Podcasts about announcer thanks

Wondering how to earn more points towards travel? Trying to decide which travel credit card is the best fit for your family? This week we chat with points and miles expert Jennifer Yellin about the best travel credit cards for families. Kim and Tamara also talk about the changing travel restrictions in Europe, the Caribbean, and cruises. Note that since this podcast was recorded, Italy has also dropped its testing requirement for fully vaccinated travelers. About Jennifer Yellin Jennifer Yellin is the founder of Deals We Like, where she helps her readers travel on a deal. She writes about everything travel related, such as travel credit cards, travel rewards (points and miles) and travel destinations. Jennifer is also a freelance writer for CNN Underscored and The Points Guy where she writes on similar travel topics. Jennifer loves traveling to beach destinations and embracing ski trips with her family. How to Pick the Best Travel Credit Card for your Family For family travel, you need to book early if you are looking to use points since they are popular times to travel and you need more seats than if you are traveling solo When choosing a credit card to start using points there are some that are very easy to redeem points, like Capital One which allows you to earn points and then use the points eraser to erase the travel charge on your credit card. Others, like Chase Ultimate Rewards, you transfer your points to airline or hotel programs to use your points. You can get better value that way but it takes a little more work There are also airline or hotel specific cards that provide certain perks, like a free night certificate or free baggage, that can be valuable if you are able to fully utilize it Also look at the annual fees and make sure you are getting more value than you are paying in annual fees The Hyatt card will help you earn Globalist status, which will provide nice perks like room upgrades. See our episode about the best hotel loyalty programs Southwest is a popular card for Southwest fliers that can earn the Companion Pass (see our episode about flying families for free) The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great card but wait to sign up until they have a very good sign up bonus. Points transfer easily on a one-to-one basis and you can even book through their travel portal. They have a partnership with Southwest and OneWorld Alliance members like American and British Airways If you transfer 1-to-1 to Hyatt, you will get more value out of your points then transferring to Marriott If you do decide to have multiple cards, make a note of which cards give more points for specific categories (e.g. gas, travel, supermarket) and put a piece of tape or label on each card and write on it which category to use that card for If you have a specific trip in mind, find out what hotel you want to stay at and then look at signing up for that hotel brand credit card and sign up when there is a good bonus (unless a card like Chase has a better welcome offer) You can also sign up for credit cards in you and your partner's name or a personal and business card to get multiple sign up offers if you have a specific trip in mind When you want to use points for a family, it can be hard to find enough free seats for everyone. Just keep in mind that if you book separately you may end up separated if they reshuffle the flights but you can try to get the itineraries linked to avoid this If you have status, you probably want to buy a ticket for the person with status and use points for the rest Expert Flyer is a membership website that helps you find special award availability For international airlines, it also helps to use an award booking service to help find flights to a specific destination, these usually cost about $150-200. Usually you don't pay unless you can book You can use Point.me (used to be Juicy Miles) where you put in your itinerary and the system will provide you with options that you can book and that is a less expensive service because it is automated When you transfer points, it can take 24-48 hours for the points to show up in your account and you can't book until they are available. You can Google how long it takes to transfer points between specific programs Once you transfer points from your credit card to an airline or hotel program, you can switch them back to the credit card so be sure you want to use them To earn additional points, sign up for every shopping portal available such as eBates/Rakuten (for cash back or points), some have Chrome Extensions to remind you to purchase through the portal. Most mainstream ecommerce sites will earn you points There are also a lot of sign up bonuses around big shopping weekends Cashbackholic will show you which shopping portals offer the best rates/points offers EV Rewards will also compare for you Always look at the targeted offers that are sent to you from your credit card companies to earn extra points or cash back Buy gift cards through shopping portals, put purchases on credit card and have others pay you back for group dinners, class gifts, etc. Never sign up for a credit card without a sign up offer Southwest currently has a good offer for earning a Southwest Companion Pass Make sure you can always easily meet the minimum spend requirements when signing up for a new card If you are applying for a mortgage or a loan soon, don't apply for a new credit card, but otherwise it won't hurt your credit score Cancel cards when you are no longer getting value, but you can also call and see if you can get a fee waived or reduced If you have applied for 5 or more Chase cards in 24 months, you can't get approved for a new card and Amex offers are usually once in a lifetime but you may be able to get it once they roll off your credit card in seven years or so Full Episode Transcript [00:00:00.190] - Kim Tate Stay tuned to find out how you can charge your way to free travel. [00:00:15.450] - Announcer Welcome to Vacation Mavens, a family travel podcast with ideas for your next vacation and tips to get you out the door. Here are your hosts, Kim from Stuffed Suitcase and Tamara from We 3 Travel. [00:00:29.890] - Kim Tate Tamara. It's kind of a fun intro today because I feel like we're going to share some happy news for a change that's happening. Do you want to kick us off and start talking about some changes that are happening in the travel space lately? [00:00:41.710] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, just overall, I think everyone feels a whole lot better than they did a month ago, for sure. And I know traffic to my website showing that people are more interested in international travel than they have been, for obvious reasons. But it's just so nice to be on the side of things where it's like things are getting better. [00:00:58.670] - Kim Tate We have good news. Yeah. [00:01:00.680] - Tamara Gruber But as you guys know, we're planning a spring break trip coming up very quickly, and we've been keeping everything crossed that everything goes okay. But we saw just actually, I just saw very recently, I think it was on February 12 that France has lifted their testing requirement to get into the country. So it's just like one of these hurdles that I can check. I can just cross off like, okay, the day before, how am I going to get the test that I need? And is it going to come back in time depending on how things are there or they're going to shut now that things are better, they're closing some testing centers. What's the best way to get this test that they need? So it's just like one of those hurdles that I don't have to go through now. And it's just it's such a relief. And also because Hannah had COVID in early January, I was actually going to get her tested to see if she's still testing positive. Do I need to get the doctor's note and go through that whole thing? And so as restrictions are lifted, it's just so nice to have one less thing that you have to do as you're getting out the door, and then one less thing that could kind of screw up the road. [00:02:11.860] - Tamara Gruber Obviously, you could still get sick, but hopefully you would know that versus like, oh, no, you're actually asymptomatic. Not that we want to be traveling asymptomatically, but you know what I mean? So I'm just encouraged that there are a number of European countries that are lifting their testing requirements at the same time, though, I should say that is for people that are fully vaccinated and different countries have different rules about full vaccination. Like, for example, for France, you need to also be boosted if it's been more than seven months since your second shot or your only shot if you're like me when it was Johnson, Johnson. So you need to follow still those kind of guidelines and all of the rest. But at least on the testing front, it's one thing. So, yeah, so France lifted it. The UK has lifted that, Ireland has lifted it. Spain lifted it. And I've seen that both Portugal and Greece have lifted it for the EU. And so my matter of time before they lift it for the US as well. And part of it might be like the US still has the requirement that people need to test, including US citizens, on entry into the US. [00:03:24.420] - Tamara Gruber So it might be one of those things where it's like, well, if you lift it for us, we'll have it for you kind of thing. But yeah, at least I mean, right now we're still going to have to get tested in France to go into Italy. But at least we know that that's pretty easy to do. Like, there's tons of pharmacies around and it's cheap and readily available and fast turn around. So I'm not as worried about that. And then I actually just ordered some testing kits from EMED, which is what you and I used when we were in Portugal because it's the proctored self testing that is accepted for return to the US. [00:04:00.540] - Kim Tate And it's instant. Yeah, it's really good. [00:04:02.170] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. [00:04:03.870] - Kim Tate That horrible one day window that the US enacted, which I hope they're going to reedit that now that Omicron is calming down because that one day is a big ask. [00:04:13.080] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, it's definitely and I was worried about like, oh, if we're in Italy, I know I can get tested, but will the turnaround be in time? So I just felt like bringing these along is going to be the easiest scenario. We just do that in the room and we'll be all set. So positive news on my friend. And I know you've been paying attention to some other stuff going on, so you have some positive news, too. [00:04:34.640] - Kim Tate Yeah. Well, we're headed out on a cruise for spring break, and we're getting numerous emails that keep coming in because cruises are really volatile right now with the way they're changing. A lot of them went back into even a lockdown. They canceled a lot of cruises in January. And now I think things are loosening up, and so that's kind of opening up options. And so I think that for cruising, just know that cruising is back. Cruises in general have always been, as we talked about in that episode a while back, they're pretty obsessed with cleanliness and germs because of other things like norovirus that they've had issues with. So just know that cruising is back. And so if that's an option. The other thing that I like about cruising is because we're doing a Caribbean cruise and because you come in and out of a US Port, you are waived from a lot of those testing requirements that if you were just flying directly into a Caribbean Island. So there is some benefit to that. Just know that some of the Caribbean Islands also are editing what they're requiring. And I know that, for example, I believe it's the Bahamas and maybe even Aruba, if you're vaccinated, you no longer have to submit a PCR test. [00:05:41.530] - Kim Tate You can take a rapid test. Of course, it has to be a proven rapid test. You can't just take one of the Amazon ones and take a picture of it. It has to be like the EMED ones that you're talking about. But I think for some travelers, those are way easier than, like you said, making appointments and going in through a drive through or some kind of testing site. And then that stress over. Will I get the results in time, especially if for us out here, the Sundays really throw us off because they don't run the results on Sundays and do the testing. So if you need it, you kind of have to either wait for Monday or you have to go Saturday and hope that process works. So I just know that for us, it's kind of a big thing to keep an eye on. And I do think, like you that things are relaxing, and I think everybody's ready to get back to travel. So I feel like a lot of us traveled over the past year anyways, but it's becoming more accessible for people who maybe don't want the cost or the stress of testing. [00:06:35.070] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, I've talked to a couple of people recently. They were like, oh, I just paid $100 for a test, and then they dropped it the next day. The cost for a family to have to deal with that kind of testing is considerable. It's huge. [00:06:51.000] - Kim Tate Well, our in laws won't come visit us from Canada because they're a family of five and they didn't come last summer because even after the border opened, they can't pay for five test times $150 or whatever. It just was cost prohibitive. [00:07:06.880] - Tamara Gruber So, yeah, I like to be an optimist, and it's been hard for a couple of years. And I know things can change and all of that, but it is just nice to see positive news, positive things happening. And I'm excited. I'm excited for where all of our travels are going to take us this year. [00:07:26.130] - Kim Tate I definitely think that it's exciting and I think that it's people I mean, governments are seeing that the travel restrictions and the testing isn't necessarily catching it. It's still spreading like wildfire all throughout the country. I think that's a bigger thing. Like, I'm fully into watching things, but the fact that obviously Omicron moved through multiple countries, it really shows that we kind of all just need to get back to living and do our responsible parts. [00:07:54.940] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. Well, speaking of getting back to living, I think everyone has been thinking of the trips that they want to take. And so we've been trying to have some episodes that addressed some of that, like some of that inspirational dream travel and today we're going to talk to really a credit card expert, and she's going to help us figure out ways to earn our way to those dream trips using credit cards. So I'm very excited to kind of find some new strategies after talking to her today. [00:08:26.090] - Kim Tate Yeah, definitely. Jennifer is a true expert. So let's get talking to her. [00:08:38.270] - Tamara Gruber We are here this week with Jennifer Yellin. She's a travel and credit card expert, founder of travel site Deals We Like, and a freelance writer for The Points Guy and CNN Underscored. So, Jennifer, I feel a little bit odd to have such an expert here today, but welcome. [00:08:52.970] - Jennifer Yellin Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. [00:08:55.340] - Tamara Gruber Well, we get a lot of questions about credit cards and strategies. And there are always some of our favorite episodes, and people always have different advice. So it's really nice to talk to, like, people with different viewpoints and experience. But before we get into really talking about what credit cards families should be using to earn points, I was hoping you could inspire us a little bit with some of the trips or flights that you've been able to book using miles and points. Sure. [00:09:21.790] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. So this past two years, like many of you, probably has been a little bit of a pause in staying at home. But just more recently, my family was actually able to take our first trip since the Pandemic started to Aruba, and we were able to book that fully on points, utilize our JetBlue points. And with JetBlue, it's really cool that if the flight goes down in price, you can cancel now with your points and rebook it. So I was able to do that a few times and really get that price down really low. Booking with points, even during the Christmas time period, it was pretty awesome. And then we stayed at the Hyatt Regency there right on Palm Beach and used points as well. And my husband actually has global status, which is their top tier status. So we are able to apply a suite upgrade. And we're confirmed into a two bedroom suite. And my kids had their own bunkbed room, which I thought was so cool. [00:10:11.020] - Kim Tate That's amazing. That's definitely like a dream. Good job on that, because I know those suite rewards are kind of difficulties sometimes. I hear they are. [00:10:19.280] - Jennifer Yellin I mean, it wasn't available right away. I had a check online daily, maybe hourly leading up to it. And probably about two weeks before our trip. [00:10:26.930] - Kim Tate It opened up nice. [00:10:28.700] - Jennifer Yellin That was good. [00:10:29.960] - Kim Tate That definitely sounds good. I know Tamara was in Aruba, too, but I think those are the dream trips that everybody thinks about when they can do points on Airlines and hotels. So Unfortunately, I get overwhelmed at that aspect of, like, how to redeem. And so I have a whole bunch of points, but they're all just sitting in my account doing nothing for me. So I had a friend who's in the point space once say to me, what do you hate free money? Because you're not using your points. So I know that that's a good thing when you can use them. [00:10:57.520] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. Family travel, specifically points kind of early because we always are booking during the popular Christmas break, spring break time frame. And that's when everyone books early. So right now I have a bunch of trips planned for December break. Clearly, I'm not taking them all, but booking them right when the war calendar opens up has allowed like a word availability to be booked and it's easier to come by. [00:11:22.660] - Tamara Gruber That's a good tip. [00:11:23.840] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. As long as I can cancel them, I'm good. I probably have like four different trips. [00:11:28.850] - Kim Tate Yeah. It becomes you have to have a spreadsheet to manage it sometimes. [00:11:33.110] - Kim Tate Well, what do you think is some of the so let's start off by talking about what you think some of the criteria is for people to look for when they're choosing a credit card to start earning points because there are a lot of options and I know kind of what I'm thinking and what other people have said. So in your opinion, what should people look at? [00:11:50.580] - Jennifer Yellin I think it kind of depends. There's two types of credit cards out there in the points space. Forget about cash back, but there's those that allow you to easily redeem your points. Like capital One is the first one that comes to mind. You book your flight and you can kind of use your points to wipe away the charge. [00:12:10.730] - Kim Tate Like the eraser or something. [00:12:12.510] - Jennifer Yellin Exactly. Like at a very easy rate. You don't have to worry about award availability. Like you were saying that you don't want to deal with if the flight is available. The hotel is available on points. As long as you can book it with cash, you can use your points. Then there's one like the Chase Ultimate Rewards, which kind of has a few different programs, actually. But those are where you can redeem your points to various hotel and airline programs by transferring your points. But that takes kind of some motivation, I guess it takes some effort and work and you need to kind of learn the programs, but then you could actually get something of better value. So it kind of depends on what your personality is. [00:12:53.540] - Kim Tate Right. And then, of course, there's also, like specific airline credit cards, like Delta or I have an Alaska card just because it gives me some perks. But it's funny because on Alaska I still book with my Amex because Alaska pays three times, but Amex pays five times. So it's kind of funny how you have to think about that stuff. [00:13:10.330] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. Other things I look for is I try to keep my annual fees low because I have a decent amount of credit cards. But are there perks that come with a credit card, like a free night certificate? So like Hyatt offers a free night certificate. It's capped at a category four, but I always find that that helps pay for the annual fee and actually allows me to come out ahead. So are there any of those other bonuses or perks that you'll utilize? [00:13:35.210] - Tamara Gruber I used to have a Marriott card, and I felt like sometimes I ended up not always using that voucher for the free night because then you would look at it and when I wanted to book, it was only like $100, $150. And you're like, oh, I'm going to save it for something else. And then it never ended up happening with all these things you definitely have to stay on top of make sure you're using the perks and the bonuses that you get. Right. [00:13:58.270] - Jennifer Yellin Definitely. Because if not, you could be spending a good amount on just fees where you're really not worth it. [00:14:04.160] - Tamara Gruber I mean, I totally admit that we've had the Capital One venture card for years and years, and the Holy Racer thing is just super simple. [00:14:12.670] - Kim Tate Yeah. That's what Paul likes. He loves that one. Just for the ease of it. [00:14:16.910] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. And we've also been using a higher credit card. And even though we're not getting the best value every time you make a purchase, it helps us earn global status, which, as I've mentioned before, is like their top tier status. So by earning that status, because every time you spend, I think $5,000 on the card, you get two nights towards status. So that, combined with staying at hotels, allows us to use that and then kind of get these awesome perks. So you kind of got to look at the pros and cons of every car and see what works best for you. Whenever anyone asks me, my simple answer sometimes is it depends. [00:14:51.780] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. We talked to who is Ed Pizza, right. A few months ago, Kim, and he was really recommending Hyatt as a great program for families. So I'm glad that you brought that one up and like ways to kind of maximize that because their point redemption is certainly much more generous than, as I mentioned, the Marriott card. [00:15:11.380] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. Ed and I are big Hyatt people for sure. [00:15:15.100] - Tamara Gruber Well, it sounds like you gave a couple of good starter cards for someone that's interested in travel but maybe doesn't have any particular destination in mind, or they just want to be able to use it, like travel generally. I know some people are like, really into Southwest, do everything Southwest. We had somebody on that talked about that in the past. But are there any other kind of starter cards that you would recommend for someone that doesn't want to be loyal to a particular brand or a particular airline? [00:15:43.570] - Jennifer Yellin Sure. Yes. If you don't want to be loyal and you kind of want to be agnostic and have to diversify your portfolio, I guess the Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great card. I wouldn't say the sign up bonus is as high as it has been over the past year. So if you're not in a rush, you might want to hold off. But that is a good program where it's simple. They have really good transfer partners such as Hyatt, United, JetBlue, and then once you get more into it, you can explore some of the international airline partners as well. But it's simple. Everything transfers as one to one, and you can kind of figure out what your needs are and then transfer to the program. Or you can book through their travel portal. I think it's run by Expedia. It's the exact same process as booking as any other Expedia hotel you would or Air flight. And you can utilize your points that way, too. It's at a fixed value, so they offer a good amount of opportunities. [00:16:37.550] - Tamara Gruber And are they one that has a really broad portfolio of Airlines? I remember I used to do that a lot with Amex, and then they had gotten rid of a lot of their partners and we kind of dropped Amex for a while. Some still have limited partnerships with the one to one transfers. [00:16:55.310] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, I think they have a broad number of transfer partners. It's on the airline front, off the top of my head. United JetBlue, British Airways, which a lot of people will book domestically. You can book their British Airways points using on American Airlines, so they're a partner. So it's really easy to travel domestically even with an international airline. And then there are some other international carriers, too, in Southwest actually is one of them as well. So I think they have a good amount. There are definitely ones that are better than others just because of not all points are pretty equal. So if you transfer one to one to Hyatt versus one to one to Marriott, Hyatt points are 20,000 Hyatt points is probably equivalent to 60,000 Marriott points. So it's slightly different when you're transferring in a one to one rate. You want to get the best value. I'd say. [00:17:45.920] - Kim Tate Yeah. I think that it's good to mention that you do have to be mindful of the transfer partners because that is where you can get into. There's a whole it's kind of like couponing, right? Where the people who are like those extreme couponers, they knew everything and they could stack stuff. And I think that people who really get into this are good at stacking stuff because it's like, oh, I know for a fact that British Airways has really high taxes. So maybe you want to fly Air Lingus into Ireland and then get to there's little things like that that you learn over time. But it is nice to have the multiple transfer partners knowing that you can kind of optimize the way the credit cards work for you. Do you have any tips? Because I know this is a big thing in the point space about deciding if you do decide to have multiple cards, how do you decide what expenses to put on each card? [00:18:29.730] - Jennifer Yellin So I have many cards, probably too many, but I kind of look at category bonuses. So some credit cards will give increased payout for gas, some will for restaurants, some for travel, supermarkets, your common purchases. And so I kind of lay it out and I actually have what's it called tape with Sharpie written on which one to use for various types of purchases. And that has helped, but that can definitely get overwhelming. I'd say if you don't want to be overwhelmed, you're probably better off with a credit card like the Capital Adventure that just offers you two points for every dollar you spent. It doesn't matter what you're purchasing. If you're buying a toy for your child, purchasing travel, going to grocery store, anything, it's the same return. So it really depends on maybe your personality and how much you want to spend on this. But if you're willing to put in the effort, you can definitely maximize every single purchase you make. But it will require a few different credit cards. [00:19:35.410] - Tamara Gruber I like that tip, though, of like putting a little note on them in some way because I have a terrible memory when it comes to numbers. And so I could see myself having a spreadsheet somewhere that says use this one for gas and this one for that. But until it becomes like routine and a habit, I would be like which 01:00 a.m. I supposed to use again. So like a little tip, right? [00:19:56.480] - Kim Tate So many people in the point space on the groups, a new quarter comes around and they change out and they have those label makers like the Dymo label makers, and they put them on their cards, which card to use? And they do it for their spouses too. That maybe aren't into it as much because sure enough, I think of that. I'm like, which one do I want to use for dining? What do I want to pay here? [00:20:24.450] - Tamara Gruber I'm thinking like when you use Apple Pay or you do online and your card saved, you can name them. Usually just name it like Amex or Visa. You could name it like grocery store, dining, gas. [00:20:36.650] - Kim Tate All the gas probably isn't needed online. [00:20:39.090] - Tamara Gruber So that kind of covers some of the general travel. I know some people have some dream trips in mind. Like say, okay, I want to go to the Maldives or I want to go to Tokyo. Like what is a good strategy to get me to a particular destination? Is that better to then look at a specific card for the airline? That might be best for that? What would your approach to that kind of scenario be? [00:21:05.080] - Kim Tate Absolutely. [00:21:05.600] - Jennifer Yellin Whenever I give anyone advice, I always actually find it's easier for me to help them when they have a specific trip in mind, because then you can have a strategy for that particular destination. So I know it was a few years back, but a friend of mine wanted to go on our honeymoon to the Maldives. Like you had mentioned, it's definitely a quite extensive adventure. So this is a prime opportunity to use your points and miles. And I said, well, the Hyatt actually has a great property there get the highest credit card. I can't remember what the actual bonus was at the time, but right off the bat, it was either two or three nights free at the Maldives. This was many years ago when before the point rates went up a little bit. But that was probably a $3,000 in savings. So I think if you know exactly where you want to stay, let's say it's the Hyatt, then look to see what the Hyatt credit card is offering at the time. Look to see what maybe the Chase Sapphire Preferred is offering at the time, since you can transfer the Hyatt and see which one is going to give you a better welcome offer for that particular destination in mind. [00:22:07.650] - Kim Tate Yeah, I know we were planning a trip to Tokyo, and Japan Airlines is a partner with Alaska, and Alaska is my airline of choice here in Seattle. And so that was easy for me because I was kind of banking those miles and I got the Alaska card because my status gives me free bags, but I was able to get free bags for my kids as well. And all that. And those points really helped in the way get us our Tokyo flights that we didn't get to use, but still there. [00:22:32.320] - Tamara Gruber You got them? [00:22:33.530] - Kim Tate Yeah. [00:22:33.910] - Jennifer Yellin I did something similar last year about probably eleven months ago. I knew I wanted to go to Hawaii over this past December break. We didn't go, therefore, we went to Aruba. But I purposely just got the Alaska credit card purely for them, based in Boston. Boston. I don't think I've actually ever flown Alaskan Airlines in my life, actually. But there was a points available I saw. So I immediately applied for the credit card and both my name and my husband's name. And actually I applied for the personal credit card and the business credit card in both of us. And I knew that immediately would give us both a one way flight there. And I already had American Airlines booked on the way home with points. So I applied for that card for that one specific destination. I now have all these Alaska airline miles, and I know that I'll just use them at another point of time to hopefully go to Hawaii again. [00:23:21.250] - Kim Tate Yeah. [00:23:22.350] - Jennifer Yellin So I did that myself, too. [00:23:24.870] - Kim Tate So let's talk about we talked about booking flights and using points because this is something that I've struggled with a lot. When you are for a family, when you are wanting to use points, do you think it's easier to just always search for four tickets? Say you're a family four. Tamara is a family, three, whatever you are, your whole family search for tickets with those points? Or do you think it's better to be willing to pay for some and get tickets for some? Because I know that I've struggled with that, especially because as a status person, I almost want to buy my ticket, which is what I did for our spring break. I bought my ticket and I use points on my family's three tickets because now I'll earn miles on that trip and they don't care about anything else. So do you have any tips about that for using points with a family? [00:24:10.340] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, we actually do the same. We fly JetBlue a lot now. And my husband had status and actually they extended his status. So he still has his status, which actually isn't worth as much anymore. But we'll pay for his ticket and then use the points to purchase tickets for myself and my two kids. And then Jeff, who allows you if you call them and the tickets are booked within a few minutes of one another, they'll kind of link them kind of for you. So that's a strategy we use with JetBlue and Southwest. There's no capacity control. So as long as there's a paid ticket available, you can go ahead and use your points. It doesn't matter, unlike some other Airlines. But with other Airlines, sometimes I do recommend just looking at one ticket at a time, because if there's one or two tickets, you could do that. The only problem is when you're booking with multiple itineraries. And sometimes if there's schedule changes, the Airlines aren't as helpful, I guess is the right term to keep families together, necessarily if they are booked on separate itineraries. So that's just one thing to keep in mind if you're booking under multiple reservations. [00:25:15.090] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, we've actually had that happen to us a number of times. We used to travel on points much more often and we were separated. And it's one of those things that especially when you book far out in advance, they tend to reshuffle flights fairly often and equipment, and so you can easily get moved around. And it's something I'm sensitive to because I have a child who is now older, but when she was younger was also a nervous liar. So there's, like, no way I would have wanted her separated from me. I think it's a good tip to say call, tell them to link the PNR numbers on the itinerary, but it's definitely not foolproof. So if it's something that you're concerned about, definitely something to keep in mind. [00:25:59.070] - Jennifer Yellin Right. And my thought is if I'm willing to pay for two or three of the passengers and I'm probably willing to pay for all of them and then use the points at another time, I personally like to book with everything either paid or points just to keep everything clean. [00:26:15.750] - Kim Tate And I know that when you do talk about just for people who are maybe a little more intermediate or advanced well, if they're advanced they already know this. But I know that a lot of people use Expert Flyer, which is a website. You can actually pay a yearly membership fee. I think it's like $49 a year. $99 a year. I don't remember what it is. And they somehow have some magic API that looks for special award availability that's coded a certain way. And so if you are trying to play a game, I know some people set up like alerts so that if they're watching a specific flight or a specific destination, they can kind of if an award ticket becomes available, they can hurry and log in and book it. [00:26:57.950] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, absolutely. That is one good technique. And another thing I've kind of found helpful at times is using an award booking service. I know that seems silly from someone who kind of knows as well, but specifically with international Airlines, it can be beyond overwhelming. And they have all the tools and they have the same API's. And I don't know what they do in the background, but sometimes they're able to find ways that you didn't think of to go ahead and book an award internationally using partner programs. And it can actually save you points. So if you have points on one Airlines, but then also points in a flexible program like the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, which awards you ultimate reward points, you actually could potentially transfer your points to a program and then book your itinerary for less points than booking with another program. So there's so many different things to know, I guess, when it comes to that. But there are services out there. [00:27:53.490] - Kim Tate Yeah. Do you have any? Because I know a friend that I kind of met once that's in the space. And at one point when we were looking at Japan and I was trying to decide if I was going to do it myself and he charged like 150 or something to do it for you. But do you know what those typically charge or what? Is there a top one or two that you know by name that you could mention? Sure. [00:28:15.120] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. That price point sounds about right. But then there are other services that have kind of come out over the past few years. So one is Point me, it used to be called Juicy Miles, and instead of them actually booking it for you, you can kind of like Expert Flyer in a sense, somewhat. You put in your itinerary and it kind of lists out all these different options for you. So it's all system process. There's no one physically doing it for you. And that's a much less expensive option. I think that you can charge a monthly fee or maybe just you can do it a one time or even a seven day trial period. I think so. Those are some good options, too, because it's less expensive. But it will give you all these international Airlines that you do in point programs that you probably didn't even know existed. And how to book. The only problem is some of them are a little bit more challenging to actually transfer to and book. But by quick Google searching, there's, like everything out there that you can figure out on how to transfer points and everything. It's time consuming. [00:29:16.410] - Jennifer Yellin It's really time consuming. And sometimes, I don't know, it might be easier. [00:29:19.740] - Kim Tate That's what I'm saying at this point. I would pay someone $250 to do it for me because I do know how time consuming. [00:29:26.970] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. And usually you don't pay unless it works. Right. [00:29:30.550] - Kim Tate Unless they get it for you. [00:29:31.880] - Jennifer Yellin Right. If you're not happy with it, no harm. [00:29:34.500] - Kim Tate Yeah, that's good tip. And I think also just a heads up for some people realize that a lot of these, like, I know Amex and Ultimate Rewards, a lot of their transfer partners take 24 to 72 hours for the points to kick into your account, which can be a big issue, especially if you're like, oh, this airfare just became available. Now I have to transfer the points, but then you're waiting there two, three days. I'm hoping that they hit your account so you can buy that award ticket. It's very stressful. I actually did that for Alaska to get our Japan tickets. I needed like 50,000 more and I had to transfer some. And I was like, oh, my gosh, please get in my account before these disappear. [00:30:09.750] - Tamara Gruber That's a really good point. [00:30:11.620] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. If you like Google also, I don't know why has it, but if you Google, like, time to transfer points from one program to another, there's so many experts out there, points people that have kind of taken all the data and put it all together. So some of them are instant. Some of them could even take seven days. But you could probably get a good inkling based on what these other people have put together. [00:30:35.190] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. Well, it's one of these spaces where there are so many experts, but trying to sort through it all on your own is definitely confusing. That idea of being able to hire someone to help you. And thinking about that, I'm such an advanced planner, you kind of want to be like, oh, well, I'm probably going to use this. I'll just switch the points over now, but then you can't switch them back. [00:30:58.030] - Jennifer Yellin That is a good tip. Once you transfer points out of, like, Capital One or City or American Express Chase, I think those are the three main ones. They're in that program of choice. They are not going back in. So once flexible, points are no longer flexible. [00:31:12.770] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. One way. [00:31:14.020] - Jennifer Yellin Yes. [00:31:15.690] - Tamara Gruber Well, we talked a little bit about some ways that you can maximize kind of your earning potential through these. But maybe we can just touch on that a little bit more deeply because I feel like it gets challenging for families that don't have someone that's like a real road warrior that's traveling a lot to kind of build up points simply from travel. So obviously you need to find other ways to earn those points. So maybe you can just touch on a few of those strategies. [00:31:41.670] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. So one major way is to sign up for every single shopping portal. Ebates is one that's always advertised and that will give you cash back, although you can now have those points go into American Express. But similar to ebay, you can sign up and receive points to American Airlines or United Alaska. All the Airlines have their own shopping portal. So all you have to do is Google Alaska Airlines shopping portal and it'll bring you up. And a lot of them even have those widgets on your computer where every time you go to a site, if you were to Gap.com, it'll pop up and say kind of give you a reminder, remember to shop through the Alaska Port. I don't know if that. [00:32:22.620] - Kim Tate Yeah, the extensions. Like the Chrome extensions. Yeah, exactly. And I think Ebates, just so everyone knows it's called Racketon. Now, if you're confused about that. No, it's okay. You're good. I still think of them as ebay. So I wanted everyone to yes. [00:32:35.800] - Jennifer Yellin Ebay was definitely a softer name. So every time you make a purchase online, there's no reason not to earn points unless it's more of a boutique store. But with your mainstream stores, even if you're only earning one point per dollar spent that's one point more than you would have earned otherwise. And sometimes if you sign up for their emails, if you spend $200, earn $1,000 bonus. They have these types of bonuses all the time, especially around the holidays, Black Friday, even randomly, the long holiday weekends, like Memorial Day, Labor Day, big shopping weekends, and just sometimes out of the blue. So there's ways to really accrue a lot of miles from home. [00:33:17.530] - Kim Tate Absolutely. [00:33:18.420] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. [00:33:18.790] - Kim Tate That's one of my favorite tips. I do that a lot and I really like it. And there's these websites now, the one I use the most is like Cashback Holic. And they'll compare. So if you're going to you're like, okay, I'm about ready to buy. I'm going to book this Marriott stay. You can type in Marriott and it'll show you like who, because I belong to Racketon and Top Cashback and I can compare those two. I try not to get into too many of them, so I mainly use those two. But I'm like, oh, Top Cashback is 6%. Racketon is only four. I'm going to go to Top Cashback so you can get really nerdy and kind of compare them also. [00:33:49.190] - Jennifer Yellin Oh, totally. Absolutely. And EV Rewards is another one that will also compare for you is great. [00:33:57.090] - Tamara Gruber I totally admit that. I completely suck at this. I don't use any of these. And every time you read about it, you're like, oh yeah, I should do that. And I just get excited if I actually learn how to use one of the bonuses on my credit card, like get $50, $50. [00:34:16.510] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah. And another thing you want to do, I mean, this is separate from the shopping portal is I remember I think it was the last time I received an email from Barclaycard. And they are the bank with JetBlue. And it was like ridiculous offer spent $2,000 on your card over three months and earn I think it was 40,000 points. It was a targeted offer. I got it. My husband didn't. I was like, all right, moving all my spent to my JetBlue card for the next few months. Right. And they're just paying attention just helps you earn these increased offers. So there's definitely ways from home without flying to earn points and miles. [00:34:55.990] - Kim Tate I've definitely been getting better about when I'm about ready to either go on a trip or go shopping with my girls or something along those lines. I log into my Chase and my Amex accounts online and I look because they have an offer section because you have to add them to your card. [00:35:09.740] - Jennifer Yellin Yes. [00:35:10.010] - Kim Tate And I don't think people always realize that. So if it's like, oh, Levi's is having a deal, I add it to my card because maybe they're going to want Levi's jeans while we're on back to school shopping or, oh, guess what? Hilton is doing this special. If you spend if you stay two nights, you get whatever the case may be. And I don't think people do that enough. But it's a good way to really I think if you want to get serious about it, you should log in often to the offers page because they reset every month. [00:35:34.850] Yeah. [00:35:35.740] - Jennifer Yellin Every day you're going to laugh. But American Express offers used to update every day at three in the morning. And I'm not joking. And so when my kids were small and I was up in the middle of the night non stop, I was like, so excited. And that was part of my daily routine. Some people have their morning coffee. I would look at my American Express offers. I'm not even kidding. That's awesome. Daily. But I will say it used to be you could add them to every single American Express credit card you have. I can't remember when, but a few years ago, it's now just one per account. So it's not as generous as it used to be. But I used to check them every single morning. And I'd saved thousands of dollars this way because it's not earning points. Well, actually, there are offers that you can earn points, but some of them are cashback. So now there's either cash back or increase point offers. So it depends on the offer and the type of card you have, because some cards might have it somewhere, but they're really great way to earn points or offset your purchases. [00:36:33.850] - Kim Tate And like you said, so many are targeted. Like Tamara got this offer for a Marriott offer at one point on her Amex and mine. I didn't have it and I'm convinced it's because I had the Amex Marriott card. [00:36:42.870] - Tamara Gruber I don't know. [00:36:44.830] - Jennifer Yellin You'll never know. And sometimes you can even I remember I can't remember the exact offer, but it was like grocery stores and I spend $500 getting $100 offer, something like that. And I wasn't going to make $500 purchase in once because sometimes it's on a single purchase. So I just bought a $500 gift card there and then just use the gift card over the course of my shopping fees. So there are ways to kind of I don't know if scheme the system is the right term, but play the game. [00:37:13.460] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, I do what you do, Kim, is when I'm shopping online, I'm like, wait, that might have an offer. Let me look. But the other thing with the gift cards is just simply like gifts, right. We give gifts and I buy gift cards for people all the time. And it's just like if it's something that you're spending anyway, just find a way to use to earn points on it, right? [00:37:34.430] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. Or be the one to pay the bill at the restaurant and have everyone to Mo you buy the class gifts or anything like that. Like everyone wonders why I'm always a class mom. It's to accrue all the money and then I can put all the purchases on her credit card. [00:37:49.320] - Tamara Gruber Love it. [00:37:49.910] - Jennifer Yellin Little things like that. [00:37:51.290] - Kim Tate Well, I know another big way to maximize points is with sign up bonuses. So could you give any final tips for people that are thinking of getting a new card, anything they should know about sign up bonuses or things to watch for, and then wrap it up with any final tips that you think people need to know about credit card points? [00:38:07.580] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. So one thing you want to make sure of is when you sign up for a credit card, make sure it doesn't have to be the best offer because you might be waiting around for a year for the best offer. But make sure it's a really good offer. I know we were speaking before and you said you apply for an offer that was like half of what it typically is. So when you see an offer, make sure it's a good value and it's going to provide you with enough points that you'll be happy with that. Even if a better offer comes along in a month or two. Pay attention to best offer. Some banks, actually, if you apply within a few weeks or maybe even a month, if you call them up and say this better offer just came out, will you match it? They may or may not match it for you, but it's always worth a try. You never know. Some banks have kind of different fools and they change every so often also. But if you're looking for a credit card right now and specifically for family travel. The Southwest Credit Card actually has one of the best offers where you'll earn the Southwest Companion Pass. [00:39:05.500] - Jennifer Yellin I don't know if you guys have discussed the Southwest Companion Pass much on the podcast, but it's definitely one of my favorite travel features. And it allows someone to fly with you for free in a limited number of times. I've been a passholder for the past 13 or 14 years at this point. And it's like the most amazing thing ever. So that's one of my favorite offers right now. If you live in a Southwest hub, if you don't live near Southwest, then it's not worth it. [00:39:33.520] - Kim Tate And I'll chime in and just say that we did cover quite extensively about that Southwest offer and stuff with Lynne and that's episode 181. If anybody wants to go back and listen to that awesome. [00:39:43.960] - Jennifer Yellin Yes, she's an expert and everything's Southwest as well. So that's one thing right now, credit card offers are changing all the time. I think Marriott just came out with something last week, United as well. So it's like hard to even keep track. But sometimes even just like Googling best credit card offers from the experts. You'll get pages, but make sure it's really the best and not just them pushing you on the best when it might not be. [00:40:11.950] - Kim Tate Yeah, I definitely think that I've done that where especially if I have a big purchase, like, oh, I'm buying a new camera or we're about ready to take a big trip and I'm going to be putting a lot of charges. I kind of go and I say, okay, best credit card offers for March 2022 or whatever. And of course, it's the points guy, nerd wallet, upgraded points. [00:40:31.310] - Tamara Gruber Like all those guys. [00:40:32.280] - Kim Tate And so it's kind of good to just read through those and kind of see which ones are popping up. And they definitely, you'll know, because it's not just an offer. Like they'll write a whole article about this amazing offer is one of the best we've seen lately, that sort of stuff. [00:40:45.640] - Jennifer Yellin Right? Absolutely. And also just another tip is make sure you can meet the minimum spend requirements. Some of the credit cards are 1000 $2,000 in three months, six months. But the Capital One Venture X card right now, for example, is like, I think it's $10,000. So that might not be obtainable for most families. [00:41:04.130] - Kim Tate Exactly. [00:41:04.910] - Jennifer Yellin So it just makes it something you can do. [00:41:07.420] - Kim Tate Those business cards can sometimes have really high spends. Because I've looked at doing a business card, sometimes I'm just like, there's just no way I can spend that right now. [00:41:15.240] - Jennifer Yellin Right. [00:41:16.170] - Kim Tate Although I know that's a whole other expert level of people who do credit or gift card buy and resell to do that. So that's a whole other level. [00:41:24.990] - Jennifer Yellin Yes, it is. If you're interested in that, go to Greg at the Frequent Mile or he is crazy when it comes to this. But awesome attitude. [00:41:32.530] - Tamara Gruber One of the things that I'm thinking about. As I'm listening to you guys, I'm thinking about what I have an upcoming trip where I'm going to be spending a lot of money and some of that's already on one of my credit cards. But maybe I should look into what bonuses are up right now. But it makes me think about when you want to churn your cards. And we obviously talked about signing up, you and your husband for a card and signing up for this card in that card. And it's like, at what point are too many cards? Like too many? Like, how long do you keep it before you get rid of it? Are there considerations to think about in terms of your credit or just eligibility for future cards? That just to make people aware of? [00:42:10.930] Sure. [00:42:11.520] - Jennifer Yellin So as long as you're responsible with your credit cards, for the most part, credit cards are not going to hurt your credit. I mean, you'll see people who have 50 credit cards and they still have these awesome 800 credit scores. If you're applying for a mortgage to get a house in a few weeks, don't apply for a credit card right now. Right. So there's definitely or even any loan I wouldn't recommend applying for a credit card. Wait. And then go and get it. In regards to when you should cancel, if you're not getting value out of your credit card, cancel it's not going to hurt you or downgrade to a no annual fee. For example, if you have the Chase Sapphire preferred card and you find that the $95 annual fee is not worth it anymore, first of all, call and see if they'll do something for you. A lot of times they might say, okay, if you spend $1,000, we'll give you a $95 credit. You just never hurt. I know. Last year I think I ended up getting about $500 back from American Express amongst a lot of my credit cards. I know COVID played a hand in that. [00:43:16.470] - Jennifer Yellin But always call and see. And if not, then see if there's a car that you can downgrade it to, and then there won't be a Ding on your credit report. I mean, it also depends on what your current credit score is. And sometimes you might get a Ding, but it will go back up in a few months. So there's a few factors depending on. [00:43:34.050] - Kim Tate Yeah, it's like ten point Ding, and it does pop right back up because we've had that opening up a credit card kind of opens up. [00:43:40.310] - Jennifer Yellin Gives you more credit, which creditors like, too. [00:43:43.520] - Kim Tate So opening up credit cards is not a bad thing unless you're applying for a big mortgage. They don't like to see your capital, your accessibility too high, right? [00:43:53.510] - Jennifer Yellin Absolutely. And then Chase also has Chase and American Express have different rules in place. So I'm not sure if you've discussed Chase is 524. [00:44:01.800] - Kim Tate Yeah, we talked about that. [00:44:03.530] - Jennifer Yellin So you've applied for five or more cards. Usually they're personal cards, but sometimes they throw business cards into it, too. Chase will automatically not approve you for another credit card. I've seen some reports that that might be changing, actually. So we'll kind of see what happens over the next few months. But that's one thing to keep in mind. It's five or more cards in 24 months, I think I said. And then American Express also doesn't allow you to get the welcome offer for I believe it's like once in a lifetime, but once it falls off your credit report, they might not know. So might be like seven years. So those are things to kind of keep in mind. That's why you want to apply when the offer is the best, because if it's not and you're going to be losing out on points if a new offer comes around and then you're not able to get it and you're no longer a card holder. [00:44:48.390] - Tamara Gruber I have one more question for you, because now I'm just going to use you as my personal source for information if you want to get an additional card for someone in your family. So, for example, I have a 17 year old that we've been waiting till she turns 18 to get a credit card for her. And we've been debating like, do you get her own credit card or do we put her on one of ours? Do we get another one of the capital one cards? Any tips for if you're adding somebody in your family, maybe a first card? Is there any advantage, like kind of getting points from them versus kind of setting them up on their own? [00:45:24.660] Sure. [00:45:25.100] - Jennifer Yellin So just remember, if someone is an authorized user, you're responsible for all of their credit card habits. So if the credit card bill is not paid or if anything happens, it kind of can hit you. So just something to keep in mind with teenagers. But I actually personally don't know a lot about the high school age and what credit cards you can and cannot apply for for that age. I'm not there yet, fortunately. But setting someone up as an authorized user, I think some credit cards you can maybe do as early as 13, you can add them on. And that actually helps them as well build their own credit score. So it's always a great thing to get add on authorized users if they're not eligible to get their own credit card. And then when they are to get them, there are various student credit cards, and a lot of times those comes with $300 spend limits or very low thresholds that you might want for your child. But yeah, definitely getting them set up will only help their credit score, which can then ultimately help them in their 20s to apply for a credit card. [00:46:26.470] - Jennifer Yellin That will be useful. But there are a lot of student credit cards out there that do give you points and miles. [00:46:32.810] - Kim Tate They do come with a really high annual fee or not annual fee interest rate. Normally, that's the only bad thing. We actually added my husband and my daughter, both as authorized users with my Amex Platinum Tamara, because of the lounge access. So now, especially if they're changing it, we're going to get Mia. And that'll be my maxed on three, because with Amex Platinum, you get three authorized users for $175 total. So you pay the $175 and then they get all the lounge benefits as well. Are they changing the lounge that you can no longer guests unless you spend like $75,000 starting in January of 2023? I think you don't get anywhere. Is that right, Jennifer? I think that's right. [00:47:15.840] - Jennifer Yellin That I don't know. [00:47:17.100] - Kim Tate Okay. [00:47:17.820] - Jennifer Yellin Sorry. [00:47:18.780] - Kim Tate No, you're fine. [00:47:19.580] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, but I will say that the expensive credit cards a lot of times you have to pay to add an authorized user, but no annual fee or low annual fee credit cards. Usually you can add a few authorized users for no fee. [00:47:33.380] - Kim Tate Great. Well, one of our questions that we ask all of our guests is what do you wear when you travel? So do you have any favorite brands that you want to tell us about when you travel? [00:47:41.020] - Jennifer Yellin Sure. I travel as comfortably as possibly. And I also wear my everyday clothes, which consists of black as leader pants, which is side pockets, like those leggings. And then you can put your cell phone or any cars. Side pockets are a necessity. Once I found them, like two years ago, I can never go back. And sneakers or flip flops, depending on the weather. Nothing fun and exciting. [00:48:05.480] - Tamara Gruber Well, you're brave wearing flip flops on the plane. [00:48:07.370] - Kim Tate My feet are always freezing. [00:48:09.230] - Jennifer Yellin Yeah, that is a good point. It depends on the length of it's. Just like an hour flight that's going to be different. But you're right. I used to travel for work every single week for many years. And I would always be traveling like those high heels and hated every second of it. I would get off the plane and go straight to the client site for the week. And now I just want to be comfortable. [00:48:28.770] - Kim Tate And everyone has those little packable ballet flats that you can just pop in and out. Yeah. [00:48:34.610] - Tamara Gruber I'm happy, though. So work travel days are behind me, too. And just like work dress in general has changed. [00:48:41.210] - Jennifer Yellin Oh, yeah. I got rid of all of my stuff, never going back. [00:48:44.640] - Kim Tate Good. [00:48:45.030] - Tamara Gruber Well, can you remind our listeners where they can find you online or learn more about points? [00:48:51.120] - Kim Tate Absolutely. [00:48:51.940] - Jennifer Yellin So you can find me at my blog Deals We Like. You can also find me on Twitter or Facebook. Everything is at Deals We Like. And then also I'm a freelance contributor at the Point Sky and CNN Underscore. So I have some great articles there as well. That where you can learn more about credit cards, family travel, anything in the points and miles world. [00:49:10.850] - Tamara Gruber Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge with us. It's always really great when we can get an expert on and just kind of brainstorm some ideas. Hopefully people will have something new that they can try to get them a little bit closer to their next kind of dream trip. [00:49:25.130] - Kim Tate Thanks for having me. It was great chatting with you. [00:49:27.320] - Announcer Thanks. [00:49:27.630] - Tamara Gruber You too. [00:49:31.850] - Kim Tate Well, as always, thanks for joining us for another week here and I have a little request. Tamara, I was looking at our podcast page the other day and I noticed that we were almost at 100 reviews. We are really close so I'm going to do a little bag from all of our lovely listeners and ask you guys if you're willing if you love our show, if you would leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast app, the one I looked on was Apple podcast. But wherever you're at or listen to us, if you'd leave us a positive review, we'd love it. We love hearing from you guys and I'd love to see that switch to 100 reviews. [00:50:05.780] - Tamara Gruber That would be great. I know we've been at this for almost six years and actually by the time it comes out it will be six years and we're just really bad about asking for reviews. We definitely appreciate it. I know some podcasts every day it's like the first thing that you hear is like leave us a review but we would appreciate it. We'll give you shout outs online. We'll read them especially if they're nice, but even if they're not nice, we will read them mindful of it but otherwise stay tuned because next episode we're going to be talking about sustainable travel and I think that is also on a lot of people's minds as we're getting back out there and how to be responsible and thinking about things in a more sustainable way. So join us next time talk to you again soon. Bye.

There's no end to new platforms popping up and claiming to be the next great source of traffic to your business. First there was Yahoo. Then Google. Then Facebook. Then Twitter. Then Instagram. Then TikTok. Then… well, the list goes on and it will forever be growing too. So, how do you decide which one to test and how to gauge the success or failure of these new exciting ways to spend your marketing dollars to generate business? Luckily Ryan is here is to break it all down for us. TRANSCRIPT: Jon MacDonald : Hey Ryan, welcome to another episode of Drive and Convert. Today we're going to talk about shiny new traffic sources. Right. There's no end to the new platforms popping up and they're always claiming to be the next great source of traffic for your business. So, we're going way back first though is with Yahoo, then Google then Facebook then Twitter then Instagram now everyone's on TikTok. I mean I'm not but everybody is supposedly. Definitely feeling old these days based on these stats. Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Me neither. Jon MacDonald : But look, the list goes on and on. And I'm sure I've left a lot off of that list over the history and it will forever be growing too, right? So, what I'd love to get schooled on today from you is how do you decide which one to test? And how do you gauge the success or failure of each of these new and exciting shiny objects to spend your marketing dollars on to generate revenue? It's a lot, right? But look, with so many social networks and traffic sources popping up seemingly every week, how do you know if it's a good place to spend money? Ryan Garrow: The real answer is, always it depends. But that's always the answer we give everybody no matter what we're talking about in the digital marketing world. It's my least favorite answer but it has to be the one you give every time and with context. And when you're looking at all of these wonderful platforms and companies that you can spend money on the ads, I think the first step is to really understand what the platform is. Who's on it? What are they trying to do? What's their goal of being on that platform? Because we all really understand Google and that was always a pretty easy one. Like I'm on Google to find something either information or a product that's why I'm there. And it makes a lot of sense logically saying, "I get it, if I am selling that product or I provide an answer to that I want to show when they're searching for that." There's a lot of intent there. If you're selling houses you might not necessarily want to spend a lot of time on TikTok, generally. TikTok is skewing. It's getting older, I think, as young people blow platforms open like in Facebook and Instagram did and then older people take them over because I think they're being cool by getting on them. Jon MacDonald : I saw a stat today about Facebook that something like 70% of people over 60 are on Facebook, which is the highest user percentage base. It's crazy. Ryan Garrow: Oh, [crosstalk 00:02:57]. Jon MacDonald : We used to tell our customers you want to convert older folks and high income, you would advertise on Microsoft Bing. Because they're using Internet Explorer out of the box and not changing the default search engine, right? So- Ryan Garrow: Correct. Jon MacDonald : ... But now it's definitely Facebook too. Like it's crazy. Ryan Garrow: What's sad, well I'm not going to say sad, but you have to advertise through Facebook to really target Instagram. You have to use that Facebook ads platform like Joyful Dirt, which hopefully I'll be able to bring this back later to talk about one of my issues with the Joyful Dirt brand. But Joyful Dirt doesn't have anything going on on Facebook really. Instagram because we're targeting millennial plant moms generally, I mean obviously anybody can buy the product, but we get very little and to no interaction on Facebook and it doesn't work when we market on there. But at least you're understanding that, right? If you are selling arthritis cream you want to be on Facebook. And we've got a company that sells arthritis cream and does really well on Facebook. So understanding who's on it, where it's going, and then also just how they're interacting. If it's short-form video like TikTok, then if you're not prepared to make short-form video you're probably not going to be tremendously successful in that space. Do you have a personality? Like if you're just a brand throwing ads up randomly on TikTok with no face to the brand, I can't imagine it's going to do well. And I think in early on you've got these platforms that you have to really get into the platform, I think, and understand how you're interacting. And so if I was going to spend my money on TikTok step one is I would go join TikTok. Like I'm not there, I don't want to be there but that would be understand who's there. And in theory until you get in there you won't even know that, you have to get in there and start watching TikTok. You know I was never a Snapchat person either, I just wait for Instagram to copy their stuff and then I'll see if I like it. But again, understanding where the ads are being put there can really help you figure out does this conceptually make sense for my brand? Jon MacDonald : So I'm hearing from you if I could summarize two things, one is know who your target audience is and where they're at and what platform and then that's a good place. And then B is test it, right? You really don't have a choice you just need to test it. Throw some money at it and see what sticks if you think you have a good understanding of your consumers being on those channels. Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Like once you can advertise in there and decide that this is based on who's on it, who my demographic is or target market is go spend some money. And it could be that you're trying to open up a new audience, so it's you're testing it for that. Like if you want to sell to teenage kids TikTok may be a great place to start pushing into. Jon MacDonald : That's great. Okay. Ryan Garrow: I mean it's gradually older, but. Jon MacDonald : Yeah. So how do you test the traffic then? Ryan Garrow: Well, once you're on the platform and you've seen what it looks like, my lens that I look through is I want a light money on FIRE budget. And I have to be comfortable with it just not working, because we don't know. It's a new traffic source for you, it's a younger platform often, because we're talking about the shiny new ones that haven't matured like a... If you're not advertising on Google and Facebook I probably don't recommend that you start looking at the shiny new ones yet. Jon MacDonald : Right. Yeah, start with the basics. Ryan Garrow: Yeah, start with the basics. And then, okay great. It makes sense to do this so you need to have a budget in mind that if it goes horribly wrong and you lose it all and you get no results, it's not going to sink your business. If you're doing a hundred thousand a month in revenue you're not going to go onto a brand new channel for the first month probably and spend $50,000. It just doesn't line up, doesn't make sense unless there's some crazy reason that you believe in your core that that's there. Jon MacDonald : Maybe you like lighting money on fire. Ryan Garrow: True. Maybe you do. And I've got a great thing I can sell you, I'm sure, somewhere that's going to run 50,000 bucks. And so have that budget first. Jon MacDonald : Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ryan Garrow: Then you need to make sure that you can track the traffic. Just by going off on advertising there you have to be able to tag the ads to make sure that when they go to your website or wherever your call to action is, Google Analytics can see that traffic coming in and then tell you if they took the right action after they came to the site. And that's not always the easiest. If you have a profile, let's pick on Snapchat, and you're driving traffic from Snapchat already, does your ad set allow you to do UTM parameters in the URL when you're sending traffic over? Because you want to be able to differentiate organic traffic from that platform and the ad stuff or the traffic from that. Even a lot of companies don't even do that with Instagram and Facebook still. And just look at the different, is it coming from the organic Instagram interactions? Or is it actually coming from an ad that I placed? So be able to track it, and then watch it carefully as it's coming through. Either your marketing team or you as the business owner probably has a good gauge of traffic as it's coming from a new source pretty quickly. And so that's where that light money on fire you have to have some patience to let it do some of the stuff. If there's an algorithm that's helping run your ads for you. Facebook's does some great algorithms in their space, Pinterest has some going. You have to give it enough to do something as far as the budget's concerned. Going out with $5 is probably not going to give you a good test and you also have to give it some time. It's just that data collection to really see it churn and see, is it improving after seven days? Or is it staying the same? Or is it getting much worse? Because maybe you have to make some changes. Jon MacDonald : Now that's a great segue to my next question which is, how do you have the right expectations, right? So you're saying give it a week or so at least, but what are the right expectations I should be having? Obviously if I'm setting the money on fire is what you're suggesting here, my expectations are pretty low, right? Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Jon MacDonald : Maybe I'll stay warm. But other than that, I think it's interesting. I should expect to learn probably, right? Ryan Garrow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon MacDonald : What else should I be expecting here? How do I set those right expectations? Ryan Garrow: Generally, and again I can't give the specifics for every potential business listening to this, but generally newer platforms are not going to generate profitable sales initially. And so what you're often looking for is new users, new sources of traffic, people that you're not reaching in other platforms. Because if you're already reaching everybody on Google and Facebook, why would you go try to target those same people if you're already capturing them at a rate or at a cost that makes sense? So you're trying to move generally up the funnel, and when you move up funnel or find a different source of traffic don't expect it out of the gate to be profitable. It can happen and nothing is impossible lightning can strike, and you can be profitable out of the gate. And if that happens continue dumping money on it and figuring out what's causing it to work and try to analyze why and how this happened. And so, have low expectations for it. You're trying to see trend lines going in the direction you need marketing budget to get to. And so if the first week it's you spent, I'm going to just use random numbers, if you spent a thousand dollars in the first week and it drove $200 in sales on your site, great. Week two, did that $2,000 generate more revenue than the previous week? Are we starting to see a trend line in the same direction? Or did that extra thousand dollars a week to generate $50 in sales? What is that conversion rate of the traffic? Be paying attention, do you have to go to the homepage on that? I mean, where are you driving? What's the call out that you have within the ad that you're running? Jon MacDonald : So what we're looking at here, Ryan, in reality is not even trying to break even, but you're paying to acquire a new customer that then you're looking for the lifetime value, right? And that's really where you're paying to acquire that new contact, that new customer. And then at that point you can continue to sell to them and continue to market to them and that's where you're going to make your money. Ryan Garrow: Yes. I mean often in these, right? It's the expectation is not out of the gate head profit. And if you have that I think your chances of success are higher. Your chances of having the patience necessary, you see a platform out. I think often I talk to business owners or marketing teams that all marketing needs to drive a profit, and if it's not driving profit why are we doing it? And I think that's very shortsighted of a lot of business owners and marketing teams and saying, "Look..." Billboards for the last hundred years have not had direct attribution to what's going on or the sales that are coming, but people still did it. And there was still value there that people knew about or saw. And so sometimes on these new platforms it may be a branding play. But can you start seeing the impact? Or if you're in the data enough? I have a really good feeling in the businesses I'm involved in when something is working. I might not see the data yet but I can say, "Ooh, this is definitely moving the needle for the brand. I don't necessarily know yet how or why, but I'm going to continue doing it." And then the opposite is true sometimes as well like, "This is just not working." And the marketing team may be like, "Well, how do you know?" I'm like, "I don't see the data telling me that yet, but my gut's telling me that." So I'll let me be. If the marketing team has faith I'll let them continue on for a little bit and say, "Okay, I'm going to trust your instincts on this and go against mine, but let's see what happens." You can't always run a business, I don't think, on gut you have to have data. And with a new platform that you have no experience in you have nothing to base your gut on to get the data. Jon MacDonald : Yeah, you have a gut feeling. Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald Founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers. And Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, the digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Jon MacDonald : Well let me ask you this then, what have you seen work? Looking at these expectations, when has it worked out well for you? Ryan Garrow: Well, new platforms like Instagram. I think the Instagram rollout and execution, thankfully it was coming from Facebook that already had a very solid marketing program built out at the time that they started doing ads on Instagram. And they did it at a small level saying, "Hey, we're going to let some people into the beta. We're going to start it here." But at the initially Instagram was not a driver of valuable traffic for marketing initially. I mean, we had some clients that started on Instagram initially and quickly and it was bad. It was pure branding, there was not people on Instagram that were used to seeing ads. So, I think you have to be aware of where you are on that adoption and on the maturity of a platform as well. Because it took Instagram a while to get people to understand that I'm going to see ads and they're going to be targeted to me and I'm going to take action on them. Innately at the beginning of the platform it was I'm scrolling through a feed, I'm laughing, I'm seeing my friends, and seeing pictures rather than words on Facebook. I mean initially I thought Instagram is stupid. I like reading and nobody's going to like that pictures and then I'm like, "Well, I'm..." Now I don't even get on Facebook and I'm on Instagram because I like images. Jon MacDonald : You and the rest of the world as it turns out, right? Ryan Garrow: Exactly. Jon MacDonald : Look, I buy a lot of stuff that I find in discover via advertising on Instagram. It's just the reality is I hear about products on Instagram and I end up... I mean I just bought one last night that popped up, it was the weirdest thing. It was a hose reel. And I was like- Ryan Garrow: Our lives are so exciting. Jon MacDonald : ... I know. But I'm like, "You know what? I just spent all weekend with one of those crank hose wheels that's without wheels on it and it's really cumbersome to move. And it's just a huge issue and I can never get the hose long enough. And here it's one that attaches to the wall and bolts in and then it pivots and you can pull on the hose and it auto retracts and it's a 90 foot hose. And I'm like, "This is awesome." Like it was a hundred dollars, a hundred and change, and I was like, "That is going to make my life so much better. For that a hundred dollars I am not going to have to mess around with this hoses ever again. I mean, I'm sold." Ryan Garrow: Oh, yeah. Jon MacDonald : And it was like a 10-second ad of this guy working this hose that's attached to the side of his house and I was like, "That needs to be me." Right? And if I saw a text ad I would have never bought that, never clicked on it. But I saw the video of the guy using it and I'm like, "Yeah, I just had that problem the other day." Now how I knew I had that problem that's a whole nother episode maybe. But I will say- Ryan Garrow: It's listening. Jon MacDonald : ... I know. I will say I was complaining about it quite a bit. But not on Facebook and not on Instagram, so I don't know. But look, I think that it can work well, right? What about what have you seen not work though? Right? You've tried a lot of these things, you've tested a lot how do you know when a test is going poorly? Ryan Garrow: Obviously being in the marketing world I want to know and see and experience a lot of things on my own, so I know what the platform is doing. And so the last one I tested personally was Pinterest last year, because Pinterest fits all the buckets for me. For Joyful Dirt there's plant people all over Pinterest. There's some big influencers there, there's a lot of interaction on plant pictures, there's a lot of interest on Pinterest for when to plant certain parts of my garden, what kind of light do I need for this plant? So all of it lined up I'm like, "Okay. Well, if my target market is women between the ages of 25 and 45, my wife is in that demographic and she loves Pinterest." I go to Pinterest for meals so I was like, "Okay, this is just logically checking all of the boxes for me." And by being an early adopter in a platform I know there can be some pretty significant advantages if you understand the algorithm early enough you can really step on the gas and your competition may never catch up. So I was pretty excited about Pinterest. Jon MacDonald : Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ryan Garrow: Called Pinterest up, I got a rep I was like, "Okay, I've got my budget. And for me at the size of Joyful Dirt last year my light money on FIRE budget was about $3,000." And then Pinterest was like, "Yeah, you got to go at 5,000." I was like, "No, I'm going to give you 3,000 and you can tell me based on your knowledge of the platform, your Pinterest. And so, you want me to be successful because I can spend more money with you, and I will spend a hundred thousand dollars a month with you if it's working and not a problem." Jon MacDonald : Right. Ryan Garrow: And they're like, "Okay." So I was like, "How long do you think we should run?" Like, "Well, we like to see a couple hundred dollars a day for 14 days." I'm like, "If you say so." I was like, "Why?". And then we went back and forth and I was like, "Look, I'm going to know pretty quickly if it's working. I see data, we're going to tag ads. I'm confident that if it's working I'm going to know quick. But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and you help me and we'll design." So we went back and forth. 22 days in we had spent $2,700, tested different ads, we'd done some things, we'd seen a lot of impressions, we had a hundred dollars in sales. And I'm like, "This platform is not working for me. I am not seeing the traffic coming to the site that is engaging well with our content on the site." The images were getting clicked, I mean it's just I could tell that their platform... And this was November of 2020. And so people were on Pinterest, it was holiday season, it was impulse purchase can be... I mean we're only $15 so that's not a difficult impulse purchase for our target market. So my expectations were high and the reality was bad. I still believe Pinterest has a huge potential for a lot of brands. I personally just think it doesn't have the maturity as an ad platform yet. It's got the eyeballs, it's got the people but as people are searching and scrolling Pinterest they're not yet thinking the same way that they are on Instagram. So I don't know how that changes, I don't know how Instagram got us to think that but for whatever reason like you I will click and buy things on Instagram that I think are cool. And that it's easy. Jon MacDonald : Well I think it's different, Instagram you're open to discovering new things because you're just scrolling through a feed. Pinterest, do you have the search intent, right? In the sense that you're setting up, you're looking for inspiration around something specific. And I don't know that people are going to be on Pinterest looking for inspiration around fertilizer. Right? Ryan Garrow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon MacDonald : And I think that might be the difference. Yes, they're related in terms of like, "Hey, I want to know what house plant I should get for this. Oh, the fertilizer that might work well." I could see that perhaps, but I don't think people go there with the buying intent, to buy off of there, right? They're more like, "Hey, I'm putting together a new living room decor and I'm going to pull some Pins and one of them is going to be the plant that I want to use." Right? Ryan Garrow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon MacDonald : And so I think it's a different mode. And that's where I've heard from folks it doesn't work as well for advertising, but that's interesting. I mean, what I love about talking to about all this stuff is you have the real world examples, right? You've done it, and so for your own brands and for thousands of clients so it helps. So let me ask you this then, generally somebody comes to you at Logical position and they say, "You know I'm looking to get into this shiny new platform or source of traffic." How do you advise them? What do you tell them right upfront? I mean, you've given a lot of good advice already today, but I'm coming to you and I say, "Hey, there's a new platform I really want to do something with it. What do you think I should do?" Ryan Garrow: Yeah. 99% of the time? I will say, "No! Do not do that!" And it's not because the platform might not be good for them, it's often they haven't maxed out what they could or should be doing on Google and Facebook SEO. I look at most marketing like most people in a funnel. And so when there is search intent on Google they are trying to find that product to purchase and you're not in front of them. Why would you go off and try to convince somebody that's never heard of you, may not even be considering that product that you sell to come to your site and buy something? It doesn't make any sense. So for most of these shiny new platforms it's larger brands that are going to pave the way. They have the budget to go light on fire and spend a million dollars figuring it out. And the platform will mature and generally they go downstream. Like the first advertisers on Facebook and Instagram, which is our most recent memories of successful platforms, were large brands. They went on there, we want a brand, we want to be in front of people, the Coca-Colas, the AT&Ts of the world they did it. The platform matured and went downstream and allowed smaller advertisers to take advantage of all that algorithm, that learning that happened early on, and generally make it work for them. Most business owners at Logical Position that are bringing up Pinterest, for example, because it's still is a very buzzy platform now. Recently I IPOed last year, I bought some of that because I do believe in the platform. Business owners are always trying to find where can I get some new source of traffic that my competitors don't have so I don't have to compete on Google? Because Google maybe is not as profitable as it was five years ago for my brand. So oh, all I need to do is go spend my 5,000 on Pinterest and that's going to get me the cheap traffic because there's less competition. No, probably not. And most business owners have bad goals, and you and I talk to lots of business owners all day every day. And- Jon MacDonald : We have a great episode about that, setting bad goals. Ryan Garrow: ... Yeah. You have bad goals. And so, spend down at the bottom of the funnel until you have maxed out and you are breaking even on new customers. At least get to that point. And you're like, "Okay. From the search intent, let's move up a level and say the audience of my target market on Facebook and Instagram I need to max that out and make sure that I'm capturing all the people in the algorithm that has more history. And we can validate that it works well for a lot of other brands, there's proof there, take care of that piece." And then, "Hey, have you actually worked on raising your organic rankings on Google and Bing and Yahoo where people have the search intent that you could shoot or could be getting a higher percentage of that traffic at the bottom of the funnel?" For most brands, they should be doing some of that before they go try something way at the top of the funnel, trying to drive Pinterest traffic or TikTok or Snapchat. So most people don't even need to be looking at these, but they do. And so my message today is stop. Don't go waste your money. I didn't even follow my own advice at Joyful Dirt. And that is I'm not perfect, I will make mistakes but my job is to learn quickly and pivot. I also wanted to a degree understand Pinterest myself so I can be advising people that it's not there yet for most of you. Jon MacDonald : Great. Well, this has been really informative and really helpful. So I've learned a lot. If there's a whole new shiny object out there for driving traffic, you generally recommend letting others figure it out a little bit before you jump in. At least figure it out yourself if you were going to test it out and jump in, but always be testing it, right? Start with a small amount and then figure out from there. Set the right expectations. You're going to light money on fire and that's okay. You're going to try to otherwise go for the branding and get that new-to-file customer that you're looking for the lifetime value not just that initial sale, and then go from there. And generally unless you're a large brand, you might want to just avoid those shiny new platforms and figure it out a little bit. There's always going to be room there a little bit in, doesn't have to be as mature as Google, right? Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Jon MacDonald : So, this has been informative. I appreciate it as always getting schooled by Professor Garrow over here. And I look forward to learning more next time. Thanks for your time. Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Thank you, Jon. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com

Product descriptions may seem straightforward, but if done right they can significantly improve conversion rates. Today Jon explains why product descriptions are one of the most effective changes you can change to your website and how to write great product descriptions that will convert. The article Jon mentioned on how to write production descriptions that sell: https://thegood.com/insights/product-descriptions/ TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better eCommerce growth engine, with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. Ryan: Jon, you recently wrote an article that kind of put my head in a spin around product description. Jon: Sometimes that's too easy. Ryan: I know. Spinning my brain's not necessarily the most difficult thing to do if you're in the space, but you wrote an article about product descriptions and how they can significantly improve conversion rates. And that surprises me because I personally ignore those all the time and I focus on other aspects of marketing and driving traffic as per usual. But that for me, is kind of like a side, just put it in there. As long as it's in there and then we can manipulate it going into Google shopping, where it's going to have an impact on your traffic. Just get something in there, period. Obviously I was wrong on this in my opinion. And I'm probably not alone in that. I'm excited today, Jon's going to school us on product descriptions and what you should be doing as an eCommerce business to leverage that to improve conversion rates. Jon, kick us off, explain at a high level, of all the things you could be focusing on on your site, why product descriptions in your mind, are one of the top things you can be doing to improve conversion rates? Jon: Yeah well, I think you basically just said it best in your tee up here where a lot of people just don't pay attention to this. And I think it's really, really forgotten. And that's a challenge in that as you're optimizing websites, it's one of the first places we go because most people forget about it. But look, we've learned over a decade of running AB tests on hundreds of product detail pages that optimizing your product descriptions is just one of the highest return, lowest investment improvements that an eCommerce manager can make. And look, they're key part of your potential customer's decision making process. I think the stat that my team here at The Good always says is that 87% of consumers rate product content extremely or very important to deciding to buy. Ryan: Wow. Jon: 87%. Ryan: Way higher than I would've thought. Jon: Right. Well, that's exactly the problem is most people don't think about this. And so if you're not optimizing product descriptions, you're certainly leaving money on the table. That's why you should focus on this. Ryan: If we're going to improve it, if we just assume that for example, my product descriptions are just terrible because I didn't focus on them, what are the areas I need to be looking at as I'm staring at my product description? And where do I start? I guess would be the best question. Jon: Well, I think there's four main areas that everyone should be focusing on and we can chat about today, but we can break these down. But the first is the real job of a product description. Most people think the real job of the product description is something that it's not. And we'll dive into that a little bit. The second is that it's an effective product description template needs to be used, so we can talk about what goes into those and what items you need to check the box to really make it great. And then how to write one that converts. It's not just having the content, you need to also be thinking about how you're writing that content. And then we can really talk about frequently asked questions around the product descriptions that I get, because I get a lot of questions about it. Once we start optimizing, people start thinking about it, a lot more questions come up than you might imagine. Partly, that's why we're doing the show today, it makes your head spin a little bit. That means there's a lot of questions there and you're not alone in that really. Maybe we can just break those four down and discuss each pretty briefly. Ryan: Yeah, I'm excited for it. What's the real job of a description of a product? In my mind, it's to describe the product. It's a blue t-shirt, congratulations. Jon: Yeah, right, exactly. If you just said blue t-shirt, how many sales do you think you're going to get? Let's just poke a hole in the idea that the job of the eCommerce product description is just to describe the product. I think that that's not right. Given the name, it makes sense that most folks think this, but product descriptions aren't there to just describe what's on your eCommerce site. They're also there to qualify. Do they help your visitors quickly assess, is this for someone like me? Do they persuade? Is it a compelling description? Is it customer centered on the reasons they should be considering that product? And then it's also there to surface. And what I mean by that is to help people find the product. This is the third one on purpose because a lot of people will stuff keywords throughout in terms of search engine optimization in optimizing the product description, but look, SEO keywords and search terms, and if you use those in a natural way, you'll get the page to show up and you want it to show up in search engine or even Amazon results if you're talking about optimizing your product descriptions on Amazon, which should also be done. Here's really one way to really think about this, product descriptions are a bit like your 24/7 in store retail associate for your online store. We often talk about if you wouldn't do something in a retail store, don't do it on your website. Let's take that analogy a step further and say, "How would associate talk about the product?" If you walked into a store and said, "Hey, I'm looking for a t-shirt," what questions are they going to ask to help you find the right one in that store? As a virtual retail associate, the product description can have that same kind of impact. And if it does its job well, it's going to draw visitors to your goods and then increase the conversions on those. And if it's done poorly, it's just going to frustrate visitors and push them away and hurt sales. It's very, very similar. Ryan: I like that. I think a lot of people, at least in what I think through is I don't think about qualifying. I'm like, you got to my page, you click on my products from Google shopping, you saw the price, just go buy it. And then if I'm in the jar looking at the label in the wrong way, from that perspective and I step out, I realize, okay, well I know conversion rates on shopping traffic is generally lower than category page traffic and so I'm like, oh well, possibly because my category is doing a better job describing a product or qualifying that person coming in and I'm just leaving that there rather than pulling it through and looking at qualifying them. Jon: Yeah. You're not alone on that. A lot of brands look at a category page as an opportunity to convert. I look at a category page as an opportunity to help somebody to the next step in the funnel, which is get them to that product detail page. And that's where you can really convert and sell and make sure people are getting the right product for them. Ryan: Okay, I concur. Tell us then okay, once I decide that it's more than just describing a product, what's a template look like that's going to help me through creating this product description that is going to be more than just describing my product? Jon: I love when I can change minds. And I'm glad we're helping do that today. All right. Ryan: We are. Jon: Again, here. Ryan: I'm taking notes. Jon: There are a handful of bullet points of things that you want to ensure are included. First of all, you need a descriptive headline. Use a product title that's going to hook your audience. Bonus points if you can connect with them emotionally. We don't want blue t-shirt, we want the t-shirt that makes your dad bod look hot. Ryan: I'm getting those ads on Instagram, by the way. I'm like, no, this is terrible. Jon: Ryan's looking good today in his shirt, by the way. All right. Benefits focused paragraphs. Use a descriptive paragraph to explain why, and I mean exactly why the customer benefits from the product. Too many people talk about features and that's it, they're just bullet point features and then don't talk about the benefits. You know how I led with the t-shirt that's going to make your dad bod look hot? That's what we want to be talking about here. What's the benefit? Not that it's a blue t-shirt. Yeah, that might be in there, but what's the benefit of wearing that t-shirt? The other thing we want to have in here is a key benefits list. Follow that description with a bulleted list of product features and benefits and this is where you can get into those details that if somebody is just skimming, they're going to look at that list. You're really what you're doing here is you're providing the benefits in a paragraph, maybe even telling a little bit of a story could be really helpful there. Don't make it too long. But then if somebody really wants, just give me the details. I already know I want a blue t-shirt, I just am deciding between two or three different ones and they want to know the specs and the features, that's where they're going to go is the bullet list. Don't bury those in the paragraph. The paragraph should be, hey, here's the benefits to you. If you want to know the features and the details, look at the bullet list that comes next. And then the fourth thing is, add some additional motivations. Really what we're trying to do here is just minimize those remaining purchase hurdles. Will it fit? Do others like it? Do things like credibility, social proof, you can bake in product reviews or even urgency. And of course, make sure you have a clear call to action. So many brands, we talk to have four buttons to add to cart and it's like, oh, you can use quad pay, after pay. You could use Amazon checkout. You could use both. And it's like, just give them one button and then push that to the next step. Get them to commit and then ask them how you want to pay. Ryan: Because my brain goes in funny directions when you say urgency, can you explain what that means from you, your perspective? Because it's probably not the little popup thing on Shopify that says, "Hey Bob in New York just bought this and Suzie in Florida just bought. Jon: You know me well. Ryan: Because I guarantee you don't like that one because I don't like that one. Jon: Yeah, nobody likes that. Ryan: And I don't have as many dislikes as you. Jon: I call that one of those wildfire apps and I call it wildfire because they just spread without anyone knowing how it started or why it's spreading. Ryan: Yeah, my competitor's probably doing it so I did it, and that's the worst way. Jon: And you don't see those apps as much anymore, a couple years ago, it was really popular and then everyone installed it and they realized this isn't doing anything. And also half of the companies using it are aligned about who's purchasing what, they all had Bob from Waco, Texas and it was kind of like you see Bob from Waco, Texas. Ryan: That guy shops on every site and I've been on. Jon: Exactly. And you're kind of like, that's the default it gives you. Here's the other thing. I really think what you need to be thinking about here in urgency is stock levels. And I'm not talking about lying. I'm saying, okay, only a few left. And what I mean by few? Well, I have two or three and you'd better buy it right away or it's going to go out of stock. There's some great tools, especially if you're on platforms like Shopify that are great apps that will do dynamic badging around quantity left so it can pull your quantities and do a dynamic image overlay on your product images. It will put a badge up in the corner that says, "Two left, one left," whatever. That's what I'm talking about with urgency. Or something like, hey free shipping. You're doing an offer, not a discount. When I talk about urgency, I'm not talking discounts as you know quite well. There could be some offers. It could be, right now it's a buy one, get a free gift. There's a whole litany of offers you can do that are not discounting and so I think when I'm talking about urgency, I'm talking about those type of items. Ryan: And so generally if you're a brand that has just tons of inventory, you have to focus more on getting creative and incentivizing without discounting to get that purchase from the product page. Jon: Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Create urgency if it's necessary. The other thing we see perform really well in terms of urgency is if it's out of stock to sign up to get notified when it's in stock. We have a client we've worked with for years, that is a really well known Japanese outdoor brand, outdoor camping high end. And what we have done for them over the years is help refine their out of stock notifications. They have some products that never are in stock because as soon as they send out that out of stock notification, they burn through their stock again. And I'm not talking that they only get five or 10 in, no, they get thousands. But the thing about it is, is that consumers have all signed up for this list and they want these products. We say, "Hey, you want this product? Sign up to be notified." And then we send out on an email and that email goes out, "Back in stock, click here to buy it," adds it right to the cart and they're able to purchase. And then before it even ever hits the site and it changes the product detail pages show how much stock is left, it's gone within hours. Ryan: Geez. Yeah, I'm going to test pre-sale. I'm going to say, "Hey, this new blend from Joyful Dirt's coming out, we're going to start advertising it and pre-sell it on social so we can start demand, figuring what demand looks like, what our production runs need to look like." Jon: That's a great idea. Ryan: And hopefully there's a lot there, but if not, they were like, "Yeah, we're only going to produce a few hundred. We'll be fine." Okay, so what else do we need to be considering what's average eCom business owner not going to be thinking about that you know that they don't even know to ask? What don't I know that I should know. Jon: Well, I think there's some simple questions that need to be answered. Let's look at this as maybe I don't know, questions that somebody doing a natural deodorant product might have. You need to think about this, who's the customer? That's always the first one, who's the potential customer? When you're starting to write this, you need to be thinking about that first. Let's say here, it would be men and women who are fed up with chemical packed deodorants. Just being a normal deodorant and saying, "Hey, people who don't like to stink," that's not going to be good enough. What's your differentiating point? The second is, what problems does it solve? This is where you can get into it helps keep them stink free. The potential customer is not the problem, it's what pain are you solving for them that is a little bit deeper than the surface level? And then the problem it solves is really the high level okay, people buy deodorant for this main reason. But the differentiating point is what's going to define that potential customer. Then you get into what desires does it fulfill? For this theater and it would be something like feeling healthier, more responsible towards their bodies and the planet, maybe just feeling less dirty and smelly. They could be that generic. And maybe they've been fertilizing their garden all day with a Joyful Dirt and now they don't want to come back into the house and smell. And then you need to be thinking about what objections people have. And this is where it's like, hey, why are you using a natural deodorant? Or maybe other natural deodorants just don't seem to work or they lie about the ingredients. Those are all types of things you should really be thinking about there. The next question you really want to ask yourself is why you? Why your brand? Compared to the other guys, why does this deodorant actually work? And then last of all, definitely not least, but you really want to think about what words your consumers are using so you can mirror what they're looking for there. And this is great, this is where user research can really come in, just interviewing consumers, doing some user testing, for instance so when they talk about what words they use, things like natural, fresh, perhaps scent or confident, and those are words that you can bake into your product description. They're going to write it for you. And if you go and you answer all of these questions in an outline, kind of like I just did where I answered each question a little bit about deodorant, you'll have most of your product description written and then you can move on from there. Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, the podcast focused on eCommerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with eCommerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay per click management, search engine optimization and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Ryan: I know though, pictures are worth more than words and so do you consider the images on the side of a product description as part of the description? Or is that different entirely? And that's a whole nother conversation around the images? Or do you use them together? Jon: I think it's a whole nother conversation, quite honestly. Although people say a picture's worth a thousand words, I think that's true. And that's why pictures, we should do a whole nother episode on that because I do think it matters. And I think that there's a lot of things out there that you could be doing. I think on model, off model, 360, in use, size comparison. You really got to be thinking about all the different types of images that you could be doing. And a lot of brands will focus on the words, because a lot of consumers will go to the words and with one good photo you can still get them to convert. But after that, you really need to dive in and start thinking about all the other photos that you could do. And that's a ripe opportunity for optimization as well for sure. Ryan: Got it. You've done a lot of obviously user testing and listen to a lot of people go through the process of buying, are there certain types of people that are only going to pay attention to image and some that only pay attention to the words and that's just is a personality or a person? Or is it everybody's taking all that information in together? Jon: I think that as humans we're visual, but there are some people who will, if you have a video, they're just going to watch the video and they're going to skim. This is really huge on B2B websites where you want to bake in video because what's going to happen, meaningful video, Telling you about the product and walking you through it, et cetera, because consumers are going to just scroll until they find video and then watch that video while they're doing something else like on a bus or in traffic or eating lunch. I just did that. I was evaluating some software for our business, for The Good, over lunch and I was eating lunch, watching product videos. I didn't want to read about it. I just wanted to sit there and watch the video. I just put it on one and a half speed and then go. And I think that's a lot of people will do that. And I think in terms of images, it's similar. A lot of people will get that content from the images, but they're not going to get all the features and benefits that way. They're really not. People still need the bullet point list to see all of the features. People who are going to be watching the video, looking at the images, that's where they're going to start and if you don't get it right there, they're not even going to go on to read the bullet list. It is important for a segment of the audience for sure. Ryan: I think of product descriptions kind of like I think of one on my website and I think of the one on the Amazon and I probably put more time into the Amazon one, but I have more volume on Amazon right now. And so, but Amazon has multiple areas for information. You get the top there's image and then a short description and then you go down and you have A plus content and the expanded descriptions. And now that I think about it, a lot of websites have that same type of feel built out around them. Are you seeing a lot of focus needing to be on the short snippet, kind of at the top, more than at the bottom? Because sometimes the descriptions I see, especially on B2B, all the spec tab that is really long and drawn out, you can tell people are just dumping information from an SEO perspective sometimes in there. Is there one area that's more important in all of that? Jon: Yes. I think in the concept of the description, this is what those towards the top of the page. Often you'll have images on the left and then all the product description content on the right. As you scroll down, you can take those bullet points we talked about earlier with the benefits and the specific features and that bullet list and break that down throughout the page. That's typically what I would recommend. Have the bullet point and if people want to dive into each one of those, so say you're talking about the deodorant as we talked about earlier and you want to look at the ingredients list. Well, you can say all natural ingredients as a bullet point. And then at the bottom you could start saying all natural ingredients and then you break out what those ingredients are and talk about the benefits of each and how it's truly all natural and it doesn't include, what is the big one? Aluminum or something that people don't like? I don't know. But I think, it's something like that where you would use the rest of the page to truly break it down. And that's where you can also inject some brand. And it's also where you should be injecting supporting content like blog articles. To me, too many brands put the blog on the homepage, so they have like this lineup of blog posts that nobody cares about on their homepage. The blog post is top of the funnel. It's great for getting people to your site. It's great for SEO for instance. But then if they're on product detail page and you send them back up the funnel, you need to make sure that it's done in a supporting fashion so that you're not just sending them right back to the top of the funnel for no good reason. What I mean by that is maybe you have a blog article all about those ingredients or a specific ingredient that you're using and you want to talk about why it's more superior and you need a 1,000 or 1,500 words. Well, that's not good for your product detail page, but it would be good to link to that and say, "Hey, want to learn more about this? Read this blog post about it." That's also going to help your SEO and Google find all of that content together. Ryan: Yeah, I think exactly zero times have I ever gone from a homepage trying to research a brand for a product and gone to the blog and be like, hmm, let me read some blogs. Jon: No, not going to happen. Ryan: Never happen. And I'm like, no, I'm here to buy a product or research the product, not read about how the product worked on X, Y, Z in these conditions. Jon: Yeah, but when you're on a product detail page and doing your research and you're far enough down that step, it might be relevant to some degree to know that it's there. Ryan: Awesome. No, obviously Jon you've broken down and torn apart a lot of product pages over your life. What are some of the questions that you've had clients ask you as they've gone through the process and tried to implement a lot of what you've talked about, even with your template? And are there any funny ones or when it makes sense that other people are probably going to be asking after they start doing this? Jon: Yeah. Yeah, you're right, I've probably broken down hundreds of thousands of these at this point. I don't know that might be exaggerating, but it is kind of like what's that movie with the kid where he's like, "I see dead people." That's me. I can't go down the internet and shop without seeing messed up product detail pages everywhere. It's just unfortunate side effect of my job. But I will say, I do love when we have a positive effect on those. And so I'm always happy to answer questions, but yeah, I do get some off the wall ones. I think the biggest one I get all the time is, can't I just copy my description from a competitor? It's working for them so why not? I hear that all the time. But I'm shocked I even have to answer this. But yeah, the short answer is no, you can't lift product descriptions from your competitors. Look, beyond the SEO challenges of that, meaning that it's going to be a challenge where Google sees the same as that content across two sites and then you're playing a really hard to win game because Google is going to pick one of them or when they do that, it's likely not going to be you because it knows that content has been on the other site longer and so that's what it considers the original source. Ryan: Now what about product descriptions from the supplier or the manufacturer? Especially if you've got a site with a 100,000 products on it. Jon: Well, you might want to evaluate why you have a site with a 100,000 products. Ryan: True. There's a lot of them out there. Jon: Yeah. I wonder how many of those are just dropped shipping, not doing that great. And that's why they're not doing that great. If you really want to be successful at something like that, you need to customize the heck out of it. And so you really do need to sit down and do this for all the products so it's not just the manufacturer description. Now you can base it on that manufacturer description, but don't copy and paste that because everyone else who's drop shipping that product is doing the same thing. Or on top of that, you're not really adding any additional value and I can promise you, most of those subscriptions are D level work. They're not even a passing grade in most cases. I think copying is a moral issue for me in addition to the SEO issue so it's two strikes you're out rule, really. Using the manufacturer, I think is the SEO role and ineffective. It's just a non-starter. Ryan: And I think that if you are in the eCommerce world and you are assuming something, you're going to lose. You never assume that this is working for a competitor because they're doing it and you think they're bigger than you. And you assume that somebody knows what they're doing. Obviously I have a wine and beer read business and you drink wine, if you read wine descriptions, those are generally written by somebody sitting at a desk at a winery that's coming up with weird terms. One of my friends owns a winery and I'm like, "Well, how'd you come up with your descriptions?" "Oh my wife and I started drinking wine and decided, let's start putting these things in there." You can't assume that, if it works it's on accident many times. Jon: I have a good friend who runs an agency that does nothing but branding and labels for wine and spirits brands and that is the number one challenge that they get from brands, their customers that they work with, is that those vineyards will send over the descriptions and they're like, this isn't going to fly, we got to help you optimize this. It's a challenge. It's not unique. They're like, you might as well just label it alcohol, alcohol from grapes. And that's always the joke. My friend is always just like, "You sent me this description. I'm just going to change it and say alcohol from grapes." Ryan: We're planting wine grapes right now. And I told my wife, it's like, "We're going to make some wine with it." She's like, "You think it's going to be good?" I'm like, "Probably not, but we're just going to call it Ryan's Yeast Juice. It's going to be great. It's going to sound like crap." Jon: When you gift me a bottle, I'll know. Ryan: Yeah, Ryan's Yeast Juice. That's actually why, I add grape juice with some yeast in it that sat in the bottle for too long, became alcoholic. Jon: Can't wait, can't wait. Ryan: I can't wait for my marketing to go, all the marketing energy I have, Ryan's Yeast Juice. I should probably trademark before it gets out. Jon: Yeah. Made with Ryan's fertilizer. How's that? Ryan: Yeah. Jon: Joyful Dirt line. Well yeah, I think the other question that I get a lot here is how long product descriptions should be. And I think it's not a one size fits all. It's long enough to be helpful, short enough to be digestible and depends on the product. A few quick sentences could work for your products or you may need to write 1,500 words, but I think it's something where you really need to understand your audience. Are they here quick? Are they deciding between a couple of things and want a feature list? Or should you put more effort into the story? Also, there's the brand aspect. There's a lot of brands who have a lot of fun with their product descriptions. And then there's a lot of brands who are just dry. That's just kind of their brand and you go from there. Ryan: Okay. Over the past, let's just keep it recent, three years, who would you say of companies you've at least seen their site, you don't have to work with them, probably did the best with their product descriptions? Jon: Yeah. Are you familiar with Chubbies? Ryan: I'm not. Jon: Ooh, okay. Chubbies is a men's, mostly men's clothing brand and they do some hilarious descriptions. They started out, I believe selling swim trunks. Ryan: Oh yeah. Yeah, now I remember. Jon: And it's now a bunch of other stuff, but they've always done some good work. I haven't looked at the site in a while, but they were pretty good one from back in the day. And I think, generally there's brands like OLIPOP and a few others like that who are new and are doing a really, really good job with it. I don't know if you've heard of OLIPOP. It's kind of like a new flavored seltzer brand. They do a really, really good job with it. I also think that there's a couple out there around more around eyeglasses, Felix Gray, things of that sort, that do a really, really good job. And I think that their biggest competitor is Warby Parker. And I think Warby Parker does a good job, but Felix Gray has really made their calling card being better content on the page. Ryan: Got it. Jon: The other one that I really like is Cards Against Humanity. I don't know if you've ever been to their site. Ryan: I love that game. It's the most inappropriate fairly game we've played with my in-laws. Jon: Okay, I was going to say, yeah, that could be awkward at best. Ryan: Oh it for sure is. Jon: They have a teenager version I've played with my cousins and I will tell you, that got awkward real quick too. But they have add on packs and all this other stuff and they do a great job with branding. And they have a couple of sentences, they'll say, "Hey, this is just," they'll be very quick. This is all about these topics. It's 300, but they'll inject some brand. They'll say, "All new absurd box contains 300 mind bending cards that came to us after taking peyote and wandering in the desert." And it's kind of like, that's funny and I know what I'm going to get is just weird random stuff. And then it's, they did in the bullet points. 300 brand new cards to mix into your game. This one's pretty weird. They're going to be weird, I get it. It's an expansion. It requires the main game. Now I'm like, okay, I get it. It's expansion pack. And you have nothing to lose, but your chains, I don't know what that even means, but that's what they're telling you. I think, it's on brand because it's super random. And I think that last bullet point is all meant to just demonstrate the randomness that you're going to get out of this pack. And then if you go down the page, they have a lot more info about and some samples and stuff, but that kind of gives you a good example there. Ryan: Thank you. That's awesome. Any parting words or places people need to be focusing and getting started on? Jon: Yeah, I think look, it's there's a simple formula that you can follow and too many brands don't even try to follow the formula. And if you go to The Good's website and on our insights or articles page, or just go to thegood.com/insights/product-descriptions, we have a really great article that breaks all of this down and more. Gives you ton of examples and it's a great way for you to just take the template we've got on there and start using that and applying it to your product descriptions and Ryan, it sounds like you may have some work to do, but it will get you a higher conversion. Ryan: I think I might. But thanks for the time, Jon. I appreciate it and educating me as always on how to make my site work better. Jon: All right. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the results on that. Thanks for chatting today. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert, with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com

Traffic sources can come from a number of places, but for most companies the largest source is Google. And things can get confusing when it comes to organic traffic versus paid ads.There are a number of things that can affect organic traffic and paid traffic in Google, and it can get confusing quickly. Today Ryan clears things up and tells you what does and doesn't work in Google, and focuses on what you can do with on-site SEO to improve your organic rankings. The site mentioned for checking your organic rankings: www.semrush.com TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better e-commerce growth engine with Jon McDonald and Ryan Garrow. Jon: Hey Ryan. So traffic to a website comes from many different channels and avenues, as we all know. And for most companies though, that largest source is always Google, the infamous Google traffic source. Now, from previous conversations with you, I know that Google shopping, spend and traffic can have a really positive impact on organic traffic in Google. Which always has blown my mind when I've heard that, because I heard from you recently too, that there are several types of search engine optimization that can have an impact on paid search. Not just on on-page. So this really confused me, because I thought Google kept everything separate. You can't spend money to grow rankings within Google. You can buy your spot with an ad, maybe do some stuff around shopping to get surface there. But I wasn't aware that those two really correlated with organic. So I'm looking forward to hearing about how search engine optimization can help your paid search. And I guess more simply, what are you talking about? Can you fill me in on this? Ryan: Yeah. So I don't want to confuse people kind of with the title or how we're putting this out there, but you can't spend money on paid search to have Google increase your rankings. That's been a myth disproved multiple times over, and Google has been very, I think, above board in how that works. But we do know that spending more on shopping, where people discover your product more, they will come back and buy through organic and direct, and those channels will start producing more revenue. But what people I think overlook are the fact that there are two types of SEO that people need to be aware of. And you should always as a business owner be investing or planning to invest in both SEO and paid search. I don't think one is greater than the other necessarily long-term, but you need to have both. And the type of SEO that people talk about or think about when they say SEO is what we've been doing generally for 20 years, building our rankings in authority with back links that are of high quality, putting content out on the internet that Google recognizes as valuable and they will give you more authority. You spend now on SEO with that's either your time or money, hiring people to do that. And then four to six months you see the results in increased traffic. That's generally what people think about with SEO. What they tend to overlook is the SEO that gets results actually within two weeks of you doing it. And that's the on-site SEO work. And so there's things you can do on your site to improve it that when Google re-indexes that you will move up in rankings. And this type of SEO will help organic traffic, but also have an oversized impact on paid search. And so because it dabbles both of those buckets I like to focus on that SEO before I even go to the SEO that people normally think about. And so on-site SEO at its simplest form is improving your category pages for Google. Jon: Okay. So you're talking content, better imagery, things of that sort? Ryan: Yeah. The content, the tags, the titles, things on that site that Google indexes and sees have a lot of benefits around your website and traffic generally. And so, if you do a search for your product, and so if you sell Nike shoes and that's the broad search that has lots of traffic, you will notice on Google most of the organic results are for categories of Nike shoes. It's not one specific Nike shoe like a shopping ad would be. Because Google, based on that search, knows that you don't know which specific model you're looking for or if you're looking for men's or women's. You're looking for Nike shoes. And so often the high volume terms are going to be category pages that Google is going to be indexing and sending traffic to until people get more and more specific with their searches. And that's how people generally move down a funnel, is I gradually do my research... Forgot, okay. Now I know I need to be searching for men's Nike shoes. Then I see that page. I'm like, "Oh, I need to be searching for men's Jordan Nike shoes." And then I'm like, "I really want to search for Jordan 4 men's shoes." And then that's when I'm getting to more and more specific and even adding color onto that, and people will do that through a search funnel. But the biggest advantage is saying, "All right, I have this category page and I need to have a description on that page about what's on that page that Google can see." And it doesn't necessarily matter for searchers because if I'm searching for Nike shoes and I'm on a page of Nike shoes, I can see they're Nike, I can see they're shoes. I don't need to read that text to see it. And so putting that on there though will have an outsized impact on quick increase in rankings. And so I like to start this by telling people to go to SEMrush, or some site like that to be able to see what is Google doing with your organic site, how are you average ranking on there? There's some wonderful reports on SEMrush. It's the one I use because it's probably simple enough that we to dive into very, very quick. I don't get super deep on a lot of my analysis. I get high-level and figure out some strategy and then move off of that. But SEMrush has some great things they've done from an organic perspective. They scraped these results pages, and they know generally where you're ranking. Obviously you rank in different parts of the country differently, and search intent and my previous search history is going to impact my organic results. But generally we know that hey, you're ranking here on this keyword. And SEMrush also brings in the average volume of searches a month. And so to start to see where your site could have a quick impact on this, you go to SEMrush, click on your organic rankings, sort it by volume. And you'll start seeing where your site is ranking. So if you're ranking on number 70 for a term with 10,000 searches, you're still getting zero traffic because you're stuck somewhere on page seven. But it'll also show you which page is ranking there. And when you see that you're like, "Oh, this page is ranking for that. And I'm seeing the term 'Nike shoes' goes to my Nike shoe page. That's great." You can click it actually in SEMrush and pull it up. Very simple. And you can see there's nothing on that page other than my title that says, "Nike shoes," in text that the search engine can scrape and understand. And so you take those category pages and you write that paragraph of text. You maybe make sure that your title is short and appropriate for that search. You make sure the H tags on the site are appropriate for that, and it's not including random other characters or doesn't have your brand first. It doesn't have sizes first maybe, if you're looking at shoes. That information on your site will raise the ranking within two weeks. And it really depends on your competitors on what they've done or what they're doing. But within two weeks, you can assume that you're going to have more value to Google. They're going to raise you up there. And that's by no means a bad thing when you're getting quick results on SEO. Jon: Yeah. So if you're looking at all of this and I'm hearing from you that okay, do onsite for sure. But how does this affect paid search? I understand that you can't buy your listings. You can buy optimization of these pages, which is search engine optimization, and that could help you. But how is this going to affect your paid search? To me, it doesn't feel like it would. So that's what was kind of shocking. So yeah. Tell me more about that. Ryan: For Google ads, if you're running text ads there's something that Google has called the Google quality score. That basically gives you three components. It says if you do well here, we're going to let you pay less than your competitors for the same search. So there's always a value having a higher quality score. It's one to 10 and there's three components. There's the expected click through rate. That's always relative to your competitors. And so somebody may come to me and think, "Well, I have a 7% click through rate. That's great. Right?" And I'm like, "No. There's no way of knowing that." It's based on your competitors and what are they getting. If Google knows that compared to your competitors you're getting a 7% click through rate on the same search term and they're getting a 10% click through rate, guess who Google wants coming up higher? Jon: Right. Just because it's more relevant to the searcher, and that's what they're understanding. And that's going to drive more money for Google in the end because more people will click on it. Ryan: Exactly. Jon: Okay. Yep. Ryan: Google makes decisions for themselves. They have shareholders, they need to make money, and that's fine. It's their platform. So the higher click-through rate is good. And then the ad relevance, so they're saying, "All right, does your ad have instances of the keyword that was searched in it?" We generally, horrible broad stroke, shoot for about three times in the ad, and the rest of the text in the ad doesn't have an oversized impact on the actual click rate. It's just you have it for Google, you're playing the game to get ranked higher. And then the other piece is the landing page and the quality of that landing page based on the search query. So Google can't see the actual image itself and decide is this image what they searched for. They can see the tags you put on the image, but the actual physical image AI is not actually determining is that actually what they searched for. And so that piece of content you're putting on your category or in Shopify, the collection page is telling Google what's on that page. And if you have that keyword in that content, Google is going to think this is a more relevant page to what they're searching and give you a benefit by lowering your cost per click through the increase of quality score. And it's a very easy thing to tie together and see the changes because quality score is reset every time somebody searches and every time your ad shows. And so if you make a change on the site to that description, today, and you see that I have a quality score of seven and you can break down the quality score components using columns in Google ads. And if you haven't done that before, you can get to all your keywords in the list in Google ads, that you're showing a text ad for, go to columns and ad quality score, and you can see, "All right, what's my click expect to click through rate, what's my ad relevance. And what's my landing page quality?" Jon: Okay. Ryan: And it'll tell you. You can either get below average, average above average. There's only three pieces to it. If you've got a lot of keywords, I like to push it down into an Excel pivot table. So I download it, put pivots on it- Jon: You love your pivot tables. Ryan: I love pivot tables. If you're running Google ads and you don't use pivot tables, you're wasting a lot of time. We still use Excel a lot in Google ads, but that can find really quick your below average landing page quality scores. And you can focus on those first, saying, "Okay, for whatever reason, this landing page, I'm getting dinged." And it's the largest component. It has about six of your 10 points associated with it. So moving from below average to above average can give you a significant boost and you're probably getting zero or very little traffic if you have a below average landing page score, Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, the podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Jon: Optimizing your site increases your quality score, which then helps you get more visitors and makes your ads more effective because it's going to be ranked higher in that list. So if you're on the search results page and there's three items, the one that comes first has the higher quality score. It's not just how much you bid, or is it how much you bid and the quality score? What other factors might come in there? Ryan: It's both. Jon: Okay. Ryan: Yeah. Google keeps a little bit of a black box in play. But they say it's the ad rank, which generally we know is the bid and the quality score going into play. And so the highest on the list is not always bidding the most. You could actually pay less per click and being ranked higher, generally. I guess it's not always the case, but generally the higher up you are in rank on that first page of Google, the more you're the more clicks you're going to get. The higher your click-through rate. And you obviously want more of the traffic if you're bidding on the keyword. And so improving the site experience for a Google perspective, and we're not talking about... Unfortunately sometimes for Google is not always best for the user. But you got to get the traffic to be able to determine if it's good for the user. So get the traffic from Google by increasing what Google thinks of the site. And often it's a pretty simple implementation to get this text on there. It's not tremendously complicated. I don't think you need to have a master's degree in onsite SEO to be able to do this. I've done it on a lot of my own sites and it's just having something there is better than nothing. And using general logic is saying, "Okay, I'm writing this for the search engines, not necessarily the user. So I want to make sure I have the right density." It's got to read in normal English because people are still going to see it, even if they're not reading it. But just get it on the site. And most small sites that don't have this are going to be on Shopify, just from a numbers perspective. We know they have over a million people using it. And so on Shopify this is the Collections page. And when you're putting that description in on your collections, in fact, I was just talking to a company that I'm helping advise in this area, and the business owner had all the descriptions already put on there, but they weren't showing on their Shopify site. Well that's interesting. And so we've dug into it and it's the theme. The Shopify theme she's using doesn't pull those descriptions in by default. And so some themes do it and some don't. So if you put it in there and your theme doesn't have that when you go to the collection page, you need to get a developer to force that theme to show it. And if you have a choice, put it below the product results on that category or collection page. If you don't have a choice, just get it on there. It's going to be fine. I haven't seen a meaningful increase or decrease yet on putting that continent in there on conversion rate. Jon: I was going to say, is there a... Thinking about my conversion rate hat, of course, as always, is there a better consumer experience when you think about that? Is having that content higher on the page, lower on the page near the products, things of that sort. Does that seem to matter? Ryan: I haven't seen it, but obviously I haven't done as much broad research on that. That's probably something in your bucket of skillset to look at that. And all right, on these Shopify sites where it defaults to above the fold or above the product results, do we see a change one way or the other when we move it below? My gut tells me I want to see the products first and most of the time when I go to a site, I'm not reading a bunch of texts when I'm searching for a product. I want to go right to the products and see which product makes sense based on the images I'm seeing and the titles of those products. But there probably needs to be some testing for most sites around that. But I would say if you don't have it there above or below, you're probably not getting very much traffic on it from a paid perspective. So you just need to get it, even if it's above the products, because now you don't even have- Jon: Done is better than perfect. Ryan: Yes. That's most of my method of business based on my business partners. We're just going to do it and we're going to make choices as we go, because if we're not moving forward, we're not going to make any decisions at all. Jon: And this is slightly unrelated, but I would say that a lot of our success at The Good has been purely because we just keep making decisions. And we know we're going to make bad ones along the way, but we're doing the best we can. You just keep moving forward, just keep taking those steps. And that, really, I think has been a competitive advantage. Or at least over just business in general, it's really helped us. And I think that's, that's a challenge I see. We talk a lot about all of these different optimizations you can do, and just getting it done, taking that step is 99% better than a lot of your competition. Ryan: For sure. Jon: A lot of them just aren't even taking the steps that we're talking about. So even if you don't take all of them, just take one. Like go to SEMrush today and look at these organic results and have a list of these opportunities and then fix them. And you're going to be 99% ahead, being armed with that data and having a good understanding of what to do next. And even if you're not running ads, because then when do run ads, you'll be well ahead of the game. Ryan: Yeah, exactly. I think it's always better to take two steps forward and one step back than it is to try to plan the best step perfectly the first time out. I know I'm going to make mistakes in business. That's fine. I don't care. As long as it's not a crippling business killing decision, I'm willing to make all of those. Jon: Which 99 out of a hundred couldn't be. They're small enough decisions that you just got to do it. And if you go to SEMrush and you follow their instructions or the recommendations, is there a chance that that kills your business? Unlikely. It's very unlikely. So what do you have to lose? You just got to put the time in and do it. Ryan: Exactly. And that's for most business owners, it's going to come down to a time-money thing. If you've got more time than money, which smaller businesses generally do, you're going to do some of this work yourself and figured out the hard way. If you've got a little more money than that, you're going to hire an agency to go do some of that work for you. And that's what I advise a lot of businesses to start. I was like, "Look, if you've not done this before, and you're really worried about making a bad mistake, hire an agency to do very small amounts." So you can see the model that they're using. And I even tell them, Logical Position for a thousand bucks, we will put six category pages together for you and do the work from the titles, descriptions, all that stuff. And you can then see, "Oh, that's actually not that complicated I see it where you put it in there, I see how it got on there. I see the keywords you used. Great. I can go build out the next 15 of these to help those all increase and then by that time, I might have enough money to pay for more paid search because I'm seeing organic traffic increase." Jon: This is why I tell people all the time when I send them to Logical Position, it pays to work with a partner that is large enough that they have an SEO focused team and a paid team because these things work together so well. And they need to be talking to each other. You can't just go off and do these SEO things and then not have your paid team aware of it. Because as we found out today, that's going to affect your quality score. And so not only could you get some increase in organic rankings pretty quickly by doing some basic SEO stuff, if you're not doing that, but then you can also do some off-site stuff that builds for a longer term. You were saying about four to six months, roughly. And then on top of that, you can be affecting your quality score. So what I've learned today is, okay, you still can't pay Google to list higher organically. Okay, that's a bummer, but I get it. I assumed that was the case. And so second, what I've learned is I need to get a better quality score if I'm ever going to run ads, because you need to make sure that quality score is high because I'm not going to pay a thousand bucks a click. But if I have a better quality score, I might pay a little less than that. Ryan: Some of your settings, you may get close. Jon: Let's just bury that one and keep it buried. Jon likes to waste money with his spend. But that's what I get for not talking to my friends before doing that. So look, I think there's a lot of great things here around things that every business of any size could be doing to really get more out of their paid media spend. Ryan: And just business in general, best practices, laying a solid foundation to build on for a brand. I think it's an easily overlooked one for a lot of brands that can have house sized impact for that time. I mean, writing a description might take you five minutes if you're the business owner and that five minutes could produce massive dividends on both SEO and paid search. Jon: On that, we'll leave it. It sounds like folks have some tasks to do that are pretty simple. Just need to put the time in to make it happen. Or if they don't have the time to give you a call and have your team at Logical Position make it happen for them. Ryan: Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. Let me know how I can help. Jon: All right, thank you there, Ryan. Appreciate it. Ryan: Thanks John. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.

Larger companies get most of the press and excitement with their 6 and 7 figure marketing budgets, but the majority of clients we work with are smaller. And smaller companies have to do things a little differently than the big guys. What impact does a small budget have on driving traffic? How should small budget brands compete online? https://www.logicalposition.com/ TRANSCRIPT: Jon: Hey Ryan. So we get companies contacting us all the time, that don't have large, six or seven figure marketing budgets, and many times, those large clients get most of the press and excitement, but the majority of companies that end up investing in marketing are going to be smaller, and smaller companies have to do things a little bit differently. I want to ask you today, what impact does a small budget have on driving traffic and how do those small budget brands compete online? They obviously want to compete, they have to compete in order to grow, and I want to know what's the magic, how do they make that happen? I'm excited to talk to you about this today, and I guess I'll start pretty broad, in e-commerce, is there such a thing as too small of a budget? Ryan: Across the board as a broad general rule, no, but if you're really going to do something with your budget, then yes. I mean, you have to have enough budget to start moving things around and collecting data. And I think that initial starting budget, if you're a smaller business, is going to be important to determine how quick you can grow, how aggressive you can be, where are you going to find that opportunity to take the next step in the digital marketing evolution of your business? And I challenged a lot of business owners in this space, as I'm talking to smaller ones all the time. Like for example, yes, you can start with $100 a month budget, it's your money, and you can market it however you want, invest it however you want. But if you're e-commerce, you're e-commerce so that you can sell everywhere and have your online store open all the time, even when you're sleeping. And so if that's the case, $100 is not going to get you very far in marketing across the internet. And so if you're going to do something that small, you really need to be hyper, hyper, hyper-focused, which does limit your potential and opportunities to find little pockets where you can really dominate or win. And so I would generally say less than $1,000, there may be better places for your money than trying to drive traffic with it online. Jon: Interesting. I was going to ask, and maybe you've just answered, but I'd love your take on this too, if I only have $1,000 a month to spend, is it worth doing it or am I just throwing my money away, when we're talking about driving traffic through traditional paid media sense? Ryan: That's a difficult one because most business owners that are coming up with this $1,000 and you're smaller, that's a meaningful number to them probably, but they probably don't have the expertise to really make that $1,000 do as much as it can. And so you probably have to bring an expert in, and that costs money as well, because most people in the digital marketing world are not working for free. And so you have to figure in an expert generally, and I'll probably come back to that point, but for most businesses, I would say that you have to look at it through a lens of time and money. Jon: Okay. Ryan: Anybody can learn how to do digital marketing. You have to be able to study, you have to be able to go in and make some mistakes and learn it, but anybody can figure it out. It's definitely not the most complex thing you could be learning. But if you have more time, then you should be doing some of that work yourself and learning it and getting it to it like, "Can I get some basic things done?" If you have more money, than you need to hire people and your budget should probably be a little bit higher to be able to invest and push traffic. Jon: So we should be saying, when we say budget for today's conversation, should I be thinking about it as budget including the expert or budget just in what you would spend to drive traffic in these channels? Ryan: I think businesses should be looking at it together, but I think most business owners are thinking about, "Okay, I can spend $1,000 to drive traffic. Let's go put that on Google and make it work." I do believe though, the Googles in particular and I'll focus on Google for right now, but Google in particular has done some pretty cool things helping small e-commerce businesses get going. If you've got a feed and you're on a smaller platform, like if you're on Shopify, it's very, very simple to get up and running on Shopify and get your products going to Google. And then there's what Google is calling smart shopping campaigns that allow a business really to say, "Google, here's how much I'm willing to spend per day, and here's the goal I need to get out of it." It does not take an expert to get that up and running. And in fact, I tell companies, do not pay an agency to manage smart shopping campaigns because there's nothing to do. It can be a small piece of an overall structure, in fact, we at Logical Position do use smart campaigns in a small piece of a campaign occasionally, but we have to do a lot more work in the reporting and strategy on that type of client, to be able to justify charging management fees on smart campaigns. Jon: Okay. That makes sense. Ryan: Small budgets use more automation, I think, is the name of the game. Use things that are set up to make sure you don't just waste a bunch of money, and I think that's where a lot of small businesses, what keeps them from starting often is that fear of, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to go waste money trying to drive traffic because I don't know how to do it right." Doing some research, I think, can help keep that option to a minimum, that is just going to go out there and be a big waste. Jon: Let's say a company hasn't driven traffic on Google. How do they decide what that starting budget should be? Ryan: This generally comes down to, what's the business doing as a whole? If you're doing $100,000 a month on your website and you haven't been spending money, you probably have a larger amount you could start with then if I'm only doing $1,000 a month in sales. It's a threshold there of starting to look at it, but I generally say, in e-commerce, at least $1,000 to start with on Google. And then start thinking about it through a lens of, "I know I'm not going to be starting out at the gate if I'm doing it myself in a perfect world scenario." So there's going to be some learnings. I look at it through the lens of what's my light money on fire threshold, to let me get things going, and I've done this with new platforms on some of my brands. Nobody knew what they were doing yet, across the entire platform. Pinterest is being one of them. A couple years ago, it was just wide open. Nobody knew what it was going to do. I think they're getting some more structure in place and it's driving better traffic, but I went onto it saying, "Look, I don't know what it's going to do." My light money threshold at that point was, I think about 2,500 bucks, so I talked to Pinterest like, "Look, we can go a thousand a day for two and a half days if you want, or we can go $100 a day for about a month. I'm okay with either, whichever one you think is going to work better for me." And that was my light money on fire threshold, that I wasn't going to be mad, I was just like, "Yeah, that did suck, but I got some learnings." Pinterest didn't work for us at that point in time on that business, we'll continue to be revisiting it. But all that to come back around to it can't be a budget that if it doesn't work, it's going to tank your business, because there's a lot of unknowns if you haven't been on Google before, to how is your website going to convert, what traffic is going to work best for you. Because you'll take the same product with the same price for the same search query, going to two different sites and it's going to convert and there's going to be a different return on ad spend. And so with all of that unknown, anybody that tells you they know exactly what you're going to get by putting $1,000 out there, they're lying to you because there's no data to tell you one way or another. There's no way to know. Jon: Okay. So don't bet the farm. Ryan: Don't bet the farm, but it should probably make you a little uncomfortable. Jon: Okay. Ryan: When I'm looking at business decisions and I want to grow, and you know me, I tend to be on the aggressive side of things, I want what I'm risking to make me a little uncomfortable. I don't want it to be an easy decision or an easy thing to be like, "Okay." Could I have wasted $100 to test Pinterest? Yeah, but that was not an uncomfortable thing. 2,500 from me was a little bit uncomfortable. Partners and I talked through it and we're like, "Okay, if it returns nothing, that's not going to be great. But again, we're not going to lose the business because of a mistake if it doesn't work." So a little bit of uncomfort, I think, is good. Jon: Okay. So then let's say I have a thousand bucks, where do I start, Facebook, Google, something else? Ryan: I think generally it's going to come down to those two for most businesses to start off with. I think other platforms generally are younger and they are less proven and therefore generally higher up in the funnel. Like if you're going to jump right on TikTok or Snapchat for marketing and you haven't done Google or Facebook, I think it's going to be difficult to know if that platform is actually working for you, if you haven't gone to more advanced ones yet. And so when I talk to a business owner or a marketing team that's looking at deciding between both of those two to start, the easy way of looking at it as if there is existing market for your product, I generally say go to Google because you're going to capture people towards the bottom of the funnel as they're looking for your product. If you're creating a brand new category, there's not a lot of people searching for it on Google and so you're going to have to figure out how to create that and find the right audiences on Facebook and convince people to start trying you to build that search volume. So for example, last week I talked to a guy, his company makes edible bubbles and I'm like, "I have never heard of this before.'. Jon: Isn't that bubblegum? Ryan: Yeah. This is for kids going out and playing and blowing bubbles, he makes edible bubbles. And I had no idea my kids would want that until he sent me some samples and they're actually pretty cool. Jon: That's awesome. Ryan: But they actually make them for bars. Someday when we get to go back to a bar, they make these bubbles you can blow on top of a drink, and a lot of times they infuse them with smoke for presentations. Jon: That's cool. That's a great idea. Ryan: So really cool stuff, but there's not a target market yet that they know to search for that. So I, before last week, never would have even considered searching for the term edible bubble or edible bubble for a drink or bar drink presentation bubbles, that's just not even there. And so for that type of business, you've got to go on Facebook, you've got to target bartenders, you've got to target moms with kids, with the kid bubble one. And there's some really cool targeting on Facebook, and if you've got a good visual and some good offers, I think Facebook can work really well. For other businesses, Facebook generally will hit top of funnel like that, and so the return, again, generalizations, is going to be a little bit lower than if you had run some bottom funnel, Google stuff to figure out where people are searching for your product and what are your advantages and all of that. Jon: So we're talking the difference between perhaps intent versus awareness? Ryan: Yes. Like if there's already people searching with intent for your products or services, I would go capture them first. It's going to be a little more expensive per click, possibly, there's generally going to be more competition, but it's an existing demand that you're tapping into. You've just got to figure out how you're going to compete there. If you're creating a brand new product that nobody's ever searched before, you probably can't even spend your money on Google on search terms, you're going to be on broad match keywords on Google wasting money. Jon: Right. No, that definitely makes sense, then Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, the podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers. Ryan Garrow, of Logical Position, the digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization and website design services, to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Jon: What other things tactics do the smaller budgets need to be aware of? What else would you consider? Ryan: Some of the tactics I talked about when looking at smaller budgets on advertising and driving traffic, don't even have to do with the tactics to drive the traffic. A lot of small businesses, even over the last year with COVID and a lot of brick and mortar moving into online, a lot of them haven't thought about what is my advantage online? If you are selling the exact same product at the exact same price, and you have no discernible advantage over a competitor, what are you doing? Try to figure out, before you go spend money, why somebody is going to buy from you. And you can't really tell me that your advantage online is going to be because you have really smart salespeople inside, or you have a lot of knowledge in your industry, because that's not going to come across in Google shopping. Nobody cares how much you know, they don't know how much people know when they're just going to a website and transacting. And so you've got to figure out what that advantage looks like first. Why should somebody buy from you versus a competitor, if they've never met either one of you and all they're doing is seeing your website because the internet is the great equalizer and small companies can't compete with big companies, if they're better at certain things. Better at converting, if all of your competitors are stuck on really ancient Yahoo stores that are 20 years old, and you're going to come in there with a Shopify or a big commerce site, that's really easy to convert on. That can be a significant advantage, even if everything else is the same. Jon: It's funny, you say that, a friend and I were just talking about that and we were laughing, saying a great business model would be to just go to find a index of all the remaining Yahoo stores making over a million dollars a year and just replicate that on a better platform, with better usability and you would print money. Ryan: Why are we doing a podcast? Let's go get a list and start making business. But it's true. I think we still have 50 clients on Yahoo and some of them are, I think, are on the RTML, that really old coding platform, that if you're not 50, you've never even heard of that. And I only heard about it because we have clients on it. Jon: Yeah. Look, I mean, I think a lot of these stores take the approach of, if it's not broke, don't fix it. And they're still printing money, so why change it? I think they're going to ride that till the end. So somebody will come along and end them by doing something better, but you got to find it first. Talking about that is one of the things that the platform could be, one thing that these smaller companies are doing wrong. But thinking about smaller budgets, if they're sending traffic to their site, what do most of these smaller budgets do wrong? What mistakes are they making with their small budgets? Ryan: I think a lot of them, if they do have some advantages and they do have a reason to market, a lot of them make the mistake of not being aggressive enough. I think I've mentioned this probably multiple times, but a lot of small business owners really watch their P and L and all line items going in and out of the business, which is good. But when they come to Google ads, it can quickly become a very large line item and they want to focus on, hey, I need to increase profits, so we need to start cutting this budget and controlling Google, because if I control something in the middle of my P and L, the bottom gets bigger. And unfortunately, something like a Google ads or Facebook ad, is generally driving top line number that does translate into bottom line number, but if you eliminate what's driving that top line, it can really have an opposite effect of what you're intending. And so it's really a paradigm shift. If you're looking at your budget like a line item, you start looking at it as you're investing in getting new customers and then what are you going to do with it? Don't see Google ads or Facebook ads as a cost necessarily, unless you're purposely losing money and you have to control that piece, but that's a whole different story and most small businesses are not doing that, so I won't dive into that necessarily now. But then trying to figure out, okay, once you've got a customer, what are you going to do with them? Because Google and Facebook, they're a marketing channel and you're going to have to give some or all of that initial order margin to the platform to get the customer. And that allows you to compete and capture more market share, but if that margin is going to the platform, it's not going to you, the business owner or marketing teams future budgets. So you've got to do lifetime value, figure out what you're going to be doing to bring them back. So many times small businesses are thinking about, I've got to get customers, I've got to get customers, so I've got a market. Okay, good, you do have to do that, but you can't keep trying to do that without focusing on the customers you do have. What happened to the customers from last month, what are you doing with them? If you're not emailing them, if you don't have a loyalty program, you're essentially wasting all of this effort that you're doing to successfully bring new customers into the brand. And so that's where I see most struggles, because then they'll just be like, "Oh, Google was terrible. It took all my profit and then I had nothing." Jon: Well, we've talked about this several times on the show, of understanding that it's okay on that first sale to break even, and your customer acquisition costs might be high on that first sale, but you have to have a longer term game plan in place. Is it a subscription type product that you're going to use, if you have a consumable, is it something where you're able to continue to market to them afterwards, but you're doing it in a way that is going to continue to drive down the customer acquisition, but up the lifetime value over time? That definitely makes a lot of sense. So, okay, we've heard a lot of disadvantages to being small here today, but there's still a fact that most brands are going to be in that small budget. What are the advantages, what's the positive side, the glass half full here, what's the advantages to being smaller advertisers? Ryan: Yep. There's no secret that having more money can have more advantages in advertising, I mean, that's just basic marketing 101. But what I've seen through a lot of small businesses and having my own that compete against much larger brands, is you inherently have more flexibility. In fact, we were just laughing before we got on and started recording, about politics in larger companies, having all these things that you have to wade through to get things approved, or to do things, where you can't move quickly into new markets, because there's all these layers of approval. Small businesses, hopefully don't have that problem. And it's like, if you see an opportunity, you can just go do it and there's not a lot of people that have to sign off on. It's like, no, I'm going to go capitalize on that change in the market or that area that hasn't been attacked by larger brands. And so that can be a huge advantage, but I still think a lot of small businesses don't think of it that way and look at it, hey, I can afford to make mistakes and learn from them very, very quickly and pivot and adjust. And I can test new products on my site, I can test things on my site as a small business that I don't have to go to a web dev team. I can make quick little changes on my Shopify site to say, "Hey, let's see if this works or not. Let's run it for a week and if it doesn't work, flip it back." So much opportunity to test and so few small businesses actually taking advantage of that. I mean, I can't say the number of times that we've tested small things, even on Joyful Dirt, as we're moving very quickly and say, "Hey, let's test this or test this." That many of them work. I mean, we've got a really smart team that can come up with really cool ideas to test. For example, this month we did a black history month label, so we just, "Hey, let's just do a small run of a few hundred labels and see what happens." And larger brands can't in mid January, decide to do a label run for a specific event and try to get it to work. We're like, "Yeah, let's just see if it works. And so based on the success, we're going to do this multiple times throughout the year for different events and just have custom labels. Jon: That's a great idea. Ryan: Because we can. Jon: I believe this is called the innovator's dilemma. So when you're at a large corporation, you as an individual can come to the table and say, "I want to do custom labels for this month, starting in two weeks." But you have so much red tape to get through that you can actually affect the change that you want to affect. So that's a definite competitive advantage for a small brand, I can completely understand how that would work in their advantage. So that's great. Is there any other advantages that we should be thinking about? Ryan: I think being smaller also forces you to pay attention to details, that larger brands don't have to. We have a lot of large clients that focus on such macro level numbers, 35,000 foot layer of saying, "Hey, what's our data? How much should we spend? What is this?" And there's not the deep dive on, "Okay, how can I squeeze this little bit more out of this product?" It exists on a few large brands, but generally it doesn't matter to them on the small little minutia. And I think smaller brands, really have an opportunity because there is less data to sift through, they can quickly see where markets may be changing or evolving, that larger brands aren't going to catch till later. So you have to be willing to be aggressive and move quick when you see them, but you might see, even on Amazon, this is a massive thing with one of our clients where there's a couple really big players in vital wheat gluten, for example, on Amazon and the volume of sales on baking products on Amazon, is astronomical, I had zero clue until we started working with this company. Jon: Yeah, would not have suggested or thought that. Ryan: No, I'm like, "Vital wheat gluten," that's a very specific product for a very specific niche of people. Jon: Baking in general on Amazon, you would think there's no way. Ryan: It blew me away. But because the volume is so high, everybody selling FBA can only send in, because vital wheat gluten comes in, it's heavy and it comes in five pound bags or two pound bags, so it takes up enough shelf volume that you can't get 50,000 units in there at a time. And because you're usually co-packing, you're getting pallets delivered, and once it's down, you can't all of a sudden like, I'm just going to send 10 units today to take care of the sales. It's massive in and out of stocks all over the place. And so smaller advertisers could leverage that by saying, "All right, if I have my own fulfillment house, I can always keep a seller central product in stock on Amazon. Even if my FBA stock goes out," and you can play a lot of games and figure out what part of the country is or is not working. But that type of flexibility as a small brand, can pay huge dividends just by being aware of some of the struggles of your larger competitors. If your larger competitor has a disgusting amount of aging inventory, they've got problems probably floating the next purchase. Whereas you may not have that problem as a small advertiser, and you can even use drop shipping through one of the partners that could help you. So I think small companies have some significant advantages and I enjoy that part because it is more exciting to grow a smaller brand to take on a larger one. I do it myself, I add to this one. Jon: You'd love to take down the big guy. Ryan: IT do. Jon: Who doesn't? I mean, if you're in business, you're a competitor, just the way it is. Ryan: Oh yeah. And I love competing. And so it's fun as smaller business, but it does take a mentality that you are going to scrap and do everything you can to make it work. And when you come in with that mentality, I think it's very difficult to fail on Google ads or Facebook ads, because you're not accepting that it's not going to work. You see the data, you know people are spending money in your industry and they may not all be making money, but there's consistent effort there. And you just have to get to the point where you can wade through it and make it work because it will. Jon: Well on that note, any parting thoughts on this? I feel like I'm sufficiently equipped if I were a small brand advertising. You're giving me some renewed hope, that's for sure, that my $1,000 per day or per month, excuse me, would actually go someplace. Ryan: Yeah. The only thing I will say is that I do believe quality help will go a long way. You can be a small advertiser as a business owner and spend $1,000 if you learn and you're quick enough at adjusting and pivoting and looking at data, you're going to learn how to do it, but it might take you six, seven, eight months to get the point where you could have started at that point with an expert. And so it's at least worth interviewing a couple of agencies to see what it is they could do to help you if you bring experts on to manage that $1,000 spend. Yes, you're going to have to pay an agency extra cost, but can they get you moving towards your target at a quicker rate? I think often they can, but even if you're going to do it yourself, at least talk to somebody else that really knows what they're doing to see what the advantages could be. Jon: Well, and it could be huge too, if you get a higher return on that ad spend, that margin difference, they pay for themselves. It's like working with a great CPA, they're going to get you a bigger refund than if you did it yourself. So that covers their fees and hopefully more. Ryan: For sure. Jon: All right Ryan, well, thank you for your expertise on this. I know you guys work with thousands. Every time I talk to you, it's another thousand. So I'll just say thousands and thousands of clients at Logical Position, and a lot of those are smaller ones and you guys have learned a lot from that. So thank you for sharing all of the expertise you've learned. Ryan: Oh yeah. Thank you, Jon. I appreciate the time. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert, with Jon McDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.

There are seven different types of people that you're going to find coming to your site. And if you can understand who these people are in each one of their buckets, you're going to be able to help each one of them convert because they're all going to look at your site a little bit differently. So how do we understand who they are? And what do we need want to know how do we convert these people? Jon's got the answers! TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better e-commerce growth engine, with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. Ryan: Well, Jon, welcome to the Drive and Convert podcast. You've done a lot of writing, to say the least. You've got some phenomenal content out there on the internet and as somebody that reads most of your content and speaks to you often, it's always good to read. So if you're listening to this, go find Jon and all of his content on his website. I highly recommend it. You will come away as a smarter human. But one of the fascinating concepts that at least for me seems fairly unique to your brain and at least the content you're putting out is the idea of there are seven different types of people that you're going to find coming to your site. And if you can understand who these people are in each one of their buckets, you're going to be able to help each one of them convert because they're all going to look at your site a little bit differently or want to do slightly different things. But I guess step one is just, how do we understand who they are? And then we want to know how do we convert these people? We've got them to the site. We know who they are, now how do we convert them? So I'm excited to hear about this because I can never get enough insight into how to make my businesses and my clients' businesses work better. But can you kick us off just by telling us who are the seven personas that you're seeing on the internet coming to websites? Jon: Well, thank you, first of all, for the kind of compliments on the content. I'm blushing over here if you can't see that. Yes, there are seven and a lot of people think, seven that's a lot. But the reality here is there might be some overlap in these as well, right? And these are all different types of people that you really need to address on your site. And so many people don't do that, that it really led me to write this content. So the first set of folks coming to your site are what I call lookers, right? These are people who are just looking. They're browsers, if you will, right? They're not after any one thing in particular, they're having fun just looking around. They want to see what you offer that maybe will catch your attention. Honestly, they may even have been just searching around Google for different types of products and ended up at your site, not necessarily by mistake, but they ended up there and now they're just looking at what you have to offer. Really you just need to understand that not everybody who approaches your site's going to buy. Most e-comm sites know that, right? Because their conversion rate's not a hundred percent or else we wouldn't exist. But the reality here is that you still need to address this audience. A second one to be thinking about is bargain hunters. These are people who are only at your site because you're having a sale or some type of offer. Ryan: Hopefully, it's not a discount. Jon: Exactly. That would be my point of view. But that's what they're looking for there. They're trained, as we have said, several times, they're trained to look for that sale. And so there are people, and there is a segment of folks who will only buy if something's at a perceived bargain, right? And they really want to see if they can find the bargain. Sometimes it's the thrill of finding the bargain that really gets to them. The third you really want to think about it as the buyers. Now, it seems pretty obvious, but some people are really on a mission. They know exactly what they want and they're there to get it. So they searched for the model number, they found your site, and they are ready to buy. And so you really want to facilitate that. A fourth is researchers. Some folks are just researching. They have a general idea of what they're after, but they want to compare those options and the prices. So, a lot of people will go to Amazon for this, but now, a lot of people are doing that on brand sites as well. They go to Amazon and they find the product they want but then they end up on your brand site after they've done that research. They find the model number on Amazon, they Google it to find more details about the brand behind the product. Amazon isn't always the best at having product details, right? So a lot of times you'll end up on a brand site trying to do that and that's what these folks are. Ryan: Now, what would be the big differentiator on the researchers and the lookers? Because a lot of similarities between the two, but what would be the key differentiators in your mind? Jon: The key differentiator is the researcher knows what they want. They know what they're looking for. The lookers are ... It's kind of like wandering around a mall versus going right into the Apple store. You're at the mall but you beeline it for one shop because you know that you need something from that shop. Where you might just go to the mall to hang out, right? If that's even a thing, post-COVID one day, we'll see. Ryan: Someday we'll get back to a mall, maybe. Jon: New customers is another one. People don't really think about that often. And this is really where some visitors are just going to be new customers. They enjoyed their last visit. Maybe they were a looker on their last visit and now they're there to find out more and potentially become a new customer. Perhaps these are people who you should really be thinking about post-purchase, like they just purchased. What happens at that point, right? So these could be people who are buying from you the first time. And it's an audience you really need to be thinking about because you need to make them feel welcomed and appreciated. One that a lot of people don't think about is dissatisfied customers. Everybody has them. I don't care if your net promoter scores is perfect or you don't hear about these complaints. Everybody has a dissatisfied customer or more. And that's okay. These people are there for a number of reasons and it might not always be that bad. Maybe they're just dissatisfied because it didn't fit the way they thought it would, but they still like the product, they're there to return or exchange. For some reason, a previous purchase didn't suit them and now they want customer service. And the goal here is to make it easy for them to get that and perhaps even do self-service where possible. And the last one, seven of seven, we blew right through these, but we'll dive into each in a second, but this is loyal customers. So some of these are your best customers. They come back, they love shopping with you. They love your product and then they're going to be repeat customers. So, that's the seven. To run them real quick, it's lookers, bargain hunters, buyers, researchers, new customers, dissatisfied customers, and loyal customers. Ryan: Got it. So we know what personas people are in, generally. And then are there ways outside of the types of traffic that you help decide who this one is on the site to do that, or is it, I just want to make sure the site works for all of them? Jon: You really want to make sure the site works for all of them. And I think that there's many ways to group people into these different types. As I said earlier, they could be multiple types. But I heard you say the word persona, and I think I really want to make clear that it's easy to get dragged into things like personas, or where people are in the sales funnel, or warm, hot, and cold leads and visitors, or any of those things that can really just take you down the rabbit hole if you will, right? And I see this all the time where we ask people, who's your ideal customer, and they give us an avatar of somebody that has flowcharts, and photos of Charlie, the avid runner, and his demographics, and preferences, and what soda he drinks, or what bottled water he prefers, and all of that stuff doesn't really matter. It's never really put to good use, especially when it comes to optimizing a website, because that guy, Charlie, the runner, he was generated in the mind of the brand. He's not an actual consumer, right? So what you really want to do here is just keep it simple. Really you just want to focus on better serving each of these. And by doing that, you're likely to increase your conversions for each of these. Additionally, if you go any deeper than that, you're unlikely to get started because you'll end up in this, as I said earlier, rabbit hole of trying to figure out who Charlie is. Well, Charlie, isn't going to be all seven of these, right? So don't worry about Charlie and don't worry about going so deep. Ryan: Because you might have your ... If you've done the persona thing as a brand, you could have your same persona being all of these types. And so at the same time, keep this very top level when you're looking at your site and trying to guide traffic and just do what Jon says at the end of the day. Jon: If the world only worked that way. I'll have you call my wife after this and tell her that too. Ryan: Yeah, you do the same for me when we're talking about driving traffic. Okay. But we've got to tell people how do we take these groups of traffic and these people and get them to take the action we want them to take on the site. Because I'm guessing to a degree, not all of them are the same conversion either. Jon: Very accurate. That's true. Ryan: So we've got to think about that as well. Like a disgruntled customer is probably different than a looker at the end of the day, as far as action. So guide our listeners and viewers around what that looks like and how you're seeing converting those people. Jon: Well, let's break them down one by one, shall we? So start with lookers, really is what I would recommend here. And I think the thing to be thinking about here is with lookers is you're going to catch your attention and get them to stop that just shopping and not browsing long enough to consider some type of offer or something that gets their attention, right? So if you know your customers well enough, which most brands listening to this will, they'll know what will entice their customers. And I'm not just talking about an offer or a special or deal or anything of that sense, I'm also saying what's that one feature that makes you unique and makes you stand out? What's the benefit of the product that's really going to hit home for these people? They're at your site because they had a pain or a problem they're trying to solve. And they think your products can help them solve that problem. So you really want to make sure that you're putting that right upfront to get these people's attention early. But know also, it could take a few sales to get these people in there, right? So don't be discouraged when you see the bounce rate up there because people are just looking and leaving. That's what they do. That's why I call them lookers. Ryan: I hate when people talk to me about bounce rate. Take your bounce rate to the bank. Have them tell you what that's worth. Jon: Yeah, it doesn't help, right? Ryan: No. Jon: And it's a metric so many people chase, I think, thinking, oh, I can get my bounce rate down. Okay, this one goes in with time on-site with me as well. So many people track time on-site and I think it's a false metric because if you think about it, I'm there to get my tasks done. I'm there because I want to buy this product, or even if I'm just looking around, I generally have an idea of what I'm doing at your site. I might just still be browsing, but I have an idea of why I'm there. The problem with this is if I'm there for 10 minutes, you've made my life really complicated. I'm there because I need something, I'm looking around, and then the problem is I can't find that or I got sucked into something and I'm there for 10 minutes. As opposed to, I would much rather have customers who are at my site for three minutes and buy, right? And then I have their information. I can continue to market to them at another opportunity. But if somebody is spending 10, 20 minutes on your site, we probably have some type of usability problem. Ryan: Well, and also I laughed when you started talking about catching their attention because I know you're going to tell people it is not a pop-up telling them to join your email list for 10% off your first order, especially if you're a looker. Jon: Yep. I agree with that. Ryan: That is not going to be a quality email. Jon: Not at all. But you do want to encourage them to get on your mailing list but not through a discount, not through a pop-up, really encourage them in other ways so that you can then follow up with them later. Maybe that's something like an upcoming new release that they might be interested in, right? You should be thinking about it in that way. Once you've kind of got their attention, then how are you going to continue to keep that attention and continue to market to them? This is where I hear you say all the time, you're happy to pay for ads and break-even knowing you're building your customer roster. And I think that this is a good opportunity to be thinking about that without actually converting for a sale, right? This is what we would call a micro-conversion, where they're doing something that's not actually an exchange of money. Ryan: Now I would venture a guess and you can probably correct me if I'm wrong, but lookers probably make up the largest portion of traffic to most e-comm sites. Jon: Yes. There's a reason that I put them first on the list. It's because it's going to be the vast majority. Ryan: So it's a vast majority. You've worked with some pretty large brands with the ability to test measure lots of different things. Top of mind, obviously on the fly because we didn't talk about this beforehand, but what's a good implementation of this catch your attention that you've seen implemented that caused the brand to continue to be able to grow and push these lookers further down the funnel? Jon: Yeah. So this is where things like we were just looking at a company that sells a bunch of different pants. The price point was like $128 for a pair of pants. And I was like, man, that's, that's kind of expensive. I'm just looking at these pants. I don't really need a pair of pants right now. But the reality is what caught my attention was that they are five times stronger than jeans and I can do a lot of different activities in them. And that caught my attention because now I'm thinking, "Wow, they're going to last a lot longer than jeans and I probably spent $100 on a pair of jeans." So what's 28 more dollars to have them last five times as long as jeans, right? So just something like that, the benefit is really going to hit that. And I'm the target audience for that site I was looking at. So, these lookers, they're likely, the vast majority of them should be your target audience. If you're working with Ryan in Logical Position, then you're driving qualified traffic. And so assuming you're driving qualified traffic and these lookers end up there, they're going to be within your demographic of who is your ideal customer, so then really it's all about connecting with them on the benefit. Ryan: Got it. Okay. I think that's a great thing. It's easy to execute for most brands, I think. Jon: Yeah, for sure. So we can also talk about for each of these how I would recommend converting these. And I think for the lookers, I would want to really just make sure the e-commerce site is easy to navigate and search because really that's what they're here to do, is just walk around the store, right? So make it easy. Don't put barriers in their way, help them get where they want to go, and give them a really excellent reason to give them that email address that we talked about or other contact information, and so you can build a relationship with a nurturing campaign. That site I was just talking about, they had a bi-weekly $150 gift card that they would give to somebody who signed up. So you're entered to win a $150 gift card every other week, which is great because of $128 pair of jeans, I might get those for free. So if I'm seriously interested and I want to continue to stay in touch with this brand, I might've given them my email address there, right? And then another way really here is cart abandonment because a lot of lookers will add stuff to cart as a way of holding it to compare and look at when they're done browsing your store. It's kind of like if you go shopping and you might pick up a couple of different pairs of clothing or something off the rack when you're walking around the store because, "Oh, I like this. I might like it. Let me see what else they have too." And then you end up with three or four things, right? It's the same thing browsers are doing on your website. They're throwing it in their cart and then they want to just take a look at that and evaluate after. So having some type of cart abandonment there can be a great way to captivate their interest. Ryan: Awesome. Jon: So next would be bargain hunters. With bargain hunters, it's really not about discounting, right? That's not conversion optimization. I think you know my stance on discounting. People who listened to this show will know I'm fervent about not discounting, right? But instead, really look to offers like free shipping, or gift with purchase, BOGO. We did a whole episode on this. People really want to know the alternatives, they exist. And really here, you just want to be thinking about things like current offers on your website. Don't make your customer's desert at the checkout and then go elsewhere to find that bargain or that special code. If they have to go to any of those sites, they're not coming back. And so we really don't want to drive them there. And you might also highlight, last chance or clearance items instead of making shoppers really go find those on your site. It could be really good on every category to have a little tout or badge or flag on each product that says something about how it's last chance, or low inventory, or something that's on clearance. Ryan: Now, do you advocate for having a clearance or an outlet navigation button on brand sites for this type of thing? Jon: Generally not. Where I want to see that as within the category because, yes, having a clearance item ... A lot of brands will put that in the main navigation. The problem is you're wasting a really critical main navigation slot. You only want five to six navigation items to begin with. And if you're taking clearance as one of those or something of that sort, a sale, I see a lot of people have sale in main navigation, what's going to happen is people are going to go there first and they're not going to get a total view of your products. Usually, the products that are in that clearance are in clearance for a reason. They weren't really popular. So why do you want the first impression of what your product should be, for a person coming into your site to see, is only the products that other people normally wouldn't buy and they're on clearance, right? So instead, mix clearance in with your other products. That way you're not promoting only your worst sellers if you will. Ryan: A couple interesting points that deviate a little bit from what we're talking about, but it's applicable in that I can afford most things on the sites I go to, but I am cheap by default so I always go to the clearance button first. Because I'm like if I can find what I'm looking for on clearance first, I'm going to get it. Even though if I didn't see clearance, I would have gone to the product and probably bought a higher price one by default because that's just how I operate on a site. But also, when you are throwing discounted products on your site, and there's a clearance section that they are in, if your Google shopping is not set up properly, all of those products would have been going into the clearance section and you can be stuck in the clearance section of the site and you're going to be staying in there most of the time. And because products are discounted price, generally get to show more often in Google shopping because they're lower price point or there's a discounted price, you will, unfortunately, be sending a lot of discounted traffic to your site when that maybe is not the focus of your brand. So some brands I advocate for having an outlet site that's completely separate. Jon: That's a great point. Ryan: Kind of like Gap Outlet, their stores, they sell all their old stuff and they'll have a separate site, and then having the people going to gap.com on that. Jon: That's a great point. And that probably makes Kanye very happy as well. Next up is buyers. Buyers should be buying from you in a way that's hassle-free, right? These people want to buy. They're there to buy. They have a job. That's one job that they're there to do and that's to buy, so let them buy. Clear these obstacles, make it easy and simple to buy, really be thinking here about the bottlenecks in the path to purchase that people must take, right? What are the hurdles you're asking them to jump over? Let's get rid of those. A really great way to look at this is to do user testing, get people who fit your ideal customer profiles, and have them run through your site while you record it and talk about the challenges they're having. Again, the whole goal here is to get outside the jar, read the label from outside the jar. And it's really hard to do that when you're too close to it. So really be focusing on just eliminating every single possible barrier, too many fields on checkout, making people create an account before they buy, all of those things that would be extra steps or what we're looking to eliminate with these. Ryan: And be clear on your shipping rates. That's the one that makes me so mad lately, is people not telling me what I'm going to pay for shipping, so it'll increase your cart abandonment too. Jon: Yeah, Exactly. I mean, these people are ready to buy until they saw you were going to charge them 20 bucks to ship, right? And so, there you go. Perfect case study. Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Jon: All right. Should we move on to researchers? Ryan: Yes. Jon: Really, researchers, my point of view on these is these folks need to just make sure that they feel like they've considered their options and they're making the right decision. And your job, your only job is to help them do that. So what does this look like? Well, provide all the info you can think of, dimensions, instructions, details, data, data, data. That's what these people want, right? They're comparing. They came to your site because as I mentioned earlier, they were on Amazon, the Amazon didn't have the details, so they're relying on your site to have them. And you want to help them just make an informed decision. This could be everything from product reviews from other consumers to video. Researchers love video because they can see the products in motion and in use. Somebody even just holding the product and walking them through it. Specialized Bicycles does an amazing job of this. They actually have employees of Specialized, not models or anything else. It's employees hold the bike and then walk a consumer through it on video. And it's really, really well done. It does not have to be ... They shoot it in a studio, but it doesn't feel like it's a super well-polished and professional video on purpose, right? It's not some high production quality. You're aiming for your local news versus the national morning show, right, in level of quality here. Ryan: Got it. Jon: So the other thing is, really help these people understand things like sizing and photography. Video, I mentioned. So those are the things you just really want to help people dive into are all these different decision points. All right, new customers. These folks, they really want to feel like they've made a wise decision or that you want them to feel like they can make a wise decision, understand your warranties, helping people stand behind their products. You want to make sure that you're glad that they are your customer and make them know that. So this is where you think about retail source. Like your wife's retail store, right? She's there to answer questions. She can help out with returns. She'll generally just express gratitude when these people are shopping, right? It's hard to do that online, but this is where it becomes really, really important that you're doing things like building relationships with nurturing campaigns. And that can start with, as I mentioned earlier, a post-purchase campaign. What happens after this new customer becomes a new customer, right? They're no longer a visitor, they're now a customer. What do you need to do there? Loyalty campaigns, a huge way to engage these folks, right? You get them in and say, "Thank you so much for your first purchase. Here is points for your next purchase," or, "Two more purchases and your fourth one is free." Something of that sort, right? Where you're helping these loyal people become loyal customers. That's really what this is all about. Ryan: And these people just purchased, so maybe they haven't even gotten the product yet or maybe they just got it. Jon: Exactly. Ryan: Even just user videos on how to use the product you're getting can be valuable. I do that with Joyful Dirt. Jon: That's a great point, right? So what can you send as that follow-up email flow while the people are waiting for their package to make sure they know that you have their back, right? So if I bought Joyful Dirt, what do I need to prep for? Is there a season I should be doing this in? How much water do I need to apply? All these other types of things that I probably don't really think about, but are really key to somebody getting the most out of the product and buying again, right? If I follow your instructions for Joyful Dirt, I am more likely to have a good experience and then buy again, then if I just use the product without reading the instructions, which is more likely for me than not so. Ryan: What I appreciate on it too, on that first email after I purchase, usually the next day, it builds the anticipation because often I forget what I bought yesterday and I get surprised by Amazon in two days, who are the site I purchased it on. And so you're like, "Oh, yeah, I do have that coming in a day." I'm excited to get it now because I was excited yesterday when I bought it, and I forgot today, and then tomorrow when it arrives, I get excited. So it's a good way to continue that kind of that high from my purchase that I just paid. Jon: How is there not a phrase like the Amazon phenomenon or something, where everybody forgets what they ordered at Amazon at midnight the night before and then it shows up two days later and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I was looking for that. That was great. I'm a genius." Ryan: I know. I was like, well, I knew I wanted one of these and like, oh, I did want one and then I bought it. It was great. In college, it would have been, "Man, what did I do at 2:00 AM?" and talk about, "Oh, I had a bean burrito." Now, it's just transaction fatigue or something. And I'm just [crosstalk 00:25:48]. Jon: That was much lower key than I thought you were going there, Ryan. 2:00 AM in college. But this happened to me recently where I was working out with a trainer and we do an outdoor workout in my garage now. And it was really funny because he didn't bring his TRX bands. If you know about these TRX straps, they're a way to do workouts. And the reality is that I went on and I just ordered a pair from Amazon. I was like, "Well if you ever forget them again, I'll have some here." And totally forgot about it. And then the next workout came by and the Amazon guy literally showed up two days later while we were working out. So it had been like two days to the hour and the guy shows up and I'm like, "Oh, I wonder what that is." And you could read the outside of the box. It said TRX. And my trainer is like, "Did you get something from TRX?" I was like, "Oh, yeah. Last time you were here. Yeah, remember?" Yeah, so that's was pretty funny. I was like, Amazon wins again. Ryan: Yep. Jon: All right. Dissatisfied customers. We have two left. So let's talk about the dissatisfied customers. Everybody has them, right? And they exist. And that's okay. These folks often can just be made satisfied by helping them understand that you're trying to fix their challenge and improve the experience for everyone else. Often, it's like if I come across a problem on our website, okay, let's just say, I just bought a bed. I'm not going to name names, but I bought a bed online and it has a whole bunch of technology in it. Love it. But, I'm a tall gentleman, right? And I bought a king, and it comes, and I was like, "This is a lot smaller than a king." It turns out, I measured it, it's two inches less than a king. And I was like, that's really weird. It's not a queen. So what's going on here? And so I contacted the brand and said, "Hey, this bed is two inches smaller than a king." And they said, "Oh, yeah. Because of some of the technology, blah, blah, blah, we have to make it a little bit smaller." And I was like, "That would have been nice to have known up on your site. You need to tell people that it says king, but it's actually two inches smaller. Because you're advertising all these NBA players use this bed and things like that, and I'm thinking great, right? But then it's two inches smaller." And the founder actually emailed me and said, "Hey, I got this feedback. I heard this. Well, we're going to add this to the website and make sure people know." And I was like, okay, well, I still have the bed, now I'm satisfied. And I was like, at least other people won't have that problem, right>. So I felt vindicated in some way. And so I think I made this point to say that complaining customers are an excellent source of feedback. And that's how you need to look at these, right? It's not about just having dissatisfied customers, it's about understanding what their problems are and fixing them. They tell you what the problems with your website and your consumer experience are, and so you could fix those problems. So really just want to be quick to listen to things like bad reviews, understand the complaint before responding, and understand that you can turn dissatisfied customers into loyal ones. It is possible. Ryan: I think too often brands hear or get bad feedback or just dissatisfied customers, and it's just for them, it's almost scary confronting it, or they're really excited and passionate about their brand, and somebody doesn't like it, they're like, "They just don't know what they're doing." I've done this myself with brands, and I'm like, "They just don't know what they're doing." And then I'm like, okay, it happened again. I'm like, okay, fine, we need to adjust the product. And my baby may be ugly, so let's fix it and not make it so ugly to some of these people. You can't be scared of dissatisfied customers, or you're going to lose your brand. At the end of the day, it's going to be just terrible. Jon: That's a good point. Yeah. All right. Last one, loyal customers. So, look, the 80/20 rule says that 20% of your customers will be responsible for 80% of your business. So the way I like to look at this and it's hilarious, I was just saying this to somebody else, but loyal customers are your bread and the rest are your butter, right? So really want to be thinking about what are you doing for these loyal people? So look at loyalty programs. I like to use airlines as examples because they are so good at gamifying, right? I'm platinum on Delta. I mean, I haven't flown them in nine months and I just got another letter from them yesterday with baggage tags for platinum level. And they said, "Hey, we're going to keep you a platinum level for another year. Don't worry about it. All the miles you've accumulated will count towards next year. So you don't have to start over. We understand." And they're gamifying it and in a way that's, okay, now, next year, when I start flying again or whenever that is, I'm going to go right back to Delta because I'm still platinum there. If they had removed, I'd just figure out, I'd be like, hey, well maybe Alaska or whoever else flies more on the West Coast where I'm all the time going, I would probably switch. But now I'll stick with Delta, right? They've done a great job with that through what's no doubt a challenging time for them. So really want to be thinking about a way to keep customers coming back and how you can take care of your most loyal customers. As I say, gamifying works very, very well. Every customer is special, but you really want to treat these folks with even more kid gloves, if you will. And then find ways to reward and recognize these people, you can give them special amenities. Baggage tags aren't really going to be much for me. I don't really care about that, but I'll take the free upgrades and the free alcohol and everything else that comes with being platinum with Delta. And then really just treat them like a VIP and they'll continue to be loyal. That's really my key point here. Ryan: And this is really probably the one area that I advocate for companies looking at competitors and taking note because a lot of times when you look at competitors and they have this widget on their side, or they do this thing in their ads, they probably have no idea what they're doing. At the end of the day, they're testing something. But when it comes to loyalty and what they're doing with their customers to try to keep them loyal, often, this is where a lot of research goes and especially in the airlines. If I was running an airline, I would go to all of the other airlines' loyalty program, find a list somehow and say, "Look, if you are platinum with Delta, I will automatically make you platinum or whatever my highest thing is with Alaska, give me a shot." And just automatically, because you're losing nothing. I'm not getting Jon's business right now. Jon: Right. It's funny you say that because Alaska does just that. They'll do a status match, where if you're platinum on Delta, they will status match you and give you that for a year on Alaska. Sadly, you can only do it once in your lifetime. And I did it right before the pandemic, so that's not a good situation for me. But yeah, at any rate [crosstalk] travel. Ryan: Join your competitor's loyalty program. I highly recommend everybody do that because it's going to give you some ideas of what they're seeing in the data or how they're gamifying it. Just jog your brainstorming ideas. Jon: Yeah. Status matches is a great idea, right? That's wonderful. Yeah. Where do you think you want to go from here? Ryan: Well, we're about out of time. So, I guess, I've got a lot to chew on too because I'm sure we're going to come out with some other ideas on this after digesting most of your data. But there's a lot of things you can do on a site to target a lot of people. And so what would your suggestion be to somebody that's just taken this fire hose to the face for their site and they're like, oh, my gosh, seven different groups of people? Where do you start and how do you start taking some actions so you're not a paralysis-analysis scenario? Jon: Yeah, great point. I would say here, start by asking questions about each of these groups and taking a good look at your site from their perspectives, right? So do each of these customer types get their needs met or are you just leaving some out in the cold? And how do you identify and engage the most loyal customers, or how do you flag and recognize new customers? And are you providing enough information to researchers? So really there's a key question in each of these if you go down and just ask yourself, am I meeting the needs of these people? And you'll come up with tons and tons of optimizations that you can do to your site on your own pretty easily. Ryan: Got it. And I would probably just broad stroke saying if you move up through the list in reverse order, you're taking care of some of the easiest or most important things. Like keeping your loyal customers loyal to you, you can't lose lifetime value customers, otherwise, your top-funnel marketing is just wasted. So keep those and move up. If you have to make a choice on where you're taking actions, I'm guessing that's where I would start. Jon: There you go. Awesome. Well, thank you, Ryan. I really enjoyed the conversation today. Ryan: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for bringing your brain and letting me pick it and add some value to our listeners. I appreciate that. Jon: All right. Well, have a great afternoon. Ryan: You too. Thanks, Jon. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.

Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Hear now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Welcome back to another addition of 4-H-4-U-2, the podcast that brings you everything 4-H and 4-H related in the state of Mississippi. I'm your host John Long. Cobie Rutherford:  And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, how's it going? Cobie Rutherford:  It's going great John. John Long: That's great. That's just great. The weekend is here and we've got some cool weather on the way so, we are super excited about that. We are also super excited to have our guests here today. Well, it's just a picture perfect day outside and we've got the picture perfect man with us. Mr. Kevin Hudson. Kevin Hudson:  Glad to be here with you. John Long: Yeah, whoa, that was good. Yeah. Kevin, since you're here, tell us a little bit about yourself, where are you from and basically how you got to where you are today? Kevin Hudson:  Well, I grew up in Louisville, Mississippi and still live there today and so it's a short commute to MSU. Glad to be working as a photographer with Extension. Most of my working career has been spent either in photography or video production, so kind of those two fields and I've spent a good bit of time at the university and other places. I'm glad that my path took me to Extension; it's a good place to be. John Long: When did you first like really realize that photography was going to be your thing? How old were you? Kevin Hudson:  Well, I don't ... That's hard to say. I mean, I was always interested in photography I guess growing up. We lived next door to my grandparents and my grandmother had an old manual 35 millimeter camera that she would let me take and use. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They said everything on it with the lever and everything. But she was good about letting me experiment with that and kind of see what it would do. And she was also good about paying for the film developing in those days. You know, you had to pay for that. John Long: Where'd you have to take yours in to? Kevin Hudson:  I want to say in the days before the big store that everybody goes to. I think what I remember is sending it off through the mail, through one of the local drug stores. John Long: Okay. What was the turnaround time on that? Kevin Hudson:  Oh man, I don't remember. Probably a week or two maybe. I'm just guessing. John Long: Yeah. Yeah. So you didn't do the dark room thing until... Kevin Hudson:  I never did. John Long: And you still don't to this day. Kevin Hudson:  No. Cobie Rutherford:  You know, I remember when the little digital cameras first came out. It's like that kind of toss and go's and I thought that was the coolest thing. When some of the big box stores and drug stores start offering 24 hour process, I thought, wow, this is the best thing. How could anything get better in photography and we just had no idea. John Long: Now, its leaps and bounds. Cobie Rutherford:  And now the world is crazy. Right. Kevin Hudson:  It was a big deal even after that to get one hour processing, you know? Cobie Rutherford:  You know and now, last job I had was with Alabama Cattleman's. And we talked about that a little bit on here before and I was kind of thrown into being the official photographer for the Alabama Cattlemen with no training at all. And you know, people just think that it's an easy task to do and I'll be the first to say; it's hard. You know, trying to get the lighting, all that. Kevin, I don't know how you do it, to be honest with you. I would take a thousand shots and maybe get one good one. Kevin Hudson:  Well, I would not say that livestock photography is my forte by any stretch and that's difficult Cobie, because you know, at least when you're working with people, you speak the same language and animals often don't cooperate and don't help you out. John Long: You learn to speak cow. Kevin Hudson:  Yeah. Even then, they don't always want to cooperate. So, that that's difficult to do. Cobie Rutherford:  When my boss would always be like, "Every picture you get of me, my mouth is open." I'd be like, well, maybe if you wouldn't talk all the time. Kevin Hudson:  Yeah. It usually works that way for me when it's pictures of, of our boss. You know, mouth is open and I ended up taking a whole lot more to try to avoid that. John Long: What's your favorite thing to photograph? Kevin Hudson:  I enjoy taking pictures; I do a lot of different photography for Extension, but probably what I enjoy the most is the photographs for Extension Matters Magazine. The magazine focuses on individuals around the state who are doing good things, interesting things and they've had some help or some influence from Extension along the way. And so the magazine tells those stories. But those people are always interesting and I enjoy that. It's a lot of environmental portraiture. So you're shooting them in their location, whether it's their farm or their business or home or wherever they are. Kevin Hudson:  And I know a little bit about the person before I go. Oftentimes, the story is being written at the same time, so I don't have all the facts about them. But, you just get to where they're located and you have to do a location assessment and see what's there, what's going to work for photos and kind of as you're talking to them, you know, you're thinking about what, what can we do, what will work, what's not going to work. And I enjoy that. That's probably my favorite part of the job. John Long: You do a great job because it's a beautiful publication. Cobie Rutherford:  You know and you've read those stories and you really don't, if there's not a picture with them, it's hard to make that connection with the person that the story is about. So I think that the strong photographs sometimes tell more of the story than sometimes the verbiage does. Kevin Hudson:  Well, I think that can be true. Thank you. Yeah. John Long: How long is that, excuse me. How long has that publication been going on now? Kevin Hudson:  I think with the issue that will come out beginning next year, I think that's volume six so, we just about have; and the last issue for this year is not out yet, so five years; wrapping up five years production. John Long: Good. Cobie Rutherford:  You know, I like those stories and how diverse the Extension audience is. And I think, you know, just if you don't even have time to pick up the whole Extension Matters and read it from front to back, you just flip through and say the portraiture throughout the magazine and see the youth, the adults, the older generation, everyone who's being impacted by Extension; it really tells a neat story. John Long: And I think that of course, Kevin does all the photography for the project achievement days as well. And of course, we get to work with him during the summer doing those. And you think well, a picture is not, you know, you take a thousand of a young person getting an award. But to that young person, that is so super special and you can see that every time they step up and get their picture made, I'm sure. Kevin Hudson:  You can. And that's fun. I enjoy the project achievement days. There are photography contest that I run in the morning and in the afternoon. And then after all of those contests are complete, I'll take the awards photos at the end of the day. and I think it was maybe one of the, one of the early project achievement days this year; the 4-H-ers get their awards and then they wait until that specialist, you know, is, is finished giving all the awards for that category and they will take their photos all together. Kevin Hudson:  So, there's time backstage or wherever we're taking the photos for them to wait on that specialist. And there was one young 4-Her this year who was talking to another one while we're waiting on their specialist. And he was just really excited and I heard him saying, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I knew when she was reading those names, she was going to call my name and she did. And I just knew it was going to be my name and I just can't, I mean, this is like the Grammys!" And I thought, that's great. It's a really big deal for them. And so, it's fun to see that and, and it gives you some appreciation for what they're doing and how much they enjoy it. And that's nice to see. Nice to be, have a small part in that. Cobie Rutherford:  Now, Kevin, how many, you might have mentioned earlier, how many years have you been that official Extension photographer? Kevin Hudson:  Well, I don't know that you would call me the official Extension photographer. When I came on, we had actually had two photographers, Cat Lawrence, who went on and is doing great things at the University of North Carolina Charlotte now as a photographer for them and we do have other people who take photos. John Long: I've even taken photos. Kevin Hudson:  You have. Yes. And do a good job with it. John Long: I've taken pictures of Kevin. Kevin Hudson:  Unfortunately, yeah. But I came to Extension in 2014. Cobie Rutherford:  Okay. You and I, I think came along about the same time. I started in early 2015. John Long: Kevin used to work my wife. Kevin Hudson:  I did. Yeah. Yeah. John Long: How many years did you work over there? Kevin Hudson:  I was there two different times, so I'm going to say altogether probably about eight years I would guess. John Long: Yeah. Cool. Cobie Rutherford:  So now you're, you're getting to the point in your career where you're seeing some of these children go from 4-Her or into the workforce. So, I bet that's a pretty neat story to kind of watch and photograph and be a part of and have all those memories on your computer. When I was in Alabama Cattleman's, that was always one of my favorite things to do is to watch these children progress through the ranks of being a junior cattlemen member going up into becoming a leader in the adult association. So, it's kind of neat that you'll have that experience firsthand and you're always kind of our go-to person too, for a historical pictures and reference now. John Long: Oh yeah. Cobie Rutherford:  So, it's kind of like your, the library, the archive down here. John Long: Where can we find a picture of dot, dot, dot. Cobie Rutherford:  Go to gallery. Kevin Hudson:  We get that sometimes and sometimes, maybe it's a person or an event that we, it certainly predates me. I haven't been here a long time, but a lot of the photos we have do go back a long time. But we do get requests for things that we don't have and sometimes we can direct them to somebody else on campus who may have those photos. Sometimes the library has them, so yeah, different places. John Long: And you also helped with our Congress too; our state Congress. Kevin Hudson:  I do, yeah. John Long: And it's basically the same contest that you do at PAD? Are you doing anything extra on that? Kevin Hudson:  Well, for a long time, we had an all day photo track, but this past year I think that may have been the last all day track there was. So, this past year or this year that we just finished, this summer we have just the regular photography contest. So a judging contest and a visual presentation contest that take place on two different days. John Long: What was the photo safari and is that something, was that Dr. Browning did that or is that? Kevin Hudson:  No, the photo safari is something that still goes on. That happens the spring break week of each year. And that really got started with Cat Lawrence, who was another photographer here. Cat, together with Leflore County agent, Christina Meriwether, got that started. Kevin Hudson:  And the idea was to take a group of 4-Hers to some place on around the state, let them learn about Mississippi, maybe see a part of the state that they've never been to see some things that they haven't seen before, let them take photos, teach them about their camera. We do require that if you're going to go on the photo safari, you have to have a camera. You can't take pictures with your phone. So, we want to teach you about the settings on your camera; what does what and when to use this and when to use that and that type thing. So, it's a bit of an educational four days that we spend with them, not only on things photography, but things about our state. In this past year, the Safari actually was in the New Orleans area. So, I think this year coming up, we'll be back in Mississippi covering some other places that we have not been to yet. John Long: Cool. Cobie Rutherford:  So how does the photography judging contest work? I know there seems like there's an increased interest every year; more and more children sign up for that contest. And it seems like it's really growing. Kevin Hudson:  It is growing. I mean we have a good number of participants through the project achievement days and then also at Congress for the elder 4-Hers. Kevin Hudson:  The judging contest is really made up of two parts. In project achievement day, they bring their photos with them, but they bring four photos that they've taken, four printed photos, one portrait, one action photo, one landscape photo and one still life. And those get judged at project achievement day. We try to give them a little constructive criticism, you know, tell them what works about this photo; what might make this photo better. Something that you know, they can go home and try next time. So, that's one part; that's the skills judging part of the judging contest. Kevin Hudson:  The other part is oral reasons and for that, we'll show them a series of four photographs and we want them to, on their own, look at those photos, evaluate them, rank them from the best photo to the worst photo and then be able to tell me or me and whoever else is judging orally; tell us your reasons for ranking them that way and together that makes up your score for the judging. Cobie Rutherford:  And then the visual presentation is basically where they just give a presentation on something about a camera or a photograph or a feature of a camera, is that right? Kevin Hudson:  That's right. It can be a visual presentation related to anything photography. So, when you see visual presentations about photos they've taken, sometimes it's about the history of photography or a particular type of photography; can be about their camera. It can be about pictures taken with a smart phone. So, anything really that's photography related; it's pretty much wide open as far as the visual presentation goes. John Long: And we talked about the technology side of it too and you just alluded to about going back to the phone. Amazing how that has really changed our ability to take pictures and good quality pictures at that. But, do you see, and I heard this one time, I don't know if you remember this or not and I guess it was when digital cameras were just coming into really popularity, was the fact that with a digital camera you don't have those little nuances that you, that you captured with a good or bad with a film camera to whereas if you take a picture and you don't like it, you can quickly delete it. Do you say that been a hindrance or is technology really, my guess, more pro than it is con when it comes to photography? Kevin Hudson:  Well I think it's definitely more pro because you, you have the ability to take as many photos as you'd like, see what looks good and what doesn't and you can delete them. It's not costing you anything. Whereas the film days, you had to pay for the film and pay for the developing also. John Long: So what would you tell a young person that would be interested in getting into photography? How would they get started? What would be some good ideas to do? Kevin Hudson:  I always advise people who are interested in photography; and a lot of times they have interests in other things that kind of are photography related, my advice is always study art as well because if you understand things like composition and where to place things within the frame; it's the same thing that you see in the art world, whether you're talking about painting or drawing or those kinds of things and that really works together with photography. Kevin Hudson:  You understand more about an image; it's not just like looking through the holding your phone up and clicking or just pressing the shutter on a camera, but you're intentionally making photos, you understand about composition and why you put this here or why you would put your subject in this spot versus this other spot. You understand lighting, you know. So, my advice is always study art and find photographers or find photos that you like and that's easy enough to do online these days. Find photos that you like and try to figure out how that photographer made that shot. Where were they? Where was the camera? Was it up high? Was it eye level? Was it down low? You know, where was the sun? Where's the light coming from? And just practice those things and learn what you can do with what you have. And you know, the best camera available to use is the one that you have and sometimes that is your cell phone. So, practice with whatever you've got. You can't say that practice makes perfect, but practice always leads to improvement. Cobie Rutherford:  And you know, and I've heard some people say, well, if it's not a good photo, I can fix it with Photoshop. And that kind of goes back to the art thing too, because really if you can't draw, you really have trouble editing photos. Right? Kevin Hudson:  Well, yeah, I mean I think that's related. And you know, Photoshop is a great tool. I use it every day and I love it. You can't Photoshop everything though. You know, there are things that are beyond being saved and sometimes we get those from people that you know like, "Can you help me do this or can you make this look this way?" And sometimes we can and sometimes we can't. So, it pays to have some knowledge and experience on the front end to get it as good as you can and don't count on, you know, Photoshop to fix everything for you. John Long: Perfect example of how you can use Photoshop is when I was getting my engagement pictures made, I realized I had excess hair on my neck and the photographer took that out. Kevin Hudson:  Yeah, you can do that. John Long: She said the offending hair had been removed. Kevin Hudson:  The offending hair. Cobie Rutherford:  That's funny. Cobie Rutherford:  You know my pet peeve when it comes to photography is that if I ask someone to send me a picture and then they copy and paste that picture into a word document and send and just obliterate the resolution and the size of it and just make it so pixelated. What's your pet peeve? Kevin Hudson:  Well, that would be one. When people embed things in Word documents and send them to me. And you know. John Long: I'm sorry. I think I've done that. Kevin Hudson:  I don't know if you've done that. I don't, I don't recall that. But you know, just attach the photo to an email. Don't try to embed it into the body of the email. Just send it as an attachment. And with phones these days, you've got the ability to change your settings on your phone so that you're taking a, a really lightweight photo that's great for social media or whatever, something like that may be way under a MB or you can also set your phone to take a heavier duty image. You know, maybe a couple of MB or even four or five, six MB. And what a lot of people don't understand is the difference in resolution that you need when you're printing something versus looking at it on a screen. You don't need a huge photo. It doesn't have to be big at all to look good on a screen, but you can't necessarily print that and it looked good. Cobie Rutherford:  Yeah. That's one thing I learned at the Alabama Cattleman's was that when I put any picture in print media that it has to be 300 dots per inch. That's the only thing I remember about photos and print media. Kevin Hudson:  That is the standard that we go by for things that are going out to news outlets or magazines. We want to keep it at 300 DPI. John Long: Well Kevin, where can youth or 4-Hers learn more about photography? What resources do we have out there? Kevin Hudson:  Well, I would start with your agent. Certainly there are some things available through a national 4-H that some good resources that are photography related. I would start there also, you know with, I would always say with your parents' permission, you know, you can look online, there's a lot of free education related to photography, so it's possible to learn a lot about photography. John Long: Oh, that's great. Cobie Rutherford:  Is it those two sources? John Long: Well, Cobie where can folks go to learn more about 4-H and 4-H in their area? Cobie Rutherford:  Well, if you want to learn more about 4-H in your area, you can always visit, like Kevin said, at your local extension office, or you can go to our website at extension.msstate.edu. John Long: And Kevin, thank you for joining us today. I think it's a great way to wrap up our week and just wish you the best of luck. Kevin Hudson:  Oh, thank you. I've enjoyed it. John Long: All right, well thanks a bunch and thank y'all for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. Thanks for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, welcome back to another 4-H-4-U-2 podcast. I'm your host John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, it's maroon Friday here on campus and everybody here in our podcast studio is decked out in maroon. You going to the game this weekend? Cobie Rutherford: I am not actually, we've got some other plans and I think we're just going to keep it chill this week. John Long: There were no parking slots in the big parking lot. Cobie Rutherford: Oh really? John Long: Yes, the maroon army has arrived and hopefully we'll have a good outcome this weekend. Cobie Rutherford: I think so. I think it'll be a good game for them. John Long: That's good. That's good. And last week was 4-H day at football. Cobie Rutherford: It was, we had a pretty good crowd for that. It was so hot though. I feel like it's still summertime here in Mississippi when the calendar says fall, but temperatures definitely don't say that. John Long: I'll be so glad. We always talk about weather on here because it's so important. We're ready for cool weather to come and we are excited once again to have a super great guest on the show with us today. And that is Miss Courtney Headley. Courtney, how are you doing today? Courtney Headley: I'm doing well John. John Long: Good, good, good. Well we're wanting to basically find out a little bit more about you. That's what we're going to be first talking about. Courtney, tell us where you're from and how you got to where you are right now. Courtney Headley: Well, I am from Starkville, Mississippi. I started with the 4-H Youth Development Department on campus in 2007 and yeah, I'm here. I'm loving it. John Long: Yeah, but she started out by telling a fib. She's not from Starkville originally... you were born where? Courtney Headley: I was born in South Carolina, but I was raised here. I am definitely a Jacket alumni. John Long: Okay, very good. Very good, very good. And you do go on occasion, go back to South Carolina, don't you? Courtney Headley: Yes. John Long: That's cool. What part of South Carolina? Courtney Headley: Walterboro. John Long: Walterboro. Okay. Maybe can you go through there for anything trampling wise? Courtney Headley: Mostly the beaches are the best. John Long: Oh, okay. Very good. Very good. Courtney Headley: Charleston, yeah. John Long: Awesome. Awesome. Cobie Rutherford: Anybody out there that's listening to us, have called the 4-H office, they've always almost talked to Courtney at some point in time, especially if they deal with the volunteer program or any kind of community club type information. And Courtney, you are a volunteer for a 4-H club here in Oktibbeha County. Courtney Headley: I am. Cobie Rutherford: And tell us about that club. Courtney Headley: I have a club that I started once I started working for 4-H. I wanted to see what the other side was like. I started my club and we have been active for over 10 years now. John Long: Name of club? Courtney Headley: The name of our club as the Clover Dogs 4-H Club in Oktibbeha County. John Long: Shout out to the Clover Dogs. Courtney Headley: Very thriving club. We started first with just some of my own children and church friends and or family and it has just exploded. It has been an amazing experience and I have loved every minute of it. John Long: How long were, you said you started in '07 in the 4-H office. How long was it before you started your 4-H club? Courtney Headley: About a year. About a year. John Long: Okay, so you really did, you really wanted to get involved in it? Courtney Headley: I did. I did not unfortunately get to grow up with 4-H so when I started seeing all the amazing things that 4-H had to offer, I just had to get another insight of what it was like on the volunteer side and the youth teaching side, education side. Cobie Rutherford: And as a parent, all your children are involved in 4-H in some facet, right? Courtney Headley: They are. Finally, we have got my little one old enough that he is a Cloverbud and he knows nothing other than 4-H. When he sees the symbol, that's the first thing he says is, "Hey, that's 4-H Mama." Cobie Rutherford: And shout out to her oldest daughter Callie, who is the Northeast Region Vice President. John Long: That's exactly right. Courtney Headley: Yes, and she is so proud to be representing the Northeast and really has enjoyed and thrived in 4-H and is a big advocate of it. John Long: That's pretty cool to see her, I know when you started here I hadn't been on, well, you and I both started same year and to see how she's grown up and attained that that's a really cool, she does a great job too, by the way. Courtney Headley: Thank you. Thank you. We're super proud of her. Cobie Rutherford: What kind of life skills do you think your own children and the kids that have been your club have picked up as a part of 4-H? Courtney Headley: Oh goodness. Mainly they have learned public speaking. They have learned to set their self some goals and achieve those goals. And as a volunteer, believing in them and watching them achieve the things that they didn't think was possible. And to see the outcome of that, that is the best part of it is that's the main life skills and taking those things and just another step further and believing in themselves. John Long: What about, and you said this twice already, seeing the other side. What I guess what did you go into it with? What did you think about going into it? And then what have you thought about it now that you've been doing it for quite a few years now? Courtney Headley: Well, I just wanted to see the teaching aspect. I wanted to see what really 4-H could do for the kids and the outcome. When we started all of our children were Cloverbuds, and so as they've gotten older we're getting to see the senior side of it and we've got club congress, you've got co-op, you've got national congress and all those opportunities that are just there waiting to be taken. And it's just been a great ride. John Long: That's awesome. That's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: And I think when I think about volunteers and I see our 4-H agents working around the state, volunteers are a pivotal part of our extension program. And especially in counties that only have one agent that has to balance community resource development, FCS, that's family consumer sciences basically, agriculture and 4-H. They have to have volunteers or they would not be able to have any kind of 4-H programs of significance, I wouldn't think. Courtney Headley: Absolutely. I truly believe that our club would not be where it is if it was not for the parents and volunteers that are there with me every time that we meet or they're volunteering because there's no way I could do or have our club as successful as it is without them. They're amazing. John Long: How many did you start out with? How many young people did you start out with? Courtney Headley: Probably around 10. John Long: 10, and now how many? Courtney Headley: Right now we're sitting at, we have going around 50 but right now we're sitting around 40. John Long: Wow, that's amazing. Cobie Rutherford: That is. And you get a lot of support from the agents in Oktibbeha County for your club. Courtney Headley: Oh, absolutely. They are wonderful. If I have questions, because even though I work for the state office, there are still things that I'm learning constantly and they are always there eager to give any kind of feedback and help and support and I couldn't do it without them. Cobie Rutherford: That's really cool because there are several different community clubs in Oktibbeha County, right? Courtney Headley: There are. Cobie Rutherford: I know I think about the controllers and then there's two of those. Courtney Headley: Longview Discipleships. John Long: Sunrise, what is it Sunrise? I thought there was another one too. Sunrise or something. Cobie Rutherford: I don't know about that. Courtney Headley: I'm trying to remember Miss Poe's club's name. John Long: That's the one I'm thinking about I think. There's several in the county. Cobie Rutherford: And they all kind of have different specialties, right? Courtney Headley: Absolutely. Many of them do focus on the community aspect of it and do amazing work. In Oktibbeha County was serving our community. Our club, we do community service as well, but we kind of dabble a little bit more on the project side. John Long: What would you say has been your most popular of those projects? Courtney Headley: Oh my goodness. Probably robotics. STEM and robotics. It is that generation and these youths are just loving it. Anytime I can put some Legos in front of them or challenge their brain, they just love it. John Long: It's amazing how they can put that stuff together. I can't even get it to move. I don't know what's the future going to be holding for 4-H 20 years down the road.? Who knows? Courtney Headley: Exactly. I had Cloverbuds This past meeting that we were going to only do the builds and then we would program the next time that we met and they far surpassed the time. I was like, okay, well let's go ahead and start programming. John Long: That's important is to be flexible, right? Courtney Headley: Oh absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: You've got a wide range of ages in your club all the way from Cloverbuds all the way to the senior 4-Hers. How do you balance that dynamic of all the different ages? Courtney Headley: With volunteers. Absolutely volunteers. I could not do it without them because the way that we operate is most clubs are generalized, a one project area, but I have such a large variety of youths that yeah, we could do it that way, but there's so many interests that we want to supply that need for them. My different volunteers, we split up and we ask the kids what they're interested in for that year and depending on the project choices of that they have, then we'll assign volunteers and they take that on learning about the project and then teaching them. John Long: Have you had an instance of where a child comes in and says, "I'm really interested in doing this." And it's like, oh, we don't know anything about that. Courtney Headley: Oh absolutely. But there's so many resources on the internet, that and curriculum that's out there that it's not difficult. It just takes a parent who is wanting to achieve that. And is as eager as I am to teach the youth. John Long: Right. And that's what it takes really, doesn't it? It takes that enthusiasm and desire. Courtney Headley: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: For sure. What kind of fun things do you all do as a club? I know a lot of it's project based. You come together and meet and do state fair exhibits. But do you ever take any trips or do fun things? Courtney Headley: We have taken some trips. We've been here in Starkville we've done a lot of trips on campus. We've gone to the entomology museum. We have come on campus with the clothing. They have a clothing museum. We've been out to Raspet Flight Center before. Here, fortunately with Mississippi State campus, we have tried to take advantage of those resources. John Long: There's a diverse opportunities out there for sure. How many volunteers do you have in your club? Courtney Headley: There is probably about 8 to 10. John Long: Okay, that's pretty good I would say. How many did you have starting off? Courtney Headley: Oh, it was just me. John Long: It's quickly, we need to get some more people in here. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's something that we're all pretty good at in extension is finding people who are the experts and fields to help us out. And rely on for information. And it's neat to see that trickle all the way down to the county level. John Long: And I love the fact that volunteers have such a passion for as Courtney said, for teaching young people. That they really take on a lot and a lot of it's out of their own pocket. And in their time, time is very valuable asset that we all just have a limited amount of and volunteers take that time. And I think that's just so important and it's so, it's important to recognize that and recognition of those volunteers just you never can get enough of that for sure. Courtney Headley: And it's neat to look at your parents too and, and find out what hidden talents that they have and then use those resources. We have one group that we are starting out this year that's going to be neat. It's going to encompass woodworking and small engine that we've never had before. John Long: Okay so this is one instance I guess. Courtney Headley: We're excited to see how this is going to pilot and go forth, but yeah, it's going to be really neat. John Long: That's cool. That's cool. Cobie Rutherford: Last year we had in our annual report, we included some numbers of volunteers in Mississippi. I'm going to drop some numbers that I think are pretty cool. John Long: Number drop. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. Last year we had 5,361 volunteers for 4-H in the state and the average number of hours contributed by each one of those volunteers was 220 hours. Now there's been a lot of research on volunteerism and a lot of folks have put a value on each hour and they have determined the average hourly dollar value of a 4-H volunteer for MSU is not $19.81 cents per hour. John Long: Wow. Cobie Rutherford: That would "equivalate," is that a word? Probably not. John Long: I don't know. We'll make it one today. Cobie Rutherford: That would "equivalate" to. John Long: It's Friday. You can say whatever you want to. Cobie Rutherford: $23.3 million. John Long: That's amazing. Cobie Rutherford: From volunteers. John Long: Absolutely amazing. Just don't, we can't say thank you enough, that's for sure. That is for sure. Cobie Rutherford: And that probably doesn't even count the impact they are making within the county. That's probably just for their time. John Long: Right. Right. Cobie Rutherford: They're doing community service. There's probably an even greater value to that. John Long: But, one thing you can't put a price on, and this may sound corny, but it's the truth, is the fact of the amount of impact that they're having on that young person, you can never put a dollar value on that for sure. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Now Courtney, I know for a fact because I was there when you got it, your club has received some recognition and awards and things like that, right? Courtney Headley: We have, especially with Banner Club. John Long: And tell us what that is for folks that don't know. Courtney Headley: Coming up October 1st, is when, or October 15th, one of those days. John Long: Check your calendar Courtney. Courtney Headley: Yeah, check your calendar. Is when the Banner Club books, secretary record books are due. Basically that is a record book that your club contribute. John Long: Collectively contributes. How does it work? Courtney Headley: Basically, well actually I'm really the only one that does it, but it is a collection of everything that the club has done over the past year. John Long: Right, right, right. Like a resume basically of what you've accomplished. Courtney Headley: It's the same as for the youth, but a lot larger version. John Long: I got you. Courtney Headley: For your club. You want to showcase all of the activities that they've participated in, all of the ribbons that they've won, all the meetings that you've had. And it's very important to turn that in. John Long: And you all were awarded that what year? That was few years ago. Courtney Headley: You had been awarded it I believe three times now. John Long: Three times, wow. Courtney Headley: Different awards. John Long: That's awesome. You usually do that recognition at the legislative day in Jackson. That's an opportunity for, again, for the young people to get out and see the Capitol and visit with people that are representing our area. Cobie Rutherford: And as far as volunteers go, there are also opportunities for professional development opportunities within 4-H through NVLA and different trainings that that organization puts on for volunteers that I think are pretty valuable. John Long: Absolutely. Just like I said in there, it's priceless. Cobie Rutherford: And Courtney, if I'm not mistaken, don't the NVLA recognize volunteers based on years of service and do some awards and kind of monetary things for volunteers that have excelled in their field? Courtney Headley: They absolutely do. And I can't stress enough how important it is for volunteers to go to these forums, the North and South forum as well as NVLA because a lot of times adults want to be able to help youth, but they don't know what they can offer or how to even get started. And those events are there for these adults to succeed in their clubs. John Long: Having that information I know can generate other ideas as well too. It's not a, hey, you got to do this for certain for sure. Courtney Headley: And it's very fun for adults. John Long: Oh yeah. You got to keep it fun for the older people as well. Just like for the young kids too. Older kids are just young kids at heart in older bodies. Well, all right. Courtney, what do you, what other things have you got coming down the pipe on your end as far as the club later? Have you all got anything coming up immediately? Courtney Headley: A lot of community service coming up. Of course you've got State Fair right around the corner. Getting the banner book completed and turned in. We just finished exhibit days in our county. Those are the items that go to State Fair. Yeah, so we got some stuff going on, getting started. John Long: Awesome, awesome. Well we just wish you the best of luck and just continued success in all that you do and for the hard work that you do. And I know that the young people appreciate it and as I've always said, if you're doing this now, you never really even get to see on down the road how much an impact that you've had on a young person. It goes and travels beyond this little existence we have here. Thank you so much for your hard work and again, much success. Courtney Headley: Thank you all for having me. John Long: Loved it. Loved it. See, it wasn't as bad as you thought it was going be. Cobie, tell everybody where they can go and get more information on extension and 4-H in their area. Cobie Rutherford: To learn more about the MSU extension programs, you can go to our website at msstate, excuse me, extension.msstate.edu. John Long: It's a mouthful. Cobie Rutherford: Or contact any of our county offices. They're located in each county across the state of Mississippi. John Long: Awesome. Awesome. Well, with that, we're going to wrap this edition of 4-H-4-U-2 up and we'll talk to you next time on youth and 4-H youth development. With that, thanks for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. for more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Saddle up for a good time as Dr. Clay Cavinder rides into the studio this week to talk about the importance of horses! Transcript:   Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service, promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here, now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Welcome to 4H4U2, where we talk about all things 4-H, 4-H youth development, life skills, preparation for the future, and giving back to the community. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And good morning, I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, how are you doing today? Cobie Rutherford: Doing well, it's Friday. John Long: Awesome. Cobie Rutherford: Football Friday. John Long: Woo-hoo! We got our first home football game, and people are already putting their tents up. So, we're getting fired up, and you and I both have our maroon on, as well as our guest that we have today. Cobie, why don't you go ahead and introduce our guest? Cobie Rutherford: Well, John, I'm happy to have our guest here today. Dr. Clay Cavinder, he's a professor in the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences here at Mississippi State. I guess, Clay, you started here about three or four months before I did, back in 2015. Clay Cavinder: That's right. January of 2015. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, time's flying, isn't it? John Long: I remember when you, I don't know what that meeting was that we were at, but that was the first time I'd seen you. I think it was in 409. But anyway, I remember meeting you that day and them telling me that you were new, so that's, ooh, four years? Clay Cavinder: Four and a half, yeah. It'll be five, five this January. John Long: So Clay, tell us a little bit... Oh, I'm sorry, Go ahead. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, no. Go ahead. I was just going to say Clay is our equine specialist, for Extension. John Long: Yes. Yes, that's good to know what he does. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I should have said that earlier. John Long: You just wandered in here and says, "Can I be on a podcast?" Cobie Rutherford: No, not really. John Long: Even though he says he's a podcast junkie, so that that's good. He feels at home here, so that's just great. Clay Cavinder: I do. It's strange to actually be a part of it. John Long: Yeah, it's awesome. Look, Clay, tell us where you're from and just how you got to be where you're at today. Clay Cavinder: Man, that's- John Long: And spare no detail. Clay Cavinder: That's a long story, but the shortened version. I grew up in a little town in Southeast Oklahoma. It's weird. Anybody ever asks me that question, and I tell them a little town, they say, "Which one?" I say, Idabel. Everybody knows where it's at. You don't go through Idabel, you go to Idabel. Clay Cavinder: So, most people, for some reason, have been there, but I grew up there, finished school and undergrad there at Oklahoma State, and then, wound up in Texas. John Long: How far is that? I'm sorry, I'm going to... How far is that from Stillwater? Clay Cavinder: That's a good ways, four and a half, five hours. John Long: Ooh, okay, great. Clay Cavinder: As far as Southeast, you can get close to Texarkana, Texas. John Long: Okay, go ahead. I'm sorry. Clay Cavinder: So, I grew up close to the Red River, and then when I was finished up schooling at Oklahoma state, wound up through a series of events, but wound up in Texas doing a PhD. And then shortly after that, finishing up, they had a spot open there on faculty. And so I wound up staying on faculty at A&M for 11 and a half years. John Long: That's awesome. Clay Cavinder: And then, I don't know, it's just kind of a God thing, really. A position opened here, and through a weird series of events where my family moved here, and I've been blessed to be here for sure, since January '15. Cobie Rutherford: Wow, that's awesome. That's good. John Long: Now, the reason I asked how far it was from Stillwater, you ever met a guy named Kevin Allen? He is- Clay Cavinder: I don't think so. John Long: Well, he's the state program leader, state 4-H program leader over there. So he and I, he used to do shootings for it, so that's how I knew him. He was at the PLN that we were at. Cobie Rutherford: And Clay, you've had some big life changing moments since you got here. I mean welcomed your daughter here in Mississippi. Clay Cavinder: They all happened in the same month, it seemed like. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Clay Cavinder: Yeah, within a six month period, we moved here in January and within four, five, six months we were, my wife was job hunting and I was starting a new career, really a new career because I hadn't ever had a formal Extension appointment, so it was a new animal for me. And in the midst of all that- John Long: Pardon the pun. Clay Cavinder: Yeah, right. In the midst of all that, our daughter was born and to make matters worse, it happened in the morning of the second day of the state horse show in Texarkana, Texas when I was in Jackson, Mississippi and she was premature. Everything's great now, but that was a scary time. I wound up being in the NICU for five weeks. Clay Cavinder: So you know, within a six-month period, you know, parents understand people who are going to be parents will understand, but new parents, it's tough. The job was nothing. Cobie Rutherford: The job is raising them. Clay Cavinder: The career change was not that big a deal. It was the, juggling all that the same time. But it's been a tremendous blessing, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt. The whole life changed just in one day almost, didn't it? John Long: Oh, man. Nothing like them. Clay Cavinder: Let me tell you a quick little story, just to tell you how great the people of Mississippi are. I was brand new, did not know hardly anybody, especially at the producers level. We were at the state horse show. Oddly enough, the second morning of the state horse show, I don't know, it just, I woke up out of sleep at the hotel about 1:00 AM and wide wake. Clay Cavinder: And I picked up my phone, like most of us do to kill some time. I was just looking at it, just to hopefully go back to sleep, and it rang. It was my wife, and I knew immediately something was wrong. And you know, of course I'd put on my pants was off to Texarkana two, three o'clock in the morning, and wound up having to call John Blanton and Dean and them guys that were at the state horse show and saying, "I won't be there. I've got some things going on." Clay Cavinder: But you know, that night I had people that I didn't even know texting me saying "We're praying for you." And the really cool thing was, people called me and told me, said, "Hey, that night at the opening ceremonies of the state 4-H horse show, they did an opening prayer and talked about your family." And I thought, "You know what, there's not many places that do that." John Long: Right. That's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty cool. John Long: That's awesome. And good to know, everything's okay now. Cobie Rutherford: It's fine, that's great. Clay Cavinder: She's great. She's a tough one. John Long: That the only one you have? Clay Cavinder: Only one. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, okay. John Long: May end up being the only one. Clay Cavinder: Probably so. Yeah. Yeah, it took a while to get her. John Long: You know, I'm talking about if they're tough. Clay Cavinder: She is. John Long: My son's tough, and I think we wouldn't have another one, if we hadn't had the girl first. Clay Cavinder: Yeah, I love that though. It means when they get older they'll be able to take care of- Cobie Rutherford: That's right. That's exactly right. Clay Cavinder: I hope that's the theory. Cobie Rutherford: And what's her name? Clay Cavinder: Isabella. Cobie Rutherford: Ooh, beautiful name. John Long: Yeah. Beautiful name. Cobie Rutherford: So, Clay, you mentioned that you work with a 4-H youth horse show. What other kind of responsibilities do you have as the Extension specialist? Clay Cavinder: Pretty much anything that deals with equine programming in the state, whether it's at the youth or adult level, with agents, with their clientele, a number of things in that regard. And then even here on campus, a number of things that deal with the management of the horse unit here, and some... I've tried to take some student programming through the courses I teach here and kind of overlap that with Extension work in terms of getting students involved in being a part of that education process through the horses. Cobie Rutherford: That's really neat. What surprised me, as I was part of an economic analysis a few years ago in Alabama, and I always think about Alabama and Mississippi being very similar in terms of agriculture industries, but how much of an economic impact the horse industry makes in the state. John, it's a... How many, it's multimillion, isn't it? Clay Cavinder: Multimillion-dollar deal. And even beyond the state, people don't realize that, in terms of a national economy, horses bring in billions of dollars in terms of GDP. John Long: No idea. I didn't know that. I did not know that. Cobie Rutherford: It's really incredible how much, I mean just the horse people in general spend on their horses, just to maintain them and keep them. Clay Cavinder: Yeah. If you think about it in terms of comparison to beef cattle and other food commodities, you know we have to eat and that kind of thing. And so, cattle are an important thing, poultry and swine, but horses, we don't obviously have to do that. It's just the sheer enjoyment of the species that drives it. John Long: That's that almost [inaudible 00:07:55] equate it kind of the hunting. We don't have to hunt, but we do enjoy it. So it's a multimillion, multibillion or million, whatever, for our state as well. Clay Cavinder: If you look at the GDP comparison of equine businesses, it's comparable to tobacco manufacturing, even apparel. That's what's crazy to me is, we all need to or have to wear clothes, but we don't all have to contribute to the horse industry. John Long: Right. That's so cool. You know, the horses had been around for a long time and they have helped out a lot. Of course, mechanization changed a lot of that overnight, I guess, but we still enjoy our horses for sure. That's good. I'm not a horse person. I'm not saying I don't enjoy them, but I saw a picture of me on one 10 years ago, the other day. It popped up on my Facebook Memories. We were doing therapeutic riding and yeah, so that was cool. Cobie Rutherford: You know, I'm not a horse person either. I mean, I like to look at them from a distance. John Long: I've enjoyed riding them. Cobie Rutherford: If one comes up to me, I'll probably pet it, but I think my son is going to be a horse enthusiast. He's all about them. We almost bought him one, but luckily the lady backed out on us and decided to keep it herself. Clay Cavinder: You know? It's wild though. If it's in your blood, it's there. John Long: Yeah, that's right. Clay Cavinder: I tried it a few years ago, probably four or five years ago. I was kind of burned out with everything. I was dealing with my own business and my own horses. I thought, you know what, I'm done with it. Right. It's a lot of work. People don't get that part of it. They go to the horse show and think, "Wow, that's pretty, that's neat," but the work that goes into that, it's insane. Clay Cavinder: I sold out, sold everything I had, and within three months I was buying new horses again. Cobie Rutherford: It's funny how when- John Long: My friend has one that'll... I don't know, he hasn't ridden it in years, but takes he takes very good care of it. I take my kids over there, and that joker is a biter. I say, "You watch him move, his ears go back, you better look out because he's coming for you. Clay Cavinder: Well you talk about raising kids, working with horses ain't no different. John Long: Right. Clay Cavinder: I mean, it's the same training. I tell my students all the time that you can train anything, your boyfriend, your horse, whoever it may be, whatever it may be, a dog, with three simple things. That is, provide a cue, wait for a response, and then reinforce that response, and that's the truth. The other day my wife and I were sitting in the living room and she said, ""Man, it's cold in here. And before I knew it, I was turning the thermostat down. Clay Cavinder: She never told me to get up and do it, but through providing a cue, telling me she was cold, I knew what my response needed to be, and I knew how she would positively or negatively reinforce that response or lack thereof. John Long: That means get up off the couch, right? Clay Cavinder: That's right. "Hey, go turn down the air." John Long: That's right. I think you're a wise man. Cobie Rutherford: Maybe we need to start incorporating those theories into our child development. John Long: Maybe it's the same. John Long: For sure. John Long: Probably so. Cobie Rutherford: Now a child, if you want to bite your teacher, this is how we're going to negatively reinforce it. Clay Cavinder: Right. That's negative reinforcement. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So, Clay, as far as this 4-H horse show, kind of getting back on track a little bit, are there activities that children can participate in if they don't own the horse, at the- Clay Cavinder: Man, that's a great question. You know that's usually the stumbling block or hurdle people talk about is to expense the horses inquire, which is true, but there are so many opportunities for kids to get involved with through education, with horses, with not directly owning a horse. Clay Cavinder: Horse judging obviously is something I've been big involved in through my lifetime, and that's a huge one for life skill development. You don't ever have to own a horse, but can still be around them and still be involved in that community. And there's other things too, like hippology which is a, it's a humongous contest. It's an educational contest. Clay Cavinder: It involves some aspects of judging, education, as far as knowing different facts about horses, and then of course things like horse bowl. And yeah, there's plenty of opportunities for people to get involved, and I think it's a... even if you do own a horse, need to be involved in that. The understanding of what's going on physiologically with the horse or management-wise is definitely important. John Long: You brought up a question I had in my mind. On average, what would you say that it would be for upkeep for a horse, on average for a year. Clay Cavinder: Yeah. It's very dependable upon a lot of certain factors, but we think around $1,200, $1,500 for feed and costs, you know, maintenance. But when you start adding in other things, like boarding and you know. You've got to own a barn or board them or whatever it may be. John Long: And heaven forbid something happened, which it will, because it's an animal, for sure. Clay Cavinder: And it's a horse and it will happen. John Long: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. We've been talking about... Most folks listening to the podcast know that my wife and I are livestock people, but we've actually been talking about how expensive buying a show heifer or buying a show steer would be. And yeah, when you start putting the pencil to it and you get multiple years showing a horse, it may be less expensive to show a horse than a steer. Clay Cavinder: Well, and I think that's a fine line too. You know, people try to, not that you were doing this, but a lot of people will exclude horses from livestock species. They are definitely a livestock species. It's not a pet, but the end product is a little bit different obviously, because of the meat animal versus athletic animal, performance-based animal. Clay Cavinder: But I think what you're probably alluding to more is that, if you buy a show steer and take him to the end of his showing season, then he makes a sale, then you make money. Horses, you may keep them for 10, 12 years, because of the life expectancy in that kind of thing. Cobie Rutherford: That's a good point. And I think a lot of people have started equating horses as companion animals, instead of livestock. Clay Cavinder: They sure have. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: And I think as an Extension specialist, that's probably something you battle pretty often. Clay Cavinder: It is. And you know, people say all the time, they are a companion animal because I connect with them. Well, so is a guinea pig or a Potbelly pig. Pigs are not pets. I've seen it multiple times. A little girl has a show steer, she pets on that thing and puts bows in his hair. It does not make it a companion animal. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Clay Cavinder: So to me, I'm defensive about that because I want to maintain the livestock production, agriculture and animal aspect of the horse business. I think that's important, or a valued thing for many of us. But I also get that people look at them as a, with a connection. John Long: And I am sure it's real easy to do that, even then with the other animals, like you say, livestock and things like that, because of the fact that they raise it, they have such a hands on experience with it, but then of course, there comes that time where you realize that yeah, that's bacon too, or whatever, a burger or whatever you want to talk about. Clay Cavinder: Well, the scarier part of it is too, for me, is that you can pet a dog and he doesn't step on your foot and break your toe. A horse is a different animal. And talking about that, that training aspect of it, every horse you meet, whether you know it or not, they ask you one simple question. That is, "Would you like me to be the boss, or would you want to be the boss?" John Long: Right. Clay Cavinder: And they're fine either way. Whichever one you choose, they're okay with it. And really, especially at the young student level, trying to get them to understand the capacity of this horse to learn something, but also to understand his train of thought. His mindset amongst his herd mates is, there is a definite hierarchy. And so we as horse owners, for safety more than anything, have to establish a clear, dominant-submissive relationship with them, that sometimes people who look at them as pets don't quite understand that aspect. Cobie Rutherford: That's a good point. Clay Cavinder: It is a good point. Cobie Rutherford: This may be turning into a parenting type thing too- Clay Cavinder: It all relates. Cobie Rutherford: ... because I keep thinking back a lot. Maybe my child identifies as all horse. He bites and kicks. John Long: The lights coming on now. Cobie Rutherford: The light's coming on. Clay Cavinder: Well, I think especially as young parents, we all, all of us, Cobie being a young parent too, is we all try to figure out, I think we're all constantly analyzing, "Well, I did this wrong here. I hope I don't scar my kid for the rest of his life," But, my wife and I were, yesterday, just talking about some parenting things we're going through and everything I do, it goes back to the horse. I'm just now after 20 years of marriage getting her not to condemn me for doing that. Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty good. John Long: Yeah. That's why I've used the analogy of training the kid's like training the lab, which we do. And it's like what you're saying, that reinforcement or the dominant-submissive. It's not to lessen the fact, how we teach, but it is a method to it. For sure. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. Clay mentioned the hierarchy. Reason's first day of daycare at the new location, he went in and got in a fight with every kid in the class. I tried to tell my wife, I'm like, "He was just establishing the pecking order." John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: And that's something that all animals pretty much do. John Long: Youth development. Cobie Rutherford: Feral [inaudible 00:00:16:36]. John Long: That's right. John Long: [crosstalk 00:16:40] animals do that. Clay Cavinder: And there's always a bigger one out there. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Oh yeah. Clay Cavinder: They'll figure it out. John Long: I guarantee you. Cobie Rutherford: Maybe that's what we need to do, is ask them to move my child up to another class or two, see what happens there. John Long: It's going to happen soon enough. Cobie Rutherford: Soon enough. They say- John Long: My daddy would say, there's always somebody bigger. Like you said, just gotten run across him yet. Cobie Rutherford: So Clay, what's coming up in the horse world, though? Do you do anything with the state fair or have any activities there? What's going on this fall? Clay Cavinder: No, we don't have anything going on at the state fair. A lot of the horse stuff evolves around the state 4-H stuff, and with the Winter Classic, stuff goes on with these especially. John Long: When is that? When is that? Clay Cavinder: I think it starts the end of, middle of January, end of January, down in that ballpark. John Long: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We're going to have to turn the corner before we get to that. Clay Cavinder: Yeah. Yeah. And then of course we'll head into the state show. But, we do so many little things too, but people don't get, and talking about that non horse owning group, we started a program two years ago called Horse tales, T-A-L-E-S, which I think is a really cool program in which we're using the horse to go into schools to educate kids. Clay Cavinder: Actually, we're not really educating them. We're the horse as an entertainment tool. So we go into third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade level classrooms and engage the kids with horse facts, knowledge, and information. And then, it's a door of opportunity to open up to discuss all of what 4-H has to offer. So, there's kids in there. We always go, "Hey, how many of you are not interested in horses?" Clay Cavinder: And there's always those kids that aren't. "Well, if you're not, we've got shooting sports, we've got ATV classes, we've got all kinds of different robotics. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's a great point. Clay Cavinder: Tons of things that you can get involved with. So, we're using Horse tales as a tool to increase or improve a 4-H enrollment in activity at the county level. John Long: Now do you actually take a horse? Clay Cavinder: You know, I did. The first one we did, I did. It's a program that's... I created all the tools for the agents to be able to do it. Whether they know anything about horses or not, that is irrelevant. The information's there and again, it's just a tool to engage the student. But the first one I did, and we did, it took maybe an hour. I took two horses with me, talked to the students in a classroom setting, but then took them outside and let those horses engage, or let those kids engage with horses, and we talked to around 600 kids that within about an hour and a half. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, good gracious. Clay Cavinder: You should've seen these kids. Just that, being able to pet them and be around them, it really lit them up. John Long: Folks just don't understand the power of experiential learning, that hands on that we have in 4-H. I think it's just, more people can relate to that, is the fact that when you can put your hand on a horse or some... And I'll go back to Clay, who was saying that, just to get them hooked. That's what it is, really, is the horses a hook, a cow or whatever is the hook. John Long: Then we get them in, to where we can teach them those life skills that they need. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: And it's that connection that... Clay Cavinder: And if anybody's listening that is connected with a secondary school or high school or any, it doesn't matter the age group, wants us to come do something like that, I'd be happy to talk to them. Cobie Rutherford: That's awesome. John Long: Now, how can they get in touch with you? Clay Cavinder: They can start through their county office. The agent in their county should know, be engaged with that program. And then, if the agent doesn't want to come do that or in terms of, just doesn't feel comfortable with it, I'd be more than happy to come help the agent do that and put that on at the county level, but that'd be the first place. Clay Cavinder: And then maybe, maybe me secondly. But engaging their county office, that's where I would say to start. John Long: That's awesome. That's awesome. And Cobie, where can our listeners go, just to find out more information about 4-H? Cobie Rutherford: Our listeners can go to our Extension website, which is constantly changing with updates, at extension.msstate.edu. John Long: And, if you're a podcast junkie like the rest of us in this room are, you would like to subscribe to this podcast, please do. We would love to hear back from you, and you can reach us at the state 4-H office via email or by phone at (662) 325-3350. And my email is John.Long@msstate.edu. Cobie Rutherford: And mine is Cobie.Rutherford@msstate.edu. John Long: We'd love to hear from you. So with that, we're going to call this the end of our podcast for this week, and we'll hope you join us next time on 4H4U2. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2. A podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. Dr. John Long: Welcome to another edition of 4-H-4-U-2. I'm John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. Dr. John Long: Cobie it is... I know we always seem like we start out talking about weather, but it is fantastic out there for a August day. Cobie Rutherford: It sure is John. That breeze feels mighty nice. Dr. John Long: Mm mm. Good things to come, good things to come for sure. Oh me, well we've been, again, busy and you and I've been traveling a little bit, but what did you do this past weekend? You have anything special. Cobie Rutherford: This past weekend I actually went down to Raymond for the South Mississippi Volunteer Leaders Association Forum, on Saturday. That was a good deal. Tammy Parker, shout out to her, she put on a great conference for the South Volunteers and Extension agents. Well attended. Great workshops. I guess we can spend a whole episode one of these days on the workshops we went over. Dr. John Long: Yeah, we need to get Tammy in here, I think that's a good idea. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And I'll tell you someone else we need in here is Erika McDaniel from Chickasaw County, she has started a 4-H dog club in her county, and it's fantastic. It could be a state wide program so easily. Dr. John Long: So what exactly do they do in that? Do you know? Cobie Rutherford: Well they kind of have all the- Dr. John Long: Or should we wait for Erika? Cobie Rutherford: Well we should probably wait for Erika, but all the things that they're doing like; teaching children how to properly handle their pets, how to feed their pets, differences in- Dr. John Long: Grooming. Cobie Rutherford: Different breeds of dogs, grooming, you name it. Dr. John Long: Mm-hmm. Cobie Rutherford: And then they're starting a little dog show, and basically it's an obedience class. So the kids take home what they learned, teach their dog, work with their dog, and basically strengthen that human animal bond. Dr. John Long: That's good. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it's very positive. Dr. John Long: I love dogs. Those dogs are great. Cobie Rutherford: And then there was just a whole lot of other good workshops. Rocheryl Ware in Hinds County did a nice workshop about 4-H 101 that's real informative. I hate to start naming names... Dr. John Long: No, no. You may leave somebody out, but still. Cobie Rutherford: Those are the ones I was interacting with the most. And in my workshop was all about the fair, which we talked about a couple weeks ago. Dr. John Long: You didn't have anybody go to sleep in there did you? Cobie Rutherford: No, I almost did, given the presentation, but people were writing down and asking questions, so I think they liked it. Dr. John Long: Well that's good. Cobie Rutherford: Maybe. Dr. John Long: That's always good. You know, it seems like sometimes when you're presenting something it's maybe not as interesting as you think it is, and then somebody says, "I really enjoyed that." And I guess that can be the case at times I guess. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, kind of like, "Are you feeling empathy? Because that was awful." Dr. John Long: Right, "Yeah, thanks for trying to prop me up." But no, I know you did a good job. Dr. John Long: We actually, and I say we, my family and I went to a bow tournament and everybody but my wife shot so, we had a lot of fun. That's something I guess that... I shoot every day. It may not be, I don't know, whatever, but archery is one of my favorite things to do and it was really good to get to do that with my family and just to get out and, and get away. It was out of town too, so we had a little trip and that was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Cobie Rutherford: Good. Good. Well, leading up to the weekend it was a busy week. Dr. John Long: Oh yes. Cobie Rutherford: We made some road time. Dr. John Long: Yes. And you and I left last Monday, I guess a week ago, over a week ago now, and went to New Orleans. Dr. John Long: Excuse me. Dr. John Long: And I haven't been to New Orleans in several years, it still looked the same. Cobie Rutherford: That was my first trip. I was impressed. It exceeded expectations. Dr. John Long: What was your favorite thing? Cobie Rutherford: Oh gosh, I guess it was the food. Dr. John Long: Okay. So, first of all, we have to say, we went down there for a meeting. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. It was for a conference. Dr. John Long: Cobie and I just didn't load up and say, "Hey, we're going to New Orleans." Okay? Cobie Rutherford: Right. That's right. Dr. John Long: So, just clarify that right now. Cobie Rutherford: And the conference was good. It was very good, very informative- Dr. John Long: It was. Cobie Rutherford: Made a lot of good contacts and a lot of networking. But yeah, I don't think you can go to New Orleans and not talk about all the good food. Dr. John Long: Oh the food. I tell you what, it was good. What was your favorite food that we ate? Cobie Rutherford: Oh, I guess it was that the Crawfish Etouffee. Dr. John Long: Yeah. You really liked that didn't you? Cobie Rutherford: I really did. I loaded up that night. I'm kind of a glutton I guess, I ate two bowls of it, but I hated for it to go to waste. I mean they made probably enough for a hundred. Dr. John Long: Gosh, it was a lot. I don't know what they did with it, but it was a lot. Cobie Rutherford: I don't know. But the PLN meetings were good. Dr. John Long: Yes. And that PLN stands for? Cobie Rutherford: Program Leaders Network. Dr. John Long: Southern Region. Cobie Rutherford: Southern Region. So, it kind of was all Extension administration from the ANR and FCS side, the 4-H side, lots of different committees with a whole lot of acronyms. Dr. John Long: Right. That first day...Well, the first day I really enjoyed it because they had that first-timers meeting. That was a lot of fun, just to kind of get to know... And we actually got to go out to eat with a couple of older... Well no, one was first time and then the other one was a committee member or whatever. But anyway, that was a lot of fun to do that and get to start meeting new people. And then we started meetings on that Tuesday and went all day Tuesday and Wednesday, so. Cobie Rutherford: And then part of Thursday morning, it wrapped up. Dr. John Long: Part of Thursday morning, Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: But it was nice to be able to represent Mississippi State as the 4-H leaders. Dr. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: Of course Dr. Threadgill was there, but she sat in on the FCS meetings- Dr. John Long: Dr Jackson. Cobie Rutherford: And Dr. Jackson was there, sitting in on the director's meetings. So, if nothing else, it was also good to get to interact with our administrators and talk to them more, in more of an informal type setting. Dr. John Long: Right, right. And I think you need that sometimes just to kind of, not put all that down, but to really be able to have open discussion about things. And out of the office setting, which was really nice. I like that. Dr. John Long: But, I tell you, one of the things that I was really interested in, and I told Dr. Jackson this when I was talking to him, is that I really enjoyed seeing what other states are doing. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Dr. John Long: The difference. You know, of course we're all geared towards youth development, and you and I were in the 4-H youth development committee section of that and, it was really neat to see how different states are doing this. What really stuck out in your mind about that? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think the one thing that I thought our 4-H'ers may be missing out on is a state wide camping opportunity. Which, I know there are good regional camps all around the state. I know those regions put on a very good... But I don't think, with the limited resources we have, you know, we don't have a Mississippi State 4-H camp grounds. And I think most of the states that had successful camping programs had just one 4-H camp ground, the way I understood it. Dr. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: So I'm glad the regions are kind of taking that and running with that endeavor, because I think that's a very positive experience. Dr. John Long: Yeah, I think it is too. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah I went to 4-H camp when I was a 4-H er. Dr. John Long: Did you? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Dr. John Long: What did y'all do? Cobie Rutherford: Oh gosh. We did everything. Dr. John Long: Sang Kumbaya? Cobie Rutherford: Well they had some campfire type stuff, but mostly it was just workshops and meetings, and we got to canoe and swim and different things. It was fun. Dr. John Long: Throw in a little shooting sports in there on top of it? Cobie Rutherford: I don't remember doing that. Dr. John Long: You could do archery. Cobie Rutherford: You could. Maybe I went a different track, but it was a lot of fun. But in Alabama they had one in the summer that was kind of statewide and then they also had a mid-winter camp. Dr. John Long: Right. Is this tent camping? Is this what I'm thinking about? Cobie Rutherford: No. Not at all. Dr. John Long: Cabin. Cabin camping. Cobie Rutherford: Cabin. Dorms. Dr. John Long: Oh yeah. Okay. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. They were fun. For sure. Dr. John Long: See, I've got to get in a tent. If I'm going to say I'm camping, I got to be in at tent. Cobie Rutherford: I appreciate the outdoors but, I want modern day amenities. Dr. John Long: We went camping this year for our "Summer vacation." And it was a two day event, obviously on the weekend, but it was so funny. We tent camp, and we were on our little concrete pad... Of course, we're not roughing it completely because we got electricity and water there at the pad, but it was so funny, it was all of these hundred thousand dollar campers and then this, right in the middle of them, is our little tent. But you know what? We had a great time anyway. Cobie Rutherford: I'm sure. That's... to each their own, but that's probably not my cup of tea. I don't want to fight the bugs or, you know? But then again, I'll go out to the barn and sweat with the flies and things. But, I don't know. Dr. John Long: We picked up our tent last year when we were camping and there was a snake under it. Cobie Rutherford: Oh geez. Dr. John Long: So I figured it was attracted to our body heat, I don't know that. Cobie Rutherford: Dang, I'd have left the tent there I suppose. Dr. John Long: Well, obviously you're saying these 4-H camps, they're not geared that way. It's actually kind of like a summer camp like you would imagine, that you see on "TV". Because I've never been to a summer camp or anything like that. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, and I think most of these had dorm rooms, and air conditioned cafeterias. Dr. John Long: Have you ever been to Rock Eagle? Cobie Rutherford: Rock Eagle? I have not, no. Dr. John Long: It's beautiful. It's a beautiful place. And they've actually done more now. Rock Eagle is in Georgia, in Athens, Georgia. So big 4-H camp there. Cobie Rutherford: So, what about you? What was the part that you think that we might be missing out on? Something that just kind of stood out. Dr. John Long: You know, I really liked... Of course, I know we do have collaborations, but I was really impressed, I would really like to know more about the collaborations we have with individuals like... For instance, we went to the farm, they had a Docville Farm, in Chalmette. They had a, oh I don't know what you would say... Partnership. Let us just say a partnership with that County Club, and they've just gone above and beyond reaching out and assisting them in different projects. They had a, I wouldn't say it's a, well I guess it is kind of a reforestation of coastal wetlands and marshes that Docville Farms actually works with the 4-H clubs there in order to try to reclaim some of that coastal marshland, because it's eroding away so fast. Dr. John Long: And I thought that was really cool. I know we have partnerships like that in the state, but I'm not aware of who they are. And I that would be really cool, because those 4-H'ers get up there, we had two 4-H'ers get up there and they presented that whole presentation about how they went about putting the marsh, I'm just going to say grass because I can't remember, what was it? Cobie Rutherford: Mangrove trees. Dr. John Long: Mangrove tree. Yeah, I knew it. Okay. Mangrove trees. Kevin, my friend from Oklahoma, he thought they were saying... was that to you or was that... Cobie Rutherford: Oh that was me. Dr. John Long: That was you. Cobie Rutherford: I thought... well it may have been both of us. Dr. John Long: Mango. Mango. Cobie Rutherford: I thought, well then you can go out there and pick fruit when they're finished, but, Man Grove. Dr. John Long: I thought this is a dual purpose thing. But yeah. So mangrove trees and Cypress trees and things like that so that they got up and gave that whole presentation and, I think you'll agree with me, just knocked it out of the park. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they did really well. Dr. John Long: And I think that's a result of those cooperatives like that. Of course, you went on a cooperative tour this year too, but I just thought it was really neat to see that on a county level. So, I wouldn't say it was something that we're missing out on, it's probably because we're in a state office we're probably not as aware of them going on. So, that would be really cool to see even more that, you know? Cobie Rutherford: You know, one thing I think that we are doing very well compared to the other states is our Statewide leadership team. Dr. John Long: Oh yes. Yes. Cobie Rutherford: You know, there wasn't a whole lot of other states that I interacted with. I mean they might have had a president or a board, but it seems like ours is more engaged with what all we're doing than some of the other ones. Dr. John Long: Yeah, that's great for sure. I loved our interaction, you know, of course we had 1862 institutions and 1890 institutions there, and that was really cool to interact and work out how we could work more together on doing 4-H youth development. And seeing how the 1890s institutions do that. I thought it was really good. It was very educational for me. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. No doubt. Cobie Rutherford: You know, I think that just getting to interact with those other state program leaders was my favorite part bar none. Just learning more about them, learning about... There's some people in that room that I would consider to be new mentors for me. Dr. John Long: Right. I would too. Cobie Rutherford: That I'd never met before, and never even heard of before. And now I feel like if I had a question about a program that's going on in North Carolina that I want to come to Mississippi. Dr. John Long: That one stuck out to me too, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: You know, I could call Mitzi Downing and she would help me out with it. I mean just name dropped her, but there were a lot of other ones that would do the same thing I think. Dr. John Long: For sure. For sure. I will not lie, in all the acronyms that first day I felt, other than the main presentations, when we got into committees I was like, "Oh my goodness, I am totally lost." But the second day I felt like I was with family, because I'd kind of figured out where we were going with it. But of course a lot of that was last years reporting and stuff that we weren't privy to at that time. So, but yeah, it was really cool going and representing 4-H and Mississippi Extension, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. You know that committee, they really embodied the four essential elements of 4-H. Dr. John Long: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: They made us feel like we belong to the group. I always felt included and... But then had that sense of independence as well. They were generous in sharing their other ideas and we got to experience how some of our colleagues, and maybe, I'm not going to speak for you, but maybe one day I'll have the chance to mastery some of those ideals and things that we're talking about. Dr. John Long: Right. Exactly. Cobie Rutherford: I don't feel anywhere close to a mastery on that. But, I feel like we were included within the masteries. Dr. John Long: Yes.Yes. We bow before their greatness. Cobie Rutherford: But I thought that was cool. Dr. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: We had a good time and, I don't know, I got a blank John, where I was going with that? Dr. John Long: Food. Cobie Rutherford: Probably food. Dr. John Long: Now we go back to food. Cobie Rutherford: I didn't get any beignets, and I was disappointed on that. Dr. John Long: Well, we ate those blue crab beignets, those were good. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they were very good. I feel like I missed out on the sweet ones. Dr. John Long: Oh yeah, yeah again. They are. Cobie Rutherford: Then on the way home, we bought a king cake, and that king cake got ants in it. Dr. John Long: No! Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, so I got home and opened it up, there were ants all over it. Dr. John Long: Oh my goodness. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I tried to pick them off and then I'm like, "Eh, I don't know where them ants have been." Dr. John Long: You did not throw that king cake away did you? Cobie Rutherford: Well, it was infested. Dr. John Long: Really, that bad? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. They were all over the place. Dr. John Long: Oh man, that's terrible. Cobie Rutherford: I know, I was disappointed on that. Dr. John Long: Oh we got petite fours the next day. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they were good. So, we did that. Dr. John Long: Well, that was an interesting time. And like I said, I would go back in a heartbeat. If I was asked to go back to PLN, I would definitely do it just because I felt like, professionally, it was very good professionally to go there. Cobie Rutherford: I'll tell you the one thing I didn't like. Dr. John Long: What was that? Cobie Rutherford: All right. So when we went around the room that day and we had these chairs, our superpower- Dr. John Long: You had to bring this up. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I did. Mine was awful. And yours was not that great. Dr. John Long: It was terrible. Yours was good. I liked yours. Cobie Rutherford: But ours was not the worst. Dr. John Long: No. No- Cobie Rutherford: There were ones that were worse than that. And then there was some people that took the easy way out and just copied the person in front them. Dr. John Long: That's what I should've done. Oh, I just wish I could take mine back. Ugh. Cobie Rutherford: So I'll share my superpower. Dr. John Long: I'm not. I'm not going to share mine. Cobie Rutherford: I don't remember what it was. Dr. John Long: Good. Maybe nobody else did. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, mine was so corny, I said "I'm good with numbers and I have this ability to remember numbers from my old high school friends, or elementary school friends, and I can even remember my parents credit card number." And- Dr. John Long: Oh my god. But you got a laugh out of that though, it was good. Cobie Rutherford: I did. But then I thought, again, on the same side, they were like, "That guy is mid thirties, and he knows his parents' credit card number. That is shameful." Dr. John Long: Still. Cobie Rutherford: But I guess, shout out to my parents for keeping up with that card and all these years. Dr. John Long: That's right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: I have to call them every once in a while when it bounces back and the expiration date change or the CVV changes. And that's kind of embarrassing, but, it's only in case of emergencies. Dr. John Long: I just don't like... I'm sorry, and this leads to what we had talked about before about introvert. I am a introvert, I do not like ice breakers. It is the hardest thing in the world for me to do, is to do that. I just want to state my name and what I do and move on, because I'm just not good at it. I don't know why, but I'm just not. Cobie Rutherford: I always try- Dr. John Long: You talk about hunting and I can do that, but- Cobie Rutherford: I always try to think of something really creative, and sometimes I'll nail it and then sometimes it comes out like, "What an idiot." Dr. John Long: Well I had stepped out of the room, and I came back into it. So I was really not, I don't know, I wasn't prepared. I wish I'd had at least another 10 minutes. I maybe should've just copied, like I said, I could've copied somebody else's, but I didn't, and wound up giving the dumbest answer I probably ever have. And, I don't know, I looked over to you and I don't if you were smiling because of my answer or were you still thinking of about yours? Cobie Rutherford: No, I was probably still thinking about mine, but anyway, I think they come out with knowing that those probably were not our true superpowers. Dr. John Long: No, I know. I know. Cobie Rutherford: But you know, you got a good shout out in for our podcast. Dr. John Long: Yeah, I did. I really did. And I think, you know, we had to give a state report so that, or I guess what did they call it? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah a state report. Dr. John Long: A state report. So, that was really cool. And I think that, when I said podcast, people kind of perked up. I don't think they're doing that. Cobie Rutherford: I don't think so either. Dr. John Long: We're all cutting edge. Cobie Rutherford: Another thing that made people perk up was the name change of shooting sports to safety. Dr. John Long: Yeah, it was. I think it was well received and, as I was explaining why, I saw a lot of people nodding their heads, so, yeah, it was really good. Cobie Rutherford: I think that was good. Dr. John Long: For sure. For sure. Well, we need to get down to... Oh, the Bulldogs are going to be in New Orleans this weekend too. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah? Dr. John Long: Yeah, they're going to be in a Super Dome, playing in the Super Dome. We should've just stayed down there. Maybe. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, just taken two weeks and- Dr. John Long: Gosh. I wouldn't be able to fit in the door if I stayed down there and ate all that all the time. Cobie Rutherford: I think my phone would have blown up. Dr. John Long: Probably. Cobie Rutherford: I think it would have spontaneously combusted had I been out for two weeks. Dr. John Long: Yeah, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. Cobie Rutherford: I had plenty of voicemails. I think I still have some people I need to reach back out to from that week of being gone. Dr. John Long: Well, if you need to get up with Cobie, just call the main office. He'll be there, and you'll get him. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Dr. John Long: Apologize for anything we've missed during this time. Cobie Rutherford: Exactly. Maybe I haven't missed anything. Dr. John Long: Maybe not. Maybe not. You're good. You did good. You're good. Hey, you'd heard from it by now, probably. Cobie Rutherford: That's true. That's true. Dr. John Long: Oh man. Well, all right. Well with that we're going to wrap up this podcast of 4-H-4-U-2. And if you're not already, go ahead and subscribe and kind of punch up our numbers. I wish we knew how many people were out there, but we don't and if you are, let us know. You can contact us through our emails, john.long@msstate.edu. Cobie Rutherford: Or cobie.rutherford@msstate.edu. Dr. John Long: And only kind comments only, please. We don't want any... No, we'll take constructive criticism I guess. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Dr. John Long: And if you want to know more about 4-H and 4-H in your area, tell them where they can go, Cobie and learn more about Extension overall too. Cobie Rutherford: So you can visit the website at extension.msstate.edu or visit any of the local County Extension offices. Dr. John Long: And I will say this, if you still have questions and need them answered, please do not hesitate to call the 4-H office and we can point you in the right direction, who you need to talk to, and find out about where 4-H is and what they're doing in your area. Dr. John Long: So, with that, we're going to sign off for this edition of 4-H-4-U-2. Thanks for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. Announcer: 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Julie White sits down with Cobie and John to explain what's so fantastic about an activity she developed called Farmtastic! Transcription: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service, promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your hosts, Dr. John Long, and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And welcome to another podcast of 4H4U2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And it is yet again one of my favorite times of the week, and that is to do this podcast, and we're talking about everything 4-H. We are joined with our special guest this week, Dr. Julie White. And Dr. White, did I do that right? Did I say that correctly? Julie White: It's Miss White. John Long: Oh, sorry, sorry. Julie White: Hopefully in the next year. John Long: Okay. All right, so we are working on it. All right. Julie White: That is true. John Long: That's good. All right, so we're going to get that taken care of, and then we'll formally call you doctor. Julie White: That is true. Yes, that's right. John Long: All right. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: So you're pre-doctor? That's the way I look at that. Julie White: That's right. Yeah, there we go. John Long: Okay, very good, very good. So, how are you? Julie White: Good. John Long: Good. Good, good. Cobie, so you had a good week so far? Cobie Rutherford: It's been a good week. John Long: Good. Yeah, I think it's been a pretty good one. Cobie Rutherford: A hot one. Julie White: Yeah, very hot. John Long: A hot one. Felt very blessed to be able to say that I could stay inside. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt. Julie White: That's right. Amen. John Long: Yeah. And I'm an outside person, so that's kind of tough. But anyway. Anyway, comme ci comme ca, we're going to move in to the program. And Julie ... I've been knowing Julie a long time, and Julie, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, and how you got here, to where you are today. Julie White: Okay. John Long: And what you do, today. Julie White: All right. So I grew up in South Louisiana. I grew up in Livingston Parish, just outside of Baton Rouge, and grew up in 4-H there, showing livestock, was in the clothing project, which is one of those deep-known secrets that a lot of the 4-H agents find out. And you're like, "Really?" So I actually made my senior prom dress. So it was one of my projects. But I grew up on a dairy farm, and so ... But while I was in school, I met a Mississippi boy, and ended up in Starkville because of the Mississippi boy. So ... John Long: Isn't that a, I think that's a country song isn't it? Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's it. Julie White: Mississippi man, sure is. John Long: So you just played that right out there. Julie White: Sure is, so ... John Long: Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Julie White: So yeah. John Long: And got started, you said in, well you were a 4-H-er, and then you came to 4-H through here. Julie White: Yep, yep. John Long: So that's awesome. That's awesome. And a little-known fact, I always like saying a little-known fact. Julie and I are practically neighbors. Julie White: That is correct. John Long: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Cobie Rutherford: Wow, how about that. Julie White: Mm-hmm (affirmative). John Long: Yes, yes. We got to keep check on each other when we need to. Julie White: Technically I'm in the middle of you two. John Long: You are, you are. You really are. So ... Cobie Rutherford: How about that? John Long: If we need anything, just call, she can be there in a short amount of time. Julie White: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: That's a good deal. Julie White: That's exactly right. Cobie Rutherford: Now Julie, you started out your career in the county office here in Oktibbeha County, right? As a 4-H agent? Julie White: I started actually in a Attala County in 2000, and served there, and in Lowndes County, and Webster County before coming to Oktibbeha County as a County Agent. In Attala, Lowndes, and Webster, I was actually a 4-H Agent. So I spent 15 years on the county level before coming to the School of Human Sciences. John Long: Boy, time gets away, doesn't it? I just was always say that it's amazing how quickly that gets away from us. Julie White: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: And now you've got one of the largest Extension projects in the whole state that you conduct. Tell us a little bit about that. Julie White: So I am an Extension associate over in the School of Human Sciences, but I focus on Agriculture Literacy. So I run a program called, Farmtastic, that I actually created back in 2012 as a way to teach kids. At that time I was the county agent here in Oktibbeha County, and I just wanted a way to teach kids about farming and agriculture. And when I would go to the schools they would say, "Tell me that chocolate milk came from a brown cow. Or that cotton comes from a sheep." And so I just wanted a hands-on way for us to be able to teach those kids about agriculture, and for them to experience it. And so- John Long: And these are legitimate answers that kids are giving. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Julie White: Yes. Yes. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Julie White: It's amazing how many adults will tell me that chocolate milk comes from a brown cow. And they really don't understand where cotton comes from, or anything like that. And so, there are as many adults that have that perception as kids. And so, this was just a way for us to really highlight county agriculture here in Starkville, but grew way faster than I had planned. John Long: That's what you get for being creative, Julie. Julie White: And so, in about a year and a half, we went from being just a county program to being a statewide program. John Long: That's awesome. That is awesome. And now, we talked about this on our last podcast we recorded, about that disconnect that people have with where everything comes from. And it's so hard to wrap your mind around it. Well, I grew up in an agricultural background. If you're around it, it's pretty easy to know where things come from. I never had those kind of questions. But it's really hard to believe that people really don't know where everything comes from, and what it takes, that production side and all of the things that are so big a part of our state for that matter. Julie White: Right, yes, very much so. John Long: So, with us being an agricultural state, to me that seems like an extremely important thing we need to do, especially in our state, is to continue doing that. Julie White: Yeah. Most of our kids these days are three to four generations removed from the farm. And so they just haven't been exposed to it like many of us were. And so, they just don't know. And so it's our job to show them what agriculture is about, and why it's important to them. John Long: Right, right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And I even look at our statewide 4-H demographics, where only 6% of our 4-H-ers claim to live on the farm. So there's 94% of even the children that we're interacting with, John, that don't have that real farm experience. John Long: Background, that's right. And see how much that's changed. And I would think in a relatively short amount of time, too. I don't think it's been all that long since ... But then that's again, something that we have to adapt to, as far as the educational efforts for sure, I would say, so ... So Julie, exactly ... Walk through some of the activities. I know my kids have been, or one of them have been through it. Just tell us exactly what Farmtastic, how do you go about setting that up and going through them? Julie White: Okay. Yep. So Farmtastic is a traveling exhibit, and we travel across the state throughout the year. We set up in agri-centers across the state, and when we set up, it has five or six different focus areas depending on where we're set up. But basically the main ones that the kids will walk through, they'll all enter through our Barnyard Bonanza, which of course focuses on livestock and poultry. Then they'll move through to Mighty Crops, which focuses on agronomy, like cotton, soybeans, rice, corn, those kinds of things. Julie White: And then they'll move to Wonder Plants, which is horticulture, so it looks at gardening and things that they can do in their backyard, whether it's actually growing vegetables, or whether it's growing plants such as flowering plants to beautify their home. And then we also go to the Enchanted Forest, where we look at forestry and how big that industry is in our state, and how it relates to the things we do every day. We also go to Something Fishy, which has to do with aquaculture. And we look at the different things, the catfish industry here in this state. Unless I'm on the coast, and then of course on the coast we're looking at the seafood industry. Cobie Rutherford: You have to adapt for that, for sure. John Long: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Julie White: Yes. And that is a huge room when we're on the coast. And then the last room that they always go through is the Farm Village, which helps them to put together the things that they've seen that day dealing with agriculture, and how all that gets to their plate, or their home, or their clothes that they're wearing. And so that's a chance for us to kind of tie that whole farm-to-plate activity. But we also have many partners as we travel, such as the Soil and Water Conservation districts, the County Farm Bureaus, MDOT is a big partner of ours that comes in. And so, there's a lot of different activities that we add to the events, depending on where we are and what the local partners are. John Long: Right. Well that's great that you've got these local partners coming in and continuing to help to expand the program that you have. So that's important, too, as far as that support is concerned. Julie White: It's definitely a great benefit. John Long: Mm-hmm (affirmative). For sure. Cobie Rutherford: How many of these do you do a year? Julie White: Typically the last four years we have done anywhere from nine to twelve a year. When we set up, we come in on a Monday and set up, and then we run the event Tuesday through Friday. So bringing in local schools ... As an example, and most of them, this is how it works, like here at MSU when we host the one at the Horse Park, we attract 10 counties, and we're targeting second to fourth graders. And so it's a free field trip as far as coming in and being able to tour it, and experience it. All the kids go home with a backpack full of goodies they get to take. There's a lot of make-and-take activities as they go throughout the exhibit. They get to take that stuff with them. The teachers also get some information, an agriculture curriculum that they can use in their classroom. And so they get stuff, too, while they're at the event. John Long: Wow, that reminds me. I'm sure you remember this, you know when we used to have school days on the farm? Julie White: Yes. John Long: That's very similar to that. Julie White: It is. John Long: Except you're more mobile, instead of having to bus kids into the campus. That's great. So this program is, I'm obviously expanding through the years that you've been doing it, as you said, starting on the county level ... How many at each workshop or Farmtastic event that you have, on average, how many kids would you say that you're reaching out to at a time? Julie White: Each time it kind of depends on actually how many days the event is. But the average is about 12 to 1500 in those four days. So ... John Long: Wow. Sorry I just blew into the microphone, but that's mind-blowing. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's a lot. Julie White: So we're seeing a good number of kids for us as a 4-H program. It's a great opportunity for us to show what we have, as 4-H, since everything we do doesn't necessarily have to do with farming. There are some other things that our kids can be involved in, and so it's a great time for us to market our 4-H program, too. John Long: Now Julie, I know that you're a hard worker, and I know that you don't back up from anything, but you have to have help for these things. Julie White: I do. John Long: Now how many people do you have helping you with this? Because it's tiring me out hearing you say all that. Julie White: Yeah, I run ... Usually I utilize about 40 volunteers a day, and that's to get through all of the stations that are in the different focus areas, and to make sure that the kids have the best experience possible. So we're using a lot of volunteer hours when we do Farmtastic. John Long: Yeah. Thank you volunteers. Julie White: Yes, very much. John Long: Thank you. We can't do a lot of stuff without you, and we really appreciate you. A little plug for our volunteers. Julie White: That's right. John Long: Now I have to ask this, do you have a favorite area that you work in? Julie White: Well ... John Long: Yeah, out of everything, the whole thing, out of everything. Julie White: I do. Actually, there's probably two. A, I'm a livestock person. And so, of course the livestock room is always my favorite. Because being raised on a farm, and we have a farm now, it's kind of my thing. And yeah, to see the kids all hold that baby chick in that room, it's a really cool moment, especially for those that have never seen it. My other favorite is the forestry room. John Long: Really? Julie White: They get to the bubble blowers in that room. John Long: Oh yeah, I saw that. Julie White: So if you haven't seen a bubble blower, it's an actual stick of red oak, and red oak is very porous, and so it allows us to be able to blow bubbles through it. So they get a piece of wood that they get to blow bubbles through. And just watching them experience that concept of how a tree utilizes water ... But for us, we're utilizing bubbles. But we get to have some fun with wood, so that's my other favorite. John Long: You get an aha moment of it anyway, don't you? Julie White: Yeah, so ... Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty cool. So I'm sure you've seen a lot of eureka moments, where the light just flicked on in the kid's mind. Do you have a favorite? Julie White: I think for me, one of the favorites, and it's more because of the way my volunteers act, is because the kids walk from the livestock room into the agronomy room. Well in the agronomy room we have a cotton gin going, and we're ginning cotton. Well, of course the first thing we ask is, "So where's cotton come from?" And they're like, "A sheep!" And we're like- John Long: Well it does look kind of like cotton. Julie White: Yeah, it does. But then they're like, "Oh, it really doesn't?" And so we really get to hone-in on that. "No, here are the plants it comes from, here's where it's grown." John Long: It's a plant, not an animal. Cobie Rutherford: Right, yeah. Julie White: And so that one is really neat. And to watch how the volunteers react to the kids' reaction has been really a neat thing for me. John Long: That's good. That's really good. Cobie Rutherford: I can almost see the volunteers getting as much out of this in some cases as the youth, because they kind of see firsthand that disconnect that we all see on a daily basis. And then I guess from an adult standpoint, that gives them an opportunity to say, "Well I tell them an agriculture story is important." Julie White: Yep. John Long: Right. That's exactly right. Julie White: It does. And we try to utilize a lot of volunteers that are farmers, or that are involved in different industries in agriculture when we're out traveling. Because then they're actually getting to see what their consumers are saying. And so it gives them that consumer perspective John Long: It may be more so now than when we went to school, but ... And I think this is what is so important about 4-H, kind of the key thing that we teach in 4-H, is that, learn by doing, and that hands-on activity is so important to that learning process. And every station you have is that way. So those kids are not sitting in a classroom trying to regurgitate information. They're actually learning by that tactile touch, and everything. Julie White: Yes, and that's one of the things I try to emphasize to our volunteers as I'm doing volunteer orientation for the events, is, look, it's okay that they're not just standing there listening to you. It's okay that they're moving around, and really in each room, there's like seven activities for them to do. And so there's a lot going on in that one room. And so, sometimes my teachers are like- John Long: Be still! Julie White: What do you mean they're not going to just stand still?" John Long: Right right. "We can't handle that." Julie White: They have trouble. Yeah, they have trouble more than my kids do. My kids love it. John Long: Very freeing. Yeah, so ... Julie White: Yeah. And so it's one of those that I kind of have to talk to the volunteers and the teachers, and just be like, "Hey, let them do what they want to do. And it's okay if they don't touch everything," but just letting them do how they want to do. So ... John Long: Right. Right, right. And giving them a little freedom as far as what they're interested in, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I remember a couple of years, well, I guess it was last year when you had it here on campus, we took Reason. And Reason had been terrified of chickens- John Long: Reason being your son. Cobie Rutherford: Reason is my son, yeah. He was terrified of chickens up to this point. So we took him in, and he got to hold a chick for the first time. And that was the first time he had seen a chicken outside of a commercial grower. And he just, it blew his mind. He couldn't wrap his head around why this chick wasn't yellow, and in a house with 60,000 friends. Julie White: Right, yeah. John Long: "Where are all your friends?" Julie White: Yeah, they, that's probably ... And that's, like I told you, that's one of my favorite spots, is because that is an aha moment for most of them. And even though we have to tell them that that chicken's going to end up growing up to be probably a chicken nugget. John Long: Right, your chicken nuggets, yeah. Julie White: But that whole little fuzzy baby chick thing, and we actually have them hatch in there, so they're getting to see the whole process. The whole "chicken or the egg" thing. So it's- John Long: We discussed that last time, didn't we? Cobie Rutherford: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Julie White: Yeah, so it's kind of a neat thing for them. So ... John Long: Oh, that's good. Cobie Rutherford: It also works out really well that Julie and her husband have a farm, because I know they use their own animals sometimes at these events. John Long: Oh, wow. Julie White: Yes, especially here in Starkville. It's ... Cobie Rutherford: Easy to transport. Julie White: Yeah, it's easy, and it's easier for me because I spent so much time at the exhibit. When we're having to feed and stuff, it's just easier to have ours there. But we do utilize 4-H-ers as we travel across the state to utilize ... Whatever county we're in, typically that county's 4-H-ers provide the animals for the exhibit. John Long: Boy, that's great outreach for them as well. That opportunity to go out and show what they know, too, so that's really good. And it's giving back to what 4-H has given them. That's great. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah and I said, I guess I misspoke there, they're probably not Julie's animals, they're probably your children's animals who are 4-H-ers, too. Julie White: Yes, yes. And they spend as much time at Farmtastic as I do because they love it as much as I do. So ... John Long: Right. That's awesome. It's a family event. Julie White: Yeah. John Long: Yeah. Julie White: Yeah. Morgan asks me all the time if I'm going to keep doing this until she's old enough to do it. And I'm like, "I don't know about that." John Long: Well, you know, time moves on. Julie White: Yes. John Long: Well, now what do you see in the future for Farmtastic? What are your visions for the future? We're not going to hold you to those, but ... Julie White: Yeah. No, I would love for us to be able to continue to do Farmtastic across the state, because I see the importance of us as an agriculture state promoting what we do. And to be there to promote what our farmers are doing on a daily basis, because people need to understand where their food and clothes come from. Cobie Rutherford: Absolutely. Julie White: And so I'd love to see us maybe scale back a little from doing that whole 12 a year to maybe doing at least one a region across the state. And if not, just a couple more than that. But I would love to see us be able to continue the program for a while and expand it in certain areas. And change it up just a little. It gets changed pretty regular, more or less because I get bored, more than ... With the same activities all the time, but that also- John Long: Because you've got a new crop of kids coming in. Julie White: Right. And so it's fun to change things up and let them see something new. John Long: Sure, sure. And that's keeping you fresh too, right? Julie White: Yes, yes. John Long: Not losing your mind. So with that, that is, like you said, expanding and changing things is going to be important. And we have a lot of things that change agriculturally, and otherwise. So, yeah. Julie White: So yeah, our technologies are changing every day. So there's going to be a lot of new things coming down the pipe that we're going to be able to show. John Long: I saw a drone spraying a field the other day. I knew it was just a matter of time, so ... Julie White: Yep, yep. Cobie Rutherford: I heard about that. John Long: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Julie White: So most of our kids will have the opportunity to go to school to be a drone pilot. John Long: See, now that's ... Julie White: And that's something we would've never thought of. John Long: The big yellow bird will be replaced by that. That's an airplane for people that don't know. Julie White: That's right. John Long: But anyway, but anyway. Well Julie, we certainly thank you for coming in, and the time just flies by when we do these things. Julie White: It does. John Long: And we really appreciate it. Now where can they go, our listeners, if we have listeners, I think we've got listeners. I hope so. If you're listening, Where can they go to get more information? Julie White: Our website is farmtastic.msucares.com. John Long: Oh, that was snappy. I like that. That's good, and easy to remember. Julie White: There you go. John Long: Easy to remember. And Cobie, where can they go to learn about 4-H in their area? Cobie Rutherford: So to learn more about 4-H, you can visit any county Extension office across the state or visit our website at extension.msstate.edu. John Long: And I love our website, because if you're in your county, and you just look to the right, it'll say, "Select a county," and it automatically takes you to the people that you need to be in contact with. Julie White: That's right. John Long: So, that's awesome. Well thank you. And with that, we're going to wrap up this edition of 4H4U2. Be sure and subscribe if you're not a subscriber already, and join us next time. Take care. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 44H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service Office of Agricultural Communications.

