Podcast appearances and mentions of ben what

This episode the boys are discussing:            * Big challenge between Andy & Ben * What not to eat * Hotel horrors  As well as so much more!

Show notes:Links:Threads.comBlueyVogmaskTwistIt’s a Southern ThingIf I had a front porchFull transcript:Josh:How y'all doing?Ben:I'm doing.Starr:Yeah, about the same.Ben:I've been riding my scooter to work all week.Starr:Oh, how's that?Ben:It's a lot of fun. Got a little electric kick scooter and top speed about 25 miles per hour. I was concerned about it being able to get up the hill that I have to go back up on my way home. It does drag a bit on that hill. I only got a single motor. Guess I should have gone with the dual motor. Otherwise it's fun. It's nice to be out in nature, I guess, air quotes, because you're still on the road and you're still a victim of cars and stuff. Being able to see the sun coming up over the hills and down to the valley and while you're just feeling the wind on your face, it's all good.Josh:It sounds nice.Ben:Yeah.Starr:Yeah, sounds awesome. I don't know. It seems terrifying to me, but I'm sure it's a lot of fun.Ben:It helped that I have done a lot of bike riding on roads for the past several years, so I'm already comfortable with the idea of mixing it up with cars and weaving in and out of traffic and realizing that people aren't going to see me and things like that. I think if I had just gone from driving a car straight to riding a scooter in the bike lane, that would be a little more terrifying.Starr:Yeah, that makes sense.Josh:Next you're going to have to upgrade to one of the electric skateboards or a Onewheel or something, just remove the handle bars.Ben:Right, right, right. Get one of those Onewheel things.Josh:This is leading up to-Ben:Totally.Starr:We're just working up to hoverboards. I mean I commute to my backyard office, so maybe I should get a zip-line or something from the main house.Ben:I like that, yeah.Starr:... then I could be extreme.Josh:We want a zip-line at our place out into the forest.Starr:That would be fun.Ben:You could do a zip-line from your deck to the sandbox, send the kids out to play.Josh:The kids would love it. Well, I was thinking more for myself though. Screw the kids. They don't need a zip-line.Starr:There you go. That's actually not a bad idea. We're going to get-Josh:That would be cool though.Starr:... a deck in the fall.Josh:Oh, nice.Starr:I had thought it would be fun to put a fireman pole on one side or something so kids could slide down it. It's raised up a little bit but not that much. It's like a kid's sliding size.Ben:That would be totally awesome. That would-Josh:We have been loving our new deck that we have had for a month and a half or something now. It's a new deck. If you have a really old, rickety deck, a new one is a big upgrade. Also ours is a little bit larger, too, so it's like a bigger house almost.Starr:Oh, that's great. We don't even have a deck it's just like a little stairway.Josh:I think you're going to like it, Starr.Starr:I think so, too. I know, deck life. It's going to be covered. I was just like-Josh:It's just the small things.Starr:I know. All I want is to be able to go out on a nice evening or something and sit and drink a cup of tea and be outside.Ben:And think about all-Josh:I was going to say, where do you drink the sweet tea in the summer if you don't have a front porch?Starr:Yeah, that's the main problem with houses up here in the Northwest is there's not real front porches. We have one that's like a weird nod at a front porch. It's like somebody maybe had seen a front porch once when they were... They were like, "Oh, maybe I'll try and do that from memory," without really knowing what it's supposed to be like.Josh:Some of the ones in Portland have them, but they're boxed in usually, and they're the older houses-Josh:... like the old Craftsmans or whatever.Starr:The stately grand dames.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:Well, here in Kirkland we're destroying all those old houses and putting in-Starr:Thank God.Ben:... townhouses.Josh:Hell, yeah.Ben:I drove by one this morning. This morning was the first morning since I got my scooter that I actually didn't ride the scooter because it was raining and the ground was wet. I was like, "Ah, I don't want to deal with that this morning." So I just drove. I drove past this house that... Well, yesterday it was a house. Today, it's a pile of sticks because they sold the lot, and they're going to split it into probably, I don't know, four lots and put in some townhouses. It's always a sad thing, but people got to have a place to live.Starr:Yeah, it's a shame. They tore down a house on my block, too, except it was a condemned house. It looked like a gingerbread fairy house that you'd find on just a random stroll in the woods where you'd go inside and you'd find just a delicious meal laid out on the table just waiting for you. So I'm a little sad it's gone just for, I guess, the storytelling aspects, the mythology of it. I guess it's probably best not to just have a condemned structure hanging out.Josh:I still do feel like Ida's is missing out with your telling of that story. I feel a little sad for you all.Starr:I know. I know.Ben:You're totally missing the threat possibility there. Like, "Don't misbehave or I'll send you over to the gingerbread house."Starr:Oh my god, yeah. Yeah, lots of great ways to traumatize my child.Ben:Speaking of traumatizing children, I was going through Twitter the other day, and the Washington State Department of Health had a tweet. I don't remember what the tweet was, but they had a GIF embedded in it. It was Stimpy from Ren & Stimpy as a scene from the show. I was like, "That's from the Department of Health? My generation is now in charge."Starr:With the Twitter account at least.Ben:We're now putting in-Josh:Yeah, exactly.Ben:That was the weirdest... It's like, "I'm an adult." That was a weird, weird experience.Josh:It is kind of strange when the people in charge start looking more and more like you until you realize they're just like-Ben:They're just little kids, just like I am.Josh:Then you wonder why the hell they're in charge.Starr:I'm getting like Paul Ryan listening to a Rage Against the Machine vibe from this.Josh:That's what I'd be playing if I was in charge of the Department of Health's-Starr:There we go.Josh:... Twitter account.Starr:I think this week has all been a little bit... I don't know. We're all maybe a little bit having a hard time focusing. I know I have a little bit just. It seems like that happens every spring as soon as the weather gets nice and it stops being nice, then it gets nice and it stops being nice. You're waiting by the door with your kayak. You just got to get the jump on it before everybody else gets to the lake.Josh:Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Also allergies have been kicking in lately.Starr:Oh my god, yeah.Josh:I was really on top of it this year, but then I ran out of my Zyrtec or whatever. It was on the list to replenish the supply or whatever, but I procrastinated and missed a few days. That's a huge mistake.Starr:Oh, yeah.Josh:That was this week. Now I switched to Claritin, so we'll see how... That's the big news of my week.Starr:Oh my gosh. I'm getting vaccinated later today, my second dose.Josh:Nice.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Congrats.Starr:I think I'm still going to keep wearing the KN95 respirators outside, though, just for the allergies.Josh:It's probably a good call.Ben:I was helping a neighbor with some yard work and doing a bunch of weeding and had the weed whacker out, and there's just dirt flying everywhere. I'm like, "Man, I should really wear a mask." Like, how ironic. I've got like, I don't know, a thousand masks in my house, and I'm not wearing one as I'm doing all this dusty stuff.Josh:That's a good thing to do.Starr:Oh, this is reminding me, I need to stock up before fire season.Ben:A few years ago when we had the really bad fire season, we got some Vogmasks. This was before the world knew that you were supposed to wear masks. Vogmasks are fantastic. They're a fabric mask that have the filtering stuff on the inside and highly recommend. I'll put a link in the show notes.Starr:Cool.Ben:Good stuff. When the pandemic hit, of course, they were out of stock immediately because everybody and their brother wanted one, but they've been back in stock. They're nice masks. They're really nice.Starr:Well, one thing that we have been doing is casually just checking out alternatives to Basecamp for our internal company's message board. I don't know. I feel like we're just perusing the alternatives. Honestly, it's been a little bit difficult finding just a system out there that's just a simple thread and message board without a million complex adjustments for running a forum that has thousands of people. Somebody on Twitter yesterday recommended Threads. I don't know. I think we're currently evaluating that one but no decisions yet.Josh:Is that like Twitter threads? You just-Starr:Oh, yeah, just Twitter threads.Josh:We do all of our communicating but just public threads.Starr:No, we're just going to use Twitter stories. We're just going to take some pics of ourselves in different-Josh:If we're trying to go to the opposite direction of Basecamp, we could just... Well, I guess this is like Basecamp, just do all of our communication via thought leadership.Starr:There you go.Ben:What if we did all of internal communication via TikTok?Starr:Okay, I'm getting this. I'm on board with this. We're just going to be influencers. Whoever's the most influential is going to-Josh:You know what? If our employees don't like it, too bad. You're getting a Twitter account, and it's getting verified.Starr:Yeah, they can interpret our really random TikTok video and try and figure out what it means. That's how they'll discover our disapproval.Ben:On the Basecamp thing, though, it was interesting as I was looking at it this week and realizing that the only thing that we use in Basecamp is messages along with the files. We sometimes attach files to our messages.Josh:Or email forwards.Ben:Yeah, occasionally we do an email forward. But we don't-Starr:Usually we do calendars, but we also have Google calendar.Ben:And Slack.Josh:And Notion.Ben:And notion. So we don't do to-dos. We don't do hill charts. We don't really use the project management side of the project management software that we're using. As I was looking at alternatives this week, I looked at monday.com and ClickUp and, I don't know, a few different ones. They're all these project management things. It's like, well, we don't really manage projects. We do that via chat or via a Zoom call every once in a while or via Notion. We don't use a project management tool for that. So it's like, yeah, all we really need are threads, conversations.Starr:It's the sort of thing where you could just do it in email, but it's nice having that archival ability, the ability to go back and check things out and not have it dependent on, "Oh, maybe I deleted that message by accident or whatever."Josh:Well, you could do it in Slack, but then you end up with the weird history aspect of it, and you'd have to have some sort of... You have to create a channel for it with the rules so it doesn't end up being just a chat. You have to say, "The rule of this channel is every message is a thread or a post or whatever."Starr:You kind of have to do it manually.Josh:Yeah.Ben:I did look at Twist. That was pretty cool, pretty close, but it also has chat. It's like, "well, I don't want a second chat since we already use Slack." We're not going to ditch Slack.Starr:Basecamp has chat, too.Ben:Right, and we don't use that. I guess you could use Twist. Twist is pretty nice.Starr:I think we need threaded messages, we need everything to be archived, and we need some way to see what people have been writing on lately, see what the latest activity is. That's basically it. I don't even use notifications. I get them, but I don't really... Usually by the time I see them... That's not my process. I don't look at my notifications and be like, "Oh, I'd better check this out." I check out the messages at a set set time basically.Ben:Then, like you said, the forum software, like the discourse, and it's just way, way too much. It's like, "Yeah, we get it." We just need a message board. We don't need all the dials and knobs. It's totally a dials and knobs application. I saw it in the settings, and I was like, "Whoa, okay. I'm just going to back away slowly."Starr:It could be fun, I don't know, if we want to be passive aggressive, we could shadow ban people. We could just do all sorts of fun things.Ben:But I suppose we don't have the hard requirements supporting BBCode.Starr:Isn't that a negative requirement? Supporting BBCode, I think that's a detriment. But we do have a chance to maybe, I don't know, maybe... One thing that I've always really... This really annoyed me about Basecamp is that it doesn't support Markdown, and everything we use supports Markdown, so everything I have is in Markdown. So if I write something in my personal notes, it's going to be in Markdown. If I want to transfer that to Basecamp, I got to manually format it, which is just like, "What am I? What is this? Who do you think I am?"Josh:That's my number one gripe with Basecamp, like the editor, is just a WYSIWYG editor that... I constantly... even just when I'm writing and I want to make a list and I just type a dash like I normally... in most things these days, and it just doesn't do anything in Basecamp. Then I remember, "Oh, I have to get my mouse and click on the bullet." It's a huge hassle.Ben:I can imagine your quality of life being dramatically affected by that.Josh:Yeah.Starr:You know we're developers when we're complaining about things like that.Josh:This is why I'm wearing wrist braces.Starr:Or dual wrist braces.Ben:I totally get what you're saying. I want to be able to type star, space, stuff, stuff, stuff and I get a list. Yeah, totally.Starr:It looks like threads.com, it does support Markdown, which is nice. I don't know. I haven't really played around with it a ton. Some aspects of its design, I'm not super happy. I wish the column widths were a little wider and stuff, but also I don't like certain aspects of Basecamp's design. So it's kind of a toss up for me.Ben:I did an export of our Basecamp content, and I got to say their export is fantastic. They give you an HTML page that links to a bunch of other pages per topic or project or team, whatever they call it, and the files are there. It's really well done. So I think if anyone's looking for inspiration on doing exports in their app, they should totally look at Basecamp. They nailed it. It's actually usable. You get this zip file. You open it up and bam, you can just browse through all your stuff.Starr:That's pretty great. I guess I should declare, I think maybe I started this casual looking for alternatives just because I've seen a lot of stuff online about people are angry at Basecamp. It's like, I'm not really angry at them. Well, this isn't really the point. I'm sad and disappointed in them. But also a lot of the reason why I think they have had our business and they had my business, I've stored personal stuff in a personal Basecamp account, it's just because they're trustworthy. That feeling of trustworthiness has gone down a few pegs for me.Starr:Also, I just kind of felt gross logging in there. If you haven't been keeping up with this, part of the deal is they were making fun of people's names and stuff. I don't know. Are they making fun of my name? I've got a weird name. Are they going through my stuff making fun of it? I know they have access to pretty much everything that I put into Basecamp. I don't know. Even if they're not doing that now, are they going to do that in the future? Because it seems like they're going in that direction. I don't know. It seems like they're shutting down people trying to hold them internally accountable for that sort of thing. I don't know. It's just like a gross feeling. I'm just sad about the whole thing.Josh:I personally I kind of doubt that that's like... I got the feeling that the list was more of an artifact from the past, and it had stuck around for too long. I didn't get the feeling that they're condoning that sort of activity really, but I get what you're saying. Also for me, a big factor of it, it's not even just that I'm mad at them or something, they did lose 30% of their company, and they're supporting two products now, one of which is a major infrastructure product but basically is like email. So they have operation overhead and stuff. They did just lose 30% of their company including their, what, head of strategy but basically head of product. So I just wonder, where is the product going from here? It was already, I felt, a little bit stagnating. I don't know. I think they've been working on the next version of it is what I heard. I don't know. It just seems like there are questions about just the stability from that nature, too.Ben:I'm probably in a third place from you two and I probably care the least. I'm like, "Eh, it's a message board. They can make fun of my name." Okay. I had that happen when I was 10. People do that. It's like, "Oh, get on." I have a hard time getting up the energy to care, I guess.Starr:Don't mistake me. I'm not like up in arms about it. This is more like a passive viewing. It's like, "Oh, I got to go on Basecamp and check my things. Uh, I just feel kind of crummy about it." This is-Ben:It's one of those friction things in your life you just don't need. Yeah, absolutely.Starr:Yeah, yeah.Josh:Absolutely.Starr:I'm like, this is a message board. Like, should I be having to deal with this just to go check some messages? It's ridiculous.Josh:I think all of us are really just talking these are passing thoughts we have using the product in light of the drama of the past few weeks.Starr:If we end up staying on it, I'm not going to be super upset. I'll probably get over it. I don't know. It just seems like it might be nice to try something different especially if we can get that sweet Markdown.Ben:I've been surprised that there are so few products that are just about this one use case of the simple messages. I expected there to be tons of things to try and no.Starr:Of course, in our company Notion, there's now a design document-Ben:Of course.Starr:... for a simple-Josh:Because we're going to build our own.Ben:We're going to build our own, of course. What does any good tech team do when they're frustrated with the 20 solutions on the market? They build solution number 21.Starr:Of course.Ben:Maybe we'll build that. The code name for that project is Budgie. I named it Budgie because I went to do the Google search, I'm like, "What's a communicative type of animal? What's a social animal?" I can't remember the search I did, but the first thing that got turned up was like, the most social birds. I don't know. So there's this list of birds, and budgie was the number one bird. So I'm like, "Okay, cool." Then I was like, "Well, what kind of domains are available?" Because of course when you start a project, you have to buy the domain. Before you do anything else, you got to buy that domain. Surprisingly, and perhaps not surprisingly in retrospect, every variant of budgie is taken, of course, budgie.com but also budgie.app and budgieapp.com. I'm like, "Wow. How many...?" And they're all for sale. None of them are actual products. They're all parked, and they're for sale. I'm like, so a bunch of people have had this idea about what's a social animal. I guess budgies are really popular for pets, and so they're looking for the ad opportunities with people looking for, "How do I take care of my budgie?" Anyway, just kind of a diversion.Starr:That's interesting. The first thing that pops into mind when I heard that... I like the name. It's a cute name. There's this really good Australian kids' cartoon called Bluey, and there's an episode where they find a little budgie that's injured, and it dies. So the kids have to come to terms with that. I don't know. It's just like, "Little budgie died."Josh:Bluey is one of the best cartoons ever, by the way.Starr:Yeah, Bluey. Oh, I'm glad you like it, too.Josh:It's so good.Starr:It's super good. It's super good. Basically the whole cartoon is just these kids... They're dogs but they're kids. They're just making up games to play with each other. How it works is the kids watching the show see it and that makes them want to play that game, too. So it's just not dumb TV. It gets them doing stuff outside of the TV, which is kind of nice.Josh:That's a really good analysis of the show. I hadn't thought about that aspect of it, but come to think of it, my kids totally imitate them.Starr:Oh, yeah.Josh:Climbing all over us.Starr:I now have to play every game in that show, and I've got to know them by name and what the rules are.Josh:One of the things we like about it is just they really got the sibling dynamic down. It is like our kids to a tee. It's pretty funny. Now that I think about it, maybe it's like our kids have now become the characters in the show.Ben:It's a good thing I watch the Simpsons.Josh:Oh, no. Actually we do watch the Simpsons.Starr:Is the Simpsons still on?Josh:It's on Disney+.Starr:Oh my gosh.Ben:Yeah, it is still a thing.Josh:They're still making it, too, right?Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.Starr:Wow. I don't know. I don't even know about that.Josh:We don't watch much of the Simpsons with them yet, a three and four-year-old.Josh:I don't know if I'm quite ready for a couple little Bart and Lisas.Ben:You put that off as long as you can. Well, I actually did a little bit of work this week. I was working on something, I don't know what. I noticed one of the tests was running kind of long like it was just stuck. I don't usually watch tests. I don't usually run the tests actually. I just let our CICB run the tests. I don't even worry about it. But this morning for some reason, I don't know, I was working on something, and I happened to be running the tests. I noticed one of the tests was just stuck. Like, that's weird. So I did a little investigation.Ben:It turns out that a number of our tests do some domain name server resolution because, for webhooks, when someone puts in their webhook, we want to verify that the destination is not like a private thing. They're not trying to fetch our EC2 credentials and stuff like that. So it does some checks like, is this is a private IP address? Does this domain name actually resolve, blah, blah, blah? Also for our uptime checks. Obviously, people are putting in domains for that, too. It turns out that, I don't know, maybe it was my machine, maybe it was the internet being dumb, whatever, but the domain name resolution was what was holding up the test. This happens, as you can imagine, in a variety of ways in our tests. This one test that I was running, which was only, I don't know, seven or eight tests, it was taking a minute or two minutes to run. Then I fixed this so that it stopped doing the domain name resolution, and it took two seconds.Josh:Wow.Ben:So a slight improvement to our test suite there. A quality of life improvement.Josh:Did you benchmark overall? Because that's got to be a huge improvement if it's doing that everywhere.Ben:Well, it's not doing that everywhere. I did do a push, so I have to go and check and see what GitHub... see if it dropped that time.Josh:Well, it might have been whatever was wrong with your DNS resolution in the first place that was causing it to be extra slow. Would it be faster if DNS was fast?Ben:Yeah, it could have been. I actually did some tests on my laptop at the time. I'm like, "Is my DNS resolution slow?" No.Josh:So it's-Ben:The test... I don't know what the deal was.Josh:It was just resolving a bunch of actual URLs in the test.Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Josh:Yeah, that's bad. So nice work. You reminded me that I did some work this week, too.Ben:OhJosh:Very important work, I must say. I added a yak to our Slack bot to where-Josh:... if you mention the word "yak" when you're interacting with the Slack bot now it will return... You should do it in Slack, just whatever Badger bot. Say Badger bot yak me, it-Starr:Okay, I'm doing it.Josh:Okay, do it.Starr:Oh, sorry. It was the wrong channel. Hold on.Josh:You got to do it in general, I think.Starr:Come on Badger bot. Oh my god. It's a little text space yak.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Awesome.Josh:This came about because earlier this week I was just passively mentioning in chat that I'm just yak shaving. My entire life is yak shaving. That just got us talking about, why don't we have some representation of that in our chat, in our Slack? Obviously, I had to stop everything I was doing and build that right away. Of course, there were some escaping issues that came up as a result of that, so obviously I had to deploy a few hot fixes.Ben:The whole episode amuses me. I love it. I would do exactly the same thing. But also what amuses me is that we already have, as part of Slack, GIPHY, and you could just dump a picture of a yak in there. But you're like, "No, that's good enough. I must have an ASCII yak.Josh:It's got to be an ASCII yak, yeah.Ben:This is great. I love technology.Josh:I kind of miss Hubot where it would just automatically... if you just mention it. Maybe I should change our Slack bot so that it does that. So if you say "yak," a wild yak appears. By the way, that's what the text at the bottom of the ASCII yak says, a wild yak appears. I just wish it would pop up if someone just mentions it in a chat, like if they're talking about it just because-Josh:It's listening to everything, right?Starr:That would be fine.Ben:We used to have Hubot, and every time you said "ship," it would show the ship-Josh:The ship, the squirrel. But I definitely would like... annoying at times, but overall I'd say it was worth it.Ben:Totally worth it.Starr:Yeah, definitely. I do remember sometimes where things were on fire, and it's just popping up funny GIFs, and it's like, "Not now. Not now Hubot, not now.Ben:Sit in the corner. Should have had that command. Like, "Go away for a while."Josh:Or just make it a separate... Maybe we should just make this a separate bot that you don't have to have any ops channel. Maybe this'll be our next product.Starr:Oh, there you go. It's like when you mention yak, it turns into an Oregon trail-type hunting scene, and you have to shoot the very slow pixel at it.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative). I do love this aspect of our business of being... I assume it's like a side effect of being small. I don't know. I'm sure large teams also do this, I didn't spend a day on this, but spend a day just doing something completely useless. I like that we can do that-Ben:Yes, it is.Josh:... and the total lack of responsibility, to be honest.Starr:Is there a total lack of responsibility? I don't know. I don't know.Ben:I think you could argue that there is a total lack of responsibility.Josh:Maybe relatively.Starr:Maybe.Josh:I think we're speaking relatively.Starr:Relatively? Well, there's responsibility to customers. I don't know. Do they count? Nah.Ben:Speaking of being a small company, just because of a recent acquisition of one of our competitors, I had gone to look at what some of our other competitors, what status they were, and I was just blown away with how many employees our competitors have. It's really amazing.Starr:What are they doing with all those people? Are they paying...? Do they have a professional volleyball team or something?Josh:Not in the past year.Starr:Well, they play over Zoom.Josh:It's a professional pong league now.Starr:There you go.Ben:We have five employees. The competitor that has the closest number of employees comes in at a hefty 71. Then the largest number that I found was 147 employees. That's impressive.Josh:With the competitor, the first one that you mentioned with the 70 something employees, and I assume over $100 million in funding, were they the ones that were recently bragging on Twitter about how much more usage they have than everyone else?Ben:I don't know because I don't remember seeing that bragging.Josh:They were. It was kind of funny. Yeah, you would probably be the major player.Starr:That's something I definitely learned throughout the course of running this business is that a company that has tens or, I don't know, hundreds of, did you say $100 million, that's a lot-Josh:It's a lot.Starr:... of funding can do more work than three people even if those three people are very, very good. It's-Ben:That's right.Starr:They can do more work, and that's all right. We're just going to have our little garden patch over here. It doesn't matter if ConAgra is a mile down the road. They can do their thing. We can do our thing.Ben:As long as they don't let their seeds blow into our farmland, right?Starr:Oh, yeah, definitely. Let me just ask you a question. When it comes to buying your strawberries for your traditional summer strawberry shortcake, are you going to go to that wonderfully, just delightful artisanal farm down the road, or are you just going to slide over to ConAgra and, I don't know, get some of their strawberry-shaped objects?Ben:I got to say, I love roadside fruit stands. Those are the best. When cherry season happens here in Washington, going and grabbing a whole mess of cherries from some random person that's propped on the side of a road, I mean it's awesome.Starr:My favorite ones are the ones have no... if you stop and think about it... I used to live in Arkansas. One time I was walking by and there was this roadside fruit stand just with oranges. It was like, "Hold up. Hold up. Oranges don't grow in Arkansas. What is this?" I don't know if he just went to Costco and just got a bunch of oranges or maybe he did the Cannonball Run from Florida straight up-Josh:Road trip.Starr:... and was selling oranges all the way up. There was some explaining to do.Ben:I didn't realize until I was saying it, but it really does sound ridiculous that you're going to go and get some fruit items from some random person on the side of the road. But I love roadside fruit stands. They're great.Starr:Oh, yeah.Josh:I don't know. In this day and age probably, yeah.Josh:Maybe things should be more like that. Maybe that would solve some problems.Ben:Well, coming back to the front porch thing, do you know that country song, If the World Had a Front Porch?"Starr:No, I don't.Ben:Definitely have to link it up in the show notes. It's all about if the world had a front porch like we did back then, then things would be different. People would be more friendly. We'd be chatting with our neighbors. Things would just be overall good.Starr:Yeah, totally.Josh:We'd all know each other.Starr:Is that true? Is that true?Ben:I got to say, I grew up in the Deep South. I did not have a front porch and none of my friends had a front porch because we all lived in the same neighborhood and all the houses were the same, but we were all still pretty friendly-Starr:Oh, there you go.Ben:... even though we didn't have front porches.Starr:Well, I had a front porch and people were assholes, so I think the correlation between front porches and nice people is weak.Ben:The song If I had a front porchJosh:.Isn't it more like a metaphor? I don't know.Starr:You could say the internet's the world's front porch and look how great that's worked out.Josh:If you just build a front porch-Starr:I'm sure it's a nice song. I don't mean to make fun of the song. I'm sure it's a good song.Josh:You build a front porch that the entire population of the world could fit on, just see how that goes. That's what we-Starr:It's like, "Oh, shit. We deforested the Amazon to get the wood for this."Ben:We should name our little message board product Front Porch.Starr:Front porch, ah, that's nice. You could have add-ons to that. Like for upgrades, you could get the rocking chair or the whittling knife.Ben:Yeah, and the sweet tea-Starr:The sweet tea, yeah.Ben:... or the mint julep.Starr:Can I ask you a question? Was sweet tea a thing when you were a kid?Ben:Yes.Starr:Do people refer to it as like, "Oo, sweet tea," as a saying?Ben:No.Starr:Okay, that-Ben:They'd just refer to is as tea.Starr:Okay, thank you.Ben:There was no other tea. It was just that.Josh:But it was sweet.Ben:Yeah, it was sweet, of course.Starr:Yeah, of course. It's-Ben:That's the only tea that existed. None of this Earl Grey hot business, no, no, no.Starr:I just noticed, I don't know, around 2007 everybody started talking about sweet tea. It's like, "What? What's this?" Ben:Yeah, totally. It's a Southern Thing, on YouTube, their channel, is pretty funny. They go into the sweet tea thing quite a bit. If you want some additional context, do some research on that whole aspect. You can go and watch that YouTube channel. I'll have to link it up in the show notes.Starr:Yeah, I'll check that out. Well, would you gentlemen like to wrap it up? I think I've got to start... I'm going to be Southern here. I'm fixing to get ready to think about going to my vaccine appointment.Ben:Jeet yet? You know that joke? Have you heard that?Starr:I haven't heard that joke. What?Ben:It's like, oh man, two southern guys, one's like, "Jeet yet?"Starr:Ah, did you eat yet? Okay, yeah.Ben:"No. Y'want to?"Starr:I haven't been back in a while.Josh:Did you eat yet?Starr:I haven't been back in a while.Ben:Oh, good times. Sometimes I miss the South but not during the summer.Starr:One of my favorite words, I think it might be a local Arkansas word, is tump. It's a verb, tump. It's the action of tipping something over and dumping out its contents. The perfect use case is a wheelbarrow. Like, you tump out the wheelbarrow. I'm sorry. Tump out the wheelbarrow.Ben:Totally.Josh:I am learning so much on this episode, by the way-Starr:There you go.Josh:... about the South.Josh:It's great. I'm learning more about-Josh:This is your second vaccine appointment, right?Starr:Yeah, it's the second one.Josh:Second and final. Well, for now.Starr:So I'm ready for it to hit me. I'm like, "Bring the storm.Josh:Yes, it hit me.Starr:Bring it on."Josh:Mine was like a 48-hour ordeal, but back to normal now. I feel great.Starr:That's good. You got your super powers.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Well, good luck with that.Starr:Thank you. Maybe one day we'll be able to have a conclave in person again, although I might need the support of a therapist or something because just like... I mean I like y'all, but I don't know if I'm over the droplets yet.Ben:You can still wear masks.Starr:Okay, that's good. Thank God, okay. All right, I will talk to y'all later.

