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HMO Market Predictions for 2025 - E - Energy I - Inflation E- Employment I - Interest Rates and R - Regulation For more information, guidance and support to help you invest in HMOs and create a profitable property portfolio, please head on over to my website www.hmosuccess.co.uk You'll find some free downloads to learn about HMOs as a high cashflowing strategy and how you can get started with very little money.  If you want to learn more about my amazing tips which I compiled in my book '101 Essential Tips for Running a Professional HMO' you can get your own copy FREE (Just pay postage and packing) www.101essentialtips.co.uk/  For a FREE 30 minute call for any help you might need with HMOs, and to understand what I can offer you to help you progress your portfolio, please book a call here: https://calendly.com/wendy-w-large I look forward to hearing from you! Wendy ---------------------------------------- Daniel Hill's 2025 predictions podcast  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/270-2025-property-market-predictions/id1498618503?i=1000682987558 Adam Lawrence - Partners in Property February Supplement - https://partners-property.com/supplement-2-feb-25-the-new-dawn/ ---------------------------------------------- Transcription: Hello and welcome to the first episode of the HMO success podcast for 2025. I've had a little bit of a break over Christmas and New Year and decided that it was time for me to take a few weeks off recording a podcast. I wanted to review things that were filtering through the pipeline, like the renter's rights bill. I also wanted to take stock of other people's views and opinions about the outlook for 2025 and consider what some of those impacts are going to be for this year. So while many people might have released their predictions and property thoughts for 2025 on the 1st of January, I'm a month late. I hope that you will find that this podcast will give you some thoughtful reflection on what has been an interesting January. First of all, I'd like to say a massive thank you to those of you who listen to this podcast and write to me when I haven't done an episode and say "Wendy, when's the next episode coming out?" Thank you ever so much. You keep me accountable, keep me on my toes. And I hope that this podcast helps you as you invest in HMOs. I'd also like to thank everybody who participates in the community and who's investing in HMOs and gives me lots of food for thought, content, ideas, and subjects to tackle. I'm looking forward to 2025. I think it's going to be a very interesting year. What I mean by that is it's going to be one where we're going to have to use our intelligence to navigate the market. Today's podcast is very much about using our intelligence, crunching some of the numbers and thinking more deeply about some of the statistics you might have already heard since the first of January. There are a couple of people I want to give a quick shout out to who produce excellent material and whose views and opinions I value highly. One of them is Daniel Hill. He has the entrepreneurs podcast. He is very much about looking at business and growing your property portfolio as a business. I listen to a podcast of his a while ago and I thought it was excellent and I would agree with a lot of his conclusions. I'll put the link in the notes so you can jump over and listen to his podcast if you wish to. The other person I'd like to mention is Adam Lawrence from Partners in Property. His property predictions or update on the market - he does a monthly newsletter for Partners in Property. That was released today and I've been mulling over some of those statistics that he's released. Again, I'll put the link in the show notes so you can go over to that and read his notes on the general wider housing market. Today, I want to focus on my chosen topic, which is HMOs and predictions for 2025. I'm really delighted that today you have the honor of listening, not just to me, but also to my husband, my partner in crime, Andy Large. The reason I've invited him on is because Andy's got a really deep knowledge and interest in macroeconomics. At home we have plenty of discussions about this topic. As we're running an HMO business and a property business, we're always very interested in looking at how these links work back and forth because housing is a massive part of our national economy. It's a huge part of our international economy and understanding the macro picture is very important when you're trying to make decisions about the micro picture, which is how you use your money to invest and make it grow, and hopefully also provide good quality accommodation for individuals. Discussion Topics: EIER Framework Energy Wendy: Let's start with energy. What are your thoughts about what's happening in the energy world and market? And how's that going to affect us in HMOs? Andy: It could affect folk differently because we have to recognize that there are different models for HMOs. Not every HMO is an energy inclusive model. Some have tenants that actually pay their own bills with individual room billing, particularly for electric sometimes for gas, mostly for electric. I think most professional HMOs at least are an all-inclusive model. Would you say that's right? Wendy: Definitely. I think that particularly for the professional market, which is where we specialize, we offer that all-inclusive rent because I think it's really valuable for the tenant. There are so many benefits to it for the tenant. It's much easier for them just to move in and have one all-inclusive fee that they pay. It's rent, utilities, council tax, water, etc. It all goes into one part and makes it much easier for them to move in and move out and be more flexible. As well as the actual energy costs of running an HMO, the other things on the horizon which I think are part of this wider industry that affect HMOs are regulation when it comes to energy - the EPC regulation, but also the wider costs of energy and the costs of moving to net zero. This is becoming much more prevalent. We are no longer just simply accepting that we should be moving to net zero as a fait accompli, but there are voices which are now counterindicating that. As we've heard from President Trump across the pond, he stated that he is not going to support net zero and he's withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate accord and he's going to "drill baby drill." What does this wider energy industry direction of travel mean for us in HMOs? Andy: My view on net zero is that it's a totally suicidal mission. Even if we achieve net zero, what would it do? When asked that question, the reply is "Well, we'll be showing the world how to do net zero." And my view is they'll be laughing at us, particularly in China as they've made billions probably trillions out of manufacturing solar panels and we'll have no energy independence. The pertinent point for HMOs and rental properties is the EPC piece. That's where the rubber hits the road. My personal view is that this is going to be very hard now for Labor to inflict on the population of the UK. The idea was that by 2030, every rental property needs to achieve EPC C, which is unachievable anyway. There are millions of properties, at least hundreds of thousands that would never be able to meet that energy requirement because of the method of construction, their proximity to other properties, etc. I think it's an even bigger political problem for Labor now because of the appalling performance in the opinion polls and the rise of Reform who are strongly opposed to net zero. Even if Labor were to introduce a bill or ministerial instrument that said you've got to achieve that target by 2030, that requires consensus across the House of Commons, because there will be another election before 2030. They are doing a consultation about it at the moment as a live consultation. That's often what you do about what you're about to go wobbly on ideas. There's no certainty. There might very well be a law that comes in that says you have to do EPC C, and then a landlord is going to have to make a decision - are they going to do it? This is one of the dangers of any of these types of legislation. It's like the car industry having to prepare for getting rid of all ICE vehicles, only to be told, "Oh, actually, you can make some ICE vehicles." It's like a big liner crossing the ocean - it's not very easy to change direction of travel halfway through a strategic plan. Inflation Wendy: Linked to energy, of course, is inflation, and this is clearly a topic which is very important when you're investing in property, partly because we talk about real assets hedging against inflation, hedging against effectively the decrease in the value of your pound. What is going on with inflation right now? The headline statistics are that as of the end of 2024, it was 2.5% annualized, which doesn't sound too bad. But what do you feel is going on with inflation? Andy: You mean CPI inflation, which if you listen to the government inflation figure, that's really like asking a child to mark their own homework. I don't really believe that number. I think it is quite a bit higher than that because it doesn't include housing costs, which is a massive part of most people's monthly budget. Even then, there are things in the mix that make your head spin. I was listening to shows about housing costs priced in gold, which is the only Tier one reserve asset that has no counterpart. And priced against gold, all these things have indeed been in deflation. Housing prices are in a deflationary cycle right now. This is one of the problems with the fiat currency we have. It is very hard to make really solid predictions when fiat is such a fungible thing. But I think CPI is about to possibly go negative. I think rent levels are probably going to ease off for a variety of reasons, mostly to do with employment and the recession. Wendy: I'd like to challenge you on that one. Inflation is a compounding problem. We're talking about two percent or two and half percent in 2024 on top of four and a half percent in 2023 on top of seven percent in 2022. It doesn't include house prices, which is why when you're doing a refurb these days, you can add another 30% on the cost on what you were doing three or four years ago because it's all that compounded inflationary effect on goods services, materials, etc. I would argue that there is a possibility that although CPI inflation remains relatively low and the Bank of England have got a target to keep it at two percent, the wider inflationary picture - I believe there is a possibility that we're going to actually see effects of inflation coming through much more strongly and that could affect interest rates. Many people are suggesting the interest rates are going to start to come down this year. It would be great if they did, but I wonder actually whether interest rates could actually go up. Employment Wendy: What's going on with employment and unemployment? Andy: I think it's quite simple. Rachel Reeves has created rather a hostile environment for employing lots of people and we're going to wait and see how heavily that weighs on our economy. The chances are it could be quite bad. Wendy: I personally feel having spoken to a lot of people in the last couple of weeks about rooms and whether they're renting out and how long they're taking to rent out, there is a little bit of flat lining. The pace of filling rooms is not what it was a couple of months ago, although sometimes that is the time of the year. We have a slow month sometimes. People are still getting over Christmas. They're paying off their credit card bill. They haven't got any money to move. The 23rd of January is apparently the day when most people apply for new jobs. It's a commonly known date. So I think by the time we get to February March time, things will pick up again. People are more available for viewing and you've got more hours of daylight to do the viewings. Regulation One of the areas of HMO that we've seen grow a lot over the last few years is social care, social housing HMO. Whether it's an HMO that you set up and you lease to a care provider or maybe a charity, those people may be vulnerable. They may be long-term unemployed. There may be other reasons why they're being housed by the third party provider. What's very interesting to me, linked to social housing and the growth of social housing is debt at local government level. As of 2023, local government debt nationally was about nine billion pounds. This means that's about one thousand four hundred pounds per person in every local government area has debt to that level. That's the equivalent of many people's annual council tax bill. The big regulation coming forth this year is called the RRB - the Renter's Rights Bill. That is rapidly making its way through the Houses of Parliament. It's being read currently in the Lords and we're awaiting some amendments. The HMO action group wrote to about 25 members of the House of Lords to try and influence them in their thinking about particular amendments to that bill. Students are very badly treated by the Renters Rights Bill and I feel sympathetic towards those landlords that have offered really good quality student lettings for a number of years and now suddenly find that they cannot offer that fixed term tenancy of nine months or 12 months at the beginning. I think there's going to be ways around it. We don't do student HMO, so I'm not an expert in this field, but I know other people who are doing student HMOs and they've thought about it. I think again there's going to be creative solutions around it. On that note, I'm going to call our discussion to an end. We've covered some of our thoughts and predictions about 2025. Some of these are certainties, some of these are possibilities, but whatever happens, we want to wish you a prosperous and happy 2025. Please note that none of this is intended as financial advice. It's simply our musings on what's going on in the wider world of macroeconomics and housing statistics. Keep providing good quality HMOs for your tenants because long-term people need somewhere to live. Everyone needs a home. Look forward to speaking to you soon.

Andy is president of Gellert Global Group. The company imports more than 5,500 unique food items from more than 60 countries and is one of the largest food importers in the world. Gellert Global Group is home to 12 companies, led by Atalanta, the largest privately-held food importer in the U.S.Gellert Global is a third-generation family-run business. The Gellert Global Group comprises many of the leading North American food-importing companies and has been importing food products for over 100 years. The combined revenues of the Group exceed $1.7 billion.The Gellert Global family includes Andy's sister, brother and cousin. Andy's father and uncle are also part of the company. Andy's father, George, was recently inducted into the New Jersey business hall of fame. Gellert Global's goal is to be a part of every food and beverage experience. Andy and his team use a variety of factors to determine which products and brands to partner with, including trends and the needs of customers. QUOTES “Some of these family businesses and you hear about fighting and people not getting along. I think we're successful because we keep growing and there's enough things for everyone to do and for everyone to bring value.” (Andy) “You want (joining the family business) to happen organically. It's a fun business. There's opportunities for (family) to join if they want. There's no obligation to come in. We'd like them to come in, but we don't want to make a rule that they have to come in.” (Andy) “Network is important to my father. I learned that from him early on. Being a part of YPO (Young President's Organization), I love leveraging my network. I like investing in early-stage CPG's and helping and leading them to other opportunities.” (Andy) “We don't want to lose direction. We're very big and we're happy where we are but we're not in a rush to get to two billion. We're going to get there smart. If it means pairing down and doing SKU rationalization to be more profitable, all the better.” (Andy) “It's really all about efficiency. As you get bigger you can be more efficient, but you have to be diligent.” (Andy) “We're an importer of products so our products are expensive already. We're always looking for ways to (save). You always have to turn over rocks to look for more opportunities.” (Andy) “I love eating. I love food experiences. I love being surprised. I like going to a chef and saying ‘Just surprise me. Just give me what you do best.'” (Andy)  TRANSCRIPT 00:00.45Andy GellertBye. 00:01.87vigorbrandingHey there, welcome to Fork Tales. I’m ah Michael Pavone, and I’m happy to really get a chance to talk to a good friend of mine. ah Today we have Andy Gellert here. He’s a good friend I’ve known for and respected for a long, long time. Andy’s the president of Gellert Global Group, one of the largest food importers in the world. ah They import more than 2,500 product lines from more than 60 countries. Andy, thank you so much for being here. 00:27.05Andy GellertMike, always a pleasure, always great seeing you, and nice seeing your smiling face, and I love hanging out with you. We’re always having a lot of fun together. 00:34.39vigorbrandingYeah, absolutely. You know, if they if they have music for this in the beginning, you know, I was going to, I was going to change up our, our forktails music and have a little. 00:41.11Andy GellertListen, I don’t like to brag about my my my my my my my my my beautiful voice. where You saw me on stage with Welcome Pepper a long time ago. I hung that up a long time ago. 00:52.98Andy GellertI got straight into the food business, Mike. I can’t cant just think my life away, you know? 00:54.81vigorbrandingYeah. The little salt and pepper in the beginning of this thing i gets us off on everything and everything. The thing is, Andy, I have known you for a long time, but I love doing these interviews because I always learn more. so it’s like I might have seen you over the years at these shows and get to hang out and you know have a drink together, but you know when you’re digging a little deeper about the family business and about the food industry and and all of that, it’s just I’m always blown away. and your Your company and your family, which is the company, is absolutely amazing. 01:21.57vigorbrandingSo tell us a little bit about Gellert Global Group and know what they do. 01:24.57Andy Gellertbut i mean like Next year we’ll celebrate our 80th birthday and we’re very excited. and As I said, you know I’m third generation and I live i live food. It’s a passion of mine. I love all aspects of the food industry. and you know like My grandfather started this in 1945. 01:46.38Andy Gellertimporting meats from Eastern Europe and seafood. We’ve grown and got other lines of businesses in. We’re selling food service, retail, manufacturing, cruise line. 01:57.56Andy GellertWe’re now involved in, you know thanks to YPO, I’m i’m involved in the franchise business. By the end of the year, we’ll have 55 guys. Thanks to our good friend Dan Rowe. 02:05.09vigorbrandingWow. Yeah. 02:07.17Andy GellertWe’re introducing their first one. And you know we invest in food businesses and it’s just, ah We’re all about food. I tell everyone I hit my belly, it’s this is R and&D. 02:17.29Andy GellertThis is R and&D. I mean, 02:20.68vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. Now, you know, I know family owned, super important. I know you treat everyone like family because I’ve seen you around ah customers, employees, the whole thing, but your dad, he is an older gentleman, but still very much involved in the business. Is that correct? 02:35.09Andy Gellert86. I went to his house to play tennis at 6 o’clock in the morning today. We play with people from our company. He loves it like he’s, my mom goes away for the summer. 02:45.63Andy GellertHe’s having, ah lot this summer is incredible. He’s 86. Every, twice a week, he has people from the company come over and have dinner and just different groups of people. 02:52.74vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 02:53.86Andy GellertAnd and he loves what he does. It’s it’s it’s really it’s really an honor to to to work with him and and watch him. he loves He loves his suppliers. 03:04.49Andy GellertWe love our bankers. We love our employees. It’s all about, you know, yeah he’s all, he’s all about people. And it’s really great. 03:11.81vigorbrandingYeah. 03:12.97Andy GellertI said this summer at the fancy food show, he was honored with a lifetime achievement award. And it’s such a good honor to see him up there and enjoying all the success of the role we’ve done together. 03:22.47vigorbrandingWell, it’s so well deserved. He deserved that honor. The company’s amazing. But you should give him a break. I mean, I think you you put sneakers on him. 03:28.24Andy GellertHe loves, 03:28.57vigorbrandingi had He had sneakers on in the booth to run around. I mean, you know. 03:32.00Andy Gellertyou know, listen, like I said, he works out before we play tennis in the morning and He’s all about the next activity and what we’re doing next. So, you know. 03:39.84vigorbrandingThat’s it’s fantastic. how many So how many members of the family are currently working in the company? 03:45.07Andy GellertSo today we have my sister, my brother, and my cousin in my generation. And my cousin who, my other cousin who runs the Five Guide business. And then I have my father and my uncle. 03:56.25Andy GellertSo there’s, you know, three, six of us, you know. 03:58.55vigorbrandingthat’s great 03:59.47Andy GellertAnd we’re getting ready for the third generation. 03:59.41vigorbrandingand look 04:01.81Andy GellertHopefully, you know, there are nine kids in the next generation. Hopefully one of them or two of them will come in and we’re we’re excited. It’s all about, you know, we love what we do and there’s a lot to do. 04:12.31Andy GellertAnd, you know, some of these family businesses, you know, the family, you hear about them and they’re fighting and they’re not getting a along. 04:18.50vigorbrandingThat’s 04:19.38Andy GellertI think we’re being successful because we keep growing and there’s enough things that everyone can do and everyone brings value that no one’s stepping each other’s toes. 04:25.06vigorbrandinggreat. 04:27.57Andy GellertWe’re all different, we but we appreciate each other’s opinion and listening to each other. We argue, but, you know, we all, we we get her off our chest and we move forward. You know? 04:36.10vigorbrandingWould you go out and play tennis, right, and solve it over the own tennis court? 04:37.88Andy GellertExactly. We stopped it on the court. We stopped it on the court. 04:40.98vigorbrandingSo you the kids, are are they are they interested? are they old not I don’t know how old they are. Are they old enough to be getting close? 04:47.10Andy GellertSo I think um my daughter my daughter is a social worker therapist. I don’t think she’s going to come in, you know. But my, you know, my other two ah potentially will come in. 04:57.29Andy Gellertone One probably more likely than the other. 04:57.44vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 04:59.68Andy GellertOther is in the real estate industry. And then my sister’s kids potentially were there and my brother’s kids were a little bit younger. So I definitely think at least three or four will come in for the next generation. But in the meantime, we keep growing and getting bigger and and looking at opportunities and we have fun. Why why are we doing it? 05:17.12vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. Well, so in in your situation, I mean, we’re we’re of a generation, you and I, I’ll say that, like, did you, did you have a choice or did you always know that this is what I’m going to do or I want to do it? Or did you, did dad put a little pressure on you and say, Hey, look, you know, you got to do your thing. 05:32.22Andy GellertI did everything wrong in the family business. youre They all that go out and get the outside experience. And I came right in. 05:38.08vigorbrandingyeahh Yeah. 05:38.43Andy GellertAnd it was difficult. I’m not going to say it was a piece of cake. And my brother was a lot. 05:41.30vigorbrandingYeah. 05:44.06Andy Gellertyou know He went to business school. He went to law school. He worked in private banking. And then he came in. So it it made a lot of sense. And my sister, the same thing. yeah I did everything wrong but it’s good to know, it’s good to do it because then you know you’re not going to repeat it. 05:57.78Andy GellertSo you know my son who who definitely looks forward to maybe joining one day says he want he wants to spend three or four years you know the outside and coming in. 05:58.16vigorbrandingYeah. 06:05.42vigorbrandingyeah 06:08.26Andy GellertHe says he doesn’t like his boss I’m like that’s good get used to it. you Get used to it better than me you know. 06:12.52vigorbrandingGet used to it, right? 06:17.21vigorbrandingWell, you know, that’s I had the same rule with my girls. I mean, I don’t know that they’ll ever want to come into it. Why would anyone would go to an advertising agency or come into a marketing firm? But if they would, I said they had to work somewhere for two years and get one promotion. 06:28.93vigorbrandingAnd thankfully, they’ve both been doing that. 06:29.31Andy GellertYeah. 06:31.08vigorbrandingIn fact, they’ve been doing it for a while now, so maybe they’re not interested. So ah they may have dodged the bullet or maybe I have. But I just think our generation was one of those things where, you know, yeah, go do what you want to do, but you’re coming into the company kind of thing, you know. 06:43.02vigorbrandingI started my own business, I didn’t go to my dad’s company but I mean it was one of those things where I just think a lot of folks, it was just I guess different. ah Now I think with, I’ll say with my daughters and probably your kids like go out and do your thing and if you’re interested talk to me, don’t you know, don’t don’t not talk to me about it but you know, no pressure, that kind of thing. 07:00.05vigorbrandingYou know, it’s just a little different. 07:01.20Andy GellertYeah you want it to happen organically and you know listen he he comes around a lot of the meals and the family all gets together and a lot of time is talking about work so he’s interested and you know he spends weekends he came to the fancy food show they all came I can see what’s going on and it’s it’s a fun business so I think there’s opportunities for them in the future if they want but there’s no pressure we’re growing we we have a lot of we’ve done a great job of hiring a lot of outside ah you know ah 07:03.16vigorbrandingYeah. 07:19.45vigorbrandingYeah. 07:30.22Andy Gellertah you know professionals to help us run the business and they don’t have to come. re We’re doing well and you know they’re all going to enjoy the from the fruitfuls of the business as as it as it gets bigger but there’s no obligation for them to come in. We like them to come in but we don’t want to make a rule if they have to come in. 07:48.07vigorbrandingYeah, but on that note, and we’ll jump in more about the business, but on the family side, you mentioned earlier that we’re both in YPO. And we both know that a lot of YPO businesses are family owned businesses. And there’s there are challenges, right, with being family owned and led. I mean, you know, what, you know, can you talk a little bit about that? 08:05.93Andy GellertListen, it’s hard, but thank God for YPO. To me, it’s one of the best opportunities of my life. I really enjoyed all the people like yourself and getting involved in the Food Network and my New Jersey Forum. 08:23.49Andy GellertThese guys are my board of directors and my own personal board of directors. 08:26.70vigorbrandingyou 08:28.15Andy GellertThey really helped me grow. where you know where I was i was being stubborn, they told me to relax, where I was not being aggressive enough, they pushed me. And it’s just been a great environment for me to to prosper as a leader because of YPL. 08:43.66vigorbrandingThat’s great. When I know your food and beverage form or that group and boy, you know, I can’t believe you learned anything from them. So ah you guys have a group of, you guys have ah ah a group of, uh, of, uh, cherished individuals, yeah characters. 08:49.65Andy GellertThank you. 08:56.99Andy GellertWe’ve got a great group and we’ve been together for over, you know, some of us back almost 16, 18 years and it’s great. 08:58.20vigorbrandingYes, you do. 09:03.87Andy GellertI love seeing the guys and we don we try not to miss meetings and and we’re supportive of each other. 09:06.99vigorbrandingYeah, it’s cool. Yeah, I’ve had a couple of them one here, so it’s ah it’s been great. They’re they’re they’re like the characters, that’s for sure. So yeah and you mentioned your father got an award at Fancy Food. I was there at Fancy Food this year, and what it’s a great honor. He’s also a member of the New Jersey Business Hall of Fame. 09:24.61Andy GellertYeah, please listen, though we it’s not easy. I think we’re the 11th largest privately held business in New Jersey. We’re very proud of that. and we you know it’s We work hard and he deserves to be honored for what what what he’s accomplished. 09:39.11vigorbrandingYeah. i mean so As I was saying earlier, you know I get to meet folks and we get to see you know different folks at different shows. and i had i i mean I knew you ran a great, important company. I had no idea the size and scale. so you know on Your vision is to be a part of every food experience. and you know Well, I will say that sounds like a really you know audacious goal, right? But with your company, you kind of are. i mean you have you have you have You have a franchise, you have you import your frozen food, you have CPG, you have a private, I mean, it’s it’s incredible. 10:13.44vigorbrandingCan you talk a little bit about the breadth and the different companies within your organization? 10:15.87Andy GellertI mean, it’s exciting and I think we’ve grown over the years through acquisitions. I think the last 18 months we made three acquisitions. We’re probably closing on one the next month and have two on the table that we’re looking at. So growth is, you know, we’re always looking at mergers and acquisitions. And we like to say, listen, private equity, if you’re a family business, you want to stay apart, you know, how enjoy the ride, take some money off the table and join our family instead of private equity where they 10:44.81vigorbrandingYeah. 10:45.10Andy Gellertchange your business up and listen if you want to cash out you can always cash out but if you want to enjoy the ride a little bit longer and take some money off the table we’ve been very successful about people wanting to join a family business and ours is that we’re like a large very large family business so we get to a lot of opportunities to look at business deals. 11:05.69vigorbrandingYeah, and you know, ah your your ah passion for the business and your your love of people, it sort of precedes you. Like I’ve always seen that about you, your energy and i it’s not, it’s not, it’s not artificial. 11:18.40vigorbrandingYou do that. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you at the booth when I’m standing walking the shows and stuff. And it’s, ah it’s really kind of ah really cool. And I’m sure that’s a compliment to your father and and I’m sure your whole family’s like that. But you do treat everybody like family. 11:29.62vigorbrandingAnd I think that’s ah admirable. 11:30.12Andy Gellertbut You know, network is always um is important to my father. I learned that from him early on. And being part of YPO, I love leveraging my network and not for myself, but helping people. 11:39.05vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. 11:41.20Andy GellertI like investing in early stage CPGs and helping these young people and watching their passion and, you know, leading them to other opportunities. I love putting two people together and let let them prosper. 11:53.58Andy GellertIt’s it’s really a ah pleasure of mine, you know, watching that happen. 11:58.17vigorbrandingYeah, well, and that’s, that leads to success, right? 12:00.84Andy GellertIt’s really pure joy. 12:00.82vigorbrandingYou know, you help people out. 12:01.68Andy Gellertat You’re 100%. 12:01.74vigorbrandingYeah, absolutely. So, and I will say, ah you know, I’ve been informed with you and you were a treasure and valuables all get out. And the amount of people you know, and and the connections you have are second to none. 12:14.02Andy GellertWell, 12:14.00vigorbrandingAnd you know, 12:14.46Andy Gellertwe do have a good friend in LA who like to compare. 12:16.32vigorbrandingokay 12:17.18Andy GellertMy good friend, our good friend Clara, who probably knows one more than I do. 12:20.44vigorbrandingyeah hey 12:22.30Andy Gellertjob 12:23.31vigorbrandingheard I would always keep score when we’d be talking, like who knew who or who knew the other person better or whatever else, but I will say, yeah I’m excited for you to be on here because I know my podcast now will be, I’ll rival the the football games, you know the upcoming football games for for for viewership because because of you. 12:34.55Andy GellertYeah. 12:38.34vigorbrandingSo I just, I appreciate that. So, but but back when companies, though you have frozen, you have CPG. can you Can you talk a little bit about the different types of of ah products? 12:46.45Andy GellertYeah, so we’re in the frozen fruits, frozen vegetables. You know, we just actually, a few years ago, we invested in a company called Cafe Spice. I made him join YPO and they make ethnic meals. um I just, you know, we did ah the Bloomberg of Food, the Food Institute, 13:04.37Andy GellertWe made a minority investment in there. 13:04.43vigorbrandingYep. 13:06.90Andy Gellertwere you know We do a lot of different retail, private label, manufacturing. We’re just trying to leverage all the everything on a plate. look at you know we’re We’re looking at an olive business, a rice business. There’s so many opportunities out there. We just want to add on to our great team here. We’ve got great people. 13:27.64Andy Gellertah We have great sales people, great buyers, and you know, finance. And we just, we can do some more. So we’re looking for more opportunities. 13:33.69vigorbrandingMm hmm. That’s great. Do you need an ad agency? I’m just kidding. 13:37.95Andy GellertWe’ve said, a lot of us not our own brand. We do have some brands that we, that are ours. 13:43.18vigorbrandingYeah. 13:43.84Andy GellertAnd we bought, we bought two brands from, from UNFI, Mountain Vicos that was owned by UNFI and Sonoma Cheese. 13:48.53vigorbrandingMm hmm. 13:52.16Andy GellertSo we do, we do work on our brand. So we, you know, we and um we have a marketing department. 13:54.60vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 13:56.46Andy GellertWe got a, get you more engaged, Micah. 13:58.46vigorbrandingThere you go. 13:58.78Andy GellertI’ll get to that. 13:59.35vigorbrandingHey, I’m always here for that. That’s awesome. 14:01.26Andy GellertFor even your Philly cheesesteak, we’ll have a meeting, you know, that’s all I need. 14:03.59vigorbrandingYou got it. Hey, that’s done. No no no problem there. So when you’re when you’re building and you’re always looking for these new new products or companies, ah yeah what when you want to import them, what what factors are you looking at? 14:15.50vigorbrandinglike I mean, obviously you you go to need a lot of things, there but you’re in so many different places. What what is it that you’re you’re kind of like, what’s on your checklist at the top of the checklist? 14:23.65Andy GellertSo we want to look at something that makes sense. so if you know We love the the old math, one plus one equals four. So we want to find efficiencies. Maybe they’re doing the same thing we are, but they have a big they have a big finance team that we don’t really need going forward. 14:38.14Andy GellertOr maybe they’re in one segment of the business where we’re not in. 14:42.04vigorbrandingUh-huh. 14:42.16Andy GellertSo we try to really identify where we can do the math where one plus one equals four and five. 14:47.91vigorbrandingRight. 14:48.70Andy Gellertyou know we don’t want to doesn’t that A copycat doesn’t really help sometimes, but if they have a you know a big ah big staff on the some redundancy there, then it could make sense. 14:54.08vigorbrandingUh-huh. 14:58.10Andy GellertOtherwise, it could be a whole new field that we can add to our already you know deep bench of of products that we do. So we don’t have a playlist of what we’re looking for. We just look at different opportunities and see if they make sense. 15:11.27Andy Gellerti mean like Just like building a network, we love looking at decks and looking at opportunities or 15:16.32vigorbrandingMm hmm. 15:16.75Andy GellertWhy are companies for sale? Why aren’t they aren’t? And a lot of times, i likeck listen, this is going to go to private equity. We’re not going to need a bit because we know we’ll be blown out of the water. 15:25.59vigorbrandingright Yeah. Yeah. that makes That makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, obviously, and you know, I kind of had this philosophy as well in the business. It’s like, you’re opportunistic. You know, you’re not saying I’m looking for this exact thing. 15:36.91vigorbrandingIt has to be this big, that, you know, that that category doing that thing. It’s sort of like, Oh, here’s an opportunity. Hmm. This fits or no, it doesn’t fit. Or, Hey, this can enhance that. 15:43.96Andy GellertYeah. 15:44.95vigorbrandingAnd if we do this, maybe we can go here. And so I’ve always looked at that. It’s kind of fun to do it that way. I kind of always. 15:50.32Andy GellertIt’s not a good idea. You’re looking under the rug and see what’s there and putting that puzzle together because like I said, a big company that’s competitive in mind, it’s going to go for a lot more for private equity. 15:51.60vigorbrandingYeah. 15:54.65vigorbrandingYeah. 16:03.40Andy GellertI don’t even want to play in there. I don’t have private equity money where I could afford to strike out. 16:05.38vigorbrandingRight. 16:10.74Andy GellertI want to make sure these are successful acquisitions and they fit in them all. 16:15.96vigorbrandingYeah, and you make a really good point because we’ve seen, you know, I’ll say, and um I know you’ve seen for sure, but in my business with CPG and in the restaurant side, private equity will come in and they, I’m not gonna say they don’t care if they fail, but they they know it’s a numbers game. 16:31.27vigorbrandingThey know that all aren’t gonna pan out. So they make these investments and then they they do their, they they they they apply their playbook and then, you know, if it’s like baseball. if they They hit three out of, ah if they hit three out of 10, they feel like they’ve done something and and you probably have financially, but 16:40.88Andy Gellertyeah 16:44.73vigorbrandingThe other seven are just left to the wayside. 16:46.68Andy GellertExactly. And and they’ve, you know, they can afford to do that. We really don’t want to do that. 16:49.73vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. 16:51.36Andy GellertAnd we don’t want to, we don’t want to lose direction. 16:51.34vigorbrandingNo. 16:53.42Andy GellertI mean, listen, and we like, you know, we’re very big and we’re happy wherever you are, but we’re not in a goal to rush to get to 2 billion. 17:00.89vigorbrandingRight. 17:01.14Andy GellertWouldn’t get there smart. And if it means paring down and skew rationalization to be more profitable, all the better. 17:06.88vigorbrandingMm hmm. Do you find yourself doing that a lot? Do you do you have to go in there and and do skew rationalization or? 17:12.64Andy Gellertall the time, all the time, we really, you know, skew rash, customer rationalization, and we’ll bundle a bunch of customers and give them to a bigger customer just to make sure our warehouse is more efficient. 17:13.21vigorbrandingYeah. 17:16.68vigorbrandingYeah. 17:21.11vigorbrandingYeah. 17:23.25Andy GellertIt’s really all about efficiency. I mean, as you get bigger, you could be more efficient. 17:24.87vigorbrandingYeah. 17:27.21Andy GellertAnd, but you have to be diligent and skew rationalization, customer rationalization, people rationalization, you know, rationalization as well. 17:32.84vigorbrandingYep. 17:35.97Andy GellertYou know, it’s important. 17:37.23vigorbrandingYeah. And that’s that’s such ah’ such an interesting point because I think, you know, and I’ll say i’ll say in my own experience, you know, i in our holding company, we have several different marketing companies and I’m always afraid to let customers go. 17:48.21vigorbrandingLike, oh, though no, that we can do it for them. Sometimes it’s not good business, right? And sometimes you have to make those tough decisions and, you know, it’s it’s hard to let employees go, but it’s it’s hard for you to let, or I’ll say for me, to let a piece of business go, a paying customer. 17:52.67Andy GellertYeah. 18:00.83Andy GellertYeah, ah it’s, you know, you don’t like the same thing. But, but you got to look at it like, you know, you still have another 300 other employees out there that you want to do for the better the of the group. 18:07.78vigorbrandingRight. 18:10.14vigorbrandingRight. 18:10.45Andy GellertSo it makes sense to let someone go or let a customer go in order to be more efficient for everyone else. 18:10.42vigorbrandingThat’s right. 18:17.54Andy GellertSo it’s hard. 18:17.83vigorbrandingyeah 18:19.55Andy GellertAnd initially, it’s hard. But over time, you realize It’s a better decision and to be you know to be more efficient and just try. 18:27.95vigorbrandingAbsolutely. So I mean, one of the things that, you you know, we have the two agencies, we have quench, we have, ah which is CPG food and beverage, we have a vart of Vigor, which is ah ah restaurant marketing. and you you You cover them all because you’re in franchise with five guys, you’re in, you know, in the CPG world. um You know, it’s it’s sort of like, it’s hard to keep track of everything. How do you manage it all? I mean, I know you have different folks, but you’re sitting up there, are you just pulling up a different P and&L for each of these business units every two days? or 18:56.16Andy GellertI mean, we’re on ah basically a lot of these Zoom calls and just listening in and we just had one a few minutes ago, you know, we do a lot of nut and dry fruit business and we’re working on getting bigger in the bakery in the in the supermarket. 19:09.09Andy GellertSo how could we be, you know, and and we sat down today and we talked about all of our items and they all fit in the bakery. bill We’re selling very little of the bakery. So it’s an untapped market and it gets everyone excited. 19:21.02Andy GellertAnd we sit down and f throw things at the wall and see what sticks. 19:24.19vigorbrandingThat’s great. 19:24.58Andy GellertAnd we’re kind of fun. like we just said hey You know, we do this item, this will be good for, and I just, I love sitting in these meetings and just, you know, throwing out ideas. 19:32.21vigorbrandingThat’s great. That’s great. Very cool. Well, I know at Quench, you know, the CPG side, we would do to learn, to understand the industry. You know, we started the agency in food and beverage. 19:43.65vigorbrandingIt’s like, you can’t just say you do advertising and marketing food and beverage. You have to have an expertise. We’re going to hire people from the CPG world. But then what we did was we created a food and beverage trench to learn what was going on. 19:54.01vigorbrandingRight. And the first year we’ve done them for 15 years. You know, you’ve probably seen me speak on them at different events. 20:00.02Andy GellertYeah, are you do a great job. I love hearing your updates on the YPO conferences and you really got a pulse of what’s going on in the industry. 20:07.49vigorbrandingYeah. would So we we would do that. just We did it actually just for our own edification, just to learn. And then when we did it, we said, well, let’s let’s just give these away. So we do them every year. We give them away, fast companies written about them and all that. Do you use trends ah for your business to for like that next big thing? 20:21.92vigorbrandingOr is it more of truly just looking at the pieces and moving things around on the board? 20:26.18Andy GellertWe look at trends, we look at pieces, you know, we lot of our a lot of our suppli customers say, we like this item, can you go out and find it for us? And we got people or, you know, and in some cases we do a lot of business, some of our our customers say, here’s an item, you know here’s the supplier, you know, you’re you’re a great importer, we want you to import it for us. So it just, because we’re a trusted supplier, we’re good at logistics, they actually given us business to to handle. 20:53.89Andy GellertAnd it’s it’s exciting. And then we take that business and look at other opportunities as well. 20:59.70vigorbrandingHow is there anything are you doing anything in the beverage side is it mostly all just food? 21:01.22Andy Gellerte 21:04.27Andy GellertNo, I mean, we the beverage side we have, so we, Cipriani, you know, the so we we handle all their CPG items. 21:09.46vigorbrandingMm-hmm Okay Mm-hmm 21:13.80Andy GellertSo they make a the bulini mix, non-alcoholic bulini. So we’re slowly getting it. That’s our beverage and, you know, we’ll see where that takes us. but That’s new space for us. 21:24.96Andy GellertAnd we’re doing it on the retail side. Now we’re looking to try to listen to all the beverage distributors we don’t really touch on. So we’re getting a ah handle on that business as well. 21:31.95vigorbrandingMm-hmm. Yeah. 21:34.96Andy GellertSo that’s the only part of beverage. know I’m an investor in a few CPG, like Ollie Pop and Lemon Perfect, a few others. 21:40.57vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 21:43.06Andy GellertBut but not I think that’s a tough space. But I think we’re we’re getting our feet wet with this Trippiani land. 21:48.39vigorbrandingSee, that’s interesting. 21:48.67Andy GellertWe’re very excited. 21:50.05vigorbrandingYou’re 11 perfect. We just took over their space in Atlanta. They’re headquartered in Atlanta, yeah. 21:53.76Andy GellertOh, 21:54.76vigorbrandingAnd we just took over their space. They went ah they went all virtual, so yeah. 21:58.07Andy Gellertyeah. Yani went to Cornell with me. 22:00.32vigorbrandingYeah. Oh, is that right? 22:00.83Andy GellertYeah, yeah he’s a you should get him on your podcast. 22:03.45vigorbrandingWell, I’ve met him, he’s a great guy. 22:05.26Andy GellertI he’s Mr. Energy. It was his birthday this week. 22:06.69vigorbrandingOh my gosh. 22:07.72Andy GellertSo I just I love that guy. 22:08.28vigorbrandingIs that right? I will reach out to him. Yeah, i we you you can you can appreciate this, Andy, you know me pretty well. 22:11.20Andy GellertHe 22:15.37vigorbrandingSo i’m goingnna I was gonna sublease his his office, right? So you know it’s a real estate deal. I’m gonna sublease it, we’re gonna move from one ah ah one office to this other office. So I talked to him and he was like, he was going 180 miles an hour and it was great and all that. 22:29.28vigorbrandingAnd I was like, I really like this guy. And I’m like, 22:31.92Andy GellertHe’s an infectious personality. 22:32.86vigorbrandingYeah. 22:33.53Andy Gellertyou 22:33.75vigorbrandingAnd I’m like, you know, johnny i said hey if you want, I mean, I’ll, I’ll do the deal here with you, but if you want to stay, like, you know, I mean your energy and what you’re, you’re in the beverage, that’s what we do. 22:44.21vigorbrandingI mean, you can stay, you know, like if you have meetings here and like your, if your people come in, like it’s a big enough space for all of us, I’m not asking for anything on the other side. 22:46.07Andy GellertYeah. 22:51.86vigorbrandingah You can stay. I mean, I just i thought energy, you know, creates more energy. So, and we talked about that, but then he was like, you know, isn’t that crazy? 22:57.60Andy GellertThat’s so funny to know that guy. I met him at Expo West. And he had a small little table. 23:03.20vigorbrandingYep. 23:03.40Andy GellertAnd I’m like, wow, this guy’s this guy has a firecracker. 23:07.14vigorbrandingYeah. 23:07.31Andy GellertAnd I’m like, um’m I’m supporting you. 23:09.42vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 23:09.51Andy GellertAnd it’s a great story. 23:11.92vigorbrandingThat’s very cool. That’s the end goes to show you know everybody that’s amazing to me amazing. That’s funny. 23:17.14Andy GellertTake that, Clara. 23:21.03vigorbrandingI’ll make sure we tell her that. 23:22.87Andy Gellertbut 23:22.95vigorbrandingSo, all right, now I’m gonna bring up something, I guess negative or whatever, but inflation. Inflation is, ah you know, is it affects every industry, especially food. 23:28.56Andy GellertIt’s tough. its you know 23:30.55vigorbrandingYeah. how How much of an impact has that had on you guys? 23:32.99Andy GellertThat’s a very important product. 23:33.03vigorbrandingand 23:34.29Andy GellertSo our product are expensive already. And so it’s tough. We have to find you know so you know find other opportunities. That’s why we invested in this cafe spice that makes meals. 23:44.93Andy GellertSo maybe we make things more efficient for more of our customers and look at other opportunities. Maybe so source something that’s coming from Europe, getting it from South America. And and we’re always looking for ways to skin. 23:59.19Andy GellertWe started importing French fries from Belgium. to the East Coast because it’s it’s more effective and looking at opportunities like that. and Now we’re looking at opportunities in India. You always have to turn over rocks, look for more opportunities. It’s scary. 24:14.30Andy Gellertand it’s it’s you know the It’s all the news, the the price inflation. So we’re always looking for newer opportunities to try to make things better for our customers. 24:25.43vigorbrandingAnd being a global you know accessing globally with conflict and things like that, I mean obviously that’s affecting everything. i mean are you having are you ah is there um Is there ever a chance where one area of the business is sort of shut down or hey we can’t get this from there? 24:40.46Andy GellertYeah, things happen all the time. I mean, you know, when the Ukraine war first started, you know, it was it was a big factor because happened old Europe was tough. 24:42.39vigorbrandingIt’s crazy. 24:51.28Andy GellertAnd then when there was a ah big problem of freight from the from from Asia, supply chain issues from COVID. I mean, we’ve we’ve seen them all, Mike. 25:00.35vigorbrandingcrazy 25:01.71Andy GellertAnd now ah there’s an impending dock strike that’s going to come. So that’s going to affect from Maine all the way to Texas. 25:07.59vigorbrandinghear about that? 25:09.05Andy Gellertand 25:09.51vigorbrandingYeah. 25:09.86Andy GellertThat’s really making us very nervous and our customers nervous. 25:11.55vigorbrandingOh yeah. 25:12.86Andy GellertSo, but we, you know, we do the best we can and we keep fighting every day, you know, get up, get up and play some tennis, you know. 25:13.80vigorbrandingWow. 25:18.34vigorbrandingYes, I was gonna say, you get played tennis and smile and have a positive attitude and that’s the secret sauce. 25:23.15Andy GellertYou just got to, you know. 25:25.04vigorbrandingYou know, and I do love because every time I’m talking, I think, I think you always say, yeah, I played tennis with my dad this morning and you know, family businesses, there’s so many family businesses that end up like not talking to each other and you hear all the the generational strife or the the falling apart. 25:37.72vigorbrandingThe fact that you you still hang with your dad, my dad was my best friend. So that’s just so near and dear to me. It’s incredible. I think that’s so awesome. 25:43.18Andy GellertWell, today is a little, today is a little flat with him. I showed up at his house at 10 to 6, pouring rain, and the the match was canceled. So I had to wake up for nothing, and I’m a little annoyed. 25:50.67vigorbrandingah Oh boy. 25:53.10Andy GellertBut that doesn’t matter at all. 25:55.76vigorbrandingI hope you don’t ever let him win. 25:57.56Andy GellertWell, i I’m his partner. He doesn’t move very well, and people, no one was allowed to drop shot him, you know? 25:59.16vigorbrandingOkay. 26:04.11Andy Gellertget Everyone starts booing, whoever dropped off him. 26:06.88vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 26:07.02Andy GellertBut it was an accident. They’re like, no, you know? He’s got a bunch of rules, you know? 26:11.16vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. It’s his own tennis game, right? It’s his own. 26:13.99Andy Gellerttheel game is his ze tennis game 26:16.17vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. So, if I if i may ask, and I know if there’s something you can’t say, that’s fine, but what’s what’s next for Gellert Global? I mean, what is anything new on the horizon, anything exciting you could talk about? 26:23.54Andy Gellerti We’re looking at more opportunities. you know we will be like We have such a great team. We have such great suppliers, such great employees, such great customers. We just want to keep doing what we’re doing and look for more opportunities. And if it makes sense to to make an acquisition, we’re going to do it. 26:40.44Andy Gellertand uh, it’s, it’s fun. You know, I mean, you know, just look at my cousin and the five guys, we were like 12, five guys. Now this year, by the end of the year, we’ll have a hundred. I mean, it’s just, uh, opportunistic and good people and growth to move forward. 26:50.43vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 26:57.42vigorbrandingYeah. And, and Dan Rowe, as you mentioned, he’s a king of a guy and he, he was actually on the podcast and he, he’s, he’s fantastic. 27:00.10Andy GellertYeah. 27:03.17vigorbrandingSo that’s good company right there. 27:05.70Andy GellertYeah. Yeah. We were at a YPL event and he’s like, and we’ we’re looking My cousin at the time had a bunch of cinnabons and we’re looking for our second concept and we’re at a YPO in DC. 27:11.89vigorbrandingUh-huh. 27:15.43Andy GellertHe’s like, Andy, come try this concept. And I took a bite of the five guy burger. I’m like, this is like a, like the, when you taste a cinnabon for the first time, it’s wow factor. 27:23.93vigorbrandingRight. Yeah. 27:25.78Andy GellertI called my cousin and the next thing we know, we you know we’re down there signing the deal. So it was, it’s been a great journey. 27:30.70vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. Yeah. Fantastic. Very cool. All right. So now I asked this question. I have one last question, right? And this probably, well, I don’t know if it’ll be easy for you, but it’s not like you have to say, you can’t say five guys. 27:41.96vigorbrandingSo I have to fill it out there. So, but if you have one final meal, what would you eat and why, and I’m going to say this too. 27:48.70Andy GellertLike, that’s the hardest thing because I love. 27:48.90vigorbrandingAnd and and who with, I want to know who with. 27:52.53Andy GellertThat’s like the hardest question anyone can ever ask me. I love like, it’s like, we I think I told you was before we started out that you was open with my son and my wife and there’s so much food options. 28:00.19vigorbrandingYeah. 28:04.26Andy GellertI had a headache. I couldn’t find what to get. Would I get to the Korean bowl or the palette for the steak sandwich? or or the fancy chicken with truffles, the dumplings. 28:15.10Andy Gellertyou know i’m like I almost get a headache, I can’t even decide. 28:15.19vigorbrandingyeah 28:19.04Andy Gellertso back It’s impossible. I just i love eating, I love food experiences, I love being surprised. I like going to a chef and say, just surprise me. 28:29.38Andy Gellertonly even Just give me what you you you do best and let me try it. 28:29.31vigorbrandingYeah. 28:33.30Andy Gellertand and you know it’s really i can’t i There’s not one meal that I have to have. i 28:39.23vigorbrandingYeah. 28:40.25Andy GellertI love a good sandwich. I love a good burger. I got a good steak. I like Italian, French, Spanish food, everything. 28:45.72vigorbrandingYep. ah You know, it’s funny. i I’m the same way. I’m lucky. I can eat anything. Like I don’t get nothing. I don’t have any allergies. I don’t get sicker. But you know, if I have a go to at a certain thing at a certain place, i will I’ll have a go at my go to. 28:56.26vigorbrandingBut nine out of 10 times when I go to a restaurant, like whatever the chef wants to make, because I figured he’s gonna put his heart and soul on it. 28:56.44Andy Gellerte 29:00.90Andy GellertYeah. 29:02.21vigorbrandingRight. If it’s, if I’m asking him his opinion. 29:02.59Andy Gellertbut i agree yeah if if if If they put it on the menu and then they’re behind it, I would take their recognition and set something I really want. 29:05.89vigorbrandingYeah. 29:09.81Andy Gellertso My father, yeah. 29:10.21vigorbrandingRight. That’s right. That’s right. You nailed it. And I love the fact that you mentioned the U.S. Open and there was somebody there at the U.S. Open that had better seats than you, which was your. Of course, yeah. 29:21.87vigorbrandingAndy, you know, I love being with you. I love talking to you and I appreciate your time. ah Just thank you so much for being on Fork Tales. 29:28.25Andy Gellertah mike First of all, congratulations to you and the organization you built and you’ve always been You’re always smiling, too. i mean actually That’s why we like each other so much. 29:36.16vigorbrandingYeah. 29:36.89Andy GellertWe’re always smiling. Have a good time. And your trends are amazing. And I really enjoyed seeing you and doing this with yourself. 29:43.81vigorbrandingfantastic well thank you so much 29:45.78Andy GellertAll right? 29:46.39vigorbrandingtake care 29:46.78Andy GellertTake care. Bye. 29:47.78vigorbrandingright 30:07.41vigorbrandingFantastic. 30:11.01vigorbrandingWell, thank you so much. Take care. 