Cobie and John give out the exciting details and activities of 4-H Day at the 2019 State Fair. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Welcome to another edition of 4H4U2. We're the podcast that's bringing you all things 4-H in Mississippi and even touch on some national events as well. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, how are you doing today? Cobie Rutherford: It is fair week, John. I couldn't be better. John Long: It is. It's been a busy week for us for sure. We're on the road and and whatnot, and we're just excited about it. I know it's always one of my favorite times of year. Cobie Rutherford: Same here. I have been going to state fair since I was nine years old, and I just never lose enthusiasm for them. John Long: I never went to state fair until I started working for 4-H. Cobie Rutherford: Really? It just became part of our annual calendar. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: We would go show livestock and compete in different activities. It was something I kind of carried with me throughout my career. I went to state fairs in Kentucky, in Alabama, and now Mississippi. It's just something different and unique about every one of them. John Long: Fair food keeps me coming back. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. What's your favorite? John Long: My favorite. Normally what I get is the kielbasa sausage and the chili cheese fries with ranch. That's my favorite, I would say, but I always like trying something different too. Cobie Rutherford: The best thing I've ever had at the fair was in Kentucky at their state fair, and they had a Krispy Kreme cheeseburger. It was basically the cheeseburger with the two buns were donuts, just glazed donuts. It was so good. John Long: Did we have that? I haven't seen that at ours. Cobie Rutherford: I haven't either, but if it was there, I would definitely have another one. It was really good. John Long: I'll be on the look for them. Yeah, I've had a turkey leg before, but since it's right outside our 4-H village, I may just pick one of those up since it's so close. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, but it's always so many good things. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So earlier in the week, we set up the state fair village in a different location. Thoughts on that? John Long: Yeah. I liked it. I think that we're going to get a lot more traffic through there than we did in our previous location. Not that there was anything wrong with our previous location, but with it being located right outside of the livestock barn, I think we'll definitely get more foot traffic in there. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think so too. The events, or the exhibits, were really good this year I thought, as a whole. John Long: I liked them as well. Oh, and we'll just touch on this. Anybody that's listening that was part of the wrecking crew. Previously, it was way easier to put the village up this year. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, yeah. Without those plywood storefronts, I guess you could say- John Long: Right, that's what they were. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it was much easier to hang those curtains. John Long: It looks good, and I think it looks really good. Cobie Rutherford: I think it does too. John Long: Yeah. We'll just pat ourselves on the back. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, we're doing that right now, just pat. John Long: We can't do that because... Cobie Rutherford: Now if it rains, let's hope it doesn't, but- John Long: If it's a 4-H event, you can be guaranteed of one thing: it's going to rain at one point or another. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Well, we got two weeks to make it. So maybe it'll all turn out okay. John Long: Oh, it'll be fine. Cobie Rutherford: Got a lot of things going on, though. John Long: Yeah, let's talk about that. We're hoping we can get this out to everybody in a reasonable amount of time to where you can learn more about the state fair and what we've got going on as far as 4-H and 4-H Day is concerned. So, tell us about it, Cobie. Cobie Rutherford: So, most of the exhibits are in already. We have all our exhibits that were in the Agri science shop, all our seed displays, all the environmental shop items, which I really like this year, John. There was some really good items in your shop. All of our creative arts and fashion and all that stuff is the in. We got one more entry day for our horticulture items, which is our vegetables produce, et cetera, and our baked goods items. John Long: Now, when is that? Cobie Rutherford: So, those have to be in by October 10th, Thursday. John Long: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: But if you're going to bring those, you need to let me know as soon as possible so I can make sure there are people there to judge them, and make sure they can get them displayed. But, got to be turned in on Thursday, October 10th. John Long: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: I kind of hope we have a lot turned in, because that way we can kind of refresh the exhibit and things look good for 4-H Day that following Saturday. John Long: Yeah. So, what time does 4-H Day get started, I guess? Cobie Rutherford: So our tickets, the fair commission was gracious enough to give us a lot, about 2,500 tickets for our 4-Hers. So we are able to distribute those across the state, and they can enter the gates at 8:00. Now, our activities that you and I and other staff are coordinating, they begin at 9:00. John Long: At 9:00, okay. Cobie Rutherford: So, we have a Public Speaking contest that morning in the Mississippi Cattleman's Association Building, which is just right across the road from the fairgrounds on Monterey Street. John Long: Very nice building. Cobie Rutherford: Then, we had the Fashion Review Contest that's going to be held in the Equine Center. John Long: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: So, it'll be kind of the opposite side of the road from where the trademark, where we usually are. John Long: That's the Kirk Fordice- Cobie Rutherford: The Equine Center. John Long: The Equine Center, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Okay, I didn't realize that was the whole name of it, but- John Long: Former governor. Cobie Rutherford: Okay, good deal. So, that'll be nice over there. This will be my first time to really help with the Fashion Review contest, but I think it's pretty cool. I sent out some entry information on it. Cobie Rutherford: Basically, there are two divisions in the Fashion Review. You have a clothing construction, where the children actually make their own garments. Then, you have a clothing selection contest, where a child will go and purchase an outfit that is appropriate for some event that they're going to, and then describe that, and why that's the right choice for them. John Long: Like for a job interview I guess or something like that. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, or like a formal party or something like that. John Long: I got you. Cobie Rutherford: It can be anything as long as what the child's description of that garment or that outfit matches what they're wearing. John Long: Now, is there any prerequisite that the individuals have to go through in order to get to this level? Cobie Rutherford: I don't think so. We always encourage county contest for everything and go through a county level, and if possible, a district level. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: But for state fairs, just kind of come one, come all, I think. John Long: Right, right. Well, that's good. Cobie Rutherford: It probably differs by county. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: But then, I'm really excited, too, about what the Commissioner of Agriculture, Commissioner Gipson is doing with this Mississippi Ag Workforce Development Core. John Long: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: Mrs. Gayle Fortenberry is leading that, and she's kind of bringing 4-H and FFA together on a few events, and look forward to seeing her. John Long: Shout out to Gayle. She's really done a lot of work. Cobie Rutherford: She has done a lot of work, and it's going to be exciting to see how many 4-Hers are participating in those events and how those kind of workout. One, it's modeled after our Career Pursuit contest, and the children are doing an interview and resumes and all those kinds of things. So, it'll be interesting to see how those two contests will feed off one another. Cobie Rutherford: Then of course, the commissioner's also doing a summit, an Ag Workforce Summit. He'll start at noon on Saturday. So, we hope a lot of our 4-Hers will go over there and hear all the things he has to say. John Long: That's great. That's great. Yeah, they have really reached out and just going above and beyond on helping us get everything done. So, we really appreciate that with the commissioner for sure. Cobie Rutherford: One thing that Mrs. Fortenberry mentioned to me that they've done this year is they partnered up with Hinds Community College, and they're doing kind of this combined simulator thing. John Long: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: I don't really know a whole lot about simulators or electronic games or anything like that, but basically the simulator, you can get in it and pretend like you're driving a combine. This kind of gives you that real life experience of being in the combine, picking the corn, or whatever. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: So, that's kind of going to be neat, I think. John Long: That'd be awesome. I'd like to give that a try. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I mean, I know I've been in a combine before picking corn or soybeans before, and just to see how different it is from real life will be pretty neat. John Long: Yeah. Yeah, it would be cool, for sure. If they could switch it up and do different simulators. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I'm sure that could. I don't know. I have no idea how that's going to work, but that's going to be a feature this year that's going be in the big white tent near the Coliseum. John Long: Good deal, good deal. That's great. Now, let's step off because I've got to ask this. I'm going to step to the side and say that when we were judging exhibits, did anything particularly stick out? John Long: I always love judging state fair, because it's really cool, I've said this before, it's cool to see the little projects and things that the 4-Hers come up with, and they've been participating in. So, I have a fair favorite this year. I'm not saying there's any less on anybody's part, but I do have a favorite one that I saw in my shop. Now, do you have one? Cobie Rutherford: You know, I think the one that I think was the most interesting to me was a circuit board that the kids from Lauderdale County did. John Long: I saw that one. I saw that one. Cobie Rutherford: I thought that was the best one in my opinion. John Long: Yeah, yeah. Mine was, and I had most fun with, was the maracas. Did you see the maracas? Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah, with the plastic spoons. John Long: I've got all the materials to make those except the Easter eggs. I've got to find some plastic Easter eggs, because I wanted to do that tonight with my kids. I wanted to make them tonight. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that is where neat. What county did those? John Long: I can't remember. I really can't. Cobie Rutherford: Those were very good I thought. John Long: Yep. I had a lot of fun playing them. Kyle Lewis is awesome on them, by the way. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, really? John Long: Yes. He had the rhythm going. I never could get the rhythm like he did. Cobie Rutherford: I saw those. There was quite a few of those. I thought some of the creative arts were also really good with the paintings and things. John Long: Oh, yeah. Paintings, yes, yes, yes, yes. Very much so. Cobie Rutherford: I thought those were really nice. John Long: Yeah. Very, very much so. So, we don't have Ms. Debra Lloyd in here with us, but what exactly, we know we have some activities going on in the tent on 4-H Day, what about that? I know our ambassadors are going to be there. Tell us a little bit about that. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they are. So in the 4-H tent, near 4-H Day, we hope that all our 4-Hers who got the 4-H Day tickets come through just to say hello and look at all their colleagues, their friends' exhibits or their own exhibits, but we've also got some things in there that we think will be fun to them. Cobie Rutherford: So, the ambassadors are going to do face painting. We've got some different 4-H armbands that we're going to hand out. MVLA, the Mississippi Volunteers Leaders Association, are going to be handing out refreshments. So, that'll be nice cool down for the 4-Hers. So, a lot of things going on in there. John Long: Okay. Yeah, the 4-H tent's nice. It's air conditioned, and you can just kind of move through and look at all the exhibits, and then kick back and just enjoy the rest of the show for sure. It's going to be a lot fun I think. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, and I think the weather's going to be perfect this weekend. John Long: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Cobie Rutherford: Well, this upcoming weekend. John Long: No, it ain't upcoming weekend. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. John Long: Yeah. Well I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but they're saying we're going to have a cool down, so that'll be really good fair weather. Well, that's a pun there, but fair weather for the fair itself. Cobie Rutherford: Be fairtastic. John Long: It'd be fairtastic. Oh, that's a good theme. We need to pass that along. So, fairtastic. We may even make that in the show notes. That'll be fun at the fairtastic or something. I don't know. That was not good. I failed miserably at that, but we'll figure something out. Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. John Long: Well, that's awesome. That's basically, I guess, what we wanted to cover is just to say, "Come out and join us. We'd look forward to seeing you." If you are one of our podcast listeners, please come up to us if you see us and let us know that you listened to our show. If you don't and you're just new to this broadcast, please like and subscribe, and do whatever you got to do social media wise to spread the good word about the 4-H-4-U-2 podcast. John Long: Now Cobie, where can individuals go if they're interested in 4-H in their area? We get that question a lot, even in the state office. Where can they go to get more information about 4-H and 4-H in their area? Cobie Rutherford: Well to get more information about 4-H, you can visit our Extension website, which is extension.msstate.edu, or contact your county Extension agent. We have those in located in all eighty-two counties across the state of Mississippi. John Long: Isn't that wonderful that it's just so widespread that we have that ability to reach out to those young people? So, make sure that you do that. Check us out on, well, we're basically everywhere. Facebook, there's Instagram. Yeah, Twitter. So, we've got a lot of different ways that you can get in contact with us, and we hope that you do that. I got to ask this before we wrap it up, do you ride the rides any? Cobie Rutherford: Not really. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: Nah, I just go eat. John Long: The food's good. It's best to ride the rides and then eat. That's my opinion. Cobie Rutherford: That would make pretty good sense. John Long: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I'll tell you what mine is. The swings, I love the swings. I rode those last year. It was amazing. All right. Cobie Rutherford: Not big on that. John Long: Well, maybe we can get you into it one time. I'm not getting on the Ferris wheel. That's all I know. All right. Well, thank, everybody, for joining us today and hope you come out and be with us during 4-H Day at the fair. It will be, as Cobie said, fairtastic and that is October the 12th. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Starting at 9:00. Well, the gates opened at 8:00. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Then, our events will start at 9:00. You will be easily seen or know where to see us on the midway because we have a big 4-H sign out front and come in and join us. With that, we're going to be a calling that wraps on today's podcast. Thank you for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Dr. Jessica Wells visits the studio this week and discusses all things chicken related in the world of 4-H. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we are back on the air. This is 4-H-4-U-2 and I'm John Long, your host. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford, I got a little quick there, John. John Long: No, it's fine. It's fine. We've had a lot of coffee. Well, not you, you don't drink coffee, do you? Cobie Rutherford: I don't. John Long: No. No, but we had donuts this morning, so- Cobie Rutherford: We did. John Long: We got our sugar rush going. We've got summer celebration here in the Extension Bost building today and it's a Friday. Cobie Rutherford: Most importantly. John Long: Most importantly. So, we're getting geared up for the weekend. We are so delighted to have Dr. Jessica Wells with us this morning. And how are you doing this morning? Jessica Wells: Doing good. John Long: We have been sitting here talking for like 30 minutes, it seems, and just trying to catch up on some stuff that's been going on. So, Jessica, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and how you got to where you are now. Jessica Wells: Sure. So, I am originally from south Mississippi, Ellisville area. Yeah, Free State of Jones- John Long: Jones county. Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: That's right. That's right. Jessica Wells: I grew up there, graduate- John Long: Have you seen that movie by the way? Jessica Wells: You know I have not, I've seen- John Long: You need to. Jessica Wells: I've seen pieces of it but- John Long: Very good movie. Jessica Wells: I'm sure it is. No, I saw all the hype over it when it was being filmed, because, you know, being from there. John Long: Sure. And it was filmed. Jessica Wells: Yeah, everybody posted a picture with Matthew McConaughey because he came through town. Yeah. John Long: Sure, of course. Cobie Rutherford: You know, I've met a guy that was actually in that movie. He was an amputee. He was a veteran amputee and he's actually in the movie, well as a wounded person. So yeah. Jessica Wells: Yeah. The man that married me and my husband, he was in it, too. John Long: Oh really? Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: Well good. Jessica Wells: He had a few little snippets, you know he had to post those and he was famous. John Long: I'm sorry that we got sidetracked on Matthew McConaughey, but who wouldn't? Jessica Wells: Exactly. John Long: Right? I mean, he's a good actor. So, go ahead. I'm sorry. Jessica Wells: I graduated from there and I did my bachelor's and master's here at Mississippi State in poultry science. Kind of just fell into that department, I don't think many people grow up saying, "I want to be a poultry scientist." It's just not something at six years old you decide, but I was lucky that I was given the opportunity. It's been great. And- John Long: Well, what six-year-old doesn't like a chicken? Jessica Wells: Exactly, exactly. John Long: I mean, come on. Jessica Wells: But I finished that master's and got hired on in the poultry department in 2009 and I've been working with 4-H/FFA Youth Project since then. Along with other Extension activities, like Backyard is particularly what I focus in. And then I teach some classes on campus, as well. John Long: It sounds like you're really busy. Jessica Wells: I stay busy. John Long: Yeah, yeah. And you just recently finished your doctorate, right? Jessica Wells: I did. I finished my PhD this past May. So, work I'm sure is not going to change but... John Long: It may increase. Jessica Wells: But the titles different. Same person, different title. John Long: Give Cobie some advice, as he is going through the... Yeah, you got any questions? Cobie Rutherford: The dissertation writing. Jessica Wells: Yeah, I would suggest starting to figure out how to drink coffee, Cobie. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I need to- John Long: A lot of it. Cobie Rutherford: I need to do that. John Long: Copious amounts of coffee. Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: Black. Jessica Wells: Cry every now and then, it helps. Cobie Rutherford: Will that help, too? Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: If you don't cry, just use artificial tears. It worked, it's the same thing. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. John Long: Yeah, that's a big deal. And Cobie, I don't know if you know this or not, we are sitting in the room with a celebrity. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah. Jessica Wells: Oh, yeah. John Long: She was not in any movies, I don't think, but she just got an award. Jessica Wells: I did. John Long: Yeah. Jessica Wells: So, a little bit of what I do in our department is student recruitment and I'm the undergraduate coordinator, so I work with our students a lot. So I was nominated and awarded a national recruitment award through Poultry Science Association. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, very cool. John Long: That's awesome. Jessica Wells: Yeah, it was a nice honor, I got to go to Canada and accept that award. So- John Long: Do they say eh up there? Jessica Wells: They all spoke French, actually, where we were at. It was a little nerve wracking getting off the plane- John Long: What part of Canada? Jessica Wells: Montreal. John Long: Yeah, I was going to say if... Yeah. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Beautiful place though. It was real pretty. John Long: Yeah. Oh, I've heard it was. Jessica Wells: They all speak English, they just talk French to you until you go, "What'd you say?" And then they'll pick up in English then. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. Well, I went to Canada last year for the animal science meetings. We went to Vancouver and it was perfect up there. Jessica Wells: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: Like, I love Canadian summers. Jessica Wells: Oh, I know. Cobie Rutherford: I don't think it want to be up there in the winter, though. Jessica Wells: Yeah, I totally agree. It was like 75, even on their hot days while we were up there. So, I mean sight-seeing was beautiful, but I agree, I'm not a snow person at all. Cobie Rutherford: But you mentioned- John Long: Fly south. Cobie Rutherford: That you do the recruiting. So, I guess 4-H plays a pretty important role in that. Jessica Wells: It does. I have different things that I do in our department, but they really all kind of mesh into one. So with 4-H and FFA, it's a huge recruiting tool for us. I also do a hatch out program in elementary schools and you know, in all honesty that's somewhat of a recruiting tool, as well. Even though those kids are in kindergarten, we make that impact. You give them baby chicks, they get to see that live animal and it's something that they remember from there on out. So when I do come into a school their junior year, they already have that trigger of, "Oh, I remember this activity. This was really cool." So all of those youth development type things that we do, we can really use them as recruitment tools to kind of prove to students that poultry science degrees doesn't mean that you're going to be working in a chicken house. It's actually a wonderful industry and hugely supports our state. And the job opportunities are endless in what you can do with it. John Long: I think that... And you kind of touched on something that I've always kind of thought... Or not thought, but know, that sometimes you feel like maybe what you're doing is not being effective as far as teaching a young person. But there you make an impact on a young child's life and obviously 4-H does this, they're providing experiences that they never forget. It doesn't matter what it is, I mean, as long as you're that. Jessica Wells: Right. Right, I agree. You know, it's not a fast turnaround, if I do a 4-H or FFA activity with a senior, I might see that student in in a year. But with kindergarten, you can't really turn that paperwork in to upper admin and say, "See, we're doing something. Look at the numbers." It takes a long time to see that develop, but it's definitely worth it. I can remember as a child, my granddad, who I was really close with, would let us pick out eggs in the Murray McMurray magazine. John Long: Oh really? Jessica Wells: Yeah. And we would hatch them and I'd go through there and pick out colorful pretty eggs- John Long: Well sure. Jessica Wells: We'd pick out turkeys, quail, ducks, chickens, whatever. And we would hatch them out, keep them in the living room for a couple of weeks, and then he'd turn them loose and I'm sure half of them got eaten- Cobie Rutherford: Become coyote bait. Coyotes, cats. Jessica Wells: Right. But it was still like a really cool experience. I remember as a kid, getting flashlights out and going hiding in a closet and looking at the eggs inside and it was... So when I did come into poultry science it was like, "Oh my gosh, I think I was geared for this from day one." I didn't realize it, but... So, little things like that are really important and it seems- John Long: It's my favorite thing that y'all do. Not the favorite, but is my favorite, it's the candling. I love that. I think it's just the coolest thing. Jessica Wells: Oh no, the little kids in kindergarten through third grade. I mean they love, you'd tap on that egg and the little embryo starts to move and they get so excited. It's so cute. And then if they start to pip but they haven't actually broken through the shell and you can hear them peeping, they think that's just the coolest thing in the world. John Long: That leads me to ask the question. What came first chicken or the egg? Jessica Wells: You know, that's a very valid question, but- John Long: Well, yeah, I know. We won't get into that. Jessica Wells: We'll say that both came at the same time. If you had a grown chicken, there's probably an egg inside of her. John Long: Hey, that is true. Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty valid. John Long: Didn't think about that. Jessica Wells: So it's a draw. John Long: Yeah. But we still don't know why the chicken crossed the road. That could be a lot of reasons. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So I used to work in the beef industry with Extension and then with the Cattle Association, and one thing I always had a challenge doing was making that connection from farm animal to a food product. Jessica Wells: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: And one of my... I can't say favorite questions, but one question that I got from a kindergarten one time was a sweet little girl in Kentucky, she raised your hand and said, "So when you get the hamburgers from the cow does it hurt them?" And it just baffled me that there's such a big disconnect between farm animals and food. Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: How old was that child? Cobie Rutherford: She was in kindergarten. John Long: Oh, you said kindergarten, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So I'm like... How do you combat that because I'm sure you get some of those questions when you go to a kindergarten class. Jessica Wells: I do, and I will say that when it comes to those questions, kindergarten and first graders are way better at the questions. I mean, they really do logically think through those processes. And you can still kind of... If I go into a senior class and I talk about slaughtering an animal and us eating it, they're all, "Ooh, yuck." And when you talk to kindergarten or first grader, they've just got that innocence to them that's like, 'Well we've got to eat, I understand this." So it's actually a little easier to communicate with them, you wouldn't think it, but... That hatch out program that I mentioned is a lot... It's an easy way to talk to them about that. We bring live chicks, we talk about how cute they are, but the fact that we need them to survive and they serve a purpose and we go through the concept of... I usually ask them, how many of you like chicken nuggets? And they all raise their hands, everybody gets excited. And then we mentioned to them that chicken nuggets come from the chicken and that we have to slaughter this animal in order to utilize them but we have processes and methods in place that make it safe and less harmful for the animal. Jessica Wells: And you know, honestly, I've never had kindergarten and first grade students that aren't receptive of that concept and understand that. There is a huge disconnect though, I will agree with that, Cobie. A lot of kids don't put the connection together and it's never offered to them. I think a lot of us try to tread lightly with kids, when in reality, when you're honest and truthful with them the benefit is there, it's good for them. So being able to go into those classrooms with a program like the hatch out, that's fun and educational at the same time, helps to kind of dispel those myths, but also allow them to see that process firsthand, utilize that information in a positive way. John Long: And we don't do that education, then they are the adults that say, where do you get the milk from? They say the grocery store. Jessica Wells: Right, exactly. John Long: Have no idea. Cobie Rutherford: When that little girl asked me that question, it was around Thanksgiving time and I played it off with the pilgrims and the Indians and the Thanksgiving story about how the Indians taught the pilgrims how to hunt and how did they get the turkey? Well, the Indians showed them how to kill turkeys. It was the same purpose, they shot turkeys with bows and arrows and we eat chicken today. Jessica Wells: Right, right. And- John Long: Don't get to talking about turkeys, you'll get me all messed up. Jessica Wells: We'll get way off track, again. John Long: I'm already in the spring all of a sudden. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Jessica Wells: No, it is. It's fun. I get wild questions sometimes, some of them throw me way off guard with those kids, but a lot of them, I'm sitting there just in amazement of how they really start to piece those puzzles together. And you know, in all reality, I'm not just there teaching the students, a lot of times those parents and teachers that are in the room, too, have valid questions and a lot of questions that you wouldn't think that an adult would ask, but they're disconnected. Less than 3% of us actually have a connection with agriculture and farm. So you got to think most of these people have never even seen a baby chick and experienced that. John Long: I think that's so true, what you say, is that connection between the need or the... Well I don't know how to say that, that disconnect, that gap needs to be closed for sure, because people... And I've had people, they didn't want to talk about it. They know that chicken nuggets come from a chicken, but they don't want to talk about it and they don't want to know and I guess that's fine. At least they know where it comes from where a lot of people don't. Jessica Wells: Yeah, I would say that generally when you have people that are very timid of the process, if they have the opportunity to go in an actual processing plant and watch that process, they come out with a way better knowledge and it's almost like, wow, that wasn't bad at all. So that understanding, a lot of it is just not knowing and your head creates an image for you that really isn't the truth. John Long: Exactly. And it's like riding a roller coaster, it's normally worse than... I mean, you make it so. Jessica Wells: Right. Once you get on, it's like, wow, that was actually fun. John Long: I want to do that again, let's go to the chicken plant again. Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: No, I'm kidding. I've never been to one, I would love to go to one though. Jessica Wells: It's definitely something to see. It's so efficient and, I mean, you're just in amazement of how well it's operated and ran. And I mean you're talking 150 birds a minute are coming out of that plant process, it's so crazy. John Long: I went to school many years ago, but I still remember that in animal science, they were quoting those numbers and I was like, "You've got to be kidding me." And I'm sitting here and thinking, okay, how many we've gone through already. But yeah, it's crazy. But we need it, there's a demand for chicken. Jessica Wells: Exactly. Cobie Rutherford: And Mississippi ranks third or fourth in the nation? Jessica Wells: Yep, I think we're fourth or fifth actually now, I think. Cobie Rutherford: We're fourth or fifth, okay. Jessica Wells: North Carolina has put in some plants, Sanderson Farms has started developing up there. So they are on the map now. It's number one for our state, it brings in about $3.5 billion for our state in income and whatnot. So it's huge and we do rank in the top five nationwide. In the world, the US is number one for broiler production. So people don't realize, you can say you don't want it, you don't like it, but in reality- John Long: The demand is there. Jessica Wells: The demand is there, and it's a way to feed the world, you know? I mean, it's efficient. John Long: High protein. Jessica Wells: It is. It's sustainable. A lot of people don't match a commercial industry with sustainability, but if you really think about it, it's probably the most sustainable market we have. John Long: I had chicken last night in preparation for this interview. Jessica Wells: And it's good. John Long: And, oh, it was fantastic. Yeah, it was wonderful. Jessica Wells: Goes with everything. Cobie Rutherford: What other contests and activities do you help with? Jessica Wells: So, with 4-H and FFA, we have poultry judging, which those students will come to state competitions, they also have district competitions and they judge market products as well as live birds. Those we basically base off of industry standards. So most people don't realize it, but when you go buy those eggs or that meat in the grocery store, there's actually a grade on them. And that grade means something. You know, if you go and see that grade A on the top of a carton, that means that that's a good, top egg. Whereas you'd have an A, B, C or no grade. We don't actually buy B eggs or C eggs, they go for other things. Jessica Wells: But we teach those youth what those grades mean and how to judge those products on that factor, to say whether it's a good egg, a bad egg, mediocre egg, I guess. And then also the quality of that bird. So in our industry, I know a lot of people think we just hatch those eggs, put those birds in a house and see what we get in the end, we can't do that. A processing plant can't run efficiently if those birds aren't uniform, if they're not grown to the best of their ability, we lose profit. So there's characteristics we can look for in young hens and in broilers that we could either cull that out, so that genetic line doesn't move into future generations. And we teach those kids how to look for that. Pigmentation's an easy one to kind of use as example. If a hand has really yellow legs, that means she's probably not laying those yellow yolks. So she doesn't lay as many eggs. John Long: Really? Jessica Wells: Yeah. So she- John Long: Wow. Did you know that, Cobie? Cobie Rutherford: I did not. Jessica Wells: Yeah. John Long: Just learn something every day. Jessica Wells: I know. She actually, the food she consumes has xanthophylls in it, which is yellow pigment. And as she eats that, it turns her skin yellow. If she's laying eggs, she's utilizing that nutrient for that egg. So it will pull that color out of her body. So I could actually walk through a hen house of egg layers and I could tell you who's consuming feed and not giving me profit. And we would want to get rid of that bird because if I'm just feeding her and she's serving no purpose, you know, it's not useful for us. So they learn how to place those birds based on those characteristics. So, it's not just a fun activity, it's actually something that we do utilize in the industry. And our students in college actually take those courses and they compete and they will utilize that once they go into the industry. John Long: It seems to me, that there has been an increase in... Maybe not, but it seems like it to me, that there's been an increase in interest in growing your own chickens, growing your own eggs at home. Jessica Wells: There has. John Long: Especially in our area, I know for a fact. Jessica Wells: Right. John Long: Why do you think that is? Jessica Wells: You know, I think, this is just my opinion- John Long: You're entitled to it. Jessica Wells: Yeah, I think so. John Long: This is free radio. Jessica Wells: But I think as, Americans especially, but as a human population, we always want what we can't have. And you know when 90% of us lived on a farm, nobody wanted a spare chicken to play with, you know? Because we were all doing it day in and day out. And now that less than 3% of that population live on that farm, we want what we can't have. We don't actually grow our food, so you know what I think I can... I want to take that opportunity, I want to try it out because I've never done it before. So I think that's a lot of where that boom comes from. And social media, too, we see a lot on social media. It has a huge impact and a lot of that's in your face on do we really know where our food comes from? Do you know what those sources are? Whether it's true or false, we take it, we absorb it. And I think that it plays a part on people getting into that feel of wanting to grow their own and see if they can do it. John Long: And maybe it's in fact that they want to know where they're... I mean, how their food's being handled, too. I've heard that as a reason as why. Jessica Wells: Right. Most of the time when they do get that flock of birds, they realize real quick that it's a lot more convenient to go back into the grocery store. John Long: I had an old poultry science professor told me the same thing. He said, "Don't worry with it." Jessica Wells: It's a lot cheaper, too. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is a very fun hobby. And chicken of all the livestock is probably the best to prove to a child, it's something that they can maintain on their own. So it's a good one to use as a concept of you're not going to sink thousands of dollars into it, it's going to be pretty cheap. You don't have to have a lot of land for it. And they're able to take care of that, not knocking Cobie livestock over here with cattle and whatnot, but I'm not so sure I'd give my four-year-old a bucket and send them out into the pasture with bulls to feed. I would probably give a four-year-old a bucket to go feed some chickens. John Long: Yeah, they're pretty safe. Jessica Wells: Yeah, a little safer. John Long: Until they get spurs on them, I guess you get roosters over there. Jessica Wells: Yeah, don't get me wrong, they can hurt you, but I don't think it's going to be as bad as some other livestock. So, it's a good, fun project. Like I said, I don't think you're going to save money on it by doing it, but it does teach some really good qualities in youth. John Long: Educational value's there for sure. Jessica Wells: Right, right. But aside from that judging, we also have egg prep competition. So students come and give a 10-minute presentation. Those youth come up with some type of food product that they make and it has to have egg in it. And we get everything under the sun, deviled eggs, we get that. John Long: My favorite. Jessica Wells: Yes. But some of them will even make cheesecake because it has egg in it, it has to- Cobie Rutherford: I'm sorry. He was starting to say, "Oh really?" Jessica Wells: Yeah, you'd be amazed at what you can make with some egg. But they come and do a demonstration and they talk about that product and then they also do a taste test. So the judges will have... We'll have a panel of judges and they serve their product after their presentation and whoever has the best product, as far as flavor and presentation, ends up winning that competition. So that's one that's really fun and you don't have to necessarily get in there with live birds and whatnot, you still get that process. And then our main one, that big one, is the chain project. John Long: Oh, I love this. I love saying chicken chain. Jessica Wells: I saved it best for last, right? John Long: Yes, yes. Jessica Wells: That poultry chain is really fun, we do all ages, so Cloverbud all the way up to that Senior level 4-'er. They get chicks starting May 19th week, every year, and usually, we tell them to order around 20 because it gives you kind of a pool, but- John Long: And they go through that through you? Is that how they do that? I mean, through the poultry science. They say, "Hey-" Jessica Wells: Yes, yes. Their county agent would have all of the information and then, obviously, if they can't get what they need from that county office, then they can always call us and we can answer questions and whatnot. Any of those routes would work, we're probably going to direct them back to that county office, but we'll be glad to help. But those kids get those 20 chicks, or around 20... Obviously if you have six kids, I don't expect you to buy six times 20- John Long: That's a lot of chickens. Cobie Rutherford: That's too much. Jessica Wells: So we don't make it mandatory, but it's just a suggestion. But there're select breeds that they can choose from, they raise those birds for about 20 weeks. So they get them to, basically, sexual maturity and then they bring them to the state fair and they pick their top three to show. John Long: Wow. Jessica Wells: It's really been a pleasure to do that. We started that project about eight years ago, I think, and it's been a lot of fun. It's really rewarding. We usually have a pretty large group of kids that compete. We do give out monetary awards for that, so our grand champion gets $1,000, makes it worth it, you know? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: I'm sorry. Jessica Wells: You want to compete now, John? John Long: No, I'm going to sign my vote. Jessica Wells: And then a reserve gets 500 and we give money to first through fifth place as well. And then there's a category in that, showmanship. So I came up with the showmanship after our first year, I had a little girl that kind of pulled my heartstrings. She was about 10 years old, came decked out, all the bells and whistles, just so excited to be there. She lived with her grandmother, her grandmother was a lot older and you could tell they didn't have a whole lot. But buddy, she was ready, she was excited. But you know, 85-year-old grandmother doesn't understand the concept of feed-in-a-bag feed and it having a nutritional value and whatnot. So she was free ranging some chickens and telling her have fun. So, obviously, she didn't place, her chickens weren't very good quality, but, I opened the cage, they looked at me, jumped in my arms, they weren't scared at all. You could tell the child had lived in that chicken pen. Jessica Wells: So, we developed the showmanship category to where those students actually take that chicken and they show it. It has to walk across a table for them, they have to position it in different positions and kind of show that bird. So it doesn't really matter the quality of the bird, but it proves that that kid took up time and effort with that animal. So it gives them the ability to place when maybe they don't have the means to place in other categories. So- Cobie Rutherford: That's awesome. Jessica Wells: Yeah. And they get a monetary award, as well. We placed first and second for showmanship. So- Cobie Rutherford: That is cool. Jessica Wells: It is really fun to watch these little kids make a chicken walk across the table, too. John Long: I was going to ask you- Jessica Wells: Yes? John Long: I'm not even going to go because my mind was thinking, okay, now how do you exactly show a chicken? Jessica Wells: I know, it's like any other animal. If you've ever seen kids show rabbits or sheep or anything- John Long: What do you do? Whistle and hold it in the air? Jessica Wells: You would be amazed. John Long: Really? Jessica Wells: So they'll train them with treats. John Long: Yeah, like a dog. Jessica Wells: Yeah, just like a dog. And they'll pretty much put their fingers in front of their face and kind of snap and that chicken will walk and- John Long: You are kidding? Jessica Wells: Yeah, and they'll stop them- John Long: I've got to... Have you seen this before, Cobie? Cobie Rutherford: I've seen the afterwards of a chicken show, but I've never watched the children's show their chickens. Jessica Wells: Yeah, it's pretty neat to watch. John Long: That is too cool. Jessica Wells: Now, occasionally- John Long: Now, when does this happen because I'm going to make plans. Jessica Wells: So we always do the second weekend of the state fair, we generally have that show on that Friday before. It's worth coming. John Long: So, that's the Friday before 4-H day, I guess. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Jessica Wells: It is. John Long: Oh, I'll be there. Jessica Wells: It is, yeah, come on over. John Long: Oh, I've got to see this, this chicken walk [crosstalk 00:26:49]. Jessica Wells: Yeah. We're usually showing about five at a time from starting about 8:00, 8:30 until lunch. John Long: Where is that located? Is it in one of the barns? Jessica Wells: So it's usually where your dairy show is going on in the arena, we're usually right outside of that. John Long: A smaller ring. Jessica Wells: Yeah, yeah. John Long: In the little, smaller ring. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Last year I walked through there after the show was over and I tried to buy some chickens from a 4-H'er and she priced those three chickens to me for 75 bucks. Jessica Wells: Hey, there's a lot of work that went into [crosstalk 00:27:18]. Cobie Rutherford: That's right, that's fine. John Long: If you won't Fifi, you're going to have to pay for it. Jessica Wells: Exactly. So we actually did do auctions a couple of years, but we kind of ran into that. A lot of those kids get attached and they just really don't want to get rid of them. John Long: Yeah. Now, I'm excited just to see the little arena. Jessica Wells: It's a show that's worth coming to see. John Long: And it's all hens, we don't have rooster? Jessica Wells: We do all hens. So they don't get... If they want to buy rooster they can, but we don't do roosters. I kind of like to get that concept across that we don't need a rooster to get our eggs and they don't serve a purpose unless you want chicks off of them. John Long: Right, more chicks. Jessica Wells: It's just a headache. They get aggressive and- John Long: They're so pretty, though. Jessica Wells: They are pretty. John Long: But pretty annoying. Jessica Wells: When your four-year-old walks in and they start attacking. John Long: Yeah. We don't want that to happen. Cobie Rutherford: So do y'all do anything with any other types of poultry? With ducks or geese or guineas- John Long: Turkeys. Jessica Wells: Yeah, so as far as youth projects, we don't, some other states do have turkey shows. The Turkey industry is nonexistent in Mississippi. John Long: Don't they have it in Arkansas. Jessica Wells: They do. John Long: I thought they did. Jessica Wells: They do. So neighboring states do have some turkeys, we're too hot for turkeys here in Mississippi. John Long: Okay. Jessica Wells: We're too hot for everything really. But- John Long: For us. Jessica Wells: Yeah, exactly. But we don't really have a whole lot of turkeys. Now, if a backyard enthusiast had turkeys or ducks or geese or whatever, then we're equipped to answer those questions and help them out as best we can. But we don't have any projects that focus around those other avian species. Cobie Rutherford: Gotcha. John Long: You just don't think about... Domestic turkeys, I guess. Wild turkeys live out and I guess they're tougher. Jessica Wells: Yeah. They're way different. John Long: Wait, wait, here we go, I'm getting sidetracked again. Better bring us back around. Jessica Wells: John, if you've ever been around commercial turkeys, you would- John Long: You'd know the difference. Jessica Wells: Yes, yes. John Long: Yeah, I bet there is. Jessica Wells: There's a big difference. They're hard to raise, too. They're not as smart as chicken. John Long: Really? Jessica Wells: Yeah. You kind of... With a baby chick, you hatch it out and you put feed and water out and they're good to go, give them some heat. But with a turkey, you generally... They imprint on that mother, so you have to kind of feed and give them reasons to go to the water and if you don't give them heat, they won't go and eat and drink and- John Long: Wow. Jessica Wells: They're way more finicky than a chicken. John Long: Labor-intensive. Jessica Wells: They are. They are. Cobie Rutherford: Sure didn't know that. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. When I grew up we had some backyard chickens and some of my fondest memories- John Long: I thought he was about to say turkeys. Cobie Rutherford: No, my grandparents never let me get turkeys because they said they roost in trees and they'll poop on the car and- John Long: Well, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Their poop is acidic and it'd make the car rust. Jessica Wells: Mm-hmm (affirmative). John Long: That's true. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Is it? John Long: I mean I'm asking, I don't know. Jessica Wells: Yeah, it is. They basically excrete uric acid. John Long: Oh my. Jessica Wells: So, they're not like us. It is pretty nasty and- John Long: And we've scored some more points on something I didn't know. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: That's crazy. Jessica Wells: Yeah, it's uric acid. Cobie Rutherford: So that was why I couldn't have turkeys, but we would always... Like, we would sell chickens at the local trade day and we'd get up before dawn go out there and catch the chickens while they were on the roast and then like take them to trade day and pedal them all day. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: Yep. John Long: My wife won't let me have turkeys at the house. She says I gobble enough, so... Jessica Wells: I agree with her, they're a little bit of obnoxious. They're not real bright and they are a lot of maintenance. John Long: Yeah, I bet. Jessica Wells: They're way bigger bird, too. John Long: Everything after it, I'm sure, too. Jessica Wells: Yes, yes. John Long: Just like chickens. Jessica Wells: Yeah. I worked with them in my master's degree and I had my fair share of turkeys, the line that we worked with- John Long: That's good eating, too. I'm saying- Jessica Wells: It is. John Long: The protein and... Jessica Wells: Yes, it tastes really good. John Long: It tastes mighty good at any time. Jessica Wells: That would be one pro to having your own turkey, turkey's pretty expensive in the grocery store. John Long: Oh, you're not kidding. Meat, would you come out on top, growing your- Jessica Wells: Probably not- John Long: Probably not. Jessica Wells: You'd still have a lot of feed intake there, but- Cobie Rutherford: You know, my former boss in Kentucky, they had a little farm right outside of Lexington, and his wife grew turkeys and would sell them for 75 bucks a piece. Jessica Wells: Yes. John Long: Holy smokes. Cobie Rutherford: Processed at the farmer's market. Jessica Wells: And people will pay it. Yeah, people will definitely pay it. We do a fundraiser, occasionally we have in the past with our club, and people don't bat an eye at $50, $60 for a whole turkey. John Long: Wow. Jessica Wells: So I mean, especially if it's a fundraiser for- John Long: Well, yeah, sure. Sure, sure. Jessica Wells: Somebody, but we've done that in the past with our club and I try to not mention it too often because I end up being the one that's processing all those turkeys. And you process a couple of turkeys in you realize really quick, it's not fun. Cobie Rutherford: It's hard work. John Long: You did it with hot water? Jessica Wells: Do what? John Long: Do you do it with hot water? Jessica Wells: Yeah. We do use it... Well, we use our scalder and whatnot because we have our own processing plant. It's just that our automation is set for chickens, so we can't hang turkeys in it. So as far as like the cut-up process, everything past plucking we have to do by hand and even hanging a Turkey, their wings- John Long: Oh yeah. Jessica Wells: I mean if you're not careful, I could honestly see them break an arm on you if you let them get too crazy and start flocking around on you. John Long: I guarantee they will. I've got scars to prove it. Jessica Wells: Yeah, exactly. And you got to think your turkey that you're killing in the wild is not near the size of- John Long: No, no. Jessica Wells: A commercial turkey. John Long: I know, I know, they're more ferocious. Jessica Wells: Yeah. Those breeder turkeys can get up to 80, 90 pounds. John Long: You are kidding? Jessica Wells: No, they're big. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. John Long: Did know that? I did not know they were that large. Cobie Rutherford: I knew that the males were so big that they couldn't naturally service the hens. Jessica Wells: That's right. John Long: Wow. Jessica Wells: That's right. John Long: I'm just... This is a Friday learning experience for me. Jessica Wells: I know, the commercial industry actually artificially inseminates on turkeys. John Long: Geez, that is insane. I did not know that. Jessica Wells: Yeah. They don't have artificial insemination in turkeys and chickens, so they can actually store sperm, so you don't have to do it every day. John Long: Is that an ootheca? Jessica Wells: Do what? John Long: What's that called and isn't that an ootheca? Now, what's that called when they can store that because I've heard of that. Jessica Wells: You know, I don't know what the term is. John Long: I'm sorry. Jessica Wells: I should, they have sperm tubules, I know that. That's [crosstalk 00:33:18]- John Long: Yeah, that is pretty neat. I think that [crosstalk 00:33:20]- Cobie Rutherford: I didn't know that. John Long: So they can be serviced once, yeah. Jessica Wells: It's about a- John Long: It's a repository. Jessica Wells: A turkey can store almost about two months, approximately two months. So and then a chicken is about two weeks. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. Jessica Wells: Yeah, you're not in there but you know maybe once a month or something like that, it's not an everyday chore. John Long: I'd love to see an 80-pound Turkey coming through the woods, just once. Jessica Wells: Oh my gosh. John Long: Thing would look like a tank. Jessica Wells: Hunting season would be over-complete. John Long: Here you go, this is all the turkey's you get, right here. Well Jessica, we certainly appreciate you coming in and sitting down with us. It's been a lot of fun. Jessica Wells: I enjoyed it. John Long: And, again, we've learned a lot. So, Cobie, you got any other questions for her? This feel so educating. Cobie Rutherford: I do, too. It was a good Friday podcast. Jessica Wells: Good. John Long: Absolutely, absolutely. Then Jessica, you've talked about a lot of projects and a lot of things for 4-H'ers to be involved in. Where can they go and get more information on that. Jessica Wells: So, all of your county offices are, obviously, going to have that information. Also, you can visit our website, poultry.msstate.edu and even if you call our front office or anything, if you mention youth, you're going to end up getting in touch with me. Even if you don't remember a name, you don't know the face, anything like that. Everyone in that department is going to funnel you to me, so we can answer any questions and get you in touch with the right people in order to get active in those youth programs. I mean I do it if I had... I have kids and none of them are old enough yet, but I'm sure they'll be in all of those poultry projects. John Long: Do you have chickens at your house? Jessica Wells: I do not. Anytime they want to see chickens, they can come up to work. John Long: And an 80-pound turkey, apparently. Jessica Wells: That's right and they do. They get pretty aggravated when they come up to the building and I don't have chicks. They just don't understand why there's not chicks there. John Long: What a big letdown. Jessica Wells: Yeah, it is. John Long: Come on, come on. Jessica Wells: So, why did I come up here again? John Long: Yeah. Jessica Wells: But we don't have chickens at home. You know, I'll work with them enough. It's kind of a biosecurity issue, too, with us having a farm and I'm on that farm constantly. I would hate to think that my chickens gave some type of sickness to chickens that we're raising to research and whatnot, that are worth tons of money. John Long: Right, right, sure. That makes sense. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to throw a guilt trip over... Jessica Wells: No, it's fine. My kids can get all the chickens they want at work, they can see them anytime they need to. John Long: That's awesome. Awesome. Well Cobie, tell everybody where they can go as far as on the extension side, where they can go to get more information. Cobie Rutherford: So you can visit extension.msstate.edu or contact any of your local county offices. John Long: And we would love if you're hearing this podcast, please subscribe and I guess like, whatever, our podcast, because we're going to keep bringing it to you every week. So just a little word, too, is if you're interested on when these podcasts drop, that's the official term drop. Jessica Wells: I learned something today, now. John Long: Yeah, there you go, there you go. They drop on every Wednesday, so just keep up to speed on that. And you can also go to the extension webpage and just type in 4-H-4-U-2 and you will hear us talking about a variety of subjects. So with that, we're going to close out this podcast and thanks for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Ellen Graves is back in the 4-H-4-U-2 studio to talk about the powerful positive impact that 4-H and Social Media has on the youth of today. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your hosts, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And welcome back to another podcast of 4-H-4-U-2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, we have been sitting here talking for seemingly like an hour to our next guest as a precursor to our show. This is our second podcast with Ellen Graves. How you doing today, Ellen? Ellen Graves: Doing good. John Long: Same as you were about 10 minutes ago, I guess. Ellen Graves: That's right. John Long: We pretend like there's been some lack in time, anyway. So yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I wish we'd been recording the whole time. We had some- Ellen Graves: That's not for people to hear. John Long: It wasn't anything bad, but it was just like, so not on topic with what we're going to talk about today. Ellen Graves: Right. Cobie Rutherford: It wasn't research based... Ellen Graves: But y'all were helping make the guest comfortable, right? So that's part of it. John Long: That's right. Just setting up the whole thing. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Celebrities, and favorite people, and movies. John Long: Movies, yeah. Ellen Graves: Movies, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: All good stuff for sure. Ellen Graves: Yeah, for sure. John Long: But you made mention of one thing I guess we could lead in with, is about your end course. In the South, we say daddy. So your daddy, go ahead and tell us today cause I thought that was really cool 4-H connection. Ellen Graves: Okay, yeah. Yeah. So I was telling y'all that in this job I figured out that 4-H is such a great organization to be a part of and I wish I had done it when I was growing up. I was not, unfortunately, in 4-H and I totally wish I had been. But when I got this job, my dad started to regale us of stories when he was in 4-H back in the 60s and early 70s, and because of 4-H he was able to get on his first plane ride ever and go to national 4-H convention in Chicago, maybe. And so, 4-H gave him that first opportunity in his life to get on a plane. And so he's always remembered that. And he won a lot of contests in forestry especially in 4-H and he just loved it so much. And so I think it's cool that I get to work with 4-H now. John Long: And I said the same thing on an earlier podcast. I was not in 4-H, I really wish I had been. Ellen Graves: Yeah, I mean I don't think people realize, and I know when I got this job, I think I thought like a lot of people did that, "Oh, it's for kids like showing pigs or cows, horses maybe, but I'm not really into that." John Long: Which we do, which we do. Ellen Graves: Right. And that's a very important part of 4-H. You can learn so much through that. But for 4-H has something literally for everybody. And I think one of the biggest things that I think of now is the leadership skills that it gives you, public speaking. Those are things I wish I had done when I was growing up and I wish I had been in 4-H for those things. John Long: Yeah, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: So we do a lot of promotional social media with 4-H contests with 4-H different events. Do you think that one day these 4-H’ers will use social media platforms as almost a resume builder to go back and say this is what all I've done? Ellen Graves: I think that's a cool idea. I've actually never even thought about it that way, but... John Long: See, here we go again. Ellen Graves: I know, look at y'all. But yeah... John Long: Write all this stuff down. Ellen Graves: I know, these are good ideas. A lot of 4-H’ers I think do use that because you can scroll back to two years ago if you'd been on there long enough and you can see all those posts you did, whether you were at Club Congress or at the state fair, Dixie National, and you really preserve those memories. And I think the cool part about social media is that you preserve the memories and that emotion that you were feeling at that time in your life. You know, looking back years later, you might feel different about it. But the cool thing is when you scroll back, you remember how you felt right in that moment. And I think that's a really cool thing. John Long: And a few things. If you think life doesn't move fast... Ellen Graves: Yeah, it does. John Long: Hey, scroll back... Ellen Graves: That's right. Preach it. Yeah. John Long: Yep, that's right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I think you was just talking about your dad when he was on the plane taking that trip to National 4-H Congress and yeah, I thought, "Well, what was going through his mind if he'd been able to capture that on social media?" Ellen Graves: Right. Cobie Rutherford: That'd have been huge to go back and look at. Ellen Graves: Oh, I know. John Long: We had a lady, I can't remember her name, I'm sorry. But anyway, she got to go to DC when she was just a young girl on a train. And that was a big deal for her. Ellen Graves: Yeah. John Long: So it's similar to, you know. Ellen Graves: Right. Well, and I think too, like we're talking about my dad back in the 60s but even nowadays I mean, kids in 4-H get so many opportunities to go out of the state, see other parts of the world, meet other kids their age from all over. And you're doing that through an organization that you know, and love, and trust. John Long: That's right. Ellen Graves: And so I think just the opportunities alone for travel is something that a lot of other organizations for youth cannot offer. John Long: That's exactly right, exactly right. Cobie Rutherford: And I think a lot of youth that are going to the national contest right now, all over the country, I think about what kind of experience they're getting. You know, they competed at our State Congress and horticulture judging or consumer judging or whatever it was. And now they're getting to go to a national trip that I mean even John, you mentioned shooting sports on an earlier podcast. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: What else would take you to Grand Island, Nebraska and have a chance to see that part of the world. John Long: Exactly. Cobie Rutherford: Other than shooting sports or, you know maybe livestock. John Long: Livestock, yeah, for sure. Ellen Graves: Yeah, and I mean those 4-H'ers that get to go on those trips, it helps them understand there's a whole world out there. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: There's so many opportunities and possibilities for their lives that maybe they just hadn't thought of yet. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so, I mean, you can't put a price on that. 4-H does that for kids. So I think, I don't know, it's just awesome. John Long: And I think that's important too, to remember the actual experience because, and we'll go back to the podcast we had, part one of Ellen Graves, but when information is so readily available, I mean, look, you don't have to climb to the top of Everest. They got a 360 degree view of Everest, whatever you want to call it. Everything is right there. But if you're not there, if you don't sit there and are able to look at the Grand Canyon face to face, you can't really appreciate it from that standpoint. And I think that goes the same for these trips and everything, you know what I'm saying? Ellen Graves: Oh yeah, for sure. John Long: Social media takes us to certain places, but it will never- Ellen Graves: It can only take you so far. John Long: That's correct. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Ellen, I like how you mentioned a while ago that social media allows us to capture memory but also an emotion. Can you elaborate some more on that? John Long: Yeah, I wish she would, because I did this, which I'm combing through my beard right now. Go ahead. Ellen Graves: Yeah. So, I think I get the unique opportunity to see a lot of posts out there about 4-H from our 4-H'ers, from our volunteers, from their parents. And I think one post in particular really sticks out to me, is we have a 4-H'er named Savannah and her mother, we follow her mother, her mother posted a collage picture of Savannah when she was just a kiddo, going to Project Achievement Day. And then she posted a picture from years after that where Savannah was wearing a green jacket and was there as a State Council Officer. And so just look at that post visually and then see in the caption that mother described the transformation that her daughter had gone through and the confidence that she had gained. I mean, makes me look at 4-H and I appreciate my job through their eyes. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: You know, cause I look at a lot of stuff obviously from my angle, from a professional angle, from my work angle, but to see that emotion and that memory through a parent's eyes of her child growing and becoming a great young lady, that's something that I was able to think about because of social media. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so I think that's one example. Was that a good answer? John Long: That is very good. Cobie Rutherford: That was really good. John Long: I was going to say it's a virtual record book. Ellen Graves: Yeah, yeah. John Long: You know, like a 4-H record book. I mean, you see that progression. Ellen Graves: Right. And I mean I think 4-H has done a really good job of trying to meet our folks where they're at on social media. So like one of the new things that we've done lately is create a Facebook group for 4-H volunteers. And so they have a space underneath our Facebook page where they can discuss internally what their plans are, updates about different things. So it's a virtual gathering space because as y'all know, our volunteers are stretched throughout the state. So this is a place where we can use technology to help kind of fill in those gaps. John Long: Yeah. And we did that on the national team this year too. Ellen Graves: Oh, that's cool. John Long: There's a Facebook page that a parent had started just for a means of saying, "Hey, this is where we're at and this is what we're doing." Ellen Graves: Right. That's right. John Long: So yeah, that makes perfect sense for sure. Cobie Rutherford: And I like all the new components of social media, like on Facebook or Instagram where you can almost go live, well you can go live, at any place you're at and share your experiences of what you're doing in that moment. John Long: Yeah. Ellen Graves: Yes, yes. And Cobie, give a shout out to him, he is like a master at going Facebook live, Instagram live. He's like so confident about it. So shout out to you. Cobie Rutherford: Oh my gosh. The first time I did that, I was live at the livestock show going around and talking to the people before- Ellen Graves: It's that adrenaline rush, isn't it?. Cobie Rutherford: It is. It was before they walked into the ring for the championship drive at Dixie or State Fair one. And then all of a sudden this calf kicked this kid. John Long: Oh no. Ellen Graves: Oh no. Drama. John Long: No music track. Ellen Graves: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: And then someone let out a descriptive word at that calf. John Long: Oh. Ellen Graves: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: That was probably not social media... Ellen Graves: Right. Appropriate. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So I quickly deleted that. Ellen Graves: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: And did not share and then started over again. Ellen Graves: Right. You got to have fast fingers, sometimes on social media. John Long: Yeah, for sure. Ellen Graves: But I do think Facebook live, Instagram live, just going live in general and gives us the opportunity to be authentic in a way that we've never been able to do before. John Long: Yeah, yeah. Ellen Graves: Because when you think about it, that's just the structure of media. People obviously place so much emphasis on television because they had the ability to go live. Cobie Rutherford: Right. Ellen Graves: Whereas now that power is also in the hands of everyday people. And we can argue whether that's good or bad, but I know in 4-H we're using it for good. John Long: Yeah. Ellen Graves: And so I think being able to open up that window to people, being really transparent with them, is a great tool for us. John Long: I've only been Facebook live one time. Ellen Graves: Yeah. John Long: And it was that... Ellen Graves: I worry about you sometimes, John. That's all we can do, one time. John Long: I'm just like, "Oh no, let me get my finger up here." Arthritis. But I was in a tree stand and I just said, "I'm going to try this." And it was like, "Okay well here I am, what do I do now?" Ellen Graves: Some people are more natural at it than others. John Long: Yeah, yeah. I guess I'd like it if I did it more but I don't. Ellen Graves: Practice makes perfect. Cobie Rutherford: I feel like I need to do a real enthusiastic voice when I do Facebook live. I'm like, "Hey y'all!" John Long: Trying to drum up some excitement. Cobie Rutherford: I know. John Long: "This is Cobie Rutherford." Ellen Graves: Well that's why I like being behind the camera because y'all know my philosophy with the accounts that I manage is like, I never want to make it about me, you know like ever, even though I'm the person behind it kind of operating it. John Long: Yeah. Ellen Graves: But that's the funny part, I think, about working with 4-H'ers is that these kids are so naturally inclined to be not nervous in front of the camera. Ellen Graves: Whereas people, even my age, y'all's age, have kind of a nerve nervous element to going live or getting on video. And so these 4-H'ers have really just embraced it because it's all they've ever known. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so that makes for great social media, so that's good for me. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Yeah. And I think it helps them kind of watch their actions too. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Ellen Graves: Right. John Long: Because now they know that if they do something down the line that anybody anywhere can flip up a camera and video them. Ellen Graves: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, and I think... John Long: And it is all over the place. Cobie Rutherford: Right. And that's, yeah. Like you said, because if something happens or, you know what I mean? John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: It's a different, I don't know, I don't want to say media, but it's a different... Ellen Graves: But it's a different world because people have the technology at their fingertips to record anything, so- John Long: Isn't that crazy? Ellen Graves: Yeah. John Long: And I remember wanting a video camera. Ellen Graves: Yeah. John Long: That thing was huge as, you know, and now it's in the palm of your hand. Ellen Graves: Your hand. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: And take just as good video. Ellen Graves: It does. Cobie Rutherford: What I see is like, and Ellen, please comment on this. Do you see a lot of youth when they're trying to create content, they're trying to put things out there to get likes or make impressions. How important are those to a lot of youth and do a lot of youth take them more serious than they should? Ellen Graves: So I think that's a great point to bring up. And honestly, when you think about it, we're still really young in the progression of social media. So I know there's a lot of research that has been done, that's going to continue to be done about the effect mentally that social media has on young people and even people our age. And I mean just from, this is Ellen's opinion, my viewpoint on it is that yeah, I think people do take stock in how many likes a picture gets. Because I always tell 4-H'ers in my workshops I do with them is that whether you know it or not, you are a social media strategist. Because like for example, on Instagram, you're thinking about, "Okay, what picture do I want to put up from my camera roll? What filter do I want to use? What kind of caption should it be? This kind of caption or should I make it funny? What hashtag should I put? What emoji should I put with it?" You know, so people are going through the same thought process because they want that post to succeed. Right? John Long: And if anybody heard the first one, it's called clout. Ellen Graves: Oh yeah. John Long: I don't even know what that means. Ellen Graves: You're becoming a social media strategist. John Long: I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I had to throw that in there. Ellen Graves: No, it's fine. No, it's fine. And so, I do think that whether young people admit it or not, they do think about that. And it's funny you should bring this up. I actually saw a headline the other day that Instagram is starting to test and roll out a feature where the likes are hidden from public view. So if you put up a picture of yourself, you can see, "Okay, I got 50 likes on it." But someone looking at it from the public's perspective would not know how many likes, and that's an interesting thought because they saying they're basically eliminating the peer pressure of like, "Oh, well 100 people have liked this, so I should too." Or, "Only 20 people liked it, so I'm not going to like it, that's lame." You know? And so I think that's going to be really interesting to see if that actually does come to pass or if it's just something they're testing. So, yeah. John Long: So it kind of gives them an idea of like making an informed decision instead of a snap decision based on what everybody else has done. Ellen Graves: Right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And it's kind of like you judge yourself against others. John Long: Yeah. Oh yeah. Cobie Rutherford: You know, I can put a picture of me and one of my cows or, I'm just being facetious here, but you know somebody else could. And I'm like, "Wow, they got more likes with their cow than I did with mine." Ellen Graves: Right, right. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: And I think that happens more times than not. You know, you see that a lot. And it's almost like, I know I catch myself, and I don't know if y'all ever do, but I catch myself saying, "What is the purpose of this other than your glorification?" Ellen Graves: Yeah, yeah. John Long: You know what I'm saying? It's like, "Look what I can do." Ellen Graves: Well, and it's like a weird line for me because professionally I very much care about analytics and it tells me certain things about our audience and about how I can be changing our content to meet the needs of our audience by paying attention to analytics. But then on the personal side of things, I try to not take that with me. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: I try not to like over analyze my own personal presence on social media. Cobie Rutherford: Right. Ellen Graves: But for professional it is really important in my job to understand those things. John Long: Yeah, I bet it is. Cobie Rutherford: So how many accounts do you monitor? Ellen Graves: I told you I wasn't good at math, Cobie. Cobie Rutherford: I will give you a piece of paper. Ellen Graves: I know. I don't know. I would say like a rough estimate is that, like I have my hands on probably about 20 accounts. Managing day to day consistently, it's probably about 10. But I have my hands just in a lot of pots I guess would be the best way to describe it. I generally tell people, someone actually asked me this in Sunday school the other day like, "What do you do?" Because I think a lot of times in Extension our job titles can not be very... Some people just don't understand what that means. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so I told the person, I think about my role in Extension as I create content and then I also manage accounts and then I also train people in Extension about how to best use social media. So that's kind of the way I think about it. So, yeah, I'm looking at social media every day. John Long: So let me ask you this, it's a good lead into my next question. Does Ellen Graves ever unplug totally? Ellen Graves: Oh, there's some days where I wish I could just throw my phone in a river, but then I know I would just jump in right after it. John Long: Right, right. Ellen Graves: But it's hard for me to completely unplug. I do try on Sundays not to look at our work accounts and then the only time I can really unplug for an extended amount of time is during our Christmas break because that's the only time long enough where I'm physically not at work. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: That I don't have to worry about it as much. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: But you know, the thing I tell folks a lot of times, I feel like in this job in particular, but we all have aspects like this in our own jobs. I don't want to sound like I'm the only one like this. But you know, even when I go home, if someone sends us like a question on our 4-H Facebook page at 8:00 PM, I'm looking at it. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: You know I'm answering it. John Long: Right. Sure. Ellen Graves: And so it's kind of like with my job, you can take it with you wherever you go. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so I do have to try to step back at times. As we've said before, I did graduate from Ole Miss. There was one time during where we really lost an Egg Bowl real bad to State and I had to put my phone in a drawer. John Long: Oh wow, it was blowing up that bad? Ellen Graves: Yeah. John Long: Oh wow. Ellen Graves: It was bad. And so but I do try to unplug around the holidays. But I'm pretty much plugged in all the time. John Long: Well I think, and you said it is part of your job. What advice would you give to a young person in order to get a healthy balance? Because I just, I mean people are with their heads down. Ellen Graves: Yeah, yeah. John Long: I think they're just going to eventually just get a crick in their neck and never going to look up and look around at the world. Ellen Graves: Right, look at the sunshine. Right. John Long: Right, exactly. So how does the person do that when it's just so available. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying that we need to- Ellen Graves: Have a good balance. John Long: Yeah, you're not going to see a sunrise if you're trying to Google one, you know? Ellen Graves: Right. Well, I think I've been really fortunate to have lived before there was social media, so I had a childhood that was free of a screen, that was free of social media, and I'm really thankful for that. But at the same time, nowadays that's just the world we live in, right? John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: That stuff is available to kids. And so I think having that balance of having times in your life during just your normal weekly routine of like, "Okay, the phone, it goes on the dresser drawer at 8:00 PM and I'm not going to look at it after that." You know? And I think honestly, when you're talking about teenagers and kids, you're talking about their parents, right? Because those are the folks who would be obviously setting the rules in the house. And so I think as a parent you have to say, "What are our digital guidelines as a family?" John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And you're setting an example for your children. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And I think adults have to think about that. But I did talk with our 4-H'ers at Co-op and we just kind of had just a time where we just kind of talked with each other about what social media is to them. And I told them, I said, "You know, a lot of adults think that y'all cannot communicate face to face. They think teenagers can't look another adult in the eyeballs and talk to them." John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And that they just, phones and social media have put up a barrier. And the kids really pushed back on that. They said, "We feel very confident about looking people in the eyes and talking to them." And that might be because they're 4-H'ers, right? John Long: Right, right. I was thinking that. Ellen Graves: They have the skill set to do that, right. But the other point too they brought up with me is, and I agree with this, is that teenagers and kids in their mind, when they're texting someone when they're Snapchatting someone, that is a friendship. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: That is relationship. It's just in a different way than their parents experienced friendship. John Long: Right, right. Ellen Graves: And so it's not that they're just in a world all by themselves. A lot of times they're communicating with their friends through those methods. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so. But to boil it down, I kind of had a rambling answer. John Long: No, I- Ellen Graves: You do have to have a balance. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And I think with anything in life, you have to have a balance. John Long: One thing that I'm seeing more and more of late is the ease, and I'm speaking for myself, the ease of parents. Did you just give a device to a child for a pacifier, for lack of a better words, you know? And then it just becomes such an addiction to where that child, and again moderation in all things, but it becomes just like this, "I got to have, I got to have it, I got to have it." And I think that is a danger for sure. Ellen Graves: And I think I'm not as well versed in that kind of stuff. I don't have kids myself. And so I haven't had to experience that. But I think the research that folks are doing out there from this generation that's grown up like this will tell us things eventually- John Long: Right, I agree. Ellen Graves: About how that's affected them and adulthood and all that. John Long: Sure. Ellen Graves: And we'll have to look at what that says. But what I do encourage, parents out there, especially 4-H parents, is that we will definitely want you to post about 4-H- John Long: Absolutely, absolutely. Ellen Graves: And about your kids having a great time in 4-H. John Long: That's right. Ellen Graves: Because it's always better. We can shout from the rooftops on our 4-H accounts that we have, but it's going to be way more authentic coming from y'all. John Long: Absolutely. Ellen Graves: For sure. John Long: The youth tell the story. Ellen Graves: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: And how important is it for them to use the hashtag so you can see what they're talking about? Ellen Graves: Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Cobie. John Long: Ellen always has to remind me during annual conference what the hashtag is. Ellen Graves: I know. It's all right. John Long: Go ahead, I'm sorry. Ellen Graves: That was part of my job. So #MS4H no dash, just all put together. And then for Extension it's #MSUEXT. And you might say, why is this important for me to use this hashtag? One of the reasons that I've seen is that a lot of 4-H'ers, or even volunteers and parents, will post something about an activity they've done through 4-H but not actually mentioned in the caption that it's 4-H. John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: And so there's this misconception that it's another youth organization out there. And so if you put up your caption and then at the very end just put #MS4H, you're getting that point across to your friends and family that this was done through 4-H. And so that helps our brand grow, just from doing that tiny thing. And then also just from my perspective professionally, it helps me be able to see the amount of posts out there about Mississippi 4-H because- John Long: ...going back to analytics again. Ellen Graves: That's right. It gives me a way to aggregate the content that's out there so I can understand what is our audience talking about, what concerns do they have? And I want to make sure that I interact with our 4-H audience through our Mississippi 4-H account. So when you put up a post describing a 4-H experience, I want to like that. I want to, from our 4-H account, I want to say, "Great job. Thank you so much." John Long: Right. Ellen Graves: So I want to continue those lines of communication with y'all and I can only see those posts unless we follow you. And unless you're using those hashtags. John Long: Yeah, that was a good and a plug for me. Cobie Rutherford: Yep, that's right. Ellen Graves: I practice it a couple of times. John Long: Just use the pound sign. Ellen Graves: You know, that tic-tac-toe, right? John Long: Yeah, that's right. You know, you got the square and then you got the X and the Os. Ellen Graves: Right. John Long: But yeah, thank you so much for that. And Ellen, we thank you for, again, for coming in and being with us today and like I did in the last podcast and we'll let you tell us where we can go to get our information on 4-H and Extension in your area. Ellen Graves: Thank you, John Long. So everyone please make sure to follow Mississippi 4-H on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. And then of course you can also follow MSU Extension Service, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. And then we already talked about the hashtags. John Long: Yes. Ellen Graves: So use those. And then of course you can look at our website, extension.msstate.edu. John Long: We need to bring her in every- Cobie Rutherford: I know. John Long: Can we record that? Cobie Rutherford: We should record that. Ellen Graves: Yeah, just make a standard. John Long: No stipend or royalties... Ellen Graves: Right, right. John Long: Alright, well with that, that is another week of 4-H-4-U-2, and I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie. John Long: And we will be back next time with who knows what we're going to be talking about, but we're going to be talking about 4-H and 4-H youth development for sure. Y'all have a good one. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Ellen Graves, Social Media Guru, spreads the word on the do's and don'ts of the social media world. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi state university extension service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And welcome to another edition of 4-H-4-U-2 podcast. I'm your host John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And Cobie, how are you doing? Cobie Rutherford: Doing fine, John. John Long: Great, great. Cobie Rutherford: We have survived summer. John Long: Yes we have. And we still got a ways to go as far as it getting cooler. But yeah, we have survived. So we're moving on, looking into next year and we are so excited to have our guest with us today. Miss Ellen Graves is with us. Hello Ellen. Ellen Graves: Hey y'all. John Long: We're just so proud to have her here. It's one of those things where we feel honored to have you here. Ellen Graves: No, I'm honored. No, I'm honored, really. Cobie Rutherford: I feel like we're in the midst of a celebrity because everyone knows- Ellen Graves: No, no. This is a milestone in my career, honestly, to be here with y'all today. So. John Long: So Ellen, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, and how you got to where you are right now. Ellen Graves: That's a great question. John. John Long: Your stardom. You're a star dumb. Ellen Graves: Yeah, right. Oh, so I was raised in Ackerman, Mississippi. John Long: Whoop-whoop. Ellen Graves: And I actually went to Ole Miss, which might be surprising to some people since I wound up at State. John Long: Look, I'm not offended by that. Ellen Graves: Thank God. John Long: And I'll say that right now because there's some great doctors up there. Ellen Graves: That's right. And lawyers, you know, we got them. So I went to Ole Miss, and I got my degree in journalism. I actually got it in print journalism, and after I graduated I was really interested in doing something with social media. So all throughout college social media was starting to become a real thing. And I could tell that businesses and organizations did not understand how to use it. They needed someone who did. And so I made, every chance I could, I made in college to actually incorporate social media, whether it was into my thesis for the Honors College, or into jobs, internships. Ellen Graves: And so when I got out of school, this job came open, Social Media Strategist with Ag. Communications. John Long: Wow, so right out- Ellen Graves: Yes. John Long: Off the bat. I didn't realize that. Ellen Graves: So I graduated in May, 2013 and I started this job August, 2013, so I was just a baby. John Long: Gosh, you've been here that long? Ellen Graves: Yeah, six years. John Long: Wow. It doesn't' seem like that. Ellen Graves: I know. Time flies when you're having fun. John Long: Yeah. We like that though. Ellen Graves: So I applied for this job, and it's exactly what I wanted to do. I was surprised it was at Mississippi State because being an Ole Miss graduate. I wasn't necessarily looking for a job like this, but I said this is ... When I read the description, it's what I wanted to do. And so I applied, and went through a rigorous interview process, and here I am. John Long: We're so glad to have you for sure. And Cobie, if you want to know where Ellen lived when she grew up. I think her house is the only one in Ackerman that has a cupola. However you pronounce it. Ellen Graves: Yeah, some people think that it was going to be a KFC because it has a similar look. John Long: It's an off the road KFC. Ellen Graves: Right, right, right. No chickens, we have cows. John Long: It's a beautiful place by the way. Ellen Graves: Thank you. John Long: No, I had to say that because it is a pretty cool house. So do you ever get up, go back to the school up North? Ellen Graves: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Every chance I get I try and get back up there. I tried to not be too overwhelmingly Rebel here at State because I know where I'm at. But yeah, I love where I came from. John Long: It's all right to claim where you're from. Ellen Graves: That's right. That's right. John Long: Nothing wrong with that. Just like we do. Ellen Graves: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Exactly. Ellen Graves: That's right. John Long: So we're going to be talking today about the big time thing that it's just blown up, and that is social media, which is what you do. So what exactly, how do you define social media because it's just got so many different branches now than when ... I just remember, I can't remember what the first thing was. What was the first thing? Give us a little history of social media if you don't mind, because I don't really know a whole bunch myself. Ellen Graves: Sure. So Myspace was probably one of the first platforms that was used by the mass public. And that was actually before my time. I was never on Myspace because I was too young. But Facebook, of course, was after that. Instagram. John Long: And it had a similar platform, right? Ellen Graves: Yes. John Long: Myspace did? Ellen Graves: Myspace did. I think Facebook probably figured out how to do it better than Myspace, and so of course they survived and Myspace did not. But I got Facebook when I was a 10th grader in high school, so that was back in about 2007. And so that was my first introduction to it. And I think what's really helped me, even though I'm technically one of like the younger employees in Extension, but in social media I've seen how it's grown, because I've been on Facebook since I was a 10th grader. Ellen Graves: And so whenever I was on Facebook for the first time, I had to be invited by a friend. I still remember getting an email saying like, "Kristen has invited you to join Facebook." And so I've seen how it's progressed from like that to where it is today. And so I think just being able to observe that as a professional, it helps me make decisions about what platforms we use, and how we use it, and all that kind of stuff. John Long: So you've got a great base for that? Ellen Graves: Yeah. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I think about when the way Facebook has evolved in my eyes. So I joined in 2004 when I was an undergrad at Auburn University. And then we were still using flip phones, and we would have to physically log into a computer. And if we wanted to upload pictures, we would have to get pictures from our disposable camera or our other type of camera, take them to Walmart, put them on a CD, put the CD in the computer, upload the pictures. Which in my mind, that was fantastic because it got us accustomed to social media before we learned how to use a smart phone or before smart phone technology became available, and before if there was instantaneous. So we had some decision making time incorporated into those decisions. But to me it's a great tool for young people but also can be a a risk as well. What do you think about that? Ellen Graves: I agree with that. And I actually just did a workshop at co-op for, for 4-H-ers this summer. And that was one of our topics we talked about is that we have to be smart using social media. You need to be safe using social media. In my mind, there's right and wrong in this world and that still applies to social media. So it's all about making good decisions, whether it's on social media or just in day to day life. And so I really did encourage them to think before you post, because what you post now as a teenager can affect you the rest of your life. Ellen Graves: And I think that's something, looking back, growing up I had to wait until I was a 10th grader, right? So I was at least a little bit more mature than some of these kids who are getting on social media when they're in junior high or even younger. So I think parents, even though they might not feel like they know as much about the platforms as they do, as the children do. The parents though are responsible for teaching kids right and wrong. And I think that still applies on social. John Long: Yeah. Be smart with your smart phone. Ellen Graves: That's right. I love that. Did you invent that? John Long: You can take that. Ellen Graves: That was good. John Long: Right here. Right now. Ellen Graves: Boom. Get that trademarked. John Long: This is what happens right in here. Ellen Graves: I can tell. This is where the magic happens. John Long: This is where the magic happens. And I totally agree with you on that. I had a discussion with my nephew, not really a discussion, we were playing UNO, so I don't know what kind of discussion that was. Ellen Graves: Serious discussion. John Long: Really. To play with them. I mean it's just like ... Yeah, I don't know. It's very irritating. Sorry. Sorry, Mike and Patrick. Ellen Graves: Did you lose? John Long: Yeah. It's not that I lost. It's the way that they were like, every time they'd throw a card down- Ellen Graves: You're not bitter, are you? John Long: They were like, "Ohhhhh." I'm like, "Come on guys, just chill." But I'm not 11 anymore. Ellen Graves: Right, right. John Long: So anyway. But they were talking, do you know what, what clout is on on Instagram? Ellen Graves: I've heard of that term. John Long: It's talking about if you have a certain backpack, then you get so many clout points. I don't know. It was strange. I just said, "Back in my day..." Ellen Graves: Yeah, right. I'm starting to reach the age where I have to Google some of the terms that people are using. They're real popular now. John Long: And you have to stay up with that in your job for sure. Ellen Graves: I do. That's very true. John Long: The readily availability of information is something that just is amazing to me and the "necessity" that we have to be connected. And the fact that I think, I don't want to say anonymity, but people seem to be more free with what they say or what they post on Facebook, and why do you think that is? Not Facebook, any social media for that matter. Why do you think that is? Ellen Graves: Well, I think part of it is because the folks who are mostly doing that have grown up sharing about their lives and so it's not unnatural for them. Whereas for me and you and we have lived in a time where we didn't share stuff all the time on a website. John Long: Didn't want people to know. Ellen Graves: Right, right. It's a little bit more, I think, unnatural for us. But I think people in their heads are talking with their friends, right? It's just through a screen. And so they feel comfortable with that. They don't mind sharing about their lives, but I just still think that some people obviously need to take a step back sometimes and think about, "Did I need to share that? Did the world need to know that," because you might think you're sharing it with your friends and your family, but no telling who's looking at it. So, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So do you think this information that's posted and shared on these social media platforms ever really goes away regardless if you delete it yourself or... Ellen Graves: I think it's always out there. And one of the reasons I told our 4-H-ers the other week at co-op is that people can take a screenshot of anything whether you choose to delete it. If they get a screenshot of it before you delete it, it's out there. And really, one of the things I encouraged our 4-H-ers to think about is when someone looks at your account for the first time, what kind of impression do you leave them with? And I feel like as people we should look at our own accounts ourselves and say what is this showing the outside world about myself. Is this an accurate portrait of myself? And I even encouraged them maybe every year around your birthday, go back through your accounts and just do a self cleanse and say, "Is this post, is that something I'm wanting to leave up here or should I delete it?" Ellen Graves: Was that a post that was smart to make because eventually when you think about deleting stuff, you might start thinking about that when you're like applying for jobs, and you have decades of content to go through and pictures and videos that it's better to do it on a yearly basis. Just that self cleanse on your own social media posts. John Long: I actually saw an employer post that yesterday. It was like, "Check your social media accounts before you come apply for a job for me." Ellen Graves: Oh for sure. I mean, that's the first thing that we look at when someone applies for a job. I've been on several hiring committees, and I'm a Social Media Strategist so I can find some stuff about you if it's out there if I really want to, right? So. John Long: Please don't. Ellen Graves: Yeah, I know. I'll never look you up John. You're safe. John Long: Thank you very much. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I was thinking about that the other day. I had a former person that I'd run into that had applied for an internship with this company, and they got on her social media account, and she had posted something that was scientifically based but it didn't match his values as an employer. And he basically said, "I can't offer you this internship because our views don't align because you posted this on this date and this on this date." And to her that was a huge wake up call because she first of all didn't realize that he would even look at her social media account. And second she didn't see anything wrong with what she posted because it was science based, but had a political innuendo behind it, I guess. Ellen Graves: Yeah, it can happen. I mean, I don't want to scare people out there because overall I do think social media is a force for good, and it's all about ... You can make the most of your own social media accounts by who you follow, right? So if you look at your newsfeed one day, and you're like, "Ugh, this is terrible." Well look at who you're following. Weed out the folks that are making your social media account not fun. But yeah, I mean you have to be careful about what you post about even with stuff that you think is not a problem at all. It might be a problem to somebody else. John Long: Somebody else, yeah. For sure. Ellen Graves: Yeah. And too, I mean honestly Cobie, the way I think about that is that, if that person, that employer didn't want her working for him because of that, but she still really believed what she posted about then that probably wasn't the best fit for her anyway. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. That's probably... Yeah. You're probably right, that definitely could have played both ways. One thing I also worry about as a parent, I will share pictures and things that my little boy does on Facebook and then all of a sudden I'm like, "What happens when he gets 14, 15 and then becomes aware of all this stuff that I've shared" or I could've shared. So I think about that, does he really won't a picture of himself in his diaper chasing his dog with a water hose? John Long: Nobody does. But it always comes back to haunt you. Cobie Rutherford: It always comes back. John Long: They did that with Polaroids. Ellen Graves: Right. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Ellen Graves: See now it's really, I think of it as a digital scrapbook. Our moms and dads were doing pictures of us like that, but they were in a book in the shelf at the house. But now it's a digital way for people to put that together. And I think each parent just has to look at their own situation. Everyone has their own views about how comfortable they are with sharing certain aspects of their life. And I just think it pays off to be smart about it, but at the same time you want your friends and family to know about your kid. So it's just a balance. And I think maybe when that child gets old enough, hopefully they'll look back and appreciate maybe some of the fun memories, and that you were able to share it with friends and family. But any kid's going to be embarrassed by some pictures. Right? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah absolutely. Absolutely. John Long: I saw a Law and Order episode one time that talked about how readily available images were through that too. And of course there's always been people that are trying to do bad things, but the readily availability of images and things like that of young people, and that is always in the back of my mind. But then again, it's kind kind of hard to ... you want to share things with your family, but then you have to realize that that's a risk you run when you put it out there. Ellen Graves: One of the things I talked about with our 4-H-ers the other week was just even when you think you've taken the precautions, like on Instagram for example, if you have a private account on Instagram and you're like, "Okay, I'm being safe with that." But in your bio section you have maybe that you're 16 years old, you're a cheerleader at West Jones high school. Then anybody could say, "Okay, well I know where she's at on a Friday night." So I try to bring up some of those points maybe that our 4-H-ers had not thought about, and that you have to keep in mind those nuances of the platforms where people from the outside that you don't think are actually following you can still see your information. John Long: Right. And that brings up something too, because we just went on vacation. And well, it wasn't a vacation really, but it was a couple of days. But anyway, I never post any of my, where I am currently because I don't want people to know that I'm not at home. Ellen Graves: They could rob you, right. John Long: I want to keep them guessing. Ellen Graves: Right. I understand that. John Long: But then when you get back, of course, I always frame it from the standpoint had a great weekend. Ellen Graves: Right. Right. Look at you being a social media strategist. John Long: I'm just trying to be responsible, Ellen. Come on. I'm learning something. Ellen Graves: You are. John Long: So let me ask you this. In Ellen's opinion, is social media here to stay or is it something, do you think that will eventually fade away and become something else? Ellen Graves: So that's a great question. John Long: Well that's what I ask, is a great question, frankly. Ellen Graves: You do. You do. John Long: I'm kidding. Ellen Graves: I know. You're doing good at this pod. You might take this thing full time. I don't know. John Long: I'm telling you, we're taking it on the road. Ellen Graves: Right? John Long: Yeah. Ellen Graves: That would be awesome. Do we have the budget for that? John Long: No, no. We'll be taking nitro. Ellen Graves: Right? Right. Pay for your own gas. John Long: Right, right. We'll just put a clover on the side of it. Ellen Graves: People can donate food. John Long: Start a my fund me account, or something. Or fund me, whatever it is. Ellen Graves: GoFundMe. John Long: Yeah, GoFundMe, yeah, yeah. Ellen Graves: But yeah, so to your question, in Ellen's opinion, it is around to stay. I think it will continue to evolve, and what is social media now might not be what social media is in 10 years. John Long: Right, like you said earlier. Ellen Graves: That's right. And so it will continue to evolve, but I think organizations like Extension and 4-H have a duty to be on social media because we need to meet our clients and our 4-H-ers where they are. John Long: Absolutely. Ellen Graves: So if they're on social media, we have to find a way to be there, and that's what they did when they hired me. They found a way to get us on there. So I think they were smart and very forward thinking to implement someone like me in our department. John Long: And with Extension being what it is and why it served that purpose was to get information from the University out to the people. The quicker we can do that, the more ... And with reliable information on top of that, not just some Joe Blow out there. Ellen Graves: That's right. John Long: Spitting information out. Ellen Graves: Let me take a point there too. John Long: Go ahead. Ellen Graves: That's one of the things that I've really been emphasizing with folks lately is that Extension and 4-H can fill a void on social media because I'll be the first to admit, so much content on social media is garbage. It is not true, it is not based in fact, it is opinion based, and what Extension has is the exact opposite. It is truthful, it is research based, it is information that you can trust to help your family. Ellen Graves: And so I think that's why it's important for us to be on there because we can combat all the other falsehoods that are out there with the truth. And so that's one of the things I think about with my job. Not that I'm Captain America or anything, but in our small way- John Long: Captain Marvel. Are you saying that? Ellen Graves: Yeah, that's such a good movie. John Long: It was a great movie. Ellen Graves: I loved it. John Long: Shameless plug. Captain Marvel. Ellen Graves: That's right. Maybe they could sponsor us. John Long: That's right. We'll put Captain Marvel on the back of the truck. Ellen Graves: That's right. But I think in our own small way, I'm hoping that we're helping that issue on social media about providing good information. John Long: You did tell people that Google is not- Ellen Graves: Right. John Long: You mean, you wind up saying what is this insect? And a lot of times you can find it, but it's not necessarily a hundred percent on everything. Ellen Graves: That's right. We're a free resource. Why not get it from Mississippi folks that you know and love, right? John Long: And we have fact based information is what you're saying too. Ellen Graves: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. I mean, another thing I think about it is that it increases brand awareness. And when I see our post on Extension Facebook page or Extension, whatever platform it is, it tells people what we're doing here at Mississippi State, whether it's through the 4-H, or through crops, or all those different platforms. So I think it helps spread the positive message as well. Ellen Graves: Oh, for sure. John Long: Yeah. I have a friend that says that, of course he floats this, that there's nothing new under the sun. And he and I often argue that really there's nothing has really changed. It's just the method in which we do it. There's always been travel, travel's just changed. Well, exchange of information has always been there, it's just ... So I agree with you. I think that in the future, it will not make the same as what we're seeing now. And it's just a steady progression and evolution that's going to continue and continue. And I don't know if it's going to get better or worse, but we hope it's for the better. Ellen Graves: Hope so. John Long: Like you said, it's a tool for good and great. Ellen Graves: That's right. John Long: The superhero. Ellen Graves: That's right. John Long: See, there you go. Cobie Rutherford: Well, John, I think that's about time for our first episode- John Long: Yes, Ellen- Cobie Rutherford: ... on social media. John Long: Part two. So- Ellen Graves: I know. John Long: The sequel. Let's hope the sequel's as good as the original. Ellen Graves: I hope so. I feel the pressure. John Long: It's always a struggle to do the sequel better, right? Ellen Graves: It is. I agree. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So we'll do a to be continued? John Long: Yes, to be continued. Now I'm going to let Ellen fill us in. Ellen you tell us ... Not tell us because we know. Tell those listening exactly where can we go to get more information about Mississippi State Extension and 4-H program because you do it all. So tell us about that. Ellen Graves: So of course, I would not be doing my job if I didn't give a shameless plug to follow us on social media. So you can find the Mississippi State University Extension service on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. And you can follow Mississippi 4-H on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat as well. So we're pretty easy to find just look for the maroon logo or the Mississippi 4-H clover. We'd love to have you, because we do a pretty good job. I'm biased, but we do a pretty good job of posting consistently on those platforms. John Long: Awesome. Awesome. And I'll go and do ... Did you say the webpage? Ellen Graves: Oh extension.msstate.edu. John Long: Yeah, that's what I thought. I don't do WWW anymore. Ellen Graves: Yeah. Yeah. People just know it. Yeah, right. John Long: It's automatically assumed. Ellen Graves: Right, right. John Long: Well with that, and we can't wait to have you back again, Ellen. Ellen Graves: Thank you. John Long: And we're going to ... Appreciate you coming in today. And with that, that is our 4-H-4-U-2 podcast for the week. I'm John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie. John Long: And we'll talk to you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Cobie and John reflect on the many events that have taken place during "The Summer of 4-H" and even hint on the things yet to come! Transcript: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your hosts, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Hey and welcome back to another podcast of 4H4U2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, let's just take a moment and breathe in. Yes, we have almost made it through the summer, haven't we? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it's been a fun but busy summer. John Long: Very busy. We were talking about that this morning, about all the things that we've had going on and you've heard if you've been listening to different podcasts, you know that we've had several activities over the course of this summer and we're going to talk about a few of those today and give a little recap, I guess you could say, and talk about that and talk about some other things that are potentially coming up and onboard for that. So with that, I guess what we started with was what, Cobie? Let's go back and think, just go back to the Wayback Machine, Wayback Machine, Wayback Machine ... Cobie Rutherford: So if we start back, Congress, we talked about Congress on several podcasts. John Long: Yes we have. Cobie Rutherford: We recapped that. But since Congress, there's been State 4-H Horse Show that Dr. Jousan talked about some. We've had all of our project achievement days in all four regions, which I think were pretty successful. And then we had the co-op trip. State shooting sports, or S.A.F.E.T.Y. John Long: S.A.F.E.T.Y. Cobie Rutherford: And what else did we have? There was something else. I can't remember at this point, but it's- John Long: It's all mixed in there together. Cobie Rutherford: They all ran together. What was your favorite? John Long: Oh I know, the national championship. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah, that's right. John Long: Shooting sports national championship. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, in Grand Island. John Long: In grand Island. Yeah. So I should know that. I stayed out there for a week. Cobie Rutherford: Now of all those which is your favorite? John Long: Oh, that's tough. That is really, really tough. I love the national invitational. I just love the excitement of it and I get to see a lot of people that I see every year from different States, and we always joke say it's a family reunion. Which it is. Because that's the only other time we really get to see each other unless it's own computer sometime. But I liked that and I liked the seeing the youth that we take out there really getting to be exposed to other youth around the country. That's a lot of fun. I really like ... I don't know. It's hard to choose. I don't know. I like project achievement days. I love project achievement days. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, those are fun. I also remember the other event was the cookouts. Those probably my favorite. John Long: Yes. Cookouts, I never have been to cookouts nor co-op. Cobie Rutherford: Those were really good. And now co-op, we just finished that last week and that was a blast. Of course we had the most elite 4-Hers in the state, I think here, the 4-Hers who had won contest at Congress or they were part of the ambassador or leadership team. So they were really an elite bunch. But that was a pretty fun four days. John Long: So with that, and again, I've never been to co-op, and I know y'all talked about that on another podcast, but I'm going to rob a question from it I guess. But during that time, I know they do several activities and go around and see different I guess businesses and things like that. So what was your favorite part of that? Cobie Rutherford: So my favorite part of the whole cooperative leadership conference was probably the last night we had leadership Olympics. And we divided the youth up on different teams. We had eight different teams of, some kids on the team knew one another, but most of it was pretty random. And we had them do activities that were team-building and it really brought the kids close together and it made them work together. It made them get out of their comfort zone, made them learn more about each other and it was pretty cool deal. John Long: So I do have a question in regard to that because I was bringing something in the [Bill and B 00:00:04:28], Bost [Bill and B 00:04:28], while you were doing something with the youth at co-op. And I have to ask this because it's just, not worried me, but I've been curious ever since. It was something you were walking around and saying you're invited to the party. You're like ... Tell me about that. Because I did not know what in the heck was going on. Cobie Rutherford: So on the very first day we had some breakout sessions and the breakout sessions, one was the youth were learning how to be a part of the media corp or the reflections corp. And basically those were the groups that were taking the pictures, doing all the social media, putting together the video for the end of conference. So they were the media team I guess. Well the other team was called the hospitality corps, and that was just a small group of youth. And what their jobs were to do was to make everyone feel comfortable at the co-op and try to meet people, when we'd go to the tours, greet everybody, shake hands. Cobie Rutherford: So the first part of that breakout session, we did a handshaking demonstration. Which to me handshaking is pretty universal when you go to meet somebody. And we talked about some different strategies that people use to shake hands and ... John Long: Because there's a right way and a wrong way. Cobie Rutherford: There is a right way and wrong way. And we talked about how when you shake someone's hand, always make eye to eye contact and go in as an equal. And that's not offensive to anybody. And we talked about you never want to shake hands and be like a limp rag. No one wants that- John Long: No I hate that. I'm sorry. I hate to use the word hate, but that's the worst kind. Cobie Rutherford: Yes. We talked about sitting down to shake hands, when someone is standing up and greets you, you should always stand and just some basic hand shaking etiquette. Cobie Rutherford: Well then we had some time leftover and I wanted everybody to learn each other's names. So one thing we did when I was a 4-Her was learn about this, on bus trips we'd play this game, I'm coming to a party. And basically the way that worked out is people would start saying they're coming to a party and I'm bringing two things. So if I was going to party, I say I'm Cobie Rutherford, and I'm bringing a cat and a rabbit to the party. So it just goes around and folks finally start associating the items you're bringing with the initials of your first and last name. John Long: I got you. I got you. Cobie Rutherford: So it takes a while for them to start recognizing that. And then once they catch on, it's kind of fun. John Long: Yeah. I ... Excuse me. I played something similar to that, but it's a really good way to learn people's names by association. And it's so funny. The first time I guess I did it was at a national shooting sports training and we had an animal, he had to associate an animal with our names. And to this day, everybody that was in that class still knows everybody's animal. So we'll call Moose Mike, Moose Mike or whatever. Cobie Rutherford: How about that? John Long: Yeah, that is cool. So now the mystery has been solved. Cobie Rutherford: It has been. Yeah. So we'll have to come up with something new for next year. But that was fun. John Long: I always want to say that, and of course you and I talked about this at lunch, but I always wanted to see the hot dog fry at the four County thing when they electrocute the hot dog. I never have seen that in person. I always wanted to see that in person. It's pretty- Cobie Rutherford: That was pretty cool. John Long: It's impressive. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Shows you how powerful electricity is. But I think as far as the stops go, that was a really good stop for our 4-Hers because they showed this really informative video that demonstrated that electricity is still pretty new. A lot of these youth's grandparents and great grandparents may not have had electricity. And how four County for instance, was a group of people in this area that just decided that they were tired of not having ... John Long: Lights. Cobie Rutherford: Lights, the electricity that people in the city had. They just got together and formed a cooperative and made it happen. So to me, and I hope that the youth that attended co-op got the big picture of this, is that having a small idea or an idea like that, if you've got the rat team and you're willing to work hard to reach that goal, that you can basically do anything even if it's provide lights and power to the four county area. John Long: Yeah, just a thing like lights and power. No big deal. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah exactly, right. John Long: Which we take for so granted now, just to walk in and flip the switch. It's amazing. Cobie Rutherford: And they were talking about that too. They said, we feel like we're inconvenienced when the power goes out for a few minutes and we can't charge our cell phones or we can't play our games or whatever it is that the youth are doing. But when the power goes out, it's usually stormy, bad weather, and we ask a lineman to go out and take care of that problem for us, and it's so dangerous and we don't even think about it. John Long: Yeah. You don't know what it's like until you don't have lights and then it's dark. You better be prepared. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: We had that happened not too long ago. So what about you? I know this is kind of your first full summer through, what was your favorite thing we've done so far? Cobie Rutherford: So I guess my favorite thing would have been, I really liked the PADs. Those were fun. You see the energy from those young 4-Hers, they're just starting their 4-H career. That's kind of enthusiastic, and see them have some zeal and spunk about 4-H really reinvigorates you a little bit. John Long: And we are so blessed to have so many talented young people in our state. It's amazing. And that's just a small example of what we have out there. It was really great because there's just so many variety of things that they do or they can do, they compete in, they do the talent shows and things like that, share the fun. And to see them be able to get up there and perform at such a young age. I think that's probably, I think that impresses me the most. I had one little story, and give a shout out to my young lady in Northwest district, she did a great presentation on river otters, and she came up there and she gave this great presentation. And afterwards we were getting ready to leave. I don't know if I told you this or not. Cobie Rutherford: I haven't heard this story. John Long: Anyway ... No because you had to, we separated once you left. Anyway, so I was getting ready to go get on the van, come back home and she stopped me and she said, "I just want to tell you that I really appreciate what you said", because I was really bragging on her presentation, she even got the award and I was telling people, I said, "If you want to know about river otters you need to talk to her because she knows her stuff". John Long: But she caught me right before I was about to leave. She said, "I really want to tell you how much I appreciate what you said", she said, "Because I was really, really nervous giving that presentation". And I said, "Let me tell you something". I said, "I couldn't tell that you were nervous. You did just a really good job". John Long: So we don't even think about those small things that young people have to go through. You and I may not think about getting up and talking in front of people, but for a younger 4-Her or a young person, that's a big challenge. And to overcome that fear and to say, "Hey, I can do that", and move on, that to me was probably the most impressive thing I heard at PAD for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's pretty cool. My favorite- John Long: Maybe that's that appeal to it, I guess. I don't know. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. So I had some similar experiences at PAD. The one that I enjoyed the most was actually a failure on our part as specialists. John Long: Okay, I- Cobie Rutherford: So at the southwest PAD we had the little robotics competition. And putting that on, there was one team of three children and we didn't have a robotics mat. And so, which could have been a big deal, we had a lot of teams and didn't have that. So we improvised and I think that one thing I've learned this summer is that you better be able to think on your feet fast and improvise in a situation. John Long: Right, right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: So we got together and we had these youth that were on this robotics team to demonstrate the robot, tell about how it worked, all the parts, all the pieces, everything they used to control it. And then we asked them to set up a situation similar to what the mat was. And just to put it into perspective, these robot mats, the 4-Hers control this robot to do different activities on a mat. And this year the theme was a beehive. So in the middle of it you had your honeycomb where the queen bee lived, and you had to take her food, which was pollen, little styrofoam cotton ball like things, or take her water, which was little blue rocks. And then there was several insects around the honeycomb. You had to move them out. So the robots were trained to go collect pollen, collect the water, and then run over all the insects to get them out. So some of them were pretty- John Long: Over the honey bees? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Or no- John Long: Aren't they our friends? Cobie Rutherford: Well no, it wasn't the honeybees, these were intrusive insects that were trying to break into the hive. John Long: Oh, okay. If they're pests then I'm good with that. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they were pests. John Long: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: So all to save the queen. John Long: Get my entomology ire up. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. So basically these robots were programmed and then the youth would just set them, hit different buttons, make them go. Well when you don't have a mat and nothing's at scale, that just messes up the whole- John Long: That throws you off doesn't it? Cobie Rutherford: ... Thing, well these children set up their mat or set up the room so specific that the robot was still able to do exactly what they wanted it to. John Long: Wow. Wow. Cobie Rutherford: And they demonstrated all these things and we talked about it. Then they gave a presentation on how they programmed it, and they did a great job. And then actually they were very happy with the way the contest worked. They all got their blue ribbons, they all got trophies. But that could have been bad really quick. And those kids were just grateful for the chance to compete. And I thought that was pretty special. They could have been woe is me, the mat's not here and ... Disclaimer, part of the rules is that you should bring a mat to practice with prior to the contest. You had that opportunity. But sometimes you just, well somebody else will bring it, and I'm leaving my home and ... John Long: Right. Well they learned to improvise as well didn't they? Cobie Rutherford: They did. They absolutely did. So it was a good win-win. John Long: Well, we just wrapped up this past weekend with the state invitation, 4-H S.A.F.E.T.Y. state invitational. And have to give a big shout out to, and a expression of appreciation, to my cohost Cobie Rutherford as this was his first one and he was invaluable. I appreciate all the work you did. I think you were kind of thrown into a few things, but yeah, I really do appreciate it. Cobie Rutherford: It was good. John Long: Yeah, it was good. Cobie Rutherford: Other than getting the truck stuck. John Long: Other than getting the truck stuck. But we got that over with. Cobie Rutherford: That was an obstacle that we just overcome. John Long: Improvised, we tried to improvise, but a wrecker worked better. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it was fine. John Long: But that's okay. Cobie Rutherford: That's okay. John Long: Lost the keys to the box truck, we got through that. You talking about sweat and that was the one where Friday morning and all my archery stuff's still locked up in the truck and I have no key. So thank you BJ McClinton for your trusty bolt cutters. We got through it, that was one of those things. And we had I'm thinking probably close to, I don't know shotgun numbers exactly yet, but we had 152 kids shooting everything but shotgun. So it was probably close to 300, over 300 kids this past weekend. So yeah, it was a good event. Hot. But it was a good event. Cobie Rutherford: It was hot. Do it really exceeded most of my expectations. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: Because I thought it was going to be loud. I thought it was just going to be bang, bang, bang, bang. It really wasn't. John Long: Now it's relaxing. Cobie Rutherford: It was ... Yeah, it was relaxing and planned out and just had a rhythm to it. John Long: Right. It was pretty smooth transitions. When you have to, especially jocking around ranges, it has to be a little bit of a timing deal there. But yeah, it was fairly seamless I thought. And I think the kids had a good time. Cobie Rutherford: I think so too. John Long: Yeah. And thank the Lord that the rain held off. I was glad of that. Mercy. Cobie Rutherford: Well we just missed it. John Long: Yeah, we sure did. That was so weird too. Because right as archery was finishing up and that cloud was building in the west, I'm thinking, "They're going to get a rain delay right here at the end". They pull their arrows, walked back to the line, and it thundered. And I said, no, that's good. They're done. Cobie Rutherford: They're done. John Long: They're done, so ... But yeah, I really do appreciate that. And I'll give a shout out to all the agents, parents, volunteers. I got to say, thanks to support of the extension and without all of these people that wouldn't be possible. Brad. You know what I'm talking about, Brad stayed. And appreciate your help too. So you did a great job helping with that and getting everything ready. So- Cobie Rutherford: Facilities looked good. John Long: Yeah, it did. It just takes a lot. It takes a lot to get stuff done, but when it's done, hey, it's a good thing. I tell you, we had some really good scores turned in this year, so I'm excited about the national team we've got coming up, I think they're going to be really good. So ... Cobie Rutherford: So I helped out in the score room some and saw all those targets as they were shooting at, and it amazed me how some were so precise. And there was one John, we looked at, that we couldn't tell how many holes it had. Basically the child shot through the same hole multiple times. It was so close to center point. And we finally got looking, turned it over and got a light and showed, you could see where there was three different [indentions 00:00:19:22], kind of like Mickey mouse head. It was very cool. But [crosstalk 00:00:19:29]. John Long: I had a recurve archer score I believe as high as I've ever seen a ... I can't even talk. Recurve Archer. I don't think I've ever had a score that high. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: Yeah. That was unbelievable. I'm still amazed at that, I've just never seen a recurrent score that high. So that was an eye opener for sure. But we had some really good, I know air rifle was really tight, the scores were really tight in air rifle. Had a good turnout in .22 rifle and .22 pistol and got even a really great turnout in shotgun. So ... Cobie Rutherford: How many kids did the hunting exercise? John Long: Hunting had three this year. Cobie Rutherford: See, I think if I was 4-Her that's something I would love to do. John Long: I know, and I wish [crosstalk 00:20:16]. Cobie Rutherford: That had so many different parts to it. You could probably be a mediocre shot and be able to do the other parts really well, do okay in that contest. John Long: Right. And I think that if more people really got into it and realized how multifaceted this one is, it'd probably be more people that participated in it. And I'll give a encouragement if you're out there in the county and want to take on the hunting discipline, I think you'd be surprised at it, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think it'd be fun. With that compass, and what were those other components? Compass [crosstalk 00:20:48]. John Long: Okay, so they had a compass, and then they had a test, and then they had ... Almost said insect ID. I'm still on PA day. Animal ID, or wildlife identification, and then the two shooting components, which is seniors only that had the shooting component and it's only at the state invitational. It's archery. They shoot the archery course and then they shoot paper targets at varying distances, but there's a deer, a fox, and a squirrel. These are all paper. No animals are harmed in this discipline. But anyway, they shoot that at three different distances. Deer's at 50, and I can't remember the other two distances. One's at 25, I think it's the squirrel. But anyway, so they have to exercise that prowess as well. So ... Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. Fun, fun month. John Long: Oh yeah. It's a blast. And you know, the year's not over. We still got things coming on down the line and we're looking forward to that too. What is something that we have coming up? I had it my mind just a while ago and I thought, man, we need to talk about that. Cobie Rutherford: Well, we've got, there are several counties that are starting the County fairs and doing workshops, getting ready for exhibits at those fairs. John Long: North and south volunteer leaders forum. Cobie Rutherford: North and south volunteer leaders forum are big. They're coming up soon. Dr. Jousan has got a contest coming up in August with a heifer development contest. So lots of stuff. John Long: Yeah. It's not over with yet, but I think the bulk of our time is, it's never over with, but I'm just saying the intensity I guess is maybe a little reduced on us anyway. Cobie Rutherford: I hope this doesn't mean ... I suspect this means that more office work coming up soon. John Long: Oh yeah, that's exactly what it means. Cobie Rutherford: Trying to get all this paperwork ready for next year, right? John Long: Yep. That's what it means. Just get started and turned around and head back in this same direction we're in now. So ... Cobie Rutherford: That's right. It goes by fast. John Long: It does. It does. And so does our time today. If you want to learn more about 4-H in your area, go to your local extension office. Or you can go where Cobie? Cobie Rutherford: To extension.msstate.edu. John Long: You say that so well. I would still be saying W-W-W dot extension dot MS State ... But anyway, thank you very much for all y'all listening. And please, what do you do? You like, subscribe? What do you do on a podcast? Cobie Rutherford: You subscribe. John Long: Subscribe. Cobie Rutherford: Share with your friends. John Long: And share with your friends. So until next time, I'm John. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie. John Long: Take care. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Cobie has a couple of 4-H Co-Op attendees visit the studio and talk about all the exciting visits and stops that they made during this years 4-H Co-Op tour! Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service, promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your hosts, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. Cobie Rutherford: Well hello everybody, this is Cobie Rutherford with another podcast at 4-H-4-U-2. I'm certainly excited to be here today. It seems a little bit empty in the office without my cohort Dr. John Long, but we're thrilled to have two of our very best for 4-H'ers with us today, Miss Molly Whitehead and Mr. Chase Montgomery. So what brings you all to campus this week? Molly Whitehead: This week we've got co-op, and this is my first year at co-op and it's been really fun. And it's been a really good learning experience, and just to get to meet more of the 4-H'ers. And to just be more involved on that state level, and get to meet 4-H'ers across the state is really cool to me. So yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Chase, have you had a good week? Chase Montgomery: Yeah, it's been really interesting. I've been offered this trip pretty much every time for the past five years. I've just never been able to come. Cobie Rutherford: So you've had some fun and learned a few things, then. That's awesome. So, to give you a little bit background, I know we talked about the co-op on several podcasts previous to this week, but the co-op stands for the 4-H Cooperative Leadership Conference. And 4-H'ers can earn this trip by either placing first at a contest at Club Congress, or being a part of the leadership team. And Molly, I think you were actually a first place winner and the Southwest Regional Vice President. Is that right? Molly Whitehead: I was a second place winner, but yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, so pretty close then. What contest did you participate in? Molly Whitehead: I did interior design, level two, which was like designing a living room, and that was really cool. Cobie Rutherford: And Chase, what was your project this year? Chase Montgomery: I did two. I did the citizenship bowl and entomology. Cobie Rutherford: Okay, good deal. So that's two wildly different topics, right? So, which one did you prefer best? Chase Montgomery: Entomology was probably the easiest of the two, mostly because I'm the only one competing in it. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, don't tell that. Chase Montgomery: But yeah, citizenship was interesting cause I got to learn a lot of historical facts about Mississippi that I never would've learned in school, because they don't usually teach the governmental history of Mississippi. It's mostly just the facts of how it's progressed over the years. Cobie Rutherford: I gotcha. So, do you remember anything, a fun fact? Chase Montgomery: Not much. It's been a few weeks. Cobie Rutherford: It has been, and this has been a busy week too. It's been some very late nights and some very early mornings. So co-op, pretty much. Molly, why don't you give us kind of a synopsis of the co-op schedule? What we've done so far. Molly Whitehead: Well, we've traveled to different cooperatives to learn about how they work and what they do to benefit the communities and to work to better our communities. And we've had leadership Olympics last night, which was helping us with our leadership skills and teamwork skills as a group. And yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So Chase, tell us a little bit about the stops that we went on, on the tour. Chase Montgomery: Okay. Well, you know, we went all the way to the Delta area in Greenville and Greenwood, and I've never been to that area before. So seeing how the land and the economy there is different than in my area of the Northeast district, because of how the weather is, and just being able to see how their businesses operate based on the placement of the rivers, and the ecosystem, is kind of interesting. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool, too. We went to the farmer's grain terminal, and it sits right on the Mississippi river, and the manager there said that it was the largest grain terminal between, I hope I don't quote him wrong, but between New Orleans and St. Louis, on the river. That's pretty cool that that's in Mississippi. And it baffled me. I mean I've always been around agriculture and farms, but seeing just the size of those silos and grain bins, it just blew me out of the water. So I thought that was certainly a fun trip. And then when we went to Staplcotn, that was awful cool, too. You know, seeing what they do for the cotton farmers around the Southeast, especially those in Mississippi, and making sure that they have a marketable product is certainly important. And then I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the breakfast that we had at Four County electric co-op. What'd y'all think about that demonstration those guys gave us? Molly Whitehead: Oh, that was really cool. It really made me appreciate the lining a lot more, and how dangerous their job is every day. Like, we've had big old storms with all the rain coming, and it's really made me appreciate the linemen that go out and do such dangerous jobs, just to get our lights back on. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And it made me think about, you know, when they're out there doing that stuff for us, how bad the weather can be. And they're right out in the middle of it. What'd you think about that hot dog demonstration, Chase? Chase Montgomery: It just made me realize exactly how terrifying electricity is. Cobie Rutherford: I know, right. So, one of the demonstrations guys did was they had a demonstration cart, or wagon, that had a power line simulation there, and one of the linemen got a hot dog and put up against the hot line. And we saw how much damage, basically the hot dogs split in half. And he kind of had a funny analogy about how the hot dog is very similar to our bodies, and basically it's water and flesh, and how bad electricity can harm us. So I thought that was really cool, and they fed us a great breakfast. So that was good. So then yesterday, we basically were in the classroom all day. So, we started off with a talk about the history of cooperatives and then had some leadership training. One thing that I tried to put together was, getting to know yourself, and we talked about how youth should look at themselves as a business, as something they can market, as something they should take pride in, and something that they can improve upon. Molly, what's something you learned from the talk yesterday? Molly Whitehead: Oh, I've learned a lot about myself. It really made me think about what my weaknesses are. Because we were doing the interview for the cooperative thing the other day, and it Peyton asked me, "Hey, what are some of your weaknesses?" I kind of stopped and I was like, "I don't know any of my weaknesses." And it kind of made me think about what, really, I'm not strong in but I can improve upon in that way. Cobie Rutherford: So chase, what about you? What'd you learn? Chase Montgomery: Learning and listening to the other people give their demonstrations of what they believed was their greatest weaknesses and strengths. It just let me think even further about myself as a person, because I've already had to do an interview where I had to give my weaknesses, and they are not very good. I have about a list about a mile long of those. But, just seeing other people whose weaknesses were fear, and stage and stuff, get up in front of everybody was kind of encouraging for me. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. So, one thing I talked about in my talk was we talked about the strategic plan that 4-H'ers should have for themselves, and always have a plan B and a backup plan, but always, work hard to reach your goals. And we talked about developing a vision statement, a mission statement for yourself, and talked about some values and different things like that. But, one thing that I encouraged the 4-H'ers to do was just take back and do a personal assessment of themselves with a SWOT analysis. So, determine your strengths, your weaknesses, any opportunities, and threats that you might have to reach your goals, that you had outlined in your personal strategic plan. So, the strengths are pretty easy to come up with. And I think first and foremost, everybody in the room kind of had similar strengths, in terms of, well, I'm a leader, I like talking to people, I'm a good communicator. Cobie Rutherford: And then we start talking about weaknesses. And one thing that I mentioned, right off the bat, is that I hate being put into a vulnerable type situation. And I shared some of the weaknesses I've had, that I've had the opportunity to improve upon. And I hope that I got the point across for 4-H'ers that you shouldn't look at weaknesses as something that is concrete. It's something that you can always improve upon through different opportunities. But you need to be aware of them, and be aware of what you can change. And 4-H'ers got up there to the front of the room, and a lot of shared their own weaknesses, and things that they could improve on. And I think that others in the room gained strength from that. Knowing that some of their own insecurities that other people had. And I think that is pretty cool. Cobie Rutherford: So, we also looked at the opportunities and threats. We talked about the greatest opportunity was to capitalize on your strengths, right? And improve on your weaknesses. So, I think one thing I have done to improve on my weaknesses is put myself in a situation I don't feel comfortable in, and make myself feel that vulnerability. So we had a lot of good examples yesterday about that. Cobie Rutherford: Then, from there we went and did two really good workshops. Now I missed the workshop on social media. I'm sure that was excellent, what did y'all learn from that? Chase Montgomery:  Basically we were going through and talking about how people can not be who they say they are online. You never know who they are behind the screen. It could be anybody, because technology's just got to the point where you can fake pretty much anything. And the dangers of inviting people that you do not know, personally, into your life like that. Like the dangers of people you don't know privately messaging you and talking vulgar and such, and how you should block, and probably report them. Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty cool. And what'd you pick up on it, Molly? Molly Whitehead: Well, we talked a lot about guarding your accounts, and about how you shouldn't start drama on Instagram, and Facebook, and Snapchat, and things. And just to keep it to yourself, and just to handle that in a personal way and not to put it out there socially. And also, like Chase said, to guard your accounts in a way that there's people online that you don't know, and people that don't know you, but are online just to hurt others and to, almost stalk in a way, almost. So you have to kind of guard your account to those things. And also, how you have to guard your account to where if you have a future employer that wants to come to hire you, they check your accounts, and they figure out what's on your account, and they can form an impression of you through your accounts and things like that. So, just to be aware of what we post, and what we tweet, and things like that. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's really good advice. Sometimes we don't think about, you know, we share something that's funny and then, next thing we know, someone very important sees it that might not share the same sense of humor that we do. Or you know, just for safety for that matter. The other stop we did at the workshop was the state chem lab. What'd y'all think about that? Chase Montgomery: That was really cool. Molly Whitehead: It was cool. It was cool to see like how detailed it was, and how every little detail counted in that. And it's so important to pay attention to those little details. Even if it's something little like, I don't know, school work or something like that. How our actions right now go into our careers that we are going to start soon. And it's, yeah, just keeping those little details. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that was a lot to keep up with, for sure. And then the last night we kind of ended on the leadership Olympics. What was the favorite activity in that? Molly Whitehead: Let's see. There was a lot of them. Cobie Rutherford: Which one was the most difficult? Chase Montgomery: The most difficult? That was probably stacking the pyramid. Molly Whitehead: Yes. Stacking the cups with the yarn and the rubber band. That was really difficult. Cobie Rutherford: So one thing that we did was we made them build a pyramid with six styrofoam cups. And you can imagine the pyramid, three on the bottom, two in the middle, one on top. And I had a rubber band that had six pieces of yarn around it, and each person on the team had to have a piece of yarn in their hand and control the rubber band, put it over the end of the cup and stack them up on the pyramid. So it took very good communication skills, and very good coordination within the team to make that work. I thought that was pretty cool. And then today, the last day of the conference, has just kind of been low key. Taking group pictures, saying goodbye, just kind of getting everything wrapped up. So, as y'all reflect back on co-op, what would be one thing you would tell someone in your county next year who is thinking about going? Chase Montgomery:  Basically it is a really good learning experience. Like learning the differences and the intricacies of the businesses in our rural community, and how something small can rise from just a few people, to something that big. It's a good demonstration of how hard work can develop into something major. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's good. What about you? Chase Montgomery:  Definitely, I've made a whole bunch of friends that I wouldn't normally make at Congress, and it's such a smaller group that everybody gets a little bit closer because there's not a lot of us. But yeah, it's such a learning experience. I've learned a whole bunch that I wouldn't have necessarily learned at school, or going into college, or just on the street one day. It's so really cool to learn things that I wouldn't normally learn on a regular day. Cobie Rutherford: Very good. Well, I know I've had a blast. I actually stayed in the dorms this year as a chaperone, so that was fun. Got to have some very late nights, very early mornings. But, I'm kind of ready for my own bed now. It's been a good four days, and thank y'all so much for coming in today. I hope y'all had fun on your first podcast. Chase Montgomery: Yeah, this is... Cobie Rutherford: This is kind of cool. Just wait till you hear yourself online. It sounds really good most of the time. Chase Montgomery: Oh, I'm going to hate it. Cobie Rutherford: Well I probably will too, because I feel like I've got a frog in my throat. Well, with that, I guess we'll wrap it up. Thank you again to Miss Molly Whitehead from Franklin County, and Mr. Chase Montgomery from Pontotoc County, for joining us today. I'm so glad y'all came to co-op. I'm glad I got to know you all better this week. And just remember that Mississippi State Extension is always here for you. Whatever you need throughout life, whether it's a question about your garden one day, or home economics or future 4-H plans. Volunteer. Maybe y'all can come back when you age out as volunteers. So, we thank you. And with that, if you'd like more information about the Mississippi State Extension 4-H program, you can find it on our website, extension.msstate.edu, or you can contact any of your local county extension offices. We are located in every county in the state of Mississippi. And with that, I'm Cobie Rutherford, and we'll visit next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

Cobie and John discuss the details for the 4-H Village exhibits for the upcoming Mississippi State Fair. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now are your hosts, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Welcome back 4-H-4-U-2, and I am one of your hosts, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right. Cobie, we just literally got back yesterday from our trip to the Southern Regional Professional Leaders Network. Is that right? Did I say that right? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think that's right. It was a conference of acronyms. John Long: Yes it was, for sure. We needed a catalog of the acronyms because I was lost. That was our first time there, but I had a good time. It was in New Orleans, so that's always a big time. Cobie Rutherford: The Big Easy. John Long: Yes. The Big Easy. What was your favorite thing? Of course you can't say New Orleans without, or New Orleans without saying something about the food. So what was your favorite? We did not eat beignets, I will say that. So go ahead and we can scratch that from everybody's minds, but what was your favorite thing we ate there? Cobie Rutherford: The favorite thing I think was, gosh so many good foods, but probably the crawfish etouffée. John Long: That was really good, wasn't it? Cobie Rutherford: That was a fantastic. John Long: Mine was the oysters Rockefeller. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they were good, too. John Long: I've never had that before and it was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I'm ready to go back. John Long: I am, too. I am, too. Cobie Rutherford: Just do a tour of food. Go buy some pants that are a couple sizes too big and just grow into them. John Long: Grow into them. Yeah, you can do it down there for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Without a doubt. John Long: Yeah. Great atmosphere. And that was your first time going. Cobie Rutherford: It was good. It was good. I got to meet several people from across the south and learn what they're doing to make their 4-H program successful in their state, so maybe we can bring some of that back to Mississippi. John Long: Yeah, I definitely think we've got some things we can brainstorm on for sure. So, that was really good. But we're not talking about that today. We're going to be talking about what's upcoming in our world and hey, everybody else for that matter is one of the greatest things we have in our state and brings people from all over, And that's the a Mississippi State Fair. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: And 4-H has a role in that, so let's talk about that. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think that sounds good. You know, growing up the State Fair was always fun to me for livestock projects. But as we would go there and see all the other things that the 4-H'ers from around the state were doing, it was kind of neat to put all that stuff together and have it in one location. John Long: We never went to the state fair. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: No. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I guess the only reason we went in Alabama was because of the livestock. You go out to the Midwest and it's like a huge thing. Everyone goes to State Fair. John Long: Right, Iowa State Fair. Cobie Rutherford: Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, it was- John Long: Nebraska. Cobie Rutherford: Yep, Nebraska. Big, big events. And Mississippi kind of almost has a Midwestern feel to it. It seems like a lot of people from all across the state go down to State Fair. John Long: Right. Well I know we've made it our family tradition, and I wouldn't want to stop it now for anything because it is a lot of fun, especially out there on that midway. John Long: We do have some 4-H related activities other than the livestock and different things, so what is it exactly we're going to be talking about today 4-H related? Cobie Rutherford: So, the main point of today's podcast is going to be the 4-H Village. Last year was my first 4-H Village experience and last year- John Long: Was no bloodshed. Cobie Rutherford: There was no bloodshed. It was fantastic. We set up all these different shops in the Trade Mart Arena. Now I understand we're going to be in a different location this year and hadn't got all those details worked out. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: So we're going to do a few things different, but basically this is a chance for 4-H'ers from across the state to enter their exhibits that they've already competed with on a county or district level, and have them judge on a statewide basis. It brings awareness to our programs, to what our volunteers are teaching our youth, and it's a really neat thing. All exhibits from produce, fruits and vegetables grown in the 4-H'ers gardens, all the way to a creative arts exhibit. John Long: Right. You know, we heard that term this week when we were at that meeting being the best kept secret. And you know, it's strange to think because we're so involved in 4-H and we know what 4-H has to offer, but there are so many people out there that really don't know what 4-H does and it's a perfect opportunity for that, right? Cobie Rutherford: That's right. And you know, besides the recognition of coming down and competing in a statewide event, like you said, it's a great public relations piece for us because it showcases our 4-H'ers. Wow, they did that through a 4-H Club? And just kind of opens up those doors of opportunity. John Long: Right. This is actually probably one of my favorite times of year, is State Fair, and it's because we get to see these exhibits that these young people put out. It's a really amazing, some of the creativity, and I always step away thinking, really they use that ... I do the environmental shop or help with environmental shop, and it's amazing what kids can take an item, a recycle item or something like that, and make something of use out of it, you know? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. My favorite last year were the gallon jugs that the children painted pink and made- John Long: Pigs. Cobie Rutherford: Pigs out of them. John Long: Yeah, the pigs. Cobie Rutherford: And what were those, planters? Or were they piggy banks, or what? John Long: I can't remember. Wasn't they planters? Cobie Rutherford: I think there were planters, yeah. And then, I mean just all kinds of things. John Long: You know what my favorite one was? Cobie Rutherford: Which one? John Long: The wind driven car. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah, yeah. I do remember that. I tell you the one that I remember most, I'm not going to say the least favorite, but the one that stands out to me was the creative arts division, those children were making the door wreaths and one had made a clown for Halloween. John Long: Oh, I remember that. Cobie Rutherford: Do you remember that orange wreath? John Long: It was like Pennywise, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it was definitely a good decoration for the Halloween holiday. John Long: Right, right. It was kind of creepy though, looking at it in the shop every time I walked by. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it was like looking at you. But what I thought was- John Long: Wherever angle you were at. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, the eyes were kind of creepy. But it was kind of neat, especially in that creative art shop, is how many of those items could go towards like an entrepreneurship. Kids selling those to make money for field trips or whatever. I mean, there was a lot of legitimate items in there that I would buy as a consumer. John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: And even that the kids made it, it was that much more appealing. John Long: Absolutely. They do put a lot of work into those exhibits, for sure. But what other, I guess when we're talking about the village and us judging the exhibits, and of course we have our judging day, but what's our main, I guess, day that we have that's 4-H day? What we call 4-H day. We want to talk a little bit about that too, obviously, because when we talk about showcasing 4-H, that gives us at least a one day or a morning to where we have activities for the young people that might not even be in 4-H, but as an outreach to those that are or are not. What are some of those things that we do during that time? Cobie Rutherford: So first of all, I guess 4-H day is going to be held on Saturday, October 12th. John Long: It's good to know what day it's on. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's a key thing when you start mentioning that, "Oh my gosh, I better get my calendar in front of me." John Long: Yeah, right. Let's pull it back up. Cobie Rutherford: So, 4-H day at the fair is just a plethora of a lot of different activities. So we have, of course, all the items on display, all the exhibits that have been judged already with the ribbons hanging up, but we also have several other events and contests are taking place. So the one I kind of host is the 4-H public speaking contest at the fair that's held at the Mississippi Cattleman's Association building right there on Monroe Street, and that was a great time last year. I know that we have also the fashion review, which is a lot of fun. I don't really know, I think that's where the children select an item of clothing and model it, or do they make their own, or is there two divisions? John Long: I think there's two divisions on that. Cobie Rutherford: I think you're right. One is homemade and then one is selected. John Long: That's correct. I think that is correct. Cobie Rutherford: So, that was a lot of fun last year. Kind of watch the kids model their garments was kind of cool. Also, you had quite a few safety activities last year, right? John Long: I did, yeah. The caveman skeet was a big hit again, and that was, of course, trying to break the clay targets. I don't know, based on where we're going to be, if we're going to be able to do that, and it's not a firearm related activity, by the way. Cobie Rutherford: It's a cave man. John Long: Yeah, a cave man. We did not have firearms day. But we're taking basically a sock filled with beans and throwing it, trying to break a clay target that's set up. But that was a lot of fun. Of course we had making hand turkeys. That's always a big favorite. Face painting. We had some really good face painting going on. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I do remember that. Somebody painted up our boy, didn't they? John Long: Yes, they did. Cobie Rutherford: What was he, a tiger? John Long: Yeah, it was a tiger. Cobie Rutherford: I thought I remembered that. John Long: Did you remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Cobie Rutherford: Uh-uh (negative). I don't remember that. John Long: I've got pictures. I have to show you that. The clown was creepy. It was just then the process. It turned out really good though. Cobie Rutherford: Huh. And those activities were done by our ambassadors and council officers, right? John Long: Yeah. Jaylin was actually was at one station. Jaylin being Jaylin, our president. Our former state president, I should say, we've had on the podcast. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah. John Long: But she did that. And I can't remember who else was helping her, but anyway. Cobie Rutherford: That's going to be a fun day for sure. John Long: Yep. Cobie Rutherford: What I'm looking forward to, and I messed up this year. John Long: What'd you do? Cobie Rutherford: I was doing the work assignments and sending those out to the agents, trying to line up judges and all that kind of stuff for the activities, and I had made a mental note to myself to make sure that I judged the culinary arts division at the fair. John Long: Oh, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: And for some reason I forgot about it when I was doing those assignments. So, totally jealous of those- John Long: You have the power to change that though. Cobie Rutherford: I've already sent it out, so once you hit that send button it's kind of done. John Long: Oh, okay. That's right, it's out there. Cobie Rutherford: But all those cookies and cakes and breads and things those 4-H'ers turned in last year, they looked fantastic. John Long: They did. They really did. I try to stay as far away from that as I can because I know the midway's coming. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, yeah. But you know, the midway is costly. John Long: Ah, you're not kidding. Cobie Rutherford: If you're serving as a judge, you get to sample all that goodness for free. John Long: True. For free, yes. Free is good. Free is good. I'm sorry, we're going to have to have a sidebar. What's your favorite fair food? Cobie Rutherford: My favorite fair food is probably funnel cakes. John Long: Yeah, those are good. Cobie Rutherford: Those are my favorite. Messy, but good. John Long: I have a thing that I try something different every year. I've done the fried Twinkie. I think I did the fried Snicker bar. I don't know what I'm going to try this year. Cobie Rutherford: So bar none, my favorite fair food I ever had was at the Kentucky State Fair, and it was a Krispy Kreme hamburger. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: It was so good. And I mean, I got it fully loaded with the cheese and ketchup and mustard. I didn't get lettuce or tomatoes or anything like that on it, or onion. John Long: Right. Was it basically two donuts- Cobie Rutherford: Two donuts. John Long: With meat? Cobie Rutherford: With meat. John Long: Heck, you could try that at the house. Cobie Rutherford: Well, I don't know what it is about fair food, but everything's always better at the fair. John Long: Oh, I know. Cobie Rutherford: I think it would be disgusting trying that at the house. John Long: Maybe. Maybe. Cobie Rutherford: So, I don't know, maybe those hamburgers were cooked in donut grease or something. John Long: Probably. Probably. I want to try the, what is it called? The meat Sunday or something like that. I never had that. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, the hot beef Sunday. John Long: Yeah, I've always- Cobie Rutherford: You know, I don't know that they still do those. John Long: Oh really? Okay. I missed my chance. Cobie Rutherford: They used to do those, but that's something we make it home. John Long: Oh, okay. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, just get some mashed potatoes and put some roast beef and gravy over it with cheese. That's really good. And if you like tomatoes, put a cherry tomato on top. John Long: You can tell it's getting close to the lunchtime here while we're recording this. Cobie Rutherford: I know. That's the- John Long: Okay, so we really got off track and I'm sorry about that. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, that's fine. John Long: Well, it was all fair related. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's right. We were okay. John Long: Yeah, but anyway. Cobie Rutherford: Other division that ... John talked about the shops while ago, and we have the agribusiness shop, and that was cool last year. We had opportunities for kids to turn in different projects they had done within the animal sciences or plant sciences systems. Some of them who grew up on cotton or corn farms actually brought produce from their family's farms to be exhibited and judged. We had kids that made rope halters for goats and sheep or whatever they wanted to use them on, but I think of all the shops, I'm most envious of your environmental shop. John Long: I love it. I feel so fortunate to be in that one. Cobie Rutherford: The recycled items were probably by far most creative, but putting together those tackle boxes, those things are really useful. John Long: They are. They really are. We go back to the creativity, but then there's the functionality exhibits that we have, as well. I really think it teaches a lot, as far as you think, "Oh, we're putting together tackle box," but you really need to make sure that you have everything in there. You know what I mean? It's laid out and it's very specific and it's very functional. One time I will say though, I had somebody that had this catfish stink bait and it looked like it was about 30 years old. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, geez. John Long: Oh, yes. So when I opened the tackle box, yeah, it was disgusting. It was. Fish may like it, but it was pretty gross. Cobie Rutherford: It'd probably bring them out, I guess. John Long: Yeah, make sure you got fresh supplies. Cobie Rutherford: You know, one thing that I kind of- John Long: They haven't found live worms yet though, so that's good. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, that'd be fun. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: The thing that I was surprised that more people didn't enter last year was making the first aid kits. John Long: Yes, I know. Cobie Rutherford: I only had like four of those last year. John Long: I know. I know. Cobie Rutherford: And something that would be pretty useful. John Long: Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely, for sure. For sure. Birdhouses, I think were a number of birdhouses. We always have a good number of birdhouses. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: I always liked, and I'm going to reveal something, I love when somebody ... Of course this is going out fast, but the DVDs or the CDs that they make for coasters. I've seen some really nice coasters made out of CDs. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, that's interesting. John Long: Yeah. That's compact disc for those younger listeners. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah. John Long: Before we had- Cobie Rutherford: When we get ready to retire somebody will have our archaic iPhone and make birdhouses out of them. John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Birdhouses with WiFi. John Long: That's right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: You know, the other shot that we hadn't mentioned much is the fashion shop. John Long: Yes. Yeah, that's true. Well, we kind of touched on it in fashion review. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's true. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: The fashion shop, I was overwhelmed at some of the things that they came up with last year and how good of seamstress- John Long: Oh, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I guess is seamstress gender neutral, I think. John Long: Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's the right word. So, I don't know. Young men are getting- John Long: Taylor. Cobie Rutherford: Taylor, maybe. They put together some of those garments that were really, really good, from apron's to I remember one pretty exquisite dress that somebody had done last year that was really neat. Cobie Rutherford: The other shop is the horticulture shop, and that was pretty fun to judge because that's where the youth had brought in items from their gardens. Maybe three tomatoes or basket of green beans or three apples. That got to be pretty interesting. You'd think, well some of those things may not be in season, but however they plan their garden to make them be in season for State Fair took a lot of planning and prep. John Long: Right. And then they get to replace that later, right? They stay out on display and then they get them ... How does that work? I haven't judged that shop, so I don't know. Cobie Rutherford: So, there are two different entry days that they can turn them in on. The first would be that Tuesday, October 2nd, or they can submit them the following week on the Tuesday and have it out. John Long: Okay, okay, okay. Cobie Rutherford: So we have Marcus Davis takes care of that, of course, on the second day. John Long: Okay, cool. Yeah. Thank you, Marcus. Shout out to Marcus. He's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, so that's a pretty neat shop. I thought, well if you wanted to, if you went the grocery store and bought them items, put them together, but really, there's no financial incentive to do that. So, we know our 4-H'ers are growing these products themselves, because if you win a blue ribbon that's not probably going to cover the cost of buying that thing at the grocery store. John Long: Right. Exactly. What's the point? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it really makes that negligible, I guess. John Long: Right. It does. It does. Cobie Rutherford: What is the other shop? So, safety- John Long: Oh, Clover. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, Clover. John Long: Oh, I love that shop. I love that. Cobie Rutherford: Do you remember they a toilet paper snowman? John Long: Cloverleaf. Huh? Cobie Rutherford: The toilet paper snowman over in that shop last year. John Long: Oh, yeah. I remember that well. Cobie Rutherford: That was pretty cool. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: One county did Christmas decorations with their clover leaves or clover bud kits, and they- John Long: The Clover Shop. Cobie Rutherford: The Clover Shop. John Long: Just say it's the Clover Shop. Cobie Rutherford: So these are kids under 4-HH, so five to seven generally. John Long: Right. Right, right. Cobie Rutherford: Well, they stacked up rolls of toilet tissue and then put two beady eyes and drew some decorations on them, made snowmen for decorations. John Long: I'm not laughing at the exhibit, I'm laughing because I'm remembering how cute it was for sure. Cobie Rutherford: And, they were all good. John Long: Oh, every one of them. Cobie Rutherford: And the agent brought up like 15 of them at the State Fair. I just thought- John Long: If you do one, you're going to do 15. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I just thought to myself how funny they were all stacked in their car driving down the road, beady eyes shaking. That was pretty cute. John Long: That is. That is nice. Cobie Rutherford: I don't know, there were some real creative ... That's just the one that stood out. John Long: What was that other one? Yeah, I don't remember nothing else. You got my mind on the snowmen or the toilet paper snowmen. John Long: What's the shop, I'm just going to say it for Cobie, because some people may not even know what we're talking about, but to the left of that? What's the name of that? That's where they do a safety poster or- Cobie Rutherford: I think that is the health and safety shop. John Long: It is health and safety. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Like say no to drugs posters and things like that. Cobie Rutherford: Right, and that's where we had the first aid kits. They were a part of that shop. John Long: Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: There were quite a few posters in that shop. This year I think our poster theme for that shop is how 4-H inspires youth to think. So, kind of continuing on with that theme. John Long: That's right. That's good. Cobie Rutherford: and at Congress. John Long: And then, of course, we get the photos that were at Congress that are going to be displayed there. We do that every year. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that'll be- John Long: Those were from Congress, right? Cobie Rutherford: That's right. They submit them at Congress. They were judged sometime this summer, and then we'll display them there. John Long: Cool. Cobie Rutherford: We've got a lot to do between now and then, John. John Long: We do, but it's going to be fun. Now last year, I don't know, we had some other activities for the 4-H day. I know that my son did Lego's. I don't think we're going to be doing that this year. Cobie Rutherford: No, I don't know. Dr. Morgan's going to, she said, come up with something. John Long: Okay, cool. Cobie Rutherford: But you know- John Long: She's creative. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt. Oh my gosh. John Long: Listen to that podcast we had her on. Cobie Rutherford: She has got it figured out. All those STEM activities she puts on. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I know she'll come up with something good. John Long: Great educator for sure. Cobie Rutherford: I know 30,000 Lego's in a tent can be hard to keep up with. John Long: Yeah. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So, I'm not sure how we'll do that. John Long: So, we're going to be in a tent this year. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. It's going to be outside of the livestock barns. They told us it's going to be really nice. John Long: That's good. Cobie Rutherford: Air conditioning and 24 hour security out there to protect the exhibits. John Long: So, don't worry about the exhibits. Go ahead and throw that out there. It'll be okay. Cobie Rutherford: And it should increase visibility. I mean, everybody is going to be walking through looking at things. John Long: True. Cobie Rutherford: We've got some pretty cool decorations we're going to use. John Long: Good. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Rest in peace to the village. John Long: We'll have a moment of silence. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Yeah. I don't know, it won't be much moment of silence. Cobie Rutherford: It aint going to be much. I don't know what's left of it. John Long: Ah, well we always seem to pull it together every year, but this year you don't have to worry about getting ... The blood letting may be less. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Anybody that's set up fair knows exactly what we're talking about. Cobie Rutherford: That was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun, the comradery last year. John Long: Absolutely. Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: So Larry's gone, the village is gone. What have we done to 4-H, John? John Long: We're still here. We're still here. We're still green. But anyway, but yeah, it's a good change I think. It's like you said, I think it's going to get a lot more visibility for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think so, too. John Long: Yeah. Thanks to everybody that's making that happen, too. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, no doubt. We're going to be sending out a lot of information over the next few day through social media venues. We've also got National 4-H Week coming up pretty soon. John Long: Oh, yeah we do, don't we? Wow. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. That'll be going on simultaneously with the fair, so we've got to come up with some cool things to do during that week. I know the county agents are getting all the information today. John Long: Oh, well be sure and check your inbox, I guess, for that. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Well, that's awesome. Oh, and fall's going to be in the air. I found out that apparently the first week in September we're supposed to have a cool front move in, so it's going to be more seasonal. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, good. Nice. John Long: So it's going to get everybody in the mood for fair, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: And Starbucks is bringing back the pumpkin spice latte. I saw that. John Long: Do you partake? Cobie Rutherford: You know, I'm not a big coffee person. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: But I do like those. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I will drink a pumpkin spice latte. John Long: I sin, because I drink my coffee black, but I do at least once in October will drink a pumpkin spice latte. So, I know that's shocking. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that shocks me. John Long: Yeah. But I do love those pumpkin spice. Cobie Rutherford: Yep, it's that time of year. John Long: I can't wait. I thought my pumpkins we're not going to make it this year, but I think my pumpkin patch is going to make it, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Cobie Rutherford: Good. John Long: Well all right, all things green, and we've got plenty of 4-H still left in the year and to come. And Cobie, information's going to be sent out, as you said, to the extension offices, but we'll also have it posted on our web page which is- Cobie Rutherford: On the web page and all social media venues. You can find on the website at extension.msstate.edu. John Long: Right, and we've got all kinds of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and everything else. Be sure and check us out there. And with that, we're going to wrap up this episode of 4-H-4-U-2. Thanks for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information please visit extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Dr. Jousan talks to Cobie and John about the many opportunities that the 4-H Horse and Livestock Program has to offer the youth of Mississippi. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service, promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your host Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, and welcome back to another 4H4U2 podcast. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And Cobie, we have a special guest with us today, Dr. Dean Jousan and Dean, give us your title. Dean  Jousan: So my title is Extension 4-H Livestock Specialist. I'm an Associate Professor in the Department Of Animal And Dairy Sciences. John Long: That's a lot of credentials there, Dean. Dean  Jousan: It is a long title, yeah. John Long: When did you start? Dean  Jousan: I started in September, 2006 so I'm approaching finishing out my 13th year. John Long: Awesome. Yeah, you started in just a little bit before us because I remember me and you being new kids on the block, so to speak, I guess. So tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and how you got to where you are today I guess. Dean  Jousan: So you could probably tell by the tone of my voice, I'm from the South, I'm from East Texas, a little small town called Jouaquin, a population 800. John Long: Wow. Dean  Jousan: We're so large, we finally got a traffic light a couple of years ago. So now you got to watch out for traffic lights when you go home. John Long: Did they have this big christening for the- Dean  Jousan: I wasn't there so I'm not sure. John Long: Probably. Dean  Jousan: They probably did at Christmas time so we'd have more lights for the Christmas parade. John Long: That's great. They decorated. Dean  Jousan: Exactly. John Long: I'm sorry, go ahead. Dean  Jousan: No, no. So I grew up getting into 4-H and FFA as a young person and was involved with mainly show and breeding cattle all over the country. But we did a little bit of a poultry because that was big in our home county. Went to college at Texas A&M, got my undergraduate degree and went off to Virginia Tech for a master's degree and the University of Florida for a PhD. Literally graduated on a Saturday and interviewed here the next Monday for this opening, and I've been here ever since. John Long: Wow, wow. Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty exciting, a lot of traveling. John Long: Yes, yes, now family? Dean  Jousan: Yeah, I'm married just over 10 years to a pharmacist and we've got two kids, Keegan, a seven year old girl, and Web, a four year old boy. John Long: Awesome. And trivia, I was in Dean's wedding. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, how about that. John Long: Yes I was. I enjoyed that a lot. That was lot of fun. And I saw that come up on Facebook the other day and I thought, "Wow, 10 years just flies by." That's just insane, insane. Cobie Rutherford: That sounds like that could be a whole another podcast with the wedding stories. John Long: Well, no- Cobie Rutherford: Probably won't get into that. John Long: We're going to keep that under wraps. Cobie Rutherford: Dean, I guess I known you since I started at Mississippi State. Maybe you were on the search committee that hired me. So you were one of the first people I met in the department. Cobie Rutherford: But what intrigues me about you is that you are also a reproductive physiologist by trade. So kind of how did some cutting edge stuff with your PhD work in embryology. Is amazing how many talents this man has in terms of his education and then what his skillset is and his job. So how did those two kind of tie in together? Dean  Jousan: Yeah, so like I said, I was a 4-H'er growing up, I was interested in cattle. As I started competing in contests, educational contests, through 4-H, FFA and our state and national Simmental Association, I became interested in reproductive efficiency and the reproductive process of cattle development. So I was really interested in embryos and embryonic development. So that's what attracted me to Virginia Tech for a master's degree and the University of Florida for a PhD as I mentioned earlier. Dean  Jousan: And even though I was doing a lot of laptop research on embryos, I guess I still kind of had a heart for the producer, even though I was working more with dairy cattle at that time. I still wanted my research to be applicable to a producer because what was the point of doing research if you can't tie it back to benefiting someone's life and profession. So I try to do lots of things during both my graduate degrees to help producers and also even to help youth in some of the contests and things that I was able to help with. Cobie Rutherford: Cool. So you wear many hats and John and I know that. But let's talk about all the things you do with 4-H youth lifestyle. So what are some of the contents and activities and programs you do on an annual basis? John Long: This'll be part one. Cobie Rutherford: Yes, this'll be a two-parter for sure. John Long: Cobie and I both know how Dean is just constantly, constantly going. Go ahead Dean. Dean  Jousan: Yeah, sure. So I'll try to break it up. So livestock wise, I help to manage and oversee the Dixie National Junior Roundup. So that's the largest market show that we have in Mississippi that takes place in Jackson. So I oversee that entire show. And because my title is 4-H livestock specialist, I'll work with the [inaudible 00:05:28] champions committee that's really involved with raising a lot of funds to purchase champion animals and also really works to have developed a scholarship program over the years. Our other big livestock show, would be our Mississippi State Fair, which takes place for a couple of weeks in October. So I'm in charge of all the junior livestock shows that take place there. Dean  Jousan: I also work with our extension equine specialist, Dr. Clay Cavender. I'm heavily involved with our state 4-H horse championship. So those are the bigger animal type shows that I'm involved with in state. Cobie Rutherford: That's quite a few. So Dixie Nationals, I understand, is the largest show east of the Mississippi. Dean  Jousan: Yeah, it's a large event. We typically have probably 24, 2,500 head of livestock that we currently exhibit over about a six day period and probably 1,500 plus youth involved. So it's a large ordeal. John Long: Now, Dean, don't give me a canned answer to this, but of all those things you listed, what's your favorite today? We all have our favorites. Dean  Jousan: I guess probably what's been most rewarding to me and it probably took time, I guess, to realize it, the impact that you make through the sale of champions and through the awarding of scholarships. And when you see those kids on campus, since I've been here 13 years, your whole 4-H career starts as an eight year old and concludes as a 18 year old. So I've been here long enough to see kids that were beginning in 4-H, or not even 4-H age, develop all the way through their entire 4-H career. Dean  Jousan: So you've seen them change and and grow and gain knowledge and expertise. So really, that's been the most impactful probably. John Long: Yeah, I think that is. That, I know has to be because you see the effect of the whole... through the whole process for sure. Cobie Rutherford: So besides earning scholarships and premiums through the sale of champions, what kind of skills are these youth learning when it comes to you- John Long: You stole my question. You stole my question. Cobie Rutherford: It's almost like we've got this- John Long: I know. Cobie Rutherford: ... mind thing. John Long: Not even talking and we know what we're saying. Dean  Jousan: That's scary. John Long: Go ahead with his question Dean, or it could be our question. Dean  Jousan: There we go, we'll share it. John Long: Yeah, share it, please. Dean  Jousan: So the livestock shows are fun and that's a teaching moment. We're not directly in front of the youth teaching but the youth are still learning a lot about their development of their animals. So everything I do is educational and everything that the the youth learn is beneficial to them. We do have tons of educational contests. And I care about those a lot because, to me, that's where the youth separate themselves from other 4-H'ers. And I guess I'm biased. I mean, I do livestock and horses as well. To me, that's sort of the cream of the crop of our 4-H youth because it takes a lot of responsibility to wake up. Here we are in the middle of July and we're having mid 90 temperatures and heat index 105, 110. It's hard to get up in the morning and go out in the afternoon and get your show heifer out of the barn and take her to the wash rack and rinse her off and cool her off and work with her hair and go to some of these jackpot shows that are happening all around. Dean  Jousan: It takes a lot of responsibility, a lot of dedication, a lot of discipline to get up and do that. And we try to educate our youth with quality assurance practices to make sure that they know what they're doing to their animals, with safe and humane and they're treating them to the best way they can. So there's just a lot that really goes into the whole 4-H livestock project. John Long: I myself not owning livestock, my dad had some cows, but other than that, how does a young person own that early stage in 4-H? How do they get involved in the livestock program if their parents or whoever doesn't have the availability of an animal? How does that work? Or does it work? Dean  Jousan: Well, as far as showing an animal or just getting involved? John Long: Yeah, getting involved, getting started, I guess, from the base level since we talked about that. Dean  Jousan: Yeah, so if a family isn't able to own the animal for whatever reason, but they're still interested. We've got a whole variety of contests. A couple of weeks ago, we just had our 4-H beef cookout contest in the North and the South. So you're still learning about choosing your selection of beef to cook and how to prepare it. And that's educational in and of itself. And then we've got lots of other contests. We've got judging contests. We're either going out and learning about animal selection and what makes a good market animal versus a good breeding animal. And how to compare animals within a class and how to defend your reasons and how to come up with your decision making process. We've got Quiz bowl competitions and visual presentation contests. Dean  Jousan: If you were interested in showing beef cattle, it would be easy to go to a project achievement day for a younger 4-H'er or to Club Congress for an older 4-H'er and talk about breeds of cattle or whatever topic was of interest to you. So that way you're doing some homework and you're learning more about maybe livestock options that are available to you before you actually invest the money and get the animals and proper housing and things of that nature. John Long: And I guess that would dispel the myth that it's just not getting in the ring with an animal. There's just so much more than to do other than that. Dean  Jousan: Yeah, I would say everything that I do with livestock and horses, there's probably over 30 educational type contests that a youth could be involved in. And that could be from more of the arts and creative expression, type contests such as creating a dairy poster about the theme that year for Dairy Month in June that's turned in at Club Congress. To the horse side of things, we've got photography contests and horse art contest where you could be drawing a picture or drawing a cartoon to designing a piece of furniture that's horse related. Dean  Jousan: So there's all kinds of opportunities available. The opportunities are endless. It's just how much do you want to jump in and how much do you want to get involved with. John Long: Right, and sounds like there's a little something for everybody. Cobie Rutherford: And it seems like most of the kids or youth that participate in these showing animals and livestock, it seems like they do other things within 4-H. I've seen him here at Club Congress participating in public speaking contest or maybe did other things under the AG and natural resources umbrella, forestry judging, meats judging. It seems like they're really involved in a lot of different things. John Long: And Cobie was at the... you were at the cookout? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Man, that was phenomenal. I was very impressed with the beef cookout and pork cookout this year. Well even poultry too. So it was kind of neat to see those kids light up their grills Most of them pretty delicious, I think. John Long: All I ever get to do is hear about that. I never get to go because I'm in Nebraska at that time. So y'all have fun. Cobie Rutherford: What else I like about the youth program, it's something that a child can select as their project and either make it a short term project, like a getting a market hog or a pig project or even a chicken project that's even a shorter duration of time. Or they can get a long term project like a heifer and keep that heifer for an entire year and work that animal and do something with it from January to December. Cobie Rutherford: So it kind of, you can design how you want your project to work depending on what species you select, if you have that option, and even go on to different levels. I know you go chair several national contests and take 4-H'ers from the state. Where do y'all go? Dean  Jousan: Yeah, so I'll start at the regional level first. We do have a Southern regional 4-H horse championship that we host in Perry, Georgia. And this is the only regional 4-H horse show that's offered in the entire country. So youth in the 13 states that make up our region, are eligible to compete in if they qualify to go. I'm the chair of the equine specialist group, so it's a lot of work that goes into putting on that event. And we can send our top two senior teams or individuals in our horse contest to compete in that educational event and we can send up to 70 horses that qualifies as well. And we've had a good history of our youth, with our horses, being very successful at that show. Dean  Jousan: From an educational standpoint, there are a variety of state contests that I host throughout the year where we qualify youth to go to national competitions. So in November of every year at the North American International Livestock Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, we will send a dairy Quiz bowl team and a dairy judging team. And then I guess this is maybe the third year that we've sent a 4-H livestock skill-a-thon team. And that's sort of a unique team that that we develop, that's not a county based team. We kind of worked with some of the elite 4-H'ers in beef, sheep, Swan and meat goats and we kind of single out some of them and do some mock contests and really kind of select a cream of the crop to represent us on that team. Dean  Jousan: And then early January is where we send the majority of our youth out to the Western National Roundup in Denver, Colorado. We send up to six horse related teams, a meats judging team, a livestock judging team, a livestock Quiz bowl. And then we also take a couple of other competitions that I'm not directly involved with, but we take a consumer decisions team and a prepared public speaking individuals. All together, it's probably over 30 youth that can qualify to go out to that event. Cobie Rutherford: Now, do y'all usually take a plane or drive a bus or how do y'all get out there to Denver? Dean  Jousan: We used to take an MSU bus and that was about a 24 hour trip out there and back with very little stops. In recent years, we've taken the big airplanes and every county sort of coordinates their own travel to get out about the same day. People like taking a direct flight of about two hours versus a 24 hour bus ride with people not brushing their teeth and all that stuff, yeah. John Long: I got a funny memory of that. I've never been to it, but I got a funny memory of that. Hey Cobie, you've heard me talk about Clover Clues, when we had this little thing? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Dean, I had to get a report. Do you remember this? You probably don't, it's been a long time ago. Dean had to give me a report of how the teams had done out in Denver and they were on their way back. Poor Dean, he was talking on the cell phone to me and I could just tell he was tired. But we did really well that year, I remember, and I had to give his report for him. But I remember those bus trips and y'all talking about them. So yeah, that would be a long time. Cobie Rutherford: I'm sure there's a lot of good memories. Well Dean, another thing that I think is pretty neat with what you do, yesterday I had the chance to help out with that dairy products judging. And we think about livestock specialists helping with a bunch of different live animals species, but the products are just as important as the actual animals, right? Dean  Jousan: Sure, yeah. And I guess that's what's interesting about a lot of what I do. Dairy products is a little more unique than maybe some of the other judging contest. But the neat thing about all of those things is that, again, like John referred to earlier, you don't have to own the animal to be in dairy products judging. That's a simple contest where you're evaluating samples of Milk and cheddar cheese and ice cream for flavors and, and different ways those products are prepared. They're not prepared in unhealthy ways, but they're prepared differently. And that makes those products taste differently, just like if you season your steak. The way I season my steak versus the way you season yours, maybe a little bit different to the degree that you cook your steak, maybe different than the way I cook mine. It doesn't mean you're right or I'm right, it's just the way we do it, and then they're evaluated. Dean  Jousan: So a lot of the things I do, it's neat because the kids can form a basis of what the ideal product should be, what the ideal animal should be. And the neat thing is, a lot of the judging contests, all that stuff can go over to consumer decisions judging or another type of judging event. You know the structure of how to present your reasons and how to make your choices, you just have to learn about judging refrigerators versus judging a class a steers. John Long: So you're saying it can cross over into other areas. Dean  Jousan: Yeah, and that's where I think a lot of our livestock kids... To me, I see a lot of them crossing over into other aspects of 4-H just because they meet kids from around the state when they're at the state fair, when they're at Dixie National. They're interacting with youth all over the state and they hear about other contests and they say, "Hey, wow, if I win that, I can go on a trip." So they want to really invest and learn and engage in ways to learn to better themselves. John Long: Right, right. And it's just like any other areas in 4-H, if we offer those programs based on the areas of interest of young people and we get them in and we all teach them life skills. Regardless, it's youth development from day one. So that's always fascinating with me is how those areas all work together for the same common goal, and that's great. John Long: Well Dean, we certainly appreciate you coming in and sitting down with us today and whenever you can, catch your breath, please. We want you to stay around for a long time because you do such a great job and we appreciate all that you do for 4-H and for the youth of our state. So thank you for that. And if anybody wants more information on livestock and other areas of 4-H and what to do, go to the Extension webpage and check us out there. You've got information on there? Dean  Jousan: Yup. John Long: Anywhere else we need to go to. Dean  Jousan: I've got a Facebook page. If you're on Facebook, you can type in to search for Mississippi 4-H livestock and horse program. And as you alluded to, if you go to the MSU Extension website and search for 4-H livestock, there's plenty of information about our big major shows and education contests and all sorts of information. John Long: And not to mention, other publications that we have that you can read- Dean  Jousan: Lots of publications and newsletters and lots of information. John Long: Wonderful. Well thank you for that. And with that, we're going to wrap up this week's podcast. And Cobie, we'll be back next time with some more good stuff that 4-H is doing. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, next time we'll have two attendees for the co-op leadership camp joining us. John Long: Yes, that'll be great. Cobie Rutherford: Looking forward to that. John Long: Be great. All right, well with that, I'm John. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie. John Long: And we'll talk to you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

John and Cobie discuss hitting the road and traveling on the 4-H Project Achievement Day road trip! Transcript: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting forage programs and positive youth development. Here, now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Okay, well, it is that time again for another edition of the podcast, 4H4U2. We are so glad that you have tuned in, and if you have not, you need to subscribe to this podcast because we are going to be talking about everything 4-H as it relates to Mississippi and beyond. And this week, we're going to be talking about our upcoming project achievement days. And I'm your host John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, I feel like I see over here, of course, nobody else can, but I can see you have your mixed purified drinking water over here. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah. John Long: And I have a bottle of water over here behind me as long as a cup of coffee, so I feel like we're maybe gaining some legitimacy here as far as podcasts are concerned. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, maybe so. I know my bottle of water here is filled with artificial flavors and caffeine, so hopefully it'll be enough to get me through today. John Long: Yeah, yeah. Well, we've got a busy day on the day of this recording. We're going to be working with judge record books. I've never done that before, so this is going to be a new new experience for me. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I'm pretty impressed by the record books. This will be my first time to go through this cycle, too, and it has some pretty intense labor that's put into those things. John Long: Really, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I just flipped through a few of them earlier, and it seems like they build on each other. So, you start off as a young child, and then every year you add more stuff to your record book within your project area. And it's pretty fascinating. I can't wait to dig into them a little bit. John Long: I can't either. Cobie Rutherford: I don't know how we're going to judge them. I mean, because they all look pretty good, but- John Long: It's going to be tough. I have no doubt it's going to be tough. Cobie Rutherford: So, with these record books, I understand that the first place winners get to go to National 4-H Conference in Atlanta. John Long: Yeah. And you're going to that, too, aren't you? Cobie Rutherford: I am, yeah. I'm excited about that. John Long: That's cool. Cobie Rutherford: It's starts on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so yeah, we go home, eat some Turkey, spend some time with family, then hit the road to the ATL. John Long: There you go. THere you go. The big ATL. Yeah, it's always a fun time going there, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Have you ever been? John Long: I have, obviously, been to Atlanta. Never been to the National- Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. But never been to the National- John Long: No, no, no, no. I have not. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We're taking, I think, 20 to 25 for 4-Hers depending on how many come through the record boot process today, so it should be a big time. John Long: Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. So, you and I are about to hit the road here next week, and we're going to be on this road trip. I always call it the 4-H road trip because we're leaving on Monday, and then we're going to be not coming back home until Thursday. Cobie Rutherford: Thursday. John Long: So, most of us are not going to come home until Thursday. But anyway, and we're going to be doing the Project Achievement Day road trip, so tell us a little bit about that. Cobie Rutherford: So, I am super pumped about this Project Achievement Day. John Long: I am too. Cobie Rutherford: After the first one in the Northeast at [inaudible 00:03:39] I've been waiting on these others to happen. John Long: Yeah, you're jonesing for another PA day. Cobie Rutherford: It seems like it's taken forever for them to get here. So, we'll start next week in Laurel on Tuesday, then we'll go to Raymond on Wednesday, and then Moorhead on Thursday. But basically, this is our chance to showcase our junior 4-Hers within their districts and give them a taste of what State Forest Congress will be like. John Long: It's like a mini Congress, basically, for the juniors, so I guess they get a lot of little aspects of what Congress's like. Wouldn't you say based on what we've got there? Cobie Rutherford: It's a lot of fun for them, best I can tell. Anytime I looked up at the Northeast PAD, they had some music going, the kids were dancing and just having a good time. John Long: Yeah. I like it because it's an intense day because when you get started everybody gets... And like you said, it's an energy level that keeps going, and it's really cool because you turn around and it's like, "What do you mean we're ready to go to the next one?" But I like it because of the younger 4-Hers get to see the excitement in those younger 4-Hers just getting started, and they are just amazed at everything that's going on. And I guess, you can remember, too, what it was like to look up to somebody and see those leadership team members up there on the stage and they're introducing these young clover leaf exhibitors, things like that. That I'm sure they look at those green jackets and say, "Wow, they must be old, like 20 something." You know what I'm saying. But a mentor to look up to, I guess. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think that's always cool. I remember going to our district events in Alabama and how fun they were and seeing those green... Well, they had green jackets over there, too. John Long: Did they? Cobie Rutherford: It was a cool deal. John Long: I wonder if the green jacket's everywhere. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I don't know. John Long: I don't know either. Cobie Rutherford: Just seeing some pictures from Nationals, it seemed like several states have green jackets. John Long: Oh, okay, cool. Cobie Rutherford: But I know they sure stand out in the crowd here and along with our purple shirts. John Long: Oh you better believe it. You better believe... We need to coordinate. I think that's what we need to do. We need to coordinate what shirts we're going to wear for the Project Achievement Day. I like that. I always like that because you know who's... You can look across and see who's the state staff member with the shirt on. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: But anyway- Cobie Rutherford: That's probably something I think about. John Long: Yeah, we'll work on that. I think that's the least of our... No, we don't have worries, but- Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's probably number 15 on the list. Maybe 20. John Long: Get the van, get it loaded up, and we'll go from there. Cobie Rutherford: Now, one thing I've got to remember is I've got a whole box of ribbons in my car from the- John Long: Don't forget those [inaudible 00:06:35]. Cobie Rutherford: I know. That'd be huge. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So, I took them down to the cookout last week, which was a lot of fun. John Long: Oh yeah, I forgot that y'all did that while I was gone. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Maybe that's a another podcast. John Long: Oh, I can't wait to- Cobie Rutherford: We're about to talk about the cookout. John Long: With no smell-a-vision or... No, we can't. I don't know how it works. Cobie Rutherford: I'm salivating thinking about the pork chop that I had. John Long: Well, it is close to lunch. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, you're right. But, man, so much fun. I don't understand why every single kid in the state don't do it, participate in the cookout, because these kids, honest to goodness, had a blast. John Long: That's good. Cobie Rutherford: Now, there may or may not have been some close to fire hazards. John Long: Right, right. Cobie Rutherford: The kid that dumped half of his lighter fluid onto his charcoal grill. John Long: I think, invariably, that's going to happen, right? Cobie Rutherford: I think you plan for it. I was like, "Oh, wait! Fire!" But everybody was else like, "That first fire of the year, check that off." So, that was fun. But these kids can cook, and I think that's part of our culture. They grow up watching Food Network now and seeing all these different ideas. But yeah, we need a whole podcast for that. John Long: Yeah, we'll definitely do that. Cobie Rutherford: Project Achievement Days, though- John Long: Are we going to have a taste test and everything? Cobie Rutherford: We got to sample some things at ... John Long: I'm talking about in here. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, we should. We need to invite ... John Long: There may be need for a remote recording. Cobie Rutherford: I would say, maybe go live, too. John Long: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm sorry I interrupted you. Go ahead. Cobie Rutherford: You know , though, at PAD in Northeast, they had these foods and nutrition demonstrations, and I got to try one of the winner's guacamole that they made with mango and pineapple. Did you try that? John Long: Yes, I did. I got the recipe, too. Cobie Rutherford: Man! John Long: Perfect summer guac. Cobie Rutherford: It was so good. I don't even know how the 4-Her came up with that. John Long: I don't either. Cobie Rutherford: But I think she made the recipe herself. John Long: Wow. Cobie Rutherford: Just went with it. John Long: Hey, whatever you like, put it in there, mix it up, I guess. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Yeah. It was good. Cobie Rutherford: It was good. Now, I wonder, I hadn't heard a lot about the South PADs, but they'll have workshops I suspect for the juniors to participate in. John Long: Yeah, it's the same. It's the same across each one of them. But each one of them has their own little different spin or taste. I mean, each district is unique, I think, in the way that Project... Obviously, we have the same framework for each one of them, but- Cobie Rutherford: Same contest. John Long: Yeah. But each district adds in their little bit of flare to it for that area. Oh, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I thought it was cool with the Northeast, they had that dog trainer there, and they had dog training workshops. And then, they also had a fishing tournament. John Long: I heard about that. I didn't get over there to see that. Cobie Rutherford: I saw a lot of kids bring their brand new fishing poles. John Long: Yeah, I saw the poles. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, they [inaudible 00:09:33] have to big time. John Long: That's cool. That's cool. Cobie Rutherford: I'm anxious to see what the other districts offer. John Long: Yeah, that'll be neat. That'll be neat. We are going on... I have to lay the map out. We're, like you said, we're going to the Southeast on Tuesday, and then we're going to the Southwest and then cutting across to the Northwest. And I think, well, the Southeast, this'll be the second time it's been a different location. And then, Southwest is, as far as I can remember... Well, no, it's been at Hines Community College. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Where is Southeast again? Not Laurel Middle School, it's Jones. Cobie Rutherford: West Jones High School. John Long: West Jones High School. That's right. Then we go to Hines Community College in Raymond, which coincidentally my wife used to work there. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: Yeah. She got all the ins and outs going into the metropolis of Raymond. But then we go to Moorhead, and I love going to Moorhead. I don't know what it is about that campus, but I love going. I guess because I've worked so much in the Delta, I just love going to the Delta every year. Cobie Rutherford: I'm excited about that, too. I think they're feeding us catfish over there. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: I think so. Maybe I just dreamed that up or maybe that's what's, maybe, I want for lunch. John Long: Maybe that's what you want to eat. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I'm excited about that. John Long: Yeah, that'll be good. Cobie Rutherford: What about- John Long: That's an important thing about extension, you've got to know where all the good eating is. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I think we've talked about that as much as we have anything. John Long: Yeah. That's right. Food is important. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Cobie Rutherford: It's, obviously, close to lunch because that's what I'm thinking about. John Long: What are we going to eat for lunch? We got to get back here and start judging record books before too long. Cobie Rutherford: I'm hungry already. John Long: I am too. Cobie Rutherford: But after PADs we've got co-op starting that Monday, all week. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: You're on campus. John Long: Yep. Cobie Rutherford: So, we'll get to go back to the Delta again for that. John Long: Right, right. Cobie Rutherford: Man, I was hoping we'd eat catfish again. John Long: Well, you might. You never can tell. No, I'm kidding. Cobie Rutherford: No, I don't think we will that week. We're going to have Subway for ... John Long: Yeah, y'all don't have time to stop munch on that schedule that I saw, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: No. My goodness, those wheels are barely going to stop for us to run into Subway, I think. John Long: True. And then, co-op runs right into the State Invitational. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: That weekend. Cobie Rutherford: Then July is over almost. John Long: Then July is over and then- Cobie Rutherford: It'll be the 20th. John Long: ... school starts back and... Crazy. That's always crazy. Cobie Rutherford: Man, it gets away. It's so much fun, though. John Long: Yeah, it is. Because, like we had said earlier on another podcast, I mean you used to think summer used to drag, and then you get a job where it just flies by. So, it is beneficial in that respect, and we enjoy being able to interact with the kids and getting to see how 4-H is changing lives and for the better. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I was thinking about even fall. This week I finished up the the fair book, so I've got to get the final approval done on it. But holy smokes, before we know it, I'm going to have a whole year of 4-H under my belt. John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Because last year we started on September one. John Long: September, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: We opened for fair that month, and then... Man, it's just gotten away from me. John Long: Oh, I love State Fair. I cannot wait. I love State Fair. Midway and food. Here we go again. Cobie Rutherford: I know. John Long: I'm sorry. But anytime you talk about State Fair, I'm thinking Midway food, which is probably not the best for your health, but good gracious, it's so good. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. That's my favorite time of year is the State Fair bar none. John Long: I think we need to get Dr. Brent Fountain in here to talk about nutrition and his nutrition program. It's probably what we need more than anything. Cobie Rutherford: He probably lay it out that you probably should- John Long: Probably not be eating a bunch of- Cobie Rutherford: ... drink those artificial flavors and that water and that high dose of caffeine. John Long: Yeah, way too much coffee. Way too much coffee. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I think we'd probably get, I'll scrutinize for that. John had a birthday last week. John Long: Oh, that's right. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: So, we've had a- John Long: 25. Cobie Rutherford: ... birthday cake this week. John Long: Oh, that was awesome yesterday. Yeah, that was good. Cobie Rutherford: I had donuts last week. We've been needing a lot of fuel. John Long: And yeah, I guess so. But it's interesting, going back, I was at Nationals during my birthday, and there's only been one National since I started working, that I was actually home for my birthday. But I don't think you could ask for a better present than to get to smell gunpowder and watch arrows fly on your birthday. That's a pretty good birthday present. Then I got to celebrate with my family when I got back. But yeah, I sure did. Turned 25, almost for the second time. Cobie Rutherford: Fun. John Long: It'll be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Always is. Cobie Rutherford: So, with the Project Achievement Days, we got those. I've almost counted those as being finished right now even though we've got lots to do. There's been so much prep work going into those from the ordering the trophies, getting the packets ready, and the ribbons, and people signed up. John Long: [inaudible 00:14:49] that excitement. Yep. Cobie Rutherford: The event's just the icing on the cake. John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: It works over. John Long: The work's done, and that's the way I look at State Invitational is once we get to that point, the week before, I'm already looking into August. And we move into, like you said, getting ready for State Fair and other stuff. But yeah, it is. And the icing on the cake is being able to see those young people walk up on that stage and get those awards and to see the smile on their face and the feeling of accomplishment from even from the bottom up or the top down, whatever way you want to look at it. And I love being able to work with the specialist and being able to be out there with the agents and see the hard work that they've put into these young people and the investment that they put in these young people, along with our parents, and just all the people that make it possible for them to be able to be successful, which is all of us. And I think that that's key to remember. It's not just one person, and it should never be. It should be a multitude of people that help develop that child and help teach them these life skills that they need for the rest of their life. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. And it takes a village, literally. John Long: Absolutely. Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: And celebrations are free. John Long: You better believe it. Cobie Rutherford: It does not take us any talent or time or money to pat someone on the back or clap our hands for somebody and help them celebrate their accomplish. John Long: Absolutely. Everybody needs that. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's what I love about 4-H most is that the round of applause, the congratulations, the "You got this" encouragement. John Long: That's right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's what sets us apart from other youth activities. Because sometimes I think in, maybe athletics, you're scrutinized a lot more than you are in 4-H. Maybe you miss a ball or you strikeout and maybe you don't get the applause and the congratulations for those things, but in 4-H, someone is always there to be like, "You get it next time. You got this." John Long: Oh, can I tell you a funny story? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah go ahead... John Long: It may not be funny to anybody, but it was to me because we were at a softball game, my daughter's softball game, last weekend and I was sitting there and they were wrapping their game up. And of course, behind us was another field, and there was another game going. And all of a sudden, behind me, I hear this guy with the most, deepest... He needs to be on the podcast. He would have a much better radio voice. Very deep, very pronounced, annunciated voice says, "What are you doing? You need to be running!" And it was just like, I remember thinking, maybe they need to get their head in the game, but it was seemingly more derogatory than it was encouraging. You know what I'm saying? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: So, I thought, "Man, I wouldn't think I'd want to be on that team with them." But anyway. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I remember back to my athletic days, I think I got a lot of this kind of encouragement. "Quit lollygagging." John Long: "Quit lollygagging." Yep. For sure, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: "You're not going to find the baseball in the dirt." John Long: Well, and I think it is, too. It is. I mean, especially if you're a parent. I think you do want, obviously, want your child to do well because you feel like they are a reflection of you, but we need to remember that they are an individual, as well, so we need to treat them as such. Cobie Rutherford: Oh gosh. I keep thinking about my experiences in athletics, and I was not athletic at all. I was probably the worst ball player that ever went through my youth league program. I think about what I won't do as a parent when... "Oh yeah, I want you to play sports, but-" John Long: "Oh, I'll never do that. Never do that." Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I'll never do that. Yeah. John Long: Yeah. Watch what you never say you'll never do. Cobie Rutherford: Exactly. John Long: Yep, yep. Cobie Rutherford: With the PADs and... I'll look at that as a great opportunity to introduce these kids to something that they never thought they'd do. John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: I think most agents are making their children do one contest in the morning and then one in the afternoon, so if they have a project area, let's say an entomology, and do a visual presentation in the morning, well they might can pick out something totally different that they don't know anything about and learning about it for the afternoon contest. John Long: Sure, absolutely. That catalog of things that they can do is just so diverse. It really allows people, or youth, to experiment and to find what they really love doing. And I've seen some of those 4-Hers that I routinely see it at PAD through the years, or have seen them through the years and then seeing them move into seniors, they do that. But then, when they find their niche that they... Oh, they know it and they, I mean, they are passionate about it. Absolutely passionate about it. Cobie Rutherford: That's really neat. I can't wait to get these three here and see what all happens. John Long: Oh yeah. Yeah. That'll be awesome. That'll be awesome. Cobie Rutherford: Without a doubt. John Long: All right, well, if you don't know anything about 4-H or wanting to know more about 4-H or Extension in general, Cobie, tell them where they can go and learn more about them. Cobie Rutherford: Go to your Extension website at Extension.msstate.edu or you can contact your County office, and you can find all that information on the website, as well, John. John Long: That's right. And if you can't do that, just give us a holler at the state office, and we cam point you in the right direction as well, too. So, you can reach us at 662-325-3350. And that's going to wrap us up for another edition of 4H4U2. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast, please do so and tell all your friends about it, because the more people that we can touch and teach about 4-H, the better. So, with that, we're going to wrap it up for this podcast. I'm your host John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Take care. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit Extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service Office of Agricultural Communications.  