Audio source: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/berkshire-hathaway-part-iTranscriptI think maybe in part because of this mindset of like I'm going to stay true to do what I'm good at, he makes the biggest missed opportunity ever maybe in history. I was teasing Ben, over the last couple days texting him saying, I've got something in this episode that I don't know if you know but is just the most unbelievable thing that you will never imagine.Ben: Lay it on me.David: In 1967, he writes his partners saying that he's introducing a new ground rule to the partnership. This one is quite literally the opposite of Don Valentine. He says, “We will not go into businesses where technology, which is way over my head, is crucial to the investment decision. I know about as much about semiconductors or integrated circuits as I do about the mating habits of this chrząszcz.” It a Polish word. It means beetle in Polish. Typical Warren way with words here. “This is very unfortunate.”Ben: What was the company?David: “Very unfortunate decision to make.”Ben: Let's see, 1967. It predates Microsoft by seven years, predates Apple. It's way after IBM. What's around this time, DEC? No, it's post-DEC.David: No, you'll get it if you think about it enough. Silicon Valley, or just as we talked about it a lot on the show.Ben: Is it an early Sequoia investment?David: Just pre-Sequoia. Sequoia was started in 1972, but this is all the crew that Don Valentine—Ben: Is it an Arthur Rock investment?David: It is an Arthur Rock investment.Ben: Is it Intel?David: We're talking about Intel here.Ben: No way.David: Get this. Buffett, at this point, is on the board of Grinnell College in Iowa. He's a trustee of Grinnell College, which by the way, he was introduced to by Susie. Susie became an incredible civil rights activist and Grinnell College was involved in the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King spoke at Grinnell College six months before he was killed. Susie brings Warren to the college to listen to King speak. Warren is like incredibly moved by Dr. King.He decides after that to join the board. They were trying to recruit him to join the board, so he does. Do you know who else was on the board? One of Grinnell College's most famous alumni, alongside Warren Buffett?Ben: Noyce or Moore.David: Yes, bingo. Robert Noyce.Ben: Wow.David: Alumni of Grinnell College, inventor of the integrated circuit, part of the traitorous eight, who left Shockley Semiconductor to start Fairchild, and then co-founder of Intel with Gordon Moore and Andy Grove is on the board of Grinnell with Warren. Not only has that, but Warren chairs the endowment investment committee at Grinnell. Of course, that would make sense. When Noyce leaves to start Intel and Arthur Rock is putting the deal together to finance Intel, Noyce brings it to the investment committee at Grinnell College and says, there's $100,000 piece. I think Grinnell should invest in this company. I think this is really going to be big. I know what I'm doing.Ben: He saw the deal.David: Warren approves the investment and Grinnell does invest $100,000 in the Intel seed round effectively. But Warren never goes near it for the partnership, for himself. In fact says, I will never invest in technology companies. Unreal.Ben: Basically held to that for another 45+ years.David: Totally. Not until Apple and I think—I haven't done the research yet—Apple bubbles up within Berkshire from Todd Combs, not from Warren. Talk about sins of omission. This is before Sequoia. Imagine if Warren had financed Intel, Warren Buffett could have been Warren Buffet plus Sequoia Capital.Ben: Wow. Realistically, what would he have done with it if he did invest in it? First of all, he's never invested in technology business to this point. He's never invested in something that early. Everything he's bought has been pieces of public companies.David: Yup. Established on-going cash flow businesses.

Andrew – What is the Churches position on Weddings? Seems like anyone can get married even if they are living in sin. Ben – What is the expectations of a confirmation sponsor? Paul – What does John’s Gospel mean “in the beginning”? Hector – Wants to thank Patrick for helping him keep his sanity during […] All show notes at The Patrick Madrid Show: April 19, 2021 – Hour 2 - This podcast produced by Relevant Radio

Ben: Hana, I'm currently teaching English as a Second Language, and I love for my students to get confident in producing English or increasing their listening ability. I know that you speak English as a second language, but you do such an amazing job and it's inspiring to me, so I love my students to improve and like it, and so because you're a perfect example, what are some strategies you have for my students so I could tell them?Hana: Firstly, I worked on listening, and there are so many websites that are designed for English learners, like here you're listening to, and YouTube or any, you know, so many sites that you can check on. Yeah, like that. I'll probably start with the listening first.Ben: You said, firstly, listening. Why is listening so important?Hana: It's because when you want to communicate, of course, the English as a tool, communication tool, first, you have to understand what the speaker say, so first, I worked on listening. By listening to audio, or the sound, then you can learn vocab and also spelling, and you know the meaning, of course. Eventually, you can move on to the next English skill. That's why I start working on listening first.Ben: What about anything else that you ... have any other strategies?Hana: Personally, I found that learning vocab, and especially idioms, help me a lot.Ben: Yeah, idioms are tough.Hana: Yes, because often I found it difficult to understand what the speaker say. I could hear, I could understand what the single words they say. But sometimes it was hard to sort of grasp the meaning what they're actually saying, so learning idioms or vocab helped me a lot, yeah.Ben: When you learn the idioms, you can understand them. Did you ever use them yourself, when you, like, tried it out in the wild, so to speak, using the idioms you learned.Hana: Yes, I did it gradually. I mean, when I was in high school, I started speaking ... I started studying English when I was in high school. First thing I did was visiting those websites that, like, designed for English speakers, English learners. At the same time, I start watching like American TV dramas and, in that sense, you can sort of understand in what situation you can use those particular phrases or idioms. By learning the idioms and vocab and the settings or the environment, the situation you can use, then you can sort of actually try to use them. At the beginning I was so nervous, but ...Ben: I'm sure. Yeah. I mean it's really difficult to use idioms in any language, but English has so many, I think. Another thing I wanted to ask you about production skills in English is writing. I try to give my students opportunities to write it in class, but in order to be a proficient and excellent English speaker, you need to practice outside of class. What do you recommend to improve student's writing abilities, besides just taking it for a test or for an assignment? What do you recommend?Hana: Yes. They are difficult. I myself have trouble still writing because I'm not a good writer in my native language.Ben: Oh, no.Hana: But I guess just reading will help you, at the start. Reading something, reading text or some passages will help you.Ben: So if you know how to read, it can help you write.Hana: Yes, definitely.Ben: All right.Hana: To learn sort of the template, how will things go and how you make paragraph and stuff. Probably if you want to get better at writing, I would start reading first, reading lots of passages, different kinds of materials first.Ben: That's true, and I agree with that. One thing I wanted to have my students do is actually do like a journal, actually.Hana: Yes,.Ben: Did you ever keep an English journal to help with your writing?Hana: Yes, I did.Ben: Oh, you did?Hana: I did, yeah.Ben: How do you feel that helped you? Was that good, a good idea?Hana: Yes. Because, first, when you write, unlike speaking or talking to somebody, it gives you time to really think about what you want to do, what you want to write, and you can focus on grammar more. That helps to actually talk to somebody maybe a day, right, next day, or you have to write something else in the class, that would help you. So keeping the journal will help you definitely, I think.Ben: Okay. Thank you very much for the tips. I really appreciate it.Hana: You're welcome.

We welcomed Ric Rodriguez to the RankUp podcast for episode 17 to discuss his unique take on SEO strategy. You can listen to the full interview on your podcast app of choice, or right here on this page. And now, for the first time, you can keep reading to see the first 20 minutes of the interview in text form, or use the contents block below to skip to a paritcular topic of interest. Introducing Ric Ben: Can you give us a quick overview of how you got to your current role and what that means for you now? Ric: So first things first. I'm Search Director at Vashi, which means my responsibility is across paid search and organic search. I'm also overseeing our performance channels as well. [Before Vashi] I was predominantly an agency-side marketer, including being employee number four at Three Whiskey, so I was agency through and through. I also spent a year at Yext, a technology vendor in the search space. While I was there, I was effectively their European evangelist talking to businesses about all the wonderful things that search can do for them. How do you start out with SEO in a new industry? Ben: What it was like for you getting to grips with the SEO requirements for a site that you're now Search Director for, you were new to? Ric: Whether you're agency or in-house, you have to learn quite quickly. That was the challenge with me. I can't claim to have been a super expert on the jewellery industry…I bought jewellery before I and thought I knew a lot, but as with all different subjects, there's tons of tons of information out there that you need to know. I've learned to approach these challenges in a way in which I put myself in the mindset of the customer and then figure out what's out there. So let's take a general example. You might know nothing about mortgages. And so the first thing you do is say, “What would I do if I actually needed the mortgage?” The first thing I'll be doing is looking at what's in the search results. I then go to YouTube, and lots of different places to start to piece these ideas together and build my knowledge, and then you start to follow the rabbit holes as you figure out more. Over time, you get to learn the industry and what's out there in the competitive landscape. Exploring the search landscape like a customer Edd: It sounds like you're approaching it from a joint view where there's a professional level to which you need to know stuff, where you're in-house or agency. If you're going to provide good service, you need to get a base level understanding of what you're working in. But you're also able to replicate what a user on the street is doing pretty closely because you're having to do the same searches as customers who don't know the industry. I've mentioned before that I was sitting next to a friend when he was shopping for a jacket and I saw him go to image search, and I thought, “Why are you searching that way?” But it's these ways of thinking like a customer or trying to get to know how a customer shops within that industry that gives you the biggest wins. Ric: We often think of search often as a search engine and therefore we have a very clear view of what the output is. I prefer to think of search as a verb, not a noun, because it is ultimately a way in which anyone can look for information and find it. It could be anything from traditional search engines like Google, to third party comparison sites, or image search in your example.

