Podcasts about bill how

Enjoy this episode? Please share it with at least ONE friend who you think needs to hear it!Researcher, filmmaker, and truth seeker Faust Checho returns to expose the CIA's deep involvement in cocaine trafficking — and the explosive role that the Bush and Clinton families played in building a covert empire of drugs, power, and political corruption — in episode 196 of the Far Out with Faust podcast.

On today's show: Hurricane Helene made landfall late last night Alyssa has a bone to pick with Bill  Friday Free for All! - Brynne's question for the show illustrated where Alyssa's true loyalties lie...and it's not to Bill HOW is it possible that people get scammed on the internet when the scam is so obvious?? Alyssa's College of Knowledge! Alyssa tells us all about Moo Deng, because Bill was clueless Carole calls in with questions for Alyssa about her Vegas wedding, because Carole's daughter wants to do the same thing It doesn't take much for Bill's wife to get excited about something...and Alyssa too, apparently 

I have been lucky enough to speak to some of the most amazing people who have built the core of security on the Internet, and a person near the top of my list is … Torben P. Pedersen.  The Pedersen Commitment So how do we create a world where we can store our secrets in a trusted and then reveal them when required? Let's say I predict the outcome of an election, but I don't want to reveal my prediction until after the election. Well, I could store a commitment to my prediction, and then at some time in the future I could reveal it to you, and you can check against the commitment I have made. Anyone who views my commitment should not be able to see what my prediction is. This is known as Pedersen Commitment, and where we produce our commitment and then show the message that matches the commitment. In its core form, we can implement a Pedersen Commitment in discrete logs [here]. But blockchain, IoT, Tor, and many other application areas, now use elliptic curve methods, so let's see if we can make a commitment with them. The classic paper is here: So before the interview with Torben, here's an outline of the Pedersen Commitment: Interview Bill: Okay, so tell me a bit about yourself, and what got you into cryptography? Torben: Well, I was studying computer science at university in Aarhus, and I just thought it was an interesting subject that was somewhere between computer science and mathematics. Bill: And so you invented a method that we now know as the Pedersen Commitment. What motivated you to do that? And how does it work? And how do you think it will be used in the future? Torben: Well, the reason I worked with this, was that I was working with verifiable secret sharing. There was, at the time, a method for doing non-interactive verifiable secret sharing based on a commitment which was unconditionally binding and computationally hiding. At the time, there was also inefficient commitments, that had the property of being unconditionally hiding, and I thought it would be nice to have a verifiable secret share where you don't have to rely on any computational assumptions, in order to be sure that your secret is not revealed when you do a secret share. Torben: Then there was a paper which created an authentication scheme very similar to Schnorr. But it's used a similar idea for a useful commitment. And that was kind of the combination of those two (the existing non-interactive verifiable secret sharing and the ideas form this authentication scheme), which motivated me to do verifiable secret sharing. And the commitment scheme was, of course, an important part of that because it had unconditioned hiding property, and it had the mathematical structure that was needed for the secret sharing. Bill: And it has scaled into an elliptic curve world. But with elliptic curves and discrete logs now under threat, how would you see it moving forward into a possible post-quantum crypto world? Torben: The good thing about the commitment scheme is that it is unconditional hiding. Of course, you can be sure that your private information is not leaked, even in case a quantum computer is constructed. But of course, the protocols that are using this one have to see what effect does it have if one, for example using a quantum computer, can change ones mind about a commitment. So you need to see how that would affect those protocols. Bill: So an example use of the commitment could be of a secret say someone voting in an election. So you would see when the commitment was made, and then when the vote was cast. Then the person could reveal what their votes actually was. Now it's been extended into zero-knowledge methods to prove that you have enough cryptocurrency to pay someone without revealing the transactions. How does that world evolve where you only see an anonymized ledger, and which can scare some people, but for others that is a citizen-focused world? How do you see your commitment evolving into privacy-preserving ledgers? Torben: I go back to what we're doing at Concordium where we have a blockchain which gives a high assurance about the privacy of the users acting on the blockchain. At the same time, using zero-knowledge proof, we set it up in such a way that designated authorities — if they under certain circumstances, for example, are given a court order — they will be able to see to link an account on the blockchain for that particular person. So, actually the zero-knowledge proofs and the commitment schemes — and all that — is used to guarantee the privacy of the users acting on the blockchain, and there are also regulatory requirements, that it must be possible to identify people who misbehave on the blockchain. Bill: Yeah, that's a difficult thing, and it's probably where the secret is stored. So, if the secret is stored in the citizen's wallet, then only they can reveal that. And if the secret needs to be stored, for money laundering by an agency could hold it. Torben: Actually we do not have to store the secret of the user. But there are other keys which allow us to link the account with a particular user. That is something which only designated parties can do. So we have one party which is the identity provider with issues and identity to a user and other parties called anonymity reworkers. And those parties will have to work together in order to link an account to a user. We use zero-knowledge proofs when creating the account to assure that account is created in such a way that it is possible for you to trace back the account to the user. Bill: And in terms of zero-knowledge proofs, there is a sliding scale from highly complex methods that you would use for Monero and anonymized cryptocurrencies, to the simpler ones to Fiat Shamir implementation. And they are probably unproven in terms of their impact on performance and for security. Where is the sweet spot? What methods do you think are the best for that? Torben: I think we need to see improvements in zero-knowledge proofs in order to have really efficient blockchains and non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs on a blockchain. So I definitely think we need some work on that. There are some acceptable non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs for the moment. We are using Bulletproofs for the moment together with Shamir shares on it, in order to make it non-interactive. But I think there are some technologies like zkSnarks and zkStarks, but I think there's room for improvement. Bill: And what do you think the key challenges within cryptography just now What do we need to be working on in the next three to five years? Torben: Yeah, so the biggest challenge, as you already mentioned, and that's what happens if we have a quantum computer that can break the assumptions that a lot of the constructions are based on today. Whether we have a quantum computer, I don't know, but we need to be prepared. We have some post-quantum algorithms, which I think also are quite complex, and it would be nice to have something that was more efficient and better to use. I think there's also room for work on that aspect. Bill: And obviously, to create some toolkits that move away from an Ethernet world and where the Internet was really built on the seven-layer model — and it's flawed. We perhaps need to rebuild on a toolkit of math, so that we actually have a solid foundation. I know that Hyperledger is starting to build these tools for developers. When we do see that rebuilding happening, and where are the toolkits going to come from? Torben: Toolkits could come from blockchain companies such as Concordium, for example. It could also come from the community with sponsored projects. If we can build up an infrastructure that allows people to use blockchains in the ledger, without trusting one particular party, so that they can create a trust, which is probably lacking on the Internet today. It's very difficult, as with the current Internet it is very difficult to know if you can trust someone or not. I hope blockchain technology can help create an infrastructure for that. There's a long way to go. We need good public permissionless blockchains for that, so you don't have to rely on a particular party for this. Obviously, that is sufficient, but there's quite some way to go. Bill: How do you change the approach of governments and industries that have been around for hundreds of years. So if you look at the legal industry, they still typically only accept wet signatures. They might have a GIF of a signature and add it to a PDF, but that's as far as it goes. So how are we going to really transform governments and, and existing industries to really accept that digital signatures are the way to do these things? Torben: Yeah, I think it's a bit dangerous, you know, accepting these GIFs of signatures and digital signatures which are not really cryptographically secure. I'm not a big fan of that. I'd like to see us moving to digital signatures, which are the way that we originally envisaged in the cryptographic world, and where the party who signs the signature is in control of the key which created the digital signature. I hope you'll see a movement towards that level of security. Bill: And could you tell me a little bit about the Concordium Foundation and what's objectives on what it hopes to achieve? Torben: So our vision is to create a public permissionless blockchain that can help to create trust across industries. We want to enable entities such as businesses and private persons, to interact or act privately on the blockchain. At the same time, it's very important for us not to create an infrastructure, which allows criminals to misuse it, and for some money laundering problems. Thus we want to create an environment where it's possible to identify people who misbehave or break the rules. And that is why we have this identity layer as part of our blockchain. Bill: And what got you into blockchain? Torben: I think the technology is very interesting. There's a lot of things you said based on a lot of pretty old cryptography. There's also new developments, for example, the zero-knowledge proofs. So there's new and new developments or developments. So very interesting. I mean, it's not necessarily what I was interested in, but when I did research many years ago. That's probably what I wanted to work with. I have been working with cryptography — mostly in mostly for the financial sector for 25 years. And that's also very interesting. There are challenges and it's also nice to get back to the sort of basis that I worked with many years ago. Bill: You took a route into the industry but obviously you could have gone into academia and you could become a professor and have an academic research team. Torben: I think it was because I wanted to work with practical aspects of using cryptography. I've been in research for some years and I thought I needed to try something else. And I was very keen to see how it would be used in practice and be part of that. So that's why I made that step. Bill: What does our digital world look like that's made up of tokens, cryptographic tokens, consensus systems and digital identities. And you think that that world will come anytime soon that we can trade assets, we can have digital assets that can be traded. Torben: Well, it depends on what you mean by soon. I think we will have some way to go. I think the use of blockchains for trading tokens, for handling tokens, and for registering tokens, is an obvious thing, but we also need to bring value to businesses or projects. To have something that people can feel it and control. We need to make sure that information is protected the right way, even though it is registered on a public blockchain, for example.