John is back from Grand Island, NE to report on another successful 4-H Shooting Sports National Championship. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, and with that funky beat, I guess you all know what time it is. It is another episode of 4H4U2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, it's raining outside today, and at the time of this recording, it's the Wednesday before ... 4H. I've got 4H on my mind, but it's actually July 4th. It's coming up tomorrow. Hopefully, all this is going to clear out, but have y'all got any plans for the 4th of July weekend? Cobie Rutherford: We don't have anything big planned. I think we're going home, spend some time with the family, and watch some fireworks. Maybe go out to the lake some, but I think a lot of my time will be a setting in the office writing this dissertation. John Long: I remember those days. It is tough to do, and especially I know you've got a young family, too, so that's really hard to be away from them, too. But it all comes out in the wash in the end, and you'll be through it, and look back, and it'll be six years later, 10 years later, and you're like, "Well, I'm glad that is done. Done and done." Cobie Rutherford: I think I'm through school after this. John Long: Definitely. I remember walking out of that last class thinking "That is the last class I have to take for the rest of my life," and that felt good. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I'm all about like continuing education, and continuing to learn things, but no more formal education. John Long: I understand that for sure. Cobie Rutherford: I need a piece of paper, and then we'll go on. John Long: That's right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: So what have you been up to? John Long: Well, I've been very busy myself. We just got back from ... I say "we" as when I say that my wife says, "Who's we? You and the mouse in your pocket?" I said, "Yeah, I guess so." But I just got back from nationals, National 4H Shooting Sports Championship in Grand Island, Nebraska. And they had that starting ... Basically, check-in was on June the 23rd, and it went through the 28th. And we ... Here I go with "we" again. See, that's the difference. When I go out there, I feel like I'm part of the team, so I say "we" all the time, but it's really the kids that do all the work, along with the volunteers and the parents. But, anyway, they let me tag along. How about that? John Long: But anyway, we did really good. I think the young people had a really good time. National Committee does an excellent job on organizing different events just to keep them not occupied, but entertained and occupied, and really try to tell people that's part of the experience is being able to get out there and meet other youth across the country that they would otherwise never meet. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's part of the big deal. Networking. John Long: You're right. Exactly. And it was a really good turnout, too. We had 661 participants from 36 states. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. John Long: So not a record on the number of states that came in, but but only shy by equaling the record by one state. It was only four that didn't show up this year, if I'm correct, out of the country that have shooting sports programs. It's very good. It's a very good place. Grand Island is an awesome place to have the event. They have great facilities there. John Long: And, like I said, one night we had teen social for the kids. State coordinators actually got to get up and be together. And then we had another night where ... Oh, gosh, I'm drawing a ... Oh, where they went to the water park, which is right behind the event center. So it's really good. Really, really good time. And the food is not too bad either out there. Cobie Rutherford: That does sound good. John Long: Yeah. I'm always about the food. Cobie Rutherford: Do most of our neighboring states have teams represented at Nationals? John Long: Yes, they did. In fact, I'm good friends with the Arkansas coordinator, and he had a really good group there this year. Numbers wise, they had a really good group, and put up some awards this year. So he's kind of, I say, fairly new to the job. I think he started about maybe two years ago, but he did really well. John Long: Louisiana came in number one overall in the sweepstakes. Alabama, I think they had the air team and a shotgun team, I think. I think there was just two of them. Alabama, don't get onto me for messing that up if anybody's listening, but I met the guy that was there helping out with their team. I'd made him a few years ago when he first started, but anyway, they brought one. John Long: Tennessee, which is really cool. I actually saw a couple of young people that I worked with on the NWTF Convention that help out at the NWTF Convention that's in Nashville. Youth that are from Tennessee. And they saw me, and they came running up to me. I didn't even know they were going to be there. But anyway, that was really cool to see them, and their parents, and get to fellowship with them some, too. John Long: But weather's fantastic out there right now. Cobie Rutherford: I bet it is. John Long: Oh, it was hard. It was just so hard to ... No humidity. Cobie Rutherford: No humidity. John Long: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Cobie Rutherford: I went to National Conference a few years ago in Kansas. Well, it was about third week of July, and I remember out there, everybody was sweating because it was about a hundred degrees, and all of us from the Southeast, we thought, "Oh my gosh, this is fantastic," because no humidity. They're like, "How are y'all doing this? How are you all not just dying out here?" Well, we're heat tolerant, I guess. Cobie Rutherford: But I always thought those national contests and things like that were a lot of fun as a 4H-er because it gave me a chance to network and meet people from other states. Most importantly. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: I thought it was cool when you lose contact with folks when I was growing up because there wasn't social media or neat interactive ways to text or communicate. So we'd write letters, and then you'd all of a sudden wind up at college or a conference down the road, and see somebody you met three or four years ago, and you make that reconnection pretty fast. Cobie Rutherford: I remember actually one of my first days here on faculty at Mississippi State, I met a person who I had grown up showing cattle with. Lady came by my office, and she's like, "Whoa, what are you doing here?" It was cool because we'd lost connection for almost 10 years. But it was neat. John Long: Yeah. And that was funny you say that, because at the opening ceremony, there was a a man there, and I think he said this was the third year he's been representing Federal Ammunition, or as it's formerly known, ATK Federal Ammunition, named John Zinnel. And John was actually a 4H shootings sports participant. He was an ambassador, and now he's actually working in the outdoor industry, so to speak. And he was up there speaking to those young people. So to see somebody as successful as him to get up and represent 4H, and to say, "Hey, I was there, and see what I'm doing now," that was really, really cool. John Long: And he's a very good representative, and we really appreciate shameless plug or support for a shooting sports across the country, because they're really awesome. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that is pretty cool, to somebody full circle. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: What I think is good about your program, John, is that you just finished Nationals, and now in two weeks you're getting ready for the State Invitational. If I mispronounced this or misunderstand it, correct me, but it's almost like the people that win states shooting sports have a whole year to prepare for the national contest if they're eligible to go. John Long: Right. And I always either laugh out loud or smile inside. I don't know, either one, but ... I don't know. Like you said, once we get back from Nationals, it's a short turnaround to where we're at State, and it just seems so far off to Nationals since. And here we are going to select another national team, so it's just like this never ending cycle. It's great. I'm not knocking that because I really think that a year out is a great idea because it gives them time to fund raise and to practice, because it is a different experience, for sure. John Long: One of the things I tell young people that are on the national team, especially on archery, but all disciplines with the exception of air, because they're inside, is any day that you get to practice when the wind's blowing, you better be practicing, because the wind out there invariably is going to be blowing strong while we're out there. And experiencing shooting archery in that type of environment, I jokingly say that would be a great engineering project for Mississippi State is build this wind tunnel, and then we could do archery shooting, and see how it affects arrow flight at different wind speeds. But I don't know if that'll happen or not, but it would be good for our team. Cobie Rutherford: Just a good physics lesson, right? John Long: Yeah. Really good. STEM. STEM. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: You know, STEM. Cobie Rutherford: Go ahead and get on that. John Long: Yeah, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: I think that when I went out there to Kansas, I didn't think about the wind, but I thought the first time I got out of my hotel room that it's about storm. Likewise, it hardly ever is windy here unless it is storming. John Long: Consistently windy anyway, right? Cobie Rutherford: I bet that does make a difference with arrows and stuff. John Long: Yeah. And it does, and shotgun, too, is really ... Have you ever shot skeet? Cobie Rutherford: I have not. John Long: Okay. So let me just tell you how it's set up. There's what's called a high house and the low house, which is these towers. So one's obviously high, the other one's low, and I was watching one of our team members shoot skeet, and it was amazing. Of course, it's an equalizer because everybody has shoot in it. But they would throw a target out of one of those houses, and that sucker would be going straight, and then all of a sudden it'd just turn and go straight up. The wind is just crazy. But anyway, that that's neither here nor there. We had a really good time. John Long: And I try to tell young people this when they get ready, and I try to emphasize this, and I can't emphasize it enough. You need to go. There's nothing wrong with being competitive, and I encourage you to be competitive. I encourage you to practice. I encourage you to make every shot count, but don't get so wrapped up in a competition that you miss the experience, because a lot of these young people that go to these events, and I'm not talking about specifically our kids, I'm talking about kids from across the country, is that when they embrace the experience, you can tell who is having the best time. Because they're going to that teen social, they're going to that water park, they're meeting other people. John Long: One of the biggest things that we have out there, and I don't know if they have this in livestock or anything like that, but trading pins. State pins is a big deal, and everybody's out there swapping pins, and you want to get all 36 of them. So it's a competition within itself, but guess what? When you go to doing that, you're interacting with other people, and you're making connections with other young people. Shooting sports is something that's so different. I say "so different," but it can vary on to how they do their programs, and it's really cool that we all come together. 661 kids, and no accidents. That speaks volumes. Cobie Rutherford: Somebody is doing something right. John Long: Something is being done right. Those life skills are being taught. Those young people are being taught respect, and I really wish more people understood that side of it is the fact that ... When can you have that many people together? And you know what I'm saying? It's just an amazing thing. I wish everybody could go to Nationals and just see it. Cobie Rutherford: So do the children take their own guns and their own bows and arrows there? John Long: Yes, they do. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I bet that's traveling nightmare. How do you travel with guns? John Long: Not really. The first time I traveled with a firearm, I thought, "Oh, my gosh, this is going to be horrendous." Oh, no. You just walk up there. They open it up, look at it, put it back. And I've had no problems. With myself personally going on hunting trips, I've never had a problem carrying a firearm. It was almost just like checking any other bag, and you would think that, especially with today's security, but apparently they have it down to a science obviously. So it's really not that bad if you're flying. Obviously, traveling in a car ... John Long: The one thing that I will say is the one thing you don't want to do, and if anybody's listening to this getting ready for Nationals, do not take white shoe polish and put 4H Shooting Sports Championship or Bust, or 22 Rifle Team On Board, because what that does is that says "We've got guns in here. Come break out our window." Cobie Rutherford: It makes you a target. John Long: Correct. Hey, that's a good pun there. Pardon the pun. John Long: And I try to emphasize that. Don't do that, but that is the one thing that would be primarily is thefts. You need to make sure if you're stopping overnight that you're taking those firearms out of the vehicle, or any equipment, for that matter. Don't make yourself a target. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. I just can't wrap my head around this. I'm looking forward to the State Invitational, because I've never been to a match such as this, where people are bringing firearms and not lost dogs. John Long: Right, right, right, right. Cobie Rutherford: I imagine it's kind of similar type situations where you have a massive check-in, a lot of different things going on at one time. John Long: Yes, absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: You're probably running around trying to multitask a million things, and there's a million questions at the same time. John Long: I had a guy one time, he would joke with me, and he was just a ... I say "just." He was the guy that actually was over the range at the time where we were shooting, and he would get tickled because everybody would say, "Hey, John. Hey, John." So throughout the day he would say, "Hey, John," just to get me to turn around. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. John Long: So, yeah, it's like a Pavlov-ic response to that. But, yeah, and usually I talk myself pretty hoarse. But it's a good time. It's a lot of work. I'm not going to lie to you, it is, but it's very rewarding, and it's always been my goal to make sure that we have the best event that we possibly can have because I want those young people to get just a taste of what ... And it is different. State is so much different than what they see on the district level, and I want them to have a a positive experience. I want them to enjoy themselves in preparation for going to that national event because it's really cool when I look out over the crowd, and go by those firing lines at State Invitational. I know that within that group there is going to be the next national team. And hopefully I'm going to get to know them better, and I'm going to get to know their families more, and get to share in that experience. In fact, I sent out a message to everyone when we got back, and I said, "I just want to thank you for allowing me a just for a small moment to be a part of a lifelong memory that you've made with your child." And that's a very important thing is if you don't take advantage of those moments, then they're gone, and you don't get them back. Cobie Rutherford: That's very, very true. So the state contest is mirrored to prepare the kids, the youth, for the national contest. And so it's kind of a continuum. Districts are prepared for state, state prepares for nationals. John Long: All part of that youth development component that we have. And a lot of people get wrapped up in the fact of State, saying, "Oh, well, it's for the national team." No, not. It's not. Primarily, it is an additional advancement competition for seniors. Just so happens that we use that as an instrument for selecting national team. Way more kids will come to State Invitational that will not go to Nationals than those that do, so we've got right now is a 176 that were signed up for shotgun. We've got, I think, 56 for 22 rifle. 56, 57 for 22 rifle. So there's a lot. And you're only picking four. So way more people are coming to compete for that very reason of being able to just experience a different type of environment. And hopefully get to go to Nationals. I encourage everybody, like I said. I think it's a great experience, and I wish everybody could go. Cobie Rutherford: Now, can you go to Nationals more than one year? John Long: Oh, you can, but you can't go in the same discipline twice. Cobie Rutherford: Got you. John Long: You can. In fact, in my tenure, I've had three individuals that have gone five times, four times. Four to five times. Very few that'll go that much, but they were diversified enough in their disciplines that they would go a repeated number of times. In fact, I had a Facebook memory come up of a couple of young men that nine years ago, we were at Nationals in Kerrville, Texas, and now one of them is a game board with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and the other one is serving in the Air Force. That was really cool to see that, how much change happens in nine years, and how fast it goes by for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Without a doubt. John Long: Yep. John Long: I got to give a little shout out for my teams, too, if I could. All in all, when we finished up at Nationals, we had the number two 22 pistol team in the nation. Air pistol was number eight. Muzzleloader was number 11. Air rifle was number 14. No, yeah, that's right. And compound archery was number seven. Shotgun was number eight. I wrote air rifle down twice, and then we had recurve. I had one recurve shooter, and he did very well by himself. And he had a blast, too, so I got to be with him and his daddy some. John Long: But what was really cool was air pistol came out number eight, and that was where the three person team. That was without a drop score each day, so they did really good. Oh, and I have to say that 22 pistol, this is the very first time that I can remember, and if anybody can remember any different, shoot me an email, but I do believe this is the first time that 22 pistol has ever being number one when shooting metal silhouettes. So I was really proud of them for that. I'm proud of all of the young people that participated, and they really represented the state of Mississippi well. Very proud of them, each and all, and thanks so much for those that served as coaches, and everybody that helped them get to that point, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Well, good deal. It sounds like y'all sure had a good time, and a lot of good things going on with safety in the state. John Long: We did. Cobie Rutherford: So, congratulations, John. John Long: Thank you. It's not me, it's them. Yep. John Long: All right. And I guess with that, we're going to wind up this edition of 4H4U2. If you want to have any information or more information on extension in your area and don't know where to go to, Cobie, where can they go? Cobie Rutherford: They can go to the website, extension.msstate.edu, or contact your local county office. John Long: That's right. And if you don't know where your county office is located, or who to talk to, that's a really cool little thing because, aside says by county. If you pull down that little pull down menu, you can see your county, and it'll pull up all of those smiling extension faces that'll be more than happy to help you with any questions you have. John Long: And with that, we're going to end up this edition of 4H4U2. I'm your host John. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie. John Long: And we'll talk to you next time. Cobie Rutherford: Have a good one. John Long: See you. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

In the second of two parts, Cobie and John sit down with Mr. Larry Alexander to reflect on his 38 years of working in 4-H, and what his plans are in retirement. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now are your hosts, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, we are back. This is John Long... Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: ... and you are listening to the 4-H-4-U-2 podcast, courtesy of the Mississippi State Extension. With us today, we're going to have part two of our conversation with Mr. 4-H, Mr. Larry Alexander. How are you doing today, Larry? Larry Alexander: I'm feeling really good. John Long: Good, good. Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Glad to have you. Larry Alexander: Thank y'all for having me. John Long: Yeah. How are you Cobie? You doing good over there? Cobie Rutherford: We're good. It's been a good day so far. John Long: Good. Excellent. On our last conversation that we had, we basically had led up to Larry touching on your getting into the state 4-H office and spoke about Mr. Holly Ford introducing you to that position. Now, obviously, at that time, you had had working relations with him. He knew you well enough to say, "Hey, this is maybe a pretty good candidate for the position." Larry Alexander: Yeah. Holly and I, when I first started in the Extension Program in Marshall, he would invite agents to come and help judge record books and be a part of committees. He always somehow would seem to draw my name for things like that. So I got to know Holly very, very well. When this opportunity came available, he just kept saying, "You ought to consider this. If you're going to grow in your career," he said, "This might be a golden opportunity," because as a young man prior to then, I thought I'd be a 4-H agent the rest of my life. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But he really opened the door and shed some light on a way to grow and still be a part of the 4-H Career Program. So he really inspired me to want to take this opportunity. John Long: How did he explain the position as far as what your responsibilities would be and then, because that's interesting you say that, how you could still incorporate working with the youth? Because I find sometimes we get, not disassociated but we get displaced from- Larry Alexander: Disconnected. John Long: Right. And not even have any interaction. So, when I get an opportunity, I'm excited. Like when we have Congress or nationals, it's something to be excited about because I actually seen the results, you know what I mean? So, what was his advice on the position? and do you remember any of that as far as... Larry Alexander: It's a little vague, but I just remember some conversations we had because when I explained to him about enjoying interacting with the young people, he said, "Now that may be one thing that would be a little struggle for me because at the state office you dealt more with the agents and volunteers more so than you did with the young people." But he said there were several programs that would afford you the opportunity to interact with the young people so that you can really stay close to that age group. Larry Alexander: So I thought about that for a minute and I said, "I'm not sure if that's what I wanted to do," but we had lots of interaction with young people from national Congress to our state Congress events, project achievement days. That was all with the young people, which you know. So I really didn't miss that much of interacting with the kids. So I was able to feed my passion in the position by still being closely tied to the young folks in the program. John Long: That's awesome. And I think that would be important too, just because you've got to, obviously if you're going to meet the needs of young people, you need to be interacting with them to see exactly what they're into, I guess you could say. Cobie Rutherford: So of all the jobs you've had and little tasks you've had in the office with everything from project achievement day at Congress, what is the one thing you look forward to every single year? Larry Alexander: Shooting sport. John Long: 4-H S.A.F.E.T.Y. now. Larry Alexander: Well John, you say that facetiously, but I really looked forward to those outdoor events, even though sometimes it was in the hottest part of the year. But we work closely together. John Long: Right? Larry Alexander: But I think Cobie, the one thing that I look forward to each year was state 4-H Congress because it was an opportunity for us to showcase Mississippi state university in the state 4-H office. Because I go back to my early years and growing up I never knew much about 4-H. Never was a 4-H member. And so I prided myself in trying to tell young people about Mississippi State and Extension because I didn't have that luxury when I was growing up. And I tell a lot of people now even. I spent 38 years with it as a career, I never spent a day as a member. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: And that was probably not a bad thing because I didn't have any preconceived notions about the program. But, Congress and the state fair, I guess, docked the boat. John Long: Oh, you know I love State Fair. Larry Alexander: It was probably my favorite two things to look forward to every year. John Long: Wrecking crew. Larry Alexander: Yes indeed. John Long: We'll have to do another show on that when it gets a little closer to the time. Cobie Rutherford: It's crazy how things roll around so quickly in this office. And I'm starting to see that as, I've almost been in there a year in this position, but John today I got an email about state fair. John Long: Did you really? Cobie Rutherford: I'm like, "What? It's not even July yet." John Long: Doesn't matter. Cobie Rutherford: But then started thinking, I'm like, "Well, registration opens August 1st. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: The fair's in October. I mean it's right around the corner. It's just a cycle. John Long: Next week we're rolling into July. Cobie Rutherford: Right. John Long: So yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Somebody called yesterday wanting a fair book. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Yeah. That may have been what you were talking about, but I don't know. Cobie Rutherford: It's a cycle. So whatever- John Long: You got me excited about state fair now. Larry Alexander: John's favorite. John Long: You shouldn't have mentioned it. Cobie Rutherford: I love state fair, too. So you mentioned the Congress and state fair. Anything in particular about those events, just other than watching the youth compete? Larry Alexander: Well, Cobie, I think the big thing was, I had a chance to see kids through their project achievement days and then I see them at the senior level, and you already see them maturing as young people. But then you see them as their first year at Congress and then they come back when they are junior or senior in high school, and boy, there's a big difference in their maturity, the respect. And that just proved to me that 4-H really and truly gives young people a jumpstart in life. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt. Larry Alexander: Equip them with the tools that they need to go out and meet some of the most important people in the world, but then still be kid enough to have fun in the process. So I think that was the one thing that I look forward to and I appreciate it, what those events did for those young folks. John Long: It's definitely amazing to see how they, like in the short time I've been here, to see the 4-H'ers come through and I remember them being small. I say small but younger, and then aging out and then going out and getting careers and all of a sudden it's like, "Well this so and so is in the military and this person's a game warden and this person is..." And I think that's 4-H teaching those life skills like you said, it's able to prepare them probably better than a lot of other young people the same age, for sure. Larry Alexander: I think having my two children grow up through the 4-H ranks, I can see a very noticeable difference in Trey, who is the oldest, and Leanne, which is my youngest. Leanne actually got into 4-H at a younger age than Trey. John Long: Okay. Larry Alexander: Probably not a whole lot of difference, but she was exposed to some things that Trey probably didn't get the opportunity to in 4-H, and I can see it in her personality. Cobie Rutherford: Really? Larry Alexander: I can see it in the way she's performing in her career now. But I just knew that not having that opportunity as a person myself, really let me realize how much I may have missed- Cobie Rutherford: Right. Larry Alexander: ... In getting some of those tools at an earlier age. John Long: And she's a perfect example because I remember when she was on the leadership team and now she's... where is she- Larry Alexander: She's at MS as Director of Student Affairs. John Long: Yeah. That's amazing. Larry Alexander: She's enjoying it. John Long: It makes me feel old. But we'll get back to the age thing again, don't we Larry? Larry Alexander: That's right. John Long: Well, so 38 years in basically from... How many years did you say you stayed in? Larry Alexander: I was in the County for right at 11, almost 11 years. John Long: And the remainder that has been here. Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: Can you think of how many Extension directors that you've had during that time? Larry Alexander: Wow. So my first Extension director is the person that this building is named after, Wm. Bost I believe is his name. But I think if I look back, there's been either seven or eight directors. John Long: Okay. Larry Alexander: I think that's right. John Long: Yeah. Larry Alexander: But the thing that kind of is a funny, back about two or three years ago, a lot of the people that came on with me, the last of them were starting to retire. And I had a conversation with one of them and I said, "Well, I think this Bost Extension Building was built somewhere in the '70s," I said, "I think I'm becoming a part of the building. I go with the decor." I said, "It's time to do something." Larry Alexander: But yeah, I've had the opportunity to experience, I believe it's been seven or eight directors. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: And each one of them had their own unique leadership styles. I couldn't pick a favorite. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: Because sometimes, people with different leadership styles, you need that as an individual to grow yourself, and I think each of them brought a very unique skill to the table. John Long: Yeah. Larry Alexander: But it was fun. John Long: So Dr. Bost, was he here when you started in the state office? Larry Alexander: He was not, he was not. Actually when I started with Extension, he was going out the same- John Long: Oh, really? Larry Alexander: I really never got to really even hear him speak at a function. John Long: Well, the paint hadn't pretty much dried here when you came here then, right? Larry Alexander: That's right. John Long: Yeah, fairly new building. John Long: Well that leads us up to the topic I really don't want to talk about for obvious reasons, but Larry, if decided that moving onto the next phase of life, starting at the end of June, or starting 1st of July, really. Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: So, I know that's a tough decision in some instances because 4-H has been such a big part of your life for so long, you've got things you want to do other than that. I mean, I know you still want do 4-H. I know that. Okay. But what do you see yourself doing in the future? Larry Alexander: Well, Dr. Long, probably if I had retired five or so or more years ago, because really and truly I had a goal of retiring at 55, I probably would have looked at getting into something else that would allow me to continue what I do on my job. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But you know, I've been probably seven years, or not quite seven years, past that time. John Long: Don't tell your age. Larry Alexander: That's right. Almost did. But no, we got some things that we need to do at home that we've been putting on the back burner with our old home and the place itself. So I'm hoping that I'll be able to, in the first year, get that project under way and done. But after that, I told LaTrell Stokes, I said, "I'll be in Starkville, if I can help with some of your workshops and some volunteer work, I'll certainly do that." Because I truly, truly enjoy providing service to people. So I don't want to forget that part of it. But as far as work work, I don't know if I'll be looking for anything. John Long: I'm going to tell you something about the first time, I guess it was the first time I met you. Larry Alexander: Okay. John Long: I came in, and I knew Trey. I actually knew Trey way before I knew you because I would always come to the basement and I would see Trey working in the basement. Larry Alexander: That's right. John Long: In the print department. But anyway, so I interviewed for the job. I think it was the day that I interviewed or something, I can't remember. But I came to your office and very first time I met you, I walked into the office and he smiled at me and I said something to him and I said, "Okay, thanks Larry." And when I said that, I turned and I was like, "Oh!" I just winced because I said, "I don't even know this guy, and I'm already calling him by his first name." And I went home and told my wife and she was like, "You called him Larry?" Little did I know, for the remainder of the time we're having together, that's all I really called him, actually. Larry Alexander: That's right. John Long: I always get tickled, and I know I've been guilty of it too, and I know that you're probably will have heard this in your sleep, but I always call it a quick question. Everybody always has a quick question for Mr. Larry. Do you have any quick questions that come to mind? I know it's millions of them that you've probably answered throughout the years. Cobie Rutherford: I think I asked him 15 today. John Long: I'm telling you. Larry Alexander: Well, you know, the way I took on questions, and this is just something been a part of me for a long time, I feel like if you're providing sometimes maybe an answer, it may not be the exact answer that you give, but it says that somebody thought enough to come to you to ask a question. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: Which I feel good about that. Which means you still feel like you're fulfilling your worth. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But there have been some questions by some agents that sometimes, you hang up the phone, and not just agents, it could be a volunteer. Cobie Rutherford: It could be John. Larry Alexander: But, I guess the one thing people ask me, "Do you ever have agitations," because I always try to smile. Not really. But you think about things, you ask yourself, "Did they really think about that before they asked the question?" John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But I never wanted to make anybody feel that a question was a insignificant question or a dumb question. John Long: Right, no. Larry Alexander: I mean because, if that person had enough courage to ask that question, then we give them the courtesy to give the answers back. That's right. So I tried to take every question that way and not make a person feel, "I'll never ask him a question again." And I think over the years that is why people don't hesitate to ask me any kind of question. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: Because you make their questions important because you give them the answer. But we've had a lot of questions that sometimes you don't really know the answer, but one of my prides was to try to find the best answer for that because there's no way we can know everything. And for people that's just starting in youth development, that's one of the things that you got to do is to make the caller or the person asking the question, feel like it's important enough for you to get an answer, and find that answer and give it to them. So that goes a long way with you. Cobie Rutherford: That's a good point. I remember when I first started in this position, asking you just a million questions a day, because I didn't know what I had gotten into, what I was doing. But I remember that reaction from you always being willing to help out, to stop whatever you're doing to explain to me things thoroughly so that I would get it and understand. And that always went a long way with me. John Long: Of course we know things move along. But anyway, it's a big loss because you've got such a wealth of information and such years of experience that when you don't have that, it's kind of like you got to be, "Here we go." You just don't have Mr. Larry to come to. Cobie Rutherford: I know. John Long: That's going to be missed. I can tell you that's going to be missed for sure. Cobie Rutherford: I'll have to find resources instead of going next door and asking Mr. Larry. We'll have to actually do a Google search. We'll have to work some, John. John Long: Exactly. It'll be okay. Cobie Rutherford: We'll be fine. Larry Alexander: That's the thing you have to keep in mind. I didn't learn all the things I learned overnight. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: I can tell you, experience was a great teacher. I can tell you I did not have, for maybe a year or so, when I came on the staff here at the state office, there were three other people. I think Jim Young, Joe Campbell, and Jared, and their responsibilities were so different from Holly's, which is the responsibilities I took on. But I can remember Joe Campbell being very, very polite and saying, "Well, let's just go find out." And that stuck with me because he could've just blew me off and said, "I don't have time for that." John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: Neither of them ever, ever did that. So, that's why I really tried hard to reach out to other folks and to say, "Hey, we'll go figure it out together." John Long: Right. Right. That's awesome. John Long: I've always thought he was cool under pressure too. I envy that. Larry Alexander: I've had some real cusses before I want to tell you that. That was hard. That was real hard. John Long: You get a thick skin eventually, I guess. Larry Alexander: You will. You will. John Long: That was one thing I was going to ask. If you got- Cobie Rutherford: I've got a good question. John Long: Go ahead. You ask. Cobie Rutherford: So, favorite memory? John Long: Oh! Cobie Rutherford: I know there's probably a bunch of them, but- John Long: I mean has to be favorite, favorite now. Larry Alexander: Oh wow. That's a tough question. John Long: We should have prompted him with it, now I wish we had. Larry Alexander: I need a chance to think about that one, because I've had several, but I don't know if it was such a fun memories, the one that's coming to me right now. But Dr. Evelyn Johnson was on board as a clothing specialist, and it's a fair related item, and we were in Jackson for the state fair and we had a fashion show as a part of the fair. Larry Alexander: And so we had spent Friday night and some lady from the Gulf Coast had come there to see her child's, seven year old, exhibit on display. And so she got to Evelyn Johnson before she got to me. And when I walked through the back door, Evelyn was trying to keep her from discovering that I had gotten there. But somebody said, "Well there he is right there." And so she beelined to me and she proceeded to give me this- John Long: What for? Larry Alexander: ... Spiel about, they traveled all the way from the coast, "And my baby's exhibit is not on display, and y'all should be ashamed," yada yada, yada. And I just stood there with this, well everybody says I just stood there with a smile on my face because I really didn't know what to do, but I finally asked her what County she was from and who was her agent. Sharon Watkins was the agent. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: Fairly new. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: And we did an exhibit, five to seven year olds, at the fair. Her exhibit was there, but not on display. John Long: Oh. Larry Alexander: But she gave me a few choice words. But, I guess that was a real learning opportunity for me as well because we tried to explain more to those new agents what to tell their volunteers so we didn't have that again. I won't ever forget that, but it wasn't too fun. Cobie Rutherford: So not necessarily the favorite, but one that stuck with you. John Long: Sticks in your brain. Cobie Rutherford: Oh man. John Long: Oh. So speaking of that, do you have any advice - A, to us, and those that are left behind and agents out there? Larry Alexander: Well, the tidbit of advice that I would give for those who are working in the 4-H arena and the youth development arena, one of the things that I encourage people not to do, and that's to assume. Sometimes we go about our work assuming that everybody knows the same thing that you know, and there are some young agents out there, young volunteers, young to the 4-H youth department. And I just think that we have to keep that in mind,, is that you have to reverse the situation and put yourself in their shoes. And I think by doing that, that'll allow you the opportunity to service people in a glad way or in a happy way that they look forward to having opportunities to dialogue with you. Larry Alexander: Because if you ever make a person feel small, they will avoid you the rest of your career. They won't want to have anything to do with you. So we have to have a welcoming attitude and you have to let people know that you care. Not always have the right answer, but know that you care. John Long: Right? Larry Alexander: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: That's really good. John Long: Well, as we close this podcast, there's a little bit of sadness. I'm not going to lie, I've enjoyed working with you these past... I don't do goodbyes too well, so this is about as good as it's going to get. Larry Alexander: I understand. John Long: But I have enjoyed working with you and we appreciate you coming in today and we wish you nothing but the best of health, wealth and luck, and enjoy working on your cars and answer your phone because I've got tractor issues or something I need help with. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, don't go and change your number without telling us. Larry Alexander: I look forward to the opportunity to continue friendships, and anything that I can provide to help along the way, y'all know that I'm more than willing to do that. John Long: Have you got any plans for July one? Like what you're going to do that day? Because I asked somebody else that the other day, another retiree. Larry Alexander: You know it's funny, I had a conversation with my wife and she said, "What are you going to do on July 1st?" I said, "I'm going to stay in the bed past eight o'clock," and I said, "If the phone rings, it'll just ring because I'm not going to answer it." I said, "Because I won't know what to do with myself." So you know, July one, my old dad is still living and we're blessed to have him, so I'm sure I will be either headed in that direction, or doing something with him. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: That's my intent. John Long: Somebody told me that it feels like a vacation for about a week or so, and then it sets in that you don't have the office to go to. Larry Alexander: That's right. John Long: Well, we wish you nothing but the best thing, and thank you for 38 years of service to the youth of our great state and we wish you all the best. So, thank you. John Long: We've been speaking with Mr. Larry Alexander and Mr. 4-H and this is 4-H-4-U-2, and we hope that if you are interested in 4-H, you would go to the website and Cobie, what's that website? Cobie Rutherford: That's extension.msstate.edu. John Long: Y'all have a great day. Thank you very much for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

In the first of 2 parts, Cobie and John sit down with Mr. Larry Alexander to reflect on his 38 years of working in 4-H, and what his plans are in retirement. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we are back again. Welcome to another edition, podcast if you will, broadcasting from Bost Extension Center. This is 4-H-4-U-2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we are back at it again, Cobie. Cobie Rutherford: Yes we are, John. It's been a crazy week here on campus. John Long: Yeah. It's summertime. Cobie Rutherford: The students are starting to come back for orientation. There's football camps everywhere. It's an exciting time to be on campus. John Long: I'm excited to be here today. Of course, I'm always excited to do these podcasts. I mean, it's kind of like the highlight of my week so far. It's just like I can't wait for them to be here. So I'm pumped up about this. I'm also pumped up about our guest today. We have Mr. Larry Alexander and he's also known as Mr. 4-H. And we are going to talk to him today about his career. And Larry, tell everybody, how long have you been in 4-H? Larry Alexander: So, I've been in 4-H exactly, this past June 1st, 38 years. John Long: 38 years. Almost as old as I am. Larry Alexander: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. John Long: No, it's not, though. It's not that long. Larry Alexander: You're dating me, John. John Long: No, no, no. I'm a young man. I'm a young man. So Larry, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you were born and raised and just a little bit of background about you. Larry Alexander: Okay. So I'm really old Delta country boy. Grew up in a little small town of Ruleville, Mississippi. And of course, when I'm away from Ruleville, I have to tell everybody I'm from either Greenwood or Cleveland, because they'd never heard of Ruleville before. But got my start in, kind of on a farm. And then we finally moved to the city limits of Ruleville. But came up on the farm and Ruleville has been my stomping ground for a long time. John Long: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, Ruleville's like you can't get to Cleveland if you don't, from the- Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: I mean, I guess you could, but you have to go through it to get to Cleveland sometimes. So that's awesome. And I got tickled once I found out where Larry lived. And where his daddy still lives. Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: I drove by his house my whole life and never even knew it and I was like, oh really, that's your house? Anyway, that's neither here nor there. So from the Delta, what's your educational background? Larry Alexander: My undergrad degree is agriculture education with an emphasis in biological science. Then of course my master's degree is in AIS, which most of ... Started a few classes toward the PhD but didn't quite get there so. But that is my educational background. John Long: That's awesome. And you went to school? Larry Alexander: Alcorn State University for my undergrad and then my graduate work was here at Mississippi State University. John Long: And that's a pretty good little ways from my home, I would say at that time, right? I mean- Larry Alexander: Roughly about three, three and a half hours and never being away from home before going that far, it seemed like forever to get there. Yeah. John Long: It's a little homesickness at first, probably? Larry Alexander: Yeah, first few weeks. You know, as a matter of fact, a little bit of funny, I had a friend of mine that we majored in the same thing, went to school together and when we went for freshman orientation, we didn't go. I have a sister that lives in Vidalia, Louisiana, which is just across the bridge or Natchez. So on about, we went down on Monday and freshman orientation was Monday through Wednesday. And so by Wednesday my sister finally asked me, she said, have y'all got your classes and all of that? And we looked at each other and we didn't have a clue. So we had to beat it back to Alcorn to get registered because we didn't know any difference. John Long: Otherwise you'd just been walking around campus having a good time. Larry Alexander: That's right, just having a good time. John Long: That's right, that's right. Living that college life. Cobie Rutherford: So what are some of the things at Alcorn Mr. Larry, Or experiences you had growing up that kind of led you to a career in agriculture and in service, really? Larry Alexander: Well, Cobie, it's funny you ask that question because when I first went to Alcorn, I did have an idea that I wanted to do something in agriculture, I just didn't know what that was at the time. So it took me a semester, or a year, to kind of decide that I wanted to do something in the Ag Education arena. But my first thought was possibly being a Vocational Agriculture teacher. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, yeah. Larry Alexander: Because actually the gentleman that directed me to Alcorn was Bobby Boone, was our Vocational Ag educator, and he kind of talked us into going to Alcorn sort of. But I had a sister and a brother that both went there, but then he helped me kind of decide which direction I wanted to go. But I had not heard of the Extension program within the first year being there. So that came a little later, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Right, right, right. John Long: So you mentioned him or some other people that kind of influenced your educational direction, didn't it? Larry Alexander: Well, my oldest sister, been in education forever, seems like, but over 40 years. She coached me a lot along the way. But my old dad had always thought that I would be doing something in the Ag field, just didn't know what it was. And with him not having a college degree, he didn't know all the ins and outs and details of what you could major in and all. But he kind of kept me focused on Ag because he said it seemed like I got a joy out of doing something in the Ag field, so. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But Mr. Bobby Boone really enlightened us on the ins and outs of Ag, so. John Long: That's cool. And then actually working on the farm- Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: I mean, you had that background, so. Larry Alexander: That's really all we knew at the time, yeah. John Long: Right, right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it's kind of cool looking back and thinking about the experiences that you provide to so many 4-H'ers about teaching them about careers and different STEM and agricultural areas in the career field. And you know, there's a lot of things that kids don't know about till they actually come to the university. John Long: That's right. I didn't know what I wanted to do either. Larry Alexander: Well, I think a lot of people are like that. And I think I took that with me as I started my career, especially in 4-H because I got to work with a lot of children in Marshall County, which is where I got my start in Extension. They would go to school every day, but they really never thought about what it was they wanted to do. And when we started talking about all of the opportunities that agriculture had to offer and the Extension Service had to offer, you kind of channel young people in at an early stage in their education to figure it out early so you don't wait till you're a sophomore in college to decide what you want to do. John Long: That's right. And it kind of forces you to make it a lifetime career decision that's in a rush. Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: But yeah, that's great. I was always envious of people that knew what they wanted to do right off the bat. You know, but sometimes that's really, I guess, not the best. But I would have liked to have known maybe a little bit sooner. So you mentioned that, I guess your first introduction to 4-H was in Marshall County. Larry Alexander: That is correct. John Long: When was that? Larry Alexander: Actually, in 1981. John Long: Okay. Larry Alexander: It was when I went to my first job there in Marshall County. And another little story about that, I went on June 1st, which was a Monday. And that was the start, so Ronnie Jones was the County Ag Agent there. He was supposed to take me over to meet the board and the board would approve the position and we would go forward. Well, the board didn't approve that position. So Ronnie didn't know what to do and he said, well Lar, I'll tell you what, you just go on back home and I'll get this all straightened out and we'll call you back. Well, I went home, but I was trying to get, I'm into cars a little bit and so my daddy worked with a big dealership in Illinois, so I called him and said, hey, I'm on my way. And he said, no, you just go back home. They got something mixed up. But I almost missed my calling- John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: ... in the extension arena because if he had said, come on, I probably wouldn't have got a second chance- John Long: Really? Larry Alexander: ... to go for that job. But the job had already been approved, the board just, they paid me $25 a month. John Long: Wow. Oh my gosh. Larry Alexander: That was the percentage that they paid of my salary a month. John Long: Oh, wow. Larry Alexander: But they couldn't come to an agreement on whether they needed the position because they had not had a 4-H Youth Agent for about seven or eight years before. John Long: Wow, that big of a gap. Larry Alexander: It was. John Long: Man. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. John Long: That is insane. So how long was it before he called you back? Larry Alexander: Well, Mr. Leonard Turner, I'll never forget him, he was a District Agent for that region and he called me, actually Tuesday morning, and he asked me where was I at? And he said, you supposed to be in Holly Springs. He said, I don't care what the board said, you go to work. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But he then realized, I had kind of went on a wild goose chase. He said, I tell you what, you just go back Monday. And he said, you start the work then and if the board says they're not going to pay, I'll pay you the $25 a month. So he kind of made a- John Long: It was going to come from somewhere. Larry Alexander: Yeah, it was going to come from somewhere. That's what he was saying, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. That's pretty cool. So from the office in Marshall County, then kind of what path did you take to get here to the state 4-H office? Larry Alexander: Well, it's kind of funny how my career track's landed. When I went to Marshall County, really didn't know anybody in that area. But then after I started doing some 4-H programming, the trend back then was you get into the Extension program at an entry level through 4-H. Then everybody would say, oh, you want to become a Home Economist or become an Ag Agent. Well, I had an opportunity probably five years into my 4-H Youth Agent position to take on a County Ag position in Benton County, which was the next county over. But something about the 4-H youth development work just gave me a lot of joy in helping young people. And I decided back then, that's where I wanted to make my career was in youth development. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: And so I turned that position down and stayed in Marshall County for another, for about 11 years. And a gentleman here at the state 4-H office by the name of Mr. Holly Ford was retiring and they were going to fill the position and he called me and just said, hey, would you be interested in applying for a position at the state office? And I instantly told him, no, because my wife was from Holly Springs, big family, and I knew it was going to be real hard to move her from Holly Springs to Starkville, Mississippi. But after the interview, seminar and all of that, I really just blew it off because I figured I wouldn't have a chance. Then I got that phone call. John Long: Wow. So did you have children at that time, when y'all made that move? Larry Alexander: We did. John Long: Okay. Larry Alexander: Actually, I had two children. My son was, right then, he was in the third grade and Leanne was like two or three years old. John Long: So she really didn't have a- Larry Alexander: No, not much in Holly Springs. John Long: How do Trey take it when you said, we're going to Starkville. Larry Alexander: Trey had some friends that lived right there in our little community. It was kind of, he was okay with it, but he realized he wouldn't be seeing his closest friends every day. But my biggest chore was getting my wife to say, yes. John Long: I bet. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Larry Alexander: It put a little strain on the marriage there. But you know, her mother really talked to her and told her that, you know, being the baby girl of that family, of nine, the only way for her to really grow was to get away from her brothers and sisters for a little while. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: And that kind of resonated with her, but it took about two years or so to really make her realize that it was a good move for her, personally. John Long: Right, right, right, right. That's always tough leaving family. Larry Alexander: It is, it is. John Long: For sure. Especially one that's a large one. Cobie Rutherford: That's for sure. Larry Alexander: Kind of uprooting and going to somewhere new. That's always tough. Cobie Rutherford: That is so true. Larry Alexander: For sure. John Long: Would you, I had to ask this because I forgot to earlier, but do you remember your very first day at Marshall County? Like official, like I went to the office and actually made some phone calls? Larry Alexander: John, I really can say that I do because the secretary that was there, Ms. Nilah Moore, I won't ever forget her. When I came in that that day, actually to work, not the first day I went and had to come back. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: But the first day I went into work, she brought two messages to me and said here, this is for you, deal with it. And it was just- John Long: It was a disgruntled parent. Larry Alexander: That's right. But no, it was a teacher who had called, somehow they got the word or it was put in newspaper that a person was starting in the 4-H position in the county. John Long: Oh. Larry Alexander: And it was actually a lady who had been a volunteer in Marshall County and she wanted to start a club in the school there. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: So it was a good experience then, for that first call and to actually talk to somebody and then how to advise them because I didn't know much. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: We hadn't even had orientation. But after about, I guess it was about four to six months on the job, we had orientation one. John Long: Which was here? Larry Alexander: Which was here on campus. Came back for a week, week long. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: And they gave you a lot of the, one-two-three's and A-B-C's of 4-H, which was really, really good training. And then you went back to your county and worked a few months and they brought you back for an orientation two. John Long: Oh. Larry Alexander: And it was about three and a half days. John Long: So what was the part two? I can imagine part one was really ground level 4-H. Larry Alexander: So the first part was really dealing with the paperwork that you had to do with the Extension Service. John Long: Okay. Larry Alexander: Like our monthly report. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: So when they're due. What the pecking order was as far as a protocol. But then the orientation two really got more into the subject matter of youth development in 4-H. John Long: Oh, okay. Larry Alexander: So about the clubs and different types of delivery modes and all of that. But they really had a great way of introducing new people to Extension positions back then. I think that's, as an old head now, I think that's one of the things that we could learn something from, because right now we're hiring people and we're just putting them in there to do a job and we really haven't given them all the tools that they really need. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: So if I could encourage our administration now to to look at that, that would be one thing I would encourage that would be beneficial to a lot of people. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: Especially in 4-H. John Long: Do you remember how big your class was? Larry Alexander: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I can just about mention the ones that were in there, but we had about 10 to 11 people. John Long: Okay, okay. Larry Alexander: It was not huge and they gave us a lot of personal instructions because we were not that large. But out of the group that started with me, probably three or four did not stay in Extension. John Long: Oh really? Larry Alexander: Yeah. They left to go do something else. John Long: They didn't say long at all? Or they just didn't- Larry Alexander: No, they didn't make it to orientation two. John Long: Really, wow. Larry Alexander: Some of it, as a matter of fact, [Sierra Brantley 00:16:27] is one young lady that I remember, she went into education, to start teaching school. So some people discovered early on that 4-H wasn't really for them. John Long: For them. Yeah. Larry Alexander: It required a lot of time and effort. Cobie Rutherford: Well, I think today, looking at how busy our agents are and looking at how many different clubs and stuff to balance, it would be pretty daunting for a young person to take on that responsibility. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: You'd have to almost share that passion for youth development that Mr. Larry mentioned earlier- John Long: Right, absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: ... to do a good job at it. John Long: Of course it's easier now, you mentioned getting your master's degree. You actually had to travel to Starkville, didn't you? For- Larry Alexander: That is exactly right. John Long: Or Mississippi State, I'm sorry. Larry Alexander: That's right. You could take, I think they allowed professional staff then, six hours. Three could be during the day, three hour class. And then three after five. And so they had the Ag Information Science Department kind of set up where they made it really easy, but we were two and a half hours that we had to drive, mostly on Monday nights. John Long: Wow. Larry Alexander: From six to nine. John Long: Then turn around and go back. Larry Alexander: That's right. That's exactly right. John Long: Then get up and go to work. Larry Alexander: That's exactly right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Larry Alexander: And back in those days, a lot of the people that were managing the offices, they expected, they didn't care whether you worked on the weekend or you had something else, they wanted you to be there that morning. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: If you left later, they understood that. John Long: Right, right. Larry Alexander: But a little different values and all back then. John Long: Boy, that makes you appreciate technology a little bit more. Larry Alexander: It does. It really does. John Long: For sure. That's right. Yep. Cobie Rutherford: It would've probably been nice though, to not have been constantly dialed into your email and constantly checking email emails and texts and all that stuff. John Long: I don't know what we would do if we didn't have email. Just think, I guess you sit there and open mail or twiddle your thumbs until something, till the phone rang, I guess. I don't know. Larry Alexander: You know John, it's funny you mention opening mail because everything we got, back to my county days, it came in hard copy stuff. John Long: Right. Larry Alexander: And you would spend, literally, when you had something going on like you had county contests or whatever, you'd have tons of mail coming in that you had to take time to just open and look at every piece. John Long: Make sure it was all there. Larry Alexander: That's correct. John Long: Wow. Cobie Rutherford: Read it from top to bottom and- John Long: My how times have changed. Cobie Rutherford: Probably less things were missed back then. John Long: That's true. Cobie Rutherford: Because there was probably a system that you had to sign off on to open the letters and who opened them and all that stuff. Larry Alexander: You're right on target. Cobie Rutherford: Wow, goodness. Larry Alexander: Technology has, as you all know, it has its ups and downs. It's very easy for someone to say, well I didn't get that email or I missed it. But usually when that hard copy comes in, either a secretary or somebody was going to open that piece of mail and let you know what was going on. John Long: Make you a little more conscientious of- Larry Alexander: It does. John Long: ... what you're sending out, I guess. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's true. John Long: That's awesome. Well, go ahead, Cobie, I'm sorry. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, I was just thinking about, somebody told me one time about writing a letter that it was always a good practice to write the letter before you go to bed and leave it on your counter to decide whether or not you wanted to mail it out the next morning. A lot of times I think people are fast behind their emails and just type something hastily and click send. I shouldn't have said that. Larry Alexander: I've had a few instances like that. John Long: Texts too. You better watch your texts. And predictive text is even worse. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, I know. John Long: You better make sure you're checking that. Larry Alexander: That's right. John Long: So I think that right now we're just going to stop right here and we're going to make this a two part series, I think. We've spent basically this first half talking about Mr. Larry's first part of his career. We're going to talk about the second stage of his career in part two. So y'all join us on 4-H-4-U-2. And if you want more information on the 4-H in your area, go to extension.msstate.edu and click on the 4-H tab at the top of the page. And with that, I'm John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we'll see you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

John and Cobie discuss what 4-H Project Achievement Days are and how it helps younger 4-H’ers develop life skills. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. Dr. John Long: Well, if you're hearing that really hip kind of funky music, that means we are here for another 4-H-4-U-2 podcast. I am John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. Dr. John Long: We are pretty excited today about the weather outside. It's absolutely phenomenal outside. When I got up this morning it felt like it was spring all over again. Cobie Rutherford: I know. I don't feel like we had any days like this even in April, when it was raining every day. Where our spring was consumed by water. Dr. John Long: Yes, very much so. Very much so. And you'll hear us talking about the weather so much because we know what's coming. July, August. We're going enjoy every little cool snap we have. But that's part of it, and that's where we live and that's something we have to just deal with I guess. Dr. John Long: So Cobie, we have our starting off, we just finished up Congress when this is being recorded. Congress, as we talked about before, is basically the senior only event. Now we've got some other events coming up very shortly that are basically something for the younger kids today. So let's talk about that and exactly what that entails. Cobie Rutherford: So the events John's describing here is Project Achievement Days and we have four that are dispersed around the States. One hosted in each region of the State by the regional offices. So the Northeast Regional Extension and Research Center is hosting the first one we have coming up. We'll have one hosted of course by the Northwest or any center. Then Southeast and Southwest will host them. Cobie Rutherford: And John, really that's when the agents get together and they plan these contests for junior 4-H'ers. These 4-H'ers are between 8 and 13 for the most part. Some younger ones may do an exhibit or two, but for the most part they're between 8 and 13. They do things like visual presentations, judging contest, miscellaneous contest, like the bicycle rodeo, the bicycle contest. It seems like it's going to be a lot of fun for these kids. Dr. John Long: It is. I always enjoyed doing the Project Achievement Days and anytime I get to judge a contest, such as visual presentations or being in a judging contest, kind of overseeing that. I really love the visual presentations that calls each year. It gets kind of funny because even if I'm not a judge, I may be there to ask a question and I sincerely ask a question out of curiosity to be educated. Dr. John Long: Because every year that I go, a lot of these young people, they will do a presentation and it's like, "Wow. I never knew that." Sincerely, this is not for score, this is just out of just pure wanting base knowledge I guess of the topic. So really cool stuff that young people are involved in and you can tell they put a lot of time and effort into the presentations and their preparation for the event. Cobie Rutherford: I think about those visual presentations. A lot of times they kind of pick a topic that they're interested in, but also at the same time they don't know a whole lot about. So they have this chance to do a research project, so to speak, and then present what they found to a layman audience. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's what's most cool about that. They're able to almost do what extension agents do. Take knowledge that is out there that's been published or, that comes from really good sources and then transpose that to something that they understand or they could share and teach to their peers. Dr. John Long: Right. Of course that goes back to probably one of the first questions that always gets asked, and it's kind of a can answer was our question is, "Why did you choose this topic?" And they can surely come up with the fact of how they really got interested in this specific topic or going back to even what I was telling Matt about rank curiosity about, why something is the way it is. So it is a great opportunity for them to get out there. Dr. John Long: I think one of my favorite, as you mentioned, some of the younger kids will come and they'll do a visual presentation, a poster board presentation. I remember one of my favorite ones being how to play the guitar. This is a little kid, he came up, he had a cowboy hat on. He was decked out and he had his little guitar. I mean, that little fella could flat out play. I tried to play a little bit, but he could play. Dr. John Long: And that was something that he was interested in and he was trying to teach others about it. I, in fact, I went up to him and asked him, I was like, "Basically tell me about your project." And he was sincere, even at a young age, very sincere on trying to teach me how to play a G chord. Cobie Rutherford: I remember in high school giving visual presentations. One of my friends one time gave one on, how to clean her glasses. She had forgot to prepare and she didn't have anything written down or anything done. It just totally slipped her mind. This girl got up in front of our class and just came up with that topic out of the blue and said, "I'm going to demonstrate how I clean my glasses." Cobie Rutherford: Dr. Long I'm telling you, this girl gave the best feature and our teacher gave her a hundred because she completely winged it and demonstrated the proper way and how she took everything apart. I mean, I'm sure she knew what she was doing. Cobie Rutherford: But I think back from a 4-H level, one of our guiding principles, we talk about the big M quite a bit, and the M stands for mastery. We talk about if you're able to get up and give a presentation on a topic of your choice and teach others about it, well you've really started to master that topic from my opinion. So visual presentations really help us drive that point home. Dr. John Long: Well. Yeah, and I totally agree that visual presentations, I think they serve going back as far as a transfer knowledge. But it also allows that individual the opportunity to get up in front of a crowd and actually be able to speak. We talk about public speaking. Well, visual presentations give you the opportunity to actually get up and speak on a topic that you know about. I know that sounds kind of [inaudible 00:07:21], but that's the truth. Dr. John Long: A lot of times for me, I didn't have that exposure. So some of the first times that I actually spoke in public or actually in front of extremely large crowds of people at older ages. So you can imagine the amount of life skills that these young people are being taught simply by being exposed to speaking in front of people. Dr. John Long: Whether you remember the presentation or not, or whether you'll even remember what you spoke on. You took that step to get up and being able to present. Being able to talk to people is one of the key things that you're going to really need as far as a life skill later in life. It's one of the biggest problems that people face, is communication. Cobie Rutherford: Right. That's exactly right. I think that the Project Achievement Days are such a good platform for these kids. They're the first time to give a visual presentation or a public speech or whatever event they choose to do because it's a friendly audience. It's for somebody that is there listening that's going to help them get better. I think the children know that going into it, so it's perfect platform. Dr. John Long: So when we talk about Project Achievement, Days, how does a young person get involved in going to Project Achievement Day? Cobie Rutherford: Well, I think the primary way that most children get involved is by reaching out to their 4-H agent or their County agent. Every County in Mississippi has an extension office and they have someone there that can be a resource to them. So if you're interested in participating in Project Achievement Day, it would just be as easy as calling your local extension office or even reaching out to us at the state office and we could point you in the right direction. Dr. John Long: Absolutely. Absolutely. Just go to the website and you can find a wealth of information either in your County or in regards to who your agent or agents are. They will be more than happy to help you. Even like you said, we are as well. So we talked about and visual presentations, we talked about very briefly about judging contest. So let's talk about what exactly or just give a few topics in which young people actually present on are or what contest they're in. Cobie Rutherford: So for the judging contest, there are several different components. You can participate in dairy judging, I think we talked about that or not dairy judging, dairy products judging. We don't have live animals at this contest, but- Dr. John Long: We may have metallic tasting ice cream. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's exactly right. So dairy products judging would be definitely a fun one to do. Consumer judging is actually one of the most popular ones. I guess being new to this whole Project Achievement Day and where it's Congress still, I don't know a whole lot about that contest. But apparently it attracts a whole lot of different types of children with a lot of different interests. Cobie Rutherford: The way I understanding, correct me if I'm wrong here, but basically they have to make choices that everyday consumers make, whether it's the grocery store, looking at apparels or just anything like the consumer would buy. So it might be washing powders or, I don't know what all it could be. Cobie Rutherford: But basically the kids have to make a decision on which product is the best for their buck and then give a set of reasons and defend that product. So I think that's pretty cool. Then we have the course in wildlife habitat judging. And you probably know more about that than I do. Dr. John Long: I need to learn more. Cobie Rutherford: I haven't seen that contest- Dr. John Long: It's pretty cool. Cobie Rutherford: In real life, but I know it's a lot of interest and when they get to a senior level and come to Congress and participate in that, there's national trip that goes with it. So this always popular. And then poultry judging. I talked to Jessica Wells, who... We need to get her on here. Dr. John Long: Yeah, she wouldn't be great. Cobie Rutherford: She'd be really good. She's actually taken some birds up to Verona this week. Dr. John Long: Is she really? Cobie Rutherford: For judging. Dr. John Long: That awesome. One of my favorite things in poultry judging is the egg candling. Oh, I love that. I don't know what it is. Just that aerial light I guess and then there's this egg setting on top of it, but I know it sounds weird. But I don't know that much about candling, but it looks very interesting. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I don't know a whole lot about it either. I like to eat eggs and chicken, but outside of that, I know a few breeds of chickens. I had some chickens at one time. Dr. John Long: You did? Cobie Rutherford: I did. Yeah. Dr. John Long: Oh, really. I want chickens. Cobie Rutherford: They're okay. I'll like them just to look at, I don't really want to go out and gather their eggs or do any of that. Thanks to Mississippi and thousands of poultry farmers who do that for us. Dr. John Long: That's right. That's right. Cobie Rutherford: I'm content going to the grocery store. Dr. John Long: That seems like a throw back to what we used to have I guess before modern conveniences. But yeah, it's a lot easier. I think you probably, be better of to... Well, no, I don't. Do your own thing, I guess. If you want to do it, do it. But yeah. That's my plan is to have chickens and a beehive, couple of bee boxes some one day. Cobie Rutherford: I think beehives would be a a pretty neat venture to go into. I'm not saying I won't have chickens, but I'm going to have chickens just to look at. Dr. John Long: I'm thinking you'd say you will have chickens, but you might not have them for production purposes. Cobie Rutherford: We might not go out there and get their eggs. Dr. John Long: Speaking on honeybees and things like that. I get involved in this entomology portion that we have at Project Achievement Day. I'll tell you what, last year I really had a awesome experience because I saw this young man from the Southwest District, he's always been super interested in entomology ever since he was young. Dr. John Long: I've seen him come up through 4-H and this may be his last Project Achievement Day before he moves into senior or he may have already moved into a senior. I can't remember. But anyway, he has just been eaten up with entomology and he came up to me last year, he and his mother. She said, "He's got to tell you about the book he wrote." And sure enough, he had written a book on beneficial insects in the garden. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. Dr. John Long: Yeah. And he was working on another book talking about fire ants in Mississippi. So this is a young- Cobie Rutherford: Less than 13. Dr. John Long: Oh, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. Dr. John Long: I mean pictures, the whole nine yard. It was really awesome. So it's just stuff like that. It kind of says, "Yeah, there's some very positive things that happen at Project Achievement Day for sure. Cobie Rutherford: I think is just going through all this stuff and looking at all the different opportunities. That entomology stuff actually intrigues me more than anything. Because I don't know that a lot of States have an entomology program in the 4-H. Dr. John Long: They might not. I don't know. I don't know. Cobie Rutherford: I'm not sure. I don't recall seeing that when I grew up in the Alabama system. There may have been one, but I just may not have been aware of it. Dr. John Long: Every state needs one. Cobie Rutherford: I was visiting with [Dr. Gordon 00:15:11], our entomology specialist a few weeks ago. I've always known that insects outnumber humans and outnumber all other life forms together. But there's a lot of careers available in entomology. Dr. John Long: Very much so. Very much so. And that's perfect, like I said, speaking to that young man, see this is a perfect gateway. If you're interested in something you just never can tell, it could turn into a career path that starts them on a journey for the rest of their life. So there's a lot of opportunities to try different things. I think that's one of the things that that Project Achievement Day does. Dr. John Long: It provides that opportunity that you can select a topic and go with it and really dig in and get information and that's a lot of fun to me. Plus we have some fun stuff that goes on as well, as far as just entertainment activities. What about that? We have, it's kind of like Congress, we had a share of the fun. So I think we're going to have something like that- Cobie Rutherford: Got to share the fun again, the the big talent show, the modeling squad. They've got some pretty cool workshops coming up at the Project Achievement Day this week in Verona. Dr. John Long: What do they have? Cobie Rutherford: One, that I'm very interested in, is a dog training workshop. Basically, this renowned dog handler is coming up and bringing his dog and going teach the 4-H'ers how they can train their dog to do certain things like heal and how to positively reinforced different behaviors. How to get the doll to do what you want it to do. I think that's just going to be really neat to see you. Dr. John Long: I'm going to go and see that one. Cobie Rutherford: I went through a dog obedience class with my dog a few weeks ago and it was actually more of a learning experience for me than it was my dog. Because the dog knows what she wants to do and I just have to teach her how to do what I want her to. My way of communicating with her was different than what the instructor thought I should do. Dr. John Long: I thought my dog's is going to need training. I think it goes the other way. Man, I'll be asleep in the chair and he'll come up and bump me in the cheek to let me know, I said, "Okay, go outside." So yeah. That's going to be good to see. I think that I'm going to be really interested in that. But there's always something, Cobie Rutherford: There's a lot of careers in the pet industry too, so. Dr. John Long: Oh, yeah. Big time. Cobie Rutherford: There's actually a visual presentation on pet care. [crosstalk 00:17:50] There's quite a few children that are signed up for that. Dr. John Long: Awesome. Awesome. Well, we look forward to that. Now you're saying we've got the... I'm talking like I don't know because we're going to be there. But Northeast is tomorrow. Cobie Rutherford: June, 14th. Dr. John Long: I mean June, I'm already in July. But as you said, things are flying by, aren't they? Cobie Rutherford: Right. Dr. John Long: June 14th, is going to be the Northeast Project Achievement Day. Then what's the date to the other ones? Oh, he's had a lot- Cobie Rutherford: July the 8th, it starts on a Tuesday. Dr. John Long: Yes. That's correct. Cobie Rutherford: They go 8th, 9th and 10th. Dr. John Long: Yeah. We'll be on the road. That is a fun road trip to be on. So we're going to go to Southeast and Southwest and then Northwest in that order. Cobie Rutherford: So Laurel, Raymond to Morehead. Dr. John Long: Yes, yes, yes. Cobie Rutherford: I'm excited to get to Morehead, I've never been there. Dr. John Long: Oh, it's a cool campus. I love it. I love it. And they have a lot of cool activities on the... They have at the center of the campus. I know for the past two years they've done archery and stuff like that. Yes. Kind of like, "Hey, if you're not in a contest, come have fun with us over here." Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty cool. Dr. John Long: Yep. Yep. Cobie Rutherford: They're bigger that I thought they'd be. So there's 441 people that'll be at the one, this week. Dr. John Long: Tomorrow? Cobie Rutherford: Yes, tomorrow. Dr. John Long: Oh wow. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. That's huge. That's how many they're preparing lunch for us. Dr. John Long: Good night. That's a lot. That is a lot. Cobie Rutherford: It's exciting. Dr. John Long: We're all looking forward to it and we neglected to say that we have a special silent guest with us. Evelyn Phillips is here. I did say that right, didn't it? Evelyn Phillips:           Yes. Dr. John Long: Okay. She said I did. Okay. So she is going to be helping us this summer and, and she's nodding in approval off camera, I mean off of mic. So we appreciate her and we hope we didn't bore you too much to death. But this is 4-H-4-U-2, and we're going to keep talking about and youth development and it's what we do and that's who we are. So that's what we're going to be doing. Hey from here on out. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Dr. John Long: So anything else coming up Cobie you want to mention? Cobie Rutherford: We'll save that for the next podcast. Dr. John Long: Oh, I cannot wait. We've got some really good things I think lined up for next podcasts or for next few podcasts you're going to really find interesting. So we're going to leave you with that cliff hanger and you all come and join us again. Please subscribe to 4-H-4-U-2. Dr. John Long: You can go on the iTunes app now and subscribe to us. That's where we're going to be, I guess broadcasting from, for lack of a better term. Because I'm still learning here. But anyway, go and subscribe to 4-H-4-U-2, and if you have any questions on a 4-H in your area or in the state, where do they need to go? What website is that going? Cobie Rutherford: It's extension.msstate.edu. Dr. John Long: Awesome. Well, thank you all for joining us and we'll see you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Cobie and John take a deep breath and talk about the 2019 State Congress Highlights, and favorite moments. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Coby Rutherford. John Long: And welcome back to another podcast of 4-H-4-U-2. I am John Long. Coby Rutherford: And I am Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Cobie, let's just take a, inhale deeply, and exhale. Cobie Rutherford: It has been a week. John Long: It has been a week, and we're here to talk about that- Cobie Rutherford: What a fun week. John Long: What did you ... Well, we'll talk about that later. Tell us what's been going on in the world of 4-H. Cobie Rutherford: So this past week we had our state 4-H Congress, where we brought over 600 youth from around the state in to compete in about 80 different contests. They went to workshops where they increased their leadership ability. They learned new life skills, and I think just overall had an outstanding time. John Long: Yeah, I know that for us on Tuesday we had some ambassadors kind of trickle in and they were going to go over some scripts and we ate some pizza. So that was kind of a good way to ease into to the week. And then of course Wednesday morning when registration opened up, it was awesome just to see everybody excited about moving into the dorms. It was just... It's the frenzy of activity. I guess I love that the most. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, as those youth were unpacking their cars and coming into the dorm for the first time I thought, "Oh gosh, are some of these kids going to stay forever." John Long: Some of them probably wanted to. Cobie Rutherford: They brought so many clothes. And I guess they had to bring a lot, because they had to bring their bedding- John Long: Yeah that's true. Cobie Rutherford: ... and their pillows and stuff. But- John Long: Yeah, that's true. Cobie Rutherford: Gosh, I think that just the excitement that day kind of set the stage for the rest of the week. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: It was a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm. I remember thinking that day, I thought, well as we were checking folks in, I had the opportunity to check in the pictures and the help with the posters and that kind of stuff. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Well this is going really, really good. It seemed to fly. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Is this going to set the stage for a hit? And it did- John Long: It really did. Cobie Rutherford: Everything went by so fast last week. John Long: Yup. Cobie Rutherford: Then the time just got away from it. John Long: I don't know why, but it seemed like for this Congress it just seemed to fly by faster than others for sure. But I guess it's what happens when you're just constantly moving and constantly... We were in state of motion for pretty much the whole time I guess. Cobie Rutherford: It's almost the whole campus were- John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Everybody here that was with 4-H Congress was in a state of motion. John Long: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: The agents trying to get the kids from contest to contest. Youths trying to get from their dorms to the contest locations, to workshops. It was just a lot of movement, a lot of activity. John Long: Cobie, give us a little overview of what exactly Wednesday consisted of. What did we do on Wednesday? I know what we did, but you tell everybody else what we did. Cobie Rutherford: So Wednesday we started with check-in, most of the kids and their agents and volunteers who came in on Wednesday morning. So we had all the check-ins, they got their t-shirts, they entered in their different inset collections, their posters, their photos, photography exhibits. I guess what I was trying to say. Cobie Rutherford: And then they went into their visual presentations on Wednesday afternoon and John I think they had 15 or so different options to enter in the visuals. Anything from Veterinary, Science, Pet Care, Visual Presentation, all the way to the Plant Soil Science and even Clothing Selection Visuals. John Long: Yeah. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: It was pretty neat to see the whole range of activities that they could participate in, in those Visual Presentations John Long: Yeah, it is amazing the topics that they do come up with and how well they do those. So one of my favorite parts of Congress always has been the campaigning. I love to see the different approaches that the candidates have, that are running for office. And that normally occurs around, I think it was about twelve to one, I think on Wednesday. Cobie Rutherford: Mm-hmm (affirmative). John Long: And they set up out here embossed outside building B. And I saw some really good creative candidates out there. One was the Yellow Brick Road. Did you see the Yellow Brick Road? Cobie Rutherford: I did. John Long: I loved that one. Cobie Rutherford: I saw that, that was pretty good. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: And then Go bananas for Savannah. John Long: Go bananas for Savannah was a good one. Cobie Rutherford: Shout out to Savannah, our new Vice President. John Long: Yeah, there you go. Cobie Rutherford: That was cool. When- John Long: We're proud of all of you by the way. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: We can't single anybody. Cobie Rutherford: That's true. John Long: We all are good. Cobie Rutherford: We are proud. John Long: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: When I was in 4-H that was a big part of it too. And I never did run for state 4-H officer, but I'd campaign for several things at school. And I thought when we had our first child that we should name him something that have a funny campaign slogan. So we named our little boy Reason, which is a family name. But I also thought that when he runs for office one day, if he chooses, like the season for reason. John Long: Season and for reason- Cobie Rutherford: So- John Long: ... the reason to vote for me. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, so I think that's pretty cool. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: But that was a fun experience. The kids were handing out candy and doing everything they could to sway the votes, so that was cool. John Long: Yeah, it was cool. Then we had a lot of... We had some, like I said, I guess not out of the box, but we had some new things that the kids were exposed to this year. One of them being the... Oh gosh, and what was damn session. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that was really neat. John Long: Yeah, Tell us about that. Cobie Rutherford: So I really didn't know a whole lot about it going in, but that was led by Dr. Lacey, who is the extension coordinator for the Delta region. And he had basically gotten up this group of youth. They had brought their instruments and basically they just got in the Boston auditorium and saying and learn different instruments and just learn from one another. It was fantastic. I walked in and they were singing, "We Will Rock You" and I love that. John Long: Oh, wow. Cobie Rutherford: I Mean just rocking the whole place. John Long: With music? Cobie Rutherford: With music. And they had their electric guitars or drums. It was really, really good. John Long: Well, and by the way, if somebody is missing a drum stick, we have it here in the state office. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, wow. John Long: Yeah, whoever lost it, I may keep it and put it in a shadow box. It might be famous one day I guess. Cobie Rutherford: I wouldn't doubt it. John Long: I know. Cobie Rutherford: With the amount of talent that was showcased here last week, there's some of these children who will be famous- John Long: That's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: ... is inevitable. John Long: That's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: They also had Dr. Linda Mitchell led an improv session where the youth were learning how to be dramatic plays and things and how to think on their feet and how to put those improv comedy or improv drama. I thought that was pretty neat. You don't think of that necessarily when you think of traditional 4-H, but gosh we got to start thinking out of the box and get these non traditional youth involved in 4-H because that's kind of our catalyst to get them involved in other contests, other activities and the whole youth development. John Long: Teaching those life skills. We never can say that enough and that's what we're about. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Moving on to Thursday. John Long: Yeah, Thursday is really the big day I guess you could say. And- Cobie Rutherford: It seems like Thursday started at 6:00 AM- John Long: Yes. John Long: ... and ended at 6:00 AM the next morning- Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: ... Almost. It was a long day but it was so much fun. The judging contest for the most part took place on Thursday morning. And we offered everything from a Judging cont. Are judging contest, mis-judging to, consumer judging. There was really something for everybody. And those judging contest had those contests like the automotive drive and then tractor driving and welding contest, Mississippi cook-off. Now what surprised me that as popular as cooking shows are right now, there were only two teams- John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: Involved in the cookout, I thought there would be... Everybody would want to participate now. John Long: Is that the one that's kind of... It's like iron chef. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Its only two teams? Cobie Rutherford: Only two teams. John Long: Wow, that's surprising. Cobie Rutherford: And I think this winning team, if they cooked a seafood dish, get to go to national context. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: So that was pretty cool. John Long: Opportunities abound. Cobie Rutherford: Another shout out to AMEA County. John Long: Hey. Cobie Rutherford: Amy Walsh and Randy Mack. And- John Long: South Whales District. Cobie Rutherford: Yes, So they've rocked that contest. John Long: That's cool. Cobie Rutherford: I wanted to go over there to that, but I was tied up at the computer tapping into scores and it seemed like all day Thursday. John Long: Yeah sure. Cobie Rutherford: Until time for the dance. John Long: Time for the dance thats right. Cobie Rutherford: Oh Mercy, that was a... They had a lot of fun at the dance. John Long: I guarantee. I'm in the game room, in the doghouse in the game... Well I'm not in the dog... Well I guess I am in a dog house a majority of the time but anyway, so I felt comfortable there. But in the doghouse in first floor of the union and we have games and stuff and we got, let me tell you what, and that was the most kids I've ever had on game night and we got a shout out to Dr. Joy Anderson. She was awesome, she brought a super awesome deck of UNO cards and I bet at one time or another we had at least 10 people play a UNO at one time. And I learned a new UNO game. Well have you ever done a stack? Have You played an UNO stack? Cobie Rutherford: Is that where you, like if I had to draw four and then you had draw four, you just keep playing them on top of each other, then somebody has to draw? John Long: Yes, Right, and I got stuck with 16. Cobie Rutherford: Oh my God. John Long: So thank you to my partner on the right for... I can't remember his name, but they stuck me bad. Cobie Rutherford: That's the way we always played. John Long: Really? Cobie Rutherford: But I didn't realize that that wasn't a rule in UNO until- John Long: Yeah, I don't think it is. Cobie Rutherford: It's just kind of make up as you go. John Long: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. John Long: Anyway, that was my learning experience, but Thursday I actually also participate in helping with the ambassador interviews and things like that. Cobie Rutherford: How did that go? Announcer:It went really well. We had quite a few first-timers and they did a really good job. Each and every one of them did a really good job and then we had some returning ambassadors that we're coming back. Let's see if that gets selected again. And of course we had National Congress delegates that we had to enter or interviewed through committee. So it was exciting. It's an all day thing. In fact, I was helping Deborah Lloyd who works in our office and I told her about noon, "I said, Deborah just think about it. We've got 10 more hours yet to go. Announcer:So it is a long day but, but yeah, to culminate in the dance and the game show, I mean the game, the game room, that was, that was a lot. I always look forward to that. It is a long day, but we always look forward to that too." And then, but of course then we had to turn around and be back up here. Hello, I was up here at like 6:30 the next morning after I got home at midnight and then 6:30 the next morning up here, getting ready for the award ceremony. We had a lot of awards to handout. Cobie Rutherford: Yes we did. John Long: How many did we hand out do you remember? Cobie Rutherford: I think that we ordered, I want to say it was 121 plus. John Long: Yeah, that's right. Cobie Rutherford: That's A lot. My favorite part of the whole Congress I'll say was something that I was the only person that had the opportunity to do this. John Long: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: I hate to even share it with you cause I know you're going to be jealous. John Long: I will be. Cobie Rutherford: But I got to be the person who facilitated the announcement of the new state, 4-H officers. John Long: No way. Cobie Rutherford: So at the dance, the results were emailed to me. So I got to go up on the stage with our president at the time, Jaylin who we've had in here for podcast before, and she announced the winners. So I was holding my phone up in the dark while she read those. But what I had the chance to see is the facial expressions and the celebrations of those children who won those officer candidates. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: And just to see their face and then see their friends and the people around that embrace them and kind of put them up on a pedestal. Man, that was awesome. That was so good just to see that. And I thought, you know, this is really what one of the things 4-H teaches us, that we don't realize what we're being told is how to celebrate others and celebrate small victories such as that or big victories, either one and celebrations cost absolutely nothing, to be happy for your friend. John Long: Right, exactly. Cobie Rutherford: I thought, you know this pretty cool skill. And to see the candidates often standing by one beside one another, they're both reining for the same exact position and then for them to embrace and hug each other and put each other on their shoulders, it was really awesome. John Long: I think that's proof that 4-H really does what it's supposed to do and which is exactly what you said is. We promote good sportsmanship and things like that. We're doing a great job. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, definitely. You know that- John Long: Well we're not, but the program. Cobie Rutherford: ... the program is. John Long: Yes, that's right. Cobie Rutherford: And that was just a total validation of that. That we're doing great in that case. John Long: Right, exactly. Cobie Rutherford: But I'm excited about the new panel of leaders that we've got coming up. There's a lot of good ideas in these youth and I think that these youth really won't take ownership of their program and kind of drive the programmatic areas that we go to. So if you- John Long: If he wanted to see a snippet of exactly what Congress is like, I don't know if they've got it loaded yet or not, but they will have a Congress. Well Like a wrap up video that the agricultural communications put together and just look for it on our YouTube channel coming up, Missy before each YouTube channel coming up. And that'll show you... And that's actually one of those parts on that video is where they announce there are new president. Cobie Rutherford: ... yeah, that was really neat, really good. John Long: But you'll see the reaction that you were talking about, which is really cool. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. I definitely had the best seat in the house for that deal. John Long: I am jealous. Cobie Rutherford: That was kind of just a fluke that we got to announce those at the dance anyway. John Long: How did that come about by the way. I don't think we've ever done that before. Cobie Rutherford: It was kind of, I had to run off election and some kind of odd things happened with our ballots so we had to vote later than we planned down and- John Long: Just a bump on a road, no big deal. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it set up that perfect opportunity and then everyone was at the dancer or in the union at that time. So there's kind of a good chance to announce. John Long: That's good, that's really good. Cobie Rutherford: So that little snafu actually resulted something better, I think. John Long: Okay you do. Cobie Rutherford: We also had on Friday, we did that surface learning project where kids- John Long: Oh, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: ... in counties brought different items for cleanup Mississippi. So we thought these items could help with a flood cleanup or maybe even some of the tornado cleanup. So they brought everything from brooms and mops to- John Long: Buckets. Cobie Rutherford: Buckets and cleaning supplies. John Long: We're thankful you brought buckets with stuff in it because it's a lot easier to move that, right? Cobie Rutherford: Yes it was. And then we had the opportunity John to go drop that outfit, the Red Cross in Columbus. John Long: Let me tell you what, that was a highlight for me because I'd never been to the Red Cross in Columbus and to see that and to, and to deliver that, that really kind of was a good wrap up for Congress for me, you know? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And they were so grateful to get those supplies and I know they'll be put to great use. John Long: Absolutely. We thank everybody that brought to that service project because that's what 4-H is about, about giving back. And I don't have to tell anybody out there that, Oh, there's been a lot of people hurting this year with all the rain we've had and flooding and just tornadoes and things like that. So being able to provide, even if it's just a little bit of relief to somebody was much appreciated. And I can tell you red cross was very appreciative of it when we dropped it off, that's for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, those donations will definitely help a lot of families around the State and they'll stay local too. John Long: That's right, That's exactly right. Cobie Rutherford: Pretty cool. John Long: Yup. Cobie Rutherford: You know, I keep thinking about back to highlights during the week and think about celebrations and think about seeing those kids win their awards at the awards ceremony. I think that was pretty cool. They all got to walk up on stage, shake hands with the specialist. I wonder how many, it will need one to go back and look and say, Oh that kid won first place in clothing, visual, they pursue a career in the clothing industry or just so how many of those kids actually go into those groups? John Long: Do you know, we really had a great keynote speaker. Not that we don't always have a great keynotes figure, but saying that our keynote speaker this year was a former leadership ambassador team member and who has become a medical doctor. And she came back and spoke and that was really cool to see how, she had just gave us her basically her biography of her life and how she went through her 4-H career and where she's at now. She's a- Cobie Rutherford: That's neat. John Long: ... pediatrician. Cobie Rutherford: That's neat. Yeah. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: That definitely goes to speak for the hands for larger service stuff- John Long: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: I just caught the tail end of her toe, but it sounded like it was very, very good. John Long: Yeah, it was good. And you talking about... I'm seeing her grow up as a 4-H. I can't remember and I apologize, but I knew that her maiden name is Newman. I can't think of her last name. Cobie Rutherford: Livingston. John Long: Livingston. So it's Aaron Newman Livingston, Dr. Aaron Newman Livingston. And she's a pediatrician and she did a great job delivering our keynote or being our keynote speaker this year. And that was just proof positive and a great example of where 4-H can take you, you know, and how important it is in part of your life or it can be a part of your life. So let me ask you this first time, we've talked about this on our pre-Congress podcasts, first time state staff, Congress. What was your, the your most favorite part? Cobie Rutherford: Ooh, my most favorite part. I think just seeing celebrations. John Long: Mm-hmm- Cobie Rutherford: Seeing whether it's a kid celebrating their own performance and having the courage to step up and give a visual presentation in front of a statewide specialist and experts or seeing kids when the, when their awards are celebrate one another. Just celebrate being here and being on the beautiful campus, Mississippi State University. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: I think that was my favorite part. Just to take in and reflect on them. John Long: Yeah. Their enthusiasm's always addictive to me. It really is. Cobie Rutherford: And I think that Congress justifies, in my mind what we do is stay for each staff. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: First and foremost it provides an opportunity for these youth to express themselves- John Long: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Cobie Rutherford: ... and develop an interest or passion in something that can lead to a career, lead to life skill that's very impactful. John Long: I always like saying Mississippi State University campus covered in a sea of grain. And that's exactly what we had last week for sure. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Well with that, I guess we're going to close out this podcast and I hope that in some way if you heard podcast and are interested in getting into 4H so that you'll go to extension.msstate.edu. I think you don't even have to say www anymore because it's pretty much assumed. But if you can click on that 4-H tab and you will get a lot of information on where to go. You can also, if you don't know where your County office is or who is actually in your County extension office, you can also find a directory there that can point you in the right direction. John Long: So we would love to have you get into 4-H and we hope to see you come to 4-H Congress one day. And if you did hear this podcast as a young 4-H, come up to us and tell us about it because they'd love to hear your story. So with that, I'm John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And this has been 4H4U2. We'll see you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more permission, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University extension service, office of Agricultural Communications.

John and Cobie sit down with Dr. Mariah Morgan to discuss the 4-H Robotics Program. From creating robots to performing amazing feats, Dr. Morgan will explain the many activities that encompass this program. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right and welcome to 4-H-4-U-2. I am John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we want to welcome everybody back to the podcast, if you're out there. We hope somebody is listening to us anyway. I hope so. We're kind of getting a little bit, I guess, getting quite a few episodes under our belt, Cobie, and I guess things are getting a little smoother. What do you think? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think we are. I think we're getting better at this, every podcast we go through, and maybe we'll be famous one day. John Long: I'm already famous. We'll work on you. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Yeah, so, but anyway. Cobie Rutherford: Well. John Long: Well, we are so happy to have Dr. Mariah Morgan with us. Mariah, how are you today? Dr. Morgan: I am doing great, John. Thank you so much for having me. John Long: Great. I have known Mariah for a long time. We won't say how long, but I've known her for quite some time. Even before, well, we were both in our roles I think. Correct? Dr. Morgan: Yes. John Long: I think that's true. So Mariah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from and what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Dr. Morgan: Okay. So I am from the metropolitan city of Artesia, Mississippi. John Long: Awesome. Dr. Morgan: Big town, big city, big happenings. John Long: It's still happening. Dr. Morgan: Yes, it is. Very much so. But it is unique in that it has informed a lot of my decisions and a lot of my outlook, particularly as it relates to 4-H. I've even had some fun going back and doing some training with the local after school club that's there. John Long: Oh that's good. Yeah. Dr. Morgan: So that was a lot of fun to go back and see that. But, I grew up in Artesia and then I actually pursued a degree in philosophy and foreign languages. John Long: Wonderful. Dr. Morgan: But ended up with 4-H and 4-H robotics working for the Extension Center for Technology Outreach here at MSU. So that's been a lot of fun and we've had some good time with that. Favorite flavor of ice cream, got to be cookies and cream. John Long: Oh, that's mine too. What's yours, Cobie? Cobie Rutherford: You know, I think any ice cream, but I guess if I had to pick a favorite, it would be from this little place in Clanton. They have cantaloupe ice cream. John Long: Really. Cobie Rutherford: It's fantastic. John Long: I have never had that before. Have to try that. What's the name of it? We'll do a shameless plug for them. Cobie Rutherford: Peach Park. John Long: Oh, okay, cool. Well, if it's MSU ice cream, which we highly suggest you try, it would be muscadine ripple for me. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt. John Long: Yeah, that's a good one. Just saying, since you're from Artesia, have you ever taken that road from Artesia back to the airport? You ever gone those back roads? Dr. Morgan: I sure have. Mm-hmm (affirmative). John Long: Yeah. That's kind of a little secret. I couldn't believe how quick I got there one day. I don't think I could do it again. But anyway, I guess that road's still open. Dr. Morgan: It is. John Long: Okay, good, good. Dr. Morgan: I know lots of secrets about Artesia. John Long: Oh. That's an whole nother podcast right there. Dr. Morgan: It is. It is. John Long: That would probably be an entirely different podcast- Dr. Morgan: Exactly. It would. Yes. John Long: Okay. Well, good, good deal. Well Mariah, you are over, or I don't want to say, I'm not going to put words in your mouth. Dr. Morgan: Okay. John Long: What exactly is 4-H Robotics, and just kind of introduce this to that and kind of tell us number one, what is it and really how did it get started? Dr. Morgan: Sure. So 4-H Robotics got started, gosh, it's probably been nine years now, maybe even a little bit longer, but it really grew out of a need that we saw for our 4-H youth to have a different experience than what we were currently offering in say in the computer project. And so we looked to see what was available and we realized that there were some things happening in the area of robotics and we really wanted to be a part of that. And so we began in Newton County with a group of youth that were there for a CYFAR, children and youth of family at risk program. And we were in a community church there in the summer and we had all these robots and all these children and it just went really well and they really got excited about robotics and what that might mean for their future. Dr. Morgan: And so from there, the program has just really grown. And so we have added different things as our knowledge of robotics and youth and how those two things go together. We've really started focusing on our younger youth because we know that most of our 4-H youth, and just youth in general, are going to decide quite early on whether or not they're even interested in STEM careers. We know some research suggests that girls decide by kindergarten whether or not they want to go into STEM, and we know that usually for our boys, it's around first or second grade when they decide whether or not they're going to pursue STEM. John Long: I wonder why that is? Dr. Morgan: A lot of it's what they're exposed to, what they've seen, different things like that. And so what we're really focusing on now is providing more opportunities for our young Clover Bud, that's our five to seven year old range in 4-H, to get excited and to get into STEM. And so rather sneakily, I might say, we have launched the 4-H Lego Club curriculum. John Long: Yes, yes. Dr. Morgan: And so we really are pretending like we're just playing with Legos, but at the same time we're teaching those engineering concepts and we're teaching those careers that you might could do if you pursue STEM, but we're really just having fun with Legos. We don't tell them that they're learning all of those extra things, it's just it's kind of part of that process we're doing, learning through playing, which is very important for young children. And so just getting them open and ready to do the next thing. John Long: Legos, the thing that you step on with your bare feet. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. John Long: Yes. That's what I call them. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. John Long: They're horrible. Have you had that yet, Cobie? Cobie Rutherford: We have not gotten to the Lego stage yet, but it's coming fast. John Long: Prepare yourselves is all I can say. Cobie Rutherford: I am. John Long: It's pretty bad. Dr. Morgan: We have about 50,000 Legos right now in the state of Mississippi with all the youth doing the Lego Clubs. John Long: 50,000. Dr. Morgan: So you think you've got problems at your house. You ought to be in my office. Cobie Rutherford: In office. John Long: You ought to be in mine is all I can say. Cobie Rutherford: Oh my gosh. John Long: You were going to say ... what were you going to say? Cobie Rutherford: That sounds pretty cool. I mean, it seems like with this new robotics program we are actually able to reach a new set of children and get them involved in 4-H through a non-traditional type program. I think that's really neat and something that we really need in this state. Dr. Morgan: One of the exciting things that I have seen is that we do attract youth who might not generally be interested in what most people consider typical 4-H programs. John Long: Quote unquote. Dr. Morgan: Quote unquote, right. But what's been so fun is to see them come in and maybe they don't like to talk to other people or in front of other people, or they maybe just have a difficult time relating to others. What's been so great for me to see, because again, not trying to age myself, but I've seen some of these 4-H'ers for awhile. They might have started- John Long: Do they have kids now? Dr. Morgan: They might have started when they were, you know, eight or nine and they may be in college now. John Long: Okay. Okay. Dr. Morgan: What's been so fun is yes, they kind of came in because they were interested in Legos or they were interested in robotics and along the way they found a love for public speaking or they found a love for community health or something like that. And so it's been really fun to see that growth. I actually had a group this past year that was just in absolute almost tears because they came to tell me that they were going to do the dairy judging contest this year and they did not want me to be upset with them. And I said, "It's really okay. We want you to get involved in other projects." Dr. Morgan: That's one of the great things about 4-H is that you can explore all these different opportunities and all these different careers in this one environment so that you have that experience before you get out of even elementary school, really. And so I said, "You go have fun with the dairy contest because one, you get to eat ice cream so-" John Long: That's ice cream again. Dr. Morgan: Exactly, exactly. But at the same time I know that most of our dairy farms are going to robotics to use for milking the cows and so much of our farming and our agriculture is robotics related, so I know at the end of the day they're still going to have to come back and see me for that robotics. John Long: Eventually. That works for the inclusiveness, not the exclusiveness that 4-H stands for so I think that's wonderful. Now, it seems like that technology, I don't know, some people say there's nothing new under the sun, but it sure seems like technology is just so quickly advancing that, I mean these, even if you look in homes, they have these personal assistants and things like that, which probably just a short time ago seemed like the biggest ... it was George Jetson type technology, right? I mean, it was just improbable and now it's becoming more, probably, or it is occurring and we have to be prepared for that and I think that's great that we have something that's actually getting youth at least exposed to it for sure. Dr. Morgan: Sure. And that's what we don't want, or I guess, let me say this, we want to use programs like the 4-H Robotics Program and things like that to help teach youth how to approach those challenges because the technology is changing so quickly. And so we can't just bring them in and say, "Oh, you've only got to be able to code or to program in this one specific language." That's not what we're trying to teach. We're trying to teach the how do you address the problem and how do you work through that problem, because whether you're coding, whether you're just trying to solve what to wear in the morning, life is always going to have a challenge and life is always going to have a problem that has to be solved. That might be homework that might be course work, whatever, but the big thing is how do you solve that challenge and persist in the face of a difficulty? Dr. Morgan: And that's what we want to do. We want to make sure we move past that to get to a resolution. And so really it's not so much about a particular program or a particular robot, it's about persisting. John Long: And a lot of times just like in any, like we've said before, Cobie, it's like with any 4-H activity or program we have, is that we're teaching life skills and we're using that particular area of interest, like you said Mariah, that piques that young person's interest and gets them into the program where we can teach them. So it's kind of a dual, a double edge sword, in a kind way, not in a bad way. Dr. Morgan: But, yes. Cobie Rutherford: And it is almost a domino effect too with the youth and they come into their extension offices and get involved with other projects like Mariah said, and then they bring their parents in to start utilizing extension as a resource. I think that's the coolest part about this whole project. John Long: I do too. I like it. I love it. Oh, I got to say this. A lot of you all probably don't know this, but the 4-H office adjoins a classroom and we walk across it to get to another hallway. I was walking through there one day and most of the time we have a sign that says there's a video conference going on because we've got some equipment in there, and so it was not ... I guess the sign was turned around, but I opened the door, Cobie, and there is Mariah sitting behind the desk with a green wig on and I did not know what in the world I had just stepped into it and she was just talking away. So Mariah, what was that I got exposed to rather abruptly? Dr. Morgan: Are you sure you want to know, John? John Long: Ah, well, I'm asking so I guess so. Dr. Morgan: Well, every- John Long: Maybe I don't want to know, but- Dr. Morgan: Every year we have a 4-H robotics kick off. It's usually in late January, early February, kind of depending on when Dixie National is because we don't want to, you know, we don't want to mess with that. John Long: No, no that's fine. Dr. Morgan: We have a big kickoff every year. And so typically beforehand we'll have counties register and we'll send out little kits for them to do and we'll all get online via interactive video, all the counties that join up, and we'll do that robotics activity together. I think that year that you came in, it was probably- John Long: See, you even remember it. Dr. Morgan: Well, I only have one green wig, so- John Long: And a feather boa. Dr. Morgan: Yeah, well, you know- John Long: If you're going to do it, do it right. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. Exactly. Go big or go home and so I think we were doing some type of sensory robotic fish that year if I remember correctly. This past year, my memory is getting a little difficult, you know, not so great as we get older, but this past year it was honeybees. And so I had a lot of fun sending, we made robotic bees, and I had a lot of fun sending different types of honey to the kids, or to the youth rather, to try out. But I didn't tell him which honey was which, they just had to try it and figure it out. And I had one poor youth about pass out because he tried the buckwheat honey first- John Long: Oh, and the allergies. He had an allergy? Dr. Morgan: No, no. Buckwheat honey is just a unique flavor. Anything buckwheat is always going to be a unique flavor. But then he had a really great time trying to convince the other youth to try to buckwheat first and then they all about had a [inaudible 00:14:03] as well. So it was a lot of fun. John Long: That's awesome. That's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: That is funny. What about the contest that you just conducted at State Congress? You had a computer contest, a robotics contest. What were they about? Dr. Morgan: Sure. The computer contest is really where they're making an app using the MIT App Inventor, and so much of our technology is going to be phone driven or smart device driven in the coming years. And we just want to expose youth to that concept that they can make their own apps. And so really it builds on just the programming that they've been learning in our younger programs. So for example, our Clover Buds, they start out with Lego, and then they moved to ScratchJr, and then they moved to Scratch, and then they move to probably the EV3 programming or Python programming, and then they move into Python in the MIT App Inventor. And so that's what they were doing in the computer contest. Dr. Morgan: And then in the robotics contest, they had used the Hummingbird robot to create, again, our theme this year was bees, we're kind of working off some of the work that MIT is doing in several different bigger groups like that, and so they had to make a robotic bee using the Hummingbird platform and they had to program it in Python. And so what you saw was what they had created using that robotic kit and the programming language. And I thought they did a really excellent job. This is the first year we had used the Hummingbird and the Python. Python is one of the first programming languages they learn when they come to college, and so we wanted- John Long: That's what I was going to ask you. It's not a snake. Dr. Morgan: No, no, it's not a snake. It's an actual just a programming language. And I think they really liked that. I think they liked being able to use the Python to program in. Cobie Rutherford: That fascinates that a child in Mississippi has an opportunity to go through the 4-H Robotics Program, learn all these tools that one day could help them develop an app that could be used nation or worldwide. John Long: Yeah. You don't think of it from that standpoint. I mean from the beginning, like a little child doing that, but that's the way it gets started. For some it sure has for sure. Cobie Rutherford: And the coolest thing about it, is 4-H is free. John Long: That's right. That's exactly right. A lot of people ask me, they say, "Well, how much does it cost?" I'll get that at state fair a lot. "Well, how much does it cost to join?" Nothing. You just come, show up at your extension office, and say, "Hey, I'm interested in 4-H." So Mariah, I remember, and since we're talking on honeybees, I heard that they were using in like the hiving mechanism or whatever, for micro robots. Have you ever heard that? Dr. Morgan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). John Long: Yeah, that's pretty out there too isn't it? I wonder how advanced that is right now, have you ever looked into that? Dr. Morgan: It's pretty advanced. It's pretty advanced. John Long: Probably more than we need to know. They're spying on us. Cobie Rutherford: It just amazes me, like, I think Mariah mentioned the dairy industry earlier today and how there's some researchers in the Animal Science department that are collaborating with folks in Ag Engineering about keeping up with cow steps and cow temperature, milking with robots, it's just fascinating. John Long: It's crazy. I've got friends in Pennsylvania and their dairy parlor blew me away when I went in there. It was just so far, I probably hadn't been in a parlor in so long, and it was so more advanced than I had seen before. And it's all because of these advancements in technology. They just keep, you know, not taking over, but they are, to a sense, they're taking, not necessarily jobs, but they're making things more efficient for sure. That's really good. That's really good. Well, Mariah, what do you have coming up for 4-H'ers? Dr. Morgan: Well, sure. Well, of course we have project achievement days coming up where our junior 4-H youth will be participating with their robots on a- John Long: We're excited about that. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. And they have a bee theme as well. Everything is bee theme this year. And we typically try to have a theme that reflects something that's going on in the industry or something that might be of interest to the youth. John Long: Will there be buckwheat honey there? Dr. Morgan: There might be. John Long: I hope so, might be- Dr. Morgan: There might be. John Long: [inaudible 00:18:33]. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. John Long: I want to taste some. Dr. Morgan: Yes. Yeah. I have some down in the office you can try. John Long: Oh, good. Dr. Morgan: But it's not for the faint of heart, but yes, it is- John Long: I'll get my coffee [inaudible 00:18:41]. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. Yes. But one thing that's exciting and I think it's going to come up and I've been asked by many extension agents over the past week while they were here for Club Congress, when our next Lego Club curriculum was coming out, and that is underway. We have begun that process so hopefully we'll have that out sooner rather than later. We have our ScratchJr curriculum that's out, which really just walks 4-H youth through how to code, how to begin coding, and also what it means to be a 4-H'er, takes them through the four Hs of the clover. Dr. Morgan: And then we have a new curriculum that's really I think going to be popular with libraries. It's called Programming Pals. Dr. Jamie Varner has worked with Lori Maxic to write that, and it's about reading but it's also about programming. It's joining two things together because we don't want to promote coding and not promote reading because those are very big things and we want those two to go ... It's a literacy skill. Basically what we're working on is digital literacy skills. That's going to be the emerging trend that we see coming ahead. And so we'll be working on that. We're hoping to have a training on the EV3 robotics in late July or August, probably August now, and then we'll keep working on our Hummingbird and Python options for our senior 4-H'ers as well. John Long: That sounds awesome. Now real quick, I should have asked this at the beginning, but how many 4-H'ers, do you have any idea how many 4-H'ers or how widespread robotic ... I know it's growing, it's continued to grow, especially at project achievement day. It's just, I don't want to say crazy, but crazy in a good way, right? Dr. Morgan: Right, right. John Long: And so it's very large. I would assume that you've seen it grow quite a bit over the time that you've been over it. Dr. Morgan: Sure we have, and what we're seeing a lot now, which really excites me, is that our extension agents are taking it and doing it for summer programs. And so we have a lot of counties that do summer camps and do programming in the schools and even after school, and so that's really exciting to see that growing on its own really because they're able to have teachers trained and they're able to work with volunteers to offer that program to far more youth than I could ever reach on my own. And so when you ask how many, it would be hard to say just because the ones we see at competition are not necessarily reflected in all the hundreds of youth that they have been working with locally in their community. John Long: Yeah. And that just means that just because you're exposed to it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to compete in it. Dr. Morgan: That's right. You might be in dairy judging. John Long: That's right. That's right. That's right. And we're going to close ... no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Cobie Rutherford: I mean, if they found out there's ice cream in dairy judging. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. I'm going to say buckwheat honey does not trump ice cream. John Long: Buckwheat honey. Oh, it does not. Dr. Morgan: It does not. John Long: Not even if you put it in ice cream? Dr. Morgan: I don't think so. John Long: Oh well, we're not going to try that. Dr. Morgan: Exactly. No. John Long: Don't bring it to project achievement day, okay? Dr. Morgan: Okay. John Long: No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Well Mariah, thank you so much for being with us today and just keep up the good work and we just look so forward to see where robotics is going, and where it's been to where it's going is the sky's the limit and I think that's for sure. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt about it. John Long: Well with that we're going to wrap up 4-H-4-U-2. If you want more information on 4-H Robotics, Mariah, tell them where they can go to find more information about that. The website for sure, right? Dr. Morgan: The website for sure, and we also have a Facebook page. John Long: Wonderful. Dr. Morgan: Mississippi 4-H Robotics, and then of course they can email me, Mariah, mariah.s.morgan@msstate.edu. John Long: Awesome. Dr. Morgan: And I can refer them to the right place. John Long: Great. Great. Well thank you so much and we look forward to, again, maybe even having you on at another time and you'll have to wear the green wig. Dr. Morgan: Oh, absolutely. John Long: All right. Very good. All right and with that, I'm John. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie. John Long: And we'll see you next time on 4-H-4-U-2. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

John and Cobie speak with Jaylen Smith 4-H Statewide President on her 4-H Career and what it has meant to her. Jaylen also shares some memories and the importance of being a positive role model to youth. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And welcome to another edition of 4-H-4-U-2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we have a very, very special guest with us today. Cobie, I'm going to let you introduce her. Cobie Rutherford: So today we are very happy to have Miss Jaylen R. Smith from Leflore County with us, and she happens to be our State Council 4-H President. John Long: Wonderful, and I'm sure it is bone dry in Leflore County right now, isn't it? Jaylen Smith: It is. It is. Cobie Rutherford: Right, whatever. John Long: Water, water everywhere, so... Well that's great and we're so glad to have you with us this morning, and I appreciate you carving out a little time for us because I know we're all running in different directions since Congress 2019... Congress is well underway. Cobie Rutherford: Yes. Here, here. Inspire kids to do. John Long: That's right. That's right. So let me ask you this, Jaylen. What number congress is this for you? Jaylen Smith: This is my third Congress. John Long: Third Congress, okay. And when did you get involved in 4-H? Jaylen Smith: I got involved my junior year of high school. So I didn't know about 4-H before I actually got into it. I thought it was an organization that you had to pay a lot of money to join. And so I talked to Ms. Christina, my agent, she was like, "No, baby, just come on, just come." We have so many different organizations and clubs that you can be and within the organization itself, and so I've loved it ever since. John Long: Do you remember your first club meeting? Jaylen Smith: I do. It was like an interview, kind of, to see if we could get into the meeting. It was like an open interview, and she would just ask questions about what we thought diversity meant and the importance of diversity. I love speaking, so I kind of... I felt bad because I think I dominated most of the conversation, but I just... I love diversity. That's one of the things I want to do with math communications, and so I was like, "Yeah, I'm definitely coming back." Cobie Rutherford: I think that's what's so neat about 4-H because it appeals to... Every kid can find their niche within this organization. John Long: Sure. Jaylen Smith: Definitely. Cobie Rutherford: And gosh, Jaylen, I think my favorite memory of your 4-H career so far has been when you gave a speech at the state Senate this year for Legislative Day. Jaylen Smith: Oh, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I had chills listening to it. And John, she got a standing ovation from those Senators from Mississippi. John Long: I am so jealous because I have never been able to be over there and hear that, so I'm glad to hear that. That's awesome. Maybe one day? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Maybe one day. Cobie Rutherford: I don't know that I'll want to hear another one because it was... I don't know how anybody will ever live up to what she did do it. It was so good. John Long: She's a good communicator, that's for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Very much so. John Long: Very well spoken, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: So what was your project area, Jaylen, in 4-H? Jaylen Smith: I mostly did public speaking. Another thing that I did was our club itself was PRIDE, which is Potential Realize In Diverse Environments, so a lot of the things that we did were to bring different communities and just people from different backgrounds together. I really just enjoyed that, being able to learn different people's cultures, teaching people my culture, and just learning from each other. John Long: I think that's really cool because a lot of people just get to a point in life and they just feel like, "Well, this is it. I'm just not..." They just get in this rat race, and the same old, same old, and they forget that there's so much yet to learn. Jaylen Smith: Definitely, definitely. John Long: And I think that's always important to remember is that you can always learn from different people. I'm always anxious to want to hear more or to learn more about this. Jaylen Smith: Yeah. John Long: That's great. That's great. So what do you feel like one of the main things at 4-H has taught you in your career? Jaylen Smith: Even though I've had a lot of leadership roles in 4-H, it's definitely taught me how to follow others, just to kind of let go sometimes and not always be on the front stage. John Long: Right. Jaylen Smith: But to learn from others by following them. John Long: Right. Jaylen Smith: And so also by serving others, I learned leadership skills, things like teamwork and just depending on others to be there for me, and learning how to delegate and be delegated to. So definitely followership has taught me how to be a better leader. John Long: That's awesome. I've always heard a good leader is a good follower. Jaylen Smith: Yeah. John Long: I don't know if that's true, but I believe it. I believe it. Cobie Rutherford: Well it kind of goes back to what we were telling him about a couple of weeks ago on the leadership podcast, and how the top tier of leadership is going back to a servant leadership position. Jaylen Smith: Definitely. Cobie Rutherford: So it seems like Jaylen's had a chance to go full circle in this organization- John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: And developed that servant attitude. That's cool. John Long: I think it's an awesome opportunity, and I said that during our leadership podcast, was the fact that we we are given a very unique opportunity to serve others that a lot of people don't get that opportunity to do, or they don't take advantage of it, for sure. Jaylen Smith: I completely agree. John Long: So I think that's one of the products, for sure, of the program and teaching those life skills. So as far as, and I really think you are, and I'm not just saying that because you're sitting here, but I really think that you are a very positive role model for a lot of our younger 4-Hers, and I've seen them looking up to you when we've been to various events. How important is that, and what do you... Obviously it's important to you, but how do you feel like, or what do you feel like is most important as far as allowing youth, or what you can give to youth in order to encourage them and instill those things that 4-H has given you? Jaylen Smith: One of the major things that 4-H has given me is learning to be tenacious and just learning to persevere through all obstacles, and so that's what I really want to give off to younger 4-Her's is that whatever you want in life, it's yours. But if you work for it and if you work through whatever obstacles that are stopping you from doing that, you can get to it. People tell me that they look up to me and it's crazy because I look up to so many 4-Her's, and it's crazy to me how so many people look up to me and I just... I'm like, "Y'all are my heroes." Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's funny. Jaylen Smith: Can I get your autograph? John Long: Nobody wants my autograph. Jaylen Smith: I want your autograph. John Long: Okay, I'll give it to you after this. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. John Long: Well that's great. Yeah. That's awesome. Cobie Rutherford: So what do you think... Who is someone that's inspired you to take these steps and become a leader in your community and in 4-H, or just someone who inspires you in general? Jaylen Smith: I definitely have to say my mom and my grandma inspire me. They raised me, and so just seeing two strong black women raise me to be a strong black woman has just made me want to make change for my community. I've definitely had to go through struggles in life, but seeing the way that they go through those struggles graciously has encouraged me and instilled in me those same values. And so another thing, is just a love for Mississippi. I've also learned that through 4-H because it teaches so many different aspects of Mississippi, which other states don't have, and just the richness of our culture. And yes, we have been disenfranchised in the past and we're still working on that, but it's not like I can't love my state and work on its problems. John Long: Right. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: I think that's very cool that you had that perspective, and I also think that it's cool that you have a love for Mississippi, because I see a lot of kids that are talented like you that say, "Okay, I've been successful in high school. I'm having a successful career in college. I'm moving out of Mississippi," or "I'm moving out of the South." And I think that your ideal of Mississippi, that you want to make a change in your community and in our state, is just so refreshing to hear. Jaylen Smith: Yeah. John Long: Absolutely. Jaylen Smith: I was always taught to clean my own house before I try to tackle anybody else's. Cobie Rutherford: Right. Jaylen Smith: So I've never been taught to let anybody clean up my own mess when I have a broom in my hand. Cobie Rutherford: Right. Jaylen Smith: So yeah, I definitely want to fix Mississippi for the better. John Long: You need to write a book. You've got some great quotes. I wish I could think of stuff like that. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, and one of her quotes that she gave at the Statehouse this year was that kind of impactful, and I think that's why she's so talented. Jaylen, do you remember any parts of that speech that kind of stood out? I remember a lot of Senators followed her out of the hall, out of the chamber, and were talking to her and basically probably offered her a job and everything else. Yeah, I hope you run for Senate one day. John Long: Don't forget us when you hit the big time. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, exactly. Jaylen Smith: I could never figure you all. Cobie Rutherford: Do you remember anything that was said to you that day or something you may have said that impacted those Senators? Jaylen Smith: I think that it was towards the end and what I basically wanted to tell them was that it's not only Mississippi 4-H's job, but it's also your job as the people that we elect, to... I said, "to speak for those who do not have voices, to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves, and..." It was something else that I said. I just remember that little part. I think that that's so important because we have to be leaders for those who cannot do for themselves. I've always believed in helping people and serving others so that they can serve themselves. Some people need a boost in life. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Jaylen Smith: And it's our job, our responsibility as fellow Mississippians, as humans, regardless of your color, your creed, your size, your gender, whatever, it's our job to help each other and to move towards the top to be the best that we can be. We can't be the best at we're crumb snatchers. Cobie Rutherford: Right. Jaylen Smith: Trying to get all the opportunities for ourselves when there's enough to go around. John Long: Right, right. We are richly blessed, but when we lose empathy for someone, we lose a part of humanity. Jaylen Smith: Exactly. John Long: Hey, that sounding pretty good. Don't steal that. Jaylen Smith: I won't, I won't. John Long: But it is true because, yeah... I mean, it's scary, I guess you could say, when you look at the world and people are becoming more and more... I guess, anyway. It's the way it seems to me is that people are just getting more and more self-centered and we're losing that empathy for one another. And when you do that, how in the world are you going to make change because you're always focusing in on yourself and what you want, not what other people want. That's a perfect, perfect. Jaylen Smith: I definitely agree. John Long: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's pretty deep, John. John Long: See, it's just being in her presence. Jaylen Smith: Ah, no, no. Don't give me all the credit. Don't give me all the credit. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. John Long: So we're... Congress kicked off this morning. Jaylen Smith: Yes. John Long: And so we... I know you've got a lot of stuff that you've got going on. I've got to ask this, since this. What is your favorite Congress memory? Jaylen Smith: Oh- John Long: Or, do you have one? And don't cop out and say, "Well, they're all my favorite." Jaylen Smith: There are so many. Definitely, the dance is one of my favorite ones. I learned how to do the dance off of Grease, or something. John Long: Yes. Yeah,sure. Jaylen Smith: I learned how to do that a little bit. And the Sanderson Center, playing basketball, I'm not good at it, but you know, I was doing my best. John Long: Hey, that's all you can ask for. Jaylen Smith: And just the conversations that I have with 4-Her's, and just the connections that we made. I have friends who I talk to outside of Congress. We're friends on social media. We text each other, and so that just... Knowing that I have a lifelong friend and knowing how we became friends through such a great organization, it just... It makes me not want to age out, and I'll be back next year. I'm just going to be in the back. John Long: There you go, there you go, and then you get to volunteer. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Jaylen Smith: Definitely. Cobie Rutherford: And you know, I tell a lot of 4-Her's this, is that we think that, and I thought this is a 4-Her, is that the best time of my life was happening right now. But when you get the opportunity to leave your legacy in the organization and come back as a volunteer, maybe hopefully come back as an extension agent or a state administrator in Jaylen's case, or even even in our cases, John, that legacy that we're able to leave is so much more, I'm not going to say better, but it's kind of like a building block. It's really cool to have that experience. John Long: Absolutely. Absolutely. My favorite part... May I share what my favorite part? Jaylen Smith: Most definitely. John Long: I love the games, because see that's where I am. I'm in the dog house during the dance, but I can never get anybody to play UNO with me. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: So if there's anybody listening, next year, please reach out to me. I'll be the little sad person in the corner an UNO deck. Cobie Rutherford: My favorite part of Congress was the same as Jaylen's. I loved going to the dance because I was from a really small rural school. So I would go to state 4-H Congress over the summer, learn all these dance moves, take them back to my high school, and then be like, "Hey, look what I learned in 4-H." Jaylen Smith: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: Most people might [inaudible 00:13:26] sinful, but it was good. John Long: That's awesome. Jaylen Smith: And also, you have to have a 4-H playlist for the 4-H van. That's vital to Congress. John Long: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I do, I loved going into the dance. It is some energy going on. Jaylen Smith: Yeah, definitely. John Long: That's all I'm saying. I'm envious, because I never had those dance moves, but anyway, maybe one day. It's not over with. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. You mentioned the van, too. That's been kind of a long standing tradition in my home county. We would play these games, and that was before cell phones and before MP3s, so maybe you had a mixed CD. John Long: Jaylen does not remember that, do you? Jaylen Smith: I remember CDs. John Long: Oh, okay. Okay. Jaylen Smith: I remember CDs. John Long: Just not without cell phones? Jaylen Smith: True. Cobie Rutherford: We would make mixed tapes, and we'd sit by the radio station and listen for our favorite songs to come on, and to hit record and as soon as it hit off, it'd stop. So we might do that for four or five hours to make it that perfect mixed tape. John Long: We did that. We did that here. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: Yes. Lord, have mercy. Yeah. I was saying that... Well, I was saying that this weekend. Y'all just don't know how good technology is because we just struggled to get that kind of stuff. But anyway, it is a changing world, and it is so refreshing to have Jaylen with us today. And you know, it's just one of those things that as I've said before, Congress, 4-H, whatever... And Jaylen touched on this too, is that it's like a coming together. It's kind of like a family reunion and it's really kind of, I don't know, I don't want to say sad, but a lot of times when you watch a 4-Her grow up and you realize, "Man, this is their last year." They won't be coming back as a 4-Her. I may see them later or something, as a volunteer, whatever, but it is something. Then of course we have that Congress video at the end, and that always kind of makes me a little sad because it's over with. But, I know there's- Jaylen Smith: One thing I can say is that I have been the end of the Congress video for the past two years and so hopefully, Ellen, if you're listening, you can put me at the end again because I've- John Long: We'll put it in a good word for you. Jaylen Smith: Thank you. John Long: We do have connections. Jaylen Smith: Okay. Cobie Rutherford: I can't wait to see this Congress video. John Long: I know. It's good. Cobie Rutherford: Good. John Long: Yeah, I think it's just getting better and better through the year. And personally, I think I've enjoyed them, but yeah, that's awesome. Well we won't take up any more of your time. Thank you so much for coming in and being with us today. And, who knows, we may get another opportunity to join us on 4-H-4-U-2. Jaylen Smith: I would love to. Thank you for having me. John Long: Yes, and I don't... I asked... Oh, I kind of want to tell you this. I asked somebody last night when we had the ambassador little meeting you were presiding over, and I went down to the front and I said, "So how many of y'all listen to podcasts?" And, one guy raised his hand. So we're hoping we'll spread the word. So subscribe and tell everybody about us, and we'll get the word spread. So... Jaylen Smith: I will. John Long: All right, well we're going to keep on keeping on, on 4-H-4-U-2. If you want to know more about 4-H, you can go to the extension.msstate.edu website, and as I said, go and subscribe to 4-H-4-U-2, and we're going to keep bringing you up-to-date information on what 4-H is doing for youth and what it is doing for your state as a whole. So with that, I'm John Long- Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we will see you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service Office of Agricultural Communications.  

Mary Audrey Long sits down with John (her father) and Cobie to discuss the life skills learned and relationships developed through the first years in 4-H. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right and welcome to another podcast of 4-H-4-U-2. I'm your host, John Long. Cobie Rutherford: And I'm Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And we are broadcasting live from Mississippi State University in the wonderful podcast room in Bost Extension Center here. Cobie Rutherford: Yes sir. John Long: Excited to be here and even more excited about the guest that we have on today, and that is Mary Audrey Long. She is joining us in the studio. Mary Audrey, how are you doing today? Mary Audrey Long: I'm doing good. John Long: Good, good, good. What have you been up to? Mary Audrey Long: Enjoying the first full day of summer. John Long: That's good, that's good. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, I remember those days. Summer was always something to look forward to. John Long: And it seemed like as a kid, I don't know, Cobie, do you feel like that summers are just much shorter now than they were when we were kids? Cobie Rutherford: It does. It seems way shorter. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: And I always looked forward to spring break and summer, and there for a while, I always tried to take spring break, but it seems like the older I've gotten, the less that's happened. John Long: Yeah, that's true. That is true. I've had folks actually say, "Are y'all off all for spring break?" I said, "No, we're working." Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: I mean we've got things to do. We've got a lot of stuff to get ready for, and one of them being one that's coming up next week, which is Congress. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. It'll be here, 600 4-Hers across the state will be here on Mississippi State's campus. John Long: That's a lot, that is a lot, and it is a lot of fun too. Cobie Rutherford: No doubt. John Long: Yeah. We get to see a lot of different contests and workshops and get to see some really good talent too. Cobie Rutherford: So Mary Audrey, you're probably too young to come to Congress, but I know you're probably looking forward to that one day. Mary Audrey Long: I really am. I've heard so much about it and I've just been looking forward to it. John Long: So good. How long have you been in 4-H Mary Audrey? Mary Audrey Long: I think ... What's the age limit for it? John Long: It's eight. Mary Audrey Long: Eight, I did club and that was when I was about five. John Long: Yeah, that's about right, when you did Cloverbuds. Mary Audrey Long: Cloverbuds, and then I did archery, the shooting sports, it kind of hooks onto 4-H too and I've done that since I was old enough to and love it and it is the best thing. John Long: That's awesome. Mary Audrey Long: We've just had District too. John Long: That's good, that's good. How did you do at District? Mary Audrey Long: I actually got first place. It said in the bracket I got second but on my certificate it said first. John Long: Actually that was last year certificate I'm sorry to disappoint you. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. John Long: Dead air. Mary Audrey Long: Are you kidding me? John Long: Oh me. We are really winging this today and reason we're winging it is because we don't have our sound or our chief engineer, Art Shirley with us. We are going to get through this. Dead air or not, we're going to do it. But anyway you are saying ... Now let me ask you this. Why did you choose archery as far as being in the safety program? Why did you choose archery? And don't say it because I made you do it. Mary Audrey Long: Well, I chose archery because I had been doing archery since I was ... I don't know what, four? John Long: Yeah, probably. Mary Audrey Long: Four, maybe three, three, four. I don't know. John Long: Yeah, I got you a really little bow when you were little. I mean, little, little. Yeah, probably four. Mary Audrey Long: Yeah, but I have shot it since the day I can pick up a bow and I have loved it ever since. John Long: Good. Mary Audrey Long: [inaudible 00:03:56] So happy, when I found out that I could do it. Cobie Rutherford: Now I don't really know how a lot about safety programs and shooting sports programs. I didn't grow up a hunter, didn't participate in 4-H, but I know a few things about a bow and what is it when you pull back on on the string, if there's not an arrow on it, you shouldn't do that, right? If there's not arrow loaded on the bow? Mary Audrey Long: You should really not do that, it'll break the bow basically. I did that once, I forgot about the arrow not being in my bow and it just broke. What was the daddy? Was it my peeps? Did my peeps come off? John Long: Yeah, it was a lot of stuff came off. Mary Audrey Long: Yeah, it's a really bad thing. John Long: It's called dry fire. Cobie Rutherford: And see, that amazes me because I learned that in physics class- John Long: Oh, really? Cobie Rutherford: In college actually. It's like Mary Audrey's already got a jump on some physics and different mechanisms of bow and arrows before she even gets to that upper level sides. That's pretty cool. Mary Audrey Long: You can learn a lot in 4-H, especially shooting sports, a lot of science, physics. John Long: Yeah it is, it takes a lot of that. Cobie Rutherford: And the other thing we learned was how you have to ... If you're shooting far away, have to adjust for the wind and you may have to aim a little bit higher than you wanted to because it might drop. Do you use all that kind of in your strategy when you're competing? Mary Audrey Long: I actually ... Before competition were not allowed to move anything during competition unless we're senior at State, but we can only adjust it before competition. We can't do it while we're shooting. I always shoot before my competition to find out where I'm needed to aim and all that and where my site needs to be. And then that's just how I kind of get ready for competition since we can't move it. Cobie Rutherford: That's cool. Mary Audrey Long: When I'm a senior at State or District, isn't it District you can do that daddy? John Long: It's at State what you're telling him about. Mary Audrey Long: Yeah, at State you can only move it while you're competing. John Long: Right, right. When you have an archery practice- Mary Audrey Long: I do. John Long: ... How does that work exactly? What do you do during that practice? Mary Audrey Long: Basically what you do is we have the whole team from our County, [inaudible 00:06:24] County, and we have a coach named Johnny Thompson. I think a lot of people know him from horse riding and all that. What we have to do is at the beginning of the year, we make a line and we lay out targets. And then all the people from [inaudible 00:06:44] County, they come and we will all shoot, well we go in rounds like you would at District or State or whatever. John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: And the junior will shoot inside, since we had to switch facilities and the seniors will shoot outside. John Long: Okay. Mary Audrey Long: If there aren't enough kids to go on the line, then we'll have sections that you do at District or State, which will have one round of kids and then another round, like morning one, two and three. John Long: That kind of prepares you for going to a District event, really. Mary Audrey Long: It really does because you can fit in people at certain times if people aren't there, so that's a good thing that we use in practice. Cobie Rutherford: That's pretty interesting. What about with the firearms? What do you participate in that side of the safety program as well? Mary Audrey Long: Well, we actually have to get them checked at District and stuff like that and State too. Cobie Rutherford: Do you shoot a pistol or a .22 rifle or any of that stuff? Mary Audrey Long: I do not, but I really kind of want to shoot .22 rifle next year. Cobie Rutherford: Okay, good deal. John Long: Yeah, because you'd be old enough to do it at that point. Yeah. What do you feel like ... Like you mentioned you've been in different parts of 4-H and the club level. Like I said, pretty much and grown up in 4-H, what do you think is one of the main things that you have learned while you've been in 4-H? Mary Audrey Long: I think it's being more responsible and being more careful because before I went to the club and before I went to doing archery and shooting sports, I was not as responsible I should have been with firearms. I had a BB gun when I was little, I was not as responsible I should have been with that. John Long: Yeah, I know. Mary Audrey Long: Thank you. Cobie Rutherford: Sounds like you've got a story behind that. John Long: We're not telling anything no, but go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted you. Mary Audrey Long: And I was not as responsible I should've been. I'm more careful with how I shoot and what is around me while I'm shooting and that has just changed me a lot and it actually helped me be more comfortable shooting stuff. John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: Because since my dad's one of the ... We'll have to go Nationals and stuff like that when I was a baby, I basically grew up around guns and stuff like that since I hunt too. John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: And that's just helped me want to shoot more. John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: Actually shot my first Clyde in December and busted it and I was crying. Cobie Rutherford: That's cool. John Long: Yeah, it was pretty awesome right there. When she shot, I turned around and she was crying, I thought she was crying because of the gun- Cobie Rutherford: Because it kicked her. John Long: ... Right, but it wasn't, I said, "Are you okay?" She's like, "Yes." And I said, "What's wrong?" She's like, "I'm just happy." Cobie Rutherford: I'm just happy. John Long: But anyway, that was pretty cool too. Mary Audrey Long: I had ate three waffles that morning. Dominic, the guy we were hunting with, we're actually duck hunting. He was like, "I guess it was because of those waffles.?" John Long: Yeah, that's right, it's the waffles that'll get you. I don't know if that's good advice, eat waffles before you get out of line, but hey, it might work for some people I guess. Mary Audrey Long: Oh, I don't know. John Long: Yeah, I don't know either. Cobie Rutherford: That's funny. John Long: You mentioned safety and I think safety first and foremost, and we preach that all the time, don't we? And even around guns. What is one of the main things I tell you to do when you're handling a firearm? What's the first thing you do once you have it in your hands? Mary Audrey Long: Check it because you have no clue, you might've forgotten if you have a ...What do you call it? John Long: A bullet or a shale or something like that. Mary Audrey Long: What do you call it? One of them things, you know how you stick in your rifle? A magazine. John Long: Yeah, a magazine. Mary Audrey Long: Might have a magazine and left a shell in there or something, and that safety might be off. I mean, and you could be aiming it and then you know how you can kind of click it? John Long: Yeah, we don't want to do that first thing. Mary Audrey Long: No, the gun might go off. You just always want to be safe and make sure that that gun is not loaded, so something bad could happen- John Long: Exactly. Mary Audrey Long: ... It always can. I mean there's a 99.9% of it happening. 50, 50, whatever. John Long: You don't know unless you check it. Mary Audrey Long: Exactly. John Long: And all guns are to be treated as if ... Mary Audrey Long: They are a person. John Long: They are loaded. Mary Audrey Long: Same thing. John Long: But do you ... Yeah, right. I guess some people are loaded, I don't know. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's one thing that my grandpa taught me. He was a hunter and he told me to never ever point a gun at anything unless you intended to shoot it. John Long: Shoot it, yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. Same for a target. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: I mean, you don't want to ever point a barrel at anything that you're not ... You want to keep it in a safe direction, and another thing is too, is that that goes for archery as well. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Mary Audrey Long: It really does. John Long: For sure. Mary Audrey Long: You just need to be careful because that end on that arrow could kill somebody right when it hits them, you always need to make sure what is around you and what could be coming through the area that you're shooting. John Long: Target, that's right, and always be careful to be aware of- Mary Audrey Long: Your surrounding- John Long: Who's behind you too. Mary Audrey Long: Yeah. John Long: You want to make sure, you don't want to jab. Mary Audrey Long: And you don't want animals outside while you are shooting. John Long: Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. I think that goes to the fact that we preach safety, safety, safety, and I think that goes a very well for the safety record that we do have in shooting sports. I think that one of the things that emphasis goes just is always at the forefront and it always should be at forefront, but what do you feel like you as a person ... How do you think you as a person, what do you think one particular thing in four H safety that has taught you responsibility or good sportsmanship? Can you think of any moment in 4-H Safety that really was memorable and was kind of a learning experience for you? Mary Audrey Long: Last year. Basically last year I was not shooting my best at all, it was a learning experience to listen what other people had to tell me about getting better. And that was a really learning experience because at the beginning of this year I was not shooting my best, but as it went on, I kept getting better because I would listen to people's advice for me and that was a really good learning experience and stuff like that. The first year I shot the first ever shot I shot all in the practice line was in the bullseye and that was a really fun moment for me. John Long: That's good, that's really good. What about friendships? Because I know that we have friends at school and then we have friends in sometimes those in 4-H Safety and sometimes those actually overlap. But do you feel like you've made new friendships with people in 4-H and how has that been for you as far as that experience? Mary Audrey Long: Yes. I've made so many more friends and I love it because they can help me get better and I can help and give them good advice and they can help me and give me good advice and I love making all these new friends because they're are so nice. And I mean, I just loved it. John Long: That's good. Cobie Rutherford: You probably have a chance to meet people from outside of your club and your County too, don't you? Mary Audrey Long: I do actually. I stood on the line this year at District with this girl and she was actually from ... What's Columbus County? John Long: Lowndes County. Mary Audrey Long: Lowndes County, she's from Lowndes County. John Long: Shout out to Lowndes County 4-H. Mary Audrey Long: Yep, and she was really nice and we talked every time we got off the line and it was just fun, I love standing by people I don't know. And because I always don't want to get by people I know, even though sometimes I do- John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: ... Because then they'll keep talking to me while I'm shooting, shout to that other dude. John Long: To Trey. That's who you're talking about, who's on the line. Mary Audrey Long: I'm talking about that dude who would not shut his- John Long: No, no, no. We're not talking about that. Cobie Rutherford: That talked a lot. John Long: Yeah, yeah. You can't be too talky. Cobie Rutherford: That would be distracting I think, shooting beside chatty Cathy. You pull back your bow and then she gets loud or something, then you might shoot up in a tree. John Long: No, that's exactly it. You don't want to do that. For sure. Mary Audrey Long: But it's good to not get by people who you don't know, it'll keep you from talking to them, but you also need to learn how to keep that stuff out of your head- John Long: Right, right. Mary Audrey Long: ... Which I did not have good handle over. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, because that's probably part of the strategy. If you're beside somebody that was really, really good and you're like, well I'm going to try to get them off their game. That's not very good sportsmanship- John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: No, it's not. Cobie Rutherford: But it's kind of probably a fine line between being friendly and aggravating. John Long: That's right, that's right. Mary Audrey Long: And I'm pretty competitive, so it's hard to ... John Long: I've told her before that when you get on the line, it's only you in the target and you are the only thing that's in control of that moment and once that arrows gone, you can't take it back. So you have focused on the next arrow Mary Audrey Long: Yeah, I've always kind of learned from that and it's been good. John Long: That's good, that's good. What do you feel like ... You said you think you might try .22 next year, that'll be good. Mary Audrey Long: Yes. I basically got it from Santa Clause, I got a .22 rifle, and I've been shooting it forever. John Long: Yeah, you've been going through my bullets pretty quick too. Mary Audrey Long: Well at least I'm shooting. John Long: Well, I said that that I would buy all the bullets you needed. Cobie Rutherford: Wow. Mary Audrey Long: And I've loved it. It's been one of those little Crickett ones and it's camo, which I love, and it has a side arm, this .22 rifle. John Long: It has a little scope on it too. Cobie Rutherford: It fits you. John Long: What do you think is one of the things that if you had a young person that would be interested in the 4-H safety program, what would you suggest that they do? How do you think they should get into it? Mary Audrey Long: Well, it would have to depend on what they would want to do, I guess, because I mean, I might don't want to make the decision for them- John Long: Right. Mary Audrey Long: Because they might have an interest in stuff, but it would probably be archery, shotgun or .22 rifle. John Long: Yeah, and probably a little bit biased on archery, I would guess, because that's what you're doing, right now. Mary Audrey Long: Yeah, yeah. John Long: That's good, that's good. Well, Mary Audrey, we thank you so much that take a just a few moments out of your busy schedule. Mary Audrey Long: Oh, so busy, so, so busy. John Long: So, so busy. Cobie Rutherford: On the first day of summer. John Long: First day of summer, that's right. Mary Audrey Long: So busy. John Long: For you. Thank you for coming in and sitting down with us, we appreciate it. Mary Audrey Long: You're welcome, I really liked it. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. Good deal. You did a good job. John Long: Yeah, popsicles on me. Mary Audrey Long: Yay. John Long: All right. Well, this has been 4-H-4-U-2, and for more information on 4-H in your area, go to extension.msstate.edu and please go to our podcast and subscribe and Cobie, you got anything else before we go? Cobie Rutherford: I don't hope everybody has a good rest of the week- John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: ... And hopefully see you at Congress. John Long: All right, we'll see you then, we're going to keep it green from here on out. Mary Audrey Long: Oh, yes. John Long: Oh, yes. All right. Thanks for listening. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford take a look at the 4-H Leadership program Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University extension service promoting forage programs and positive youth development. Here now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, well welcome to 4-H-4-U-2, again, and Cobie, how are you today? Cobie Rutherford: Doing fantastic John. It's been a busy, fast week. Gosh. John Long: It's like you'd kicked an ant bed in the 4-H office, right? Cobie Rutherford: I know, we go the whole month with the phone ringing like twice a day to now twice every five minutes. It's been insane. John Long: We're a hot item. That's for sure. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: That's right. Well we got a lot of stuff going on, of course. You know, summer is on top of us and the Mississippi homemaker volunteers are going to be on campus next week. And then the weekend after that is Congress. So we've got a lot going on for sure. And then what really got me was I had a national shooting sports committee meeting yesterday and somebody said, "How many weeks are we out now from the national championship?" And somebody said, "Five." And I thought, oh my goodness, five weeks until the end of June. Then we're looking at state invitationals, so it's a lot of stuff going on in a short amount of time. Co-op, we got co-op. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, co-op. John Long: Yep. Cobie Rutherford: Then just so many events going on this summer. My wife and I were trying to look at some dates for a possible vacation and John, I don't know that it's going to happen this year. It is wild. John Long: I don't know who we had a vacation last. It's rough. You know, the corporate guy, he didn't even say anything about PADs. We'll be on the road with PADs, too. Cobie Rutherford: Yep. That's going to be fun. John Long: Yeah, it will. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. All of our... And that ties into what we're talking about today, all times management, leadership, all these things kind of go hand in hand together. And I'm kind of excited about our topic today. John Long: Yeah, me too. Me too. Cobie Rutherford: The past couple of podcasts or past three or four, however many we've done now, we've talked about kind of content area. We talked about safety, we talked about the youth livestock programs, we've talked about ATV safety. And now we're kind of getting into the youth development content. I think leadership's one of the best skills that we teach 4-H'ers. John Long: So when we're talking about leadership, when it's with 4-H, what does that really mean to you? How do you see that? Cobie Rutherford: Well, I think when I think about leadership, my favorite leadership quote just really defines the whole concept of leadership and leaders very well. And it's by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and it's, "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus." Trying to get everybody on the same page, being an influencer, being someone who others look up to, but kind of keeping your power in check, I think. John Long: Right, right. And that's very important because a lot of times, you know, adults have that problem, right? Keeping a lot of things in check. But I think to me one of the things that 4-H teaches, the young people to give back. I'll use a big word, contributory skill. And giving back to what's been given to them is really an awesome thing in my opinion. And I've seen young people start from very young age in 4-H and go all the way through, and to see them take leadership roles... And not necessarily in this terminal part of their 4-H career, it's supposed to go with them forever and even through the program. So you can see a lot of young people at a young age exhibiting leadership skills for sure. Cobie Rutherford: That's exactly right. And I think about stages of leadership and think about where we want people to be through the 4-H program. You and I as extension educators, we want to make an impact on those children's lives and teach them, like you said, how to give back. But I think it's important as we talk about leadership to these kids that we teach them about leaving a legacy. What do you want to be remembered as? Even after, post 4-H, into adulthood, into your senior citizen years and even posthumously, what is going to be that thing that people remember about you? And I think that's where really good leaders stand apart from people who don't take leadership roles. And I think that's also another misconception. I think that everybody has a potential to be a leader, just because you're not in the forefront of something or a project, you still have an ability to provide leadership to a certain aspect of a team or to a certain aspect of a contest or something like that. So I think it's pretty cool. John Long: Yeah, I agree. You was talking about quotes, I wish I'd have brought... It's on my wall in my office and it's by... And I'm going to really slaughter this, but it was from General MacArthur and he said that a soldier's job is not to destroy, but to rebuild. And that when he... And, again, I'm slaughtering this and I'm going to get to the point in a minute. But he said that he didn't really want to be remembered by his son for all of the achievements that he made in his military career, what he wanted his son to remember was the time that he spent with him. And I thought that was just so powerful and such a... I don't know, it brought it all into context about what a great leader really focuses on as the important things and doesn't let the small things get them drugged down, or defeats. There's another one I have, excuse me, on my wall that's by Winston Churchill that says, "Success is defined by repeatedly being defeated, yet not losing enthusiasm." And I think a good leader does that for sure, too. Because it can't be downtrodden by no means for that. But- Cobie Rutherford: That's exactly right. You know, even in these 4-H contests we've talked about so many times, we talk about in all contests we applaud participation first of all. You get up there and you participate, you do the public speech, you do the demonstration, whatever it is, you're a winner just by getting up there and competing because most people don't. But at the end of the day, there's always a first prize winner, a second place winner and third place winner. And where I think that the whole leadership development really begins is when you don't win first place, going back and competing again and trying it again the next year or trying to improve your skills. To me leadership is not something you're born with it or it's not really something that is inherited, it's your ability to get back up when you fall down. And as, almost, a road of continuous improvement. You don't, I don't think, ever reach a pinnacle in your leadership development. You keep working harder, you try to become a different leader. You try to motivate and inspire people in different ways as you get older. John Long: Well, I've got to tell you this little factoid that I heard when I was listening to another podcast and actually today, and it was on United States presidents. And I'm a big history buff, I did not know this at all. But that George Washington's mother was a loyalist. Cobie Rutherford: How about that? John Long: And could you imagine that household with him trying to create a country, be a leader, and having to face that difficulty, you see. So that's very true. That's very true. And I think that it's important to learn that you're not going to please everybody. I think that's another thing a leader has to realize is that... What was Lincoln's favorite quote? We're doing a quote of quotes today. Cobie Rutherford: I know. John Long: What you can't please all the people some of the time or something like that, you know? But the fact is is you're not going to be able to make everybody happy. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: And learning that is another good quality, I think, of a leader. Cobie Rutherford: Absolutely. And I think that's where a lot of people with different personalities struggle with things. If you're taking the Myers Briggs test and trying to figure out what type of personality you have or what [crosstalk 00:08:58]- John Long: That's what I did my PhD on. Cobie Rutherford: Is it really? John Long: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Cobie Rutherford: How about that? John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Well so I- John Long: That and other things, but... Cobie Rutherford: I've taken that test probably four or five times now and you know, surprisingly... Well, you're probably not surprised. I'm two standard deviations above the mean for an extroversive, being an extrovert. And then so really one thing I've had to work on since high school, really, is toning it back, dialing it in some, trying to be more introverted when I'm just dying to yell out. John Long: Right, right. Cobie Rutherford: And I think that that self awareness is a big part of leadership, knowing what your abilities are, knowing that for me it's being too much for people to handle sometimes. Because I like to chat, I like to talk, I can get distracted very easily, I can get others distracted easily. And a lot of people don't really operate well under that type of leadership. So I've had to try to dial that in some. John Long: What do you think I am, an extrovert or an introvert? Cobie Rutherford: I would say you're extroverted. John Long: You would be incorrect. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: I have test introverted every time. Cobie Rutherford: How about that? John Long: And that was one of the things I think too, that you don't really know because a lot of, I would say, 4-H'ers that I have seen that were through the years, like I was saying, that we're introverts. How they, through public speaking and different projects where they were... And not to say forced, but when they put themselves in that situation, they really found out that they could actually get up and speak in front of people. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, exactly. John Long: And that's a testimony to what 4-H does for young people, in my opinion. I mean that's... The proof is in the pudding when you do that. Cobie Rutherford: You know, when you can change your personality, they call that emotional intelligence. John Long: Oh really? Cobie Rutherford: So for you, me thinking that you're an extrovert, that must indicate that you have a high level of emotional intelligence. That you're very intone with what your personality is and how you can overcome that. John Long: Nah, it's been a struggle. It's been a struggle. But I think I have gotten a little bit better through the years. I definitely... I remember it, and this is crazy, believe it or not, it was really a struggle to even talk on the telephone. I called people that I didn't know, I could not stand it. So big secret is, is John is an introvert, but, again, I can function and I think that that's part of it. I mean, it's not a bad thing. Cobie Rutherford: No, absolutely not. John Long: And I think, kids get hung up, especially with the fact of being during those formative years, that common thread that runs through those ages is that they're prone to periods of low self esteem. And when they have those moments, it's almost like saying, "Well, you know, it must be something wrong with me." No, it's just who you are and it's not anything to be ashamed of, you just have to learn who you are and be who you are and by that you are who you are. And now let me ask you this. Do you think every person is a leader? Cobie Rutherford: So I think that that's a tough one because I- John Long: We're bordering on opinion here, I know. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. So I think that, in theory, everyone can take on a leadership role if they choose to. So in whatever it is, I think that some people are better at being a follower than a leader. And Lord knows we need people, the worker bees, that can take direction that don't necessarily want the spotlight or be in the the center of everything. So, you know, I think that's kind of a loaded question. I think people can be if they want to be, but if not, there's more room for followers than there are leaders, I guess. John Long: Right. And we'll give you that. You know, I talked about being a history buff. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: Did you know that Napoleon, when he was retreating from Russia, he got out of his carriage and was walking beside his men and his men were totally just angry. They did not think he was supposed to be, a man of his position should not be out there. And he was walking with a common soldier. That's strange when you think of him. But I don't know, I think it's like you said, it's important that we have those that are willing to do the work. But you know a really good quality that I think a leader exhibits, is being able to get down in the trenches with the worker bees, or whatever you want to call [inaudible 00:13:44] and doing the same thing. Cobie Rutherford: Oh, absolutely. John Long: I always thought that if you felt like that you were... I would never ask somebody to do something I wouldn't do myself, you know, that kind of thing? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I agree. John Long: But yeah, I don't know. It's kind of like that question I ask, is who hunts? And I say, who hunts, raise your hand, and you may have half the class raised their hand and others saying, "No, I don't hunt. I never been hunting." And I said, well what happens when you get hungry? You go to hunting a hamburger- Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, sure. John Long: Or you go to hunt for a sale at a store. So can everybody be a good leader? I agree with you, I think that the ability to lead in some capacity is there, but it may not... It may be like Myers-Briggs, it may be stronger on one end than it is the other, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's right. And I think a lot of it's based on your own drives and your own motivations and ambitions. I think about what 4-H help... I consider myself to be a leader, I guess. And I think I really got my start in being interested leadership through 4-H in my elementary school program, in fifth grade. I was elected the club president in my fifth grade class, Ms. Anderson's homeroom. So that's kind of the- John Long: Shout to Ms. Anderson. Cobie Rutherford: Yes, shout out to Ms. Ruth Anderson I had in elementary school. But you know that was my first interaction with leadership and then from there, after that, it was kind of expected that I was going to run for 4-H president because I kind of liked it, I kind of liked leading the meetings. And with my project, livestock, we talked about that a lot. You know sometimes cows, steers, whatever they are, can be the dumbest animals in the whole world and teaching them how to do what you want them to in the show ring, you're actually practicing a leadership skill without even knowing it. And it's patient, compassion, understanding, all those different things that you learned from that dumb hamburger on legs, walking burger, I guess. And it's kind of cool how that stuff all comes back into play. How do shooting sports or safety promote leadership? John Long: Well, I think that it's... And again, like we've talked before, 4-H is 4-H, it's youth development by teaching life skills. We developed that child by teaching life skills. It does not matter if it is a cow or a firearm or a bow and arrow. The thing that we have to remember is, is that is only the instrument used to teach the life skill. It is all headed in the same direction. We're all teaching the same thing, just the method may be a little different based on the instrument or tool that's used. So I would say in 4-H safety, leadership really... I tell you what is really cool and I love it and I've seen it more than once, is to see somebody, a young person, that might be struggling on the line and another young person sees that and steps up and says, "Hey, let me see if I can help you." John Long: And, I mean, it's pretty moving to see that because you just... I don't know if we just get stuck in this stereotype that kids are just selfish and they only think about themselves and... But they're not like that, you know? And, again, I think that's a testimony to the program. There's just something different about 4-H, and that sounds vague but it's not, but you can tell a difference when a young person has been exposed to a positive learning environment like 4-H does. I think that provides an opportunity for those leadership characteristics to really grow because that's the ground, that positive experience that we give them with something that they're interested in. I think that just provides that real fertile environment for them to grow. John Long: And the result of that is you're going to see those opportunities to lead. Other times I've seen, of course, with the 4-H safety ambassador program, with a child that goes through that, they want to be an ambassador. They want to be at the forefront of promoting 4-H safety. And I've seen them reach out to other young people, as well as adults, and assist them. So there's just a lot about 4-H that when we talk about citizenship, we talk about leadership and things like that, where these young people are actually giving back to the community. That is just... It's absolutely amazing. And I know I've probably [inaudible 00:18:44] I need a jar for every time I've said amazing, but I'll put a quarter in it and go buy a hamburger. But it's the truth. It really- Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, no doubt. I totally agree. I think that these 4-H'ers are getting so many skills and there's no value on that. I mean, it's something we can't measure very effectively, but we know we're making a difference. John Long: You know what's exciting to me, is the fact that what an awesome opportunity. And I am kind of jealous because we do have interaction with young people, in certain circumstances we do. We get to deal with Congress, like we've got coming up, or we may be at a 4-H safety event or PAD. We do have a little interaction with young people, but those volunteers and agents that are out there on the ground with them, doing the program, they have such an awesome opportunity that I am jealous of at times because they get to see the full effect of it. They get to see that child change. They are a change agent in that young person's life. Cobie Rutherford: They're the catalyst. John Long: That's the cat... Hey that's good. Isn't that like the triangle or no, that's the... What is that in the heat, in chemistry? You know what I'm talking about? Cobie Rutherford: Oh, yeah... John Long: Yeah, it's- Cobie Rutherford: I'm removed from that. John Long: Yeah, now you've got me off on topic now. It's getting close to my coffee time. But yeah, and they get to see that part of the process and see that young person grow. It is an awesome, awesome opportunity. And I wish more people would get involved. And if you are to be that competent, caring adult in that young person's life, you change that person. It's like you can... I guarantee you... Like you just mentioned your teacher, we all have teachers that we remember for good things and it's because they invested in our life. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, exactly. John Long: And it's life changing. We never forget them. So if you want a monument to your life, you be a teacher of some type or a person that is a mentor or involved with a young person in a positive way. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, no doubt. Well, yeah, there's... I wonder what we're going to talk about next, John? This leadership thing, this time flew. John Long: I know. Cobie Rutherford: We've already talked 20 minutes and I think we just barely skimmed the surface of- John Long: We may have to do a part two or something. Cobie Rutherford: We may have to, to be continued. John Long: That's right. Well, we may have an opportunity to have a young person in here and they can tell us by their own mouth what 4-H has done for them and how it's changed their life, too. Cobie Rutherford: I think that sounds like a great opportunity for us to bring in at 4-H Congress next week. John Long: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well we are going to be seeing everybody there and having a big time and we look forward to if anybody hears this by the time Congress rolls around. We'll see you on the grounds and out and about, but if we don't, we'll see you next year. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, no doubt. If you're listening to our podcast and want to give John or I a shout out, we'd be appreciative of that. See if people are listening. My email address is cobie.rutherford@msstate.edu and John's is- John Long: Same as his, same as Cobie's. Cobie Rutherford: First and last name... john.long. John Long: You can send on the bad email to Cobie- Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: And he doesn't have to show it to me. Cobie Rutherford: So that sounds good. Well tune in next time to 4-H-4-U-2, and always look forward hearing from you. John Long: Oh yeah. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 2-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University extension service, office of agricultural communications.  

Cobie Rutherford and Dr. John Long welcome guest and MSU Extension’s ATV Safety expert, Brad Staton. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4H4U2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service, promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your hosts, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: Alright man. Welcome to yet a, another, a podcast of 4H4U2. How is everybody doing today? Cobie Rutherford: Man? It's a lovely day outside. I'm so happy to be here today. John. John Long: We are so glad to have a, I don't know if you want to call it fellow, well coworker, fellow beard brother. Uh, even though I call it, Cobie Rutherford: I feel a little left out without the beard. John Long: Right. You know, Hey, I'm, I'm losing it on top. Big time. Hey can, it's not too late. He's got a good head of hair. So, you know, I'm jealous. I'm jealous of Cobie. Um, but Brad with ATV safety is here. And um, Brad and well all of us kind of work in kind of the corner, I guess I'm the outsider. My office is a little bit further away from everybody else's, but Brad's going to talk to us about ATV safety and that's something extremely important as we all know. Um, and I guess we just want to start out by saying brand. Tell us a little bit about yourself, uh, where you come from and, and, uh, how you got involved with the, the 4-H ATV safety. Brad Staton: Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, let's see if I can answer. Um, well, uh, I'm from Alabama originally. Um, went to school at Auburn university. My wife got a professorship at Mississippi State, and here we are. Um, I just kind of looked into the 4-H, uh, position and I guess I like what I'm doing so I'm still here. John Long: Good, good. And kids. Brad Staton: Yep. Yeah. Love worked with kids. John Long: And have some yourself? Brad Staton: Yeah, I have some myself. I've got two... John Long: You love 'em so much, you had two. Brad Staton: Yeah, I had two of them and we're not getting anymore. I don't like them that much. John Long: You're like Leanne, she said if we had had our boy first, she wouldn't have had another one. Brad Staton: Well, see, I said the opposite. If we'd have had our girl first, we probably wouldn't have had another one... John Long: Oh, right. Okay. Okay, cool. Cool. But you do like working with kids? Brad Staton: Oh yes, I like working with kids. They're lots of fun and then can be stressful sometimes, but it's worth it in the end. Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Now Brad, your education training, formal education is in fisheries, right? Brad Staton: Fisheries and wildlife. Cobie Rutherford: Fisheries and wildlife. So it kind of makes sense that ATV kind of goes hand in hand with the hunting and outdoors and kind of seems like a good fit to me. Brad Staton: Yeah. A lot of the jobs I had in the past, you know, required me to, to ride ATVs, you know, through the woods or are on the fish farm, whatever. So, you know, that was kind of my selling point when I applied for the job that, you know, I've, I've driven ATVs, you know, professionally, so to speak, for, for several years before I had this job, John Long: I don't, I don't know. I don't know if any of y'all had three wheelers. Anybody have a three wheeler? Brad Staton: I didn't own one, but I've riden one several times when I was younger. John Long: I had one, I think mine was a 1982 model. It was a 1-10, it was a three wheeler. And I'm going to tell a quick story about my experience. You know, I wanted one bad. Well, I came home and for my birthday there was one sitting in my front yard. I jumped on that thing and took off, you know, no helmet or anything. Right. And, uh, my dad and mom were sitting on the front porch and I took off and I made a loop around the house. Well, I didn't, I couldn't make the turn and I slammed into my dad's truck and I jumped off of it. And I didn't ride it for like probably a day or so. But safety standards are so much different now, uh, and they finally wised up and realized four wheels were better than three, I guess. Brad Staton: Yes. Uh, I don't, I don't know what took them so long to decide that. It kind of seems, you know, obvious now, but it wasn't a thing that was thought of, you know, back in the 80s. John Long: and we had no, no rider safety courses that I was aware of. How old is this program or how young and... Brad Staton: uh, approximately 10 years old I would say. Uh, and I guess we're kind of unique in Mississippi. Uh, many States don't require, you know, various or, many States have different laws. Uh, Mississippi is kind of unique in the fact that we require, you know, riders under 16 to have a safety card through one of the ASI approved, ATV safety Institute approved courses. And we also require riders under 16 to have a helmet on public land. John Long: That's cool. That's cool. Cobie Rutherford: And does that a certification, does that apply to only public land or is that private as well? Brad Staton: Well, the way the law is written, it's only the laws only written for public land. Of course, it's my recommendation, you should have a helmet anytime you get on an ATV. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I know. There are times that when, so my story, I had a Kawasaki Bayou 2-10 growing up and that thing would go, it would fearly fly. And of course, uh, John Long: Is that one fairly jacked up, kind of high. Cobie Rutherford: It kind of was, but it wasn't racing one, we used it on the farm and, uh, I would just take off and full speed ahead and, uh, one time I flipped it and, uh, I actually cracked a couple ribs, but, uh, you know, I just, I didn't have on a helmet and it could have been a lot worse, but it's something we didn't think about growing up. John Long: Yeah, we didn't, we definitely didn't think about it. You know, when riding and all, I don't, I guess the term of limitations is going out on right, getting a ticket. But I mean, we rode them all over public roads, too, and didn't think anything about it, you know, and, the funny thing was, is our parents let us do it, you know? Cobie Rutherford: Right. John Long: It's just strange, you know, looking, like Brad said, I don't know why, but looking back... Brad Staton: ...just never crossed our mind. John Long: Right. Brad Staton: You know, to jump in with the, the wrecking stories, I think, I think was my goal in life to wreck in every possible way when I was growing up, we, I, I got one stuck in a tree and we had to cut the tree down to get the four wheeler out. That's a long story. I won't go over it right now. John Long: I want to hear that one, when we're off air. Announcer: One day y. John Long: May not be suitable for air. I don't know. Um, so how large is the ATV safety course in the United States? It's a large... Brad Staton: Yeah, it's large. Uh, you know, based on, you know, when I got trained, I had to go out to Oklahoma for a week to get trained, you know, to teach these classes. And we had people from all over the United States, you know, uh, we had a guy from Oklahoma, Florida, Arkansas, you know, I can't remember where all everybody was from, but I think everybody in the class was from a different state. John Long: Right. Brad Staton: So, you know, in every state kinda varies in their, their methods of, you know, their, uh, programming. John Long: Right, right. And you and I were talking this morning about, um, the, the length of that course and it being a week long. And I asked you if it was much classroom time and you said... Brad Staton: ...no, we didn't spend much time in the classroom. Uh, we'd meet in the class every morning, you know, kind of go over some non-writing top things, you know, how to go into schools and, and get our message across. But now most of the, most of the 40-hour a week or they advertise 40 hours is actually about 60 hours a week. John Long: Right. Brad Staton: But, uh, most of that week was riding four wheelers. We either taught classes or we were the Guinea pigs while other instructors were teaching classes. John Long: And that goes back to like 4-H to learn by doing. Brad Staton: Right. Yeah, that's exactly what that was. The model. No, teach the teachers. John Long: Exactly. Exactly. So with the certification, could you kind of walk us through like your, how you do courses? I know there's kinda like maybe two different type courses you do. I'm talking about as far as the, I know you were telling that doing like a rider course and then being certified to teach or, ... talk about that. Brad Staton: The two main courses that ASI provides, which like I said, that's the ATV safety Institute. It's all the big manufacturers, Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, whatnot. They all went together and formed this entity that you know, uh, promotes ATV safety across the nation. Uh, basically they have two levels of courses. Uh, there's the e-course, which is an online computer, uh, course it takes about two hours to complete, uh, that gets you familiar with just the basics of ATV safety and you know, what an ATV is and that kind of thing. And then after you complete the eCourse, you can take the rider course, which is a, a hands-on, you know, half-day class where we put you on an obstacle course with an ATV, and we teach you how to, how to ride it safely and have fun at the same time. John Long: I took, I think I took mine, the rider course, about 11 years ago, and I won't tell you what that was. I don't know how long we were out there, but I had dirt all over me, and I was worn out. I mean, it was, it was very physically taxing on me. Brad Staton: Yeah. People don't go ahead. Announcer: From an adult standpoint, did you take something away from that course, that training? I mean, what did you learn new? John Long: Well, I can tell you this, that, um, I learned that there was a lot of things that I weren't, but I was not doing that I needed to be doing. Normally. And I think Brad, we'll touch on the equipment in a minute. I had probably never worn probably 90% of the, the stuff that, that we were required to wear during the course. And the, I liked the mechanical issues, you know, how are you talking about check this and this every time you got on. That was something I'd never, never done either. So, but it was, it was a lot of um, maneuvering and just kind of experiencing, you know, it was just a different experience for sure. Interesting. What about Brad? What, tell him about equipment. Tell us, tell us about the equipment that's required when you go do the rider course. Brad Staton: Okay. So for my rider course, I require all my students to have, you know, proper gear and then we start off with a helmet and you know, I won't let anybody on a four Wheeler without a helmet. Right. Um, you know, it needs to be a DOT-approved helmet. So like I joke around with my, my kids when I do safety days, you know, bicycle helmets, football helmets, they're just not good enough. You need a real DOT-approved helmet. You know, it's approved for the crash that you potentially could have in the speeds that you'd be traveling on the forehead. John Long: Right. And I am going to just stop right here. We had advisory ATV advisory council. This, this last week one was it, Brad Staton: It was Monday. John Long: I'm telling you, this is crazy. It's been a long week... but anyway, um, and it's for good reason too, I guess, right? Uh, with Congress coming up. But anyway, we had an ATV advisory council, and I found out a very fascinating fact that I never knew before. Cobie, let me ask you this. Yeah. How many times can you drop a helmet on the ground before it becomes ineffective or are that you should not wear it anymore? Cobie Rutherford: Well, John Long: I mean high, Cobie Rutherford: I would say several times, but my, my gut tells me that if you drop it once, it's probably compromised the integrity of it... John Long: That's correct. And Brad, and tell us why that is. I could not believe that Brad Staton: It's not necessarily you look for cracks on the outside of the shell. You know, that's what most people would think if you drop it, and it didn't crack, it should be good. But it's the internal components of the helmet, the foam and whatnot, uh, that could get out of out of line or compressed and never, never really gain that. Uh, foaminess back John Long: Or protective. Protecting your, your uh egg there. Brad Staton: Exactly. So yeah, if you drop your helmet once or you know, especially if you have a crash, you should replace that helmet. That's the recommendation. John Long: That is that, that really, like I said, surprised me because, and it re..., And I'll tell you another thing is it teaches if you're gonna have your kids on an ATV, you need to be careful that they understand that, you know, cause here I am, I'm old and I never knew that. So yeah. Cobie Rutherford: I mean, how many people were tell us in their helmets, in the backs of the trucks are. John Long: exactly. Cobie Rutherford: on the concrete when they get home. Just toss it in the garage. John Long: Yeah, exactly. So what else, what else did you have there? We talk helmet and then I'm a, I'm sorry, I interrupted. Brad Staton: So like I said, helmets, the number one most important piece of equipment. Uh, I preach that all the time. Uh, and then, you know, we go into eye protection next. Uh, you know, if you can't see, you can't drive. John Long: Right. Brad Staton: So, you know, they make goggles that slip over the helmets or you know, even safety glasses will work and you know, shatterproof safety glasses. Just something to protect your eyes from the bugs, you know, dirt, whatever that that may make cause you not to be able to see while you're riding. John Long: People don't think about that, but you just think about like if you're riding whatever, and it's like going down the road and you hit a bug with the windshield, you know, it makes a big splat and you imagine if that hit your eye that you could probably blind you. Brad Staton: Well, I'll, I'll tell you a real quick story about why I'm a believer in eye protection. We were actually riding four wheelers up in Alabama in the mountains of Alabama, so to speak. Uh, and the guy in front of me broke a chain on his four wheeler. John Long: Oh. Brad Staton: And I ended up getting hot sparks in my eye and I had to go to the doctor and have them removed. John Long: Oh goodness. Right. So yeah. Brad Staton: Ever since then, I'm a firm believer in, you know, eye protection, right. John Long: Guarantee you. It's what I say in a 4-H safety. Uh, you only got two and you got to take care of them so you don't get you don't get another one. So, all right. So, uh, we talked about that and then what else? Brad Staton: Okay. Um, and I'll be a little quicker on these other ones. Um, you know, you've got your head protection, your eye protection, the next thing you want to protect is your hands. Uh, you know, wear a good pair of gloves that gives you a good grip on the, on the ATV in case your hands get sweaty or whatever it's wet. And it also, you know, will protect you from briars or you know, branches or stuff like that, if you're driving through, you know, uh, some vegetation or whatnot, right? And then, uh, go on along, I would say long sleeves and long pants both for, you know, protection from limbs, briars, that kind of thing. Or if you did fall off, it's gonna protect you, you know, keep you from getting that road rash type injuries. John Long: Right..; Brad Staton: And then, uh, you know, another thing about the long pants, you know, you're sitting on top of the motor. So if you've got short's on, and you barely touched that muffler or the motor on either side, you know, that's an instant burn. John Long: Right. Brad Staton: But then you think, well, what if I flipped and I've got short's on, and I'm stuck under this for even 30 seconds. It could be, you know, go from just a little burn to a pretty severe burn, pretty quick. John Long: Major, major. Brad Staton: And then the last thing I recommend is where, you know, over the ankle, closed-toed shoes. And that's basically the same reason you want to protect your feet. Uh, you know, both from being burned and from, you know, abrasion type injuries, John Long: Right. Right. Well with, um, with all of that and you know, some people saying, Oh, well, I don't want to wear that because it's so hot and you know, and all this stuff and, you know, I can drive and I don't hear a lot, you know, people say, well, I've been driving my whole life, you know. Well, it's just like anything, if you lose respect for it can hurt you. So, Cobie Rutherford: ...that's right. John Long: Um, I actually, uh, have come up on, in my life, we've come up on two, uh, ATV accidents where fatalities occurred. Both of those were when they were riding them on paved roads and both of them had multiple riders. So what do we preach in, in, uh, in your course Brad? Brad Staton: So, in my view, both of those are, a no-no, uh, ATVs are not designed to ride on the road. Uh, you know, the way that, the way they're set up the tires and whatnot, they don't handle as good on the road. It's really easy to flip, especially at higher speeds. And then I'll, you know, on top of that you've got cars, trucks, 18 wheelers on the roads as well. They're not looking for ATVs, they're too small. And by the time they see you it's usually too late. And then, um, as far as multiple passengers, you know, 99% of the ATVs out there are designed for one person only. If you look at the stickers, there'll be two or three, four stickers on, on one ATV that, that says something to the effect of no passengers. And the reason behind that, you know, the seat is really big. Everybody thinks, you know, let's just pile as many people on here. But to truly be in control of your ATV, you need to be able to move around on that seed and shift your weight, you know, depending on where the turn is or if there's a hill or, or whatnot. Right. So that, that whole seat is yours. You don't have enough room to share it with someone else. John Long: Right. And you, you may not realize it until it's too late. Brad Staton: Right. And you know, when I talked to the kids about riding double like that, uh, you know, so you've got somebody on the back, what are they going to hold on to? Well, most likely they're going to hold onto the driver. So if the person on the back falls off, guess who's going with them? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's a good point. John Long: Person controlling the thing. Cobie Rutherford: Right. I never thought about that. John Long: Well, I, I'm fascinated by the fact that, um, the program or, uh, that your classes are open to a wide audience. So how, how wide open I, how old do you have to be, I guess in order to take the rider course? Brad Staton: To take the rider course. Uh, you need to be six years old and up. You know, we can do classes with families or we can do classes with, you know, similarly-aged kids. I don't like to, you know, have a six year old and a 16 year old in the same class. You know, you just teach differently and you know, their, their levels of control on the ATVs are different, are different too. So, uh, you know, I like to keep my classes kind of the same age range, but we go, you know, like I said, ages six and up. John Long: Even into adult. Brad Staton: Yeah. Even into adults. Yeah. I've done several classes where, you know, a whole family comes out. We do mom, dad, you know, brother, sister, cousin, whatever, you know, everybody in the same class. John Long: That's cool. Cobie Rutherford: And do these families that participate bring their own ATV? Brad Staton: Uh, I have had people bring their own. Uh, we're lucky enough right now to where I've got several different sized ATVs that are, that are owned by Mississippi State and 4-H, so if you don't have one that you can bring, then you know, a lot of times we can supply it. Uh, like I said, I've got different, different sizes for different aged kids, so I'll make sure every person is on an ATV that fits them. Uh, now should you want to bring your own, that's perfectly fine. Uh, I would just have to inspect at first, I want to make sure you got, you've got working breaks and whatnot before I'd let you, you know, participate in the obstacle course. John Long: You don't want to bring your six year old up there and it's got like a 16 and older sticker on it. Brad Staton: Exactly. Exactly. It's gotta be an age appropriate ATV. That was a good point. Cobie Rutherford: Gotcha. Well that's a, it makes it pretty inclusive for anybody that wants to participate in this program. They have a chance to do that. John Long: And it's, it's so cool cause it goes right along again because it is 4-H, it's youth development because we don't, it's just like in 4-H S.A.F.E.T.Y., you don't put a shotgun in hands of an eight-year-old. So you put, you put it in the appropriate size, even the physical ability that, that the young individual has. Brad Staton: And along with that youth development note, we also, you know, when we teach the class, we're not just talking about riding ATVs, John Long: Right. Brad Staton: We're talking about respect the environment, respect, you know, the local laws, other people that may be on the trails, other people's property, that kind of thing as well. So we, you know, it's, it's not just driving, we're, we're trying to do a holistic approach, I guess. John Long: Right. What was the, I think I saw one time, it was one of the slides and said mud holes don't ride through them or something. Rather tempting to... Brad Staton: It kinda just depends, you know, if you're on a public trail, John Long: Right, right. Brad Staton: You know, you're not supposed to leave that trail to make your own mud hole. If you're on somebody's private property and they don't mind you making a mud hole. Hey, have fun. John Long: Yeah. Knock yourself out. That's right. That's funny man. Well, all right. I think like we've about wrapped it up and, Cobie, you got anything else? Cobie Rutherford: No, I sure appreciate Brad taking his time out to educate us some of ATV safety. John Long: It's awesome to have you again sometimes. Brad Staton: Yeah, it'd be fun. Um, if you do want some more information about our rider course or our e-course, just contact your local Extension agent. Uh, they can help you. And you know, kind of what we do is I do classes on demand. When I have enough people in one county that's, that want to take a class, I'll, I'll load my trailer up and come on down, and we'll do a class. So just co contact your local Extension agent for more information. John Long: Yeah. And you can also go to, uh, extension.msstate.edu. I think I said that right. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's right. John Long: And go to click on 4-H, and then if you scroll down, you'll see 4-H Safety. And then when you open that up, you'll see ATV safety, and then you'll see 4-H S.A.F.E.T.Y, which AKA shooting sports. So Brad and I kind of share the safety safety. Right? Brad Staton: That's right. John Long: So anyway. Well, good. Well, thank you so much Brad, and we appreciate you coming in and uh, y'all remember to get out and have fun and ride safe. Keep it 4-H. Brad Staton: yep, sounds good. Cobie Rutherford: Until next time. John Long: Alright, that's right. We'll see you next time. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4H4U2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu, and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4H4U2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.