In today's episode of the IC-DISC show, I sit down with Andy Hein of Patent Veritas. Andy shares his impressive journey from chemical engineering and law firms to establishing his firm. He reveals how Patent Veritas helps businesses secure their intellectual property through strategic patent licensing. I learn how industries like restaurants and stock trading benefit from robust patent protection. Andy demystifies securing patent licenses through the secondary market, allowing businesses access to a vast portfolio. Tailored solutions are key to understanding clients' needs. For business owners, Andy discusses using patent licensing for long-term investment and coupling it with Private Placement Life Insurance. Andy offers valuable insights as we discuss real cases that illustrate high stakes, even in seemingly simple industries. We also touch on ethical considerations in competitive landscapes and ensure personalized services.     SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Andy Hein shares his background in chemical engineering and patent law, discussing his experience at Skadden Arps and Sidley Austin before founding Patent Veritas. We discuss the role of Patent Veritas in helping businesses secure their intellectual property through strategic patent licensing, particularly focusing on mitigating litigation risks from patent trolls. Andy explains how Patent Veritas acquires patents from the secondary market and licenses them to clients, allowing companies to preempt costly legal battles and enhance their IP portfolios. We delve into the benefits of understanding clients' revenue streams and technological processes to offer tailored patent protection solutions, applicable to various industries, including non-high-tech sectors like restaurant chains and stock trading operations. Andy elaborates on the concept of Private Placement Life Insurance (PPLI) for accredited investors, highlighting its dual benefits for business owners in protecting both their business and personal interests. We explore real-world cases, such as a litigation involving used car sales companies, to illustrate the high stakes of patent protection and the strategic moves companies can make to safeguard their operations. Andy discusses the ethical considerations and strategic advantages of having a robust patent portfolio to counteract competitor lawsuits, emphasizing the value of being proactive rather than reactive. We reflect on the rewarding aspects of offering personalized legal services and the importance of ensuring a good fit between clients and Patent Veritas' offerings, with a unique fee structure based on patent licenses rather than hourly rates. Andy provides insights into the competitive dynamics of the patent marketplace, explaining how companies can leverage patent licensing as a long-term investment to enhance their business value. We conclude with advice for entrepreneurs and business owners, stressing the importance of being hardworking, available, and respectful in building successful client relationships, and offering complimentary initial consultations to make the first step towards collaboration accessible.   Contact Details Email Andy (mailto:ahein@patentveritas.com) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyhein1) LINKSShow Notes Be a Guest About IC-DISC Alliance About Patent Veritas GUEST Andy HeinAbout Andy TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dave: Hi, this is David Spray and welcome to another episode of the IC-DISC Show. My guest today is Andy Hein, a founder of a company called Cotton. Andy has a legal background. He's an attorney and worked at some of the top law firms in the world out of law school and then he saw an opportunity and started this business and it's really fascinating. And started this business and it's really fascinating. Apparently, almost every company, every privately held company, has exposure to being sued by patent trolls or competitors that use patents as a tool to extract money out of a company, and virtually every privately held, closely held company is at risk for this. And they have a solution that addresses this, by which the company can license or have a subscription that allows them to have access to tens of thousands of patents in the company's portfolio. So you don't need to own the patents, you can just license the necessary ones to protect you and your company. Andy: Anyway. Dave: Andy's a really dynamic guy, interesting guy, interesting service, and they can also wrap it in an estate planning wrapper to make it even more appealing. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Good afternoon Andy. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, good afternoon Dave. Andy: How are you doing? Dave: I'm doing great, thank you. So where are you calling in from today? Andy: You know I'm in the great town of Carmel, Indiana, so just right outside Indianapolis. Dave: I think you have more roundabouts than any city in the country, if my knowledge is correct on that. Andy: We do. I think we still have one or two stop signs and stoplights to take out, but they're getting thinner by the day. So, yeah, we have a lot of them Now are you a native of Indiana? Dave: I am, yeah, I'm originally from Crown Point, which is in Northwest corner of Indiana, and then eventually migrated our way down to central Indiana here, okay, well, my my all-time favorite basketball player is from Southern Indiana. Andy: Oh, who's that? Dave: That would be Larry. Andy: Legend, of course, yeah, no, obviously a great player, pretty famous around these parts too. Dave: Now you, you're an attorney. Where did you go to law school? Andy: So I went over to Georgetown Law Center over in DC and studied there, focusing mostly on patent law, but a bit on finance as well. Dave: And your undergraduate degree, I believe, is in engineering. Is that right? Andy: It is. Yeah, it's in chemical engineering from Trine University, which is a school just in northeast Indiana. Dave: Okay, yeah, it seems like most IP attorneys I know have a technical undergraduate degree. It seems to kind of go together. Yeah, it's like peas and carrots. Andy: You know, especially when you go to law school, they ask well, what do you study? A lot of folks study history or philosophy, and when you say engineering, they say you know you should think about being a patent attorney. And so you go into that and you think that's kind of interesting. Actually it's a lot of fun. So yeah, we all kind of end up there for the most part. Dave: Now, right after law school. Did you launch your own firm then, or did you take a different path? Andy: Yeah, no, I took a kind of a traditional path. So I started my career at a firm called Skadden Arps and I was in the Chicago office. There I worked on actually finance work, doing supporting M&A and chapter 11 bankruptcy, and then also did litigation there as well. So spent a few years there and then went over to another firm called Sidley Austin and there I concentrated just on patent litigation. Doing deals and litigation work is a lot of fun on paper but eventually you have to pick a horse to ride on. So I picked the litigation one, so just stuck with patent litigation and worked there for a number of years before setting out on my own. Dave: Yeah, and those are I mean arguably two of the top 10 law firms in the country, right by many metrics or top 20, you know very kind of traditional white shoe law firms right by many metrics or top 20, you know very kind of traditional white shoe law firms right. Andy: Yeah, they're up there for sure. So yeah, great place, great experience at both firms. It was a wonderful time there. Dave: So let's come up to the current time. So tell me about and off the top of my head, I don't even remember the name of the company. Tell me the name of the company and why you started it and what you guys do. Andy: Yeah, so our company is Patent Veritas. What we do is we help, for the most part, privately held businesses of all sizes with their IP litigation risk as well as enhancing their IP functionality within their business. It's kind of the culmination of what I've been doing over a number of years. We're very client focused and this is one where it kind of pulls together a lot of the past experience and work that I've done and my colleague Nick Stabinski and partner Nick Stabinski has done. So we formed that and the neat part about that is it addresses a real concern that some companies know about. Just actually had a conversation this morning where someone was very aware of what we're trying to do and trying to help the company with and others haven't heard of it. But it's a risk that's out there and a very real one that we're trying to help companies with. Dave: So I know what patent means. Veritas, I think is Latin, but I don't recall off the top of my head what does Veritas mean? Andy: So it's just patent truth. It just sounded pretty good Good Latin word in there, so we have to. We put it in there. Dave: That is great and it sounds like that you saw some opportunity in this space based on your prior experience or clients. Like was there a specific situation that made you say, hey, you know there needs, there's a hole in the market here and I think I'm the guy that needs to fill it. Was there anything in particular? Andy: Yeah, no, that's a great question and there was, it's. Mostly clients were coming to us. Two things we noticed over the years, and then also, more directly, folks were asking us On the patent side. Two things would happen, because what we do is the particular IP risk is against patent trolls. These are folks that buy patents. They don't make a product or otherwise, they just buy buckets of patents and they sue operating companies for licensing revenue. So we saw a number of clients getting sued that way, and patent lawsuits are expensive. I mean a cheap one. According to the AIPLA, which is an association of IP attorneys, a relatively lower cost one, or average one, is about $6 million if you're going to trial, which is, yes, it's a lot of money. We've had clients upwards of 50, spend 50 million plus on legal fees. So patent litigation is not cheap, and so a lot of the folks that are the patent trolls are also called non-practicing entities. These folks, they know that arbitrage costs right and so they'll come in, they'll buy the patents. A lot of times then they go to these companies and they ask for a license that's below the cost of the litigation and so that's their business model. So we saw that happening to a number of our clients and these are especially targeted now are oftentimes small and medium enterprises right, privately held businesses, because that's their money right, and so they're going to make a decision, perhaps different than a bigger company like a Samsung will make or otherwise, to say hey we have the money. Dave: Yeah, they may just make a more pragmatic decision, right, because they may not have $6 million to spend. Andy: Exactly so. The decision process by an Apple or Samsung, which has a much larger litigation budget, is a lot different than when you're targeting, say, privately held manufacturer or maybe a restaurant chain or something like that Very successful businesses and oftentimes making many millions of dollars, but their decision with that money is a lot different than an Apple. As to saying I'm just going to fight all this, we're just going to fight everything that comes our way which isn't really possible for these companies because they don't have that deep of pockets, and so we thought of a solution for that, which I'm sure we'll talk about soon. But it came from that. And then also in our work, we buy and sell patents. That's how we kind of got into forming Patent Veritas, and that comes into play here as well, where we see this secondary market of patent purchases and sales going through and oftentimes those patents ending up in the hands of these non-practicing entities or patent trolls, and then they go off and license that. So we see that market as well, and I think we're able to. We formed a company here to kind of make a difference for that and help folks out. Additionally, what we also saw a lot of times were our privately held clients again, successful businesses, all ranges of things but they didn't necessarily devote the resources or have the capability really in the IP space and so we also address that with Patent Veritas, which is helping companies have almost an instant patent portfolio when they work with us. That's also expensive to develop. You know it can cost several millions of dollars to develop your own patents organically and grow it, which is a great thing to do, but it takes money and time. It often takes several years as well. So our company kind of marries all that together, the experiences we've had with our privately held business clients, and put this together in a really neat service that we can provide to people. Dave: Okay, so I think, if my recollection is correct, I think it was in 1899 that the head of the patent office announced everything that could be invented had already been invented. Is this true? I think it was a moratorium on new patents for some period of time. Andy: Well, I think he wanted to. I don't know if he did, he might have, but that was definitely said and everyone always points to that as oh geez, you know, when everything is done, everything all the inventions are made, they point to this, you know. Some other interesting things were the patent office had kind of a list I think they still do of potential inventions or products that are impossible. One was heavier than air flight impossible right Until the Wright brothers came up with it. That didn't happen, so that was on the list. Another one that was on the list was I think this is funny hair growth for men. Almost impossible, right Until someone created it. So yeah, I think since 1899, we've had one or two inventions that have really helped us out, so I'm glad. Dave: Oh, that's funny. So you're saying so to kind of simplify things. The patent examiners just kind of had a cheat sheet of the 50 kinds of impossible things that some scam artist is going to try to patent and you can just automatically reject those when you just look at the impossible. Andy: That's right yeah. Dave: Well, talk to me about the patent, the secondary patent market. Andy: How large? Dave: like how many patents change hands a year, or what's the? How do you measure the size of that market? Andy: You know, honestly I'm not sure it's a private market. It's one where it's not there's metrics. But you know, this is one where companies buy and sell patents for strategic reasons. So it's not like the NYSE where you can go in and see how many million shares were traded. So it's one where it really is kind of a bespoke market. There's, I would say, several hundred thousand patents change hands maybe, or tens of thousands of patents maybe each year. It's quite a few, yeah. But it's a mixture between strategic players your Samsungs, your Apples, your Googles of the world maybe filling holes and doing deals with each other or other companies. And then it's also a combination of, say, these non-patent, non-practicing entities or patent trolls purchasing patents and that kind of makes this whole marketplace go. And it's a global market. People are buying and selling, especially you know some of the changes in Europe where they have a new patent court for the entire European Union, you know. So that made all these European patents change hands more often. So it really is one where there's no marketplace, single marketplace you go to and say I want to buy a patent. It's more of just folks brokering patents and just being part of the marketplace more of just folks brokering patents and just being part of the marketplace Gotcha. Dave: And then, in addition to the actual tens or hundreds of thousands of patents that are changing hands, you then have licensing deals, which are probably of a similar magnitude, I'm guessing. Andy: Yeah, oh, definitely. So there's a lot of licenses, yeah, and those now the patents, don't necessarily change hands, but certainly value does, right. So you'll see a lot of companies cross-license patents where they can have access to each other's portfolio, and then there's different degrees of licensing where, for example, at a university, you can license patents out on an exclusive basis. So you have every right as the licensee, almost every right except ownership of the patent itself, and so that too, even though that's a license, that's really closer to being a sale because of how many rights transfer over to the person. So, yeah, the patents are it's a little bit of a complicated business. Just because it's property, but it's intangible properties, you can do a lot of different things without actually changing hands, or you can change, actually have the property change hands. Dave: Fascinating. I wanted I'm really anxious to dive into this. I know you speak on the subject a lot. How do you want to kind of lay this out for the listeners? Andy: What kind of? Dave: sequence of events. Andy: You kind of want to go through to explain in more detail your services, your product and such yeah, we can just take it from the top of how we normally or folks will approach us because there's some, as you know, there's some interesting estate planning opportunities as well that we can put together with this. So, on the front end, with the businesses, a lot of times we'll be approached or we'll approach clients, or what have you usually referred over to? They're referred over to us and the ideal client is someone who's a privately held business, successful privately held business and it can be of a variety of. You know, a lot of times people think that the folks who need patents or use them are high tech, and that's not necessarily the case, especially in the fact of the non-patent. You know, the patent trolling side right, the patent trolls really like to have kind of simpler businesses to target, because even those simpler businesses use a lot of technology today. So our clients come to us all the way from their restaurant owners, successful restaurant chains, all the way to maybe trading operations where they're doing stock trading and they have their own software or sell software in that To, of course, you know your traditional high tech companies that are privately held, of which there's many, and then some people in between, so the metal benders of the world that you know are very. We have in the Midwest right A lot of manufacturing companies, so all those are great clients because they all use technology. Even real estate developers nowadays are using some really high-tech stuff and they're not just digging dirt and building houses. So really any of those clients are interesting folks to talk to and could use our services. So what we do is we'll sit down with them, talk about what we do, like we're doing, and then also just understand some of the risks they face, namely like what do you do to make money? How do you earn income? So we figure that out, because that's where the patent trolls are going to target. Then what we'll be able to do is match up. We have patents and then we can also purchase patents in the secondary market if we don't have the right ones for them. And then for the most part we'll figure that out and then we'll right size the license amount to see, okay, how many services of ours can we really help? What can we do? And then we'll get a patent license over to them, or the license or the patents from us. Because what we do is I didn't even mention this, I skipped ahead but we go in the marketplace, our marketplace that we're in every day, and we see these patents that are there that might be good patent, troll patents or targets, and we'll buy them before the trolls do. And then we own those patents, we put them essentially can think of in a bucket and then we license those out to our clients. So we have access whether we own them or have access to many tens of thousands of patents that can work for the client's purposes. So we do that client gets a license to this, and the longer they subscribe with us, the better. The value is because we'll charge a flat fee and we're going out there and buying patents all over the place for them. Also, what we'll do is kind of understand, okay, what are the risks that you face from competitors and what are some of your goals in the IP space. Like, do you have a patent portfolio? Do you want one? Should we have one? And then we can also use our own patents to provide that kind of starting point for them if they want to build their own portfolio or if they're sued by a competitor, which happens a lot, which is one of the reasons why we formed Patent Veritas, because we can instantly help them out and say hey, we have the following three or four patents you should probably use. You can sue the competitor, because the worst thing you can have is to be sued for patent litigation and not have a patent to sue back to somebody. They have a gun, you don't? That's a pretty bad fight and we get called a lot of times Again. One of the impetus, one of the reasons we started Patent Veritas we were getting calls from people to say hey, we have a patent lawsuit against us. I don't have any patents. Usually the lawyers would call us and say can you get us patents quickly? How fast do you need them, like in a day or two? Well, that's not going to happen. It takes a while to get these patents, to purchase the right ones. So now we can have these patents available in case they're sued by a competitor, and that really helps out a case. Dave: So that's on the front end. I was going to ask you, so your clients, are they licensing, like your whole portfolio of patents or just certain patents? How do you typically do that? Andy: Yeah, just the ones that are going to be of value to them. So we'll have groups of patents that are of value to almost any companies. I call them process workflow patents. So almost every business has some sort of process workflow that they go through, and it usually involves software. These are the most typical ones, but that's almost every company everything from a restaurant where you're purchasing you know you don't think about it, but if you order from a restaurant online on your phone, there's a process workflow that goes from start to finish, or even when you sit down. A lot of times restaurants are automated, especially some of the bigger, not necessarily publicly changed, but some of the better, even kind of privately held chained restaurants. They're going to have a process workflow from when you sit down, you order, you do this and there's going to be software and automation involved in that. So those sorts of patents, generally everybody should probably have a license to, and we're on the lookout for those all the time, because those are prime patent troll patents. So we want to buy those and at the same time then there's going to be some that are a little more bespoke to their industry, right. So if you're in the manufacturing business, you're going to have a certain need of different patents versus if you do, say, crypto trading, right, you're going to have a different set of patents that are more crypto specific. The metal benders of the world, the manufacturers of the world, are going to be over here. They're going to have a different group of patents, so we'll include those as appropriate. Or, if you're a restaurant, you're going to have different online ordering patents that are probably very relevant to your business, not so much to the crypto guys. So that's how we usually do that and kind of right size, which ones are going to work best for who? Dave: And you mentioned the scenario that an attorney representing a defendant will call you saying, hey, my client needs some patents. Can you help us out? It seems like, from what I know about litigation, it seems like it's almost too late by then. Is that true? Is it better, even if it was the day before they were sued, if they had the license in place? Yeah, oh yeah. Andy: Whenever, if you're the defendant and you're calling us looking for patents, it's on the late side and that's tough to get in place. We can do it, but it's going to take a while and that's not the position you want to be in, because the case isn't going to be stayed just because you don't have any defenses. It's going to keep moving. In fact, the plaintiff is going to be really happy. The adversary is happy that you don't have patents and to move that case along quickly because it's going to force you into a settlement. That's not very favorable. So yeah, so that's why we always try and get the word out, try and talk with people, like we're doing here, like, hey, guys, we can offer this, let's talk now, as opposed to when you're sued by a patent troll or you're sued by a competitor. Let's talk now and get this in place and let's get that access to the IP in place now. Dave: Okay, so let me just recap to make sure I have it. So you're having proactive conversations with these privately held companies and you're kind of assessing their current IP portfolio and then you're deciding if it should be supplemented with some patents licenses to patents that you own and then you kind of get them set up as a client to patents that you own. And then you kind of get them set up as a client and then over time you'll acquire more patents that they may just automatically benefit from. And then if they then do get sued, they have a really strong defense because they have access to all of the licenses or all the patents that they've licensed from you. So now, all of a sudden, instead of coming back saying, hey, you've infringed on the plaintiff's patent, they can say no, we haven't, and in fact we actually have intellectual property that protects what we're doing. Is that kind of the idea? Andy: Yeah. Well, it's even more than that they can use the patents to sue the other party. It's not so much it protects what they're doing, it's more of hey. They're going to say. The plaintiff is going to say, hey, you're using my patent. Look at this, You're manufacturing tires a certain way. That's fine. What they're going to say is now our client is going to be able to say fine, but we have five other patents that you're using right now, so we're going to sue you back, so we can either go through with this. We can either go through with this whole lawsuit and I'm probably going to make more money off this than you are or we can resolve this suit, Because the goal is to actually bring the suit to a close as quickly as possible for our client. And by doing that by having your own weapons, you can do that. Dave: Now with a patent troll, you won't have as much of an offensive approach. Right, that's really more if it's a competitor suing you. Andy: That's correct. Yeah, if it's a competitor, you have that. If it's a patent troll, the goal here is to try and starve the trolls of as many patents as possible and minimize that risk. So it's a double part that we're able to provide for that. Dave: Okay, okay, all right. Well, let's move on to kind of the next part of the process or the business. Andy: Yeah, no, I mentioned some really neat tax and estate planning opportunities here as well. So the way the business is structured is that, if we're able to allow our clients, this is kind of a longer term solution for them with their IP side, and that allows us to do some really neat things as well, because the most common, most popular thing is for us to actually then look at insurance and insuring our deal, if you will, and that is. There's a couple of different ways to do it and it really depends on the client's own estate planning. A lot of the folks that we work with are pretty well-off folks, pretty affluent folks from their businesses, but the simplest thing would be that we could take out a life insurance policy on the business owner who's of the company, and the reason we want to do that is because we want to make sure our deal goes through. So a lot of clients are going to sign a multi-year deal, three five-year deals, ideally even longer. We'll have you as a client as long as you want, but something in that order and then we're able to take out a policy and purchase a policy where we pay the premiums, and this is a whole life policy, and so the cash value is going to accumulate in that as we pay those premiums, and then if at a certain time the client decides to end the relationship with us, we're able to transfer that policy over to them in an efficient way however that works for them. Again, that's kind of bespoke to the particular client, but we can move that policy over to them. So the advantage is twofold. Now is that by working with us, their business is getting access to all these different patents, access to our portfolio able to counterclaim against adversaries if they're threatened or sued threatened or sued and at the same time now we can help them out with a life insurance policy where they name the beneficiaries, they do those sorts of things and then ultimately that policy will be sent over to them when our relationship with us ends. And so now they have a hopefully fully paid up whole life policy with cash value that they can use for whatever purpose they want. So it's a really neat way that it's structured. There's some other types of insurance as well. If folks qualify for that, it's called private placement life insurance, and with private placement life insurance that's for accredited investors. But that's another possibility where we can work with them via PPLI, or some of our clients have PPLI it's private placement life insurance is called PPLI. They have that in place already and so we can do something similar with that slightly different structure for our backend. But again, if it's already set up or if they want to set that up, that's a different form of life insurance and it really depends on what the client. What's best for the client as to their particular situation. But the neat part about that is is that they get a double. You know, they get both benefits, not just the. Their business gets the benefit and then they get the benefit as well. Personally for some of these in life insurance. So it's a neat system. We're able to work with that and to offer our clients. Dave: Okay. So let me just let me check for understanding there. So the client signs some, some contract with you, you know you, for some period of time three, five more years to basically have a subscription to the various bespoke combination of patents that they are licensing Because of that contractual relationship and the receivable that your company has, that gives you an insurable interest, because if the owner of that business were to die suddenly, that might jeopardize the ongoing nature of the business, which might jeopardize your ability to collect on this long-term contract, right? So that's what creates the insurable interest. And then, in theory, every client wants your product. They just maybe don't want to pay for it. Well, and it's not just your product, it's a lot of things, right? Most people want lots of stuff, they just don't want to pay for it. And so by using this structure, by adding the additional layer of the life insurance, it makes it a more attractive value proposition for them, and not only in the short run, but even in the long run. Andy: That does no well, said Absolutely, because, yeah, this is an extra benefit from working with us. It's not just, you know, especially privately held businesses, right, it's again, this is those owners money, right, and they're working hard for that. So they may want this service, but they say, like you said, geez, this is kind of expensive, because patent licenses are not cheap. There's several hundreds of thousands of dollars often. So this is a way, though, to provide an additional incentive for working with us over the long haul. Right, making a commitment with us will help make a commitment with you as well and provide a real benefit to you and your family from working with us, in addition to a client for the long term. And that's where the value can really accumulate for the business as well, because each year, we're going out, we're buying, we're bird dogging more patents, we're buying more patents, so that bucket, so to speak, just keeps getting bigger for that price. So it's a great thing for their business too, because the longer you work with us, the more patents you're going to have a license to, and the more value you're going to realize for your license, the more patents you're going to have a license to and the more value you're going to realize for your license. Dave: How do you decide, like, let's look at a hypothetical industry that has 10 players in it? Let's say it's some niche industry and there's 10 companies that all manufacture something similar? Well, obviously you can't go sell your solution to all 10 of the companies. I mean, I guess you could. It would at least protect all of them from the patent trolls, right? Give them any protection from one another. How do you? What's your strategy there? Is it kind of a once you know? In a situation like this, once you have one client in this space, do you not take on any more? Or by yeah, and I guess it depends on which risks they're trying to ensure. If it's the patent troll risk, in theory the 10 of them are all better off teaming up, if you will, to combine their resources, and it would be more cost-effective for you to license the same group of patents 10 times or sell 10 subscriptions instead of just one. Tell me about how you strategically look at that situation. Andy: Yeah, situations like that I mean you have to be careful on because you don't want to have where you know you start having kind of clients suing each other and both of them coming to you for patents to use against each other. So it's a great point made and we assess that on kind of a case by case basis. But it really is looking out for kind of a conflict of interest. We haven't had that happen, but if it is, we would look at that and say, okay, we'd be careful about what rights each party would have. Like you said, if they all want patent troll protection, that's not as big of a deal. But if folks want to have that access as well to the patent portfolio, now we really need to look at it and say, okay, what could happen if these guys sue each other and what should we do? And the right answer there is to not take conflicting positions. That's a pretty straightforward thing. Dave: Well, that's another reason. When you're talking to a potential client in this hypothetical scenario of 10 players in this industry, the fact that you're talking to one of them implies you don't have the other nine as a client. And if they say no to you in the back of their mind they have to be thinking well, you know who are they going to call next. Right, yeah no, that's. Andy: Yeah, we've had something not exactly similar but like that happened in other, and that's right. You know it's a Coke or Pepsi thing, so if Coke says no, we go to Pepsi, then Coke knows that. Well geez, that wasn't maybe the best thing. So yeah, that's absolutely right. It's a little incentive, I guess, for the client who we're talking to to sign up for us, in addition to all the benefits we just talked about. Maybe they don't want to see we'll be behind the scenes and all of a sudden get whacked over the head with some patents. That's never a fun day, sure. Dave: So can you for the listeners. I find that, like case studies, examples are really helpful to help learn. Do you have like an example or two you could give us and I'm sure you'll? You know they'll be anonymous, but maybe just an example of you know of maybe somebody who was a client who got sued and the outcome because of this? Or could you give us some kind of examples or a blended example of several things, a hypothetical, whatever you're most comfortable with? Andy: Yeah, we can do a couple different ones. I mean, we haven't had yet where a client was sued and had to access the portfolio. We haven't had that yet, but we have had in the past where we will get. As I mentioned, folks are sued, they don't have patents, their adversary does, and this was in an area where you wouldn't even think of as being like there's patents on this. Car sales, okay, used car sales, oh wow. No one thinks of this like that. But there is actually. There are patents out there. I know for a fact there are patents out there in the used car sales market at reaching pricing and reaching distribution and how to optimize inventory, all that. Those are real patents and they were issued by the United States government. And we were in the middle of that case won't name parties but where two competitors used car salespeople, big ones, very large companies, both privately held one sued the other. Not surprisingly, we got a phone call from their attorney and they said listen, we have a bit of a situation on our hands. These two companies are suing each other. Their competitor just sued them. They have a patent that pretty much covers 100% of their revenue, which is never a good position to be in, because that means that all of your businesses is at risk. We need patents. We need them now. We were able to help them and we were able to locate and find used car patents which was a great win. And they were very happy and were able to do that in a way that, in a timely fashion. However, that was a fire drill that I don't ever want to go through again and really did set this whole business of patent veritas in motion. One of the reasons because Nick and I Nick Stabinski and I looked at each other and thought there has to be a better way than this and so we formed this. So that's a great case study. Because, again, if I were to tell you before Dave, hey, a great case study. Because, again, if I were to tell you before Dave, hey, there's patents on used car sales, you'd think I'm crazy. But there is, and there's a lot of them out there. So that's a great example of that. And then, in terms of other folks just clients of signing up, how that works, sure, there's one. I'll give a more traditional role. They do they sell software, partially as a reseller of software and partially their own, and they have different process workflows that they have. They realize the value. I talked with these folks. They realize the value of our services and, fairly straightforward, just what I mentioned, which is you look, we sit down and say how do you earn your revenue, how do you make your money, what does your workflow look like? And you get a license in place relatively quickly. That only takes a license after we understand how the business works. It really only takes if the client's ready a day. It's very simple to have that we have, you know, our licenses we like to use. It's very simple to put one of these up and running, and so that was great. And then they also realized the value of the life insurance. And now that of course takes a little longer but the two can be done separately. We can get the license in place first and then let the process play out for the life insurance piece, because of course there's some underwriting for our client there personally to do and I should mention, there's at the same time depending on the carrier and provider. You know cause. Sometimes the question is well, what if I can't get insurance? Excuse me, there's actually ways, there's actually carriers that you can insure different groups and the like and still receive the benefit of some of those insurance things like cash value and the like that they might care about. You don't get all the benefits, but you can get some of the value still out of it. So you know, that wasn't this instance, the folks are going through the underwriting, no problem, but that's out there. So that's a fairly straightforward situation. Dave: Now, you're probably not going to like this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, In this hypothetical example of the 10 companies in this one niche, and you're talking to one of them and they think might this be a strategy for me to weaken my other nine competitors? Might I be a little patent trollish, like, but this is at least a legitimate operating company and the patents that we would be seeking to enforce, I mean, actually revolve around our business. They're not the non. What did you call the patent trolls? Non-operating entities. Andy: Yeah, non-practicing entities Sure. Dave: So if somebody did that and let's just say they didn't even have the conversation, or a year into it, this idea suddenly strikes them and they get an aggressive attorney and they start suing these other folks. Is that a problem on your end, or whether they use their service offensively or defensively? Are you neutral to? Andy: that. So if they're a client and they come to us and say, hey, we want to use the patents offensively, we'd have to look at it and really think it might be best to even just sell them the patents at that point. So there's different ways. Yeah, we would talk with the client and understand their goals as to why they need it or otherwise, because, again, that's a competitive position. You know, it's obviously like in the example I gave with used car sales. The one company felt strong enough that they wanted to sue another used car sales company because maybe, it's you know, they're gaining market share or a whole bunch of reasons why companies might use patents, right. So you know, that's really a conversation we'd have to have with the client to understand is this the best way? Is this what you need for your goals? And then we'll kind of help them out as best as possible. Dave: Yeah, and especially with the Department of Labor. I think it was the Department of Labor that basically invalidated non-competes. So it could be, if this competitor is very good at stealing their top car sales people and they can't really use a non-compete to stop that any longer, maybe this would be another way to shut that off. Andy: Yeah, it could. I mean, these are kind of case-by-case examples that you want to really talk with the client. But yeah, that's correct. Especially it would be one where maybe they've stolen the IP that you have, they're implementing it in their system or whatever. Then you know, you really that's something that you, that's what patents are for, right, that's what we're here for. So we want to have that conversation, we want to talk with them and work with them to help our clients. Dave: What do you enjoy most about what you're doing now with Patent Veritas and your role within the company? What do you enjoy most? Andy: and a lot of money. And it's neat to see a lot of these folks grew the business from the ground up. Most of our clients are so. They started their businesses and have grown it the entire time, and in a whole bunch, like I said, everything from restaurants all the way to really complicated software that just boggles the mind when you look at it. But every single person is interesting because they all have some insight into their work that really has allowed them to be successful. And it's neat working with people like that. It's really a privilege. It's really fun because you learn something and you say why didn't I think of that? But then we're able to help them out and really help their business, protect their business with this and then help them personally as well, right With some of their estate planning, their tax and estate planning, with some of these insurance needs. So it's pretty cool to combine all that together. And it's never a dull day On the patent side, even you know, when we're out there in the market bird dogging and trying to buy patents, it's always interesting because you know you're always learning something off the patents themselves too. You get to read through those and kind of see is this something that's going to work for us, is it not? And you know, have the team kind of weigh in on all that, and that's a lot of fun too. So it's a really neat. It's a really neat business. It's every day is a little different. Every company definitely is a little different and every client's a little different, so it's always kind of cool. There's no, it's not a cookie cutter business where every day we're just like, okay, I mean, we have a nice workflow to get folks signed up, but it's always interesting to meet them and to learn more about what they do, like everything from the used car sales guys to, you know, the more traditional software folks and guys that manufacture, you know, boats. Dave: So it's kind of cool to just see like I can appreciate it, because that's really what I love about my role. You know, with my companies I'm working with the same type of clients. You are Mine just are in a niche where they export at least a portion of their product, and I love working with those folks because you know they're the lifeblood of our economy. You know there's just a, they're dynamic, you know ambitious, they're visionaries, they're successful. I mean just. You know there's a saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and I can think of no better group of five people to spend the most time with than successful entrepreneurs. So I love that as well. Andy: It really is the best. I mean people I tell other, my friends or whatever, and I'm like it's pretty, it's just pretty cool, it's inspiring, like you said, just to be around these folks and to and then be able to help them. It's kind of neat Like hey, we're able to help your business just a little bit be more successful. That's pretty cool, it's a real privilege. Dave: Sure, Okay. So then that's the one side, that's the part you like some of the things your clients tell you. You know, like, once they become a client, you know they've started working with you. What are the things they tell you that they say that they really like working with your firm? What do they tell you makes your firm special and unique? Andy: You know, I we've been told a couple of different things. One is we're very, we're very hardworking. We're always working on their behalf, always going hard for them. That's always good, available. You know, we're very available to call folks like that and punctual, and also just actually had a nice award and they said you know, we treat people with respect and so it's. I think that's a big deal nowadays especially, so that's a wonderful thing. So folks like that as well, just I guess it's just we're hardworking, put our nose down for them and treat the folks with respect and be there for them. I think that's what I've heard. Dave: So that's great. That is great. Well, as we wrap up, I have three more questions. One is if somebody wants to reach out to you to explore the services, what's the best way for them to reach you? Linkedin, call you, email you. Andy: You know, email is always good, or a phone call, or LinkedIn, any of those. Dave: So I'll give you all three, yeah, the LinkedIn we'll put in the show notes so they'll have access to that. So what's the email? Andy: Sure, it's ahin ahein@patentveritas.com P-A-T-E-N-T-V-E-R-I-T-A-S.com, and then you can also phone. If you're so inclined to give a call, you can do so. It's oh geez, I just blanked that number because I don't call my own number. Dave: I know. Andy: But I'll give you another one 312-371-6578 is a direct number for me, so you can call that as well. Dave: It's kind of funny. I don't call myself, so I hear you Okay. Well, that's one of the three questions. The second one is there anything I didn't ask you that you wish I had? Andy: No, I think we covered a lot of information, so this is great. I'm sure I'll think about that an hour from now, but no. I think it's good Okay. Dave: Well, the last one. It's kind of a fun one and it's a question you may be don't get asked every day. So if you could go back in time and give advice to your 25-year-old self, when you were graduating from law school, what advice might you give to yourself? Andy: Wow, those are always that's tough to look back. I'd say you know it's going to. It all works out It'll work out Some things that happen to you. You don't realize why they do, but then later on, looking back, you understand that needed to happen. So some really good things happen later. Dave: So it works out and just keep moving forward, I and Well, that sounds like great advice for anybody, not just your 25 year old self. So that is great. Well, andy, I and Well, that sounds like great advice for anybody, not just your 25 year old self. So that is great. Well, andy I, this has really been fun and I've learned a lot and I think our listeners and my clients could really benefit from from knowing your company. Oh, I guess. The one other question so if somebody is interested in your service, you know you can take the law you're out of the law firm, but can you take the law firm out of the attorney? Does the clock start ticking, you know, the moment they call you, or how does your process work there? Do you have an introductory conversation? That's complimentary, or what's your? Andy: We don't. I mean we don't charge by the hour or anything like that. So all of this is the upfront work is done, just upfront work, just to see. Is this a good client? Is this a the person we're talking with? Would this be a good client, right? Would we be a good fit for them? Are we going to be able to provide the value that I just talked about and we just talked about? Are we going to be able to provide that value for you? Occasionally, the answer is no, because the business might not support it, and so that's simple. But no, our fees come from the patent license. That's how we make our money, and so we want to make sure that this is the right person that we're working with, because the right person. We can provide value to that person, we can actually add to their business. So there's no hourly rate, there's no anything that you know just to understand their business and otherwise have plenty of conversations, and if we're not the good fit, we'll tell you it's not going to be good for anybody. So we let folks know. Dave: That is great. Well, andy, again, thank you so much for your time. This has really been fun and you know, being from the Midwest myself, I'm from another one of those. I states Iowa. I always joke that, even though I've been in Texas for 40 years, I always joke. People in the West or the South, they all think Iowa, idaho, ohio and Indiana are the same place. All those states that start with a vowel end with a vowel somewhere up in the Midwest. They think they're all like the same place. Andy: Yeah, I've been asked if I like to ski in Colorado before, even though it's about a 12-hour drive, which the answer is yes, but I don't get there too often Understood. Dave: Well, hey, thanks again, Andy, and I hope you have a great afternoon. Andy: Cool Thanks, Dave. Thanks for having me, really appreciate it. Special Guest: Andy Hein.