On the December 3, 2020 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, senior writer Ben Pearson and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to discuss what may be the single biggest piece of movie news this year.   Opening Banter: Is this the biggest film industry story of the decade?   In The News: Ben: Whoa: Warner Bros. to Premiere Its Entire 2021 Slate On HBO Max and In TheatersBen: What films does this include? Ben: What are the terms of the exclusivity window for HBO Max? Is there the possibility WB changes their mind mid year? Are movie theaters dead? Will they be able to put the genie back in the bottle for 2022? Will other studios follow? (Disney investors meeting next week) What does this mean for Christopher Nolan’s relationship with WB? What could this mean for backend box office deals? Streaming caused tv writers to go on strike to demand a fair stake, so could that happen again?   All the other stuff you need to know: You can find more about all the stories we mentioned on today’s show at slashfilm.com, and linked inside the show notes. /Film Daily is published every weekday, bringing you the most exciting news from the world of movies and television as well as deeper dives into the great features from slashfilm.com.  You can subscribe to /Film Daily on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the popular podcast apps (RSS).  Send your feedback, questions, comments and concerns to us at peter@slashfilm.com. Please leave your name and general geographic location in case we mention the e-mail on the air. Please rate and review the podcast on iTunes, tell your friends and spread the word!  Thanks to Sam Hume for our logo.

Description This week we learn about FUD and Todos; Darin finds a magical mirror and becomes slightly self-reflective. Garret Hearts all the James Charms; We get into Employee Compensation, Core Values, Right People, and the Lens we use to make decisions. Then close out with some great questions and Long Answers around 15COCL, Families, and a non-answer about our listeners (hint, Meta EOS).Show Notes 00:00:00 - Pre ShowGarret talks about why he loves terrible beer.Tyler attempts to outdrink Tyrion Lannister.Darin plans his new career as a Desk Assembly Guy (DAG?).00:02:13 - Follow-UpsGetting into Todos, Pebbles, Rocks, and 7 Days.MQLs and Garret using the word Lead 17 times in 45 seconds. FUD and how to play with Head Trash.What is NPS, and how to do hard customer maths?.Very Slowly Spelling M-R-R and A-R-R.Revenue equals The "Money" coming into your company.What is a KanBan? 00:07:08 - The HeadlinesDarin only talks about himself for 5 minutes.Engineers Learning how to redefine Good, Bad, Okay, and "Really Bad".Not taking things personally while James is making people better than they want to be. Garret explains how to read a book next to his pool (he has many books, stacks of books, many leather-bound volumes) How To Be A Great BossStealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work Vectors Vectors Vectors (EO and Business, Self, and Others)00:27:41 - Employee CompensationRight People / Right Seats / Pay Them Competitively.How Employees Make More Money.Knowing what you need to accomplish to move up, even if it feels like a lot, really helps with the mindset and setting expectations.Darin throws down a line - "I have nothing additional to add here. No passion about it, no involvement in it for the company."00:47:53 - Core Values CornerFrom EOS - part of the vision component - defines who you are, what you believe inThe key aspect of culture - whether you define them or not, they exist.How "Focus on our Clients' Success" does not mean anything they wantWhat are NOT core values? Not the Bullshit ones. What they ARE - PolarizingWhy are so many companies too terrible at this? 00:73:53 - Questions and Long Answers?The SegueHappy Robot T-shirtsA conversation about what is metaJames Not Answering Questions (going meta instead)How some of us handle 15cocl and our shifting views on RR along with families and friends that don't subscribe. Accept It == Try To Change It == Leave It == By Me Life Tyler helps us understand how to eat a mountain with a sprint spoon.Are "Tim" and "Ari" real people, or just imaginary (like Dan Carlin's "Ben")?What about "listener Brandy?" how real is she, really?00:92:10 - End of Show (The Sing Out)Send the show to a friend, share it on your social sites, or leave us a rating or review - we appreciate all of that and can use your help to build this community."New Blogs - We've published a few new blogs there this week - about fitness for the guy what hates fitness, and some good LTM / bad LTM guides"And now I'd like to sing us out".00:94:56 - The After ShowA thoughtful interview about a watching of DS9The CreditsHosts, Garret Richardson, Tyler Samples, Darin Kelkhoff, and James MaesShow Notes by Garret RichardsonProofing and Title by Darin KelkhoffEditing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brenton Wainscott 

Today, Rhonda and David discuss three great questions submitted by podcast fans like you!  This thoughtful question is from our beloved Rhonda! . . . And the answer may surprise you! When something terrible happens, like being raped or having your house burn down, or being a victim of racial discrimination, doesn’t the event itself upset you? Do you really have to have a negative thought before you can feel anger, fear, grief, or worthlessness? Hi David! For example, if our house burned down and we lost everything, or we or someone we loved was raped--doesn't the event affect you directly? Do you really have to have negative thoughts before you can feel sad, depressed, anxious or angry? Do all of our feelings REALLY result from our thoughts?  What about people who have been treated unfairly or been discriminated against because of their race, religion, gender identity, etc.  Aren't their feelings a direct result of their experience  and not just their thoughts? Rhonda What do you do when patients fall in love with you? Hi David and Rhonda, My name is Ben and I live in Maryland. I started listening to the feeling good podcast about 3 years ago when I was in a period of life transition. The podcast has been incredibly helpful to me as I dealt with my childhood trauma, explored my motivations and drives for life, and reoriented my personal relationships and career, away from what I thought I should be doing, toward what I love and deeply want for my life. In part because of the podcast's inspiration, I have decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work, and hope to become a psychotherapist. Thank you for all that you do, and the amazing help you have been to me personally. I do have one question. In one past episode. You mentioned the possibility of using five secrets to defuse the situation when a patient falls in love with the therapist because they feel understood and cared for. This has happened to me a few times when I talk with a friend about their personal difficulties, and they begin to develop feelings for me. I would like to keep these relationships friendships, rather than romantic. I would love to have your advice on how best to both inoculate against and resolve such situations. Thank you again. Ben What can you if your boss is not empathic? Hi Dr. Burns, You guys are always so good at empathy. I’d love to hear one day your method about how to cope when there is lack of empathy, but you still have to keep a relation. For example: when your boss doesn’t empathize with you and his message makes you feel bad, but you still need the job. I had an experience like that and it really hurt the ego. Cheers, David. Have a great day! Andres Hi Andres, One can always learn a lot from one exchange with the boss. What did he say and what, exactly did you say next? Waiting for empathy from others is never something I have recommended! That’s a really long wait! But you CAN discover how you are provoking the very problem you are complaining about if you have the courage. This empowers YOU to change. David Questions on the next Ask David: Are depression and anxiety states of self-hypnosis? How do you deal with somatic symptoms in TEAM? Should we forgive Hitler and Stalin? What if a patient feels stuck and unable to identify emotions? Do you still really believe that depression and anxiety, regardless how severe, can be treated even without the use of prescription drugs? Do you have to work on your negative thoughts the moment they appear? What role, from your years of practice, does spirituality have in the psychotherapy? Rhonda and David

Amanda Talty is back! The president and CEO of the Tourette Association of America talks ways to maximize Tourette Awareness Month, what's happening in the world that hopefully leads to an easier time discussing mental health, what happened at the recent TAA Virtual Conference, and what TAA's programming is focusing on. Plus - listeners questions for Ben: What's your most awkward tic? What's kept you busy during the quarantine? Also - masking tics with an actual mask. Oh, and if you musically inclined Touretters (or anyone else) want to submit Tourette's Podcast jingles, that's 100% welcomed. Tourette's Podcast is made possible by the support of the Tourette Association of America, https://tourette.org/. TAA Virtual Conference  "The Story of the Human Rubberneck" by Shaharah Gaznabbi