Encore Presentation from August 4, 2023 Patrick answers listener questions about cremation, who witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus, do angels experience fear, and what is the history of the Oriental-Orthodox Church? Being happily married prevents working men from burnout David - I heard that 3 days and 3 nights in the 'heart of the earth' means that Jesus was under the control of men and Jerusalem. Which makes sense if you start that time at the agony of the garden, instead of the time starting when he was buried. What are your thought? Clifford (email) – I want to attend church, but my wife hates it. What should I do? Frank (email) – What is the history of the Oriental-Orthodox Church? Bill - How can the spirit feel the pain of purgatory or hell since it doesn't have a body anymore? Roz - If angels don't experience fear than does that mean they know the outcome? If they know the outcome than why do demons do what they do? Fernando - Transfiguration of Jesus: why were Moses and Elijah there? Teresa – Is it permissible for Catholics to be cremated?

In this episode of Why Isn't Everyone Doing This, Emily introduces a very special guest, YOU! Emily reviews four Ziva Mediation Student's questions and provides practical advice, guidance, and wisdom.   Join us as we unpack how to resume Ziva Meditation after grieving, navigating the complexities of feelings an emotions during meditation, finding time to meditate in the afternoon and how to introduce the power of Ziva to colleagues, friends and family.   ===   Do you have a question for Emily? Visit https://zivameditation.com/ask to submit yours today!   ===   For FREE bonus content such as mini-masterclasses from our guests and more, visit https://zivameditation.com/whythis/   ===   Have you watched our previous episodes with Jere Simpson?   Listen to Part 1 on Apple Podcasts:: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/using-ai-to-save-humanity-part-1-with-jere-simpson-ep-11/   Listen to Part 2 on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/using-ai-to-save-humanity-part-2-with-jere-simpson-ep-12 ===   00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:52 - Q. Maribel: How do I resume Ziva meditation while grieving? 00:03:26 - A. Emily's guidance to Maribel 00:08:18 - Q. Chiara: Why does my meditation practice feel "messy"? 00:09:48 - A. Emily's answer to Chiara 00:15:04 - Q. Sunnyside Su: How do I find time to fit afternoon meditation in? 00:16:05 - A. Emily's response to Sunnyside Su 00:20:56 - Q. Bill: How do I introduce people to Ziva & your work? 00:21:40 - A. Emily's advice to Bill 00:27:35 - Conclusion   ===   Emily is the founder of Ziva and has taught over 50,000 people. Her best-selling book, Stress Less, Accomplish More, debuted at #7 out of all books on Amazon and has been translated into 12 languages.   Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Vogue and ABC. She's been named one of the top 100 women in wellness to watch and has taught at Apple, Google and Harvard Business School.   A formerly stressed Broadway performer who was going gray at 27, Emily discovered a powerful practice that cured her insomnia and improved her health on the first day. Her transformation was so dramatic that she felt inspired to share it with others.   It's Emily's mission to help as many people as possible achieve extraordinary benefits — like dramatically reduced stress, anxiety relief and deep, restful sleep.   ===   Ready to start your life-altering Ziva practice? Click here to start now: Free Meditation Masterclass: https://zivameditation.com/freemasterclass/ Learn More: https://zivameditation.com/ Join us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zivameditation/

Patrick answers listener questions about cremation, who witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus, do angels experience fear, and what is the history of the Oriental-Orthodox Church? Being happily married prevents working men from burnout David - I heard that 3 days and 3 nights in the 'heart of the earth' means that Jesus was under the control of men and Jerusalem. Which makes sense if you start that time at the agony of the garden, instead of the time starting when he was buried. What are your thought? Clifford (email) – I want to attend church, but my wife hates it. What should I do? Frank (email) – What is the history of the Oriental-Orthodox Church? Bill - How can the spirit feel the pain of purgatory or hell since it doesn't have a body anymore? Roz - If angels don't experience fear than does that mean they know the outcome? If they know the outcome than why do demons do what they do? Fernando - Transfiguration of Jesus: why were Moses and Elijah there? Teresa – Is it permissible for Catholics to be cremated?

From IT Manager to the CIO of a Gigafactory, Listening, Earning and Keeping a Seat at the Table  On this episode, I am joined by Justin Herman, VP and CIO of Panasonic Energy of North America. Starting  out as an IT Manager for Coca-Cola Bottling Co., he worked his through the ranks in manufacturing and eventually moved from South Africa to the United States.   Presently, Justin leads the technology division for Panasonic Energy at their Gigafactory out of Sparks, Nevada.  Key Wins and Takeaways for You:  How to Show Business Partners the True Value of IT   Speed and Agility for Innovation: “The way we innovate within the Gigafactory is unlike anything I have personally seen on the manufacturing side. We've been here for about six years now, so basically, we're a startup and we continue to think as a startup. We're a 100-year-old company that thinks like a startup.”  The Power of a Mission Driven Company: Building a world of cleaner energy.  How to Use Fusion Teams: Building your speed and agility significantly while transforming your innovation.  How to use the Ontological layer of your business coupled with AI and ML to transform your business, processes and speed of innovation.   How to Select the Right Edge, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud Partners for You  How to Achieve and Keep Your Seat at the Table  Justin's Superpower of ‘Active Listening:' “Step back, listen, and understand the pain points. Bring those notes back home in a quiet space and reflect on them.”  The Value of Mentorships   As a CIO and Business IT Leader here are more wins you will get by listening: (3:00) Bill: “What's the change that's happening in manufacturing?”  (3:57) Justin: “Our business leaders have really brought the IT leaders into their decision-making because they understand the role we play and how we can create those efficiencies within multiple facets.”  (4:18) Justin: “As we innovate, and as new technologies come on board, we're able to sit down with our business partners and show true value.”  (6:13) Bill: “What is a Gigafactory?”  (8:19) Justin: “Failure to innovate will put you at a competitive disadvantage.”  (8:22) Bill: How do you do that with a legacy business?”  (8:42) Justin: “We believe the future is in energy and it is our mission to go and change the world through cleaner energy.”  (13:27) Bill: “What does the ontological layer mean regarding ML and AI and Gigafactories?”  (15:52) Bill: “How you went about the journey of finding the right partner?”  (16:55) Justin: “Take a step back, understand your business, the data, and most likely what you're going to end up with is a hybrid model.”  (18:20) Bill: “How do you focus on the 80-20 principle?”  (18:45) Justin: “Having a seat at the table is extremely important.”   (21:08) Bill: “What skills did you come to need to have set in-house?”  (21:42) Justin: “There's always a balance between your FTEs in-house and your managed services that you use externally.”  (24:20) Justin: “Being able to sit and communicate to your business leaders and talk to them in a manner they understand while taking a step back to actively listen.”  (26:48) Bill: “What books have been the biggest impact for you?”  (29:45) Justin: “Never pass up an opportunity to keep quiet.”  (32:18) Justin: “How people are looking at security nowadays…invest in people as a number one firewall.”  (35:39) Justin: “Take it in, learn, listen, because everything you're doing today is going to provide the opportunities that you're going to get tomorrow.”  (36:17) Justin: “We all as leaders have a responsibility to give back. Let's train the leaders of the future and let's help them as well.”  (36:46) Bill: “All leaders need to be looking and surround themselves with the five people that are not necessarily their peers but are in front of them a little bit.”  (37:20) Justin: “As technologists, it is our responsibility to push the envelope, to get a seat at the table with our business partners to help innovation. Let's try to create a cleaner energy environment through technology.”    Resources  Connect with Justin on LinkedIn  “CIO Paradox” by Martha Heller  “Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giants” by Ray Wang  ChatGPT 