In this episode, Andy chats with Kevin Williams an expert in ChatGPT and A.I. ========== References: www.SprinklerNerd.com/inkworks www.InkWorks.ai ========== Kevin: You know, it's not going to be AI that replaces you as the employee or, or supplants you, your company. It's going to be a company that knows how to use AI or a person who knows how to use AI that's going to disrupt things. Andy: Hello my friends. This is Andy. Welcome to episode 129. Of the Sprinkler Nerd Show, where it's my job to speak with world-class water and technology innovators from all walks of life so that it may inspire you and your business. My guest today is Kevin Williams. Who is Kevin Williams? Kevin has been featured in Inc.Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and even as a Shark Tank business. Before starting his current company, www.inkworks.ai, Kevin was the former operating partner and CEO of www.balls.co. And before that, Kevin was the founder and CEO of Brush Hero, which is the product you may have seen on shark tank. Our conversation today will be focused on AI tools like Chat GPT, and how you can implement these tools in your business. So with that, Kevin, welcome to the show.  Kevin: Thanks so much for having me, Andy.  Andy: I cannot wait to talk about AI and how service businesses, contractors, irrigators, and landscapers can learn a little bit from you, who has spent a lot of time, uh, really becoming an expert in this field. And I think that before we jump into that, I'd like to ask how you got your start in business and as an entrepreneur.  Kevin: It's, it's funny. I actually come from a family of entrepreneurs ever since I was about 10 or 12. My family was traveling all over the country with various business ideas and it was just part of the fabric of my life. Kevin: Sadly, that story doesn't actually end particularly well. So sometimes I, I, I glib about it that I come from a family of failed entrepreneurs because in a period in my adolescence, my parents lost their business, they lost their house. They lost their marriage, like all of this horrible stuff. So young Kevin decides that a good idea is to not be an entrepreneur and instead go be a chemist. Kevin: Well, fates have a way of, uh, of messing with plans like that. Um, I went on the straight and narrow path. I did a bunch of interesting stuff and I ended up at pretty good business school. And in business school, I entered a business plan competition just as a part of a, like an elective entrepreneurship class. Kevin: And I won. And I won a bunch of money that came along with it for seed funding. Um, so I ended up starting my first business having done everything in my power not to be an entrepreneur. I was like, oh heck, here's an opportunity. I'm just going to take a left turn in my life and chase this now. Um, that business didn't necessarily go anywhere, but it introduced me to the angel and venture community in my town in Washington DC and uh I ended up operating businesses for a high net worth, uh, individuals for a bunch of years and my own entrepreneurial journey kicked in again, where I saw that there was just so much waste in a lot of startup companies that people really didn't know how to demonstrate. Kevin: What we marketers would call product market fit, and instead they just dump bucket loads of money into things trying to prove a concept. Uh, and when I saw the rise of social media, I saw an opportunity to rapidly test concepts, um, without necessarily spending a lot of money. And that pivoted into a whole series of businesses where I would either license or buy intellectual property. Kevin: And my dirty little secret was that when a patent was pitched to me, I could go out onto social media and test some concept around that product. I could throw a bunch of traffic at it, see if anybody cared. If people cared about the idea, then I would license the patent and then I would already know that I could get on to first base with the product. Kevin: Was it going to be a home run? Who knows, but I could get on to first base. So that led to the Brush Hero product, which I had licensed. I'd licensed the underlying IP from a gentleman in the UK, um, and several other patents in homewares and kitchenwares. Uh, I sold, um, or I, yeah, I exited Brush Hero in about 2019. Kevin: And, um, then I ended up running, uh, a large international brand. Usually I don't say, but yes, it was Balls. co.  Andy: Fuck it, you can say it on this channel, on this show.  Kevin: Yes, I was a manscaper. Um, so Balls was the largest, uh, manscaping company in Europe. Uh, you can probably already tell I'm not the guy who tells Balls jokes all day. Kevin: So it was, it was pretty fun to dive into a brand like that. British sensibility, really cheeky humor. And, um, our goal was to drive it into, uh, the U S with that sort of humor. Um, the realities of running a UK European based business from the West coast of the U S not so great. A lot of early mornings, a lot of late nights. Kevin: So, mm-hmm. , in part when I saw just the I I, I, I like to think that I immediately saw the opportunities that generative AI would represent when G P T launched in November of last year, and I left and dove feet first into generative AI and practical applications of it. Um, And I've been rooting around for business models in my M. Kevin: O. You know, test some ideas, test a lot of different things, um, to see what might take root. And from there, ink works is one of several different products, projects that I'm working on, um, as well as doing executive coaching and executive coaching oriented around a I capacity development within organizations. Kevin: Because one challenge of all of this Is that coming up with a one size fits all solution just isn't practical. So business leaders need to develop a framework around the way that they think about AI and how they're going to safely lever it in their business. Um, as opposed to just looking for a magic bullet type. Kevin: Platform that they can just buy. That's going to solve all of their problems. Um, that's going to be very interesting to, to, to see how that develops. And it's been fun to, to, to work with other business leaders to try and identify how their particular business, be it, you know, in landscaping or direct consumer or. Kevin: Business to business SAS type stuff. Well, how can they actually deploy this stuff right away to make changes in their business? Because, you know, the, the adage has become. You know, it's not going to be AI that, that replaces you as the employee or, or supplants you, your company. It's going to be a company that knows how to use AI or a person who knows how to use AI that's going to disrupt things. Andy: I love that. So there's a couple takeaways. I'm going to start with the last thing you said, because it reminds me of a great expression that I can't remember who the author is, but I use it all the time. And that is the company that kills you will look nothing like you. So when you said AI may not replace the person, it's going to be a company that knows how to use AI that becomes your competitor. Andy: That's a great example of another company that It looks nothing like you, but could end up killing your business and you were running balls. co and this is not the right time to talk about balls. co, but we don't actually talk about a lot of balls in this industry. We do talk about a lot of nipples though. Andy: There are many different types of nipples in the irrigation industry, believe it or not. So I'm just going to, I'm just going to put that out there inside joke for those that are listening. We don't talk about balls, but we like to talk about nipples, talk about  Kevin: turf.  Andy: And turf. Yep. Totally. You can talk about turf. Andy: There's a lot to, a lot to play with there. Not last week. It's been probably three weeks now. Kevin and I both went to a conference. I would say that's just for shark tank companies, just for those who have. been on Shark Tank, whether it aired or whether it was just taped, because we know that most of the businesses that tape don't actually go to air. Andy: So we were both at the conference, and that's when I was learning about what you were doing in the AI space, because Kevin was actually presenting at the conference. And I thought this would be great, Kevin, to have you come and share some of your Uh, real practical world experience with AI, you know, and how you are coaching people to use it, some of the value that it has, and maybe even some of the best practices or things you should do first, second, third, or even how do you optimize the responses of, let's say, chat GPT versus a beginner that just goes in and asks it a basic question. Andy: So very, very excited, and especially because this industry is tends to lag behind.  Kevin: So first, just to back up, I we were sort of operating on the assumption that everybody knows what this is, and I'm pretty sure everybody has at least heard of it at this point. That is this magic machine that can that you can talk to, and it can it can come up with responses. Kevin: Um, but it is actually a success story. That's it's one of those overnight successes. That's eight years in the making that billions and billions of dollars has been poured into what are called neural networks that allow So Uh, highly abstract patterns to to interact with each other such that the magic machine can output based on a predictive model. Kevin: What might come next from a thought? So that's essentially what it's doing. It's predicting from the sum of the human Internet knowledge. What? The next likely thought can be, and it is absolutely amazing what it can do, but the underlying fundamentals of neural networks have been around for a long time. Kevin: The novelty and what was just completely mind blowing for most of us was the Interaction, the interactive effect. Like if you leave a bunch of wonky people together who are studying neural networks, they know how neural networks work. They don't need this chat functionality. What the chat functionality did is it made it much more accessible for we mere mortals to be able to lever these tools, um, on on even on a basic level, as opposed to going through a whole machine learning type process. Kevin: So These are predictive models. They're taking the sum of human knowledge and they are outputting the next likely. So the first thing to understand about them is that They don't necessarily know or care if anything is particularly accurate. So, this is what you hear about in terms of hallucinations. And hallucinations are just wrong facts. Kevin: Like, the AI is not particularly good with facts. It's very good at expressing A dubious fact in a very convincing way, which should be a giant red flag for most of us who produce any sort of content that particularly in a subject matter that's relatively technical like what you guys are talking about, um, it could easily. Kevin: It could easily just lie to you. So the first thing that I tell people from a, from a mindset perspective is that you need to calibrate what you're doing with the AI based on who you are and what you know, so picture like a Venn diagram, you've got this. One circle, that's the size of my house, that is the sum total of human knowledge. Kevin: And then you have this intersecting circle that's much smaller, which is the sum total of who you are and what you know and what you know about irrigation and, uh, and lawn care and everything else. Right? And the intersection of those two circles is where the power really lies. So If you, the farther you drift away from that, the more likely you are to get into dangerous territory. Kevin: So, I know a lot about digital marketing. I know a lot about business operations and such. That is a core of who I am. But, if I drift away and I start talking with the AI about neuropsychology, I might get interesting results, but I have no way of calibrating whether or not those results are actually useful or, or practical or not. Kevin: I'm just leaving it to the AI. So when you say  Andy: calibrate, what does, what does that mean? What does calibrate mean? So  Kevin: it's you know what you know. So imagine, you know, most of us have have businesses that are large enough that you have developing staff like there. There are other people that are involved in the business and you you take, let's just say a new sales guy and You, The way If you're the senior sales guy or you're the business owner, you might tell the sales guy to go off and do X, Y, and Z. Kevin: And then you're going to look at the output and you're going to, you're going to coach them, you're going to push them towards an output that you know is going to work in because you have this expertise in the knowledge. It's the same as true for the AI. The AI doesn't necessarily know what it's talking about, but if you were to look at the output. Kevin: Your art as a business person and just as an individual is being able to identify the value in that output. And if it's something you don't know anything about, that's going to be really hard to do. So if you're, if you're looking at, at creating something that's entirely new that you don't know anything about, there are ways to use AI that you can do that. Kevin: But it's not as effective as Amplifying things that you already do know. So in a lot of organizations, let's just take a lawyer, for example, like you could you could call a lawyer and say, Hey, I need to set up a trust document and whatever. And right now the M. O. would be that lawyer would probably record the call or take notes on the call. Kevin: They would go to their associate. Their associate would look through their templates about it. Trust. They'd adapt it to Wyoming. They put it back to the senior attorney who would then approve it, edit it, give it red lines, hand it back to the guy or gal and then process it and then finalize it and then send it out because that senior attorney really knows their stuff or you hope they really know their stuff. Kevin: They can do that. That is their art. That is their job. That is their profession. But now you can bypass all of that, that associates job. Not so good for the associate, right? But you could output that document and be able to read it and have it done in 15 seconds, but you can't abdicate your professionalism and your art. Kevin: You can't just trust it. You're going to get 80% of the way there in 15 seconds, but that last 20% of editing and clarifying and redlining, um, you still own that at least at the moment. So. The lawyer knows a lot about law. The business guy has actually read a ton of contracts, right? Like, I've probably read a thousand contracts in my career. Kevin: I'm not a lawyer. I happen to be married to one. But, I... Not a lawyer, but if I need to create a new contract I can actually get 90% of the way there So let's just say 70% of the way there Because I know how contracts are written right and I can read it and I can interpret Okay, this indemnification clause makes sense to me The smart move is to then send it on to the lawyer, but I didn't have to spend the 500 for him to draft the first version. Kevin: I just need to spend the 250 for him to take a pass at it at the other side, because I know enough to be dangerous. Now, if it were to get into case law, statutes, regulations, things like that, it could easily lie to you, and that's out of my realm. Like the lawyer might recognize that that case isn't a real case or that that statute isn't accurate, but dang, if the AI isn't going to be very, very compelling in its, it's sort of its defense of its own facts that it's putting forward, but that's the. Andy: So, so would it be. Would it be safe to say that an attorney who uses Chet GPT, if Chet GPT or the AI can do the 70% as you describe, but because they're the expert in that field, they can review that 30% and get it right. So that if it's lying, they can correct it because they have the expert knowledge in that core business. Kevin: Exactly, exactly. And this is where I like to focus when I'm talking to people about it. There's a lot of water is wet out there. Oh, you can just. Have it write a giant blog post for you. Okay. That's cool. You know, it's cool to watch it do its output. It's like, it's sort of mind blowing if you haven't seen it by all means, totally go sign up and see that because it's really cool, but that doesn't allow you to abdicate from your art and your expertise. Kevin: So, you know, your audience knows a lot about lawn care and it like, like you can have it create a blog post about certain patterns of irrigation and you're going to be able to decide whether or not those are accurate or not. But if you want to reach into topics that you don't know much about, even if they're close to you, you can. Kevin: But you have to have either some sort of validation mechanism such that you can determine whether it's accurate or not, um, or not care, so. Because  Andy: then if somebody who is an expert in that category reads it, they may think, Oh my gosh, what is Kevin talking about here? He doesn't know what he's talking about. Andy: This is not accurate.  Kevin: Exactly. Like imagine, you know, I, as I understand it, that, uh, you know, grass varietals change by different continents and there's expertise in South America and they're, you know, sprinkler nerds in South America and like you pontificating about, you know, Argentine varieties of. Kevin: Bermuda grass, like that person is going to be able to smell a rat because that's their, their expertise. And worse, this is sort of meta as there's an industrial scale opportunity for content production. If all of us. I'm not going to get noble about this, but like if all of us are out there producing bad content, the AIs will be trained on the bad content. Kevin: So there is going to be value. Is that the  Andy: garbage in garbage out analogy? Yes.  Kevin: Garbage in garbage out. And at some point it all reverts to the mean. So from the segment of your audience that is out there and doing direct to consumer type marketing, don't be, don't be tempted to do just. Industrial scale output. Kevin: Your art has to be producing new information from somewhere. But what AI can do is it can make some of that new information really accessible. Like there's a lot of geeky in this sort of field, right? And there's scholarly articles about soil density and all this other stuff. One really cool use of AI is to be able to contextualize something like a scholarly document and make it accessible to people who have expertise that can do something interesting to it. Kevin: So, you know, somebody comes out with a paper from the university of Florida, as far as water absorption rates, whatever it is, and you can then use the AI to simplify that overly complicated document to a way that it falls into that zone of expertise and art. And then you can actually. Add to the corpus of information that's out there on the web in an additive way because that paper was never really going to get found. Kevin: It was somebody's PhD thesis or whatever. But now you Andy can like actually make that accessible in a way that increases the store of human knowledge and from a Strategic perspective, I do suspect that, that, that brands, particularly in the internet who can truly add novel value are going to be rewarded by search engines, by advertising platforms, et cetera, and that those who simply put it out like high volume garbage are going to get severely punished. Kevin: And, and I'm  Andy: thinking that likely the level one knowledge. Which may address the most frequently asked questions about lawn care on the internet will probably be garbage in garbage out and stuff that everybody talks about. I love what you said about finding a scholarly article and what came to my mind is that there actually are scholarly articles from, I believe, University of Florida on, you know, lawn care and let's say soil moisture sensor technology. Andy: And my question would be, number one, Perhaps this would be a great training example for us to do live like, Hey, let's grab a couple articles and use that to produce some really awesome content using AI. And could we do that? You know, could we take an article of a research on soil moisture sensor, not right now about soil moisture sensor technology, real case studies and recreate it in a, in a, in a way that everybody could understand it simplified, but on a deep topic  Kevin: like that. Kevin: So this is, let's walk through the practical example. The example is yes, that would be really cool, right? So first you're going to find the article and then let's just be practical. First, if you're not paying for GPT, pay for it. It's 20 bucks a month and it gives you access to GPT 4, but more importantly, it gives you advanced access to advanced processing. Kevin: So the, the 3. 5 was the first model 4. 0 is where it is now. 4. 0 is roughly 10 times. It's more powerful as far as the level of connections. It's also slower, um, which can be a little bit agonizing in a demo because it writes really slowly. Um, but it allows you to contextualize. These are, these are all terms that are going to be so common in the next few years, but right now we're all kind of bending our heads around it that you have to set context. Kevin: Like, uh, I like this particular example, like you go, you stand at the top of a, of a building at, uh, you know, Times Square, you stand in the middle of Times Square and you say, what should I read? And people are going to have all kinds of opinions. They're going to have like, Oh, you should read the Bible. Kevin: You should read, you know, Tom Clancy. You should read, you know, the, the sprinkler digest of 2022. The Idiot's Guide to Landscaping. But that's because, yes, of course, you know, scintillating reading, right? But that's because nobody knows anything about you. So one of the first keys here is you have to set the context of the conversation such that you're narrowing, you're narrowing what you're after. Kevin: So from a practical perspective in GPT 4, you can start out a conversation by saying, I'm a landscaping expert. Um, I'm interested in expanding my knowledge of lawn care practices using scholarly articles. And it's going to say something like, yay. Next you set the context for the conversation because you could just. Kevin: Continue. And this is where it gets dangerous. Like, let's just chat about lawn care. And you're going to come up with all kinds of interesting stuff. In the back and forth that it's, it's, as you're, you're expanding. It knows who you are. It kind of knows what you're looking for. But now, you want to refine that context further. Kevin: And the way that you do that is by contextualizing something like a scholarly article. And there are tools, they're called plug ins within GPT 4, that allow you to do that. And that's simply by Letting it ingest the PDF, and now this is what we're talking about. We're not talking about the body of the knowledge, of world knowledge about lawn care. Kevin: We now have established minimal context that you have expertise in lawn care, and now specifically what we're going to talk about is this scholarly article. Like, use, oh mighty GPT, use your chat based functionality to make this easy, but this is what we're talking about. So now you've set the context for it. Kevin: And you're going to do something like, let's ask for a summary, um, that would be applicable and interesting information for an audience that is focused in on lawn care science. And it's going to come up with a bunch of ideas. Okay, cool. Now. Let's say, oh, okay, I like idea number three, that, um, you know, I don't know, relative humidity and the impact of, uh, water absorption rates on whatever it is. Kevin: Now let's dive into that, and let's put a marketing hat on. Okay, let's produce content, a blog post about this that, that, that incorporates interesting facts from the scholarly, the scholarly doc, document, and dresses it up with a little bit of marketing speak. Okay, cool. Now, because we're a marketer, we need to put headlines on it. Kevin: So let's come up with 10 possible headlines for this. So now you have 10 possible headlines for the article. Now let's get a little bit wonky because this is a scholarly article. Scholarly articles often come along with data sets. Okay. So you could actually ingest a dataset using the, the, the code interpreter function within GPT and say something completely simple, like some giant dataset, and just say, help me visualize the data in this dataset in a few different ways that would be interesting to my audience, my audience. Kevin: Like you've already defined who your audience is, right? It's another cool part. Like it has permanence. Um, So it's remembering  Andy: what you gave it earlier when you said, you know, my audience is homeowners, you know, interested in black, it, it,  Kevin: it, it stores that. So we've, we all, we all, I'm not going to say the name because it'll trigger, but the S device on a, on an Apple, if I were to say the name and I would say, Hey, what's, what's the weather in park city tomorrow? Kevin: It's going to have an answer. And if I simply said, what's the weather on Saturday? It's going to say, what are you talking about? Because it has no permanence to it at all. You have to start over in that conversation. Permanence in GPT is so cool. So just a practical tip. You have chats. that maintain that context. Kevin: And some of my chats are now hundreds of pages along because I'm chatting through specific business models and it knows that that's what we're talking about. It doesn't need to like remind itself. I can go back months later and bring something up and all that context is set and you get much better results once the context is set. Kevin: So what you've done with that. So if you, if you have a  Andy: thought. Or you have another question, but it's really related to some other things you've already asked that you'll instead of starting a new conversation, if that's what it's called, you'll go back to your other one and add it into the dialogue. Andy: Yep,  Kevin: exactly. Just write, don't even need to be like, do you remember what we're talking about? No, of course it remembers what it's talking about. It's a machine, right? Um, but imagine you've put out that blog post and, um, somebody now in the community has some insightful question and you're like, I don't know what the answer is. Kevin: Dump the question in and say, this was a community conversation. Can you, can, can you come up with some sort of, can you help me answer this question? And it's going to use the context of your chat. The conversation you have, it's going to use the document that's been set as context. And it's going to try and answer that question within that much narrower context, um, than just the wild west of the internet. Kevin: So taking it like just taking it to the logical conclusion again, as a marketer, you need visuals. So now we haven't talked about the visual tools at all. I've been very GPT focused and GPT is not the only language model out there. I just, it currently is the strongest, but. In my opinion, but there will be many, there's no real barriers to this except gazillions of dollars, which people like Mark Zuckerberg have. Kevin: So you're gonna see a lot of different models and this is just, it's going, they're all gonna be out there. So people will choose their poison. Do you know,  top  Andy: of mind what a couple other models are that we could share list in the,  Kevin: so Google Bard is quite powerful, and it's not like Google wasn't working on this. Kevin: They missed a tick. They have business model problems with this that are pretty obvious. You know, they make 160 billion a year off of advertising. And what does advertising mean if. Like you get the answer, it's not so great. So they  Andy: also not perusing the internet and clicking lots of times and visiting lots of pages and getting served. Andy: Lots of visuals. We're  Kevin: in that space, right? Yeah. So it's, it's, it's going to be an interesting existential crisis for them. They seem confident about it. So I think they have a plan, but they're constrained. My, my worry is big brands like that get more constrained by reputational impact. We all have heard the stories of the New York times, I think. Kevin: Kevin Roos, um, who like the AI tried to convince him to leave his wife and stuff. Um, like open AI, which is GPT can kind of get away with that with its. I'm a 10 billion startup thing, but Google has to worry about that. So naturally they've limited their model more. So there are all these instructions and there's a term that's, that's, that's. Kevin: It may be permanent, but at the moment, I'm not quite sure it's called a constitution. And it's this idea that there's, there's an operating, we call the, the, the, the, anytime you type something into a LLM, it's a prompt, but there are all these hidden prompts that are behind the scenes. And those hidden prompts are, let  Andy: me catch you right there. Andy: You, you, you mentioned a buzzword that I want to make sure everybody knows you said.  Kevin: Large language model. So a GPT is one of the large language models. Um, Lama from Meta and Facebook is another one. Um, Google has its own that, that underpins BARD. Um, these are all, they've all done the similar thing where they've subsumed. Kevin: The Internet and are making these connections. Um, and then, yeah, that's a GPT is not the generalized term term. It's that it has that has to do with technical language transformation. So GPT is actually a technical term. Yeah. So anytime you put a prompt into these things, that's a set of instructions that the AI is then trying to follow. Kevin: But there's a whole set of hidden prompts behind the scenes that are basically don't be psychotic, like Try not to say like racist stuff. Try not to like incite violence. Like, don't try, don't answer legal questions in a way that could be misleading. Like, it's, it's, it's like this whole giant set of things and, you know, building that constitution into the model, um, the, the, sort of the strength of that constitution ties into, this is slightly wonky, but it ties into the, the, the, how crazy the outputs can be. Kevin: And there's another term in there that's called temperature. So the higher the temperature, the more likely it is to go batshit. That it's going to start making And what does a high  Andy: temperature mean? What,  Kevin: what is that? So it's a, it's like a continuum, like low temperature is cold. Just the facts, man. And stick to the fact Right. Kevin: This is what Okay, I see. High temperature is, we're going to loosen up. That loose that that that neural network and you know, I'm being I'm trying to paraphrase a little bit But like it's gonna loosen up the neural network and allow the network to make kind of wilder connections between things  Andy: Okay, so it's called something that's extremely factual like one plus one is two would that be very very cold  Kevin: not factual So that you got to be super careful like it's pretty okay. Kevin: All right high level of probability that 1 plus 1 is 2, but, but some of these models are very bad at math. Um, because they don't, that's not what they do. They're, they're predicting that one thought follows the golden rule. Okay, we have a lot of information about the golden rule. We, we are really, really comfortable that the golden rule is due unto others, right? Kevin: So that low temperature, it's going to connect this extremely high temperature. It may come up with something like Hmm. Maybe that means something different. Hmm. Let's just like connect things. So it gets creative on its own? It's creative. Don't anthropomorphize, but it's, it's easy to do, but it is, um, it just gets looser in its neural connections and it can be very powerful in terms of being extremely creative. Kevin: There's an example that's, uh, I like that. So a high  Andy: temperature means more creative.  Kevin: Yes. And most of the models by default operate at a relatively low temperature because, That's where the you should leave your life wife and marry me stuff comes in where it starts like It's crazy. Like, don't get me wrong. Kevin: Like, researchers in this space, they anthropomorphize it because it's doing stuff that they don't understand.  Andy: Well, I'm just wondering, um, number one, I'll ask you, and you could answer it now or later, is this, is this regulated? Because if it's high temp and it's super creative, which means it may not be accurate, should there be a disclaimer in the response that must be included if you use the tool? Andy: Because the answer may or may not be correct because it's high temp and where, where do we draw the line? Or is there a line being drawn on telling someone disclosing the use of the tool?  Kevin: So this is where Europe is heading. Europe is heading to a disclosure of AI, and I think we may see something similar. Kevin: To this in the U S at some point, but it's a commons issue. Like that sort of disclosure is only as good as the compliance of the community and the enforcement mechanisms that make that happen. And I have doubts having lived in the digital marketing trends as long as I have that. If there's an edge to be had, people don't have to use these models. Kevin: So that's, we haven't really talked  Andy: about that. And right now I can write a blog post about whatever I want, factual or not. It's up to someone else to actually decide if it's right or not. I don't have to, there's no disclosure I have to put on it currently.  Kevin: And you bury it in your terms anyway, in the bottom of the fine print somewhere. Kevin: Yeah. It's like an affiliate disclosure that, um, it is possible that artificial intelligence was in some way used to construct this particular note, this particular route. Right. So maybe by  Andy: default, someone would have to trust the author, i. e. trust Kevin, trust Andy, trust the author. Then you'll trust the words, but don't trust the words. Andy: All by themselves, unless you trust the source, which is essentially where we're at today anyway.  Kevin: Yep, exactly. Do you trust the source? So authority, you have a lot of authority in this space, because you have such a great community, and you know, there's a lot of energy and output and such. That is why search engines reward you, or I assume reward you for that output. Kevin: Mm hmm. The same will be true in these models that, that, and that's the winners will be those who have a lot of authority and a lot of credibility and that will make it very hard for new entrants to, to batter through. In my opinion, there will always be shenanigans or tactics that are designed to like break through the model and try and get something that to get attention. Kevin: Um, but I think it's going to be a lot harder than it has been with a search engine optimization SEO over the years.  Andy: Let me ask you a quick question. Do you think a service business? Landscape contractor, landscape maintenance, service business, irrigation, you know, they could write an article about, let's say, turf grass management, and they could write that article with the audience being the world, yet that, with the audience being the world, that pool is extremely competitive, which makes me think that they should use That's AI to write something more hyperlocal so that they're found with somebody in their service area, and that's what matters. Andy: It's like lawn care maintenance in Peoria, Illinois, and being the expert there, but not Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Kevin: So I think, would that be the right way to think of it? I think it would. And you and I chatted briefly about Sunday. I mean, that might be a polarizing company in your world, but they do from a sales mechanism. Kevin: They're very, very good about using satellite imagery and sort of loose connections about soil density and soil construction in order to get you into their marketing funnel. And they can do that because they were extremely well funded. And, you know, they, they spent a lot of money trying to figure this out. Kevin: And the fact is there's really nothing right now preventing a Peoria, Illinois provider who knows about soil to be able to output like sort of micro geo content. Based on the information that they have to, to educate the Peoria, Illinois population about the very specific aspects of their soil on a level that someday can never touch because it's just microform. Kevin: They're too  Andy: big, right? Exactly. They're the authority in this particular area based on their experience just in this area, which someone who lives in that area, they would want to hire someone. That knows a thing or two about that specific location.  Kevin: So imagine you have your scholarly article, let's put a few of them in there that are about like how to manage, you know, pH, whatever it is, and then you can put a data set or even even sort of qualitative information. Kevin: Well, I happen to know that Be embarrassed to show you guys my lawn, but the, uh, like I happen to know I'm in a high clay area and like, I don't really know what that means, but like, you, if you feed all of this in, you could come up with a very practical micro guide that's very effective without necessarily having to do the whole lift of, of, of doing the brain dump. Kevin: Of everything, you know, about high clay environments. Um, you could use the AI as your assistant to relatively rapidly output that information. So, I mean, honestly, that's, that's very practical. Like anybody listening to this. If you're that hypothetical Peoria, Illinois, like provider, you should totally do this. Kevin: There's SEO value to that, like as far as having content that, that a local, like long care tips in Peoria, you know, right now you might actually find, if you were to type that in, there are all of the dynamically generated, like SEO articles about there that do that. But that's kind of crap content on the inside. Kevin: If you have authority as somebody who's in that community. Plus, you know, being a professional organization there, plus offering this micro content that's useful to people. You wouldn't have bothered before this. Now you can do it. You can do it this in like a half an hour. Like this is, it's, it's way easier than it, than it would have been. Kevin: And. Is it going to change your business, but is it going to, on the edges, allow you to build out just this, this corpus of credibility that, that in a very SEO sort of way can follow you over the years? Yeah, that's very plausible. Wow, this  Andy: is really hands on. I mean, I think we could, there could be a ton of value in actually doing a live workshop that could be recorded for people to see later, but take similar businesses, i. Andy: e. irrigation, contracting companies that number one, all have to have a website. I'll know exactly the type of work that they do and all know exactly their, who their best customer ideally is create some content, you know, copy pasted onto their blog, you know, know what the traffic is now. And then over. Andy: let's say three, six months, what happens after the end of six months? Could we get a cohort together that becomes like number one ranked in all of their local areas through a quick training demo seminar?  Kevin: There's value in that. I think that'd be  Andy: fun. Wow. Okay. Well, we can't show people actually how to use chat GPT today, but I love how you talked about some of the context because I feel like that's what I've had to learn the most about is not just asking it a simple question, but creating that frame. Andy: Um, and believe it or not, I learned it from my son, who was apparently was taught how to use this in college, and he's a computer science major, and you know, he uses it actually to correct some of his code when it doesn't work, uh, among other things, but he was the one that taught me you got to basically, you know, tell it who it is, what its job is, all those sorts of things to frame it. Andy: Which I had no idea about and I think that a lot of people may use again Just chat GPT and then say, you know, I tried it, but it didn't give me the results. So yeah,  Kevin: I'm done And so let's let's wrap a little bit of truth practical other practical ways that I think that everybody should be using it and cool, it's you know ranging from just dead simple to much more complicated but the Most simple bit is none of us have any excuse to have blank page syndrome again Like, some people are talented content creators. Kevin: A lot of people aren't. I am not. I, I actually can write, but it is an agonizing process for me. I'm not that guy who just can hammer something. And I have blank page syndrome. I sit there, I look at the page, and I kind of play with some words, and I'm like, eh. We  Andy: don't have that. Then your mind starts to hurt, and you'll go, eh, I'll, I'll try it again tomorrow. Andy: And then it's just repeat, repeat, repeat, and you never frickin do it.  Kevin: So now it's like I need to write a letter to X, Y, and Z client, and this is the sort of stuff that it can't contain, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and bam, you've got a draft. And then my art and my effort is spent on revising that draft and personalizing it and putting the me into that draft. Kevin: But I'm already, I've gone from zero to eight, like in 15 seconds or, you know, it's spending a little bit of time. Going back and forth with it working on tone, you know, bringing that down a little bit. So that's one It's just you you don't need blank page syndrome again Like you just start with something and then work them in related is a brainstorming partner is like Trying to isolate good ideas. Kevin: What's a bad omnipotent Personal assistant, um, next to you who knows everything about everything and occasionally lies to you, but they're very enthusiastic about it. So pretty cool to have like this brilliant thing that you can like bounce ideas off of and none of it's perfect, but boy, does it come up with some just interesting things, particularly if you, if it's like come 10 actionable headlines for this topic, like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Kevin: Like, Oh, that's neat. Let's explore this a little bit more. Um, also related. Um, you know, I think a lot of small companies struggle with creative design and creative development and are frankly beholden to a lot of creative like people and agencies out there that charge a lot of money for it. Being able to use this as sort of a creative designer assistant, again, you're not going to get to eight or nine in this case, if you're not already creative, but being able to use it to get to, you know, six, seven, eight, and like maybe script out a video or a piece of content and have an idea of what that's going to take to get it done. Kevin: Oh, you know, what sort of camera angles might I use? And then you walk into the conversation. with that creative partner, and you're way more equipped. You have a good idea of what the storyboard looks like and what it feels like. And then their art is layered on top of that because they don't know your business. Kevin: Like as much as we all love the idea of having a creative agency that knows everything about us, they're busy and they might know something about your business, but you will always know your business better than they will. So if you can kind of skip that phase and get to the, the, the creative production part. Kevin: That can be super, super useful, um, correcting documents, um, or assessing documents rapidly. Just, just being able to absorb information like in your guy's world, like every time a new regulation comes out or if, uh, you know, scholarly articles, if you're a real geek, you know, whatever it is, being able to rapidly ingest that information in a way that, that you just, you have it in your to do list. Kevin: Okay. Like I have family members who love to send me Atlantic articles. Like they're always like. 15 pages long and like, I just can't, I like don't have the bandwidth to read it. So I'll put the article in GPT. I'll summarize it. I'll frame who I am, uh, and like be able to come up with a summary that, uh, that, that, that is appropriate for who I am, that, and then I can decide if I'm going to engage in whatever, wow. Kevin: The first thing  Andy: I think of when you say that is, could we take, let's say the national plumbing code and use it to help understand what the requirements are for irrigators as it relates to the national plumbing code on what you can and can't do and what the laws and regulations are.  Kevin: Theoretically. Yeah, you could. Kevin: Wow. Your art. Don't forget your art. Like, you know, there's a code inspectors, like even you guys probably don't totally know, like, Where that line is, and it would make me a little nervous, um, to do that, but I bet you'd get some pretty meaningful output from it. Um, it would be an interesting test actually. Kevin: And just maybe  Andy: a summary format, like, Hey, can you summarize the national plumbing code and what irrigation companies should know are responsible for, you know, in a  Kevin: summary. So I literally did something like this. It was an OSHA regulation for scissor lift safety. And, um, I put in the OSHA reg and I asked it questions about like, this is not something I was doing as a hobby. Kevin: There's, I have a client who is in this world, just to be clear that I, yeah. You  Andy: weren't just going to rent a, yeah,  Kevin: a lift and go out there. But I was, I was, I was. Clean your windows. About like, you know, I have this situation, like there's a two 20, um, junction right here. Like how far away does the scissor lift need to be? Kevin: And it did an ad, it did a very good job. And I think let's think ahead a little bit. Well, what, like this is all cool. Right. But. Man, this is going to be powerful. Like you imagine that you're an onsite contractor and you've run into X, Y, and Z scenario, like right on your phone, like, Hey, I've run into this. Kevin: You know, there's a T junction of whatever flow rate. And how does this apply to, um, you know, the code of. Peoria, Illinois and flow rates that will yeah, no doubt about it. Right.  Andy: Exactly. So today, uh, we've got something called friction loss, uh, friction loss charts. So those listening likely know what a friction loss chart is. Andy: It'll tell you what the PSI loss is per hundred feet based on a specific flow rate and a specific pipe. And if somebody were out in the field today, it's very hard to have all of those things memorized. It's actually. probably impossible to have them all recalled in your head, but just to be able to ask, ask it, Hey, what's the PSI loss on 2. Andy: 5 inch PVC pipe or a hundred feet. Cause you want to make a change to your design. You need some quick engineering facts.  Kevin: Sounds interesting. That's going to be a thing. It will, it may already be like, that's, this is changing. So, so fast. I mean, I literally was in the middle of the presentation and when Andy and I were in Vegas and a new feature was released in GPT. Kevin: As I refreshed my screen, and I was like, Oh, that's new. Yeah, it's, it's very hard to keep up with. Um, and the possibilities are virtually endless. So, yeah. So what other things? So business businesses, you all have a bunch of customers. You could dump your customer data into it and ask it to visualize it and visualize where the clusters, you know, you have sales staff that are out and they're, they're covering things. Kevin: Um, It's a bit of a lift to do some sort of geographic sales analysis of how effective you're being. But if you dump the data in and you can tell it to visualize, um, where all your customers are, like almost do like word cloud type type. Deals, it'll do that. You can see that, you know, 85022, like you're doing really well in that zip code. Kevin: So kudos to that salesperson. But these other zip codes, you know, they're not, or maybe they have a lot of customers, but revenue is lower. Identify  Andy: opportunities. That was my next thought is I think that. Contractors probably have revenue per customer because that's the account. They may not have profitability per customer because they may not job cost down to that level of detail. Andy: But could you, you know, do what you just said? Say, show me geographically where, you know, a majority of our revenue comes from or where our profit comes from.  Kevin: You absolutely could, and easily, easily you could. Major caveat. You're putting your data out there, and you've got to decide if you care. Um, I have a very practical, uh, attitude about this. Kevin: That... There. The, the LLMs are not in the business of yielding your data, but there is evidence that they are porous at the moment. So if you put highly sensitive data in there that you know, the formula for Coke or something like that, it is possible that the MO model. maybe training itself on that. So if somebody somewhere then asks for the formula for Coke, um, since you've put it in there, it can connect the dots, but we're not talking about,  Andy: so you might not want to disclose the name or the address, but maybe just the zip code. Andy: And that might be good enough. The first column was a zip code.  Kevin: So, but I'm, I'm not too stressed about it. You can turn some of these tracking features off and the training features off. But somebody would have to. Like the data would have to be meaningful, right? That, that, that somebody would be interested in it and like be able to put it together and whatnot. Kevin: So know that and you're going to start to see micro LLMs develop. Um, I don't think in this scale of business so much, but in medium sized businesses, you're going to start to see captive this is just Kevin pontificating, but you're going to start to see captive LLMs such that they are walled. Such that the organization can play with the LLM, but it's not necessarily getting out into the corpus of the world. Andy: I mean, I think it, uh, you're right, is we don't know how the data could be used now, but if, if the engine, if that's what you call it, the, the machine ends up with, if everybody uploads all of their sales data by zip code, then potentially the machine knows where people are spending money on outdoor, you know, services. Andy: So if we had a new, business we wanted to sell into a brand new greenfield market. It's a startup and we could ask it, show me the areas that spend the most on irrigation systems and it could provide that to us. Then we would have a target on how to go sell holiday lights or ponds or landscape lighting or something else, patios. Kevin: Yeah, we could. And it's pulling from all kinds of different data sources as well. So, um, so other practical things. So let's talk about images.  Andy: I was gonna say, um, that's what I wanted to get into next, just briefly, because we are kind of running out of time. But could we talk a little bit about images? Andy: Sure,  Kevin: uh, so In much the same way that the language models can predict what word comes next, image models do the same thing on a pixel level. So they're predicting, based on their neural network, what could actually come out next. And this can allow you to enter prompts, in a similar way as GPT, into a model like MidJourney. Kevin: is, uh, the one that I prefer, but there's also Dolly, uh, stable diffusion. There's a few, a few others that are out there that allow you to visualize things. So here you've done your blog. Um, now you need, uh, an image to go along with the blog. You could go to Getty or one of the other image provider things and find a dude squatting next to a sprinkler. Kevin: Or you could ask the The image generator to come up with, you know, middle aged guy working on a sprinkler in their yard mountains in the background and come up with a plausible image that you can use very, very quickly. That's adapted to what you need on a professional and you and I did  Andy: this. Briefly, like with a five, a five minute, you know, demo. Andy: And I'm, I'm curious, do you still have the copy of that image that we created with  Kevin: AI? Which one that does the discord image? Yeah, I do.  Andy: Yeah. Cause maybe what we could do is if you could email that to me, I will, you know what, I may use it as the cover of this article. I'm not article, but of this podcast, uh, on sprinkler nerds so that you guys can see an example of an AI generated image that Kevin made with me with a couple prompts. Andy: So if we still have it, let's, let's  Kevin: pull it up on my screen. So it's, uh, yeah, cool. Um, so it's, it's like a guy, I think, what's the, what's the prompt? Let me read the prompt. It was, uh, If you're  Andy: listening to this on Apple podcast or Spotify or something to see the cover art, I think you will need to go to this episode on sprinklernerd. Andy: com. That's where you'll see the actual graphic that Kevin's talking about.  Kevin: So the prompt is 30 year old energetic man checking a sprinkler in a deep green lawn. Nikon photorealistic and the trigger there is I'm trying to get it. It knows what a Nikon photorealistic image should look like, so it's not going to be some wild cartoon like, you know, psychedelic type thing. Kevin: It's trying to get it to be as real as possible. And sure enough, there's a guy squatting next to a sprinkler that is pretty well unusable. Now, from a processing perspective, you know, just let's just talk more work a day like you don't know what's going on. I, I've always advised, so I guest lecture on the stuff, um, entrepreneurship in general. Kevin: And I've always told my classes that, you know, you need to know basic Photoshop if you want to be a, a group by base level entrepreneur, because if you're not a creative person, you're going to be beholden to those agencies and it takes a long time, even if you're outsourced. So you're waiting for the student. Kevin: So things like practical things, like I need to remove a background. So, you know, I see Andy's logo behind him. I need, I need a transparency of this logo. Like there's an app for that, that, you know, for basically nothing. You can go to remove BG and it's going to pull out the background or image correction or image resizing. Kevin: And what you're going to see is a lot of these tools are going to be baked into the image processing software, like. Photoshop and Illustrator. Uh, I highly recommend if you're graphically oriented that you check out Adobe Firefly, uh, because it is magic. Like. I want a picture of a deer. Okay, now let's put the deer in an alley. Kevin: Oh, let's make the alley dark and add a sign over this door. And it's just on the fly creating all of this stuff. Which should make any graphic design oriented person tremble in their boots because... The most graphic designers make their, most of their income off of the stupid little stuff. The image correction and things. Kevin: It's not the big creative projects. And you're going to see that's going to be an industry that's going to be highly disrupted as a result of this. But yeah, even  Andy: Canva today is really disruptive, but not nearly what you're talking about. But Canva  Kevin: will implement this stuff too. So you can also do video voiceover. Kevin: I mean, be very afraid about voiceover and deep fake potential. Like we're not going to get political, but the next few years in this country should be very, very interesting. That way it's an election cycle and we're going to see all kinds of crazy stuff. And just to get, you know, philosophical for a second, we're going to end up in a place where you can't trust things and that's not a good place to be at all. Kevin: But just know that you can replicate your own voice in 15 minutes. Like I do a lot of podcasts, my voice is out there. So I had this bit of an epiphany and I called my, you know, 83 year old mother and I said, look, it is entirely possible that somebody could call you with my voice and try and get access to your bank accounts. Kevin: Like. That is actually possible right now and I gave her a safe word, like, you know, if you ever feel weirded out, whether or not it's actually me, um, just ask and, um, you know, we can verify, right? Don't say your safe  Andy: word. Don't say it. Andy: That's a great tip, actually. I think I'll, I'll, uh, with my family, come up with a safe word for all of us in the event that somebody does this. I think that's a really good  Kevin: tip. And it's awful, but people, it's already happening where people will get calls from their kids. I've been kidnapped. You need to send, you know, 10 grand right now. Kevin: Like that is happening. Now the positive side is like you're very soon you're going to have the ability to have these virtual customer service agents that can actually talk to people. Um, it's also terrifying, but. Like that's, let's just stay on the positive, right? That these are, these are, these, we are going to be able to offer such a personalized experience to our customers that we are going to just be able to blow them away. Kevin: Like when you, right now you're busy, you're running around, you got all your crews, you maybe have one person answering your phone, maybe you have nobody answering your phone. The phone can be answered. Chats can be responded to like, this is an whole aspect of practical applications that you, you all should be thinking about that. Kevin: How can I, how can I create a better experience on a creepy experience, but a better experience for my customer using some of these tools to get them to what they need instead of the endless frustrating, like back and forth. So, so  Andy: this might be a good point. Two are a good time for me to mention. I would like to run an experiment. Andy: So if you've made it to the end of the episode here, I would like to run an experiment based on what Kevin just said about personalization. And I think I would like to I'm kind of just spitballing this as as I go. I'd like to put a form on my website. So let's just say I'm going to go with sprinkler. Andy: com forward slash Ink Works, I N K W O R K S. Ink Works. I'm gonna put a form there with a few questions, including your address and when you fill out the form, I'm gonna use one of Kevin's projects, ink works.ai to send you a personalized letter handwritten from me based on the input, personalized based on the inputs that you enter in the form. Andy: How's that  Kevin: sound? That sounds awesome. So, and that's, that's my, and  Andy: I'm going to pay for it. It comes with a fee and that's Kevin's project right now, inkworks. ai. So I'd like to actually test it in real time with you guys listening and, um, you know, give you, give you a taste of what Kevin's  Kevin: working on. So we do, we're using, uh, LLM technology to interpret messages. Kevin: And then we're using pen wielding robots to handwrite notes. So, let's imagine you did a big landscaping project for a customer. Like, you know you should send them a thank you note. Or a Christmas card, or whatever it is. But you never get around to it, because it's, it's, it's time consuming. Um, using Inkworks, you can produce that letter. Kevin: And it comes out handwritten, absolutely unique. Um, I of course have them piled around here. They look like they're written by... And, um, it's remarkable efficacy and very ironic that I'm using multiple layers of AI to create something that's so highly personalized specifically because people are craving that personalization that we're all bombarded by all of this information constantly with emails and SMS and all this stuff and people just ignore it and it's just going to get worse as AI continues to advance. Kevin: Um, so. Ironically that my, one of the first toeholds I have is doing something analog with something amazingly complex.  Andy: So great. So great. Can't wait to run this experiment. Uh, on that note, you know, Kevin does, uh, coach businesses in this field. If you would like to, uh, hire Kevin to, you know, help you with your business, coach your employees, give you tips. Andy: How can somebody reach out to you, Kevin?  Kevin: Yeah, the easiest is, uh, Kevin at www. inkworks. ai. Um. Or I'm relatively easy to find on, on LinkedIn. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm out there.  Andy: Very cool. Very cool. And hopefully we can maybe find a time to do a little online training as well. And again, visit sprinkler. com forward slash inkworks and let's test out Kevin's software. Andy: I'm really excited to do that. And. You know, Kevin, I think that from all the people who I have met that are into AI and use the tool, I don't think I've met someone as knowledgeable as yourself, and I really appreciate you sharing  Kevin: this with us today. Thank you. I'm clearly passionate about it. This is the future, guys. Kevin: Okay,  Andy: well, until our next AI conversation. Thanks so much, Kevin. Have a great one.  

PromEvil Part 2:  "Ins and Outs" Will Hal and Lyn ever run into each other? Will Todd find his true love? Will Barb ever shut up?.... A lot of people put their heart and soul into producing this memorable event: STUDENTS Hal - Mathias Rebne-Morgan Lyn - Molly Tollefson Todd - Eli Nilsson Gee - Melissa Bartell Barb - Beverly Poole Andy - Mike Campbell Bud - Jasper Loovis Tina - Chandra Wade Missy - Jade Thomson Jake - Michael Faigenblum other students - Sky Iolta, Shelbi MacIntyre, Henry Mark FACULTY Principal Peabody - Reynaud LeBoeuf Mr. Ervin Carpel, Woodshop - Gene Thorkildsen Ms. Angela Wellesly, Crafts - Gwendolyn Jensen-Woodard Mrs. Snodgrass, Lunchroom - Robyn Keyes P.A. Announcements - Julie Hoverson Rent-a-cop Bob - The Caretaker OTHERS Cop 1 - Glen Hallstrom Cop 2 - Joel Harvey 911 Voice - Julie Hoverson STAFF Writer - Julie Hoverson Doll Wranglers - Julie Hoverson, Kimberly Poole (Warp'd Space) Sound and Mastering - Julie Hoverson Stock sound effects - Soundsnap.com; sonomic.com Music - Prom - Sinkhole Music - background - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) __________________________________________________________________   Prom Evil PART 2 MUSIC   1. Wood shop SOUND          DISTINCTIVE WOOD SHOP CLOCK TICKS SOUND          SCRITCH OF METAL ON WOOD - KIND OF AIMLESS LAUREL         [questioning sound] LEDERHOSEN     [negative] DUDE           [huh-huh-huh] SOUND          WOOD THOCK MONKEY HEAD    [screech]   2. AMB - GYM SOUND          CANNED MUSIC PLAYS STUDENTS       CHATTER SOUND          HARSH NOISE OVER THE SPEAKERS PEABODY        [P.A.] All right, everybody.  Quiet down.  I know you don't want to listen to this old fuddy-duddy all night, [waits for laughter, which is scarce] [fading into background] but I have a few announcements that have to be made.  Emergency exits are at the front and back of the room, should there be any ...um, emergency. LYN            You're sure Andy'll still be coming tonight? BARB           Oh, sure...maybe he'll even try to get me back, wouldn't that be a riot? LYN            Yeah.  [no] BARB           [to Tina] Hey Tina!  Where're you going?  The night's still young! TINA           Huh?  Barb?  [too fast] Nowhere. BARB           [nastily] Hot date? TINA           [gasp]  I-- I--  Oh! SOUND          DASHES AWAY BARB           [considering] Hmm. LYN            Why are you so harsh to your friends? BARB           Oh, please.  Any guy she can't bring to prom isn't worth dating.  LYN            Maybe she has to pick him up from work or something. BARB           [scorn] Work?  Tscha.  [up] Ooh!  Jake! LYN            Don't leave me! BARB           I'm your cousin, not your babysitter.  Andy'll be around somewhere. MR. PEABODY     [fading back in] Finally.  The only washrooms that are available are the ones in the locker rooms.  The school is locked, so no matter how long the lines are, you have to wait.      3. SOMEHOW SEGUE TO OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL.  PEABODY's VOICE STILL PLAYS, JUST MUFFLED SOUND          CRICKETS, DISTANT TRAFFIC MR. PEABODY     Anyone seen using any...ahem... atypical facilities, specifically the school's flower beds, will be taken into custody. SOUND          WALKING TODD           Ew.  Who would use the flowers.  [shudder]  [gasp as he almost walks into someone] DUDE           Freak!  The world's up here. CHICK          [giggle] TODD           [evasive] Sorry.  Sorry. SOUND          FEET QUICKLY SHUFFLE PAST CHICK          Who's that? DUDE           That's the [up] freak [down, fading out] who's all obsessed with his damn woodshop project. TODD           [muttering]  I'm not obsessed.  Obsessed is bad.  I'm passionate.  All great artists are passionate. SOUND          LAST FEW QUICK FOOTSTEPS, QUIET TRY AT DOOR - LOCKED SOUND          MUSIC STARTS IN THE GYM TODD           [chuckles]  Perfect. SOUND          JANGLE OF CHAIN, LOCKPICKS MUSIC   4. DANCE FLOOR AMB - GYM, MUSIC IS LOUD BUD            Dude.  HAL            [polky voice - goofy and muffled]  Hello! BUD            [disgusted] Oh, man.  Ditch the Spot and go talk to the brain.  She's been left unattended and needs to be towed away. SOUND          VELCRO OPENING HAL            [slightly muffled] I don't have anything else to wear.  I was gonna just-- BUD            God, you are the king of dork.  Find something in the drama closet.  They just did some pig-thing show. HAL            [exasperated sigh] Pygmalion. BUD            There must be something. HAL            [considering] Hmm. Maybe... MUSIC   5. PUNCH BOWL SOUND          LIQUID BEING SLOPPED INTO GLASS BOY1           [dubious] Thanks. SOUND          FEET APPROACH LYN            How's the punch, Mrs. Snodgrass? MRS. SNODGRASS  I've confiscated three flasks so far.  [pitbull] No one gets past me. LYN            Great.  Give me a double. SOUND          DIPPER POURS LYN            Cheers. ANDY           Hey. LYN            [gasps] SOUND          PUNCH SPILLS LYN            [frantic noise] ANDY           Damn.  Sorry.  You wanna dance?  LYN            [uncomfortable but pleased] Um, sure.  I mean...that'd be great. ANDY           Cool. MUSIC   6. WOOD SHOP AMB            WOOD SHOP CLOCK TICKS SOUND          SCRITCH OF METAL ON WOOD - KIND OF AIMLESS SOUND          MUFFLED SOUND OF METAL ON METAL LEDERHOSEN     [urgent noise] SOUND          METAL ON WOOD STOPS DUDE           [HUH?] SOUND          WOODEN THOCK SOUND          METAL ON METAL STOPS, DOORKNOB TURNS CAUTIOUSLY, DOOR CREAKS OPEN TODD           [whispered] Mr. Carpel?  [surprised] Candles? MUSIC   7. BACKSTAGE AMB            DRAMA LOCKER GYM MUSIC IS MUFFLED SLIGHTLY SOUND          HEAVY PADDED THING HURLED TO FLOOR HAL            [coughing, then sighs]  Yuch.  Sorry old Polky, but you need to die.  [makes gun noise, pauses, then empties the other five shots into it] SOUND          SCRATCHES HIS HEAD VIGOROUSLY GEE            Delousing? HAL            [gasp] SOUND          CLATTER GEE            [laughs delightedly, but clearly not "interested"]  You're so cute. HAL            Gee?  What are-- you--? GEE            Thought you could use a hand.  I did wardrobe for the last three shows and know where everything is. HAL            But how did you--? GEE            I'm a psycho - or do I mean psychic?  [holds a second, then laughs again] I heard you and Bud.  HAL            Ahh. MUSIC   8. DANCE FLOOR AMB - GYM SLOW MUSIC PLAYS ANDY           Ooh [interested noise]  Mm. LYN            [gasps]  oh. ANDY           Mm.  What? LYN            [nervous] Let's get some punch. ANDY           Don't you like dancing? LYN            I'm just suddenly really thirsty. ANDY           [resigned] Punch it is. MUSIC   9. OUTSIDE SOUND          OUTSIDE MUSIC IS MUFFLED CRICKETS SOUND          OMINOUS RUSTLING AND GROANING NOISES CAN BE HEARD IN THE NEARBY BUSHES, BUT THEY QUICKLY RESOLVE THEMSELVES INTO A COUPLE MAKING OUT. SOUND          RAIN BEGINS TINA           [oh no!] Aah! BUD            Ah, shit.  Come on. SOUND          RUNNING FEET TINA           We can't go in! BUD            Well... [indecisive]  Come on. TINA           The school's locked! BUD            [insinuating] But it's got a nice dark, deep doorway... TINA           [interested]  Ooh! SOUND          QUICK FOOTSTEPS BUD            Come here, then. TINA           Mmm. SOUND          DOOR FLIES OPEN BUD            Geek. SOUND          TODD DASHES PAST TODD           [frantic breathing] SOUND          DOOR SWINGS SHUT BUD            [speculative] Hmm. TINA           Are you thinking--? BUD            Aren't you? TINA           [teasing] Mr. Bud, are you trying to lure poor lil' ole me off to some dark place where you can take advantage of me? BUD            Well, I really just wanted your opinion of my civics project, but now that you mention it...  Sure.  I'll take advantage of you, baby.  Come on. SOUND          DOOR OPENS MUSIC   10.         PUNCHBOWL AMB            GYM SOUND          PUNCH POURS SNODGRASS      [snarls] just one at a time. KID            [frightened] Um, OK. SOUND          SCAMPERS AWAY SNODGRASS      Back again, Lyn? LYN            Just thirsty I guess-- SOUND          DOOR SLAMS OPEN, TODD RUNS IN, SLAMS DOOR TODD           [gasping] SNODGRASS      Hmph.  ANDY           Dork. LYN            He looks hurt. SNODGRASS      See if he has a ticket.  [disgusted] Or pupils. SOUND          LYN CAUTIOUSLY APPROACHES LYN            Todd?  That's your name, right?  Are you OK, Todd? TODD           [whines and whispers] Mr. Carpel.  Missy.  They're DEAD! SOUND          HE SINKS TO THE FLOOR MUSIC   11.         BACKSTAGE AMB            BACKSTAGE GEE            Hold on.  Now look. SOUND          HAL TURNS, SQUEAK OF TENNIS SHOES HAL            [surprised and cheered] Wow.  GEE            I figured you were about Higgins' size.  Oh wait-- SOUND          DRAWER OPENS, RUSTLE HAL            [admiring himself] Damn.  I clean up good. GEE            Everyone looks good in a tux - that's kind of the point.  Here. SOUND          STICKS FAKE FLOWER IN THE LAPEL, PATS IT DOWN HAL            Feels like a wedding. GEE            Plenty of time for that later.  Start with trying to speak to her - at least in her general direction. HAL            [gasps] MUSIC   12.         PUNCHBOWL AMB            GYM SOUND          SNAPPING FINGERS LYN            Hey?  Hey! TODD           [whimpers] LYN            Andy!  Help me get him into a chair! ANDY           [disgusted sigh] SOUND          CLUMSY MOVE INTO A CHAIR TODD           [mumbling, more of the same] ANDY           What the hell's he saying? LYN            Um... [listening, then repeating Todd's words, getting more creeped out as it goes along] Mr. Carpel... Wood Shop... dead... Missy... [worried] blood... ANDY           Blood?  What the f--? [realizing] Ohh! LYN            Shh.  [going on] They attacked me... they must have killed them... she wouldn't let them kill me... they're dead. TODD           [groans and passes out] SOUND          BODY FALL ANDY           [slyly] Well, we could go and take a look at the Wood Shop. LYN            Us?  Shouldn't we send Rent-a-cop Bob?  It IS what he's here for.  Besides, someone should stay and look after Todd. ANDY           [whispered explaining] It's a gag, see?  Bob'll skin anyone who gets him to shift his lardbutt for a prank.  LYN            It doesn't sound like-- ANDY           Babe, it's practically Polk High tradition for some bozo like Todd here to pull a big prank during prom. LYN            He sounds really scared. ANDY           [ignoring her] At least this sounds like a winner.  [with a naughty wink] Let's check it out. MUSIC   13.         SCHOOL HALLWAY AMB            EMPTY SCHOOL HALL SOUND          MAKING OUT BUD            Mm.  Me likee. TINA           You're sure no one can see us? BUD            Yeah.  There's no one in the ...entire ...building.  SOUND          ZIPPER UNZIPS SOUND          DISTANT TAP OF FEET APPROACHES TINA           [gasp] SOUND          SCRAMBLE OF CLOTHES TINA           I thought you said-- BUD            Come on.  I know just the place. MUSIC   14.         DOOR NEAR PUNCHBOWL AMB            GYM SOUND          DOOR OPENS ANDY           Coming? LYN            [sighs] I guess.  SOUND          SLOW STEPS BARB           [suddenly in their face] Leaving?  So soon? ANDY           There's a gag on in the school.  We're gonna take a look.  [heavy with challenge] Right, Lyn? LYN            Uh-- HAL            [off a bit, quiet] Damn. BARB           [furious] Fine.  If the building's open, I'll just go to my locker.  I could use some hairspray. SOUND          SHE FLINGS HERSELF OUT, TOO MUSIC   15.         SCHOOL HALLWAY AMB            SCHOOL HALL SOUND          WOODEN FOOTSTEPS DUDE           [huh-huh-huh-huh] LEDERHOSEN     [quieting growl] SOUND          LIGHTER THOCK DUDE           [ulp] MAJORETTE      [clicking noise] MUSIC   16.         DOORWAY NEAR PUNCHBOWL AMB            GYM, MUSIC SOUND          DOOR SHUTS HAL            [heavy sigh]  Missed it by that much.  Ow!  What was-- SOUND          UMBRELLA TAPPED ON FLOOR GEE            You think I carry this just for the SPF? HAL            But--? GEE            Go after her. HAL            Go after--?  But what do I say? GEE            Argh!  What do I look like, a fairy godmother?  Oh, god, I do....  Move your butt.  HAL            why are you doing this anyway? GEE            Lyn's my friend, and you're harmless.  Go! SOUND          SQUEAK OF HIS TENNIS SHOES HAL            [suddenly realizing] Harmless?  Huh?  [looking for her]  Gee? TODD           [muttering] They're dead, you know. HAL            What? TODD           In the wood shop. HAL            Oh shit. SOUND          DOOR SLAMS OPEN MUSIC   17.         SCHOOL HALLWAY AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          LOCKER SLAMS SHUT BARB           Jake won't know what hit him. SOUND          ZIPPER ON MAKEUP BAG CLOSES DECISIVELY SOUND          WALKING IN HEELS SOUND          OFF, RUSTLING AND GASPING NOISES BARB           Hmm? SOUND          HEELS START TO SNEAK SOUND          RUSTLING GETS CLOSER BARB           [squeal of disgust] Oh MY GOD!!!! MUSIC   18.         SCHOOL HALLWAY AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          TWO PAIRS OF FEET ANDY           [insinuating] A dimly-lit spooky hallway, a pair of good-looking, healthy American teens, what's that make YOU think of? LYN            Cheesy horror movies, what else?  You forgot to mention the possibility of two dead bodies in the Wood Shop. ANDY           It's a joke...it's gotta be. MUSIC   19.         SCHOOL HALLWAY BACK TO BARB VOICES are kind of distant BARB           [tail end of squeal] TINA           [gasp] UP CLOSE MAJORETTE      [quiet clicking] BUD            What the--? BARB           Oh... my... god.  Tina.  I cannot believe this!  You and... THAT. BUD            Screw you! TINA           [breaks down into tears and runs off] SOUND          RUNNING FEET, LADIES ROOM DOOR SLAPS SHUT BARB           Not if you had a gold plated... You know. SOUND          TURNS ON HER HEEL, WALKS OFF BUD            Tina? BARB           Ladies room, dumbass. SOUND          SHOVE, STUMBLING STEPS SOUND          DOOR FLAPS SHUT MUSIC   20.         HALLWAY OUTSIDE WOOD SHOP AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          SLOW FEET LYN            [whispered]  Is it unlocked? ANDY           Shh. SOUND          METAL CLANG - HE TAKES A FIRE EXTINGUISHER OFF THE WALL LYN            [whispered] It's not on fire! ANDY           [disgusted sigh] SOUND          QUICK SCRAMBLE OF STEPS, DOOR KICKED OPEN ANDY           Yaaah! MUSIC   21.         LADIES ROOM SOUND          LADIES ROOM DOOR FLAPS SHUT TINA           [off, Gasping and choking] BARB           Hah!  SOUND          HIGH HEELS.  BAG SET DOWN MAKEUP NOISES AS SHE TALKS TINA           [chokes and gasps under all] BARB           You should be ashamed.  That guy is such a nothing.  You can't possibly like someone like that.  Hopeless losers are not for the likes of us, Tina dear.  We're only supposed to date cute guys and guys with the potential to be rich  ...or famous.  TINA           [last gasp] LEDERHOSEN     [quiet noise] BARB           Are you just determined to sabotage your whole entire life? SOUND          SINK RUNS BARB           Tina?  You done yet? SOUND          SLOW FOOTSTEPS SOUND          PUSHING STALL DOORS OPEN, ONE BY ONE BARB           It's not that bad.  No one else needs to know. SOUND          DOOR OPEN BARB           But you're the designated driver for the next ...Hmm... SOUND          DOOR OPENS BARB           ...three parties? SOUND          FINAL STALL DOOR OPENS BARB           [full force scream of horror] MUSIC   22.         WOOD SHOP AMB            WOOD SHOP LYN            [slightly off] Well? ANDY           It's all dark.  Hold on. SOUND          GROPING FOR LIGHT SWITCH LYN            [closer] Here, let me. SOUND          LIGHT SWITCH CLICKS ON.  FLUORESCENTS FLICKER TO LIFE ANDY           Oh shit! [full force scream of horror] SOUND          FIRE EXTINGUISHER CLATTERS TO FLOOR SOUND          RUNNING, PUSHES LYN ANDY           Out of the way! LYN            Uh! SOUND          THUMP AGAINST DOOR FRAME SOUND          FEET RUN DOWN HALL LYN            [small freaking out noises] No.  No no no no. SOUND          SLOWLY BACKING AWAY SOUND          FIRE EXTINGUISHER KICKED AND ROLLS AWAY SOUND          LYN STUMBLES SOUND          CAUGHT HAL            Hey!  Gotcha. LYN            [freaks out for a second, then dissolves into tears] MUSIC   23.         HALLWAY OUTSIDE LADIES ROOM AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          LADIES ROOM FLAPS OPEN BARB           [screams past] SOUND          RUNNING FEET, THUMP BUD            Shit!  Oof! SOUND          BODY DROP TO FLOOR SOUND          BARB's FEET RECEDE BUD            [blows out a breath] Bitch. SOUND          SCRAMBLES TO HIS FEET BUD            [going off] Tina?  Tina? SOUND          DISTANT CLICKING NOISE MUSIC   24.         HALLWAY NEAR WOODSHOP AMB            NEAR WOODSHOP LYN            [still crying and gasping] HAL            It's all right.  It's OK.  Shh. LYN            [gasping out the words] He was right.  They ARE dead.  Oh, geez.  I can't.... [sobs]  I can't believe this! HAL            Who? LYN            Todd. HAL            Todd's dead? LYN            No!  Missy and Mr. Carpel. HAL            I'll take a look. LYN            No!  It's terrible! HAL            Stay here. MUSIC   25.         PUNCHBOWL AMB            GYM TODD           [drinking punch, he seems better, but is still muttering] They're DEAD.  They killed them, but she protected me.  I know she's not like the others.  She understands how ... how special she is.  She knows. SNODGRASS      You need to go home, kid. TODD           [disturbingly reasonable] They ARE dead, you know.  It was an easy A, he said.  An easy A. SNODGRASS      Look, you're scaring people.  Can't you just zip it? TODD           [reasonably] But... they're dead. SNODGRASS      Angie? ANGIE          Yeah, Marge? SNODGRASS      Take over for a while.  This boy needs something calming, and I think I've got what he needs ...apart from a padded room...if I can get Bob to unlock the school. TODD           The door IS unlocked. SNODGRASS      What?  Well, I'd better see about that, too. MUSIC   26.         WOOD SHOP AMB            WOOD SHOP SOUND          A COUPLE OF STEPS - HAL LYN            [off] Here. SOUND          MANUAL WINDING OF CAMERA BOX HAL            What?  Oh!  Good idea. SOUND          TAKES HER CAMERA, STARTS SNAPPING PICTURES HAL            Ew. LYN            [calling from off] How can you just... be in there? HAL            I watch a lot of CSI.  This just looks like ...special effects. LYN            [off] Are they...? HAL            Yeah.  I'm pretty damn sure.  Hmm. SOUND          SNAPPING MORE PICS LYN            What? HAL            It's... weird.   Just a sec. SOUND          PICKING UP BOOK, RUFFLES PAGES HAL            [musing] luh liver dess poops? LYN            What? SOUND          HE STICKS IT IN HIS POCKET HAL            [up] Almost done.  MUSIC   27.         SCHOOL KITCHENs AMB            KITCHEN SOUND          SNODGRASS HEAVY FEET STOMP IN - SHE IS DISTANT DUDE           [CLOSE - quiet huh-huh] SNODGRASS      [muttering] Nutty freaking kids these days.  None of this hot and cold running narcotics when I was a girl. SOUND          QUIET DOLL FOOTSTEPS CREEP CLOSER SOUND          DISTANT, SHE TURNS ON A LIGHT, OPENS A DRAWER SOUND          MORE DOLL FOOTSTEPS DUDE           [huh-huhs] SOUND          QUICK CLIMBING NOISES SOUND          DISTANT, BOTTLE OPENS, POURS SNODGRASS      Salut.  [drinks] SOUND          CLOSE, KNIFE SLIDES OUT OF KNIFE BLOCK DUDE           [loud huh-huhs] MUSIC   28.         HALLWAY OUTSIDE WOOD SHOP AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          SNEAKERS COME OUT OF WOOD SHOP LYN            Hmm? HAL            Um... Looks like old Mr. Carpel went all satanic and sort of... sacrificed... um... forget it. LYN            But who killed Mr. Carpel? HAL            I don't know, but this book looks all creepy and stuff.  Maybe he summoned a demon or something and it got him. LYN            You're joking. HAL            [tries to chuckle] Well, maybe just a little, but something got him, didn't it?  Come on.  We need to get ... help. LYN            We need to call the police.  Barb has a phone...when we get back to the dance... HAL            There's pay phones in the lounge. LYN            I want to get OUT of here.  Whoever - whatever - did that is still ... on the loose! SOUND          [their voices start to recede] HAL            Well...  I think that back there happened a few hours ago.  The blood looked mostly dried, and the candles were all burned down.  Whoever killed Mr. Carpel is probably long gone. MONKEY HEAD    [query] LAUREL         [negative response] MUSIC   29.         KITCHEN AMB - Kitchen SOUND          MRS. SNODGRASS STEPS OUT OF OFFICE.  LIGHT OFF.  LOCKS THE DOOR. DUDE           [huh-huh] SOUND          LITTLE FEET RUSH FORWARD SNODGRASS      Huh? SOUND          SQUISH OF KNIFE STAB SNODGRASS      [scream in agony] SOUND          BODY FALL SNODGRASS      GASPING IN PAIN DUDE           [huh-huh] MUSIC   30.         HALLWAY LEAVING WOOD SHOP AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          QUICK FEET APPROACH, PASS BY LYN            [panting a bit] I...  This sounds terrible ...I know I know you, but I can't remember your name. HAL            [panting a bit] Hal.  It's usually my face people forget. LYN            [panting a bit] I know...you're always in that costume.  It's kind of... HAL            Dumb? LYN            No!  I think it's... um... cute. MUSIC   31.         AMB - KITCHEN SOUND          BLOOD DROPS SNODGRASS      What the hell is--? SOUND          SLOW WOODEN FOOTSTEPS CIRCLE HER DUDE           Huh-huh-hwa? SOUND          IMPACT - A PAN! SOUND          DOLL TUMBLES, KNIFE SKITTERS AWAY SNODGRASS      Hah!! SOUND          SHE CRAWLS PAINFULLY SOUND          DOLL CLATTERS BY SOUND          FABRIC FLAPS SOUND          DOLL CAUGHT IN APRON DUDE           Huh?  Huh? SNODGRASS      Hah! Hah!  You little bastard! SOUND          POURING OF ALCOHOL ON DOLL SNODGRASS      [weakly] How bout a little... SOUND          CREAK OF OVEN OPENING SOUND          FIGHT TO GET IT INTO OVEN SNODGRASS      [weakening] fire.... scare... crow... SOUND          AFTER FIGHT, OVEN DOOR SLAMS SHUT SNODGRASS      [sigh in relief, breathes heavily...] SOUND          BODY SLUMPS AGAINST OVEN MUSIC   32.         OUTSIDE MAIN SCHOOL DOOR SCHOOL         EXTERIOR DOOR OPENS SOUND          FOOTSTEPS COMING OUT LYN            So what's the book?  Something Satanic? HAL            I don't really know.  It's... foreign.  Maybe Latin?  Spooky books are always in Latin, aren't they? LYN            Hmm.  That's not Latin...I TOOK Latin.  I'm pretty sure that's French.  Gee would know. HAL            [muttered] Yeah. She kinda knows everything. MUSIC   33.         HALLWAY AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          CLICKING NOISE SOUND          FEET APPROACH BUD            [off] Tina? SOUND          CLICKING STOPS SUDDENLY SOUND          A MEWLING NOISE IS HEARD FROM WHERE THE CLICKING WAS. BUD            Tina?  You OK? SOUND          WALKS FASTER MUSIC   34.         BETWEEN BUILDINGS AMB            OUTSIDE SOUND          PACING HAL            [muttering to himself]  Yeah, what do I say now - hey, since we've shared a corpse or two, why not have some bubble tea?  [heavy sigh] SOUND          UMBRELLA POPPED UP HAL            [gasps] GEE            I said it's not just for decoration. HAL            Geez.  Just sneak up on-- GEE            You've got some weird book for me? HAL            Lyn's coming back, right? GEE            Don't worry. SOUND          SHE SNAGS THE BOOK, PAGES THROUGH HAL            She's--? GEE            [exasperated] Looking for that succubus she calls a cousin. [examines the book] Hmm... It say it's a book of dolls, or puppets...or something.  [dubious] That last word - hmmm.  I gotta dictionary in my locker. MUSIC   35.         HALLWAY AMB            HALLWAY SOUND          SLOW FOOTSTEPS BUD            Tina? SOUND          TRIES A DOOR - LOCKED SOUND          MEWLING SOUND          FEET SPEED UP, THEN STOP BUD            [slightly breathless] Tina?  Huh?  [over his shoulder] Hello?  Hmph. Who could have... SOUND          SLOW WALKING BUD            [slow realization, dragged out]  I got it.  [up] Nice prank, guys!  [muttered] So what happens, I touch the dolly and [looking up] something falls on me?  Hmm?  [muttered again] MUSIC   36.         HALLWAY AMB            ANOTHER HALLWAY GEE            It's really close, I can just run over and-- HAL            Whoever killed them might still be in the-- SOUND          DOOR OPENS, RAIN LYN            [breathing a little hard]  There you are! HAL            [eager]  Waiting for you. GEE            Now can we all go to my locker?  It's closer than the library. HAL            Did you find--? LYN            I couldn't find Barb anywhere, and [breaking a little] I couldn't convince anyone else... GEE            Let me guess, they all think it's a prank? HAL            Here, then-- SOUND          OPENS DOOR HAL            And some-- SOUND          JINGLES COINS IN HIS HAND LYN            Cute.  But you don't have to pay for 9-1-1. HAL            Oh. SOUND          JINGLE PUT AWAY MUSIC   37.         HALLWAY AMB            HALLWAY BUD            Oh to hell with it.  SOUND          SOME QUICK FOOTSTEPS BUD            Oh, man!  That's the prank.  Someone broke into the wood shop and stole these little fuckers.  Bet they're all over the damn school by now. SOUND          MAJORETTE'S CLICKING NOISES BUD            Weird. Where's the parade, honey? SOUND          SCRAPE AS HE PICKS UP THE STATUE MAJORETTE      [clicking turns ugly, creak] SOUND          SQUISH, STAB BUD            [gurgle, tries to gasp for breath] MAJORETTE      [satisfied clicking] SOUND          BATON PULLED FREE SOUND          GUSH OF BLOOD, BODY DROP SOUND          MAJORETTE CLATTERS TO THE FLOOR MUSIC   38.         LOUNGE AMB            LOUNGE SOUND          PHONE HUNG UP LYN            [a little uncertain] Police are on their way. SOUND          SCREAMS AND BANGING NOISES FROM OUTSIDE IN THE HALL. HAL            Shit! LYN            [gasp] GEE            [whispered] Block the door!  [exasperated noise] Argh! END OF PART 2    