In this episode, we are Frankly Speaking with the co-authors of Our Happy Divorce, Nikki and Ben.   Nikki knows how being supported by a strong, loving family can influence the way a person navigates life, love, marriage, and motherhood. Having grown up as a member of the iconic San Francisco 49ers football family, she was thrown into the limelight at a young age. The values her family instilled in her have helped shape who she is today, and she continues to live by them.coparents Ben intimately understands the detriment divorce can cause in the lives of children. The example of his parents’ divorce instilled in him a deep commitment "to do" better by his own kids. Ben is an investor, board member, philanthropist, golfer, and sports enthusiast. But above all, he is a dedicated father and family man who understands the importance of putting his ego aside and his children first. IT  WAS  NOT  PERFECT ... Nikki and Ben define their own personal story with us and discuss what happy looks like today. Inspired by their son, they developed ways to co-parent, step-parent with an emphasis on putting the children first. As they say, “If we can do it, anyone can do it”. As Catherine says, "DIVORCE does not mess your kids up, it is how both parents BEHAVE before, during, and after divorce that can mess your children up." There is a different way to get Divorced. Let’s talk about it… Getting to the “Happy” … We chat about cleaning up the wreckage of the past and forgiveness. How can we stop pointing the finger at our spouse and get honest with ourselves? Do not fool yourself, your children know what is going on. Open discussions about financial settlements and joint custody. Using the Divorce Process to redefine what your life, your finances, and relationship will be like post-divorce. Co-Parenting and Step-parenting survival tips during the pandemic. Want to learn more about Our Happy Divorce? Visit their website at https://ourhappydivorce.com/ Whether you are thinking of divorce/separation, are in the midst of a divorce, or embarking on your new life after divorce, this episode has something to help you. If you have questions for us or a topic you’d like us to cover, contact us at hello@mydivorcesolution.com or visit MyDivorceSolution.com ----more---- Karen Chellew: Welcome to We Chat Divorce. Hello, I'm Karen Chellew, legal liaison, here with Catherine Shanahan, CDFA. We're the co-founders of My Divorce Solution. We're a company whose mission is to change the way people get divorced by providing a different approach, financial clarity, and an online course to help couples develop a transparent plan that will optimize the outcome of their divorce. Karen Chellew: Each podcast we sit down with professionals who provide insight and frank discussion on real people, real situations, and real divorce. Today we welcome Nikki and Ben, co-authors of Our Happy Divorce: How Ending Our Marriage Brought Us Together. That's fantastic. Co-founders Ben Heldfond and Nikki DeBartolo understand that no divorce is ever easy, especially for those involved. Karen Chellew: After nearly a decade together the couple decided to split, and inspired by their son, Asher, to find ways to happily navigate a divorce. Ben and Nikki created Our Happy Divorce, a service empowering and inspiring people to think differently about divorce, co-parenting, stepparenting, and what it means to put kids first. Nikki and Ben describe themselves as ordinary people who have accomplished something extraordinary. They have sidestepped a lot of the booby traps that make most divorces acrimonious. Nikki and Ben say, "If we can do it, you can do it." Thank you. Ben: No truer words have ever been spoken. Karen Chellew: I love that. So first and foremost, I want to say thank you for the beautiful gift you sent of your book, your bookmark. It was awesome. Beautiful gift. And for people who receive that, it's just so inspiring just to open the box and feel the book, so you guys have done a great job. Catherine Shanahan: Aren't you supposed to send that over to me, Karen? Karen Chellew: What, the chocolate? Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Where'd that go, Karen? Karen Chellew: Everything but the chocolate's on its way. Ben: Everything. Catherine Shanahan: I'll give you my address so I can get one of those. Ben: There you go. That's a deal. We'll get that off to you. Karen Chellew: Oh, that's good. So a service inspiring people to think a different way about divorce. How do you do that? Ben: Well, I think we do it through our story. All this book is is our experience. We're not lawyers, we're not therapists. We just happen to figure out a way to have an acrimonious divorce. We didn't have a roadmap. Collaborative divorce was sort of in the beginning stages, but you know, it was just the two of us. We say if we can do it, anybody can do it because we are two Type A personalities who somehow came to a point of putting the past behind us and not making anybody a villain, and putting our son first. And then everything sort of fell into place. Nikki: Right. It wasn't perfect in the beginning. I think people need to realize that, that we went through some rocky months. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, yeah. So that's a really good point, Nikki. Let's talk about that a little bit because if you read anything I write, or if you ever talk to me, or if anyone has gone through our process, they'll hear me say not once, but probably a thousand times because I am a stepmom. I have been divorced and I have raised five children in a blended family, so I am a firm believer that divorce does not mess your kids up. It's how the parents behave before divorce, during divorce, and after divorce that can mess your children up. Catherine Shanahan: However, you call your company or your book The Happy Divorce and I think everybody has to define happy. What is happy, and that can mean something different to everyone, and that's okay. Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: So happy for somebody could be that... as a stepmom I can remember, happy for me sometimes was that my stepchildren went home on Sunday night, and that's okay. Nikki: That's okay. Catherine Shanahan: Because it's exhausting, right? Ben: Yeah, yeah. Nikki: That's totally normal. Ben: Yeah, and Nikki said it took time. I think if you had asked us 13 years ago what happy meant, what our definition of a happy divorce was, it would have been that we could just be in the same room together. Catherine Shanahan: Exactly. Nikki: Or at like an event together or a birthday party together. Ben: And not make everybody feel uncomfortable, but most importantly our son. Catherine Shanahan: Right. Ben: So even today, we know people who have happy divorces, they might not be to the extreme that Nikki and mine are, or they might be better, it's just that you put the kids first. You don't hand the kids the emotional bill to pay for something that they had absolutely no choice in. Catherine Shanahan: Exactly. I think your son said it so cute, and he is... Asher, right? Nikki: Yes. Karen Chellew: Adorable. Catherine Shanahan: Oh, my God. He is so cute. I watched your video clip and he said, "You know, I always wanted siblings. Well, maybe not so much." Ben: After it came, right, yeah. Nikki: And he was like, "Oh, can't they go back?" No. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, yeah. I thought that was so cute, and it's so true. So his happy was, "I got them." Well, maybe today I don't want them. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: You know, it was so cute, it kind of ties it all up. And so in divorce we say that with our couples when we're negotiating a settlement where we're going through their financial portrait with them, which it's kids and your finances. So what would your happy be? Is your happy keeping the house? Is your happy having the retirement monies? Is your happy having your children three days a week? Every other weekend so you can have your career? Define what your happy is. So I love the title of your book, and it's okay to define that, and to define your co-parenting, because your co-parenting is not the same as my co-parenting. Nikki: No. It's different for everybody. Karen Chellew: And it's okay. Nikki: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: So how did you come to your happy, the two of you? Nikki: Well... I think it took less work on my part than it did on his. Karen Chellew: Oh, why is that? Nikki: I sort of set out thinking, "How am I going to do this?" My parents are still married after 52 years, so I kind of had the mindset of, "Okay, what am I going to do to make my son's life as close to the way I grew up as possible, but being divorced?" So that was always something that was in my head, and it was sort of ingrained to try to figure out a way to make him... have what I had growing up and not feel slighted. Ben: Yeah. Nikki: [crosstalk 00:07:40] not so much. Ben: And I on the other hand grew up in the complete opposite household of a family of parents who didn't have a happy divorce. So part of it was ingrained in me, being a child of the '80s, well, actually I was born in early '70s, but parents were divorced in the '80s. It was the way it was, right? People got divorced, and it wasn't, "How are we going to get along? How are we going to co-parent?" It's like, "We're going to go to war. I'm going to get my lawyer. You're going to get yours and it's going to be battle." Ben: I also was in a completely different place in my life emotionally. I wasn't a very happy person when I left our marriage. For me, that manifest itself at pointing the finger at Nikki. It was all her fault. It was all her... you know, if only she hadn't done this. If only she should have done... you know. And 'shoulding' all over myself. That's S-H-O-U-L-D, not the other one. Ben: But you know, and then what it took was a realization or clarity to find out what my part was in the relationship. So in order to get to happy, I had to, we had to clean up the wreckage of the past, and we had to get honest about what our part is and understand that it takes two to make a relationship, it takes two to ruin a relationship. Ben: And just like our happy divorce it works that way too. Now it takes four to make it, because we're both remarried. In our book, it doesn't go into what happened, who did what, who didn't do what, because at the end of the day, what we realize is all that stuff doesn't matter. What matters is that we both came to a place of forgiveness, but also admitted what we had done wrong. Karen Chellew: How did you come to a place of forgiveness? What started turning the tide from the anger and resentment, or whatever the negative emotions were? What happened on both of your parts to just start to turn that tide a little bit. Ben: Well, yeah, for me, again, Nikki wasn't as scorned I guess you could say, which is weird for her. Nikki: That's really weird for me. Ben: But you know, I left the house- Nikki: You [crosstalk 00:09:54] the one out for blood. Ben: Right, exactly. I left the house in a way that I look back and I almost cringe, a very dramatic way. I took off my ring. I put it on the bathroom counter with a picture of us torn out and I left. Nikki: Very dramatic. Ben: Very dramatic. Nikki: Like something I would have done. Ben: And I went and I did my research, and I looked for the best shark lawyer, the one who had all the biggest cases in Tampa. Definitely did my research. I called him and explained to him what I wanted, and I wanted to destroy Nikki, and I wanted to embarrass her, and I wanted to show our son what a fraud she was, at least how I saw her. Ben: So he took a very hefty retainer from me, and then he wrote up a manual on how we were going to go about doing what I wanted to accomplish. And I didn't read it for a little bit, and it was in my backpack that I carry everywhere, and I was on a plane back from LA to Tampa, and I pulled it out and I decided to read it. I got two pages into it, and this thing was like 30 pages long. Nikki: That's probably the same thing he gives everybody else. Ben: Right, just different boiler plate. Nikki: Names are just changed. Ben: Exactly. And then all of a sudden I had a moment of clarity, and I saw for the first time in a long time that if I went down this path, continuing to read this War and Peace destruction manual what it was going to lead to, because I knew where it was going to lead to, because I had been down that road. I had been part of my parents divorce down the road. Ben: Or I could try to find a different way and a different path. So I called Nikki when I landed and I said, "I need some time. I need some space." Because I knew I couldn't deal with the divorce in the head space I was in. Karen Chellew: Right. Ben: And probably Nikki too. We weren't ready to start talking about the end until we cleared up the past and found our part. So I called the lawyer and said, "I'm going to find a different way, if you could send back the balance of the retainer," and conveniently there wasn't much left. But it was the best money I ever spent. So then I started working with somebody that I knew, and just went through and found out what my in the relationship was, and my part in the ending of the relationship. And realized about halfway through that I wouldn't want to be married to me either at that time. Ben: I was not in a good place. I was not the father I thought I was, but more importantly I wasn't the husband I thought I was. So then I called Nikki to coffee, and she probably had no idea why I was calling her. Nikki: No. Because I kind of knew this was going on with him, so I mean- Ben: She knew. It was that black sedan that was following me everywhere. Nikki: And I knew that this was the mindset he was in. And I just knew I hadn't gotten to that place. I mean, yes, I was angry and I was sad and I was upset, but I wasn't in the place that he was at. Where I sort of was like, "Let's just get this over with. Let's just fix this... fix it to a point where it's just done." To me, I went at this a totally different way. Nikki: I did hire a lawyer, but it was kind of more like, "What do I do? Here's this divorce, what am I going to do with this?" So mine wasn't, "Let's attack him and let's kill him." Ben: Well, your hardest thing also was that you said it too, it was a, "Fix it." Nikki's a fixer. She wants to get in there and fix everything and not call her a control freak, but control freak. Nikki: I am a control freak. 100% Catherine Shanahan: Were you living together at the time or were you separated in different homes? Nikki: We were in different homes, but not really. At that time- Ben: Somewhere in between there... I was staying in a hotel for about six months, and then I'd come home and- Nikki: Did you really stay in a hotel for six months? Ben: Six months. The biggest most exciting time of my life during that time was when they released a new movie on the On Demand thing at the hotel. Catherine Shanahan: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Ben: Because I'd watched them all. And then I eventually got a place. So we weren't officially divorced yet when I had my own place, but it was when we told our son. He forced our hand to tell him because... Why don't you tell the story about us thinking we were getting over on him. Nikki: Oh yeah. So Ben would come over every morning before Asher would go to school. And you know, he would make sure he was there before he woke up. One morning- Catherine Shanahan: How old was he at the time? Ben: Four? Karen Chellew: Yeah? Ben: Four. Yeah. Nikki: So he comes in my room. Ben is already there. And he looks at me and says, "Hey mom, where did Daddy sleep last night?" And I always thought I did a really good job of messing up the bed thinking like, "Oh, okay." Ben: Yeah. Nikki: And I was like, "What do you mean? Right here." And he's like, "Where did Daddy sleep last night?" And I was like, "Oh, boy. This kid is way smarter than we're giving him credit for, so we need to do something, and it's time for us to sit him down as best we can with someone that young and just say, "Hey, this is what's happening. We love you." That's probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Ben: Oh yeah. It was hard. But we framed it in a way and were open with him. If anything from our experience, again, not lawyers, not therapists, but through my experience with my parents, my experience with my son and our divorce is the idea that kids are resilient and they'll get over it, or they don't see things... is nonsense. It is absolute nonsense and I can say that from experience on both sides of it, right? "Oh, our kids will get over it. They're resilient. They don't know what's going on." Here a four-year-old who knew- Nikki: Exactly what was going on. Ben: Right. Playing Inspector Clouseau. Knew that I hadn't slept there because my bed wasn't made, my pillows weren't ruffled or whatever he did. So that's another message we try to get across is that, "Don't fool yourself." To me, and staying on my soapbox too much here, but to me, that's justification for behaviors." Karen Chellew: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nikki: And too, to this day he still claims that he saw boxes, which we never let a box- Ben: At least we thought we didn't. Nikki: But he still says he saw boxes. Catherine Shanahan: You know, I think sometimes even if he didn't see boxes, he probably heard you talk about boxes. Nikki: Right. And in his head, he's like, "Oh yeah." Catherine Shanahan: You can probably remember talking about something in your childhood, but you don't really remember going to Disney World when you were two, but you remember seeing pictures that you went to Disney World when you were two. Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: So you think you remember you were in Disney World when you were two, right? Ben: Yeah. Nikki: It's true. Catherine Shanahan: I'm sure he heard about that or saw that. So he's a smart kid. Like I said, I feel like I know him a little bit from watching the video. Nikki: Yes. Ben: Yeah, he wraps up the book too. He's got a chapter at the end of the book that just puts a bow on it perfectly, because our happy... Your answer, "How does your happy look?" We didn't know it was going to be happy at the time, but you know, I called her to coffee after I'd done this work on myself. The first thing I told her was I was sorry, that I'd done some work myself and I realized that it's no one's fault, it's not her fault, it's not my fault. We equal parts of this and I'm sorry for my part. Ben: I went through some of the things. I wasn't a very good husband. I ignored you, I didn't... blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to apologize again, I already did that. Karen Chellew: Yeah. Ben: You're only getting it once. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, she's sitting here smiling and she's like [crosstalk 00:17:45]. Ben: She loves it. And so we went through it and then she apologized to me, which was- Nikki: Which was probably the first and only time I've ever apologized. Catherine Shanahan: And you're lucky because we have this recorded [crosstalk 00:17:59]- Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: You can both listen on repeat. Nikki: Yeah. Ben: And then from that moment on it didn't just all of a sudden become happy, but there was room to move, because then we both genuinely accept each other's apologies, and we told each other we loved each other, and that we committed at that meeting to putting our son first with every decision we made. So our happy looked like not what was in Nikki's bank account or Nikki's family's bank account or what I thought I deserved. Our happy was what was best for our son. Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. So you know we like to get real with everyone, and a lot of our viewers come from a wide range, and we deal with a lot of affluent people, but we also deal with people who aren't affluent, or they don't know that they're affluent. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: We do a lot of budgeting and we hone in on financials with everyone. And as a CDFA, I sit down and Karen does a lot of the budgeting with our clients, pre-divorce and post-divorce. So we listen to your story and it sounds great. You afforded him the ability to go through the mucky waters of what he needed to figure out for himself, which is a luxury, because he had that time to do that. Catherine Shanahan: And you blamed her in the beginning and you had all that anger, and you went and hired the bulldog, which oh, my God, we hear so many times people go and hire the bulldog, and only 10% of divorce cases need whatever everybody wants to refer to as the bulldog, and Karen loves to jump in and really get the definition of what a bulldog actually means, because you don't really need a bulldog. But anyway, that's a whole other podcast. Catherine Shanahan: But what did you do with your finances, because a lot of people who have money there, they can't access it during that time. How do you stay in a hotel room if you can't get the money? Did you two have your separate bank accounts, because people can't be happy if they can't get their financials, right? So if somebody out there wants to have a happy divorce, they come to us. Catherine Shanahan: So for example, for us we start with your finances. So we can afford them that time to work through the financials so they don't run to attorneys. You don't need two attorneys gathering your financial data. It's the same data you're collecting. You're paying thousands and thousands... We save people hundreds of thousands of dollars because why are you paying them to gather the same information and go through the packet of information you were asked to gather. Ben: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Why would you both have to do that. So we do that so that they can work through their stuff, right? Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: So during that time- Ben: I think what's important at least is yes from my experience, and also from this process of writing this book with Nikki and talking with people, it doesn't matter if there are a thousand dollars in the bank or there's a hundred million dollars in the bank, you know for the most part, because what it comes down to is financial insecurity. Ben: And what I think the problem with divorce and why sometimes it goes sideways is because it deals with two of the biggest trigger buttons, I could use a different word, but trigger buttons of our human condition and that's romance and finance, and both those speak directly to ego, right? Catherine Shanahan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ben: And so our financial settlement was the same as our custody agreement is that we try to as much as possible take ego out of it, and to try to put Asher first. So when it came time to discussing finances, it was, "Okay, what's best for Asher?" Nikki or myself had to make sacrifices, or give more or take less or whatever it was, but it was... Look, it wasn't simple, right? It was easier though when we looked at it through a pair of glasses of what's best for Asher, and you take the ego out of it as much as possible. Nikki: Right. I mean, I think too for him it was about his life. Ben: Right. Nikki: And the way we wanted him to be raised. We wanted him to be raised at both houses as basically as much the same- Ben: As possible. Nikki: Even with rules. With four parents, there's a lot of rules too. Ben: Right. Well, there's a lot of communication. Nikki: Right. Ben: The other thing we did, which... We both had lawyers, so I don't want to say that we did this willy nilly. But we did what's called collaborative and it wasn't- Nikki: We did through. Ben: We did. Nikki: We sort of brought it to our lawyers and said, "Hey, this is what we think we want to do." Ben: Right. So what we've tried, and agreed to try is, "Let's figure out what we can do on our own, and let's go through it with this pair of glasses that we now have of what's best for Asher, try to take ego out of it and see where we go." Nikki: And I think for us too, I mean, I guess couples... One of his biggest things with me was, "Do you have a problem with joint custody of our son?" And obviously if he was not a good guy or had some sort of issues that would be a different story, but I mean obviously I had no problem with that. So that was one of the first things that kind of softened him a little bit. Ben: That was the first question I asked was, "Do you have any problem with doing 50/50 everything with our son from the left shoe to the right shoe?" Nikki: Right. Ben: And she said, "Of course not. You're his dad." So I said with the other stuff we can work it out. And so then we started with that foundation, and then we were on the same page with that. Then we went to some other things like the businesses that we had together. Nikki had a jewelry company that she had started that I owned half of. I had a record label that I had started with her sister, which is kind of weird, but you know, so it wasn't necessarily about how much each one was worth at the time or the balance sheet of the jewelry company versus the record label. Nikki: It was things that he could have been like, "Oh, I'm going to get her because I want my half of that." Ben: Yeah, and I had no desire to be in the jewelry business. But if I was looking at it- Nikki: Why should you be? Ben: Yeah, right. Right, but if I'd been looking at it from a scorned ego standpoint, I was like, "I'm going to take the jewelry business because I know how much it means to her." Nikki: Right. Catherine Shanahan: Well I think it's really great that because you work through... Well, let me back up first. It's because I always say two people, you come together and you get married, it takes two people to get married, and it takes two people to get divorced, you know? Ben: Yup. Catherine Shanahan: And none of it has to do with your children. So you took the time to heal first, and then you made the important decision, so Karen, you know and you can pick up from this, the process that we developed because we're both divorced before we started... We saw how people got divorced, and when I went through my divorce eight years ago I just thought, "Hell, people have to get divorced different. This is just ridiculous." Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: The way we work is you do your financials first, and then you take your agreement, and we do a lot of negotiated agreements, and when we get to them take this to your attorney, pretty much what you're saying and have them draw up this agreement. You don't need them to talk to each other to tell you what you should do for yourselves, right? Nikki: Yup. Ben: Right. Karen Chellew: You just need to know what you want, and they don't necessarily spend a lot of time helping you figure that out. Catherine Shanahan: And you don't need a judge how to set up visitation for your lifestyle and your child. Ben: Control your own destiny. Nikki: I do all our calendar, well, because I'm that person. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Ben: Literally, she prints out... We used to- Nikki: I still use paper. Ben: In the beginning we used to meet at the same coffee shop, the same table, with Nikki's calendars, which are legendary, you know, not an iPhone calendar, not a computer, like the actual calendar printed out and we'd go through the month and you know, "What days are you traveling?" And I'd tell her- Catherine Shanahan: I love that. Ben: And we would do the schedule. And then over time this is sort of how the evolution of our divorce happened. Then now, she just does it. I entrust in her, not that I didn't entrust in her before, well maybe not. Catherine Shanahan: But it works. Ben: But it works. But now she does it, and it's in our shared calendar with Asher. Nikki: He knows where he is. He knows where to go. Ben: And it's 15 days, and if- Nikki: Sports is on there. Anything. Everything's on that calendar. Dinners, everybody can see it. Ben: But the thing that we went to too is again, we tried to see where we agreed or what we could do by ourselves and ended up doing the whole thing, and hashing out the whole settlement over many coffee meetings. It didn't just happen at that one coffee, but same table, same coffee shop, and then we handed it to the lawyers. Catherine Shanahan: I love that. Ben: We said, "Add your 'whereas' and run on sentences and you can get it as [crosstalk 00:27:06] as possible, so you can get paid $450 an hour for somebody to then reread it to try to find a way out of that run-on." Anyways... no offense. Karen Chellew: So I'm going to observe here that during all of those coffee shop meetings and all of those different interactions that the end result that you redefined your relationship as parents of Asher, and as your future. So I think that is fantastic, and I think that's what we try to help our client understand that use the divorce the process, and use that time to redefine what you're going to be like post-divorce, because your kids need to be able to depend on that and rely on that. Karen Chellew: And it's a very important time, and the time you spend fighting and arguing with each other, the less time you spend on creating that new relationship. So I think that's key what you did. Ben: Nobody's ever been happy or survived feeding their kids poison hoping the other one dies. Karen Chellew: Right. Ben: I think that happens a lot in divorces is that... And again, one beautiful thing about this process is when I left that house I was angry, I was going to go to war, I was going to go down the same path as my parents had gone done. But now I realize my parents didn't sit around the table when they got divorced and premeditate how they were going to not get along and how they were going to get us in the middle of that and all that awkwardness, it was just they were so blinded by the things we talked about earlier, the romance, the finance, and egos were hurt so they were blind to it. Ben: I was blind to it. When I left that house and I hired the lawyer and I wasn't talking to Nikki, I wasn't purposely sitting there going, "Hm, how am I going to screw up my kid?" But it's hard. It's hard on them. It was hard on me growing up. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, well you know, nobody gets married thinking they're going to get divorced. Nikki: No. Ben: No. Catherine Shanahan: And you know, truth be told, myself included, there are times that you sit back and you say you wish your kid didn't have to go between one home and the other. Ben: And he does too. Catherine Shanahan: Nobody wants their child to do that or spend half their Christmas. Then you have more children and you don't want them to have to leave their siblings and all of that. It's not an easy process, and you can't be normal and wonder, "Is my child okay?" Even though they're happy and healthy. We know they are. I mean, my children are thriving, and I'm happy for them. They're doing so well. Catherine Shanahan: I'm remarried. I got married in June. I feel like I have the love of my life and I'm so blessed, and my children love him, so all of that, but we do wonder sometimes. But I think that's okay, and I think that's part of just being healthy human beings. But sometimes, you know, we deal with so many people's emotions they can't see past that. Catherine Shanahan: I think what your son has learned most importantly is the respect, and the reason why you let Nikki take over this whole calendar issue is because you respect her, and she respects you and that's why she does it. For your son to learn how a couple can respect each other is probably the best gift, because that's the best love you can give a partner. Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: Because you can't fully love someone if you don't respect them. Ben: And you brought up just a good point about co-parents too. And our spouses currently are... Just the other thing, I'm sure you see clients and people who are divorced miserable, but remarried and happy, and yet they still have this hatred towards the other one, and it's just like if you could just take a step back and realize that if you hadn't gotten divorced, and you hadn't gone down that, you wouldn't have met the other person. Ben: And our spouses, Chad and Nadia, there's no question who we were meant to be with. Nikki and Chad, I still... I'm like, "She never looked at me that way. She never grabbed my hand like that." It's like I never think, "What if." And then on the flip side, Nadia- Nikki: It's the same way though. I tell her too. I look at her sometimes and I'm like, "I couldn't be married to him," but she just smiles and loves him. Ben: She loves me, the unconditional love, which means you love the good and the bad just as much. And then Asher gets to see this, and he gets to see healthy relationships, and he gets to see that even though his parents are divorced, and this is the most sobering part about it. A couple years ago we were on a fishing trip and out of nowhere he said, "This divorce is hard on me." And this is like three years ago. Ben: I felt like saying, "You little SOB. You have no idea what a bad divorce is or how hard divorce is." And then it hit me. Even as good as Nikki and I have it, and I don't think... Maybe it could get better if we lived together, but besides that- Nikki: No, it would definitely not get better if we lived together. Karen Chellew: He doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. Ben: So but just the idea of being displaced every couple days, and even though we live seven houses down, I've seen him go, "Oh, I forgot my math book at Mom's. I've got to go down and get it." Nikki: But he even says too, sometimes he'll look at me and go, "You and Dad get along so well. Sometimes I don't understand why you're not married anymore." And I'm like, "We get along really well right now. We were meant to be best friends. We weren't meant to be husband and wife." I go, "You were meant to be here, so that's why we..." 100%. Karen Chellew: That's beautiful. Ben: Yeah, so a lot of kids read Dr. Seuss books as a kid, he was always an animal junkie, so we would read him animal encyclopedias, and he knew every single animal, where they came from, where they lived. And we always knew that we wanted to take him to Africa on a safari. But with the shots and everything... So if anything was going to send our divorce south, and it was if one of the other ones had taken Asher to Africa without the other one. Ben: So this past summer, Nikki and Asher and I went to Africa, just the three of us together on a safari. Nikki: I didn't feed him to any animals. Ben: And I didn't die. There were no lion accidents. Nikki: No accidents. Ben: But it was a great opportunity for our son. Nikki: Yes. Ben: Our spouses, when we told them- Nikki: I mean, we asked them if they wanted. Ben: Right. Nikki: It was this open invitation trip. Ben: But her husband just has this small responsibility of being a sheriff of Hillsborough County, and my wife was raising our two sons and starting a practice of her own, so it just wasn't possible. Nikki: Raising your what? Ben: What? Nikki: Your two sons. Ben: Oh, no, two kids. Well, two sons and daughter. But she has two young kids at home, it just wasn't possible for them to go, but the response, and this is where it really just comes full circle, wasn't, "Are you crazy that you think it's okay for you to go to Africa in the middle of the bush with your ex-wife? Are you nuts?" It was, "Asher will love that. What a great opportunity he has to go to Africa with his parents, and have that experience." Nikki: And day two of our trip he looked at me and he said, "Thank you so much. This is the best trip I could have ever gone on." Karen Chellew: That's awesome. That's awesome. Catherine Shanahan: That's really rare. There's not very many... I don't know anyone... That's really rare and really special. Ben: Yeah, and again- Nikki: And I mean, there are people that still think we're crazy. Ben: Right. And it didn't happen overnight. Nikki: Our families thought we were crazy in the beginning. Ben: I still think they might. Nikki: I think they might too. Ben: But the important thing is, I think we started this conversation with this, and that it didn't happen overnight. Nikki: Right. Ben: And a small example of that is when Nikki married Chad, Nikki called me and said, "I don't think that I feel comfortable with inviting you to the wedding. It's because I don't want people to worry about how Ben's feeling, take away from 'this is my day.'" And I was, "Completely understandable." It wasn't ready. It wasn't the right time. It wasn't about me. It was about Nikki and her day and her second day, her and Chad. Ben: And she's right, all the guests saying, "Oh, the ex-husband's here? This is weird." But again, fast forward about three or four years later, I get married and Nikki and Chad and her whole family are at my wedding, and not like, "Gotcha," like, "Hey, you didn't invite me to yours, I'm going to show everybody I'm a bigger person." Sorry- Nikki: There's something in my ear. Ben: My phone is... So that she came to my wedding. So it's been progress, not perfection. Nikki: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ben: But it's been progress and it's getting there, and it didn't happen overnight. We've been doing this for 13 years. Catherine Shanahan: That's awesome. Karen Chellew: Yeah. Ben: It's just become more natural. Catherine Shanahan: Yeah, that's really good. Karen Chellew: That is great. So let's pivot to the topic of the day because I think a lot of people will benefit from your perspective on the pandemic and COVID and parenting children through... or co-parenting children who are traveling back and forth, and a lot of what we're hearing is, "I don't know if my son or my daughter or my children are safe at the other parent's house because they're not sheltering in place and they're not making sure everything's taken care of." So we're hearing a lot of that. Karen Chellew: And everybody's just cooped up together, so what can you offer the parents and the kids going through this right now to offer some kind of support? Nikki: I think for us, I mean, obviously we have it a little differently than most divorced couples, but I think in the beginning we sort of sat down and had a conversation, an open conversation. We weren't going to keep anything from Asher. We wanted him to know what was going on in the world, but we were on the same page about what Asher was... You know, in the beginning it was kind of a little bit slower process, "Oh, they can do this. They can do this. They can't do this." Then all of a sudden it was like, "No, you can't do anything." Nikki: So I think it took both of us to try to explain to him too in the beginning like, "Listen, you really can't leave the house. You're not going anywhere. You can get in your car and you can go for a drive, but you can't stop anywhere. You can't talk to your friends. You can't see your friends. You can't do anything." And I think the same went for the two of us. We kind of said, "Listen, what's going on at your house? Where are you going to go? Where am I going?" We kind of got on the same page where we were like, "You have to shut it down." Nikki: I mean, other than the fact that my husband has to go to work, he even tries to shut it down where he goes into work, goes in his office, he sees all of about two people when he goes into work, and that's it, because he doesn't have a choice. Ben: Right. Nikki: But we just decided in the beginning, "Let's shut this down." And so Asher's obviously homeschooled now, or whatever that's called, virtual school, whatever. Ben: It's the new homeschool, yeah. Nikki: That kind of even made a decision too that the days Asher is at Ben and Nadia's house, he comes over to our house by 9:30 in the morning to start school, unless he's got a Zoom class that starts before that, and he does all of his schoolwork at our house until he's done, because- Ben: Otherwise it'd be mayhem with the two young... his brothers and sisters going into- Nikki: Them trying to do their school, and then him trying, you know, conflicts. All they want to do, when he's there they just want to be with him. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: What's the age different? Ben: Four and seven, so- Nikki: And Asher's 16. Ben: Yeah, so [crosstalk 00:39:14]. The other thing is that I think that the way we handle this pandemic and sort of a microcosm of how we handle life in our divorce. We had a conversation. We both agreed upon the rules at both houses that we were going to social distance, we were going to be responsible, we were going to shelter in place. We were going to do all the same things at both houses. And once we did that, all of a sudden, now our sphere of quarantine has widened. Ben: That's why Nikki and I are sitting next to each other right now and not because- Nikki: Because we quarantined together. I see the kids almost every day. Ben: Right. We can go down to her house because Asher's been going back and forth, being the outbreak monkey, so if it was going to be in one house, it was going to be in the other house anyway. Nikki: We're all getting it. If it's in one house, we're all getting it. Catherine Shanahan: What do you do, Ben, if Nadia doesn't agree with Nikki? Ben: About... Catherine Shanahan: Parenting, rules, or where you go? Ben: I think one of the greatest things about Nadia and Chad is we all co-parent together. Nadia's a therapist specializing in kids, so she brings a different perspective. She doesn't try to step on Nikki's shoes. She disagrees with some things we do with Asher, but she says it, and I'm sure Chad does too. She says it, and they say it, but at the end of the day, we're his parents. At the end of the day, we're going to make the ultimate decision, but for the most part, since it's evolved, the four of us usually sit down on the big ticket items. Ben: Nikki and I have different parenting styles. Nadia and I have different parenting styles. Nikki: Chad and I have different parenting styles. Ben: Right, and Nikki and I would have different parenting styles whether we were married or divorced. So it's just about finding the- Nikki: Some sort of common ground with all of us. Ben: Picking your battles. I learned to pick my battles with her. It's not worth the... Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Ben: So the COVID thing, we ran out of paper towels for just a small example, but you know, I called Nikki, I knew that she probably had 25 cases, and even if she didn't I knew that she would give us one. Nikki: I did give you some. Ben: That's just the way- Catherine Shanahan: Are you hoarding? Ben: She's always been. There is no difference. She's- Nikki: I do not hoard toilet paper. I don't understand the toilet paper thing. I barely have enough toilet paper in the house. Ben: She's been preparing for this thing for what, 45 years? Karen Chellew: So you didn't say, "Asher, when you're at mom's house, just grab toilet paper, throw it in your bag and just run out"? Ben: No, and I go over there and I got caught robbing her pantry. Nikki: Yes, for snacks. And then if you notice my hair is pink. It is not normally pink. This has been a quarantine thing. And his daughter is convinced that her hair is going to be pink too, so I tried once, her hair's darker than mine, so didn't work. So now I've just instead of asking for permission, I'm like, "Okay, well I'm dyeing your daughter's hair pink." Ben: Yeah, I found out after I got home from work yesterday. This is, again, what our life is like today. It truly is. You talk about the byline on the book, but it's also the other one we talk about is finding a different kind of love. That's what we've done over the past 14 years, or however long it's been. I love this woman. I've always loved this woman. I think we kind of got confused with being in love and love. But luckily enough we never lost... We might have lost it for a little bit there, but we got back to it. Ben: Then it's evolved into this thing, you know, that is beyond us, beyond our wildest imagination. Again, if we can do it, and this might sound like French or Latin to some of your listeners right now, it's real, but it was a process. Karen Chellew: That's awesome. Ben: You know, if you're starting out, I don't know what you tell your clients, but take small steps, and that's what we had to do in the beginning is get the small wins, get the softball game where there wasn't an awkward feeling or event at your kid's school where you didn't walk away feeling awkward. That's a win. Nikki: Yup. Ben: That's a small win, and then the wins start piling up. Before you know it you're in Africa and no one's dying. Catherine Shanahan: I love that. We tell our clients you know, "You do not have to tell your children that their mom's an alcoholic, or their dad's an idiot. If they're an idiot or an alcoholic they'll see it for themselves." Ben: Right. Nikki: They will. Catherine Shanahan: Just be the dad or the mom that you want to be because that's what they're going [crosstalk 00:44:09]. Ben: Love that. Catherine Shanahan: Like I said it brings tears to my eyes. Literally I had chills when I watched your video because, you know, I do what I do and Karen can speak for herself, but I know that she does it also, but we do what we do because we're advocates for the children of the parents that we helped, and we've helped over 400 couples already. One day I'm hoping that the children of the parents will stand up and say, "Those women helped my parents divorce a better way," you know? Catherine Shanahan: We don't need attorneys fighting for parents to set a parenting schedule or to help divide assets. That's what you have professionals to do. So we're doing what we're doing to help people divorce a better way. We just need the attorneys to tie it up and put the 'as is' or 'as set forth' or whatever those words are. We don't really care. We just want them to have financial clarity and to help them to set up a co-parenting plan that works for their family. Catherine Shanahan: I'm like Nikki, I like to write paper agendas and put stickers on everything and all that stuff. Nikki: Me too. I love it. Catherine Shanahan: That's how I like it too. Nikki: I just won't get rid of it. Catherine Shanahan: I love hearing your story because I think that's how it should be. Ben: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: I hope you can come to our Mrs2Me Summit and maybe speak and talk to our attendees. Ben: Oh, we'd love to because that's why we wrote the book. It's not... This is truly an altruism. Nobody wants to spill their... And in the book we talk about our shortcomings. We talk about our failures. We're imperfect, but what we have is real and just for it to be inspirational. We're so happy to do this thing, and then run into people like you guys and others who... Ben: We kind of kept our head down. As silly as it sounds, when we got divorced there was no Facebook or Instagram. There's Myspace, but not a lot of divorced, co-parenting- Catherine Shanahan: Myspace, is that even around? Karen Chellew: I don't remember that. Ben: Right, so we didn't have support groups online to go to. Then even writing the book, it took us four years to write this book because we'd get in a fight, this was my idea and I was- Nikki: [crosstalk 00:46:16] say, "No, I'm not doing your book." Ben: I'm not doing your effing book, blah, blah, blah. Nikki: Yeah. Ben: So then all of a sudden we get the book out and we're starting to do some research, and we see this huge community online. It's not like, "Oh, no, we just launched a book and there's so many other..." It was like, "This is great." Nikki: Like, "This is awesome." Catherine Shanahan: Yeah. Ben: Because these people have the same goal as us and it's to let people know- Nikki: There's a different way. Ben: There's a different way going into it. Not even after they're divorced and it's yucky and all that, but I think I went into it thinking if I get divorced, it's War of the Roses. It's on. This is the only way to go. Nikki: That's the only kind of divorce I ever knew though. Catherine Shanahan: I tell people, "No." They come to us sometimes when they've been the process and we're like, "Oh, my gosh, I wish you would have came here first because you just wait..." I mean, they spent 20, 40,000, and they come with bags of papers. They don't even know what they have. I look at Karen, because the legal process to me is such a crock sometimes. It's not logical thinking, and as a financial I'm like, "What?" So she's like, "It's the process. This is the process." Look at her, she's laughing because I get so annoyed that people spend money for that. Catherine Shanahan: So we're digital. We work nationally, so I just crack up at the process. So I just wish people come here first because it would save them so much angst. It starts couples fighting when they don't even have to fight. Ben: Right. Catherine Shanahan: I said, "Oh, my God," because they get served this nasty language and they say, "Oh, my God, he's going after this," or, "She's going after this." And the couple will say, "I didn't mean that. I didn't mean to do that." So now a war began where the person didn't even mean it. Catherine Shanahan: So when you said you got to work out your stuff first, I was like, "Thank God he came to his senses," because he didn't really want to attack you, but that's how it would have started because like you said, Nikki said, "Yeah, he probably sends that to everybody." That's exactly what that attorney does. And unfortunately they have to send it like that because that's the process. I'm glad you [crosstalk 00:48:28]. Ben: For us, at least for me it was really thin ice. I think that that's the thing is one misstep... I don't know if you guys saw The Marriage Story, but that is a perfect example of one... If she just maybe read that letter in that first meeting, it might have turned out the way it seemed like the movie had ended. And for me, if I hadn't just had that moment of clarity right then or pull it out at the particular time, whatever it was and whenever it happened, who knows, but it's in the beginning, it's just so... It's a powder keg. Ben: To go to people who are aligned with a better outcome will help you, guide you down that path of the right way. We didn't have that, but luckily we got there. Karen Chellew: Kudos. Ben: Someone tell that woman, Scarlet Johansson, "Read the letter." Nikki: Yeah. Catherine Shanahan: Yes, yes. Karen Chellew: Well you guys are great, and I think one of my takeaways from today is first and foremost have the conversation. Try to have as many conversations as you can as rugged as they are, but also what I've noticed from hearing you today is whenever something happens today or yesterday that kind of is a trigger, I see that you assign it to that person, not to your relationship that broke apart years ago. And I think a lot of couples haven't developed the ability to do that whenever the other person does something that's irritating or that creates that trigger, "That's why I divorced him. I hate him. He's a terrible person blah, blah, blah." Karen Chellew: But I see you just saying, "That's Ben." or, "That's Nikki." And we're different and you move on. I think that's key in the ongoing relationship. Nikki: Give it a day [crosstalk 00:50:23] we'll come back to that. Ben: Yeah, I mean, I think Nikki [crosstalk 00:50:26] the same thing is that some of the same buttons that I pushed when we married, I still pushes. She still pushes the same. Like you said about parenting, our parenting skills would be different, our styles would be different if we were divorced or married, same as the personality. Nikki: Right. Ben: But it's a lot easier to accept Nikki today being her best friend than it is being her husband. But it's still, I'll also give it a day when she tells me she's not doing the effing book. I'll let her Italian hot head cool off a little bit. Nikki: Cool off for a minute. Ben: Then I'll come back. Catherine Shanahan: I'll take your roll of paper towels and I'll go home and talk to her tomorrow. Ben: Exactly. Karen Chellew: I love that. Well, thank you both for being with us today and to our listeners, the book is Our Happy Divorce. And your website is ourhappydivorce.com. You're on Instagram. You're on Facebook I believe as well. Ben: Facebook, Twitter, everything @ourhappydivorce. Yeah. Karen Chellew: All right. We're happy to meet you. Nikki: Nice to meet you. Karen Chellew: And we hope to see you soon at Mrs2Me. We'll talk with you a little bit more about that. Nikki: Thank you. Karen Chellew: Thank you again. Have a nice and safe and healthy day. Ben: Yeah, thank you. And thank you for everything you guys do. Thank you. Karen Chellew: Thank you. Have a great day. Bye. Ben: All right, thank you guys so much, and let us know about that whatever... the summit or whatever- Karen Chellew: Yeah, we will. We'll reach out to you. Ben: However you want to use us to help spread the message because it sounds like we're very much aligned. Karen Chellew: Great. Yeah, we'll stay in touch. Ben: Okay. Thank you guys. Karen Chellew: Bye. Catherine Shanahan: Be well. Bye.  