Welcome back to my podcast. On today's episode, I am joined by “Pro Troublemaker,” professional business coach, and president of Stefanie Krievins & Co., Stefanie Krievins. Since earning her trained coaching certification through Erickson's International in 2014, Stefanie has built a company and team of “troublemakers” that provide tools for others to help them define their organization's vision, work with trust and accountability, and communicate clearly to advocate for their own ideas.  Here are some of the top transformational wins you will receive as an IT leader:  How to Navigate Multiple Generations within the Workforce  The Power of Seven Messages, Seven Channels, Seven Times  Using the DISC Behavioral Method to Better Understand Your Team  How to Build Self Awareness  How to Run a Better and Effective Meeting  How to Start Small and Build Stronger Leadership Skills  Tune in and hear how you can transform your skills as a leader and create actions that leave an impact. As a CIO and Business IT Leader here are some wins you will get by listening: (1:05) Stefanie: “We get to work with ambitious, fast growing scaling companies when they have messy, middle, growing pains." (2:10) Bill: “What is happening that there's an opportunity for you and your organization to work for people to solve their particular problems?” (3:13) Stefanie: “I'm seeing a lot of leaders trying to use a consensus model of decision-making, which can be the fastest way to get nothing done.” (3:50) Stefanie: “For folks who want to run a high-performance team, hard times call for bold decisions.” (5:01) Stefanie: “We need to, as leaders, broaden our skillset when it comes to who makes the decision, how do they make it, who's involved so that our organization can continue to grow.”  (5:42) Bill: “What's the genesis of consensus decision making?”  (10:18) Stefanie: “There are new ways for you to be more transparent in your company in a way that makes sense for your business.”  (10:47) Stefanie: “One of my goals is to help people understand those nuances that create friction every single day. Seven messages, seven channels, seven times.”  (14:17) Stefanie: “Repetition is the magic of making your messages stick.”  (14:28) Bill: “Is that sort of the empowerment you're trying to establish if you don't have the view of the CEO in mind but rather an individual leader within their company?”  (15:46) Bill: “If you're coming in from a technical orientation versus an analytical, do you find that people have different things you have to coach them up on?”  (16:17) Stefanie: “We are big fans of the DISC behavioral assessment.”  (20:40) Bill: “You're essentially using this model to make sure that we know where we all are from our own style.”  (21:46) Stefanie: “Just recognizing that you need other people to help you make decisions.”  (22:18) Stefanie: “You need a high performing team that knows how to leverage all styles so they can make the best decisions possible.”  (23:14) Bill: “It is one thing to make a fast decision, but it is another thing to make a fast implementation.”  (25:09) Bill: “Is there a recommended meeting style or cadence that gives a framework for people?”  (27:39) Bill: “How do you coach a team or an individual on how to hold people accountable?”  (28:36) Stefanie: “We have to remember that the accountability is the other person's responsibility.”  (32:08) Stefanie: “You have to define what kind of meeting it is so people understand how to best participate.”  (37:54) Stefanie: “Spend the first 20% of every single workday being completely unavailable to anybody else to do your deepest, most important work.”  (38:38) Stefanie: “Start with the work where you add the most value.” Resources: Stefanie Krievins' LinkedIn  Stefanie Krievins & Co.  Stefanie's Podcast: Hot Mess Hotline  

We are excited to announce that the most listened-to podcast for 2022 was our interview with Jeff Gothelf on the topic of Objectives and Key Results (or OKRs). We are excited to share this rebroadcast to celebrate that milestone and introduce our new listeners to the topic! In today's podcast, Jeff Gothelf shares the importance of Objectives and Key Results (or OKRs). Jeff shares the proper way to define OKRs, sharing relatable stories that help you think through how to use them effectively. In the podcast, Jeff shares how to define and use OKRs. Using solid examples, Jeff shares the following topics with Bill: ✅ How to define OKRs based on strategic goals ✅ How leadership defines OKRs for their business ✅ Understand how teams align to OKRs with leadership ✅ How to measure our success in meeting our objectives ✅ Leadership advice to successfully implement OKRs

Josh Barro joins the group to reflect on Queen Elizabeth, analyze President Biden's democracy speech, interpret the midterm tea leaves, and evaluate what lessons we must learn from the poor US response to COVID-19. Highlights & Lowlights Mona: How Not To Write A Constitution - Persuasion (https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-not-to-write-a-constitution) Bill: How reactionary is MAGA? Try the first century B.C. - The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/07/jd-vance-fascist-roman-imperialist-caesar/) Linda: The Man Who Won the Republican Party Before Trump Did - The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/opinion/pat-buchanan-donald-trump.html) Damon: Mark Lilla: Yearning for Questions - Meditations with Zohar (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-lilla-yearning-for-questions/id1608391571?i=1000578690878) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Josh Barro joins the group to reflect on Queen Elizabeth, analyze President Biden's democracy speech, interpret the midterm tea leaves, and evaluate what lessons we must learn from the poor US response to COVID-19. Highlights & Lowlights Mona: How Not To Write A Constitution - Persuasion (https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-not-to-write-a-constitution) Bill: How reactionary is MAGA? Try the first century B.C. - The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/07/jd-vance-fascist-roman-imperialist-caesar/) Linda: The Man Who Won the Republican Party Before Trump Did - The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/opinion/pat-buchanan-donald-trump.html) Damon: Mark Lilla: Yearning for Questions - Meditations with Zohar (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-lilla-yearning-for-questions/id1608391571?i=1000578690878) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Page - I am a director at a Pentecostal teen center. Many of them are Anti-Catholic and I am wondering how do I navigate the hatred they have for Mary? What do you think about AA? Bill - How should you respond if a spirit contacts you? Lee - What is your understanding of the book of Sirach 7: 14? Liz - Is it wrong for me to use a white sheep/black sheep idiom when talking about the Good Shepard and saving sheep? Joe - As a nurse is it ethical for my wife to be in the same room as the Doctor who is performing Hysterectomy? Saul - Why do I feel more at peace with the Hail Mary Prayer than the Our Father? What should I do about this?

Patricia-My child is learning the Hail Mary in catechism. They added a part in the prayer which concerns me about other things they are changing. What should I do? Charles- I thank the Lord that the USA invented the atomic Bomb first because if another country had found the tech first it could have been much worse. David-Can you expound on the Doctrine of Double Effect? Donna-can we make something good out of something evil? Dan-On the atomic bomb issue, sometimes you have to take a life to save a life Geri-I struggle with forgiveness in my mind. Listening to RR has helped me forgive myself. Cindy-I want comment on my moms reaction to the A bombs of WWII. Wasn't till she learned about the truth of what the bombs did that she had a change of me Sam-I found an article about how Japan said that all their civilians had to function as Militia. Would that justify the dropping of the Bomb? Bill-How do you reconcile the doctrine of self defense with the dropping of the Atom bombs.

Welcome to Episode 100 (!!!) of The RPG After Years! This week, Scott and Rich revisit every RPG they've ever reviewed for the show and re-rate them to see if time has changed their opinions! The RPG After Years is hosting an RPG Club! It's like a book club, but with RPGs, and we hope all of you play along! The current game is Chrono Trigger, and the current checkpoint is to use the Time Egg/Crono Doll by Sunday, March 6th! Teatime with Bill: How does Bill feel about the show reaching 100 episodes? He also joins in on the re-reviewing fu! Catch-up: What have the boys been playing? Scott beat Zelda: The Minish Cap and Metal Slug X, and is now having un with Horizon: Forbidden West! Rich has been back into Destiny 2. In the news: Atlus has announced Soul Hackers 2! News: NieR: Automata is getting an anime adaptation. Yay? News: Pokemon Violet and Scarlet are announced WHILE we were recording! We go over our initial thoughts. Main discussion: Scott and Rich revisit each RPG they've ever reviewed and speedily re-rate them to see how their feelings have changed. Next week: more Pokemon Scarlet and Violet talk. We'll also be holding the penultimate Chrono Trigger RPG Club! Please support the show at patreon.com/rpgafteryears Join us on our Discord server! discord.gg/3WPBgur Watch the show live on Twitch! We typically stream the main episodes at 9am EST on Sundays. Keep an eye out on Twitter and Discord for extra bonus recordings or time changes. It's all at twitch.tv/rpgafteryears You can also find Scott on Twitch over at twitch.tv/the_scott_spot! Send a Carrier Pigeon or Whatever: Twitter: @RPGYEARS Personal Twitters: Rich: @Hailblue1569, Scott: @TheScottSpot, Jay: @jaydhizzle, Bill: @Metunnica, Corey: @VFLCorey Email: rpgafteryears@gmail.com Check out our merch store at https://www.redbubble.com/people/RPGAfterYears/explore We Can Make This Work Probably Network: This podcast is a production of the We Can Make This Work (Probably) Network follow us below to keep up with this show and discover our many other podcasts! The place for those with questionable taste! ProbablyWork.com,Twitter, Facebook, Instagram @ProbablyWorkEmail: ProbablyWorkPod@gmail.com Master list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13CgtJfptz1S3Da2HUsJDK86SfAIPMGA-Rmi4YZUpTGw/edit?usp=sharing Album art by Dizzy Designs: designsbydizzy.com