Bridget Gleason, previously Chief Sales Officer at Silk, is now an Advisor for the company and is also the Chief Revenue Officer at Util. In this episode, Andy turns the hosting duties to Bridget to discuss his book, Sell Without Selling Out. They talk about being intentional in the steps that you take as a seller, knowing when to do something different, understanding the value that you can bring to your buyers, and other insights and key points in the book. HIGHLIGHT QUOTES You need to have the courage to try and do something different - Bridget: "We want salespeople who are accountable. I've always thought 'I don't want to be accountable to your way if I don't think it's right.' If you're telling me to do a certain way and I'm accountable for the results, that's a hard no." Shaping generosity to help buyers achieve what's important to them - Andy: "It's also about helping them develop this vision of what success means for them. If you can play a role because you've built this trust-based relationship and play a role in helping shape this vision, you're influencing the choices they make." Find out more about Bridget in the links below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bridgetlgleason/ Website: https://www.principalpost.com/in-brief/bridget-gleason More on Andy: Connect on LinkedIn Get Andy's new book "Sell Without Selling Out" on Amazon Learn more at AndyPaul.com Sponsored by: Revenue.io | Unlock exponential growth with an AI-powered RevOps platform | Revenue.io Scratchpad | The fastest way to update Salesforce, take sales notes, and stay on top of to-dos | Scratchpad.com Blueboard | World's leading experiential rewards & recognition platform | Blueboard.com Explore the Revenue.io Podcast Universe: Sales Enablement Podcast Selling with Purpose Podcast RevOps Podcast

00:00 Intro 02:24 Vampire Survivors - GotY 14:13 Oh No, Hot Sauce Things of the Year 2022 17:35 Michael - The New Normal 22:05 JJ - The Remakes, Finally 28:18 Andy - It's Ok to Let Things Go - Hardware Edition 41:28 Octopath CotC THE Update is Arriving 54:44 Vampire Survivors Part 2.0

About AndyAndy is on a lifelong journey to understand, invent, apply, and leverage technology in our world. Both personally and professionally technology is at the root of his interests and passions.Andy has always had an interest in understanding how things work at their fundamental level. In addition to figuring out how something works, the recursive journey of learning about enabling technologies and underlying principles is a fascinating experience which he greatly enjoys.The early Internet afforded tremendous opportunities for learning and discovery. Andy's early work focused on network engineering and architecture for regional Internet service providers in the late 1990s – a time of fantastic expansion on the Internet.Since joining Akamai in 2000, Akamai has afforded countless opportunities for learning and curiosity through its practically limitless globally distributed compute platform. Throughout his time at Akamai, Andy has held a variety of engineering and product leadership roles, resulting in the creation of many external and internal products, features, and intellectual property.Andy's role today at Akamai – Senior Vice President within the CTO Team - offers broad access and input to the full spectrum of Akamai's applied operations – from detailed patent filings to strategic company direction. Working to grow and scale Akamai's technology and business from a few hundred people to roughly 10,000 with a world-class team is an amazing environment for learning and creating connections.Personally Andy is an avid adventurer, observer, and photographer of nature, marine, and astronomical subjects. Hiking, typically in the varied terrain of New England, with his family is a common endeavor. He enjoys compact/embedded systems development and networking with a view towards their applications in drone technology.Links Referenced: Macrometa: https://www.macrometa.com/ Akamai: https://www.akamai.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andychampagne/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built-in key rotation, permissions as code, connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency, and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. Tailscale is completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Managing shards. Maintenance windows. Overprovisioning. ElastiCache bills. I know, I know. It's a spooky season and you're already shaking. It's time for caching to be simpler. Momento Serverless Cache lets you forget the backend to focus on good code and great user experiences. With true autoscaling and a pay-per-use pricing model, it makes caching easy. No matter your cloud provider, get going for free at gomomento.co/screaming That's GO M-O-M-E-N-T-O dot co slash screamingCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I like doing promoted guest episodes like this one. Not that I don't enjoy all of my promoted guest episodes. But every once in a while, I generally have the ability to wind up winning an argument with one of my customers. Namely, it's great to talk to you folks, but why don't you send me someone who doesn't work at your company? Maybe a partner, maybe an investor, maybe a customer. At Macrometa who's sponsoring this episode said, okay, my guest today is Andy Champagne, SVP at the CTO office at Akamai. Andy, thanks for joining me.Andy: Thanks, Corey. Appreciate you having me. And appreciate Macrometa letting me come.Corey: Let's start with talking about you, and then we'll get around to the Macrometa discussion in the fullness of time. You've been at an Akamai for 22 years, which in tech company terms, it's like staying at a normal job for 75 years. What's it been like being in the same place for over two decades?Andy: Yeah, I've got several gold watches. I've been retired twice. Nobody—you know, Akamai—so in the late-90s, I was in the ISP universe, right? So, I was in network engineering at regional ISPs, you know, kind of cutting teeth on, you know, trying to scale networks and deal with the flux of user traffic coming in from the growth of the web. And, you know, frankly, it wasn't working, right?Companies were trying to scale up at the time by adding bigger and bigger servers, and buying literally, you know, servers, the size of refrigerators. And all of a sudden, there was this company that was coming together out in Cambridge, I'm from Massachusetts, and Akamai started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, still headquartered there. And Akamai was forming up and they had a totally different solution to how to solve this, which was amazing. And it was compelling and it drew me there, and I am still there, 22-odd years in, trying to solve challenging problems.Corey: Akamai is one of those companies that I often will describe to people who aren't quite as inclined in the network direction as I've been previously, as one of the biggest companies of the internet that you've never heard of. You are—the way that I think of you historically, I know this is not how you folks frame yourself these days, but I always thought of you as the CDN that you use when it really mattered, especially in the earlier days of the internet where there were not a whole lot of good options to choose from, and the failure mode that Akamai had when I was looking at it many years ago, is that, well, it feels enterprise-y. Well, what does that mean exactly because that's usually used as a disparaging term by any developer in San Francisco. What does that actually unpack to? And to my mind, it was, well, it was one of the more expensive options, which yes, that's generally not a terrible thing, and also that it felt relatively stodgy, for lack of a better term, where it felt like updating things through an API was more of a JSON API—namely a guy named Jason—who would take a ticket, possibly from Jira if they were that modern or not, and then implement it by hand. I don't believe that it is quite that bad these days because, again, this was circa 2012 that we're talking here. But how do you view what Akamai is and does in 2022?Andy: Yeah. Awesome question. There's a lot to unpack in there, including a few clever jabs you threw in. But all good.Corey: [laugh].Andy: [laugh]. I think Akamai has been through a tremendous, tremendous series of evolutions on the internet. And really the one that, you know, we're most excited about today is, you know, earlier this year, we kind of concluded our acquisition of Linode. And if we think about Linode, which brings compute into our platform, you know, ultimately Akamai today is a compute company that has a security offering and has a delivery offering as well. We do more security than delivery, so you know, delivery is kind of something that was really important during our first ten or twelve years, and security during the last ten, and we think compute during the next ten.The great news there is that if you look at Linode, you can't really find a more developer-focused company than Linode. You essentially fall into a virtual machine, you may accidentally set up a virtual machine inadvertently it's so easy. And that is how we see the interface evolving. We see a compute-centric interface becoming standard for people as time moves on.Corey: I'm reminded of one of those ancient advertisements, I forget, I think would have been Sun that put it out where the network is the computer or the computer is the network. The idea of that a computer sitting by itself unplugged was basically just this side of useless, whereas a bunch of interconnected computers was incredibly powerful. That today and 2022 sounds like an extraordinarily obvious statement, but it feels like this is sort of a natural outgrowth of that, where, okay, you've wound up solving the CDN piece of it pretty effectively. Now, you're expanding out into, as you say, compute through the Linode acquisition and others, and the question I have is, is that because there's a larger picture that's currently unfolding, or is this a scenario where well, we nailed the CDN side of the world, well, on that side of the universe, there's no new worlds left to conquer. Let's see what else we can do. Next, maybe we'll start making toasters.Andy: Bunch of bored guys in Cambridge, and we're just like, “Hey, let's go after compute. We don't know what we're doing.” No. There's a little bit more—Corey: Exactly. “We have money and time. Let's combine the two and see what we can come up with.”Andy: [laugh]. Hey, folks, compute: it's the new thing. No, it's more than that. And you know, Akamai has a very long history with the edge, right? And Akamai started—and again, arrogantly saying, we invented the concept of the edge, right, out there in '99, 2000, deploying hundreds and then to thousands of different locations, which is what our CDN ran on top of.And that was a really new, novel concept at the time. We extended that. We've always been flirting with what is called edge computing, which is how do we take pieces of application logic and move them from a centralized point and move them out to the edge. And I mean, cripes, if you go back and Google, like, ‘Akamai edge computing,' we were working on that in 2003, which is a bit like ancient history, right? And we are still on a quest.And literally, we think about it in the company this way: we are on a quest to make edge computing a reality, which is how do you take applications that have centralized chokepoints? And how do you move as much of those applications as possible out to the edge of the network to unblock user performance and experience, and then see what folks developers can enable with that kind of platform?Corey: For me, it seems that the rise of AWS—which is, by extension, the rise of cloud—has been, okay, you wind up building whatever you want for the internet and you stuff it into an AWS region, and oh, that's far away from your customers and/or your entire architecture is terrible so it has to make 20 different calls to the data center in series rather than in parallel. Great, how do we reduce the latency as much as possible? And their answer has largely seemed to be, ah, we'll build more regions, ever closer to you. One of these days, I expect to wake up and find that there's an announcement that they're launching a new region in my spare room here. It just seems to get closer and closer and closer. You look around, and there's a cloud construction crew stalking you to the mall and whatnot. I don't believe that is the direction that the future necessarily wants to be going in.Andy: Yeah, I think there's a lot there. And I would say it this way, which is, you know, having two-ish dozen uber-large data centers is probably not the peak technology of the internet, right? There's more we need to do to be able to get applications truly distributed. And, you know, just to be clear, I mean, Amazon AWS's done amazing stuff, they've projected phenomenal scale and they continue to do so. You know, but at Akamai, the problem we're trying to solve is really different than how do we put a bunch of stuff in a small number of data centers?It's, you know, obviously, there's going to be a centralized aspect, but there also needs to be incredibly integrated and seamless, moves through a gradient of compute, where hey, maybe you're in a very large data center for your AI/ML, kind of, you know, offline data lake type stuff. And then maybe you're in hundreds of locations for mid-tier application processing, and, you know, reconciliation of databases, et cetera. And then all the way out at the edge, you know, in thousands of locations, you should be there for user interactivity. And when I say user interactivity, I don't just mean, you know, read-only, but you've got to be able to do a read-write operation in synchronous fashion with the edge. And that's what we're after is building ultimately a platform for that and looking at tools, technology, and people along the way to help us with it.Corey: I've built something out, my lasttweetinaws.com threading Twitter client, and that's… it's fine. It's stateless, but it's a little too intricate to effectively run in the Lambda@Edge approach, so using their CloudFront offering is simply a non-starter. So, in order to get low latency for people using it around the world, I now have to deploy it simultaneously to 20 different AWS regions.And that is, to be direct, a colossal pain in the ass. No one is really doing stuff like that, that I can see. I had to build a whole lot of customs tooling just to get a CI/CD system up and working. Their strong regional isolation is great for containing blast radii, but obnoxious when you're trying to get something deployed globally. It's not the only way.Combine that with the reality that ingress data transfer to any of their regions is free—generally—but sending data to the internet is a jewel beyond price because all my stars, that is egress bandwidth; there is nothing more valuable on this planet or any other. And that doesn't quite seem right. Because if that were actively true, a whole swath of industries and apps would not be able to exist.Andy: Yeah, you know, Akamai, a huge part of our business is effectively distributing egress bandwidth to the world, right? And that is a big focus of ours. So, when we look at customers that are well positioned to do compute with Akamai, candidly, the filtering question that I typically ask with customers is, “Hey, do you have a highly distributed audience that you want to engage with, you know, a lot of interactivity or you're pushing a lot of content, video, updates, whatever it is, to them?” And that notion of highly distributed applications that have high egress requirements is exactly the sweet spot that we think Akamai has, you know, just a great advantage with, between our edge platform that we've been working on for the last 20-odd years and obviously, the platform that Linode brings into the conversation.Corey: Let's talk a little bit about Macrometa.Andy: Sure.Corey: What is the nature of your involvement with those folks? Because it seems like you sort of crossed into a whole bunch of different areas simultaneously, which is fascinating and great to see, but to my understanding, you do not own them.Andy: No, we don't. No, they're an independent company doing their thing. So, one of the fun hats that I get to wear at Akamai is, I'm responsible for our Akamai Ventures Program. So, we do our corporate investing and all this kind of thing. And we work with a wide array of companies that we think are contributing to the progression of the internet.So, there's a bunch of other folks out there that we work with as well. And Macrometa is on that list, which is we've done an investment in Macrometa, we're board observers there, so we get to sit in and give them input on, kind of, how they're doing things, but they don't have to listen to us since we're only observers. And we've also struck a preferred partnership with them. And what that means is that as our customers are building solutions, or as we're building solutions for our customers, utilizing the edge, you know, we're really excited and we've got Macrometa at the table to help with that. And Macrometa is—you know, just kind of as a refresher—is trying to solve the problem of distributed data access at the edge in a high-performance and almost non-blocking, developer-friendly way. And that is very, very exciting to us, so that's the context in which they're interesting to our continuing evolution of how the edge works.Corey: One of the questions I always like to ask, and it's usually not considered a personal attack when I asked the question—Andy: Oh, good.Corey: But it's, “Describe what the company does.” Now, at some places like the latter days of Yahoo, for example, it's very much a personal attack. But what is it that Macrometa does?Andy: So, Macrometa provides a worldwide, high-speed distributed database that is resident on what today, you could call the edge of the network. And the advantage here is, instead of having one SQL server sitting somewhere, or what you would call a distributed SQL Server, which is two SQL Servers sitting next to one another, Macrometa has a high-speed data store that allows you to, instead of having that centralized SQL Server, have it run natively at the edge of the network. And when you're building applications that run on the edge or anywhere, you need to try to think about how do you have the data as close to the user or to the access point as possible. And that's the problem Macrometa is after and that's what their products today solve. It's an incredibly bright team over there, a fantastic founder-CEO team, and we're really excited to be working with him.Corey: It wasn't intentionally designed this way as a setup when I mentioned a few minutes ago, but yeah, my Twitter client works across the 20-some-odd AWS regions, specifically because it's stateless. All of the state, other than a couple of API keys at provision time, wind up living in the user's browser. If this was something that needed to retain state in any way, like, you know, basically every real application under the sun, this strategy would absolutely not work unless I wound up with some heinous form of circular replication, and then you wind up with a single region going down and everything explodes. Having a cohesive, coherent data layer that spans all of that is key.Andy: Yeah, and you're on to the classical, you know, CompSci issue here around edge, which is if you have 100 edge regions, how do you have consistent state storage between applications running on N of those? And that is the problem Macrometa is after, and, you know, Akamai has been working on this and other variants of the edge problem for some time. We're very excited to be working with the folks at Macrometa. It's a cool group of folks. And it's an interesting approach to the technology. And from what we've seen so far, it's been working great.Corey: The idea of how do I wind up having persistent, scalable state across a bunch of different edge locations is not just a hard computer science problem; it's also a hard cloud economics problem, given the cost of data transit in a bunch of different directions between different providers. It turns, “How much does it cost?” In most cases to a question that can only be answered by well let's run it for a few days and find out. Which is not usually the best way to answer some questions. Like, “Is that power socket live?” “Let's touch it and find out.” Yeah, there are ways you learn that are extraordinarily painful.Andy: Yeah no, nobody should be doing that with power sockets. I think this is one of these interesting areas, which is this is really right in Akamai's backyard but it's not realized by a lot of folks. So, you know, Akamai has, for the last 20-odd-years, been all about how do we egress as much as possible to the entire internet. The weird areas, the big areas, the small areas, the up-and-coming areas, we serve them all. And in doing that, we've built a very large global fabric network, which allows us to get between those locations at a very low cost because we have to move our own content around.And hooking those together, having a essentially private network fabric that hooks the vast majority of our big locations together and then having very high-speed egress out of all of the locations to the internet, you know, that's been how we operate our business at scale effectively and economically for years, and utilizing that for compute data replication, data synchronization tasks is what we're doing.Corey: There are a lot of different solutions that could be used to solve a lot of the persistent data layer question. For example, when you had to solve a similar problem with compute, you had a few options in front of you. Well, we could buy a whole bunch of computers and stuff them in a rack somewhere because, eh, cloud; how hard could it be? Saner heads prevailed, and no, no, no, we're going to buy Linode, which was honestly a genius approach on about three different levels, and I'm still unconvinced the industry sees that for the savvy move that it was. I'm confident that'll change in time.Why not build it yourself? Or alternately, acquire another company that was working on something similar? Instead, you're an investor in a company that's doing this effectively, but not buying them outright?Andy: Yeah, you know, and I think that's—Akamai is beyond at this point in thinking that it's just about ownership, right? I think that this—we don't have to own everything in order to have a successful ecosystem. You know, certainly, we're going to want to own key parts of it and that's where you saw the Linode acquisition, where we felt that was kind of core. But ultimately, we believe in promoting customer choice here. And there's a pretty big role that we have that we think we can help with companies, such as folks like Macrometa where they have, you know, really interesting technology, but they can use leverage, they can use some of our go-to-market, they can use, you know, some of our, you know, kind of guidance and expertise on running a startup—which, by the way, it's not an easy job for these folks—and that's what we're there to do.So, with things like Linode, you know, we want to bring it in, and we want to own it because we think it's just so compelling, and it fits so well with where we want to go. With folks like Macrometa, you know, that's still a really young area. I mean, you know, Linode was in business for many, many, many years and was a good-sized business, you know, before we bought them.Corey: Yeah, there's something to be said, for letting the market shake something out rather than having to do it all yourself as trailblazers. I'm a big believer in letting other companies do things. I mean, one of the more annoying things, from my position, is this idea where AWS takes a product strategy of, “Yes.” That becomes a bit of a challenge when they're trying to wind up building compete decks, and how do we defeat the competition? And it's like, “Wh—oh, you're talking about the other hyperscalers?” “No, we're talking with the service team one floor away.”That just seems a little on the strange side to—some companies get too big and too expensive on some level. I think that there's a very real risk of Akamai trying to do everything on the internet if you continue to expand and start listing out things that are not currently in your portfolio. And, oh, we should do that, too, and we should do that, too, and we should do that, too. And suddenly, it feels pretty closely aligned with you're trying to do everything.Andy: Yeah. I think we've been a company who has been really disciplined and not doing everything. You know, we started with CDN. And you know, we're talking '98 to 2010, you know, CDN was really our thing, and we feel we executed really well on that. We probably executed quite quietly and well, but feel we executed pretty well on that.Really from 2010, 2012 to 2020, it was all about security, right? And, you know, we built, you know, pretty amazing security business, hundred percent of SaaS business, on top of our CDN platform with security. And now we're thinking about—we did that route relatively quietly, as well, and now we're thinking about the next ten years and how do we have that same kind of impact on cloud. And that is exciting because it's not just centralized cloud; it's about a distributed cloud vision. And that is really compelling and that's why you know, we've got great folks that are still here and working on it.Corey: I'm a big believer in the idea that you can start getting distilled truth out of folks, particularly companies, the more you compress the space they have to wind up saying. Something that's why Twitter very often lets people tip their hands. But a commonplace that I look for is the title field on a company's website. So, when I go over to akamai.com, you position yourself as something that fits in a small portion of a tweet, which is good. Whenever have a Tolstoy-length paragraph in the tooltip title for the browser tab, that's a problem.But you say simply, “Security, cloud delivery, performance. Akamai.” Which is beautifully well done, but security comes first. I have a mental model of Akamai as being a CDN and some other stuff that I don't fully understand. But again, I first encountered you folks in the early-2000s.It turns out that it's hard to change existing opinions. Are you a CDN Company or are you a security company?Andy: Oh, super—Corey: In other words, if someone wind up mis-alphabetizing that and they're about to get censured after this show because, “No, we're a CDN, first; why did you put security first?”Andy: You know, so all those things feed off each other, right? And this has been a question where it's like, you know, our security layer and our distributed WAF and other security offerings run on top of the CDN layer. So, it's all about building a common compute edge and then leveraging that for new applications. CDN was the first application. The next and second application was security.And we think the third application, but probably not the final one, is compute. So, I think I don't think anyone in marketing will be fired by the ordering that they did on that. I think that ultimately now, you know, for—just if we look at it from a monetary perspective, right, we do more security than we do CDN. So, there's a lot that we have in the security business. And you know, compute's got a long way to go, especially because it's not just one big data center of compute; it is a different flavor than I think folks have seen before.Corey: When I was at RSA, you folks were one of the exhibitors there. And I like to make the common observation that there are basically six companies that exhibit at RSA. Yeah, there are hundreds of booths, but it's the same six products, all marketed are different logos with different words. And they all seem to approach it from a few relatively expectable personas and positions. I've always found myself agreeing with the things that you folks say, and maybe it's because of my own network-centric background, but it doesn't seem like you take the same approach that a number of other companies do or it's, “Oh, it has to start with the way that developers write their first line of code.” Instead, it seems to take a holistic view that comes from the starting position of everything talks to each other on a network basis, and from here, let's move forward. Is that accurate to how you view the security space?Andy: Yeah, you know, our view of the security space is—again, it's a network-centric one, right? And our work in the security space initially came from really big DDoS attacks, right? And how do we stop Distributed Denial of Service attacks from impacting folks? And that was the initial benefit that we brought. And from there, we evolved our story around, you know, how do we have a more sophisticated WAF? How do we have predictive capabilities at the edge?So ultimately, we're not about ingraining into your process of how your thing was written or telling you how to write it. We're about, you know, essentially being that perimeter edge that is watching and monitoring everything that comes into you to make sure that, you know, hey, we're not seeing Log4j-type exploits coming at you, and we'll let you know if we do, or to block malicious activity. So, we fit on anything, which is why our security business has been so successful. If you have an application on the edge, you can put Akamai Security in front of it and it's going to make your application better. That's been super compelling for the last, you know, again, last decade or so that we've really been focused on security.Corey: I think that it is a mistake to take a security model that starts with a view of what people have in front of them day-to-day—like, I look at my laptop and say, “Oh, this is what I spend my time on. This is where all security must start and stop.” Because yeah, okay, great. If you get physical access to my laptop, it's pretty much game over on some level. But yeah, if you're at a point where you're going to bust into my house and threaten me in order to get access to my laptop, here you go.There are no secrets that I am in possession of that are worth dying for. It's just money and that's okay. But looking at it through a lens of the internet has gone from science experiment to thing that the nerds love to use to a cornerstone of the fabric of modern society. And that's not because of the magic supercomputer that we all have in our pockets, but rather because those magic supercomputers can talk to the sum total of human knowledge and any other human anywhere on the planet, basically, ever. And I don't know that that evolution has been really appreciated by society at large as far as just how empowering that can be. But it completely changes the entire security paradigm from back in the '80s when I got started, don't put untrusted floppy disks into your computer or it might literally explode on your desk.Andy: [laugh]. So, we're talking about floppy disks now? Yes. So, first of all, the scope of impact of the internet has increased, meaning what you can do with it has increased. And directly proportional to that increase the threat vectors have increased, right? And the more systems are connected, the more vulnerabilities there are.So listen, it's easy to scare anybody about security on the internet. It is a topic that is an infinite well of scariness. At the same time, you know, and not just Akamai, but there's a lot of companies out there that can, whether it's making your development more secure, making your pipeline, your digital supply chain a more secure, or then you know where Akamai is, we're at the end, which is you know, helping to wrap around your entire web presence to make it more secure, there's a variety of companies that are out there really making the internet work from a security perspective. And honestly, there's also been tremendous progress on the operating system front in the last several years, which previously was not as good—probably is way to characterize it—as it is today. So, and you know, at the end of the day, the nerds are still out there working, right?We are out here still working on making the internet, you know, scale better, making it more secure, making it more robust because we're probably not done, right? You know, phones are awesome, and tablet devices, et cetera, are awesome, but we've probably got more coming. We don't quite know what that is yet, but we want to have the capacity, safety, and compute to power it.Corey: How does Macrometa as a persistent data layer tie into your future vision of security first as what Akamai does? I can see a few directions, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that before you folks decided to make an investment in such a thing, you probably gave it more than the 30 seconds or whatnot or so a thought that I've had to wind up putting these pieces together.Andy: So, a few things there. First of all, Macrometa, ultimately, we see them coming in the front door with our compute solution, right? Because as folks are building capabilities on the edge, “Hey, I want to run compute on the edge. How do I interoperate with data?” The worst answer possible is, “Well, call back to the centralized data store.”So, we want to ensure that customers have choice and performance options for distributed data access. Macrometa fits great there. However, now pause that; let's transition back to the security point you raised, which is, you know, coordinating an edge data security platform is a really complicated thing. Because you want to make sure that threats that are coming in on one side of the network, or you know, in one given country, you know, are also understood throughout the network. And there's a definite role for a data platform in doing that.We obviously, you know, for the last ten years have built several that help accomplish that at scale for our network, but we also recognize that, you know, innovation in data platforms is probably not done. And you know, Macrometa's got some pretty interesting approaches. So, we're very interested in working with them and talking jointly with customers, which we've done a bunch of, to see how that progresses. But there's tie-ins, I would say, mostly on compute, but secondarily, there's a lot of interesting areas with real-time security intel, they can be very useful as well.Corey: Since I have you here, I would love to ask you something that's a little orthogonal to the rest of this conversation, but I don't even care about that because that's why it's my show; I can ask what I want.Andy: Oh, no.Corey: Talk to me a little bit about the Linode acquisition. Because when it first came out, I thought, “Oh, Linode must not be doing well, so it's an acqui-hire scenario.” Followed by, “Wait a minute, that doesn't seem quite right.” And I dug deeper, and suddenly, I started to see a bunch of things that made sense. But that's just my outside perspective. I prefer to see you justify what it is that you've done.Andy: Justify what we've done. Well, with that positive framing—Corey: Exactly. “Explain yourself. How dare you, sir?”Andy: [laugh]. “What are you doing?” So, to take that, which is first of all, Linode was doing great when we bought them and they're continuing to do great now. You know, backstory here is actually a fun one. So, I personally have been a customer of Linode for about 13 years, and you know, super familiar with their offerings, as we're a bunch of other folks at Akamai.And what ultimately attracted us to Linode was, first of all, from a strategic perspective, is we talked about how Akamai thinks about Compute being a gradient of compute: you've got the edge, you've got kind of a middle tier, and you've got more centralized locations. Akamai has the edge, we've got the middle, we didn't have the central. Linode has got the central. And obviously, you know, we're going to see some significant expansion of capacity and scale there, but they've got the central location. And, you know, ultimately, we feel that there's a lot of passion in Linode.You know, they're a Linux open-source-centric company, and believe it or not Akamai is, too. I mean, you know, that's kind of how it works. And there was a great connection between the sorts of folks that they had and how they think about customers. Linode was a really customer-driven company. I mean, they were fanatical.I mean, I as a, you know, customer of $30 a month personally, could open a ticket and I'd get an answer in five minutes. And that's very similar to kind of how Akamai is driven, which is we're very customer-centric, and when a customer has a problem or need something different, you know, we're on it. So, there's literally nothing bad there and it's a super exciting beginning of a new chapter for Akamai, which is really how do we tackle compute? We're super excited to have the Linode team. You know, they're still mostly down in Philadelphia doing their thing.And, you know, we've hired substantially and we're continuing to do so, so if you want to work there, drop a note over. And it's been fantastic. And it's one of our, you know, really large acquisitions that we've done, and I think we were really lucky to find a great company in such a good position and be able to make it work.Corey: From my perspective, one of the areas that has me excited about the acquisition stems from what I would consider to be something of a customer-base culture misalignment between the two companies. One of the things that I have always enjoyed about Linode—and in the interest of full transparency, they have been a periodic sponsor over the last five or six years of my ridiculous nonsense. I believe that they are not at the moment which I expect you to immediately rectify after this conversation, of course.Andy: I'll give you my credit card. Yeah.Corey: Excellent. Excellent. We do not get in the way of people trying to give you money. But it was great because that's exactly it. I could take a credit card in the middle of the night and spin up things on Linode.And it was one of those companies that aligned very closely to how I tended to view cloud infrastructure from the perspective of, I need a Linux box, or I need a bunch of Linux boxes right there, right now, and I don't have 12 weeks to go to cloud school to learn the intricacies of a given provider. It more or less just worked in a whole bunch of easy ways. Whereas if I wanted to roll out at Akamai, it was always I would pull up the website, and it's, “Click here to talk to our enterprise sales team.” And that tells me two things. One, it is probably going to be outside of my signing authority because no one trusts me with money for obvious reasons, when I was an employee, and two, you will not be going to space today because those conversations always take time.And it's going to be—if I'm in a hurry and trying to get something out the door, that is going to act as a significant drag on capability. Now, most of your customers do not launch things by the seat of their pants, three hours after the idea first occurs to them, but on Linode, that often seems to be the case. The idea of addressing developers early on in the ‘it's just an idea' phase. I can't shake the feeling that there's a definite future in which Linode winds up being able to speak much more effectively to enterprise, while Akamai also learns to speak to, honestly, half-awake shitposters at 2 a.m. when we're building something heinous.Andy: I feel like you've been sitting in on our strategy presentations. Maybe not the shitposters, but the rest of it. And I think the way that I would couch it, my corporate-speak of that, would be that there's a distinct yin and yang, there a complementary nature between the customer bases of Akamai, which has, you know, an incredible list of enterprise customers—I mean, the who's-who of enterprise customers, Akamai works with them—but then, you know, Linode, who has really tremendous representation of developers—that's what we'll use for the name posts—like, folks like myself included, right, who want to throw something together, want to spin up a VM, and then maybe tear it down and never do it again, or maybe set up 100 of them. And, to your point, the crossover opportunities there, which is, you know, Linode has done a really good job of having small customers that grow over time. And by having Akamai, you know, you can now grow, and never have to leave because we're going to be able to bring enough scale and throughput and, you know, professional help services as you need it to help you stay in the ecosystem.And similarly, Akamai has a tremendous—you know, the benefit of a tremendous set of enterprise customers who are out there, you know, frankly, looking to solve their compute challenges, saying, “Hey, I have a highly distributed application. Akamai, how can you help me with this?” Or, “Hey, I need presence in x or y.” And now we have, you know, with Linode, the right tools to support that. And yes, we can make all kinds of jokes about, you know, Akamai and Linode and different, you know, people and archetypes we appeal to, but ultimately, there's an alignment between Akamai and Linode on how we approach things, which is about Linux, open-source, it's about technical honesty and simplicity. So, great group of folks. And secondly, like, I think the customer crossover, you're right on it. And we're very excited for how that goes.Corey: I also want to call out that Macrometa seems to have split this difference perfectly. One of the first things I visit on any given company's page when I'm trying to understand them is the pricing page. It's one of those areas where people spend the least time, early on, but it's also where they tend to be the most honest. Maybe that's why. And I look for two things, and Macrometa has both of them.The first is a ‘try it for free, right now, get started.' It's a free-tier approach. Because even if you charge $10 or whatnot, there are many developers working on things in odd hours where they don't necessarily either have the ability to make that purchase decision, know that they have the ability to make that purchase decision, or are willing to do that by the seat of their pants. So, ‘get started for free' is important; it means you can develop right now. Conversely, there are a bunch of enterprise procurement departments out there who will want a whole bunch of custom things.Custom SLAs, custom support responses, custom everything, and they also don't know how to sign a check that doesn't have two commas in it. So, you don't probably want to avoid those customers, but what they're looking for is an enterprise offering that is no price. There should not be a price tag on that because you will never get it right for everyone, but what they want to see is ‘click here to contact sales.' That is coded language for, “We are serious professionals and know who you are and how you like to operate.” They've got both and I think that is absolutely the right decision.Andy: It do—Corey: And whatever you have in between those two is almost irrelevant.Andy: No, I think you're on it. And Macrometa, their pricing philosophy allows you to get in and try it with zero friction, which is super important. Like, I don't even have to use a credit card. I can experiment for free, I can try it for free, but then as I grow their pricing tier kind of scales along with that. And it's a—you know, that is the way that folks try applications.I always try to think about, hey, you know, if I'm on a team and we're tasked with putting together a proof of concept for something in two days, and I've got, you know, a couple folks working with me, how do I do that? And you don't have time for procurement, you might need to use the free thing to experiment. So, there is a lot that they can do. And you know, their pricing—this transparency of pricing that they have is fantastic. Now, Linode, also very transparent, we don't have a free tier, but you know, you can get in for very low friction and try that as well.Corey: Yeah, companies tend to go through a maturity curve evolution on these things. I've talked to companies that purely view it is how much money a given customer is spending determines how much attention they get. And it's like, “Yeah, maybe take a look through some of your smaller users or new signups there.” Yeah, they're spending $10 a month or whatnot, but their email address is@cocacola.com. Just spitballing here; maybe you might want a white-glove a few of those folks, just because not everyone comes in the door via an RFP.Andy: Yep. We look at customers for what your potential is, right? Like, you know, how much could you end up spending with us, right? You know, so if you're building your application on Linode, and you're going to spend $20, for the first couple months, that's totally fine. Get in there, experiment, and then you know, in the next several years, let's see where it goes. So, you're exactly right, which is, you know, that username@enterprisedomain.com is often much more indicative than what the actual bill is on a monthly basis.Corey: I always find it a little strange when I have a vendor that I'm doing business with, and then suddenly, an account person reaches out, like, hey, let's just have a call for half an hour to talk about what you're doing and how you're doing it. It's my immediate response to that these days, just of too many years doing that, as, “I really need to look at that bill. How much are we spending, again?” And I honestly, usually not that much because believe it or not, when you focus on cloud economics for a living, you pay attention to your credit card bills, but it is always interesting to see who reaches out and who doesn't. That's been a strange approach, and there is no one right answer for all of this.If every free tier account user of any given cloud provider wound up getting constant emails from their account managers, it's how desperate are you to grow revenue, and what are you about to do to pricing? At some level of becomes… unhelpful.Andy: I can see that. I've had, personally, situations where I'm a trial user of something, and all of a sudden I get emails—you know, using personal email addresses, no Akamai involvement—all of a sudden, I'm getting emails. And I'm like, “Really? Did I make the priority list for you to call me and leave me a voicemail, and then email me?” I don't know how that's possible.So, from a personal perspective, totally see that. You know, from an account development perspective, you know, kind of with the Akamai hat on, it's challenging, right? You know, folks are out there trying to figure out where business is going to come from. And I think if you're able to get an indicator that somebody, you know, maybe you're going to call that person at enterprisedomain.com to try to figure out, you know, hey, is this real and is this you with a side project or is this you with a proof of concept for something that could be more fruitful? And, you know, Corey, they're probably just calling you because you're you.Corey: One of the things that I was surprised by where I saw the exact same thing. I started getting a series of emails from my account manager for Google Workspaces. Okay, and then I really did a spit-take when I realized this was on my personal address. Okay… so I read this carefully because what the hell is happening? Oh, they're raising prices and it's a campaign. Great.Now, my one-user vanity domain is going to go from $6 a month to $8 a month or whatever. Cool, I don't care. This is not someone actively trying to reach out as a human being. It's an outreach campaign. Cool, fair. But that's the problem, on some level, for super-tiny customers. It's a, what is it, is it a shakedown? What are they about to yell at me for?Andy: No, I got the same thing. My Google Workspace personal account, which is, like, two people, right? Like, and I got an email and then I think, like, a voicemail. And I'm like, I read the email and I'm like—you know, it's going—again, it's like, it was like six something and now it's, like, eight something a month. So, it's like, “Okay. You're all right.”Corey: Just go—that's what you have a credit card for. Go ahead and charge it. It's fine. Now, yeah, counterpoint if you're a large company, and yeah, we're just going to be raising prices by 20% across the board for everyone, and you look at this and like, that's a phone number. Yeah, I kind of want some special outreach and conversations there. But it's odd.Andy: It's interesting. Yeah. They're great.Corey: Last question before we call this an episode. In 22 years, how have you seen the market change from your perspective? Most people do not work in the industry from one company's perspective for as long as you have. That gives you a somewhat privileged position to see, from a point of relative stability, what the industry has done.Andy: So—Corey: What have you noticed?Andy: —and I'm going to give you an answer, which is about, like, the sales cycle, which is it used to be about meetings and about everybody coming together and used to have to occasionally wear a suit. And there would be, you know, meetings where you would need to get a CEO or CFO to personally see a presentation and decide something and say, “Okay, we're going with X or Y. We're going to make a decision.” And today, those decisions are, pretty far and wide, made much, much further down in the organization. They're made by developers, team leads, project managers, program managers.So, the way people engage with customers today is so different. First of all, like, most meetings are still virtual. I mean, like, yeah, we have physical meetings and we get together for things, but like, so much more is done virtually, which is cool because we built the internet so we wouldn't have to go anywhere, so it's nice that we got that landed. It's unfortunate that we had to do with Covid to get there, but ultimately, I think that purchasing decisions and technology decisions are distributed so much more deeply into the organization than they were. It used to be a, like, C-level thing. We're now seeing that stuff happened much further down in the organization.We see that inside Akamai and we see it with our customers as well. It's been, honestly, refreshing because you tend to be able to engage with technical folks when you're talking about technical products. And you know, the business folks are still there and they're helping to guide the discussions and all that, but it's a much better time, I think, to be a technical person now than it probably was 20 years ago.Corey: I would say that being a technical person has gotten easier in a bunch of ways; it's gotten harder in a bunch of ways. I would say that it has transformed. I was very opposed to the idea that oh, as a sysadmin, why should I learn to write code? And in retrospect, it was because I wasn't sure I could do it and it felt like the rising tide was going to drown me. And in hindsight, yeah, it was the right direction for the industry to go in.But I'm also sensitive to folks who don't want to, midway through their career, pick up an entirely new skill set in order to remain relevant. I think that it is a lot easier to do some things. Back when Akamai started, it took an intimate knowledge of GCC compiler flags, in most cases, to host a website. Now, it is checking a box on a web page and you're done. Things have gotten easier.The abstractions continue to slip below the waterline, so the things we have to care about getting more and more meaningful to the business. We're nowhere near our final form yet, but I'm very excited about how accessible this industry is to folks that previously would not have been, while also disheartened by just how much there is to know. Otherwise, “Oh yeah, that entire aspect of the way that this core thing that runs my business, yeah, that's basically magic and we just hope the magic doesn't stop working, or we make a sacrifice to the proper God, which is usually a giant trillion-dollar company.” And the sacrifice is, of course, engineering time combined with money.Andy: You know, technology is all about abstraction layers, right? And I think—that's my view, right—and we've been spending the last several decades, not, ‘we' Akamai; ‘we' the technology industry—on, you know, coming up with some pretty solid abstraction layers. And you're right, like, the, you know, GCC j6—you know, -j6—you know, kind of compiler tags not that important anymore, we could go back in time and talk about inetd, the first serverless. But other than that, you know, as we get to the present day, I think what's really interesting is you can contribute technically without being a super coding nerd. There's all kinds of different technical approaches today and technical disciplines that aren't just about development.Development is super important, but you know, frankly, the sysadmin skill set is more valuable today if you look at what SREs have become and how important they are to the industry. I mean, you know, those are some of the most critical folks in the entire piping here. So, don't feel bad for starting out as a sysadmin. I think that's my closing comment back to you.Corey: I think that's probably a good place to leave it. I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time.Andy: Anytime.Corey: If people want to learn more about how you see the world, where can they find you?Andy: Yeah, I mean, I guess you could check me out on LinkedIn. Happy to shoot me something there and happy to catch up. I'm pretty much read-only on social, so I don't pontificate a lot on Twitter, but—Corey: Such a good decision.Andy: Feel free to shoot me something on LinkedIn if you want to get in touch or chat about Akamai.Corey: Excellent. And of course, our thanks goes well, to the fine folks at Macrometa who have promoted this episode. It is always appreciated when people wind up supporting this ridiculous nonsense that I do. My guest has been Andy Champagne SVP at the CTO office over at Akamai. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an insulting comment that will not post successfully because your podcast provider of choice wound up skimping out on a provider who did not care enough about a persistent global data layer.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Steve interviews Andy Gaught, a property investor, mentor and coach who has been running his own property investment business, Asset Living, for the past seven years.   Andy has been interested in technology from an early age, from upgrading computers in his teenage years to studying mechanical engineering at Southampton University. In 2014, after a couple of years working for TV post-production companies, he joined the 2-year Sky TV technology graduate programme. Then, he became a project manager for Sky's online TV services, Sky Go and Now TV, where he was responsible for delivering technology change projects.   He is now a full-time property investor with a portfolio of single lets and HMOs across the South. He continues to invest in high-quality rental accommodation.   KEY TAKEAWAYS  Andy has built a portfolio and outsourced and systemized his business Asset Living for the past seven years. Outsourcing and systemizing can improve speed and efficiency and reduce errors. Once you've captured and documented a task, you are then free to improve its process. It doesn't have to be complicated to make significant differences. It can be small systems where you store or save files or a simple checklist. Systemizing and outsourcing repeated tasks frees up your creativity. When sourcing Virtual Assistants, be very clear and specific about the role you are offering. Don't rush the process of finding a VA. Make sure you get the right person the first time. Be wary of app recommendations because people have different tastes in what they like to use, and what suits them may not appeal to you.      BEST MOMENTS  ‘By using technology or other people, it frees up your time, it enables you to scale, it enables you to do so much more in your business.' – Andy ‘It doesn't matter how complex the stuff gets, the simplicity of just noting down “this is what I am doing today”. Because it's just the act of documenting the thing that I'm doing, the steps involved.' – Steve ‘It was simply a checklist, my first system. This is what I do once a year, so I don't forget to do anything important.' – Steve ‘People may sometimes think that systems are restrictive or that they prevent creativity but by having systems in place it, then gives you structure and you can be more creative and have more inspiration than other times.' – Andy ‘I think also, don't rush into it. You want it to be a long-term relationship, and it's such a painful process and time-consuming process to find people, you don't want to onboard them, spend a couple of weeks and realize that it's not right.' – Andy ‘Seek out help so that you can do the right thing for your business, and then you'll wonder why you didn't do it so much earlier.' - Andy GUEST RESOURCES Website: ► www.asset-living.com ► Instagram:  @andy_gaught ► LinkedIn:  Www.linkedin.com/in/andy-gaught/   VALUABLE RESOURCES Facebook: Facebook.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/ Website:www.SystemizeYourSuccess.comLinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/SystemsAndOutsourcing/Instagram: @systems_and_outsourcing YouTube: YouTube.com/DrSteveDay ABOUT THE HOST Steve used to be a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change the way he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely, and after totally nailing this concept, he decided to spend his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve's been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants. Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don't know how to create systems or get the right help. Our systems and outsourcing Courses and coaching programme will help you automate your business and work effectively with affordable virtual assistants. That way, you will stop feeling overwhelmed and start making more money.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HIGHLIGHTSAndy's motivations behind Sell Without Selling OutBe friendly and do the things you can control to sell moreTrain sales managers to help sellers achieve their goalsGoodhart's Law applied: Managers' variable income based on % of reps who hit quotaQUOTESAndy: "I'd recently go, oh, that's what was happening in this situation with this customer. And it really helps to be able to put words to it. So that's one of the things I was trying with the book is help people sort of put words to what they're experiencing."Andy: "It costs you nothing to be friendly as a salesperson. It is one of the few things you can control, so why wouldn't you be? Why wouldn't you be warm? Why wouldn't you be friendly with someone?"Andy: "That's the very definition of a sales manager's job is to talk to their sellers, listen, understand what are the most important things to those sellers in terms of business goals and personal goals that they want to try to achieve, and then help them get that."Andy: "The way you help people gain the confidence to succeed is by letting them experience success."Andy: "Sellers need to understand that their ability to succeed is based not only on their ability to take control, a willingness to take control of how they sell and act in a way that aligns with who they are and their strengths, but also finding the right situation."Find more about Andy by checking out the links below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realandypaul/Amazon book link: https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Without-Selling-Out-Success/dp/1989603572Website: https://www.andypaul.com/Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-enablement-podcast-with-andy-paul/id1046045197