Andrew, Rich and Steve are joined this time by Ben Congalton (@benjicong) from The Switch Island to chat about the year 2001. More song puns abound as the gang journey into another golden year of gaming. How many games has Rich actually played this time? Which game emotionally resonated with Ben? What are Steve's game changers? Can Andrew find some happy news stories for a change?! Find out in this episode! You can also now order 'Dreamcast: Year One'! Digital copies are available right now, and physical copies will dispatch soon: https://app.crowdox.com/projects/dreamcastyearone/dreamcast-year-one-unofficial-book

They're coming for you Barbara! They're coming to get you! Johnny's famous last words, but do the flesh eaters get Barbara? Which is more effective, an aggressive Ben or a more sensitive Ben? What's the the best escape plan from the Flesh Eaters? why are the Basement dwellers such A-Holes? find out the answers to the questions and more when i sit down with Randal Silvey and discuss George Romero's Night of the living Dead from 1968, and the Tom Savini directed Remake of the same name from 1990.  hope you enjoy part one of our episode Romero's Reanimated and Remade.     links mentioned in this episode:https://www.facebook.com/groups/GrawlixPodcast/https://www.facebook.com/ElectronicMediaCollective/https://www.facebook.com/MoosesWoodburnings/https://electronicmediacollective.com/https://grawlixpodcast.com/  

Tony Vigil (Piranha) was the Rules Arbitrator before Woelf.His store: http://neverlandgames.tcgplayerpro.com/ Questions of the DayPiranha's QotD: What is your favorite house rule?Ben: What is the most difficult Rules situation you have come across while playing Pirates CSG? Here is the thread for this podcast at Pirates with Ben: https://pirateswithben.com/forums/topic/submit-your-questions-for-rules-arbitrator-tony-vigil-piranha/The Pirate Code: https://pirateswithben.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/The-Pirate-Code-FAQ-Dec-2016.pdfFind all the game pieces in the Master Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Z-x-z9gaWiKFLk-kw1weamc0A1-NxMN3xLjWWKsUmA/edit?usp=sharing~~~~~Past podcasts: http://shoutengine.com/PiratesCSGPodcast/ Take the podcast survey! https://goo.gl/forms/CsnwVmi3qhtqik323Feel free to rate and review the podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pirates-csg-podcast/id1258016060Pirates packs on eBay: https://goo.gl/MfHBQJSign the Petition!  https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bring-back-pirates-of-the-cursed-seasJoin the Forum at Pirates with Ben!  https://pirateswithben.com/forums/forum/pirates-csg/ The following should eventually be updated from ShoutEngine so they will be available when they get the podcast. iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pirates-csg-podcast/id1258016060Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1258016060/pirates-csg-podcastGoogle Play Music: https://play.google.com/music/m/Imxc6vplvkqlmagcvkxvi2er2wu?t=Pirates_CSG_PodcastBlubrry: https://www.blubrry.com/piratescsgpodcast/Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/a7xfanben/pirates-csg-podcast?refid=stpr

This week we witness the birth of a torturer! This week, we’re asking: Is Sawyer a psychopath? Is there a female version of The Stranger? Does Rousseau recognize Ben? What was Shasta McNasty all about? What is Fred Durst OCD about? Chad’s been getting lost in the new Borderlands 2 DLC. AJ’s been getting lost… Read more 82: S2E14, One of Them

As part of out unique online training Towards Vivencia, once a month we invite dance-artists we admire to talk to Jorge Crecis about Peak Performance Presence, how to sustain a long and successful career in the arts and what are the books and other resources our guests feed from.In this second episode Jorge had a very intense, comprehensive and profound conversation where they talked about: - How to make a very difficult first question to Ben Duke (my apologies for that Ben…)- What makes a performer an incredible one and how Ben Duke spots them- Trusting indirectness and creating space in the creative process- Tools to do nothing in performance and still be seen. Holding the space is a practice- Half an hour in, Ben tell us what was the definitive point where he felt: this is enough.- UK and Europe the invisible barrier that is there- Keep your energy and your quality by saying no to projects that doesn’t serve your strategic or artistic vision and how to manage the financial uncertainty that comes with it.- And what is an ideal world for Ben DukeYou can find more about him here:Website: https://lostdogdance.co.uk/Instagram: lostdogdanceFB: https://www.facebook.com/lostdogdance/Next workshops and performances: https://lostdogdance.co.uk/tour-dates/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/crecis)

Scott Kupor is Managing Partner @ Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world's most renowned venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, Github, Lyft, Coinbase, Slack and many more. As for Scott, he has been with the firm since its inception in 2009 and has overseen its rapid growth, from three employees to 150+ and from $300 million in assets under management to more than $7 billion today. Before a16z, Scott was a VP @ HP where he managed a $1.5 billion (1,300 person) global support organization for HP Software product portfolio. Scott joined HP as a result of his prior company Opsware, being acquired, where he served as a Senior VP across numerous roles across an incredible 8-year journey.  In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Scott made his way from the world of law to startups to being Managing Partner at one of the world's most renowned venture firms in the form of a16z? 2.) How did seeing the boom and bust of the dot com bubble and 2008 impact Scott's operating mindset today? Why does he argue that those times are so drastically different to today? How do public markets fundamentally diffferent? How do teams approach to capital efficiency and scaling differ significantly? 3.) What does Scott believe entrepreneurs get most wrong when pitching VCs? Why does Scott argue that product is not the core when pitching VCs? Does Scott agree with Fred @ Okta in weighing it: 70% market, 20% team, 10% product? What is Scott's weighting? Why does Scott believe that the compression of fundraising timelines is a problem? What pitch sticks out to Scott above all others? What made it so memorable? 4.) How does Scott advise founders on determining the right amount to raise for? Does Scott believe that founders should ask for a specific number or a range? Why does Scott believe raising for "runway" is the wrong mindset? Does Scott believe that most bridges are bridges to nowhere? If so, what is the next step? How does one relay that information to the founders? 5.) What have been some of Scott's biggest learnings from building the firm with Marc and Ben? What does Scott believe have been the biggest inflexion points in the public status of a16z? What have been the biggest challenges for Scott in the scaling of the firm? How does he foresee that changing in the future? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Scott’s Fave Book: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Scott on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

It’s quadruple trouble this week as Michael & Logan are joined by Ben & Michelle to recap Amazing Race 30’s second leg and trip to Antwerp, Belgium! In this episode: We find out where Ben has been hibernating. There’s an opportunity for shameless plugs. Ben shares something with Kristi. Logan asks to see the shopping bag lady. Michael finds an excuse to mention the A-Ö of Iceland again. Why is it best that the Roadblock didn’t end up being the Double-Battle? Amazing Race Canada gets a brand new Face Off. Why were Joey & Tim so excited to go to Belgium? Impressions got critiqued this week thanks to Hunted. We come up with a way to actually make Cedric & Shawn interesting. Michael’s feet make another appearance. We compare taxi fares. Michelle suggests a banner. There’s a surprising Season 5 Switchback. Michelle reveals her hatred of piccolos. A Race alumna arranges a discount for April & Sarah. What do competitive eaters get up to at home? How frequently should you use a microscope? Michael is revealed as being the granddad of the team. We learn about Double-Battles from around the world. Will this be the only Double-Battle this season? We ask Cedric & Shawn nicely to stop dabbing. There’s a special guest referee for the Frits Race. We suggest a job swap. We find an impression that won’t get Michael in trouble. Who is Kristi’s Survivor idol? Which team really had to wait three hours? The US somehow manages to outdo Canada. Are April & Sarah still talking? Can anyone remember what Las Ketchup look like? Logan gets overruled and then asks for a hostage situation. How spoiled is Ben? What would doctors prescribe Joey if he collapsed? And those of us who are unspoiled try to guess the next boots and also who will be in the top three.