Mississippi State Extension 4-H Specialists, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford discuss 4-H State Congress. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here, now, your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, well welcome back to 4-H-4-U-2, and how's it going Cobie? Cobie Rutherford: Doing good, John. Episode three. John Long: Yeah. Cobie Rutherford: Already. John Long: We're racking them up. Cobie Rutherford: We are, yes sir. It's good to be here today. It's such a nice day outside. John Long: Oh, it's beautiful. And, you know, I think it's so dry. I think we need some more rain. And it's coming. Cobie Rutherford: It looks like four inches this weekend... John Long: Oh yeah, it's going to be quite a deluge. I'm never going to get my garden planted. Cobie Rutherford: I know every time we get a day off on Saturday or Sunday here lately it's been raining. John Long: Invariably. And my yard looks like it, too. Cobie Rutherford: And inevitably everyday we're in the office, it's beautiful outside. John Long: Never fail, never fails. Cobie Rutherford: Gosh, we got a lot going on. John Long: Yes. Cobie Rutherford: It's definitely the time to be in the office as we get ready for State Congress and all the different happenings in the 4-H world. John Long: Pretty much looks like you kicked an ant bed. Cobie Rutherford: It does, yeah. So we've got State Congress coming up and as a first time staff member, I am super excited about this event. The last week in May here on campus bringing, they said 600 to 700 4-H'ers. John Long: That's right. Cobie Rutherford: From all around the state are going to be here on our campus at Mississippi State. So I'm excited about that. I know you've been with 4-H for awhile. What are some of your favorite State Congress memories? John Long: Well, you know, I've got a lot. I like the interaction that I get to have with the kids and one of the things that I really enjoyed was doing the Congress media. Was doing a lot of, you know, doing photography, doing filming. We would do the pre-Congress media, the promotional video and stuff like that. I really enjoyed that and did that for several years. Last year I got the opportunity to assist with the ambassador interviews, not as a judge, but just as a co-coordinator, I guess you could say. Basically that sounds like a real high job, but it really wasn't. It was basically making sure that everybody was where they were supposed to be at a certain time. But I really thoroughly enjoyed that. Of course, the dance is always, you know, it's always fun too. John Long: But, yeah, it's a whole collection. I think this is my 12th or 13th one, so I've got a lot of good memories and we just have a good time. It's long. It is ... Cobie Rutherford: Hot. John Long: Hot and long days and hot. Oh, I will say I haven't got my ... I know what my favorite memory is. Can I share it now? It just hit me. Cobie Rutherford: I can't wait to hear it. John Long: Okay, so my favorite memory is, I'm sorry, I got a little excited when I realized. Okay, so saying that it's long days made me remember this. So we were ... This was actually my first Congress. We had a ice cream freezer, and I'm talking about like you would go in a drugstore, and open the thing up and get you ice cream. And they said, "Well we can't leave it out overnight, would you take it home and plug it up?" I said, "Sure, no problem." So we loaded up in the back of my truck, and this is midnight or afterwards, and I pull out of Bost building and all of a sudden this vehicle comes flying up behind me and flashing their lights, flashing. I'm like, Lord, what is happening? Is this thing about to fall out? Or, you know, something's wrong. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. John Long: And so I pull over and guy jumps out and he runs up to the truck, he says ... And come to find out it was our photographer at the time, for Extension photography. He jumped out and he says, "Hold on John, hold on." He said, "I just wanted to get some ice cream." And I thought, Oh my goodness. Cobie Rutherford: Chasing the truck... John Long: He's chasing the truck down for ice cream. Cobie Rutherford: Hey, I would too for some muscadine ripple. John Long: Oh, I know, I know. And, by the way, I felt very fortunate that I could have that at my house, but I did, I ran an extension cord from my, the side of the house out, and crawled in bed for about two hours and got back up and did it all over again. So yeah, that's one. That's the funnier ones that I can remember. Cobie Rutherford: I can't wait. I've been, when I was in over in animal science, I help Doctor Joe [Samson 00:04:49] with the visual presentations and always amazed me at the talent that these kids would have when they came to present with whatever they're talking about. They would give presentations on anything from a cattle management scheme to sheep or goat disease. So it was really cool seeing that. And I think about how important the skill of being able to present a visual presentation is today. And, gosh, we're getting these kids off to a really good headstart by providing them with opportunity. John Long: Yeah, for sure. Cobie Rutherford: To compete. John Long: I like, was one other thing too is, I like the ... We used to have Linnaean Games, I don't know ... That used to be like a County deal, you rocked your County team and we would do Linnaean Games, which was entomology contest game. That was a lot of fun. It was kind of like Citizenship Bowl, but with insects. And that, I do remember that being ... I always wanted to make sure I was there when it was going on because it's so much fun to see that. Of course I love insects anyway, but yeah, that's another one too, that I enjoyed. Cobie Rutherford: The contest I always liked being a part of was the dairy products judging team, or the team contest. And Doctor Joe Samson would go to the grocery store and buy all these different samples of different ice creams, and I'm like, "Well, Doctor Joe," I said, "I can't taste the difference between these brands." And he's like, "Well if you really start thinking about the flavor, you might taste more of a metallic flavor in this brand versus this brand, or more of an acidic or the aftertaste may be like this." I'm like, how can eating ice cream be so complicated? John Long: Right, right, right. Cobie Rutherford: But these kids are excelling at it and, I mean, definitely changing their lives and the preferences on their ice cream choices later on, but it's kind of interesting to see. And- John Long: I think that, you know, again, you actually enjoy eating ice cream if you're not tasting metallic taste. I don't know. I just want to eat it and get it over with. Cobie Rutherford: Well, there was one particular brand of ice cream that I always enjoyed and Doctor Joe said, I said, "Well, how'd that place in the contest?" He said, "Well, that was third because it has a strong metallic taste in that particular flavor." My wife purchased that particular flavor, that brand of ice cream a few weeks after that- John Long: Was that specifically to see if y ou can taste it. Cobie Rutherford: No, it's the kind that we had eaten before and I'm like, why don't you buy that? It has that metallic. John Long: See it did, oh, I'm sorry. It ruined you for the... Cobie Rutherford: It absolutely did. Which is sad, but I guess saving some calories here, but, who knows? But I also, these judging contests have always intrigued me. And one of the first things I participated in 4-H was live stock judging as a young child. You think, well I'm just trying to place these animals from one to four or whatever judging contest you're in, you're like, I'm ranking something how hard is that? But what those judging contests give you as an opportunity to have a chance to make a decision quickly, and you have a certain time frame and you've got to make a justification for that placing in your mind and then oftentimes give a set of reasons on defending your placings. And I think about all the times in my life that that skill's kind of came in handy. Even justifying why I deserve a a job or why I did what I did to keep from getting in trouble, maybe. There's a lot of reasons that those skills are good to have. John Long: Absolutely. So what are you, let me ask you this, what is your expectations? I know, and see that's a benefit you have. You've seen Congress from both sides. So you've seen it as a 4-H'er and then now you're about to experience it as a staff member. How do you, what are you thoughts on it? Like, what do you think that's going to be different or going to be the same? Cobie Rutherford: So I'm expecting three days of fun and not really organized fun, not pandemonium, but just a lot of things going on. A lot of different things. As a 4-H'er I always enjoyed to go into watch other 4-H'ers compete in contents. And one of my favorite memories was, I had went to State Congress to compete in a public speaking contest and there was this girl from a neighboring County that I knew through showing cattle that was competing in the dairy foods demonstration contest. And I went to watch her contest and who would've known, I guess it was 10 years later, she and I married. And I still remember her contest. She gave a dairy demonstration about making grape ice cream. [crosstalk 00:09:28] she was talking about a purple cow and this rhyme, and afterwards I thought, I'll make fun of her, that was so stupid. Why would you ever say that? Cobie Rutherford: Of course she was the state winner, of course, and then that kind of just stuck with me. How weird is that, that I wound up marrying her? John Long: Hey, you never can tell. I met my wife, not so glamorously, in stats class. Cobie Rutherford: Oh wow. John Long: Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't stand her. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah? John Long: Yeah, yeah. If you ever see her, ask her what she made on the second stats test. Cobie Rutherford: Really? John Long: And then I can tell you what I made on it. it's still a sore subject in our house. Cobie Rutherford: Is it really? John Long: Oh yeah. Cobie Rutherford: We have some memories like that. We went on to Auburn together and did some different things, but, yeah, I thought that was just kind of the driving thing. I'm like, well, I need to go watch that dairy foods contest because that Hill girl from the opposite County from me is competing in that. I want to see her do her dairy foods demonstration. But what fun. And then also, I remember a kid from our County went with us to compete in the barbecue chicken cook-off contest. It was called the Alabama 4-H Chicken Q. And his name was Shontay, and he had a disaster of a contest and he basically blew up his grill. John Long: Oh my goodness. Cobie Rutherford: He did not follow safety protocols and squirted the lighter fluid directly on his charcoals. And the thing just went up in smoke. John Long: Well you know, Dean gave a demonstration one, Dean Jousan, everybody, gave a demonstration on what not to do. It was so funny because it was, he was like live video from the horse park and he was like, "All right, I'm going to show everybody what not to do now," and he had his fire and he shot the lighter fluid on it, and it just went [explosion sound]. And everybody watching was like, holy smokes. But it's true, yeah. Cobie Rutherford: We had our County eliminations and this chicken was honestly the best chicken I've ever had. And it just, Shontay was the nicest guy. Just so funny. And we had our County meeting that night after the contest. I'm like, "Shontay, you how'd you do?" Because we were all expecting him to be the first place winner in the state. He said, "Y'all I burnt that chicken up." He said the whole thing went up in smoke, but it was so much fun. We would swim and dance and compete. My very last Congress, I was the state runner up in public speaking and I thought that was pretty cool. Always held that pretty close as one of my favorite awards. John Long: Well that's cool. It was something I was going to ask you. About the a service project. Why don't you talk a little bit about service project we've got going on this year too. Cobie Rutherford: Oh yeah. That's going to be pretty neat. You know Mississippi has had a lot of bad weather and inclement weather... John Long: Close by us, too. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, definitely. Even here on campus with South Farm, but tornadoes to flooding, we kind of got together and came up with a Cleanup Mississippi idea. And basically we're having a cleaning supply drive for the American Red Cross. So we're asking our 4-H'ers to bring anything that might be associated with cleaning. So anything from gloves to disinfectant wipes to floor cleaners, mops, brooms, buckets, whatever might be useful. Sponges, magic erasers, you name it. And then we're going to donate all of those products to the American Red Cross. And I think that, the folks I've talked to at Red Cross, they've used quite a bit of their supply inventory, so this is going to help replenish that. And then from the flooding in the Delta, there's still quite a bit of cleanup to do, so they can disperse these products out to the communities in need. And I think it's going to be a good way for our 4-H'ers to give back. John Long: Yeah, I always liked to service projects. Seems like they always, it's going toward and it's giving back to the community, which is important for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And I think that's, when we start ... When we all think about all these things we offer in 4-H and how wonderful this Congress is going to be, part of this project is ... Or part of 4-H, I think, is leaving a legacy. And how you give back and contribute to your community or your society. I think all that's important and that's the big picture that we hope these kids go home with. John Long: Yeah. And it's always, you know, when you see that ... It's moving to see a young person contribute and to take the time for somebody else because we're so ... seemingly so busy and everybody's rush, rush, rush, and it's kind of like we're in our own little world. But then when somebody stops and says, "Hey, I see somebody in need and I'm going to fill that need," that's an awesome thing. And 4-H is great at doing that, I think. It's great at teaching a young person, hey, life is not about give me, give me, give me, it's about giving back, giving back, giving back. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's right. I heard a quote one time, you saying that made me think about it, is that what separates humans from animals and all the other spaces of living organisms on the face of this planet is our ability to care for others. John Long: Yeah, empathy. Cobie Rutherford: And I think care for others we don't know is what the quote said, and I think about, you know, from a livestock perspective or any other animal species perspective, that really is what sets us apart. Being able to care for people we've never met and have feelings for them. John Long: That's exactly right. Cobie Rutherford: I think that could be another topic for another day, but ... John Long: We may have to have like a guest come in for that one. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that would be good, that'd be good. John Long: What about, I'm sorry. Cobie Rutherford: No, go ahead. John Long: The one thing that I'm really excited about, and it's new to this year, is the ... I don't know, how do you ... I don't know what the correct term for it is. It's the one that Doctor Lacy and Dr. Mitchell are doing. It's... Cobie Rutherford: Oh the Jam Session. John Long: Jam Session. It's a little bit of everything. What is that exactly? Cobie Rutherford: So this was an opportunity for our 4-H'ers who are interested in creative arts to come and showcase, I guess, their talents. So we're going to have youth come in that play the guitar, piano, maybe any other kind of instrument. Maybe interpretive dance. John Long: And Doctor Lacey's doing stand up? Cobie Rutherford: I don't know. I'm sure not going to speak for ... John Long: I think I'm kidding, Doctor Lacy. Cobie Rutherford: I think he's going to bring his guitar and do some picking and grinning, perhaps. So I'm really excited about that. And then the Share the Fun contest that Doctor Mitchell does. I mean that seems like the ultimate talent show for a Mississippian. John Long: Right, and that's separate. That's separate from this, what we're talking about. Even though it's similar, I guess you could say. The Jam Session is ... Jam Session is for fun, right? I mean, not that everything's not for fun, but ... Cobie Rutherford: Well, the Jam Session, I think it's more of a workshop and kind of a ... it's not necessarily a talent showcase, it's to where you may can go participate and learn something about how to play the guitar. Maybe you go into the Jam Session and you are, you can play the piano. Well maybe you have a chance to showcase that ability and then you say, "Hey, let me borrow this guitar," and learn from each other. John Long: Oh that's good. Cobie Rutherford: So I think it can be pretty neat. John Long: Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. Cobie Rutherford: Maybe some drama type contest, or not really contest, but drama showcases. So a kid, they may have some scripts and get to practice being an actor or actress. So, yeah, it can be very cool. John Long: That'll be fun. Do we have anything else that's not our normal standard fare? Oh, talk about where we're going to be staying. Do we know where, the dorms? Where we're going to be located, and where registration is going to be and everything. You know that off hand? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. I think we're going to have most of our registration and activities in Hearst, but most of our events are going to take place in the Union and surrounding buildings here, to Bost. Of course, all our general sessions will be in the Bost Auditorium, I think. And so they'll be pretty local. But just a lot going on for sure. I'm looking forward to seeing the bicycle contest. John Long: Yeah, always try to get over and see that. Cobie Rutherford: You know, that was something that I never got to go to state in, and I competed in that contest every year from the time I was nine to 18. And the last year, I'm pretty awful at riding bicycles, and our state representative was judging the contest and I ran over his foot. I still remember that. Every time I see him, "Sorry, Representative Campbell." John Long: I'm the guy that ran over your foot. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, but we ever came that. John Long: That's good. He didn't hold it against you? Cobie Rutherford: Well, I didn't win. John Long: Oh, he may have. Cobie Rutherford: I think you did, actually. I ran out of the way. But, that was fun. Tractor driving, I had a funny incident with that too. John Long: Oh yeah, you told me that. Cobie Rutherford: I tore up the whole course at state contest. I didn't realize the tractor had a wagon hooked up to it. John Long: Now listen, young people that are listening, this is not a license to tear the course up. Just because Cobie did, you're not allowed to do that. Cobie Rutherford: Exactly. It was was so embarrassing because I was this farm kid, I knew how to drive tractor, but I had not ever practiced with a 16 foot wagon. And it was a disaster and embarrassing, but, needless to say I didn't get called up on stage for that contest. John Long: Did you ever do automotive? Cobie Rutherford: We didn't have that contest. No, I never did. I did plant cell science exhibit one time, and my dad and I, we built this container and I planted all of these different row crops in it. We didn't plant it correctly though, so we had to replant two or three times because our corn got four foot tall and we had to transport it to the state contest. It just wasn't feasible. So it was a fun contest. I think I placed in the state in that, but, I don't know. Wasn't something that was easy, for sure. John Long: Right, right, right. Cobie Rutherford: We didn't volunteer to do that again. But I'm looking forward to, it's going to be a fun three days. John Long: We've got some good workshops and things, other tours and things like that. Of course that information is out there as well. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And, you know, after that we start looking at the next thing. Cobie Rutherford: It'll be Project Achievement Days for our younger 4-H youth coming up. John Long: We can talk about that at a later date because that's, basically what that amounts to is a mini, M-I-N-I, Congress for younger people. So, I enjoy that too, because we get out on the road and go to these different places and that's a lot of fun as well. Cobie Rutherford: They're in each of the four districts. John Long: Yeah, that's right. And first one coming up is Northeast, so that'll be in June. So we'll take one day at a time and go from there, I guess. Cobie Rutherford: That's right. Well we thank you all for listening today. I think that kind of wraps up our talk on 4-H State Congress. And thank you for tuning into 4-H-4-U-2. This is Cobie Rutherford. John Long: And I'm John Long, and if you need anything, just give us a holler. Cobie Rutherford: Thanks a bunch. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information, please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service, Office of Agricultural Communications.  

Mississippi State Extension specialists, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford, introduce themselves and talk about the roles each play in 4-H. Transcript: Announcer: This is 4-H-4-U-2, a podcast from the Mississippi State University Extension Service promoting 4-H programs and positive youth development. Here now your host, Dr. John Long and Cobie Rutherford. John Long: All right, well good morning to you Cobie. How are you doing today? Cobie Rutherford: Hey, good. Dr Long. You okay? John Long: Oh, I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Oh, so this is going to be our kind of, I guess our maybe flagship podcast. I don't know if that's the right term to use, but our initial first one. How do you feel about that? Cobie Rutherford: Number one. I don't know. It's kind of daunting sitting here looking at all this technology and hearing ourselves on these microphones and stuff. John Long: Yes. This is what I've always wanted to do, so I feel great about it. Cobie Rutherford: Me too. You've got a great radio voice. John Long: Oh well thanks. I've got a cold. So that's probably why. Because I normally don't like my voice, you know? You know how that is. Cobie Rutherford: Yes, exactly. John Long: Recording yourself you sound terrible. So I thought that this podcast, we could just start out by kind of just introducing ourselves and tell a little bit about ourselves and where we come from and basically how we got to this point where we are right now. So I'm going to yield to the younger Cobie Rutherford. Cobie Rutherford: All right, well that sounds good. Thanks John. So I am Cobie Rutherford, I'm in the 4-H youth department as a new faculty member, relatively. Started on staff back in September of 2018. My background and training is in animal sciences, so the youth development is kind of a different world for me, but I grew up as a 4-Her in a small town in North Alabama and participated in every 4-H event. From 4-H cookie cook-off to public speaking to livestock shows. So 4-H has been a big part of my development as a person. So it's kind of neat to come back full circle and be one of the people that helps develop other youth from around the state now. John Long: Well that's cool. I guess I come from a little bit of a different background. I was born and raised, well, I was born in Ackerman and raised in Sturgis and wound up in Starkville. So I'm probably going to retire in Columbus. I'm just trying to keep going to the East apparently. But started out as basically had no 4-H background whatsoever. I do remember a specific conversation that I had with my mother when I was a child and I don't even know how it came up, and she said that she was a member of 4-H when she was in school. And I said, "What is 4-H?" And she says, "Well I can tell you the plage or what the 4-Hs stands for", which she of course told me. She still remembered that and she was older then. John Long: And so that was really the only thing I knew about 4-H and then I got into agriculture and I worked in agriculture for several years and worked in the Delta and then worked over here at the entomology department and one of the professors over there had a trap machine in the back of his truck. And I said, "What in the world are you doing?" Because he knew I loved to shoot and he said, "I'm actually going to 4-H shooting sports shotgun practice." So I kind of got a little introduction there, but a really big focus of really wanting to change towards youth development was working through the entomology graduate club. We had an entomology club and we would often go to schools and talk to young people and we would have them come to the entomology department, and I just absolutely loved that part. It was just awesome. And that's where I really decided, that's when I wanted to start trying to teach youth, trying to make a difference. John Long: So that led me down a different career path and I've been in 4-H now for... Yeah, that long. So 12 years now and been with the university 23 so it's been a big part of my career here. Cobie Rutherford: How about that? I guess my first 4-H experience I grew up on a farm, a beef cattle farm, and I was looking for something that I was good at. So I was terrible at all athletics. I couldn't shoot a basketball, couldn't hit a baseball. So I was kind of looking for my niche and with the cattle on the farm, we found that there was a venue to show cattle through 4-H. So my dad started off, he bought me a a $400 sorriest steer you've ever seen in your life. But I went to the 4-H contest with that steer and I got some ribbon that was probably some shade of orange or brown. Nothing really significant but that steer taught me a lot about responsibility and how what you put into something you can get out of. So I learned, with that steer particularly, how to lose and that's something that I had never done before. I still got my trophy my little brown ribbon, but it was kind of cool to see how I progressed over from a nine year old with a sorry steer to as a senior in high school having some really nice cattle on my farm. John Long: Yeah, that is cool. Cobie Rutherford: But that steer got me into different projects in 4-H like public speaking and different visual presentations and kind of set the whole mode for my career forward. John Long: And I think that's one thing about 4-H that I've really learned is the fact of yes, you can do a specific... Well in the 4-H safety program, you can do a discipline. For instance, you can do shotgun, but shotgun takes you other places. It takes you into other things and you can really expand on that and that's what 4-H is so much a part of now is the fact that we can actually branch out and we've got so much more to offer these days than what we've had in the past. And I think it continues to grow since we've seen the growth of the robotics program and things like that. That was nonexistent probably in my career. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. It wasn't existent when I was in 4-H and that was almost 20 years ago. But yeah, nothing about that. John Long: One thing that I've learned, and of course as you said, you've been in 4-H and one thing that I could say is, I wish I'd have been in 4-H. The opportunities that young people have now, I mean, if I'd have known about these programs, I'd have been in it for sure, but I just didn't know about it. All of my instruction, if it was a firearm or archery, it came from my parents or relatives. I mean we're reaching, I'm not just saying the 4-H safety program, but all programs are reaching out to these different veins of youth in the community. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah. And I think that that's something that we have had a hard time capitalizing on is all these children who go through the 4-H program, how they go back into their communities and be community leaders one day or even state elected officials or even on a national level. A lot of our national leaders were 4-H members and we still kind of need to remember that it's the largest youth organization in the United States and there's people on this campus at Mississippi State that don't know anything about 4-H. So I think that's one good thing about this podcast is how maybe you and I can help spread the message of 4-H and try to expand our audience some. John Long: Right. I totally agree. I know that even working at the state fair and we have our 4-H day at the state fair and we draw some people into that event that are not even remotely in 4-H, don't even really know anything about it. In fact, I stopped a lady... Or I didn't stop her, but we got into a conversation at the state fair last year and I got to telling her about 4-H and she'd picked up a brochure and then I got to telling her about it. She says, "I had no idea." She says, "Why do more people not know about this?" And I think that's true. I think we have a a great audience. We have a great message and we just need to get it out there. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, that's right. So I think moving forward with the podcast, there's so much we can talk about and have a lot of different episodes. We can talk about your programs with the 4-H safety programs. We can talk about youth livestock programs and then all those different programs in between those two spectrums that are not reaching a huge audience that are so beneficial. John Long: That's true. That's very true. I love of course when, I guess when we found out that we were going to be able to start doing podcasts, I think you and I almost bumped into each other running from our offices because we thought that this is a great opportunity. And just thinking about the things that we're going to be talking about in the future and developing those topic areas, I think that's really going to be an exciting thing. It's going to be a breath of fresh air for sure and one of the things that you and I were brainstorming on was just like talking about those smaller aspects of little known facts, I guess of 4-H and that we can hopefully educate people on. And hopefully y'all will get something out of this. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, I think so, and regardless if you have someone that's in 4-H or not, I think we can bring on some guest speakers and some guest panel members that can talk about different things like social media or maybe even some personal development skills that are geared towards youth that can be applied towards adults such as resume building, interview skills, things like that. That's important for anybody of any age. John Long: Yeah, I think that that's very true. I think sometimes we may get a little wrapped up in on the competitive side or a certain activity side and we forget that the main focus is youth development. That's what we do. You can't say that enough. It's youth development. It's not just youth doing something, you know? So what we do as volunteers, or as parents, or as agents, anybody involved in 4-H we're teaching those kids life skills that they're going to use from now on. I made a comment the other day about, this is not even 4-H related, but the girl that taught me how to tie my shoes she taught me a life skill that I use everyday. Not today, but I got slip ons today. But it is something and the very fact of if sometimes we get to thinking that we're not making a difference and it's not worth the effort and these hardheaded kids don't want to listen, you do not know what kind of impact you're making in a young person's life right now. But on down the road, I've had people come up to me after and say, "I remember what you told me." You know, and I thought, man, and I remember people that have made an effect in my life. So we're making a difference. There's no doubt about it. Cobie Rutherford: Exactly. I think back to my experiences of 4-H and think about again that sorry steer what I learned from that thing and most of all, it was perseverance. After the first two or three outings with that calf, I knew he wasn't very good and I learned what kind of the standard was for a good show calf, but I also learned not to give up on that project. I wanted that calf to go to the county show, district show, state show and kind of stick out that project. It would've been real easy to give up on him and learning perseverance, hard work, responsibility, meeting another animal everyday is kind of pretty neat. And then at the end of it, the big idea of it was I learned where my food came from. I learned that that steer was going to produce X amount of pounds of hamburger meat, steaks and things that could feed my family for an entire year. John Long: A lot of people don't know that and I think that's getting lost for sure. Do not know where their food comes from for sure and I think that when we go to talking about through these topics that we're going to be having on the podcast, I think the audience will begin to see just how large 4-H is, how diverse 4-H is and how it's just continually making an impact in young people's lives for sure. Cobie Rutherford: And even how much 4-H has evolved. John Long: Oh yes. Cobie Rutherford: During our lifetimes, I mean, wow. It's went from corn clubs to STEM that you mentioned earlier and robotics. The future is limitless for what all 4-H can offer. John Long: You know, you talk about, and may I give a little snippet of improvement? Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, sure. Go ahead. John Long: This is a little FYI, I guess, but 4-H was started as Cobie mentioned as a corn club. Well, do you know the story about why they did that? Cobie Rutherford: I've heard it, but I'd like to hear it again. John Long: Okay. So I'm going to tell you. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, let's go ahead. John Long: All right. So the deal is, is that the extension service was trying to get the farmers to take on these new agricultural practices that were coming out of the university. Well they were hardheaded, some of us are. Cobie Rutherford: Yes. John Long: And they would not take up those practices. Well they said, "Let's try to get the practices in through the youth. We'll teach the youth and they'll see the results and then they'll want to do it." So When little Johnny's corn patch or tomatoes were growing larger than dads, little Johnny was doing something right because he was taking that information that the agent was trying to get out. So that is what we're trying to do. We're trying to expand, go out into our community and make our young people better so they can be an example for other people to follow. So I don't think any of us would disagree. That's a bad thing for sure. Cobie Rutherford: Right. And I've also heard stories about how some of the early 4-H livestock projects started with record books and we think record books, they're pretty simple, but it's almost the same concept. 4-H agents taught those dairy kids in the Midwest how to keep records on their dairy cows, how much milk they were giving, how many pounds of milk and then in turn they were able to make genetic improvement in their cows and figure out which cows were continuously the better producers and they taught their parents to start keeping records. So youth are a powerful tool. John Long: Yeah. Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: Especially in a teaching environment. John Long: Very, valuable. They're our future, so let's just face it. Cobie Rutherford: And when we think about how many children there are in this generation and how they're talking about this generation will be bigger than the boomer generation and have more spending power than millennials and be probably more frivolous with their money, we've got a huge consumer base that we need to make sure that they have good life skills. John Long: Absolutely. Cobie Rutherford: Make good choices. John Long: Absolutely. Because there's a lot of things out there in that world that are right the opposite of that. For sure. Cobie Rutherford: Right, exactly. John Long: Yep. Well, all right. I guess we're going to go ahead and wrap this podcast up. I enjoyed talking with you, Colbi. Just learned a little bit more about you. Cobie's just starting out, I guess. Came in in September? Cobie Rutherford: That's right. John Long: Yeah. Yeah. So I look forward to doing this again. I think this will be great. Cobie Rutherford: Yeah, it's kind of fun. Maybe it's a little shaky today, but I think we did okay for our first go about John. John Long: I think we did pretty good. Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. John Long: All right, well With that we're going to go ahead and we'll see you next time. We're not going to see you. You'll hear us and we see each other. All right. Cobie Rutherford: Good deal. Have a good one. John Long: All right, take it easy. Cobie Rutherford: Bye. Announcer: Thanks for joining us for 4-H-4-U-2. For more information please visit extension.msstate.edu and be sure to subscribe to our podcast. 4-H-4-U-2 is produced by the Mississippi State University Extension Service Office of Agricultural Communications.

Episode 017: Important Traffic Metrics for Your Ecommerce Website   Episode Summary:  A high average order value can make it easier to run your online business. In this episode, Julie walks you through the benefits of a high AOV and specific strategies for increasing your website's AOV.   Episode Links: https://analytics.google.com/ https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:   Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place? Welcome to The Savvy Business Method with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello and welcome to Episode 17 of the Savvy Business Method podcast where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Okay, before we start today, a quick reminder. If you have not come over and joined me on Facebook, please do so. I am hosting a couple times a day on there, I have links to videos, these podcasts, other really cool resources I find are on the Internet. Or, you know, if you want to ask me a question, that can be a great place to do it, as well. I am at Savvy Business Method on Facebook.   Alright, let's dive into today's topic, which is important traffic metrics for your website and what they mean. Now today everything I'm going to talk about in terms of the numbers that we need to be keeping an eye on as small business owners, all the things today I'm talking about, are going to be available in Google Analytics. I am hopeful that if you have Google Analytics already installed on your website and are tracking your website information.   If you don't, I have a great video on YouTube you should check out about why it is so important to put a Google Pixel on your website, even potentially before you launch your website so it can be ready to go and collect all that information.   So if you don't have that right now, real quick, Google Analytics is a free tracking system. It gives you an enormous amount of information about people who visit your website and what they do while they're there. And to get Google Analytics on your website you need to create a Google Analytics account. And weirdly enough you can Google that. You'll also probably need a Gmail account, it's a good time to reserve your business' name, like I have savvybusinessmethod@gmail.com. Don't email me there, it won't go anywhere, but I own that email address. You'll also need to prove that the website is yours and then they're going to give you some code to put on your website so that things can be tracked.   Now, Google is limited to tracking the website you own, right? And it does start tracking right away, but you aren't going to be able to install tracking code like on your Facebook Page or your YouTube Channel or anything like that. Google is limited to the website that you own. But, that is hopefully where most of your business is occurring and let's talk through the three sets of metrics that could be really helpful for identifying problems with your website, seeing what's working and then coming up with ideas for ways to improve.   Okay, so those three sets of metrics are who is visiting your site? What they're doing while they're there? And how they're leaving? Okay? So let's dive in. Alright, first up, we want to know as much as possible about the people who are visiting our website. So, one of the metrics that I look at regularly for my websites are the number of visits, okay? So that ideally the number of people coming to our websites each day should be going up, right? Like, that's what we want now, granted, we do want quality visits. So just because we got more visits on a certain day doesn't necessarily mean that those visits were possibly going to buy anything and I'll talk about that in a minute when we talk about sources.   But this number is helpful because although we definitely want to see it trending upward, sharp moves in either direction can be a sign of a problem. If your website suddenly one day has a ton of traffic, for example, you need to identify where that traffic's coming from and make sure it is at least legitimate traffic and not say, some sort of denial service attack on your website, okay? A sharp downturn in that number could signal that you're having a problem. It could mean that something about your website isn't working properly anymore, so maybe your website is not as ranked as well on Google. It could mean that one of your major traffic sources is no longer sending you traffic. Maybe your Facebook ad stopped working, or something like that.   So, keeping an eye on that number can be a good clue, both when things are going well for you, but also maybe even more importantly, when they're not. Now, a sharp downturn may not be something you have to fix. It could be, I'm just throwing this out there, it could be a legitimate reason, something predictable, right? It could be if you have a very seasonal-type business, you'll probably see a pretty sharp downturn at the end of your season.   So, this is where you have to take all that other information that you know about your business when you're looking at this number. This number does not necessarily tell you anything in and of itself, it is a clue for what else you need to look at.   Next up, you want to look at the sources of your traffic, okay? So this can help you figure out where your efforts need to be put in terms of driving traffic to your website. And it also can help you see what is quality traffic for you and not, because you're able to actually segment in Google the source traffic comes from and then what they do. So, how quickly they leave your site, or, you know, whether or not they buy anything, something like that.   Now, something you'll commonly see as a website owner, if you've been doing this longer than maybe three months, you're going to end up having a day where you suddenly have way more traffic than you should and it's all coming from like maybe social media and you go frantically drilling down into your reports, trying to figure it out. And it turns out it's coming from a site like Stumble Upon. And those people did not stick around, they didn't buy anything. So it's just kind of a blip on your traffic radar, right? So that's something to think about. The source information can be really useful.   The other thing I like to look at with my sources is I, as a website owner, because I tend to be a very risk-adverse person to begin with, I do not like risky adventures. I like to be seeing in my traffic numbers a good spread across various sources. So, yeah, I want some of my traffic coming from organic traffic from search engines like Google. I want some of my traffic coming from Facebook or some other social media sites. I want some of my traffic coming from email. I do not, as a website owner, want all of my traffic coming from one place because something can always happen to any of my sources.   You know, Google could have some sort of algorithm change in the middle of the night. The rules that they have in place on what websites are number one versus number 10 on their search results, that can suddenly change. There are a lot of website owners out there who are still upset over some of the algorithm changes over the last couple of years. And so I don't ever want all of my traffic coming from one place because what if that goes away in the middle of the night, okay? Because that can happen. So I really like to look at my sources of my traffic so that I can not only see where people are coming from and maybe where I need to beef up my efforts but to make sure that I'm maintaining kind of a spread across various sources and so that my business is more stable.   Alright, also in terms of who's visiting my site, I like to look at the entry pages. What are the landing pages that people are coming in on? And this can help me kind of understand what pages are bringing in the most traffic and kind of recognize that, oh, I have that article out there and I've been putting it out to various bloggers or out on social media and look, now that page is a landing page. People are coming in to the site via that page.   Now, for established websites with strong category pages, strong product pages, good content marketing strategy going on, one thing you'll start to notice is that your home page becomes less and less important as a driver of traffic for you, which is so counterintuitive if you're just getting started. So you'll just have to take my word for this. You know, home pages are great, they can be very keyword heavy. They're obviously a good entrance into your site, but from a search engine's perspective in particular, something like a category page or a product page or a really good content article might be fulfilling the needs of the searcher more than your home page. And the Google and being in all the other search engines, their algorithms are constantly trying to find the best place to route people. And so your home page may not always be that and as you get more established, as you get better at managing your website, you're likely to see your home page drop in popularity as a landing page for your website.   Alright, so let's move on to what your visitors are doing once they're there. This is another set of metrics that we really want to look at. One thing I like to look at is the average pages per visit. This is the average number of pages that someone views before they leave the website. This can be an indicator of a couple of things. The big ones are the quality of the visitor. So someone who is potentially interested in the information you have is probably going to surf more pages than someone who is not. This could also indicate to how well your site is internally linked. So let's say you have a category page or an article that comes up and ranks really well with the search engines and someone, a lot of people tend to come into via that page. That's the first page that they see when they get on your website. If you have a good linking strategy, and there are links on that page to other related pages, you'll have a better chance of keeping them on the site for a second page and a third page and so on and so forth.   If you have a ton of your traffic only visiting one page on your website, it might be worth taking a look at whether you have a good path for them to follow, right? Among your pages if your pages are well-linked. So, average pages per visit, again, is one of those clues, right? It helps us understand maybe where we need to look to possibly improve our websites. Alright, related to that is the page path that people generally follow. So what I mean by that is what is the first page they look at and then what page do they go to after that and what page do they commonly go to after that? This can give us, as website owners, a lot of information about how people are using our website. So again, we can make tweaks, right?   In what links we want to direct people to and what best information for them to see next. You know, the good example of this is if you look at Google Analytics and you see that the page path that people are following is not really conducive to the sales process, you might need to change out the way that your pages are linking together or your menus or something to try to get people to click on a better page next, right? A page that will move them down the sales funnel so they go from being maybe aware of your product to being interested in learning more to being interested in possibly purchasing it to getting them to that purchase process. And so this is kind of a way to double check that we're funneling people through our website in a logical manner and if we see that we're not, then we need to go back and play detective and figure out why it is that they're not moving along that path successfully.   Alright, next up are two metrics in terms of customer behavior on the website that we all should love and adore. One is our conversion rate, that's the number of people who place an order during their visit to the website and the other is their average order value. Now, we talked quite a bit about average order value in the last episode, in Episode 16. If you haven't heard that one yet, please be sure to go listen to that. But, the conversion rate and the average order value are kind of our best case scenario, right? This is what we want people to be doing on an E-commerce website. I mean sure, we put the articles in there, we put lots of information, we want them to feel good about making a purchase, but in the end, we need them to make a purchase That's really important. And so we need this conversion rate to constantly be going up. It could be a big indicator of how our site is doing. It can also be, like a traffic number, an early sign if there is a problem. If we start to see our conversion rate going down, we need to dig in hard to the rest of our metrics to figure out why that is happening.   And then in terms of AOV, I'm just going to say briefly, because I just talked about this in the last episode. I'd really encourage you to go listen to that. You know, your site's AOV can make a huge difference, it's the Average Order Value, a huge difference in how difficult it is to run a profitable site and to have the cash necessary to grow. So again, that's a metric we always want to see going up when we're checking on our metrics each day.   Alright, third set of metrics we need to be looking at. The how are they leaving metrics? How are our customers leaving our website? Now the first metric you should look at in this category is called the bounce rate. Now, if you haven't heard the bounce rate before, the bounce rate is the number of people who land on a page on our website and then immediately leave without visiting a second page. They're bouncing, right? Like a ball, they hit the ground and they go right back out.   Now every website has a bounce rate. If it does not have a bounce rate, and you'll see people claim they don't, generally they're doing something with like a click bait situation where they're getting someone to click something while they're on the website and then basically they don't have a bounce rate, right? Because everybody clicks whatever it is. So a bounce rate, I just want to assure you, especially as an E-commerce website, a bounce rate is perfectly normal thing to have.   Having one does not indicate a problem. This is actually kind of a strange metric because even having sometimes a high bounce rate, you know, in the 70s and 80s, it might not indicate a problem, okay? So think about this from the search engine's perspective. A company like Google, as a search engine, cares that people who search on their search engine platform are getting the information they need from your website. So if they're going to put your website at number one in the ranking, they want to be pretty darn sure that that person's going to get exactly what they need by clicking on that link, okay?   So, sometimes, let's say you have a really great article on your website about how to pick the perfect camera for you and you might actually have a very high bounce rate on that article because people come in, they look at the article, they find the information they need and they leave, okay?   So in and of itself, a bounce rate isn't necessarily bad, okay, but here's kind of the thing about bounce rates. From Google's perspective, a high bounce rate isn't bad as long as people are getting what they need. From your perspective as website owner, a high bounce rate means they didn't buy anything, right? It's impossible to buy something without visiting more than one page on your website. Even if you have like a Check Out Now button on your product page, they're still going to have to go to the product page and the checkout page, right? And then the thank you page, hopefully, when they press that Place Order button. And so for us as website owners, we need to keep an eye on this bounce rate and generally we do need it to be going down, okay?   If we were running a blog, it could be a different situation, but if you're running an E-commerce website, yes, reading information is good, but we need them to be buying. And so we can look at this bounce rate and kind of look at, and this is along with that page path that I was talking about a few minutes ago, kind of see, you know, where are we failing here? Do we need to get better links on these pages that people are bouncing on? Do we need to lay out the information differently so that people kind of get into that path of moving towards checkout?   Alright, in addition to the bounce rate, you also want to look at the exit pages. These are the pages that people leave from. Okay, so let's say somebody comes into your website and they land on a category page and then they move to a product page and then they move to the cart and then they leave. Okay, the exit page would be the cart page. It's the last page they visited on their journey through your website. Now in a perfect world, we would want most of our exits to be on our thank you page, right? The thank you page they see after they've hit the Place Order button, their order's been placed, this is where we want people to leave our website. But, that's not always the case, right? And if you have a significant number of exits from other pages, this is, again, a place you need to look to see if you need to make improvements to your pages. Why are people leaving? You're not going to be able to prevent everyone from leaving, but again, how do we get them into that sales funnel instead of clicking up in their browser window and taking off? Thankfully, Google Analytics breaks out your exit pages by page. So you're going to be able to see where people are leaving so you can get really granular in trying to figure out how you can possibly improve those pages and get people back into your sales funnel.   Alright, so if you're not currently watching your metrics, I realize this sounds like a lot of things to keep track off. These are a lot of potentially new terms and new places to go look. I promise you, though, that if you start doing this every day or every few days, it will quickly become automatic. I can get into Google Analytics and glance at all of these things in under two minutes a day. I've been doing it for 10 years, believe me, it just gets to be part of what you do with your day, every day.   Okay, so if you have Google Analytics installed and you aren't tracking your metrics, well, you know, at least the data's in there, right? So you need to start today, get in there, start looking at these numbers. If you are getting in there and looking at these numbers, good for you. Hopefully today's discussion has given you a little bit more insight into what each of those numbers mean. If you are wondering what some other numbers mean, you know, feel free to reach out to me. Remember, savvybusinessmethod.com is my website. You can reach out, tell me what it is you want me to talk about on a future podcast. I can totally do that.   But, in the end, I do want to be clear the numbers in Google Analytics are cool, they're fun to look at, they're a great source of information we can use to help inform the decisions we make. But they are not an end all. None of those numbers give us the whole story about anything. They can give us clues, though, to areas we need to work on improving and they can also help us track the consequences of changes we make or things we try. So if we change up the shipping offer, if we suddenly start offering free shipping, we can get some clues from these numbers about how that effect our customer's behavior. If we start changing up the way our site is linked from one page to another. We can get some clues watching these numbers to how that effect our customer's behavior. But in the end, this is one piece of information and you need to take the rest of the knowledge you have about your website and numbers from other sources to make informed decisions.   Alright, well that's it for today. I will be back in your feed in a few days. In the meantime, thank you so much for joining me. I hope this information will help you make excellent decisions for your own business. And hopefully inspire you to get digging in there, right? On how well your website is performing and the areas you need to target for improvement. We all have places for improvement, trust me. If you have feedback or ideas for future shows, you know, like you want to know what some of these other numbers mean, you can find me at savvybusinessmethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. And I will talk to you soon.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up-to-date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch ya next time.       Episode 017: Important Traffic Metrics for Your Ecommerce Website

Episode 016: Increasing Average Order Value (and how to get one)   Episode Summary:  A high average order value can make it easier to run your online business. In this episode, Julie walks you through the benefits of a high AOV and specific strategies for increasing your website's AOV.   Episode Links: https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:     Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method with your host Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello and welcome to episode 16 of The Savvy Business Method Podcast where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family.   Today's topic is how to increase the average order value on your website this is such an important topic we all need to be working towards an increasingly higher average order value right? Because having a high AOV has a couple of advantages. You know one is that we have to self view our products to pay for our fixed expenses for our business right? Because every month you have to pay for your marketing systems and your website maintenance and maybe you have to have staff on hand for customer service or for shipping orders and all those expenses have to be paid whether you ship a 100 orders or whether you ship 10 thousand orders. And so having a higher average order value means more money is coming in with every order which means there is more money available to pay those expenses.   There's also more money available to spend on advertising cost, or budget for those customer acquisition costs and so the money it costs us to go out and bring customers to our website and get them to purchase something. Having more revenue coming in also can lead to the ability to pay better wages right? Which means we can pay benefits and so we can possibly attract better people who can help us continue to grow our business and of course in the end higher average order value generally means that our business will be more profitable right and more stable and have more cash available to grow which is so important.   Now if you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to figure out how to first start your business and may not have picked your products yet let me go ahead and just put it out there that it is really worth considering targeting higher priced products where you're going to have a higher average order value because honestly your path to successful Ecommerce is going to be smoother if you have to sell less things in order to pay your expenses and to generate a profit. Okay but that being said most of you listening and you know myself included already have our products right? We already have things we're trying to sell and now this becomes about trying to get the highest average order value we can with the products and the websites that we have. So let's start talking about ways that we can increase the AOV on our websites.   All right first up a fairly reliable way to increase the average order value on your website is to actively recommend best-selling products, trending products or complementary products. Okay so what we're doing here is we're trying to convince customers that there are other products they should also put in their shopping cart. Okay so there's a couple of ways to do this one is to really dive in and work on your product recommendations. Okay so depending on the Ecommerce platform you're using, depending on the plugins maybe especially if you're working with something like Shopify that tends to have a lot of apps and plugins, or if you're working with a more custom built site having good product recommendations might be built into your system but most likely you're going to need to go out and find a plugin or potentially have some development work done to get those product recommendations working properly.   Now product recommendations can work two different ways. The simple way, the inexpensive way that you can generally get a good plugin for or some fairly simple development work is to do manual product recommendations and so this is where let's say you have product A and you know from experience as the website owner that product A generally sells well with products D and E, okay or maybe you have a report or something but you know that if you recommend products D and E with product A that those are complementary products and the customer will recognize that and are more likely to buy those additional products.   Okay so that's one way to do it, another way to do it is to use a system that works on an algorithm and this is so powerful. The systems that work on an algorithm tend to be much more costly and involved but generally you set up basically recipes and you say I want the product recommendations being shown to be based on what the computer knows people also buy when they buy this product, or that people who also look at this product also buy these other products. So a good example of this in action is Amazon so if you go to any Amazon's sales page and you scroll down there's always that section about people who bought this also bought that, right? And so having those dynamic product recommendations can be really powerful for getting people to add more items to their cart which that means a value of their order is larger.   Okay so couple things about product recommendations to keep in mind, you generally want to put them on the product pages right where people are shopping just like Amazon does, you can also think about putting them on the cart page okay? The shopping cart itself and this is something that you can test to kind of see how that works. Now go back to episode six if you haven't listened to episode six yet where I talk about the goals of each of the major pages that any Ecommerce site has and one of the things I talked about in that episode is that we don't want to put things on the checkout page that might distract people. The cart page we can do a little distraction we can try to get the top sell them a little bit but we don't want to put like products recommendation on the checkout page because once someone gets to the checkout page the only goal is for that to hit that place order button and nothing should be distracting them, okay?   Now product recommendations can also be shown in the form of up sells so you can have like a pop-up on the way to the cart page or on the way potentially to checkout where it says do you want to add this additional item, possibly do you want to add this additional item for a discount is even a way to do that, and there are generally plugins for the major Ecommerce platforms out there that will allow you to do that.   Another way to actively recommend your best selling products, trending products, complementary products is to use a live chat system. So if you have a chat system set up on your website check and see if it allows you to see what's in people's carts or what people are browsing on currently, this is going to be generally the higher end of chat systems just tell you it's not going to be the free chat systems but your staff if you have a customer service team when they have time available they can see what people are looking at or have in their carts and then they can pop-up with the chat box and make active suggestions and engage that customer in conversation.   So on one hand this seems kind of creepy right? Because we're used to browsing anonymously online but in reality this isn't much different than standing in a cell phone store and looking at a particular cell phone and having the sales person come up and talk to you about that phones features and how okay well now if you want to buy that phone you need to get a case, you need to get a screen protector all that sort of thing, okay so it's the same general concept. This will work great for some Ecommerce sites who have a certain type of customer and this will be disastrous for other Ecommerce sites with another type of customers so this is just something to think about if this sounds like something that your customers would find helpful it might be worth looking into.   All right but if you're going to do it two things you need to check out okay. So one is like I mentioned not all live chat systems are going to be able to do this so check that out first, there are higher end systems out there and there are lower end systems with less functionality. Also you might want to look at automating this if you're checking out functionality see how much of this can be automated because it can be really time consuming and yeah it's one thing if your customer service people have timed like in between calls or emails or chats to do this but you're not going to catch every customer that way so if there's any automation or kind of a bot system built into any of these chat systems that might be something to think about as well.   All right so as much as it can work well to make recommendations for customers and try to get them to put more items in their cart in the end we're dependent on them putting more items in their cart right? So the other way we can tackle this is to increase the value of the items that they do put in their cart okay so what do I mean by that? Now one thing that companies can use really strategically is to create product bundles so instead of having say a small product that cost $10 or $15 you could that product together with all the accessories and all of a sudden buying that product is a $50 purchase.   Okay so you think about you can have a kit to make something instead of just buying an ingredient you can have the kit to make something I've done that myself, or if you're offering cell phones or cameras or a piece of electronics equipment you could bundle that product together with the accessories and that would increase the size of that order without having to depend on the customer to see the product recommendations and make the decision to put those additional items in their cart, okay? So that could be a really good strategy.   Another strategy is to use deals to increase the average order value. Okay so this is where we give customers a very clear incentive to buy more. Now one way to do this is to use either shipping costs like some sort of shipping cost incentive or some sort of discount incentive are the two that I see most often. Okay so let's do some examples. You could for example offer free or discounted shipping for orders over a certain amount this is really popular on the internet right now with the Ecommerce company so for example you could say we have free shipping for orders over $50, or we have you get 20% off the shipping with orders over a certain amount something like that or flat rate shipping with orders over a certain amount.   You can also look at doing free gifts I have tried this on one of the sites that I had we had a free gift for orders over a certain amount and so we figured out what our normal average order value was and then we said I think you know let's say your average order value is $50 and you offer a free gift then for any order maybe over $60 or $55. So when I'm saying free gift I'm talking about something that's very inexpensive to you but it's meaningful to your customer so you can get them maybe to put just a little bit more in their cart to get their free gift.   I've also seen a lot of Ecommerce sites do discounts for a higher order value so you can advertise $20 off an order of $100 or more something like that that could really incentivize people to get to that higher mark and these types of deals tend to work even better if you make them time sensitive so if there's a limited time only. Some websites can even get away with putting like a countdown timer on their website that is not going to work for every brand or for every website but for websites whose customers are incentivized by that countdown timer that could be really really powerful.   All right now let's just launch into some random ideas if none of those or if you've done all the things that I've already talked about here are a few extra ideas for you as well. Some companies have really good luck getting their average order value up when they put a loyalty program in place and so if your customers know that they're going to be earning points for buying with you they might be tempted to buy more right? Because they know they're going to get points towards a future purchase or a discount or something like that, those loyalty programs can be really powerful and they're common enough now that not only does the software exist at an affordable price to get one put in place customers know what they are so I mean I feel bad for the people who first did loyalty programs way back when and had to explain to every customer what it is, we're in a much better position now as companies we can put a program in place and have the basic details and customers get it, right, they know what they're doing.   Another system that is available now just in the last couple of years is to offer payment options. Okay so payment options sound really scary as a website owner don't they? You don't really want to be taking the risk as a website owner about whether someone's going to pay you or not but there are some systems out there PayPal Credit is one of them where you get your money upfront and the risk is actually taken by PayPal or at least that's how it worked the last time I checked into it. Those systems tend to work really well if you have higher end items, okay of you can nudge your average order value up over their minimum and I think PayPal's minimum is like $100 or right around there. So if you're sitting at like an $80 $75 or $80 average order value now and you're trying to nudge that up closer to $100 having that systems available might be what you need to help get customers to purchase just a little bit more from you.   Okay now remember in the last episode when I talked about how important it is to choose an email service provider who had the functionality that your specific business needed? Okay well here's an example of where you can use this to your advantage. If you look at your average order value across your customers and you start actually making a list of all of your orders and all the value you may find that they fall into very distinct buckets. So let me give you an example. Let's say your average order value is $40 you may find out if you line up all your orders into like a statistics table right? That 75% of your orders are actually $25 an average order value $25 and 25% of your values are actually an average order value of $100 you may have that kind of really deep spread which then gives you you know maybe an average order value of something like $40, okay?   If you know that information then you can go into your email system if your email system is properly hooked up to your Ecommerce platform it should be able in theory to segment out the people who had the larger orders and then you can start directly marketing to them and in that email campaigns that directly look to bring them back to the site right? Instead of marketing the same sale to everyone you can start to segment your list. It is also potentially possible to do this with Facebook and it's going to depend a lot on technology and what Facebook decides to change next week about what they allow and don't allow but it is something to look into, so if you find that you have very clear spreads in terms of order value buckets I'd really encourage you to start breaking out those higher end customers and start designing campaigns specifically for them so that you can bring in those larger orders. Pretty cool ha? This is why you want to go to email marketing system and know how to use your other marketing systems really well because you can get this segmentation going on and it can be really powerful.   Okay so I've given you a lot of ideas to mull over but before you run out and start trying different ways of getting your average order value up here are two things I want you to think about, all right? First, before you do anything you need to make sure you know what your average order value really is. So like I just talked about in the example of targeting your higher end customers it could be that you have very distinct groups within your customers and you actually have several or average order values out there depending on the different groups. You'll be far more likely to have success with getting that average order value up if you are marketing to individual groups rather than trying to come up with a one size fits all approach.   Okay second, if you do know for sure that you have a single average order value out there across the board so let's say it's $35 then you need to be reasonable about your goals. So it's unlikely to do you a ton of good to say offer free shipping for orders over $60 when your average order value is $35. The difference between $35 and $60 is pretty big right? Most customers aren't going to suddenly start spending that much more even for the promise of free shipping but if you do free shipping maybe over $40 you might even be able to try free shipping over $45 you're more likely to nudge that AOV up you'll get more customers taking advantage of that offer you know and then once you've got customers doing that successfully maybe a few months later you can try to nudge it up just a little bit again. So just be thoughtful about this think about it from the customers perspective, don't get greedy right? Don't do too much too fast we're really talking about nudging up that average order value not making really drastic changes so that might turn our customers off.   All right so getting your average order value up can make a huge different for your small business right? So it gives you significantly more wiggle room so you can invest and grow your company and so for all of us regardless of what it is we're selling in our Ecommerce websites this needs to be something we continually work on.   Okay so that's it for today if you have feedback or ideas for future shows you can find me at savvybusinessmethod.com as well as on Facebook and YouTube, also please be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitches so you don't miss an episode and of course I would greatly appreciate if you can rate and review this podcast in iTunes. I love reading your reviews, I really appreciate the feedback. I will be back in your feed in a few days and until then, bye for now.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode please leave a review and subscribe and for more great content and to stay up to date visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.       Episode 016: Increasing Average Order Value      

Episode 015: Choosing an Email Service Provider   Episode Summary:  Email marketing is typically one of the best returns on investment for most ecommerce websites. In this episode, Julie talks through the factors you need to consider when choosing an email service provider including your goals and budget as well as your functionality and level of service needs.   Episode Links: https://mailchimp.com/ https://www.constantcontact.com/ https://www.klaviyo.com/ https://www.activecampaign.com/ https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:     Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello, and welcome to episode 15 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family.   Today we're going to talk about email marketing, and we've done a few episodes talking about email. And one of the reasons I like to talk about email is because email marketing tends to have a higher rate of return for small business owners with websites, ecommerce websites, than a lot of other types of marketing. And so this is something that I feel really strongly that ecommerce website owners need to have in place and need to do well so that they can get the best rate of return on their investment and grow their business.   So today I want to walk you through choosing an email service provider. Now, before we get into the factors you need to consider, I want to clarify that an email service provider is the service you're using to send out both your automated and manual email marketing campaigns to your mailing list, so like your sales emails and your abandoned cart emails. This is different from who hosts your business e-mailbox. So I have an email address through my website, SavvyBusinessMethod.com. That email address is hosted and managed by a different service than what I use to send out the emails for Savvy Business Method. So hopefully that makes sense. That's just a point of confusion occasionally, and I want to make sure we clear that up in advance. All right, well, there are a number of good options out there for an email service provider, or an ESP. I'll probably use ESP throughout this so I don't have to keep saying email service provider.   Now, a couple of them you've probably heard of. If you've been around ecommerce at all for a while, companies like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Klaviyo are really popular with small website owners. And so we're going to be talking about companies like that today. And really the company that you choose or the company that's the best fit for your business is going to be dependent on a number of factors, including how large your email list is, your budget, and the features and the level of service that you specifically need. So let's walk through each of these and really dig into how you can figure out which service will best meet the needs of your specific business.   All right, first off, I would recommend that you think about the goals that you have for your email marketing. Now, are you looking, for example, to just send out periodic emails to your email list, to maybe announce a sale or a new product or just remind them your business exists? Or are you looking maybe to do more triggered marketing? These are the automated campaigns, things like a shopping cart abandonment campaign, when somebody abandons their shopping cart, or a welcome series that starts sending out emails to them as soon as they sign up for your email list, or a post-purchase series that follows up with them after that sale, to support that sale, maybe get a product review, and also try to get them to make that second, third, fourth sale, et cetera. So those are some different types of campaigns that you could be considering running.   Now, those are typical ecommerce campaigns. But if you are selling an item that requires a great deal of education or thought by the consumer, they really have to consider this purchase, or maybe it's a very high dollar value item, you may also need to run a sales funnel. So that's sort of a different type of campaign, right, where you're catching them at various points in the sales process and kind of funneling them through to the sales process. And so knowing your goals in advance can really help you understand the level of functionality that you're going to need from an email service provider.   All right, on top of the type of email marketing specifically you're looking to do, you do need to also give some thought to what are your goals for growing your email list? Is your email list growing very quickly? Is it likely to get very large? Do you need specific tools built into your email service provider to help you grow that list and capture email addresses? Or are you using a separate system or something like that? Email is either a small part of your marketing for some businesses, or it's a very big part of it. And knowing that in advance can be really useful before you go out and try to choose a company.   All right, next up, you need to know the types of features that are available in each system that you look at, okay? So let's talk first about automation and the functionality of the automation system within any given email service provider. Now, knowing what kinds of campaigns you want to run is really helpful, right? So then you want to look in the system at what kinds of campaigns can be automated.   Now, let's talk, for example, about shopping cart abandonment, because generally most decent email service providers are going to have support for an abandoned shopping cart campaign, because that's a very common need for an ecommerce website. So if you're looking at an SCA campaign, are there campaign templates in the system that you're looking at to get you started? Are you going to have to come up with the code for the emails by yourself? Are you going to have to come up with the sequencing and the delays all by yourself?   Now, there are some trade offs here, right? So if you're just getting started with your business or you're not particularly tech savvy or you don't have a particularly large budget to do a lot of custom coding, having an email service provider that has a drag-and-drop system or has some example campaigns already set up, where you're just plugging in your logo and the colors and the time delay you want between the emails, that can be fabulous, especially when you're first getting started.   But as you grow, one thing you need to be looking at with automation functionality in any of these email service providers is whether there is flexibility long-term. So I have great faith in you. I know that as you go on in your ecommerce journey that you become more savvy in how you run your business, and you start noticing some trends with your email marketing, you are going to be in a position to be a little bit more strategic about how you lay out your emails and how you lay out your sequences. And having the ability in a system to then go in and be flexible and set up your own campaigns with these custom layouts or custom timing can be really important. So this is just thinking ahead, right? So as you become better at this, are you going to have the flexibility in the automation system to do the campaign that you want to do? All right, also with the animated, or automated, excuse me, automated campaigns, if you could do animated campaigns, that'd be cool, too, but with the automated campaigns, you want to be asking the email service provider about the level of service they're providing here, right? So are they building the campaigns out for you, or is that something you do? And if it's something you do, be sure to get a demo or a trial period so that you can make sure that your level of technical skill meshes nicely with the complexity of the system that you're looking at. There are systems out there that are so ridiculously easy, drag-and-drop systems, they're great. There are systems out there that require a lot more tech skill, and they also tend to have a lot more functionality long-term. So those trade offs are there. Just be thoughtful before you sign any agreements or sign up for a year plan or something like that, that you're picking something that you are going to be able to work with and get those automation sequences set up well.   All right, next up, I would encourage you to look at the tracking and reporting that is available through the system that you're considering. This may not seem like a big thing. And to be honest, it isn't a really big thing when you're first getting started. But again, as you grow, as your email list is bigger, as you're generating more revenue, and as you get more savvy as an ecommerce marketer, you're going to want to see more and more metrics of how your email is doing.   And there can be major differences between the tracking and reporting in different systems. So for example, most systems will track things like clicks and opens and how many people purchase something after reading the email. But if you're planning on running more complex campaigns from the get-go, you might want to think through what information you would want about those campaigns, and then verify that those metrics are available in the system you're looking at. Also, as you start running more and more campaigns and more complex campaigns, it's really useful to be able to download your statistics into a spreadsheet program like Excel so that you can analyze the statistics. So just double check that you have that ability in whatever system you're looking at, too. So again, thinking ahead, right, we just want to make sure we can grow, and as we become better at this, that we have the information available, and it's not going to be this huge pain to pull the information out of the system.   All right, when you're looking at a system, I'd also recommend you look carefully at their template options. Now, templates are the pre-built emails that are available that, in theory, you're just going to drop your logo in and change the colors and maybe tweak the layout just a little bit. But basically, it's a plug-and-play system, right? You plug your information in, and you're able to send emails that look reasonably professional.   Templates are amazing, I mean, especially when you're first getting started or you don't have the tech skills or you don't have the budget for something custom. They can just be the best thing ever. But it's important to look and make sure that the company that you're looking to work with has templates, if you're going to use a template, that they have templates that are going to be able to be adjusted enough to match your branding so that your emails are recognizable to your customers, because you're going to have a much easier time using email for marketing if your customers recognize the email is coming from you and it's reinforcing whatever branding and messaging that your site has going on.   All right, so in order to look at templates, you need to think through a few things. Most of this is about thinking through the types of emails you'll be sending out. When we think about batch and blast emails, those newsletter or sale emails that we send out manually to our lists, having a big image, that hero image at the top is pretty common. But then you need to think through, are you just going to be sending out emails with that one image and maybe some text? Are you planning on sending supporting articles or recipes or guides or something else further down the email that you're going to need space to drop in? Maybe you're planning on doing product highlights, or you want to have multiple product recommendations in your emails.   All of that are things that you should be considering when you're looking at templates, because you don't want to mess with those templates too much unless you are some sort of coding expert, because those templates are really finicky, because they're meant to work both on a desktop and on a tablet and on a mobile device, which is great. It used to be that we didn't have that functionality, even a few years ago. But now it's standard. But it also means you can't mess with the template like you used to be able to.   All right, so let's say that you're not finding any templates that work well for you. You need very specific branding, or you need a specific layout. What are your options? Most companies, especially the higher-end email service providers, and believe me, there are some high-end email service providers out there, and they are fabulous. I miss them dearly. They often offer a service where you can draw out what you want for an email, have a designer draw it out, and then there are people who will build that template for you. And that service generally runs anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 in my experience. So that's just something to think about. That is a chunk of money. So if that's something that's in your marketing budget, great. You can have a really nice, well-branded email. But if it's not, you're going to need to figure out how to work with the templates that are already in the system.   All right, next up, this won't matter to everybody, but if you work a lot from your phone or mobile device, you may want to check and see if whatever email service provider you're considering has some sort of mobile app so that you can log in to the system on the go. This requirement, if this is really important to you, I'm going to tell you up front this is going to limit your options, because a lot of the email service providers do not have apps. And the ones that do have very low functionality apps, from what I can find. But just something to think about. If you're used to having constant access to systems from your cell phone, then you need to take that into account when you're picking somebody, and decide how important that's going to be, if that's going to be a hill you want to die on or not.   All right, next up, you need to make sure that whatever system you choose can be fully integrated with both your ecommerce platform, so this is where you sell things, right, like Shopify or Magento or BigCommerce or CoreCommerce or whoever you're using, as well as any other systems that are critical for operating your business, okay? So these are things like if you have a customer relationship management system, if you're doing more sales focus, you might have a CRM. Your ecommerce platform has to, or excuse me, your email service provider has to interface with your CRM. If you're using a landing page system like Leadpages, you need to make sure that that is interfacing with your email service provider. If you are using a separate system for email capture and you've got your popups and your static banners and all of that on your site through another system, you need to make sure all of these systems can talk to one another.   It does not work for you to be manually downloading email addresses out of one system and putting them in another. Don't get stuck in that idea. That doesn't work because part of the effectiveness of email is when someone signs up that they are immediately getting whatever follow up you promised them. Otherwise you're going to end up with a lot more spam complaints. So don't get into this idea of downloading automatically. If someone signs up on Facebook, it needs to feed directly to your email service provider. If they sign up on a popup, it has to feed directly. People place an order on your ecommerce site, it has to feed directly into your email service provider.   So this is a big thing to worry about. The nice thing is, thanks to Google, this can be really simple. You're just normally typing in the name of your ecommerce platform and the name of your email service provider. So you can type in Shopify integration ActiveCampaign, or something like that, and see if those two systems talk. That information is usually very readily available. All right, you also need to be concerned about deliverability. So what does deliverability mean? This means the number of emails that actually make it into your customer's inbox and on the way are not marked as spam, okay? So we're talking about the issue of, when you send an email, does that email get marked as spam? Does it get put in their spam box, their junk folder? We need our emails making it to our customers' email boxes. Now, granted, if our customer has Gmail, we're probably making into the promotion box. That is a very different thing than getting marked as spam and ending up in a junk folder, right? At least there's a chance they're going to see our email, and it doesn't have this big spam label on it.   Okay, so deliverability really matters. And this is a tough thing, because there are a decent number of companies out there that maybe don't have the best deliverability rates, to put it nicely. So this is something you need to ask about. And you really are looking for 98% or higher deliverability. It's also helpful if the company has a dedicated deliverability team. These are people who have working relationships with the big email providers, like Gmail and Microsoft, for Outlook and that sort of thing, or Yahoo Mail, where if there's an issue, that they're able to talk to those companies directly and say, hey, why did all of our email going to customers with your email address get marked as spam, something like that.   So this is actually really important, because you are working hard, right, to build your email list. And building an email list is not a free thing. You're putting effort into it. You might be paying for lead ads, something like that. And then to be sending emails and not having them get to people, that is a huge problem. Now, something to keep in mind, companies do not have high deliverability rates on accident. Yeah, they've got good systems if they're going to have a high deliverability rate. They probably have dedicated deliverability teams. But the other thing they do to ensure that their deliverability rates are high is they do not tolerate bad behavior from their customers. Okay?   So if you have an email service provider who's just letting you sign anyone up, import any list, send any email, that is a bad sign, okay? You're probably going to have really low deliverability rates, because a company like Gmail or Yahoo Mail is going to see emails coming from that provider and be like, oh, yeah, these are the people who send a lot of spam. So this is just something to be thinking about. You actually do want it to be a little bit difficult to send your email, okay? Just like you don't want to go to a college that gives As to everybody, okay? It becomes a meaningless grade, right? If it is so easy to send email, if no one ever asks a single question about where you got your lists or what you're putting in your emails or where you got an email address, then you need to be suspicious and ask more questions, okay? That's all I'm saying.   So I'll give you an example. I recently switched to a new email company because I needed to shift the type of emails that I was sending for one of my companies. And I went to send my first email with them. And I checked them out. They have a great reputation. I was actually quite happy with them. And instead of my email going out at 11 a.m., I got an email from their deliverability team saying, hey, we are holding your email until you give us some more information. And they needed a very detailed, documented list of where I had gotten every single one of the email addresses for my company, which fine, because I did obtain them all perfectly legitimately. But I had to basically swear that I had done this legally, and it was fine. I mean, the whole process took like 15 minutes. My email went out 15 minutes later. It was fine. This is a good thing. I mean, yeah, it was a pain in the moment, but that's a good thing. That tells me that they care and that odds are good that my emails will continue to go out and not be marked as spam going forward, okay? So that's a good thing.   Another thing to look at in terms of this whole deliverability question, something you can kind of investigate without having to ask too many questions up front is look at who their other clients are. Email service providers are really good, generally, at letting you know if they have big companies that use them for their email. So that's just another thing. You can look and say, oh, they're working with larger companies. They probably have a little bit higher quality service going on. I mean, you're not going to get the same service as a big client, don't get me wrong. Your $25 a month is not going to get you the same service as maybe a company like Costco gets. But nonetheless, generally that'll be a more reputable company, right?   All right, so along with deliverability, you also want to look at their customer service, okay? And this is things like how quickly will you get help if you need it? Do you have different ways to contact them? If you're on a very inexpensive plan, then you're probably only going to have like an email contact information going on or maybe live chat during Monday through Friday, eight to five, type thing. If you have a more costly plan, I would sincerely hope that you would have the ability to contact them 24-7. So when I had a huge email list with one of my companies, it was over 300,000 people, we were paying a pretty significant amount of money for our email every month. And the company we were working with was a very high end company. And they were fabulous. But I had a phone number. If something went wrong on a Saturday at 9:00 p.m, I had a way to get a hold of the main line, and I actually also had my account rep's cell phone number, as well. So there were things I could do. If I had some massive catastrophe, there were people I could call. But you're not going to get that level of service as a really small business.   Next up, you want to look at how extensive is their help, okay? So is this more of a self-service system, where they give you a bunch of articles and they expect you to figure it out? Or will they get in there and do things for you? And again, that's probably going to be a function of how much you're paying. Setup is also a factor you want to think about, if you need to be setting this up on your own, or are they going to do initial setup for you and kind of get you all set up and ready to go, and then kind of turn you loose on it? So that's just questions to ask.   If you are paying more or if you have a larger list and are paying more, you may be assigned an account rep. And so a good question to ask if you're kind of working in that system is what would your account rep be doing for you? Will they be meeting with you regularly? Will they be making active suggestions, getting to know your business, helping educate you on how to do email marketing better? Or are they just your contact person if something goes wrong, okay? So that's just going to vary depending on the company and the type of plan you're on and how large your list is, things like that. All account reps are not created equal, let me tell you. But there are some amazing ones out there.   All right, last up for factors you need to think about is, of course, the money factor, right? I've kind of been alluding to this with all of these other things I've been talking about. But your budget, in the end, is going to drive a lot of this decision for you. All right, so what is your budget? That can be a little bit hard of a question, right? You have a marketing budget hopefully worked out, and you may have some ideas about how much you can potentially spend on email lists.   But let me give you a few things to think about when you're planning your budget. One is how big is your list? Now, if you are coming into this with a fairly large list, like I did very little email marketing until I had about 80,000 people on my email list. And this is just me not knowing how powerful it could be. And so I was using a very slimmed-down provider. I was sending out like one email every other week. I think I had just started sending out one email every week, when I contracted with a fairly big, fairly high-end email provider, and I got a great account rep, and I was able to just take my email and run with it. But if you have a very small list, you are going to be looking at different options than if you're coming in with 80, 100, 200, 300,000 people on your email list.   Now, don't be intimidated, okay, because there are actually even free plans out there. I would not recommend a free plan because free plans usually come with a lot of strings attached. Maybe we can talk about those in another episode. But the low priced plans, where you don't have all the restrictions, for a lot of these service providers, generally start about $25 a month. So they are super affordable. But you can easily spend many thousands of dollars a month, depending on how big your list is and how much functionality you need, how much support you need. So there is a range. But that's good, right? Because that means there is something there for everyone.   All right, next up, when you're talking about your budget, you need to be thinking about how much money you could reasonably make by putting a solid email marketing program in place. And this'll be a little bit easier to judge if you're already doing some email marketing and you kind of have a feel for how your customers respond to email. But if you have no system in place at all, it can be much harder to understand what the potential is, okay? And there's so many factors that go into this. There's no way we can cover all of them today. But let me just give you a general rule of thumb.   Most companies will generally see a 5x to 10X return on their investment for email marketing. And that is a very general rule of thumb, okay? Some companies will see more, some will see less. But that would mean for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you're looking to get five to $10 back. I mean, that's part of the reason email marketing can be so powerful. But to get those kind of returns, you need to be careful what system you're using. You need to do your email marketing well. There are a lot of factors there, right? So that's just a general rule of thumb.   All right, and then finally, in terms of your budget, you need to be thinking about, can you balance being affordable now with the ability of the system to grow with you? I mean, the perfect email marketing system would have a very inexpensive plan at like $25, but they would be able to grow, regardless of your email list gets to half a million people, right? That's going to be a hard thing to find, just to put it nicely. But still, you want to look for something that's affordable now but does have some potential to grow, because ROI, as I said, or your return on investment can be really hard to predict. It could be that you have this amazing email list that just worked correctly with the right sequences of emails, is going to generate an amazing return for you. Or it could be your email list, you know, just doesn't buy that much stuff off email. And that could be a little bit hard to predict when you're first getting started. And so finding something that's affordable but can scale and even maybe unlocking more complex or really cool features that you can use for some functionality can be really awesome.   Also, just a warning up front that moving systems is a huge pain. I actually just did it, and it's no fun at all. One of the main problems with moving systems, besides having to get your list into a new system and prove that it's a legitimate list, that you didn't go out in the internet and buy it or something, is that you lose a lot of your tracking and your tagging, normally, when you move systems. So you don't have the easy ability after you move systems to go back and say, well, these were people who purchased something, or these are people who spent more than $100. So a lot of your ability to segment goes away. And we'll talk about segmenting in a future podcast, but just something to keep in mind. Don't make this decision willy-nilly. You do not want to move, okay?   But that being said, picking carefully is important, but it is better to pick a company and start sending email and start making money off your email list than it is to get stuck in any sort of cycle of indecision. And I realize that with all the things I've given you today, it's really easy to be overwhelmed and say, you know, maybe I'll just not worry about this right now. And please, please don't do that. Go back through the show notes. There is a full transcript there so that you can take your time to go through the different things that I've talked about. And think through them and make a list of the factors that you need to be considering, because no system is perfect, right? That doesn't exist. But it's better to have an imperfect system reliably collecting email addresses and sending out email regularly than it is to have nothing at all, all right?   Okay, so that's it. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll be back in your feed in a few days. But in the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. If you have feedback or ideas for future shows, you can find me at SavvyBusinessMethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Be sure, please, to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes or Stitcher. That way you don't miss any episodes. We're doing episodes on Mondays and Thursdays now. I don't want you to miss anything. Also, rating and reviewing this podcast, I really appreciate when you guys do that. I love reading the reviews, and that helps it move up in the ranking so people find it when they search. And that's helpful for everyone else. So I appreciate anything you can do for me on that, and I will see you next time.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method, with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up to date, visit SavvyBusinessMethod.com, Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 015: Choosing an Email Service Provider

Episode 014: Tackling High Abandoned Cart Rates   Episode Summary:  A high rate of abandoned shopping carts on an ecommerce website is so frustrating! In this episode, Julie walks through how to get the abandoned cart rate down as well as strategies for getting customers who abandoned their cart to return and make a purchase.   Episode Links: https://www.adroll.com/ https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:   Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello, and welcome to episode 14 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family.   Okay, quick reminder, there is a full transcript of the show in the show notes, along with any links for any resources I talk about. I want to be sure that you are in a good position to go back and quickly and easily find what you need, because this is an important topic today.   Today we're going to talk about how to tackle high abandoned cart rates. Now, abandoned shopping carts are probably one of the most frustrating issues we deal with as ecommerce website owners. This is where people add items to their shopping cart, and then they don't complete the checkout process. And I think it's really frustrating because we've managed to get traffic to our website, we've managed to get them to add something to their shopping cart, but for some reason they're not making it to that last important step of actually purchasing the item. That's a terrible place to be failing, right?   So let's dive in by first asking ourselves if we actually have a problem. Okay, so that might seem like an odd thing to say, and I get it. Anyone abandoning their shopping cart is a problem. Even after all these years, I go in every couple days to my ecommerce system and look specifically at how many people have abandoned carts on my website. And the number always makes me cringe. So here's the thing. Running a successful ecommerce website means that we all have a lot of competing priorities, right? So one of our biggest challenges is to prioritize the things we need to work on. And so this idea of abandoned shopping carts becomes a prime example because while the number makes all of us cringe, and we would definitely like to have our abandoned cart rate be zero or near zero, that isn't realistic.   So here's the deal. The average ecommerce site has about a 75% abandoned cart rate. Seriously, out of every 100 customers who place something in their shopping cart, on average only 25% of them are going to complete that purchase. The other 75 are going to walk away. I mean, how frustrating is that? But I wanted to start off this discussion today by giving you some perspective, and especially if you're new to ecommerce, so that you can be thoughtful about what you're getting upset over and what you're deciding to put time and resources into.   So here's the deal. As a general rule, if your website's abandoned cart rate is higher than 75%, then I would absolutely agree that you need to work on that ASAP. You're leaving money on the table, and it's going to be a matter of figuring out what is going wrong and why that rate is so high. But if your site's abandoned cart rate is lower than 75%, I'm not telling you not to work on it, of course you should always try to improve that number. But I would encourage you to consider if that's the best use of your time right now. So if your rate's under 75%, your odds of improving it significantly honestly are probably not that great. You can probably nudge it down a little bit, but you're not going to get, make some huge impact on it.   So this is when we need to kinda step back and think about a few things. If you aren't happy with your sales numbers right now and your abandoned cart rate is at 75% or lower, honestly your time is probably better spent working on getting more traffic to your website than it is trying to make a dent in that abandoned cart rate. Hopefully that makes sense. So this is about how we spend our time and understanding what is normal and where we need to stop and take a deep breath and understand that our time is spent better elsewhere.   Now, don't get me wrong. Once you have better traffic numbers and your traffic numbers are closer to what would be your goal or your ideal, you can absolutely circle back around and start nudging that abandoned cart rate down. But you need to be thoughtful about whether you actually have a problem and whether it's something you need to prioritize.   Okay, so let's assume that you have gone into your ecommerce platform, you looked at your abandoned shopping cart rate, and it's higher than 75%. And so this means that your priority does need to be bringing that down. Let's dive in and talk through specifically how you do that. All right, first step, you need to thoroughly evaluate your cart and your checkout process, since this seems to be the part of your website that's hanging people up or is causing people to stop this process. If they were abandoning on the product page, we would go to the product page and look. But they're abandoning on the cart or the checkout page. And so going through both of those with a fine-toothed comb is really important. And yes, you should go through them with a fine-toothed comb. But I'm going to tell you, really you need to get three or five people to do the same, ideally people who can give you some honest feedback. So if you have experienced ecommerce entrepreneurs in your life, that would be a good person to ask. I would also suggest you ask maybe some friends who are not in the ecommerce business but who shop online, and ask them if anything makes them nervous or causes them pause.   The goal with both your cart and your checkout is to have a super slick process where the customer doesn't stop to reconsider their purchase. We want them just to slide on through to checkout. Now, we had a pretty thorough discussion about this back a couple episodes ago where we talked about the 11 pages every ecommerce site needs, and I talked about the different parts of a cart page and a checkout page and how we have to be really careful that we're keeping those slick, that we're not creating distractions. We want people to slide right to the end and press the place order button.   Okay, so as you're going through and looking, there are some things that you specifically should be looking at. Number one, is something in the process too complicated or just too much? Okay, what do I mean by too much? All right, so things to ask yourself, is it simple for the customer to see what they're ordering, like how many they're ordering, the price, the discounts that are applied, the shipping, et cetera? If people can't see clearly what they're getting and what they're going to pay for it, that's a really big reason to start being mistrustful and to walk away from a website.   Another thing to consider is whether you are potentially asking for too much information. It's really important to keep the checkout process quick, and so you only want to ask for information you absolutely need. So for example, you need their name, their email address, and where you're shipping this thing, right? You don't need to ask them their birthday. So just going through and double checking that you don't have any extra questions in there that might be causing people to take longer to go through the process, giving them more time to potentially change their mind.   All right, another thing to consider is whether there are too many choices in either your cart or your checkout process. So yes, in the cart we often want to do upsells or try to push complementary items. But if those are getting to be too distracting, you might need to tone them down or remove them to see if you can improve the number of people who are making it all the way to the end of the checkout process. Also, look at how many shipping choices you have or how many payment options you have. It's easy to think, oh, I'll present my customers with as many options I possibly can. But we do know from research that there's that paralysis of choice, right? When we're presented with too many options, it is easy to stop and not make the decision at all. So sometimes having two or three payment or shipping options can actually be superior to having four, five, six, okay? Just something to think about.   Finally, if you have any customization in your product process, that can throw a massive uncertainty wrench into your checkout process and create doubt in people's minds. So just again, something to think about. All of these choices, payment, shipping, customization, it can just get to be too much for people.   All right, next step, you need to ask yourself if your customers are facing any shipping surprises when they get to the cart or the checkout page. Now, what do I mean by that? Nobody likes to be surprised that they're either going to have to pay for shipping when they didn't expect to or that the shipping charges are going to be higher than they expected to pay. And this is tricky, right, for website owners. I'm actually going to do an episode a few podcasts from now specifically about the challenges around pricing our shipping, what the deal is with free shipping, that sort of thing. But in the meantime, this is just something you need to think through. In a perfect world, you really need to have, say, free shipping or flat rate shipping that's clear on the site prior to them getting to checkout so there's no question. They know for sure that if they order more than $40 in product, they're going to get free shipping. So there's no surprise at checkout. Maybe you have a banner or something on your website. Or they know that the flat rate shipping option is 2.99 or something like that, right? So it's not surprising them and causing them to change their mind once they get to the cart or the checkout page.   Now, if that, having free or flat rate shipping isn't an option for whatever reason, you do need to start thinking about how your shipping needs to be perceived as being reasonable to your customer. And this could mean, if your shipping's too high, you're going to need to figure out a way to bring it down. It could be adding maybe some slower shipping options that people can choose or working part of the price of the shipping into the product itself. Another thing you need to look at with shipping, and we can talk more about this in a couple episodes, but if you are adding surcharges to your shipping, you may need to get rid of those, as well.   All right, almost as annoying to customers as shipping surprises are probably payment issues. Be sure when you are going through your checkout carefully that you are running test orders for each of your payment options and making sure that each is working perfectly. When people are putting their credit cards into a website is the wrong time to have any glitches or odd behavior. Also make sure you're testing realistic scenarios. So you're putting items in your cart, you're removing them, you're adding a coupon code, so on and so forth. Think of all of the really ridiculous things that someone might try on your website, and then try running those scenarios through with each of your payment providers. And again, if you have friends who could do this, have them do it. Just obviously cancel and refund those orders. But have them go through the payment process, because this can be a place that we have a lot of hidden problems that can cause heartburn for our customers.   All right, so going through this process of evaluating your cart and your checkout and making them as slick as possible and making sure there are no hangups or odd behavior or anything going on that can trip up a customer is ultimately how we bring our abandoned cart rate down to an average level, hopefully to right around that 75%. Okay, so that's the goal. This is where we're bringing it down.   Now, having said that, as I talked about earlier, everyone has an abandoned cart rate. And it's generally 75%, maybe a little more or a little less, depending on your industry. All right, so let's shift the discussion, then, to talking about how we take these people who abandon the shopping carts and get them back on our website to purchase these products, because this is something anyone with any shopping cart abandonment rate should be using, the strategy of getting people back on the website. And the reason we want to put effort into this is because people who made it all the way to the shopping cart, I mean, they liked an item enough to put it in their shopping cart, these are are warmest leads, right? They're going to be the easiest for us to convert if we can get them back on the next visit. And so you need to have a strategy in place to reach out to them in as many ways as possible and then be providing them an incentive to come back and make that purchase.   Okay, so let's start by talking about the ways that we can reach out to them, and then we'll move on and talk about incentives that you can use, all right? So option number one, all of us with ecommerce sites should be using remarketing. This is where we show ads specifically to people who have visited our website. Now, if you go back to episode three of this podcast, you can check out the remarketing episode. I did kind of a deep dive into what are remarketing systems and how they're set up and all of that. There's also a YouTube video, which is a much shorter summary that you can check out, as well.   Now, with remarketing, you're showing ads to people who visited your website. But specifically when we're talking about abandoned shopping carts, what we want to do is create a segment in our remarketing system, so this is AdRoll, Facebook, something like that, where we are segmenting out people who have abandoned their shopping carts. And then we can run a specific ad campaign to those people. And that allows us to really control that conversation and potentially put some promotions out there for them. So maybe could offer them a coupon or free shipping or a bonus in an ad to help encourage them to return and make that purchase.   Now, the nice thing about remarketing is you can generally run a remarketing campaign to almost anyone who visits your website. People with popup blockers are going to be a little hard to get a hold of. But hey, they're probably on Facebook. So you'll get them there. But even if you don't have someone's email address, even if they didn't sign up for your mailing list, you can still run effective remarketing campaigns. So these are really important to get set up. So go back and listen to episode three if you don't have a remarketing system set up so I can talk you through how to get the pixels set up, how to build your audiences, and how to get those ads up and running.   All right, next up, I would also recommend that you have an abandoned shopping cart email campaign running at all times. So if someone comes to your website and they opt into your email list, so you've got their email, right, and your site will be tracking that, and there'll be that little cookie attached to them that keeps track of what they put in their shopping carts. And then when they abandon the shopping cart, your email system will kick in and send them out an email that lists the products that were in their cart and asks them to come back. Now, abandoned cart email marketing is really effective. But you're always going to be running it in addition to your remarketing campaigns, okay? So it's not you run remarketing or email. You really want to be running both.   Now, in terms of your abandoned cart emails, these should be very simple. Your email service provider probably has an abandoned cart template available. I hope they do, because it's really hard to code one. Use that. This is not the time to do a major sales pitch or to talk about the wonder of your products. These need to be very simple. The products are there, the button to return to your cart. The only thing I would potentially recommend adding is simple messaging around an incentive. So come back and save 10% or get free shipping or something like that. Now, we'll talk about incentives in a few minutes, because incentives, especially in abandoned cart campaign, will work best if they are escalating incentives, okay? So we'll visit that in a moment.   But before that, I want to talk about your third option. Okay, so we've talked about remarketing, we talked about abandoned cart emails. Let's talk briefly about the idea of personalized follow up. And so this would be when you go into your system and you pull down people's information who have been on the site and abandoned a cart. I know, for example, I think you can do this in Shopify, where you are then able to personally, manually email or call the customer, asking them to return to the site and possibly offering them some sort of deal if they do.   Now, I'm going to say up front that this sort of follow up is not going to work well for most ecommerce companies, right, because it's generally not going to work well for a company that's doing a lot of volume. You'd have to be doing a fairly small amount of volume. Also, this would probably work better for items where the customer's expecting a much higher sense of customer service. So having somebody, if you're trying to buy a car, having somebody personally follow up with you makes sense. If you're trying to buy a five-pound bag of organic flour, probably not, right? So this is just something you need to think about. This doesn't necessarily work for every business. But if it would work for your business, if you are selling higher end products, if that personalized service would be perceived positively by your customers, this could be an awesome way, too, especially if you're a new business, to get feedback about why people are abandoning their shopping carts.   All right, but the overarching warning I want to put out here is that don't be creepy, really. If your customer answers the phone or answers their email and goes, oh my goodness, how do they know who I am? You're in trouble, okay? You're creating a sense of foreboding, of suspicion. Don't do that. So just be really thoughtful. If you're going to do personalized follow up, if it makes sense for your business, be thoughtful, don't be creepy. I think that could actually be a slogan for life, right? Be thoughtful, don't be creepy.   Okay, let's circle back to incentives. So whether you're running remarketing campaigns, abandoned cart emails, you're doing personalized follow up, you really need to think in advance about an incentive structure to bring these customers back. And incentives are going to look different depending on your market and your customers. So without, you don't necessarily need to offer a discount. You can. You can also use things like free shipping, bonuses, free gifts. But as I briefly mentioned a few minutes ago, incentives, especially in email, tend to work better if they escalate. So let me give you an example of a cadence I use quite frequently for like an abandoned cart email campaign. So the first email might go out two hours after they abandon their cart. And it might be as simple as just reminding them that they left items in their shopping cart, that they forgot to check out. And then the second email would go out two days later, and maybe that would offer them a discount, like a 10 or 15% discount, or maybe more, depending on your product and your branding. And then five days after they've abandoned their cart, they get a third email. That one would offer them a discount potentially plus free shipping. And then the fourth email goes out seven days after they've abandoned their cart, and that email is offering or letting them know, I should say, a last chance for the discount and free shipping, so creating that urgency. So you see how you're creating better and better offers the longer that they are away from their shopping cart. And then in the end there, you're trying to bring in that urgency factor, as well.   All right, so the good news is that all of these strategies I've talked about today, combing through your shopping cart and your checkout, putting in place remarketing and abandoned cart emails, even a personalized follow up system are actually all pretty easy to implement. Some of these can be pretty tedious, but none of them are particularly difficult or costly. And so there's really no reason you shouldn't be doing this. I will put out there, though, that if you do not have an email system in place that can do shopping cart abandonment or you don't have your remarketing pixel already set up, please take a couple hours this week to do those two things. They can make a really big difference in terms of your revenue numbers.   All right, well, that's it for today. I'll be back in your feed in a few days. And in the meantime, thank you so much for joining me. I hope this information will help you make better decisions for your own business and hopefully get that abandoned cart rate down and get more people who do abandon their carts coming back and making a purchase on that next visit.   If you have feedback or ideas for future shows, I would love to hear from you. You can find me at SavvyBusinessMethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Be sure also to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitcher so that you will be notified each time a new episode comes out. I'm putting them out on Mondays and Thursdays, so lots of good episodes coming up. And of course I would greatly appreciate if you could rate and review this podcast in iTunes because it helps other people find it, and I love reading your reviews. It is so much fun. I will see you next time.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method, with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up to date, visit SavvyBusinessMethod.com, Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 014: Tackling High Abandoned Cart Rates

Episode 013: Preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Part 2   Episode Summary:  In this second episode of a two-part series, Julie dives into how to get your customer service team, inventory management, and shipping systems ready to tackle Black Friday and Cyber Monday.   Episode Links: https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:   Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello, and welcome to episode 13 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your small business online, especially during the holiday season. I am Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family.   Are you starting to shift into holiday mode? You know, it's that time of year, and as ecommerce website owners and ecommerce marketers it feels like we have to make this holiday shift so early in the year. But it's really important. We want to take advantage of the revenue available during the holiday season. So if you haven't had a chance yet, be sure to go back and listen to the previous episode that came in your feed on Thursday, November 1st. And that's where I went over in great detail how you need to set up your marketing systems to be ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And if you set your marketing up properly, hopefully you are going to be seeing a lot more traffic to your website, a lot more orders placed, more people contacting customer service. The whole thing just becomes bigger and potentially harder to manage.   And so today, I want to continue the Black Friday and Cyber Monday discussion, but I want to cover a series of topics I don't think I've ever seen anyone else talk about. You know, everyone is so focused on marketing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and marketing is really important. And also, of course, it's honestly like really interesting and even a little sexy, but I have been running ecommerce websites for 10 years, and during that time I have at some point done every single job myself. I've answered customer services emails. I've ordered inventory. I've packed orders. And even once I got to the point where I had an amazing team, on a big sales weekend like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you better believe I was out there with them working alongside them.   So in all those years with all those holiday seasons under my belt, let me tell you, marketing is only part of your responsibilities as a business owner. And there are some really important things you need to get in place in terms of your customer service, your inventory, your shipping systems, to make handling what is hopefully going to be a huge influx of orders a more positive experience for you and your team.   All right, so today's topic is about getting the rest of your business ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Now, this long weekend we have coming up, it's such a crucial opportunity to bring in substantial revenue and hopefully gain a lot of new customers you can continue to market to the rest of the year. So the last thing you need is to be getting behind on answering customer's questions, or taking a week or longer to ship out their orders because you know if you take too long to ship out their orders, they're going to call customer service, right? And those interactions are going to cost you money and customers will perceive this as a negative experience. So you really have to not only be on your marketing game during the season, you have to kind of be on your management operations game as well. And so that is what we're going to focus on. What tweaks or changes can you put in place now so that you can be in the best possible position?   All right, well let's start with customer service. Now, whether it's just you doing your customer service, or you have a team, you need to be ready to handle more customer service inquiries. And like I just said, you can't afford to get behind, right? This is the time when you need to stay on top and be getting back to people quickly. All right, so let's talk about your staffing. Now, I will tell you from experience that realistically you probably don't need to increase your staffing. You don't need to go out and hire anybody. You don't need to necessarily bring in temps. I've had good luck over the years with just encouraging everyone to be a little bit more on their game or work a little bit faster than normal. You know, you can't do that to your staff every day of the year, of course, but if you can create the positive environment, the energy, and maybe even some reward systems in place, you can probably get everybody to be a little bit more energized and working a little bit harder and faster than they normally would. They'll be able to do that for a couple of days, right? You've got good people, they'll help you out here.   Now, as a practical matter, there are some things though that you can do with your staffing to make this a little bit easier. Now, one is making sure you have staffing the day after Thanksgiving. A lot of companies like to give people that day after Thanksgiving off, and who doesn't love a four-day weekend, of course? But I have generally found that I at least want to have some staff around the day after Thanksgiving. So on a Friday, typically, with one of my companies, we'd have two or three people working. On the day after Thanksgiving, one person would generally be able to handle it.   And that sounds strange, right? But the thing that we found was that most people shopping online didn't start shopping online till later in the day anyway. They were out standing in line for the sock sale or something first, or to get that big screen TV, and then they ended up shopping online later in the afternoon. But in the end, just make sure you have some coverage on Friday to keep those inboxes cleaned out and to keep them caught up.   Now, the same general idea applies to the weekend. I find that it's generally best to make sure that there is someone, at the very least, logging in every few hours to clean out the inbox. If you can staff your customer service department all weekend so that you can do chat and phone calls and email real time, that's awesome, but if that's not something you can do, see if you can get a volunteer to work some overtime and to clean out that box every few hours so your staff aren't facing a huge onslaught when they come in on Monday. Now, the other reason you want to stay on top of your customer service inquiries over this really important weekend is because if there are problems with your website, or if your coupon codes, your promotion isn't working properly, having staff who see those emails or chats quickly can make a huge difference in how quickly you can get that problem fixed.   All right, next up, when you're thinking about customer service for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you want to give some thought to the promotions that you're running. Now, we talked about promotions on Thursday in the last episode, but in this case, you're going to want to really sit down and think about what is everything that could possibly go wrong with the promotion. Sounds so negative, right? You want to be sure though that your promo or your coupon is working perfectly. This is not a time to be confusing customers. It needs to have a clear spot it goes in the cart in checkout. People need to easily be able to see that the discount that they're expecting is being applied properly.   Now, if it turns out that something does go wrong, and your staff are getting complaints from customers, you want to be sure that there is a system in place so that they can resolve those issues. So this could be making sure, of course, that you're easy to get ahold of, as a business owner. It could also be making sure someone in your customer service department knows how to work your promo system on the backend and can fix any glitches. It also may be that, you should always, of course, have your developer's phone number on hand or a quick way to get ahold of them in case you have a major website issue.   Something else that I have found personally that really works well for reducing the number of customer service inquiries that come in over that Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, is to make whatever promo that I'm running on my websites automatic, so that people don't need to add a coupon code, okay? And there's a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that people will inevitably forget to add the coupon code and then they'll be calling you a couple days later asking you to add it retroactively. And every ecommerce system I know of does not make that easy, and so it's a very manual process. You end up having to do a manual refund. It's a mess, but it's also difficult to turn people down, right? Because then you're creating customer service issues.   So all I'm saying is that if you are letting everybody have the discount automatically, you can save yourself a lot of headaches later. If you decide though you want to use coupon codes and you want to make your customers apply those, be sure you have some scripts, some practicing going on with your customer service staff, some processes in place to handle those inquiries when people forget to apply those coupon codes.   All right, now as we discussed on Thursday, I generally recommend that you make whatever promotion you're running for your Black Friday sale a little bit better or a little wider than what you run for your Monday sale. This will help prevent complaints of customers who bought on Friday and now feel that they would have gotten a better deal if they waited till Monday. So that's just a small thing you can do in the way you set up your promotions and the order you do them in to help reduce those customer service complaints.   Also, make your coupon codes, if you're going to use coupon codes, work for a day or two longer than you advertised them. So let's say that your Cyber Monday coupon code expires the Wednesday after Cyber Monday. I would suggest from the backend of your system that that code actually expire on Friday, because I assure you, people are going to be going through their email later in the week, they're going to find it, they're going to try to take advantage of it, and it's not going to work, and they're going to get upset, and then they're going to call you. And again, those interactions cost you money. It is far better for you to get that sale even at the discount than it is for you to have to pay someone to talk to that person, and then inevitably probably give them some form of compensation or the discount anyway. So just save yourself some time, money, and headaches.   All right, last up in terms of keeping customer service a doable situation for that weekend, be sure you're not making any major changes to your website right before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Trust me, and it's Murphy's Law, right? Something will go wrong. Also, you'll want to double-check that your website can handle extra traffic. If you are using a hosted ecommerce solution, something like Shopify or BigCommerce or CoreCommerce, you probably don't have really any say in where your site is hosted, it's being done by the company for you, but if you are on a platform, something like, we were on Magento for nine years, we had to host our own server, so we had to contract for a server.   So if you're in that situation, double-check with your developer that there's been some testing done, that you're going to be able to handle increased traffic so your site doesn't crash, because that is truly the last thing you need, right? Also, as I mentioned before, make sure you know how to reach your developers is there is an emergency, and that they are going to be around the holiday weekend to be able to help you. So that'll help keep, you know, if your customer service people are getting complaints about the website, just having those things in place allows you to fix problems more quickly.   All right, next up, let's talk about inventory. So inventory, there's just a couple quick tips here over the years that I've learned. One, is make sure you're ordering far enough in advance to allow for problems. It's really easy as small business owners, especially for cash flow, that we'll wait until the last moment to order our inventory because we don't want to spend the money, right? But keep in mind that everyone is bringing in new inventory right now, not just you, and so often it can take a supplier longer to ship your inventory. Freight systems might be backed up a little bit. So allow yourselves at least a couple extra days, preferably an extra week or two, just in case something goes wrong with your shipment. It would be such a shame to not be able to reap the rewards of this holiday weekend because your inventory didn't come in on time. Now, I truly understand that balancing having enough inventory, but not too much because you didn't want to tie up your cash is really hard. I would just encourage you to think about how people shop on your website normally, and then you're just going to have to make some guesses in terms of how much extra you're going to sell. Now, keep in mind, depending on what your promotion is, if you're offering free gifts as part of your promotion, all of that has to be taken into account in advance with your inventory numbers so that you have enough on hand.   And if this is your first year or two of doing Black Friday and Cyber Monday, please rest assured that this does get easier. Years three, four, five, six, and beyond, you'll feel like a pro at this. Yeah, I mean, there's always a little bit of uncertainty. You're never sure until you get to that weekend, how things are going to go, but at least you'll have some data to work with. So do your best, hang tight, it gets easier from here. All right, so if you have done your marketing well, you have met your customers' needs, you have product in stock to sell, with any luck you are going to have a lot of orders coming in, right? That is the goal.   And so let's talk about getting those orders out the door. Now, this is something you really have to give a lot of thought to if you are shipping your own orders. If you're outsourcing that to a third party, congratulations, your life, your weekend's going to be much easier than the rest of us. But for those of us who do our own shipping, let's stop and talk about what this looks like. Now, I would recommend that you sit down the next couple of days and give some thought to what scaling looks like. So let's say you get twice as many orders over Black Friday and Cyber Monday as you normally would over a weekend, okay? What does that look like? That's probably not too big a deal, right? Your system can probably adjust for that. What if you get five times as many orders? Okay, now it gets more complicated, right? You have to start thinking about people and processes a little bit more.   I would really encourage you, you know, obviously you don't want to get your hopes up that you're going to have the greatest weekend ever, hopefully you will, but still, but I would also encourage you not to assume that this is just going to work itself out. Save that attitude for the day that you're on some big cable news show with no notice and you just have to do the best you can to get your orders out. This one you see coming, right? You know this holiday weekend's coming, so take a little bit of time, give it some thought, and start planning out how you can scale your resources.   All right, so specifically let's talk about staffing. A couple of things that have worked really well for me over the years is one, making sure that we go into Friday completely caught up on shipping, okay? Friday morning when your staff come to work, if you have a team, they need to be shipping whatever up to the minute has come in for orders. You want to stay caught up at all times so that when that influx really starts, you're in a good position to keep up with it to the best that you can. I would also suggest talking to your team in advance and double-checking if they would be available to work the weekend, if they could work longer hours during the following week, how much you're going to be able to mess around with their hours when they come in and leave, so that you can flex your current team and get the most productivity out of them.   Unless you're a very large company, I would really avoid hiring anyone new or temps unless you have absolutely no other options, okay? This is not a good time to be bringing people in. If you do have to hire temps, you need to bring them in probably at least a week in advance to get them trained. You're probably going to have to put some extra quality systems in place. An alternative to hiring temps, something that I've used successfully for years, is we had this rule, company-wide, it wasn't just Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but company-wide all year, if there was a large number of orders that needed to be shipped, everyone in the company, including myself, was responsible for being out there and shipping orders, okay?   And not only did that mean that we didn't have to bring in temps for a big weekends, it also really developed a camaraderie and a company culture that I was really proud of, that we all pitched in and worked together. And when I say all, obviously not the customer service staff because they're busy, but if you have anyone working in marketing or accounting or office management, or I have some friends who, their college-age kids would come home every year, and they knew that the entire break, they were going to be working at the warehouse. So use your resources that you know and try to flex those resources first.   All right, so what I'm talking about here is going to be pretty taxing to your team if you have one, or to your family if you don't a team and you're just using your family, be sure to plan in some rewards here. Be kind to these people. Buy them lunch, call out staff who are people who go above and beyond. One year, we handed out movie tickets that I bought at Costco. And that was a huge, people loved that. It wasn't a very expensive gift, but it really meant a lot to people that we had thought in advance about how we could reward them for working hard and putting in that extra effort. So just be thinking about some of those things that you can do.   All right, next up, let's talk about your shipping equipment. You really need to be realistic about how many orders you can process in an hour, even if you managed to find more people to help you. So let me give you an example. For years we had one shipping computer. So we had one computer that was attached to a scale with the label printer that could do the official shipment of the order. And that worked fine, what, 360 days a year? That was fine. But Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we really had to start thinking about okay, that one shipping computer, with the best person in the warehouse to run it, can only ship, I think we could ship 45 to 50 orders an hour. Okay, there's a lag time to getting that label printed. And so then you have to start thinking okay, well, instead of running my computer for three or four hours a day, what happens if I have to run this computer for 10 hours a day, what does that look like?   And so this is where maybe you might flex your staff, for example, or run shifts. Another option is if you happen to be paranoid like I am about your hard drive on your shipping computer blowing up on a random Tuesday, you might have an extra computer that you keep around. This would be a good time to get it hooked up and have it ready to go so that that shipping computer doesn't become a bottleneck.   Now, you also got to keep in mind that it's not just you, right, shipping a lot of order these days. All the other companies in your area and in the country are going to be doing the same thing. So I would recommend making sure that you have cell phone numbers for your shipping reps handy. So if you ship with the Post Office, you should have the cell phone number for your account rep handy. Same thing with UPS and FedEx. Now, on one hand it is your responsibility, absolutely, in advance to make sure that you know how to get an extra pickup schedule, that you have more totes if you're using like those big Post Office totes or something, that you have all of that ready to go.   But if something urgent comes up, you need to be able to get a hold of your rep quickly. So for example, we had years where our driver forgot to pick up our shipments at the end of the day, and it was just he had a full truck. He had been stuffing his truck all day long and he forgot about us. It was just a mistake, but being able to get a hold of your rep and get someone else out to come pick things up is really handy because otherwise you're stuffing it all in your car and driving to the Post Office multiple times or to UPS, and that is no fun.   All right, also in terms of getting your orders shipped, I would encourage you just to take a look at the systems you have in place. Being busier generally means that more mistakes are going to get made, even though your staff are going to be doing their best, they're going to be trying hard, this might be a good time to think about putting in some simply quality checking, if that's not something you already have going on, with a caveat though, okay. Do not make major changes to your process.   Just like I talked about with the customer service, this isn't the time to make major changes to your website, this is also not the time to do like a major upgrade to your shipping system or your inventory system, or change around how you process an order. You want to keep your core systems in place and stable, but maybe you have a double-checking system or something you put in place just for this weekend so that as you're busier, you're making sure you're not ending up with a bunch of orders that are going out incorrectly, okay? All right, so customer service, inventory, getting orders out. All these things need to be coordinated so that you can have a smooth weekend, and frankly, the following week when you're getting all these orders out.   All right, last step. I would really recommend that you do a debrief. Once you've gotten all of the orders out the door, sit down either yourself, or with your family, or with your team, or whoever it is made it through this important time of year with you, you need to sit down and have a very honest discussion about what went right and what went wrong. So buy everybody lunch and get out your notepad and start writing things down. And this is not the time for blame. This is all about learning and improving because busy times are great for finding holes in your larger system.   So I would recommend you divide the list that you make into two parts. One of them is going to be things that went right or improvements that you need to make, that you could make now to benefit your company on a daily basis. So for example, during this process you may have found a more efficient way to ship your orders. Or maybe your customer service people found a better way to handle a customer's issue, or maybe you found a more effective way to market a promotion. All of that could potentially be incorporated into your daily operations and benefit you with this coming year.   Your second list should be improvements that need to be made or things that you did really well that are specific to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And so you want to write those down, get 'em typed up, put 'em in a safe place, and then either put a reminder on your calendar to go check that file, or I have been known to put the entire text of that meeting in an email attached to a calendar reminder in my Outlook for about September 15th of the next year so that you remember to go back and take a look and remember what it was you did right, and what you need to work on this next year.   All right, that was a lot, wasn't it? But here's the thing, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are important, we need to make as much money as possible, and so it really does benefit us to be as prepared as possible. But the good news is that's it for today. I am hopeful though that this has given you some things to work on so that this holiday weekend can go as smoothly as possible for you.   And I'll be back on your feed on Thursday with a new episode. We are going to talk about tackling a very annoying problem, and that is the high rate of abandoned shopping carts that many of us have on our websites. So if this is something that you find frustrating, be sure to tune in, I've got some ideas for you. To get ready for that episode, if you get a minute, get into your ecommerce platform and take a look at how many abandoned shopping carts you have. So how many shopping carts are created and how many people actually place orders, and have that number ready to go. So when you're listening on Thursday, you can get some idea as for how you need to proceed to improve that situation.   All right, in the mean time, I would love to hear from you. If you have feedback or ideas for future shows, you can find me at savvybusinessmethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. And please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so it can help other people find it as well. And I will see you next time.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up-to-date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.     Episode 013: Preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Part 2  

Episode 012: Preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Part 1   Episode Summary:  As an ecommerce website, you get one chance a year to bring in big revenue numbers on the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. In this first of two episodes, Julie walks you through setting up your ecommerce marketing to bring in as many sales as possible during that holiday weekend.   Episode Links: https://www.adroll.com/https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okghttps://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript: Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method with your host Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello, and welcome to episode 12 of the Savvy Business Method Podcast where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. How is it already November 1st? I hope you had a fun Halloween last night. I feel so fortunate we live in a great neighborhood for Halloween. Everybody gets really into decorating and handing out candy and it makes it so much fun. But that fun is short-lived, right? Because as website owners, you and I tend to do Halloween maybe a bit differently. It's ushering in a really critical season for most websites. And so, today I wanted to take some time to talk about planning for Black Friday and Cyber Monday because that weekend is a big deal for most websites. Unless you happen to have a really odd seasonality to your particular e-commerce company, you're probably looking to make as much revenue that weekend as you possibly can. As a friend of mine likes to say, people are in the mood to hand over their money at that point, and we should be in the best possible position to take it. So, let's talk today about what a solid Black Friday and Cyber Monday plan looks like. Now, I'm going to put a twist on this. This is actually going to be a two part podcast. We'll do the first part today and the second part on Monday. I'm going to also get a lot more specific than I typically do with this podcast. So, we're going to get really into the weeds and flush out how to get ready for this really important weekend. So, the goal today is to talk you through what you need to do from a marketing perspective so you can have the most successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday possible. On Monday, I will be back in your feed with a new episode where I'll focus on what you need to do to get the rest of your company ready. So, what does it look like for customer service to be prepared, your inventory management, your shipping systems? I trust that most of you knew deep down already that you needed to be thinking about marketing to prepare for such a huge potential revenue-generating weekend, but I also realize things like customer service and shipping can be easy to forget. I think we have this tendency as entrepreneurs to just consider that, oh well, things will work themselves out; I'll just get people to my website; they'll buy and I'll figure out how I'm going to get all these packages out the door later. But I can tell you after 10 years of doing this, there are definitely things you can and should do to prepare in advance. That's going to be a long, rough weekend. You're looking at potentially a long, rough following week for both you and your team if you have people working with you, and I would like to see that 10-day period go way more smoothly for you guys by helping you get prepared and having all your systems in place and everything organized in advance. Alright, let's talk about some reality here for a moment. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a constantly evolving situation, right? They change every year. Historically, Black Friday was huge, and of course, Cyber Monday didn't even exist. I was thinking the other day, back when I was a kid I had this really clear memory of my mom dragging us out of bed at 5:00 a.m. so we could be at Fred Meyer in Portland at 6:00 a.m. for the 50% off sock sale. And there were so many people, and I remember, as a kid, just thinking I was going to be trampled. And if you are older than probably 30, you probably have that memory, right? This was when everything got purchased, on Black Friday. Now with e-commerce became more popular, people would shop online the following Monday when they returned to work, and they had internet access, which again, I realize if you're under 30, probably sounds really strange. Let me assure you, most of us did not have internet access for at least part of our adult life outside of work; I mean, that was normal. And so this is where this whole idea came from, but clearly some things are changing. Every year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday become less concentrated, right? So, there are less people who are really focusing their shopping on that, what is that, four, four, five day period, okay? So, some things are changing and companies, though, have gotten really addicted to this idea of being able to generate a bunch of revenue in a couple day period, and so you often see some really outlandish behavior between Black Friday and Cyber Monday by various companies trying to attract sales that weekend. You know I've got to tell you, honestly, this is my favorite day of the year to be online watching the emails and the ads. If you are an e-commerce marketing geek, this is the best because you could get all sorts of ideas for things you can incorporate into your marketing for the rest of the year. So that's another reason to do your planning work now, get your whole situation set up so you've got some bandwidth that weekend to sit and look at what everybody else is doing. Alright, so let's start talking about planning our marketing for what is, ultimately, potentially a big weekend for your company. Sure, in the end, it's gray November and December, and lots of people will spread their purchases out, but for most businesses, you're going to see a significant jump during that weekend so you want to have all your marketing set up and ready to go. Alright, the first thing you've got to do is plan your promotions, okay? These are the sales that you're going to run, and I'm saying sales as in multiple sales. You actually need to run two different sales, one for Black Friday, and generally, I like to run that sale Friday through Sunday, and then one for Cyber Monday, and of course, that starts Monday and I personally recommend you look at running it through Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. And in a few minutes I'll get into why you should do that. Alright, so, with two sales let's talk about why we're running two sales and not just one sale, right, this seems like it's making our lives more complicated, as well as why I think this is the cadence you should be using. Email is going to play a big role in your marketing strategy during these days, and really, the same principles I'm going to talk about with email is going to apply to things like social media, too. Okay, so, step back for a minute and think about other sales that you run during the year. What are your best sale days? So if you send out, let's say emails or social media marketing for a sale for, say, Labor Day, you'll generally see that your biggest days revenue-wise are going to be the day the sale's announced, the day you tell them there's one day left, and the day it ends, you know, last chance, save now, right? Those are your big sale days. If you run one sale over that four, five day period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you get potentially three big revenue days based on that cycle. If you have two sales, you can almost squeeze a big day out of every day by creating that sense of excitement and urgency because you're running through that cycle twice, announcing the sale, limited time left, last chance, and you're doing that twice. So you're able to squeeze potentially more revenue out. I have done this both ways over the years, and absolutely, no question, the two sales strategy generates far more revenue. Alright, so let's talk about this idea of timing. Like I said, I tend to run my Black Friday sales Friday through Sunday. That gives me a day to announce the sale, a day to tell them to hurry, that's Saturday, and then a day to tell them they're almost out of time on Sunday, so the sale ends on Sunday. Now I'm just going to interject here that there is a big trend to start sales on Thanksgiving Day. I am sure you have noticed it. I find it so funny that like part of people's Thanksgiving traditions is starting to be to eat dinner and then go to a store, and start their shopping. Now, there is a huge debate over whether this is a good trend; I mean, obviously, there's a social debate going on; there's also debate in marketing and e-commerce circles. Most email experts agree, though, that, at the least, you should be sending an email wishing your American customers a happy holiday. Alright, so, why would you do that? This is generally about goodwill. We're there with you; we're happy you're celebrating. We're happy, you're happy kind of thing, and then maybe a few people will see that email and go, oh, yeah, I wanted to go to that website and buy something, and I really want my aunt to stop talking to me, so I'm going to go hide on my phone over in the corner and shop. So, you'll get a few of those people, too, if you send out an email. Now, the other strategy is to start your sale on Thanksgiving, and it's common to see an email, like a VIP early access type thing. So, you send out maybe Thanksgiving afternoon or Thanksgiving evening saying, hey, for our email subscribers, you're our VIPs; we're going to give you, the sale starts now, and we're going to give you 20% off or whatever it is. So, that's a strategy that a lot of companies are starting to use. Now, whether or not you just send a goodwill email, whether or not you send a sales email, whether you just leave your customers alone that day is entirely up to you, alright? Part of this is your own comfort level. What does your gut tell you about whether this is a right or wrong thing to do, and I'm going to just throw in there, I would suggest you consider how easily offended your market is, okay? If your customer base tends to be older or more conservative, you probably should think twice about sending any marketing emails at all on a holiday that's considered fairly sacred in American culture, okay? If your audience tends to be more of the young, more liberal type, then you might be able to get away with this and actually benefit from it. So that's just something for you to think about. Alright, so, in a normal cadence, you're going to send your big sale email out on Friday. You're going to tell them they only have one day left on Saturday, and then you're going to tell them they're out of time on Sunday. Something else to keep in mind. That Saturday after Thanksgiving is, of course, Small Business Saturday. Honestly, I wish they'd move it to the next weekend, but it is what it is. Now, this is something that you could potentially leverage in your marketing especially if you're easily perceived as being a small business. So, if your customers look at your website and they generally know that you're a small company, you can get out there with your marketing efforts and add in that element of, you know, hey, one more day to shop and support a small business like us, that sort of thing. Now, if you have the kind of website where you may not easily be perceived as a small business, there are some ways you can leverage this, too. Let me give you an example. When I had my health food company, we actually were very much a small business, but most people didn't realize that. We had a pretty slick website, a pretty professional setup in terms of our marketing, and so people didn't necessarily see us as a small business, and so one strategy we could use is to highlight the stores we sold to because we had a wholesale channel where we were working with a lot of small natural food stores. So we could potentially send out an email saying, oh, we're highlighting this company in Cleveland, or this small mom and pop store in Cleveland, so remember it's Small Business Saturday, support small businesses which was a great way to get an email out there to get some goodwill going on, of course, to promote a customer that we cared about. And so, it was a win-win all the way around. So, just don't forget Small Business Saturday, you can kind of work that into your marketing as well. Alright, so moving on to Cyber Monday, you have a couple of options here. It is very common to see businesses have one-day sales, some big blowout, right? I am going to encourage you that you should actually extend that sale beyond Monday, and here's why. On Cyber Monday, you are going to be competing against hundreds and thousands of other companies for someone's business. Now, hopefully your customer aren't subscribed to that many different email lists, but still, they're likely to be getting a lot of email in their in-box. I don't consider myself to be subscribed to a ton of companies. I think I had 150 emails when I woke up on Cyber Monday last year. So, this is just something to think about. It's really hard on Cyber Monday to get through all that noise, but if you run your sale until Tuesday or Wednesday, you can kind of catch those people who are still potentially in shopping mode, but you can be reaching them in their in-box and their social media accounts on days when maybe they're not quite as flooded with promotions. Now, the way to do this is to run your Cyber Monday sale and then on Tuesday morning, send out an email that says, hey, we've extended the sale; you can still get the Cyber Monday deal until tomorrow. And then of course on Wednesday, you're going to run another email that says, this is your absolute last chance to save whatever it is, okay? So, you're kind of milking that sale for a few more days to kind of help you get through the noise of what is normally Cyber Monday. Alright, so if you're taking notes, look back through what I've just said. You've probably noticed I have given you a darn good excuse to send an email every single day, and to be able to actively create that sense of excitement and urgency. You don't have any days in here that aren't exciting and urgent. You just have to be careful about how you present them, right? So, let's move on. We now have talked about the schedule that you're going to use for your sales. Let's just talk, briefly, about the promotions that you're going to run. First off, not surprisingly, it is wise to make sure that your Cyber Monday and Black Friday specials are better than your typical promotion that you would run as a company. So, whatever you ran for Labor Day, you're going to need to kick that up a notch. I'd also recommend that whatever promotion you pick should seem like a big deal, and you want to think about this from your customers' perspective. Can you present this in such a way that it seems like a big sale, that it seems like a big discount? Now, you can get a little creative here, but I'm going to tell you that I really encourage you to remember that noise, right, how much competition you have for your customers' attention during this weekend. So, the sales that you run really do need to be straightforward; it needs to be something they can glance at and instantly understand. Don't try to get too cute with, well, if you buy this item over here and this item over here, you get this third item free, something like that. I wouldn't get too creative here. Also, whatever you decide to do, needs to work so smoothly in your e-commerce platform. The person either needs to get the discount automatically or there needs to be one coupon code and then it needs to be terribly clear in their cart that that discount that they are expecting was applied. If you get creative, or you start going outside what your e-commerce cart can support, so it's not clear to your customer about the discounts they're getting, people are busy these days, they'll move on to the next store. They'll abandon their cart or maybe, if you're lucky, they'll contact customer service to ask, but then that costs you money, right? You don't want a bunch of people contacting you for questions that were generated because you didn't do a good job of setting up your promotions. Alright, so, a pro-tip here, something that I had to learn the hard way over the years that I want to share with you and save you some pain and suffering. Since you're going to run two sales back-to-back, I would strongly recommend that you make your Black Friday sale a little bit better or at least have a little bit wider appeal than your Cyber Monday sale. Okay, and there's a reason for this. Because you're running those sales back-to-back, there is a potential that if someone buys something during your Black Friday sale, and then they get the Cyber Monday email, and the deal is easily perceived to be a little bit better, they're probably not going to be happy, right? They're going to be mad they should've waited for your next sale, how dare you offer a better sale a couple days after they ordered, right? People get pretty easily offended, and this ends up creating bad will for you company. It can end up being very costly in terms of customer service because, I tell you what they do is, they call and they want the better deal applied to the order they did three days ago, and saying no is going cause you some customer service problems. And so, this is just something you can head off at the pass by being careful to offer maybe a little bit better deal on Friday than Monday while still having two awesome deals you're offering. You can potentially save yourself some headaches. And so, let me give you an example of what this looks like. In one of my companies, we had this one product line that was super popular. Probably, I'd say about 90% of people who ordered from us ordered something from that product line in addition to whatever other items they ordered. And so, on Black Friday we would run a 25% off sale on that product line, and then on Cyber Monday, we would run a 20% off sale site-wide. They were both great sales; our customers loved those sales, but it kind of headed off the complaints because if you ordered on Friday, you got that little bit higher discount on that particular product line you were ordering from. So, just something to think in mind, structuring, how we structure our promotions can go a long way to keeping people from contacting customer service, and from abandoning their shopping carts. Alright, next up. I want you to make a list of all your marketing systems that will need to be coordinated because I want you to throw everything you have at this weekend, and do your very best so that you can get the best possible sales numbers. Now, I'm going to tell you right now, if you've never sat down and coordinated all your marketing systems for an event, this is a little bit of work, but this is a good habit to get into because a lot of the strategies I'm going to talk about today, can be applied, not to just Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but any other big sales you have throughout the year. So, to that end, let's go through the typical marketing systems most of you are probably working with, and the changes I would recommend you make. Alright, first up is email. Email is going to play a very important role in your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing efforts, assuming you have an email list ready to go. Now, quick side note, if you have a large email list, and by large, I would say anything over 50,000 people, certainly if you're over 100,000, list hygiene matters greatly, and what I mean by that, if this is not something that is applying to you yet, is that the number of people who open your emails, report your emails as spam, those sorts of things can make a difference into whether or not you're allowed to send email on any given day, and because we're going to be using email heavily for our Black Friday/Cyber Monday strategy, then it's really important that we clean up our lists and we make sure the people we're sending to are active members of our list because the last thing you can afford to have happen during this really important weekend, or frankly, the whole holiday season, is to have your account get shut down because of too many spam complaints. So, if you have a big list, talk to your email service provider about cleaning your list in preparation for the holidays. They should know what that means. Alright, more specifically, and applying to everyone, we want to make sure that we have clear strategies for both our batch- and-blast emails, so those are the emails that we specifically send to our list, as well as our trigger emails, the emails that go out based on people's behavior. Okay, so, let's talk first about just our general emails that we blast out to our list. You want to be sure that that hero image at the top of the email is sale focused. So when you're sending out these emails for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the only goal is to get people to come to the site and shop the sale. This is not the time to give them an article about the best camera to buy. This is not the time to give them a recipe for how to use some specialized flour. All that you want them to do is see the sale and be incentivized to come to your website. You want to make sure, then, that all of your links in your email are going to your very best landing pages. Now, you can potentially use some product recommendations, very clear, simple ones in this email further down. So that hero image needs to be all about the sale; you can get some product recommendations further down in the email. Those tend to not distract, and may, in some cases, help, probably not in too many, but they might help you a little bit. The other thing I want you to keep in mind, and just, brace yourself. You're going to be emailing sales promotions every single day, right? From Friday through Tuesday or Wednesday. You might even send an email on Thanksgiving Day, like we talked about. You're going to need to decided if that works for you personally and your market, and then I know this is going to give so many of you heartburn, please know it did for me as well the first time I had to do it. It is really important that you send two emails on Black Friday and two emails on Cyber Monday. I know, I know, that sounds horrible, right? You're going to email your list twice in one day, what am I thinking? Like I said before, the amount of noise that you're going to have to get through to get to your customers is overwhelming. And, if you watch, I promise you, on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, watch the big companies, they're sending at least two emails each. So this means you're going to send one really early in the morning, and you're going to send one mid to late afternoon, okay? Alright, so, moving on to your triggered email. So these would be things like your shopping cart abandonment campaigns. If you're running a browse and abandon campaign, where people are getting an email just because they came to your site and browsed, if you have their email address. I would recommend that you change up those emails, potentially, to focus on your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales if this is going to be a big sales day for you. You could also potentially alter your welcome series. So, if you have, hopefully you have a series of emails that's going out when someone's first signing up, if they sign up during those days, it might be worth considering altering the graphics for that series to promote your sale as well. Something to check here is whether your email service provider is limiting the number of campaigns a person can be in. Here's what I'm trying to say, if you have someone come to your site and browse on, let's say Thursday or Friday, and they end up in a shopping cart abandonment email series, if your email service provider is then saying, well, they can only get emails from one series at a time, they may not be getting your big blast-outs about your sale. So this is just something to think about. By reinforcing that information, that way you're catching everyone regardless of whether they're getting an automated series, or whether they're getting the ones you're sending manually. Alright, next up, you need to get your re-marketing ads coordinated with your emails. And so this means that you're re-marketing ads need to reflect your Black Friday sale during the days that it's running and your Cyber Monday sale during the days that that sale is running. If you're using a large system like AdRoll or Facebook, you can probably set up a schedule so that those sales switch automatically and they turn off automatically. And I would recommend you do that. As someone who has stayed up until late at night one night to turn on and off ads, use the automated systems if you can. Now, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, or if you don't have re-marketing set up on your website, you don't have the pixels set up, you don't have your ads set up yet, you need to do that today. There is lead time here; you have to collect data before you can run ads, and so, remember that re-marketing is a really effective way to advertise and it's a very affordable way to advertise in terms of bang for your buck. So, go back to episode three of this podcast. That's a really great episode, diving deep into what is re-marketing and how you get those campaigns set up. If you want just a quick pitch on why this is important, I also have a video on YouTube, a short, two minute video on re-marketing, as well, that you could check out. Alright, next up, social media ads. If you are running Facebook ads, Instagram ads, they all need to be coordinated, again, with your email. So you're going to need to be switching out any paid campaigns you're running. Now, quick note, Black Friday and Cyber Monday tend to be more expensive times to run ads, right? You're probably already, in the last couple weeks, starting to see your ad rates, both for re-marketing as well as social media advertising, going up because there's more and more competition entering the market, but thankfully, once Christmas Day hits, that'll die off, and your ads will become affordable again. So, you really need to make the most of your budget, and you do that by ensuring that on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you are running ads focused on warm audiences. So, a warm audience are people who already know your business, have already interacted with your business or your ads. So, just something to be thoughtful about. These are not the days to run out and try to recruit the general public to shop on your website. You really need to be focused on people who already know who you are. Also, in terms of social media, if you have an organic social media presence, so, you have an Instagram page, a Facebook page, a Twitter page, this is a good time to make sure that, to at least some extent, those organic posts are well-coordinated as well. You don't have to show the exact same ads. You could maybe put a little more fun twist on it, but you still wanna be getting that information out to your customers that you're having a big sale, and this is a great time to shop with you. Alright, you also need to look at your paid ads through the search engines that you're running. So, if you're running Google Ads, Yahoo Ads, Bing Ads, make sure you get in there and switch out the messaging so that it's advertising the sale. Make sure you double check that you are being clear if there's a coupon code, or that the coupon code will be readily available when they land on your site. If you don't do those things, you probably already know that your ads will get kicked and then you'll have a problem trying to get your ads back on there; it's no fun. So, just be careful, but make sure you get that ad text switched out as well. Alright, so let's talk about your website last. You want to be sure that your website graphics are all coordinated, right? So, the hero images with a slider on your homepage needs to be reflecting these holiday sales. If you have a top banner where you typically maybe advertise your shipping rates or something like that, that's a great place to stick the information about the sale. If someone happens to wander onto your page and hasn't seen your advertising, they can see the sale, and hopefully, you'll have a higher checkout rate with them. Along with the graphics on the website, you also maybe want to think about switching out the graphics on your email opt-in. If you have pop-ups on entry and exit, this might be a good time to help remind people about the sale. So, that one's up to you, I tend to like to have those coordinated. I think it looks nice. I think it helps people notice what it is you're putting on sale, and it's just one more opportunity to kind of get in their face so that they remember that they have a way to save money, and that they should shop with you now. Alright, so we could talk about, all day about these promos you're running, but make sure you don't forget your coupon codes. Your coupon codes need to be set up correctly, and I would recommend that you use some wording that is festive, and that is easy to remember. So, your Black Friday coupon code could literally be Black Friday and that's great. Having something like that that people will see and recognize and can quickly type in will save you a bunch of problems with customer service down the road. And I'll also talk on Monday, we're going to talk really extensively about how to get your customer service department ready. Coupon codes are a way that you can either cause a lot of problems for your customer service department or make things go smoothly. So, we'll get into that more Monday when we talk about setting up the rest of the operations in your business. Alright, last but not least, actually really important, Black Friday and Cyber Monday tend to be tiring, right? You're going to get through this weekend. Hopefully, you will have made a lot of revenue. Hopefully your staff or if you have a team, they're not completely burned out. It is a good idea to have whatever promotions you're going to run right after Black Friday and Cyber Monday set up so that all of your marketing systems switch over to that once your sales are over. The last thing you want to be doing in the middle of trying to ship an unusually large amount of orders is sitting in your system at one in the morning trying to go through and upload new banner graphics, new sales graphics, whatever it's going to be. So, just have all of that set up in advance so that it switches as seamlessly as possible, and hopefully saves you some headaches or saves people coming to your site and assuming that your sale is still going on. Let's just keep everybody sane and happy. Alright, so, that's it for today. Like I said, I'll be back in your feed on Monday with a new episode, and I'll be talking about how to get the rest of your business ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Trust me, you are going to want to make some tweaks to how you normally operate so you can help people more efficiently and get those orders shipped out smoothly. Now, don't forget in the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. Black Friday and Cyber Monday is kind of an odd topic since we only experience it once a year. So, even after 10 years of doing this, I've only done 10 Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays. So it can sometimes be hard to be ready for because we don't get to experience it very often. Also, if you have feedback or ideas for future shows, you can find me at savvybusinessmethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. And, as always, I would really appreciate it if you could hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitcher. That'll make sure that you receive the Monday episode so you don't miss that, and also, subscribing, rating and reviewing this podcast helps other people find it. Alright, go work on your marketing systems, and I'll see you Monday to talk about operations. Bye for now.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 012: Preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Part 1