I had the opportunity to sit down with celebrity cosmetic dentist, Dr. Bill Dorfman. We chatted about how he came up in the world from childhood to creating one of the most famous dentist practices in Studio City, CA. On top of the practice he created, he also started Discus Dental with a dear friend of his, which was a global leader in professional tooth whitening products with brands such as Zoom®!, BriteSmile®, and NiteWhite® and they eventually sold the company to Royal Philips Electronics for millions. Dr. Bill has appeared on Larry King Live, Oprah, The Doctors and was the only dentist to appear on ABC's Extreme Makeover. Now with his extremely successful career, he has turned some of his focus towards philanthropy and the LEAP Foundation for high school and college students. You're going to see this side of Dr. Bill and his passion towards entrepreneurship, success, giving back and his foundation. As always, thanks so much for listening to the podcast and I would so appreciate a rating of 5 starts and a review. It would really mean the world to me. Much love, Joe Dr. Bill Dorfman Celebrity Cosmetic Dentist, Partner of Discus Dental, Inventor of Zoom! and Founder of the LEAP Foundation Author of: Billion Dollar Smile: A Complete Guide to Your Extreme Smile Makeover Website: https://www.billdorfmandds.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbilldorfman/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrBillDorfman LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drbilldorfman/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrBillDorfman Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, my guest today is Dr. Bill Dorfman. Dr. Bill, welcome.   Dr. Bill: Thank you. How are you?   Joe: Great. So it's a pleasure to have you here with a lot of the guests that I have on, I really like to give the audience an idea of who you are and not just jump in to where we are today. So if can you give us some background of your time line, how you decided to get into dentistry where you grew up, just kind of bring us up to today is is slow, slower, as fast as you want to.   Dr. Bill: Sure, I am a native of California, I grew up in Granada Hills as a little kid, I happen to have an accident where I knocked out my baby teeth. We had a great family dentist. And at some point I just thought this would be a cool thing to do and help people the way he helped me. And so at the age of about three, I said, I'm going to be a dentist. And it just never wavered. I was a weird kid. I mean, how many kids want to be a dentist? Right. But I've always been weird and I've always kind of marched to the beat of a different drum. I never felt like I fit into any, like, group or peg. I just kind of always did my own thing. I was like the Switzerland of a kid. I was friends with everybody, but not really part of anything, you know, like I swam. But I wasn't always with the swimmers and I played football, but I wasn't with the football players and student government. But, like, I just was kind of a free spirited kid that didn't really I didn't really, like, do what most normal kids do. I don't know. It was funny. I had this conversation with my parents recently and I said, you know.   Dr. Bill: How was I as a kid, like was I easy to raise, hard to raise, and they're like, you are perfect like you. And, you know, and I honestly don't ever remember I never argued with my parents. I never got into trouble. I was a weird kid. I just I always just kind of did what I was supposed to do. I guess it was in my mind, like the path of least resistance. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs. Like I mean, I always kind of just did what I was supposed to do and I was happy go lucky guy. And, you know, I went to school and it's funny because I was always voted most likely to succeed in kindergarten, in grade school and junior high and high. And I was like, why do people always say that? I don't know. It was just a weird thing, even in dental school and. You know, we grew up really poor. I mean, I was one of five kids, I started working when I was five years old. I had a job. I worked in in the in the yard for neighbors. I would go pick weeds. And then when I was old enough to push a lawnmower, I would pull weeds and do the lawn mower.   Dr. Bill: And then when I got a little bit older, I got a job working at Ralph's, which is a grocery store. And then I worked as a janitor. My mother was a nursery school teacher. And so I would go to school and I would work as a janitor and clean the schools. And, you know, my parents, I would say we were rich, rich, rich in love, poor monetary things. And maybe that was good, you know? I mean, I literally supported myself. I mean, outside of buying food, all my clothes, everything I wanted, I just I bought you know, it's funny because I have three daughters and I almost feel like when they got into college, I got into college, too, because I was so active in helping them write their entrance stuff and did it. But my parents had no idea. You know, one day I got a letter, I'm like, Hey, Mom, Dad, I'm going to UCLA. They're like, Oh, that's great, sweetie. Then they'll clue, you know? I mean, it was just that's just how it was. I was the independent kid. I just did my own thing. I remember. Graduating UCLA, I got a call from the dean's office and I was awarded the outstanding senior award, which is kind of a big deal, right?   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: So I call my folks and my mom, dad, I get on the phone, they're both on the phone. I'm like, you won't believe this. I said, well, I just got a call from the dean's office and I'm going to be the outstanding senior at UCLA graduating class. My mother says, What's not to believe? A lot. They picked me, there's ten thousand students,   Joe: Right.   Dr. Bill: She goes, darling, do you really think there's somebody better?   Joe: That's awesome.   Dr. Bill: I'm like, Mom, you're like totally missing. My parents had no idea. And it was actually kind of funny, you know, and, you know, so, you know, I kind of went through and I graduate UCLA. I finished that, you know, going to UCLA. And then I got in a dental school. My first choice is dental, which was a great school. It was a three year program. And as I was entering my senior year, I realized, you know, I've never seen the world or anything. Actually, I had never even really been on an airplane. And it's like I need to open up this practice and be tethered to a specific area. Like I didn't want to do that. So I did some research and I found a program in Switzerland that was the only clinic literally in the world that wasn't a third world country where an American dentist could work legally. Problem is, there were four hundred applicants and only one position, and I was bound and determined to get that. So I had every professor in my dental school write me a letter of recommendation. And they were amazing letters, you know. I know. I wrote them all I   Joe: That's   Dr. Bill: Mean,   Joe: Right.   Dr. Bill: Basically, I would say, can you write me a letter and they do I know I have to   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: Write another letter and then say I'll write it if your personal lives. So I did that and I soon realized that was getting me nowhere. So then I started calling the director of the clinic back in nineteen eighty three. This was not easy. We didn't have cell phones. You know, I, you know, I couldn't make long distance phone calls from my dental school, you know, what am I getting like keep putting quarters like a lot of your millennialist. Don't you know that you actually used to have to put money in a pay   Joe: Exactly,   Dr. Bill: Phone. Right.   Joe: I was there.   Dr. Bill: Right. So there is and you can use a credit card and none of this. So I would have to time it at home. And and even then, it wasn't easy. A lot of times you couldn't get through. It didn't work at the bank. I start calling him and calling him and I tell kids and we'll talk about my leave program a little later on, there will be life defining moments in your life. Sometimes you plan on, sometimes you don't. Sometimes they just happen. And this was one that I really didn't plan, but it was so fortuitous that it happened. And I'm on the phone with the director. His name was Mr. Schreyer. And I said as I realized I was getting nowhere with these phone calls. Can I take you to lunch? Because I had heard somewhere that, like, you should take people to lunch   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: And the crazy thing is and he said it, he goes, But you're in San Francisco and I'm in Switzerland, I'm like, no problem, I'll fly there. Which is even crazier because I was broke like I had no money. I couldn't even afford, like the 30 cents to go on the bus every day of school. That's how broke I was. I would walk like two miles. And so he said yes. And I figured out a way to borrow money. And I went to Switzerland   Joe: Wait, but don't   Dr. Bill: And   Joe: Go past   Dr. Bill: I.   Joe: This point. Wait, I want to know what you told your parents when you said I'm going to Switzerland to take the head of the department at the dental school. Out to lunch. I want to know what your parents said to that.   Dr. Bill: They thought it was a great idea.   Joe: That's incredible.   Dr. Bill: Good luck. You know,   Joe: That's   Dr. Bill: I mean,   Joe: Awesome.   Dr. Bill: They had no clue. So anyhow, I did it. There was a girl that I had been friends with my whole life that, you know, I had kind of hoped that I would marry one day. That never happened. But we're still best friends. But I took her with me and I figured if I got stuck on words, she was very talkative and she could help me out. But the two of us took him to lunch and he hired me.   Joe: That's   Dr. Bill: And   Joe: Incredible.   Dr. Bill: It literally changed my life. I mean, I got an opportunity to live in Europe. For two years, I learned how to ski trip about salesmanship of the scandal to I'm completely fluent in French. I   Joe: Wow.   Dr. Bill: And I was really not gifted in languages in school. I mean, and I still I have a godson in Switzerland. I mean and I still have very close friends there. So it was a great, great, great experience for me. And it really gave me an opportunity to see the world. I came back to L.A. I really became enamored with cosmetic dentistry as opposed to just general dentistry. And so I did something that we also teach Italy. It's called Kopi Genius. I realized that the last thing Beverly Hills needed was another cosmetic dentist. So I found the five most successful cosmetic dentists and I called all of them and I said, Can I come in Chattanooga? Shadowing wasn't even a thing back then like they were what do what   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: I'm like now coming to watch you. And I did. And, you know, there weren't a lot of students at the time doing this, but they all five of them said the same thing to me. You're really different. I think what they were saying in a nice way is you're weird, but they're really different, you know, because students would come in and watch me do dentistry. And that's not what I did. What I did was I went in, I wanted to see how they brought the patients in the intake forms, what they said to the patients, how they brought them back to the treatment rooms, how they presented the treatment, and then how they performed the treatment, and then how they took the patient out of the room, how they collected money. I wanted to get paid and I didn't know how to collect money from people working in dental school. They teach you how to drill teeth. And in the clinic in Switzerland, I didn't have to deal with money. I just did the work. So I wanted to learn how a business ran and all that. And I sat there like a sponge in these offices. And my goal was to make an office better than theirs, to take the best of the best from all of these these guys and make a better dental office.   