HIGHLIGHTSThe prerequisites of scaling a sales organizationHow to define your ideal customer profileAre geographic territories still relevant?Challenges of the Chief Revenue Officer roleFounding CEOs aren't always the best leadersDon't rely solely on advice from venture capitalistsBe open to evolutionScaling strategies can be repeatableCommon mistakes that companies make when trying to scale upDon't try to change how customers want to buy your productTeam players are essential in scalabilityMaster the playbook and improve itAdvice for new sales leadersYour actions as a leader impact other peopleQUOTESAndy: "When you think about the CRO's role, it's so hard because you're navigating a market of sales teams scaling the company, hitting the number. But then also part of the job a lot of people don't talk about and you both know this really well, is you also have to set expectations and navigate with your constituents in the executive team, the board, the CEO."Andy: "When you have an executive team that's aligned and has patience and frankly has the ability to evolve over time and just kind of say 'alright, what's working and what's not', and it's an open line of communication, and that strategy doesn't change, that's when you see companies that win."Andy: "For the first time leader, it's not about you, and what value are you gonna impart to the team? And the third thing, how are you gonna create a winning culture? Because people are gonna want to come work for you, people are gonna want to generate pipeline. People are gonna want to really inspect the forecast. If you're gonna create a winning culture, they're gonna want to do those things. I think, as a first time leader, any leader, but definitely a first-time leader, how are you gonna inspire people to go in?"Andy: "It takes some really hard times to really reflect back and say 'well, am I really giving everything I can to not just work but to myself and to others that support me?' And when you have those three things really working for you, that brings out the best in you, which by definition brings out the best in everybody else. When one of those is lacking, everybody can see."Connect with Andy with the link below:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-byron-417a429/Learn More about Force Management here: www.forcemanagement.comTaking on a New VP of Sales Role? Key Resources: | https://forc.mx/3KTEismMore about Force Management | www.forcemanagement.comCheck out John McMahon's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Qualified-Sales-Leader-Proven-Lessons/dp/0578895064

Book Your Free Revenue First Podcast Strategy here!Get Your Free Dial Session here!Claim Your Free 200 Leads here!HIGHLIGHTSA different brand of salesman Always put the needs of the buyer first, even in hiring salespersonPeople generally don't like to be persuadedModern selling should be about working with buyers Changing the perspective of what it means to be in salesDon't chase numbers at the expense of customer relationshipsCreating a consistently good buyer's experience will payoff in the end Don't work for sales, make sales work for you Look for managers that are as invested in your success as you areKnowing vs Understanding the buyerQUOTESAndy: “I ask sales managers all the time. I see your job posting and I'm dealing with the client or something and I say, okay, here's this job posting that you got listed for a salesperson. So these attributes that you have listed, how do they help the buyer?”Andy: “It's kind of a lunacy that we continue to have sales leadership that puts together job postings that emphasize these qualities, because in many respects, what they emphasize are behaviors that buyers resist and reject.”Andy: “We spend billions of dollars a year in the US alone, training salespeople in behaviors that the buyers universally resist. That sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?”  Andy: “This is the problem, right, is we've had this sort of revolution in the last 10 to 15 years with incredible technology coming to the sales space, the marketing space, and people think that the usage of that technology constitutes modern selling. And it doesn't because when you're automating antiquated, obsolete behaviors, it's not modern. It's still the same old crap. You're just doing more of it, you're amplifying it.”Andy: “Sales is not something you do to somebody. It's something you do with somebody.”Collin: “It's so common, you know because of this end of month, end of quarter, end of year, the vast majority of people in sales are stressed out, working long hours, trying to do exactly what you did. You know, going back and forth, forcing these orders to hit numbers so sales bosses can get their bonuses.”Andy: “There's no shortage of studies that have been done about how people are more productive, more creative when they have more control of the choices they make.” Learn more about Andy in the links below:Email: andy@andypaul.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realandypaul/Website: https://www.andypaul.com/Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sales-enablement-podcast-with-andy-paul/id1046045197Learn more about Collin in the link below: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collin-saleshustle/Also, you can join our community by checking out @salescast.community. If you're a sales professional looking to take your career to greater heights, please visit us at https://salescast.co/ and set a call with Collin and Chris. 

Moving into the DTC space after operating only in retail is a tricky tightrope to walk. You have already-established partnerships that you don’t want to jeopardize and a consumer base that you don’t want to cannibalize. But you also want to bring innovation and new products to your loyal customers, and you want to build more personal relationships with them along the way. So how do you win in all areas? Or can you win in all these areas?Andy Judd is the CMO at Yasso, Inc., and finding the answer to that question is currently at the top of his todos. . Yasso sells frozen yogurt bars, which side note, are the most delicious thing I have ever tasted. Yasso just recently began its journey into the world of DTC. Ultimately, Andy knows that building a profitable DTC arm of the business is one of the toughest challenges in the ecommerce industry today, especially when shipping frozen goods, but he’s done it before, and his tapping into all his knowledge he’s built up from prior roles at companies like ONE brands and Campbell's soup!On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Andy tells us what the move to DTC has been like so far, including the added challenges to logistics when it comes to shipping frozen novelties, what strategies he’s been using to ensure transparency with retail and third-party partners, and why he wants everyone listening to understand that ROAS is not the same thing as ROI. Enjoy this episode … and maybe also a Yasso bar!Main Takeaways:Deep Freeze: The logistics of shipping frozen foods are still being fully fleshed out. For certain products, such as frozen fruit, or even cartons of ice cream, you have a bit more leeway in temperature states and the risk of thawing and refreezing. With something like a frozen yogurt bar, you have absolutely no wiggle room, which means that there has to be multiple layers of pressure testing, route optimization, and quality control in order to ensure that customers are getting the product they expect instead of a puddle of froyo. It is only after you have optimized every step of that process that you can feel comfortable moving more to a DTC space.ROAS Does Not Equal ROI: In ecommerce, ROAS is one of the metrics you hear about often. And while it’s important, it’s also critical to note that ROAS does not equate to ROI, because ROAS often does not account for incrementality. So be very careful when you are measuring your success and be sure to take into account all of the other activities that bring in revenue and returns. Doubling Down: As Andy put it best, “I have a general principle of double and double and double and double until it breaks. You double until that ROAS really starts to decay at a rate, and then you know where your ceilings are.” A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: When you are selling DTC on a third-party platform, it is important to be upfront and transparent with your retail partners. Talking through who you’re targeting, how you’re pricing and why bringing incremental customers into the business helps all parties — more brand-loyal customers will buy across all platforms, including in retail — will make for a much more productive relationship.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder and CEO at mission.org. Today on the show, we have Andy Judd, the Chief Marketing Officer at Yasso. Andy, welcome.Andy:Thank you, Stephanie. Great to be here and look forward to today's discussion.Stephanie:Excited to have you here. Like I said, I am getting hungry now thinking about this conversation. My stomach actually just rumbled. I don't know if anyone heard that, but that's how I feel about this conversation today. It's going to be a good one.Andy:Yeah, no, I'm excited. I think we've got a lot of exciting things happening on the business that I think we can offer some interesting perspective to the community.Stephanie:Cool. So, I saw that you have been in the CPG space for over a decade, starting all the way back at good old Campbell's Soup, which I'm like, that's a good history there of really knowing what you're talking about.Andy:Yeah. I've been extremely blessed and fortunate to work with some great companies along the road, those large blue chip companies like Campbell's, down to smaller emerging businesses like Yasso today. Each of them is definitely different culturally, business model, go to market, marketing approaches, not only from the size of the businesses, but also what's taken place over time. I appreciate you said one decade. In that lead up, it is a bit longer than that, but-Stephanie:I think I said over, but I didn't put numbers.Andy:Over, yes. I appreciate you not going all the way to, but yeah, I've been very blessed to work at great companies, great, amazing teams and leaders that have shaped a lot of my thinking. And now I'm happy to hopefully give back some of whatever wisdom I've collected back to your community too.Stephanie:Cool. Well, to start, I want to hear, from a very high level, how do you view the food and beverage industry today compared to maybe even just a couple years ago? How has it changed and how did that lead you to creating Yasso?Andy:Yeah. The speed of change is definitely picking up pace, and I'm not even talking about the realities of the past year, because that's a whole different kind of situational change, but the speed of change has definitely changed a lot. When I started my career, there was a very set number of customers, and we had a lot of customer consolidation happening, but then really, the marketing landscape started to evolve. Obviously, around 2008, 2010, Facebook came on and just rewrote the playbook dramatically. It took a while to internalize that, particularly in the food space, I think we were a little slower to adaptation.Andy:Analytically, I don't think we were quite ready for that moment. But once we kind of got our feet underneath us as a space, it really took off, and now it's how fast can you run to the newest platform to get the most efficiency before the system goes, particularly as an emerging brand, finding those places where I can flank, get the most bang for my limited dollar set versus some of the larger spenders is really important. And I think it's bred a new capability set for today's marketing leaders, that is constant evolution. While, yes, I run, to some varying degrees, the same purchase funnel, the activity that's happened within it, wildly different.Andy:I gave a speech to my alma mater and some marketing students and walked them through like, "When I started my career, here's what we did. We ran TV commercials and a newspaper based FSI. Waited 18 months to see if it worked, and then probably made a decision before we even got the results to do it again, and it's just wildly different from how we activate today."Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. So, you have all this experience, I'm guessing you're starting to see opportunities. What led you to Yasso and what did that process look like?Andy:Sure. So, I joined the Yasso team a little over a year ago and had known the founders for a bit, and known our CEO for even longer. And like many moments where they recognize the step change from kind of the what got you here won't get you there, brought in a new management team to implement a double down on the growth strategy. So, great product. I won't talk too much about the product because you are hungry, but it is a fantastic product. Super creamy, super delicious, great nutritional, clean label, it really does have all the components. But really, it was a bit landlocked on the East Coast, founded and formed in Boston. And this team is rapidly building out that distribution footprint, investing and building the brand.Stephanie:Yeah. Also, how can you go wrong when the founders are kindergarten friends? I mean, that sold me right away.Andy:Absolutely. Yeah, Drew and Amanda, I will say this, have been just fantastic to work with, both in the principles they've set as an organization from a company culture perspective, and how we value employees, and what benefits we give them, to how we make an impact in our community. We do have a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization called Game On! Foundation. That's a big part of it. And then just this amazing product. As a marketer, I love that moment where it's like, "Build a brand. Here's this amazing foundation."Stephanie:Yep. So, what did your first 90 days look like? Of course, you always come in and kind of study things, see how things are working, but then what did your first 90 days look like? What did your playbook look like to start solving some problems there?Andy:Sure. It was a busy first 90 days. I had just come off of another transaction and was one of the last management members to join the organization. And so marketing, to some extent, needed to catch up. We were also moving the company from Boston to Boulder in that moment, and so there was definitely a team rebuild that happened there. So, first 90 days was establishment of strategy, getting the structure identified and a lot of recruiting, whilst simultaneously starting to build the components of activation to get us to ice cream season in 2020, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about, the sheer pivot that took place. Andy:So, strategy, put the playbook in place, get the key components, the critical components lined up, get the right team. Stephanie:Cool. So, you were just mentioning old school close tactics. What are you talking about [crosstalk] for anyone [crosstalk]?Andy:Yeah. Literally, couponing. I mean, I'm not kidding. Now, that evolution of incentive based activation has changed, right? The platform in which you may do that today looks a lot different than the platforms that we used to do that a while ago on. But yeah, I think there's reality to finding consumers and giving them incentives into trial and activating that personal truth in retail. It is not our largest investment, but it's an important one as we think through that funnel, particular in a category like this where taste is so critical that if I can get someone to push past that by giving them a little bit of an incentive and then know that my product is just lights out, is a great way to do it.Stephanie:Yeah. And are these coupons digital? Are they emailing coupons out? How are you doing that?Andy:Yeah. It's a number of different... So, we definitely operate that on owned basis through CRM. So, we definitely give incentives through kind of consumers that we've got into our ecosystem. That is, by far, the most valuable ones, which is keeping those people moving. Then there is outreach programs like Ibotta, that we've used, Shipt, Instacart, which also have, obviously, a shopping mechanism to them to drive trial. I'm sure we'll get into that at some detail as we talk about our omnichannel applications.Andy:And then some in-store placements, tried and true, IRCs, at shelf, to draw the consumer our way. This is definitely a very open trial based category where y'all want to try new things, and I'm looking for options, and if I can grab a millisecond of that scan at shelf by violating that with a save, definitely can do that. So yeah, it's definitely all components digitally, organic and owned, as well as in retail.Stephanie:So, let's dive into omnichannel, which you mentioned a little bit ago. Tell me a bit about how you guys had to potentially pivot post COVID, how you worked with your retail partners. I mean, I know that we're talking about how it can get kind of tricky too when you're, I guess, overly heavy on retail, and then all of a sudden, you're maybe trying to shift to DTC, and you don't want to make your retail partner sad. How did you guys think about that and explore that, especially over the past year?Andy:Sure. So, this brand was, I don't want to say 100% retail when I joined, but for this purposes, let's say it was 100% retail. Very limited investment, even on concierge based programs like Instacart, or even no investment on your platforms like Fresh, or walmart.com, it was very limited in that regard, and there was no DTC at that moment. Some of that is driven by frozen temperature state, right? I don't think... no third party platform has fully figured out that last mile in full temperature state. Retailers are definitely getting their closer and closer, Fresh is definitely pushing the boundaries there and building out an incredible footprint now. And I think COVID has exacerbated or built a lot of momentum to figuring out that for refrigerated and frozen temperature state products.Andy:We already had that in our plan. I think that all indicators of the consumer behavior was headed that way. COVID just made that evolution go faster. So, per my earlier point on change is just getting faster, COVID made this change faster. And so the dramatic shift that we saw, we knew we had to run pretty quickly. So, we were already strategically aligned to what that would look like, and for us that is four primary components of omnichannel. One is obviously DTC, and we'll talk about the intricacies there. Two is the concierge based programming and making sure that we're actively engaged there. Three is third party, and four is partnership with retail, primarily through online pickup and delivery.Andy:And so when we think about DTC, that's one component, but given that we're frozen temperature state, we really have to think broadly because of logistical challenges of working through shipping individual frozen Greek yogurt bars to a consumer's home and making sure that it gets there and it's not a puddle of Froyo is really challenging, particularly in an environment where FedEx is flushed with volume, logistics providers still haven't fully come to terms with the incremental volume in the system. So, it's definitely not without its operational, logistical challenges, but four components for us as we thought through that strategy, and we're diligently building each of them up, some of them simultaneously, and some of them we've kind of said, "Hey, we'll come to that one in a bit because these are more critical to success in the short term."Stephanie:Yeah. So, before we get more into the four pillars and the omnichannel piece, I do want to maybe jump into the operations aspect of how did you figure out this frozen shipping in a way that maybe others haven't so far?Andy:Yeah. So, let's start with our product DNA first. We make frozen novelties in a bar shape, so there's no forgiveness in that delivery, and we have to be pretty flawless against that, unlike, let's say, frozen fruit or even frozen ice cream pints, right? That can have a little bit of give, and the pint carton will hold its shape and kind of refreeze, no different than when you come home from the store. Novelties does not have that. If I have a little bit of give, that's not going to refreeze in what I believe our brand lives up to from a taste and sensorial experience.Andy:So, first and foremost was, we did a ton of pressure testing through a pretty in-depth thermal testing program. We vetted a number of different logistics partners, different packaging constructs, weights of dry ice, amounts of dry ice, what happens in delays, because we saw a lot of delays on ground shipping, hey, should we ship in air freight and taking discounts until the volume's figured out. We did a ton of pressure testing. And each of our products is also different. We make frozen yogurt bars, we also make frozen yogurt ice cream sandwiches. So, we've got a lot of different forms, even within our portfolio, that require a lot of diligence.Andy:So, a ton of diligence upfront, because at the end of the day, when we're asking consumers to buy our product, it is not a small price point for us to get over the hurdle, the cost of that seamless experience, it's not small. So, our goal is definitely very, very low fail rates through that. So, a lot of operational diligence upfront, a lot of understanding of routes and what geographies we do. We have a retail sales rep that was in Phoenix, and he got a lot of product in those early days, because we use that as our... that's the worst case scenario. If we can survive to Phoenix in August, I think we'll be okay. So, a lot of upfront thermal testing.Andy:And then engineering on the actual platform was also a good amount of diligence, and we're still evolving that as you always should be. Your selling platform, in my opinion, should be a living platform, for lack of a better word. It should never get complacent with the architecture that devils in the details on winning the SEM game, winning how consumers work through your sites, winning on how you keep them in the fold and get to repeat levels. We have a really high repeat level. That's really important to us. So yes, diligence upfront operationally, diligence on making sure the platform works right. And then once you start activating, the worst case scenario would be having someone have an experience that's anything less than superb.Stephanie:Cool. So, what does, from a high level, that back end look like? We settled on dry ice, or we didn't. We settled on a really good cooler. I'm thinking about this one cooler that shipped breast milk, it stayed frozen for four days for me. I was like, "Wow, this cooler is like a Yeti," but sadly, there was nothing you could do with it afterwards. So, what did you guys land on and what does that behind the scenes process look like now?Andy:Yeah. And also sustainability was an important factor for us and making sure that whatever format we were delivering in, we didn't want to deliver a format that would have a negative footprint on the earth either. So yeah, we had that extra variable, both the products, sustainability, surviving... like what happens if there's a day delay, right? If there's a day delay on an ambient product, if there's a day delay, most consumers don't get terribly upset by that. If there's a day to lay on a frozen Greek yogurt bar, that is a melted product, because that dry ice won't last forever.Andy:So, for us, it was a lot of diligence. We settled in on a really good package. We do use that insulated foam that put water on it, and it will dissolve. And so it was important for us to get that right. But we're talking about nuances of a half of an inch of that insulation, nuances of two to three incremental pounds of extra dry ice to ensure that. It really was fairly detailed, and I hope if our third party partner is listening or ever does listen to this, they know, one, I'm appreciative, and two, we definitely put it through the ringer on getting those details right.Stephanie:Yeah. Awesome. Let's move over to the four pillars, because I think that's a really tricky balance where you were talking about DTC, third party, retail, concierge, and I want to hear how you balance all four of those in a way that keeps everyone, including you guys, happy.Andy:Yeah. And we think about them a little bit about who we want activating through each of those. For us, incremental reach and incremental consumers into the Yasso franchise is really important. I mean, each of them plays a little bit of a different role in who we're targeting. Our DTC business is primarily pretty deep loyals because it's a pretty big price point, as well as our current baseline standard pack is an eight count. It takes up a little bit of room in your freezer too, so you got to love Yasso bars, which as we launch, we found that wasn't a problem. We definitely found some people that love Yasso bars and could take that volume on. So, that was a deep loyalty pool. It enabled us to get long... some of our tail skews and smart fan favorites available to people, get innovation in their hands early, those things.Andy:Concierge, to us, was a big win, particularly in 2020 when a lot of consumers ran, and we were able to pivot some of our investment and marketing dollars over there quickly. We had played around on the platform, and then back to your 90 days question, I had brought on someone on our team that was able to get in there, get into the self service side of things, had experience with that on other platforms, able to work in partnership with partners like Instacart and Shipt and really build that up, and we started running dollars to that. I have a general principle of double and double and double and double until it breaks, right? You double until that ROAS really starts to decay at a rate, and then you know where your ceilings are.Andy:And so for us, that was a really important one, particularly in the present temperature state. We knew consumer behavior is rapidly changing, we knew we could activate because we have the structure and the people in place to do so, and really win, particularly on buy it again. We knew that as new consumers were coming to that platform... I don't remember the stat I heard. It was something like they'd anticipated 30 million new households for the year of 2020, and they achieved that by April. And so it was definitely a double down on those types of platforms.Andy:And then we had had some initial discussions with Fresh, but it really was at a pretty good standstill. And so we knew we weren't operating on that platform relative to how we operate a retail, and brought in a new partner to help us [inaudible] on the platform, begin doing some more focused work on our side for advertising and in building out detail pages, etc, and really getting to a much better landing place there. And that has been a really nice win for us.Andy:And then the last pillar is that retail piece. And that one I think is evolving, because I think customers... there were definitely some customers that were ahead of that curve more in general merchandising, though, than anything, and definitely in some food categories, but definitely not in frozen and refrigerated food. And we've seen a definite increase from the prioritization of customers wanting to ensure that their platforms are in a good place. And we've seen a lot more requests for dollars flowing to help them build those platforms out. And so right now what we're trying to balance is, how do I see each of those platforms or pillars working together, and how do I spend the dollars accordingly? A lot of analytical rigor to that.Andy:But it's important to be really ready and flexible and flow those dollars to where you can get to the lowest CPCs, the highest ROAS, highest incrementality of households. We have third party analytic partner that helps us to look at ROIs, because ROAS does not mean ROI. If I could impart any wisdom to marketers out there that haven't lived that yet. ROAS doesn't take into account incrementality. So, it is a complement of different analytical approaches to help us flex those dollars across each of those pillars.Stephanie:Yep, I completely agree. So, are there any good lessons or learnings from going onto all those platforms, figuring it out, trying to pull them together eventually, are there any good lessons from that that other people can take away and hopefully avoid?Andy:Sure. I'll give you an example, not necessarily from my Yasso days, but some prior learnings that I had at a previous company. It is a gray space. As much as we're operating in these environments, whether it's DTC or third party platforms, retailers are also operating in these, and a lot of the questions we get is like, "Are you going to be sourcing volume from my retail in order to sell on these platforms directly?" And I think having those conversations with particularly important retailer partners upfront is important to help them understand how you're targeting, why it's good to bring net incremental people into the total business, and that helps all boats rise, how you're going to work with them through pricing strategy, in particular, how you're going to work through them with promotional and merchandising that doesn't create overlap.Andy:I have an example on Black Friday from a couple of years ago. There was a retail partner that was a very important retail partner, it was protein bars, and they operated heavily on Amazon, we operated heavily on Amazon. They were going to have their Amazon push for Black Friday, we were going to have our Amazon push for Black Friday. And we didn't get far enough ahead with them to decide who's doing what and how that may collide at the buy box. And thankfully, we decided to start our promotion early on Tuesday, because if we'd started one day later, that collision would have happened and no one would have been in the office to try and rectify it.Andy:And so what happened is they ran kind of a site-wide promotion across a number of the different brands that they sell as a broad retailer, and that discount stole the buy box and eroded a lot of your media metrics, we had obviously, some inventory challenges lined up in that. But thankfully, we were able to work through that and get it cleaned up. It had some implication with Google Shopping as well, so it was a multifaceted problem. It also gave us the opportunity to use that case as a way to talk through that with that retailer in the future, about lining up merchandising collectively, not independently. And that's not to suggest that we were comparing pricing, it was just more about talking through our approaches and what the implications on their platforms would be, our platforms, Amazon as a platform overall. I thought it led to a really collaborative place overall, but it is sticky, right? It's a bit of a frenemy reality, right? They are competing, but they're also your partners in retail.Andy:And so establishing guardrails and being transparent we found has been very helpful. Because, again, I operate from positive intent, we're all here to do the same thing, which is to drive growth and to give the consumer the right product that they want at the right time.Stephanie:Yeah. So, how do you go about talking to your retail partner to explain the incrementality piece, and this is good for me everyone type thing. How would you go about doing that in a way that makes sense to everyone?Andy:Yeah. Luckily, in the last few years, I've worked on some great brands that do have great stories about bringing in higher value consumers into the fold and figuring out ways to create total value that they may not get. And some of that is, "Hey, you don't have this portion of the portfolio on your catalog for whatever site you may be selling to, that's something that we can have...": I talked earlier about innovation as a way to get ahead. If a retailer doesn't opt into that innovation, that's okay. We definitely want you to sell our core business and operate there, but we want to give our most loyal consumers our innovation. It's also use of proof cases that we can then go back to the retailer and say, like, "Hey, this is a platform that's a little more vetted and has been cleared by our consumer," that, "hey, it's got proof here. This is an opportunity now for you to take that set to new consumers.Andy:It's also important for us to draw clean mapping to that consumer persona. Who's shopping online, and who shopping and retail, what they're looking for. And we've been very diligent about keeping that cleans. And here's who this is on my platform, here's who this is on third parties, here's who this is in your store. And collectively, that is a really nice store. And that's, I think, why we've had some success recently on outpaced growth relative to the marketplace.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, it seems like it'd be really tricky keeping track of those consumers, seeing the online versus offline, and where are they originating from, and who's attributing to what sale? How do you go about managing all that data and keeping track of it, especially since you're on so many platforms?Andy:Yeah. I mentioned it a bit earlier, but we do have a partner that does regression based marketing, real-time marketing mix analyses for us, and we use them as a way to delineate the incrementality. That gives us a broad view to our mix, but that also helps us to understand which platforms to bet on, one from the other. I think we're at 18 different variables in that modeling, and some of those variables are literally platform level variables, and some of those are different types of campaign level variables. And so it is not without a lot of rigor, but building the model upfront... and I apologize if I'm using some of those key words, but take the diligence to really think about what the data sets are that are going to come at you and establish what they really tell you, back to my comment ROAS is not ROI. It doesn't mean it's not important, but it's not. And having a data system, and a dashboarding approach, and an operational cadence by which you analyze those and bringing all partners into that for transparency, it clears the air.Andy:I think I worked with partners before that have given us feedback that, "Nobody ever tells us this," right? "And our objectives are never your objectives. They're always different." Right? And so getting alignment upfront and clarity of data flow I think is one of those pieces, no different than the diligence we talked about earlier on frozen fulfillment. A lot of diligence upfront pays off down the road, and actually enables a ton of flexibility. It's just really painful. If I could offer any guidance to winning in omnichannel, it's details, focus on details, because the more detailed oriented you are, the better your system will be and the better you'll understand implications of changes.Stephanie:Yeah. I could see partnerships being lost because of you guys maybe coming in there and being like, "Here's the data points we need. Here's kind of how things work," which maybe needs to be lost if someone doesn't want to do that. But what are the most important data points that you asked from a partner that maybe they weren't comfortable sharing at one point, but now many are on board with doing that? What do you go in saying like, "This is the requirements, here's what we need," and which ones were they maybe more hesitant to share?Andy:Yeah. The propensity or the default position of the retailers is not necessarily to share, and that's not, I don't think, in the spirit of not being a partner, it's in the spirit of, obviously, their goal is to build a category, not necessarily an individual brand, and they're trying to optimize the total pool of brands to elevate their entire category. And so obviously, they don't want to do anything that could be detrimental to the totality of that category growth or detrimental to other brand partners that they may have. Some of that is opting in, some of that is dollars and cents.Andy:There are a number of retailers that have really great platforms for data, and some of that is opting in to those. We've made it a purpose to be data centric in how we approach, not just our retail business or our ecommerce business, all of it. And that may lead to a little bit of a higher non-working/working ratio for what it may be. But that makes us a lot more efficient with all the working dollars in that. And so some of it is dollars and cents and opting into their platforms.Andy:Some of it is having a clarity of that strategy that I mentioned earlier, like, "Here's who I serve by platform," and almost drawing a line that says, "Here's how I view the world. How do you view the world?" And soliciting that. But sometimes it means going in with a point of view. And they may not share that point of view, but at least they'll declare, "I don't share this point of view." And so opt in, have a point of view, and then you'll share results. Also, I think it has to be a two-way street. If I'm unwilling to tell them, "Here's how I'm operating in a direct model," why would I ask them to then tell me what it looks like in an online pickup or delivery model? So, I think there has to be some reciprocity that comes along to that. So, don't be scared to buy data and be more data centric, be clear about your point of view, and then you'll have a partnership, and be okay with some transparency that you otherwise may be not wanting to do in the first place.Stephanie:Yeah, I love that. So, let's talk a little bit about customer acquisition. How are you guys acquiring customers and what are your most successful channels right now, or what are some big bets that you're making in new platforms or maybe you're like, "We weren't on TikTok before, but now we are"? What are you exploring right now?Andy:Yeah. Yes is the answer always. Our team has got a great, I think, pulse for that and a great flexibility for adapting to that. And sometimes it's not just new platforms, sometimes it's new activations on current platforms. I think Reels taught us all a good lesson this year. Obviously, TikTok was a great piece of the puzzle over the last couple of years. So yeah, organically, yeah, definitely continuing to build that out. I think from a paid perspective on new platforms for us, I would say the retail environment is definitely pretty evolving. Andy:Other retailers are pushing their platforms more and bringing on new media partners. Target had their big push. I think it was two years ago when they made their media change. So, yeah, I think retail is an ever evolving world because they're recognizing different to sundry, the Amazons of the world that they're both, yes, retailer, but they're also media marketplace. And if I can get a little more down funnel awareness, consideration and purchase, they're operating in that consideration bucket, because I'm already actively involved in food buying behavior. And so I think that's a really interesting place to be playing.Andy:Yasso in particular at this life stage, though, we are moving significantly in that top of funnel place. And so it isn't necessarily new platforms, but it's new to us because we're reaching growth levels, which is such an exciting moment for any brand, where we have the opportunity to make investments in larger platforms. And so this past year, we did a lot of betting on awareness based platforms that otherwise we wouldn't have probably bet on. But streaming audio was a big win for us in this past year. I think COVID definitely helped consumers even more so get into that space.Stephanie:Like podcasts, you mean?Andy:Yeah, like podcasts. Well done. Yes, like podcasts, and even just music as well. But I think those platforms have become a bigger play, which for traditional food, probably hasn't been top box consideration for media plays, but have done really well for us. And then OTT, I think, continues to build. And so those are not necessarily new platforms, but new to us. And when we think about where we are in our life stage, that gives us opportunities to rethink our total funnel, and that's really exciting, right? So, it's, hey, we have the availability to anchor to spending dollars that are scalable on some of these platforms that we otherwise probably wouldn't have been able to afford originally, and now really evolving our down funnel work with retailers in a different way. So, it's evolving, but it's pretty exciting, actually.Andy:I think that is one of the benefits I've seen from this past year, is it's moved our industry forward and our retailer partners forward. Obviously, it's not to suggest that they were at zero state by any means, but I think it's definitely built a lot of momentum.Stephanie:Yep. And when you're thinking about creating good creatives for these new platforms that you're on, how do you go about making something that really differentiates you guys? I mean, it feels like your space is pretty competitive now. How do you stand out? How do you make ads and audio content that really sets you apart from everyone else?Andy:Yeah. Since we came on, we've thought diligently about the balance of internal external creative capabilities, where we need a differential expertise, where we need flexibility internally, and again, diligence upfront, right? So, that declaration of your brand, what it stands for, what it looks like, being very clear with that, so that as you disseminate across the internal and external content creators, whether that's influencer based or UGC, or whatever it is, you know this is it and this is what it looks like so that your brand identity is well done.Andy:And then I think voice is an interesting place, and voice in two ways. One, is having perspective. I think brands that are able to separate themselves, to your point on the competitive environment, have a really clear voice and perspective on things, and they're willing to take a stand and say, "Here's what we believe." Because consumers, from an engagement perspective, are much more likely to go there. It could bring polarization components to it, definitely, that's a possibility, but it won't bring engagement, right? So, if you don't have voice, if you don't have a perspective, you won't have engagement. So, it's kind of one of those. So, perspective is one.Andy:And then, for us in particular, in our category, I think having a definitive sense of humor. It's a joyful snacking experience, right? I typically don't see a lot of people eating our food without the intention of elevating their mood.Stephanie:Yeah. You can't eat it with a sad face.Andy:No. I mean, you can. I mean, there's the old adage of the breakup with the ice cream-Stephanie:Okay. That's more ice cream.Andy:... but you're doing it to elevate yourself, right? So, most people don't enter that space without the intention of enjoying the experience. And so I think it's important for us to bring that levity and humor to our voice. So, having perspective, having a good sense of humor that's definitive and unique, and having clear sense of art direction is really important. And the last piece I would just say is contextual, right? So, not all creative is the same across. Our organic content team I think does a great job with, "Here's what works in Twitter, and here's what works in TikTok, and here's what works on stories, versus reels, versus feed," and bringing that to the game as well.Stephanie:Yeah, I agree based on some of the things I've seen. All right, let's move over to the Lightning Round. Lightning Round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Andy?Andy:Yes, I'm ready.Stephanie:I wish my knuckles cracked so I could do it.Andy:I can't do that either, but I'm ready.Stephanie:We tried. All right.Andy:Yes.Stephanie:First, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Andy:What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce? I would say, for me, last mile. I think the last mile is going to take a big step forward this next year. I think a lot of companies got caught flat footed on it. They spent the better part of last year figuring it out, and I think you're going to see more retail platforms figuring out last mile and betting big on it.Stephanie:Yeah, I agree. That's a good one. What's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you?Andy:I love the two words, to of my favorite words. Thank you. So, I will always take a thank you and I always try and give them just because everybody's working really hard right now, personally and professionally, and I just think the smallest thing you can do is just to say thank you. So, thank you for having me, Stephanie.Stephanie:Okay. Thank you for coming on the show, Andy. What one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?Andy:What one thing do I not understand today that I wish I did? There's so many things that I don't understand. I think the biggest one I had a better feel for honestly was how to get ahead on new organic platforms. That's definitely one of the tougher ones. I think we've built a good flexible ability to adapt to evolutions within platforms, but which ones to bet on just because there's so many, I think that's one I wish I had a better gut feel for it, to be able to jump there faster. As an emerging brand, I feel like that's one of our core competencies, is the flank approach and not getting trapped in the big game. And I wish I had a better feel for emerging organic platforms.Stephanie:Yeah, that does seem tricky to stay on top of, to be the first one on there and to be the one that can organically grow, because it does always say there's a lot arbitrage to be had on platforms in the beginning, especially when they're trying to figure out their maybe advertising programs. I know TikTok for a while there, you can get really good maybe ROIs because the platform was so new, they're figuring out their program. Maybe that's gone now, but that's a good one.Andy:And that's the exact point, is that it does happen quickly too. And I have seen brands be very successful in getting there first and grabbing that attention.Stephanie:Yeah. What's up next on your reading list?Andy:Right now, what is next on my... I'm looking over at my books. It is... and I'll show it to you, here. It is Hello Darkness, My Old Friend, by Sandy Greenberg. This is a book recommended by my father-in-law about the story of Art Garfunkel's college friend who went blind in college and his journey. He's a lawyer, and it's just an incredible story. So, that is next on my reading list.Stephanie:Wow. I'm writing that down. So, what was it? Hello...Andy:Hello Darkness, My Old Friend by Sanford Greenberg, or Sandy Greenberg.Stephanie:All right. I'll get it [crosstalk].Andy:Foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by the way.Stephanie:Oh, sweet. Okay, now, I'm definitely checking it out.Andy:Yes.Stephanie:All right. And then the last one. What ecommerce tool or piece of tech are you experimenting or most bullish on right now?Andy:Yeah. I'm going to go back to our logistics because I'm bullish that there's going to be a lot of progress on sustainable packaging over the next coming years, and as I mentioned earlier, having sustainable frozen packaging is just fantastic. It makes us feel way better about continuing to grow in this space. But I think there's going to be a lot of technology in the packaging constructs. There's a ton of waste in this space. I think brands are getting way more savvy around designing their first rather than trying to re-architect the other retail packs and then doing the best they can. So, I'm excited to see what comes in kind of more the the operational side as much as anything. That's a personal passion for me, but I'm excited to see how that continues to evolve.Stephanie:Awesome. That's a good one. All right, Andy. Well, thank you for coming on our show and sharing your insights. Where can people learn more about you and Yasso?Andy:Yeah. So, you can find us at yasso.com, for sure. Instagram @Yasso, are the best places, and you can find me on LinkedIn, for sure.Stephanie:Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us.Andy:Absolutely. Thank you, Stephanie.