Episode 011: Developing a Return and Refund Policy for Your Ecommerce Website   Episode Summary:  If you are selling items online, at some point you will need a return and refund policy. In this episode, Julie dives into the different parts of the policy you will need to think through, how to implement a policy, and knowing when to make exceptions.   Episode Links: https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:     Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello, and welcome to episode 11 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Alright, before we start today, a couple of quick notes for you. A reminder that a full transcript is available in the show notes if you need to go back and find a piece of information. That's there for you. You can also find me both on Facebook and YouTube. On YouTube I have a bunch of short videos up if you'd like to check those out. Lots of quick tips for managing an online business. Alright, today's topic is designing a refund and return policy. Now, I realize this does not sound like a good time So before we get too deep into a what your refund and return policy is going to look like, let's stop and talk about why you really need to have policies in place as a website owner. Now, I realize, especially if you're just getting started, there is a lot of temptation to just go with the flow and make it up as you go along. And I'm not saying you can't do that in the very beginning. There is definitely something to be said for getting to know your market, your customers behavior, kinda the nature of the products, and just kinda see how things go. But once you have maybe a few months at the most under your belt, maybe shorter if things don't get off with a bang for you, really important to sit down and start thinking through some of these issues so that you can get a written policy pulled together. Now, why have a written refund and return policy? First and foremost, it's reassuring to customers. Think about your own online behavior. How likely would you be to go purchase something from a website? You're probably gonna know it's a fairly small website, right, you're a pretty savvy online shopper, so you know it's a small website. If there doesn't seem to be any information about what happens if you're not satisfied, that probably lowers your incentive to shop with that website, okay. So that reassurance we can provide our customers by having even a really simple refund and return policy can be huge. It's just that legitimizing factor there. This is a safe place for you to spend your money. Alright, next, having a policy in place keeps you and your staff consistent. Okay, again, if you're just getting started, it may just be you. You may not have a team. But let me tell you something. From years of experience, as well as years of experience, there was a couple years there in the beginning that I didn't have a team. It was just me with my first company. You don't really want to be making all your decisions on the fly. It's exhausting. Having thought through some of these issues in advance can really help streamline your processes, even if you're answering every email. And then really, we always want to preserve our ability to very easily hand off these tasks to a virtual assistant or customer service person in the future. We don't necessarily want to do all of the things in our business ourselves long-term. So having these policies written out can be really useful. I've seen cases where entrepreneurs went for many years without written policies and it just got passed down from one person to another and there was definitely a point in my business where that was happening. And boy, it makes it really hard if you suddenly do need policies, if you need to hire somebody new, or train someone. So just something to think about. Having that consistency by having a written policy can be really helpful and save you a lot of frustration later. Alright, having a policy also really does save some awkward conversations with customers. If a customer can quickly find a policy on your website that let's them know what they need to do if they want to return a product and receive a refund, then you're not constantly having to have that conversation. Those conversations can be tricky, awkward. You really end up walking on eggshells sometimes. So having that written policy in place means at least part of the people that you're going to need to work with this on are not going to actually contact you and have that conversation. So that's a win-win. You're not paying for that customer service interaction, paying someone to do it, or taking away your time, and you're not having to have yet another awkward conversation. Okay, well besides benefits directly to you as a website owner you may have some outside factors too that really drive whether or not you need to have a written policy. One is that a lot of payment providers, especially the higher quality payment providers, we talked a couple episodes ago about credit card processors, some of these processors are going to require you to have a written policy on your website. It is a way for them to help prevent problems with customers. Going forward, it's a way for you to demonstrate that you're a legitimate company to work with and that you have your act together. Also, site verification processors might require it as well. I'm trying to remember, it's been a few years, but I think when we went through the Google verification process that was one of the things they wanted to see. We did have the policy on the site, but the policy was not as very specific as they wanted it to be and didn't include certain terms that they wanted. So that's just something to be aware of too, is when you go through if you apply for any site verification or badges or anything like that, you may need to have a better return policy in place, even if you have one then you might have currently. So that's just something to keep in mind as well. Alright, well hopefully I've convinced you that having a written refund and return policy is important. So let's talk about what that looks like. Grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, depending on the time of day, or not, because I just simply won't judge you, because I truly understand what it's like to run your own business Alright, let's talk about the parts of the policy that you need to develop. First off, let's talk about the actual policy itself. This is the thing that you are going to write down. Those terms that you need to come up with. Now, there's a couple of factors to take into account here. One is the number of days someone has to return an item or apply for a refund. A minimum here is 30 days. You are probably going to run into problems without outside payment providers, the site verification services, if you don't have at least a minimum of 30 days for a return policy. And realistically, 30 days really is considered like an E-commerce minimum. A lot of stores have longer than that. So if you are less than 30 days, that might be a red flag to your customers. Now, you will need to factor in your customers behavior, the prices of the items, what bracket you're in there, your cost of the items. All of those things can play a role into the number of days you actually decide on. If returns are very rare in your industry, or you are in a highly competitive industry where you need to be the most forgiving, awesome website out there, I would really encourage you to be as generous as possible in terms of these number of days. You know, you don't want to get into a bad situation where you're being taken advantage of. I am not advocating that at all. I'm just saying play your cards wisely here. Take into account all of the different factors, like how likely your customers are to actually take advantage of the policy, and if you could have that longer policy, it looks good on your website. It can help people decide to purchase from you versus someone else. Okay, next step you're going to need to give some thoughts to the reasons someone can return an item. Are you going to have any rules about this? So for example, common rules have to do with whether an item's been used or if it's in unused condition, whether it's resellable or not. I would really encourage you to keep this as simple as possible. You may, as a website owner, be in a position to dive into a ridiculous level of nuance on this. Your customers are not. They are going to simply look at it as whether or not you are being difficult. So when you're thinking about these things, you really are thinking about them in terms of hills you want to die on, okay So I would encourage you unless there is a really good reason that you not be putting a lot of restrictions on what can be returned. A good rule to keep in mind is that showing grace can salvage an otherwise bad situation with our customers. We'll talk more in a few minutes about what a bad situation might look like. Next up, whether there will be any fees involved with returning. I'm talking mainly about restocking fees. Restocking fees used to be really common. So if you haven't run into this before, this is where let's say you bought something for $10 and you decide to send it back. The company keeps like 15% to offset their cost of putting that item back in stock. So it used to be really common, not so common anymore. And I'll tell you, I would really encourage you to avoid these like the plague. I used to use them too. I think most E-commerce websites did. But they are now looked as being petty for lack of a better word, and they really tend to make customers who are already not thrilled with the situation angry, and we do not want angry customers. Restocking fees can also make it hard to get through a site verification process, again. So that might be something to think about as having that restocking fee may make it harder for you to do some of the other things that you need to do. Alright, along with restocking fees something to think about is who pays for the return shipping. So if the customer's gonna send this item back to you, who's gonna pay for that shipping? Now, it is general rule of thumb, it is okay to have a customer pay the return shipping if it's the customer's fault they're returning the item. So if it's something like they decided they didn't want it, or they ordered two of something and they should have only ordered one. Something like that. In theory, you're on fairly solid ground by telling them that they need to pay for the return shipping to get it back to you, okay. Now, Amazon, Zappos, some of these other big E-commerce companies are kinda make this more problematic. They've been doing it for a few years where they have these free return shipping situations for a lot of their items. Not everything. I mean, you can return just anything to Amazon and get free return shipping. But especially if you're looking at things like clothing and shoes, generally you can return those items for free. And that, if you're in one of those industries, that can put a lot of pressure on you to do the same. So again, this is something you really need to be thinking about in terms of how often is this actually happening? Can you factor this cost into your margin? All of those things will come into play when you decide whether or not to do this. And along with that who pays shipping, you need to be thinking about whether you're going to be issuing return shipping labels. And there's two ways to do this. If you've ordered clothes online recently, you have probably received a return shipping label in the box with your order. And that's very common because if you aren't in the clothes industry, you may not know that the return rate for clothing is ridiculous. Like, it's a mind-blowing number. Don't, yeah, just be afraid. Now, if you have a high return rate, if you are in one of those businesses, putting those return shipping labels in the box actually might end up saving you a ton of customer service costs. Last time I checked there's a cost to print those return shipping labels. It's like 50 cents a label or something, but check into that. If you're in a high return rate industry, it might be well worth it to just go and put those in the box. Now, even if you're not putting them in the box, and I've never personally been in a situation where that made sense for my company, if someone's gonna send something back, there is an argument to be made that sending them a return shipping label is good customer service. It keeps things simple. It helps control that process of that item coming back to you and helps you be able to track that item. So you're a little bit more in control of that situation. So that's just something to think about as well along with who pays for shipping. Just how that shipping is actually going to occur. Okay, next up and the last thing we need to talk about in terms of just the actual policy itself, these are things you're writing down to put on your website for your customer, how are you going to do refunds? Are you going to do a refund to the payment method they used? Or are you going to issue store credit? I'm gonna tell you upfront the best practice is to issue refunds to the form of payment that they used. So if they used their Chase credit card, then that's what you're going to issue the refund to. Store credit is a little bit of a dangerous game to play, especially if you made them return the item. You might be able to get away with store credit if you let them keep the item. But once they've returned the item, you're in kind of a dangerous situation in terms of chargebacks and things. I'll talk about that in a minute. But your customers have a lot of options to make your life pretty miserable if they decide that they're not happy. So I would encourage you to stay away from store credit if you can. Now, couple things to think about, sometimes you're not going to be able to refund to their credit cared. For example, 90 to 120 days after that purchase, you typically lose the ability to refund that payment. Also, if the credit card's been closed or has expired since that purchase was made, that can happen really quick, then you can have a problem as well refunding the payment. You know, cards expire all the time, of course, and then if somebody has like a fraud issue with their card and has to close their credit card, you won't be able to easily issue them a refund. So just a side note, you'll need to have a process in place potentially for issuing checks to customers for refunds. And that makes no one happy at all. Not you, not them, no one. But you do need to have that process in place, because usually by the time you're having to explain to someone you cannot issue a refund directly to their credit card and no, you can't issue a refund to their other credit card that they didn't use, people tend to be a little bit upset. And so you're gonna need to be able to get a check out to them really quickly. Okay, so now we've gone through all of the things that are gonna go on the policy itself, right. The number of days, the condition the item has to be in, whether they're gonna be fees involved, who's gonna pay for shipping, how those refunds are gonna happen. All that goes into your refund and return policy. Now let's talk about a couple of other factors that kinda come into play as a website owner. Some things we need to be thinking about. The first one is knowing when to make exceptions. Having rules and policies in place is really helpful to efficiently and effectively running our companies. But it's also just as important to know when you need to throw those rules out the window and just do the best you can in a difficult situation. Alright, the first place that you need to be darn sure you are making an exception if something happens is if the return is happening and it's not the customer's fault. So they were shipped the wrong item, the item was not described accurately on your website, the item was broken in transit. I mean, there are so many reasons that someone could get an item and legitimately not be happy with it and it's not their fault as a customer. I would strongly encourage you that you're number one goal in that situation is to make as sure as you possibly can that the customer does not feel penalized. This situation's already a massive inconvenience to them, and so you need to pull out all the stops to try to make this as slick as possible if you're gonna have that item sent back to you, or get them a refund as quickly as possible, or get them the item they did order in the condition they ordered out to them as soon as possible. Alright, the other thing I would really encourage you to think about in terms of exceptions is it is really important as a website owner to have some judgment on this and know when a fight is not worth having. As a general rule of thumb, I would encourage you not to fight with your customers. You will almost never win. And the consequences can be devastating. So there's a couple of reasons that you might want to think about a fight not worth having. You have a customer's contact to do, and you're not able to quickly resolve the situation. Every time that customer contacts you, every time you or your staff have to respond to that customer it is costing you money, right. It's costing you either time that you're paying someone to handle this or it's costing you time that you could be doing something else, hopefully something to make your business money, versus cost your business money. Alright, so there have been points with customers, with one of my past companies in particular, where we didn't have very many problems, but if we had a really difficult situation, we tended to cut our losses pretty early, because the products just weren't that expensive, and the time my customer service people were spending was costing me far more money. So just something to think about. You gotta make that calculation. The other thing you need to think about is that customer who use credit cards to pay for items, and this include PayPal accounts, okay. So PayPal account, credit cards, Amazon accounts, they have a lot of power in terms of getting their money back from their credit card company or PayPal. You know, honestly, they really just have to go to their credit card company and say I don't think I got what I thought I should get. And in almost every case they're gonna get their money back really quickly. And then it is on you as a company to prove that what they were saying in not true. And let me tell you, winning those fights is not only incredibly time consuming and stressful, you almost never will win. You are not the credit card company's customer, right. Their customer who's paying interest on their credit card is their customer. They're the ones they want to keep happy. So you need to be aware in the back of your mind when you're talking to a customer, when you're trying to figure out how to resolve a problem, that that customer has the ability to just go get their money back anyway. So sometimes it's best to say you know what, I see where this is headed and I'm just gonna give them their money back now before this ends up costing me even more money, okay. And of course, we have to be terribly concerned, especially in this age of social media about bad PR. Someone can get out there and trash us so quickly and so effectively. In the last 10 years I've been doing this, I've been very fortunate. I feel like we did a good job of managing situations so that things didn't spin out of control. But I have seen cases where companies made some small mistakes and how they handled a customer and should have been more accommodating, and should have seen where things were going with that customer, and had it end up being devastating for them. That customer would get on social media and start saying this happened and this happened and this happened. And maybe it's not all entirely true, but maybe there's just enough truth there that people pick up on it. I've seen it spread through the blogs as wildfire. It just can be really devastating. So I'm not telling you to be paranoid. I'm not telling you to make all your decisions from a place of fear, but I am encouraging you to be very thoughtful and remember that your customers have options, okay. They have ways to make your life miserable. So you need to be thoughtful and really deal with these interactions with integrity and know when you're fighting for the sake of fighting versus for an important point. As much as it stinks, sometimes you are far better off just letting them keep the item, refund their money, and move on. Don't do that too often, but every once in awhile that's gonna be your best idea. Next up, let's talk about educating customers on the policy. Now, once you have this policy written, a good general rule of thumb is to be upfront and put the policy in places where it's likely to be seen. So this needs, of course, to be on your website, probably on your shipping or ordering information page. Generally, you'll want to see it in your terms and conditions, even if, you know, nobody ever reads those, or hardly anybody ever reads those. I would also encourage you if you have the ability to do it to put your return policy on your packing slip. Now, I realize at first glance that sounds like a terrible idea. Why would we want to encourage our customers to return something by putting the policy on the packing slip? Okay, so here's the thing. Customers don't decide to return something because they see that you'll take it back. If they're about returning something, they're already thinking about returning something. And at that point salvaging that situation is about making that return process as easy as possible. So putting that information on the packing slip isn't about encouraging them to return. It's about intercepting that thought process and making sure that they have the information, that they feel satisfied with the information. Hopefully it also means that you'll get that item back in the way that your hoping to because they had that information early on. Alright, final thing, when you're looking at designing refund and return policies, you need to make some decisions about what you're going to do with returned merchandise. Now, of course, there are going to be times when an item can be resold and can't be resold. So those might be simple decisions. But if you are selling things that are perishable, or are lot controlled, that means things like food, or supplements or something where you're tracking lot numbers so that you can do an effective recall, you're probably not gonna be able to resell those items. So that's something where you potentially need to look at best practices, talk to your regulatory agency, talk to your attorney. But just something to think about. You can't always resell something that comes back. So in the end you probably do need to sit down and think about what your loss here is. You might need to budget in the loss. If you're dealing with items that are very low cost to you, and you have fairly large margins, this may not even be of issue. But if you're dealing with small margin high cost items, then budgeting in for your return rate's gonna be pretty important for keeping your margin from disappearing. Alright, well refund and return policies aren't exactly fun. But they can definitely save you some headaches. And having a good policy can potentially salvage some good will with your customers. And that needs to be your goal, because refunds and returns happen. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll be back in your feed in a few days, and in the meantime take a few minutes to either review your return and refund policy if you have one, or if you're just getting your business started, start sketching one out while this is top of mind. Just take a few minutes to think about what are the factors I've talked about today that apply specifically to your company and your situation. Alright, now don't forget I'd love to hear from you. If you have feedback or ideas for future shows, you can find me at savvybusinessmethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitcher so you don't miss an episode. Also, subscribing, rating and reviewing helps other people find this podcast. This is just a weird world, let me tell you But I'd like to get this information to as many people as possible so that we can all be in a better position to have some flexibility in our lives and support our families by starting our own small businesses online. So I will see you next time.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method of Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 011: Developing a Return and Refund Policy for Your Ecommerce Website

Episode 010: Efficiently Using the Hours in Your Day to Build Your Ecommerce Business   Episode Summary:  Most ecommerce website owners are balancing so many competing demands between work, family, and maybe some self-care. It's the nature of small business! In this episode, Julie discusses practical strategies for using time efficiently and keeping all the balls in the air.   Episode Links: https://www.canva.com/ https://asana.com https://trello.com/ https://basecamp.com/  https://www.lastpass.com/ (password manager) https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript:   Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method with your host Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello and welcome to episode 10 of the Savvy Business Method podcast where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Okay before we get started today a couple of quick things. The transcript of the show is in the show notes along with the lengths to the resources I'll talk about today. And I think there's going be a decent number of links. So you'll be able to go back and find those pretty quickly. Also be sure and come on over to Facebook and check us out. I'm posting there a couple times a day and there are videos and links to the podcast. And then just some fun things I find are on the internet to help us all stay focused on this idea of growing our business online. Alright so today's topic is efficiently using the hours in your day. I am getting the distinct impression from those of you I've heard from. That many of you are in the same position that I was when I first started my online business 10 years ago. And to be honest to an extent, the same position I'm in now. And that is being very busy and having to fit your work in around your family, around your other commitments, working from home. This seems to be a really common. A common theme for a lot of you. It's like why don't I take this episode to talk with you about some of the things that I have learned over the last 10 years. In terms of how to better structure my days, my weeks, my months. So that I can be as effective as possible at growing my businesses. While also being able to be there for my family okay. So let's think about this for a moment. Do you ever lay in bed at night and insist that you will do more tomorrow? That you're somehow going to find more hours in your day or you're going to accomplish more tomorrow. I know I do this. I'm guessing a lot of you do this and today's episode is really about making that conversation with yourself more productive. So you can be more efficient and effective with your time and grow your business to reach your goals and take care of all these other responsibilities that you have. You know being ridiculously busy seems to be an inherent part of our culture at this point. And we can probably all agree that this is not a healthy situation. But I would wager that you don't feel like you have much of a choice and neither do I. You know you may have kids, relationships, social commitments. Your house probably should be clean at some point. You have food to cook. Maybe you could throw some self care in there on a good day. You know what is self care? And all of that on top of having one or more businesses that you need to grow and run. Meanwhile our families are depending on us. So it's not like we can just flop down and say I give up. It's a lot and so let's dive in and talk about some of the strategies that are out there for better managing this busy situation that we have. And making the most of the time that we do have. Alright strategy number one is to be honest about the time that you do have. Alright now I have no doubt that if you suddenly had twice as much time during the day. Five times as much time. Ten times as much time that you would find ways to fill that time. And be productive and continue to grow your business. You didn't get to this entrepreneurship thing by accident. That's probably part of who you are. But having huge slots of time isn't a reality for most entrepreneurs. And so we need to be realistic about what time we do have. So for example maybe you are in a position where you get to work during business hours. You're getting to work eight, nine, ten, twelve hours a day on your business. This may be less of an issue for you if you're able to spend that really large concentrated time on your business. You still need to organize your time but still you're in a little bit better position. But for many of you listening I'm guessing based on the feedback I've gotten. That many of you are doing this at night. You do it on weekends. You're doing it during nap time for your kids. And I just want to tell you I really understand. You know my first business my spouse worked full time plus then some. I had two little kids, they were two and under. And I worked in five to fifteen minute bursts while my little kids played. And I've got to tell you my now much older self has absolutely no idea how I did that. Clearly I did and clearly it worked but it is a hard way to live. And I realize now the only reason I was able to develop my business is because I did make the most of those small amount of time that I had available. And so accepting what time we do have instead of constantly wishing for more time and trying to pretend like we have more time. Just owning up to this reality of our situation makes easier to at least make the most of the time that we do have, okay. Strategy number two. It's really helpful if you always know what needs to be accomplished. When it needs to be accomplished and how it needs to be accomplished. Now most things that we do as small business owners and website owners can kind of be divided into two camps. There are things that we are just one off. That task that just need to get done. So maybe you need to put it in order for something or you need to answer a customer service email. But most of the priorities and tasks that you have are going to be what I call dependent task. And that means that there is a series of events that have to take place in more or less a certain order in order for you to get that task done. So I'm going to use an example of this podcast. Okay so in order for you to be listening to this podcast right now. At some point I had to come up with a topic for today. I had to outline it. I had to run through it usually at least twice to look for any holes because I value your time. And I want to make sure that if you're gonna sit down and listen to this or listen to while you are making dinner, that you are getting the best information possible so I don't want to be leaving major things out. I then have to record it which is a small problem because that requires quiet. And I have four children and I do work from home. So I have to plan that carefully. I also edit this, I have to lay it out with the intro and the outro. I have to send it out for some wonderful soul to transcribe it so that you have those show notes. I then have to write up the show notes and the links and then get it posted to the distribution service. And then I have to get it posted on the Savvy Business website. And I had to schedule it on Facebook. Okay, so this is an example of a set of dependent tasks. Like I can't do a whole lot with the order of those. Those have to be done in a specific order. And if you start thinking through the tasks you have as an entrepreneur. You'll probably find that most of your tasks are these types of things. Where you're going to have to line up sub-tasks in a certain order to make them happen. And this has been one of the most important things that I have had to work on. As someone who works from home. As someone who has multiple businesses is making sure that I always know what my tasks are that are out there. And what is the next thing I have to do for each of those tasks. Alright so, even if you sit down and you outline all of these things that you need to do. I'm going to take a guess that it's probably still way too long of a list and way too many things. So next up you're going to need to do some prioritizing. And I would recommend a couple of things to be thinking about as you're prioritizing. One, you want to be thinking about how successful something is likely to be. We as entrepreneurs can come up with so many really cool things we want to try to promote our business, to improve our business. But we have to be honest about what are the things that are concrete good ideas likely to succeed. Likely to be something that we can actually do and pull off? And what are the things that are more. Boy, someday I'd really like to try that. It might work, it might not type of thing right. So that's really important. I'd also encourage you to think about the time that any particular task is going to take. Or the financial investment and what that trade off would be for rewards. There are things we do as small business owners that can be huge for us. For example, I truly did not understand the power of the email marketing. Until I made a major change in my email system. And this was many years ago. But that time I spent at the time it seemed like I was gonna spend a lot of time on it. The amount of financial reward for that decision was huge. And so it's really about trying to identify those things that yes. They may take us some time but the rewards are significant. I'd also prioritize your list based on what has to be done in blocks of time? So if you have a block of time in your schedule. If you have small children. Maybe your spouse comes home and can watch them or while they're sleeping at night or something like that. Maybe if you can get a block of time how do you be more efficient with a certain set of tasks then you might otherwise be? So it's just some things to think about. I've also found it really helpful to organize my tasks by daily, weekly and monthly to do lists. So I actually keep separate to do lists of the things I need to accomplish. I also keep separate lists or I mark on my list things that can be done in quick moments. So for example when I'm tired and I don't have. Maybe at night I'm tired and I don't have the ability to really focus on something. My quality is probably not going to be great if I'm trying to come up with a complete outline for a podcast. Or a brand new marketing campaign for my e-commerce business okay. But I can for example, I often work on improving an outline like when I'm sitting in my car waiting for my kids to get done with some appointment. I can sit there and work on Evernote on my phone and improve my outline and get that done. You know cause those small moments can really add up. So if we always have things on our mind that oh, when I get a free minute and I'm just sitting there. I can quickly that. You can actually get a lot accomplished that way. Alright, strategy number three. Any of you who are parents are going to laugh at me but strategy number three is to find some quiet. And I know that is way easier said then done isn't it. So I just wanted to put out a few ideas here for you. One is to think about getting some noise canceling headphones. Obviously this only works if there's not something you need to hear. Like an emergency or the alarm for dinner going off or something like that. But noise canceling headphones make a great Christmas gift. Ask me how I know. And they could be really helpful if you're working from home. And there's just that noise factor that you're dealing with. Or alternatively you need to be working at a coffee shop or something having noise canceling headphones can be amazing. If quiet space is rarely an option for you. Again, you want to prioritize those tasks that have to be done in that moment. So for example I save all of my podcast recording and my video recording for when my spouse is out running errands with the kids and my house is momentarily quiet. And I'll get a couple of blocks a week like two hours each and that's when all of my recording has to be done. And so that just means that I have to have all those other dependent tasks done first right. So organizing my schedule around when quiet will be available is pretty important. Alright, strategy number four is to get organized. More organized than you already are because having our own businesses is both a blessing and a curse right. So one hand we get to have this scheduling flexibility because we are our own boss. But on the other hand if you're not naturally the kind of person to be very organized and driven about your work. No one is standing there to make sure you do it. And so this was something that. Especially the organization piece is something I really struggled with early on because I was used to having my work come to me. And like I know my spouse was really struggling with us two being self employed. His job was all about people bringing him problems all day and he would solve them. And to suddenly be in a position where you are the one who has to decide what's going to get done and in what order. That is a huge mental shift. So if that's something that you're working on be encouraged. You know being more organized can be really helpful for that. So let's talk about a few things that you could do to kind of get in that mindset. One thing that I personally found really helpful is having a computer set up in a specific place in my house. With a set up that works well for me. So for example for me that's having two different monitors so I could have a bunch of things open at once. And for me that means not having to constantly drag equipment around to try to find a place to work and set up. It also keeps my equipment safer because I have small children including a toddler. So now that doesn't mean, I do of course have a laptop and I can go somewhere else and work. But for me I can be faster and more efficient at my computer that's set up the way that I work best. We talked earlier about having this to do list right. The daily, weekly, monthly to do list. Focus versus non-focus tasks. And I would encourage you to keep your notes and your to do list some place that you could access them from anywhere. I personally really like Evernote. It's inexpensive. It can be on my computer. It can be on my phone. Everything is synced so I can sit in the car and update an outline for a podcast. Or I could be writing up copy for some ads for my commerce business. All of that gets saved and I can access it later. Some people find project management software really helpful especially if you're working on very complex tasks, dependent tasks. Or if you're working with multiple people. I personally have used Asana quite extensively. I have friends though who love Trello. I have someone I know who loves Basecamp. So those are some options for you for project management software. There are often free plans or very inexpensive plans. So if you're working by yourself and you just want something that's going to set everything up where you know it or you have to do stuff. And what date everything is due. Those systems can be really useful. Now remember back in episode five when we talked about data security and I was encouraging you to go make sure all your data is secure. And you're backing up all your systems. So I just want to revisit really quick that having a good password manager like I talked about in episode five is really important. You could be much faster about your work and more efficient with your work if you're not hunting around for your passwords. Also I talked in episode five about getting a scanner. Don't waste your time digging through your paperwork. You should know where everything is at all times. Alright strategy number five I have to tell you is one of my personal favorites. And some days feels like the key to whatever success I am marginally managing to achieve at any given moment. So strategy five is to batch work whenever you can. Okay so what does that mean? So batching work is about bunching up a bunch of similar tasks together and getting them done all at once. Because here's the thing. Those tasks take start up time so once you're in the mode. You can often get more done more quickly by just doing it all then. Okay so what does this look like. These are some of the examples of the ways that I use this. I typically will set up several weekly newsletters at once. Like I'll set up month worth of newsletters at once because by the time I sit down. I log into my email service provider. I pull up my editorial calendar where I keep all my ideas and what I'm planning on doing each week. By the time I do all of that the newsletter itself doesn't take very much time. And so it might take me an hour to put together one newsletter or it might take me two hours to put together four newsletters. Another option is to make multiple rounds of ads at one time. So back in episode four I think it was. I talked about preventing ad fatigue and how you need to have multiple ad sets so that you can switch these out pretty regularly. Don't make one ad set at a time. Sit down, get your system open. I use Canva which I love and I'm dragging and dropping in my graphics and my texts. And I can make four or five rounds of ads in an hour or two. Which is so much more efficient and then I have ads for the next few months. And then I don't have to worry about doing that again. Also you know plan out any social media ad testing you're doing. If you're running Facebook ads you probably have figured out a huge part of that is constantly testing new copy, new images, new offers. You know sitting down and planning out to the next few rounds of that versus suddenly going oh no. My ads are expiring today and I need to come up with something new. It's more efficient to sit down and do that at once. If you're going to be getting on Facebook and scheduling your organic Facebook on your page. Plan out one to four weeks at a time. Facebook has a great scheduling option, use it. You know sit down in front of the TV at night for background noise if that's helpful to you. Grab a glass of wine and plan another month of Facebook. And then if you're doing any sort of audio or video component of your company. Especially if that involves for you doing your hair and makeup. I would really encourage you to make as many videos and podcasts at once as you possibly can because it is way way more efficient. And then you could also batch your editing right and your uploading and you rendering and all that. Alright well our last strategy for today is number six. And that's to be kind to yourself. And I realize that this is probably the hardest thing I have talked about today. Right up there with trying to find quiet right. I can tell you from experience after doing this for 10 years. And during that 10 years I have given birth to 3 babies. I have lost an enormous amount of sleep. I have had a ridiculous amount of stress involved with starting and growing companies. And I can tell you that it takes a really strong toll on you physical and mental health. And both your physical and mental health need to be in good shape. If you're gonna be effective and efficient with this whole building a business idea. And so I wanted to just give you a few things that have really helped me over the years. And just really encourage you to be thoughtful about your work habits. So that you are not burning yourself out. The biggest thing I think has been really helpful to me lately is learning to work in 25 minute cycles with five minute breaks. Now there's research to say that this is really effective and I can say personally that I have found that I am much more efficient if I do this. Now, that's easier said then done because I get in a mode and I don't want to stop. Like I'm recording two podcasts back to back today because I am in a mode and I want to talk to you about these things. And so it's hard for me to remember to take a break. But let's talk about as a practical matter what this looks like. So you can use something like a Tomato Timer. Just Google Tomato Timer. I'll put a link in the notes. There's a little timer on it it's free. It's a little web browser timer that you click when you start working and then it beeps to remind you to take a break. You can use something like Music to Code By. I'll put this link in the show notes too. I love Music to Code By. It is 25 minutes. I don't remember all of the details, it's on their site. But the music is such that it really helps keep your brain calm yet alert. And it's organized in those 25 minutes sequences so that when the music ends you need to get up and take a break. And when I say a break I mean don't look at your computer. Don't look at your phone. You just physically get up, walk around. Stretch, do some squats or some push ups. Go change the laundry. I'll go use the bathroom. Get a drink of water or a snack. Do something that doesn't involve looking at your computer because then when you come back your brain is ready to engage in whatever it is you're doing again. So this is just something that lately has been really helping me. So I wanted to share that with you. Burn out is very very common among entrepreneurs. I know a lot of entrepreneurs. I don't know very many who haven't at some point faced very serious burn out. And just to be honest it happens more to women too than men. So if you're a female entrepreneur just be aware. Surround yourself with other female entrepreneurs who can encourage you and know the signs. And can really help you if you kind of start entering that cycle. That they can be there for you to help prop you up and help you find solutions. Because burn out doesn't serve you. It doesn't serve your family. It doesn't serve your business. So please try to be kind to yourself. Entrepreneurship, you know this whole idea of starting an online business. Growing an online business. It is a marathon. It is not a sprint but I got to tell you some days it feels like a never ending series of sprints. And that could be exciting and fun. It can also be exhausting. So sometimes we need to make those adjustments to make a big difference on how productive we are and how we feel. Alright well that's it for today. I will be back in your feed on Monday for episode 11 where we'll talk about designing return and refund policies for our websites. It's a great way to really think through some of the important issues. So that you can keep any return and refund processes smooth for your customers and also keep your credit card processes happy and all of the people in your life happy. But in the meantime thanks so much for joining me today. I hope this information will help you make excellent decisions for your own business. If you have feedback ideas for future shows you can find me at SavvyBusinessMethod.com as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Please be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitcher. I don't want you to miss any episodes and I really do consider it a great favor if you can rate and review this show. It helps other people find it and I really love reading your reviews. So I will see you Monday for episode 11. And in the meantime I hope you have a productive yet restful weekend. Bye for now.   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up to date visit SavvyBusinessMethod.com. And Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 010: Efficiently Using the Hours in Your Day to Build Your Ecommerce Business

Episode 009: What is Content Marketing?   Episode Summary:  Is content marketing a buzz word or is it really something we as ecommerce website owners need to be spending time on? In this episode Julie talks about what content marketing is and is not as well as give an overview of developing a content marketing strategy.   Episode Links:   https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well you're in the right place. Welcome to the Savvy Business Method with your host Julie Feickert. Julie Feickert Hello and welcome to episode nine of the Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Now before we get started today, talking about content marketing, I have a few housekeeping things for you. First, I want to remind you that you can find links to resources I talk about in any of these podcasts in the show notes along with a transcript of the show. I realize that most of you are probably multi-tasking right now, right. You're either driving or you're picking up your kids or you're making dinner, or you're trying to organize all of your receipts for your accounting program. And you may need to go back later and find a piece of information so the transcript can really help with that. Next up I wanted to let you know that I have about 30 mini videos right now up on YouTube and I have more coming soon. There all about two to three minutes long and they're just quick tips for running e-commerce websites. They encompass everything from customer service to marketing to running a warehouse and shipping orders so lots of different things up there and if you have any ideas or things you'd like me to talk about in a video going forward, be sure to reach out to me at savvybusinessmethod.com I am also up on Facebook. So I'm posting there a couple of times a day now at Savvy Business Method on Facebook and I'm putting up videos, links to these podcasts, as well as just interesting resources from around the internet too. Be sure to come on over and "like" the page and check that out so that we can connect there as well. All right enough with the announcements let's move on to today's topic, which is content marketing. Now content marketing seems sort of like a buzz word, right? Especially if you're new to the e-commerce sphere. It can sound like something that maybe we talk about at marketing conferences to make ourselves sound cool and customer-focused but I really want to get in today to the nitty gritty of what content marketing looks like and what are the things you need to be thinking about if you decide to use content marketing for your e-commerce website. All right. So there's a lot of confusion about what content marketing is and isn't so I wanna start out with two quick stories of what content marketing looks like in action. Now this first story I don't have a name for this company because this is a story that's been around the internet for a while but I'm going to tell it to you because it is such a good example. There was a swimming pool company that of course didn't have a lot of work during the off season, right. Not very many people putting in pools in January in most of the country. And so they spent their off season writing up answers to every customer question they could imagine and then putting those short articles up on their website. This ended up generating loads of traffic from all over the world. It gave them plenty of customers for that next season and really established their business and with a steady stream of customers in the long run. So it was really important for them in terms of their growth to have all of that content up on their website. All right my next example is personal. I had a health food company for about nine years and we sold ingredients, food ingredients. In the beginning I decided pretty early to start putting up articles, like how to articles and recipes for using these products. Then we expanded to videos eventually which were made in the upstairs of my house. But I gotta tell you that content ended up being really valuable. In the end we ended up with about 2,000 pieces of content on the website which is a ridiculous amount and I'll talk in a little bit later in today's podcast about why you probably don't wanna go that overboard. But that content allowed my website to become well known as the place to go for those products because we had all that information in addition to having the high quality products. So content marketing can be really valuable for establishing your authority in a market. So let's talk about what this looks like from a customer's perspective. Content marketing is about providing valuable information that isn't selling anything. All right. So because you're offering such great information without a direct sales pitch, people tend to become loyal to your brand. They know your name. They see you as being helpful, and an expert in this area. Content marketing from your customer's perspective is also about having an information eco-system around your product. So this can be things like articles or recipes, if you're working in food like I was. It can also be things like polls or quizzes, or videos. In-person events. Apps, e-books, webinars, infographics, there's so many options, right. So many things that you can do to create content that would support your customer's use of your product and make your brand more valuable to them. Because at it's core content marketing is about education and engagement. It's not about direct promotion. Now all that being said, from our perspective as business owners who are selling products online, we actually do need to sell our products, right. This is how we stay in business, this is how we pay our bills. So what does content marketing provide from our perspective as business owners? Well first it elevates the perceived value of our brand. This is good for building that long term value and customer loyalty. Right. It also can set up apart from our competition unless you're lucky enough to be in a market where you have no competition. First off, that's probably a temporary situation, right. So you gotta bulletproof your situation. But you need to be able to show value to your customer that is different from what your competitors are doing and content marketing is a great way to do that. Now I wanna be clear here though that you want to be helpful and even though we as business owners are trying to sell things, we really do need to go into our content strategy with this idea that we wanna be helpful, that we wanna be educational. That we're building a long term relationship with our customers. This is not the time to be sneaky. And be trying constantly sneak in sales pitches. Customers are smart and I gotta tell you especially this younger generation, the millennials that are coming up behind us Gen-X'ers. They are extremely savvy and the generation behind them even more so in terms of identifying when they are being played or their perception of they're being played. If they're reading an educational article and it's clear that you're just trying to sell them something, they're gonna pick up on that really quickly. So get in that mindset if you gonna do content marketing, you gotta get in this mindset that you are being helpful and educational. Okay? Okay. Let's start talking about some guidelines for getting started with a content marketing strategy. The first thing I wanna talk with you about is that content marketing is not a quick fix. Now I know that those two stories I told at the beginning of this episode sound like a quick fix, right. We talked about the pool company that over their off season it ended up building up their business with content marketing. I told you about my health food company where we had the 2,000 articles. This sounds very quick. A lot of the success stories that you will hear about content marketing on the internet, on the wiles of the internet. The fabulous stories are gonna sound like they were a quick fix. And I just wanna be clear about this upfront. A lot of the stories that you're going to hear are going to be from several years ago and by several I mean, 5, 10, 12 years ago. Back when the internet was a great deal less crowded. There were less websites, there were less articles, videos, content in general and so the competition to rank on Google was a lot less stringent. Okay. And so because of that it was easier back in the good ole days, back when I had my first e-commerce website, I'm gonna tell you it was easier to rank on Google for a piece of content. But even with that easier situation that we no longer have, darn it. When I first started putting up content in 2009 there was no magic bullet there. Like truly. It helped people decide to buy from my company but it wasn't sending me a ton traffic. So about four or five years later I have this really clear memory, so that would be what, 2013, 2014. I had come to work. I was sitting at my desk in the corner of our warehouse. E-commerce management is a really glamorous situation, I had no walls but that was my desk. I was looking at Google Analytics which I did pretty much every day and it suddenly hit me. For the first time that Google liked us. Google was actually sending a significant amount of organic traffic to my website via this now, it was probably 1,000 pages, articles at the time. So we were actually starting to get decent traffic numbers. And don't get me wrong, it wasn't like it was an overnight thing, it had been building for the last four or five years but it had finally happened. I just remember being shocked because I had just been putting up that information to be helpful, I knew you were supposed to put information up. After four or five years you kind of start losing hope that is really gonna do something for you. So this is just an example of even you know back in what were the good ole days of e-commerce, it was still a thing. Right. It was not an instant success. You might have some limited success when you do a content marketing strategy. Maybe you'll have a piece of content or two that will get shared out by a number of social media influencers. Or you might have a piece of content that does really well in a newsletter. I remember one night we had this one strange recipe that for some reason everybody opened, it felt like. We suddenly had great traffic to the website. So you just never know but this a long term strategy. It's not something that you should plan on being successful overnight or even in a season or quarter, or even in the next year. This is about building that long term loyalty. All right so now that I burst everyone's bubble that this is not gonna be a quick fix, let's talk more about how you do this. Now the first thing you're gonna wanna do with a content marketing strategy is to look at what your competition is doing and not doing. This is not the time to copy what your competition is doing. You wanna figure out what they're doing in this area and then figure out how you're going to do it better. And on brand. Right. Because this is about building brand loyalty and value. So you wanna look at what they're doing as a guide but you also will need to come up with your own spin on the situation. Along with that is this idea of having a clear idea of what your customer needs. So who is your target customer? What are their different points in the sales funnel? What does it look like when they're first finding out about your product or your company. What does it look like when they're making their sales decision? What does it look like when they purchase, what do they need to make that last push to purchase and then what sort of support do they need of the product they purchased. So that you can engender that loyalty and you can have that repeat purchase behavior that we need for e-commerce. Each piece of content you write really does need to have a clearly defined purpose. You should know who you're targeting. You should know where in the sales cycle they are at. You should know whether this is a piece of content to help someone see the value of your product to help support the product once they've bought it. To help them get other ideas for how to use the product, I mean there's so many options out there. But you don't want to use a shot gun approach here, right. Honestly you don't wanna do what I did. Where we wrote 2,000 pieces of content over the course of about eight years. Then suddenly you have 2,000 pages that don't necessarily have a clearly defined purpose but a couple hundred of them are getting really good traffic. And now that you have so much content you have to hire somebody to manage it all and believe me, you do not want to do that. I am very grateful for the people who managed the content for my health food website, they were amazing, they did a great job but that is another person to employ and a lot of content to manage. And so, I'm just encouraging you to be more strategic than I was about that. You also when you're writing content, you wanna make sure that you're not trying to use any SEO tricks okay. So this is things like thinking you're gonna stuff a bunch of key words or meta tags or something like that. And I think this is less of an issue now than it used to be. People used to do this stuff all the time because frankly at one point it worked okay. But the search engine algorithms are very smart. Smarter than all of us, and you are not going to trick them. The goal here needs to be to produce the most user friendly, highest quality piece of content you can. Do not skimp on quality. Those search engine algorithms are looking for the best piece of content for what the user is looking for when they type a search into the search engine. Okay. So now that you have a clear idea of what your customer wants, that all of your content has a clear purpose, you've written amazing, high quality content. The next step is to make sure that you have a plan for promoting each piece of content. Now a general rule of thumb you'll see often floating around with bloggers, now remember 'cause bloggers are selling their content essentially, right. By selling advertising for their site. So these are great people to follow and to pay attention to the techniques that they use because they are [inaudible 00:14:37] tend to be content masters. One of the rules you'll see in blogging circles is that you should plan to spend at least 2x as much time promoting your content as you did developing and writing it. Now that sounds weird, right? Like wait, wasn't writing that high quality content good enough. But no one's going to beat a path to your door with content that you just throw up on your website. The search engines don't see that as being valuable, people are not going to magically find it. You're gonna need to do some promotion. And so here's what this looks like. You yourself when you put an article up on your website, you need to be interlinking your content together. Like articles get linked together, they all link maybe to the product that they go to, that sort of thing. You're also going to need to spread your content around social media. You might even look at boosting a Facebook post for example. You'll want to use your content in a newsletter. Get that out to your subscribers. You want to get that content out to influencers, social media influencers if you can. And let me tell you that will be a way easier process if you have written amazing content that is truly helpful. You can also take your content and later expand on it. You can create a video, a webinar, a white paper, a podcast, an e-book, something. Right. You can always take your content and continue to expand on it and link to it, which will really help the popularity. All right so even once you have this high quality content and you promote it and it's generating traffic, it's really important to remember that this is not a permanent fix. Even if you have a great bank of quality content and you're generating a ton of traffic and it's bringing you a bunch of sales, it is entirely possible to slide backwards. I have seen this happen and it's tragic when it does. Search engines expect a regular stream of quality content and that your content is staying relevant to real people. Okay. So it's also pretty easy for someone else to come along and do this better. And take your spot as an expert. Again, I've seen it happen and it's just terrible when it does. Think of your content management strategy, or your content marketing strategy like a peri annual garden. Okay. So when we put in annual plants they die at the end of the season, right, we pull them out and put in new annuals at the beginning of the next season. With the peri annual garden these are the plants that come back year after year, right. So when we're planting these pieces of content, we're nurturing them. We're promoting them so that they can produce traffic and sales for our website. And then regularly checking in to tend to them so that they stay healthy long term. Content marketing is not a free thing, right, you're gonna put a lot of time and energy. Blood, sweat, and tears, right, into your content. So make sure that you are nurturing it long term so that it can be a long term source of traffic and revenue for you. All right well hopefully I've taken some of the mystery out of content marketing for you. In the end most e-commerce businesses will benefit from content marketing and this is really about being savvy and making it work best for you and your customers. I would imagine that we will deep dive in future episodes into some of these areas we've talked about and if there are areas that you would like me to talk about either on the podcast or on a YouTube video, reach out to me at savvybusinessmethod.com, I would love to hear from you and hear the ideas that you have and I will try to make as many of them as possible happen. But otherwise that's it for today. I will be back in your feed in a few days. In the meantime thanks so much for joining me today. I really do hope the information in this podcast helps you make excellent decisions for your own business. Be sure to check me out again on Facebook and YouTube and I would really appreciate it if you could rate and review this podcast. I love reading the reviews. They help me make tweaks and find better ways to bring this information to you. So I'll see you next time. Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode please leave a review and subscribe and for more great content and to stay up-to-date visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 009: What is Content Marketing?  

  Episode 008: Choosing a Credit Card Processor for Your Ecommerce Website   Episode Summary:  Feeling overwhelmed choosing a credit card processor? Or maybe not sure you have the right one? Never fear! In this episode, Julie reviews the factors you need to consider so you can choose the right processor for your online business.   Episode Links:   https://stripe.com/ https://www.paypal.com/  https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method with your host Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert Hello and welcome to episode eight of The Savvy Business Method Podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills, so you can provide a better life for your family. Our topic today is How to Choose a Credit Card Processor. If you are looking at starting a website or you already have one, you may have figured out that there are a ton of companies who would be more than happy to process credit cards for you, so how do you go about choosing which company is best? They all have good marketing. Right? They're all telling us that they're the best provider, most reliable, lowest rates. Yes, some of those are objective factors that we may be able to sit down and make a spreadsheet and compare, but are those really the only things we should be thinking about? Are there other factors that need to be top of mind when we're choosing someone to work with? Let's sit down today and talk through the different things that you need to consider when you're choosing a credit card processor. Now, there are generally three types of credit card processors out there. There are the big companies that have been around for many, many years and I'm talking about companies like Authorize.net. They've been around for many years for good reason. I mean, [they're 00:01:27] tend to be very stable, very reputable companies. There are also what are generally thought of as web payment providers. These are companies like Stripe and its pile of competitors where they are set up primarily for doing business on the internet, so they integrate with different websites and they are mainly targeting website owners like ourselves. There are also payment account providers who also offer credit card processing services. For example, you can process credit cards through PayPal. PayPal is normally thought of as a way to run PayPal accounts on your site, but PayPal is their own merchant credit card processor as well. You can use them to process your credit cards or you can use ... I believe you can use Amazon Payments as well. There are three different pipes of providers that you can be looking at and today I'm mainly going to be talking about the web payment providers, like Stripe, and then the payment account providers, like Amazon and PayPal, since those are generally the more popular options for small business owners who are trying to integrate a credit card system onto their website. Alright, next step let's talk about fees because credit card fees add up quickly and the first thing you want to do when you're choosing a credit card processor is figure out their fee structure. Now, there are generally three types of fees that would be involved. One is a monthly fee and this is just a flat fee that is charged for using their service. Then, there are transaction fees, so every time there's a credit card charge run through the system for your website, you'll get hit with a transaction fee. Those generally tend to be right around 30 cents. That's kind of the going rate right now. Then, there are variable fees and this is the percentage that you pay on each transaction, so you'll get hit with that, you know, say 30 cent transaction fee, and then the variable fees are a percentage. On a $10.00 order, you might pay a 29 or 30 cent transaction fee and then you would pay, let's say it's 2%, you would pay 20 cents for that variable fee. Your total would be like 49, 50 cents for your credit card fees for that order. Now, understanding the fee structure's important because this is part of how you're going to compare between different companies because each one is probably going to have a slightly different structure. Although, I'm happy to report in the last few years most of these companies have all standardized their fees, so you're going to see the same basic rate on multiple companies, which makes it so much easier. No joke, these credit card fees matter. They add up so quickly. Six years ago, I cut my credit card fees in half by switching companies to process my credit cards. I saved over $4,500 a month, I mean, that is an insane amount of money, simply by switching from one company to another. This is really something that you want to be paying attention to. Next up, you want to look at data and how the information from your credit card processor is going to integrate into your accounting system. It is really frustrating to have to enter this data by hand. It's possible, but it's really time consuming, so this is a good time to stop and ask yourself how is your payment processor going to talk to your eCommerce platform and how are both of those pieces of software going to talk to your accounting system? If you can get all of these systems reliably talking to one another, you will save yourself so many headaches and errors and just a ton of time over the years. If it turns out that it is not possible for you to fully integrate the system and you are going to be entering data by hand, make sure you take a good look at how transparent the reporting is from the credit card processor. You really need easy to read reports where your fees are properly broken out, so that you can easily enter this information or give it to your bookkeeper to enter. Another accounting issue you need to be concerned with when you're using a credit card processor is how fees are paid. Now, most of the web processors out there now take their fees off the top. For example, if you have a customer buy something for $10.00 and the fees are 49 cents, then you would have $9.51 deposited into your bank account. Okay, that makes sense, but sometimes credit card companies charge the fees in bulk at the end of the month. I used to have this with one of the processors I used is we would get to the first of the month, first or second of the month, and $8,000-$9,000 would come out of my checking account and that was all of my fees for the month for the credit card transactions. I'm only saying this because if you're going to have a bulk amount come out of your account, you need to be aware of that and if you're not looking at your reports every day, it would be really easy to miss maybe that those fees are not coming out piecemeal, but rather are going to come out in a lump sum later on. Just something to be aware of, so you don't have issues with your cashflow. Alright, next I would suggest that you take a good look at what setup looks like. Now, most credit card processors are going to require a significant amount of information in order to set up a credit card processing account for you. This is perfectly normal and nothing to be worried about. For example, they're going to need to know what your business's name is and how it's registered with the state that you're in. They're going to need to know your tax ID number. This is a federal requirement. They have to send you a 1099-K at the end of the year. I see so many small business owners on my Facebook groups and forums who freak out when they're asked for this information and it's like, okay guys, but they have to send the paperwork to the government at the end of the year and it has to be for your business. Just be aware that these are the types of things that they're going to need. They generally also need to know who you are personally. Again, this is perfectly normal and it has to do ... at least in the United States I believe it has to do with the terrorism prevention acts, so be prepared that you're going to have to part with some of your personal info as well. They'll likely run a credit check on you personally because they want to make sure that you are in a position that you're not going to be tempted to do something nefarious with your credit card account. You'll likely hear entrepreneurs claiming about their money being held by a new processor and this can happen with any type of payment processor, a credit card processor or an account like Amazon or PayPal. There are lots of reasons that a credit card processor or a payment processor of another type might hold your money, but the most common are going to be that you have not provided that important legal information, like if you're withholding your tax ID number, that could be a reason for them to hold your deposits. It can also be that they have a policy. If you aren't someone they know or if you haven't done business with them in the past, they may hold a portion of your money and sometimes a significant portion for a certain period of time to make sure that customers aren't going to be complaining and asking for their money back. This is just something that you need to be aware of. I would definitely plan that you are going to have a portion of your money held for at least several weeks by your payment processors and just plan your cashflow accordingly, but you might be able to ask some questions in advance when you're looking at processors to determine what the likelihood is of that happening and the amount that they're likely to hold, so that you can be prepared. Even beyond their policies, be aware that your behavior as a business owner is going to affect how smooth this relationship is and how quickly you're getting your money from your processor. Here's some things to think about. Processors are going to be easier to work with and generally be less likely to hold your money if they thoroughly check you out first. If you find a credit card processor that will just sign up anyone with very little information, just know there's going to be a catch somewhere and it's likely going to be down the road. They're going to hold your money until they get the information that they need. You also want to identify any best practices that are suggested by the credit card processor and this could be things like entering tracking numbers into their system and then follow those, especially for those first few months when you are establishing a good reputation with them. You'll need to stay on top of your customers and any complaints, too. You want to handle those promptly. If you have somebody who has a charge back where they're asking the credit card company to reverse the charge, you want to stay on top of that situation and be available to provide information. You're not likely going to win that dispute, but you still need to show that you are being a responsible merchant. Also, I would recommend, if at all possible, try to avoid wild swings in either your deposit or your withdrawal habits. This can be a tough one. If you are putting together a business where you are likely to have a really successful launch, first of all, congratulations, wouldn't we all like to do that, but something you need to be aware of is that if you go from collecting no money or very little money on a daily basis and you suddenly are putting through transactions totaling in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, that it looks like very suspicious behavior to a payment company. On the flip side, if you don't do your withdrawals regularly and then you all of a sudden start withdrawing large amounts of money, again, that can trigger their system that that looks like suspicious behavior. You are probably not doing anything wrong, but their system works on algorithms and you just want to be thoughtful about your behavior. If you're going to behave outside the norm and you cannot keep that from happening, then you need to understand that you're probably going to trigger their system and you're probably going to run into some problems. It's going to be frustrating, but be persistent and most likely you can work it out with them. I know that was a lot of information, but hopefully you are now in a better position to evaluate the credit card processors you are either using or look at new processors, so that you can save yourself money and find a situation that works best for you. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope this information is helpful and if you have ideas or feedback for future shows, you can find me at SavvyBusinessMethod.com and on Facebook and my YouTube channel. Lots of videos up there. Be sure to head over. I will back in your feed in a few days. If you haven't subscribed yet, please be sure to do so, so that you can be notified when that new episode is available. Of course, I always appreciate fabulous ratings and reviews. We'll see you next time.   Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe for more great content and to stay up to date, visit SavvyBusinessMethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 008: Choosing a Credit Card Processor for Your Ecommerce Website  

Episode 006: The 11 Pages Every Ecommerce Website Needs   Episode Summary:  When you're designing or managing an ecommerce website, it can seem like there are so many pages to keep track of. In this episode, Julie walks you through the 11 pages that every ecommerce site should have and how those pages should be set up to meet their important goals.   Episode Links:   https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? You're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert Hello and welcome to episode six of The Savvy Business Method Podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal as always is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Today's topic is the 11 pages every e-commerce sites should have. Now, whether you're designing a site or you're managing an existing site, there can be a lot of pages to keep track of, but every page on your site should serve a very specific purpose, and sometimes those purposes get overlooked, and so today, I just want to go back to the basics and talk about what purpose each page type serves, and go over some very high-level optimization concepts, so when we think about how we set these pages up, what our goals are and what are the things we really should be thinking about. Alright. Let's dive in and talk about the home page, because of course, every site has a home page. Home pages are really interesting because on one hand, when you're setting up a website, it kind of seems like the most important thing you could possibly do, right? Like this is the page people are going to land on, and they need to immediately know what it is my website's about, and they need to feel reassured that they've come to the right place. I mean, that's a lot of pressure on one page, right? Now, if you already have a website up and running, and you've looked at your website statistics on Google, Google Analytics, then you've probably seen that in all reality, far fewer people land on the home page as their entry point into the site than maybe you would have imagined. Also, people don't tend to hang out on the home page, so our beautiful page that we put so much effort into may not be nearly as important as we were thinking. All right. All that being said, where should you put your time and effort when it comes to the home page? I would encourage you to do a couple of things. First and foremost, of course, your home page should communicate the purpose of your site immediately. It should be very, very clear what you do and why it's important to the average customer, because people will land on the home page, especially if they're coming from like a referral link from another business or something like that, and so it needs to just be terribly clear that they are in the right place, and you can accomplish that through being very careful and concise in your messaging, any texts that you have on that home page, but probably even more important, you need amazing imagery. You need nice pictures. This is not the time to buy the worst-looking stock photos on the planet, right? We need nice pictures, ideally of your products being used in context. That's a perfect situation, but you want to get as close to that as you can. You want your imagery to be inspiring so that people just instantly feel comfortable with where they've landed. I'll also tell you, you need to have some awesome navigation going on on that home page, because people who do land on the home page, don't tend to sit there and scroll. They are going to immediately go to your navigation, and try to figure out where they need to be, so if they're going to buy something or if they're looking for an article, a recipe or whatever it is, they're not hanging out on the home page. They need to be able to navigate off quickly before they get frustrated. Okay. Next up, let's talk about the page that they're most likely to hit right after the home page, and that is a category page. Now, unless you're only selling a few products, you really do need category pages to keep your site well-organized and make sure everyone knows where they're at at all times. Category pages are kind of like their own little, mini home pages for that product category, so again, they need to immediately communicate what can be found in that category and why you are going to be the best place to purchase those items. Category pages are awesome because they tend to do really well in organic search algorithms, so if someone searches on camera equipment, they're more likely to land on a category page than a home page. If we stop for a minute and think about Google's perspective on this, Google wants to send searchers to pages that are likely to immediately fulfill their wishes and desires in life, and so it makes way more sense if someone's looking for cameras to send them directly to the category page where they're going to immediately see products than to send them to a home page where they're going to have to navigate. Okay. This is all the kinds of stuff that's in that very mysterious Google algorithm. Just like your home page, that immediate communication is really important, and you also need to make sure that you are again using beautiful imagery, so you want maybe some beautiful pictures of your products, and very concise text to really communicate what category they're looking at and why they should continue their search on your site here to find the products that are going to meet their needs. Now, if you've done a good job with your category pages, the next page your visitor should flow to is your product page, right? Each product is going to have its own page, and product pages, I got to tell you, I think product pages are some of the more tricky pages to set up on your site, because you have a couple of somewhat competing purposes here. On one hand, your job on the product page is to convince a customer that this item is the right item for their situation, and is of the quality and the value for them, and so to do that, of course, we want to have great imagery, we want to have great product descriptions. We'll generally want to answer any questions that someone could have about this product. We might want to link to supporting information, so someone feels that this product is coming with the support that they might need to use it. Okay. That all sounds great, right? Like that sounds like an awesome product page. Here's the rub, right? With the product page, the goal is ultimately for someone to click that Add to Cart button, and yeah, all of that information for certain customers is going to help that process and get them to say, "Oh, yes. This is the product I need. I'll have the support I need. I'm going to click the Add to Cart button", but for a lot of website visitors, we run into the issue of humans being easily distractible people, right? Let me give you a practical example. One of the websites I used to have had these products that really generated a lot of questions, and so after several years of having this website, we really revamped the product pages and started putting a ton of information on the product pages, and this was really driven by the honest desire to help customers get the information they needed. I didn't want people stopping their product search and adding those items to their cart to contact customer service. Also, if you have a ton of people contacting customer service, asking the same questions over and over, that either takes away your valuable time, or you're paying someone to answer those questions, and so we really started working on making these product pages like the ultimate landing page ever for this type of product. I mean, it sounded so good in theory, and you know what happened? The Add to Cart rate went down. The conversion rate went down. You know why? Because we were distracting the heck out of people. People would start reading and be like, "Oh, this is really cool. This is really cool. Oh, here's a link to a recipe I could use this in." Then, they would be off in recipe land, and their kids would distract them or something would happen, and they wouldn't come back and actually buy the item. That's why I think product pages are honestly some of the hardest pages on our websites to set up, because we really do have to balance these competing objectives, this idea of giving lots of information and having customers feel supported with the idea of keeping them on task, and so this is what you got to remember. When you're doing your product page setup, you need to keep your customers on task. Hitting that Add to Cart button is ultimately the most important thing you are accomplishing with that page. Okay. You got your product pages set up, and you've just pulled off this miraculous balance between helping people feel they have the information they need, and will be supported in their product journey, while not distracting them and they've successfully added the item to their cart. Nice work. Okay. Let's talk about the cart page. When we get to the cart page, there's a couple of things that really matter here. First and foremost, we need to remember that we are funneling our visitors towards checkout, that Place Order button at the very end, and so we've had a home page that really helped them quickly navigate to the category pages, a category page that reassured them and sent them to the appropriate product page, their product page managed not to distract them too much, and now they are on this cart page, and your e-commerce software likely came with a pretty standard cart page out of the box. Yeah, you might be able to do some tweaking here and customization, but I would encourage you not to go real crazy with this page. This page is really a utility page that needs to slickly funnel them to the checkout. Why do we even have cart pages? I mean, that's a legit question, right? Like why wouldn't we just send people directly to the checkout? Now, some sites kind of do that now, but I would argue you still need a cart page for a couple of reasons. The first reason you need a cart page is because they are still very much standard, and they're something that customers expect and will find reassuring. Let's think about big websites like Amazon.com and Walmart.com. I mean, these are huge companies. I can assure you that they do a ridiculously large amount of testing of their site. They hire focus groups. They watch people navigate their site. If they're making changes to their site, then you should probably pay attention because they have the money to figure out whether the changes are [worthwhiled 00:10:04], and these sites still have cart pages. That brings us to the other reason I think you should have a cart page, is because they're useful. They really are. People use their cart to look at the items that are in there, and make sure the quantities are correct before they slide on to checkout. Really, there's not a lot to mess up here, but I'm going to give you two things you need to be worried about. One is creating distractions. Don't create distractions, okay? You need them to slide to checkout, so this is generally not the best time to give them an article to read about camera bodies. Everything in the cart page should help focus their attention on this idea of checking out. For example, link to a recipe, bad idea. A place for them to check the shipping charges, excellent idea, okay, unless it's really clear on your site what shipping's going to be. Maybe you have free shipping or flat rate shipping. If you don't have some exceptionally clear thing saying what shipping's going to be, then you sure as heck better have a way for them to check their shipping cost. You're going to hear people out there argue that you shouldn't, and their argument's going to be, "Oh, once they're already checking out, then they'll just accept whatever shipping cost that you're going to charge them", and you know what? That is so not true, and it's rude, and it's a total turnoff to people on your website, so let's go back to the rule, right? We treat other people the way we want to be treated, which means being transparent with your shipping costs. If your shipping costs are going to be a problem for your customers, then honestly, you're doing something wrong right now as a business owner. You need to figure something out. You need to figure out how to work shipping into the product charges, or you need to figure out some creative solution, because not being willing to tell your customers what their products are going to cost to ship is just kind of dishonest, okay? Just being honest there. Just a little dishonest. Okay. In terms of the cart page, the other thing that you need to be really careful of, is that the cart page is really easy to use. Remember, one of the big purposes this page serves is it allows people to see what is in their cart, so what items and what quantities. You want to make this really easy to edit, and I'm going to tell you why. After years and years of experience, if people have trouble changing what is in their cart, they are going to do one of two things. They're either going to walk away because they're frustrated, so that's bad, or they're just going to place the order anyway, and then freak out later. They're going to call customer service and say, "Oh, I know I placed that order three days ago, but I just realized I ordered too many of something or wanted something else", and you know what? That's now your problem to deal with, and this is going to cost you money, so make that cart work really well. Make that page so easy to navigate, so easy to change quantities so that you can keep customers happy, and keep the cost of having to resolve issues down as far as possible. All right. If your cart page worked well and you funneled your customers properly, they're going to land on the checkout page, and you're almost home free. The checkout page only has a couple of priorities. One, you're of course going to need to gather the information that you need from the customer in order to ship them their products. I'm going to tell you right now, you should not be gathering one iota of more information than you absolutely have to in order to successfully ship that order and follow up with the customer as needed. Okay. This is not a time to ask them for a bunch of extra information like their birthday, or their dog's name, or anything like that. This is not that time, so you want to get minimal amount of information, and again, we're just getting them to click the Complete Order button or Place Order button, right? Okay. No distractions at all on the checkout page. This is the wrong time to make product suggestions, okay? You might be able to do an upsell on like a pop-up maybe in the cart, but you're not doing it at checkout. We just want them to click the button, okay? The flow of your checkout page should also be very intuitive. This needs to be professionally laid out. You should have standard payment options. Do you have questions about that? Go back to episode two, and we'll talk about, where I talked about how to optimize your payment options. You got to have a credit card option. You got to have an alternative option like PayPal, Amazon, Google Pay, Apple Pay, something, and if you have your checkout nice and slick, then with any luck, you will have very few people abandoning that checkout page, right? We just got to get them through to that Place Order button. All right. Hopefully you have lots of people placing orders, so let's pause now and talk about the rest of the pages for today's discussion, and these are all going to be support pages. These pages are not necessarily directly involved in the standard sales funnel, but they are the pages where your customers are going to find important information about your company, and hopefully cut down on the amount of people emailing you, or leaving the site because they can't find the information that they need. Okay. Number one, you need a frequently asked questions page, and there's a bunch of ways to do this. You can have one, sitewide if you have a very tight product selection. If you have a number of different categories, you might want to have a general frequently asked questions page, linking to maybe some category-specific frequently asked questions page, but frequently asked questions pages are awesome because they tend to rank decently in the search engines, and they tend to cut down on the number of people contacting you to ask questions. Okay. Next, you're going to need an order info or a shipping info page. I like to separate this from the frequently asked questions page, because that way, I am able to clearly call this out, because this page, at least in my experience, tends to get more traffic than a general frequently asked questions page, because people who are asking questions, if your site's well-laid out, if your product pages are well-laid out, the main questions people should have are probably going to be around how to place orders, what the shipping situation is, taxes, that sort of thing, and so I like to have the separate ordering info page where I can list how quickly items ship, at which states we charge sales tax in, and any considerations. Also, on this page, this is where your return policy goes, and you want to be really clear on that. You do not ... Even if you're a tiny business getting started, don't skip this. You do actually need a return policy, one, because it's reassuring to customers, and two, because when you go to apply for some of the better payment accounts or you go to get some of the security badges through some of the major providers, I think Google, if I remember correctly, when they do like their Google verified site or something like that, they want to see a return policy clearly on the site, so stick that in your order info or shipping info page. Okay. Next step, you're going to need a contact page. Now, I want to state upfront that a contact page is less about people actually contacting you, and more about the reassurance that they can if they need to, and this is what helps people have confidence in buying from us. Now, that being said, a good contact page is going to have multiple ways for people to get a hold of you. For example, it could be your 800 number that he could give you a call, especially if you are marketing to a little bit older clientele, which could be a great market because remember, people who are a little bit older tend to have more disposable income, so something to think about. You want to of course make sure there's a way for them to email you, and you want to use a Contact Form, and not your email address, okay? If you don't know why that is, then we need to cover that at some point. You don't want a bunch of spam in your email box, so use that Contact Form and make sure it's working before you launch your site. I'd also suggest putting a link on your contact page to your live chat feature. Even if in all reality, you don't have live chat constantly turned on, this can still again be a reassuring thing. It's about giving customers that feedback that you are going to be easily reachable. I also recommend having an About Us page or some sort of page that is going to reinforce your story, your branding, and why someone should do business with you. Not all of your customers are going to look at this page, but the ones that do are likely to be inspired to buy from you if this is set up well. This is where you're going to put things like how you got started, why you're passionate about what you do, what sort of priority you place on your product quality or your customer service, maybe a little bit of personal information too. If you're a family-run business, that could be a compelling idea for people. This is where we just reinforce our brand, and reinforce that we are a trustworthy company to do business with, and it's just kind of that bow on the package for those customers who need that additional reassurance. Alright. Let's do the last two pages, and I will tell you upfront, these are not the most exciting parts of your website, but they're really important from a legal perspective. Number one, you need to have a terms and conditions page. Don't forget to do this. Your terms and conditions really should be crafted by a small business attorney who is familiar with e-commerce, ideally familiar with your industry, and is operating or practicing law in your particular state, because this is going to be a little bit different for every company in terms of industry norms, and state laws, and that sort of thing, so don't really skimp on this, right? You really do need to have a terms and conditions that will be upheld if you ever do have an issue with a customer. All right. Page number 11, the last one is your privacy policy. Privacy policies have been around for a long time, but they are becoming increasingly important as we're seeing more and more law is passed around how we as website owners can gather and use information. This has gone from something that's been just fair to say not very well regulated to, in some parts of the world being highly regulated, and because most of us do business across a country or often across national borders and do international business, we have to be very aware of the laws in different areas. This is again a place where you really want to consult a small business attorney, but keep in mind the types of things on a privacy policy are really about what sort of data you're collecting, how you're using it, and what systems are integrated with, which also maybe collecting and using data from your users, okay? Alright. That was 11 core pages for your website and the general purposes they serve. If you have feedback or ideas for future shows, you can find me at Savvybusinessmethod.com, as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Now, be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitcher, right? I say this every time, but definitely subscribe, because you don't want to miss a single episode, and of course, I would greatly appreciate if you could rate and review this podcast in iTunes. It really does help other people find it. It helps the rankings, and then people can find it in the big, long list of podcasts. I also promise to read every review. I really enjoy reading your feedback about the show. We'll see you next time.   Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe, and for more great content and to stay up-to-date, visit Savvybusinessmethod.com, and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 006: The 11 Pages Every Ecommerce Website Needs  

In this special episode, co-hosts Joel Southerland and Scott Smith discuss how, when the church acts on the consumer mentality of the Church, it accomplishes less. You will hear illustrations about the importance of choosing the best options for your church and on how to limit those options to focus more on evangelism. What do you need to take away from the church to make it more evangelistic? To learn more, visit the Evangelism blog at www.namb.net/yourchurchonmission. You can also email us at evangelism@namb.net. Additional resources: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action Transcript Announcer: Presented by the Evangelism Department of the North American Mission Board, this is Your Church on Mission Evangelism Podcast, the podcast to help pastors be on mission in their local communities. Here's your host, Joel Southerland. Joel S.: Welcome to Your Church on Mission. I'm your host, Joel Southerland, and this is the Evangelism Podcast of the North American Mission Board. Hey, recently I read an article by Simon Sinek who wrote the book, Start with Why. He wrote this article several years ago, but I thought it was really important to maybe mention it today as we talk about evangelism. Joel S.: In the article, he talks about a shoe salesman in the 1950s named Ben Prober who went on to own a very, very successful chain of women's shoe stores. The prices at his store weren't the cheapest. The selections weren't that different than any other store in town. The stores themselves were pretty basic. They were nice, but nothing that our design and experience obsessed era would consider any kind of competitive advantage, so with no apparent superior offering or value added, Prober Shoes managed to outsell their competition year after year after year. Joel S.: When Ben was asked, "What's your secret to success?", here's what he always said, "Two, not three. Two, not three." Ben understood something about human beings that modern businesses and even churches have forgotten, and here's what it is, "More choice is bad." Let me tell you how he fleshed it out. Joel S.: When a lady came into one of his shops, the odds were good that she would want to try on more than one pair of shoes. If she already had two styles to choose from and she asked for a third option, here's what Ben would say. I love this. He would say, "Of course, madame, I'd be happy to fit you the style of your choice. Now, which one would you like for me to take away?" What Ben learned is that, when his customer had two options, they could easily make a choice about which style they preferred. However, when they had three or more to choose from, they had more trouble making a decision and, more often than not, left the store without any shoes. Joel S.: Here's the truth. Even in business, even if customers think they want more choice, the facts are overwhelmingly against them. Not only are we more likely to make a purchase with fewer options, but the confidence we have in our choices and satisfaction we get from these choices is considerably higher than if we're forced to choose from a larger selection. In other words, the only result of competing with more is you do less, you sell less. I want to compare that and bring that into church world in this podcast because what happens is, in churches, we wind up offering so much to meet the consumer mentality of our members, we actually wind up accomplishing less. Joel S.: I'm joined by my co-host today, Scott Smith, who's an evangelism consultant with the Georgia Baptist Mission Board. Scott, most churches need to simplify a little bit, don't they?Scott Smith: Yeah, they really do. It's kind of like government regulations. We add them, and we typically don't take the old ones away, so it becomes burdensome after a while. It becomes too heavy-laden with too many options. It's a frog in a kettle thing, right? It doesn't happen overnight. It's slow so we don't notice that we've just got too much on the agenda or just simply [inaudible 00:03:51] we're trying to funnel our visitors and our members into. Joel S.: I think that ... I love the frog in the kettle analogy for this because I think that's what happens. Over time, in the life of a minister of a church, we added a lot of good ministries, and we added ministries when they were hot, when it fit the culture of the time, when it fits the context of the time, and then what we never did was take away any of the other options. Not only do we have the best current cutting-edge ministry going on at our church, we also have the ministry that worked 20 years ago going on at our church. Scott Smith: I think one of the core problems, though, is that we don't have a system whereby we evaluate, not only the new ideas, but whether or not the old ideas are still working so, without any kind of a litmus test or a filter or checklist or evaluation assessment system in place, things tend to stay on the registry of options. Joel S.: Yeah. That's also ... Man, I think since both of us are in evangelism, we both would argue that the litmus test perhaps you ought to consider is how many people are coming across through that ministry. That's not a bad gauge for is a ministry working or not, right? Scott Smith: Exactly. At the end of the day, I mean, the Great Commission is really the great filter for what we endorse as a worthwhile idea in a church. I know we'll say more about this in some future podcasts that we're kind of kicking around with conversations. I think there's a lot to say about that, but I think back down to brass tacks is, at the end of the day, we have to evaluate our evangelists' effectiveness first, and that means every program in the church and every option that we give our people, ultimately, is traced back to how it impacts our evangelistic effectiveness. Joel S.: What's going wrong in most churches is and, Scott, you preach in a lot of churches and I have over the years, as well, so you go to announcement time. You go to the average church, Scott, and you open up a bulletin, and it's probably a tri-fold document that has tons of options in it. I mean, we're seeing multiple kid, multiple student, multiple adults, senior adults, ministries on Sunday, Wednesday, Monday, Thursday. Joel S.: At the end of the day, though it sounds okay, like, "Well, we want a ministry for everybody in the church," really, in all probability, you're giving them three pairs of shoes instead of two, and most people are going to walk away not having made a purchase. They're going to walk away and not engage with anything you have going on because they can't figure out what should they engage with, this [inaudible 00:06:50], so when you throw in another announcement about a new ministry you're starting, I think sometimes it just cripples people, doesn't it? Scott Smith: It does. I think we forget that everything communicates. Everything communicates. Your announcements really communicate what your church is really about, what's the heartbeat of your church, your brochure, the website, the different things that are listing all these options, where we're finding out about them, they're communicating what is the heartbeat of your church. I think a lot of ministries can be directly traced back to evangelism. A lot of servant ministry opportunities and things like that, because of the way it's phrased or worded or what it's called but, for most churches, at least in my experience, for most churches, our announcements basically say, "We like to keep people busy. We like to keep people busy." Scott Smith: Some churches, if you look at the menu, it's all about going deeper, right? You're communicating, "We are a church that likes to go deeper. We're a church that likes to really focus on discipleship, and its classes and small groups and on everything under the sun. Nothing wrong with that by any stretch, but there are those church, when you go into a highly evangelistic church, one that's really getting it done in evangelism, you don't have to have anybody interpret it to you.Scott Smith: As a matter of fact, the very person who's making the announcements, if that is a part of their service, invariably communicates something about so that people can be saved, even if they're saying, "Look, we did this last year and, man, we had 18 people saved and we're excited about what's going to happen this year." Evangelism bleeds out when evangelism is the driver of the activities. Joel S.: Yeah, so you can't have ... This is great, great wording. What that means is, you can't have all these activities going on that are non-evangelistic because when you give them options, too many options, I mean, here's what we know. Experience tells us and observation tells us people will choose the non-evangelistic option. Scott Smith: Right, right. This conversation assumes that we're really talking about assimilation, and I think that's what keeps a lot of us up at night is, how do we assimilate, how do we get people from being a nominal member to really involved and being a tither and a worker and really using their gifts? It's almost like spray and pray. The more options I put out there for our people to plug into, they're going to plug into something. Scott Smith: Surely, the longer the menu, they're going to find something, right, but it kind of goes back to would you rather go to cheesecake factory where it takes 40 minutes to order because you literally have to read through countless different types of food and one menu to even make a choice or do you just want to the best barbecue place in town where you know you're going to have your order in in ten minutes and enjoy the meal. Scott Smith: It goes back to exactly what you were saying earlier. We do want to assimilate but, ultimately, every believer is to be assimilated into disciple-making, but Biblical disciple-making has evangelism at its core so, at the end of the day, it's not just, "Do I get them plugged in for the sake of getting plugged in?" We can always come up with creative ideas to get people to plug into something, but chances are that's going to cause us, by default, to create options that are easier to plug into, and the easier options to plug into are almost never evangelistic or have evangelism involved. Joel S.: It's exactly right, so you're actually your own worst enemy because you're creating avenues for people to get involved that it may build fellowship. There's some good things that come out of those but, at the end of the day, is not helping you push forward in what we want to be doing, which is reaching our community for the cause of Christ. They almost become diversions so, when I sit you down and I put 20 pairs of shoes in front of you, you know, it's almost like you lose me. You know, it's like, "Well, that's too much. I can't make a decision when it comes to that." Scott Smith: I think a lot of pastors may not be ready to fight this battle but, if you had to say, "Look. In order for us to add a new activity, number one, is it going to be evangelistic? Number two, what are the two other church activities or programs that we would have to take away?" What if we required ourselves that? You've heard of some ... Actually, I've heard of some state governments doing that. We will add no new regulations without taking two off the books. What if you had to do that with your church menu of things to plug into? Joel S.: I think that's where the podcast is kind of landing and the reason we started it is that. This is not about what are you going to start next? This is about what do you need to take away? In church life, we're familiar with the term 'purging the rolls' where we look through our membership rolls and we say, "Who's on there that shouldn't be? They've passed away. We know they've joined another church. They moved to Kalamazoo. They're not really on our rolls," but when is the last time as a pastor you sat down and did that with your ministries? Joel S.: We're going to purge our ministries, and we're going to take away the things that we really, A, don't want to be doing anymore, B, are not getting any support from the membership really anymore, there's kind of one guy hanging onto it or, C, doesn't really help us fulfill what we think our vision is for our church in reaching our community anyway. Those are hard calls and tough decisions for a pastor to make. Scott Smith: Some ministries need to be fired. Joel S.: Yeah, that's right. Scott Smith: You know, they're not performing their job description anymore, Kingdom-wise. Honestly, if the only reason that a ministry is still on the books, I know it gets into local church politics based on where you are in your ministry, whether you've been two years or five years, but let's be honest. If your ministry is only on the program list, or if that ministry is only on the program list because of sentimental reasons, because it was Aunt Mabel's idea way back in the day or the one that started it was Chairman of Deacons at the time or whatever and we want to keep ... Scott Smith: I mean, really, at the end of the day, we have to decide what's going to be the driver of every ministry in the church, and there's no way we can take the Great Commission out as a huge determining factor in whether it stays or goes. Joel S.: I think here's a great way to ask that question. Maybe, Scott, you push back if you don't think so, but here's the question to ask. If you currently didn't have the ministry we're talking about, would you start it? Scott Smith: Oh, that's great. Joel S.: So, if I hadn't already made that ministry ten years ago, would I start it today? If the answer is, "No, I wouldn't start that today," then why are you letting it zap resources up from your church, whether that be man hours, money, attention, whatever that may be? If you weren't excited about that ministry today, if you wouldn't go, "Oh, man, this is the thing that's really going to change our church," then you might ought to have a hard look about, "Do we need to keep this going on or not?" because we know options paralyze people, and they're only going to give you so much, and they tend to choose the easiest one and, oftentimes, the easiest one's not the one that leads to reaching people in your community or even growing Christians in your church. Scott Smith: What does it say to your church when you start paring down the options and, especially, stating that the ones that are sticking around, the ones that are there are there because it helps your church reach more people for Jesus in that community? Joel S.: Yep. Hey, I'll tell you this. As a pastor, sometimes it's something you started. Sometimes, it's not the Chairman of the Deacons' idea or Ms. Myrtle's idea. Sometimes, it was your idea, and that's where to start maybe is, "Hey, this was a good idea years ago, but not so much today, and we're going to simplify in order to get better." It sends a message to the church when you're willing to part with your own favorite ministry in order to move the mission forward. Scott Smith: Absolutely. Joel S.: Hey, pastor, that would be just an encouraging word for you today. Maybe look at your ministry roll and maybe consider doing a ministry purge and realize that you can actually reach more people by doing less, by focusing their leadership ability, your resources, their time, their money, their energy into the things that matter the most, and you'll be shocked at how much better your ministries will become. Joel S.: Hey, to find out more about evangelism, always be sure and visit namb.net/yourchurchonmission or namb.net/evangelism. Thanks for listening to the podcast today. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Your Church on Mission Evangelism Podcast. To find out more about leading your church on mission, be sure and check out the blog, www.namb.net/yourchurchonmission. To send in a comment or question, email it to evangelism@namb.net..

Episode 005: Ecommerce Data Storage and System Security   Episode Summary:  As small owners our livelihoods depend on securing our data and protecting critical systems such as access to the backend of our website, email service provider, etc. In this episode Julie discuss the various options available for storing and backing up data as well as issues surrounding securing critical systems.   Episode Links: My scanner: http://a.co/d/fYWAVOs https://www.dropbox.com/ https://www.box.com/ https://gsuite.google.com/ https://www.crashplan.com https://www.lastpass.com/ https://keepass.info/ https://1password.com/ Authenticator App for iOS: goo.gl/i6JDMp  Authenticator App for Android: goo.gl/LiRfRs    Episode Transcript: Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello and welcome to Episode 5 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. A quick reminder that my YouTube Channel is available, and I have a bunch of short videos up there, so if you're looking for some quick tips and tricks head on over to YouTube and be sure to subscribe so you're notified of all the new videos because there are so many more coming. Now, for today's topic we're going to be talking about data storage and protecting systems. Doesn't this sound exciting? This is the episode where you are going to find out that I am a total nerd. But I hope this is useful to you, because as small business owners we need to be really thoughtful about how we store our data and how we protect our systems because it really is a point of potential liability for us. Think about this: Have you ever stopped to consider what would happen if tomorrow you woke up and were missing your order data? So you had no idea who had placed an order on your website. What if your inventory tracking sheet disappeared? Would you have time to go through and recount all of your inventory, and go back through all your reporting and recreate all your projections? Or what about that truly nightmare scenario. What would happen if your site was corrupted and there was no way to recover the data and you had to start all over? What would that look like? How many sales would you lose? How much of your sanity would you lose? As much as being an entrepreneur can be this awesome experience, there are some downsides, right? In a corporation there would be a department that's responsible for data storage and security and there would be people who had gone to school for data security making the decisions. But when you're a small business owner, the decisions fall to you. So I want to talk with you today about the things you need to be concerned about when it comes to data storage and protection. I've been doing this a long time; I've made my share of mistakes, I've seen other people make their share of mistakes and I'd like to save you some pain and suffering. So maybe grab a glass of wine and sit back and let's dive in. Okay, let's start the discussion by talking about what we should be storing and how. Now, I am going to tell you up front that I am a huge fan of keeping copies of keeping copies of pretty much everything related to your business. They're very few exceptions. You should keep every invoice, every form you fill out, every screenshot if you register with online systems, that sort of thing. Everything should be kept, well-filed, and easily accessible. That sounds like so much work, doesn't it? Let me give you a few tips here: I would strongly suggest that you invest is a really good scanner, the type that feeds paper, not the type that lift up that you have to lay a paper down. This thing is going to be your best friend. I will link to the one I have in the show notes but I'll tell you up front it is definitely not the cheapest option, I'm sure there are different ones available. I just happened to have had this one for 7 or 8 years and it has just kept on kicking and done a great job for me so I feel like I should definitely link to it but know that it is definitely one of the more costly ones. It feeds fifty pages at a time; it's just super easy to use. I would suggest that you try to make scanning your paperwork something you do a couple times a week. Once you get in the habit of this, it'll take you a couple of minutes, you'll name all your files, you'll get them into folders, and then when something happens, I guarantee you something will happen on like a Tuesday afternoon at 4:00, where you have to find a piece of paper, and it'll be right there for you. It's so much easier; it takes so much stress of your life to be able to find what you need quickly. Now, having told you you should keep everything, I do need to disclaim something here: When it comes to other people's personal data, and I'm talking about things like birthdays and social security numbers, specifically the types of data you end up having a hold of when you hire people, that information you should not be keeping long term, and you'll want to check with your local small business attorney so you can determine from like a state level what your liability there is, but in general I try to follow the rule that I don't keep people's personal information for longer than 12 months once they've stopped working for me. That just limits your liability in case your data were to be stolen, okay? So I just wanted to throw out that there is that one exception to not keeping everything, but you know like everything else? You've got to keep it. Okay, so where are you keeping all of this data? It's a lot, right? Wait until you start doing videos or podcasts, then you're going to have so much data you're not going to know what to do with it. But, you know, we have to balance a few things as entrepreneurs. One of the biggest priorities when it comes to storing our data ends up being accessibility. How quickly can I get the files that I need so that I can get my work done? Can I get to my files form my cell phone or on my laptop or on my desktop so that I can pull up things quickly and get my work done? Okay, so in terms of storage options, the big ones that I see most small businesses using and I have used myself include DropBox, Box.com, Google for Business. The nice thing about these platforms for storing data is that they're generally accessible form just about everywhere, and so you always have access to your files and you can get your work done from wherever you happen to be. The thing to understand when you're using a system like this that's based on a cloud structure so your information is sitting on servers in some warehouse somewhere is that some third party systems are not generally backed up. That's not part of the service that's being provided. Also be sure to read the fine print. Generally speaking, third party systems don't guarantee your data will be safe. Things like security breaches, and corruption of the data where the data's lost, those are all risks you generally just take using a third party service. But, understand I am not knocking on these services. They are amazing for accessibility. I'm just pointing out that you really need to be thoughtful about backing up your data and backing it up regularly. Now, backing up your data generally means making at least one backup copy that is stored in a different location, personally I do this every day but you can do it a couple of times a week or once a week, It just kind of depends on how much data you're generating. I will tell you that redundant backups are best, this is when you back up from, say, DropBox to a server in your house, and then you back up that server to an off-site backup situation like CrashPlan or something like that, in fact that's the system that we personally use for our companies. Because that way, if something goes wrong, I always have a couple of different copies that I can go back to. Now there are a couple of good backup solutions out there. If you're talking about trying to back up a copy just on a different computer, but in your home or your office, you can use an external hard drive, just use a separate computer, you can use a Network Area Storage device or a server if you want to get a little bit fancier. All those options start at like $80 dollars, so they're not terribly expensive, and if you're going to be generating a lot of information, or as your business is really generating revenue, I'd encourage you to make that investment so that you have this set up and can be all the time. Now, if you want to talk about off-site backups, there's a couple of options available. If you're mainly storing files on your computer you certainly could back up to a third party service, like DropBox, or Google Business, and so if one of those two things fails, you should have another copy availble. I did mention CrashPlan; that's who we personally have used for years. I really like CrashPlan, they're affordable, they have an excellent reputation for not losing data, and that's really important to me. In terms of a potential free option, I have in the past, mainly for personal and stuff, not as much for business, but if you have a friend maybe in another city or state who would be willing to do a nightly exchange of data, we used to send all of our personal stuff to our friend's server in their home, every couple of days, and they would send their stuff to us, and at one point that saved some really important pictures, that would have otherwise been lost. So, that's a free option, maybe not the most secure thing ever, but it is something to consider. Okay, so hopefully you're now getting some ideas on how it is you're going to back up your data regularly and make sure you keep copies of everything. So let's move on and talk more about system security. Now, number one thing in terms of system security because you're going to be running a lot of systems as a small business owner, right? You have your website, you have your Email Service Provider, you have your Google accounts, you have your main email server that's handling like your business email, I mean there's a lot of things that could be potentially be broken into and damaged caused. So, the first thing you need to worry about is having different secure passwords for every single system and I know that sounds so elementary but you would not believe how many people are still working on insecure passwords. So let's just do a quick review. Every single system you have, every single time you are asked for new password, you should be creating a unique password that is long, like at least 12 characters, it should include upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols, you want a nice combination going on. Now, of course, if this is something that you're new to in creating unique passwords, these long secure unique passwords, you're probably having a panic moment right now, right? Because how are you going to remember all these passwords? I would really encourage you, every small business owner needs to have a subscription to a password manager. Something like LastPass, or 1Password, or Keeper, or KeePass, there's a ton of these out there. They're very secure; you get to basically have a password to log in and you'll want to make a secure password there but hopefully you can remember one secure password on your own, and these systems keep everything secure and they just make it so much easier to have great passwords for everything single one of your systems. They're also really inexpensive; most of the time they're like two or three dollars a month. So this is well worth your time and your money to get this, get a subscription and get it set up. I would just put a warning out to you because we own businesses, right? And we need to make sure if something happens to us that our businesses stay functioning so they can continue to support our families, if you have someone who would be the executor of your estate, you probably want to have some information somewhere so that they can get into your password manager so when in the event something happens to you, and I hate to be fatalistic but we all need to be thinking about that, they'd be able to get access to your systems to keep your business running. Okay, next up let's talk about accessing systems in general. Because even with all of your secure passwords there are still some things you need to be thinking about in terms of how easy your systems are to access. Now, one, you need to make sure all of your devices are also password protected, your laptop, your phone, your tablet. All of these devices should not be easy to break into. Because, I mean, let's face it. We all know someone or maybe we've done it ourselves where we've left, like, our phone in a public restroom, you don't want someone to immediately be able to get access to say, your website, or lock you out, or to get access to your email system and send spam email, something like that. And there are a number of things you can do to prevent that, you can secure your devices with passwords, some brands are obviously better than other for that, you can use what's called Authenticator, which will come up and ask you for a separate authentication, normally it is sending a text to your cell phone with a number so that you have to have that to log in to your systems. I would also put out a warning to you that you want to make sure you are only accessing password-protected systems over secure wireless. This is something that I just cannot overstate; actually I know of a situation where a company lost a whole bunch of money out of their bank account because their bookkeeper was accessing their bank account over an unsecure wireless connection. And, the general rule of thumb here is if you did not secure that wireless connection yourself, or you don't know what you're doing, you need to assume that your wireless connection is not secure. So don't go to Starbucks or any coffee shop, not dissing on Starbucks, but don't go to a coffee shop and access your bank account, okay? That's just not a good plan at all. Also know that if you lose money out of your business bank account, your bank doesn't have to put it back and they won't. So, this is your incentive. Just be careful. Also if you travel a lot, like I used to do a ton of traveling for work for a while there, I had a subscription to a Virtual Private Network. And that's how I accessed systems like in the evening is my hotel room I would go to my Virtual Private Network, and then I could use the hotel's Wi-Fi, and I was able to access my system securely. So there's a bunch of things that you can do. This is just about changing your mindset, and thinking about what would happen if someone was able to get access to my systems. Okay, now at some point odds are good your business is going to grow and you're going to be in a position where you need to give access to secure systems to other people. Whether it's hiring a virtual assistant, or maybe your developer who's working on your website or, maybe you start hiring employees. And so this is going to take some special thought and set up on your part. So, the number one rule I have is do not give employees, contractors, anyone access to administrative accounts. And by administrative account I mean anything where they can get in, and do significant damage and particularly anything they can get into where they could delete you as a user. So you think about if you give access to an employee and they can delete you out of the account, or delete your user out of the account, they can get control over whatever it is you're working on. And, you know, we all want to be able to trust people but the reality is that sometimes, things go sour, and we need to be protecting ourselves and our businesses. You really want to only give employees and contractors and other people as much access as absolutely necessary to accomplish their tasks. Now the good news is this has gotten a lot easier over the last few years because of these password systems that are available now. So for example, I use LastPass to not only secure my personal passwords, and then my husband and I share passwords, because, you know, we ultimately have two companies that we're running, and then I am also able to set up other users so if we have an employee or a contractor, I can give access for them in LastPass, and I can give them a password to access LastPass, and if for some reason I need to take their access away, I am doing that through my LastPass account, okay? So I'm able to, let's say they quit, or I have to terminate their employment, I am able to terminate access to one system, and they no longer have access to any of the systems. It's amazing. I cannot even begin to tell you the difference this makes for a small business owner, it used to be if you let somebody go, you had to sit there and go "Oh man, which systems did they have access to and how do I lock them out of all these systems?" Now it's a matter of changing their access to one system. So definitely make sure you've got these kinds of systems set up before you think about hiring anyone. Okay, well I've given you a lot to chew on today. You know, data protection isn't really that difficult, it's just about getting your systems set up and being thoughtful about doing the basic maintenance and kind of getting into that new mindset. Yeah as I said, I'm human and I've made my share of mistakes as a business owner, I have seen other people make mistakes, and some of which were fairly disastrous but I just don't want to see bad things happen to you or your business. Okay, if you have feedback or ideas for future shows you can find me at savvybusinessmethod.com as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Please be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes or Stitcher so you don't miss an episode, and of course, I would greatly appreciate if you could rate and review this podcast in iTunes. It really does help other people find it, and I love reading the reviews. I just get some sweet lovely reviews and I am so thankful for them. I'll be back in your feed in a few days and until then, hey, go secure your data! Bye for now!   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode please leave a review and subscribe, and for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com, and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 005: Ecommerce Data Storage and System Security  

Episode 004: Choosing Shipping Carriers for Your Website   Episode Summary:  The eCommerce customer experience doesn't end when a package leaves our facility. Who we use for shipping carriers can matter greatly from both a customer experience perspective and for our bottom line. In this episode, Julie discusses the factors you should consider when choosing which shipping carriers to use for your website.   Episode Links: https://www.usps.com/ https://www.ups.com/ https://www.fedex.com/ http://www.dhl.com/ https://www.shopify.com/ https://www.shipstation.com/   Episode Transcript: Announcer: Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert.   Julie Feickert: Hello and welcome to Episode 4 of The Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills, so you can provide a better life for your family. Before we start today, a quick reminder that you can find links to resources I talk about here in the show in the show notes, along with the complete transcript of the show. I realize that sometimes you're going to need to go back and find a piece of information and a transcript can be really helpful for that. So let's talk about our topic for today, which is choosing shipping carriers for your website. If you are selling physical products, you're going to need to use someone to get those products to your customers, right? And who you choose ends up mattering for several reasons. First, your shipping carrier plays a real role in your customers experience. Yes, we want our customers to have a great experience on our website, we want them to find the products, be able to figure out what works best for them, buy the products smoothly, and then have the products start the shipping journey to them quickly, right? That's our job as website owners. But when we choose a shipping company to work with, we are then passing that responsibility for the customer to have a good experience to the shipping carrier. And luckily, most of the carriers do a pretty good job of this, right? But things happen. If you've ever ordered something online and had it get lost in transit, or just significantly delayed, or maybe you've had something arrive broken or even destroyed in transit. I mean, I've seen some crazy destroyed packages in my time. Let me tell you, it's amazing what can happen to a package. These are all factors that influence how the customer views they're shopping experience with you. The second reason why this matters is that shipping is one of the largest costs that we as a website owner have to take on. Getting our products to our customers is really expensive, and so we don't want to be taking any more costs than necessary, and we want to be getting to best experience for our customers and for ourselves for our money. And the third reason is that in the end, problems cost us time, money, and customer goodwill. If you've ever dealt with a package that's gone missing, or been destroyed in transit, you know how frustrating it is to have a customer who's upset who is getting a hold of you. That costs you time and money. You're trying to keep them happy and you typically going to end up having to reship that package, right? So that's costing you money. And meanwhile you're off trying to deal with the shipping carrier and file an insurance claim, that's costing you time. I mean this just starts to really eat away. It eats away at your productivity, it eats away at your budget, and it eats away at your customer goodwill. So let's walk through the factors that you need to be considering when you're choosing a shipping carrier to work with, or more than one shipping carrier to work with. Now, quick disclaimer here: I am not just going to tell you which shipping carriers are best. As we talked about in Episode Two, when we discussed optimizing your payment options on your website, I feel like I do all of you the service if I just say "Oh, you should do this, this, and this." Because you are going to have a unique circumstance. You are going to have changing circumstances. The providers that are available are probably going to change. The shipping market has been stable for a long time, but there's some signs that companies like Amazon might me coming in and offering some additional competition so some things are changing, right? Better to have all the information so that long-term you can make the best possible decision for your business. Also, today I am going to focus on shipping providers in the United States. This is my area of expertise; is shipping within the United States and that's the group I am most comfortable talking about. This included the United States Postal Service, UPS, FedEx, and to a lesser extent, DHL. They are a much smaller player in the United States these days. But if you are outside the United States, these same general factors that we're going to talk about really apply everywhere right? So stick around, you'll probably still get the information that you need, even if we don't talk about your specific country's options. Okay, so the first factor you need to consider when choosing a shipping carrier is which shipping carriers will integrate easily into the eCommerce platform that you're using, so in this case you're looking at the software that you are using to run your site. So this could be something like Shopify, or Volusion, or DemandWare, or Magento, but whatever it is you're using likely already has preferred providers, or carriers, so maybe like the Post Office and FedEx, or the Post Office and UPS, something like that where they're already integrated into the platform and this is going to make your life so much easier. That's not to say you can't consider a different provider but there may be more work involved and would just suggest that you put that into your calculations, right? Like, if you are going to need custom development work on your site in order to ship with, say, DHL, then that is something you need to give serious thought to. Okay, let's talk about cost. Cost is so near and dear to all of our hearts, right? Shipping is very expensive and the more we can get the cost down, the better. Without question, the average weight of your packages is going to be the biggest factor in determining how much they cost to send. Now, the shipping carriers are all constantly jockeying for position here and especially for low weight packages, packages under 2 pounds, there's this constant competition and switching around of services available, but if you are shipping things that are very lightweight, I just want to put a shout-out out there that you really should look at the Post Office. FedEx, and UPS, and DHL to a certain extent are all trying to compete for that business but the reality is that the Post Office, at least at this point, is still a less costly option for those smaller packages. One of the companies I used to have, our average package was, I think, like 6 ounces. We were shipping things that were very small and light. And so, the US Postal Service's First Class Mail actually was a great option for us. It was only a couple of dollars, it included tracking, First Class Mail in the United States, last time I checked, is being flown on FedEx airplanes so it's getting places pretty quickly, there's a lot of good things about First Class Mail. So, if you're in a position where you have things that are lightweight, don't forget about the Post Office. Another factor you should really be looking at when you're choosing your shipping carriers, and this kind of goes back to the platform integration we were talking about, is you want to be able to shop rates. And this means when you weigh the package in your system, and you put in the address, you really want to be able to see multiple shipping options. Sure, you could memorize the map and have a really good idea just looking at, you know, a two pound package is going 4 zones away, is it going to be a better price with this service or this service. You may have the ability to do that, most of us probably are not going to memorize a shipping table. So, I would just encourage you to be thoughtful when your choosing your systems and doing these integrations to make sure you don't lose the ability to price check. I really can't think of a situation where you would have the best shipping deal with only one carrier all the time, unless you are shipping one uniform package all the time. Another way you can potentially save money on shipping charges is to use a preferred provider through your eCommerce platform. So let me give you an example: My eCommerce site that I currently have is setup through Shopify. Shopify actually has negotiated rates with The Post Office and UPS. So if we ship through one of those two options, we get a fairly substantial discount, one I'm actually fairly happy with. So that's something to keep in mind too, sometimes using a preferred provider through your platform can save you money. The other way to get discounts on shipping costs is to be shipping a lot of stuff. Once you're shipping in volume companies like FedEx and UPS negotiate your rates with you. I'm not going to claim that that is any fun, I have done it many, many times, and I could happily go the rest of my life without having one of those conversations again, but just note, that as you grow, if you are shipping on your own account and not through, like, a platform like Shopify, you might eventually qualify for some discounts. Okay, so the next factor I really would encourage you to look at is how easily you are going to be able to work with the carrier's customer service department if something goes wrong. If you are shipping things that are perishable, or if your clients have very specific expectations when it comes to timeframe for delivery, then you really need to take that into consideration, and which shipping carriers are willing to make you those guarantees. And, if your package doesn't arrive in time, or if it arrives damaged, or if it gets lost, what does filing a claim look like? Does the shipping carrier offer as much insurance at an affordable cost as you're going to need to cover your product? What's the process for filing that claim? Is it very time consuming? Are claims generally paid out promptly? Is there an argument that's going to ensue? These are just the sorts of questions you want to be asking. Now, this might not matter at all if you're shipping very low value items, then this might not be the place to spend your time and money worrying. But if you're shipping costly items, particularly costly to you, then this something you need to give some serious thought to. So hopefully from today's discussion there are a few things that jump out at you that are most important for your business that you need to consider when you're choosing shipping carriers. I would encourage you when you're doing your research to reach out to local entrepreneurs and ask them who they use, and what their experience has been, because a part of your experience is going to be determined by the group that is picking up and handling your packages wherever you are. Also you can reach out to the companies themselves, especially if you are shipping a decent amount of product, you may be able to ask for a rep to be assigned to your account so you can ask these questions directly to a single person, have that single point of contact. So you've got some options here. Thanks for joining me today and geeking out over shipping options. I hope you had fun, and I hope that there are a few things now that you can think about and go apply to your own business. I'll be back in your feed in a few days with a new episode. If you haven't yet be sure to subscribe at that little button in iTunes and Stitcher and that way you'll be notified when the next episode is available. If you'd like to learn more about me, or The Savvy Business Method or you'd like to reach out and ask a question, or give me an idea for a future episode; I'd love to hear from you. You can find me a savvybusinessmethod.com as well as on Facebook and YouTube. Bye for now!   Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed todays episode please leave a review and subscribe, and for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com, and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 004: Choosing Shipping Carriers for Your Website

Episode 003: Using Remarketing to Boost Your Website's Sales   Episode Summary:  Site visitors are hot leads but often don't buy on their first visit. In this episode, Julie walks you through how to use remarketing to specifically target those visitors and encourage them to visit your site again (and make a purchase this time).   Episode Links: https://business.facebook.com/ https://www.adroll.com/ https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/  https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Savvy Business Method with your host, Julie Feickert. Julie Feickert Hello and welcome to episode three of the Savvy Business Method podcast, where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. I'm so excited to tell you about my YouTube channel today. I finally got it up and there are a bunch of short videos on there. They're about one to three minutes each. So, it's really quick tips for you guys. So after this podcast, can you please go over and check it out? I'd love to get the feedback. And of course you remember to hit the subscribe button over on YouTube. I have a lot more videos coming and that way, you'll be notified when they're available. All right, so let's launch into today's topic and that's remarketing. You have probably noticed that very few people buy from a website the first time they visit and that's really frustrating, right? Like, if only we could convert more people on their first visit. And yeah, there are always going to be things that we're going to be trying to do to continue to get our conversion rates up. But in the end, there are always going to be individuals who need to come back multiple times before they're ready to make a purchase and those are hot leads, right? I mean, they already know our website. They've seen our products. They're interested in buying this sort of thing and so in theory, they are going to be the easiest leads to convert on their next visit. So how do we market directly to them so that they come back to the site that second time and place an order? And you're going to do this using the same system big companies do. Let me tell you a quick story. A few years ago, we moved into a new house and the Washer and dryer that came with the house were clearly not going to last. The washer was making funny noises. The dryer wasn't consistently heating up. I mean, it just wasn't a good situation. Now, I have four children and two businesses and a mastiff. If you've ever seen the movie Turner and Hooch, that should give you like a mental picture of what I'm working with here, so you could imagine that having my washer and dryer break is going to go badly. It doesn't matter what day it happens. So one night I grabbed a glass of wine and I started looking at washers and dryers online and in the middle of my search I popped in to check Facebook and sure enough, there was an ad for the washer dryer set I'd seen on a big website five minutes earlier. This is what is known as remarketing. My internet browsing history of viewing that product on a website was being used to show me hyper-targeted advertising. And there's a reason so many big companies use this marketing method. It works so well. And here's the best part. You as a website owner, even if you are a very small company, can use this method too. So let's talk about remarketing, which you'll sometimes also hear referred to as retargeting. This is where we show ads specifically to previous site visitors to encourage them to return to our website and hopefully make that purchase. Okay. So specifically, how do you do this? Right? Let's get down to the nitty gritty details. So the first thing you're going to need to do is pick companies to work with. Now, when I look at my remarketing campaigns for my companies, I generally split them into two buckets. The first one is Facebook. Facebook, as the biggest social media platform in the world right now, is a really great place to run remarketing ads, partially because people practically live on Facebook, right? Your customers are on there constantly, and so running ads on Facebook can be really effective. Now there are a couple of ways to run remarketing ads on Facebook and one of them is to work with Facebook directly and you do this through their Business Manager system. If you don't have Business Manager set up yet for your business, this would be your first step. Just Google business Manager Facebook and it will come up and they will walk you through the whole process. It is not difficult. They really want your business and your money, so they make this really easy. Okay. The other set of remarketing ads I run for my businesses are what I call general web ads and these are going to be ads that are going to appear basically everywhere but Facebook, so if you go to say your favorite news website, you'll often see ads there for maybe a pair of shoes that you saw on Zappos or Amazon will show you something you were searching in the last couple of days. So these are general web ads. They just appear on all sorts of websites. Website owners can sign up to serve them and so by working with general web ads, you're generally catching your customers pretty much everywhere they browse. Now for general web ads, I recommend working with a company called Ad Roll and there are a bunch of these companies out there, but Ad Roll's been around I think the longest and they're definitely the big one in the industry. They're pretty easy to work with. They have reasonable policies and procedures and so I don't really see any reason not to work with them. Ad Roll also has the ability to run Facebook advertising for remarketing as well, so you could run both your general web ads and your Facebook remarketing through one system if you want, or you can split them up and run your Facebook ads through Facebook Business Manager and run your web ads through Ad Roll. Okay, so once you've chosen which companies you want to work with, the next step is to place a pixel on your website. Now a pixel is a small amount of code that you place on the back end of your website and it allows for tracking of the customer behavior on your website. If you use Google Analytics with your website, if you have integrated your email service provider, the company sending out your newsletters and that sort of thing, you've already worked with pixels. There's just a little bit of code. Now with remarketing, you will need a pixel for each company you work with. So if you're just working with Ad Roll, you need an Ad Roll pixel. If you're going to be working with both general web ads and Facebook ads through Facebook business manager, then you need a pixel for Facebook Business Manager as well. Both companies are really good about giving you incredibly detailed instructions on how to get this installed. Depending on the eCommerce software that you are using, some of them make it ridiculously easy to do this and some make it a little harder. But uh, don't let this stop you. This is not difficult. You just need to get it done. Now the thing to remember about the pixel is this is how these companies track visitors to your website. It's kind of like a calling card. It allows Facebook and Ad Roll to find and identify those same people when they visit other websites. Now, probably the biggest thing to keep in mind is that you cannot collect any data until you have your pixel installed. There is no way to go back and collect retroactive traffic data. So if you are planning on launching a website, I would really encourage you to get these pixels installed before you launch, so that you are gathering all of that traffic information. If you already have your website up, get these pixels installed today. Even if you're not sure if you want to use this method of advertising yet, you can still be collecting that data. Okay, number three, you want to set up your audiences and so this is really about deciding who you want to show ads to. Now, if you're a brand new website or you don't have a ton of traffic, it probably makes sense to show the ads to everyone. You really need to have at least a couple of hundred and preferably a couple of thousand people who have been tracked to the pixel for these ads to be worth your time and energy, because the ad rates are for the cost per thousand impressions. So that's the ad being shown a thousand times. If you only have 200 people on your list, then even that thousand impressions is going to be everyone's seeing your ad five times and that's a way to make everyone really tired of you really quick. Right?There is such a thing as ad fatigue and you do have to be careful with it. Okay, so let's say you aren't really tiny or you didn't just start and you have some decent traffic. You want to keep in mind that Facebook holds that data generally, at least right now for 180 days and Ad Roll holds that data for 120 days so you can really play around with your audiences here. You could have an audience, for example, of people who have visited a page on your site in the last 30 days versus the last seven days and you could test and see which of those are going to work better for you. I generally recommend that once you have more than a little bit of traffic, that you start to think more seriously about intent. So by intent, I mean what are the signs that someone is more likely to come back and purchase and so for example, you should definitely have an audience set up for people who abandoned their shopping carts, right? Like, those are your hottest leads. You definitely want those people to come back. Also, people who have visited multiple pages on your site or key products can also be really hot leads that you would want to make sure that you target. You know, the good news here is that at the moment at least, both Facebook and Ad Roll's minimum budget for an ad campaign is like $5 a day. And with Facebook you can usually split test that amount. So really you can do a bunch of small runs to kind of see what works best for your business. You know, do people who visited two or more pages in the last seven days outperform people who visited your site in general in the last 30 days, for example. These are the sorts of things that you can test and work out. Now, while the minimum budgets for both Facebook and Ad Roll are really affordable that you still have to keep in mind the pricing that you're paying. Like I said earlier, the pricing is based on what's called CPM, which is essentially the price per thousand impressions. Now this pricing is going to fluctuate throughout the year, so your $5 minimum campaign is going to get you way, way more impressions in say June than it is at the end of November when a whole bunch of companies are bidding for that same space. It also really depends on the industry you're in. If you're in a highly competitive industry or if the types of customers that you are targeting are also highly targeted by other businesses, you're going to pay more and that $5 minimum ad spend isn't going to go as far. Okay. Number four: you need to load your ad images and start running ads. It sounds so easy, right? When people click, they'll be back on your website. So just real quick, let's talk about the two different kinds of ads that are really common with remarketing systems and the first are called static ads and these are just images jpeg or gif images that you upload into the system and generally their purpose is to remind people that your company exists and to come back. These work really well if you have good brand recognition or if you have a very limited product selection. So let me give you an example. One of my companies, we develop and sell robotics curriculum for middle schoolers and high schoolers. This is not a very crowded market so we're pretty much one of the only people doing this. And so if I put up ads and just say robotics curriculum, people generally remember who we were because that's probably the only robotics curriculum site they've been on in months. So those static ads can be really effective if you have that recognition there. They can also be really nice if you're advertising a special offer. So if you're running a free shipping weekend or come back and save 10%, something like that, they'll static ads can be really handy. One thing you need to be careful of, though. If you're going to do an offer, the offer has to be easily redeemable. So if you're running a site-wide free shipping sale, great. Everybody get free shipping when they check out. If you're running an offer specifically to the people you're targeting with your ad, you're going to need to direct them to some sort of landing page or have a way of getting them that coupon code. It can technically be in the ad, but you're probably gonna run into problems because very few people write things down, right? But the goal here is if you make it hard for people to redeem the offer, your ads will get kicked by Facebook and Ad Roll. You do not want that to happen. That's points against your account, right? Because it looks like you're being fraudulent and trying to trick people. So just be careful. If you're going to do a special ad or special offer of some sort, you really need to make sure that it's going to be super easy for people to understand how to redeem that offer. The other type of ad you see really commonly with remarketing are called liquid or dynamic ads. And that's the example I gave in the beginning, right, of that washer and dryer I was looking at. These are the ads that will generally show you the exact product that you looked at on someone's website. These are really effective. So you might ask yourself, why wouldn't I just use those? And there's a couple of downsides to them. One: they tend to be more costly. They also tend to require more tech setup. There are often minimums to run these ads, minimum budgets that you need to meet. It's changing all the time. So I can't really give you good specifics that would last more than a couple of months, but just be aware that these ads, you know, there are some downsides to them, but once you are spending enough, once you have a sophisticated enough system going on, these can be a really effective way to sell your products through remarketing. Okay, so even if you are not completely convinced you want to run out and start doing remarketing, I would still encourage you to get your pixel set up immediately so you can start gathering data. This is not a fast process, unless you have very large traffic numbers you're working with. So you know, you want to get those set up generally at least several weeks to several months in advance before you would need to run your ads. Because once you have lots of data, your ads will be more effective. So setting the pixel up is kind of an insurance policy, right? So you're gathering all that data so you can wake up one day and say, oh, I want to go use my remarketing ads to advertise my Black Friday sale. Well yeah, you probably should have set those up, you know, 30 to 60 days in advance. Okay? So just something to keep in mind. Go out and do the pixels now and that will preserve your opportunity to then go out and do remarketing and the future. Thanks for joining me today. I hope this is helpful and that you are feeling inspired to use remarketing in your business. If you have feedback or ideas for other shows, you know, I would love to hear them. Visit me at SavvyBusinessMethod.com as well as on Facebook and YouTube and I look forward to seeing you next time. Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe for more great content and to stay up to date, visit SavvyBusinessMethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 003: Using Remarketing to Boost Your Website's Sales  

Episode 002: Optimizing Your Website's Payment Options   Episode Summary:  The payment options you offer customers at checkout can increase the rate of completing the sale or drive customers away. In this episode, Julie discusses the major payment options available and how to decide which ones belong on your website.   Episode Links: https://www.paypal.com/ https://pay.amazon.com/us/  https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/  https://pay.google.com/  https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod      Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well you're in the right place. Welcome to the Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert. Julie Feickert Hello, welcome to episode two of the Savvy Business Method Podcast. Where we talk about how to plan, start and grow your small business online. I'm Julie Feickert and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Before we start today I just wanted to let you know that you can find links to resources I talk about here in the show in the show notes along with the transcript of the show. I realize that sometimes when you're listening to podcasts you may not have the option of quickly writing something down. And so those show notes are there so you can scan back through them and grab the information you need at a later time. Now today's topic is optimizing your website's payment options. Because getting paid is really important, right. Like none of us have businesses, or at least not business for very long unless we're getting paid and paid consistently. So maybe you're in the process of setting up a website and you're starting to think about what payment options you want to offer. Or maybe you're in a position where you have a website currently but you might not have put a lot of thought into the payment options that you have available for your customers. Today I really want to dive into how you evaluate different payment options for your specific customers and there can be a lot of moving pieces here so I want to just go through systematically and talk about what's important to consider and how we can make the checkout experience as smooth as possible for our customers. Now really, we could go about this two ways today. I could just tell you what I have setup on my own websites and that you should just use the same providers. But that would be doing you a great disservice. My goal with this podcast is always going to be to give you information so that you can make the best decision for your specific situation. I mean, shoot, I have two websites and I actually have different payment providers for the different websites. So even between my situations I have differences. And so I'm going to assume that you've got some unique things going on too that need to be considered. Also, let's get real for a minute, options change right. The providers that are popular today might not be popular tomorrow or might not be around in two years. And so you really do need the information so that you can make ongoing solid decisions for your business. Okay, so let's start by talking about why does this even matter. If you've had a website for a while, you've probably figured out that only a small percentage of your website visitors actually add anything to their shopping cart, right. And then only a small percentage of those people ever check out. Generally speaking, on an eCommerce website, you're gonna see a conversion rate and that's the number of people who actually buy something ... that number is probably going to be between point five percent, so half a percent up to maybe around five percent. That is not very much, right. Even five percent isn't very much and that would be a dream for so many eCommerce sites. This number is dependent on so many factors. It can be the industry that you're in. It could the specific website or products, you know maybe you have products that are an impulse purchase so you're conversion rate's gonna be higher. The eCommerce site I currently have ... people going to that site generally take many weeks and sometimes months before they make a decision because they need to know that this product is the right fit. So that rate of people checking out can vary all over the place. And there's a whole bunch of factors there that you can't control. But today we want to talk about some of the factors you can control because you really can't afford to have anybody getting lost in the shuffle, right. Especially when you're first starting out your website. Every single sale is so critically important. So how can we use payment options on our website to encourage more people to check out? And the key here is making it easy and having something for everyone. So let's start by talking about the most common way that people pay for things online, credit cards. Now I occasionally will see business owners on some of the forums or some of the Facebook groups and things arguing about whether or not they really need to take credit cards on their website. Generally the argument goes, well if I have something like PayPal, so many people have PayPal accounts anyway, why can't I just use PayPal instead of offering say PayPal and a credit card option. So let's stop and think for a moment what our goal is with our check out page. By the time someone gets an item in their cart, right, where a small percentage of our visitors are getting an item in our cart. And then they hit that checkout button and now they're on the checkout page. You're only goal, once they get to the checkout page is for them to click the place order button. You want every single thing during the checkout process to be as slick as humanly possible. Think about like applying Vaseline all over your checkout, right. Nice and slick we want people going all the way to the end and clicking that place order button. So that's what's important here. So when we think about payment options and you think about someone entering their information and getting down to the payment options, and just think about yourself, when you're shopping online. You get to the payment options and there's no credit card option. This is a red flag for people who shop online and here's the really interesting thing, they may not even realize it's a red flag. People know what it's like to shop online at this point right. Your visitors to your website are not unique to the online shopping experience. They probably have already been to Amazon today. They're used to seeing certain things in a checkout. They're used to putting in their billing address and their shipping address and selecting their shipping options and then putting in their payment information. And so if we have things about our checkout that vary from the norm, we are putting up a distraction, a red flag, something that is sending a signal to our customer that they need to pause for a moment and question whether or not this is a legitimate website, whether it's safe to put their information in, and these are absolutely not questions we want our customers asking during checkout, right. We want full trust so they hit that place order button. So even if they are the type of person who would have used PayPal anyway, you've just given them a massive red flag by not having a credit card option available. So no question having a credit card payment option available on your website and one that is easy to use and looks like every other website on the internet, right, so they enter their credit card right there on your website. This is really important to credibility for your site. And I get it, credit cards are a pain in many ways for small business owners. There are issues with fees, fraud issues, charge back issues, but I am here to tell you that all of the issues that exist with credit cards are things that you as a business owner can learn to manage and to mitigate so that you can accept credit cards with confidence. Okay, so moving on. Now that you're accepting credit cards on your website or hopefully I've convinced you that you are doing the right thing by doing so, let's talk about other payment systems. So going back to our discussion a few minutes ago about people putting stuff in their shopping carts and then not checking out. This is what's known as an abandoned cart rate. These are the people who put something in and then they leave your site for whatever reason. Now the abandoned cart rate on a standard eCommerce site is going to be somewhere around 75%. Ouch, right. Like that is ridiculous. If we could get our abandoned cart rate down we would have a lot fewer problems as website owners. And no question there are many reasons why people abandon their shopping cart. But let's talk about one way with our payment options that we have the ability to take that abandoned cart number down even further. Let me tell you a little story. It's eight pm. The kids are finally in bed and you're exhausted after a long day. So you grab a glass of wine and your tablet and you can finally look for that pair of shoes to match your dress. And you find them and they're perfect. So you add them to your shopping cart, you start checking out and bam, they want your credit card number. Seriously, you just sat down. You don't want to get up and get your wallet. Argh. You'll just order them tomorrow. So you close the window and abandon your cart. And the next day, you forget to go back and buy the shoes. Sound familiar? I've done it, you've done it, and I can assure you your customers are doing it everyday. This is why you need what I like to call an I don't want to get off the couch payment option on your website. This is a payment option that does not require someone to have their credit card in hand in order to check out. And the most common one's currently are PayPal, Amazon Payments, Google Pay and Apple Pay. So one question I often get from small business owners is whether or not anybody actually uses these. So you have a credit card option, I mean really, how many people are really going to use PayPal or Amazon Checkout or any of these. And in my experience with my websites as well as talking with other entrepreneurs, it's generally about half and half. So about half the people will use credit cards to check out and about half the people will use a combination of the other options available on your website. Or more specifically I see currently about 40-50% credit card and then maybe 30% Amazon and 30% PayPal on my eCommerce site. But this then leads to another question, right. How do you choose, or are you supposed to have lots of alternative payment options. Should a website have PayPal and Amazon and Apple Pay and Google Pay. So here is my general rule of thumb. You generally need at least one and preferably two alternative payment systems. You should always prioritize the payment systems that have the most customers currently and right now that's PayPal and Amazon Payments. Thanks to the popularity of the Amazon Prime program, a ton of people have Amazon accounts. And of course PayPal has been around for years and was the only real significant player in the industry for so long that lots of people have PayPal accounts. I can definitely see Apple Pay and Google Pay gaining momentum over the years. But right now I would say that PayPal and Amazon are must haves for most eCommerce websites. So what would be the argument though against having all four available. And the biggest thing I would be concerned about is whether having three or four options makes your checkout look cluttered. You know there's always that risk when we give customers lots of options that we introduce indecision, right, into the decision making process. And so instead of just clicking something quickly, they stop and say, well wait, I could use this one or I could use this one or oh yeah, I meant to sign up for an Apple Pay account, maybe I should do that right now. So sometimes having less options are usually enough. As a website owner it's actually a better situation. So hopefully this discussion today was helpful as you start thinking through how you can best setup the payment options on your checkout to ensure as many of your customers as possible press that final place order button. Thanks so much for joining me today, I hope you had as much fun as I did. If you have feedback or ideas for future shows I would love to hear them. You can find me at SavvyBusinessMethod.com or on Facebook and YouTube. Also please be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes and Stitcher so you don't miss an episode. And of course, I would greatly appreciate if you could rate and review this podcast in iTunes because it really does help other people find it. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe. And for more great content and to stay up to date, visit SavvyBusinessMethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 002: Optimizing Your Website's Payment Options  

Episode 001: Six Ways to Grow Your Email List Using Your Website's Traffic   Episode Summary:  Your website is the source of your hottest leads so you need to collect as many email addresses as you can from visitors. In this episode, Julie walks you through small changes you can make to your existing website to give visitors multiple, well placed opportunities to sign up for your email marketing list.   Episode Links: https://www.shopify.com/  https://www.volusion.com/v2  https://www.bigcommerce.com/ https://magento.com/ https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/  https://savvybusinessmethod.com/  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHt2LynOZylOjlIz878okg https://fb.me/savvybusinessmethod    Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Business Method with your host Julie Feickert. Julie Feickert Hello, and welcome to the first official episode of The Savvy Business Method Podcast where we talk about how to plan, start, and grow your business online. I'm Julie Feickert, and my goal is to help you build practical business skills so you can provide a better life for your family. Our topic today is six ways to get more email signups on your website. Now, if you've been around eCommerce for a while, you've probably heard that it's really important to do email marketing. You may have even set up an email list and maybe collected some emails, but how one earth do you get from the three people on your email list, because you know it's you, your mom, and your best friend in the beginning, right? We all have to start our list somewhere. How do you get from those three people to a list of 10,000 subscribers, 50,000, 100,000, half a million? When we build an email list, we are looking for sustainable and significant revenue stream for our businesses, and so unfortunately, you do need those bigger numbers. Now, no question, there are many ways to collect email addresses and to build your list, but I want to talk today about the method that tends to be most effective for the least amount of cost, and that is collecting as many email addresses as possibilities from visitors to your website. Your website visitors are already on your website. They are familiar with your brand. They've seen your products, your information. They're going to be far easier to convince to part with their email addresses than random people on the Internet. Let's talk through how we optimize our websites and make small changes so that we can convince as many of our visitors as possible to give us their email address and start really building our email list. Now, the first method I want to talk about today is by far the most effective, and that is to have a popup that pops up when people enter your website, generally about two to five seconds after a visitor lands on your website. Of course, I'm sure you're very familiar with these. In the last few years, sites big and small have employed this technology, and they employ it because it's incredibly effective. Six years ago or so when I first put a popup on my website, I just felt like a terrible person. Here I was interrupting my visitors' experience. They had to stop and figure out whether to give me their email address. Popups were fairly popular at that point, but they still weren't everywhere like they are now. I really fought this idea. I had a few people who I really trusted say, "No. Nope, Julie, seriously, you have to do this," and I did, and you know what, I grew my email list drastically through having that popup. Popups are great because you can really test and figure out what works best for your website visitors. You can use different graphics, different wording, you can even have different offers. You could offer, say, a booklet of recipes, or you can offer a 10% off coupon or free shipping or something like that, and you can just keep testing and figure out what is the most effective way of convincing people to hand you their email address. Now, along those same lines, I'd also encourage you to put an exit intent popup on your website. This is very similar. It's generally a box or a page overlay that comes up, but this one is going to be triggered when it looks like someone is getting ready to leave your website. Generally, that is when their mouse cursor goes up over the URL bar or up into that top part of your site. That's how the system triggers as, "Oh, this person's about to leave. Let's show them the popup." Exit intent popups are really useful for a couple of things. One, of course, they're giving us another opportunity to collect an email address, which is the goal. We want as many email addresses as possible. The other nice thing about an exit intent popup is it can sometimes be another opportunity to help convince someone to purchase something, because as much as we want their email address, we'll get that if they buy something too. Buying something is always our top priority. With an exit intent popup, we might want to tailor our offers a little bit and say maybe free shipping or 10% off or something that could help a customer say, "Oh, wait. I was going to leave, but you know what, I think I'm going to stick around. I think I'm going to actually buy that thing." That would be the ideal outcome, right? We want to do that. Now, both these exit and entry popups might sound a little bit intimidating if you're not fairly tech-savvy, so let's just talk about this for a few minutes. You're really fortunate because the technology that's available now for website owners is so much easier to use than it was 5 or 10 years ago. Odds are good that the ecommerce software that underlies your website, so this would be Shopify, Volusion, BigCommerce, Magento, whatever you're using to run your website, generally speaking, there is probably some popup functionality built into your software. Now, whether it will be exactly what you want is a different matter entirely, but you probably have the built-in ability to do this. If you don't, or it's really not the level of functionality you need, then there are generally apps and plugins. This is a very popular marketing method, so there are actually a ton of options. You want to make sure you pick a system that does both entry and exit popups for sure. Other things that are really nice if you can find one are systems that allow you to do A/B testing, which is split testing, so that's where you create two separate popups, and you change one thing. Maybe you change the picture or you change what you're offering them. Then you run them both randomly to people. Everybody sees one random option, and then you can see which one performs better. That's a great feature if you could find a popup system that's affordable that allows you to do that. Another feature to look for when you're shopping for a popup system is if you can do any sort of strategic targeting. For example, can you put a different popup up for someone who's on a certain category page versus another category page? Let me give you a practical example of how this works, and I have personally see this work amazingly well for one of my businesses. Let's say you're running a camera equipment website, and you want to give people who are looking at buying camera bodies a booklet on comparing different types of cameras for different projects. You could set your system up to show them a popup that offers them that specific ebook in exchange for their email address if they're sitting on a product page that has to do with camera bodies. Then you could have a completely different offer for people who are visiting pages for camera accessories like tripods. Maybe you could offer them a handout that goes through the six pieces of equipment every beginning photographer needs, something like that. This can be incredibly effective because you're meeting people where they're at. Instead of giving them some random that you're hoping appeals to most people, you're giving them an offer that appeals to people in their much more specific circumstance. It is great option if you can do that with your popup system. Another way I see this used really effectively is to change the offers on the exit intent popups based on whether or not someone has something in their cart and even the value of their shopping cart. If they have something in their cart, you might want to offer them free shipping. If they have something, maybe they have hundreds of dollars in their cart, you may want to offer them free shipping plus 10% off, maybe a little bit better incentive. Again, if you have an ability to test and split-test your offers, you could potentially really dial in what works for different groups of people. You've probably caught on to the fact that I love popups. I think they are one of the most effective ways to build an email list using people who are already visiting my websites, so why wouldn't we just use popups? Well, I mean, there's some practical realities. Not everybody is ready to give you their email address the exact time that a popup appears. When they see that first popup come when they're on the site, maybe they really want to look around a bit. Maybe they want to make sure you're legitimate and that your products are what they're looking for before they give you their email address. There's another reason. There's that little evil thing called popup blocker, and a lot of people are running popup-blocking software these days. We need to be thinking about what are ways that we can capture email addresses from people who are possibly running some sort of popup-blocking software. Now, let's go through a couple of other ways that you would need to optimize your website so you can collect as many email addresses as possible, and none of these ways that I'm about to go through are going to collect as many as the popups. I mean, they're probably always going to be your best performers, but it is well worth your time to put at least some of these other options in place so that your customers have every possible opportunity to give you their email address. Let's look at a floating opt-in. Now, a floating opt-in is generally a shape or a bar sitting at the bottom of the screen. That's very common on mobile websites. This has some sort of offer on it: sign up for our newsletter, free ebook, get recipes, something like that, and it just sits in the same place on the website, even if someone is scrolling. Like on one of my ecommerce sites, I have a floating box that sits up on the upper right-hand corner, and even when you scroll through the site, it's always there, and it just says free ebook. If you click on it, you go to a landing page where you can enter your email address for the free ebook. Generally speaking, these floating opt-ins, in my experience, are like my number three most popular way to collect email addresses from visitors, and that's really just because it appears on every page and it's always there. But there's a couple of other options too. One is to add a static opt-in box to your content pages. When I'm talking about content pages, I am talking about pages that are there to support your product. Back to the camera example. If you have a camera equipment website, you might have a page that compares different types of cameras or different types of tripods, and it could be really useful on the side of the page to put some sort of static box that just sits there and collects email addresses. Now, if you're running a website that has more of a blog-style template, this can be really easy because you can just use one of the spaces that's normally dedicated through pushing through ads. You could just use one of those square boxes and put your collection information in there. Just having that on every content page is just yet another reinforcement of this idea of, "Hey, join our community, get this offer," whatever it is you're offering your customers so they can sign up for your email address. Also, in terms of your content pages, and this is the fifth way to make a minor change to your website, I would encourage you to put calls to action one every content page. This can be some messaging around "if you like our information," or "if you like our recipes, get more by signing up," and you can put that information in the middle of an article or at the end of the article, or both. If it's a long article, you could probably get away with putting it two or three times. Again, you're just reinforcing that idea of joining your community of getting more information from you. When people are reading your content pages, especially if they're getting half, three-quarters, all the way through that content, odds are good that they see your content just being valuable, so this can be a great time in that moment to really collect that email address. Number six on the ways that we can make small changes to our website so we can collect more email addresses is to link in the header or the footer of your website, or both. This could just be a link that says, "Sign up for our newsletter," or, "Get 10% off," or, "Free shipping," or, "Free ebook," or whatever your offer is. You could put it up in your header near your account information in your shopping cart, or you can stick it down in your footer near the About Me page and the link to your frequently asked questions, those sorts of things. That's six different ways that you can make small changes to your website. None of these are very difficult. Most of you will be able to accomplish these on your own over the next few days. These can make a big difference in the number of email addresses that you're able to collect. Now, when I'm talking to entrepreneurs in person, and I'm telling them that they need to do these six things on their website so they can collect more email addresses from visitors, I generally hear the same couple of objections over and over again. Let's talk about them briefly. The biggest objection I hear is that you're going to annoy your customers or seem really pushy. This is an objection that tends to keep people from doing any of these things, especially the popups because they feel more intrusive. Let's first step back and really think logically about this. None of these six things that we've talked about today is an uncommon thing to see on a large ecommerce website. This is simply good marketing practices. I'm willing to bet that most of your customers visit other ecommerce websites, and probably big ones, on a regular basis, and so none of these things are out of the ordinary or considered to be black hat tricks. This is all out there in the open, commonly used. But if these ideas are still giving you heartburn, never fear. You have an option. Hopefully, you have something like Google Analytics installed on your website. It's a system that helps you see the statistics of your visitors' behavior when they're on your website, and what you can do is you can put one or two of these things in place at a time, and then look at your numbers. Watch your numbers for a few days. You want to look and see, are your visitors leaving your website more quickly, are they still visiting the same number of pages per website, are they bouncing at a higher rate, and when we talk about bouncing, we're talking about people who visit our website, land on that one page, and then leave the website without going to any other pages. If those numbers are not changing, then you're probably not annoying any of your customers, or enough of your customers, I should say, to a point where this is going to be a problem for you. No joke. You're probably going to hear from one or two of them. Some people really hate marketing in all forms, but you want to look at the broader numbers. We never want to make decisions based on the complaints of one or two customers. We want to step back, look at the broader numbers. Is the behavior of most customers on my site changing? If it's not, that's great. Am I collecting more email addresses? If I am, great. Then it sounds like you're doing something that is working well for your website. All right, so one more thing before you run out and start making changes to your website. It is really important to stay up to date on any legal changes that happen concerning how we as website owners collect and use email addresses. Now, you may be aware that there was just a major change in the legal situation in the European Union when it comes to email marketing, and odds are good. There's probably going to be some changes in other parts of the world, including the United States in the foreseeable future. This is just something you really need to be aware of and keep up to date on. It's always nice to have a small business attorney handy to to ask questions so that you can make sure that you are staying well within the bounds of the law. But beyond that, I would really encourage you to use this opportunity to treat other people's information the same way that you would want your information treated. That means that when we send email, we want to be sending email only to people who knowingly signed up for our email list, who knew what they were signing up for, and we are sending them the information that they expected to receive. If you do that, it goes a long way. Thanks for listening. I am hopeful that you're all going to run out and start making changes to your website and collecting more email addresses today. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit that little subscribe button so you can be notified with each new episode, and if you are excited about what you learned today, I would really appreciate kind reviews and five-star ratings. I promise I will read every single review, and those ratings and reviews really do help other people find this podcast. If you have ideas for topics for future episodes, or you just want to get to know me better, visit me at savvybusinessmethod.com or on my Facebook page or YouTube channel. I would love to hear from you. Until next time. Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Savvy Business Method with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe, and for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 001: Six Ways to Grow Your Email List Using Your Website's Traffic  

Episode 000: About The Savvy Business Method Podcast   Episode Summary:  In this episode, meet host Julie Feickert and discover her journey from starting a tiny home-based business to building a multi-million dollar company as well as her passion for helping small business owners plan, start, and grow an online business of their own so they can create a better life for their family.   Episode Links: There are no links for this episode.   Episode Transcript: Announcer Are you looking to take your online business to the next level? Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Savvy Business Method, with your host, Julie Feickert. Julie FeickertHello, welcome to the Savvy Business Method podcast. My name is Julie Feickert and I will be your host. I'm so glad you're joining me today because I am passionate about helping small business owners plan, start and grow an online business. I have been there myself. Ten years ago, when I first started my online company, I didn't know a great deal about running an online business. I mean, I'd gone to business school, but that was a whole lot of theory, which can be great, but not much in the way of the practical skills. When I first started, I had this tiny website my husband built, and I had about 10 products. And my goal was to supplement our income so I didn't have to go back to teaching at the college at night. I had just had a baby and I was having a hard time with the idea of getting dressed up, putting my makeup on, driving in rush hour traffic, to teach for four hours until 10:00 at night, just to come home and get up and do it again the next day. So I thought surely I could start a small business online, right? Like lots of people do that. And in the beginning there, I did every single job myself. I answered every customer service email, I shipped every order, I did all the marketing. And much to my husband's amazement, my business started to grow. And it kept growing. And when I passed it off to a new owner a year ago, we had hundreds of products, millions of dollars in sales each year and a team of about 30 people. And along the way I learned two really important things. First I learned that running a successful online company is a combination of having practical knowledge and skills, putting in the work, and making good decisions along the way. See, I'm a realist. The idea of get rich quick schemes, that doesn't appeal to me at all. I have a family to support and I don't need any more stress in my life than absolutely necessary. My goal is always to build a business that is stable and sustainable. Second, I gained a better life for my family, one with more security and flexibility and for that, I will always be grateful. But something else started happening during those years too. When I would meet customers at shows, or people would email me, they'd often tell me how much they loved the company. And then they would tell me, "Oh, but I could never do what you've done." And that broke my heart. See, here's the thing, it's not true. I believe in the depths of my soul that many people can do what I've done. It's a matter of acquiring the knowledge and skills and doing the hard work and making good decisions along the way. What I did seems like a big thing. But it's really not. You don't do it all in one day, I promise. It's about waking up each day and doing the next thing and doing it well. So my goal with this podcast is to help you gain the knowledge and skills you need, so you can start and grow a successful business online. Maybe your goal is a side gig, to supplement your budget. We're going to talk through how to set systems up so you can be as efficient as possible and work on your schedule. I get it. You may have to do this on nights and weekends or during the kids nap times. Maybe your goal is to replace your family's income like I did. We will talk through how to grow the company while setting it up so you can manage it long term. Maybe you have big plans. Maybe you want to grow even further and provide jobs in your community. Well, I've got good news for you. The skills you need to run a company with up to say, 25 employees, really doesn't change greatly. And we'll talk through the ways it does so you can build those extra skills you need along the way. I am so excited to share this time with you. Please be sure to hit that little subscribe button in iTunes or Stitcher so you'll be notified with each new episode. I'd love to hear from you, and the questions you have about planning, starting and growing your business online. If you want to learn more about me and the Savvy Business Method, please be sure to check out savvybusinessmethod.com and visit me on Facebook and YouTube. See you soon. Announcer Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Savvy Business Method, with Julie Feickert. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review and subscribe, and for more great content and to stay up to date, visit savvybusinessmethod.com and Savvy Business Method on Facebook. We'll catch you next time.   Episode 000: About The Savvy Business Method Podcast