Ben Marcus is the Founder & CEO @ Airmap, the startups that provides everything one needs to unlock and scale drone operations in the ever-changing world of airspace. They have raised over $40m in funding from industry heavyweights Sony, Rakuten, Qualcomm, Airbus Ventures and then also many friends of the show including Semil Shah, Lux Capital, Microsoft Ventures, General Catalyst, BullPen Capital and David Waxman at TenOneTen, just to name a few. Prior to AirMap, Ben co-founded and was CEO of the world’s largest light business jet sales company, Jetaviva and before that started his career as a flight instructor and later became a flight test engineer. Fun fact, Ben is also an FAA-certified Airline Transport Pilot and Flight Instructor with over 4,500 hours of flight experience. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ben made his way into the world of startups and drones from being a pilot and flight test engineer? 2.) What does Ben think is a strong investment strategy when investing in the drones? What 4 categories present nascent opportunities to Ben? What elements of the tech stack should potential investors further drill down on with potential investments? 3.) Question from Hemant Taneja: How does Ben assess the presence and desires of Amazon and Google with their pre-existing mission to win the airspace? Question from Semil Shah: Does this lead to a world of consolidation and startup M&A by incumbents? 4.) What does Ben believe are the core catalysts that will take drones to 100s of millions of people? How does Ben assess the similarties and differences in serving enterprise vs consumer drone markets? Does Ben agree with Jonathan Downey in his expression that enterprises like "boring" offerings? 5.) How does Ben evaluate the hardware vs software paradigm in the drone market? Does Ben see the commoditisation of drone hardware in the coming years? How does Ben evaluate the likes of DJI with their prominence? Does the weaponisation of drones cause significant alarm for Ben? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Ben’s Fave Book: The Wealth of Nations Ben’s Fave Blog: Social Capital Newsletter As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ben on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. NatureBox Unlimited snack plans offer all you can eat snacks for one fixed price per employee. Naturebox use simple ingredients you can trust to create bold flavors you can’t find anywhere else. All NatureBox snacks are free from artificial junk and variety is endless with options from sweet or savory to vegan or gluten-free. Simply choose the plan that fits your team’s unique snacking habits and select any of NatureBox's time-saving add-on’s. And beyond Unlimited snacks, you’ll receive perks such as free kitchen setup, no contracts, a dedicated account manager and more. Simply click here to and use the offer code VC20 to get 20% of your first Naturebox month.  Leesa is the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Leesa have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is ordered completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10-inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com to start the New Year with better nights sleep!  

The Detroit Pistons Podcast Season Preview Series concludes with a look at the team. Sean Corp joins Jordan Bellant and Ben Gulker as they go position-by-position to preview the team.  The episode starts with a bit of breaking news (:50) in the form of a new player joining the Pistons. If you’re a little behind, some more “breaking news” on the Pistons back court and Reggie’s Jackson knee injury (3:20).  Staying at the point guard spot, Sean breaks down what to expect from temporary backup PG, Ray McCallum (6:00). Then, expectations for Ish Smith as he begins the season as the starting point guard (9:10). Then, Sean offers some Kool-Aid to soothe the anxiety while Reggie is out (17:15).  Moving onto the wing positions (22:00), is all starts with Caldwell-Pope. Jordan poses this question to Ben: What improvements can KCP make in his game. If he cannot improve his game, are you okay with that (22:35)? Then it’s Sean’s turn: Has KCP’s play justified a max contract (25:20)?  After looking at the trio of young wing players, the conversation moves to the forwards (37:05). Ben explains Tobias Harris’ value, compared to Marcus Morris (37:30).  Center is the last position discussed, leading off with the fight for minutes behind Drummond (52:50). The attention turns to Andre Drummond (59:45). Ben starts by describing what he wants from Andre this season. Sean picks up the discussion by talking about how Drummond can make up for his deficiencies (1:02:45).  Finally, Sean gives his win total (1:04:50) and what to watch in the first few games of the regular season (1:06:10). The Detroit Bad Boys Podcast is a part of the SB Nation site, Detroit Bad Boys. Subscribe on iTunes and find archived episodes on Blog Talk Radio. For more information, go to DetroitBadBoys.com/Detroit-Pistons-Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Detroit Pistons Podcast Season Preview Series concludes with a look at the team. Sean Corp joins Jordan Bellant and Ben Gulker as they go position-by-position to preview the team.  The episode starts with a bit of breaking news (:50) in the form of a new player joining the Pistons. If you’re a little behind, some more “breaking news” on the Pistons back court and Reggie’s Jackson knee injury (3:20).  Staying at the point guard spot, Sean breaks down what to expect from temporary backup PG, Ray McCallum (6:00). Then, expectations for Ish Smith as he begins the season as the starting point guard (9:10). Then, Sean offers some Kool-Aid to soothe the anxiety while Reggie is out (17:15).  Moving onto the wing positions (22:00), is all starts with Caldwell-Pope. Jordan poses this question to Ben: What improvements can KCP make in his game. If he cannot improve his game, are you okay with that (22:35)? Then it’s Sean’s turn: Has KCP’s play justified a max contract (25:20)?  After looking at the trio of young wing players, the conversation moves to the forwards (37:05). Ben explains Tobias Harris’ value, compared to Marcus Morris (37:30).  Center is the last position discussed, leading off with the fight for minutes behind Drummond (52:50). The attention turns to Andre Drummond (59:45). Ben starts by describing what he wants from Andre this season. Sean picks up the discussion by talking about how Drummond can make up for his deficiencies (1:02:45).  Finally, Sean gives his win total (1:04:50) and what to watch in the first few games of the regular season (1:06:10). The Detroit Bad Boys Podcast is a part of the SB Nation site, Detroit Bad Boys. Subscribe on iTunes and find archived episodes on Blog Talk Radio. For more information, go to DetroitBadBoys.com/Detroit-Pistons-Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sharon Livingstone is a real psychological all-rounder. Her expertise stretches across hypnosis, life coaching, NLP and even as far as emotional marketing. There is a lot we can all learn from someone like Sharon. In every aspect of our lives, there is probably something we can improve with coaching. Sharon has certainly been there and done it. She has been president of both the QRCA (the largest qualitative research group in the world) and the ICCA (an organisation dedicated to the training of coaches), has a PHD in psychology, and as if that wasn’t enough, she is also a bestselling author. Read on for some of the nuggets that came out of the conversation with Ben: ** “What else” is a more effective phrase for making an extra sale than “anything else?” ** It takes 30 repetitions for our brain to learn a new procedure. ** Your brain is most receptive to reprogramming when you are in a state of hypnosis, so it can be very beneficial to listen to educational audio before you go to bed. ** As a general life lesson, always think about your best possible outcomes in life, and constantly visualize the journey that will get you there. ** Life coaching can work for everyone! Don’t ever assume that you won’t need it.   In this episode of Business Brain Food you will learn: ** The process of ‘laddering’ ** How emotion features in marketing ** The basics of hypnosis ** The basics of life coaching ** The inner workings of the ‘Breakthrough To Success” workshop   Resources mentioned in this episode: ** Jack Canfield’s inspirational book “Chicken Soup for the soul”: https://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Soup-Soul-20th-Anniversary/dp/161159913X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469010901&sr=8-1&keywords=chicken+soup+for+the+soul ** Jack Canfield’s book: “Success Principles: https://www.amazon.com/Success-Principles-TM-Anniversary-Where/dp/0062364286/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469011114&sr=8-1&keywords=jack+canfield+success+principles ** Contact Sharon by phone: +1 603 505 3000 ** Sharon’s online coaching site: http://www.takethecoachingtest.com ** Sharon’s book: http://www.getlostgirlfriend.com/Book ** Ben’s Daily Business Tips podcast… join the tribe and get exclusive offers at: http://www.dbtpodcast.com ** Facebook: facebook.com/businessbrainfood ** Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessbrainfood ** Twitter: https://twitter.com/bfewtrell ** ActionCOACH: http://actioncoachanz.com/itunes ** ActionCOACH: http://actioncoachanz.com/stitcher   Remember that there are experts across all aspects of business and life that can help you. Sharon’s story proves just what can be made possible with the right coaching. Also, if you are enjoying these Business Brain Food podcasts, then make sure to share them via social media sites or email the links to family and friends. A lot of time and effort goes into producing each of these podcasts with the goal in mind of the more people we can inspire about business the better. You can help us do just that! Until next time, have a profitable day. Cheers, Ben Fewtrell (02) 9111 5000