“An offer out of place is always a no” - Andy Speed   The Wholesale Nation Podcast is targeted on giving away all the details needed to be a successful wholesaler, along with direct insights from wholesalers from across the nation. Our hosts, Undrea King, and Andy Speed are the owners of Drayco Properties, a real estate investment company located in Houston, Texas. Undrea has over two decades experience as a business operator and several years as a real estate investor. Andy has been in the real estate game since February 2015 and has a decade’s worth of experience in supply chain management. In the podcast series, the two motivated men have thrown light on the importance of having faith in ourselves to be able to take risks and believe in what we’re doing. At Wholesale Nation, every episode is a gateway to better learning, better sales and wiser investment. And this week Undrea and Andy guide you into and out of being ghosted by sellers, both good and bad! They discuss today the possible reasons for your seller ghosting away (ending the ongoing deal suddenly), how to deal with them and learning to do better marketing for more deals. Listen in. Sometimes when you’ve excitedly discussed or closed a deal, and start to take the follow-up steps to get working on it, your prospect suddenly disappears without a notice. This could be a major blow to your heavily anticipated gain, or what’s worse, could hit your motivation hard. Needless to say, this is not the last deal you’d ever close. We all make mistakes and need to learn to grow from them. Learn that you should not be making an offer unless a seller says ‘yes’. Showing a lot of excitement towards a deal could make them uncomfortable and if they’re of the kind that doesn’t like appearing rude, there is a huge possibility of them going dark and not coming back with the sale. You need to hold back your emotions- play cool. Andy has discussed how he practices understanding with sellers by giving them a way out if they haven’t been able to catch up with him after a discussion because of personal commitments. Perhaps the seller is embarrassed because he/ she couldn’t follow up, had been dodging calls or missed them out of a busy schedule. He drops them a voice message making them know that it’s fine if they couldn’t talk back and that they contact him when free. There are different stages of a sale you could be ghosted at- Initial Conversation Mid-way through the deal when you’ve looked at the property Why a buyer doesn’t agree with a deal could probably be because you could not help solve their problem or perhaps because you pressurized them too much. But even if you’ve lost the leverage, you could still help the buyer find the right match to maintain genuineness towards the profession. And that doesn’t only help the buyer, but also helps you deal with the wrong kind of deals with the right mindset. Always remember that you cannot convince or force a buyer to make a deal. Either they want it or they don’t. How likely are you to consider being ghosted after this conversation? Now that you know it’s part and parcel of this game, prep yourself to identify where you go wrong and work on correcting your mistakes! And let us know in the comments how you feel about the same! If you enjoyed listening to this, and want to learn even more about growing your real estate wholesaling business, please subscribe to the show, comment, and leave a review if you wish to help this reach a larger audience! Also, if you are not a member of the Wholesale Nation Facebook group, now is the time for you to join! Every Friday 2pm Central Standard Time, go to the Wholesale Nation Facebook Group, join in the private zoom room, and get to see how to role play for acquisitions. Absolutely for free!   Quotes:   “An offer out of place is always a no”- Andy “Your offer is their leverage.” - Andy “It’s always going to be the deal that you’re too excited about.” - Undrea “If you’re not screwing up, that means you’re not pushing hard enough.”- Andy “It’s incredibly important for the seller to know that it’s okay to say no.” - Andy “If you have sellers that ghost you number one, see what you’re doing to be reactive to it and proactive to it so that you’re not getting in that situation again.” - Undrea “At the end of the day, you’ve to move on to the next one.” - Undrea   Connect with Andy and Undrea:   Facebook Group: Wholesale Nation Instagram :  @undreaking , @andyspeed_ Website : https://wholesalenation.libsyn.com/ https://www.draycoproperties.com/

Highlights from this episode include:  Key market drivers that are causing Cloud Comrade's clients to containerize applications — including the role that the global pandemic is playing.   The pitfalls of approaching cloud migration with a cost-first strategy, and why Andy doesn't believe in this approach.  Common misconceptions that can arise when comparing cloud TCO to on-premise infrastructure. How today's enterprises tend to view cloud computing versus cloud-native. Andy also mentions a key requirement that companies have to have when integrating cloud services. Andy's thoughts on build versus buy when integrating cloud services at the enterprise level. Why cloud migration is a relatively safe undertaking for companies because it's easy to correct mistakes. Why businesses need to re-think AI and to be more realistic in terms of what can actually be automated.  Andy's must-have engineering tool, which may surprise you. Links: Cloud Comrade LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloud-comrade/ Follow Andy on Twitter: @andywaroma Connect with Andy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyw/ TranscriptEmily: Hi everyone. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and my day job is helping companies position themselves in the cloud-native ecosystem so that their product's value is obvious to end-users. I started this podcast because organizations embark on the cloud naive journey for business reasons, but in general, the industry doesn't talk about them. Instead, we talk a lot about technical reasons. I'm hoping that with this podcast, we focus more on the business goals and business motivations that lead organizations to adopt cloud-native and Kubernetes. I hope you'll join me.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm Emily Omier, your host, and today I'm here with Andy Waroma. Andy, I just wanted to start with having you introduce yourself.Andy: Yeah, hi. Thanks, Emily for having me on your podcast. My name is Andy Waroma, and I'm based in Singapore, but originally from Finland. I've been [unintelligible] in Singapore for about 20 years, and for 11 years I spent with a company called SAP focusing on business software applications. And then more recently, about six years ago, I co-founded together with my ex-colleague from SAP, a company called Cloud Comrade, and we have been running Cloud Comrade now for six years and Cloud Comrade focuses on two things: number one, on cloud migrations; and number two, on cloud managed services across the Southeast Asia region.Emily: What kind of things do you help companies understand when you're helping with cloud migrations? Is this like, like, a lift and shift? To what extent are you helping them change the architecture of their applications?Andy: Good question. So, typically, if you look at the Southeast Asian market, we are probably anywhere between one to two years behind that of the US market. And I always like to say that the benefit that we have in Southeast Asia is that we have a time machine at our disposal. So, whatever has happened in the US in the past 18 months or so it's going to be happening also in Singapore and Southeast Asia. And for the first three to four years of this business, we saw a lot of lift and shift migrations, but more recently, we have been asked to go and containerize applications to microservices, revamp applications from monolithic approach to a much more flexible and cloud-native approach, and we just see those requirements increasing as companies understand what kind of innovation they can do on different cloud platforms.Emily: And what do you think is driving, for your clients, this desire to containerize applications?Andy: Well, if you asked me three months ago, I probably would have said it's about innovation, and business advantage, and getting ahead in the market, and investing in the future. Now, with the global pandemic situation, I would say that most companies are looking at two things: they're looking at cost savings, and they are also looking at automation. And I think cost savings is quite obvious; most companies need to know how they can reduce on their IT expenditure, how they can move from CAPEX to OPEX, how they can be targeting their resources up and down depending on the business demand what they have. And at the same time, they're also not looking to hire a lot of new people into their internal IT organization. So, therefore, most of our customers want to see their applications to be as automated as possible. And of course, microservices, CI/CD pipelines, and everything else helps them to achieve that somewhat. But first and foremost, of course, it's about all services that Cloud provides in general. And then once they have been moving some of those applications and getting positive experiences, that's where we typically see the phase two kicking in, going into cloud-native microservices, containers, Kubernetes, Docker, and so forth.Emily: And do you think when companies are going into this, thinking, “Oh, I'm going to really reduce my costs.” Do you think they're generally successful?Andy: I don't think in a way that they think they are. So, especially if I'm looking at the Southeast Asian markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and perhaps other countries like Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia, it's a very cost-conscious market, and I always, also like to say that when we go into a meeting, the first question that we get from the customers, “How much?” It is not even what are we going to be delivering, but how much it's going to cost them. That's the first gate of assessment. So, it's very much of an on-premise versus clouds comparison in the beginning.And I think if companies go in with that type of a mindset, that's not necessarily the winning strategy for them. What they will come to know after a while is that, for example, setting up disaster recovery systems on an on-premise environment, especially when a separate location is extremely expensive, and doing something like that on the Cloud is going to be very cost-efficient. And that's when they start seeing cost savings. But typically, what they will start seeing on Cloud is a process cost-saving, so how they can do things faster, quicker, and be more flexible in terms of responding to end-user demands.Emily: At the beginning of the process, how much do you think your customers generally understand about how different the cost structure is going to be?Andy: So, we have more than 200 customers, and we have done more than 500 projects over the six years, and there's a vast range of customers. We have done work with companies with a few people; we have done companies with Fortune 10 organizations, and everything in between, in all kinds of different industries: manufacturing, finance, insurance, public sector, industrial level things, nonprofits, research organizations. So, we can't really say that each customer are same. There are customers who are very sophisticated and they know exactly what they want when going to a cloud platform, but then there are, of course, many other customers who need to be advised much more in the beginning, and that's where we typically have tools and processes in place where we can assess what is the right proposed strategy for our customers. And then we discuss these ideas in our workshops, and then let the customer decide what will be the best way for them forward, [unintelligible] cost, timelines, and then also potential product risks.Emily: Are there any common themes around things that companies tend to not understand correctly, or misconceptions that let's say, just come up often; maybe not all the time, but frequently?Andy: Yeah. I think the most common misconception is that we work a lot with AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and other cloud platform providers. And typically, when customers are looking to migrate across, they might have virtualized their on-premise environment, and they're looking at the virtual machine to virtual machine cost comparison: how much does it cost them to run one virtual machine on on-premise versus running it on clouds. And when they do that, usually the TCO calculations, they will start breaking down the cost the customer's not taking into consideration all the security that they get with these cloud platforms, the network aspects of it, the compliance aspects, like for example, compliance certifications, regulatory aspects, and all of these things. So, if the customer was to a total TCO of what they're getting on cloud versus what they're getting on their on-premise environment, then they would actually see the huge cost-saving benefits that they are getting. But, at the moment, many of the customers just look at virtual machine to virtual machine comparison, which in our opinion, is wrong.Emily: So, it can be really hard for companies to do this, sort of, apples to apples comparison because they're not taking everything into account?Andy: Yeah, to be fair to them, many times you only start getting some of those benefits, of Cloud if you completely decommission your on-premise data center, but if you still the on-premise data center costs and you have to cloud costs, then you can't fully exploit the benefits of Cloud.Emily: Do you see any common misconceptions related to how you would have answered three months ago, where related to innovation, or agility?Andy: I think we have seen a huge influx of projects coming to us right now, and I see that a lot of companies who have been sitting on the fence in the previous years, they have now realized that the economic situation is changing very, very rapidly. And it doesn't matter if they have been the market leader, or one of the challengers, they need to do something. And previously, many companies felt that the best approach would be to go to, maybe, one of the large consulting providers, and just get something from them regardless of the price, or alternatively, go and shop around with 10, 15, 20 different vendors and try and squeeze the best price out of them, and [unintelligible] the implementation at the lowest possible cost. I think now, with the pandemic and economic situation, I feel that many companies have been rationalizing their IT strategy, their strategy they're suspending, and what they are doing is that they are trying to find what is the most suitable vendor given the current situation, forego lengthy RFP processes, do something quickly on Cloud, do some kind of TOC, if it looks good for them, then let's just get going, don't waste internal resources, don't waste external resources, and try to achieve something quickly.Emily: Do you feel like, in general, your clients tend to understand the difference between just cloud computing and cloud-native?Andy: Um, I think that definition is probably hazy. I think it's probably also maybe somehow hazy for me, [laughs], and I think in some cases, the cloud platform providers want to keep it that way as well. Typically, the customers that we are dealing with is relatively traditional enterprises, and we always advise them that rather than doing a lot of transformation on on-premise first, why don't we just help you to lift and shift and move you to cloud, and once you're on Cloud, you can start doing all kinds of experimentation there with cloud-native services. And it's not just about moving these companies to cloud-native services, which have certain benefits, like for example, serverless technologies that reduces the costs a lot, it also requires the companies to have a pretty clear understanding of their internal processes, and then also, critically, an understanding of the roles and responsibilities within those organizations because when you start deploying software and applications in a different way onto a cloud platform, the technology is one part of it, but the process and people is the other part of it, and if the organizations internally are not ready to change the process, they won't be able to reap the benefits of cloud-native services, otherwise.Emily: And how challenging do you think it is for companies to do the sort of, organizational work to match this sort of change in the way they work together with a different technology?Andy: I think it is very challenging, and we see a big skill gap there. Many companies, even large companies, they might have issues of attracting talent. And typically, one of the reasons is that even if the companies are wanting to do something on Cloud, they typically choose one Cloud Platform only, and many IT people who are wanting to get into this space or wanting to be in cloud computing. They don't want to focus just on one cloud platform. They want to be focused on multiple different platforms, and they want to understand what are the differences between, let's say, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and other providers, and that's why people who are really skilled, they probably end up in consulting companies like ours and other companies. And that's, I believe, is the whole reason of our existence is that many companies cannot do these things in-house, and therefore, they would like to outsource the initial work, and then also the ongoing work terms of managed services to the companies like us.Emily: Do companies often ask you, “Should we build this internally? Should we outsource this for somebody else to do? Should we buy a tool that does this automatically?” Is that a question that they have, and how do you sort of evaluate an answer?Andy: [unintelligible] this depends a little bit on the industry. So, for example, there are a number of so-called unicorns, in the region, and these companies have very big IT departments, in-house development department, in-house, they might have thousands of developers, and they feel that the best way for those companies to create differentiation in the market is to build by themselves. But we deal also with a lot of, like I mentioned before, with traditional manufacturing companies, for instance, and there they will go for packaged applications such as SAP, Oracle, .NET applications, and I think that's the best approach for them, rather than start building something in-house, which would not necessarily make sense for them, given the fact that these costs are not in IT industry, but they are in, let's say, in food and beverages industry. But they've certainly built, and like to build some services on top of those traditional software packages, and analytics and analytical reports, for example, predictive forecasting, and that's something that will bring about uniqueness to their organization, to their process, and competitive advantage. And that are mostly things that they're exploring on the Cloud, and weighing those options for that make sense to buy something prebuilt, or develop it in-house, or outsource it to some organization.Emily: What do you think your clients tend to be pleasantly surprised about? What ends up being a lot easier than they expect?Andy: First of all, IT has always been notorious for failed projects. There has been too many of those, and if you look at Cloud implementations, we really haven't had any. I think Cloud is safe in the sense that even if you have estimated, these are the compute requirements, or the storage requirements, or whatever it might be at the initial phase, and it turns out that assessment is wrong, then it's very easy to actually rectify that, and change the services, and if we brought up, let's say, an SAP on a certain types of instances and two days later, we find out that no, this instance was too big or too small, we can easily go and change that. That also, if I'm taking that SAP example, SAPs customers are typically wanting to move to SAP HANA at some point of the time, but they're unsure whether that makes sense for them from the organizational point of view and business point of view, and we tell them that why don't you just move to Cloud, and then we can provision new instances with SAP HANA. We can migrate your test environment to an SAP HANA environment, and then you can give it a go. So, Cloud allows you to do a lot of this experimentation, which then leads back to the pleasant surprise that there aren't really any failed IP projects, or even if they are failures, the failures are quite minute compared to some of the IT failures they might have seen in the past.Emily: Interesting. That's a pretty big upside.Andy: Definitely it is, and we have had some tough, difficult implementations in the past, big migration projects, but with the [unintelligible] from the customer side, and also internal resources, we have always been able to overcome them. And then, even if things are heated at some point of time, usually at the end of the day, the final project sign-off meetings are relatively pleasant and joyous.Emily: Do you see a major difference in strategy by industry? So, a technically sophisticated company versus a traditional manufacturing company, are they going to follow dramatically different strategies to build competitive advantage using technology?Andy: Mmm. So, we are really focused on the infrastructure, so when it comes to infrastructure, mine services, [security mine] services, and I'm looking at the infrastructure layer, typically the customers either just choosing to use something on Linux was choosing to use something on Windows. Maybe they use some server technologies and others, but from that point of view, you can't really tell, if you're looking to a customer's cloud console, whether they are a manufacturing company, or whether they are a finance organization. So, in that sense, there is no difference. Where the differences come in, though, is that we, for example, look at financial industries like banks, and insurance companies, that's where the governmental rules, and regulations, and compliance comes in, and there's a lot of paperwork outside of the cloud implementations that need to be done. There's a lot of guidelines that we need to follow, how to provision the infrastructure to be compliant to, let's say, banking or insurance regulations. That's one industry which is different from the others. Healthcare in the US, for example, there is HIPAA compliance, so how HIPAA compliant applications need to be built all the way from ground up, so that's also a significant difference. Third one is public sector. And so, like I mentioned before, almost half of our business is coming from public sector, and that's where, for instance, security, and compliance is extremely important, and it sometimes almost goes overboard to a certain extent, but I can understand why. And the security and networking requirements are extreme, and that's probably, for me, the most different industry out of all of them, customer-based that we have. And then the last one is multinational companies. Multinational companies have to adhere to their own IT policies, and audit requirements and they also have, many times, a lot of requirements that are relatively unique that they need to follow. Those are also different types of projects from the rest of them. Whether it's a media company, whether it's a manufacturing company, whether it's a research company or organization, I don't see too much differences in the way that they put the demands, and requirements on the infrastructure platform.Emily: And what do you say is something that your clients sometimes come to you looking for help with, that you still, kind of, don't have a great answer for?Andy: Machine learning. AI. A lot of companies talk about it, a lot of companies have been pitched about it, a lot of companies come to us, and said we want to do a machine learning project, and I said, “Well, fine. But what do you want to get out of those machine learning algorithms, and what do you want to build?” And essentially, once you start drilling down, what they want to have is this one red button when they press, and everything else can happen magically underneath to resolve all of their business problems. And I think all of us know that that's not how machine learning works. That's not how AI works, or at least it doesn't work like that right now. So, the expectations that vendors are setting what can be done with machine learning and AI, I think need to be revised. And also, customers need to be a bit more realistic in terms of the expectations what can be automated, what can be done through these new technologies versus what they've been doing in the past.Emily: Basically, if you want machine learning, you have to know it won't answer all of your questions. You have to know what you want answered, otherwise, you're not even asking the right questions.Andy: Pretty much. And also, machine learning, just like, also, analytics is that you require vast data sets that need to be ready from the organization, and the data sets need to be relatively clean as well, otherwise, it's hard to come up with models that are accurate, and the old fashioned saying of garbage in, garbage out is also very true, not just in analytics space, but also in the machine learning space.Emily: Is there anything else that you'd like to add about the topic of cloud-native and what companies get out of it in a business sense?Andy: I believe that we are living right now in 2020 in a very unique time, and at some point of time, when we start looking back, maybe in a few years from now, we'll start seeing that actually cloud-native started rocketing and taking off like no one expected in this year, is right now, it's happening. Every company is focusing on it one way or the other, and I think those companies that are taking advantage in this difficult economic times will be the winners once we come out of this economic and pandemic situation.Emily: I've actually heard that sentiment from many people, so that makes me think it's probably correct. Oh, my last question for you—I almost forgot—what is your can't-live-without engineering tool? So, is there a tool that you would find it difficult to impossible to do your job without?Andy: It still, after 30 years, its email. So, from that point of view it's, you know—but if I'm looking at our team, and what they're really focusing on right now, so working on things, like for example, Terraform, or an AWS site on CloudFormation tools, and that brings about automation. And the difficulty, sometimes, in Cloud is that there's so many different things that you can do. So, customers have a perception, when they go to Cloud, they do a one-off project, and then they're kind of done and dusted, and off they go and think about the next thing, but there's new services coming in all the time, and there is drift that happens on the cloud platform in terms of security, and ports, and network settings, and instances that gets loaded up and everything else, so you can only manage the cloud platform if you manage the [unintelligible] to automation. And I think that some of the [conflict] tools right now for us are starting to become tools like Terraform, from HashiCorp, CloudFormation from AWS, and similar kind of services from Google, and Microsoft that allows us to keep the platform in the kind of a compliance that the customer originally intended the platform to be.Emily: Where could listeners connect with you, or follow you?Andy: We have a pretty strong presence on LinkedIn. So, if you just search for Cloud Comrade on LinkedIn. So, that's where we post news about our industry, and our company, and our people, and our customers on a daily basis, and I would be looking forward to also connecting with your listeners.Emily: Well, thank you so much, Andy. That was very interesting to learn about what you do, and the types of companies that you work with, and what the Southeast Asian market, kind of, looks like.Andy: Thank you so much, Emily, for your invitation.Emily: Thanks for listening. I hope you've learned just a little bit more about the business of cloud native. If you'd like to connect with me or learn more about my positioning services, look me up on LinkedIn: I'm Emily Omier, that's O-M-I-E-R, or visit my website which is emilyomier.com. Thank you, and until next time.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

My guest today is Andy Polaine. Andy is a service designer, consultant, educator, author, and podcaster. He's co-author of the book Service Design: From Insight to Implementation and host of the Power of Ten podcast. In this conversation, we discuss service design, and how it helps organizations think more holistically about the experiences they enable. Listen to the full conversation   Show notes Andy Polaine Andy Polaine on Twitter Andy Polaine on LinkedIn Power of Ten podcast Service Design: From Insight to Implementation by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Lovlie, and Ben Reason Adobe Director (aka Macromedia Director, or Video Works) Antirom School of the Arts & Media, University of New South Wales Ben Reason Livework Lavrans Løvlie (in Norwegian) Chris Downs on LinkedIn Fjord Powers of Ten (film) by Charles and Ray Eames The Guide to Self-sufficiency by John Seymour Service blueprint Design for the Long Term by Andy Polaine UK Government Digital Service (GDS) This is HCD network Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: So, Andy, welcome to the show. Andy: Thanks for having me. It's pleasure to be here. It's very nice to be the other side of the mic, as they say. Jorge: Well, it's a pleasure having you here. For folks who might not know you, how do you introduce yourself? Andy's background Andy: So, my name is Andy Polaine. I am a service designer, consultant, trainer, coach, writer, and podcaster. And so, it's never really very easy. I've got one of those kinds of “hyphen” professions where I just kind of add bits to it all the time. My background is… so I actually studied film and when I did my undergraduate, I wanted to be a film director. And, initially I wanted to do visual effects actually from a very early age. And then, got interested in film and filmmaking. And when I started my degree, which was photography, film, video, and digital media, that just came in – this was early nineties, like 1990 – as I knew there was this thing called multimedia where you could… with Macromedia, or it wasn't even that, it was called Video Works, I think it was before it even became Director. And I'd always noodled about with computers; I'd had a personal computer as a younger kid, played games a lot and stuff. So, it was always kind of fascinated with interactivity. And I had those kinds of dual tracks all the way through. There was a sort of bit of competition in my head between the world of filmmaking and this new thing. And I chose this new thing, “new media,” as it was at the time, because I was kind of interested in it as a form. What does it mean to be able to interact with stuff? What are the affordances of this new thing? And so that's where I started. So, I started kind of doing interaction design before it had that name. And sort of discovering some things about interactivity, with a group called Antirom. And then, I started teaching it quite a lot and I'd always done a lot of teaching, even when I was a student, I used to of teach my peers quite a lot. And that's always been a… The secret thing about teaching is you hoover up a lot of knowledge. I think you gain more knowledge from teaching than you do give out actually. And then I was heading the School of Media Arts at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. And we were having a kind of faculty restructure, and I'd started getting interested in the idea of organizational design. And in these meetings about the restructure, the faculty – mostly designers and artists, who were the faculty – were having a meeting where they read out pages of A4 to each other, and then had long conversations and I thought, well, this is a design process. Why aren't we up at the whiteboard, you know, designing this organization? And then when I went back to the UK to visit a friend of mine, Ben Reason, in his newly minted studio of Livework, he started talking about service design. And he said, we're doing this thing called service design and I met Lavrans and Chris Downs as well and suddenly there's, “oh right! There's a whole way of thinking about this stuff.” And sort of language. And so I started kind of making the shift into that and then co- wrote the book with them, and then started teaching it. And I actually, you know what? [It was] the other way around, I started teaching it and needed the book that I wanted to teach from. So, there wasn't one, so I wrote it with them, and that's sort of been my journey. Then I went to Fjord for a while where I was, again in a kind of teaching role, as well as design director role. And I've just recently – with brilliant timing, on the 1st of March – went independent again, as a design leadership coach and also training, clients and client teams. Powers of Ten Jorge: Your podcast is called Powers of Ten, and that's named after the very famous film by Charles and Ray Eames. Why Powers of Ten? What is it about “Powers of Ten” that is so powerful? Andy: There are, there are two books that – I realized that only recently – that had seemed to have had a massive influence on me when I was a kid. My dad is an artist and was a designer too. And he had a book version of Powers of Ten that's where I first saw it. I saw, you know, a book with the frames in it. And there was another book called the Guide To Self-Sufficiency by a guy called John Seymour. Now I can talk about later and it talks about the, kind of, how to be self-sufficient, grow your own stuff, but it talks about the four seasons of the garden. And the Powers of Ten thing, just stuck with me, cause this guy actually called Andreas Elba (?) who was a friend of mine, and we were having a conversation about how to explain service design to people. Because that ability to zoom in and out and zoom out from big picture to detail and back again, and understand how they affect each other is really, really important, right? And we've really seen it recently with the coronavirus stuff, but small things can make a massive difference, particularly when they sort of aggregate up. But at the same time, a shift in policy or something can ripple – or a shift in business model ripples across all the details. And so, I'm talking about it and I had this kind of model of these different layers. And I think Andreas said, “Oh, do you know that film ‘Powers of Ten'?” And I was like, “Oh yeah, yeah, no, I love that!” And then I started using that as the way of explaining it to people. And so the thing about “Powers of Ten” is this idea of… One, it's an exponential thing, which now everyone understands, thanks to the coronavirus. But this idea of… To those that don't know, it starts with a camera above a guy on a picnic blanket, one meter above him and then 10 meters and then a hundred meters, the powers of 10 each time. So, one of the things is how quickly you're out into the universe, right? How quickly that multiplies up. And then it goes back down into the subatomic level. But the other thing is this kind of rhythm that there is, where there are moments of density: there's lots of matter, there's lots of planets, or there's lots of whatever, and then space. And as you know, good chunks of it in both the subatomic level and the kind of universe level where there's just lots of space and then suddenly there's a lot of density again. And I just found it, that sort of fractal thing where these patterns kept repeating themselves, I found it really, really fascinating, and it really stuck with me as a kind of way of thinking. I don't know if it has anything to do with my kind of film background. Maybe there's a bit of it there. You know, and when you've got like a line and a scene and kind of an act and so forth, or, maybe. But I just find it a really useful way of thinking about everything. Consulting Jorge: I'm wondering, in consulting work – because I take it from what you've been describing that most of your career has been as a consultant, in advisory roles to organizations… Andy: A mix. So, I've had… I switch in and out of kind of academic life and consulting. And so, I've had periods where I've been doing likes of 10-15% consulting every so often and doing talks and stuff and mostly teaching. And then I've had periods of the other way around. Jorge: So, these subjects, I think, fit in very nicely with what I would expect to be an academic perspective on the work, right? Where it's more introspective and you're… you were talking about this notion of zooming up and down the levels. And in my experience, folks in the business world are more focused on the nearer term, perhaps more actionable or kind of like… I've even noticed a resistance to ideas that they might consider more philosophical. Andy: Yeah. Jorge: And I'm wondering, first of all, if that somehow corresponds with your experience, and if so, how do you deal with that? Andy: It does correspond to my experience. So, service design in particular… You know, fundamentally it deals with ecosystems and services are kind of multiple touch points, they're multiple kind of channels. If you can think in terms of ecosystems and actually try and pull the parts of those ecosystems together to understand that you're actually all involved in delivering the same thing. You know, there's I think a bit in the book where we say a service is designed in silos, or created in silos, or experienced in bits. And it has a reputation, service design does, of boiling the ocean. Right? So, it's… Laddering up is a great thing, but you can very quickly get into a point… And I see it with students a lot, where it's like, “I want to do something about sustainability. And that means we have to change the use of plastics. But in order to do that, we have to change this…” And then all of a sudden, they're like, “Oh, we have to change the entirety of capitalism,” which is absolutely true. We do. But it's very, very hard to tackle it at that level. And so, I think one of the things that, in that sort of consulting world is to work out, what's the level of influence of… First, there are two things. One is, what's the level that we're actually trying to achieve, change at, and having a conversation at? Because often I think clients will state will want – or stakeholders will want – to be making change to what's essentially a structural change to the business, but sort of hoping that they can do it through some sort of customer experience mapping or something. So getting that right, getting everyone understanding that this is the level that we're tackling at, or working at, is important. And then making sure when you're having those conversations, you don't get kind of out of whack, you don't get kind of misaligned. Because I've seen, you know, plenty of times people having a really long discussion or debate or argument about some detail and yet the bigger picture thing is actually in fact the thing we need to be talking about at that time. And vice versa, right? In my head, I've got those different kinds of zoom levels and I'm trying to kind of work out where people are at and where the project is at and try and bring everyone aligned on that or move them up and down as well, you know? Jorge: Yeah. And I'm guessing that also understanding what level of role you're dealing with in the organization itself might be important, no? Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's what, I guess what I meant by that kind of, someone who's jurisdiction is quite… it doesn't have to be smaller, like it could be they're the head of customer experience or something, but if they are then in competition for budget or whatever it is with the head of marketing and the CEO has another idea and whatever, they're all essentially part of the same ecosystem if they're fighting with each other. Or they feel like, “Well, that's not my kind of role and that's not my jurisdiction.” It makes it very, very hard for them to operate. So a lot of that job is facilitating the conversations between them. And I guess a lot of my frustration is… I've come away from the idea of kind of breaking down the silos. I think silos are actually… they're often for good reasons and you need some kind of containers, but sort of bridging them or making them a bit more porous, I think is really crucial. I think that you really need to make sure that you know how you fit into the other part of whatever else is going on. Jorge: One thing that I've experienced in consulting engagements is that sometimes these design projects serve as the excuse for people in those silos to work together collaboratively, perhaps for the first time. And they become more aware of the… more tangibly aware of their differing objectives, incentives, and communication styles, perhaps. And just that knowledge is a powerful catalyst to changing the conversation, somehow. Andy: Yeah. So one of the things… this is a service design thing, but it doesn't necessarily have to be this… but one of the things in service design is a service blueprint, where you're mapping out the front stage and backstage, all the sort of bits of the enterprise that actually deliver or support the delivery of that service or that experience. And I think it's often seen as… we're going to design this thing and then we're going to fix it, you know? And blueprints are actually a kind of terrible name. Because it's, it's not really a blueprint, what it is is a map really. And in that it's often its main value is actually, for the first time, different parts of the organization, see how well their stuff fits together, you know? And it's one of those things of, our tools, you know, shape our thinking. And if you sit in PowerPoint decks and Excel sheets the whole time, you don't ever really see the connectedness between all of those different things. And so, whether it's synchronously, everyone's in the room together, asynchronicity of people coming in and out, I think that's a really kind of useful tool for that. What is service design? Jorge: Some folks listening in might not be familiar with service design. Andy: Hmm. Jorge: What is the introductory spiel? What is the “101” to service design? Andy: There's a, there's a big debate about this. So, one of the ways of thinking about it is, it's the design of all the different touch points that go into delivering a service or a customer experience, plus the kind of backstage, behind the scenes things, and that's kind of IT. Could be man-in-a-van delivery, it could be all sorts of things that go into actually delivering that service and making sure that they are coherent across different channels. So when you move between say a website and an app or call center, you're speaking the same language, talking about the same things and so forth. And also, that there are kind of seamless transitions between steps, so as people move through the journey. And so, with that, that means someone can take a journey through your service ecosystem in whichever way they like and it's always coherent. And service design is basically about doing that the way I usually explain it to kind of, you know, my mother, is this idea of… if you've ever had an experience with an organization, often with government, but often with things like telcos and insurance companies and so forth, where if you've got a problem and it feels like every time you phone up or have some kind of contact or, you know, use a touch point, it feels like you're dealing with five or six different companies instead of one. Our job is to make it feel like it's a seamless experience. Jorge: One thing that is coming to mind, hearing you describe that, is that it sounds comprehensive in nature and holistic, right? Andy: Yeah. Jorge: In that it's looking to embrace as much of the experience as possible for someone who is trying to accomplish something by interacting with either a system or organization. And that strikes me as a direction that might be in tension with another direction, which has to do with specializing more or wanting to compartmentalize design. And I'm thinking now of like professional self-identities, right? Like some people think of themselves as visual designers or, I don't know, industrial designers or, you know, in… Andy: UXers or whatever. Jorge: Right. And what strikes me here is that in all of those cases, the object of design is some kind of tangible artifact. Some are more tangible than others, but something that you can examine and point to and say, “I designed that.” Andy: Yes. Jorge: What is the object that's service design designs? I don't even know if that's a fair question. Andy: No, it's not really. I mean, it's, like I said, you're designing what you're doing is taking a zoom level up actually, or a couple of zoom levels up and trying to design, make sure that all those objects or those touch points – that can be people, incidentally, or systems – are working in cohort, that you can interact with each one and understand what's going on. That there's a kind of seamless sense to them. They feel like they're a whole. So, in some respects, what you're designing is a kind of ecosystem. But there's another bit to that also, which is the business model, right? So, you know, most service design teams have a business designer amongst them. Because they're the two halves of the same coin. If you're trying to design a service… and let's take an example where you say, “Well, we're going to change the business model from freemium to subscription.” Then the way the whole… all the touch points around that and the way you talk about that have to change, right? You know, to communicate it right. And often you'll see that a business model and the design of the different touch points in the service are slightly at odds to each other. The most… well, one of the ones I know of is a telco's name I won't mention. The call center, when you phoned the call center with a problem, they would tell you to go into the store in order to get some help. But the same company had created an app, a sort of self-help app, in order to try and get people not to go into the store. So, see you have two touch points that are kind of working against each other, with different messages, coming from the same company. Jorge: Yeah. And you talked about coherence earlier, right? Like there's this misalignment there that stepping up a level and looking at the entire – or as much of the picture as you can – exposes those points of incoherence. Andy: Yeah, and it breaks trust, right? You know, humans anthropomorphize everything, right? We give our cars names; we shout at our computers. We do it with our pets and everything else. And I'm pretty sure we're just basically hardwired to see the world narcissistically as kind of everything in the world is like another human being, right? And I think we also relate to companies like that too. And so we have these you know, things in this relationship, you go, “Oh, I thought we had this relationship and it turns out we have a different relationship,” and there's a little kind of ding in the trust there. And, and so that, that kind of happens all the time. If you imagine someone who you kind of know quite well, who you're spending a lot of time with – which is often the case with some services – and all of a sudden, they do something really out of character, you start to kind of wonder, “well, what's going on there?” And so that's, I think, what's going on when you get that destruction of trust, when those things aren't designed as a kind of coherent whole. Jorge: It feels to me that service design is kind of systemic design; it's design of the system. And perhaps calling it systemic design might lead people to assume that it really is about technology or something when it's meant that, “system” meaning in the broader sense, no? Andy: Yeah. And you know, I've been really interested in systems thinking in the last few years. I think I've always have been, but in the last couple of years, I've read more up on it and stuff. And you know, I think there's a lot of overlap there. And one of the reasons why I think there's a lot of overlap between that and say, circular economy and sustainability, is a lot of the way of thinking is around kind of ecosystems and human behavior and understanding how small changes can add up to a kind of big difference. And, do you need to kind of map out those big things, but also you also need to deal with the absolute details of how easy it is to find a recycling bin and stuff like that. All those things that are just the barriers to people changing their behavior don't have to be very high for them to not do anything at all. Projects and governance  Jorge: When thinking about design engagements, I often think of them as projects to be undertaken, especially as an independent consultant. Andy: Right. Jorge: You get called in because the organization has some kind of need, and you get brought in to help them design a solution that addresses that need, right? And one of the systemic aspects to any kind of situation that an organization might find itself in is that whatever caused it and whatever intervention you're designing is not something that is going to be fixed into a particular time. There are going to be ongoing changes happening, right? And I'm curious about the relationship between service design interventions and ongoing governance of the systems that are set up. Andy: Yeah. This is the kind of bane of agencies' lives actually. So, it's design agencies, I think because, you're absolutely right. I mean, there's lots of different parts to this. One is just a purely kind of… we talked about it before, is a sort of jurisdiction level of who is your stakeholder? Who is basically hiring you as an agency or as a consultant? And, what's likely to be their kind of budget, right? And they have a kind of certain amount of budget, and it seems to sort of pan out to be where you've got enough money for kind of three or maybe six months of work, which often means that you kind of get the discovery and the kind of ecosystem mapping and the concept of this sort of beginning of the kind of concepts done. And then basically the budget's used up of, what's probably at least a kind of two- or three-year process really. And so service design is slightly got a bad rep in that sense of being, you know, or you guys just come up with a load of kind of journey maps and blueprints and concepts, but never execute on them. And the reason why our book was actually called From Insight to Implementation is because you really need to be able to follow those things through and keep referring back. So, that is a real problem, actually. And the other bit is that jurisdictional thing, which is that person has started a process, which in fact affects the whole company or it needs to involve the whole company in order to maintain it and deliver it and so forth. And there does need to be governance there. And that governance is often set up sort of internally focused around well, you're in charge of IT, you're in charge of marketing and so forth, rather than thinking about the, how does this relate to the service and the delivery of the service? And so, who needs to be in the room, basically, having conversations about how this gets modified or changed and so on and so forth. And that is a real problem. I think there's a real problem with this idea of when again, you know, it comes back to, say, in a funding model, in an organization, the difference between funding a team versus funding a project. Projects, I think, are a natural way of people to think about things. And I'm guessing it probably comes from school. It's actually often a terrible way to think about services. I much prefer gardening and we talked about the such, I think, over email. That's why I gave this talk. I talked about that gardening book, right? And that there is no sense where you, you say, “we're done. We've shipped the garden!” Right? It's not, it's never finished. It's always changing you plant something. And some, it really does well. And then all of a sudden it does too well, because it's casting shade over all the other stuff. And then something else is withering in the corner and you either just chop it out and throw it in the compost deep or you move it somewhere else. And so, it's kind of ever going, changing thing. If you think of government services, like, I don't know, applying for a passport, or going to jail, or visiting people in jail – that's not a thing that's ever done; it's just always changing. Jorge: The idea of gardening brings up the element of time into the project, right? Andy: Yes. Jorge: And this notion that the intervention you're making now is going to have effects down the line. And in some ways, what I'm hearing you say is that ultimately the object of design might be the thing that makes the design as opposed to the intervention itself. Andy: It makes the design in what sense? Jorge: So, when you talk about funding teams versus funding a project, in some ways the project serves as a reason for a team to coalesce. But ultimately the thing that you want to do is ensure that the team is in place and that they have the resources necessary for whatever goal the thing is setting out to accomplish; to be an ongoing concern as time passes. Andy: I do think that as a… you know, if you're coming in it from a sort of consultancy/agency kind of angle to an existing organization… or an organization that isn't a design organization, like a bank or an insurance company or whatever, you only really can be successful if that company can take on some of the skills and work and become – you know, quite often, a lot of them do have internal service design or design teams internally. I don't think it's realistic for them to constantly rely on externals. I think those external consultants can bring knowledge from other spheres, which is really useful, and experience from other spheres, and see patterns where, if you've been stuck in the same organization for a long time, your field of vision narrows, and also can do some of the heavy lifting sometimes. But ultimately, and particularly for public services – it's why the GDS in the UK have been so successful, because they've really got a fantastic group of designers working on that stuff all the time and have become much more integrated into the sort of ongoing process. I don't know if I answered your question there, though. Jorge: Yeah. No, you touched on something that I was wondering as well, which is the relationship between internal design teams and people who come in from the outside. To bring it back to the Eames image… the very nature of the engagement, if you're external to the organization, you are by definition, less close to the situation, less close to the problem at hand, so to speak. And as you were pointing out, you have this broader perspective informed by projects, perhaps in a variety of different industries, even. Andy: Yeah, yeah. Jorge: So, you bring that perspective to bear on these projects and you have to work with people who are internal to the organization and, and much closer to the situation at hand. So, in some ways you have to develop this ability to very quickly move up and down those zoom levels, right? So, that's one thing that comes to mind. The other is that there are upsides to doing this kind of work that transcend the immediate project at hand, right? You might be hired to help solve for something that isn't working well or ease transitions between steps or what have you. And you might deliver on that, and that might be part of the value that you're bringing to the client, but you're also demonstrating a different way of working, right? Like one that does take in the bigger picture, perhaps.  Andy: Yeah. I think this is both a sort of beneficial thing that you bring in and is a cause of frustration too. You know we sort of talked about it a bit before, that zooming in and out lens is really useful in the sense that you're showing how… because particularly a department or a team inside a larger organization can get a little bit sort of stuck in their own bubble or their own kind of confinement, and they often get sort of learned helplessness, this, “and we would, we'd love to work that way, but we can't. Cause that's just the way things are done around here.” So sometimes that's true in which case, well then, your design problem isn't really the thing that you're trying to tackle, your design problem is the thing that's constraining around you in the organization. And you know, if you get the chance, then we have to deal with that in order to kind of make you be successful. That can be liberating because you're able to make that connection, you can create some change inside an organization. Or it can be deeply frustrating, because the answer to that is, “well, that's all very well, but we just have to fix this thing. You know, we just have to kind of deliver this thing for whoever by this impossible deadline and we don't have any chance to affect that other stuff.” And so, you are just kind of selling them a kind of a pipe dream. You know, a lot of the kind of training or coaching I've done is interestingly less around, “we're really struggling with this design problem. Can you help us?” Than it is around facing the other way, “we are struggling as a department inside our organization to kind of gain traction, to gain buy in, to… we can see that there's this thing, and we can see this connectedness, but we can't seem to kind of convince anyone else of it.” And then, you know, and so that's actually a lot of the work I do is kind of non… it's not really focused on the design object, actually. It is focused on the server ecosystem around those designers. Jorge: Again, hearkening back to “Powers of Ten,” right? Making the invisible, visible by zooming up and down the levels. Andy: Yeah, it is. And, and like I said, that can be, you know, it can be liberating and frustrating for people. And, you know, can also be a bit annoying if you're kind of… so, one of the things is when you come in as an external, it's just like any other kind of therapy or something it's much, much easier to see someone else's relationship problems from the outside than it is to see your own and your own patterns and stuff. And so, you know, the advantage of bringing someone in externally is they've got that kind of view. They can also probably say things that internal stakeholders can't say. So that's, that's kind of one of the roles I often play. But that said, it can very easily sort of come across as, you know, I can see this whole kind of picture and you guys can't. Or even if I paint it for you, then they're just going to feel frustrated that you're not just focusing on the task at hand. Closing Jorge: Well Andy, I feel like we have so much to talk about and we could keep going. I feel like I have like four or five different things that I want to ask you about, but we have to wind it down. Where can folks follow up with you? Andy: So, I have a website it's polaine.com, P O L A I N E, like my name. I'm on Twitter as @apolaine, you'll find me on LinkedIn. Those are sort of main three places and I don't really hang out on many other social media places anymore. I sort of cut down on it. Jorge: And the name of podcast is Powers of Ten, right? Andy: It's Power of Ten actually. Yeah, so I gave this talk about “design to the power of ten,” and so that was where it came from. And I didn't want to kind of too heavily steal the Eames's title. So, yeah, it's called Power of Ten it's on the, This is HCD network. Jorge: Well, fantastic. I will include links to all of those in the show notes. It's been a pleasure having you on the show Andy. Andy: Thanks very much for having me.

In this Deep Dive, Frank and Andy delve into the world of Data Warehousing, what is it and do they know things? Let's find out! Frank also shares that he has a new role at Microsoft. AI Generated TranscriptionHello and welcome to data driven, the podcast where we explore the emerging field of data science. We bring the best minds in data, software, engineering, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Now hear your hosts Frank Lavigna and Andy Leonard. Hello and welcome back to data driven. The podcast where we explore the emerging fields of data science machine learning an artificial intelligence. If you like to think of data as the new oil then you could consider us like Car Talk. However, we can't go on a road trip because of the Corona virus lock down. So it's just Andy and I kind of stuck at home respectively. And thanks to the Magic of Technology we can be on the show at the same time. And, uh, how's it going? Andy? It's going well, Frank, how are you doing? Good, good, uh, you'll probably hear my kids in the background. We will, and you know what Frank, I think it's fine. You know I'm going to. I understand why you said the word stuck with you and I work remotely an awful lot. We usually record like this. There's there's less in the background. It's your place most of the time, but you have couple of young boys there and you need to be in the room with them when mom who's also working from home is you know is doing some of her work so kudos to you to both of you for finding a way to manage this. Everybody's going through these sorts of things and I'm sure that none of our listeners will mine here in your sons play in the background or hopefully won't start fighting so that's Well, I asked, I asked if they do I think a lot of folks can relate though. Yeah, oh absolutely, absolutely so. We're recording us on April 16th. We Speaking of kids, we had your son on which if the order of recording goes the way I planted in my head. That would have been released last week. And Uh, which I thought was a pretty good, uh, discussion on. How stem is taught? How stemmers perceived by quota quote policymakers? And how the actuality of it is? And some of the interesting stuff your son is doing with Raspberry Pi and stuff like that. Yeah, I was a I was first I was very proud of him. You know the work that he's doing and he's he's had his his hands in machine learning for really a couple of three years. Now I want to say he was 14 and I came into his room. You know just checking on say something or something I saw. A Mario Brothers playing in the background. Like what do you think you know he was? He he had done his school work? He was home schooled at the time he done his school work. So you know what he wants. But um, later talking to him about it, he said he actually came and got me and he said, OK, dad, it took, you know with I think it was like 6. You know neural nodes. Here he was able to, Mario was able to figure this out and something like 4 hours or something you know later he said I wonder what it would be if I added a note. I wonder what that would do to it and I'm kind of sitting there with my mouth hanging open. Going show dad more about that nice, but he's been doing it for awhile. I know your kids are interested in the same thing. They're younger Stevie 17 now and you know. and I know that your sons are coming up in this. In this age as well, they are mentioned Mark Tapatio in that show as he referred to digital natives. They are digital natives and yeah, that comes with some pretty interesting stuff. So I'm just glad we were able to record that

On this episode of fight recap, we break out UFC fight night, Lee vs Oliveira. Amazing night of fights, even without an audience. Andy: It was pretty surreal to watch a UFC card in an empty stadium. When the whole world is going through some rough stuff it was refreshing to have a positive distraction amidst all the negativity going on. Shout out to all the fights and the UFC and its employees for letting the show go on. Stay safe. Tim: That choke from Oliveira was one of the best finishes I've seen. I can watch that talent all night long. Looking forward to seeing more of him.