Psychic Medium, Author and Intuitive Life Coach, Michelle Beltran invites you to join her for The Intuitive Hour: Awaken Your Inner Voice. This podcast will teach you how to magnify the powers of your intuitive voice. In her own unique style, Michelle raises her vibrational energy to link with higher realms delivering insightful messages with grace, integrity, and the utmost care. Listen in and expand your understanding of what it means to be psychic and how to awaken, amplify, and trust your inner voice. Join the episode today as Kristen Noel, editor in chief of Best Self magazine, chats with Michelle to discuss her award-winning book, Take the Leap: What it Really Means to Be Psychic, delving into psychic abilities and the power of our own intuitive voices. An episode you don't want to miss! This interview was part of the popular 2017 Hay House World Summit!  Enjoy The Interview Transcript Below NOEL: Welcome to the 2017 Hay House World Summit. We’re grateful that you’re joining us. I’m Kristen Noel, editor in chief of Best Self magazine, and I’m excited to sit down today to chat with Michelle Beltran to discuss her book, Take the Leap: What it Really Means to Be Psychic, delving into psychic abilities and the power of our own intuitive voices. Michelle is a psychic medium, an author, and an intuitive coach. She has become a leading international authority in the spirituality arena, specializing in psychic functioning, spiritual counseling, controlled remote viewing, and mediumship. She is the owner of Readings with Michelle and the host of the iTunes podcast, The Intuitive Hour: Awaken Your Inner Voice. She is also a former professional cyclist and lifelong fitness enthusiast who deeply believes that by balancing health and nutrition, one promotes vitality and psychic intuitiveness. And I have to interject and say she has one of the most diverse backgrounds I have ever encountered. That has surely enriched her experience in this arena and in her work with her clients. Welcome, Michelle. BELTRAN: Hi, Kristen. Thank you so much, it’s an honor and pleasure to be here. NOEL: And we are pleased to have you. So now that we’ve sparked some of the inquisitive minds, I think we should just dive right into your background, because I was just kind of amazed by your story. And I would love for you to tell us how someone with a degree in political science who seeks a career as a law-enforcement officer, was in the United States Air Force, and worked as a probation officer becomes a psychic [laughs]. I think that’s a good place to start. BELTRAN: [Laughs] Excellent, yes, I love that question. Yeah, so I would say that in many ways, where I’ve come to does make sense, despite a career in law enforcement, despite a professional sport. I’ve had just the love and the passion and the desire for the metaphysical since a very young age. My first psychic reading was at nine—which I received, by the way, I did not give. I’ve found that I’ve used my gut sense and intuition throughout my life to guide me. I am a second-generation psychic. When I was young, my mother, as a healer and energy worker and psychic herself, made it really safe for us to talk about the unknown. Spiritual books we had strewn about our home. It was safe and okay to talk about other realms and human possibility. And so then, in my mid-twenties, I just developed this voracious appetite for the metaphysical and the psychic realm and found myself reading and rereading some of Hay House’s own—James Van Praagh, John Holland, Wayne Dyer, Deborah King. Reading and learning. And so, looking back, there’s a platform that was there. I will say it certainly found me, and I didn’t expect it. It just sort of unraveled. And so, yeah, it wasn’t the normal trajectory that I had as a law-enforcement officer, but I just love that. And I feel like that serves to convey the perspective that being psychic, being intuitive, whatever we want to call it, it’s normal, it’s natural, and it’s innate. And so— NOEL: I like how you use that word, that you— BELTRAN: Yeah. NOEL: —actually brought “normal” into it, because— BELTRAN: Yeah. NOEL: —we say, quote, unquote, a “normal” trajectory, but I don’t want you to gloss over it. Let’s go back for a second. BELTRAN: Yeah. NOEL: Because, you just covered, like, 20 years of your life. BELTRAN: [Laughs] Yeah. NOEL: And your childhood is so fascinating to me. So, we have these stereotypes, right, about what a psychic looks like. You know, they should have a crystal ball, and they should be more woo-woo, and more of a free spirit. And you describe this—sounded like you were like a feisty kid, because—I love when you shared the story about growing up in a house where your mom was a psychic, so this was all present around you. So you had, like you said, access to metaphysical books. Your mom was open to having these conversations of possibility, and yet, I loved when you described that you were this little kid who said, “Yeah, that’s all great, but I want proof. I want to see the proof.” BELTRAN: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. NOEL: [Laughs] So, let’s go back to that. What was it like growing up? What did it mean to you as a child? Did you understand what it meant to be psychic? BELTRAN: Right, good question. I love that. I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I didn’t know what it meant it there. At that age, I was—I found that I was very intrigued and curious, for sure, but I didn’t know what being a psychic meant. I knew that I had a sense growing up, and even young, and throughout my teens, even, that I could understand people—and many of our listeners may relate to this. I could go into a room and just kind of sense the energy that was there, and feel what felt good or maybe not so good about a situation, an event, and experience people. I found that people were coming to me often and wanting coaching and advice, and I noticed those things. I would describe it as it was more of an intuition or a gut sense or a real knowing of people. Maybe I felt like at times, I was a little a step ahead of—like, I could see what was coming. I had no idea it was what I would call now a psychic ability. It was sort of like the precursor to it, and the foundation. And I used it more in a gut sense in my work in law enforcement. It was what caused me to maybe go double-check that door or that facility, and for what reason, I didn’t know why, but had this pull to do it, and, well, hey, there was the burglary in progress or something going on. And we all have this. NOEL: Exactly. [Simultaneous talking] BELTRAN: Right. Yeah. NOEL: I was just thinking that. You know, you leave the house and you drive down the road, and you think, “Oh, my God, did I leave that candle burning? I’ve got to go back.” [Simultaneous talking] BELTRAN: Yeah, right. NOEL: And so, we get those hits. So, as a child, though, did you feel that there was something, that you had some kind of a different sense or a different gift? Was there anything that isolated you from maybe the quote, unquote, “normal” experience of childhood? BELTRAN: Not one thing. Just a sense of all these things I’ve just explained. I just—I felt so normal. I had a curiosity. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: And I’m glad you’ve asked this, because it reminds me of what I see so often in my work, and that is that there’s a very, very strong pattern in clients that I work with—and more often than not, what was right in our life or even maybe what was not so right in our life was going on around seven, eight, or nine. So usually—my point there is that around six, seven, eight, nine years old, we are often doing those things that we love. And much of the work that I do now, that’s where I take clients, back to that time, because we were doing what made us happy, what our calling was then. And even if we have some kind of blocks or stuck energy, it was usually around there, too, that sort of got embedded. So it’s a pretty critical time, and I’m no exception. At nine years old, eight years old, I was curious, right? I was doing what I loved, and I—which is so often the case later in life. Boom, here it came, and it blossomed, and I’m just following that calling. So that’s one of the things I actually do work on with my clients is going back to that time. “What was it you were doing then that you loved? Take it off the shelf, dust it off, and do it now.” NOEL: It’s like, remind yourself, right? Remind yourself of who you were. BELTRAN: Right. Yeah. NOEL: Was your mom a practicing psychic? BELTRAN: She was not practicing at that time. She went through her own formal education later, but she was very in tune with that right-brain activity. She’s an artist. She worked through art therapy as a means to assist others and coach and to travel down that therapeutic road, but for herself as well. A little bit later in life came her more formal education. But, again, it was in there. And for her, it was manifesting in this artistic way, again, which many, many of us do have. You know, this notion of, “What is a psychic?” Well, I actually tend to—the word psychic, I’m not sure it’s always correct. Psychic is really just intuition, it’s ESP, it’s altered states of consciousness, it’s moments of breakthroughs. It’s pockets of genius. It’s where the artist is, in that deep work. And many artists, my mom included, would talk about when they’re in that space of artistic right-brain work. That’s where we’re feeling connected to a whole or a source— NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: —where there’s a timeless, spaceless sense. That’s what it is, right? That’s where it starts. NOEL: It’s often that thing that gets bypassed, right? We call it other things. We’ll say, “Oh, it’s a coincidence,” you know, or— BELTRAN: Right. Oh, there are no coincidences. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: They are synchronicity. NOEL: Exactly. BELTRAN: [Laughs] NOEL: So, that’s also like—being around children, you realize how connected to that they are, and to that power. And so I think it’s also really important to just remind our children to stay connected to that so that they don’t have to go back years and decades later, searching for it again. So tell us about what was it, that at nine years old you said, “Okay, that’s it. I want the proof. I want to see psychic.” And how was that experience for you? BELTRAN: Yeah. So, yeah, it was more just a real curious time of exploration and, yes, wanting to see the proof, wanting to have answers. The most important thing, we’ve touched a little bit on that, about that experience was that at that age, here I was, nurturing something that was deep inside me that kind of had this calling energy and pursuing it. And it wasn’t so much about what came through in that session as much as that, at that age, here this was manifesting, and it was becoming a reality. I was curious, asking questions. NOEL: But that’s a pretty amazing thing for a nine-year-old to be clear enough about, to ask for, right? BELTRAN: [Laughs] Yeah. NOEL: So even if you didn’t really understand it at the time, I don’t think many nine-year-olds ask to have a psychic reading [laughs]. BELTRAN: Absolutely. Absolutely correct. And honestly, I’m not sure what moved me to that. I just don’t have an answer. I think mostly what happened is that I trusted that inner sense of desire and curiosity. My mother made it safe— NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: —and so, I could do it. One of the things that actually comes to mind is another session later, more later in my teens that I had, that really impacted me. And I went to a psychic, and she asked me to make three wishes or intentions, something along those lines. And she said, “Say them in your mind,” and so I did. And one of the things that has always been so important to me, from a young age, is to have peace of mind, to rest my head and just have peace of mind within me. And so I made these wishes, and she told me back my wishes, and she told me, “Peace of mind.” And from that moment, I said, “My goodness. She could not possibly know this. She could not possibly know this.” So that was a pretty pivotal moment. NOEL: Right, so— BELTRAN: I knew there was something here [laughs]. NOEL: So, going back to the feisty nine-year-old who was sort of demanding proof—“I want proof”—so, did— BELTRAN: Yes. NOEL: —do you feel like the seeds were planted then? Or was this later reading that really gave you the proof? BELTRAN: It wasn’t even this later reading that gave me the proof. I’ll tell you what gave me the proof. And that was when I actually started experiencing it myself. And so, I’ll back up a little bit. Like many people who come into this work, there’s often a bottoming out. There’s a time where there’s a loss of some kind, be it a loved one, a home, a job, health. I am no exception. And I happen to have—I just got hit with this big stick [laughs], and it all came tumbling down all at once—job, finance, home, relationship—boom, here it was. And, of course, the bottoming out is difficult, but it is always correlated to the extent of the forward momentum. And so, I just went in. I had no place to go by in, and I started developing spiritually internally, and that sort of launched me forward. And so, it was through this kind of bottoming out that I began learning more and then wanting the proof. And, of course, for me it took off quickly—images, impressions, clairvoyancy—boom, here it was. I couldn’t believe it. My jaw was dropping, and I had a very strong essence and feeling that “There is something very much bigger than me happening here.” And I have very clear memories of having a conversation with God at that time, saying, “Whatever this is, I don’t understand it, but it’s beautiful. It’s bigger than me. It’s happening. I want it rooted it rightness, or don’t bring it to me.” And so, it was awareness of how magnanimous this was. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: And, yeah, and so at that juncture— [Simultaneous talking] NOEL: So let’s also talk about the bottoming out for a second. BELTRAN: Yes. NOEL: Because I always call that a “wake-up call,” you know [laughs]. BELTRAN: Okay. Yes. NOEL: Yeah, you got your wake-up call. BELTRAN: Yes, I did. NOEL: Kind of like when we aimlessly continue on doing the same things by passing our emotions or whatever it is, repeating patterns. BELTRAN: Yes. NOEL: So, you had this experience that kind of knocked you for a loop, right? You had no ability to ignore this any longer, right? BELTRAN: Right. NOEL: Can you share a little bit of that so perhaps maybe somebody listening can relate to it? BELTRAN: Yeah. Yeah. It was this internal sense of—how could I put it to words? Okay, I began—it caused me to go in, and I started to ask the questions, “Why am I here? What am I meant to do? What is my calling?” And, you know, the typical nine-to-five job and having this and that, that car, that—you know, didn’t matter anymore. It was about me internally, my soul speaking, why am I here. I felt like I wanted to contribute, I wanted to give back, I wanted to grow spiritually. By the way, all of these things, there’s a few things that are very, very similar in all of us that I’ve learned along the way, and it seems like we all kind of do reach this point, no matter how we got there, of wanting to contribute, wanting to know more, wanting to have a significance in our life. And so, all of those things, this caused me to want. And so I knew, despite the despair, despite the difficulty of the time, I knew there was more, and I knew and I trusted that what was happening here was going to be the doorway. Like, this was the vehicle to that self-actualization. And that is—so, one of the things my teacher taught me early on—I used to think this was about being psychic when I first started. I thought, “Oh, this is so cool.” [Laughs] Well, it is. And my jaw does still drop, but it’s not about that. It’s about self-actualization and a vehicle to your forward momentum and letting your soul speak, following your calling. You know, being true to you, finding that true power. NOEL: Right. But, again, you had these seeds planted very, very young. Well, obviously, probably just born being aware of this. Do you feel like at any point, you were pushing back against it, or you were rebelling against it? Because being brought up in a house where this was an accepted conversation and then saying, “No, I think I’m going to table this right now, and I’m going to go to school, and I’m going to work in law enforcement”—and I’m sure it just really enriched the ultimate experience and your abilities—but talk about how that juxtaposition worked and how you melded those psychic abilities with the vocation that you were in. BELTRAN: Right. Yes. And so, early on, it wasn’t necessarily what I would call psychic ability. It was more intuition, gut sense, what we all have. And I was paying attention to my emotions. I learned very early on that my emotions were just the best compass system I had, and they would guide me. And so if there was sense of, “Well, I don’t know about this situation,” or this person, then I trusted that. Or if there was a sense of excitement about what was happening, “Okay, yes, this feels good, I’m going to do it.” And so I just tuned in to that. Those are what tendencies that typically an empath would have, that we see that in empathic people who are very in-tuned to emotion. And that’s how it first unraveled for me. It wasn’t until the formal psychic education and after my sort of bottoming out that I really began to see what it is and learn about psychic functioning and, really, essentially what was there all along. I just didn’t know it. NOEL: Right. And I also don’t want you to gloss over that, because you seem to me like the kind of person that’s like, “I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it all the way.” And you did— BELTRAN: [Laughs] NOEL: —you did go and have quite a bit of formal training. So was that during your time in law enforcement, or was it afterwards? And where was the—just take us through that. BELTRAN: Yes. It was in the time of law enforcement. It was actually when I was a probation officer, and it was inspired, interestingly, by a supervisor of mine, wonderful supervisor, and she had lost a family member. And so, I began reading at that time about loss of loved ones and mediumship. George Anderson, the father of mediumship, has several wonderful books out there, and so I got ahold of those books and read them and reread them, and I was just fascinated, fascinated, and all the while still curious and wanting the proof, right? [Laughs] NOEL: [Laughs] BELTRAN: Which ultimately, I did get. There is science behind this, and it is out there. So, that sort of sparked this time, I’d say maybe my late 20s or so, early 30s, and at that time when I just read and read and read all aspects of metaphysical—about meditation, about Akashic records, about energy work, about mediumships, all kinds of things. I just became kind of a sponge for this. So, that was my own learning. NOEL: Did you start to receive any messages about your friend’s loss? BELTRAN: That did not happen then. It did not. NOEL: But that was—that sparked you. [Simultaneous speaking] BELTRAN: It came from me. It inspired it, correct. NOEL: Okay, okay. BELTRAN: The actual, for me—and this may not—of course, this is certainly not someone else’s experience. Everyone is so unique in their development, I find, and I just love that. But, for me, it was when I started formal education and got in the care of teachers and experts where I felt safe, who I felt knew what they were doing. I had done research about all of this, and so that’s when it really started taking off for me. When I said—again, coupled with that bottoming out, where I really would say I was open, I was at such a place. And that’s the thing about a bottoming out. There’s no walls up anymore, inhibitions have dissolved, and we’re open. We tend to be willing to absorb instead of having these left-brain notions of what right or wrong is or should or shouldn’t be. I was just open. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: And I wanted to grow. So that platform allowed, I believe, once the education began coming in, a safe space for it to just flourish. And that’s when it really started coming in for me. NOEL: Tell us what training looks like. What kind of training did you have, and for how long, and with whom? Tell us, what does psychic training entail? BELTRAN: Sure. So it began for me in psychic development, psychic as opposed to mediumship. Psychic meaning connecting with our senses, receiving mental images and impressions through our senses; mediumship meaning connecting with spirits on the other side. So I started in psychic development at a school modeled after Berkeley Psychic Institute in Berkeley, California, and went through this training program. And then on the heels of that—or, actually, during that, I had my experience with mediumship, even though I didn’t know it at the time. And so, on the heels of that, I went into a three-month mediumship program. Once successfully completing that, I—one thing just leads to another as you—once you have the door open, the teacher [inaudible]. NOEL: Sure. BELTRAN: And it certainly did for me. And so, that then led into remote viewing, controlled remote viewing, and went through all the advanced levels there. Dr. Paul H. Smith is my teacher in remote viewing, and he was actually assigned to the military Stargate program, which is the military’s psychic-spy program. The military actually had a psychic spy program in response to Russia’s program at that time in the ’70s and ’80s, a very large budget. NOEL: So it’s like music to your ears. BELTRAN: Oh, yes. NOEL: See, this is why when you said, “in spite”—or “despite”—I was like, “No. Actually, now that I hear this, it’s so rich.” It’s so rich to have these experiences in these different worlds, because we’re in this world together, all of us. BELTRAN: Absolutely, absolutely. NOEL: So it’s the thing I love most about your bio, is that you’ve had—you’re really walking in these two different worlds. BELTRAN: Mm-hmm. Well, and interesting—I’m not sure they are two different words, Kristen. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: And we tend to view that— NOEL: It’s how we perceive them, right? BELTRAN: Correct, yes, yes. And that’s what you meant. We tend to look at this as this innate wonderful ability that we’re born with as separate from us. Like it’s something to achieve beyond us, and it’s just within us. We just have to say okay to it, right, and let it blossom. That’s it. It’s that simple. NOEL: Well, and also, unfortunately, again, speaking in stereotypes, you think of probation officers and law enforcement and maybe prison guards as being so hardened, and it’s really nice to actually think of someone like you working in that environment, connecting on a whole other level. And that’s really a beautiful thing. So you did your training because you’re just that kind of gal. You’re going to get your proof— BELTRAN: [Laughs] NOEL: —and do your work and get in there and have your degrees. When did you finally reach the juncture where you said, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to practice, and I’m going to take on clients”? BELTRAN: Right, yeah. So, that actually came through one of my teachers after graduation. I have very clear memories of that conversation, and I said to her, “Well, what’s next?” [Laughs] And she said to me, essentially, “Well, you hang your shingle.” NOEL: She kicked you right out the door [laughs]. BELTRAN: “You get out there, you do this.” She did. And thank goodness, because I did not have that in mind. I hadn’t thought about that. I was just intrigued by this wonderful ability. And here, now, it’s presenting us something that I could be a life calling and create a business with in much the same way she was. And so I said, “Okay, I trust this.” Despite the unknowns, or maybe even some of the doubts. And I knew that it was so much bigger than me, and I just trusted that knowing. And as humans, we know truth, we know when something’s right, and I felt that rightness and that truth in this. NOEL: Well, and also— BELTRAN: So I did. NOEL: And also, a great teacher, like a leader, a great leader creates leaders. BELTRAN: Yes, they [inaudible], yes. NOEL: So it’s wonderful that your teacher finally said, “Okay, you’re done. Out! Get out there— BELTRAN: Right. NOEL: —get out there and do your stuff,” right? And what was that like? BELTRAN: Absolutely. NOEL: What was it like when you finally—how did you get your first client? BELTRAN: Yeah, let me think. Okay. You know, I believe that this came through—in working with my teachers, that opened up some doors and funnels for clients. I believe it was maybe a contact through her. NOEL: Mm-hmm. BELTRAN: Gosh, I just can’t remember real clearly. But I believe it was some avenue through her. Also, then I just said, “Okay,” and what we typically do if we’re going to start a venture or a business in this day and age is we get a website going and we create a business card, and we give our business a name, and we begin sort of creating bios and all the nuts and bolts to create a business. And so, I did that. Put it out there [laughs]. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: Started linking with the social medias of the day, of the age, and it just took off. And I’m in gratitude every single day, every day. NOEL: Yeah. If you build it, they will come, right? BELTRAN: Yes, they will. NOEL: Well, but, again, just going to back to it’s a testament to having great teachers, because it’s also about creating, co-creating, and knowing that there’s room for all of us and that they can support you and send people your way, because you were ready. BELTRAN: Yes, yes, absolutely. NOEL: So, then let’s talk about this wonderful book. We have to talk about this book. BELTRAN: Okay. NOEL: So when did you have the inspiration, and when did you know it was time to write a book? And when did you know that there was a book to birth? BELTRAN: [Laughs] Good. I knew when I started getting requests for it. Students and clients wanted something that they could learn from, a development book. That started happening. Then I began to see—I just knew the value in it. I saw that from the get-go, that this is an avenue, a platform toward self-actualization. It changed my life, why not yours? You know when you do something and you love it so much—like, on the side, I dance, and so often, I’m in that dance space and I think to myself, “Everyone should do this. This is so awesome.” Well, it was the same thing with psychic work. “Everyone should do this. There’s value in this.” It changed my life; I want it to change yours. And so I wanted to get the message out. I wanted people to know it’s within us. It’s not separate, like we think. And the biggest thing was kind of going back to that tenet that it’s normal. Normal people do this. It’s not a five-feet-off-the-ground, unattainable thing. NOEL: Right. When we say “normal,” we’ll use our air quotes, right? [Laughs] BELTRAN: Yeah [laughs]. NOEL: Well, and the other thing I’m thinking while you’re saying that, is that connecting to our psychic ability and understanding it does not mean that we have to practice. It doesn’t mean we have to hang a shingle and make this our vocation, right? So it’s really about a deeper understanding of ourselves and our abilities and our true power and essence, correct? BELTRAN: Absolutely, and more often than not, the student that comes in to learn is pursuing it for that very reason, because they have that understanding. And they know—usually they have some level of some understanding that it’s going to assist them in that way and can. You know, when you’re in your true power, you’re able to help others— NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: —be in their true power. You said, a few moments ago, I will echo that—they have a sense about that. NOEL: Right. Well, think about it. It’s got to be the ultimate navigational tool through life, no matter what career you’re working in. To be able to use that tool in your relationships and your connection with people brings great value. BELTRAN: Yes. Well said. Yes. NOEL: So, describe how someone would use your book and what your real goal with this book is. BELTRAN: Okay, yes, good. So, okay, let me just first say this. I started Take the Leap with the discussion about intuition, and that was done for a very specific reason. I really wanted to show readers that they actually already have this natural and normal propensity or platform called their intuition. And if they could simply acknowledge, yes, that they’ve had one of those unique gut feelings or senses about something, a person, an event, or decision, something that they couldn’t explain, right, but which turned out to be right when they followed that gut sense, then their own personal experience would be their link, their connection, their evidence to kind of absorb this in. And what a great place to begin from, right? So that was a pretty pivotal point for the development of the book. And because of that—actually, one of my favorites quotes—can I share that with you, one of my most favorite quotes? NOEL: Yeah, I was just going to ask you. I was going to say—do you have the book with you? BELTRAN: I have it here, yeah. NOEL: You know what, I’d love to ask you to do two things. BELTRAN: Okay. NOEL: One, I know that you’re going to share, some of your favorite quotes or passages from the book, and then, two, I would love for you to just kind of randomly open the book and see where we land, and what’s the message we need to receive here in this conversation, you and I and our listeners? You can pick whatever order you want to do that in [laughs]. BELTRAN: Okay, wonderful. Okay, well, let’s talk about the quote if we could, about intuition. And so, what’s become one of my favorite quotes, based upon this sense of everyone having their own link to this ability— we can call it déjà vu—you know, it’s access through our dreams, gut sense. But one of my favorite quotes is this: “Given that intuition lives in the realm of the unexplained, you may be able to conclude that you already have the foundation for acquiring psychic abilities.” NOEL: Mmm. BELTRAN: So, naturally that gives—my intention and my hope was that that would give the reader permission to move forward based upon their own personal experience. They didn’t need me, they don’t need my book. They need their own internal sense in knowing that they actually have had this. NOEL: They just have to claim it. BELTRAN: Absolutely. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: Yeah. NOEL: And I know you had another quote, and I know we kind of moved past this very quickly, but it’s very important to you—the body-mind connection and honoring our vessels, right? And so, I think you have a quote for that, do you? BELTRAN: Yes. So, one of the things—my life’s theme has been one of health and wellness. That’s been so ever important to me. And what I’ve recognized is that the value of taking care of my body and the temple that it is. And I work that in a fair amount with clients in my own life, in my teachings—you know, giving attention to this temple, this body that we have. We only have one, right? And so, this idea that our higher power, that soul side of us, wants to be housed in a healthy vessel. So, one of my favorite quotes I’m looking at here in my book is, “It’s very difficult for a higher power to be housed in an unhealthy vessel.” Right? Higher power wants a healthy vessel. And so, when I talk about this, I always want to make it clear that this doesn’t mean that anyone goes and loses 20 pounds or gains 20 pounds, or whatever they—you know, it means just that you love your body now. You love who you are now, and you be happy with that. You nourish it, you rest, you hydrate, nutrition. But there’s also nourishment that comes from emotional self-healing and meditation. And so, that’s kind of my thought space behind that quote, and taking care of the body and how it relates to this work. NOEL: Yeah, that’s a wonderful point, and obviously, you have been a professional cyclist, so I think you’ve been taking care of your vessel. BELTRAN: [Laughs] Well, I’ve tried, and it’s certainly has helped, but, again, caring for your vessel, that was my journey, and so it just is simply just loving your body and giving it what it desires and living what healthy feels like to you. NOEL: So, do you want to just pick something randomly? It doesn’t have to be—even if you don’t land on a quote, maybe it would just pop into a certain section and you could describe maybe that chapter, or see what comes up. BELTRAN: Yeah, well, actually I did that, and what I’m coming to here, interestingly enough, is the section here in the writing about opening your clairvoyance, connecting with your visual reception, what that is and how to do that. And so, I guess, in a nutshell, what I would talk about here is just that third eye and that intention of seeing how to go about opening that third eye. I first start with a talk about your intention, right? Focused intention. We know that when we say, “Yes, I’m going to do this,” and we set that intention, that’s the first order of business, if you will. And so, in this chapter I talk about setting that intention. I talk a little bit here also about meditation. You know, Kristen, if I had a magic wand and I could wave it and make everyone do what I wanted, I’d have them meditate [laughs]. That’s not in the book. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: But that’s what I’m saying to you now as I look at this chapter on meditation and the value of it. NOEL: And I just have to tell you that this, you going—in this chapter, this was my next question. BELTRAN: Oh, my goodness. NOEL: Literally have my finger on it. BELTRAN: [Laughs] NOEL: So, you just let it roll, because it was my next question. BELTRAN: Okay. NOEL: You don’t need me here [Laughs]. BELTRAN: I love this. Yeah. Good. So, yeah, so, there’s so much goodness out there about meditation and how to do it and what it is. But truly, it’s going to be—I’ll say it’s going to be the simplest and the hardest thing you’ll ever do, because there is a natural tendency in meditation for us to think. We’re humans, we want to think. And so we have thought that wants to come in. And so that kind of can sometimes create a little bit of an obstacle, but it is so very powerful. It is what separates the good—let’s see—it’s what separates the very profound and veteran psychics and remote viewers and intuitives from, perhaps, those who may are more of a beginner or doing not quite as well, maybe, perhaps, as they’re desiring. It’s that meditation. And the reason is because in meditation, we learn to quiet our mind. We learn to close that left brain. And when we do that, we—the left brain is so powerful, it wants to try and come in and create what we think’s right. There’s these tendencies of trying to nail the target or nail what’s coming in or get—and that’s all ego. So meditation helps us to move away from that, so, very, very valuable. Even if a person was not practicing psychic development, I would say meditate. There’s so much research that shows the benefits of it emotionally, physically, mentally are dynamic, right? There’s even research that shows us that the brain actually will grow and change after 11 hours of meditation. Studies out there are showing that. So, very valuable. But, again, there is not any right way about meditation. I would say to listeners that meditation, really, in its strictest sense, it’s kind of—we think about meditation as being on the pillow, quiet, palms up, feet on the ground. But that runner that’s out getting that runner’s high, that artist that’s drawing that canvas, my mother and her clay work, that is also nurturing this side of us. So that, in essence, is somewhat like meditation as well. So the message here, that right brain, musical, artist, dance, bring it in, do it. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: For sure, that matters. NOEL: That leads me into my question, which is, how are we getting in our own way, and how are we blocking the third eye and our clairvoyance? BELTRAN: Right. Wonderful. I love that question. Okay. Couple things. There is a very innate, strong tendency within human nature to have a fear of failure. As a psychic intuitive, remote viewer, someone in mediumship, whatever modality you choose in the metaphysical psychic realm, you must be able to tolerate failure and not be obsessed with success. It can happen, and so, this is not an end-all, be-all. It is not going to give us all answers. In fact, we don’t want to have answers. And I teach my clients and students that the unknowns are safe, right? If we had all the knowns, we would actually go crazy. So we think we want them, but we don’t [laughs]. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: Right. And therein come dreams, right? Dreams is a way to process things in life, and such. So it’s okay to not have those knowns. I think people tend to get—fear comes when we aren’t educated, when we have the fear of failure. And, it’s okay to not have all the answers. Psychic functioning, psychic seeing is—think of it like bits of information; support, guidance, assistance. Okay, that’s the first thing I would say about that blockage question. The second thing would be about that, again, going back to that left brain. In the remote viewing realm, we call this mental noise. That’s where our left brain wants to leap forward into what we expect should be, right? NOEL: Mm-hmm. BELTRAN: So, okay, I’m going to describe something to you that I’m holding in my hand. Are you ready? NOEL: Sure. BELTRAN: I’ve got an object in my hand. It’s red, round, and it’s edible. Okay. So what most people do when they hear that is, instantly they do two things. They want to leap to, “Oh, what is that?” And maybe someone’s feeling that. NOEL: Yeah, and then you leap to, “I want to get it right.” [Laughs] BELTRAN: Exactly. “I want to nail that. I want to get it right.” NOEL: “I want to get the right answer.” Yeah. BELTRAN: And that’s ego, that’s pure ego, and there’s no place for that here. So, that mental noise, that’s one aspect we want to just—again, here comes that value of meditation that helps us to quiet that. And the second thing that usually happens there, when I teach this in class, is that a person will typically leap to, “Oh, it’s an apple, right? Red, round, edible.” And so, that’s an absolutely wonderful display of the power of your left brain, that tricky little left brain that wants to come in and get what it was, and it leaps to an apple as a conclusion when actually, this could have been a red hard-boiled Easter egg, a radish, a berry. You know, it could have been a number of things. But we tend to associate, we tend to leap to what is so closely related to us, or a recent experience. So the person that had an apple this morning or last night, that’s going to come in more powerfully. So, definitely, [inaudible] but not in the sense that we don’t overcome them. We have tools and development to alleviate them, and that comes with consistency, practice, right? Psychic development is very much like a muscle. We have to practice, practice, practice, like anything, right? Mozart just didn’t come out of the chute wonderful [laughs]. And his ability, or many other thought leaders or people who are experts at what they do, they practice. But in any event, these are some of the things that can limit us that certainly we can work through as we develop. NOEL: Yeah. And I want to ask you about something that you had mentioned to me earlier, a sensory field trip. Can you tell us what that is? BELTRAN: Yeah. NOEL: Can you describe that little field trip? BELTRAN: Yes. And that was also a part of the chapter that we flipped to a few moments ago. And in kind of expanding on that more, in addition to the meditation and spirit-development circles as you develop your ability, this sensory field trip is huge. It’s pretty dynamic. And so, essentially, what it is, is getting a deeper sense of your own inner senses, your heightened senses, your, what we call “clairabilities.” We have clairvoyance, which means clear seeing; clairaudience, which is clear hearing; clairgustance; clairolfactory— all these different sensibilities on a heightened sense. Our daily senses taken higher, right? So what I encourage my students to do is to go to a sensory-rich place—a zoo, a local grocery store or farmers market, where there’s a lot of sensory data happening. Take 30 or 40 minutes and experience it in a new way, right? We tend to have these blinders on and go in and get what we need and leave, but we never pay attention to what we’re really smelling and what we’re really seeing and what we’re hearing, and what direction it’s coming from. Looking high, looking low, feeling the temperature, what’s around us, what’s under our feet, noticing textures. All of these kinds of sensory-data kinds of inputs and influx, we want to go and pay attention to. Let go of that tunnel vision for a little bit, right, and really notice these things. What you do in this space is, you’re just essentially saying hello to your senses. You’re inviting them to come in. You’re opening the door to it, to them. One of the things that I really notice for my own self is, I started in my work with this, and which I actually do also see in students, is that often we have directional messages. It was from one of these experiences that I actually began to discover that something coming in—ultimately, what I realized was that something coming in from the far left meant past, something in front of me meant present, and something to the right was future. And so, that became a way for me to receive directionally. NOEL: Can I just interrupt you a second and ask you— BELTRAN: Yeah, please. NOEL: —could you just—like, for example, what kind of a thing would come in to the left? Like, what kind of sense? BELTRAN: Yeah, uh-huh. Good. For me in a session, it would be—because I am strongly clairvoyant, which means I see images—by the way, we often tend to have one or two of these abilities that are strongest, not just one. For me, it’s clear vision. I’m very in-tuned to that ability and clear hearing. So, in my case, it would be a vision coming in from the left, for example. For someone else who maybe has a different ability going on, they might hear something in that way, in that left ear. Okay, so I’ll give you an example. I had a client recently. We were working through her life calling and her future and doing some past work in her childhood. And from the past, an image came in of seeing her teaching a classroom. And I asked her about that, and she said, “My goodness, this is just incredible.” She had always wanted to teach, but it never—and, by the way, we spoke about this earlier— NOEL: Wow. BELTRAN: —that manifested for her when she was nine years old. NOEL: Right. BELTRAN: Nine, ten years old, in that time frame. And she said, “My goodness, I have had”—she had this dream or vision, something of the sort, about that, that she never forgot, but she didn’t let it come because, here again, those blocks, those silly blocks, right, and she had a little bit of an uncertainty around children. And so, we’re working through that. But now in her life, it’s coming forward, and she’s using that. So that picture, for me, came from that time, past, of her. So it would be something like that. Does that answer that question? NOEL: Yeah, no, it does, a lot. BELTRAN: Good. NOEL: Especially when you were talking about meditation. Because, again, for me, it’s often just about creating that quiet space. And that’s when a lot of visions come in, and those are the kinds of visions or inspiration that you can easily dismiss. But— BELTRAN: Yes. NOEL: —I really try to pay attention to that. And I love this notion of going into a market, because I have to tell you, when I go grocery shopping, it’s like, boom, boom, boom, and I’m not— BELTRAN: Exactly. NOEL: —I’m going down the same aisles, in the same direction— BELTRAN: [Laughs] NOEL: —picking up the same—and so, that’s really a great reminder for us to slow down and really experience what’s happening around us. BELTRAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I’ll add one interesting little caveat on a personal level, or kind of a story here. What I’ve noticed in doing all this work, when I come to a movie or watching television—I don’t watch it often, but when I do, I notice that—you know, we might be looking at the character who’s the main thing on the movie screen, but I notice the street name in the background, or I notice the color of the dress that the person across the street in the back’s wearing. So, what’s happened is my—just kind of expanding on your point here—that you’re opening up to more. You’re open, you’re receptive, you’re connected, you’re seeing beyond that tunnel vision. NOEL: It’s like you’re seeing layers. BELTRAN: And this is what natural— NOEL: Right? BELTRAN: Right. NOEL: Yeah. BELTRAN: Correct, yes. NOEL: So, honestly, I could talk to you about this all day, but I don’t want to crunch our time because I know you have this special gift for our listeners today, and you’re going to guide us in a modified version of your clairvoyant meditation, “Open the Third Eye,” and they’re also going to get this wonderful downloadable PDF if they would like to access. So I’m just going to turn this over to you right now to begin and to guide us. BELTRAN: Wonderful, excellent. Okay, very good. So, this is a meditation designed to assist you in opening your clairvoyance ability. I would ask that everyone put their feet flat on the ground, sit comfortably with their palms up, as we begin. All right. There is a dimension within you that is beyond this reality. It is that space void of minutes and days and has no semblance of time. Here, it matters not how old you are, what you look like, where you live, or who you know. Your life situation now has no relevance in this dimension of inner knowing and stillness. It is this place we go to in meditation today. Release the need to know yourself through concepts and thoughts. We’re going to a place where there is not knowing and where it is safe to release all thought, concern, and daily ongoings. You will be able to come back to all of that after this meditation. In a comfortable seated position with your feet flat on the ground, begin to give attention to your breath. Say hello to your breath. Relax, close your eyes, and breathe in. Feel the gentle and gradual rise and fall of your chest. Feel the expansion and compression of your lungs, your posture and body’s dignity. So be mindful of how you’re sitting. An upright posture is better. Become aware of and notice your entire body. If there are areas of stiffness or pain, release them. Now, put your attention on your forehead, above and between your eyes. This is where your third eye is located. This is the root of your clairvoyance. Here, you begin to strengthen, unravel, and become in tune with your clairvoyant ability. Let your attention be present in this space for a few moments. Next, envision a large, very large eye in this area. What does this eye look like to you? Are the lashes long or short? Is this eye almond shaped or round? Is there color? Visualize this third eye as larger than life. Imagine it, wide open and alive. Envision it pulsing, rich with life. Breathe and be present with this image of your third eye as it reveals itself to you fully. As you begin to become more aware of and in-tuned to your third eye, it awakens. Trust, intend, and expect this ability is strengthening. Once you set this intention, the universe has heard you. Your only task is to let the ability blossom. Even after this meditation is over, your third eye and your psychic ability is still flourishing. We’re now going to create your reading screen. A reading screen is a receptacle of sorts, much like a movie screen captures a movie. Your third eye and your reading screen work together and are as one. This receptacle will be a tool where you will see images and pictures of higher essence as you grow in your spiritual knowing. Images will present on your reading screen much the same way that you just imagined your largerthan-life third eye. Next, imagine this reading screen out in front of you. Make it be whatever you desire. You might imagine a movie screen, a computer screen, or a giant chalkboard. Whatever feels right to you, create this. Once it is created, look closely at the details of it. What color is it? How big is it? What is it made of? Let’s begin using your third eye and reading screen together. Picture an image releasing from your third eye. Let it go to this viewing receptacle. See the image present clearly and as detailed as possible. It doesn’t matter what image comes to your awareness, just let it come and be aware of it. What is this image you see? Is it big? Is it small? Is there color? If you could touch it, how would it feel? Are you unsure? Then reach out and touch it. Does it move? Do you smell anything? What sounds do you hear—chirps, bells, the wind? Gently become aware of all these details. We’re now going to open your third eye fully so that you can begin to access and open the door to your own intuition and psychic knowing. Place any finger from your hand between your eyes and above the bridge of your nose, then push up slightly toward the center of your forehead. Rotate your finger to the left a few times in a circular motion, then to the right a few times in a circular motion. Take a deep breath, inhale and exhale. This simple but profound action sends the message to your third eye to begin opening. Be mindful now of this wide-open eye as you go through your day. It is accessible at any time you desire. You need now only tune in to this space and receive. Gradually begin becoming aware of your breath again. Breathe in and breathe out. Bring your attention to your body and gently begin wiggling your toes and your hands. Breathe in and breathe out. Notice sounds around you. Breathe in and breathe out. When you’re ready, open your eyes. NOEL: Very powerful. And, I have to say, the biggest thing for me was, it felt like it was a minute. BELTRAN: Very powerful. NOEL: Really, really wonderful. And I want to thank you, Michelle, and no pun intended, but it has been a third-eye-opening delight speaking with you today. I am so grateful to you for that gift, that meditation. I don’t know where I just went, but [laughs] it was nice. And thank you for sharing your journey with us and for reminding us that we can trust our intuitive voices, and for making the connections that the practice of psychic energy will place us in a greater state of balance, and that our overall physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being will improve in doing so. And, I have to say, I don’t think I’m ever going to walk through a grocery store or a market and see it the same way ever again. BELTRAN: Wonderful. Well, thank you, Kristen. Truly an honor and pleasure. ANNOUNCER: Thanks for joining us for the Hay House World Summit 2017. We’re glad you’re a part of our community of spiritual seekers. We hope to continue to inspire you to make real life changes with messages from some of today’s best authors, speakers, and spiritu

Today’s show is dedicated to the hundreds of men, women and children killed in the November 24th attack on a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. As this won’t reach the front pages of many papers, let’s make an effort to lift it up as we contemplate the tragedy of any lost human, regardless of location, ethnicity or religion. Thoughts and prayers abound for those struggling for meaning today. ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜ Gloria Allred is a Women’s Rights advocate and attorney, representing clients in controversial cases, including those against Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby and Roy Moore. She’s a boss. If you or anybody you know is a victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault, there are actions you can take. Please don’t hesitate to speak out! Visit the link in the show description at http://www.feminist.org/911/harasswhatdo.html for more information. And yes, that includes you too, guys. While news and entertainment have taken the hot seat in recent sexual misconduct allegations, it is the service, retail, healthcare and manufacturing sectors that have the highest reporting of sexual harassment, suggesting that low-wage employees seen as dispensable suffer the highest rates of misconduct. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/24/the-industries-with-the-worst-sexual-harassment-problem/?utm_term=.577ba6a0d114 Show image from Freaktography via Flickr under Creative Commons Licensing. Show music provided by the Free Music Archive under Creative Commons Licensing. Today’s music is by Evil Bear Boris, Martin Beaulieu, The Joy Drops and BenJamin Banger. ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜ It must feel to many that the rate of sexual accusers in Hollywood, television and radio is growing faster than we can process it as a society. Meaning that before we have a chance to realize, internalize and analyze an appropriate verdict as a population - another name hits the front page. The speed at which this is occurring feels unprecedented. Just since October’s Majority Villain episode entitled, “Thaaat’s Harvey” citing the sexual deviance and misconduct of one of Hollywood’s most infamous producers, has the list of those accused of harassment, assault and misconduct only grown to include the likes of Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, and even public radio’s Charlie Rose. The latter three seemed to encapsulate the shocking reaction of America in it’s beloved, because none of them had the M.O. of what we imagine a slimy head of an office setting to act like. Not one of them were known in their comedy, acting, or interviews to be the typecast of a predator. Nonetheless, the list of witnesses, accuser and victims is growing, and the damage is real and evermore irrevocable. These topics are not funny, because assault is not funny. However, satire does have a duty in these moments by highlighting the absurdity with which the reality we all live in, and actively interact with, is painted. In no way should we make light of the trespasses, or engage in the very shameful act of victim blaming. Quite the contrary, as we venture instead to shame those who have acted for years as if revealing your member to any other non-consenting human could ever be appropriate. It’s not. But, like it or not, we live in a society where our favorite celebrities and politicians are constantly going to lie on the culture’s chopping block as we weed out from those who will continue to live on in our hearts, those who we will drop like hot frying pans. Sweaty, molesty, handsy frying pans. Please enjoy the show. ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜ Announcer: Hey there folks, thanks for coming out to the game today. Whether you’re here in the ballpark, or you’re listening from home, we’re happy to have you here in sunny Delaware as we head into the 6th inning of a showdown between planet Earth’s moral certitude and the normalcy of sexual assault in America’s patriarch; The Steel Supremes against the Grody Graybeards. If you’re just joining us, the Graybeards have been mostly unable to put a run up on the board, except that of any resounding dignity that might have been remaining. However, they were able to strike first in the second by crushing any dissidence on their multitudes of foul foul balls - I’ve truly never seen so many foul balls in all my years of baseball. That left an uphill road for the Supremes as only 70% of their runs were accounted for in the bottom of the first three innings. (BONK) Aaaand there goes another one. Yessiree, that glass ceiling sure prevents a lot from escaping here in Creeper Stadium. Supremes have the bases loaded, making the Graybeards look more and more uncertain from the field. Manager Donald Trump shows no signs of changing pitchers, and the bullpen appears to be sleeping. Looks like picking up pitching coach, Bill Cosby has shown few dividends for the struggling Graybeards —- AND A LINE DRIVE UP THE MIDDLE… As Gloria Allred strikes a ding dong danger between the feet of shortstop Kevin Spacey as he stands eying the 3rd baseman, Anthony Weiner. That’s definitely going to go down as an error. Kevin Spacey was playing the minors for a number of years, until he was finally dragged out of triple A to be a Graybeard… And a POP FLY will end the inning. The Supremes will head into the 7th inning stretch with a morally insurmountable lead. And now, here is a message from our sponsors at NPR. Interestingly, there was a moment in history when America’s favorite pastime tried to make a concerted effort to expose the true nature of sexism and harassment in America, by taking baseballs new single hit, “The Olde Ball Game”, and simply rebranding it, “The Olde Balls Game”. This song did not seem to resonate with the predominantly male spectators, and the song was soon replaced with the lyrics we know today. Here, in an original recording from 1931, as given to Majority Villain by New Jersey Public Radio, “The Olde Balls Game” as sung by Atlantic City’s own Rex Ferguson: 7th Inning Stretch The Old Balls Game Take me outta the cat call games, Take me outta them men crowds I’ll buy me a whistle and an ad-vo-cate, I don’t care if they never bounce back! For it’s boot, shoot, uproot those grabby bastards, If they acquit it’s a shame! Cos it’s 1, 1, 1 strike you’re done, At the Olde Balls Game! Consent to play ball! Announcer: Thanks for that fantastic piece of New Jersey history brought to you by Majority Villain’s Finer Moments, a collection of historical newsreels from the nation’s finest hour. Here we are, back in Creeper Stadium where left fielder Louis CK has utilized a trick play of his own; and the catcher has dropped the ball on strike three just as Mr. CK has removed his penis from his trousers. As everybody averts their eyes, CK safely makes his way to not just first base but second base too. Truly inconceivable baseball. I gotta say, it’s unbelievable to me that play still gets guys to second base, as the umpire is nowhere to be seen. And BAM - another smackaroo from the Senate Candidate Roy Moore right up the first base line - a real clutch hit as the Alabama Graybeard gets his hands all over that one. Trump is ecstatic in the dugout even telling Minnesota Al Franken to get away from the On Deck circle, even though the Senator has his own history of playing grab ball. But there’s a problem at third base! 6 runners unable to turn the corner as we’ve got a real back between second and third. 5 separate runners, all terrified to walk by Allred, as she looks to literally eat any one of the terrified men. Louis CK, looking to pull off another trick play talking "I’m sorry”, comes out leading the pack, hoping to get a step closer to home base, but the Supremes aren’t having it! An angry mob of mostly women have rushed the field and are literally consuming the men alive! Lord knows in all my years of announcing the greatest game on Earth, I have never seen anything like this. And there will be no golden gates for Louis CK, with or without the apology. Another heartbreaking development for the Grody Graybeards as the Steel Supremes rise up again to devour the home team here at Creeper stadium. Surely a rain delay will need to be called as maintenance team are already rushing the field to deal with the massive amounts of blood outpouring. From Delaware’s Creeper Stadium, this is Teddy McGimlets, and this is baseball today. ˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜ Now, this should not be something I or anybody should ever have to say, but “NO” means abso-fucking-lutely “NO”. Consent is king. Or queen. Or maybe we need to rethink even the language we use as a society to articulate the issues facing us. Some see the assault on vocabulary as a politically correct affront to the America that we’ve all grown to know and love (Donald Trump - locker room talk). Others see it as common sense - realizing long ago that the language we use reifies, as much as it describes, the social norms and practices we have come to love, know and expect. For example, consider the thought that strong women in family households are often labeled the old ball and chain, battleaxe, the one who wears the pants, or more bluntly and far-less creative: the bitch. Confer those labels that most of us have at one time or another said, thought or heard to those of men in households: the breadwinner, man of the house, king. Seriously, make a list someday and shock even yourself of the degree of absurdity we have in labeling women as sluts, whores, nags or bitches and men having ridiculously regal titles like pimp, pimpalicious, pimpadocious, and pimpbuktu. Sure, it’s funny. But is it really? Why is a man “assertive” in the workplace while a woman is “bossy”? Why is a man “informed” on workplace ongoings, and a woman is a “gossip”? The truth is over 90% of us hear these types of terms regularly in the workplace or home, and yet we do nothing. We say nothing. We treat it like nothing. Maybe that’s because to many of us it is nothing. But to the women, some men, and large swaths of communities of LGBTQ - it is everything. Be an ally, not a co-conspirator. Be a hero, not a pussy. Oh look, I did it again. Let’s see… Be a hero, not a limp dick. There. That’s better.

Ever wonder how the top guys actually make fortunes in MLM? Join us now to hear secrets of the "big guys"... Steve Larsen: What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now this is part six of six. This is the last segment of this whole series. We're gonna talk about MLM funnels. MLM funnels, this is gonna be a little bit of a different sub interview than the other five so far, and the reason being is because in the other five, I have always been interviewing an actual funnel builder, right? Somebody who put the funnel together for their business, their industry, whatever it was. This is a little bit of a different scenario, I have an opportunity to interview an amazing gentleman who has built MLM the traditional way, but without bothering the family members and friends... You guys know that's my whole thing and so, we're gonna learn how he did that without using heavy tech like I use. Does that make sense? So it's kind of a rare look at this. He's done both seven figures personally, both in his MLM, but also in traditional business. Anyway, he's a very, very rare take on MLM and what it takes to be successful with it. Then what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna show you guys, or rather talk about and teach, why I have an MLM funnel myself and what it does and what it's done for me, and the whole psychology behind it because it's amazing. I've never seen anybody else do it. There's one other guy who kind of came close, but even then, it actually won't do the full thing that this does. Anyway, I'm excited for this interview. Even if you're not an MLM, I think you'll enjoy the tactics that he uses and how he manages his own business, 'cause I think if we were all to manage his MLM business the way we manage our personal ones, our actual lives would get mentally quieter. There wouldn't be so much noise in our head. Anyway, let's get into the interview... Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Alright you guys, I am super excited that you're here listening with me today. We have a very unique opportunity to hear from, honestly, one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. I actually only met him only a month or two ago, but right off the bat I could tell something was different. I have on the call with me Mr. Jon Penkert, who alone inside of the MLM industry, he's one of the top income earners. He's one of those rare guys that has done both seven figures in regular business, but also seven figures in the network marketing business. One of the things he's taught me is that most people only recruit two and half, two to three people into their MLM business ever. And to say that he's done, which is true, over $500 million in his own downline is absolutely amazing. Anyway, I'm excited to have Mr. Jon Penkert here with me. How are you doing man? Jon Penkert: Hey! Good morning Steve and thanks for having me on the call. It's a privilege to be speaking with you. Steve Larsen: I'm really excited that you're here. This is a very unique take. Most of the time when you hear the word MLM, I'm sure you were the exact same, you tend to run the other way. Most people do anyway, and I know that you've figured out though the way that this whole thing works. But before we jump into that, I actually wanted to ask, how did you get into MLM? Jon Penkert: Well, I was an entrepreneur out of college and moved to southern California. I wanted to take advantage of the business opportunities there and leverage my skills and my degree. When I arrived in California, you know it's kind of the mecca for network marketing, I never really heard of MLM. So, a friend of mine invited me to a meeting and I was very skeptical... It just seemed too good to be true. I couldn't believe all the money they were making. I was like, "Man, I gotta check this out." And it's funny, you say that people run from MLM. What happened is, I started getting involved in network marketing and then people started running from me. Steve Larsen: Exactly! Jon Penkert: I learned very quickly that this MLM business, it's rife with problems. You end up losing a lot of your friends in the beginning 'cause you don't understand what's required to be successful, you don't understand that the key ingredients to network marketing that makes successful champions are no different than any other facet of life. Whether it's business or music or sports, there's a formula to success. Once you figure that out, and you embrace the formula, then guess what? You begin to have this success that you long for... Steve Larsen: Now, did you know what that formula was when you first started? Jon Penkert: No. As a matter of fact, I have about 10 years of pain, which means failure. I learned that success is built on the back of failure. I used to tell people, "I'm the biggest loser in network marketing," because I tried everything and did it wrong. So, I got about 10 years of pain before I figured out, "You know what? There's gotta be a smarter way to do this." Steve Larsen: That's amazing. So, when you first joined though, what happened? What was all that failure? Most people don't talk about the failure parts, but I think we can all relate to it. Jon Penkert: Well, I don't fail small. I failed big. Back in the 80's people in California were making $30,000 a month in network marketing and there was a company called FundAmerica. You can research it... It actually is the case that all the case law studies. It changed the industry, because back then, you paid a lot of money for your membership fees. It was high membership fee to get involved in these clubs, these MLM clubs. The federal government shut them down for illegal Ponzi scheme, and so the big boys like Herbalife and Amway, they all went to school on that and they changed how they come to market. So all the case law for network marketing was really centered around that FundAmerica. You can do the research on the lawsuit. They came out on the other side nine months later innocent and not being convicted of a Ponzi scheme 'cause it wasn't, but it ruined the business opportunity and all the downline had dissipated. All of us that got involved and began to build saw the rug literally pulled out from under us in what we thought was the biggest opportunity of our life and we were all gonna become millionaires. The truth is, you realize if you don't have experienced leaders that have set a foundation to do it right, you're gonna get taken out and there's a lot of examples of that today but the case law began with that FundAmerica opportunity that I was knee deep in and got the rug pulled out from under me. Steve Larsen: So you came in while that was all going on then? Jon Penkert: Yeah, actually I had the misfortune of coming in at the end. I got all my guys in and we started running right as they closed the doors. Steve Larsen: Oh man! Oh my gosh. Jon Penkert: Yeah. Steve Larsen: Did you pick up and go obviously to somewhere else then I'm sure? Jon Penkert: Yeah. Then I got into a couple other companies. I tried the travel industry, it's big in network marketing, and I tried supplements. That's also big in network marketing. The number one product in network marketing is weight loss. We live in a culture that suffers from obesity and everybody wants the quick fix. There's a formula to losing weight, but everybody wants to take a pill so often times in network marketing, companies begin with weight loss. It's very common. The problem with weight loss, for those of you that are in weight loss know that 90 to 120 days into the journey people do one of two things. They lose the weight and get off your product, or they don't lose the weight and they blame your product. You lose your residual income often times in weight loss 'cause people don't stay loyal to the product. Weight loss is a tough way to create residual income. Steve Larsen: Interesting. That is fascinating. So did you deliberately steer away from that? You're asking questions that most people who are brand new in MLM never ask. You know? An awareness of the economy and the market and what's selling and what isn't, it's through the roof. It probably wasn't like that at the beginning though I'm sure, was it? Jon Penkert: Well, it's not. When you look at an opportunity, most people get involved in an opportunity because it's based on hype, right? My really good friend found this product they love and now I love it. We're gonna get rich together, and we're gonna do network marketing. Those are not good reasons to join a network marketing company. Unfortunately, that's how most people get involved in network marketing and then when they don't make the money, then they're like, "Oh, what happened?" There's five pillars of things that are important in network marketing. For those of your listeners that want to do the ... I was like, "Where do I find out about how to be successful?" Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: Harvard Business Review actually has a study on MLMs and what it takes to be successful. Go read it. Google it and find out here's the key ingredients that you need to be successful in network marketing. It's out there. It's not a secret. Steve Larsen: That's fascinating. So you go into, was it FundAmerica? And they kind of go under and go through all that big stuff, and then you transfer to another MLM. Now, were you successful you'd say in that one, or were you still learning what it took to be successful with it? Jon Penkert: Yeah. Well, I'm a type A driver and I'm very success oriented. I'm a guy that I'm gonna just try to make it work. I've done a lot of network marketing opportunities, but where I had the light bulb moment, the aha moment, was when one of my friends said ... I said, "Hey, get involved in this one and we're making a lot of money and we're driving the new cars and we're doing all this stuff." And he looked at me and he said, "Jon, you always get the car but none of the rest of us do." That was where I went, "Wait a minute." Steve Larsen: Powerful. Jon Penkert: It's not about how much money I can make or what I can do, I want to find an opportunity where I can mentor people and help them drive the new car. So that was a paradigm shift in my thought process. I said, "You know what? I have to look for something ..." There's a word that is abused in network marketing it's called duplication. I got news for you guys, everything duplicates. Success duplicates and so does failure. If you're using your influence to build your network marketing business, it's not duplicatable and ultimately will fail because your people don't have your influence. But, if you have a system that people can follow to make money, the system will duplicate and then you have an opportunity in network marketing to create a sustainable residual income. The system has to duplicate, you can't just use your influence and that's when the light bulb went off for me. I said, "You know what? It's not good enough for me to be able to do it, I have to enroll people on the journey and will help them actually accomplish their goals." Steve Larsen: That's huge. So from that point on, you went forward and just noticed that it's got to be a system that's duplicatable, rather than you being duplicatable. System wise, what did you go create? What was it that you knew that you had to go do? Jon Penkert: Well, the first thing that I do when I look at a network marketing company, is I say, "Look, I need 90 days to see if the system duplicates." Because once you begin ... most people make the mistake of measuring their success on their signup bonuses, right? "Hey, I went out and got a few people to sign up and they got some people to sign up, and in the first 30 days I made $3,000." That's not a duplicatable system, that's a sales job. The money you make on the front end isn't as important as if I sign you up Steve, and how much money do I make on you four months from now when you're on auto ship? That's the key. Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: Because if I want a residual income, it's not your sign up bonuses, but it's your monthly auto ship that creates an income for me. Now, if I have a product that doesn't have a monthly auto ship component, you can't create residual income. It's gotta be something that you need or want every month, right? Most people will buy something for a couple of months, but is it sustainable? What does that mean? Well, is it something that, as a consumer, six months from now you're still gonna buy? Because if you're not gonna buy it then I don't have a residual income stream, so I always measure the opportunity not how much money do I make up front, but what kind of residual incomes am I making on an auto ship function three, four, five months out? Then I look at the percentages of growth. If my growth percentage is there, then I've got something. Not the paycheck. If you look at your paycheck in the first two or three months of any opportunity, and measure the long term viability, you're making a mistake. Steve Larsen: Fascinating. Okay, so 90 to prove the system, gotta have the monthly auto ship as a component to the MLM you choose, what other components should people look for when they are choosing one? Jon Penkert: There's a saying in business, remember I'm a ... one of the things that made me successful in network marketing is realizing that my entrepreneurship business skills, in traditional business, they don't translate well to network marketing. When you try to bring your skill set from a traditional business model into network marketing, it doesn't work. It doesn't translate. Steve Larsen: Like what? What do you mean? Jon Penkert: Well, entrepreneurship requires a skill set where you have an ability to take risks and make very quick decisions and cut your losers fast and leverage a skill set more than a system. You try to bring your skills into network marketing it doesn't work because why? [caption id="attachment_1194" align="alignleft" width="430"] Business Colleagues Together Teamwork Working Office[/caption] You're managing a volunteer army, nobody works for you. It's like a sports team, right? Everyone's part of the team and we want to win together, but since no one works for me, I can't hold them accountable. I have to motivate them, which is why network marketing often times leverages self help. Become a better version of yourself, work on yourself. Steve Larsen: Fascinating. Jon Penkert: Because the stronger self you have, the more people you're gonna lead. Steve Larsen: Fascinating. It is all about the motivation then for that. I didn't realize ... I mean, I knew that MLMs kind of like bus op wrapped around ... with the personal development wrapped around it, but that's a fascinating way to describe that though. I've never thought of it that way. Jon Penkert: You said what's important? What do I look for? Sports parallels business that parallels network marketing, and what am I talking about? Leadership is the number one thing that has the biggest impact on your success. Why is that? Because the rate of the pack is determined by the speed of the leader and it doesn't matter if you look at successful sports teams or businesses or network marketing, you gotta have good leadership. That's one of the things that I leverage going into an opportunity is are the leaders experienced? Are they just a bunch of guys that found a product and have never run a network marketing company? Or are their leaders proficient at the global business model? Because, listen you guys, today network marketing is the business model of the 21st century. There is no greater. What you are going to get paid to do is monetize networks that you build globally, not networks locally in a local market, but your ability to sell products and services globally in a global market place. Which means what? Language conversion, currency conversion. You monetize global networks, you want to be with a leader who's done that before. Somebody who's opened up other countries. Someone who understands logistically how to deliver products into those countries because you can have the greatest product in the world but if you don't have a leadership team that can deliver, you're gonna end up with a lot of unhappy customers. Steve Larsen: What are you doing to train people below you to become leaders? Like you said, that really does seem where all that duplication is even possible. Jon Penkert: I have my own philosophy on leadership. In the leadership circles, I've studied leadership and there's a great argument in leadership, and it's are leaders created or are they born? Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: They go back and forth on that question. The truth is it's neither. Leaders aren't born. You're not a born leader and you can't just choose someone and create a leader. Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: I like to look at leadership one of two ways. You're either a cheerleader, which sits at the back of the room and encourages everybody to be the best they can be and go out there and charge and go do it. Then there's the servant leader that says, "You know what? I'm going first. I'm gonna go and go across the river and swim across and make sure it's not dangerous and make sure it's attainable. And then I'm gonna encourage my people to follow me." Leaders are neither born nor created, leaders are chosen... The masses will choose to follow you if you're cutting the path and doing the right things and having the success. Success attracts success. So as a leader moves forward quickly, there creates a vacuum that people will follow. So my definition of a leader, first and foremost, is the visionary who's following the path and setting the right example and the people will follow. Steve Larsen: That is definitely the best definition of leadership I've ever heard. Okay, a cheerleader or a servant leader and you're chosen by others based on you cutting the path and being an example. Wow, that's amazing! So you go out and you're teaching others to do that obviously, because you've chosen an MLM with the monthly auto ship and you have to develop new skills, you now have the potential for actual residual income. What are you doing to actually find people? It was fascinating, you told me when I first met you ... what do you say? The average person recruits only like 2.3 people in their life ever? Jon Penkert: Well the industry standard, and look, these are standards. Jim Rohn is a great leader and champion of network marketing. You can't beat the system and the system says the average person is gonna recruit 2.5 people in their career. So what network marketing companies try to do is they try to attract the superstar recruiters that are gonna recruit 200 people, but just do the math. Eventually, if you have a system that requires the average person to recruit more than 2.5 people for instance, well you're gonna set them up to fail. You can't beat, basically, the laws in network marketing. Steve Larsen: Interesting. Okay, so one of the other pieces you've taught just floored me. I mean, I just was blown away by this strategy. Before I did any marketing, I actually was going into CIT. I was gonna be a programmer, and I was learning about these things called binaries but you dropped that word and it meant something totally different for MLM world. Do you mind describing what it is that you were sharing with me? Jon Penkert: Well let's take a step back. The one thing that's consistent in life is change. Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: Change is always gonna happen. If you'd have come to me 10 years ago and said, "Jon, I got an MLM and it's a binary. Will you join?" I don't want to join that because an old school definition of a binary, the way they set them up really hurt people. The fairest comp plan was the uni-level. There's matrix and there's different comp plan styles and different hybrids, but all of the legacy companies ran a uni-level platform. The truth is, in a uni-level, you've gotta bring your 20 friends into a room, get them signed up, push them out, say, "Go get your own 20 friends. That's how I make residual income, but you gotta go to work and get a job." Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: That really catered to the type A drivers who could recruit, but it doesn't help the average person. Why? Because the average person is only gonna bring in a couple of people and now you need a front line of 20. So it begins to unravel. Now I say that, I made a lot of money in uni-levels, but today, the hybrid binary's serve the masses the very best. Now why do I say that? Because if you have a system where the average person is gonna get 2.5 people recruited and you have a three-legged system, four-legged system, five-legged system to be successful, you're setting yourself up to fail. But if you have a binary system, which is a two-legged system, and you're building a team and 100% of the people as the recruiter that you bring in, either go onto your left team or your right team, that means each person benefits from not only your ability to recruit, but I've set them up to succeed because their 2.5 people does what? It qualifies them. One left, one right and now they have at least a half a person overflow into their downline, so now every person's adding to this success of the system and the system supports the 2.5 people they're gonna get. If that makes sense. I know sometimes when you talk about numbers, people get a little foggy but that's the reason the binaries today are the best leverage point to create residual income. Steve Larsen: So for example then, just so everyone understands on who's listening as well, my first month of MLM was a classic example of ultimate failure. I did a great job of recruiting people. I literally went down Main Street and I recruited 13 people in that first month, but I spread them so wide. You know? They were out all over the place, and you're saying that's not what I should do, right? Jon Penkert: Yeah, let's look at it. I like analogies in life. If you take a very large room and you have all of these light bulbs that are lighting the room, the light source defuses the light and it lights the room. Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: But that's not maximizing the energy. Laser beams maximize the energy. If you took all the light and you focus it into a small beam you can cut steel with it. When I'm running a team, as a leader, I want to maximize their efficiency. I don't want them focused on 10 legs on their front line, I want them to run this business with maximum leverage. Two-legged systems does what? It focuses their time and energy in basically two streams, so you're not defusing your energy. You're focusing energy and your teams can run faster. Steve Larsen: Just in case people don't understand also the lingo or jargon, you're saying only two-legged meaning I'm only gonna put two people directly below me, right? And then try and do that for the people below them also, right? Jon Penkert: Yeah. In a binary system, I sign you up Steven and you go get two people. One left, one right. They get two people. One left, one right. Now, when you get the third person in the business, it has to go under Team A or Team B. Now, what's happened is those people that have joined you in the business opportunity, they take advantage of their upline, your ability to recruit, to help them build their residual income. That's powerful... That's what J. Paul Getty said when he said, "Look, I'd rather have 1% of a hundred people's energy, than a 100% of my own." Right! I want to join a team of leaders that are recruiting because I'm gonna bring my two people, and my people are gonna bring their two people. Then, the overflow, you have an opportunity now to gain the advantage of your upline's recruiting ability. If that makes sense. Steve Larsen: Yeah, it really does actually. That's fascinating. Now, when you were saying that all binaries are not created equally as well, I guess compared to what you just said right there, could you show what a bad binary would look like? Jon Penkert: Well, I hesitate to step into that because there's a lot of people that make extraordinary incomes in uni-levels, and extraordinary incomes at what I would consider a bad binary. There's good binaries and there's, let's say, better binaries. Right? I look for best in class and there's a series of things that are qualifiers that will tell me, "Is this a good deal or isn't it." Honestly, I'm gonna step aside for a second you guys. Look, you don't do this business by yourself. When I lead people, I tell them, "Look, you're a sum total of the five people that most influence you. Who are the five people that surround you?" My life is no different. I've got very good leaders around me that I consult with. When we look at a comp plan, I don't look at it by myself. I get my business partners to pick it apart as well 'cause I'll only see a certain deficiency, but I've got guys that break it down. They go, "Look, here's why it'll succeed and here's why it won't." I don't just rely on my own ability to analyze. I've got strong partners around me and each of you should do that. Your upline, your upline's leadership, and the downline, the people that you're attracting into your business. You have to surround yourself with strong people. That's a business acumen issue, that's not just MLM. It's good business. Steve Larsen: You've completely opened my eyes to more of these. The way you run the business is fascinating. Even the fact that you said, that I have a business card. Why don't you have your own business card to hand out to everyone? You don't run it really cool man. It's so awesome. Jon Penkert: I don't have a business card because I want my people to trust me. As a leader, if you lose trust, you lose everything. So when I go in and speak, I'll speak in front of rooms of 20 people and 2,000 people, but what happens is people come up to me and they say, "Hey, Jon. I want to join your team. I want to be apart of your deal. Or do you have a business card so I can contact you?" I'm not there to recruit my people's people. The only way you get ahold of me is really through one of my leaders. So I don't have a business card because I'm not looking to recruit anybody. The other thing is what I've learned in the business as well is, even if I come across a cold prospect on an airplane if I give them my business card, I have a 100% chance of them never calling me. They just don't follow up. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Jon Penkert: But if i say, "You know what? I don't have a card but let me get your number and I'll follow up with you." Now I've taken control of the relationship. It's amazing how I always have a chance to follow up with them if I don't give them a business card. It's part of a business progress, but it's also part of my leadership where I don't want people thinking I'm gonna cross-recruit their people. I work for them, and when I'm in one of their business meetings, then you can always contact me through them. If they want to give out my phone number, they can. That brings up another subject that you ... I'm gonna keep rambling here. Steve Larsen: Nah, I love it. Jon Penkert: What happens is, as you build these teams ... I've only recruited, best effort, between 30 and 40 people in any network marketing company I've ever been in because once you start building a team, I start working for my downline. Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: So when I go into your home, I meet your 20 people, guess what? There's two or three of them that want me to help them build their business and I meet their 20 people. The masses that I've created, I've done one person at a time partnering with them and building their business. So I don't have to recruit a lot of people personally. All I have to do is be a leader and work with my downline and the masses will come if you do that. Steve Larsen: Yeah, it's great. It's absolutely great. And so, if you go out and you have that servant leader attitude, obviously that we've been talking about, and ... Anyway, I'm taking huge notes right now, just so you know. I'm drawing circles around all the key pieces and putting it together because this is really awesome. I hope all you guys listening are doing that too. I do that for every one of the people I interview. This is really, really interesting. So, if I'm brand new in MLM, brand spanking new or say I just joined a new one or whatever, what are the first key pieces you'd have me do as a new person into an MLM? Let's say it's in the chosen one you like where there's a binary with it, there's auto ship, all the pieces are play. What would my roles be? Jon Penkert: Well, I would seek, as fast as I can, who's in my upline and who the leaders are because the upline leaders are waiting for their phone to ring with their downline because they want to work with them and they want to help build the business. You might as well leverage their experience because I guarantee you're two friends that you bring in, they don't know anything more about the company than you do. Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: The closer you can get to your upline leadership, the better that it is. I tell you what, here's what I wish I would have done and for all you guys that are new to the business, I wish when I was out of college I would have gone and looked in ... You know, the DSA today, there's about 20 to 22 legacy companies that do over a billion dollars. We're in an industry that does $130 billion globally. There's about 20 companies that actually do over a billion. I wish that I would have found a product that I really liked and believed in, and then joined the legacy company for a couple reasons. Because then I would have learned the successful tactics and strategies of a network marketing company and I would've got connected to leaders in the industry because if you think that five years from now, somebody's not gonna come out with the latest and greatest something and turn it into a network marketing company, you're wrong. The relationships that you build will sustain you throughout your career. So, I wish I would have just gotten involved in really good companies and learned some principles and met amazing leaders because that's what network marketing's about. It's about connecting great leaders. Any of your listeners, go find a good company and get involved with them, not because you're ... I hope that you spend the next 20 years with them, but you probably won't because the truth is, when you're looking for a good network marketing opportunity, the one thing that I cannot teach or coach you is something called timing. Well, the time to get in those companies, honestly, was 20 years ago when they started. Right? Now you're not gonna create ... it would be a rare person, somebody probably will to prove me wrong but, the average person isn't probably gonna get in there and create an extraordinary six figure income because they've had their run. I want to look for a company that's been around for a couple years, they've got their ground work underneath them, they're doing 40 to 50 million a year, and they haven't hit momentum. The key is pre-momentum, and you'll get that in the Harvard Business Study Review, when you read it. You want a company pre-momentum, so that you're the one that is building the legacy and the income. When they do a billion dollars, you've helped them grow from 50 million to a billion. That's what you look for, is timing. That's the one thing that you can't teach or coach, is to be in the right place at the right time. Steve Larsen: That's interesting. Do you have any tips for how you find a company that's pre-momentum? Jon Penkert: Very difficult. You gotta keep your ears open and be connected to a lot of people, which is why I said ... you know, if I was ... a great opportunity for even college kids. I think every college kid, the skills that you learn in network marketing will carry you through the rest of your life. Go out and find a good company that you believe in the product and get involved and learn how to create these residual incomes because it's those people that you need that are gonna introduce you to the next big run. Steve Larsen: Yeah, and I appreciate that that's what the advice you said, if I was brand new. First, know the leaders, know your upline. I never took the time to do that my first round at it. I joined one, seriously, just 'cause my buddy was in it. I mean it was the exact opposite of what you just said I should do when I did that four years ago. Pretty much every entrepreneur I know is out there, whether or not they'll admit it, has been part of an MLM. It's such an awesome career. It's a great place to go to. The reason, obviously, why a lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth is because some over eager upline person turned around and badgered their family and badgered their friends and, honestly, hurt some relationships. How do actually recruit? How do you get to getting leads in this industry without actually hurting those relationships? You know what I'm trying to ask? That was poorly worded. Jon Penkert: What happens often times, people get in these network marketing opportunities, they look at it as a "get rich quick" scheme. Right? Like, how can I make money off of you and your friends? Steve Larsen: Right. Jon Penkert: Then they get disappointed because that mindset fails them. It's really not the servant leader model, and so, when I talk to people who have been hurt been network marketing and we've all been in a network marketing company that didn't work out for lots of reasons. Steve Larsen: Sure. Jon Penkert: But I always tell them ... Zig Ziglar I think said it best. He said, "Create enough opportunity for people and give them what they want, you'll end up getting what you want." And so, what I've learned in network marketing, especially if I've dealt with similar experience, I'll say, "What are the things that your upline didn't do for you?" I teach them to be the upline that they wish they had. People resonate with that. They realize, "If I do the things for my downline that I wish my upline had done for me, I'll create extraordinary success." And again, that's that leadership model of leading by example and not being a cheerleader. I'm gonna get in there and do the hard work with them because together we can do great things. That's really what I try to get people to focus on. When they have bad experiences in network marketing is, "Hey, let's you and I be the leadership team for your downline, that you wish you had." And so, "Be the upline that you wish had," is my best practice. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that answer. I very strongly do believe in an element of business karma, if you go around and you start trying to help people and you put out legitimate value out there. It may not happen all at once, there's got to be this mentality of dropping your anger and not moving forward for a while, it's not a "get rich quick" thing, but eventually you do get what you'd like. It'll come, and almost be surprising, over night. Just kind of show up. That's great... Jon Penkert: What people don't realize is that you attract what you put out there, so if you don't like what you're getting, take a step back and look at what you're putting out. Steve Larsen: Do you have any last pieces of advice for someone who, let's say they're in one, they like the product, there's not really a whole lot moving along ... what should someone be involved in daily, those tasks, those rituals that keep them engaged in the process? Jon Penkert: The biggest thing that I can do for each one of your listeners is ... You guys, take a deep breath and look in the mirror, because the number one quality that drives my business overall, is a belief in your self. You have to believe in yourself. Find a company with integrity, with a great product, and a good comp plan but then, look in the mirror and go, "You know what? You are at the right place at the right time. You were chosen for this opportunity and go get it." Because I can't stop a person that 100%, rock solid believes. They will go out and break every barrier out there if they just believe. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Jon Penkert: As a leader, most often, all I do is get people to see that they have everything that they need to succeed. They just have to believe and go do it. Steve Larsen: Very enlightening, very fascinating. I appreciate that a lot. Now, you've obviously mentioned you don't have a business card and you work with the people directly under you, if people wanted to reach out or learn more about what it is you're doing or some kind of an action follow-up after this podcast, where should people go? What should people do? Jon Penkert: Well, Steven I totally appreciate and respect you and I'm glad that you invited me to be on your broadcast. This, for me, was really a favor to you. It wasn't an opportunity for me to recruit. I don't think I'm that great anyway, but I think that you find out who I am and what I'm in and you want to get involved, I would say embrace a local leader in your local market that's on my team that's great. I'm not here to recruit people, I'm just here to support. If they want to reach out to you, you know how to get ahold of me. Let's work it that way. Steve Larsen: Sounds good. We'll do it that way. Awesome. Jon, thank you so much. I appreciate that. This has been fantastic. Jon Penkert: Well, it's my absolute pleasure and I look forward to working with you in the future. I'll tell you something. In life, when you get two people ... I love the mastermind principle. You get two people, it creates a third more powerful mind. You can change the world getting two people committed and believing in themselves and moving in the right direction. So, I thank you Steven for what you bring to the table and your commitment to success. Steve Larsen: Alright you guys. Now at this time, what I want to do is to show you guys a little bit more about the actual funnel that I've been using to recruit for downlines. It's amazing. I came up with the concept about four years ago. I never thought that it would actually come to fruition as quickly, or as powerfully, as it has. What happened, basically, is I joined this MLM and it was terrible because I literally went down Main Street. We just found out that my wife was pregnant with our first kid and I was excited, but really honestly, I was scared out of my mind because I had no money. I had nothing... I know a lot of people listening to this are still trying to figure out what there thing is and they're still trying to create with their product or what ever it is, their first successful funnel or whatever. Just know that I know the feeling, right? What happened was, basically, my buddy came in and he recruited me. He said, "Hey, come join this," and I was like, "No. That's a stupid multi-level marketing thing. I'm not gonna do that." I ended up joining his after he was begging. But I did it with the reason in mind like, "You know what? This could pay for the birth of my child." I was like, "Hey, the clock's ticking. I got nine months. Let's go do this." What I did is I started studying and reading and I was literally going door to door. I was like, "If I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it 100%." And so, I literally did, I went down Main Street and I recruited 13 people my first month. First off, I just want to say, I'm never ever gonna tell you the name of the MLM. That's not the purpose of this. I'm telling you this, "You can use what I'm telling you right now in any MLM." Okay? I'm just gonna get that big elephant out of the room real quick. I was studying one night, and I realized that after I recruited those first 13 people, I was like, "Yes, this is awesome. This is totally duplicatable. I got all these people now." The problem was that literally none of them did anything at all. I literally had to take a cattle prod. I remember driving once three or four hours, something like that ... Yeah, it was three hours, three hours in a single day. I think so. Anyway, it was a long way ... just to meet with somebody just to see if they had actually done anything because they wouldn't answer the phone calls. I couldn't motivate them. I was like, "This is not sustainable. This is not duplicatable. Whoever told me this was passive income was lying."That was my attitude, and there was an element of truth to that. I was like, "There's got to be a better way to do this." What happened was, one night, it was like 3 a.m. in the morning or it was 2 a.m., 2 a.m. in the morning, I had class in a few hours. I was still in college, obviously. I was reading and all of sudden this guy ... I can see his face, I don't remember the eBook, I don't remember what company, I don't remember anything. I just remember hearing the concept "paid prospecting". I was like, "What? Is this real? Is this true?" Now, this is the dark ages. This is pre-ClickFunnels days or about the time they were launching actually. I was like, "This is fascinating, and you mean, you get paid regardless if somebody joins you? Fascinating. What?" I had this idea, what if I gave ridiculous value upfront, for free, for something and then something small paid, kind of like mid-tier, and then something more high ticket in the backend, and those people are the people that I go approach. Not family and friends. I can honestly say, and still say, that to this day there have been people, four years, me approaching them about MLM it hurt the relationship. I was like, "This is garbage. I'm not gonna do this. If this is what this industry is about, I don't want to do it." I know a lot of you guys are the exact same way. I was like, "What's this funnel thing?" I had been building, basically the equivalent of funnels, in WordPress prior, before ClickFunnels days. I had a whole bunch of my own clients. It was a lot of fun. We had successes. We had failures. This is the story, you know? Basically, what I realized is like, "What if I created this thing? I'll go film it." What I did is I basically funnel hacked. Again, I didn't know that was the term or whatever, but I went and I started looking at all the top MLMers who are out there. I started asking like, "What are they actually doing?" And you know what's funny is that after a couple of months of just deep diving into each of these guys, I realized that none of them were doing home meetings, none of them were doing hotel meetings, they're not going getting on the phone, none of them were going to their family and friends. They had created for themselves something unique. But what they did all have, every single one of them, had the equivalent of a funnel. They had their own website. They had the equivalent of a Webinar. It was interesting. It was so stark when I started looking at it. I was like, "This is the way to do that. Why have I been doing it the other way?" So what I did is I literally was taking some of these top guys courses... I was transcribing them. I was turning into my own. I was adding whole courses and elements to it. I went and I re-shot stuff. I put things together. It was one of the coolest things ever. It took me eight months, 'cause I was in the middle of college, I was in the army, we had our first kid. It took me a while to get it out, but when I did, nobody bought it at first. I had done a terrible job going around and sharing it with people. Honestly, what was really happening is I was graduating. There was a lot stuff happening. There just was. I was trying to become an officer. There was a whole bunch of stuff that was happening in my life and so I moved on. But some dude stumbled upon it and was like, "Oh my gosh! This is absolutely insane. Why are you not selling this more?" And I was like, "You know what? That was pretty cool." I went and I launched it and it was like massive, waterfall response. So many people just started coming out of the wood work, people I'd never heard of. I was like, "Holy crap! This is working." Pretty soon, I had a waiting list of like 12 people begging to join my MLM. I was like, "What the heck? This totally worked! Oh my gosh!" Anyway, fascinating. Well, it was my first attempt at making something that was bigger and there was a lot of things that were wrong with it. I had been redoing the entire thing and putting it all together. Basically, this is what happens, right? Just like Jon was saying. One of the problems is that people have not learned how to become attractive. I'm not saying good looking or whatever. I'm sure your all drop dead gorgeous. But you're not attractive yet. In MLM, you have the same product. You have the same service. You have the exact same scripts, the exact same websites. There's literally nothing different about you. Why would I join you over somebody else? There's no reason. There's no reason to. The one currency that you really have is you. You must be different. There's really two currencies, but that's the first one. The first currency, you must be different. You have to be sellable. You must know you. You've gotta find your voice. You've gotta know your message. That's what this new course that I've been talking about is gonna come out and talk about. Anyways, it's been a lot of fun. I've had a lot of fun putting it together. So, first of all, that's model number one. It talks about becoming attractive and how you actually attract people to you, how you create things and products that are free, that just deliver a crap ton of value because if you can do that, it will pull people to you in a really fascinating way. Right? You'll be giving before you ever ... you'll be leading with value before you ever even mention the fact that you have an MLM, right? I never even tell anyone about it ever. They have to find it through my funnel, and when they do, then I'll talk to them about it. Otherwise, it becomes this awkward thing and you have side agendas with every conversation. I hate that. I'm so against that. That's the reason I put this stuff together. Anyway. Second thing that it talks about is validating. So now if you've got people in through free stuff and you've attracted people in, the second part is a validation thing meaning I need to validate how serious this person is. If someone spends a little bit of money on marketing education for their MLM, I know they're serious. And so that's what I created. It was like a free plus shipping thing. And when someone bought it, I was like, "Hmm. This is not your standard MLMer." There's well over 10 million MLMers in America alone. Like, "Okay, this person already is separating themselves from the remainder of the people." And that's what I wanted. The third part then was now that I've pulled them in, I've qualified them, now it's all about the duplication and actually selling them. Right? That's what I use Webinars for and no one really has ever seen that before, which is awesome. Very few people have which is so freaking cool, anyway. But the Webinar goes in and auto closes and recruits and gets them signed up. It's amazing. Then after that, then it talks about some of this downline management stuff where I'll show you how to rob your downline. Meaning, there's a really good way to do this and a really bad way to do it and Jon touched on that, which is all about binaries, but, the right way to do them. Yes, the principles amazing, but there's a right way to do it just like he was talking about. You know, leadership training. I'm gonna have a lot of cool stuff. I'm gonna talk about when to rinse and when to repeat. How do you tell? It's weird to think of it like this, but it is a business and if someone's not doing their thing, might be time to rinse. If someone's run along with you and they can run with you, time to repeat. You do that through a very specific thing, and I'm not gonna give the golden nugget away, alright? There's a golden nugget to it. I'm totally gonna bait you guys. It's been ridiculous. Just the paid prospecting aspect of what I built up alone, without any ad spending, I made 50 grand last year. It was nuts. No ad spend, nothing else, it's just up, just talkable word to word, mouth to mouth. I didn't talk to anyone about it. There's very specific strategies I used and the people that are coming to me are asking to join. I don't even tell them I'm in one. Have I even told you what I'm in? No, and that's the reason why. That's why this is so powerful and why I've been so passionate about it... People are like, "Steven, MLM? Seriously?" Well, yeah actually. If you know how to work the system in a good way, if you know how to create a new opportunity, if you know how to create an offer, if you know how to do marketing, if you know how to do everything that Russell teaches, then yeah. Why the heck would you not, if you can do that? Then, the last part that it teaches you how to do, what it is shows you is I call it "pick your megaphone", "choose your megaphone", meaning, just choose one traffic source. Anyway, there's way more to it. There's a lot more that's been going on that you guys have no idea about that I totally kept from you for the last six months. It's been so sweet, all the pieces coming into play. Software pieces ... it's been great. It's been really great. I can honestly say very proudly that there's no one else on the planet that's been doing what I'm doing and it's ... Ah, it's so cool. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't. Anyway. That's what I want to talk about funnel-wise though, alright? Funnel-wise, and please understand, again, I'm not here to pitch. I'm just here to tell you what I've been doing because this is the sixth segment of this series, which is all about MLM funnels. So, what I've been doing, is I've been pumping ridiculous value into the MLM space. I know it's so good that people should be paying for it, and they know that. That's the feeling that I want them to have. Then I go through and I qualify them through something that's free and ... I'm sorry, something that's free plus shipping or whatever it is. Low ticket, 47 bucks. Honestly, I don't really think it matters that month. All your doing is your vetting out the good people. What's funny is that little vet move that I've been doing, I've talked to more owners of MLMs from that one thing than any other thing. You get the kind of fish that you put the bait out for, right? You know what I mean? Put better bait out, you get better fish. And so, I created a vetting system... Funnels are not just ways to increase our average cart value. They're also ways to vet people. That's exactly what an application style funnel is. You're trying to have them apply. You want to sift out the dirties, the people who are just never gonna do anything with you or who are just the kind of people who you help like crazy but they'll always complain or the people who just won't go take action. You know what I mean? I don't want those kinds of people and I know you don't want it either. So, first I attract through a lot of different ways, really amazing things actually. Then the second part is all about some kind of qualifier, money-wise. Paid prospecting, gotta charge. Right? Then after that, then I go close them through some more automated processes, specifically through Webinar funnels. That's what's been working for me and that's why I've been doing it. Anyway, I'm not the focus of this interview. I just wanted to be able to toss in more of what I've been doing funnel-wise to you, so that you have an idea that there is actually a really awesome way to do it without ever talking to family, every talking to friends, and if you want to, that's fine. I'm not trying to dissuade you from doing it. I'm just telling you that I am really against that and I don't do it for a lot of reasons. I specifically target the kind of individual that I want. I want someone who's a rockstar, someone who loves marketing. You know what I mean? Those are the kinds of people. Then what I do is I ... My team is very, very, as far as my own personal downline management strategies or whatever, I feel almost weird saying this to you guys, 'cause this is not the typical audience that I say this kind of stuff to, but what I do is I say, "Hey, look. I'll give you my entire marketing system if you come join." You know what I mean? Those are the things that you create yourself that make you attractive, otherwise, you're the same thing. Now, as far as a product standpoint, and fulfillment standpoint, and having to worry about customer service, MLM is fantastic because you don't have to worry about any of that. They take care of all of it... There's really ridiculous advantages to being a part of it. It truly can be passive if you set it up the right way. The problem is that most multi-level marketers, network marketers, have no idea how to market. And you're like, "What on earth is so..." Anyway, that's what I've been doing and it's been kicking butt. Anyway, it's been great. Not trying to be cocky, I'm just excited. Anyway, if you are interested though, go check out secretmlmhacks.com just to see what I'm doing. Again, not pitching you, not trying to be weird or whatever. Just so you guys can see how I've been doing it. If you love your MLM, stay in it, which is awesome. So anyway, go to secretmlmhacks.com to watch real time what it is that's been going on there in the MLM world. Alright. Hey, guys, that's been the last part of this series. I've loved doing this with you guys. I've loved going through this six part series. I have more interviews that I've already lined up. Might be the next one, might not be. But anyway, we're gonna get back into ... Usually I try and publish two times a week, but these have been an hour long, almost every single one of them. Now, if you really want to watch behind the scenes, as far as my hands, watch the magician hands, the real purpose behind these, yes it was to provide amazing value but there is something else that I did these interviews for that will help you. Anyway. Keep watching everything that's going on. I think you guys will enjoy it and please, these speakers have done amazing things, they have dropped insane value. I want you to know that the listenership has well more than doubled because of these. It's not because I know that I'm great or anything like that. I has nothing to do with that. It's because I understand the value these guys have been pumping out there... Anyway, I've got a great follow-up episode already that I'm gonna be doing. I think you guys will like the next one. I'll talk to you guys later. Hope you enjoyed it. Reach out to the speakers, tell them thank you so much. And go take some serious action, and you will enjoy successes. Alright guys, talk to you later. Bye! Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

Amazon, Walmart, Etc. Secrets of the ecommerce world ... What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to another fantastic episode of Sales Funnel Radio. Now, this episode is part three of our six-part series where I'm diving deep into the six different categories of people using ClickFunnels to blow up their businesses. This episode is all about eCommerce and there's a lot of ways to pull off eCommerce, there's a lot of ways to do it, and a lot of questions that everyone know who's in eCom has the answer from their beginning. Am I going to self-fulfill? Am I going to drop ship? Am I going to go for high ticket, low ticket, high volume? Am I going to brand it? Is it just going to be a straight sell and one off? Is it going to be community behinder? Am I going to be the brand behind it? There's a lot of things involved with eCommerce much like any business but I think I really enjoy what my guest today has to offer. I would take notes, see how he's doing it. He's got a great community behind him called ecomunderground.com and he's got a cool little offer for you guys at the end which I think you'll enjoy. Anyway, massive value, it's free for you so anyway, I think you guys will enjoy it. Let's jump into this episode and we got three others coming up deep into the industries that I know out of one of the six applies directly to your business. I hope you guys will enjoy the series so far, let's jump right into it. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels and now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: All right, guys. How is it going? I have with me a very special guest today and honestly one of my favorite categories of sales on the internet in general, very excited to learn more of the deep, dark ninja secrets of how to make this work. We're going to talk about eCom strategies today with the expert and my friend, Bryan Bowman. How are you doing, man? Bryan Bowman: I'm doing amazing. How are you doing, Steve? Steve Larsen: I'm doing awesome, living the dream. Doing really good. Hey, thanks for being on the show here, like I say and eCom is probably one of my favorite, one of my favorite personal category for income generation, whether someone doing it on the side or it's a full-time thing. What a lot of people would probably realize is that when Russell went out and hired this data scientist to come through and look up through all the users of ClickFunnels and try and find patterns, eCom was actually the highest revenue generating industry overall out of all of them. Everything, info products, I mean anything. If you guys want to pay attention, I mean, get a piece of paper out, take notes. Bryan is going to drop some massive gold here and super excited for you guys to learn more about eCom which is a space I'm personally very interested in as well. Anyways, Bryan, if you can just let us know how did you even get into eCommerce? It's a newish industry as far as kind of the wave of the internet taken over things. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, yeah, for sure, man. I mean, first of all, just to back up what you're saying, there is something really powerful about selling physical products. Steve Larsen: It's so cool. Bryan Bowman: This is something that I'll talk about a little bit but I do want to talk about how you don't have to choose one or the other and this is really what a big part of my message is right now because it's what we're doing in our brands and it's what's working in my community with my students is that what I have found, because I'm really, really entrenched in the physical product sellers universe or world. There is this mindset that it has to be one or the other. Where I'm really shaking things up is I'm telling people that we can have it all and physical products have their own power but info products have their own power as does a third category of product that I'm going to encourage those who really want to build a well-rounded business and a business that's going to be sellable and build an empire that I think they need to have as well. We'll leave that for a minute and I'll answer your question, I'll answer the first part of this which kind of like my backstory. Yeah, man, I've been involved in selling I guess products online or physical products for a long time. For me, it was really a hobby like literally all the way back to college I was buying, it was crazy, I would buy books and I still to this day I'm understanding why this worked but it's still a little confusing to me. I would buy books on eBay and then turn around and sell them on Amazon. The quickest arbitrage ever. Steve Larsen: It's straight up arbitrage, that's awesome. Bryan Bowman: That is available to everyone like everyone can go on eBay but I mean, I'm kind of joking like not understanding why. I mean, it's because of the confidence Amazon has. People trust Amazon so much so some people feel like a little sketchy about eBay, maybe they don't want to buy from there and literally I would buy textbooks for five bucks and sell them for 55 on Amazon. It was crazy.   Steve Larsen: Geez. Bryan Bowman: That was like a little side gig in college but I've been always leveraging the internet to sell physical products but really where it got really serious for me was about four years ago and for some of your listeners, they maybe selling on Amazon or maybe they've heard about this Amazon gold rush that's happening and four years ago it's kind of the wild west. I mean, FBA was around but not a lot of people were using it. That's where I started and basically FBA is where you can send in all your products to Amazon. They fulfill the orders and you just create the brand and ship everything off and then list on Amazon. Now, that was awesome. You're leveraging Amazon's traffic which is very cool. At the time, I need to figure out what I was going to do because we've talked about this a little bit, Steve. My wife was having some health issues and we were just trying to figure out what do we do because I needed to be home more, there's no way I could keep working my corporate job as actuarial consultant like traveling all over the place. I needed to figure out a side hustle that was going to make some extra money and ultimately free me from my job and that's really why I double down. Literally I would work all day long in a cubicle like nine to five either traveling, doing actuarial stuff, come home, eat dinner, and from like 7 PM till 3 in the morning, I was creating listings, working with my designers in Germany. Then I was talking to manufacturers in China at 1 AM because they are like on the complete opposite time as us in the U.S. and I'd be Skyping with them, seeing the factory, seeing samples. It was crazy. That's how we launched our first brand on Amazon and started leveraging that platform and really pretty quickly I think maybe because I had that actuarial background and understood the numbers which is another huge, huge thing guys. Those of you listening, I don't care what you're selling in your funnels and whatever industry you're in, you have to know your numbers. People usually don't like to talk about math, they shy away from it but you need to know basic stuff, cost per conversion, lifetime value of a customer, your cost of goods, those metrics they are going to separate you from the pack because of that very reason, no one else wants to think about those things. Steve Larsen: It's true, then you have to think about Excel sheets and that's hard and you have to think about ... It's kind of a big locked gate, a little bit to that industry a little bit. Bryan Bowman: Exactly, exactly. Listen, I love barriers to entry, it's why I became an actuary. I became an actuary, for those of you who don't know what it is, don't worry. If you have kids or brothers or sisters who are really good at math, tell them to go be an actuary if they are not going to become professional sellers online like internet marketer or sellers. Basically, having that background in stats and math, it helped me with my advertising on Amazon, ultimately, it now helped me with my Facebook advertising and in AdWords like understanding those numbers. I can't stress enough how important it is. If you're not that person, find somebody who's really good with numbers. Steve Larsen: How would I find someone like that? I mean, because that is a barrier, you know what I mean? That's a personal barrier to entry. How would I find some dude that actually go out and do that kind of thing? Bryan Bowman: I mean, we could have a whole conversation about this. I use VAs so what I do is I will set up the basic spreadsheet and then I have them, I train them on how to download reports, upload the reports and send me a summary so that I just get like an executive summary about every week. Steve Larsen: Okay. Bryan Bowman: They do the work that probably most of us, I mean, I don't really like, I kind of like being in spreadsheets but not all day. Steve Larsen: Right. Bryan Bowman: What they're good at like because I have SOPs in place they can download the reports that are already, this certain reports that are already set, they can upload them, they can refresh the workbooks and basically, just send me the summary that's already built in to the workbook and then I just can have a look at it, overview it and then make any changes that need to be made. There are plenty of people Upwork, you can go to, what is it now? Is it Elance? Is that what it's called now? Steve Larsen: Freelancer. Bryan Bowman: I mean, like I said I train my VAs one on one so I use onlinejobs.ph. Steve Larsen: Cool. Bryan Bowman: Even if you want to hire someone domestically like in the U.S. look at community colleges like see if there's some math students or someone who's in a business program, someone who's technical that's looking to pick up a few extra hours. I think it's important to have that person whether it's you or not in the business though because it's huge. Steve Larsen: I believe there are eCom people that I've talked to or some of these, that is the thing. It seems like there's a big difference between them who's successful and the others who aren't. Just merely knowing the numbers and tracking the numbers in each campaign. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, because then it just turns into a simple yes or no like, "Is this profitable?" Yes or no. "Should I double down on this?" I mean, especially if you need to make a quick turn around on your ad spend, I mean, if you have to put a $100 in today and you need to make it back in 48 hours because capital is limited and you can't wait 30 days to see your return, it is critical that you know your numbers and you know what your yes and your no is and when you need to double down and when you just stop your ads. Going back, I think because I leverage that, we had probably quicker success probably the most. I loved Amazon, it was awesome like we're doing really well really quickly but then my daddy used to always say, "No matter how thin the pancake there's always two sides." That couldn't be any more true with Amazon, you can have this great thing going but then we got hit with, man, I don't even want to get into the whole story because it brings up too much pain but I do remember waking up, it was a Tuesday morning, I checked my seller app and I'm like, "Wait a second, this is already a slow morning. I don't know about this." I went back to the desktop, checked and sure enough like our number one product had been blocked then our seller account was shut down. It took forever to get that back. It was just one thing after another and through all that pain, I really figured out, it became very apparent like I cannot depend on Amazon. I have to build my own sandbox. Amazon can be a spoke in the wheel but it cannot be the entire wheel. That's when I really double down on the funnels, honestly that's when I was looking for the best way to build funnels, how do I start because I had used them before but never really to the extent that I'm using them now. I just wanted to build that off Amazon strategy because I already had the brands in place. I was like, "All right, I need to build my sandbox." That's how I started using ClickFunnels and I guess it was at the time it felt like a curse but ended up being the biggest blessing for us because now we've been able to really diversify our sales and really develop a repeatable strategy. It's good, it's all good, man. I'm excited. I think it's interesting how this happens where some of our most painful times end up being the things that give us the most power and give us the most ability to make a difference and make a change. Steve Larsen: You said something that I thought was really interesting. I mean, you're basically describing the equivalent of the Amazon slap, the Google slap. Bryan Bowman: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Steve Larsen: There's a lot of people who I've spoken as well, they say like, "Just leave it on Amazon. All you need is Amazon." I mean, you just said the exact opposite that you realized that you can't do that. What advantage did you gain by not just staying on Amazon, by actually going off of it? Bryan Bowman: Absolutely, there are a lot of advantages but there's one that's the one that you should, all your listeners and you and everyone should write down, it's two x versus eleven x. That's all you need to know. Your Amazon business, if you have a purely Amazon based business where all your revenue is coming from Amazon, you can expect on the market when you go to sell that business, about a two x return on earnings. Steve Larsen: Really? Bryan Bowman: Yeah. If you have a business off Amazon, Shopify, big commerce ClickFunnels which by the way those listening, you can run an entire eCommerce business on ClickFunnels. It's one of the biggest misconceptions that I find. Steve Larsen: It's so true, thank you for saying that. Bryan Bowman: People, they think for some reason I don't know why and this is one of the things that I make sure I always educate people on in my community inside of eCom Underground is like it's a shopping cart. You can put everything in there. You can run an entire eCommerce store there. I compare it to basically a Costco versus a personal shopper. A Costco is like your Shopify store where you're walking around, you have a big shopping cart and you can throw a bunch of stuff from the rafters into your shopping cart and check out. That's a Costco. Whereas a funnel or ClickFunnels is it's like a personal shopper. When you walk in, you go to Neiman Marcus and they're curating goods just for you and the goods that you're going to see are different than the ones that I'm going to see because we have a different build, we have a different taste, we have different age. You're a man, if I'm a woman, you're going to see different things. That's the experience of a funnel so that's why they convert so much better. The two x is of your Amazon, eleven x, if you build that business on Shopify, if you build that business on ClickFunnels, BigCommerce, whatever, you can expect a ten to eleven x return on earnings when you go to sell that business. The market reflects the risk inherent in having a purely Amazon business. Steve Larsen: That's amazing, that's amazing. I never thought about that. I've got a buddy who just sold for a ton of money in the eCom space and I was like, "Man, that's remarkable at how big that thing scaled, how fast." It was exactly what you said, he wasn't just staying on Amazon itself. I've heard from a lot of people, "Make sure you are in Amazon," but just like you're saying, you can't leave the whole cake on Amazon itself. Bryan Bowman: Absolutely. The best analogy guys is imagine you've been doing marathon. Have you been in marathon, Steve? Steve Larsen: I've been in a sprint triathlon. Bryan Bowman: All right, do you know when a marathon when you have all the people on the side and they've got the waters and like the herd. It's like this massive, all these people are running, right? They are just like, people are holding out cups and they are just grabbing cups and water splashing everywhere. Steve Larsen: Yeah. Bryan Bowman: That's what I compare Amazon to. We're the ones with our cups and we're charging for them and there's this like all these people coming and they're grabbing our cups and they're drinking them. It's like yes, I get rid of all my cups but they're gone, they are just running. You don't even know who they were. Whoever was running the marathon, they've got the entry numbers, the emails, the phone numbers, they know everything but you're basically just hanging out on the side lines with your cup of water. That's kind of what Amazon is like and you're just waiting for the next herd of traffic that's going to buy your stuff. That's cool. Steve Larsen: It's a really good analogy. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, that's what it feels like. Then you're just waiting, you're like, "All right, hopefully the next marathon comes." The marathon by the way is called Q4. As opposed to building a business, and this is what I always tell people, what is your business? When you really think about it, it's not your inventory, it's not your sales or your profit or revenue, it's your customers, your customer list. That's why the market reflects that big difference in building that on Amazon versus off Amazon business so it's critical to have that ability to have that relationship with your customers. That's probably above anything, that is the biggest reason why you'd want to build something off of that marathon platform. Steve Larsen: Sure, and what's funny too is like anyway, I love the analogy that the customer is the business. Amazon takes all that, it take all that data. You can't really get that data, can you? You're just selling stuff. Bryan Bowman: Exactly. I mean, and they understand it. They understand the power in the customer that's why they keep it and in fact, they have a lot of things in place to keep you from driving traffic off the platform. They make their terms of service very open-ended so that they can really suspend you for any reason. It's kind of one of the dirty secrets like no one really knows that. It's interesting, when you first start selling on Amazon it's like it's so exciting because a lot of people like me were just like, "Hey, I need to build a business, an income that replaces my day job." Every advanced Amazon seller you talk to will tell you the same thing. It's always this worry in the back of their mind. Again, fortunately, this is a mindset thing is to really, really see the blessing in the pain sometimes. Fortunately, I went through some of these pain early on which forced me to have to become something else and have to learn something else which is again turned into the biggest blessing for us. Steve Larsen: I mean, someone once told me that for every dollar spent online, Amazon is so big that a quarter of that dollar is going to Amazon right now. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, that's crazy. One out of four dollars spent online is spent through Amazon or one of their companies. Steve Larsen: That is huge, absolutely massive. Bryan Bowman: If you really think about that. Steve Larsen: I know, you think about how much money that really is it's like oh my gosh, that's amazing but you're saying, obviously put some stuff on there just to be present but then keep the bulk of the business offline. How are you actually building it offline? I mean, not offline but off of Amazon. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, exactly. This takes me to my next point which I touched on earlier. Stephen, this is all the stuff I really I just I talk about all the time inside of eCom Underground because I just really want to open people's eyes to something else, like a different opportunity, different possibility. The first thing you have to do, it's nice that someone says, "Great, build off Amazon, you can do better," but how, right? The first thing is it's a mindset shift in how you're going to build your business. If you're looking to just sell general store type stuff or you just want to sell one off products that are hot sellers, maybe Amazon is a good fit or maybe some free plus shipping funnel, that's fine but long-term, we need to really build an asset. The way I like to think of it is shifting from commodity to community. This is something I repeat over and over and over again because as long as you're selling a widget and all widgets are the same, and the person who comes to your store sees it as another widget, you're competing on price. That's all you're competing on. Steve Larsen: Which is awful. Bryan Bowman: It's awful. It's awful. The life cycle of your product is shorter and it's not going to last as long before someone's going to undercut you. I mean, there's plenty of people that are doing this, they're literally making pennies on the dollar like a profit and they're just trying to do the volume play. I hope you consider this. Imagine you've built up a community instead, people who've rallied behind an interest or a common shared like passion or even an expert or a personality so it take for example, I was talking to my sister about this. One product that you would never want to sell right now by the way, if you're going to go on Amazon, it's completely saturated, measuring cups, kitchen utensil like measuring cups, you would never sell that. Maybe if you did, I don't know, maybe you could, I wouldn't. Margins aren't big enough and it's too competitive. It would make no sense. Then I was talking to my sister, she loves to cook. She's passionate about cooking and she follows this, oh what's her name? Cupcake Jemma, okay. She follows her and she loves Cupcake Jemma and she loves the content Cupcake Jenna puts out and follows all her videos and all these stuff. I asked her, I said, "If Cupcake Jemma came out with measuring cups that were twice the price of whatever you could find on Amazon, and the lowest price that you could find out there, would you buy the ones from Cupcake Jenna or would you price shop so you can get cheaper ones?" She's like, "No, I'll just buy hers." Why? "Because I know that's what she uses or I know it's her. It's her." She's getting to experience something of that community, of that interest, of that passion, right? When we start building communities and it doesn't necessarily have to have an expert at the front end. I like if it does because there's an attractive character that we can follow but if we can just build a community first, I learned this from Todd Brown, then the sale becomes superfluous because the messaging and the marketing is so good and people are craving to be a part of something. I don't know how else to explain it. If you start with the community then you can start introducing the physical products because people will actually start asking you for it. When we start building our communities and there's a lot of different ways you can build them. You can use Facebook pages, Facebook groups. There's a lot of different ways you can do it but the point is people will start asking you. You could do it on YouTube, they'll start looking at the videos and they'll be like, "What's that shirt you're wearing? What's that thing you're using?" They already want to know. Before we ever start pitching any physical products, people will start asking us for them like, "Oh, it would be cool if," let's say you're in the running niche, "If you could come up with a patch," like I love running, running addict, or whatever it is, they'll start asking you first which is awesome. That's like a very good thing. Steve Larsen: Crazy. Bryan Bowman: You start with the physical product but this is where I'm going to challenge you, probably not you but your listeners is to go a step further. Who says we only have to sell physical products? Let's get into the information space also. We can sell training. There's a lot of information that we can still be a part of and even if we're not selling it, we can form affiliate agreements with people where we can present relevant products and this is how we build our funnels relevant products that are information based because we need those higher margins to sustain the business. One of the dirty secrets about eCommerce is you only really get paid when your business is flat. When the business is growing, growing, growing, you're operating in let's say 30% margins, you're going to pay for the inventory because there's cost of goods, you're going to pay for the inventory shipping fulfillment, all that stuff. If you made a 100,000 this month, you want to make 200,000 next month. Steve Larsen: Don't grow. Bryan Bowman: You got to roll that money back in so you can pay for all that inventory and everything else associated with it. That's how you end up making five million dollars a year in eCommerce and you'll pay yourself 200 grand because you can't pay yourself very much but as soon as the business goes flat and you stop growing, then there's cash you can pull out. One of the things is if you can start adding information, and the third piece if you can add software which is awesome because you can have this trifecta inside of your community, now you can really start getting cash into the coffers and really start getting more cash flow coming in and let the eCommerce side build on its own and double down on that. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. I think it's really cool. I run the Two Comma Club Coaching Program right now and it's been a lot of fun but that's been one of the big questions, so I'm going to read the book Experts Secrets from Russell Brunson. Say like, "Hey, this is just for webinars." You're like, "No, no, no." Bryan Bowman: No way. Steve Larsen: No, it's not. If you look at it carefully, he's just using a webinar as an example of how to actually use the Expert Secret process but if you're to take an eCom product and combine it with info or combine it with something else or software or whatever it is, that's one of the easiest ways to create a blue ocean for yourself because no one else is thinking about that combination or taking information and then ... Actually with the Experts Secrets funnel itself, the actual book funnel, we do this all the time. We will combine just like you're saying, "Hey, here's this cool eCom thing, this cool products that's physical," but then really the revenue accelerators are all info products in the backend as the upsells. Anyway, just 100% I'm screaming over here that what you're saying I totally attest to. We've seen it so many times if you can combine them together whatever, that is huge, huge power, massive power for revenue. Bryan Bowman: The biggest thing and we could talk about this, I mean, I don't know if you like to get into it kind of the actual strategy we use with traffic and then getting that traffic to convert but the biggest thing is building that connection, the community. You have to have this... One thing I do and I run four different brands and in every single brand I have an org chart. Those of you who are listening, if you have not read E-Myth Revisited like, don't pause the podcast, finish the episode and then go to Amazon or wherever and go buy yourself that book. Steve Larsen: Yeah, great book. Bryan Bowman: You should have an org chart, think of your business as I don't care if you're a solo operation and I do this for all my businesses even if it's just me, I have no staff, no VA, no one at all, it's just me, and I am solo operation in that brand. Build an org chart as if you are going to build a McDonald's and you're going to franchise this business. You want it to be a well-oiled machine that the 5,000 version of your business will be just as profitable as the first that you founded. Build that org chart and make sure that in that org chart there's somebody who's in charge of relationship management like really managing relationships with your customers because at the end of the day ... Have a statement. Another thing I do is there's a contract for each one of those roles and every single one of those positions has to fulfill the promise to serve and to reinforce the values of the community more than selling like ever. It has nothing to do with selling. That's why I always say, "It's all enveloped in community." Make sure that you are reinforcing the values of the community and why they are there because that is your asset. Long-term it's that community because they're going to tell you what they want and they're going to start asking for it... They are going to start asking for that physical product that they're going to rest on their desk, that info product that they're going to, after they're done using your physical product they are going to log on and use your info product and then the software, if there's a need for it. Not every niche has it. It's funny, Russell, I'm a part of inner circle, it's just amazing to be coached and mentored by Russell. He talked a lot about how satisfying the itch in the funnel, like there's initial itch and then once that itch is scratched, there's another. I started using the phrase that different niches have different itches and it's like some niches have more itches than others, right? Some can't support a software let's say but you'd be surprised, if you think creatively, a lot of different interest can but anyway I'm geeking out a little bit. The big thing is remember why you're doing it, it's the community, it's not the product. If you're thinking product, product, product, you're selling a commodity. I don't care what you're selling, the info product, the physical product, whatever. If you're thinking about the product, it's just a commodity and someone else is going to beat your own price eventually. Steve Larsen: Oh man, I totally love that. The power of the community too is so huge because I mean, just like you said, they will start to tell you what is it that they want which takes a lot of the guesswork out for you. Basically, it's this huge platform for you to start crushing false beliefs and it's a little group for you to launch when you actually do create the products that they're asking you for. I don't know, it solves so many problems for you to have the community, have this following, a group of people it's like I'm totally in love with what you're doing. Bryan Bowman: Exactly. Steve Larsen: I love that you brought that up, it's part of the eCom selling because most people don't think of that for eCom. Most people since it's a physical product, I mean, it doesn't take that much copy usually to sell something physical. You don't really see massive sales letters on Amazon pages. The value is on the tangible thing I'm going to get to hold and touch. I'm being future paced alone. Usually, you can charge a little bit more easier than info products out of the gate because I'm going to get to hold it and it's real. Bryan Bowman: The only eCommerce people that are thinking about this are those that are in eCom Underground. Steve Larsen: Yeah, no, I totally believe that. Bryan Bowman: No, honestly. I know sometimes I sound like a broken record to the community. I'm always talking about this. It's so important like this is the one piece is this community piece but anyway, I love it. It's fun stuff, man. Steve Larsen: That's awesome. As far as how to sell an eCom product, you said the funnel, don't just be on Amazon, build a community, combine it with info product or software, how do you find the product? It's like we have these models in our head and we understand part of the marketing pieces like, "Oh, yeah, I can totally do that. I can do that." What? Do I do it too? What's the actual ... Find those things. Bryan Bowman: Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, I'm going to assume. It's so funny because I always talk about there's principles, there's strategies and there's tactics and the tactics what usually ends up happening is people don't usually share the tactics or talk about the tactics. They'll talk about the principles which is like find your Y, find the core interest, the strategy is how you're going to implement high level but then the tactics really people don't talk about much. We're covering all these which is actually pretty cool. The principles guys is what is the interest and I would always have you start there. I would have you not start at the product... I think that's an old mindset and if you start at the product, I think it's not that it can't be done and I'll share a way where you can do it that way but I would highly encourage you to start all the way at the beginning at the principle like what is it that you're trying to build, what is it that you're trying to create, who are the people you're trying to gather or congregate and the products will emerge out of that, I guarantee you. They do every single time. That's literally how we build brands. Now, we start first with the interest. We start first with the passion and the products will emerge. If you want to go straight to product, we're going to come full circle and go back to Amazon. Amazon has more data than you could ever go out and pay for with software or anything else. There's some really cool stuff you can do. If you go into, I mean, I'll just tip right here, guys, this is how we do product research. Even if we're in a niche already and we want to look for extra products, and this is assuming you don't have a list, if you already have a list then do an ask campaign. Ask your people like what do you want basically. Steve Larsen: Yes, I love you're bringing that up. Okay, nevermind. Bryan Bowman: Let's say we're starting with nothing. What's that? Steve Larsen: I said I'm geeking out with you. Bryan Bowman: Let's say we're starting with nothing. Amazon has these really cool things called Amazon best sellers. They are the hot list, the most wished for list. When you go into Amazon and they'll tell you what are people wishing for, what are they putting on their wishlist like what are things that they want, what are the things that are the hottest sellers overall in Amazon or by individual category. If you want to sell stuff in the sports and outdoor niche, Amazon will tell you these are the hot top hundred selling items in the sports and outdoor niche. It just gives you the data. That by far is the best place to start, to start brainstorming ideas. There's apps you can buy that are plug ins, none of them are really I mean, they're not super accurate in the sense that like this one says this sells 10,000 and this one sells 20,000. It's just a gauge to help you understand maybe approximate sales so you understand what's a hot selling product and where maybe there's some opportunity. Amazon is a place to start. If you want to look for purely product research, I would encourage all your listeners to start checking out some of those lists in Amazon. Again, guys, I would highly encourage you if you want to build a long-term asset, start with the principle of the actual interest. Steve Larsen: Could you give an example of that? Bryan Bowman: What's that? Steve Larsen: Could you give an example of that? Just for someone listening that goes, "What do you mean by principle?" Bryan Bowman: Yeah, if we decide like we want to get, okay, I'm just looking right here, I've got my cup of coffee right here. We'll go with coffee. If I'm like, "All right, I want to start selling eCommerce." Let's say I'm starting from day one, "Man, I really want to start selling some physical products." Then maybe you're going to go into Amazon and you're going to start looking for hot selling products in the coffee niche. There's a lot of them. I mean, coffee niche is such a good niche. I'll explain why it is in a second. There's tons of amazing products you can sell and probably can make some money on. You can get source pretty easily. You can find a manufacturer in China or maybe even domestically, but we tend to go overseas and get it sent, get your samples and start producing. That's one approach. You go to Amazon, you're going to be able to find some hot selling products but what I'm going to encourage your listeners to do and I hope you consider is let's go back before we even consider do I want to sell the coffee mug, do I want to sell the grinder, do I want to sell the pour over top, or whatever. Let's go back and let's talk about the niche, the interest coffee aficionados, coffee lovers, people who really like why do they love coffee so much and start building that community. Start thinking in terms of even if you're not going to build a community page or anything like that but start thinking about the interest, the principles. Why do they love coffee? What does it mean to them? Because what's that going to influence it's like top down, it's going to influence everything else. It's going to influence all the way down to your Facebook ads. If you're just like, the worst thing you can do if you're going to run a Facebook ad, we can talk about this is say, "Get my coffee," let's just say coffee mug, coffee mug 50% off today only like I guarantee you no one is going to buy that. No one is going to click on that and buy it because all you're trying to do is scream louder than everybody else, every other advertiser. If you can pull your customer out of the crowd. I always use a Waldo example like where's Waldo where there's like all the people and then Waldo is in there and if like a magnet, if I can pull Waldo out of that sea of people then I don't need to yell anymore. I can just have a conversation. If I start with the principle which is why do people love coffee so much, that's going to affect my messaging, right? That's going to affect how I connect and for some people, they choose a certain coffee because they want it to be free from toxins, and they want it to be organic and they want it to be the cleanest cup of coffee. For others, it's like a super power where it's productive, it's the first thing they have that inspires them. No caffeine, no creativity then that's how I'm going to connect with them. At the end, I'm still selling the same product, the pour over top thing but it's because I took the time to get my principles right, then the strategy I used for my Facebook ad was influenced and then tactically how I implemented it in my funnel was influenced as well. I don't know if that make sense... Steve Larsen: No, it totally does. Rather than selling, I mean you're basically selling the benefit rather than the feature which is awesome. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, I mean there, you put it, see you're so much smarter than me, Steve. Steve Larsen: Whatever. Bryan Bowman: You put it so much more elegantly. Steve Larsen: I stole that from so many marketers. That's cool though, okay. Meaning, I've always thought of that in terms of how to sell it but you're taking that principle like way farther back into the actual product selection phase which is very interesting. Bryan Bowman: You know why though, man? This is my prediction, and not that this is ... I'm no Nostradamus so marketing, I know the guy who is though, but what's really going to start separating people is like being genuine, man and you can't fake it. That's the thing. I actually, I try to get into niches. I don't sell me-too products. I try to get in niches that I'm going to take a little bit of time to really understand the niche. Typically, it's going to be something I'm interested in but even if I'm not and I see a great opportunity in the market, I'm going to get to know these people. I really, really, really want to be genuine and serve and create a sense of community. It just makes everything so much easier. I can't emphasize it enough because you're going to be able to think their thoughts. You're going to be able to get into their head. It makes product selection and copy and offers and everything so much easier. Steve Larsen: Yeah, yeah, no, definitely with that kind of backdrop. You go in there and you start looking at Amazon best sellers and you're going to figure out how you can sell the result rather than the thing. How do you start testing? What is it that you're doing to go through you know, "Is this product actually good? Should I build a whole culture and community around this?" You know what I mean? What's the next step after that? Bryan Bowman: I mean, the first thing I mean I'll be honest, it's been tested enough where our method once I check some boxes in terms of knowing that there's enough interest in the niche, doing a little bit of preliminary product research, seeing that there's some products that people buy, again, going to Amazon, seeing what kind of stuff they buy, researching the niche a little bit, seeing the competitiveness of it. I'll double down and just start building up our communities but I think initially whenever you're going to sell any physical products, always use small test orders. More and more, because there's been so many more of these private label sellers or people starting their own brands and going to manufacturers in China. If you're using Alibaba or AliExpress or whatever you're using or global sources, there's just a lot of different ways you can go to get product more and more these manufacturers are accepting lower MOQs or lower order quantity. When I started, if you're not ordering a thousand units like good luck because you're going to pay, either you're not going to find any manufacturer to sell you anything or you're going to pay a lot of money. Now, it's not uncommon. I mean, if you just push back a little bit or just make a second or third request, it's not uncommon to be able to get 100 or 200 units, 300 units max, I guess not max but max for a minimum order like a small order and you start with something small. I mean, always order samples. I don't want to get too much into sourcing but always check a few samples on physical products because the picture they show you is never the same as what they actually send you. I mean, what they send you is never the same as the order so it's the bigger order. Order one, the 300 units and start selling those. You could put them, I like putting them on Amazon but you can create some simple funnels and see if the inventory moves. If you're able to actually get the product to sell, if it does, then you know you're ready to double down and order a bigger quantity. Anyway, I don't want to get too much into the inspection stuff and all that. Steve Larsen: Sure. Think about more the ecomunderground.com for sure. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, this is definitely all we talk about is all the nitty-gritty, the details, but I think the main take away is always start small and scale up because I've made that mistake. The first product that we ever launched, I mean, I didn't have a lot of disposable income and we put ten grand into it. I learned the hard way because I sold $500 worth of product. Steve Larsen: This is going to sound like crazy. Bryan Bowman: In fact, I still think I have some of those boxes of products sitting around in a storage unit somewhere. The biggest thing I can tell you like anything else is micro budgets, micro orders essentially and just scale up and test it first. Fortunately, ClickFunnels has made it super easy to be able to test product like using funnel. Steve Larsen: I was going to say, you go get the product, you find it on Amazon. First of all, what people are wanting, the interest, the principles. You go and you source the product to get small micro shipments of it and then you're testing the sale on Amazon plus like funnel, is that how you're doing it? Bryan Bowman: Yeah, I mean I would pick one or the other honestly guys because I definitely don't want to divert. I'm a big believer like you focus your attention on one platform so the reason I like to test on Amazon, the only reason I like to is it's just quick. It's very quick to verify but I think that you also, if you're not really interested in getting into the whole Amazon world which you don't have to, the newest brand we're launching we're not even going to sell on Amazon. It's just not an interest of ours... We're doing it surely off of the marketplaces. When I say Amazon, I mean Walmart, Jet, Newegg, all of the marketplaces. You can build out simple funnels just to test to see if people are ordering and build out Facebook ads the way that we've talked about. Maybe we didn't talk about so much but the main thing with the Facebook ad is, actually this is really good, I really want to share this. Steve Larsen: Yeah, let's hear. Bryan Bowman: When you're building out your Facebook ads, there are so many ways to drive traffic, guys. I know people who are purely on Pinterest, that's how they get all their traffic. I know people who are purely on AdWords, that's how they get all their traffic. We use a combination of AdWords and Facebook. We're starting to branch out into Pinterest for one of our brands that's more in the mommy niche. Facebook is still I believe the most powerful platform but because of the increased competition, you've just have to step your game up and the biggest mistake I see people make, I kind of talked about it already with especially in eCommerce, with the streaming louder than your competition with bigger discounts and bolder funds, red borders or whatever is that streaming louder doesn't work. You have to get connection. It's really interesting because if you're selling a high ticket coaching program, let's say you're selling a $10,000 high ticket coaching program, you would never get on a Facebook ad and be like have a video or have an image that says, "Get my high ticket coaching for 50% off, it was 20,000, now 10 and I'm an amazing coach. You should totally come work with me, you will get amazing results." No one would ever start their campaign that way. It's like a coaching program, right? Steve Larsen: If they do, it's really annoying. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, if they do, it's really annoying and if you see those ads, just make them a spam or just report them because they don't work. Yet that's what most eCommerce sellers do, right? We're like, "Buy now. Buy now. Buy now. Buy now. Buy now, 90% off, 95% off, I'll give you $5 if you buy it." It's like let's just push the offer. What would you do if you're a high ticket coach? What would your ad look like if you're trying to sell a $10,000 coaching program, Steve? Your initial ad to cold traffic, what would you ... Steve Larsen: If I was selling a high ticket coaching program from cold traffic, actually I wouldn't. I would sell to my own community. The first thing I would do is I would be out showing people benefits of using a funnel and first, defining the people who probably know what that vernacular is. Then, ascending then up slowly just like you and I were talking about before because I wouldn't walk up on the street and ask someone for ten grand. To me, that's what cold traffic is. I'm not that good at cold traffic and it's for a reason. I just feel like it's the harder method than going to warm traffic and hot so I don't do cold that much. Bryan Bowman: Like you said, first thing you do is you'd start serving and you just start probably connecting with them. It's a little bit easier with low ticket. It probably wasn't the best analogy because yeah, absolutely, good luck selling $10,000 program to cold traffic but let's say it's a $30 offer. Let's say it's a $10 offer, I don't care what it is. There is an independence and an interdependence between your ads and your landing page. There's an independence because you're not trying to sell with the ad. All you're trying to do is get people to click to find out more. It's like a headline, the headline has one purpose, right? To get people to read the next line. Steve Larsen: Right. Bryan Bowman: The headline is not there to sell them necessarily but your ad is definitely not there to sell them, it's to get them to just click to get to the landing page, however, there's an interdependence between the ad and the landing page because that pre-frames them and sets the stage for whether or not they're going to accept your message on that landing page. Not all clicks are created equally. When I understood this, this was like the biggest breakthrough for me and my ads was there's this independence but this interdependence and when in my ad I just want them to click so that's where I'm going to try to build that connection, that's where I use a lot of story, I use a lot of powerful imagery. Who is it? Oren Klaff in Pitch Anything, he talks about the three different parts of the brain. Steve Larsen: It's such a good book. Bryan Bowman: It's awesome. I could just ramble off books right now, they're so good. Steve Larsen: Me too, so good though. Bryan Bowman: Basically, the part of the brain that's responsible for making decisions is actually has nothing to do with the logical like fact-based like what percentage off am I getting, it's the emotional part of the brain. It's the part of the brain that's responsible for processing emotions. We want to connect and we want to feel what they're feeling and let them know that our product, we're not trying to create emotions. This is Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising, the job of your advertisement is not to create the emotion, it's to take their existing hopes, dreams, desires and put them onto your product and project them onto your product. We do that by connecting with the ad, we need to have more of a connection. It's a little bit hard. I know this all sounds very theoretical but- Steve Larsen: It's so true, though. Bryan Bowman: It's not that difficult if you actually care and you actually take the time to think about what pains, what fears, what hopes, what dreams your prospect has. The only job of the ad and it's not overly like sentimental or anything, we're not trying to be corny either. It's just enough to make people stop and go, "Okay, maybe I am interested in this pour over coffee top thing, maybe this really will make special cup of coffee, maybe it will make something that is worth tasting. Let me go ahead and click and find out." Steve Larsen: Right, it's powerful because like you said, you're not trying to create desire inside of a person or any kind of emotion or whatever. If they already have it, the only job I feel like of the sale and marketing is to just plug into exactly what you just said. I forgot it's Eugene Schwartz that said that. That's cool, that's really cool. With the ad, you're going in, you're saying, independence and interdependence in the ad but then also the way they flow together. I'm not trying to sell on the ad, I'm just trying to tap into current emotion and then the next page that has one role, the next page one role, I love that. Everything on every single piece of creative. Bryan Bowman: Exactly. Steve Larsen: Do you mind just real quick, I know we've been going for a little while here, but do you mind just real quick just sharing a little bit of one of the standard eCom funnel models is and maybe we'll wrap up with that? Bryan Bowman: Yeah, for sure. We still use free plus shipping a lot. I still love free plus shipping. Again, when people say, I see this all the time, you know free plus shipping, everyone is doing it, it doesn't work. Yeah, if you're leading with on your ad, get our widget for $7 or get it for free, get it for free, click here, click here, click here. Again, it's a commodity, people just don't respond as well to that ad. Last year they did, but they just don't respond as well anymore. I still like though a low ticket tripwire, whatever you want to call it, to get them in and qualify my buyer and qualify, qualify a subscriber and qualify a buyer at the same and obviously getting that credit card info on the front end allows us to do one click upsells. The biggest thing I would give for eCommerce folks and maybe you've heard this, maybe you haven't is multiple quantities, multiple quantities. I want you to test being a little over the top. In the sense like if you think nobody would ever want five- Steve Larsen: Coffeemakers. Bryan Bowman: Coffeemakers, exactly... You don't know how many people they have in their family, who they're going to gift these things to, you have to try it and you'd be surprised how often people will take the multiple quantity option. Again, ClickFunnels is why love it, it makes it super easy for me to not only add multiple quantities but with a few lines of custom code, a few easy lines, have some nice call outs, bold some things, really call out my best value to try to entice people to consider the higher quantities. On the upsell pages, I used to do more of the same thing, we're finding that doesn't convert as well so I am starting to switch to different complimentary products but again, in multiple quantities. Then, on my down sale we'll usually strip out the most popular item so let's say it's a supplement product. We lead with our free plus shipping or maybe our trial, then on the upsell with multiple quantities, on the upsell we might have a pack of different products that are likely to be purchased together like a bundle, stack or whatever of supplements. If they say no on the down sale, we would strip out the most popular product that we know people is our best seller or is a popular product of ours. We would strip it out of that stack. That's one example. Then just make sure you take advantage of those thank you pages. That's another common thing I see with funnels in general but definitely eCommerce funnels more than anything is no one is taking advantage like few people take advantage of that thank you page. That's a great place, again, learn from Amazon, frequently bought together, frequently viewed. Think of yourself as a massive ... Steve Larsen: This too. Bryan Bowman: What's that? Steve Larsen: Other customers bought this too. Bryan Bowman: Exactly... Customers who bought this bought this as well. Hack Amazon, I mean, if you're an eCommerce seller, hack Amazon but like look at every element on that page and see how you can incorporate some of that stuff. That's probably one of the best takeaways I can give is that thank you page, it's underutilized and start funnel stacking. Honestly, you'd be surprised how many times people will go through this free plus shipping offers when you start stacking them. Steve Larsen: It's so true. I don't know how many times I bought [Trayvon 00:56:41] gun oil thing, oh I have a few guns. Bryan Bowman: What's that? Steve Larsen: I said, it's so true, I don't know how many times I bought [Trayvon 00:56:47] gun oil thing. I only have a few guns but man, I bought so many of those things. It's so funny. That's hilarious... Man, I want to thank you for this. Just to recap everything, I always take a massive full page of notes every time I get to talk to a genius like you so I got it here again. You talked a lot about how not to choose eCom or info or just one thing, you actually can combine them and make even more powerful offer. I love the concept of how getting off of Amazon allows you to sell for 11 x potential on the backend. The dirty little secret is you get paid if it's flat. I love that. It's hilarious, man. Then, massive focus on community, otherwise you're just a commodity. You can still sell the commodity but there's no longevity in just selling commodity. You got to be able to sell to community too and get people into there. I love that. Itches are in the niches, love that too. Then a big focus on principles, what are the interest, what is it they're actually going after, actually fulfilling that and tapping into creative or tapping into the desires that they already have. I love the concept of independence and interdependence with the ads too and pre-frame bridges and all that before the funnel hits and then going to the funnel. Man, you dumped a ton of stuff on here. This is amazing. This is like just a little flavor of what you actually offer in eCom Underground, that's so cool. I really appreciate it. Bryan Bowman: I was excited to come on, man, when you invited me. I was very excited. We've become really great friends man and I appreciate you, I appreciate what you're doing. Anything I can do to help serve your audience and hopefully give back some value that they can implement, some strategy but also some very tactical things that if they're running funnels right now, hopefully they can go tweak and start testing. Steve Larsen: I appreciate that. You guys noticed, those of you guys that are listening now, how much did he actually just spend on the funnel itself like the pages, not that much time. I think it's a big place that people fumble up and they say, "I've got to spend all this time," now, the funnel matters but so much goes in to actually finding the product. Finding the needs, fulfilling and actually building the business around the funnel so it can be self-sustained, I love that. Anyway, thanks so much for all you shared and I really, really appreciate it. Hey, where can people go to I think you've mentioned the trial they can get? Bryan Bowman: Yeah, I want to do something special for your audience just to have them experience a little bit of eCom Underground and be able to connect with them a little bit more. I recently created a group. We have a large private Facebook group like most ClickFunnels official, it's private but it's available for free to the public. That's an amazing group that's growing very, very quickly but we recently started a separate group which is our insiders group. Our eCom Underground Insiders... This is really special for me because it's a little smaller group and allows me to just serve them a little more closely and spend a little more time with them. What I do in that group is I have a weekly live Q&A where we literally breakout the whiteboard and your exact questions get answered and you come on and as a group we can answer them but what I do is anything that I can do to help to answer these questions I do. If you submit the questions in advance, if there's someone in my network who's a better expert than I am then I try to get them on that call and we try to make sure you get your questions answered every week on those live Q&As. What I also do is I have an expert, I call it expert no pitch interview where literally you know that moment, Stephen, it's one of my favorite things ever, it's like after you finished dinner, the plates have been cleared, dessert is gone, we're just sipping coffee or whatever it is and we're just sitting there talking. We're all just really calm and just sharing stories. That's the environment in the interviews, we're literally it's just an open dialog, somebody who's just amazing in what they do, most of the time eCommerce related, and we can just pick their brain and get our questions answered from an expert. We do that every month and we have a special private group just for us for the insider so it's a really special community. What I want to do is just extend a 30 day all access trial for all of your listeners, they can come check it out, see if it's for them and I'd love to have them obviously. It just reminds me of a sales page, like what's the catch, there's no catch. It's part of a huge national promotion. What I want honestly is like have your audience experience it, if they get value then of course I would love to have them stay and to be a part of the community long-term. What they can do is if you'd like to be a part of it and experience it, they can go to eCom, it's with one M, ecomunderground.com/steve S-T-E-V-E and yeah, we'd love to have you and have you try it out and see if it's a good fit for you. Steve Larsen: That's awesome, man. I appreciate it. Hey, if everything else is good, reach out to Bryan to say thank you so much. Bryan, I appreciate it, a personal friend and total eCom junkie and nerd. Bryan Bowman: Yeah, for sure. Steve Larsen: There's a lot of eCom people that listen to this podcast, so I know they're all going to really love it. Anyway, thanks so much, man. I really appreciate this. Bryan Bowman: Awesome. Thank you so much and yeah, it was awesome. Steve Larsen: All right, bye-bye. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your pre-built sales funnel today.

Liz Stuart, Vice President of Operations - Partner Alliances and Customer Experience at Advanced Systems Group, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss the view of the channel from the reseller side, how to be successful reseller, what it means to have a good relationship with your vendor partner and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Transcription   Announcer: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host, Jen Spencer, as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast: The fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi and welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer here at Allbound, and today I'm joined by Liz Stuart, who is Vice President of Operations of Partner Alliances and Customer Experience at Advanced Systems Group. And I'm really excited to have Liz on the podcast today because she is bringing us the perspective of the partner. And we've only had that one other time before with Justin Gray from LeadMD. Normally, where I'm talking to channel sales and marketing leaders, but I think this is such a great way for our audience to really step into their partner shoes. So, to start it off Liz, you've been there for about 17 years. You probably know every nook of the place. Can you tell us a little bit about Advanced Systems Group? Liz: Sure. First, I'll say thank you for inviting me to be on your podcast. I'm a huge fan, so I'm really honored to be here today and talk about kind of what the partner experience looks like. ASG, we've been in business for 37 years. We started off as a Computer Land franchise and pretty quickly turned into a value-added reseller or solution provider. We have historically focused in the storage space, and today we're really looking at object storage, and software-defined networking, and kind of software-defined everything. Jen: Wonderful. I wanna dig into some of your experience and some accolades actually. You were named one of CRN's 2016 Women of the Channel for your role in driving profitable growth and facilitating stronger channel alliances for ASG. Can you share a little bit about how you've grown these relationships with your vendors? Liz: Sure. So, one of the things that we did as a company about 10 years ago, or maybe a little bit longer than that was we developed a role or a group of people that we align with our strategic partnerships. And basically, that's the vendor alliance manager, strategic alliance manager. These folks are aligned to our partners and their purpose is to have a deep understanding of who the partner is, their people, meaning their org charts, and that changes a lot, the processes, the programs, certifications that are required, and to bridge the gap between the vendor partner with our sales and engineering teams and then onto operations as well. This role is critical to our successful with our vendor ecosystem because that changes often and trust with our vendor ecosystem is so very important and that person helps keep that continuity and keep the repeatability of the consistency and the repeatability of the relationship and how we go to market. Jen: Excellent. I want, you know, to get some partner perspective from you. You know, ASG is a reseller for a lot of companies like HP, and Oracle, VMware, Cisco, NetApp, and Hitachi. Can you share a little bit about your relationships with those vendor partners? I'd love to hear what those partners have done to help you be successful in selling their solutions and products. Liz: Sure. So we have a mix of what I would call the industry giants. Some of the ones that you just mentioned and we also have our boutique-type partnerships or the smaller-type partnerships. And I think having a mix of those is the recipe for success. You know, from the industry giants, you're gonna have consistency in their programs and go-to-market. There won't be a lot of surprises there. They're gonna be very process-driven, and probably move a little bit slower than some of these…some of the boutique-type on partnerships. Now, on the smaller and boutique-type vendors, they're gonna bring agility and focus. They tend to move faster. They provide great service. And it's nice partnering with them because they're not gonna get processed...they're not gonna let process slow them down or getting the way of providing great service, and they tend to be a little bit more scrappy. Jen: Great. I love that. Liz: Yeah. Jen: And, you know, are there any trends that you've seen? You know, thinking about those different vendors, whether they are those larger organizations or those smaller scrappy ones, any trends you're seeing some of your vendors moving towards as a whole? I mean, just in the time that you've been working in like a channel operations type of a role, what shifts have you seen these organizations making to help support you? Liz: So, one of the things that I think we're all hearing about is, you know, the buyer journey is evolving. And I think it makes sense that the partnership journey should also evolve too. And vendor partners that we're having a lot of success with, get that. So they're looking at unconventional ways of partnering and meeting the customer, a lot of times that's us, right? Where we are, meaning they're continuously educating on solutions, and processes, and programs. It's not a one and done, right? They're not gonna show up and do a lunch and learn and not see them again till the next QBR. The ones that we're seeing a lot of success with are the ones that come to you, they set an agenda, they...we agree to mutual of our goals, we have a mutual understanding of what their KPIs are, what we need from them and what their expectations of us are. And then we can deliver to that and then they can do the same. And I think it's that transparent and open reciprocal conversation that's just going on all the time with the partners that are...that we're really successful with. Jen: Do you have a...I'm just, you know...I'm curious about this. Do you ever have experiences with one particular vendor that you're like, "This work so well," and then do you share that with another vendor or do you try to really compartmentalize your interactions? Liz: I think it's important to share. And yes, we do wherever we can share it and try to repeat that if we're having great success. And we ask for the same of our partners. So one of our questions I have, when I'm on boarding a new vendor, is, "What have you seen work?" Or if we're struggling with a vendor, if a vendor feels like they're struggling with us, I'll go to them and say, "What does your best partnership look like? And what does that...who is that partner or what does that partner look like? Do they have the same DNA as us," right? And one of the things that I find is, you know, vendors because you're a large solution provider, will want you to sign up with them. They expect that all of your sales and engineering teams are gonna sign up to sell their solutions, and they're disappointed when they don't. And I think a lot of times it's because the homework hasn't been done to make sure that there's a good match between us as a solution provider and what their...the vendor solution is. And a lot of times that is...that's where the relationships tend to go sideways or not necessarily bloom the way the vendor expected them to bloom. Jen: Oh, that makes perfect sense. There's an article that you wrote that was called "Tips for Building a Mentor-Mentee Relationship." And it digs into some best practices for really getting the most out of those relationships, and it spoke to me because you wrote it with the intended audience of women in technology, and which is something that's a passion of mine. I'm, you know, on the board of Girls in Tech Phoenix group here in Phoenix, Arizona, but when I was reading it, I really believed that your tips can be applied to partnerships as well. And, you know, from the view of the partner, how can your tips for working with a mentor, how do you think those can translate to working with the vendor? Liz: So, when you're working with a mentor or a mentee basically you're building a relationship that's based on trust and mutual respect. And I think that's very, very important when you're building relationship with a vendor partner, building that trust, building that mutual respect. And that usually comes when you spend time getting to know each other, right? So the tips, I think, are being respectful of each other's time. So when you do meet with each other, you have an agenda for your meeting, you set goals, and you assign ownership to each other, right? So the vendor will have some goals that they want us to meet. They'll assign it to specific people. Vice versa, we'll have some goals that we want the vendor to meet, and we'll make sure that there's follow-through there. And the biggest thing is the follow-through. I mean, one of the things that I tend to see is, you know, a vendor comes in, say, "Here's what we need to do for the next quarter," and then you just don't hear that much from the vendor until the next quarter. So, I really strongly believe in having a cadence and the vendors meeting us where we are, meaning, you know, being in our offices, officing in our offices. That's they're gonna get the most thing for their buck when they're highly visible to our executive leadership as well as sales and operations, and engineering. So in doing, that those are the key components of building that trust and the mutual respect. And I really just really, really believe that a great partnership is when the relationship is reciprocal. Jen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's so critical. And, you know, if you think when organizations build these partnerships, I don't think...you know no one sets out to do it poorly, right? Like, no one sets out going. Liz: Right. Jen: "I'm gonna set these goals and then I'm not gonna follow through on that." So everyone, you know, will have these, like, aspirations of what we want this to be. And you mentioned kind of having these sort of cadences. So is it best for the vendor to have sort of a prescribed sort of system that they will go...they go through? I mean, how do you hold each other accountable for that follow-through? Liz: I think that's the best ways when there is a set prescribed system, you know. And we...every vendor is a little bit different. Whenever my vendor alliances folks are meeting with their vendors, we basically tell them, "This is what we see working. This is what works. And if that works for you, we'd love to build a cadence with you, whether that's once a week, once a month, whatever that might look like." And depending on their role at the vendor, it may or may not work, right? So it just depends on who we're working with. But, yes, I do believe having something that's repeatable and consistent is a key. Jen: And, you know, because it's so...it's just so great having kind of your perspective on here, I'm wondering, you know, if you could give sort of a piece of advice to someone who's trying to manage all of the information that comes in and the processes that are part of being a value-added reseller. I mean, what advice would you give that person? Liz: I would give, the advice that I would give is to do a deep dive. There are so many ways that we can be profitable working with our vendor partners. So deep-dive into all of their programs, their financial programs, their deal reg programs, every single program that they have and understand who they are and understand your partner managers, what their KPIs are, and make sure they understand what yours are and what your goals are for the future. And make sure you can tell your company's story, because you're selling your company as much they're selling their company, and you want them to work with you as much as you wanna work with them. So, as much as they want to work with you, so, I think that it's critical to have open dialogue and be transparent in that way and make sure that your goals align with each other, and always be working on building that relationship and making it more successful. And if there are areas that fail, you know, learn from those mistakes, move on and try new things. I mean, I think one of the things that I...one of the other things that I'm seeing a lot is trying to think outside of the box about how you partner and how you go to market with vendors or partners. You know, trying to think unconventionally and thinking about what the customers' needs are. And our customers, they're going a million miles an hour just like we are, so thinking about what are their needs, right? Do they really wanna attend another basketball game or is there something that I can provide to them where I can get in front of them, that maybe they can have their family with them because they wanna be spending time with their family? So just thinking outside of the box. If they're passionate about doing community work or volunteerism then maybe you partner with them in that way. And, man, that's...you know, what a way to build the strong partnership is by volunteering together. So, I think there are so many unique ways that you can partner with vendors and your customers for that matter, that we just have to kind of think outside of the traditional box. Jen: You know I love that. And because what you're saying is, you really have to understand and get to know this person. I mean, it's a relationship. It's just like when you… Liz: Exactly. Jen: …meet a new friend or when you start dating somebody. You're going to engage in activities and do things that are going to be, you know, shared and enjoyed, you know, among that group. And so, that makes perfect sense. And so, we do kind of have to throw away some of our old playbooks of, you know, delivering over, you know, logoed, logo with polo shirts or… Liz: Yeah. Jen: You know, yeah, or the boxes at a basketball game like, you know, you were referencing. Is that something that the customer or that the vendor or, you know, your team actually cares about? And I think in order to do that, in order to actually execute on this advice, gosh, there's gotta be like cultural alignment, right? Like, you've gotta have...at your level, you know, you've gotta be part of an organization that's culturally open to that transparency and that collaboration. And then the vendor has to have that same kind of culture as well. And its how do you make sure that before you start engaging with a partner on that level, that you've got that culture alignment? I mean, do you have any advice for that? Liz: That's the million-dollar question, right? And that is...that's part of what my vendor alliances team work so diligently on, right? And they spend so much time getting to know the vendor, understanding our internal data. You know, where the vendor might be a fit. It might not be a fit in one region, but it might be a great fit in another region because of their product mix or their cultural mix. And we're pretty consistent across the board, but there is some tendencies in different...there's different tendencies in different regions. So, that's part of what the vendor alliances team does is they...you know, they operate on data and they look at who the vendor is, what changes have been happening at the vendor, what changes have been happening internally, and really work hard to bridge that gap. And hopefully, the trust that our internal team has with our field sales team will help build the trust with the vendor partner so that that cultural connection happen easier, faster, better. Jen: Excellent. Awesome. Okay, Liz, before I actually let you go, you know, you listen to the podcast, so you know what I'm gonna do right now. I'm gonna ask you some... Liz: Yes I do. Jen: ...random personal questions. Okay. So my first question for you is what is your favorite city? Liz: San Francisco. Jen: Okay. So because that's my favorite city also I'm gonna ask you why. Why do you love San Francisco? Liz: So, I grew up in the East Bay, and I love all things Northern California, but specifically around San Francisco, there is just an energy in that city. Every time I go there it just...it feels like home, it looks like home. It's just a great city. And the food is excellent too. So, I mean, it's just...it's beautiful. It's just everything about it. Jen: Awesome. Well, from one East Bay girl to another I agree. Agree 100%. Liz: I love it. Jen: Okay, second question, are you an animal lover? Liz: Of course. I love all animals, but for pets, I love dogs that don't shed, so I have a Shih-Tzu Poodle mix and he is the best little companion for our family. He is great. And he's been with us for eight or nine years and loves kids and he's just as easy...so yeah, that definitely, I'm a dog lover. Jen: Wonderful. Oh, what's his name? Liz: Charger. Jen: Charger, cute. Liz: Yeah. Jean: Okay, question number three, Mac or PC? Liz: PC. Jen: All right. And question number four. If I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Liz: So, I am feeling a little nostalgic, so I'm gonna say I would go to the Azores islands. They're a group of nine volcanic islands west of the continental Portugal. And I've been to one of the islands, Terceira Island, twice. My parents are both from that island. And one of the things that I've always kinda dreamed of doing is going to all nine of those islands and immersing myself in that, in my culture, as it is my culture. So, that's one of the places I'd love to spend some time and take an extended vacation. Jen: That sounds wonderful. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me about channel and share a little bit from a reseller's perspective. It was great. If any of any listeners wanna reach out to you personally, maybe they have more questions, you know, what's the best way for them to get hold of you? Liz: They can email me at liz@virtual.com or I'm on LinkedIn at Liz Stuart, and it's S-T-U-A-R-T. Jen: Wonderful. Well, thanks again for your time, and thanks everyone for tuning in. And we'll catch you next time with an all-new episode of The Allbound Podcast. Have a great day. Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, #NeverSellAlone.