Dr. Bill: And within two years I did it. You know, I had the busiest and probably still have the busiest dental office in all of Beverly Hills because I copy Genius and that's what I did on Instagram and Instagram became popular. I didn't just do it. I hired a whole team. I'm only going to in the world with a million followers on Instagram. You know, I didn't just do it. One of the things I teach, at least when you go go big and that's what I do, if I'm going to do something, I commit and I do it. So, you know, I started this dental practice soon after that, I started a company called Discus Dental where I invented Zoom. And we grew that company from zero to one point three dollars billion in sales. And I did it by hiring a great team. My best friend, Robert Heyman, was my business partner and he was a genius. And his father was Fred Hammond, who created Beverly Hills Giorgio Cosmetics, two seven, three of all Fred.   Joe: Well.   Dr. Bill: So Robert grew up in that industry. So he knew marketing and manufacturing and advertising. I knew dentistry and advertising. And together we built the largest tooth whitening company in the world. Zoom became Q to became the number one to fly new product in the world. And then we sold that company to Phillips back in 2010. And since then, I've been the featured dentist on ABC's Extreme Makeover, CBS of Doctors New York Times, best selling author, 20 Lifetime Achievement Award. Three Children, two ex-wives. This Thrill Ride.   Joe: Incredible. So I have to ask you, and this is for the entrepreneurs in the audience, because the question that would come to my mind is you're fresh back in the states from Switzerland and you decide that you're going to plant roots and probably one of the most expensive real estate areas in the world. How do you start up a dental office in the heart of Beverly Hills?   Dr. Bill: So I basically didn't put all my eggs in one basket, I grew up in Granada Hills, the difference between Granada Hills and Beverly Hills is astronomical. The only commonality is the word Ilze. Right. But I didn't know where I would usually drive more. I had the advantage holes of all the people I grew up with living there and coming to me. But I loved the allure of Beverly Hills. So I worked as an associate in two different dental offices. So it didn't cost me anything. I was a hired gun. I would go in and work and bring in patients. And I soon realized that I loved cosmetic dentistry. I love the mentality of people in a business area like centricity and, you know, and not so much kind of like family dentistry. And so I pretty much closed down the office and Granada Hills worked in in Century City. And the plan was I was working with an older fellow to buy him out. Well, as soon as we started getting closer and closer to the buyout date, I think my enthusiasm became infectious. And he decided he didn't want to quit anymore.   Joe: Oh.   Dr. Bill: And he was very sweet. And he said, you know, Bill, he said, you can do this by yourself. He said, you don't need to buy my practice. I'm going to stay here, open up your own practice. You have enough pay. I had more patients than he did   Joe: Oh,   Dr. Bill: After   Joe: Wow.   Dr. Bill: Just two years. And so I did. It was really fortuitous that the dentist right next door to us moved out of the building. And so there was a completely furnished dental suite. I didn't have to do any build out at all. All of the plumbing, the gas, the soft, everything was there. So I was really lucky. I moved into that suite is on the 11th floor, my building, and the only thing I needed was all the dental equipment, the chairs and the   Joe: Mm   Dr. Bill: Lights   Joe: Hmm.   Dr. Bill: And this and then another stroke of luck. There was a dentist in our building who was four or five flights above me who passed away. And there was a fully furnished dental office up there of all this equipment. And the building didn't know what to do with it. And it was a mess. It was a mess. So I went up there and and I had it evaluated and assessed. I was going to try and take out a loan or something. And the appraisal came in at close to seventy five thousand dollars for all that. I had three thousand dollars in the bank at the time. I mean, that's it. And so I, I went and I spoke to the owner of our building and I said, listen, I've been up on in that suite and it's it's a mess. I mean, and it was it was really disgusting and dirty. And I said, I will empty the suite. I will take all of the equipment, I will clean everything up and get it ready for you to read. And I'll give you three thousand dollars cash. And he said, fine.   Joe: Wow, that's   Dr. Bill: And   Joe: Chris.   Dr. Bill: I still I still have a lot of those instruments, and I this is 40 years I've been practicing. I have all the surgical like four extractions and I have all that stuff still in my office with that doctor's name engraved in it. But that was how I really opened up my office. I had no budget. I had no ad budget. Like, I couldn't advertise, but I realized something. And as an entrepreneur, I would say you need to sit back, look at your situation and really think outside the box. And this is what I did. I thought, OK, I'm in Century City. There is a five block radius of buildings around my office with 20000 thousand people coming to work every day. Right.   Joe: Hmm.   Dr. Bill: We know on average that 50 percent of those people don't have a regular dentist. OK, so that's you know, what was I'm sorry. It was fifty thousand people in that area. So that's twenty five thousand people don't have a regular dentist that work for me. Of those, twenty five thousand eighty percent of them work in companies with dental insurance so they don't even have to pay anything. They just need to come in and because I'm so close, they can walk over, they wouldn't have to drive. So what I did is I hired five kids from Beverly Hills High School, which is right next door to my dental office. And I made up these flyers for I think I paid three hundred bucks and I had them put a flyer in every single office in Century City. Now, this was way before 9/11, so there was no restrictions   Joe: Right.   Dr. Bill: You could go. And so basically by doing that, the flyer gave people a great first time offering to my office. If they had dental insurance, it was free. And I got something like 80 patients the very first month. And if we continue to do that and so we were basically getting patients in two ways, internal and external. Internal was taking the patients that came in, giving them the greatest dental experience we could and asking them to refer friends and then externally going out and putting out more and more and more flyers and bringing in patients. The next month I got something like one hundred new patients. And honestly, since then I have probably had no less than 90 new patients a month my entire career. And there were I mean, and the average dentist gets like 20. But I have never not been busy even during the pandemic. We've been busy. I'm busier now than I've been in years because I always say I invented Zoom when people think I the video conference, what it was. But people are sitting on Zoom looking at their smile,   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: Going, I'm not really happy with that. I'm doing more cosmetic dentistry right now than I've ever done in my life. It's it's a   Joe: That's   Dr. Bill: Boom.   Joe: Crazy. And when you said when you started your practice you were going to concentrate on cosmetic surgery, so were all of these new patients coming in just for cosmetic stuff, not for cleanings, or were you doing   Dr. Bill: Well,   Joe: That also?   Dr. Bill: First of all, it wasn't cosmetic surgery, it was cosmetic dentistry,   Joe: Ok.   Dr. Bill: But as a cosmetic dentist, yeah, we do regular dentistry too and do   Joe: At.   Dr. Bill: Fillings and crowns and cleanings and everything else that you need to do to maintain your oral care. But the focus of my of my practice, the thing that really differentiates me from most dentists is the fact that I do, you know, cosmetic dentistry. And I have a very high profile clientele for that.   Joe: Yep, so that's my next question, you get right into it perfectly. How did you get   Dr. Bill: Ok.   Joe: Like with any entrepreneur? Obviously, if you provide a really great service, you're going to get talked about right. And automatically you're going to get known. And like for my business, I have an entertainment booking agency here in Scottsdale and Phoenix. Somebody writes to me, calls me. They have an answer. Within an hour or so, I'm known for my response time. And then the product I deliver is a very high product with you. How did you get that first step into a clientele that you now have?   Dr. Bill: So there's a few things. First of all, you said something, you said you automatically get no wrong. You don't automatically   Joe: No,   Dr. Bill: Get   Joe: You   Dr. Bill: No.   Joe: Do it yourself, you write.   Dr. Bill: You know, it takes work,   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: You know, I was really fortunate early on in my career, there's a woman that I went to high school with as very close. But if you came in and needed a lot of dental work and said, hey, do you want to barter what I got, even though the barter was   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: I was so naive when it came to business. And then I said, well, what do you do? She goes, I'm a publicist. I'm like, I don't need one of those. She goes, Yeah, you do. I'm like, I don't even know what one was. So I don't leap of faith. I thought, OK, fine, we'll barter and we'll do it. She was genius. I mean, she got me in magazines, journals. She got me listed as the best dentist in L.A. in L.A. magazine, which was huge that, you know, she she was friends with the editor. She got the whole editorial staff to come in and be my patient. They loved their experience. And so they ranted and raved about my practice. And those things started building up my practice. And, you know, I can get more into the whole PR thing, but that was really a big mindshift for me. I never thought as a dentist I would have like a publicist. I mean, and the crazy thing is today I'm probably the best known dentist in the world. Go figure.   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: Right. But a lot of things happen. And, you know, I always tell kids when they come to leak, if there's only two concepts that you walk away from from this whole program, these are the two that I think are most important. Number one, don't wait for opportunities in life. Make them, you know, I mean, if I meet another millennial who's sitting there waiting for the universe to do something, I want to scream and pull my hair out. Like the universe doesn't care about you at all. You need to care about you. And number two, when you get an opportunity in life, don't take it. M. it. There's a big difference   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: When ABC put me on Extreme Makeover dentistry, great TV, not so good. You know, if I watch the first two episodes of that show, I literally stunk like they should have fired me. But at least I was smart enough to know how bad I was. So instead of waiting to get fired, I was proactive. I took acting classes, hosting classes, teleprompter in class. I hired the woman who worked with all the kids on American Idol to sit down with me and teach me how to do what we're doing right now. To interview, to talk. I mean, this was not natural for me. It wasn't at all. But, you know, if you practice and you practice and you practice, you get better at things. And there's a big misconception. We always think practice makes what?   Joe: Perfect.   Dr. Bill: Ron.   Joe: Right.   Dr. Bill: Practice makes permanent.   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: So with your practicing in, you're not getting the results you want, don't keep doing that, get a mentor, get a coach, hire somebody and learn how to do it right, because you need to practice it the right way. Right. To make it perfect. And   Joe: So.   Dr. Bill: So there was a lot of learning for me. But, you know, at the end of the day, it paid off.   Joe: Then would your grandmother say you look thin? Is that what she said? She looks.   Dr. Bill: The first time I was on TV, I said, Grandpa, this is a woman who never said anything bad to anybody. I said, Gramps, did you see me on TV? She goes, Of course I did. I said, What do you think? She says? You look very   Joe: If   Dr. Bill: Skinny.   