Property managers may not know about or haven’t tried maintenance coordination. But they are quickly discovering its value in making their jobs easier, manageable, and understandable.  Today, I am talking to Andy Shinn of EZ Repair Hotline about implementing an Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), Traction, and process improvement.  You’ll Learn... [02:40] Maintenance Coordination: Define world-class process to run for property managers to address issues and inconsistency with performance. [03:49] Growing and gaining Traction to create a structured operating model and take business to the next level.  [04:32] Systems that every business needs: Operating, planning, support, and phone. [06:00] EOS predicts and creates future through annual planning for quarterly goals broken down into monthly and weekly commitments.  [08:38] Constraints around Crazy: Don’t get distracted; you can’t do everything; force yourself to limit your focus to inspire, not control your team. [13:18] Fundamental Flaws:Take things that work well for you with Traction and EOS; leave out the other stuff.  [16:28] Accountability Chart: Visionary, integrator, leader, doer, and other roles and responsibilities depend on strengths and weaknesses. Overlap occurs until roles are filled by others. [22:43] EZ Repair Hotline establishes values: What are we doing now? What are we aspiring toward?  [25:28] Do they share my values? If the answer is “no,” they have to go. They’re team members hurting your business, momentum, and results. [26:18] Two Different Businesses: Do you want a business that you can have vs. a business that you want and love?  [30:08] Change people's mindset to move beyond minimum standards by motivating those who want to step up and make things happen.  [37:42] Process Piece: One of the six components of Traction by documenting processes to improve them and help others reach goals. [40:03] Planning System Solves Internal Problems: One of three things must be missing—accountability, transparency, or clarity on outcomes. [43:19] Property Managers: A structure helps you avoid working 80 hours a week; figure out how to handle work without having to be available all the time. Tweetables Every business needs an operating system. EOS: What are you going to do with your business in the next 90 days? EOS makes things doable, not overwhelming when growing a business. When businesses predict and create the future through planning, that’s magic! Resources EZ Repair Hotline DGS 15: EZ Repair Hotline with Andy Shinn Traction by Gino Wickman Wake Up Warrior 90 Day Year Rockefeller Habits EMyth Clockwork Checklist Manifesto Profit First DiSC DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: All right, and we are live. Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. Today’s guest, I am hanging out with Andy. Andy, welcome to the show. This is Andy Shinn of EZ Repair Hotline. Andy, you’ve been on the show before. Welcome back. Andy: Great. Thanks for having me back. It’s good to be here. Jason: [...] and you’ve made a lot of changes since then and grown. I would imagine quite a bit. I’ve seen you at several conferences that we’ve both been vendors at. Tell us what’s been going on with EZ Repair Hotline. Andy: Last time we talked we were pretty much brand new. We were maybe a couple years in, but we really hadn’t had much momentum, and we were just getting started in the industry. We’ve grown a lot over the last couple of years. We’ve learned a lot in terms of process. I hope to talk to you about some of that today and some of what we’re doing. It’s been an exciting couple of years. I think this is an industry, maintenance coordination, that’s just taking off in the property management space. A lot of property managers don’t even maybe know this is available or some haven’t tried it yet. It’s definitely a wide open industry and we’re excited to work with a lot of property management companies who I think are seeing value with what we do. Jason: Great. Well, let’s get into it. Where should we start? Today’s topic is implementing EOS, Traction, and process improvement at EZ Repair Hotline. Let’s get into it. Where do we start? Andy: I guess, maybe just a little bit of history. Over the last year, we have really been working on defining a process and what our product needs to look like. Before that year, we were very customizable. As a property manager, you come in and you’d inform the process as much as we did and I think that was causing us issues, inconsistency in performance. About a year ago, we said, “We got to define a process that’s best in class, that’s world-class, that we can run for the property manager. They’re not just buying us like a virtual assistant, they’re buying our whole process. They’re getting that whole package of what we do.” That was really important for us over the last year and we’ve made some strides in that direction. Not exactly to the end of where we want to be, but we’re moving in that direction. Anyway, about January or so, I’d heard about Traction probably on the DoorGrow site. A lot of property managers are implementing Traction. I decided to read it but I did an audio book which I do sometimes. I read about a business book a week. Usually, I read them but for whatever reason I did this on audio. It just didn’t catch with me, so I just went on and I kept doing my thing but then I was hearing more and more about Traction. I decided to go to Barnes & Noble and pick up the physical book and see if that made a difference, and it did. It’s a kind of book you need to sit down, open up with a notepad, and really use it almost like a workbook. I knew a few chapters into it that it was going to be that was going to be really exciting for EZ Repair because it creates a really structured operating model which is what we needed. There’s a lot of different books that’ll help you do that but I think Traction for a small–medium-sized business is the perfect way to do it. Certainly is the perfect fit for us. We’re only a couple months into that Traction piece, coming off, like I said, where we started a year ago, but Traction’s taking us to that next level. It’s really exciting. Jason: Cool. I believe every business needs an operating system. There’s different systems that every business needs. Initially, the entrepreneur is every system when you’re first starting out, but there needs to be a planning system which is what we’re talking about. There needs to be a support system for most business. If you have customers that needs to be supported, there needs to be a support system in place. There needs to be a phone system for most business so there’s phone communication. I think there’s five or six, maybe seven different systems that every business needs and one of the key systems is a planning system. In most business planning systems I’ve studied, the Traction and EOS stuff, scaling up—I’ve worked with Allen Scharfen who’s a brilliant operations mind—there’s a lot of different planning systems out there. One common thread that seems to be through all of them is annual planning, having quarterly goals, being broken down into quarterly and then having goals broken down into 30 days, and then maybe even something broken down into weekly commitments that the team are working on. We don’t use EOS. In our business, I use a different system but it’s similar to what you might find in other systems, which I think all good business planning systems incorporate at least those basic elements. Andy: It does and you mentioned taking the goals, like the quarterly goals. What EOS really tries to do is take your business into 90-day chunks. You’re really running a 90-day cycle of, “What am I going to do with the business in the next 90 days?” You’re setting longer term goals like, “Here’s what’s out here that I need to be able to hit. Here’s my stretch goal, my 5- or 10-year goal of what this company’s really going to be like.” Then, what it does is it takes it down to just 90-day blocks where you’re setting targets that the enterprise owns but then individuals on the leadership team own. Here’s what I own for the next 90-days, what they call rocks. At the end of that 90 days, you’ve taken your business that next step and now, you plan out your next 90 days. It really helps businesses put things in a very doable context because it can get overwhelming, as an entrepreneur, when you’ve got a lot of stuff going on, especially in a growing business—this industry is really growing—and to be able to say, “Here’s what’s going to happen in the next 90 days. Here’s what we have to do in the next 90 days. Here’s the goal for the next 90 days.” That’s a very easy way to take the business forward, rather than thinking, “Where are we going to be three years from now,” and trying to plan off of that. That’s fully difficult. EOS for our business has been fantastic and in just about 90 days in, in taking the business into those 90-day chunks. I have a feeling, for property managers, they’d see the same kind of value. When I was a property manager, I would have seen a lot of value in this. Like you mentioned, there’s other systems, too, but being able to select a system like this is really important for companies to be successful. Jason: I think most businesses have no planning system. They’re just winging it. The entrepreneur’s winging it. When you do implement a really sub-planning system, then what happens is you become able to predict the future. You’re creating the future in the present and eventually, it’s happening and that’s magic. That’s magic for businesses to be able to predict and create the future. Most entrepreneurs come up with these big goals, big dreams, and these endless to-do lists. If you look back at all those things—we’ve all been there as entrepreneurs—very few of them ever end up coming to fruition, very few end up getting done. We always bite off more than we can chew. We overestimate our ability to get things done. We get distracted because we take on too many different goals and too many different things. What I’ve noticed in having a planning system in the business is it forces me to limit the things I focus on. I’ve been doing this for several years, not just 90 days. I’ve been doing this for years and it forces me to limit the pressure that I put on my team as well because a lot of time, as entrepreneurs, we get really pumped up and excited, right? We go to an event, conference, something. We come back to our team and we’re like, “We’re going to do all this stuff. I just got all these great ideas.” And then we get super excited, we throw out some big goal where we heard some coach or somebody say, “Write a number down that you want to make. Add a zero to it. Add another zero. Go big.” You hear these old phrases like, “It’s better to aim for the stars and miss than a pile of manure and hit.” Entrepreneurs love that. They’re like, “Yes, the stars.” We get so pumped up and excited, then we walked out of the room and we think, “Man, my team must be pumped up.” What they see is a grenade sitting in the middle of the floor with the pin pulled. That’s their perception. They’re like, “What are we going to do with this? How are we going to that? My life’s already hard. Doesn’t he know how hard I’m already working?” They look at us like we’re kind of crazy. I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed with planning is that it allows us to get buy in from our team because ultimately, I can’t do it all on my own. I just don’t have that capacity. You don’t as well. You cannot do everything in your business. You cannot answer every phone call at EZ Repair Hotline personally. We really rely on our team and if we don’t get their buy-in, if there isn’t adoption into any system, or into any goal, or any outcome that we have, then we end up trying to control people. Controlling as an entrepreneur is not a very comfortable place for us to be, to be controlling our team instead of inspiring them. Andy: That’s a great point, though, because entrepreneurs have different personalities. It is a different mindset. Most people, they want more structure. You and I are probably really comfortable just working without structure and getting things done. Jason: I can totally live in chaos. I can totally do it because to me, it’s giving me new ideas, I have to adapt, I’m exploring. That’s fun and exciting for me. I’ve had team members quit because of that, because it makes them feel really uncomfortable and unsafe because most people [...] crazy, you have to be smart, maybe a C on the DISC profile. They want stability, they want things to be okay, they want a job where everything stays similar each day. I would probably get really bored in a situation like that. It wraps some constraints around my crazy. An upside of constraints is that it forces innovation. It allows my team also to innovate because they have an outcome. I don’t care how they get there, as long as they live within our value system, but I don’t care what specific actions they take to do it or to get there and they can create, innovate, and come up with ideas that I never would have thought of. Andy: That’s exactly right. You’re training structure for your team so they know what to do, what to expect, and what the goals are. Goals that they can imagine because I can imagine a five-year goal but my typical employee is not imagining a five-year goal. They want to know, “What are we doing this year? What are we doing the next three months?” It gives them something very tangible to hold on to. “What do we need to accomplish in these next three months?” At the same time, the whole operating system relies on employees and leadership at all levels to be able to bring ideas to the table, bring process improvements to the table, and to do things to try and achieve those goals. How are we going to get there? Well, we’re not going to get there by just running the show. We’re going to get there because we’ve set these 90-day targets, what specific activities do we need to do or what do we need to change to get to these targets? It creates structure but at the same time, almost counterintuitively, it does create that innovation from employees thinking about, “How do we hit these targets?” I think it’s very effective. I think the cool thing, too, about Traction that I like, it creates what they call a visionary role. That allows for somebody like me to still have a place in the operating model. I’m not just trying to fit into this operating model and be more structured. It allows a place for the entrepreneur to be that visionary, to be that person who’s got the ideas, and maybe he’s got the crazy goals but it tells you, “Here’s how you operate within that model as that person.” That’s been a personal help for me as well. Jason: I’ve been really outspoken online. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of my posts but I’ve been really outspoken online somewhat against Traction and EOS. I do see the value and important pieces of it but I also think there’s a couple of fundamental flaws. Everybody I’ve talked to that does EOS, they don’t do everything. I think that’s the benefit of taking a system is you can take the things that really work well for you and leave out the other stuff. Ultimately, if we’re really honest, EOS was built as a system to create a really nice business for the people that created EOS. You have to go hire integrators from them, you need the integrator, and the integrator is the magical, golden key to the whole puzzle. They take on this glorified role that replaces a COO or operations manager. They take on the executive assistant role which is a critical role for an entrepreneur. They squeeze all of that as this layer in between in their accountability chart, which is an org chart, between the visionary, which is the entrepreneur, and the entire team. Which in reality would be probably the most dangerous thing to ever do with your company, ever, to give somebody that much power and control because they don’t even need you anymore. They can just chop that top piece off and the whole org chart works fine without you. What that means, they can charge whatever they freaking want. They’ll come back to you after a year, after they know and run everything in the business, and everybody’s loyal to them and say, “I want $500,000 a year. I want a percentage of the company.” What are you going to do? Replace them? I think, ultimately, the best way to foundationally build every business is around the entrepreneur because we’re not all the quintessential or perfect visionary. I’ve noticed in property management, there’s different roles. I’ve noticed there are some property management business owners, some entrepreneurs are more accountants. They’re more accounting-minded, they’re more on the financial side, they’re more doing things by the book. You got some that are more relationship-oriented. They’re more about people, relationships, they love. Some are more sales-oriented. Some may be should keep and retain some of the property manager type of role. Some may be should be the sales or BDM person in the business. That might be the last thing they give up. Some may be the operations person and doing systems and coordinating things. Ultimately, the great thing about having a business is instead of building it to somebody else’s system, we can build it around ourselves and make ourselves feel like Ironman with our supersuit. We can have the business that makes us feel amazing, supported, and fulfilled that we love doing everyday. Ultimately, that’s the one fundamental, foundational piece that I would change in that system to build around it. I think everything would extend out from that. Andy: That makes total sense. I’ll tell you how we’re doing for the accountability chart. Jason: Yeah, I wonder how you’re using it. Andy: First of all, we’re self-implementing so there’s nobody else in the picture but it’s working out well for us. Maybe this is probably just advantageous to us. It just so happens to be that I’m in this business with Michael, my stepson. He is the perfect integrator. He’s the perfect operations. Jason: He’s an operations guy. Andy: Exactly, that’s what he does. I’ve done those things but I’m not as good at that as he is. I’m more of the visionary. We’ve taken ourselves and each of us has taken that role. So, I’m the visionary, he’s the integrator. There’s still a lot of overlap so it’s maybe not as clean as what it would look like at the end of that accountability chart. It’s not like there’s one person reporting to the visionary. That’s the only contact the visionary has as you might look at it visually. Jason: This isn’t as it perfectly claims. Andy: No, exactly. We’re growing and in our current size, I’m actually filling a couple of the boxes that would be on the next level down like some of the financial and the CFO type roles. I’m filling that as well. I’m filling a couple of the boxes. That’s how we’re using the accountability charts, to make sure that somebody’s in each of those boxes. Even if that’s Michael or me overlapping. As part of the process, we also added a couple of folks to our leadership team. We had one operations lead. We brought that up to three to give them very specific responsibilities within the organization. When you look at our accountability chart, you will see that visionary and integrator but it’s not quite what you described. It’s a lot different. Then next level down, we’ve got our operations leads and then you’ve got me on a couple of the boxes at that next level down, filling those roles until we’re large enough to fill those roles with other folks. That’s how we’re using that chart. I think the risk that you brought out are very real but I think for us, and maybe it is a little unique with me and Michael being in a partnership in the business, those roles actually worked out really well for us. Jason: Yeah. I think every visionary entrepreneur does need an operationally-minded person. They’re just the yin to the yang. They’re the opposite that we need to wrap some constraints and some managerial prowess towards what we as visionaries would not be good at. We need that person and that role in the business, so it makes a lot of sense. I think ultimately, another key takeaway for the listeners is that it is important to have an org chart. There’s a lot of people saying, “Do away with org charts,” or they’re saying that no org chart that has to exist and you need to build towards it. I don’t believe there’s an ideal org chart or an ideal situation but I do believe that it is important to have clear levels of responsibility to understand who reports to who. You can’t serve two masters. You can’t have somebody reporting to two people, everybody will be confused as to who their supervisor is and who they report to, and have a company that runs well. It just doesn’t tend to happen in reality. Even if you don’t create it, it starts to exist organically. People have people they trust as an authority, people that they go to, and to make it actually clear and say, “This is how it is,” makes everyone feel more at ease, makes it a lot more comfortable, and then attaching to that, their roles. What is their job description? I think that’s where it gets really specific is everytime we add a new team member, our role changes if they are doing anything that impacts us in any way. Most of our initial hires impact us directly. Any executive team members, any assistants, they’re taking something off our plate. Our job description changes, so we need to update that. Their job description changes everytime we bring on somebody else that works with them on that team. Businesses are a fluid thing. Everytime you hire somebody, and if you’re growing and scaling, these are always happening. That top level team is going to be in flux, initially, until that’s somewhat stable. Then the lower levels are going to have that flux and that change, all those variations, and their job descriptions need to be updated and tight. Over time, what I’ve noticed also is every single team member, as the company grows in scales, starts to do less, not more if it’s being done well. Because as the company scales and grows, my job description gets narrower. Like my head of fulfillment, his job description gets narrower. He used to be doing all the content, content gathering, client communication, and everything. His job gets narrower and narrower as we slice pieces off and give them to new people so that he has leverage. That’s how that pyramid grows and scales, is everyone slicing pieces off and doing less and less, but they get better at it and they’re able to focus more on what they really enjoy if you’re doing it right. Then, they’re even better at it and more excited. Over time, they get better and improve. A lot of people think you just pop somebody into a role if you got the processes documented. But I think there’s something to be said about long-term employees and keeping people as long as you possibly can. I don’t think you can beat that in a business. Andy: Absolutely. I’ll tell you though, as you’re growing, what you just said is exactly why you want to have an operating system in place as you’re growing. It’s because you do have those changing roles. If you don’t have that built, you said something like it’s going to happen anyway, it is. It’s going to happen by itself but it’s not going to happen the way you want it to and that’s true. If the processes is through the job roles, is through the culture in your organization, all of that stuff is happening. The only question is, are you directing it? We’ve really been trying to direct it over the years and finally, with Traction, we’ve found a way that we’ve said, “This really organizes what we’re trying to do and it’s been very helpful.” I’ll talk a little bit about our values, if I can, which is one piece of Traction that we had a head start on. We were already working on our values. We had set up an initial set of values a few years ago when we started the company. They were just me and Michael, put them together. They were just about having fun in the workplace. That sort of thing. I’d say they were lightweight values. They didn’t have a lot of meaning behind them and since we just put them together. The employees that had come on since didn’t have any stake in them, so to speak. Last year, last December, we brought in a team of three employees and we had them work as a committee to put together our values as an organization. We wanted them to focus on two things: (1) What are we doing now? Because we felt like we had a pretty healthy culture, and (2) What are we aspiring towards? What are we aspiring our culture to look like? Those three went out and talked to all of our existing employees. Over the course of several months, ended up putting together our values which fit in perfectly, timing-wise, with Traction because we had that in place at the same time we’re implementing Traction. That’s so important for any company to do. Even if you're a small company, put together those values because now we’re able to look at how we deal with customers, how we interact with employees, how we do our job, how we set up processes. We can look at all of those and the context of our values. Is this consistent with what we’re trying to be as an organization, with the culture we’re trying to put together? So, that’s been really helpful. That’s a part of Traction we were sure to working on. You can do it without doing Traction, but it’s a big part of what Traction brings to the table as well. So, very important. Jason: Touching on values, I think it’s important to have values in the business because without those, you can’t even have team members that believe what you believe, which I think is the most foundational thing in building a team. If you don’t have believers, then you have people that are just there to get paid. If they’re just there to get paid, they’re going to be B players. They’re not going to care about quality the way that you do. They’re not going to care about the results. They just care about getting the paycheck. I think it’s a very dangerous thing to not really ensure that you have values set and that your team members are aware of what those are. I think it’s very easy once you get clarity on your own values as a company. This is one of the exercises I take clients through when we take them on, is to get clear on their values. But if you don’t have clarity in your values, then it’s impossible to have a company that displays them. It just won’t happen. Once you get that clarity, it’s very easy to look at every single team member and just ask a very simple question, “Do they share my values?” It becomes really obvious, it’s a yes or no, you know. If you know these team members at all, you know. Do they value integrity? Do they value being on time or whatever it may be that you care about as an entrepreneur? And if the answer is a no, they have to go because they’re hurting your business, they’re hurting your momentum, and they’re hurting your results in the business. I know when I got clear of some of my values as an organization, what my purpose was as a human being and my purpose for my businesses, over a very short period of time, I think I fired half of my team. I just let them go. I let go of contractors. I brought in new people and the entire temperature of the company leveled up because I think what we do as entrepreneurs is we often trade the business we really deep down want for the business we can have. We have this business. We take on the properties we can, anything we can. We go out to far areas and manage properties too far where we can. We take on team members that can fill a role instead of what we really want. We’re doing the business that can be used instead of the business that we should or the business that we deserve. That’s a huge difference. Having a business that you can have versus a business that you really love are two completely different businesses. Most businesses, especially when they get into the 200–400 door category, a lot of them at that stage had built a team, a system, and everything around them, I’ve noticed that is still with the old mindset that they had as a solopreneur and it’s painful. This is probably the most painful stage I’ve seen for entrepreneurs in the property management industry, is that 200–400 door category. Fifty–sixty door category can be quite painful, too, but they’re usually solopreneurs at that point, so the pain isn’t as widespread. Andy: That’s right. The thing about this too, Jason, whether you’re talking about Traction, E Myth, Clockwork, or other books that’ll talk to you about, how do you pull yourself out of the business all the time? Because when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re growing, if you don’t have a structure for how that growth is going to happen and what’s your business model needs to look like, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. You’re going to be working 90 hours a week and you’re going to be on-call 24/7. You’re going to be answering the phones all the time. That’s just part of what a lot of entrepreneurs do as they grow. If you get a system like Traction, I think that helps you pull yourself away, be the real leader of the company and not the doer of everything within the company. I think Traction’s a good way to do that. For me, I’ve been able to create this role that I think is comfortable for me, that’s not overwhelming, that it’s something that I can do, it’s the kinds of things I like to do, and at the same time, Michael’s got something he likes to do in our operations leads. They’re in roles, they’re very comfortable, and they like to do that. I think you take that all the way down your organization and if you structure that, you give everybody a piece that they’re good at, that they can do, they have the ability to do, and that they want to do, that’s going to make them very effective. That’s a lot about what Traction and other operating systems are really about. The other thing, though, I wanted to touch on something you said a little bit about we can set minimum standards for people who work for us. A lot of people get into that mindset of, “Oh, well you’ve got to hit this minimum. If you’re not hitting it, you’re in trouble. You got to hit this minimum.” No matter what happens is people hit that minimum. But what you don’t understand is that you’re losing an extraordinary amount of discretionary effort that you could have had from that employee if they were on board with your values, if they understood the goals. They were buying to those goals, and they wanted to reach them. Now, their performance isn’t the minimum. Their performance is up here. They're not even worried about managing the minimum because everybody's onboard with their culture, everybody's onboard with their goals. Nobody's around here. It's just a matter of how much discretionary effort they're providing.  I worked in call centers for a large organization before I became a property manager, before I started EZ Repair. Call centers are the worst at this because it's about setting up these metrics around handle times or compliance. Jason: [...] tickets, check time between how long it takes to write notes, everything. Andy: When you took your break, you're supposed to take a 7-14 but you took a 7-17, so you're only 98% compliant. All this stuff, all you're doing is managing somebody that hit a minimum standard. That's what you're going to get.  When I came into some centers, we were able to change their whole mindset, saying, "Yeah. We've got to measure on the outside of those things, but what we really need to do is to motivate our team towards a common goal." We were able to improve service levels immediately at a very large contact center, immediately. That contact center, people thought it was understaffed, that we weren’t answering the phone quick enough, going and almost immediately just by setting targets, getting away from this minimum standards, changing people's mindset, and getting people to step up. People will give you discretionary effort if they're buying the way you're doing it. They're onboard with it.  As a small business owner, I think a lot of us missed that. We do get into the, "Okay, we've got to hit these standards," or, "It's busy. We're not getting everything done. We've got to up our standard to how many X number of widgets we're going to make or whatever our performance metrics is," and that's fine. You have to have goals and standards.  What we really need to do is to motivate people who want to step up, add a little work, and be a part of your company because they buy into your company. They decided to get up on Monday and go to work because they like what they're doing. They like what they're trying to accomplish. That's a big part of this. Traction help us do this. I think there's a lot of other ways you can implement those types of things. Traction gives you a way to show each employee on a 90-day basis, something that is very relatable to everybody, "Here's what we're trying to accomplish over 90 days. Can you help us do that?" To a person, our teams told me in small meetings with everybody on our teams, “Yeah, we can do that. We will do that. We'll step up if we have to. We'll do that and we'll make that happen.”  I think you'd be surprised how people will respond to you when you can bring them a real visual, structured, account of what we're trying to do with the company, and get it out of the framework that we're talking about earlier where it's in my head, that I know what I want my company to do, and I got this pie in the sky. Jason: Which [...] everyday. Andy: Exactly. It didn't help anybody because it does seem a little scattered, it does change sometimes, and nobody can really related to these ideas I've got in my head about where business is going. Traction brings it to a level where everybody in the organization can understand the buy-in and get excited about it.  They can also put the pieces together. They can see in our five year goal, "Okay. This is what we need to do in this next 90 day chunk. If we do this and we keep doing our 90 day chunk, we're going to hit that five year target." Even though it seems like it's way out there, we're going to hit that, and we're going to hit it 90 days at a time. If I were looking at Traction and say, "What's the biggest single thing we've got out of this?" there's a lot of things in there. It's the ability to chunk that business in 90 days, and have a very good and very solid structure. Jason: Yeah, and really any business planning system, that is one of the most basic things. I've done Wake Up Warrior, there's a 90 day year which is a system out there that's scaling up, the Rockefeller Habits, that system. There's EOS, Traction. All of these things. My [...], internally we call DoorGrow OS. It's our Operating System. I've taken what I feel like is the best of all the systems out there. It may, in the future—I don't want to be the vaporware guy—be the system that we share with property managers. I do have an intention to help create the ultimate system out there, but I think what you're saying is very valid. I don't know if you know this, you and I have a little bit of a similar background. I don't have the scale that you had at AAA, but I was the head. I did all the hiring, I was the lead supervisor and head of a call center for the largest private broadband internet service provider in California. Then, I left there as a big fish in a small pond to work at Verizon in their Business and Tech Support Center for DSL and was the low guy on the totem pole, but I got paid a lot more when I went there.  I've been in the call center environment. I've been the supervisor doing the hiring. I've taken the supervisor calls as well. I've done all the low level work. The funny thing I noticed is when you have a system and you geared it towards those metrics, people figure out how to game the system. I figured out how to manipulate the system because it was all about speed in getting things done faster. I used a piece of software that could do macros that would prepopulate tickets. I noticed we're only getting about three types of tickets. We had to fill up this horrible piece of software in Verizon that was detailing everything that we did, what we said, and how to be done. They really made four types of problems so I created this macroscript thing. It would just prepopulate the tickets. I have my tickets done and I was back on a call right away. I got really good at closing out tickets legitimately, so that we were helping people.  I then started sharing with other people that were struggling. If you're not making your metrics, you get nervous. They're afraid that you're going to get axed. Here's the funny thing. Supervisors don't like [...] people messing with the system or doing things differently, especially if it wasn't their idea. I had supervisors that wanted to challenge that or felt threatened by the fact that I optimized and make things better.  As entrepreneurs, this is what we do. We're always looking for ways to support our team or looking for ways to improve speed, improve accuracy, help them be better. If we give our team members that ability to feel entrepreneurial which is where instead of micromanaging them, we give them our values, we give them our outcomes. We give them outcomes to work towards and we let them see what they could do. I've been really amazed when we've gone into planning sessions with my team. I say, "Here's the things that I want, what [...] you have to help us get there." My graphic designer has a completely different view and perspective from her angle of the business than I have from my top down. My head of fulfillment and the content person has a completely different view and perspective from that side than I do from the top down. Their ideas are great. I'm always amazed. We have all these brainstormed ideas. I'm like, "Yes. I didn't even think of that."  I think we also as entrepreneurs, we become the emperor with no clothes if we don't have a planning system because they're all just saying, "Yes," and they're just getting their paychecks, they're just doing what they're told. They're not innovating, they're not feeling alive, and they're not really enjoying being part of that organization. You're the boss that everyone is complaining about. On the weekend, they just leave for the weekend. What you said earlier about discretionary time, I want team members that even on the weekends, they're thinking about how they could be better. They're thinking about the job. They're excited about what they're doing. They're studying and learning new stuff because they're excited about what they get to do in the business and they feel passionate about being able to be part of something bigger. They like that feeling and camaraderie of being on a team, and having a culture. It's a very different thing. Andy: I’ll tell you a quick story along those lines. We're doing a lot of the process piece. One of the six components of Traction, one of those is process. We've been spending a lot of time on that. I mentioned a year ago, we want to really formalize our process where it’s consistent the same way every time for every company. You can customize things like that. Your [...] criteria can be customized, but you couldn't customize when we follow up with the tenant after repair. We're not going to do the same for everybody. There's things in our process where we don't do the same. When we started Traction, we're also used to email then The Checklist Manifesto was a great book, as well. We talked about how we are going to document our processes in a way that our team has all the support that they need for the process. We did that. We put some really cool documentation for our seven key processes all in checklist style but visual checklist. You don't have to fill anything up. Any team member, even new team members can immediately walk into a process and these steps to do for that, for example. When we roll that out, almost immediately, one of the team members who does most of the work on one of our frontend processes—part of the dispatch processes—that was able to come in and say, "Look, I’ve been doing this process. It's working fine. If we did this, we've been quicker. We can get to these work-overs dispatch even quicker." We made these small changes. Because we had a checklist listed down, he can even see what's the next stage in the process and what are they doing. He was able to put that altogether and say, "Here's the fix. Here's something that we can improve." We implemented it the same day. It definitely drives people to be more engaged in the operations. They're not just there to do your ABC work that you asked them to do. They're vying into the goals they were trying to accomplish. They're vying into the process you're rolling out. They're trying to be a part of that.  We've seen a lot of that. A lot of folks at the very frontline and in this particular case. This is an employee that has only been enlisted for a couple of months. People feeling really comfortable to be able to help us towards these goals. Now that they understand what we're trying to do and that really put an understandable 90-day blocks. Here’s what we’re trying to do and everybody's going to be more likely to be onboard, jump up, and say, "Hey, let's do this differently because that’s going to improve our operation." Jason: Yeah. If you look at any problem internally in a business, there's one of three things that must be missing. Either there isn't a clear outcome, which a planning system help solve, there isn't accountability, it wasn't clear who was supposed to be doing it or who was responsible for the outcome, and there isn't transparency. Nobody can see who's doing what or see that people are or are not getting things done. Nobody has clarity on where the business is at financially or how it’s working. I think having a planning system, having regular meetings, it creates this culture that allows accountability, allows transparency, allows responsibility, allows to be a clear drive towards outcomes.  Most businesses have no clear outcome. They're not working towards a clear outcome. They're just managing day to day fires and they're just shooting in the dark. That's how most small businesses operate. It financially looks that way in their business, too. There is a consistency in the financial side as well. Also, it's a financial system which is a part of planning. I'll just throw that out there which I'm a big fan of Profit First.  Andy: First of all, big plug to Profit First. Big plug to Profit First. It changed my business two years ago. Absolutely a big fan of Profit First and in Clockwork thesis. He’s written several great books for profit entrepreneurs.  For me, you were talking about how most small business owners don't do these things. I was in that same boat. Even though I come from a very structured environment from AAA, when I was a property manager, that's all I [...] property management company. I joked but it's not really a joke. I didn't make any money in my property management company until I sold it. That was the company I ran. When we started EZ Repair, we sort of forgot to do this a little differently. We started getting into the systems and reading different books about structuring, about how to have an operating model, how to profitability. It wasn't really until, like I said, two years ago, we were at Profit First. That just transformed our finances completely. It's was amazing. And then here, I feel like Traction for us is going to be the next turning point, but a couple of years from now, I'll be talking about how we found Traction a couple of years ago. I think it's an evolution of a small business. You learn different things as you go. But for any small business owner, even if you're just starting up, whether it's Traction or another system, you need to have an operating system in place. This would've been so much easier for us a couple of years ago if we did implement it, but that’s okay. We’re implementing it now and it's never too early. I don't care how small you are. Maybe you don't have employees yet but you plan on growing. Get it in place.  Jason: Yeah. For those listening, what do you want them to take away from this? Andy: Hopefully, some learnings from me. What I just said from my own property management experience when I was a property manager. Hopefully, you can make some money before you decide to sell your [...] business. Hopefully, you can make money along the way. There's a lot of property managers who are. The ones who are have that structure. They have that operating system. They have that financial plan in place.  What I'm advocating for is to do that as a property manager. Implement, whether it's Traction or another operating system. Implement it. Definitely read Profit First. It will change your life, absolutely. Do that going forward. Even if you're small, even if you don't think you're there yet, even if you think, "Well, I'm just a one person show," or whatever, one or two person show, it doesn't matter. The structure is going to help you so much and it’s going to keep you from working those 80 hours a week.  I know there are PMs out there working 80 hours weeks because that was what I was doing when I was a PM. You don't need to. Even if you're not ready to hire right now, these operating systems are going to help you structure in a way that you won't be working 80 hour weeks anymore. They'll figure out how to handle the work without actually having to just be available all the time.  Hopefully, you'll determine too that there's some self-showing work that you can do, maybe some maintenance work coordination, work duty. You can do some other things. You can outsource, but you're definitely even without doing any of that, just by structuring your work and system like Traction, you're going to find your job becomes easier or manageable, and you're going to understand exactly what you need to be doing in the business everyday. Jason: One thing I want everybody to take away from this, too, is that this is rare in businesses in the US or everywhere, really. This is rare that a business will implement a planning system, implement profit first, have these pieces in place. I think every listener should feel a lot safer with using a company if they hear that they have these pieces in place. Andy, props to you for getting these pieces in place over EZ Repair Hotline. I'm sure those listening will feel a lot safer with using these services if they haven't considered these before. It creates more consistency in the outcomes of the business. It creates more reliability. Really, that's what people are vying from all of us—safety and uncertainty. That's what they want. They want results. It's far easier to deliver results when you have a predictable system to create that magic and to create a future.  Andy, I appreciate you coming on the show. How can they check you out? Andy: Thanks for having me. Our website is probably the best way to start to take a look at us. It's ezrepairhotlinellc.com. They can see all our products and the easy way to set up a meeting with me or just to send us a note in the contact form. I'd love to have people follow up with us. Jason: Perfect. I appreciate you, Andy, coming on the show. Hopefully, you have an awesome rest of your day. Andy: Thanks, Jason. That was great. I appreciate it. Jason: You can check them out. It is ezrepairhotlinellc.com, so check them out. If you are a property management entrepreneur, you're feeling stressed out, you’re feeling overwhelmed, you're not getting the results that you want, you don't feel like you have consistency, you feel like things are crazy, you feel like you're on a financial rollercoaster, you may just need to start with getting clarity on yourself. This is where I start clients out when we start working with them, when we start coaching and consulting property management business. We start them with figuring themselves out first. Andy is the center of the solar system. I'm the center of my business. If you change and help them get clarity on what they love doing, on what they should be doing, or where their time is being drained, or where their energy is being drained, we align the business around the entrepreneur.  Every business will be very different from each other. Every business will be unique. It will support you, you will feel alive, and you will feel the momentum which is what we crave as entrepreneurs. The rest of the world wants to be happy or sad. They're focused on that. We want momentum. We want to feel alive. If we don't have that, we feel unconstrained, we feel overwhelmed, we feel frustrated, we feel stressed, we feel stuck. That's hell for us as entrepreneurs. If you're stuck in a little bit of hell, maybe reach out, and we'll see if we can get you unstuck. I'm Jason Hull, from DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Make sure you join our Facebook community, our Facebook group. You can get to that by going to doorgrowclub.com. If you feel like your property management website is a little bit outdated, it's older than 2-3 years, maybe it's 5 years old or older, it might be time to test that website, see how much money is really leaking and costing you. You can go to doorgrow.com/quiz and take our website quiz. Most websites that go through it get an F grade in terms of conversion which means you are losing deals and money right now. It's probably costing you tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, annually, in lost deals and lost business. So, check that out. Again, I'm Jason Hull with the DoorGrow Show. I appreciate you guys tuning in. Be sure to check us out on iTunes or on YouTube. Like and subscribe. Where it's possible, leave us a testimonial or review. We'll really appreciate that. That is it. I am out. Bye, everyone. To our mutual growth. Until next time.  

GUEST BIO: My guest on today’s show was an early pioneer of Web Standards, writing a best-selling book on the subject of CSS.  He then went on to found Clearleft, arguably the first dedicated UX consultancy in the UK.   He also set up dConstruct, the UK’s first digital design conference, and UX London, the country’s first dedicated UX conference.   EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Andy Budd is a renowned Design Leader and agency CEO. He started his IT career working as a designer. During his early career, Andy became a pioneer in the field of Web Standards. At that point, he published his first book – CSS Mastery. Over 14 years ago, he co-founded Clearleft, one of the UK’s first dedicated User Experience consultancies. In 2015, he set up the dConstruct conference, which was held for 10 years. It was the first design conference to be run, in the UK. He is also the founder and curator of Leading Design. That annual conference improves design leadership and management. Andy speaks at these and many other conferences that are held across the world. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (1.09) – The first thing I wanted to ask you really was about how you transitioned from the web standards and the CSS aspect or your IT work to founding Clearleft. Andy as a natural transition, and goes on to describe how it happened. He started his working life as a flash coder, creating games. From there, he discovered CSS. When he did he realized almost immediately that separation of presentation and content was the way to go. Baked into this were standards around accessibility and usability. Andy was an early adopter of web standards. He had the 3rd table list website in the UK. He got together with two other early standards geeks to found Clearleft. At the time he was already creating controlled vocabularies, working with information architecture, usability testing and much more besides. So, he was one of the first people, in the UK, to take care of user experience, rather than just making a site look pretty. For the first few years, it was hard to get clients. Nobody could understand why it took them twice as long to deliver a website and why the fees were higher. In time, that changed. Now, UX design is the norm. (4.48) – Phil comments that at the time Andy set up Clearleft, a lot of people would not have known much about UX. So, he asks Andy how big a part of educating people about education was to making Clearleft a success. Andy agrees educating potential clients about usability was important. But he goes on to say that the fact people had never really thought much about UX before was also a superpower. Nobody else was really doing it. As a result, as soon as firms began to wake up to the importance of UX Clearleft grew really quickly. This was especially the case when companies moved away from using websites solely for marketing. Once, they started to use their sites to sell things and transactions were involved the functionality of the website became far more important. (6.11) Phil asks if the introduction of new devices like iPads and SmartPhones has changed the approach to UX at all. Andy responds by saying that the tools have changed. But, the underpinning philosophy hasn’t really changed. The underlying problem-solving principles remain the same. However, the introduction of smartphones had an impact in another way. Mobile sites had to be slicker and better designed. At that point, a lot of companies woke up to how ugly, clunky and old-fashioned their main sites were. When they saw how good a website could look and what an effective sales tool that type of site was a lot of firms wanted to re-design their original websites. (7.44) – Can you please share a unique career tip with the I.T. career audience? Andy explained that for him no single thing led to his success. His approach has to continually review what he is doing and make little course corrections. But, he does say that working in a company where you are not the best at what you do is a good idea. It ensures that you are continually challenged and stretched. You need to be a continual learner and have a beginner’s mindset. This ensures that you learn new tools. If you do not, your knowledge becomes stale. At some point, those tools are going to become obsolete. When that happens, you are stuck. (10.32) – Can you tell us about your worst career moment? And what you learned from that experience. Andy has been very lucky career-wise. So, could not think of anything he would categorize as a bad career moment (11.47) – What was your best career moment? Andy has had a lot of great moments in his career. His first speaking gig went really well, so that was a highlight. Meeting Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path was also a great career moment. He was sat next to him at a book signing at SXSW South by Southwest. His work has also led to him traveling the world, which Andy has clearly enjoyed doing. Plus, over the years, he has worked with some fantastic clients. Spending time in Copenhagen working with Nordic Region Banks was a highlight for Andy.  Working with Zappos was also exciting. (13.38) – Can you tell us what excites you about the future of the IT industry and careers? Andy is fascinated by the rise of artificial intelligence. He believes that in the next decade or so, AI means that things are going to get really exciting. About two years ago, Andy realized he was a bit out of the loop when it comes to AI. Rather than read a bunch of books about it, he decided to pull a diverse group of people together to discuss where AI could take them. The result was really interesting. It is clear that the landscape is changing drastically. AI will lead to wide-scale automation. As that happens, jobs are going to disappear and be replaced by others. So, people are going to have 2 or 3, maybe 4, careers in a lifetime. That is why it is so important to be a continual learner. Some talk about there being a 4th industrial revolution. Regardless, these changes are going to create winners and losers, but it will also be exciting. Andy states that we are already moving away from hand coding using a traditional text interface. Coding is set to become more visual, with developers acting more like curators and editors than creators. (16.57) – What drew you to a career in IT? As a child, Andy enjoyed using the BBC Micro and Spectrum computers. While other kids were out playing football, he was learning to code. He thinks that his interest in sci-fi and love of reading gave him a curious mind, which is why he was drawn to all things tech. But, he did not realize that he could turn what he viewed as a hobby into a career. Nobody, in his family or circle, was involved in the IT industry. So, he was not exposed to the possibilities. After university, he did an aeronautical engineering degree. To do that he had to learn how to use CAD, which he really enjoyed and quickly became good at. Once he had finished his engineering degree, he went traveling for 6 to 7 years. During that time, he started to use internet cafes to communicate with friends at home and research his next destination. One day, while he was in one of these cafes he saw a guy building his own web page. He was creating a travel blog. Later, he met a web designer. He worked for 6 months and traveled for 6 months. Andy decided that he wanted to do the same. In 1999, he arrived back in the UK, bought a Pentium 486 and learned HTML and how to code. To do this he turned to several sources. One of which was a website called Ask Dr. Web, which was run by Jeffrey Zeldman. In time, he became a friend on Andy’s. It was him that inspired him to learn CSS, which eventually led Andy to where he is today. (21.25) – What is the best career advice you have ever received? When Andy set up his IT business he read a book called E-Myth. It contained one great piece of advice which was to make sure that you are working on your business, not in it. That means you need to hire people to do the day to day tasks for you, so you can be free to grow your business. He also explains that you need to see your career as a journey. You have to see it as a business and treat it that way. (22.24) - Conversely, what is the worst career advice you've ever received? You need a business plan is no longer good advice. It is no longer necessary. (23.52) – If you were to begin your IT career again, right now, what would you do? Andy states that when he got started in the design industry the bar was much lower. The tools and sites were so basic that it was not that hard to compete. You could easily get in at the bottom end of the market building sites for local businesses. Now big providers like Shopify and SquareSpace make it possible for people to put together fantastic sites without employing a technical person. (26.52) – What are you currently focusing on in your career? Andy’s focus is on helping others to unlock the power of the web. He is very appreciative of what IT pioneers have done to enable him to succeed. So, he wants to pay it forward and help others. (19.16) – What is the number one non-technical skill that has helped you the most in your IT career? Andy is a keen and experienced diver. In fact, he is a dive instructor. That role taught him the importance of becoming a good communicator. You are working in a dangerous environment, so you need to communicate effectively with your students. If you do not, it can be disastrous. Learning to be a good communicator has ended up helping his IT career in many different ways. (31.01) - What do you do to keep your own IT career energized? Andy works as a servant leader. He is a boss who is very focused on helping others to energize and progress their careers. Taking that approach has had a positive impact on his career too. It helps to keep him motivated and keeps his team engaged and contributing. (31.57) - What do you do in your spare time away from technology? Andy’s IT role takes him all over the world. Whenever he can, he incorporates a bit of leisure time onto his business trips. Doing this provides him with the chance to continue to explore new countries and cultures. Andy also loves good food. So much so, that he has made it his mission to eat at every one of the top 50 restaurants in the world before he is 50. He is really enjoying completing that mission. He still dives a lot and has recently tried cave diving. Andy has also got into bouldering, which is indoor climbing. He says it is a lot more fun than going to the gym. Participating in the sport has virtually cured the RSI he has picked up from his constant mouse usage. This is because climbing stretches and strengthens the muscles in the hands and arms. More importantly, it works the opposite muscle groups from the ones used while working with a keyboard and mouse. Bouldering is very popular with the IT crowd. A lot of it is about problem-solving. Planning your route and working out what techniques and hacks to use is all part of the fun.  (36.02) – Phil asks Andy to share a final piece of career advice with the audience. If you work in the design industry, you need a killer portfolio. A CV that shows career progression also helps. But, when someone is hiring a designer they want evidence of what you are able to do. If you are claiming to be a UX designer you have to demonstrate that fact. For example, when hiring, Andy wants to see photos from user research sessions, as well as interactive, paper-based and animated prototypes. If someone claims they can do information architecture, he wants to see sitemaps, content audits and controlled vocabularies. BEST MOMENTS: (4.34) ANDY – "These days, saying you’re a UX designer is like saying you breathe air or drink water. It’s just what all of us do." (5.45) ANDY – "Our clients quickly realized the benefits of not just making a pretty website, but making something that actually delivered business results." (8.27) ANDY – "It's always better to work in a company where you are not the best at the thing you do." (15.31) ANDY – "We're moving towards a kind of visual coding. I think we're moving much more towards being curators, and editors rather than creators" (22.53) ANDY – "It's important for you to be working on your business, not just in it."  (36.07) ANDY – "For the design industry, having a killer portfolio is everything." (37.34) ANDY – "A really good resume should be backed with a powerful portfolio that demonstrates that you can do these things."   CONTACT ANDY: Twitter: https://twitter.com/andybudd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andybudd/ Website: http://www.andybudd.com/

Hello and welcome to The Teaching Space Podcast. It's Martine here, thank you so much for joining me. Today, I'm excited to bring you an interview with a very nice man called Andy Sammons. Martine: Andy, welcome to the show. Andy: Hi, nice to be on. Martine: It's very nice to have you here. Why don't you introduce yourself to the listeners? Andy: I've been teaching for seven or eight years in secondary school as an English teacher. I've been a main scale teacher, worked towards being a lead teacher, a lead practitioner. I've coordinated from key stages three up to five, I've worked as a second in English, as well as now as a head of English. Everything was pretty much plain sailing for the first few years, it was fantastic. It was only last academic year where things really got difficult for me, and that's what's let me down this path of focusing more on well-being and teacher psychology, and things like that. As a result of that, I decided to put my ideas down into a book, and luckily someone's been mad enough to take it up and publish it for me. That's why I'm talking in this space and beginning to operate in this space as well because I am really interested in teachers' mental health and well-being. Martine: Fantastic. Well, it's really nice to have you on the show. In today's episode we're going to be talking about poor mental health amongst teachers, and it's something that I'm really passionate about in terms of helping teachers improve their well-being, and their work-life balance. That's how we got chatting really because we have that in common, I think, don't we? Andy: Yeah. Martine: Tell me, what's going on with this wave of poor mental health that we seem to be seeing amongst teachers and trainers at the moment? Why is this happening? Andy: I think it's an interesting question. I feel I'm in a pretty decent place to answer that because over the last seven years or so I think that the profession that I now see, and I am experiencing is completely different to the one I came into seven years ago or so, it really is. I think, not to blame the government completely about this, but it ties into austerity and the coalition government, and all the rest of it, if you think about a broader political and economic narrative. I think when I spoke to Emma Keller about this for the book she said, we were talking about this seven years ago when we were all starting to go on strike over pay and pensions, and I suppose back then I was just too much in love with teaching to realize what was going on, but I think what we've seen is since then, the last seven years, a really so slow process of attrition, of wearing away, of accountability, of squeezing over funding, and that kind of divorce of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I think all of these things has now reared its head in manifest in the numbers leaving and the recruitment problems we're seeing. What I think this happened is a lot of the underlying factors ... because teaching if you do it properly it's really quite a stressful job, at any level there's no escape from that, but I think what's happened is a number of the contextual factors have unearthed a lot of that stress, and have brought it to the surface a bit more. I think the reason we're beginning to see the narrative now around even Ofsted mentioning now about work load and manageability, and even the new Ofsted framework, for example, about not just outcomes, but about the curriculum I think in some way indirectly or directly that's a response to what we're seeing to make the profession less toxic, I suppose, in lots of places. I think what we've got is we've got a combination of things, which are now slowly starting to come together and that's why we are starting to hear more about it than before. Actually, I think things feel like they're coming to a bit of a head at the moment. Martine: I think even though I'm based in Guernsey in the Channel Islands and my government is different to your government, but my government is often influenced by the things that your government does, so I can certainly relate to what you're saying about everyone feeling a bit squeezed. Ultimately, the people in charge are wanting more for less, and the people that impacts on are the teachers because we do not want it to impact on our learners, so I know exactly what you're saying. Andy: No. The other thing of course, is not to generalize too much, but I think people go into teaching because they have a love of either teaching young people, or they have a love of teaching or their subject itself. There's something intrinsically passion focused there, I think, for people to go into teaching and education. I think if you're going to put such squeezed accountability measures on people, of course there should be accountability, but if you take it to the level that I think some places seem to be then I think that's misappropriating what accountability is for because actually if you want to improve your share price for a company that's a certain context that works for that context to generate a profit, but improving people's lives in the way that education is attempting to do and needs to do that's more nuanced than just an outcome in any way you measure just an outcome. I think what's happened, certainly, in the last 7/8 years or so is that this drive for measures, and this drive for proof is actually having a profoundly damaging effect on teachers, and the profession itself is well. That's my feeling on it. Martine: Definitely. That's evidenced by the numbers of people leaving the profession very early on in their careers. It makes it so tragic when you say about that intrinsic motivation to help people, and to help young people and learners, and things like that. Then, for them to get into their dream job and go, "You know what? I just can't hack this, this is too much," that's just really tragic. Andy: What you say there's really interesting actually because a lot of research I've been doing recently is that actually the people leaving the profession, age isn't a particular predictor of people leaving the profession, it's not so much young people, or old people. The real correlation is a lack of experience, so most people seem to be leaving within the first three years of starting teaching. Martine: That doesn't surprise me. Andy: Which is says something about, in terms of teacher training, the lack of actual meaningful support that's going on for those inexperienced teachers. I'll be honest, I'm happy to say I'm not sure if I would survive in teaching had I come into it in the last couple of years. I was lucky that I found myself in an incredible school for my first couple of years that just completely nurtured my joy of my subject, but also teaching itself. I feel so thankful for that because if I was just dumped into a difficult class and said, "Off you go son," that wouldn't have worked for me, and that's what we're doing to too many people nowadays, I think. Martine: If I just reflect for a moment on when I went into teaching, I'm coming up to 10 years now teaching, and I'm in a different area to you I'm in further education, but I started teaching 16 to 19-year-olds. Prior to that I'd been working in a senior position in the financial sector, I was a director of a trust company, and the massive transition between that roll into teaching. I have never worked so hard in my life during that first year of teaching. I can vividly remember in the first week sitting in bed with my husband going, "What have I done? What have I done?!" It was such a shock. I'm thankful that I had really supportive colleagues around me and, like you, I was with great organisations, and I'm with the same organisation. It's about having that support network, and the support from your employer, that certainly helps. Andy: I think also a lot of the stress that we're talking about well, I noticed ... I’m married now and I've got a young boy, and what I found is that the stress has been appalling for me over the last year and a half since I've had children because your life is so much more pinched in terms of your time and resources, and all the rest of it. Whereas before my wife and I would just work into the evenings, and we'd have a bit of a chat, and we'd spend all that time together. Whereas now, because our resources, our time, and our energy, and our emotional resources are so much more squeezed because we've got children as well as our responsibility in our jobs I feel that that ‘unsustainability’ is there particularly for people who have got families that they're looking after and they've got commitments outside of work as well. So if work is expanding it needs to go somewhere, it needs to fit that space and, ultimately, it's leading to people taking too much home, which is great in the short term for schools because it might mean better results, but in the long term it's catastrophic for not just schools, but the industry because people leave because they can't cope. Martine: What it's forcing you to do, ultimately, is to try to do your job within the hours that are allocated to that job and people are struggling to do it. There's a fundamental problem there. Andy: We're asking too much pf people who want to give the best of themselves, but they can't give the best of themselves, and as you say, in that sustainable way if they're not that person outside of school as well, if they're not that person outside of the building because, ultimately, we're in a room with people teaching and imparting knowledge, and that's not just about reading from a textbook. That's about being a human whose well rested and who understands the complexities of their subject, as well as human interaction. If you're too knackered to give yourself it doesn't work in whichever way you look at it, I don't think. Martine: I know it's a bit of a cliche, but I often like to say about teachers' mental health and well-being is when you're on a plane and they do safety announcement and they're saying, "In the event of an emergency you need with your oxygen mask on before you help anyone else with theirs." That's the same as being in the classroom, if you're not looking after yourself and your well-being then you are not best placed to look after other people i.e. your students. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but it really hits home to me, you got to look after yourself first. Andy: I know we'll probably touch on this later, but there is a real misunderstanding about the metaphor of that putting on the oxygen mask. There is a real misunderstanding about what that entails I think, and that's that's a real danger, that's a real problem I think. Martine: Let's talk about how we can improve well-being amongst teachers. It is not as simple as ... I saw this meme recently, it was about compulsory yoga. Teachers don't have time for compulsory yoga. Andy: Let me go and buy my books instead. Martine: Yeah exactly. It's entirely the wrong thing. It sounds like it's well-being personified, but it just isn't what the teachers need right now. What are your thoughts on improving well-being amongst teachers? Andy: I think there's two things that we need to understand, both of which involve education around this actual term. As you've hit upon, well-being isn't an afternoon off every six weeks, or a yoga class, or bringing in someone to paint nails while there's a quiz going on in the next room. That's not what it is, and I think that represents, as you have alluded to, a profound misunderstanding about how we should look after ourselves. I think that's something that we need to get away from. I think that the key to that is understanding that whatever we understand by well-being should be deeply personal to the individual, and we need to understand about what makes a person, what makes you as a person well mentally, what is that? I think we need to encourage professionals, teachers to stand back and understand what those small things are that make a difference to us. Only when we can fully understand what it is that makes us feel well can we really begin to create space for ourselves around our stress to separate ourselves from our stressful thoughts, our negative thought, and things like that. A silly little thing for me is coffee. It's silly, but it's not just drinking coffee, it's what's that represents. It's that time and that space to taste something, to be present in the moment, to engage with what's happening around me as I exist as a person in this moment. I know that sounds almost hippie-ish… Martine: No, not at all. Andy: I think it's about presence. When I was doing some work for the book, and I've done lots of reading around this, there was really sound evidence to suggest that we should, I don't if this is the right phrase, but we should sweat the small stuff. We should be bothered about having breakfast in the morning. We should be bothered about making sure we've got a drink when we're at work in the daytime. We should be bothered about carving time out, leaving at 4 o'clock one day a week if we can, if that doesn't create too much stress elsewhere to create that space to go to the gym, or for whatever it is for that person. If well-being for one person looks like getting in at 6:30, so they can leave at 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock of a day then that's fine for that person, and I think part of the dialogue we need to improve in schools is about recognizing that in each other, and recognizing that that person goes home early, but that's fine. That's nothing to sneer at, that's to be commended because they're managing their work load in a different way. Often our hackles go up when we don't see the hero teacher, and this cult of hero teacher that celebrates marking until 12. That's not funny, that's not heroic, and that's damaging actually for me, for the profession, and I think we need to try, and reclaim health for ourselves actually. If working until 12 ... to retract that a little bit I suppose, if working until 12 is what works for one person then that's fine, but that doesn't mean to say that's what everyone should be doing. I think that's what I mean by that. Martine: I know exactly what you mean, yeah. Andy: In a nutshell, I think we need to improve our education and our understanding about what it means to be well, and how we can do that, how can we achieve that. Martine: I love what you said about focusing on the individual, and that it's not a one-size fits all approach. When you really unpick this it's mildly ironic that we, as teachers, forget that because what we do in our classrooms is before we even meet our students we identify their individual needs, and work out what they want to get from their education experience, and then work out how we're going to accommodate those needs. We know, as educators, it's not one-size fits all, but when it comes to ourselves suddenly we forget, which is just mildly ironic. Andy: It's one of those things, I think everything about our world, particularly in the Western World is almost directly or indirectly designed to make us feel like we're not an evolved animal. We think we're somehow above the evolutionary chain in some way, and we think that ... I don't know, we think that we don't have to look after ourselves. As teachers, we don't have to worry about all that because we'll just do, and we'll never run out of energy. Actually, there's fairly sound evidence, there's more than sound evidence about this in terms of making sure that we need to look after ourselves, and not just keep shutting the box on that, and about acknowledging about when our body and when our mind is telling us that things aren't okay. The more we neglect that of ourselves, and we put our students first well, I would argue that actually if we keep putting our students first and neglecting ourselves we're actually doing, as you alluded to before, we're doing our students a disservice. Then, what we're doing is we're showing a complete misunderstanding about our own selves at the same time as well because if we don't listen to when our heart rate goes up, or when we're beginning to sweat because we feel anxious or we're feeling anger, or whatever, or even apathy about certain things if we don't acknowledge those thoughts and where they came from, and what caused them, and we keep neglecting to understand that we are an evolved entity then that's really damaging for your mental health, I think. Martine: It is. Also, you're not setting a great example for your learners, are you? Andy: No. Martine: The students, obviously, play a role in all of this, and regardless of the age you teach students are intuitive things, and they will pick up on the fact that you aren't looking after yourself. Andy: Students smell fear, can't they? Martine: Oh they do. Oh they definitely did in that first week of work that I remembered earlier. Andy: Absolutely. They do. I was a very middle-of-the-road student at school, but you can sense it a mile off when a teacher's not prepared, or when a teacher's not in control. As you say, one thing students are, all different students they can see that you are first and foremost a human, and the moment that you aren't credible with them in terms of ... and you don't show credibility and integrity in front of them then something goes off in that room straightaway. There is something out of kilter in that room straightaway, and I think that's dangerous. Martine: Definitely. Andy: At least for the learning anyway. Martine: Yeah, it is for sure. How else do students fit into this equation of teacher well-being? Andy: Well, I think that's a really interesting question. I'm really interested in this idea of compassion, and I think there's a difference here between being compassionate with people, and being sympathetic with people in this sense. What I mean by that is, rather than with our students being sympathetic with them and saying, "Oh, that's really rubbish or that must be really difficult," or something like that. I think in terms of well-being, I think, we need to model well-being with them. I think what that means is ... There's a really good analogy about this. If someone's in a well and they're upset sympathy would be shouting down saying, "Hey, that looks really rubbish down there, doesn't it? I'm really sorry that you're down there, that's rubbish." Whereas compassion is about climbing down into that well with the person and saying, "Yeah, I can understand why that's difficult. I can understand whether it's emotion, whether it's something to do with the subject, I can understand that," and it's about going on that journey with the young people really. I think it's about, first and foremost, what we touched on before, about modeling that honesty and integrity with regard to emotional intelligence, with regards to what it means to look after ourselves. I think it's really important that for silly things if you mention to the students that you're watching ... I'm a football fan so I'm watching the football tonight I'll mention that. I'll mention that I took my little boy to the park at the weekend. I think it's really important that students see that human side of you, and even if for whatever reason, the photocopier's blown up and you haven't got your resources, I think it's really good just to acknowledge it with the students, and just show that you're a real human. I think we need to be human with our students, but I think in terms of more direct educational sense I think we need to educate our students more about well-being. I think that's a lot more difficult than you might expect because one of the downsides to what we've discussed about education, as we see it now, is that this obsession with outcomes, this obsession with league tables I think there's this creeping insidiousness about, if you can't measure it we're not bothered. Inadvertently, I think teachers pass that on to students. It struck me because once I was listening to a teacher deliver a session on well-being about exam stress to their class, and this teacher's probably one of the most inspirational teachers of ever worked with, she's just phenomenal, but the session was just dry. There was nothing in it because I don't think she was passionate about it, about that particular topic, I don't think the students were passionate about it because I think the students thought, "Yeah, you don't really get it anyway. We have to go through the hell of these exams, you don't." I think there was a real disconnect and I think educating students about what well-being means, all the things we've talked about in the last half an hour or so, it's more difficult than just saying, "Make sure you have a drink, and make sure you chunk your revision up into 30 minute sections." I think we need to go back to the start with students too, and that means when they're younger educating them when they're younger about emotional literacy, about emotional well-being too. I think to summarize there, I think there's two parts to it. I think, firstly, it's about modeling honesty and integrity with our students. Secondly, I do think there are some curriculum implications in terms of helping students understand what well-being means, but there needs to be a culture change because if you can't measure it, and it's not a result I think people aren't motivated by it, which is one of the unfortunate byproducts of our current education system. Martine: Do you see change on the horizon in terms of the if you can't measure it it's not important type approach? You mentioned the new Ofsted framework, and things like that. Do you get a sense that there's going to be improvements in that area? Andy: That's interesting because I get a sense from having a couple of conversations with people off the record, and speaking to people about this in and around the hierarchy of education, I do think that what we see with Ofsted and this new framework is there's a couple of really good people at the top of Ofsted at the minute, I think. I think Amanda Spielman and Sean Harford are banging the right drum from what I can understand by people who are around them, and people who have spoken to me about those particular individuals. I think that's really important, and so I think there's going to be change in that sense. I'm not sure whether or not we're going to be looking much longer term before we see a real change beyond that though. What I can say, but I do feel is that this new framework definitely is a step in the right direction, and I think it'd be foolish to turn our noses up at this new framework because I think at least it is, from what I can see I know it's in the consultation phase, but what I can see is that it's acknowledging that it's about the richness of the curriculum rather than just the outcome. One of the things that I like as, certainly, a middle to senior leader is that when Ofsted are coming into the school I think as a middle leader you should be able to walk around with them and justify what's happening in the classroom in terms of the direction of the curriculum, what you're doing and why and the rationale. Yes, I think baby steps would be the short version to that answer. Baby steps, but I think there needs to be a lot more done, and it takes a long time to unpick a culture. When I was at school, if it was PSHE I didn't care, if it was general studies without something that was going to go on my UCAS form, I didn't care. I think there's a lot of that in schools nowadays, and that's what we need to turn round, I think, and that starts right from Primary whether or not that's on the agenda for change in the future I couldn't say. Martine: It's a case of coming at it from all angles, isn't it? Andy: I think so. Martine: Whether you're senior leadership, whether you're one teacher starting this well-being journey, whether you are Ofsted. Whoever you are, it's coming at it from all angles, and that's the way we're, ultimately, going to achieve positive change. Andy: The sad thing is that I'm not sure what's motivated the inspection framework change, but the fantastic book written by Becky Allen, The Teacher Gap really explores what's going on with teaching in terms of what we need for our students, and what we're providing them as a profession at the moment. Those hemorrhaging numbers are a problem. I think these hemorrhaging numbers in terms of profession, and not the numbers but the quality that we see in front of the students at every level, I think that's going to be felt for a good few years, unfortunately. What we can do in the meantime is take ownership over our own well-being, and make sure that we are the best for our students in front of us everything every day, that's what I think we can do. Martine: Definitely. One of the ways that people can make a start in the right direction is your book. Tell me about a bit about your book, Andy . Did you like that segue? That was beautifully timed wasn't it? Andy: Yeah, that was fantastic. Yeah, that was beautiful. It's a bucket list of mine to write a book, and actually I've had a fairly difficult 2018. Actually, it was really difficult, and as part of my coming back from where I was emotionally I went through a form of therapy called compassion focused therapy. Effectively, what it does is it's an evolutionary psychology model that helps us to understand what motivates how we see the world. What is it that we see as threatening about the world, and how can we unpick that in order to be kinder and be more productive with ourselves? The source of helpful things we can say to ourselves rather than keep having these unhelpful voices in our minds almost, this critical voice. Once I really began to emerge from how awful I was feeling in 2018 I began to think about well, actually does this model of compassion focused therapy about threats and drives and soothes, which you can find out more about in the book, does this apply to education as a whole? As a culture, as an educational culture have we become plagued by threats, have we become plagued by drive, drive, drive to get results and threats if you're going to lose your job, or whatever is going to happen if we don't get these results rather than actually being on the soothe drive axis? This axis where you feel safe, and you feel content, but actually you're able to go to work and feel passionate, and feel safe, and be the best version of yourself. I began to start with that model, and then branch off into all other kinds of psychology and things in the book. What it is, is a bit of a frank disclosure of what happened with me before, in Chapter 2, it goes on to thinking about the wider education system and how it is, in some sense, it's almost wired for poor mental health. In the second half of the book it's much more practical, it's much more how we can see ourselves in schools in a much more healthier way and the relationships with our colleagues and students. Then, in Chapter 4 it's much more about practical methods to cut the work load and be well, but also be effective in the classroom. It's around the topic trip in terms of mental health in schools, and how we can be productive as best we can be. That's the book in a nutshell, if that's at all clear. I hope that's clear. Martine: No, that sounds fantastic. Where can we get a hold of a copy of it? What's it called and where do we find it? Andy: It's called The Compassionate Teacher and you can find it on Amazon, and you can also find my blog and there's a couple of excerpts from the book put up on the blog, and that's compassionteach.weebly.com, and you can find it on there. If you go through Amazon you'll be able to find a little bit about the book as well, and things like that, and that's going to be out on the 15th of March in paperback and Kindle as well, so I'm excited. Martine: Congratulations on the book, that's quite an achievement. It's so good to hear you've come out the other side of not such a great year last year, and you've put all of your energy into something so positive helping other teachers who are struggling with their mental health. I think that's fantastic Andy, you must feel really good about it. Andy: Yeah. It felt really great to start the year as it started, but then finish it towards the end of 2018 being able to put something together. Actually, the way the book shaped up it was quite cathartic disclosing everything that happened with me, and how the theoretical approach of compassion focused therapy help me. I think anyone who might want to buy it would be pleased to know it's not my autobiography. It's a disclosure about what happened with me, and then the model, but then it goes into a thorough, fully contextual understanding about education in this country, and all the rest of it. I do sincerely hope it helps at least one person, if it does then it's not in time wasted. Even if it doesn't then all I wanted to do was add to the literature, add to the debate in some way. I'm thrilled that someone's actually said they'd like to publish it, and the final manuscript's gone in now, so it's just off to them to do it now. Martine: Fantastic stuff. Andy, it's been a real pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me. Any final words to listeners of The Teaching Space Podcast? Andy: I would say, be very clear about what your soothe is, be very clear about what things relax you, hold them close, make space for them because if you don't you'll pay it back somehow later, I think. I think it's really important to treasure the things that make you feel safe, and make you feel happy. Wrap Up Massive thanks to Andy for the interview. Don’t forget to check out his book and whist you’re at it why not hop over to The Teaching Space Facebook page here.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Steve: So do you go by Andrew, or is Andy OK?Andy: Ah, Andy, please.Steve: Can you tell us about the work you do with your website?Andy: Sure. I've made a website for people to study English using movie trailers. (OK) Movie commercials. (OK) On the site, you can see lots of different trailers, over 100, (Wow) and you can do various activities (Right) you can read a summary. You can do a cloze exercise (OK) you can read a script, you can pop, you can click on a vocabulary word and it will show you definitions, example sentences. (OK, OK) yeah, I added little quizzes and stuff. (OK) Yeah, it's pretty fun.Steve: So you have the subtitles on there?Andy: Ah, no subtitles. It's all English. (OK, yeah) English trailers with English voices only.Steve: OK, so do you have the transcripts in English? You have the English subtitles in there?Andy: Yes, yes, yes. The students can watch the trailers while they read.Steve: Right. OK.Andy: So, yes.Steve: And what kind of movies have you been able to put into use?Andy: Oh, gosh, recently we've added "War of the World's".Steve: Oh, the H.G. Wells classic.Andy: Yes, the new Speilberg version.Steve: Oh, OK. OK.Andy: Yes. Yes. Um, the new "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." is going to be up there shortly.Steve: Right. OK.Andy: It looks like a fun trailer.Steve: Excellent. Yeah.Andy: Ah, various genres, too, like computer animation or love stories or action (OK. OK) Yeah something for everybody.Steve: Yeah, and who, which type of people have been accessing the website, and who's getting the most from it?Andy: Ah, people from all over the world are going now. I've had people e-mail about this site from over 25 different countries, so it's very international.Steve: Excellent. Excellent. And how long have you had this website up?Andy: Almost three years now. (Yeah) I guess, yeah about three years.Steve: Wow. OK. It sounds extremely interesting. I'll be very much looking forward to having a look at it myself. How can I access this website?Andy: The URL is www.english-trailers.comSteve: OK, sounds great, Andy, Good luck with it.