Employers hire candidates that they know and those who are recommended to them by people that they trust. That's why networking is so important: it gets you face-time with fellow professionals and kickstarts relationships that get you known in the community. When you're looking for a job, one of the best things you can do is conduct informational interviews with professionals in your desired field. But how do you find the right people with whom to meet? And what are the takeaways you can expect from these meetings In this episode of Find Your Dream Job Mac talks with Nathan Perez, an executive recruiter and writer who has mastered the art of networking. According to Huffington Post, Nathan is one of the most connected people on LinkedIn, with 30,000 professional contacts. He is also the author of The 20-Minute Networking Meeting, a primer on how to conduct successful informational interviews.    In this 36-minute episode you will learn: How to structure a short but effective networking meeting How to make a good impression in an informational interview How to build and leverage your network The one thing you should never do in a networking meeting This week's guest: Nathan Perez (@NathanAPerez) Principal, 20 Minute Communications Author of The 20 Minute Networking Meeting Minneapolis, Minn.   Listener question of the week: What do I do when a professional connection "ghosts" (disappears) on me? Do you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode? Please send your questions to Cecilia Bianco, Mac's List Community Manager at cecilia@macslist.org. Resources referenced on this week's show: The 20-Minute Networking Meeting (Executive Edition) The 20-Minute Networking Meeting (Graduate Edition) Young Nonprofit Professionals Network Network After Work Ignite Conferences Eventbrite Meetup.com Find Your Dream Job in Portland (and Beyond): The Complete Mac’s List Guide If you have a job-hunting or career development resource resource you'd like to share, please contact Ben Forstag, Mac's List Managing Director, at ben@macslist.org. Thank you for listening to Find Your Dream Job. If you like this show, please help us by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. We appreciate your support! Learn more about Mac's List at www.macslist.org. Opening and closing music for Find Your Dream Job provided by Freddy Trujillo, www.freddytrujillo.com.    Full Transcript: Mac Prichard: This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want and make a difference in life. I’m Mac Prichard, your host and publisher of Mac’s List. Our show is brought to you by Mac’s List, you best online source for rewarding, creative and meaningful work. Visit macslist.org to learn more. You’ll find hundreds of great jobs, a blog with practical career advice and our new book, “Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond.” Welcome to our podcast, Find Your Dream Job. Every week, we bring you the career tools and tips you need to get the job you want.Joining me are Ben Forstag, managing director of Mac’s List and Cecilia Bianco, community manager of Mac’s List. Ben, Cecilia, how are you? Cecilia Bianco: Good, Mac. How are you? Mac Prichard: Doing great; Ben? Ben Forstag: I’m having a great week. Mac Prichard: Good. Every week we bring Ben and Cecilia to you, our audience, so that they can share with you resources and answer your questions. Let’s start with Ben. He spends his week among other things, looking in the nooks and crannies of the internet for blogs, podcasts and other tools you can use in your job search. Ben, what do you have for us this week? Ben Forstag: Mac, this week I bring you more than one resource. Mac Prichard: You’re rocking my world here. Ben Forstag: I know. I’m going to start collecting overtime soon. I’m bringing you 5 resources and these are my own top 5, can’t miss professional networking opportunities. We sell an e-book on the Mac’s List website. That e-book contains a list of 100 networking opportunities. I’m not going to do all 100. That would take forever and it would cost you a whole lot of money in overtime, Mac. These are my own personal top 5. These are opportunities to get face-to-face with people in your community and folks who work in the sectors where you want to work. They are opportunities to expand your network within your field of interest and build relationships that can help you land a future job and/or advance your career. As you know, the one tip we give all job seekers in one word is? Cecilia Bianco: Networking. Ben Forstag: That’s right, Cecilia. We’ll start with #5. Number 5 is the young nonprofit professional’s network, YNPN. This is an organization I’m sure you guys have heard of. They’re very active here in Portland. They have a great event every month. I’ve been to some of their events on the east side, but as you say, they’re a national organization. They are dedicated to training emerging leaders to become active social change-makers. They have 42 chapters in cities around the country so if you’re not here in Portland, I’m sure there’s a YNPN chapter somewhere near you. They have regular networking educational events. It’s a great group of folks and you don’t necessarily need to be in a nonprofit to be a part of this organization. The other key thing with this is membership in YNPN is actually free. You have to pay for some events, but you can be a member and get a lot of their resources for free. You can learn more at YNPN.org. Mac Prichard: Coincidentally, Ben, I was on vacation last week visiting family in Iowa and of course, I met somebody for lunch on my vacation. We were standing in line in a coffee shop and he introduced me to the president of the YNPN chapter in Rock Island, Illinois. Ben Forstag: That is synergy right there, Mac! Number 4 is Network After Work. Have you guys heard of this one? Cecilia Bianco: I have heard of this one. I haven’t attended, though. Mac Prichard: This is a new one to me. Ben Forstag: Okay, so Network After Work is actually a nationwide organization and they host networking events for professionals to attend. They have 50 chapters in cities all around the country. They said last year that they had 1 million people participate in their events. These are typically informal networking mixers held in a local restaurant, a bar or other social venue. They tend to be pretty trendy places where they host these events. They’re paid events, but they’re generally less than 20 dollars. A great way just to meet folks in your community, meet folks, other working professionals and so forth. You can learn more about them at networkafterwork.com. Number 3... this is one of my personal favorites: Ignite conferences. Cecilia, you ever heard of Ignite? Cecilia Bianco: I haven’t, no. Mac Prichard: I’m actually familiar, Ben, with the Ignite presentation. I’ve been to conferences where, I think the custom is you have 5 minutes and 20 seconds a slide and if you get out of sequence with your slide, you have to catch up frantically. Ben Forstag: Yeah. These are essentially TED type of presentations. They tend to be a little bit more accessible, though, and much more affordable. They’re usually only 2-hour long events. The general deal with them is that presenters share their personal passions using 20 slides at auto advance every 15 seconds, for a total of just 5 minutes. I’ve gone to several of these events, both in D.C. and in Portland and they are fantastic. You hear all kinds of cool things. It’ll be a presentation about healthcare right next to a presentation about beekeeping. The important thing is you meet really interesting people there and make great professional connections that you can leverage later on. They have events all around the country and indeed, all around the world. Here in Portland, they’re on the 13th iteration of this. You can find local events at igniteshow.com. Number 2 is EventBrite. EventBrite is not an organizer of events per se, but it’s a technology platform that a lot of organizations use to manage their events. In fact, Mac’s List uses EventBrite to manage our own events. The nice thing with EventBrite is if you go there, you can actually search all the events that people have put on using that technology according to location, subject matter, number of people participating, all this stuff and you can find out a lot of events that you might not have ever heard of anywhere else. I definitely suggest people check that out. That’s at eventbrite.com. Mac Prichard: One of the things I like about EventBrite is once you register, you sign up to attend an event, there’s a record of all the events you’ve attended in the past so if you’re trying to get in touch with an organization or look for contact information or recall an event where you might have met someone, it’s there in your EventBrite account. Ben Forstag: Yeah, that’s definitely nice. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah. It’s also a really great tool if you’re going to host an event. It’s one of the best tools out there. We always use it and it’s super helpful. It lets you share the guest list with people and it’s a great tool. Mac Prichard: For a time, we used eVite and then we moved to EventBrite. Why did you make that choice? Cecilia Bianco: I think just because EventBrite has so many more options. It’s more searchable and more people are able to find our event and it’s easier to manage the guest list. It’s just a better tool. Mac Prichard: Good tips. Ben Forstag: Great, so it works both for folks who are organizing events and people who are looking to network through events. My #1 networking tool, this is my personal favorite. It’s an oldie, but goodie. It’s Meetup.com. I know everyone here has heard of Meetup.com. Mac Prichard: Yeah. I’m ancient enough that as you both know, I worked for elected officials on political campaigns and I remember when Meetup.com was defined by the Howard Dean campaign in 2003. That’s how they first came to prominence. Howard Dean has certainly faded from the political scene, but Meetup.com not only endures, but it’s gotten bigger and much, much better. Ben Forstag: Yeah and in fact, Meetup has become a noun in and of itself. "We’re going to a meetup." The site has been around for a long time and it provides hyper-targeted local groups based around personal or professional interests. Literally, whatever your interest is, I’m sure there’s other folks in your neighborhood and your community who want to meet up and talk about that. I did a quick search of the Portland groups. There’s plenty of professional groups that meet through Meetup. If you’re a techie, there’s just about any kind of programming language, there’s a Meetup group. If you’re a vampire, there’s a Meetup group for you here in Portland and you can find other vampires. Participation varies city-by-city, I understand. In Portland, it is a very active network; other cities, not so much. You can learn more about Meetups at Meetup.com. Mac Prichard: I know many of our listeners are in the nonprofit world or want to work with nonprofits and one of the Meetup groups that you can find nationally, including here in Portland, is Tech 4 Good. I’m familiar with the Portland event. It is organized by the staff of the National Technology Education Network, NTEN, which is a terrific national group. It is a wonderful place for meeting people who are interested in technology, social change and nonprofits. Ben Forstag: The nice thing about that group is you don’t need to be a techie to get it. A lot of what they do is educating lay people like me and you in how to use this technology for good. Mac Prichard: Well, thank you, Ben. That was a wonderful list. Do you have a suggestion for Ben? You can write him. His email address is Ben at macslist.org. We encourage you to reach out to Ben and he may share your idea on a future show. Let’s move on. It’s time to hear from you, our listeners. Every week, Cecilia goes through her mail bag or her inbox these days and pulls out a question from our listeners. Cecilia, what do you have for us this week? Cecilia Bianco: This week, a reader wrote in and asked what should I do when someone promises to help me at a networking event and then ghosts me? I have to admit, I had to Google what ghosting was. I wasn’t quite clear. Have you guys heard this term before? Ben Forstag: I have. Mac Prichard: I have, as well. I first became aware of it; I saw it in the New York Times earlier this year. It had a celebrity angle. Apparently, when Charlize Theron broke up with Sean Penn, she according to the Times ghosted him, which meant cutting him off on all of her social media channels and not responding to his texts and phone calls. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah, it makes sense. Ben Forstag: Mac, I’m glad to hear that you stay up-to-date on the celebrity news! Cecilia Bianco: Yeah, so ghosting is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when you poof, disappear and you promise something and then you don’t follow through. Maybe you’re ignoring the person. In this case, a job seeker went to an event and was promised help in her job search and then never heard back from the person. I know this has happened to me before and I’ve also been guilty of the other end which I feel bad about, so I know that it’s important to follow up at least twice when this happens to you. I had a student reach out to me through email asking for help. Obviously, I wanted to help her, but we’re busy as professionals. I’ll flag the email and then think I’ll get to it later and forget, so sending a follow-up email is definitely appropriate and sending at least 2 is great. What do you think, Mac? Mac Prichard: I think that’s absolutely right. I think sometimes and I’ve been in this position, too, where I’ve reached out to someone, I haven’t heard and I interpret their silence as rejection. What I’ve learned is by making a 2nd or even a 3rd attempt, I usually get a response, almost always, actually. I know as a job seeker, it’s hard to make that 2nd attempt or even the 3rd, but I think people will be pleasantly surprised by the result. It’s as you say, people get busy and I certainly have been guilty of it, too. I try very hard to get back to everyone in as timely a manner as I can, but sometimes, things fall through the cracks. A reminder is always welcome. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah, definitely, and I always suggest waiting 4-5 days before sending a 2nd follow-up just so you can give them a chance. If they have it saved in their inbox, they might respond, they’re just busy, so waiting a few days, see if they follow up and then follow up again. I think probably after 3, it’s time to let it go. What do you guys think? Ben Forstag: I think that’s probably good advice. Mac Prichard: Yeah. One thing I do on my 3rd message, I just do a very brief and I’ll just say, “I don’t want to be a pest, I’ll just wait to hear from you.” I almost always hear back. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah. I have responded to this reader and she followed up with me and asked if it matters how she follow up with a person. If they’ve only communicate through email, is it a bad idea to follow up with a phone call? I thought it was a great question because you can definitely get someone’s attention quicker with a phone call, but I was more inclined to tell her it’s a bad idea just because you might not want to put them on the spot by calling when you communicate usually through email. I think it’s better to stick with the mode of communication you’ve used with this person in the past, but what do you think? I know a phone call obviously gets their attention quicker. Ben Forstag: I think you’re right. I think a phone call is more likely to upset someone or put someone on the spot and a job seeker really has very little to gain from upsetting a professional reference or a contact. If they don’t want to speak to you for whatever reason, that’s unfortunate, but you should move on and if you’ve emailed them 3 times, I think that’s sufficient effort to reach out to them. Cecilia Bianco: I agree. Overall, follow up 3 times and no more than that, then let it go, but don’t take it personally because you never know why someone is not responding. Don’t feel bad about yourself and go out and meet new people and get help in another way. Mac Prichard: That’s great advice. Thank you, Cecilia, and thank you for that question. If you have a question for Cecilia, you can email her. Her email address is Cecilia@macslist.org. These segments by Ben and Cecilia are sponsored by the Mac’s List Guides, publisher of our new book, “Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond.” The Mac’s List Guides give you the tools you need to get the job you want. We show you how to crack the hidden job market, stand out in a competitive field and how you can manage your career. In each of the book’s 8 chapters, experts share job hunting secrets like how to hear about positions that are never posted and what you can do to interview and negotiate like a pro. You can download the 1st chapter of the book for free, just visit macslist.org/macslistguides. Now it’s time to talk to our expert. Let’s turn to our guest this week. It’s Nathan Perez who is the co-author of the acclaimed job searching networking books, “The 20-minute Networking Meeting,” Executive and Graduate Editions. Nathan is an executive recruitment professional and he’s responsible for finding qualified candidates for search engagements and he also speaks and holds workshops nationally on the topics of job search, networking and relationship building for business. Nathan, thank you for joining us. Nathan Perez: Thank you, too. Mac Prichard: Okay. In preparing for our conversation today, I did my homework and I have to say I’m in awe because in looking at your LinkedIn profile, I see that you are one of the 10 most-connected people on the planet on LinkedIn. How did you make that happen? Nathan Perez: Part of the nature of my work is to make sure that I have an expanded network. My role in executive search is actually the 1st step of an executive search process. When companies come to us to hire, they hire us to find new executive leadership for their company. My job responsibility is to devise a strategy as to where and how to find qualified candidates. LinkedIn is one of my tools, one of my primary tools and it’s in my best interest to have a wide network because LinkedIn works on the premise of 3 degrees of separation. That means the more people that I know, the further reach I have globally. It was a matter of reaching out. Once I started reaching out, networks started to expand. People began to find me through the same network. The people that I was connecting to, right, that 1st degree, eventually got to 2nd degree and that’s your extended network. That extended network started to come to me, as well and then the numbers started to double. Mac Prichard: Let’s talk about networking. It’s a word that people who are looking for work always hear, “You’ve got to network, you’ve got to network” and one of the pieces of advice that we give job seekers and I know you do, as well, is reach out to others for networking or informational interviews. Nathan Perez: Right. Mac Prichard: Let’s just drill down on the basics here. What is a networking meeting or an informational interview, Nathan? Nathan Perez: A networking meeting or even an informational interview, sometimes there’s a fine line, but there’s a distinct difference. A networking meeting is all about sitting down with an individual to obtain information. I think lots of times, just the word networking itself brings with it a negative connotation and people liken it to name dropping or that glad-handing, greasy activity, this thing that no one really wants to do so they avoid it. Really, what it is, is just the exchange of information. Mac Prichard: One of the most provocative things that you say, I think, is that you can have a 20-minute meeting with someone and walk away with information and contacts and tips that will help people with their job search. Tell us, how do you do that? Let’s back up. How do you arrange a meeting like that, what do you ask for and what do you do when you walk in the door? Nathan Perez: Often times, as far as networking requests go, time is the deciding factor as to whether or not someone is going to accept the networking request. Even if let’s say, up front you were hoping to request a networking meeting via email, even by phone, because time is the deciding factor, making it brief and succinct is what’s key. As far as the information contained within 20 minutes, what you’re really doing is truncating a process that already exists. For example, if you and I were to sit down for a few minutes and I were just to ask you this one question, “Do you think I should go find another job?” There’s going to be a whole host of questions that come back to me. What do you mean, Nathan? Do you mean should you go find one now, should you go find one later, in your same line of work, a whole different industry change, whatever it may be. What you’re doing is you’re taking all of that information and you’re packaging it into something that’s much smaller and you’re presenting it up front. You’re, therefore, giving that person, your networking contact, context as to what your background is, where you are right at this moment and then you ask a set of questions that are thought provoking. This is homework that you do, these questions that you ultimately ask your contact to further your knowledge. You’re tapping into their expertise and their knowledge to further your own to inform your own job search. Mac Prichard: Like you, I get a lot of requests for people who want networking meetings and I’m always impressed by the people who can come in and do 3 things in 20-30 minutes. For me, a successful meeting is one where someone introduces themselves and shares their story. That’s the first thing they get done. The second is to your point, they ask questions, not big broad questions, but strategic ones about their career goals or their opportunities in the industry and the third thing I see people do really well is ask for contacts. Nathan Perez: I had mentioned that time is a deciding factor. What one should avoid is misusing that time. Mind you, it’s misusing that other person’s time and your own, as well. Going in unprepared, not knowing who your networking contact is, in fact not knowing who their company, what their company does and what their company mission may be because knowing something about that person’s company should tell you quite a bit about that person, as well. Going in unprepared and going in without an agenda or structured use of time is probably the biggest mistake you can make. That’s often times and for anybody who’s listening and Mac, I’m sure you would agree with this; often times, when we accept a networking meeting and it goes longer than we anticipated or than we thought or longer than that person promised, it makes us a little more wary to do it again. If you think about time, if I were to maybe put into perspective of what time looks like, just 1 hour which a lot of folks believe should be the length of a networking meeting; 1 hour adds up very quickly. For instance, if you have small children or if you have younger siblings, you know that there’s not enough hours in a day to take care of small kids. If you were to think of it from a monetary standpoint; if you’re a consultant who charges 150 dollars an hour, for instance, and someone is asking you for a networking meeting and you say yes to that request, that’s a 150-dollar gift of time. If you think about what that looks like over 1 week, 2 weeks, over the course of a month, how many times do you give away a 150-dollar gift? I would say the biggest of them all is probably the misuse of time. Mac Prichard: Yeah, that’s a good point. I also want to second a point you made a moment ago about having a clear ask for the meeting. I, as you know, have worked in government and public policy and politics, and have done a lot of government relations work. There is an old lobbyist I knew in D.C. who said the definition of a failed meeting was one where there was no clear ask and then when people got up at the end of the appointment, there was no homework for the other party. I think again to your point, having that ask and being clear about what you want to get from the meeting is crucial. Nathan Perez: I would agree. Mac Prichard: When you see people who are just superstars at networking and informational interviews, what do they do that makes them stand out, Nathan? What kind of examples come to mind? I know you’ve talked to hundreds, I’m sure thousands of people over the years. Nathan Perez: Right. There’s a handful of things. I think one of the primaries is listening, really engaged in the conversation. Staying present is really key because we all know, we can sense and we can also see when someone is not engaged in the conversation. Listening is one of them. Also, staying engaged and staying present also allows you to keep track of time. We all know innately how much time has passed to some extent or another. Sure, maybe it’s within a few minutes, but we get that, combined with knowing what we want to go in and talk about and being able to present that in a way that’s very clear, concise and simple. The longer time that we take with a networking contact and the more information that we drop on that contact, the more difficult it is for that person to keep track of everything and to keep you in context. By being succinct and brief, we manage to put our own experiences or whatever it is that we want to talk about, that clear ask, into context and into perspective in just a small time frame. That allows for a really powerful and informing conversation. Mac Prichard: So have a clear ask, be succinct, do your homework, look at the web site, other resources before you walk in the door. What are some other tips you have for people that you’ve seen other job seekers and career professionals use to stand out? Nathan Perez: The people that have had the most successful networking meetings with me in particular are those who are informed, not of just my background, but their own. When they ask the questions, they’re asking at a deeper level than something that’s more obvious. For instance, I’m going to take the legal profession as an example. Right now, the landscape of the hiring side of the legal profession and the legal profession itself is changing. Smaller companies are being taken by bigger ones and what that means is that the people who are in the smaller ones either get pushed out or they get enveloped into this big thing, this sort of monstrous machine. If you are an aspiring legal aid or attorney and you were to learn about how this information is working, you can come into a networking meeting and ask very informed questions that gives you a further insight into the hiring practice or the industry itself. That in turn could do a handful of things, one of which is completely change the course of your job search or whatever your networking efforts may be. You may learn something that makes you think twice about what you’re doing, whether it’s for the better or whether it’s just a change in tracks. All that information is good. It’s people who come in really informed with the topic that they’re going to talk about. Mac Prichard: Often when I talk to people about their goals, sometimes people say to me, well, I don’t want to close out my options. I want to be open to everything. I think as we both know, the challenge there is that if you’re open to everything, it’s hard to pursue something and there are just too many doors that are open. As we talk, I know our listeners are thinking about the challenges of and doing networking meetings like this. Let me rattle off a couple that I often hear and I expect you do and get your advice about how to overcome them. What do you say, Nathan, to people who say gosh, I just don’t have any contacts? Nathan Perez: That’s something that I hear all the time. The fact of the matter is, is that we know a lot more people than what we think we do. We just perceive them as they belong in a different bucket. These are my friends, these are my family and these are my neighbors over here. If you take away those titles, they are people that you know. A personal and professional network is comprised of people that we know. If you ever meet someone through one of the people that you know, that person becomes an extended part of your network. I often say when I give presentations and sometimes I get pushback here, I say that it’s not just the people that you know or even the people that you meet through them. Every single person that you have ever met and I’ll explain this in a second; every single person that you have ever met is actually an extended part of your network. That might be dormant, but the moment that you reach out to someone who you’ve only met once and you ask them for help, you bring to life an extended part of your network, but again, not just that person, but any person that you might meet through them. If I were to put this in a really clear perspective, it’s imagine that you don’t know a single soul on Earth but that one person, but imagine that person knows 50 people. Immediately, you have multiplied your network by 51 people. If each one of those people know 50 people, you can see how quickly your network actually adds up to people that you do know and you can also see how quickly you can obtain any kind of information to achieve your networking goals that you can really imagine. Mac Prichard: What is the one thing that you should never do in a networking meeting, Nathan? Nathan Perez: You should never take, take, take. Networking is all about reciprocity. It’s back and forth. It is really not unlike, let’s say when you do a Google search and you send out the query, it sends it down the network. The answer comes back from the servers along the network and there you have it. There’s always give and take. Impressions are everything out there. Perceptions, if perception really matters, they’re real and what you want is to make sure you are giving the sense that you are someone who cares and who is willing to help in return. As I mentioned earlier, time is a gift and when we take it without giving back, that’s not something that’s really forgotten in the long run. Mac Prichard: Finally, what should you do after a networking meeting? What action should they take? Nathan Perez: Keep your network alive by following up. You always want to thank someone for their time. Even though you may have thanked them up front during the email when they accepted the request and even though you had the presence of mind to say thank you again when you were in person when you sat down with them, but after the meeting you want to follow up with them, thanking them again. More importantly, well just as importantly is what I should say, you should follow up with the person who introduced you to that person if in fact, you were introduced to that person through someone else. Mac Prichard: You have a new book coming out. Tell us about it. Nathan Perez: It’s going to be the professional edition. There’s the executive edition of the 20-Minute Networking Meeting and then earlier this year there was the publication of the graduate edition. Anybody who has returned to school or who is coming out of school and knows that they need to network for a job, that’s that book. This one is going to be the professional edition that is every one in between; if you’re not an executive, if you’re not a graduate, it is everyone in between. Over the years, I’ve had quite a few different jobs. That’s everything from a lifeguard to a professional, I have 20 years as a professional actor and writer and I worked on Wall Street at one point. This is going to address all of those people who are not in one of those other 2 categories. Mac Prichard: Nathan, where can people find you online and learn more about you, the books and the services you offer? Nathan Perez: At 20-minute Communications, which can be found at www.20mnm.com. Mac Prichard: Great. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. Nathan Perez: Thank you, too. Mac Prichard: We’re back with Ben and Cecilia. What did you two think of what Nathan had to share with us today? Cecilia Bianco: I thought he had some great tips and I think his most important tip was to be clear and succinct. I know I get some emails that are super long with detailed backgrounds of people just sharing what they’ve been doing and what they want from me. I’d rather just get a 20-minute hey I want to talk about this, can you meet for coffee sometime next week? I think his tips on that were really great. Mac Prichard: I’m a big fan of brevity and I always like the emails that say I’d like 20-30 minutes of your time to talk about A, B and C. I especially like the emails, I know I have to admit I’m a bit detailed about this, that say I could meet with you on these times on these dates, but let me know what might work for you. How about you, Ben? What did you think? Ben Forstag: I thought the most important thing he said was about the size of your network and that your network is bigger than “your professional network.” This really resonates with me because when I think about the network that I’ve leveraged the most in my job search and in my professional life, it’s actually not my professional contacts, it’s the contacts I made when I was working at a summer camp. Those people who I had a real close relationship with, they’re all around the country, all around the world now and they’re all involved in a variety of industries. I’ve been able to use those relationships in a bunch of different positive ways, both professionally and personally. Mac Prichard: I’d agree with that, as well. I recently was trying to identify how I might get in to see someone at a national nonprofit communications director and I discovered that one of my neighbors that actually worked at that organization and not only knew this communications director, but she had gone to high school with this person in Maryland. It was a completely unexpected connection because my neighbor and I knew each other through walking dogs and seeing each other at the block party, but we also had this other connection that didn’t come from LinkedIn or an informational interview. Ben Forstag: I think this brings up an interesting point which is when we start thinking about networks being this everyone you know component, it can sometimes feel daunting; you’re always on the clock or you’re always doing a job search. I think if you’re a novice at networking, it certainly would feel like that. I think the key is you have to make this informal networking and communication and relationship building something that’s just part of your life and something that you’re comfortable with so that it doesn’t feel like a job in and of itself; it’s just something that you do. Mac Prichard: Cecilia, I know you’ve learned a lot about networking in the 2 years you’ve been with Mac’s List. Do you have 1 or 2 pieces of advice for listeners who are just getting started? Cecilia Bianco: Yeah. I think what Ben just brought up is important because I know just right graduating out of college, it’s hard to feel like you need to build your professional network and you don’t really know where to start. It’s important to start with friends, family and rely on your university’s network. That’s one of the best tools you can use when you first graduate and after for seasoned professionals when you look back. Those alumni LinkedIn groups are great and really, they never die. I’m still looking at mine all the time and it’s really active. Looking to friends and family is a really easy way to start so I suggest to anyone who is new to networking, start there because you’ll be more comfortable and it makes it all a lot easier. Mac Prichard: Great advice. Thank you, Cecilia. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, our listeners, for joining us. We’ll be back next week with more tools and tips to help you find that dream job. In the meantime, find us at macslist.org and you can sign up for our free newsletter there with more than 100 new jobs every week. If you like what you hear on our show, you can help us by leaving a review, a comment and a rating at iTunes. Thanks.