Joe: It's.   Dr. Bill: I'm like, But what do you think about what I did? She goes, I'm telling you, you were skinny.   Joe: I want to talk a lot about Lee, because even though you said, like, the universe doesn't care, I I also believe and I'm a big Dave Meltzer fan and he's sort of my mentor at this point that we get in our own way. And so there is abundance out there. And if we get out of the way and we just know what we want and we ask for it and we act accordingly, things come. So this connection with you means a lot to me because of Lee. Before we get to that, do you want to talk a little bit about your own podcast? Just because the lead part of it for me is huge and I really want to concentrate on that until our time runs out, so.   Dr. Bill: Well, I mean, the know the way that my podcast ties in the league is, Leape is a motivational leadership program for high school and college students that we do every summer. And it's always been at UCLA Live. Obviously, last year it was virtual. This year, I think we'll have probably one hundred students live and maybe ten thousand virtual.   Joe: Oh,   Dr. Bill: But   Joe: My gosh.   Dr. Bill: It's been amazing. And if any of your listeners have kids or no kids, fifteen to twenty five will be July 18th to the twenty fourth. They could get more information at w w w dot leap foundation dot com. We've had amazing speakers Paula Abdul, Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Kathy Bates, Michael Strahan, Usher, Apollo Ohno, Jason Alexander. I mean, I could go on and on and on. And these people come, they speak to these kids and they they give them their pearls. They give them their words of wisdom to help these kids become successful. And it's it's an amazing program. And, you know, I was always fearful that people would look at is like one and done like we have them for a week. But by putting out content continuously, we're able to stay in touch with the kids and we have the students stay in touch with each other. And so because I've been able to interview all these amazing people, I started this podcast. It's called Meet the Mentor. And every week I. I interview another person. A big part of Leape is mentorship. The program culminates on Friday with a mentor workshop where I bring in doctors and lawyers and firefighters and writers and actors and actresses, you name it, and the kids get an opportunity to sit and talk to these people one on one and ask them about their careers. And it's so valuable. And it's it's literally the highlight of the week for these students. So I continue that throughout the year by doing this. Meet the Mentor podcast. How is it done? Crazy. I mean, we're number one in Yemen. We're number two in Iceland, number three in Finland. And I think I'm ninety fourth in the category of forty seven thousand of these podcast in the US. And it's it's it's been phenomenal. And the purpose is twofold. One, to keep students engaged and keep, you know, exposing them to different mentors and to to expose parents and friends and family to lead. And hopefully they'll send their kids to the program.   Joe: So how did this come about? What was the light bulb that went off for you to say? This really speaks to me. I mean, I can imagine you are with all the things that you've done, your super busy, and then then all of a sudden have this light bulb go off and say, this is how this is. I want to give back and this is how I want to do it.   Dr. Bill: You know, I've always been very philanthropic and it's funny because I had this common theme in my life where every time I've committed to do something purely for philanthropy, it's ended up becoming incredibly successful for me on a monetary basis with literally no hidden agenda. And I can give you an example after example after example. The first one being discussed, you know, I was working at at the sports club L.A., which is now an equinox. And a woman came up to me named Cynthia Hearn, who I didn't know and said, would you like to help raise money for children's cancer research? Well, I wasn't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but how can you say no to that? Right.   Joe: Absolutely.   Dr. Bill: So I said, sure. You know, she said, you are a dentist. I said, yes. And she goes, and you're single, right? I'm like, Yeah, but this is weird. She goes, Well, we're doing a bachelor auction and   Joe: Oh,   Dr. Bill: We need 10 bachelors that we can auction off to a thousand women for this charity,   Joe: Oh.   Dr. Bill: To be honest with you. That was stupid and humiliating. But out of that, I met Robert Hamit Robert Heyman with the other bats are standing in line beside me. By the way, Robert was over last night. We had dinner. We became instant. Best friends were brothers.   Joe: A   Dr. Bill: And   Joe: Simple.   Dr. Bill: Robert and I started discus dental and we literally brewed that company zero to one point three billion dollars. And along the way we've raised over forty five million dollars for children's charities. I mean, a lot of really cool things. But I was exposed to lead through another program that was very much like it was a precursor to lead. And that program was a program for students where they brought mentors in and they asked me to come as a mentor. And unfortunately, the founder of that program passed away. And when you did, I thought, you know, I can make this a nonprofit and keep it going so that that's how I actually got introduced to Lee.   Joe: Wow, that's really interesting. So when did this start? By the way?   Dr. Bill: So LEEP has been going this summer would have been our 13th, so the fourth theme fleet will come up this summer, but I've been doing the program prior to leave for probably 10 to 15 years before I started.   Joe: That's incredible. And when they go out to you said it's on the UCLA campus and where are they staying in dorms, if they.   Dr. Bill: Right, so students come from all over the world. We get kids from Australia, from New Zealand, from Europe and Asia and Africa, you name it, it's like a mini UN. It's really fun. And we get about five hundred kids. They all live in the dorms and we put on, you know, I think the best program of its type in the world. And a lot of the success of the program is the community. I mean, I get amazing speakers and they don't charge us. I mean, you couldn't afford to pay, you know, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Wahlberg. I think we'll get Katy Perry this year. I mean, I we couldn't pay, but when I when I talk to him about the program and they see how much passion we put into this, they say, I'll do it, doc, I'll do it. And now with Zoom, it makes everything so much easier because they don't even have to show up prior to the pandemic. If I had told kids. Oh yeah. Mark Wahlberg told Zoom in maybe like and   Joe: Yeah.   Dr. Bill: Now it's like it doesn't it's like live or Zoom. They're happy to see him.   Joe: That's incredible. It's just really the reason this speaks to me is because I feel like in the world that we're in and I'm I just turned fifty nine in February. So next year is a big year for me. And I think about all the time and I don't want to say it was wasted or regret or anything, but I think about that we end up trying to repair ourselves as adults on things that might not have happened. You had your life a little different. You knew exactly what you wanted to do. You followed your path that you're wired differently, your DNA, and you were able to just literally do all of these things. And I'm sure you've had your struggles. So I'm not I'm not painting this picture of, you know, none of that. But it would be so nice to get to these young minds early and explain that the world literally is your oyster. And you need to follow your. And sometimes I don't know. Right. So you say follow your heart. Sometimes they're confused about it. But I love the fact that you're getting to these young minds earlier and you're helping them to understand things sooner. And that's why this program speaks to me so much. I think it's incredible.   Dr. Bill: Well, I'll tell you what I have found empirically to be one of the most important factors in all of this. When I sit back and I say, you know, what am I most thankful for, you know, from my parents now, they never bought me a car. They never gave me money. But you know what? They did give me confidence. And confidence is currency, if you are a parent, the greatest, greatest gift that you can give your kids is confidence. And the very first thing we do, at least when a kid walks in that door and I open the program, I say to them, hey, when you woke up this morning, whether you think you did this or not, you put a number on your forehead once the lowest 10, Zayat said. How many of you did not put a 10 on your head? They raised their hand. I said, Who picked the number? You did have to take a test. No, did have to do anything. No, I said wipe it off and put a 10 on that. I said, from now on, I want you to walk like a ten top like a 10, act like a ten. But most importantly, surround yourself with other kids who are tense because you're trying to be a 10 and everybody around you use it to guess what, you become a two. So we give the kids these pop soccer   Joe: It's also.   Dr. Bill: Support on their phone ten. And you might hear something super crazy. Joe, we sold discus dental on ten, ten,   Joe: Oh,   Dr. Bill: Ten   Joe: Well.   Dr. Bill: At 10 a.m. to Philipps.   Joe: That's crazy.   Dr. Bill: I think about October 10th, 2010, at nine a.m., the merger documents came on like this is you can't write this stuff. I'm waiting till exactly ten o'clock so that when I go to sleep in 2011, I could tell the kids what a perfect ten day looks like. And we I signed that paper and, you know. It was an emotional moment for me. I always knew as against. I'd be comfortable, I had no idea. That I had the ability. To make the kind of money I made when we sold my company, that was like funny money to me, I didn't even think something like that could happen. I didn't grow up that way, you know? And, you know, and I thank my lucky stars every day for for meeting Robert Haymond, for participating in that charity auction, for, I mean, all the things that led up to that. Because I wouldn't I mean, you should see where I'm sitting right now. I'm I'm on the 30th floor of this beautiful condominium in in Century City. I wake up every morning the happiest guy I know. And so, so grateful for everything. It's it's really it's really been amazing.   Joe: Well, you know what? Good for you. Well deserved. I can just tell by I do a little bit of research up front for these. I want them to be somewhat spontaneous. But I when I went and looked at what I felt, I wanted to figure out more about who you are. I can tell I can tell from just how you look at the kids that are part of the program. I watched one of your talks to them, and I can tell it really it's super important to you and and your generous and loving and giving back. And it just it's very, very cool. And I appreciate you.   Dr. Bill: Well, I think my my my mantra is. Learn so you can earn and then return. And I feel if you can really accomplish those three things, you'll have a lot of happiness and and self satisfaction in life. So that's really what I focus on.   Joe: I agree. Well, I literally could talk with you forever. This is amazing. I'm honored that you came on my podcast. What is the best way for someone to get my guests in touch with you in regards to what do you prefer? And also, the lead program has   Dr. Bill: Yeah,   Joe: The best.   Dr. Bill: I mean, believe it or not, I'm the only person I know with probably a million followers who actually answered all of their demands. So Instagram, I don't do tick tock or even Facebook, but if you really want to reach me, it's super easy. It's Dr. Bill Dorfman, D.R Bilel Dorfmann on Instagram. I promise. I answer one hundred percent of my DBMS. If if you're interested in the program, please go to Sleep Foundation dot com. You can sign your kids up right now. And yeah, I think that's.   Joe: Well, thank you so much, I appreciate it. I look forward to to seeing more about what happens with LEEP, and I definitely want to stay in contact with you. And I wish you all the best.   Dr. Bill: Well, thank you.