Zach Selch, VP of Global Sales at PharmaJet joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss partner channel goals, growing a channel, educating your partner sales reps and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Announcer: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the "Allbound Podcast," the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi everyone, welcome to the "Allbound Podcast." I am Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Zach Selch who is the VP of Global Sales at PharmaJet. And if you don't know Zach, he's been working in sales for the last 30 or so years, and with a lot of that time spent in the channel we're gonna have a ton to talk about with him. Zach, you've just recently transitioned into your role as VP of global sales at PharmaJet, and I know you're working on building up new channels, expanding, and empowering existing channels. Before we get into all the meat we're gonna talk about today, can you share a little bit about PharmaJet and about your role in the company? Zach: Sure. So PharmaJet is a company that was put together to develop and sell needle-free injection technology for the vaccine market. And the basic idea is that you have literally billions of people getting vaccines, and there are a lot of dangers involved with the needles. They make it a little bit less safe. There are issues with disposing of needles. There are issues of accidental sticks, those types of things. And there's also advantages with vaccine to where in the flesh, where in the layers of the skin or the muscle you deliver your vaccine. So if you can make it easy to deliver the vaccine in the right part of the body, you can make it more effective with less training. So that's essentially what we do. And right now our focus really is in growing the international vaccine market as well as the domestic flu market. Jen: That is very, very interesting. And I love this innovative approach to medicine. So channel comes up in this? I think there's so many different interesting applications of growing a channel. You know, what's kind of the overview of your role there? What are you setting out to achieve for PharmaJet? Zach: This is an interesting product for a couple of reasons. When we're dealing with the international market, we're looking really at ministries of health; government. And, you know, when you're selling to a government, they're...it can be a long sales process. You don't really have a relationship, you're looking at a very, say, long investment in the issue of developing trust. And when you're dealing with a channel, you're essentially onboarding the trust and the relationship that that channel's already developed with your customers.   So if you know who your customer's going to be...and in this case I do, it's a very specific part of the Ministry of Health of countries and you can find the right channel. So you find somebody who's actually selling to them another product today has been delivering the trust, they know that they're delivering good product and, you know, they're honest and so on and so forth. If I could get those type of channels, that accelerates my sales process, it cuts down my cost of sale because I don't have to be there 20 times. You know, I can manage the ongoing sales process through my channel. So that's the focus of what I'm doing.   Now, domestically, I have a similar thing...or actually, you could say it's similar but almost opposite. In the United States the people who are making decisions about vaccines are much, much more localized and much smaller, and it then goes back to the cost of sale. "Can I actually get out to every clinic or every place where they're going to make...where they're going to be delivering vaccines and make a presentation, develop the relationship, build rapport and trust. Well, if I'm dealing with distributors, our channel partners that have those relationships, they're getting out there, then that is gonna make my sales process a lot easier. Jen: The beauty of a channel. That's great. Zach: Exactly, right. Jen: So, actually, let's dig into that a little bit more, and I'm gonna start by going backwards. So your most recent company, AMETEK, you worked within the Rauland-Borg Division. And when you were there, you grew annual sales from less than $1 million to more than $12 million in 7 years, and you did it without adding any headcount, products, or resources, which that's pretty substantial, right? That's a big accomplishment. So you gotta tell us how were you able to grow your sales that much without adding that headcount and those resources. Zach: Well, so when I came on board to Rauland, which was the division of AMETEK that I was part of, they'd been trying for 40 or 50 years to sell internationally without any real luck, mostly because, you know, they were doing what a lot of companies do. They were taking a regional manager from the US market who thought it might be fun to sell internationally and putting them in the role, right, but without any real experience. And we were locked into probably the wrong model of partners, the wrong profile. And what I like to do in a new role is I always start by asking a few questions: who are we selling to, why are they buying it. And that might sound really elementary, but a lot of people don't do that, and that really is going to define your channel. And as an example with some companies...and this was the case with Rauland. We had a very difficult - not difficult - a complicated product to install and to maintain, and keeping happy customers is very important. So the philosophy from the beginning, had been "Let's find partners who we can trust to handle this very complicated technical installation and provide good technical support. And can they sell what's sort of an afterthought?" So the first thing I did was I looked at this, I said, "Okay, we need people who can do this type of level of technical support." That's great, but you can always buy an engineer. If a distributor doesn't know how to sell, you can't teach them how to sell. But if you tell them you need this type of technical person, "If you wanna be our distributor, you have to have such and such technical person and they have to do this training," then you'd wanna hire him, and in some countries they can hire him for $15,000 or $20,000. In some countries, it might be 50, 60 or $80,000 a year, but those numbers are nowhere near the cost of getting really good sales people.   So the first thing I did was totally revamp what the profile of distributor I wanted was. Now, one thing that I did that was interesting - and it wasn't my choice, but I'm not unhappy I did it - was we decided as a company that in order to maintain our reputation and our credibility, I wasn't going to fire any of the distributors even if I thought they weren't the right distributors. So I inherited something like eight distributors, probably none of whom I would have chosen, and I let one of them go simply because they had nowhere near the bandwidth to cover the territory that was assigned to them, and that was the one distributor I had reason to let go. But everybody else, I really focused on turning them around and we were able to get them, on average, to increase their sales by about 400% and some of them even more than that through, you know, the next step. So after we brought on board new distributors and identified a new paradigm or new model of distribution, I really started off with everybody saying, "Okay, now you're part of our sales organization." This isn't the situation where you are a customer where we're selling you something, you buy it and you do what you want with it. I look at channel as part of my sales organization, which means I wanna know what they're doing, I want information about the funnel, I wanna know who their sales people are, I want either myself or my regional managers to actually know and evaluate the sales people, know how much they're actually working for us. And I started off with, like, KPIs from the beginning of saying, "We have X man hours of selling time around the world. I wanna increase that by about a hundred-fold within three years." And the idea there was that if our distributors were just not really getting out and focusing on us, the existing ones had to increase their sales hours with the product, and the new ones had to commit. And either myself or my regional managers were keeping track of this very diligently, which sometimes isn't that common.   Some people look at the channel and they say, "Well, I'm gonna find a channel in a country and I'm gonna ask them to buy 100 pieces a year and they're gonna buy 100 pieces a year," and they'll sell them and that's all I really need to know. But what I wanted to do and the way I liked to work was really know how they're selling, how the different people are, and it goes really in-depth. I mean, we would do evaluations all of their salespeople on a regular basis for training needs. We would do a lot of sales training and we would push people to take different courses. I would send out summaries of business books that I've read and I'd say, "Okay, I believe this is a little piece that could help you out."   On a regular basis, I would talk to distributor owners and I would say, "Look, John just isn't really the right guy. You don't have to fire him, but you have to take him off my product and replace him with somebody else." And I would do that, and about two years into the job I had a little rebellion by the existing distributors.   Jen: Oh, really? Zach: And I said, you know... Oh, yeah. They said... And what's funny is at this point after 10 years, they loved me and they were making a lot of money. But for the two-year mark, they all actually got together, the old distributors, the ones I inherited, they actually got together and they decided that they were gonna go to my boss and say that they didn't wanna work with me anymore. And, you know, my boss supported me on that, and then I went to them and I said, "Look, I'm gonna fire one of you. I don't know which one yet, but you don't either. And if you guys don't wanna work according to the way I say, there's a good chance you're gonna lose our line. So you'll have to decide if it's worth it, you know, because you wanna exert your independence if you wanna lose the line."   And it was a big, you know, standoff, got a little tense, but then they all decided that they would change the way they worked, that they would cooperate. And, you know, some of them ended up making a great deal of money afterwards because they were selling more. And all I really wanted from them was to do things to help them sell more, but at the time they thought, you know, I was really intruding into their independence, right. They didn't like that I was asking them for too much information, I was pushing them too much.   So that's really, that's the short of it, was finding the right new distributors. You know, and being my distributor, the ones I recruited, I would probably interview anywhere from 6 to 10 distributors for every territory before choosing one. We would really give them instructions in terms of how much training they had to do, how many sales hours, what type of reporting they had to do and that kind of thing. And, you know, they always thought this was a little much, but on the other hand by asking for them for a lot, they understood how serious we were. And then we would do things with them like get them together for periodic trainings. We would do...we divided up the world into four territories, so we would get the groups of people together on a regular basis. On odd years, we would get the local groups together. So we would have a South American Sales Conference one year and then we would have a global sales conference on the second year, and that gave a lot of opportunities for the distributors to talk to each other and exchange information.   And because I was pretty aware between myself and my RM's, of the different people's strengths and weaknesses, we could do things like say, "Okay, Turkey has the same problem that Australia's having now and they overcame it. I'm gonna have them sit together at dinner and I'm gonna, you know, throw out a little introduction and mention that problem and see if I can get them to have a conversation about it," and those type of things. And we really got different channels to support each other and share information and become very, very friendly, and also really have a feeling of belonging to a family.   And that, I think, was very powerful, because there were expenses involved. You know, we were flying people to global sales conference every two years and we were flying to a regional sales conference every two years and we would ask them to send their people to sales training and stuff like that, but you know, by asking them for that investment we made them really buy into our system and they sold a lot. That really drove sales.   Jen: Well, I mean, like you said, you looked at your channel partners and these distributors as an extension of your sales team, which is great, and that's exactly what everyone should do. And what I really like about, you know, your story is that you went in, you did research, you gathered data from these new partners to see what was working and then used that to coach the existing partners, because I think the situation that you were in where you had these partners that you inherited, right, that use it and go and sort of prospect and select, it's very, very similar to somebody walking in and now managing a sales team and inheriting reps. You know, this story, we could take out the word 'channel', take out the word 'distributor', we're just talking about managing expectations with the sales team. But I think there's a lot of people that have been in your shoes or are in them now, and for some reason when we talk about people selling for us, with us, partners, most folks tend to be a little bit hesitant to be that aggressive, because it's almost like firing a volunteer, right? So people get a little anxious about it, but you have limited time and resources. Zach: Right, and what's really interesting, I always say, is almost every case...and you could even say every case. I mean, almost every case, your distributor, if he's any good, if he or she are any good, they're richer than you are, they make a lot more money than you are, they might have more experience in exactly what they do, right. So, you know, when I try and explain this to people I say, "Yeah, I'm having a conversation with this guy and I say, you know, I really want you to do this, because you're gonna be more successful," and he says, "Zach, how did this year go? My boat's 100 feet long, how long is your boat? Don't tell me..." right? And that's the type of thing it's a very sensitive point. You know, I had a distributor who I love now and I was able to get their sales up by almost 400%, and he was 75 when I took over at Rauland, and he was the only sales asset for his company covering a large country, and he was great. I said to him, I said, "Look, if you die, your company is worthless to me, and your family is gonna be in trouble. So I need you to start hiring sales people and training them, because you wanna be able to sell your company to leave something for your family." And he was furious with me, right? But I was able to drive him to hire professional sales people and other people and build his company, and we ended up building up by 300-400% of sales, which was good for me, and then when he wanted to retire he had something to sell. But you get that, and he was looking at me like I'm his kid. Why should I be telling him what to do?   Jen: Right, it's great. And you know, between building these teams and...you know, you were talking before about putting partners together at the same table, getting them to learn from each other. It reminds me of...there was a blog post you wrote that was on LinkedIn, it was called "Hobbies and Selling." So for everybody, after you're done with the podcast, go to LinkedIn, connect with Zach, you can see this article. But you talk about the benefits of seeking help from sources other than your own. And in this particular piece you talk about weight lifting, how you were able to really break a plateau, a sales rep who was able to outsell his peers two to one, all by innovating, right, and listening to other people, to someone else's innovation, then using their expertise to kinda change a tactic to fill a need. I'd love to know, you know, how do you see this translate in the channel, because today, channels are not as much two-way streets anymore, they're becoming these very complex ego systems. Love to hear your thoughts on this. Zach: So just to repeat the story, sort of, I learned when I was probably 25 or so. I had a channel and there was this guy, a salesman, who was taking notes in a very unusual way. And none of this...and his boss had sent everybody to this class to learn how to take notes, and he was the only one who adopted it. And then later on in the year I found out that he was by far the best performer in his team, right. Like, he outperformed everybody else in his team by at least two to one.   And I really learned from that the idea of you should always be learning, you should always be honing your skills, taking yourself up, even something as small as note-taking, right. I mean, how many...we all take notes, we all say, "Well, you should ask people questions, you should gather information," right? But if you're not documenting that well, you're not doing your best job, but how many of us go out and really work at note-taking? So I took that as a really important lesson, and that was almost 25 years ago, more or less. So what I try to do every year is, first of all, I try and read probably between 6 and 10 very specific business books every year, and they're usually on a subject, open-ended questions for instance, or you know, a certain type of way to prepare a slide deck, different things like that. And I'll read the book and, you know, I'll go to a couple of seminars or workshops every year. And what I try and do is then take that stuff and prepare it into training for my channel sales organization, and sort of I see that as part of my job. So what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay, you know, I'm gonna take this 300-page book. I'm gonna take two ideas from it, and then I'm going to set up a webinar, and I'm gonna first train my regional managers, and then I'm gonna train all of the salespeople." And now this also brings another value to the owner or manager, because if I teach them a good trick that isn't related to my product, they're gonna be able to use that selling other products too, right.   So I'm giving them an advantage. I'm increasing my importance and my mind share with the partners, but I'm also giving them a tool that might help them sell a little bit more. And, you know, what I've heard from that is also sometimes it even drives people... You'll have sales people who say, "You know what? I sort of felt that I had everything I really needed, and then you taught me this and I thought, 'Maybe I should be reading my own 10 books a year.'" And it sort of helps convince people to get back onto the self-educating type of path, because that can be...you know, sales people really should be constantly learning, in my opinion, to develop their skills.   Jen: Excellent. I agree. I don't think there's...I mean, think most people do agree with that completely. I wanna pull us...let's pull in, going back to the present. So we've been talking a lot about a lot of your past experience. You're at PharmaJet now, we got to understand a little bit more about what that company's doing. You're partnering with some interesting organizations like the Serum Institute, and its really innovative healthcare. Can you get into a little bit more detail about how your partner program is set up? Because I imagine there's this one layer of education marketing that's going on, there's the distributors, there's like the in-office sales that are happening. I just would love to know, you know, how are you organizing this to really maximize collaborative partnership?   Zach: Well, so it's very interesting. We are essentially selling tools to help deliver vaccines, and vaccines are purchased in a very unusual way. And again going back to what I said before, I really like to try and think from the beginning that your sales organization should be a mirror of how people are buying your particular type of product. So internationally, the people who are buying vaccines and things that have to do with vaccines are a very limited number of people. You have a country that might have 200 million people and the decisions for all their vaccines are being made by 1 or 2 people who are part of their central government. And so what's really important to me is to be able to find those people, give them the information they need, help them understand that they can trust us and then help move forward the sale, right? That's key to me. But I also need... You know, what's gonna happen as I go...you know, let's say I go to Bolivia and I meet with the right person and he loves the product, and then I come back or I go to another city, and then he remembers he has another question, right? He wants to know more information. Well, I don't wanna have to go there 20 times over the course of the sales process.   Now, if I have the right channel who has a good relationship with that guy already and I can make sure that my channel handles all that ongoing questions and the issues and the back and forth along the sales process, that really takes a lot off of me that simply would make the whole sales process not cost-effective. So that's really what I'm looking for.   So, internationally, I'm looking for a very specific, focused type of partner. And of all the products I've ever sold, this is probably the most focused type of partner that I'm looking for in that sense. Now, domestically, there's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of potential customers for my product in the United States and I need to be able to reach them. I can't afford to do it directly. So again, I need the right channels for that and it will probably involve multiple channels because if you think about who vaccinates in the United States, well, your pharmacy chains vaccinate, your doctors' offices vaccinate, your employers vaccinate, right? And those are probably going to be separate channels, so I need to find the right channels to reach those types of people.   What's very interesting about this is people make decisions about vaccination in a very focused way, time-frame wise. It's almost like selling Christmas trees. You know, if you offer a Christmas tree for $3 in May, nobody's gonna buy it, right? No matter how fantastic the tree is and how great the deal is. People have a very specific timeline where they say, "Well, I have to figure out what I'm doing about flu shots, you know, and I'm gonna make that decision...for the 2018 flu season, I'm gonna make that decision in April of 2017." So what I really need is my channel to be talking to the customer during, you know, a 60-day period about my product, which is on one hand good, because if you say to your channel, "Look, what we really want from you is, every time you go into the customer to remind them about our product, that's asking a lot of the channel. But if you basically say to your channel partner, "Look, once a year during this six-week period, we want you to present our product," that's a very different ask from your channel. The other thing is the starting price of this, you know, a doctor or a pharmacist can really start using this for very little money. So the cost of buy-in for the customer, for the end-user customer, is very low and the return on investment is very clear. So from a channel perspective, I think what I believe has happened with us is, in the past we've made the wrong asks from the channel partners in the United States, which has sort of slowed down our sales. But I think what we really need to be asking from them is a very, very doable, reasonable, focused sales process, you know, very, very reasonable, and the return is, in my mind, very obvious.   So, well, that's sort of where I am. I've been getting a lot of very positive feedback from both international and domestic channels that see this as a great addition to their portfolio.   Jen: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've made a ton of headway in a short period of time, and I'll be anxious and eager to catch up with you a little bit later down the road and see how things are going. Maybe we can have you back for a recap of what's transpired. Zach: Oh, that would be great. Jen: Wonderful. Well, before we wrap this up, Zach, at the end of my podcast, I like to ask folks some more personal questions about themselves just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So if you're up for it, I've got four simple questions for you. Zach: Sure! Jen: All right. So first question is what is your favorite city? Zach: Oh, wow. You know what? I live in Evanston, Illinois, and having traveled around a lot...like, I've done business in more than 100 countries, I've lived in 4 or 5 countries. This is a very, very comfortable place to live. So if you're asking me what's the best place to live, I'm very happy at Evanston, Illinois. Jen: Okay. That works. Second question, do you consider yourself an animal lover? Zach: I have a corgi, and yes. So I did not think that I would love a little furry dog, but I am very, very fond of my corgi, yes. Jen: What is your corgi's name? Zach: Wingate.   Jen: Oh, nice, very nice. Zach: Yeah, Wingate was a British World War II general, so I gave my kids a list of potential generals they could choose from and they chose Wingate. Jen: That's hysterical. The way that I name pets in my house is authors' names. I was an English major, and so... Zach: There you go. Jen: Always funny hearing how people come up with their pets' names. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Zach: PC. I have never been a Mac fan. Jen: All right, and last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expense paid trip. Where would it be to? Zach: Oh, wow. Probably Cambodia. I have never been, and it's someplace my wife really wants to go, is probably Cambodia. Jen: I like that the decision is based on where your wife would like to go. I think that's a great answer, Zach. Zach: You gotta keep your wife happy. There you go. Jen: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing your experiences, your insights, it was a pleasure. If any listeners want to reach out to you personally just to kinda follow up, connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?   Zach: So I would just suggest reaching out to me on my LinkedIn profile, there's contact information there. You can send me an email or a personal message through LinkedIn. Just to make sure it's clear, because I don't know how this appears on your site, my last name is Selch. That's Sierra, Echo, Lima, Charlie, Hotel, and my first name is Zach. So if you look me up on LinkedIn, you'll find me and you can reach out to me.   Jen: Perfect, yeah. Be sure when you reach out to Zach, let him know you heard him on the podcast so he has frame of reference. That will help, and you'll wanna do that so you can also check out that article, and he's got others up there too that are great as well. Zach: Yeah, thank you. Jen: So thanks, Zach, go ahead. Zach: Oh, I was just gonna say I put up a series of articles about hiring a regional manager that I'm very proud of. So that's something...you know, I'd suggest people...if they wanna read it, they're more than welcome to.   Jen: Wonderful. I recommend that as well. So thank you again for joining us, and thanks everyone else for listening in, and we'll catch you next time with an all-new episode of the "Allbound Podcast." Have a great day. Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to the "Allbound Podcast." For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com, and remember, #NeverSellAlone.

John Sekevitch, President of CyberSolutions.io, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss, conflict between direct and indirect sales, making your partners money, customer experience ownership and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Jen: Hi, everybody, welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer. And today I'm joined by John Sekevitch, who is President of CyberSolutions.io. Welcome, John.   John: Thanks, Jen. It's good to be here. Hi, everybody.   Jen: It's great to have you here. And before we dig into sales leadership and channel, tell me a little bit about Cyber Solutions and what that organization is.   John: Well, Cyber Solutions is a channel. Right now there's roughly a thousand companies representing about 5,000 different offerings in the cyber security space. And each one of them wants to have access to cheap information, like the security officers of major banks and financial services, organizations, large retailers, and other high tech companies with intellectual property to protect. And as a result of the challenges that these companies are having in going to market and getting access to their targeted executives, they work with channel partners such as I in terms of bringing their products to market.   So right now, I'm representing a couple of application security companies, a threat and vulnerability management company, risk management company, one involved with threat intelligence sharing, and finally, another associated with risk scoring and security scoring for cyber insurance purposes. I think what's going on is it's very difficult for new companies to get access to the market. So more and more companies are going right to channel partners rather than trying to field a direct organization first, and then expand into the channels. And I'm sure we'll probably get into some of that later.   For the most part right now what I'm doing is helping these companies and representing their offerings to roughly 100 of those types of companies. So I have established strong relationships over the past 20 years, and I can get them into places they wouldn't be able to get into themselves. And I think that's typically why companies are looking for their channel partners.   Jen: Well, this is a real treat for us. Typically on the podcast, I'm interviewing channel executives who represent a vendor and they're talking about their best practices, and their triumphs and challenges in engaging a channel of partners to help them achieve their revenue goals. And so, what's so great is you bring the perspective of the channel partner, which is a really powerful voice that many of our listeners need to hear. So I'm excited. This is going to be great.   John: Yeah, I've also been on both sides. So I've definitely been that head of sales and marketing who was looking to expand my direct team into places where they weren't able to get into, or to just scale to the market opportunity. So I have recruited and worked with channel partners, and not only in this situation of my own company, but prior to that being a channel partner of IBM and being a channel partner of Oracle, which are two of the biggest that work with channel partners and have a lot of the best practices in the space. So I'm happy to share my perspectives from both sides of the table.   Jen: That's exactly what I wanted to dig into next. Looking at your background, you've had these executive leadership positions that you've held over the last 20 years, companies like IBM, like Net SPI. You've worked directly in sales and marketing like you mentioned. So you have a vast amount of business experience, and so I imagine you understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to channel, but also really business in general. Channel is just one aspect of an entire business. I'd love to hear, what are some of the biggest changes that you've seen in channel sales and marketing?   John: Well, I think the biggest change I've seen is more and more companies starting with the channel, rather than starting with their own direct sales organization. I think that's just symptomatic of what's happening out in the marketplace, which is, it's very difficult to do direct sales these days without spending a lot of money on marketing. For the most part, in my experience everybody's kind of focused on a handful of executives, and those executives don't answer their phone and they don't respond to emails. They get their insights from their relationships, their trusted relationships.   And so more and more, hiring a sales guy just because they have the ability to sell isn't enough anymore. What you're looking for is potentially getting a channel partner who already has those trusted relationships. In the cyber security space for instance, there's a company called Opto, and Opto has relationships with most of the top banks and financial services, organizations and large retailers. So as a result, everybody wants to get their attention so that their products are being represented. What's interesting is that now the channel partner is in power, because of the fact that they have these relationships, and they can try to exact a pound of flesh out of the product or offering provider.   So what's interesting is you'll see things like big commission payouts for the direct side being in the 5% to 10% range, and on the channel side being in the 20% to 25% range, regardless of whether or not they're selling at this price or not. So I'm seeing starting with the channel rather than the direct, and also the power of the channel to be able to dictate economic terms, which hasn't been the situation in the past.   Jen: Well, working for Allbound, where we believe in the power of selling with partners, I'm definitely biased, but we started our own channel partner program very, very early on. It was one of the first things we did as an organization, and I love my partner leads. I talk frequently about how they're my favorite leads, because like you said, they're coming from a trusted adviser. So when I get a lead from one of my agency partners, that is not just a lead, that is somebody who is coming to us because someone that they trust and work with on a regular basis recommended me to them. So it's the warmest hand-off that you can possibly get in sales. I think that's part of why we're seeing these organizations starting those channel partner programs earlier and earlier on in their business.   John: Right. But there's also a lot of challenges in an effective channel program. For instance, you were just mentioning getting those channel leads. Well, one of the things that has to be managed is the channel conflict between the direct organization and the channel. Who has what responsibilities? What account responsibilities? What happens if the channel's not getting the traction that you were hoping to get out of a particular territory? How do you get a channel partner to support all of the sales reps rather than just one or two sales reps? And so these are all things that obviously you need to have executive leadership over. You always need to have somebody who wakes up in the morning caring about whether those deals are being done by the channel or being direct.   I've always had situations where I ran sales and marketing and had responsibility for the whole number. However, I always had somebody who was responsible for that channel. To think that that person who has responsibility for the total can also be the person who has responsibility for the channel number, is just not going to work because they can always get their number with the big number, rather than working through the channel. So you need to have deal headquarters, if you will, to make sure that everybody knows what's going on. And you've got to have trust in the partners to be able to share access to your salesforce.com or whatever CRM system that you're using, and also to have content that's relevant to the channel and not just for yourself.   So one of the things that companies are struggling with is the fact that they barely have enough content to support their own people, much less what's needed by the channel. At the end of the day, the channel still needs to have content. They might have relationships and that might get them access, but they need to have content to be able to share with their relationships to advance the value propositions that they're trying to represent out there.   Jen: Absolutely. They're your volunteer salespeople. They're out there selling on your behalf. They need to be empowered and enabled. So my next question I was going to ask you was, really, how do you determine if and when a company is ready to build a channel partner program? You mentioned a couple of things, you mentioned having a leader who is responsible for that revenue. You mentioned making sure they figured out some of those internal processes to avoid conflict. You mentioned content. So are those really hard and fast signs and if you don't have those three or four things, then you really can't launch a partner program? Is there anything else? What do you think is really the bare minimum for an organization to really start selling through and with channel partners?   John: Well, I mean, if you start with a channel partner program, then you don't have to worry about channel conflict. You're just going through the partner.   Jen: This is true, yeah.   John: So when you hire a person who has that experience, it'd be a different person than you would if you're going to hire the head of an internal sales organization, if you will. The other thing is what are you going to do about leads? Are you going to develop leads for your channel? A lot of companies are looking for both sides. So I remember working as a channel partner for Oracle, and we were a systems integrator for their e-commerce solution, and for a while, that company lived on business given to them by Oracle. But then came to the point where Oracle was expecting them to be bringing business to them. So there's got to be that give and take, if you will. So I would say that, if you're going to start with just a channel, be prepared to use your marketing and inbound resources, and perhaps even some of the inside sales resources to feed the channel, not just looking for the channel to feed you.   Jen: That's really great advice. I think about that, and I think about some of the mistakes that I've seen organizations make mostly around being under-resourced. So an organization, maybe that's been selling direct and then decides to build out a channel partner program, that group decides, "All right, we're going to hire this one person to really spearhead this and own it", except that person might be an operations type of individual, or a sales type of person...   John: Yeah, typically.   Jen: Right. Or maybe marketing but...   John: They're moving the paperwork, they're not moving the market. And that's a mistake. I'm glad you mentioned it.   Jen: Right.   John: I mean, naturally it is important to have somebody who moves the paper because of the fact that these people need to be paid. And if they're not being paid and if it's not worth their while, they won't put the work into it, and that's bad because sometimes you've given them exclusive territories, and they're not making any money on it, and they decide to walk away from the commitment so then nobody's pursuing these opportunities. So you got to be concerned about whether or not the channel's making money, because if they're not making money you're eventually going to lose them.   Jen: Are there any glaring mistakes that you've seen executives make in the channel? You don't you have to tell us who they are, or what companies they were. Just wondering if in your experience you've seen any like big failures that maybe, our listeners who are either building channel programs or nurturing them can learn from?   John: Well, there might be some people on the line that are familiar with this company, IBM for instance. So IBM pays 20% to 25% commission to their channel partners. The caveat is the fact that they pay 20% to 25% based on a deal that sold at list price. So the thing is that when it isn't sold at list price, and those of you on the podcast probably understand that there's never an IBM product that gets sold at list price. So consequently, these channel partners are making 5% to 10% instead of 20% to 25% because of the market realities that these IBM products need to be sold at a discount in order to be competitively priced.   So consequently, they lose a lot of the channel traction that they could be getting because even though the 20% to 25% seems like it's a reasonable commission to be paid, it's not actually being paid, and the result is the channel's not making any money, and they eventually lose some of that traction. So that's probably the most glaring example, other than just flat out, taking all the cherry accounts as in-house, and leaving the dogs and cats to the channel. That's again, not paying attention to whether or not the channel's making money. So you may be able to get somebody interested in it to begin with, but when the results don't stand up to their expectations, you eventually lose a channel, and I've seen that happen on a number of occasions.   Then the other thing is that you have to be continually diligent about whose account it is. On the one hand, it's the channel's account, but they're buying your product. And so consequently, you have to have a way of being able to stay involved so that they end up being a happy client. Because when they throw you out, you're going to get the black eye, not necessarily the channel partners. So something that needs to be coordinated is how do you maintain some degree of account ownership and ownership of the customer experience when there's a channel partner involved.   Jen: That's a really great point. That's something that we're seeing grow in importance, particularly in this as a service subscription economy that we're in, and where buyers have more choice than ever before to move from one product to one solution to another. Gosh, I mean, making sure that if you're a vendor you have the ability to easily collaborate with your channel partners or vice versa, so that you could ultimately take care of the customer, because that's what's most critical to your business. I think that's really, really great advice.   John: This is becoming a complication nowadays, because as customers move towards annual subscriptions versus perpetual licenses for many of these solutions, we're talking about paying commissions off of smaller numbers, or you're paying commissions off of just the first year rather than years two and three, type of thing. Again, this is all related to asking “Is my channel making money?” You can imagine if you got a $100,000 deal for a one year deal, and you're getting 25% of it, what do you get? You get a $25,000 doesn't go very far, but if you can pay them up front 25% of a $300,000 deal for instance, now you've got a bigger hit.   However, you don't get your money until years two and three. So you just have to figure out how to do that. So maybe instead of offering 25%, you offer 20%, but you pay the full three years upfront, that type of thing. These are all things that, again, focus on is my channel making money? If your channel's making money, you're going to be successful. If your channel's not making money, you won't be successful.   Jen: I couldn't agree more. It's perfect, perfect mic drop. Before I let you go, a lot of listeners of The Allbound Podcast are in their partner program infancy, and they're not the IBMs and the Oracles of the world. They are maybe some smaller mid-market SaaS companies that are really setting out to to build a partner program for the first time. Do you have some tips that you could share with folks like them, maybe the CEOs of those types of organizations? What do you recommend they do to really get started? Maybe it's even things they need to think about.   John: Well, I think what you're kind of describing is somebody who's already got a direct sales organization and now they're looking to expand into a channel, because otherwise, if you started with the channel you'd already have it there, so it's a little bit different. So let's assume that there is a direct sales organization, and now you're going to supplement that with the channel. So the first thing I would do is get somebody and invest in that person who is going to worry about the channel. Who's going to work with your inside teams to feed the channel? Who's going to set up the deal center to be able to manage channel conflict? Which accounts are the channel's? Which accounts are the inside team? Who's going to manage that? Who's going to put together the compensation plan that's going to be attractive to the channel, and still help the product company make money?   And then the other thing from a customer experience, is how are you going to share ownership of your mutual client? What are the expectations that you're going to have for your clients, for your channel's clients, and what are the expectations? How are you going to be participating in it? So I think if you take care of who's feeding the channel, who's compensating the channel, and how, and then also, how are you going to manage your mutual client? I think those are the three things that are most important to have a successful channel on your hands.   Jen: Excellent. Excellent advice. Well, this has been so great getting a chance to talk with you. Gosh, I could probably stay on the line even longer, and just pick your brain, but I won't. But before I really truly let you go, John, at the end of all of our podcasts, I have a little bit of a speed round of more personal questions, just four simple questions that I'd like to ask you. Are you open and ready for it?   John: Sure, sure.   Jen: All right. All right.   John: They're all related to channel, right?   Jen: No. They're actually not all related to channel. They're all related to you. So the first question is what is your favorite city?   John: My favorite city is Los Angeles. I like the ocean, and I like warm weather, and it's got a buzz to it. So I'm a Los Angeles type of guy, as compared to all my compatriots who seem to be Silicon Valley guys. So I'm a Los Angeles guy.   Jen: Southern California, awesome. Second question for you, are you an animal lover?   John: I am an animal lover. We have had cocker spaniels for years, and they live a long time, very painful to see them leave. We just had one that passed in the last few months. And so my wife is now in the process of getting a Saint Charles, I think is the type of cocker that she's expecting to get next, so we'll have one soon.   Jen: Aw! Those are so adorable. Will this be a puppy?   John: Oh, it will be a puppy, yeah. We always start from scratch and go through all that pain. But cockers are a lot of work, I'm telling you. So if you're looking for a puppy or a dog that is not a lot of work, I would not recommend cocker spaniels.   Jen: I don't think I've met a puppy that's not a lot of work. So if anyone out there on the internet knows of puppies that are easy, let me know. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?   John: Mac for sure.   Jen: And last question...   Jen: What's that?   John: The only way I made much affordable, however, is every time I bought one, I bought a share of Apple stock. And so it's been able to keep up.   Jen: There you go. All right, my last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   John: All-expenses paid trip would have to be someplace in the US. I'm a US guy. Where have I not been? I've not been to Charleston, South Carolina. And I think I need to go there. My wife and I have thought about doing that and it's like, it never gets to be the right time to go to Charleston, South Carolina. But if you were going to pay for it, I'd go.   Jen: That's the first time that someone has picked Charleston, South Carolina as their destination of choice. So I need to ask you a fifth question which is, what is so amazing about Charleston, South Carolina that I am missing?   John: I think it's just the architecture. They've kind of kept their hands on the old, while still having all of the modern conveniences.   Jen: All right.   John: And it's warm.   Jen: And it's warm, and it's warm. Well, lovely. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing your time with me today John, talking about channel, talking about South Carolina. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally and just connect with you, what's the best way for them to do so?   John: Just my corporate email's fine. Its jsekevitch, S-E-K-E, V like Victor I-T-C-H@cybersolutions.io.   Jen: Wonderful. Again, thank you so much for your time. And thank you everybody else for tuning in. And I hope you'll join us next week for an all new episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.   Intro: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.

Kevin O'Brien, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at JazzHR, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss challenges when starting a channel program, scaling and tiering, creating a culture of partnership and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.  Jen: Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Kevin O'Brien who is Vice President of Strategic Alliances at JazzHR. Welcome, Kevin.   Kevin: Welcome, Jen. It's great to be here.   Jen: Well, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast today. I think it'd be great if you could just tell us a little bit about JazzHR just so we have a frame of reference of what you do every day.   Kevin: That's great, yes. So JazzHR is a recruiting solution for small businesses. Small businesses all over North America are having the same challenges that a lot of larger businesses have in terms of how do they find talent, how do they get applicants to new roles that they're trying to fill, how do they screen them and interview them and ultimately bring them through to an offer. And Jazz has built an end to end solution that helps them get exposure onto a lot of the well-known job boards that are out there like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor and more.   So, it allows them to power their own careers page so that they can actually get visibility into their open roles and then provide a series of tools and solutions so that they can easily screen and identify who to call, who the candidates are going to be and then bring them through in an interview process in a very collaborative manner. So, we've helped tens of thousands of small businesses hire about 300,000 employees over the course of our existence. And we're seeing great success in the market today.   Jen: That's wonderful. It's really wonderful to hear. Hiring, recruiting and onboarding are such big business challenges for organizations, so it's great that you're helping them alleviate a lot of those pains. I want to dig into JazzHR's partner program and also kind of frame the conversation. You and I met at that small business Web Summit and I was sitting in your session.   You were speaking about how to really grow a partner program and how to enable and support partners. So, I immediately went to your partner page on the JazzHR website. And first of all, it's great, it's so thorough, it spells out everything perfectly for any prospective partner hoping to work with you. I mean, it seems like that partner program is very well established. So, can you share a little bit about how long it took to ramp up to where you are now and what had to be in place to get to where you are?   Kevin: Yeah, happy to, happy to. Yeah, the program at JazzHR has been around for just about a year, coming up on a year in May or June. To us a small business is a company that has up to 500 employees. So generally, small businesses have anywhere between 20 and 500 employees to be able to have the need to use JazzHR for their system.   And what we found was a lot of these companies are already working with trusted advisors for their HR needs, so maybe they're working with HR outsourcers, maybe they're working with compensation consultants, maybe they're working with other technology providers like HRIS systems and so forth. And those companies and organizations tended to be in a great position to not only introduce their clients to sort of the next wave of technology that they needed to bring onboard, but also they needed to be able to answer the next question that their clients had which is, ''Hey, can you help me with my hiring needs and help me get my hiring needs from offline to online.''   And so, when we saw this at JazzHR, we knew that we had to have an indirect strategy. And so, we built out a program that was tailored to local consultants who had one-to-one relationships and face-to-face relationships with local businesses. We put a program in place so that it was easy for them to get educated on what are the challenges that their customers have with hiring and have Jazz help to solve them.   And then we also have an indirect strategy around integrations where we built out an API so that we could tie in some of the technology systems that we're bringing these solutions down to small businesses as well. And so, we had to have all of that in place and then we had to build in sort of a partner portal with a marketing portal so that they could get access to this information and track their customers and then get rewarded for bringing new customers into Jazz.   So, it took a good three, four, five months to get the infrastructure set up and then it's been in place since around May or June of last year. And so, we're 9 or 10 months into it and the program is really growing very quickly and we're having a lot of success in helping these partners bring hiring and recruiting solutions down to their customers.   Jen: Well, you guys have been really busy. You have accomplished quite a lot in a very short period of time.   Kevin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, luckily the solution set for Jazz has been built out over a lot longer period of time than that. So, Jazz is what was founded as a company called the Resumator in 2009. And so, it's a fully functioning end to end suite for recruiting solutions. The whole company really rallied around it and we had support from our executive leadership all the way down to our product, marketing and sales teams. There's definitely a need in the market for these local consultants and technology providers to help their clients move their hiring from offline to online. So, the opportunity was there, the solution was there and we were able to build up the infrastructure to connect the two and really start to ramp the program.   Jen: That's great. Not to go down like a memory lane with you, but you look at your career and you definitely have had a general focus. You were the VP of Partners at HootSuite, you were Senior Director of the app partner program at Constant Contact. I'm just curious, what do you feel you've really been able to bring with you from company to company as you work to scale a channel partner program? Because I see a lot of individuals, a lot of channel professionals and they go and they build something we create something in and they move on maybe to the next company, and I'm just curious from your perspective what you feel you really brought with you?   Kevin: Yeah, that's a good question, Jen. Thank you. All three of these companies have all been focused on delivering solutions into small and mid-size markets. And one of the things that I really developed an appreciation for at Constant Contact from being there as it was able to grow from 100 customers up to 600,000 customers was an appreciation for how small businesses really leverage their own networks and their own trusted advisors in terms of what they need to be focusing on next.   And so, building out channel in partner programs that are able to empower those trusted advisors to be comfortable with your solution to understand how it's going to solve their client's needs and to be able to easily fit it into their existing workflows is something that I think we were we were able to solve really well at a Constant Contact, and I also took that into HootSuite and now into JazzHR and that's the key. It doesn't just have to be a solution that they believe that their customers are going to be successful with, but it also has to have the features and functionality that make it easy for them on a day in and day out basis to see how their customers are operating with it and to understand the challenges they have, so that if they can help overcome certain areas of the product they're able to add value themselves.   And then to also achieve some status with the brand that they're working with so that they can get early access to the content or features or insights and so forth that they can bring it to their clients, and it helps them to strengthen their relationship there as well. So, I think bringing in an appreciation for how small businesses need to be hearing about these solutions from their trusted advisors, as well as some of the more traditional direct marketing that happens in terms of software today is something that I've leveraged and tried to bring with me so that we can scale these programs with different companies.   Jen: That makes perfect sense. I mean you really understand the day to day of that small business, the end user, end customer and you also can put yourself in those partnerships. So, it makes perfect sense to me. I want to dig in and get more nitty-gritty with JazzHR's partner program because whenever there's a successful program we want to look and see, “Okay, what can we learn from this and how can we apply it to other people's organizations?” You guys have three tiers of partners and it seems like those are based on the number of bookings. So, can you tell us a little bit more about the tier structure that you've built out at JazzHR?   Kevin: Yeah. Yeah happy to. So, a booking for Jazz is the total cost of a contract that a small business is signing up for. When you think about hiring and recruiting, and this is different than some of the other companies I've been at, some of the other companies have been more month to month, but at Jazz we look at it as a more annual contract because hiring is something that you have a hiring strategy for the year and so you need the software for the whole year and the value of that year is the booking. And what we want to establish we put these goals in tiers out on our website so you can see them at jazzhr.com.   And partners are able to come in and understand how much business that they would traditionally need to be bringing to JazzHR in order to be at a certain tier. That typically translates into how many new customers do you think you will be able to introduce JazzHR to? So, whether it's two, three, four or five throughout the year we have a tier for that, whether it's 20 to 50 throughout the year we have tiers to that, or if it's a 100 plus we have tiers for that. The goal is to really set the expectations for ''Hey this is what we think you need to be signing up for when you come to JazzHR, and here's the reward you are going to get for doing it.''   So being really transparent is important when you scale any channel program or partner program and it's something that we found to be helpful in getting the Jazz HR channel program off the ground as well.   Jen: Is it safe to assume that those same KPIs that you're using to measure partners are similar to what you're using internally for direct sales or is there a good alignment there as well?   Kevin: Yeah, there is and that's a great point because with any partner program it's always being measured against the direct sales initiative because you really need to be outperforming what a traditional single sales rep can do for the partner program to be successful. So, you really need an apples to apples comparison. So, you're right. The sales teams are measured by bookings, and the partners are measured by bookings, so that the company and the teams at the company are really able to see how one is performing against the other and what efficiencies are we getting through the channel strategy that we don't see necessarily in a direct strategy for this particular product set. And so, that does give us an easy way to measure how each of the programs are working.   There is a lot of cross promotion within the programs, like the sales team is very comfortable if they think that they're talking to a prospective partner of introducing them into the partner program so that they can be serviced a little bit differently and rewarded a little bit differently. But at the end of the day, we are looking at both programs to be able to accelerate the growth of Jazz, so we do try to keep the way that they're measured consistent across the two programs.   Jen: Excellent. Excellent. These are the types of questions that when someone is just setting out to build a channel partner program, these are the things that they've got floating around in their head. And so, I love being able to talk to people who are in the trenches like yourself and share that knowledge forward. Speaking of that, when you think about an organization that's just really embarking on building out a partner program, what do you think are some of the most critical elements that a channel leader should consider, particularly when they're really starting from scratch?   Kevin: Yeah. When starting from scratch, there's internal things and then there's external things that you really need to be looking at. So, externally you really need to identify if the product that you want to develop an indirect strategy for is something that the people of the ears of a small business can easily articulate to their client because that's really what's going to determine whether they're going to align with your product or not. And what I found is most small businesses business applications fall into that category. And so then it's really trying to identify who are the pockets of these different partners that you can easily go after so that they can adopt your solution for their customers.   The bigger challenges tend to be internally focused when you're getting a program off the ground. I think a lot of times people run into headwinds in a new program if they don't have the buy in and the visibility of the program that you really need. And what that means is a lot of people would want to take a program put it in a corner and give it some time to mature a little bit and keep it out of the way. But with a channel or an indirect strategy that's going to be a big part of the business, it really needs to be top of mind across the exec team and top of mind across the product team, the marketing team and the sales organization.   So, having top-level goals that are measured weekly and that are constantly in front of the functional leaders of each of the departments in the company is critical to keeping it at the forefront of everybody's mind. Now recognize it's going to take 12 to 18 months for a program to really start to achieve scale. But if it doesn't have the visibility throughout that period it's going to get left behind by product, it's going to get left behind by marketing and it's never going to be able to get that sort of the foundation under it that it needs to achieve the scale. So that's number one.   Number two would be investing in infrastructure early and I think a lot of it is easier now than it was say 12 or 13 years ago when we were doing it at Constant Contact. Now there are a lot of tools out there built specifically for indirect programs so that you can easily set up a partner portal or you can integrate it in an API set into the back end for companies to take advantage of it if you're looking to integrate your system. But investing in that infrastructure to be able to measure and help the partners manage their business with you is critical because if you don't it's going to be a lot of email and wait and email and wait, and they'll just get frustrated and move on.   So those are some of the key things that we try to do when we're setting up programs with high-level goals that are visible across the whole organization. We also measure them weekly so everybody can see how it's doing and invest in the infrastructure before the program actually launches. So you're really setting it up for success because you're trying to pull that 12 to 18 months data as quickly as you can, and that's the point at which it will start to drive and really accelerate sales for the business going forward.   So those are the things that I've tried to work on in the different programs that I've built. For the folks who have challenges, I think they tend to try to keep it outside of the limelight at the beginning, but it just gets a lot harder to integrate it later on as the program starts to mature. So, doing it right out of the gate is critical.   Jen: I think that's such great advice. When I look at partner programs that never really produced any real results, they were siloed. The organization has to have a culture of partnership, it has to embrace that, and that comes from the top. Right? That comes from the CEO, CFO and trickles down into every single person within an organization.   Kevin: Yeah, and being hand in hand with the sales team is critical as well and making sure that they understand it's a friend, not a foe is going to ensure that it gets the support it needs as well.   Jen: Yeah, and I know that could be challenging, but sales people we like to fight for our turf. So, it's a cultural wave to bring everyone together and work together collaboratively, which actually leads me to my last question for you about collaboration. I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you see vendor organizations face when they're trying to collaborate with their partners? And then this is kind of a bonus question, but I'm just curious if your partners have an opportunity to collaborate with each other? We're starting to see these partner programs really become ecosystems where different partners might be able to collaborate to solve a business challenge. So, I'd love to hear any feedback you might have on that as well.   Kevin: Yeah, let's take the first part of the question first, collaborating with the partners is critical. And it's such a great way to get access to new content, new ideas, new case studies and really get behind them and showcase them. In most cases with an indirect partner strategy, you're going to have access to probably more marketing resources than your partners are. So really pointing them out there and leveraging the partners expertise is a great option that we have.   We have a webinar that we're going to be running this Thursday. I don't know when this podcast is going to be accessible, but Thursday is 4/20 and 4/20 is a moniker for pro-marijuana and the partnership is actually with a partner who focuses on what are the rules around marijuana in the workplace for states where marijuana is legal. So, there's the fun play on sort of timing and content but it's really leveraging partners to bring their expertise so that you can educate the rest of your customers. And if you're open like that, more partners are going to be a lot a lot more interested in working with you if they can see that you're open to helping them demonstrate their expertise in growing their pie as well as growing your pie. That's critical.   And to the second point of your question, you're absolutely right, when your partner programs get big enough you can facilitate this sharing of ideas amongst your partners so that now you can get two, three, four partners involved in helping to solve a single customer's problem. At Constant Contact we saw this where we would have partners who would partner up together. If one was a web developer and another was a content writer they would work together to solve, and we would actually be building up the local networks of those partners through local directors we had. Those directors would work with all these partners and understand skill sets and who to refer customers to for what, but also build a working group so that they could team up and attack customer problems together.   We saw the same thing at HootSuite with technology partners. There are partners who are really good at deep listening and analytics and others who are good at content management and how that all works with the HootSuite platform and then bring them in to solve customer problems. We are not big enough at JazzHR where it's happened yet, but it's certainly where we're going and that's the point when the word gets out to partners that they can not only be rewarded for bringing in business, but also get new business from participating in your program, that's when it really starts to take off. So, that's another reason why it takes 12 to 18 months to get these things moving, but once they get moving it's like rolling a ball downhill, it'll pick up speed and start to manage itself on its own.   Jen: Oh, that's great. And that's very, very true. I think it's the changing buyer that's also dictating a lot of these collaborative partnerships that are happening because the customer has a challenge and partners can learn from each other and collaborate together. And with the Internet, you can't hide a partnership very easily right? So, the days of this is this exclusive partnership and we don't work with anybody else, today buyers have so many more choices, so, I think that the sun has set on that type of partner program.   Kevin: Yeah. In the small business world we like to say they are time starved and task focused these small businesses, because they also don't have a lot of time. So, if they are very comfortable working with someone and that person can bring another person in it just makes it easier for both for both companies. So, developing that trust is critical early on for sure.   Jen: Well, this has been so great. I've loved digging into this with you and hearing about what you're working on over at JazzHR. But before I let you go, I like to end the podcast with asking a couple of more personal questions so our listeners can get to know you a little bit better. Nothing too challenging as long as you're open to it. Does that sound okay?   Kevin: Sure, sounds great.   Jen: Okay. All right. So, first question is what is your favorite city?   Kevin: What's my favorite city? Well, outside of the city I live in, I live in Boston, but the one city that I've traveled to multiple times and I would love to relocate to at some point is San Diego. I love the culture and I love the location, so that would be the city I would prefer over Boston.   Jen: That's a great city. Every time I go there, and every time I land and I walk outside and I'm at the airport, I go, “Oh, this place is so beautiful.”   Kevin: Exactly, right.   Jen: Question number two, are you an animal lover?   Kevin: I'm an...   Jen: Is that a no?   Kevin: I have zero pets. How's that?   Jen: You have zero pets, all right.   Kevin: I've taken my kids to the zoo before.   Jen: That's awesome. Question number three, Mac or PC?   Kevin: Mac. I was a PC guy till 4 years ago, but now I'm Mac all the way.   Jen: They have a way of rewiring your brain, huh! It's unbelievable.   Kevin: It's more just how many times I've had to repair the PC and how many times I haven't had to repair the Mac, that was enough for me.   Jen: Yeah, absolutely I agree. Okay, last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   Kevin: That's a good question. An all-expenses paid trip probably Australia, I've never been to Australia, I've always wanted to go. And assuming that you can also carve the time off for me to get there for a month that's where it would be.   Jen: Yeah, but this is like a magical pretend land, so yes, I can do that for you. If I had unlimited money to send any podcast episode guest on any trip. So yes, in that world you can take as much time off as you'd like.   Kevin: Great.   Jen: Well, thank you. Thank you again, it's been so great spending some time with you today. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to do so?   Kevin: Yeah, that's great. So, they should reach out to me through my work email. It's kevin.obrien@jazzhr.com and I'm happy to collaborate on partnerships, make personal connections and help anyone out if I'm in a position to do so. I really appreciate the time you gave me, Jen, this has been great.   Jen: Wonderful. Well, thank you and thanks, everyone else for joining us for an episode of The Allbound Podcast, and we'll catch you next week.   Announcer: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember #NeverSellAlone.      

Tony Fox, Vice President of Sales and Development of Channel Partners at bswift, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss protecting your brand by choosing the right partners, solutions partners vs channel partners, business acumen and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Announcer: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host, Jen Spencer, as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast: The fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.   Jen: Hi everybody, welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound. And today, I'm joined by Tony Fox who is Vice President of Sales and Development of Channel Partners at bswift. Welcome, Tony.   Tony: Hi, Jen. How are you doing?   Jen: I am doing great. I'm so glad to have you on the show, and I thought we could maybe kick things off with having you share a little bit about bswift for listeners who maybe haven't heard of the company before.   Tony: Yeah, well, thanks, Jen. And first, I do want to thank you for inviting me on your podcast, so thanks for that. A little bit about bswift, so bswift is primarily known in various industries as what we would call a "benefit administration platform." I think we go a little bit beyond that, and we offer potential partners a great deal in terms of connectivity, so the ability to link out to different vesting class partners and giving the channel partner the ability to take back to their end user. And we really have a top-in-class decision support tool as well. So, again, benefit administration on the whole with a healthy dose of connectivity thrown in for good measure.   Jen: Great. And, so, when we look at your partner program, I know that bswift has two main categories of partners. So you guys have solutions partners, then you have channel partners. So, can you just explain the key differences between those two groups and the role that they play in your sales ecosystem?   Tony: Yeah, sure. So, really, we have, like you said, two different types, and the one I'd probably describe first are our channel partners. And it's really a fairly simple relationship where we reach out to an entity or they reach out to us and we end up licensing our software. It ends up acting for bswift as a distribution channel, we license our software, and then our channel partners take on the effort of selling, implementing, and monitoring the software in an ongoing basis as they deliver it to their end users. End users in this scenario are usually employer groups but can be individuals, but again, mostly employer groups. So that's a channel partnership.   Aside from the distribution pathway, it also acts like, kind of a, I don't want to say free, but it really is a business laboratory. So as we further develop our software, and ours is an evergreen technology that has three full releases per year, we like to take input from our channel partners as they interface with the market, and then they bring back recommendations and suggestions for really how we should innovate going forward. So that's really a channel partnership right there.   Our solutions partnership is slightly different, and really it comes down to aligning ourselves with what we call “best-in-class vendor partners.” So what we would do is identify maybe a best-in-class medical partner, for example, Aetna insurance. We could align ourselves with MetLife, Unum, or, perhaps, Guardian on the ancillary and work-type products. And when we have a solution partner, it has the effect of stocking the shelves, so to speak, for an end user employer group. So as they enter on to bswift, our channel partners have the ability to select from our portfolio and solutions partners and bring their product to their employer groups. It makes implementation much easier, it makes price negotiation much simpler, and it really just enables everything to work properly and as a whole. Does that make sense, Jen?   Jen: No, it makes perfect sense, and it's definitely a true ecosystem that you've got there. And I absolutely love that concept of your channel partners being part of like a laboratory. I think that is so cool because the sales experience, is an experiment. You're constantly experimenting and trying new things, and that's such an awesome way of thinking about how your partners can help contribute to the growth of your organization. Not to put you on the spot, but are there any anecdotes? Is there any story of something that's emerged out of a channel partner engagement from your experience?   Tony: Yeah, absolutely, Jen. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sorry to talk over you there for a second.   Jen: No!   Tony: But I think, maybe the biggest example is more and more of this grouping of channel partners has informed bswift's evolution in really our recent interfacing. And I'll talk about this probably a little bit later, but you have to know who your best customers are going to be. We identified very early on that payroll vendors were going to be a pretty good partner for us. Largely speaking, with the advent of the ACA reporting necessity, payroll plus Ben Admin equals compliance. So, as we began to partner with these different payroll companies, we found that, as opposed to our traditional carriers and brokers, payroll companies were much more advanced along the technological spectrum specific to connectivity.   So again, we fancy ourselves very much a connectivity vendor in addition to Ben Admin. And so what we were pushed to do is really accelerate what we call our API interface. And I'm not going to remember what API stands for, but really what API consists of is a real-time data exchange which makes everything look and feel more cohesive with where your partner is in the market, if its a payroll company, or the brokerage, or even with an enrollment firm. So that's an example of how payroll companies on the whole push us to accelerate our API timeframes, and we're going to be releasing a full API published spec in our August release of this year. So that's a perfect example of how channel partners have pushed us to do something, maybe outside of our normal pathway.   Jen: Awesome. And bonus definition for everybody, API stands for "Application Program Interface." So, "Oooh, ahhh."   Tony: I feel like you got points on me for that one. That's fine.   Jen: The information that's in my head...the technical information about web services and APIs that I have in my head from over the course of my career is baffling to me, as somebody who got a degree in English.   Tony: Whenever Jeopardy releases a technology-type of episode, I'll make sure we getcha on it.   Jen: All right, all right. Well that's really cool, thank you for sharing that example. Let's talk about a couple other things. You've been working to grow bswift's channel program for the last two and a half years or so, but when you look at the course of your career, you've been collaborating with partners even in a more traditional direct sales role. So I'm curious, what do you feel you've brought with you as an individual contributor that you've applied to helping scale a channel partner program?   Tony: Sure. Now, Jen, that's a great question. Without too much back-patting on my part, I think what I bring to the bswift spectrum is really an understanding of, maybe the broadest possible concept at the benefits industry. As I mentioned before, it's not just brokers and it's not just carriers that comprise the, call it the benefit administration spectrum or the universe. Really, you have to understand that payroll companies are in there. Brokers naturally have a very strong presence within that, but you also have things like PEOs and large-scale enrollment firms, and other types of entities that are firmly connected to the employee benefit sphere.   My understanding of that enabled me to come into bswift and really understand what our channel partners need. Now, we have been a very successful company prior to me coming onboard, but what I think I brought was in addition to understanding what we offered, I know why we offer that. And I know why it applies very well to a distributed system. So again, for example, when you have a channel partner, it's one person selling on your behalf. I understand how that works, I understand why that works, and I understand the profit motivation of the different folks within the employee benefits universe. I think that's really what has led this to be a pretty good fit both for me and bswift.   Jen: You've kind of hit on this business acumen that you have. So, you understand the impact that the solution has on the end user, the customer, what it can have on the partner's business. We're seeing this more and more where channel professionals have to understand the entire business, all the challenges, all of the different levers to pull to increase efficiencies in revenue. And, yeah, I think you've really articulated very nicely how you've been able to kind of translate that over into this channel program at bswift. That's great.   Tony: Yeah, Jen. There's another thing, too, and it kind of goes back to the earlier question you talked about. And if you understand the business as a whole, you're able to utilize the feedback you get from that business, as that kind of laboratory scenario, like we talked about earlier. If you don't understand the industry on a whole, you're not going to understand the small little bits and pieces that come back to you and really how they fit into the bigger whole. If you are a software company dealing with the employee benefits industry and you don't use your channel partnership distribution as a lab, I think you're fooling yourself. I think you're really passing up on a massive amount of potential information that can inform your development process.   Jen: I'd love to see more and more organizations treating their channels that way, and maybe we'll get some feedback from listeners. If anyone is doing that, we'll want you to reach out to us. We'll share some information at the end of the podcast because I'd love to hear more stories just like that. Speaking of kind of thought leadership and new ideas, you'd written a blog fairly recently called "The Unexpected Benefits of a Channel Partnership," and one of the benefits in that blog that you state is "simplify the pivot," and I really love this philosophy. So, if I'm looking to engage in a partnership with another organization, how might the partnership help me simplify the pivot?   Tony: So first, I feel I should probably apologize in advance if I've coined a new corporatism, "simplify the pivot." I figured that's worth at least thirty points in a great corporate-phrase buzzword game. So, my apologies in advance. But by definition, a pivot is changing the way you do business. It doesn't mean you have to move away from what got you to the level of success where you are.   So let's use an example, maybe, a broker, or an enrollment firm, or a payroll company, when you become a partner with a successful channel partnership organization, in a broad sense, or bswift in specific, what you should be entering into is a certain level of market expertise, a certain level of operational expertise, and, without using the word "expertise" again, really knowing how the process works. What it can do if you're a channel partner, and let's say you're a broker, it can ramp up your learning curves, it can help your investment, because we all know that distributed software systems are not free, it can help your investment pay off a lot more quickly.   Now, you have to partner with somebody who has a good product and a good process to go along with it, but your partner also needs to be able and willing to deliver on your organizational expertise. They can know how they're doing it and how to do it successfully. If bswift doesn't pass that on to each and every one of its channel partners, again, there's an opportunity for success there that we've missed.   Jen: So, if I'm an organization... I think these are really good pearls of wisdom, but if I'm an organization that's just embarking on building out my channel partner program... I'm just trying to kind of wrap this all up together, thinking about this idea of experimentation, the idea of the benefits that partnership can bring. I guess, can you maybe summarize for us what you think some of the most critical elements are that a channel leader should consider? You know, really put yourself in the shoes of someone who is really just getting going, starting from scratch.   Tony: Yeah, it's funny. I think probably the two biggest pieces are, you have to understand your audience...and again, these are going to sound strident, they've been repeated a couple of hundred times, but the fact that they're basically synonymous with channel partnership and there's something to that. You have to understand who your audience is and who you sell to, and you have to understand why they should want your product. So, along the lines of who you sell to, benefit administration is a perfect example of as you grow a company and as you grow your channel partnership line of distribution, early on in the process, you want to get ink on paper. You want to get contracts signed. You want to focus on your immediate top-line revenue.   Over time, and as you move away from that immediate urgency to get revenue in the door, you're going to find that there are partners that are better suited to tell your story, than some of those early ones, the ones that you just kind of signed in a mad rush. And maybe they're better at operations and deliverables, and they're going to lessen your chance of brand damage. Because if you damage a brand in the market place to your third-party, you don't have a lot of recourse, and it's very difficult. Probably another facet to that, I call it “over-targeting”, or being so specific in your perceived market that you kind of ignore the rest of the ecosystem to use your word.   And, for benefit administration, the perfect example is focusing so heavily on the brokerage market that you ignore those, I would call them tangential partners, like enrollment companies, and payroll companies, and PEOs, and carriers that need to set up exchanges. The universe is a big thing, and you don't need to focus, or really, over-focus on just that brokerage group. So if you understand what you have and why a certain group wants it, it can come in upon you when you're developing a channel partnership system to mentally try to broaden that out as much as possible. The more targets you have, statistically speaking, the more you're going to land.   Jen: No, that makes perfect sense.   Tony: Does that make sense, Jen?   Jen: Absolutely. Even in your final point there about keeping those options open for the type of partner, it's still grounded with, "Okay, but who is your buyer?" Right? Who is the person who's going to benefit most from using this product? And as long as that's consistent...I mean, there's new technologies, there's new categories, there's new types of companies that are being created every day. And so, to your point, if you kind of keep your head down focused on this one type of entity, like a broker, you might miss out on other complimentary solutions that could be just as beneficial, if not more, to helping you achieve your goals, so yeah, I agree. I think it's a great strategy to keep in mind.   Tony: Yeah, and it's funny, Jen. One thing you hit on there, kind of reminded me of this. You see what your competitors are doing in the marketplace, and obviously, you need to know what your competitors are doing. I don't think you should feel obligated to follow what they're doing. For example, a lot of benefit administration companies start by heavily trying to penetrate that up-market, in that 10,000, 20,000, those big brand name clients. Having said that, there are also newer arrivals on the Ben Admin stage that have done very well in that small group exchange stage.   You have to understand that when you have a potential market or a potential industry that's so deep and broad, there's going to be room for a lot of other people at the table. And your goal is just to make sure you definitely have a seat at the table and then maybe knock over a couple people that are sitting to your left and right.   Jen: Right, sounds good.   Tony: Unless its too aggressive.   Jen: Well, we'll let all of our listeners decide what's too aggressive or not. I think everyone's going to have a different threshold for that. I'd love to know from you, what do you think is the most exciting thing about working in indirect sales? And the reason why I'm asking that question is because, well, I think we could really go backward and say, okay, no kid grows up going, "I want to be in sales." You know? And certainly no kid grows up saying, "I want to be in channel sales." It's not something we go, "I can't wait until..." There's not necessarily a degree that you can get in it in college, but yet, here we are. Right? My day 100% revolves around indirect sales. What do you think is the most exciting thing about doing what you do?     Tony: Well, I think aside from seeing one of your channel partners land a big one or really kind of hook into a fourth gear or something like that, I mean, that's going to excite most people because that's more revenue in the door. Everybody gets excited by revenue. I think, maybe on a smaller scale, when we talk to a channel partner, and maybe even in the discovery phase or when we're contracting or something like that, and you just hear the penny drop, and you just hear it click with that channel partner and...I'm trying to remember what my intro to psychology class back in college called it, I think it was a cognitive flash. That “aha!” moment.   I love when I'm talking to somebody on the phone and they say, "Whoa, that makes a lot of sense, Tony. So you mean not just A, B, and C but maybe D through R." And they start to see that scope expand, and they start to see maybe it's not just software. Maybe it's a way of realigning how their entire business model reports on the business model itself, for example, on a brokerage. Or maybe they perceive a way, if they're a broker, to drive new broker of record letters. Or if they're an enrollment firm, maybe they see a way to lessen their operational investment on a medium size client by using our divisions support tool.   It's really just when what you offer just absolutely clicks with somebody, that's what kind of gets me excited about stuff because I know that we're not a mature industry quite yet, although we are getting there. Eventually, it's going to be a mature industry. And the more that we can kind of form that discussion as we go, both through our product and our discussions with people, the better off bswift and Aetna, our owner, are going to be. So that's what really gets me going, is when they kind of get it.   Jen: I love it, I love it. Because I know the feeling. I can certainly empathize, and I'm sure a lot of our audience can as well. This has been so much fun, and before I let you go, whenever we do the podcast, I have people answer some more personal questions so we can get to know them a little bit more. So, are you ready to answer just four simple questions? Sound good?   Tony: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.   Jen: Okay. So, first question for you is, what is your favorite city?   Tony: Well, I'm born and raised in Chicago, so it's difficult for me to say anywhere but Chicago. I will say that recently I've become acquainted with the charms of Manhattan. I'm a big city guy. I like the excitement. I like the energy. I like the buzz that a big city brings. So, if I had to live somewhere other than Chicago, it might be Manhattan or oh gosh, pick some island off the coast somewhere because if I'm not in a big city, I probably want to get away from it entirely.   Jen: Great, sounds good. Okay, next question. Are you an animal lover, yes or no?   Tony: I'm absolutely an animal lover. I have two dogs, I have a Border Collie and a suspiciously tall Dachshund, and they take up a lot of my day. So, they're awesome.   Jen: A suspiciously tall Dachshund. Really?   Tony: Yeah, yeah...   Jen: Just a tall guy?   Tony: Yeah, my wife and I only buy from shelters, but they said that she was a Dachshund mix, and she ends up looking a lot like a small German Shepherd, so I'm thinking whatever they use for their DNA might be slightly lost.   Jen: That's great. Next question for you, Mac or PC?   Tony: I'm a PC guy. Without divulging too much of my age, I will say that decades ago at the University of Illinois, Macs really weren't a thing. I guess that the Apple IIe and the Apple IIc were starting to come on.   Jen: Yeah.   Tony: I was born and raised on a PC, and I started learning computers before Microsoft even existed. So, I've been a PC guy, I'm going to be a PC guy. It's just the way it works.   Jen: All right. Sounds good. And my last question for you is, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   Tony: As long as it's not within the United States on business, you could tempt me pretty much anywhere. It's funny, there's this TV show, and I forget what channel it is, but it's called "Alone." And the concept is that they take a bunch of survival experts and they kind of dump them on different parts of the globe, and they're expected to kind of make their way to their life for approximately two months and all that good stuff.   The last series of episodes were in Patagonia, South America, down in...I want to say it's in Argentina, it might be Chile. And it was starkly beautiful, and I would just love an opportunity to travel down there with my wife. Maybe do some hiking. Maybe do some fishing unless there's some weird disease I don't know about, and just generally do the "get back to nature" thing. I do love that.   Jen: Very cool. That's awesome. Well, some other time I'll have to have to tell you about my trip to Pucon, Chile, which is at the very, very, very bottom of the country. Let's just say, I was the only individual who exited the bus with a rolly suitcase. Everyone else had a camping backpack and I had a suitcase on wheels, but it was good fun.   Tony: That's hilarious!   Jen: Give you a sense of who I am. But thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your insights with us today, Tony. It was so great. If anyone listening would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to do so?   Tony: I think probably the best way to reach out to me would be through LinkedIn, initially. I'm Anthony Fox on LinkedIn, and I'm currently at bswift so I should be easy to find. And I would welcome any questions for, "Hey, how about an opportunity?" That would be great too. So, feel free to reach out to me whenever.   Jen: Perfect. Well again, thank you, and thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll catch you next week with an all new episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Tony: Thanks, everybody.   Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone. #NeverSellAlone

Joe Schramm, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at BeyondTrust, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss refining your focus on specific partners, channel growing pains, understanding the win for your partner and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Hi, everybody, welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound. And today, I'm joined by Joe Schramm who is Vice President of Strategic Alliances at BeyondTrust. Welcome, Joe.   Joe: Thanks, Jen. Good to be here.   Jen: I'm glad to have you. I think the best way for us to get started first of all is maybe if you can tell us a little bit about BeyondTrust and your organization.   Joe: Sure, sure. So BeyondTrust is in a segment of cyber security focused on privilege access management. We're also in another segment called vulnerability management. Both segments are pretty well defined in the cyber security landscape, but I would say that privilege access management is probably growing at a higher rate, and that's where we're seeing, a lot of our new product growth, net new logo acquisitions, and so forth. So we're very much focused in the cyber security domain, and it's a very hot market. It's something that we're doing really well in and are very happy to be participating in.   Jen: You have a history of working in business development, strategic alliance roles at very high-tech companies in security. And, I don't know if you have a byte of information or a hard and fast rule, something that you've really taken with you as you've gone from one organization to another to really help grow your channel program at BeyondTrust. How do you help it really run smoothly?   Joe: Yeah, that's a great question. So I think probably my favorite hard rule that I like to live by I learned some time ago now...this goes back several years and a few different organizations ago. But really, my favorite thing to think about and to focus on is what I call “partner profiling”. So a lot of organizations, when they start to build their partner program, they tend to gravitate towards easy wins, meaning if a partner came to you and said, "Hey, I'm interested in working with you," you'd rush to sign them up without really stepping back and understanding, "Are they the right partner for us, right, based on the type of company we are and the products we sell and how we sell them?"   So partner profiling, for me, is one of those almost religious experiences where I sit down and set out to really define the top three or so attributes and partners that we want to proactively engage and recruit and bring into our partner program. And it's easy to get this wrong, right? A lot of organizations, like I said, will gravitate towards easy picking, sign up lots of partners without stepping back and understanding, "Are those partners really aligned to your market? Are they in business for a sustained period of time?" To me, that's an important attribute is length in the market.   If an organization has been around 10, 20, 30 years, it's a very good leading indicator that they've got a big customer base and that they've had to reinvent themselves along the way a couple of times, and pivot as technology changes and continue to sustain and grow their business. That's an important attribute. And then certainly, things like a good go-to market capability, so having sales people, having pre-sales people, having perhaps delivery capability or at least very good technical competence within your domain.   So profiling and identifying what those key criteria are is really, really important. And then making sure that as you engage and as you seek out partners that the ones you're engaging with proactively, even the ones that you're reacting to based on inbound interest, you're qualifying them against those criteria pretty firmly to ensure that your chances of success, once they're up and running, is going to be a lot higher.   Jen: I think that's such great advice, and it should really resonate with a lot of folks who are focused on this account-based movement right now that's happening on the direct part of business because that's what we do, right? That's what we do with an account-based strategy is we identify who's a good target for us looking at those profiles. And, I know it can be challenging when you're building a partner program and you've got that inbound interest in joining your program. It almost like reminds me of if you've got someone volunteering their services, right, they are volunteering to sell for you or sell on your behalf, and you've got to say no to them sometimes. So it could be really hard to do, for sure.   Joe: Yeah. It takes some practice, for sure.   Jen: Yeah. Now, you have launched several key initiatives really to grow the channel at BeyondTrust. Can you share a little bit about the areas that you focused on so far in the organization?   Joe: Sure. I'll touch on maybe a top three that I would want to share here in the context of this discussion. So the first one is that we decided to embark on a global distribution strategy for our company. If you look at the way we were organized from a distribution perspective, it was very localized, so specific countries. For example, in the U.S., we had a distributor. In Canada, we had a different distributor. Throughout Europe, we had many different distributors, throughout Asia Pacific, many different distributors. And what we found was that there was a lot of inefficiencies, a lot of inconsistencies with that model.   Furthermore, we found that not all those distributors were doing much more for us than facilitating transactions, which is important, right? You need to have an ability to transact business. You need access to different kinds of resellers that distributors oftentimes have access to. And you obviously need access to certain kinds of procurement vehicles, which again, distributors often have access to either directly or through their network of resellers, so state and local contracts, for example, GSAs, too, and the federal site to name a couple.   So it's really important that you have some measure of a strategy there. But what we did was we set about to consolidate our distribution strategy and align ourselves to a distributor that we felt was very focused on the security domain, which is what we participate in, and also one that we felt could help us scale the business and generate net new opportunities through their network of resellers.   And so we decided to join a program that Westcon-Comstor offers called Accelerate. And it's a very selective program. We're one of like, I think, five or six different vendors that belong in that program, and that's really the extent of it. This gives us a lot of focus with Wescon, gives us an ability to wide up each region in a sequence. So we're very active with them in AsiaPac. We are now writing up North America and Latin America. In Europe, we'll be coming online later this year, in fact in Q2.   So it's provided us with a nice way to rationalize, streamline, drive more efficiency, drive more consistency with our distribution business, have one, well, not one entirely because we do have a couple of distributors that we're maintaining, but it helped us rationalize and reduce the number of distributors that we've had on a global basis. That's one initiative that we embarked on.   Another one that we embarked on last year was our Technology Alliance Program. So we wanted to have an opportunity to provide our technologies, provide our open APIs to potential technology partners as well as potential consulting partners who would want to or need to develop custom integration in their product or on behalf of our customers. We launched the Technology Alliance Program last year, and that's been great. We signed a couple of very strategic technology relationships through that technology program, SalePoint, McAfee being a couple in particular.   But we also have some others now coming to us and saying, "Hey, we want to build an integration to this product, to that product." We can do that very easily now. We can provision not-for-resale software. We can provide them with the APIs. We can provide them with some simple instructions on how to leverage them. And we're finding that some of these partners that are coming to us are now able to build these integrations very quickly.   And the third area that I would highlight is that one of the things that I thought was missing for the company when I joined really late 2015 or early 2016 timeframe, was that we didn't have a partner strategy centered around consulting partners and system integrators. We had been talking to a few and have been having some conversations with some. But I saw that as really a missed opportunity to align ourselves to some very well positioned, very focused consulting organizations that are really centered on the identity access and privilege access domains in particular, and for us to align ourselves with them to create new opportunities for us and for our salespeople, as well as scale our delivery service capability.   So as we're growing, one of our constraints or one of our challenges has been keeping up with demand for consulting services to implement our technologies. And so we aggressively recruited and onboarded about a half dozen or so boutique consultancies last year, and that's paying off for us really well. They're getting certified and getting consultants out there in the market who can implement our products and create bench strength and scale for us on the delivery side. And just as importantly, they are also identifying net new opportunities for our technologies with their clients that we didn't know about previously. So that's creating some net new business for us through that effort as well. Those are the three things that I'd call out.   Jen: You've been busy. That's quite an undertaking in a fairly short period of time, which is really commendable. I want to dig into some of the results that you've been able to see. You shared with me previously kind of what happened in one year. Your channel business is up 100% year over year. Business through the channel has grown from 15% of the business to between 25% and 30%. I mean, is this the result of those initiatives? And also, is there anything else, any other great results that you've seen because of work that you've done in 2016?   Joe: Yeah, I think there's a couple of forces in play here, right? One is that we're in a high growth market, right? Our market segment's growing at over 30% per year. And so there's always going to be organic growth with what you've been doing. So that's definitely attributable to some of the growth. But I think moreover and more importantly is that we've really aligned ourselves to not only the right partners that can help us, but we've also really narrowed our focus down.   So when I joined the company, we literally had hundreds of resellers in our system, and I couldn't get my head wrapped around how we had so many. And then of course, you look back at the history of our company, and for a long time, we were a growth-by-acquisition company and we came together as BeyondTrust four or five years ago through the acquisition of four or five different companies. And with each acquisition, it brings a different partner base with it, right? And we never really rationalized that partner base.   So this year, actually, last year, we started this process and we're going to continue to do it this year, but we've really started to refine our focus on the partners that we really want to proactively manage. That's not to say that we won't work on an opportunistic basis with any partner, but what we're doing with those other partners, what I call the tier-two partners, is we're rolling them underneath Westcon to help us manage and grow those partners so that we can take my direct team, right, the alliances people that we have on the team and have them spending the bulk of their time really building business with the core set of partners that we want to focus on.   So I think those are a couple of contributing factors that have really played a role in our success and the growth that we've achieved. We expect this year to again significantly grow the channel business. So we're excited about the prospects, excited about the opportunities. I think we've got many of the key things in place to enable that growth, and it's really just going to be a question of our ability to execute.   Jen: That's awesome. Anytime an organization grows, and especially when you're in channel and you grow so exponentially, it's exciting and it's amazing, it's great from a revenue perspective. It can also be a little bit painful. Just there's challenges anytime that you do grow. I'm wondering, could you share maybe some of the challenges that you faced or maybe some challenges that you're anticipating and how you're going to mitigate those?   Joe: Yeah. So there's always challenges as you highlighted when you are growing, and these challenges that are good problems to have. And I like what our CEO says. He says, "We don't run away from problems or challenges, we run towards them," right? And so that's the attitude of our company, which I love and I embrace that philosophy. Every time he says that, I kind of smile because that's kind of how I operate. I want to attack things and get after it, right?   But that being said, yeah, there's certainly growth pains. Now, there's a couple things that we did early last year in anticipation of the growth that we were expecting and wanting to drive, right? One was we needed to launch a partner portal. We had a large number of partners, some of whom were very active with us, some of whom were occasionally active with us. But we did not have a good vehicle for disseminating content, and for addressing the educational needs and the content needs of both our sales folks that work for the partners, as well as the technical folks that work for the partners.   And so we stood up our partner portal last year, which has been very widely adopted, and I would say it allowed us to centralize a number of the processes, chief among them, our deal registration process. So that's been fantastic. And that's a key metric that we want to measure as you get your registration volume year over year, and even at a granular level by partner or region or what have you. We can measure how that's building. It's an important leading indicator as to what's going to come out the back end of the funnel, one, or two, or three, four quarters later, right? So that's been great.   And I think that the usability of the portal and the intuitive nature of the portal has been great. We see very sticky behavior, very good evidence that a lot of our partners referenced the portal. They referenced it frequently and not just to do deal registration. We obviously can report and track on what artifacts they're accessing, how frequently those pieces of content are being accessed. We can look at that and kind of analyze, what's valuable, what's sticky, what's being consumed the most. And so all that's really, really important for us. And so that's been great.   Another challenge that we've had to deal with has been training this new class of partners that I spoke of, right, the consultants and the systems integrators. Having training in education capabilities, certification capabilities was a really important driver to help us scale. And we launched our BeyondTrust University early last year as well. And that, too, has been extremely well received. We probably have over 500 partner individuals across the globe that are engaged in BeyondTrust University either from a sales enablement, pre-sales enablement, or technical consulting enablement perspective. And we're now starting to turn out certified consultants who can actually help scale on the delivery side.   So those are a couple of highlights and things that we've had to overcome. And we're not done yet. We're never, I think, fully satisfied. We can always do more. But, those were a couple of really important foundational components that we needed to get in place to help scale.   Jen: Well, with all of those individual partner users, you were talking about those partner entities, you weren't talking about the companies, right? You're talking about actual individual people who are engaging with that content or who are phase two, your end customer. You've got all those folks. You've got over 4,000 organizations as customers. You've got half of the Fortune 100. I mean, I'm just baffled. Like how are you able to dedicate time to your individual partner entities? I know tiering's got to be a big part of that, not just the segmentation of types of partners but also tiering within. Is that something that you guys are doing as well?   Joe: Yeah, yeah. We did that last year for North America. We just completed our first pass of it for Europe, and we're in the process of doing it now for Latin America. And I think AsiaPac is a little different for us. We've kind of been working through a two-tier distribution model in AsiaPac from earlier points in our history and so there is less rationalization needed there, I believe.   But certainly, if I take North America for an example, we looked at the entire pool of literally over 300 reseller accounts that we had in our CRM system and we started winnowing that down and looking at it different ways. We said, "Okay, over the last two years, how much new business has been booked by each of those partners," right? And obviously, you typically see a 80/20 kind of formation there, where 80% of the revenue comes from the top 20% of the resellers. And we quickly realized that we've got literally hundreds in our system who haven't done any business with us over the last two or three years.   We also looked at how much renewal business is being handled by that pool of resellers, and we found that there is some that do a large number of renewals for us but there's an awful lot of onesie-twosies out there, right? Literally, we have a reseller that handles a couple of renewals for us a year, and that's the extent of it. So we value that. We don't want to just throw that out the window, but we look at the volume of it and we look at the alignment to the partner profile that I spoke of at the top and say, "All right, who are the top 12 that we want to focus on, or the top 15," and really zero in on those resellers and say, "Okay, how do we sit down and build a business plan that's meaningful for both companies?"   And for us, we're kind of looking for anywhere from half a million in net new product license bookings or more from those kinds of partners, and whether they've done that historically or not may not necessarily be the critical decision factor. Maybe a partner has only done 250,000 with us but they've only been working with us for six months and we believe that they've got the right DNA, the right profile to really take that up to the right level.   So that's kind of how we've done some tiering here in North America. And I'd say that we're really focused on probably the top 10 or so resellers, and then there's a cadre of consulting partners maybe 15 or 20 in total that we're either on board with or working with in some capacity to try to figure out whether they belong in that bucket or not. But taking it from literally 300 down to 15, 20 is a much more manageable number, and we believe that by providing that focus that we're going to see more benefits coming out of those relationships.   Jen: Thanks for sharing that. I think it's really, really helpful to a lot of people who are in a similar situation that you're in. And on that note, the last question I really want to ask you is if you have any sort of concise piece of advice that you can give fellow business development professionals who might be in a situation similar to the one that you embarked upon when you joined BeyondTrust, any words of wisdom that you can share?   Joe: Yeah, I'd piggyback on the first point about the partner profiling, and say that it's really important that you understand what your targets looks like. And then the second thing, which is really important, once you start getting into discussions and conversations with potential partners, you really need to understand what the win is for the partner. And it kind of amazes me that a lot of times, people don't step back and ask that question or even understand that and they may assume that, "Oh, these guys are VAR, therefore, they're only interested in margin on the sale of products."   Well, the landscape is changing out there, right? I don't really believe that organizations that may have historically survived and thrived on just being product-resale companies are going to survive, right? We're seeing a lot of evidence that traditional resellers are morphing into what I call a solution provider, and they're trying to solve problems for clients that includes products, that includes services, and it may include managed services.   So the landscape is shifting a little bit, but the point being is that it's really important for you to understand what the win is based on the partner you're talking to. And, one partner may say, "Hey, I'm only interested in selling product." Fine. Another partner may say, "Well, we do some product resale but we're really in the consulting business." Or it might be obvious from the onset that they're in the consulting business but, they like referral margins on the back end of deals, too, right? So trying to be flexible, trying to frame and understand the win for the partner is equally as important as understanding what the win is for you. So that's my piece of advice.   Jen: I think that's great advice. We can always be better listeners. Really listen to what our partners need and what's going to make them successful. That's fantastic. You know, Joe, before I let you go, before we totally sign off here, I always put people through a little bit of like a fun personal speed round, so ask some questions that kind of dig in a little bit, get to know you as a person a little bit more. Are you up for it?   Joe: Yeah, sure, why not. Sounds like fun.   Jen: All right, all right. So easy questions. First one is what is your favorite city?   Joe: My favorite city, oh, that's a good one because I've been to so many great cities. Honestly, my heart belongs to New York.   Jen: Good. What do you love most about New York?   Joe: I grew up in the New York area and I've always loved it. It's a city that, honestly, you can pretty much do anything within the bounds of law, of course.   Jen: Right, right.   Joe: Do anything, see anything, experience, any kind of entertainment, any kind of cuisine. It's just an amazing city to me. I've always loved it. But I've got to tell you, I do love London and I love Tokyo. I got to Tokyo last year and I am absolutely amazed by Tokyo and I'm dying to go back. I was only there for two days, and if I can figure out how to go back for 10 days, I think that'd be like my first choice. And I may come back with a different opinion about what my absolute favorite city is after some real time in Tokyo I think.   Jen: That's a really long way to travel for two days. Wow, wow. You need to go back.   Joe: It was a total of a 10-day trip in Asia but we only had 2 days in Tokyo.   Jen: Yeah, okay. That makes more sense. Okay, second question, are you an animal lover?   Joe: Oh, yeah, definitely.   Jen: Yeah. Do you have any pets?   Joe: We've had some pets from time to time, cats, hamsters, fish those sorts of things. I'm an absolute dog lover. But here's the thing, I travel so much and my kids are getting older and heading off to college. And, it's always been one of those things that we'd love to do, but at the same time, we've always felt that owning a dog would be unfair to the dog because you need to be around to spend the right time with them and treat them like any other family member quite frankly.   Jen: Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Okay, next question, Mac or PC?   Joe: Oh, gosh. If I ever had the choice of having a Mac for a work tool, I would say Mac. But I never seem to get that choice so I have to go with PC. I'm using a Microsoft Surface and I actually love it. It's great, very lightweight, very reliable. And you can use it as a tablet as well, so it's got some nice flexibility.   Jen: Yeah, everyone who I meet who has one absolutely loves it, so that's great. My last question for you is let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to?   Joe: It would probably be Italy, and I'd have to say Tuscany in particular. For me, Tuscany is kind of the perfect balance between my need to see things and do things, but you can kind of find the peace and tranquility to relax when it's time to do that, too. It also has that phenomenal food and wine aspect to it that I love. So Tuscany, I'd take it any day.   Jen: Wonderful. Sounds lovely. I was picturing myself being there as you were talking about it with a glass of wine, of course. So thank you. Thanks so much for sharing your time with me, with us today, Joe. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to connect with you?   Joe: Find me on LinkedIn. It's Joseph Schramm, S-C-H-R-A-M-M. Easiest way to find me. There's not too many of me out there that I'm aware of at BeyondTrust. So yeah, I would welcome the opportunity to chat with anybody or kick any of this stuff around. It's good fun. I'm passionate about it. I enjoy it and would welcome the opportunity to talk to people.   Jen: Wonderful. Well, again, thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And thanks everyone else for tuning in, and join us next week for an all-new episode.   Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

Jay McBain, Global Advisor at Channel Mechanics, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss shadow channels and the shift from IT buying power, verticalization (or hyperfocused vectorization), the future of the channel and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Welcome to The Allbound Podcast, I am Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound. And today, I'm joined by Jay McBain who co-founded the company ChannelEyes, currently serves as Chairman Emeritus of the CompTIA Vendor Advisory Council and Managed Services Community. He is a Board member of the Channel Vanguard Council, the Ziff Davis Leadership Council, and CRN Channel Intelligence Council. In short, this man knows channel. Welcome, Jay. Jay: Thanks, Jen, really appreciate it. Glad to be here. Jen: Absolutely. Well, it's good to have you. And especially, really wanting to get caught up with you and what's going on in your world and I'm sure our listeners are also really interested about five months ago, you took on a free agent status. You said, "Okay, I'm leaving ChannelEyes," which was the channel tech startup that you helped co-found. So catch us up, what's had your attention the last year or so? Jay: Yeah, absolutely. I had spent the last while at ChannelEyes as CEO and they're working on some really interesting stuff around predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. And I think in the next three to five years, most of us in the channel will be using computers to help us do our daily tasks...help us with our daily tasks and get us to the finish line faster. And I think now that the company transitions to a CEO that can better position the company with some of the leading CRM players in the market like Salesforce and Microsoft. And who knows, further down the road, to really make something happen. Jen: Great, great. So what are you focused on right now as a channel professional in your world? Jay: That's a great question and I was at CompTIA last week and probably answered the question at least 100 times so... Jen: I'm sure. I'm sure. Jay: One of the answers is I spent almost 20 years working at IBM and Lenovo in different channel roles including channel chief roles. And they were always Americas based, either North America or full Americas, and I never really got a lot of exposure to Europe and Australia and Asia-Pacific. And what I've decided to do in the last five months is work closely. I've been to Australia and going back again working with a very large telco there, I'm working with this great company in Ireland which is where I'm sitting right now in Ireland. The company is called Channel Mechanics and they've really looked at the channel management space and they've done some really innovative things. So looking internationally but also looking obviously to work with some very interesting challenges, which I'm sure we'll touch on on this podcast. Jen: Great. So let's, dig in to some of that. I've followed a lot of what you've been writing about specifically around channel, something that you previously called out, is that a large number of channel programs that tend to get stuck in the exact same place. And you wield it down to two key conclusions. So one, that some vendors will simply win because their product wins. And then two, that other vendors will win because they know how to influence the channel. So I'd like to know, what do you mean by that? Jay: Yeah, this is one of my kind of personal passions and I think it started when I read the book "Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. He's got this great chapter early on in the book. I think it's chapter 2, about Paul Revere. What a great connector Paul Revere was in 1776 and why that won the day more so than riding a horse through all these towns, and why the other person who left on horseback that night wasn't successful. And this idea of influencers or connectors and super connectors, when I moved to the United States from Canada in 2009, I looked at the market and looked at the millions of people that participate in the channel and I didn't have 15 years to catch up to the relationships that I had in Canada at the time. So I kind of boiled it down and said, "What is this influence and how would you measure it?" And in 2009, I generated a list of the top 100 most influential people in the global channel and I did it again, actually, about 4 months ago on my blog. And seven or eight years had passed and it's interesting to see people have changed positions and everything else. But it's a very analytical numeric way of assigning scores for people's influence. And just to give a quick synopsis is back in 2009, I figured out that there are 16 magazines that channel people read. There's 150 trade shows globally that channel people go to. There's thousands of vendors. There's dozens of distributors. There's bloggers, thought-leaders, associations, analysts. When you look around this web of influencing sites, what people read, where they go, and who they follow, it's across different mediums but they're all available. So I took and read every magazine. I wrote down every name of everyone in the magazines. I went to most of the trade shows in my first year and took note of who the keynote speakers, and the advisory council, and the board members, and all the key people at these events. I did the same for peer groups. I did the same for the associations and analysts. And as I came around, I came to about 1,000 names. But what was more important to me is how visible they were across multiple different communities. In our channel, it's so wide and diverse. But more importantly, it's decentralized. Channel partners don't have the time to go and read 12 magazines. So they tend to focus on one community and at most, maybe two to get their information to reinforce their expertise and to really peer network. And we look at these organizations, there's about 30 of them in North America that they're a part of. And I was really looking at how many people influenced in more of these 30 communities. And really, for me, reach was more important than maybe... that's all I could find out on Google. I couldn't find out how important they were in each community but I could definitely measure their reach. And so, I just added this really simple spreadsheet, and I just started adding check marks beside each name every time I saw them more than once. And after 1,000 names and thousands and thousands of check marks, I just sorted by whoever had the most check marks. And interestingly enough, in 2009, Larry Walsh, who was long time CRN editor, kind of patriarch of the channel, but he ranked number one and I didn't know who Larry Walsh was but I knew I had to go meet him. And then, all the way down the list I wanted to meet. And as I met probably 20 to 30 of the top 100 people, the other 70 came rushing to me. Not because I was important but because they sensed that I was doing this and talking to these important people and maybe I was important. But to a connector, they don't want to be left in the dark. So it's really important to them to know what's going on and to be able to kind of stay on the inside of things. So it was kind of really fascinating and over the last seven or eight years, I've written a lot and I've studied the level of influence that people have in the channel and there's a direct correlation between people having a high influence and carrying their company to great new heights. Jen: I think that holds true, regardless of what sort of industry or what segment of the market you're in, especially from that leadership perspective. I think it's also interesting, we talk to a lot of folks who are not your traditional type of channel organization, not your traditional enterprise IT company. Maybe they're a small or more mid-market size organization, software company, ready to kind of build a channel. A lot of folks are looking at an agency-based program. Upcoming on a future podcast episode, I'm going to be interviewing Pete Caputa from HubSpot who's now at Databox and has assured us that he's building the agency partner program to end all partner programs. And so when I think about influence, I think about an individual like that. So would you say that this concept of influencing the channel is just as strong in the evolution of where channel is going? Is it even more important than ever? I mean, what is your take on it because looking at 2017 compared to 2008, not that much time has gone by but there's been a lot of change in that time period? Jay: Well, there absolutely has, and some of the things I wrote about later last year, I call them shadow channels. But I've got this personal belief that your average vendor, their channel program is going to grow by at least 5X in the next three or four years. And the reason really goes back to the customer buy-in journey. And people at HubSpot know this very, very well but over the last 10 years, 90% of all IT decisions 10 years ago were made in the IT department. Makes sense, CIO. And today, it's flipped completely where 72% of all decisions are made outside of the IT department. It's now the VP of sales and marketing, operations, and finance, and HR, and all the way down the line that are making big technology decisions that are business decisions. And what's happening to traditional vendors is sometimes they're not in the room. Well, most cases, they're not in the room. When a VP of marketing like yourself is making a technology decision, a lot of times you don't have the person who's fixing your printer in the room. Jen: Wait, wait, hold on. Jay, I'm the person who fixes the printer here, so should it be someone else fixing... Jay: Oh. Jen: Just... Jay: That's right. Startup life, you know. Jen: Startup life. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, I had to insert that. I had to insert that. But no, no, I agree with you 100% what you're saying, right? So I buy technology all the time and we do have someone here who's responsible for overseeing all technology and he has a zero influence on what I choose to buy to run our sales and marketing team. Jay: Right. And so, in the sense of if you put yourself under traditional vendor's space and you're trying to install traditional hardware, like you're selling software or other services, and now you need to get in front of Jen Spencer and, you know, who are you using to influence you. You might have somebody from HubSpot or Marketo in the room. You probably have somebody from your industry in the room that's a tech expert on your industry. In some cases, this could be accountants. They could be legal firms. They could be digital agencies. In your case, it might be a digital agency in the room. You could also have other ISVs in the room that play in ecosystems like a Marketo or HubSpot or Pardot or whichever one you play in. They're going to be in there because they know how to drive more leads for a company specifically like yours. You may have a startup in the room that's built with piece of technology and you're going to be one of their early customers so they want to make sure it succeeds. But you look at the five people in the room and it's not the printer person. It's not the person that installed your phones. So in other words, it's not the IT department. And so, if you're a traditional vendor spending all your time trying to recruit MSPs and solution providers and VARs from days gone by, guess what? You just missed out of a technology decision because your influence isn't in the room when it was made. Jen: Right. Jay: Now put yourself in the shoes of...let's talk VP of marketing and let's talk ambulatory care...healthcare clinic, midsized, 50 doctors, in the Northeast U.S. And in the room with that VP of marketing, again, it's probably that person from Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, whatever it is, Eloqua, probably somebody that is an expert in healthcare driving leads for midsized clinics who's had success in the past, with five other clinics of the same size and scope. But these five people are different five people than what the IT department would have in the room. And so, you're not talking about routers and PCs, and you're not talking about, traditional licensing and everything else. You're talking about driving more leads or you're talking about a marketing problem. And to be relevant, vendors either a) need to train their current channels to be valuable to the VP of marketing in the clinic, which is less likely to happen. It's more likely that they then have to go and recruit and nurture these five other types of partners, and you call them alliances. You can call them whatever you want but the incentive is different, the way you manage them and measure them is different. The entire relationship is different. But the point is, there's so many more rooms that you have to be influencing now that your channel program is just invariably going to grow. Jen: So, you call these “shadow channels”, and when I think about like shadow marketing, shadow IT, usually, it's a very negative connotation to it. There's work going on that's outside of your viewpoint, that is in most cases negatively-impacting whatever the core function is. But what you just described doesn't sound negative, right? So are these shadow channels, is this the future? Is this a good thing for these organizations? Jay: Yeah, well, there's good and bad. And depending on the audience that I talk to, is which one I'll start with. The good news is businesspeople are now making business decisions around technology. All companies are becoming technology companies and all other professional organizations and industry, association, everything else, are becoming technology-based just because that's the way world works. All 27 industries now are pretty much 27 tech industries depending on agriculture, fisheries, or whatever they do. You know, that's become such a big role. So, the world has changed. And the reason it was called shadow IT or rogue IT is back in the day, where 10%, and then it became 20%, and then 30% of decisions are made by these people who have no idea what's going on with technology and they don't understand security and they don't understand backups and disaster recovery and they're not of the adult in the room which, you know, the CIO or IT department would claim to be. And so they were rogue, they need to be stumped. Well, the fact of the matter...and these are Gardener numbers, by the way, 72% of all the decisions today are now made outside of IT, so it's no longer rogue or shadow. It is literally the new normal. And the prediction by 2020 is that 90% of all decisions will be made outside of IT. So in 10 years, there's been pretty much a 180-degree turn in terms of where the decisions are made. And this isn't changing. And businesspeople are making business technology decisions and that's the way the world should work. It's been a big boom for SaaS companies. And it's been pretty hard for technology companies and hardware companies, specifically, because they're trying to still find their place in these conversations when these decisions are being made outside of their normal feasibility. Jen: It makes perfect sense and it's a good opportunity for consultants, for people like yourself to let you go in and really help some of those organizations along this evolution of the way that channel and selling today, tech buyers today has definitely changed. I want to ask you now about another topic that you've written about, that you spoke about. You talked about channel vectors or vectorization. And you said that verticalization is being replaced by hyperfocused vectorization. So I'm hoping perhaps you can clarify what you mean by that. And then, I want to explore, what today's executive needs to consider as he or she is scooping out plans to grow through channel over the next 5 years, because there are a lot of these organizations that maybe they've hit $10 million in annual recurring revenue and they're looking at, "How do we get to $100?" And they're looking at channel as a way to do that. So what do they need to know from this new vectorization perspective? Jay: Yeah, it's another example of me making up a word and then all of a sudden... Jen: I love it. Jay: It's really good for Google SEO if you actually make up your own word. It's actually pretty cheap, first of all. But all kidding aside, let's go back to the healthcare VP marketing in a midsized clinic. And you're looking at the 5 people in the room and 10 years ago, for an IT provider, it was okay to say, "Hey, I got to move from being a generalist to a specialist." "Well, what are you going to do?" "Hey, well, I'm going to specialize in healthcare." "Well, that's fantastic." So what they do is they go out and read HIPAA and HITECH, and, they get a couple people certified, and they can talk their way out of a paper bag when it comes to patient records and compliancy and even some legal. But again, the world in this journey has changed things for them. So if you're that VP of marketing at a midsized clinic and you have somebody in your office that says, "Hey, I know a lot about healthcare." You're like, "Well, that's great. That's one of the vectors. What would be even better is if you knew not only healthcare but midsized clinics, so the sub-industry. The fact that you put in a solution for a 500-doctor firm probably doesn't have a ton of relevance to me because I don't have those resources. So that's another thing. The fact that you installed in Colorado may not be as relevant as it is in New York because of the different statewide bureaucracy and everything else. I mean, there's just that 50 different systems in 50 different states. So if you start asking these questions, there's actually five vectors. And as a VP of marketing in a midsized clinic, you're not going to ever get that perfect person who has all five. "Listen, I've just done the last five clinics exactly your size, just down the street. I've just done your competitors. They're the guinea pigs. I know exactly what to do. Here's my price. I can get started right away." That would be perfect. That doesn't work. So all you only end up doing is, "If somebody knows healthcare that's better than not knowing healthcare." I put that in quotes, air quotes. But that's one vector. So, flipping it aside, "I want somebody who knows my business. I want somebody who's been successful in my sub-industry. I want to know somebody who's been successful in marketing. I don't care if you put in an accounting app, or I don't care if you put in an IT solution. I need the drive leads. I need you to be focused on my line of business. I need you to be focused on my sub-industry. I need you to focus on my region." So these are the types of things that you push back on. And if you can get two or three out of five, it's much better than just getting that generalist in the room who might have one out of five, or none out of five. Jen: I think that's such a good kind of point to make and maybe even to end on here, because we've talked about how the channel is no longer just a channel. It's no longer just kind of a one-way street or even a two-way street. I mean it is a complete ecosystem. The story you just spun about healthcare IT, about being able to plug in to Salesforce to really put that on steroids to make it work for somebody to do their business, I mean that is absolutely our present and our future of the way that sales ecosystems are growing. And organizations that embrace it, organizations like Salesforce, organizations like Microsoft, that embrace that type of channel environment are reaping the rewards of it, the benefits of that in addition to their partners as well. So I love it. I'm glad you invented the word vectorization. I'll have to start using it. Jay: Great to participate. I've actually wanted to do this since you started. But one of the key things is you asked me to look forward five years. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. Jay: Vendors need to look at the toolset that they're using. And many of the tools that they're currently managing the current triangle of gold and silver and bronze partners they have the same program they built 20 years ago, they need to refresh their tools. If they're going to grow their channel by 5X, they need to seriously look at a tool like GoalBot, take collaboration to a completely different level. They need to look at a tool like Channel Mechanics. They need to look at new, fresh thinking around how to do this because if you try to force-fit your old ecosystem, your old infrastructure into this new world, it's going to be very, very difficult. And many vendors are now realizing that and looking for those right SaaS companies and others to plug together, to kind of manage these new channels, measure these new channels and set these new channels. And in the end grow with these new channels. Jen: Absolutely. I mean, it's that old saying that, "What got you to where you are today may not be what's going to get you to where you want to go tomorrow." And so, I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment. Thank you so much. I'm not going to let you go just yet, though, Jay. So since you said you listened to the podcast, you've been excited about being on it, then I'm going to ask you some other questions. So you already know this is coming. Jay: I know it. Jen: Okay. All right. So, yeah. Well, I'd like to ask some more personal questions just so we can kind of shake things up and get to know a little bit more about you as a person. So first question I want to start with is what's your favorite city? Jay: Oh, that's a good one. I have traveled to 27 countries now. All of that spent on vacation, one of the blogs I write is "Rollerblades and Red Bull," the idea is to get to every country in the world. Right now, it would be tough to say the absolute but I would say Prague. Jen: Prague, awesome. I haven't been there but I've heard amazing things about it. So I heard it's a really beautiful city. Jay: Very, very difficult to rollerblade in, by the way. Jen: Okay, I won't try that, at least not the first time I go. Okay. Question number two, are you an animal lover? Yes or no? Jay: Yes, we have...we just actually...we had two dogs and one cat. And they were all 13 or 14 years old and we lost them all within 6 months. But, we're kind of in that mode now. We've got two young daughters as well I've got two daughters in college. But we're thinking about the family pets now and looking at different breeds so very excited to rescue some new pets. Jen: Oh, good. Well, you have to keep us posted. We love pets at Allbound. Our pets have an Instagram account called "Allbound Critters." So when you do have a new pet join your family, you have to let me know so I can give you guys a shout-out there. Jay: Will do. Jen: Okay, next question for you, Mac or PC? Jay: Well, being a 20-year IBM and Lenovo guy, the answer's going to shock you, I'm 95% Apple. So from iPhones to Watch to the laptop I'm on right now, everything, except for real work, is on an Apple. When I talked about analyzing the thousands of people that run this industry and running all these AI and macros and heavy, heavy lifting, I have one super-powered, liquid-cooled, top-end gaming machine at home that I do serious work on. But everything else is Apple. Jen: Everything else is Apple. All right. All right. There you go. And last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to? Jay: That's a good question. So back to visiting every country in the world, the next, probably Middle Africa. Jen: Oh, what interests you about Middle Africa? Jay: A) that I haven't been there. Jen: Okay, yeah. Jay: I've been to most regions... You know, when I see the weather report that has 50 or 60 cities, most of them...well, almost of them I've been to. So now, I'm in the mode of, "I've got to go to dangerous places now." You can't go to the Middle East. A lot of Africa is off-limits. But it gets much harder to travel once you've knocked off the easy ones. Now you've got to start knocking off ones that have government warnings, or can add a little bit of risk. So that's what entices me about going to Middle Africa and maybe at Uganda, or Kenya, and help build schools or do something good for the world. Jen: Sounds wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for joining me, for sharing some of your time with us, especially calling in from Ireland where I know it's late at night. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to connect with you? If folks want to talk about going to Kenya with you, or they want to talk about fixing their channel, how should they reach you? Jay: Absolutely. My website, my blog that most of what we've talked about today, is jaymcbain.com. It's jaymcbain.com. There is at least 50 ways on there that you can contact me through every social and my cellphone and everything else. If you just want to hit me with a quick tweet. It's the letter "J" mcbain, M-C-B-A-I-N, so jmcbain. Hit me there and we can go from there. Jen: Perfect. Well, thanks again, Jay. Thanks, everyone else, for tuning in, and catch us next week for an all-new episode of The Allbound Podcast. Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the Resource Center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone

Click above to listen in iTunes... I LOVE video…. And traffic. I have over 200 videos on Youtube now and here's what I wish I'd known… Steve: Hey, everyone. This is Steve Larsen. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve: All right, you guys. Hey, I'm super excited. I'm super pumped for today because we get to talk about something that has always intrigued me. It's actually kind of the way it got started in internet when I first started working for Paul Mitchel and driving internet traffic with one of my buddies. Since then I really haven't done much so I'm excited to welcome on to the podcast an expert in this area, thank you so much, Nick Arapkiles. How are you doing? Nick: I'm great, man. Thanks for having me on. Steve: Hey, thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. I was just looking through Facebook messages before you and I got on here and I didn't realize I think you had asked if we could push the time back and I'm such a morning person, thanks for getting up this early to do this. Nick: Hey, no problem at all, man. I'm happy to do it. Like you said I'm not much of a morning person, but when someone like you gives me an opportunity like this I'm happy to get on. Steve: It's nice that you did, I appreciate it. For everyone listening, this really is probably the first time, I mean, this is the first time that we'd really spoken like this. The guy that connected us is Ben Wilson obviously. Ben is the guy. He and I we're doing that things, Paul Mitchel and several other companies just think the world of him. He sent me a message and he goes, "Dude, I got this awesome guy. He's the man." I think I still have the message just to put it on the podcast or something. It's pretty funny. He's like, "This sweet guy, man, he's this genius and he said he wants to come." "Hey, sweet." I'm always looking for talent, for people because I get boring for everyone I'm sure. I'm excited to have some mix out. Nick: It's kind of a funny story. I met him at an event here in Colorado and then I actually ran into him at the Rockies, in the baseball game. Then he messaged me about you and here we are. Steve: Dude, that's great. What event was it? Nick: It was actually for a book publishing event ironically ... Steve: He told me he's going to that. Okay, cool. That's fantastic. It's funny this whole internet marketing world, it's actually a lot smaller than people think it is because people get in it, they'll get out of it, they'll get in it but the people that stick around I don't think there's ... Anyways, get around quick. What is exactly that you're doing then? You told me that you're awesome with YouTube which is awesome. Most people forget you can even advertise there I feel like but what is it that you're doing? Nick: Basically, I've been doing this stuff for a lot. Do you want me to just go on to my story a little bit? Steve: Okay, man. Let's hear it. Nick: Okay, cool. I've actually been online for about six years now and two and a half of those first six years were complete and utter struggle. It's usually the case with a lot of people's stories. I don't think I'm too much different... Steve: Anyone who says otherwise I feel like they are just lying or throwing a sales video. Nick: Yeah, I mean, it sucked at the time. Obviously it sucked at the time not having, you always expect when you get started you're thinking you're going to make money in your first day, first week, first month at least but it was tough man, it really was. I forfeited a lot of things going on. I was actually in college at the time... It was the summer before my last year of college so all my friends were going out partying and going to pool parties, different stuff like that. I was just dedicated to this thing. I essentially locked myself in my room that whole summer and I was dedicated to making it work and I didn't even make it work that entire summer and even years after that. It just led me on this path I think once you get into this like you're essentially infected with the entrepreneurial bug as I like to call it. You can't really go back from that. I mean, I kept on trying different things. I even went into the trading Forex and stuff like that but eventually came back into the marketing realm and that's where I am now like you're asking I've done a lot of YouTube stuff. That's the big thing is I really always focus on driving traffic because if you can drive traffic then you have a business. You really can do anything, it depends on what traffic you're using. Most the time I promote different funnels like business opportunities or just affiliate programs... I haven't really dove into much of my own stuff. I just leverage other systems that people put out and that's pretty much what I'm doing but it all stems from driving traffic and then calling people from YouTube into my world. I like to really call it my world more so than my list. I think a lot of people say my list or build a list. That's great, obviously you need to build a list but I think it helps me come from a better mentality than it's I'm building a list of people or a list. It's more so I'm building an audience of people, they are in my world now. Because I think a lot of people secure a list and they just think of numbers and what it really comes down to is that these are people that are interested and they want to connect with you and they want to learn more. You have to treat them as such and I think when you do that you get a lot better results. Steve: Interesting. That's interesting. A lot of people I know will talk about, they'll have you fill out something. Who are you trying to attract? What's their likes? What's their dislikes? What do they hate? Sometimes I feel like that gets pretty artificial after a while. You're just targeting people like yourself. I feel like it's the easiest way to go... Nick: Yeah, to be honest I didn't express this fully but basically what I do right now is I don't actually do too much advertising where I'm paying for the clicks and stuff like that. It's mostly just all organic. I've done a little bit of advertising here and there but the big thing is just putting content up. I know you're asking if I could drop some nuggets for YouTube and stuff like that but the biggest thing is just to continually put out content just like any other type of platform whether that's Facebook, Instagram, even Snapchat now. It's just continually putting out content because the more content you have out there, the more likely people are going to find you... I mean, there are some videos that I have that have seven views but there's also other videos that have 100,000 views. You never really know exactly which videos are going to hit. You might have an idea depending on the keywords and how optimized your videos are but the biggest thing that I stress and every day I learn more and more, I'm always learning is the fact that you never really know exactly until you start putting up content which videos are really going to stick and gain some traction until you upload them. Steve: That's interesting you say that. Back in college also I started really, really diving into this also, same thing. I sucked at it. There's a guy I listen to and he was saying, "You should always be publishing. Try and get a way to be in front of your people. Produce content." Just exactly what you're saying. I started doing that and making all these Periscope videos and I would put the recordings on YouTube. I can't tell you how cool that was. Stuff started happening when I did that. The exact reason you're saying. I had some videos that were terrible but then others were completely surprising to me. People started watching them and pushing them around. What the heck is this? My products started getting sold organically. I was like, "This is kind of cool," I totally agree with that but I have to ask though, you're putting YouTube videos out. Try to put as many up as you can. How do you rank a YouTube video? It's hard to... these words for spiders to go crawl and stuff like that like a blog post. What are some strategies you use to actually try and get them out there? Nick: It almost feels like it's changed throughout the years, I think the algorithms and everything. I'm not that geeky like that but I just noticed some trends here and there. As of late, I've noticed that a bigger channel with more subscribers and just a little bit more authority, maybe it's been on for a little bit of while or a little while, those are the videos that's pushing up towards the top of the search engines. You can pull back links. I know that probably gets a little bit more complex. I don't know if you're familiar with back linking. Steve: 100%, yeah definitely. Nick: Okay, I just didn't know if your audience would or not but that's basically you can go out there and get some other people to put your video in a bunch of different places. The idea behind that is that the search engines see your video all over the place and they are like, "This must be a video that is good. Let's start pushing it up towards the top of the search engine." Especially a couple of years ago that was huge and it definitely got me a lot of results but the thing again that I've noticed lately is that just having a big channel and having some decent subscribers and having people actually watch majority of your video is what's really pushing your videos up. I've had some videos where I just started making videos and they don't get much traction at all but then I have one of my bigger channels and I just put it up and I don't really optimize it at all, I don't really do anything to it and right away it's like one of the first videos on the search engine. Steve: I hear of Traffic Geyser. Nick: Yeah the name sounds familiar. Steve: These sites where you just submit your video and they'll just blast it across the internet so that you could get more views. I mean, totally spam-my stuff, you know what I mean? It's the dream for every entrepreneur or internet guys to just put your stuff everywhere. What strategies do you use for finding people to put your videos up? You know what I mean? Did you have to find related channels to yourself? Nick: Not necessarily. I use a website called Fiverr a lot of the times or at least I used to. I haven't been using it as much lately but it's a really cool website. You're obviously familiar with it but I'll explain it for your audience. Basically, it's just a website. It's called fiverr.com, F-I-V-E-R-R dot ‎com and basically it's a site that has a bunch of people doing a bunch of different gigs. They'll literally do anything for you for $5. I think there's a processing fee now for like 50 cents. Essentially people will do anything for you on the internet. I should be more specific with that. Steve: It's funny though because I've had people like, "Rap my name." I've had people, "Beat box stuff," they'll do anything for five bucks. Nick: Exactly, there's a lot of different stuff that you can do. Basically I just go on there and look for back links or maybe social signals and it's not to complicated. I mean, you just have to find someone with good rating, good track record and just test them out and that's the whole thing that I always tell people too is that you just have to test things out. You'll never really know what's working, what's not working until you go out there and actually apply it yourself... I think a lot of people are always asking me for the secret, asking me for different things that are just going to make it click and they're going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's really never the case. You know this just as well as anybody is that you actually have to go out there and do the work, see what's working, see what's not working and then throw out the stuff that's not working and then just ramp up the stuff that is working... Steve: This is one of the reasons why I laugh so much when you brought up Fiverr because it started out as a great class. I'm sorry if anyone's listening that was in that class. It was like an SEO class in college and it started out great. We're learning all these cool strategies for SEO and things like that. Then it just got like the strategies were really old. I've been doing it long enough by that point that I just knew that what I was earning wasn't significant or anything. He's like, "Hey, what you're all going to go do is you got to go create a YouTube video and think about a topic a lot and the competition in the class to see whose video can get the most views." I was like, "I could totally game that." We went and we made this, you know that, "Do you even lift, bro?" Those videos that are out there right now, have you seen it though? Nick: I'm not sure. Steve: "Bro, do you even lift?" Nick: Okay, yeah. Steve: The next Star Wars is coming out and we said, "Do you even Jedi, bro?" We made all these funny videos of people. It was pretty cool but I totally went to Fiverr and I paid this dude $5 to send like 10,000 bot clicks. For no views at all to just this massive spike and we went and we gave the ending presentation stuff like that like we have over 10,000 clicks on this thing and everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing." It's in the last few weeks and what's funny is that we ended up getting contacted right before the class ended by this ad agency. They were like, "Hey, we want to use your video to promote Star Wars stuff on." I was like, "Okay." None of them knew that this were like ... I'm sure that 50 of them were real clicks out of the ... Maybe. What's funny though is that obviously YouTube after a while can start to see if that's crap. The views on the bottom went from 0 to 10,000 to 12 and it stayed there. We're looking at the analytics for a while and then just totally drop. They took away all of them all the way back down to 3 views or something like that after the class was ended. Anyways, the only reason I bring that up is because A, it was a total failure and I knew what happened. I knew enough about that world that time but it was I mean, how do you go through Fiverr and figure out who's going to be sending you real clicks and not. You know what I mean or who's going to be pushing your video around the right way or not? Because most of it ... I like Fiverr for testing a lot of the lower level stuff but it sounds like you've got a cool way to do it that isn't that way. Nick: Yeah, that's actually a good point... I'm glad you brought that up because that's very important that you find good gigs because if you are sending a bunch of fake traffic to your YouTube videos it can get your video shut down and even your account shut down because YouTube will recognize that and they see that you're just throwing all these views on there and they are all fake. They don't like that. I've had the experience of getting a lot of my stuff shut down because of that in the early stages. Anyone listening, make sure that you're not sending crap gigs over to your videos because YouTube will shut that down real quick. In terms of finding good stuff, basically I just make sure that the vendor has a good track record. There's one specific guy that he's probably one of the bigger gigs. He's got so many different gigs on there. I'll just let you know his name is Crorkservice. Steve: Crorkservice, you know, I might actually seen him before. Nick: I'm sure you have. Honestly he's probably one of the best out there and he's got the best ratings. He's like the top of the top sellers... I mean, it's no hidden secret. You just have to go through his gigs and figure out what exactly it is that you want. If you are going to purchase views I really haven't done that in a long time. I know there are some people that do it and they do actually have success because again like I was saying before, if you can get high retention views where people are watching the majority of your video, that actually can really, really help you with ranking your video on YouTube in specifics. Just make sure that is a high retention view and again it has a good track record because that can definitely help with rankings on YouTube. Steve: Interesting, okay. What are you doing? I heard some people talk about we’ll give some formula or outline for what to make, what to put in the video to make sure that they’ll push pass minute seven or whatever it is. Do you have anything that you would recommend there? Nick: Yeah, for sure. There’s a couple of things. The first thing that you definitely need to know, basically how I get all my traffic for the most part is it’s all based on keywords. People come into the search engines and this is just like general in terms of search traffic. Basically people will come in, they’ll be searching for something, I mean you and I have done this just as much as anybody else is that they have a concern, they have an issue, they need help with something. They come into the search engines and they start typing it out whether that is how to lose weight, how to grow tomatoes. It doesn’t really matter, it just pertains to whatever your business is but they’ll start searching things in and then they’ll find your videos if you start uploading videos, you do it on a good channel, you start optimizing it. Your videos are going to start rising towards the top of the search engines. What you need to do when you’re making your videos is that you need to let your viewers know that they are at the right place. Let’s say for example that you did make a video about how to grow heirloom tomatoes for example. What you need to say in the beginning of the video, you need to let your viewer know that they’re in the right place at the right time. You say, “Hey, you probably landed on this video because you are looking, you started searching out how to grow heirloom tomatoes,” right then and there they know that they are at the right place. That's what starts it out and then if you can get technical and say, you need to say this, you need to say this, but I think it ultimately comes down to is that you need to let them know that they’re in the right place and then give them value. I know it sounds stupidly simple but I think there’s many people out there that just like they’re trying to heighten all this traffic, all this stuff through your website. People are smart, you can’t bullshit people... When you’re genuine, when you give value and you’re just a real down to earth person then that’s when people recognize that. People will connect with you just on that fact based alone, they might be coming searching for information they want to learn how to grow tomatoes or lose weight or whatever it is. A lot of times people just want to connect with somebody and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that happen where people just, they’ll hit me up on Facebook and they’re like, “Yeah, I mean, your video is great and all that but you just seem like you’re a down to earth person, you seem like a good dude and that’s why I came out and connected with you.” Steve: Interesting... I have had it happen before also and I never realized that that was probably it. I’m trying to be authentic on camera, you know what I mean? I’m just being myself and I have people come back and say, “Hey, you’re the man. I have this feeling when I was talking to you I should reach out to you,” and I was like, “What kind of feeling? All right, thanks.” Interesting. Yeah, that’s cool you bring that up... There really is as simple as that just answer the question, let them know that they’re there and then connect with them. There’s a guy I was listening to and he was saying something like, “The first 20 seconds you have to do something crazy to keep their attention. The next 60 seconds then you got to teach a little nugget then the final two minutes do something that’s also a little crazy to make sure they come back next time.” I was like, “Man, that’s a lot. All right,” but that’s so much more simpler route to do that. What kind of timeline do you usually look at when you’re trying to rank a video? You know what I mean, like how long it usually take? Nick: Again, it’s kind of goes along the same thing I was talking about just before and there’ll be a lot of people that say, “You got to make two to four minutes.” I certainly agree to that to an extent because like I was saying before it’ll help you start ranking your videos a little bit more if people are watching more of your video. If you have a shorter video it’s more likely that people are just going to watch more of it. If you have an 11 minute video then obviously less people are just going to watch it just because everyone has shorter attention spans. It does depend on the video that you’re doing because specific keywords especially like I do a lot of reviews. I’ll be honest that’s where a lot of my traffic comes from, a lot of my buyer traffic. That's just kind of a nugget right there. If you can start doing some reviews like that’s going to be some of your best traffic out there. I’ve got review videos that are like 10, 11, 12 minutes long and people watch the majority of it because buyers, think about this, buyers will watch, they will watch everything and they’ll read everything because they're thinking about it from your perspective. If you’re going out there and let's just say for example you want to buy a new MacBook or yeah, let’s just go with that example. Are you going to go to the website and just like look at a couple of pictures and then buy? No, you’re probably going to be going, you’re going to watch the hour long keynote presentation, you’re going to watch the ten minute video that shows all the details and all the benefits and features on the MacBook. You’re going to be talking to people, you might even reach out to a support. Buyers they will do their research. To just tell you, “You have to have it four minutes long,” or, “You have to have it ten minutes long,” I can’t really tell you that exactly because if you just target keywords that are buyer keywords, people are going to be searching that stuff until they make that buyer decision. Does that all makes sense? Steve: Yeah, it does. That’s a great insight. It’s not like a two to four minutes, there's not a hard fast rule, it's just hey whatever is … Make sure first that you’re actually delivering value and answering the question and coming back to them. Nick: Yeah, and if you’re asking for a short answer, I would say keep it shorter if you can but if you need more time to explain everything that you need I think there’s nothing wrong with that. Steve: What kind of buyer keywords? I mean is there’s a trend in good buying keywords, you know what I mean that you’re saying? Like across mostly internet or things that will pull your videos apart because those keywords are more valuable or you know what I mean? Nick: I’ll just be honest, review videos are probably the best videos that you can possibly make. Steve: Really? Nick: Yeah, because the reason people are coming and looking for reviews is because they saw a video or they saw a product and they’re a buyer. They’re looking for more information on that, they want to get everything they can possibly know about that. Once they figured out, once they see your video, once something clicks and they make sure it’s the right product for them then they’re ready to buy right there. Does that makes sense? Steve: Interesting. Yeah, 100%. I was just thinking too I’ve got like, I don’t know, 150 videos on YouTube but 90 of them are unlisted or whatever so that I can put them inside of websites and things like that. Do you have a preference at all? Have you found that there’s any kind of, I don’t know. I don’t even know, favoritism given to people who stay on the YouTube website versus watching YouTube video embedded on a page? Nick: I haven’t really done too much embedding on different pages so I can’t really speak for that. One other thing I was going to touch is the fact that you can actually look at your analytics too and you can see which videos people are watching longer. You can see the average duration on how long your viewers are staying on your video... Steve: Yeah, I love the stat section in the back of YouTube, it’s nuts. Most people don't look at that by a part but it’s pretty fascinating. Nick: Yeah, it’s great stuff and I actually just like within the last few months I’ve really started looking at that stuff a lot more and it’s really helped me. We just go back to the whole thing about testing seeing what works and then start doing more of what works. That what I was doing is I was really taking a look at the analytics, see what the videos that people are staying on for a long time and then just making more of those videos. Because there’s some videos where people are staying on for less than a minute through an average of 10,000 views. I’m like, “Okay, that obviously didn’t work so let’s throw that away. It was a good test, that was some good feedback, I won’t do that anymore so let’s move on and let’s find something better.” Steve: I just wanted to touch on something because this really matters a lot in kind of my world. I build funnels all day long, just tons of sales funnels and that’s kind of what I was looking through on your site mentorwithnick.com which is super cool, everyone should go there, mentorwithnick.com. You’ve got a quiz there and we’re a huge a fan of quizzes, it kind of pre-frame people. You got a welcome video from you and automated email that I got and then a link over to $1 offer. Kind of a cool biz opportunity there or business product I should say. Usually what we do when I build these types of funnels. You just kind of took me through in that mentorwithnick.com is we’ll always take those videos and enlist them and put them inside a funnel. I mean, I never let people just sit inside of YouTube format. I think it’s interesting that you just said … I mean it sounds like almost all of your review videos they’re all on YouTube anyway which makes sense. That’s what people are searching. That’s fascinating though. I guess I’m just recapping that. That’s cool though. Do you ever embed it all I guess, I mean you obviously did on that welcome video with Mentor With Nick. Nick: Yeah, that is one place that I do embed, I kind of almost forgot about that but those are like the only places. Mostly just like welcome videos or I like to call as bridge pages, like you said I do promote different things, different opportunities and stuff like that. What a lot of people will do is they’ll just send traffic directly to an offer and while that can work for sure like I’m not saying it can. Steve: It’s rough though. Nick: Yeah, pre-frame that a little bit and kind of just introduce them, kind of welcome them into your world. That’s a big thing it’s just like saying, “Hey, I’m here for you,” like, “I got your back,” like, “Don’t worry,” like, “We got this taken care of and you know I’m going to introduce you to this thing and you can certainly take us up on that but if not, you know, just connect with us.” So many people just want to connect with somebody, that’s what my whole video is about and after they opt in it’s just kind of saying, “Hey, I’m here,” like, “If you need anything from me you’ll be receiving some emails from me and you know I’m here to help you out.” I think that’s just a lot better way to do things instead of just like hard driving traffic to offers... My honest opinion that’s going to drop convergence but it’s also going to drop your audience where they just think that you’re just trying to sell them all the time. Steve: Yeah, 100% I agree with that and I was impressed with that video that you put out there, I thought that was really good. I always draw out funnels like crazy and in my world we call it funnel hacking. I was going through your funnel and drawing all that out, the emails that came, things like that and it’s not like you need that welcome video, the one from you. Technically you don’t but I thought it was interesting and cool that you put it in there because I watched the whole thing and it made sense to me is like, “Hey, there’s a lot of trust and there was a lot of ...” What’s the word? I can’t think the word. After watching the video I was like, “Hey, this guy is real. That was cool. What a good video,” and it set me up because I have to tell you when the next video started I was like, “Eh.” I don’t know but because I watched you, I was like there was a lot more trust, like a lot more stock in that video. Anyways, great example right there, I thought that was fantastic... Nick: Thank you. I appreciate that. Steve: Yeah, everyone go checkout mentorwithnick.com, that’s an interesting process for a bridge page right there. That’s really good. Nick: Thank you. Steve: Do you send people to quizzes a lot also? Nick: I use that capture page right now because it seems to be converting the best. I’ve noticed that in the past like I even got opt in pages like that up to like 50% opt in rate for all my traffic which is really good. Right now I’m sitting at around like 39%. I mean that’s for the best that I’ve done. I’ve tested with a lot of different stuff and everything else have been kind of sitting around like 32 to 33 maybe like a little bit higher than that. I just use that because it just kind of like gets them invested... They have the two step opt in and you are obviously very familiar with all this stuff and that works really well where you have to click on something that makes it a little bit more congruent. They’ve already invested a little something to make sure they put their email address in but the survey just kind of adds a little bit more like they’re taking a quiz and then they’re like, “Okay.” Now, they need to put their email address in and they’re already a little bit more invested so they’re more likely to continue with that action, that whole congruency. Steve: 100% plus then you can follow up with them, you got their email address and you can re-market to them and ask them if they got the trial. Yeah, great for you, great for them. Yeah, I completely agree with that too. I had this quiz who’s probably about 50% also, same thing. It’s just quizzes are great things for people. It was only like four questions but it set them into my … It was the same thing that you did which is what I was laughing at, “Where did you hear about us from?” and it was like, “Facebook, Oprah, Obama mentioned me,” and then other. I’ve never been on those things before but because they heard those names first and then your name last or even other, it’s a lot more stock also. Just increases your authority like crazy, not that you want to be deceptive but it does give you more authority. The next question was like, “What age range are you in?” and these are questions that sometimes don’t even matter or you can ask questions that just kind of poke them in the eye a little bit. “How much do you make on your side business every week?” “Zero. A hundred bucks,” and then just, “I got to choose the lowest one.” For a weight loss product, “How many products have you tried?” but at the time your solution comes up they’re like, “Man, he’s right. I fail every time at this. I do need to buy this product.” That’s interesting though. Cool. Hey man, I don’t want to just keep taking your time. I appreciate you getting up early to do this with me. Where can people learn more about you and join your world like you were saying? Nick: You can add me on Facebook, that’s a good place. I am kind of maxing that out now. Lately I’ve been going pretty hard with getting people add me and everything like that. My friend list is kind of maxing out right now so I did also start up a new Instagram account, a new Snapchat account which my usernames are Mentor With Nick, just kind of goes along with my website. You can also go to my website like you mentioned before which is mentorwithnick.com. Steve: Mentor With Nick Instagram and Snapchat, mentorwithnick.com also and then also on Facebook. Hey Nick, I appreciate it man. Thank you so much for taking the time again and for dropping all the nuggets you did. Nick: Yeah, for sure man. It was fun. I always love getting on with like-minded people and just chat marketing something I’m very passionate about. Steve: Yeah, I appreciate it. Everyone else usually who talks about it, sometimes they feel alone in this world. Anyways, it’s cool to meet you man and I do appreciate it. Nick: No problem, man. Happy to be on. Steve: All right, talk to you later. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the live Hey Steve Show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.

Click above to listen in iTunes... I don't just build funnels in ClickFunnels. Full out websites are not only possible, they're CRAZY fast... Here's some tricks fo' ya!! Steve Larsen: What's going on everybody? This is Steve Larsen and this is an "HeySteve!" segment of the Sales Funnel Radio Podcast. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales Funnels. And now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: Alrighty Alrighty, Hey! So today's question actually comes from Becky, and actually I have interviewed Becky before in the past, so if you want to, go back and listen to her interview. It's absolutely, totally amazing. Absolutely amazing interview. But anyways, I'm going to play her question. Becky: Hey Steve, I was wondering on your template for the website, why you made every page an order page? I think I know, but just wanted to be sure. Thanks so much! Steve Larsen: Okay so I actually get asked that question pretty frequently. Now if you guys haven't done this in the past at all, please do in the future. I made my entire website, salesfunnelbroker.com, available for everyone for free. I mean you can download literally the entire thing, straight into your ClickFunnels account. Now if you don't have ClickFunnels, that's totally fine, it'll just give you a two week free trial, so you can go in, literally switch out your pictures, content, copy. Honestly, and what I would do, and I'm telling you guys to do this and a lot of people I think would freak out at this, but ... Literally put up my website on one page or on the right side of your screen and then the version that you download from me on the left side, and then you can go through and just add or change whatever and just make sure you model after what I've done. It works, almost everyone it works quite well... I want you to know, I had somebody come out and they were on YouTube and they were calling me out saying, "How is it that," I can't remember what they said. They were like, "How come you didn't give this to me for free? Are you serious, you're not," They said something like that, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I was crazy fired up, like, "Are you kidding me? I gave so much stuff away for you guys. I just finished building another person's Funnel, and I charge ten grand for them, and I'm giving you the entire website for free. That's like giving ten grand away." I got to be honest, I still get a little gut check every time I do that because I worked two or three hundred hours on that thing. I worked a long time on that, but I just wanted you guys to know that I do care about you and I'm obsessed with Funnel building. So anyways, back to the question... Becky asked, "Why is every single page," when you guys download it you'll see it, "Why is every page set up as an order page?" If you don't know what Becky is talking about, when you're inside of ClickFunnels, before you get in the editor but you're in the actual Funnel, you'll notice on this left side that it all says "Order Page." So the first page will be a home page but underneath it says "Order Page," right? Then there's an about page. Underneath it says "Order Page," and I've had people ask me, "Why do you do that?" So think about it this way. ClickFunnels is absolutely fantastic, not just for building things like Funnels of course, right? I use them to build websites, full websites, and I've done it for many people. You can check out echoh2water.com, that's a full one I built out. I guess I won't list them all out here, but I've built a ton of different websites inside of ClickFunnels and the way that I do it is first, right off the bat, I make every page an order page. Here's the reason... A lot of times what happens is I say I'm building a site, I'll say I'm building a full website inside of ClickFunnels and in the future, I'm like, "You know what? I would love it if I just sold something straight off of this page." Let's say I'm in the about page section of my website. If you went to salesfunnelbroker.com/about, you'd see me and you'd see about me and I'm telling you guys who I am and what kind of person I am and trying to get a relationship with you guys, right? Let's say I wanted to sell something off of that page right there. You actually can do it straight off that page because it's an order page. There's been many times in the past where I have, someone's come and I only made this mistake one or two times and realized I should build out every single page as an order page. This is off of a website, understand what I'm telling you... This is not a traditional Funnel that I built out.... The reason I do it is because there's been many times in the past where I built for somebody and I go out and I'm like, "Cool, hey, the project's done," and then they're like, "Hey, can I sell something just straight off of this page?" And I'm like, "That was different than you and I agreed on. Sure. But I'm going to have to rebuild that as an order page type or there's some really ninja code things you can do to switch it," and I was like, "Oh I don't want to anyway." So I just rebuild it real quick with one on one page, one on the other. But anyways, that's the reason why I do it though. So that to future assume any kind of purchase that might happen on that page in the future. Now that's kind of a quick answer to your question, so I wanted to go through a little bit more about how I build a whole site inside of ClickFunnels, because I have been asked that so many times. So, that's why I was like, okay this is totally going on the show. Becky I'll send you your T-shirt right after this... Here's how I do it though. Like I was saying I build out, first I select, I delete everything out of the Funnel. I start out a Funnel, it doesn't matter what kind and click Funnels. I delete every single page. Then I just create an order page one and choose any template. When I open it up though, I delete everything. Then I'll go out and I Funnel hack, essentially. Who are the other guru's out there? Who are the other people out there who are crushing it who I might want to model after? And I'll get four or five different websites that I like the look and feel of them. I don't want it to be too corporate-y... So then I go out and I build the whole thing and here's the key part. Make sure that all of headers with all the links are in there. Make sure all of the footers with all the links are in there. Make sure you get that page, as far as a template goes as 100% complete as you possibly can. Because then what I do afterwards is I'll go in and I'll just save it as a template. I save that whole page as a template and then I just literally paste it out like five or six times and name one of them the about page. Name the next one the services page, name the next one the podcasting page. Just like you guy see on the top of salesfunnelbroker.com. What's cool about that though, is the front page becomes, and any of the other pages become the entry point for other Funnels that I'm building out. So here, go check this out, for example this is how I do it. If you want me to build the Funnel for you, I did not think about all the people that wanted that when I built salesfunnelbroker.com, I was just planning on being a broker, which I do that also, by the way. But I was thinking, "Man, people want me to build their funnels for them, this is awesome, I'm really excited to do this!" If you look, the salesfunnelbroker.com site is not in the same category in ClickFunnels as the services, /services Funnel is. It's a different Funnel. But anyway, I don't want to keep rambling on. It's now turned into a long answer, but that's the reason why so that I can assume that they'll be future sales, which is awesome, which is what I've done. That free Funnel section, guys that's making like a grand a week and I'm not doing anything on it. You guys can go do the same... I want you to know though, you can download the entire site that I built for free, like I said, right in your ClickFunnels account. If you don't have one, just get the free trial, it will go right in still. But what I also did, if you go to the free Funnels section in there, scroll down to the bottom, I created a custom WordPress theme, so that I could still put up blog posts, and there's a whole other episodes that I've got on how to do that. I've made the whole thing available for you guys though. It cost me a good chunk of money to create, a lot of time, a lot of time with another coder that I ended up hiring and she's awesome. Well we ended up packaging up the entire blog theme and we made it available to all you guys. And so if you look, if you click across the top, salesfunnelbroker.com the blog at the top, there's a whole bunch of different places. Well the blog is not on the same URL, it's actually WordPress. All I did is I went and I paid someone to custom create a WordPress theme that made WordPress look like the site salesfunnelbroker.com. So they looked like they were together on purpose. That's what that is. So if you want to, you can also get that as a companion to the entire salesfunnelbroker.com website. Anyways guys, I'm sorry, this is kind of more of a nitty gritty, that was like hard core style more of an episode and I promise I won't do these too often and these "HeySteve!" segments is a little bit more forward, not as many stories I should say. Anyway, guys, thanks so much and Becky thanks so much. I will get your address from you and then I'll send you off that T-shirt. Anyone else who has a question though, please go to salesfunnelradio.com and you can see, if you scroll down on the right, there's a little green button you can click it and ask any question you want. It will forward off to my email. I kind of vet the questions to see which ones will be great on the podcast and then I send you out a free "HeySteve!" T-shirt kind of as a thank you. Anyways guys, hey thank you so much, and I will chat with you all later. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free T-shirt when your question gets answered on the live HeySteve! Show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.  

Click above to listen in iTunes... Steve Larsen: What's up everybody? My name is Steve Larsen. Thank you for listening to Sales Funnel radio. This is a special, "HeySteve!" segment. Announcer: Welcome to Sales Funnel radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen. Steve Larsen: All right, all right, all right. Hey, I'm going to get right into the question again on this one. I really really like this question. This is, this goes a little bit beyond building funnels and is more about how to manage building funnels. If you're doing it for others, or kind of just in general. Anyways, I'm going to go ahead and play the question here from my man Keith. Keith: Hey Steve, it's Keith Mosely. Wanted to ask you, what do you use to log your hours that you spend on your funnels? How do you send out invoices and generate quotes for customers? Thanks man. Steve Larsen: Keith, okay. Great, I just love this. I smiled like crazy when you said this because obviously there's the skill behind building, but then, how do you build a business around that? That's obviously what I've done... Okay, so when I was 17 years old, no no, I was 18, just barely 18, just barely graduated high school. Had no idea what I wanted to do with my life still. I'm still figuring that out. I plan on being a kid forever. I went to get a job at Discount Tire and I was a tire buster. I got over there and there's a bunch of rough guys. They, at least for the store that I was in, I mean, they would like, they'd push my buddy and I all over the place. There was this thing called tire tongues. It's like these big steel pieces of, well, they're big pieces of steel. That's basically what it is. It helps you pry tires off of cars and stuff. I mean, they like, pushed my friend around and stuff. Anyway, they were some tough dudes. I was trying to be all cool, whatever. I'm trying to be really fast at my job so that they liked me. I ended up being really really fast. I would go work and work and work. We'd work from, and it was during the winter season so there's hardly any heaters in there. We would get crazy sick. There's no breaks, there was no lunch breaks or anything like that just because we knew we were good and we knew we were fast. We wanted to be that way... I worked day after day after day. We'd work 12 hours a day, pretty much every day. Oh my gosh, it's so crazy. I ended up being really good at the job. After 12 hours, I think only got paid like $10 an hour, not much. I would come home with $120 right, for my time. I was like, this is cool. Up until that time, I had been working at different places. It was probably the highest paying job I'd ever had that time... Anyways, I was like, "Cool. I'm going to try and get really really good." I went and I started getting faster and I started getting faster, started getting faster. What was interesting is my pay got less and it sucked. I was better, but I was getting paid less for it, right? I would be able to get all the cars done 10 minutes faster than everyone else, even faster even faster. I was like, "Man, this is dumb." I didn't think about it much. Time went on, time went on. You know, 4 years went by. I was in college. I was doing lots of stuff and I started working at this pool repair company. We would build swimming pools. Residential swimming pools for celebrities and stuff. I got to go hang out and meet a lot of the Denver Broncos team. Colorado Rockies. A lot of really famous baseball players, golf players. Actually, the singer from ... This is totally a... sorry guys ... Singer from, I think it was One Republic, I used to clean his pool. The guy's got a sick house man, it's awesome. His pool's underneath his house. Anyway, what was frustrating for me though is I got fast. I got good. I got better than everyone else but I got paid less for it because I finished my route faster. I was like, "This is retarded. I can't." Anyway, I remember there was one day. I had just really started getting into, kind of, side entrepreneurship. I wasn't full fledged into this, like I am now obviously. I remember there was, kind of the last day, I was going to go back to the school. The summer was over, whatever. I picked up this little piece of broken tile on the ground. I remember looking at it. I had worked construction jobs like crazy. A lot of my teenage years, even into my very early twenties, in college and things like that. I picked up this piece of tile, for whatever reason, it's very nostalgic for me. I was like, I'm never going to work a construction job again in my life. There's nothing against that, I was just trying to get out of the time and effort economy and trying to get more into the results based economy. There's an episode, podcast episode, that I kind of ranted about that a little bit. It was very important to me... Keith, to get back to your question, when you say, "How do I log my hours?" I don't. I don't. What I do is I log my projects. I log how good they're performing. I know I can build a totally kick butt funnel. I have done over, just in the last 6 months alone, over 100 funnels... They're good and they work. I have busted my butt to get very good at them. I don't charge by the hour, I charge by the project because you're not just paying for my time, you're paying for my expertise. All the times I've sacrificed... I would hid in our college campus, when I was in college, I would hide in the campus, really late into night, hiding from security so I could keep studying. No joke, funnels and building funnels. I am so obsessed with this topic that I've given up a lot for it. There's no reason at all why I should get paid by the hour. I say that to all of you who are listening right now. Understand that you guys are too good at your specialties to get paid by the hour. Pay by the project... That means I can go build a funnel that's totally awesome, in about a week, sometimes two. It's going to be an amazing funnel. I charge 10 grand for the funnels that I build. They're awesome. I just finished one and it's amazing. They love it, the client loves it. I'm off to another supplement funnel right now. They just, I know they're going to love it. They're not just paying for my time, they're paying for expertise. I would dare say that if you take a crap load of time on something as specialized as a funnel or whatever it is you're specialized in, maybe people would like it if you're actually faster. They might actually like it if you don't charge by the hour, charge by the project right? No matter how fast you get it done, you'll still get paid, which keeps you motivated and keeps them to their word. It's awesome. That's the first thing I do. The second thing that I do is, you talked about invoices, how do I send invoices? I actually don't either. I'm maybe kind of a different kind of business guy than you would think. I take half of my money up front. Then I take the other half when it's over. I give a discount though if you pay or it all up front. For example, one of the last guys I just billed for, I said, "Hey" ... He needed a lot of extra custom stuff and it was going to take me some extra time. His actually took 2 weeks. I think I had to go out of town, or something like that. Anyway, I was like, "Hey look, I'll do ... I need to charge like 12 grand for this because this is intense. I can pull it off, I know I can do it, it'll just take me a little extra time." Right? I was like, "So, I'll charge you 12 grand, so it'll be the first payment is 6, and obviously the second one's going to be 6 as well. Or, you can pay the full 10 up front and I'll take off the extra 2." That's a good way to structure it as well. Some people like that as well. The only reason why I spend so much time teaching you about this stuff is that I have been burned so many freaking times by people who want to take advantage of the things that I've worked hard to be good at. For example, when I was doing ... I think I've told you guys this story, at least on a podcast before, that I was a traffic generator for Paul Mitchell for a little while. The Paul Mitchell, the hair school. It was awesome. It was super cool. I was in the middle of college and we were driving traffic for these guys, we're helping them get more clients, more people coming in. One person coming in is worth like 20 grand, so they had a lot of lee way to spend money and still be profitable. We were driving traffic, it was awesome. We start building these sites for some of their rising celebrities. I'm totally saying the name Paul Mitchell right now because I'm still pissed off about this. They came to us and said, "Hey look, we got to build the site in 36 hours. This guy's going to get on TV in 36 hours and we need him to be able to say, 'Hey, go to such and such URL.' and say on TV what website to go to." We said, "Holy crap! 36 hours? Do you guys know what you're asking us? You're pretty much asking us to stop everything else we're doing." My buddy and I, we sat in his living room for the next 36 hours. We didn't sleep. We barely slept, we barely ate. Just bloodshot, bleeding eyes. We got it done though, in just an hour or two to spare before he got on TV. It was a screaming success, it was totally awesome. They never paid us... They still owe us a ton of money. Anyway, it was very very frustrating for all of us. That's the reason why. Unless you are dead sure that it is a successful company, do not take on people who are start ups and do not take your money solely in the back. Do half up front... When you guys are these specialized people in whatever industries you're in, I would say to do that every time for everything. Anyway, I guess that's the second question. The third one, you're talking about, "How do I give quotes?" It's built in. It's kind of a secondary part to the invoice question. The way I do it, like I said, I charge a base of 10. The a lot of times I'll even charge, you know, even 15 or 20. The reason is it depends on what kind of funnel. It depends on how serious of a funnel do they need. Do they need custom code? Do I need to build a whole membership site? Am I writing all of your copy? Which is huge... If someone needs that, that adds a tone of time and a ton of brainpower. I go into hibernation mode for a week. My family does not see me. It's not like I just toss these things up, just so you know. It's stressful for me too. I go into hibernation mode. I don't see my family for like a week or two when I'm doing these custom ones for people. Especially when you add something like copy in. Do I need to write the scripts for your videos? Do you need to shoot the videos? Do I need to edit them? I do basically the whole Adobe suite. Photoshop, video, audio, I mix my own podcast and that's the reason why. Anyway, that's why though. I go and it very much depends on also, are they a brand new start up? Which I'm very hesitant to take startups on because people think that the funnel is their business, and that's not true. Their product or their service is the business. If something goes wrong with the funnel or they don't like something, sometimes they think that it's the funnel's fault, when in reality, 90% of the time, it's actually the fact that their business model is not proven. Anyways, I have probably given way too much on this, but man, like, serve your customers like crazy, but have another backbone for when you need to put your phone down and say, "Look, I've worked my tail off to get good at this. It's my unique ability. You got to pay me. I want to get paid half up front." That's what I do Keith. That's a bit of a rant. I don't log hours. I don't really do invoices. I just do it. There's a quote, I went through the certification program with ClickFunnels. I did it in two weeks. It's a 3 month course. I actually got in trouble for it which is kind of funny. Anyway, I did the certification in 2 weeks and then they help you with some different, really cool formats for contracts you sign with people for getting funnels and stuff like that. That was really nice to use... It's kind of a starter place. Anyway, hey, that's, I'm kind of ranting now. I just want you to know, that's what I do. Thank you so much for the question Keith. You and I will chat and I'll send you over your T-shirt. Anyone else, if you want your free, "Hey Steve!" T-shirt, please go to salesfunnelradio.com and scroll down just a little bit. There'll be a button, a green button on the right that says, "Ask the question" or "Start recording". It will be highlighted. You can ask a question straight off the browser. It forwards right to my inbox. Then if it makes it on the show here, I send you over a T-shirt. Anyway, hey guys, thank you so much. You guys are awesome. I really appreciate you. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Have a question you want answered on the show? Get your free t-shirt when your question gets answered on the Live, "HeySteve!" show. Visit salesfunnelbroker.com now to submit your question.