This week on Dying Scene Radio, the Bobs’ digital smoke signals to Ben Weasel finally pays off, as the Screeching Weasel founder and frontman guest hosts the show, joining Bob Noxious and Bobby Pickles in studio to discuss everything under the sun, from bums to farming to fat, middle-aged punk rock stereotypes - the three blather back and forth about a slew of interesting, unconventional topics. Weasel’s epic punk rock opus - Baby Fat Act 1 - is out now on Recess Records. Episode 17’s recurring theme: Performance Art.SYNOPSIS OF BANTERThe show wouldn’t be the same without a local weather report, so right off the bat, Bobby the meteorologist asks for an oral account on the state of precipitation in the area encompassing Ben’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. Ben responds that he is enjoying a nice sunny day overlooking his cattle grazing in the Alfalfa fields. Who knew that Ben Weasel was a farmer!?Ben interrogates Bobby about his decision to employ a homeless person as a model for his T-shirt company. Bobby reveals how he first met “the bum”, who was living inside of Penn Station, when Bobby first moved to NYC. Bobby, who was managing a cell phone kiosk, thought it rather ironic that a bum would have a cell phone, so he struck up a friendship with the man. Ben commends Bobby on his humanitarian efforts, when Bobby admits to housing and employing “the bum”. Ben concedes to feeling like “a heel” for trying to make a joke about it. Intrigued by the new-found thought of employing bums as T-shirt models, Bob suggests to Bobby that maybe he should consider publishing a calendar as a way to support the homeless on a more regular basis, which Ben wholeheartedly agrees upon.While on the subject of T-shirts, Bobby bounces an idea off of Bob and Ben: “What about a “mash-up” tee, depicting the recently deceased B.B. King as G.G. Allin (B.B. Allin) - complete with poo and tattoos?” In unison, Ben and Bob both agree that it is way too soon for that much poor taste, but that King’s heirs should be entitled to some of the profits if that were to happen.Like a kid at Disney World, Bobby cannot contain his excitement as he gleefully tells Ben that not only did he purchase Baby Fat Act 1 from iTunes on the day of its release, but that he has listened to the entire offering three times already. Ben explains the general concept behind his punk rock opera, which is played out by many singers and complete with a libretto - but for a more comprehensive breakdown of the characters and plot, please read Ben’s exclusive interview with the Italian magazine, Tempi. Baby Fat is based on the opera, Rigoletto, which Bobby admits to watching the Luciano Pavarotti version online earlier in the afternoon after not being able to find a cassette deck to play his Italian grandfather's audio version.The conversation turns to crowdfunding. There’s a common misconception in the “record business” about artists who “beg” for money from their fans, but Ben justifies his use of crowdfunding to finance his operatic masterpiece by comparing it to nothing more than a glorified pre-order, but without the recoupable advance from the record company. He also states that crowdfunding is really a tool in-line with the old standby D.I.Y. ethics of yesteryear. The artist maintains control by doing everything for his or herself; therefore, cutting out the middle-man, which benefits the artist in terms of receiving larger royalty percentages as well.After nearly 30 years of playing punk music, Ben proclaims that punk bands will always shoot themselves in the foot, based on their misguided principles. He goes on to point out that most of them spend too much time, himself included, apologizing for their actions and what they say; meanwhile, Bob is preparing to play a new track from Chicago’s The Copyrights, who Ben declares “complete douchebags” who “can certainly dish it out, but [they] can’t take it”. Ben continues by stating sarcastically that ska/punk music died out in the 90’s. Bob mentions that musical styles tend to run in cycles and that maybe there will be a resurgence in the genre sometime in the near future, which Ben is quick to dismiss.Ben inquires about the origins and operations of Dying Scene, asking if it is corporately owned, or indeed run by a team of fans and writers. Bobby compares it to a grass roots operation. Ben goes on to say that if it was corporately owned, he wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with it, reminding everyone that, after all, Screeching Weasel is incorporated too. Weasel continues by telling a story about another popular online news gathering website, leveraged by investors and bought out without informing their staff of contributors, the result of which being one person walking away with a huge cash-grab and then going into seclusion.Ben tells the story of how he met Bob’s mutual friend, ex-Pink Lincolns frontman, Chris Barrows. The two used to trade their respective bands’ cassettes through the legendary punk periodical, Maximum Rock and Roll, and the US Mail. Ben explains how he had Chris in mind when coming up with the Zannoni character on Baby Fat, elaborating further about what a great job Chris did on the record, singing “God Damn You” in a key that is normally not in Chris’ wheelhouse. Ben discloses that Chris is his oldest friend, not in age, but in longevity. Bob deadpans that Chris is his oldest friend, not in longevity, but in age... On a sidenote, Bob played all of the guitars on Chris Barrows’ 2014 debut solo album Human Being. One notable track on the record is “Not It”, which happens to feature vocals by none other than Mr. Ben Weasel himself. Go find it on iTunes!Honestly, this synopsis could go on forever. The three blather back and forth relentlessly for over an hour about woman-punching, the current state of the music industry, Ben’s jaded self-interested in his own music, his predilection for Taylor Swift and the Frozen soundtrack, which is a clear indication that Weasel either has a daughter (or really bad taste in music), how PEARS were more than likely manufactured in a corporate board room by guys in suits with pie charts, the political predispositions of a fat, drug-riddled record executive who should stick to writing songs about “boobs and doing blow”, and how Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, who Ben remembers as “Lint”, finally found his voice. To know what else landed in Weasel’s cross-hairs, you’ll simply have to listen to the episode.“Kids...stay in school. Stay off drugs. And, eat your vitamins.” - B.WizzleTHIS WEEK’S PLAYLISTScreeching Weasel - God Damn You (with Chris Barrows)Dead On A Friday - A Reasonable GuyThe Copyrights - SliderThe A-Ok’s - Thrash Skank ThrashSniper 66 - Warriors WayHead Creeps - Come On InHaken - Anaphylactic ShockWasted Potential - CumlordsFree Sergio - So Far Yet So CloseUpinatem - The Balls On This GuyFreya Wilcox and the Howl - Bury MeDying Scene Radio is now on iTunes! (Please: Download. Listen. Subscribe. Share with your fellow punks. Rate the show. And leave an opinionated comment about Bob’s hosting abilities). DSR can also be heard LIVE each and every Friday night at 9PM EST on Real Punk Radio.Follow us on Instagram: @DyingSceneRadioLike us on Facebook: /DyingSceneRadioCall the hotline; tell Bob you’re not very fond of him - (347)754-PUNKThis week’s sponsor is FAT ENZO. Help us feed and clothe the homeless!

This week on Episode 72 of Bobby Pickles' Podcast (Dying Scene Radio #17), the Bobs’ digital smoke signals to Ben Weaselfinally pays off, as the Screeching Weaselfounder and frontman guest hosts the show, joining Bob Noxious and Bobby Pickles in studio to discuss everything under the sun, from bums to farming to fat, middle-aged punk rock stereotypes - the three blather back and forth about a slew of interesting, unconventional topics. Weasel’s epic punk rock opus - Baby Fat Act 1 - is out now on Recess Records. Episode 17’s recurring theme: Performance Art. SYNOPSIS OF BANTER The show wouldn’t be the same without a local weather report, so right off the bat, Bobby the meteorologist asks for an oral account on the state of precipitation in the area encompassing Ben’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. Ben responds that he is enjoying a nice sunny day overlooking his cattle grazing in the Alfalfa fields. Who knew that Ben Weasel was a farmer!? Ben interrogates Bobby about his decision to employ a homeless person as a model for his T-shirt company. Bobby reveals how he first met “the bum”, who was living inside of Penn Station, when Bobby first moved to NYC. Bobby, who was managing a cell phone kiosk, thought it rather ironic that a bum would have a cell phone, so he struck up a friendship with the man. Ben commends Bobby on his humanitarian efforts, when Bobby admits to housing and employing “the bum”. Ben concedes to feeling like “a heel” for trying to make a joke about it. Intrigued by the new-found thought of employing bums as T-shirt models, Bob suggests to Bobby that maybe he should consider publishing a calendar as a way to support the homeless on a more regular basis, which Ben wholeheartedly agrees upon. While on the subject of T-shirts, Bobby bounces an idea off of Bob and Ben: “What about a “mash-up” tee, depicting the recently deceased B.B. King as G.G. Allin (B.B. Allin) - complete with poo and tattoos?” In unison, Ben and Bob both agree that it is way too soon for that much poor taste, but that King’s heirs should be entitled to some of the profits if that were to happen. Like a kid at Disney World, Bobby cannot contain his excitement as he gleefully tells Ben that not only did he purchase Baby Fat Act 1 from iTunes on the day of its release, but that he has listened to the entire offering three times already. Ben explains the general concept behind his punk rock opera, which is played out by many singers and complete with a libretto - but for a more comprehensive breakdown of the characters and plot, please read Ben’s exclusive interview with the Italian magazine, Tempi. Baby Fat is based on the opera, Rigoletto, which Bobby admits to watching the Luciano Pavarotti version online earlier in the afternoon after not being able to find a cassette deck to play his Italian grandfather's audio version. The conversation turns to crowdfunding. There’s a common misconception in the “record business” about artists who “beg” for money from their fans, but Ben justifies his use of crowdfunding to finance his operatic masterpiece by comparing it to nothing more than a glorified pre-order, but without the recoupable advance from the record company. He also states that crowdfunding is really a tool in-line with the old standby D.I.Y. ethics of yesteryear. The artist maintains control by doing everything for his or herself; therefore, cutting out the middle-man, which benefits the artist in terms of receiving larger royalty percentages as well. After nearly 30 years of playing punk music, Ben proclaims that punk bands will always shoot themselves in the foot, based on their misguided principles. He goes on to point out that most of them spend too much time, himself included, apologizing for their actions and what they say; meanwhile, Bob is preparing to play a new track from Chicago’s The Copyrights, who Ben declares “complete douchebags” who “can certainly dish it out, but [they] can’t take it”. Ben continues by stating sarcastically that ska/punk music died out in the 90’s. Bob mentions that musical styles tend to run in cycles and that maybe there will be a resurgence in the genre sometime in the near future, which Ben is quick to dismiss. Ben inquires about the origins and operations of Dying Scene, asking if it is corporately owned, or indeed run by a team of fans and writers. Bobby compares it to a grass roots operation. Ben goes on to say that if it was corporately owned, he wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with it, reminding everyone that, after all, Screeching Weasel is incorporated too. Weasel continues by telling a story about another popular online news gathering website, leveraged by investors and bought out without informing their staff of contributors, the result of which being one person walking away with a huge cash-grab and then going into seclusion. Ben tells the story of how he met Bob’s mutual friend, ex-Pink Lincolns frontman, Chris Barrows. The two used to trade their respective bands’ cassettes through the legendary punk periodical, Maximum Rock and Roll, and the US Mail. Ben explains how he had Chris in mind when coming up with the Zannoni character on Baby Fat, elaborating further about what a great job Chris did on the record, singing “God Damn You” in a key that is normally not in Chris’ wheelhouse. Ben discloses that Chris is his oldest friend, not in age, but in longevity. Bob deadpans that Chris is his oldest friend, not in longevity, but in age... On a sidenote, Bob played all of the guitars on Chris Barrows’ 2014 debut solo album Human Being. One notable track on the record is “Not It”, which happens to feature vocals by none other than Mr. Ben Weasel himself. Go find it on iTunes! Honestly, this synopsis could go on forever. The three blather back and forth relentlessly for over an hour about woman-punching, the current state of the music industry, Ben’s jaded self-interested in his own music, his predilection for Taylor Swift and the Frozen soundtrack, which is a clear indication that Weasel either has a daughter (or really bad taste in music), how PEARS were more than likely manufactured in a corporate board room by guys in suits with pie charts, the political predispositions of a fat, drug-riddled record executive who should stick to writing songs about “boobs and doing blow”, and how Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, who Ben remembers as “Lint”, finally found his voice. To know what else landed in Weasel’s cross-hairs, you’ll simply have to listen to the episode. “Kids...stay in school. Stay off drugs. And, eat your vitamins.” - B.Wizzle THIS WEEK’S PLAYLISTScreeching Weasel - God Damn You (with Chris Barrows) Dead On A Friday - A Reasonable Guy The Copyrights - Slider The A-Ok’s - Thrash Skank Thrash Sniper 66 - Warriors Way Head Creeps - Come On In Haken - Anaphylactic Shock Wasted Potential - Cumlords Free Sergio - So Far Yet So Close Upinatem - The Balls On This Guy Freya Wilcox and the Howl - Bury Me Dying Scene Radio is now on iTunes! (Please: Download. Listen. Subscribe. Share with your fellow punks. Rate the show. And leave an opinionated comment about Bob’s hosting abilities). DSR can also be heard LIVE each and every Friday night at 9PM EST on Real Punk Radio. Follow us on Instagram: @DyingSceneRadio Like us on Facebook: /DyingSceneRadio Call the hotline; tell Bob you’re not very fond of him - (347)754-PUNK This week’s sponsor is FAT ENZO. Help us feed and clothe the homeless!

Lyrics Black Bach – Lyrics by Billy Dean Start Now – Lyrics by Billy Dean Purchase Click here to purchase songs Artists’ Notes Ben Verdery: My daughter Mitsuko asked me during the holidays if I’d heard her friend Billy Dean’s new music. I hadn’t, but immediately started listening and was captivated by the tone of Billy’s voice and the varied textures she was using in her music. I loved it! I’ve known Billy since she was eight. I remember her improvising on our little upright piano; I remember eavesdropping, thinking: This girl is a musician. Like me, she has to create music. It is not an option. Billy Dean: Since I was eight years old I have been living by the quote “There are no mistakes in art.” I began playing piano at Ben’s house. I was constantly exploring beyond my artistic boundaries. He would yell, “Keep practicing girlfriend! It’s sounding good in there!” encouraging my passion and creative exploration. Ben’s house became my creative safe haven. He’d never heard any of my songs until, behind my back, Mitsuko played one for him. Immediately after, I received an email from Ben stating that he appreciated the musicianship of my cadences, content and instrumentation. He said, “I am attaching ‘Allegro’ by Bach and I was thinking it might be perfect for you to rap to.” Ben: Why did I think Billy and I should rap over this Bach work? Because musicians from all cultures can relate in some manner to Bach’s music; it is truly music without borders. Given the rhythmic nature of the Allegro as well as the harmonic and melodic structure it seemed a natural for Billy. Billy: I was super excited to mesh hip-hop with classical, two genres I love. I was also thrilled that Ben, a professional musician, thought that I was worthy of an innovative partnership. I must have listened to the song ten times on my own and thought it wasn’t possible. However, I remember thinking: If I can write verses for a Bach arrangement with no drums or bass I can write to absolutely anything. I had to structure my brain around what I needed. A pulse. A beat. I decided to beatbox over the tune to give myself guidelines for arranging the lyrics to work with the movements. I began to memorize the melodic ups and downs, the retards, the refrains, everything. All I needed was some great content. Ben: When she asked me what she should rap about, I suggested her love of music. She did this and more. Her lyrics are moving and honest. Billy: I thought: Allegro means happy, so I should write about what makes me happy. Of course the one thing that keeps me in a healthy state of mind and spirit is my music. I wanted this piece to be a tribute to music. It was also an opportunity for me to showcase my knowledge of different musical styles and genres; many people assume that hip-hop artists only listen to hip-hop. Ben: What brings Billy and me together is music itself, just like she says so movingly at the end of “Black Bach.” What makes it work is our mutual respect and the fact that we trust each other. We are not judging what the other is doing musically. I like to think this is one of the reasons the music sounds sincere and breathes. “Start Now” was originally a solo guitar piece, part of a set of 11 Etudes I wrote in the late 90’s. It is rhythmically dominated by two different rhythms. Because of the groove and general upbeat feel of the piece it seemed a natural for Billy to rap to. Here I played it on my baritone guitar,

Lyrics Black Bach – Lyrics by Billy Dean Start Now – Lyrics by Billy Dean Purchase Click here to purchase songs Artists’ Notes Ben Verdery: My daughter Mitsuko asked me during the holidays if I’d heard her friend Billy Dean’s new music. I hadn’t, but immediately started listening and was captivated by the tone of Billy’s voice and the varied textures she was using in her music. I loved it! I’ve known Billy since she was eight. I remember her improvising on our little upright piano; I remember eavesdropping, thinking: This girl is a musician. Like me, she has to create music. It is not an option. Billy Dean: Since I was eight years old I have been living by the quote “There are no mistakes in art.” I began playing piano at Ben’s house. I was constantly exploring beyond my artistic boundaries. He would yell, “Keep practicing girlfriend! It’s sounding good in there!” encouraging my passion and creative exploration. Ben’s house became my creative safe haven. He’d never heard any of my songs until, behind my back, Mitsuko played one for him. Immediately after, I received an email from Ben stating that he appreciated the musicianship of my cadences, content and instrumentation. He said, “I am attaching ‘Allegro’ by Bach and I was thinking it might be perfect for you to rap to.” Ben: Why did I think Billy and I should rap over this Bach work? Because musicians from all cultures can relate in some manner to Bach’s music; it is truly music without borders. Given the rhythmic nature of the Allegro as well as the harmonic and melodic structure it seemed a natural for Billy. Billy: I was super excited to mesh hip-hop with classical, two genres I love. I was also thrilled that Ben, a professional musician, thought that I was worthy of an innovative partnership. I must have listened to the song ten times on my own and thought it wasn’t possible. However, I remember thinking: If I can write verses for a Bach arrangement with no drums or bass I can write to absolutely anything. I had to structure my brain around what I needed. A pulse. A beat. I decided to beatbox over the tune to give myself guidelines for arranging the lyrics to work with the movements. I began to memorize the melodic ups and downs, the retards, the refrains, everything. All I needed was some great content. Ben: When she asked me what she should rap about, I suggested her love of music. She did this and more. Her lyrics are moving and honest. Billy: I thought: Allegro means happy, so I should write about what makes me happy. Of course the one thing that keeps me in a healthy state of mind and spirit is my music. I wanted this piece to be a tribute to music. It was also an opportunity for me to showcase my knowledge of different musical styles and genres; many people assume that hip-hop artists only listen to hip-hop. Ben: What brings Billy and me together is music itself, just like she says so movingly at the end of “Black Bach.” What makes it work is our mutual respect and the fact that we trust each other. We are not judging what the other is doing musically. I like to think this is one of the reasons the music sounds sincere and breathes. “Start Now” was originally a solo guitar piece, part of a set of 11 Etudes I wrote in the late 90’s. It is rhythmically dominated by two different rhythms. Because of the groove and general upbeat feel of the piece it seemed a natural for Billy to rap to. Here I played it on my baritone guitar,