A private equity firm is in the business of buying, growing, and exiting companies, hopefully for more than they bought it for. For every industry there is a private equity firm out there. As private equity diversifies, what are the key trends changing the nature of the deal? Today we are discussing where private equity firms come into play in the buying and selling space. Today's guest, Andy Jones, is the founder and owner of PrivateEquityInfo, a private equity database that helps investment bankers and private equity firms close more deals by taking a look at the top trends to look out for when scouting an acquisition target. One major trend we discuss is the holding periods for private equity and how those can often reveal the direction of the overall economy. Studying these and other trends are useful for potential buyers to understand what to look out for in an acquisition deal. Episode Highlights: Andy's history with Private Equity Info. A look at a typical private equity deal. What sellers should know about the private equity industry. Buyers don't want the ugly marbles. Why buyers prefer asset deals over stock deals. What ebita sizes private equity firms are looking for and why the size requirements are in place. Smaller ebitas and add-on investment trends in the private equity arena. Why larger acquisitions still make more sense. Best ways to find the private equity for your business. We touch on the topic of microfunds; what they are and how they work. Typical deal structures that Andy comes across. Why business founders don't have the same appetite for risk as PE firms. The typical holding period before an exit. How long is it? Exuberance trends typically show up when those holding periods experience a decline. Andy shares his top ten trend list for 2018. Transcription: Joe: Mark, I understand you had a great conversation with Andy Jones from PrivateEquityInfo.com. Mark: Yeah private equity is one of these things that buyers and clients that we talk to and even … I'm sorry sellers and clients that we talk to and buyers as well often ask us about. Is private equity buying online businesses? Are they buying Amazon businesses? Are they buying SaaS businesses? Where do they start buying? When do they … what are the lines for it? How does it work? Andy Jones is somebody that I've known now for probably seven, eight years. He's always been very primed by complimenting me on the content we put out. So anyone that complements me is immediately somebody I like and so we talked about having him on the podcast- Joe: Hold on just a second, you're awesome Mark. You're a really good guy and I'm proud to be your partner. Mark: I thought you're stopping the podcast here. Joe: No, I'm just complementing you; that's all. Like you see I just wanted to be liked by you today. Mark: Okay well continuing … thank you, Joe. We will talk about increasing your equity stake in Quiet Light Brokerage after this call. Joe: Awesome. Mark: It's kind of easy guys, it's really that easy. And so Andy has PrivateEquityInfo.com. It's a fantastic database of private equity activity across the spectrum. So anything from manufacturing to the online world but something that they do at PrivateEquityInfo.com is they take a look at the trends and what is going on in the world of private equity and these can be leading economic indicators. And he gave me one trend in particular, I'm going to let him get into the details of it but it's the holding period for private equity. Because private equity, what they typically do for anyone that may not know that they're going to make a lot of investments with the goal of growing these businesses but then exiting these businesses as well or at least a portion of these businesses that they're building up. And the holding period, how long they hold them can really tell us a lot about the direction of the economy and what to anticipate next. And so they look at this holding period, the average number of years that a private equity is hanging on to business before they exit it. Right after the recession that holding period went up to like a number of I think it was like eight or nine because they bought at the peak and they had to wait for the economy to recover before they could exit. So I'm going to tease here and just say listen to the podcast to see what the average holding period is right now, what number we want to look out for to be able to understand okay maybe the economy is going to start to retract a little bit and use that for the decisions we want to make. Joe: This is going to be fascinating. I think we're going to learn about the future of the economy here as well. Hey before we move to the podcast I just want to give a shout out to Mike Nuñez from affiliate manager. Mike, you're probably out riding your bike right now listening to this podcast, I appreciate all the positive feedback you've given us in the last few months. Thank you very much. Let's go to the podcast with Andy Jones. Mark: Andy thanks for joining me. Andy: Thanks for having me. Mark: All right let's start off with a little bit of background on yourself and where you come from. I'll let you do that part. Andy: Yeah I'd be happy to. So my name is Andy Jones. I'm the founder and owner of Private Equity Info. We're an Austin, Texas based company. We own several websites but our flagship website is really PrivateEquityInfo.com and this is where we provide and emanate research database that helps investment bankers and private equity firms and even the corporates close more deals. So I have an engineering background and investment banking background that's kind of what lead me onto this journey of entrepreneurship 14 years ago. Mark: Yeah pretty cool and you are one of the people … I will confess you feed my ego whenever we send out messages by saying really great content Mark. I'm like hey, I like this Andy guy. Andy: Yeah yeah. Mark: Good stuff, I like that. Well cool. We're going to talk about private equity today because you have PrivateEquityInfo.com and really good information through that site. How long have you had that now? Andy: So yeah we launched 14 years ago, January of '05 so this year is our fourteenth. Mark: I remember when everybody's site is full. It was like three, four years old and somebody who had like an eight year old site it was like ancient. Andy: I know I'm that guy. Mark: You know you're that guy right? I own a 20 plus year old site and then Quiet Light Brokerage this is going to be our 11th anniversary coming up next month. Andy: Wow. Mark: Actually by the time this episode airs we've surpassed 11 years so … really really cool. So again private equity was what we're going to talk about today. We get this question all the time from buyers. People want to know things like who's buying online businesses and would private equity be interested? At what levels are private equity interested in and how do those deals sort of differ from other deals? And you've got a pulse in the industry more so than anybody else that I know so I thought hey let's talk about this. I think this is- Andy: Sounds good. Mark: -sort of thing to go into. So let's talk about just kind of the typical private equity deals from what you are seeing and from your experience. I mean what is a good intro for somebody who owns a business that might be thinking about selling and they think well maybe private equity would be interested? What should they know about this industry in general and the different PE firms out there? Andy: Okay. Well, that's a pretty broad question; let me see if I can tackle it from the few angles there. So I'm going to come at this from the assumption that there is some general knowledge of private equity but maybe some inexact knowledge and I'll just kind of ram a little bit and we can flesh it out. But essentially let me just start with the basics what a private equity firm is. A private equity firm, they're in the business of buying growing and exiting companies for hopefully more than they bought it for. And the way they do that is they typically raise a fund through their limited partners. And limited partners are typically institutional money, pensions and retirements, high net worth individuals, [inaudible 00:06:43.1] and such. They raise a fund that has a 7 to 10 year lifetime and the private equity firm then puts that money to work by buying companies. And their hope is to grow those companies, produce cash flow, and exit at a good return on investment for their limited partners and also for themselves. So that's kind of the mechanism of how they work. We can create … we can talk about how they create value later if you want to but you know is a private equity firm the right buyer for your company? Well now that depends on a lot of factors; primarily size but also industry. So by way of size, there's a huge range of private equity firms out there and they go from billions of dollars of interest in price value, company size down to single digit millions. And so there's a long tale of the firms out there. But at some point, the transactions get small enough that it's not really just logistically practical to make investments of small sizes for a platform investment. But I will also say that for add-on investments, you know private equity firms often have this model whereby they buy a platform investment and then we have add-on investments to it. Most private equity firms have size criteria for platforms but for add-ons, it can be more strategic interest rather than size. And so usually there's not a lower limit on the add-on acquisitions. Process size is one limitation, geography being another, and industry. If you have an industry there is a private equity firm interested in it. There's a lot of private equity firms out there. The trick is finding which ones are interested in your company and that's where we come in. Mark: Yeah so I want to talk a little bit about these different sizes because we … as a broker I get these emails all the time from private equity firms that are out there. They're reaching out to just these large databases of brokers and they typically are saying hey we're looking for investment opportunities in manufacturing with this, that, the other thing. A lot of times it just does not fit what we do at all. Obviously, there's no reason but they always list a minimum EBIDTA that they want to see. And typically what we're seeing from the ones that reach out to us would be EBIDTAs of a minimum of 10 million, 5 million, 2.5, and in some rare cases 1 million but almost never below that. Andy: That sounds about right. Mark: Yeah. So what do you see with that? I mean, first of all, I think we can ask the question why, [inaudible 00:08:58.2] the listeners of everything we're all … it's obvious but for those that may not be cashing out of that why do they have these size requirements in there? And then second of all if you comment on that breakdown I mean are private equities looking for these [inaudible 00:09:10.6] smaller in the world of bootstrapped entrepreneurs a million dollars EBIDTAS is a decent deal but for private equity firm that's tiny little bits of money there. How does that break down? Andy: Yeah let me answer those in reverse. So the spread you kind of set it right. Yeah most of them are 10, 25 million in EBIDTas that's for the bigger firms. In the upper middle market, firms are going to be and middle market firms is targeting down the 5 million down to 1 million in EBIDTA [inaudible 00:09:36.7]. But there are firms that will do it. And I think really the trick there is if you're operating in that size range, the trick is not to be considered a platform investment. You want to be considered an add-on investment. And the single best way to find the right private equity firm for your company if you're selling it and if you're down in that range … even half a million, a million dollars in EBIDTA it's getting pretty low. But it is to use a database like ours to keyword search based on keywords that describe your company the portfolio companies that are owned by private equity firms and we allow you to do this. You can search almost 80 … I guess a little over an 80,000 of them now and find those portfolio companies that are currently owned by private equity firms and that is … yeah, they look like your company. So that's the single best gauge to determine a private equity firm's fit or interest in your firm and your company is if they've already made a platform investment and you might be a likely add-on. So that's the process I would go about to discover the sort of rifle shot hits that you're looking for and you can use a tool like ours to find that. Why the size limitations? Well, they have a fund and they have to deploy that money. And if you have a hundred million dollar fund and you're deploying it at single digit millions at a time it is too much work. You'll never get it deployed. And that's really just driving your limitations there. Mark: Right. I think we have addressed this at the podcast topic a while ago on should you buy big or should you buy small. I've addressed this topic in a number of times as well where if you have the resources available to be able to run a larger enterprise from just making your dollars work; the larger acquisitions make so much more sense. The workload, the resources that go into a lot of internet companies doesn't really scale at the same rate as the revenues do. And so it makes sense to do that. So for a private equity firm to come in and try and buy out a company doing 250,000 in EBIDTA just doesn't make much sense. They're not going to reach the goals that they're looking for. And also the capitalization rights, I mean how large are these private equity firms when … how much capital are they trying to deploy through acquisitions? Andy: It really depends on the firm. You know if you wanted to … I don't know off the top of my head but I've done studies on this based on our data. And I've done some data size and probably shoot to our blog. So if people want to visit our blog you can read more about it but it's very typical to have fund sizes and it'd be hundreds of millions of dollars. Mark: Right. So let me take a little bit of a diversion real quick. I want to ask you a question that a trend that I've seen in our space here in the online acquisitions space, I call them micro funds because I don't really have another word for them. Andy: Okay. Mark: But these people that are raising 10 to 15 to 20 million dollars and they're doing it following that private equity sort of model of bringing in those investors. Their goal is to bring in a few companies, have some synergies between those companies, grow them, and hopefully sell them off. Are you guys tracking those at all at this point? Andy: So at that level what we typically see is a firm that has raised capital because they have an operating partner with very specific industry experience and they're looking to buy a company or two. In that case, they're likely not in our database and it's not because we don't know about them, it's just for fit reasons. Most of our customers that we serve are middle market investment bankers and because of that, we want to provide them a data set of firms that are likely going to close the deal. And if you're buying one or two companies the probability of you closing that deal is pretty small especially if you've already closed one. Mark: Right. Andy: So the firms in our database are only those firms that have committed capital that are closing deals in the marketplace. Or sometimes they're from a sponsor but they have to demonstrate that they're actually closing deals. Because at the end of the day investment bankers and firms like yours you want to close a deal so you want to make sure that the people that you're approaching from our database have some probability of making that happen. Mark: Yeah that makes complete sense. All right let's talk a little bit about … and again you've said this a couple of times so I'm going to reiterate it but talk in generalities when I'm asking you some of these questions. Every firm operates differently. Some like the sort of incubator method … you really it's going to be different from one from the next but I want to talk about typical deal structures. And let's say that we have somebody who … they built up a company and let's say that they're in that seven figure EBIDTA range or low eight figure EBIDTA range as well. I know I'm working with people on that low eight figure EBIDTA range, they're looking for an exit down the road and they're definitely in that private equity territory where that's what makes most sense. Andy: Okay. Mark: So when you're approaching private equity firms with a business … let's just focus mainly on the seven figure EBIDTA range, the one to five million, say that we have some people there, some PE firms there. What sort of deal structures do you typically see? Are they completely asset based acquisitions, are they stock, are they management buy-outs with the managers staying on and if there's no general rule that's fine too of course. Andy: There's no general rule but there are some factors as you know that sway the rules. Let me organize my thoughts on how to answer that. So asset deals versus equity deals, there's no all encompassing rule for that. Generally speaking, let me just sort of educate the audience a little bit and there's a good analogy for this. If you think about your company as a bag with a bunch of marbles in it and marbles are the assets, buyers like to come in and pick out the marbles they want. That's an asset deal. I want this marble, this marble, and this marble and that's what I want; that's an asset deal. You keep the corporate entity and all the other marbles I don't want. Whereas a start deal … equity deals says I will just buy the bag and all the marbles in it; good, bad and ugly. Well as a general rule, buyers prefer an asset deal and sellers prefer start deals because it's just [inaudible 00:15:21.8]. Buyers don't want the ugly marbles; the litigation, the potential liabilities … you know that stuff, so just for your audience though typically we find that the buyer wins because they're the ones with the money. So if you want a deal done you're going to do an asset deal. So there's not a hard and fast rule, the exception to that is often times when there's customer contracts in place that you don't want to have to renegotiate, you don't want to create a new corporate entity and then often times those become start deals just for just the core purposes. That's the other part of your question, you're looking at a seven figure in EBIDTA deal. Mark: So the basic structure of it. I know we've run into some cases where we've worked with private equity firms but they wanted to have a management team in place before. Andy: Right. Mark: Or the structure of the deal you know as a cash or as a cash financing and as a- Andy: All right, again it's going to be all over the place but generally speaking if the owner is retiring … owner-founder is retiring, the seller that's one case whereas if they're wanting to stay on and run it and grow it that's another case. If they're retiring it's going to be more … mostly a cash out kind of deal. But if there's a continuity there and they're selling the vast majority of their equity to a private equity firm retaining a small minority stake on the order of 10, 20% that's a different sort of deal. And that's probably the preference for most private equity firms. Again we're talking generalities. All firms operate differently. If you have a strong management team that wants to stay on the private equity firms are going to be interested in that. If they're interested in your company because of its industry, its size, its growth trajectory, and its promise to go on forward they want that management to stay on and they want them properly incentivize and aligned. So typically what we'll see it's not unusual at all to see a certain sort of enterprise value established at the exit of the majority of your stake. And then the private equity firm infusing that company with capital and all sorts of tools to create value. And then having a subsequent accurate equity exit whereby the original owner's second exit is as much as or more the first exit. It happens quite frequently. It doesn't mean it will happen obviously but it's not so unusual. Mark: Yeah and I think that falls in this territory of thinking outside the box of some of the regular deals that most people think of. I talk to a lot of sellers who they want that 100% exit, they got in love with the market but they moved on. But sometimes a really good deal is if you do find that good firm involved just getting that partial exit or that first exit and then that second exit later on can be like you said just as lucrative or if not more lucrative as you got this thing behind you. Let's talk a little bit about 2018 and some of the trends in the- Andy: Let me add … I'm going to add on to that a little bit before we move on. Mark: Yeah, please. Andy: So one of the things that people I guess wonder is how … why is it a private equity firm can come in buy a majority position the equity and create value where I couldn't? A lot of that stems from they're just … they don't have their entire net worth tied up in that company or a huge swath of it whereas an owner and founder does. So they can come in and infuse it with capital where an owner would go I don't know if I want to throw the rest of my [inaudible 00:18:29.6] that I got in the basket. The same basket is already all in. And so a private equity firm and can take greater risks because it's a small percentage of their portfolio in total. And you know and as a bootstrapped operation there's a mathematical limit to how much you can grow your company without outside capital. It has to do with your profit margins, there's a straight mathematical relationship. Your profit margins are X your growth can be Y and no more. So your opportunity for outside capital is debt or equity and founders oftentimes don't have the appetite for debt and this is where private equity can come in and infuse the company with capital at a risk for them that's much more acceptable than it is for the owner-founder and try some things that are maybe riskier and get that company to grow through multiple expansion and taking on your projects and what not. So that's kind of why they're able to do that whereas an owner sometimes isn't going to take that leap of faith. Mark: I think there's another aspect to that as well. I think … I'm glad you stopped me with that, we talk a lot on this podcast and conferences, just people that we talk to in general; entrepreneurs. These bootstrapped entrepreneurs or even the guys that have come in and maybe bought something smaller and that growing it. I put them in that same category of this bootstrapped entrepreneur who this is their livelihood and if it's not 100% of the livelihood it makes up a good part of it. A lot of people are not operating with an aim towards an exit. Maybe it's in the back of their mind so a few things here and there and they do this but a private equity firm has this holding period. They have this goal of we're growing this, we're going to get the cash flow from this, and in most cases … in a lot of cases, they're looking for that exit with that company as well where they could profit from it. Andy: That's right and it drives a huge sense of urgency day after day after day. And once you're owned by a private equity firm, it's hit the ground running. It really is because they're driving that growth because they need to grow the company and exit it before their fund timeframe runs out and so it's a bit of a race. With that comes a lot of operational efficiencies, they'll add to your institutionalizing the company in terms of process fees and measurement and systems in short governance and it's all the stuff that you should do as a company but sometimes that stuff falls and kind of cracks. Mark: I'm going to make a plug so Walker Diebel who works with Quiet Light Brokerage and how he's the executive producer of a number of documentaries and one of them is Print the Legend on Netflix. And it's about the 3D printing industry. There's a really cool part in there where you see [inaudible 00:20:58.0] go through this transition of bootstrapped you know the classic starting in the warehouse garage everybody is really agile doing what they have to do and then they take outside money and it becomes institutionalized. And one of them … I cannot remember what her name was but she said just like I call this part trying to put the skeleton into the jellyfish, trying to get it back on in a jellyfish. Andy: That's a great analogy. Mark: It is. It's a great movie by the way. Print the Legend, you can get on Netflix and again that's my genius plug for Walker. Andy: I love it. Mark: Yeah. So let's talk about 2018, let's talk about some of the trends that you're seeing in 2018. Actually no let's back up we're going to talk about that in a minute because we've just said that they buy these companies with a goal of exit. What is a typical timeframe? What is the holding period that most companies are … most of the private equity firms are looking to hold companies before doing that exit? Andy: We do a report about every six months to update the holding period and we say well of all the companies that have exited in 2018 how long were they held and we compare it to six months ago and 2017, 2016, going back in time. And I set you a graph of this beforehand and we can post that if you want to or whatever or make it or you can visit our blog and see that study. But generally speaking, I think most people would say look the general private equity holding period is 3 to 7 years. That's the right answer. It's fairly generic and that's kind of all-encompassing but I wrote down some stats here. The medium holding period right now as of a couple months ago is 4.8 years. So of all the companies that have exited in 2018, they were held just shy of five years. By way of comparison, we saw a max holding period of 5.6 years in 2014. Well, why was it so long then? Well if you think 2014 and you subtract out 5.6 years, if you're looking at companies [inaudible 00:22:48.7] and say you're looking at companies that were bought at a peak of evaluations right before the recession. So those are companies that are portfolio companies owned by private equity firms that got bought at the beginning of 2008, unfortunate timing, and then just hit the recession and they just had to hold a lot longer to either breakeven or realize any value. So that increased the hold rate. And we saw a minimum conversely in the year 2000 when we have a .com boom out of 3.0 years. And we saw another minimum in 2008 you know at the peak of that it bubbled there at 3 ½ years. So that leads me to think that if you start getting around … I'm going to say holding periods of 4 years or less it might … maybe it's an indicator of a little bit of exuberance in the market. And so right now we're at 4.8 years and it is declining. It is consistently going down every time we track. So we're aiming to the 4, we're not there yet. Mark: That's fascinating data. We've actually had that conversation internally quite a bit as far as the trends in the market and what we're thinking. And what we're seeing right now we're seeing one of the more aggressive markets in the 11 year history of Quiet Light. Now granted Quiet Light Brokerage when I first started it was 2007 and we were really just getting our feet wet and getting go-ins. So we didn't have a lot of data … real useful data then we hit a recession. So you take the first six, seven years it's pretty bearish. They [inaudible 00:24:13.3] are working with. Andy: Right. Mark: So comparatively like this is the time that we're in right now feels really good and strong and that [inaudible 00:24:19.9]. Andy: And we can talk about statistics because one of the great things about having a database is that it learns itself to this during data studies and slicing and dicing a data. It really pops out interesting trends. Right now valuations are high. No secret I think everyone in your industry knows valuations are high and I'll actually tell of you guys a little bit here or your world of investment banking and business brokerage. If you are a company owner and you are thinking about selling in the next 3 to 4 years and it's even on your horizon there may not be another time that is this good for valuations. It is as good as it gets. I mean there are a couple of economic factors there. There is sort of meta … macro-economic factors that are happening that are making this as sort of sustained seller market but that'll change. Those factors are just real quickly … money is cheap right now. Monetary policy has made interest rates low. It's cheap to borrow money. It's fueling a lot of growth. Companies are growing but consequently, those people with money are looking for where can they get a better return on my capital instead of CD's and treasuries and stuff like that. So they're looking at the alternative asset space. They're putting money into private equity which has created more private equity firms than ever before, larger funds than ever before, looking for the same deals as everybody else. So there's a huge … from a financial buyer perspective there's a huge demand. And then the other factor that plays with that is a social factor and that is you probably thought this as the eye. When the baby boomers were going to retire and then we had 60's we thought that there would be these huge influx businesses for sale as they start to retire and that largely didn't happen. They just kept working. The baby boomers just kept working and that only eventually come out a buy plan but right now because they've held their businesses longer they've built up a pent up demand because they're limiting the supply. So, on the one hand, you have money in trying to chase deals, on the other hand, you have fewer deals. That's what's creating this sustained seller's market where valuations are high. It will change. It will go back down and we're going to remain. You cannot … this is my opinion not data, but you cannot make money on the assumption that someone else is going to over pay in the future years like you did today. Mark: Right … no I think that's absolutely right that when … last year on this time I wrote one of the last blog post that I personally wrote. We started the podcast instead. Before we started recording here I was telling you that I like doing this [inaudible 00:26:49.6] Andy: Yeah, right. Mark: But I talked about the history of what we've seen over the years and during those recessionary years boy if you've got a 2.7 or 2.8 discretionary earnings for a business it was a really solid deal. And today people are looking that and saying why would I ever sell for that. Understanding multiples, they're relative to the time, they're relative to the supply and demand within the marketplace and what money out there and what other investment vehicles are out there as well. Even when you're thinking about when to exit when you're thinking about buying and growing and turning this around in the case of a private equity firm that's crucial data to really kind of hone in on and understand. What are you seeing trending this year? I know I was contacted by Buzz Feed a while ago about private equity firms starting to get into the Amazon space and really looking more towards e-commerce specifically within the Amazon Marketplace. What are you seeing as far as different trends in the private equity space or is there any industries that seem to be popping up right now? Andy: There are you know we studied the portfolio companies and what's changing over time. I sort of have a top 10 list for 2018 that I'll run down with you. On top of the list has always been and maybe always will be manufacturing. Mark: I see that all the time. Andy: Everyone likes a solid just basic manufacturing company, no frills just consistent cash flow, consistent growth; predictable money. With that said manufacturing as a percentage of the portfolio companies is way less than it used to be. So coming hot on its heels are … number two and three and four positions which number two is software. So far this year software deals are a big deal. At number three is technology. This kind of go together and it makes sense. Anything that you can scale like you can with a software and technology private equity firms are interested in the ability to find the concept that scales with very low capex which software and technology tend to do. And also have this component of recurring revenue also a big theme for the private equity firms. The others I'll run down … number four was health care. Interestingly enough number five was data businesses, information services which I'm on. Six would be oil and gas which is interesting because there for a while that went away. When it went down so cheap and thus nobody … everybody was losing money in all the oil and gas services companies and the PE firms just weren't doing that but it's coming back. Seventh is medical. Eighth, construction which has been interesting, traditionally we would not see much construction related private equity investments mostly because it tends to be very capex heavy. Number nine was transportation and logistics. And number ten was engineering so another kind of services company. Mark: Fascinating. The software I presume SaaS businesses with kind of all that- Andy: Well that's the preferred. Yeah, that's the preferred model. Not always but that's where everybody's going. Everyone's going to SaaS and everyone's going to the club. Mark: Right. What about consumer products? I mean that's obviously not in your top ten list. Andy: You know off the top of my head I don't know where it is. There are a number of private equity firms that specifically build consumer product brands and focus on that exclusively. Some well-known firms they have done really well. I know that for a while food and sort of ingredient businesses we're pretty hot. I don't know if that trend is still as hot as it used to be but consumer brands is definitely a hot industry it's just not on our top ten. I hear it all the time. Mark: Sure. But what are some of the things that private equity firms just love to see when they're looking for an acquisition target? Andy: Some of the things we already touched on recurring revenue. I mean it's all about stability of cash flow. So I would say stability of cash flow spur the quality of earnings kind of companies. Scalable businesses that have strong cash flow and a track record of growth. And those firms that are maybe a little more venture capital minded might say you know what's the opportunity here in terms of can this just blow up as a trend or is this software tool just meeting this huge demand in the cloud space that's going to be the next revolution of software so that sort of thing. But really it's all about cash flow stability or scalability. Mark: All right then what are some of the things … I mean people will probably come up with conclusions but what are some of the things that they'd want to avoid? Andy: Yeah so in addition to just like the opposite of those private equity firms it would be difficult to find firms that will do project based financing as opposed to just an outright purchase acquisition. They don't want to finance your projects. They typically will not do projects that require a lot of capex. With that said I did say construction was in the top 10 so I am not sure about that but traditionally it's just hard to scale companies when you have to put a lot of money on upfront for property client equipment. And then lastly at least for the firms that we track, we do not track those that are not in this particular data site those that invest in real estate. In a traditional buyout M&A private equity firms, we just need a longer time horizon than seven or 10 years to make sure that real estate pays off like it should. So what we do track in another data model institutional real estate investor, that's a different animal altogether and probably outside of this group but … out of this conversation but they typically are just not going to buy real estate. Mark: I've got a question for you on general multiples and let's talk software and tech and if you don't have this data right now I know I'm kind of … I'm springing this on you, I didn't prep you on this one. Andy: That's all right. Mark: But we talk often that there's a bit of a multiple shift when you get to certain levels in EBIDTA. Andy: Yeah that's right. Mark: This is something that companies don't typically get the strongest multiples as you move up we see these multiple shifts. What are some of the demarcation lines that you see for EBIDTA as one of these multiples that you start to inch up? Or is it just kind of a gradual scale where you're seeing that happen? Andy: You know I don't know if there is definite lines and I don't know if I'm going to know the answer to that question but just let me talk kind of about a hand waving principles around. Mark: Sure. Andy: I think it just kind of scales generally with size. Companies that are bigger tend to be more stable. And when you're more stable that's perceived to be less risk for a buyer and therefore more valuable and hence a higher multiple. And so that is why one of the methodologies that private equity firms use is this buy and build platform an add-on strategy. It is you buy the platform company, you take a smaller add-on investment, you buy it for … I'm just going to make up a number, 6X EBIDTA and suddenly you put it in, you fold it into a bigger company and that same sort of producing asset is now repaid X because it's part of a bigger company. So you got a 2X sort of free value out of that built on. And I can remember meeting with … I won't name the name, but a private equity firm we're meeting with one time we we're working on a deal back when we used to do deals and he was outlining that strategy for me. He's like yes it's really not just rocket science, that's what we do. It's pretty simple and you buy it for a five and you get seven automatically; free money. Mark: Right. I have these conversations with buyers over the years that their first footsteps into the space of buying … in our case online businesses start with maybe on Flippa and buy me [inaudible 00:33:51.5] out of $20,000 $30,000 sites and that was their appetite. The next thing you know they're doing an SBA loan and they're buying something bigger. Andy: Right. Mark: In variable … invariably once they have enough success that light bulb goes off in their head where they look at that and say wait a minute I can bolt on my company over here which is more valuable, a company that is less valuable here and if I can fill them in I'm getting this multiple jump and I'm adding value immediately. And in addition especially with the sizes that we're looking at I can buy something with EBIDTAs of 500,000 but if I buy four of these, combined them, now I'm not buying at a multiple of 2.8 or three. I'm buying at a multiple … I'm now able to sell it maybe at 3.3, 3.5 or whatever the case maybe for that industry. Andy: Right. Mark: It's this double whammy of the valuations that go up. And as that light bulb with them goes off for where then the next thing I know they're building their fund around to be able to do that. Andy: Now it's easy for us to say it's much harder to implement. So you can say you are just free money. Yeah, there's a lot of hoops you got to jump there to make that happen and integrations and all that. And it's hard work and that's why not everyone is doing it. But if it is kind of conceptually not that difficult to understand. Mark: Right, okay where can people find you if they want more information and if they want to start kind of exploring this world of private equity outside of the blog that'd be a great place to start but what if they're finding for more information? Andy: So you can go to our website PrivateEquityInfo.com at the bottom there's contact us, you'll see my phone number and my email. I'm happy to take calls. I'm happy to answer your emails. If you have questions about private equity, questions about your business and [inaudible 00:35:32.0]. Just pick my brain that's fine. We're happy to do that. We love to talk to customers and potential customers and help people. Mark: Very good. Hey, thanks so much for coming on. I can see you having [inaudible 00:35:42.3] 2019 rolls around and we get in to some of the trends there. Start paying attention to these holding periods that are happening I think that's a really cool stat to be able to be tracking here. And also just kind of see where the trends are with these top industries that are kind of popping up as time goes by here. Andy: Yeah well thanks for having me. It has been fun. Let's do it again. Mark: Yeah thanks, bye. Andy: All right bye-bye.   Links and Resources: Andy's LinkedIn Andy's Company PrivateEquityInfo blog  

Download This Awesome Podcast: http://bit.ly/2Js59zm Exactly 100 episodes ago on Episode 7 we were honored to have Andy McFarland on the REI Foundation Podcast. We welcome him back again today to celebrate our milestone and to thank him for his friendship, mentorship and just plain old awesomeness. His ENLIGHTEN approach to Real Estate Investing has allowed us to not only succeed financially but personally as well. Andy has not only served to brighten and help the lives of 274 people but also their families and now YOU! WHAT DO YOU TYPICALLY TELL PEOPLE WHEN THEY ASK YOU, “WHAT DO YOU DO?” Andy: That's so tough! That's so hard! Typically I say real estate stuff. Sometimes I'll tell then entrepreneur. Depends on how deep of a conversation I want to get in with people. Because no one really understands when I say “Real Estate Stuff” people will say, “Oh, so you're a Real Estate Agent.” And I typically follow up with, “Well, no I'm not an agent.” So sometimes I just say business things… business stuff… That “Real Estate stuff” has Andy doing 274 deals in 2017 alone totaling well over 7 Figures! Andy is a widely successful entrepreneur whose “business stuff” (beyond his massive wholesaling business) includes a being a TOP MENTOR at House Flipping HQ, a successful PPC business that helps drive other Real Estate Investment companies into being top in their markets and a super informational, funny and educational YouTube program at www.iloverealestatestories.com. WHY DO YOU DO THESE BUSINESS THINGS THAT YOU DO? Andy: It just started going and one thing leads to the next. I never tended to be on step 10, if I'm on step 10 now. I just started with step one and went on to step 2, 3, 4… and then you look up and you've kind of got into this thing. I'd be lying if I told you 15 years ago I wanted to have a digital marketing company, and I do rentals and I do loans … I didn't envision that. “You don't know what you don't know.” I just started with step one and it evolved into where we are today… I didn't plan this… HOW DOES ANDY PLAN FOR SUCCESS Andy: At the start of the year I set up my goals, personal and business. At the beginning of the week I line up some key strategic things I need to do that week. And then I push those to my days … the things I need to do that day go on my A, B, C list. ANDY'S PERSONAL AND BUSINESS GOALS!!! Andy's Personal Goals: -Increase my spiritual net worth -Study all scripture related to Jesus Christ Andy's Family Goals: -Scripture Study and Prayer with my wife every night -Unstructured break time for my wife so she can unwind -20 hours of FOCUSED and PRESENT time with my family per week -13 days of this year on a boat with my family -20 days of skiing with my family These are the things that are important to me. Here are the business goals… thats what you really want… Andy's Business Goal -My house buying and wholesaling company: I want to do 6 million Dollars of top line projected revenue -The digital marketing company: build and grow… ON VALUE AND THE JOURNEY We get so busy in the DOING that we forget to ENJOY THE JOURNEY… Be intentional about putting in those things that you said you wanted. Because you'll find yourself at the end of 10, 20, 30 years just looking up and you might have a pile of money but you missed your entire life. Because TIME is the one NON-RENEWABLE resource. The things that we get for free, ironically, we don't value. We take them lightly. The things that cost money… the houses, the cars and the vacations… we value those more. But really… what about your mind, what about the ability to hear, to see, to think, your friendships, your relationship with your family. It's free. ON GROWTH …As a person I'd like to think I'm always getting better. I'm always trying to refine who I am and what I do. And try to be less selfish and more selfless. Try to serve others… WHAT IS SUCCESS? We've got one objective and one priority. And our objective helps us get to our priority. Our number one objective is to make a profit. That's not necessarily success but your have to be profitable as a business and a company in order to hit your priorities… Our number one priority… is to … ENLIGHT. We rebranded to ENLIGHT Home Buyers. Because that means all these things to me… that we are to look, as a team, constantly bring light into our individual lives so that that light will impact the team members. We can bring that into the team environment. And then also as a team we will be able to spread that light to others… WORDS TO LIVE BY “Be the person in front of the curtain as behind.” HOW TO FIND ANDY http://enlighthomebuyers.com/ www.iloverealestatestories.com HOW TO GET MENTORED BY ANDY www.houseflippinghq.com … let them know we sent you! So grateful to you for listening! Thank you! If you enjoyed what you've listened to please leave us a five-star review on iTunes and Like and Follow us on YouTube and FaceBook!!! Thank you! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

欢迎订阅微信公众号“老虎小助手”，进入右下角菜单“会员中心”，收听本专辑完整音频，以及超过10000+中英文有声学习资源哟！亲子英文（12）What club do you belong to？你参加什么社团？换一种方式问，也可以说”What club are you in ?”意思是你在哪一个社团？孩子可以这样回答”I'm in the school choir.”我加入学校的合唱团。妈妈可以多了解孩子感兴趣的事情，多鼓励孩子去挖掘他的天赋，What are your interests?你对什么感兴趣？interest是指兴趣、关心的事情。如果孩子告诉妈妈”I'm interested in art.”那样妈妈就可以鼓励孩子去学画画或和艺术相关的事情。What kind of things are you interested in ?什么事情让你感兴趣？What do you like?你喜欢什么？Andy:Peter,which club do you want to join?Peter:I haven't decided yet.What about you,Andy?Andy:I am a member of the basketball club.Do you want to join us?Peter:But I don't know how to play basketball.Andy:It's OK.Don't worry about it.Our school coach will train us to play basketball.I haven't decided yet.我还没决定。那么我还没完成怎么说呢：I haven't finished yet.I don't know how to…我不知道如何……不能直接说How to …这样不地道。Belong to是……的成员，应归入……的意思。

欢迎订阅微信公众号“老虎小助手”，进入右下角菜单“会员中心”，收听本专辑完整音频，以及超过10000+中英文有声学习资源哟！亲子英文（12）What club do you belong to？你参加什么社团？换一种方式问，也可以说”What club are you in ?”意思是你在哪一个社团？孩子可以这样回答”I'm in the school choir.”我加入学校的合唱团。妈妈可以多了解孩子感兴趣的事情，多鼓励孩子去挖掘他的天赋，What are your interests?你对什么感兴趣？interest是指兴趣、关心的事情。如果孩子告诉妈妈”I'm interested in art.”那样妈妈就可以鼓励孩子去学画画或和艺术相关的事情。What kind of things are you interested in ?什么事情让你感兴趣？What do you like?你喜欢什么？Andy:Peter,which club do you want to join?Peter:I haven't decided yet.What about you,Andy?Andy:I am a member of the basketball club.Do you want to join us?Peter:But I don't know how to play basketball.Andy:It's OK.Don't worry about it.Our school coach will train us to play basketball.I haven't decided yet.我还没决定。那么我还没完成怎么说呢：I haven't finished yet.I don't know how to…我不知道如何……不能直接说How to …这样不地道。Belong to是……的成员，应归入……的意思。

Jim and Andy 

 It seems our film seeking duo has comes across an alternate route on their journey. This is no ordinary side-quest, Mack and Peter discuss something current. What?! That is right! Peter puts out some spicy hot takes on "Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond" and Mack is also there saying things. If you were expecting a simple fetch quest from our dudes you will be disappointed, this auxiliary path is a brief trip but gets deep. Folks, we have entered into the teeny, tiny micro episode territory. Enjoy. 

 #supermovieball #JimandAndy #hottakes 

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 Music By: -Intro Original_Music by Joe D'Agostino -Outro By RoccoW

托福雅思口语太难？快来和安迪一起学习地道的美语来征服雅思托福口语吧！ 今日话题：How can we save endangered species? Please include details and examples in your answer. 解题方案：Problem-Solution What is wrong now? Andy: Nowadays, many species（物种） are on the verge of extinction（灭绝）. What are the effects of this? Andy: The whole ecosystem（生态系统）will collapse（坍塌） because the food chain（食物链）has been damaged. At the end of the day, our offsprings（后代）will bear all the outcomes of the mistakes made by their covetous ancestors（贪婪的祖先）. World hunger, tsunamis（海啸）, floods （洪水） and the list goes on and on! What caused the problem? Andy: It was caused largely by animal agriculture（畜牧业）, which contributes to 51% of the greenhouse gases（温室气体）in our atmosphere（大气层）, like carbon dioxide（二氧化碳）and methane（甲烷）. They are the culprit（元凶） of global warming（温室...

托福雅思口语太难？快来和安迪一起学习地道的美语来征服雅思托福口语吧！ 欢迎大家留言评论以及订阅节目哦！ 今日话题：What are the benefit and drawback of using robots? Please include details in your answer. 解题方案：好坏对比法+5Ws+ Effects 解题思路：5Ws+Result What is the benefit of using robots? Andy: It can save lives. When?Where?Who invented What? Andy: Recently, doctors from the US have invented nanorobots（纳米机器人). Why do we use it? Andy: Coz it can do some jobs that humans cannot do. What can they do? Andy: First, they can go into the bloodstream（血液） and produce some chemicals（化学物质） to identify （识别）and fight against some diseases like cancer（癌症）, tumor （肿瘤） or viruses （病毒）. Also, it can be used to repair DNA, RNA and some cells（细胞）. What is the effect? Andy: It will save millions of lives. What is the drawback of it? Andy: It migh...

托福雅思口语太难？每天三分钟，快来和安迪一起学习地道的美语来征服雅思托福口语吧！ 今日话题：If you had money, would you go space traveling, like going to the moon? Please include details in your answer. 解题方案：假设法 解题思路：5Ws+Result When are you gonna go to the space? Andy: In 10 years. Where are you gonna go? Andy: Wormhole, blackhole and Planet Pandora （虫洞，黑洞 和潘多拉星球） Who are you going with? Andy: With a bunch of astronauts from NASA. Which transportation are you to use? Andy: By spacecraft. What specific activities are you to do? Andy: 1. go through the wormhole 2. jump into the blackhole to experience 5D world. 3. land on Planet Pandora. What is the result to be like? Andy: It’s gonna be so cool! 示例答案 Well, I’d totally choose to go space traveling coz it’s gonna be so cool. For example, I can imagin...

This week Team JoJo comes across some ~very~ angry undead knights, the Diamond Is Unbreakable crew finds an invisible baby and Jack has a surprise for Andy (It isn't vampires).

Amongst other things, Steve tells the story of how driving a mini through a ford resulted in a new engine. Andy: It’s Friday 29th January, I’m at 1st Class Garage with Steven. Steven’s just been playing – not dominos – that game where you have to move things around to make space with cars. Steve: Well, it’s almost like [...]