Jake – Continued from Hour 1 – Proving that the Church is the one true Church. Jake – How can we believe the Catechism when it can be changed? For example, the death penalty Bill – How do I better understand the concept of the ends don’t justify the means Candice – I read an […] All show notes at The Patrick Madrid Show: February 19, 2021 – Hour 2 - This podcast produced by Relevant Radio

Here's a 1 1/2  minute preview of Ricci Victorio. Give it a listen and share it with your friends, and if you like the content be sure and listen to the full 20 minute interview! Transcript:  Bill: How do you deal with the issues of bringing family members into your family business? Here's expert Ricci Victorio.  Ricci: I love being brought in when a family has a business that they care about and they've got kids who are in high school or college. Maybe they've worked there in their summers in between school breaks, but the kids are getting ready to step into their careers or start preparing for them. An ideal way to bring family members into a business is, they grow up with it so they understand your values and they see your work ethic and they understand why this business is important to you. So what I like to do is, we set up a family member employment policy, and it doesn't matter what age your kids are, they could be very young, and they can also be into their 20s and 30s, but the earlier you start so kids grow up knowing the employment says, if I want to work at this businesses, I need to have X, Y, and Z experience and education and skill sets. If I want to own it or run it, that might be a higher bar that's says, well you're gonna need an MBA because the world is different now. To run this business now, it's 3 times the size it was when it was mom and dad and we did it in a garage. So, recognizing entry requirements to run a business are changing and evolving. So, setting a family member employment policy creates a standard that all the kids or all family members understand, this is what's required, and that may thin out some family members who don't have an interest.  ExitCoachRadio.com - Great Advice from Great Advisors! Listen to Daily interviews and tell your Business Owner friends!

Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we are here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Bill Parry from Redwood Software join us. Bill, I’d love for you to just introduce yourself, your role, and your organization. Bill Parry: Well, thank you very much. I would be happy to. I am here at Redwood as the director of enablement of an amazing company that specializes in process automation and robotic software and some really fantastic stuff in the financial world. For me, I am just a poor kid from Northern New Hampshire living in Texas. The first half of my career, I started in the U.S. Coast Guard. I spent the majority of my time studying training, training development, process improvement, human performance, instructional design. My last three and a half/four years in the Coast Guard, I was working at a training center, a giant think tank. So, I developed a real passion and love for training and teaching and coaching and understanding the process behind it all. And then when I left the Coast Guard, I jumped into the sales world and I realized that there’s a great disparity between training and what actually happens out in the street. My first sales job, I go off to sales training, I’m fired up. I’m excited. I come back and the first thing my sales manager says to me, he says, “Bill, don’t about what they told you, I’m going to show you the right way to do it.” So, from where I came from, that was a big red flag. Then he goes on to say, “what I want you to do is I want you to hang out with Bob next week.” Okay. So, you just told me that training’s wrong and now you’re passing the buck to Bob. So, I go home, I go to Bob. “Hey Bob, I’m going to hang out with you this week.” Guess what you think Bob said? “Why me?” And that was the beginning of my passion for connecting training with real-world application. That is something that I see all the time. You have so many sales managers out there that have been promoted into a role they really don’t know how to do, and their only way of coaching and teaching is just do what I did. Just do what I did. You’re going to do it. You’re going to crush it, and that really doesn’t work or doesn’t help. In my career, I’ve either been in sales or I’ve been training. And that really gives me a unique perspective when I’m coaching and teaching a seller. Because I know what it’s like to have that quota over your head. I know what it’s like to be at the end of the quarter, end of the year, and you’ve got nothing, and how to get out of that so that you can be productive and be a consistent performer. SS: Well, I love it, Bill. I think that scenario is one that a lot of sales professionals encounter when they go into a new organization. And I think specifically that the kind of first interaction with an organization is really critical to getting a sales rep off on the right foot. You co-led a session at the Sales Enablement Society event on great onboarding. And I would love to understand from your perspective, what makes an onboarding program great and what are kind of the core components of a successful onboarding program? BP: Onboarding really has to be personalized and specific to the role that you are trying to coach and teach. Too often, we have HR that gets involved and HR has got their onboarding that we’ve got to do here. We’ve got these people, “Oh wait, what is a sales onboarding?” And we don’t understand that a seller, yes, they’ve got to do HR onboarding because they’ve got to learn how to get a paycheck and how to get healthcare and all that other stuff. But the seller has to learn the specific things about their role and how they can be successful and what do they need to know or be able to do in order to be successful in their role. Many times, people create an onboarding program by assembling the kitchen sink and just throwing it at the person and saying, “okay, there it is. Just go learn it.” And one of two things happen. They figure it out painfully or they say, “forget this, I’m out of here”. And that can be very exhausting and costly. So for me, for a really good onboarding program, there are four key elements that you’ve got to really focus on. First and foremost is the industry. What is the industry that the seller is going into? Show them how to be a student of their industry, show them where to learn about their customers and their competitors, and where do their customers meet? What networking groups do they participate in, what user groups they participate in? Where did their customers go to find help so that this seller can immerse themselves into and understand that the industry that they’re selling into and the pains and the frustrations of their customers so that when they do engage with a customer, they’re having an intelligent, businesslike conversation that hopefully elevates them to the level of a trusted advisor. Somebody that the customer wants to talk to, not just some knucklehead who’s trying to sell them something. So, the first bucket is they’ve got to be a student of their industry. The second is they’ve got to understand and know the systems that they’re going to be using and what resources are available to them in their job. Systems like Salesforce, Outlook, how to input an order. Those systems need to be second nature to them. So many sellers hesitate calling somebody because they don’t know how to input a lead or how to finish an order or how to insert frustrating process that we have created and they don’t know how to do it right. You’ve got the industry, you’ve got the systems and resources. Then the next thing is selling skills or selling process or selling methodology. Whatever you want to do. What do your sellers, or what does your company subscribe to to help your sellers do their job? It could be customer-centric. It could be solution selling. It could be Challenger sale, it could be insert methodology, but we need to have an understanding of the process. And then the last thing that they need to know is the product and what are the product solutions? What are the pains that we solve? Who are the competitors? What are my success stories? And I like to put them in those orders. I share with sellers that, the product is the last thing that you need to know. And so often new hires want to, like, “I just got to know the product and I want to go out there and sell.” Okay, cool. But you need to know why people are buying our product. You’ve got to know what problem our product is solving. You’ve got to know why we even created this and why is the industry in need of this. If you can understand the need and the business needs and the industry, the product is secondary, because that same person that’s begging for information on the product, what are my features benefit? That’s the first seller that’s going to drop price in order to close a deal and we don’t want to drop price. We want to provide solutions and we want to help the customer solve a pain problem. SS: Absolutely. I love those four buckets. I think what I’d love to understand from you are maybe some of the challenges that you’ve encountered when trying to design or implement these onboarding programs within a new organization? BP: Sure. There are a lot. There are many challenges. The first challenge that you have to do is you have to clearly identify what does the seller need to know or be able to do to successfully do their job well. Just simply identifying those key elements can make the process that much better. For example, sales really is simple. Who do I call? What do I say? And what are the next steps? Who do I call? We want to spend a lot of time clearly identifying who is the target customer that we’re going after. Teach your sellers how to identify the proper target, the proper prospective buyer. Show them how to get that information. If you can clearly identify what they need to know or be able to do, you can now bake out, how do they learn that, what resources are available to them? Who’s my subject matter expert on this? Where can this learn the seller learn this information? Too often a lot of organizations just kind of create things without thinking of the end in mind, they just kind of say, “okay, you just need to know this.” Well, yeah, I know I need to know how to close a deal, but before I know how to close a deal, I’ve got to learn where the hell is the guy? How do I find the guy? Okay, great. Now what do I say to the guy? How do we overcome this objection? What is my conversation starter? How do I engage with this customer? What is my demand creation process and methodology? And there are baby steps that you’ve have got to develop these things. Now, to help you understand that, you’ve got to be engaged with the senior leadership. I can’t emphasize the importance of this. The enablement process needs to be a top-down function, a top-down, cross-functional, synergistic process. They’ve all got to work together. If you don’t have that mutual buy-in, you’re not going to have any level of success. I’ve done it the wrong way and it doesn’t work where you work with just the sellers. Because any teaching that you do, the seller is going to be useless unless the leadership supports it. If you can get the leaders in one room and talk about it and clearly identify it and help them clearly identify what are the top five things that a seller needs to know in the first week, what are the top five things that the seller needs to know in the second week? By the end of the first month, what’s a reasonable expectation of our sellers? And the skills that they need to know or be able to do that. Just engaging with senior leadership and getting them in the process is key. One of the things that I really like to do is when I start building an onboarding program, or I’m building a pipeline generation program, or I’m building anything that engages the sellers, I want the sales leadership involved. And I tell them, “this is your process. This is for your team. I’m really good at this. I kind of understand it. I know how it all works, but unless you help me build this, and unless you support it, we’re not going to get anywhere with this. So, let’s do this together so that collectively we’re building a program for you and your team. It’s not my quota, it’s your quota.” SS: I think that’s a great approach. And you mentioned obviously sales, leadership, and also cross-functional alignment. So, from your perspective, obviously cross-functional alignment is critical, but why specifically for onboarding? Then, who beyond the sales leadership within the organization should enablement partner with to deliver great onboarding? BP: That’s a great question. Let me tell you a story to explain this. My first job after I graduated college, I went to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and my first job was to drive a very large ship. My first duty station was in San Francisco. When I reported aboard, a young 24-year-old kid, do you think the captain said to me, “well, here you go, Mr. Parry. Take the keys. She’s all yours. Drive through the San Francisco Bay with all the traffic and work your way underneath the Harbor.” No, no, not at all. That would have been the stupidest thing for them to do. I was handed a binder and in that binder were specific skills and knowledge that I had to clearly demonstrate to subject matter experts that I knew how to do my job. For example, I had to go into the engine room and I had to trace oil lines and fuel lines and sewage lines, and I had to completely understand the insides of the engine so that when I was driving the ship and I said, “all ahead flank,” I knew what happened down below. I had to navigate the ship, I had to spend time with the cooks and the deckhands and I had to touch almost every single department on that ship. Why? Because on a cold January morning at one o’clock in the Alaskan ocean in a storm, our crew needed to know that I knew how to do my job so that they could sleep. I was engaged with everybody. Now, how does that apply to a sales world? How many sellers do you know that leave a wake of pissed off people because the seller just doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what happens? I’m just closing deals. We all know that person. They’re out there, and the reason why is because we don’t set up a system in their onboarding process and teach them what happens when you hit send. How long does it take to install your product? And when you do order the product, what is the process to get that? What is the implementation process? My onboarding is very similar to what I did with the ship. Granted, it’s not like a year and a half long, but I make sure that the sellers are engaged with sales operations, that they spend some time, even if it’s 10 minutes, here are the five things that I need you to go talk to finance about. I want you to go talk to Sue so that Sue knows that you know what you’re doing with your job. There’s an ecosystem, if you will, of everybody that that seller impacts. I want to make sure that that seller engages, shakes a hand, has a face-to-face and meets them. Not just the first week, because we all know the first week is pretty much a waste of time. In the first two weeks, nobody’s going to remember anything. So, I want my seller to engage with them in the first or second week and then come back in six weeks and reengage with them. Now that they have a better understanding of what the process is, when I hit send, when I do sell something, so that way there is cross-functional support. The people in finance no longer are thinking, “ah, those guys are just in sales. I don’t like them.” But it’s, “Hey, how can I help the sellers do more? I like John.” John knows what he’s doing so that when John picks up the phone and he calls Sue in finance, “Hey Sue, I need some help.” Sue wants to help because she knows that John knows how to do the job. Does that make sense? SS: Yes. I love that you are helping the sellers build out their ecosystem internally. that’s fantastic advice. I would actually, love to get some more advice from you, particularly around kind of being able to reinforce the knowledge learned during the onboarding program. As you mentioned, the first two weeks are kind of a wash. How do you ensure that what you’re teaching the sellers sticks long-term? BP: Years ago, I had a boss, wonderful human being, and he would always challenge us. “How do you know, Bill? How do you know?” Too often, managers send their sales guys off to a “sales training” or a certification program, and then when the seller gets back and they’re “certified”, we all hope and pray they can do their job because we don’t know. We’ve all heard the term inspect what you expect. So, with onboarding, I help the managers with a specific milestone checklist. This is the behavior that I want your sellers to demonstrate to you. And it’s usually taken from a QBR review, because every quarter you’re going to review these five things of your sellers. So, now with your new hires, I want you to inspect with them. And it literally is the manager. I’m going up to the guy or girl and saying, “Hey, demonstrate this to me. Show me how to do this”. Too often we can be very complacent. A manager will go up to the seller, “Hey, did you do that training that you’re supposed to do?” It’s like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I got it. I know how to do it. Yeah, it’s great. It’s easy.” Okay, cool. As opposed to, “Hey, show me what you learned. Walk me through this. Demonstrate to me that you know how to do this.” We don’t want to hurt their feelings. We don’t want to upset them. We don’t want to challenge them or embarrass them. Forget that dude. Show me that you know how to do your job. That key element is important. So, for a confirmation of learning, which is the technical demo, the technical term in instructional design, you can do a quiz, which really just means they just know how to take a quiz. They can demonstrate it to you. You can see them in action. What I like to do with onboarding is several levels of confirmation of learning. One, we’ll do a quiz. You went through this module, take this quiz, fantastic. But I’m also going to pair you up with a mentor, one of your teammates. Who you choose for a mentor is important. You want to make sure that you find young sellers that want to become leaders and want to become managers. You don’t want to just hand it off to somebody and say, “Hey, can you walk this guy through it?” You’re going to demonstrate to the mentor that you know how to do the job. But I also want to build the behavior and the comfort level that it’s okay to talk to your peers because I want a room full of sellers to coach each other. I want a seller to totally screw it up on the phone, hang up, and look to his peer go, “dude, what the hell did I just do wrong? Let’s walk through this. Can you look? Where did I blow it?” “Oh, Bob, I heard you, man. You really ran into that challenge. Why don’t we try this? We’ll do a quick role play.” If my onboarding is working correctly, you can walk through the sales floor and you can hear the sellers coaching each other. That allows the manager to go do other managerial things. So, I went on a couple of tangents here. For the confirmation, you want to do a quiz, you want a coach, a peer coach, you want a manager to do spot-checking. And then, another element that you can do, is you can have kind of like an informal session at the end of the onboarding. You can bring the new hire into a conference room and walk and go through their training, demonstrate and show it to us. Going back to my ship, when I had completed my entire program and I finished, I checked off all those boxes that I had to do and I spent all that time with subject matter experts. I still wasn’t qualified. I had to spend time, I had to sit in a room. With the captain of the ship and the second in command of the ship and my boss and the weapons officer and like two other people. It’s like this kind of magic. Imagine a conference room with VPs and the entire C-suite grilling you and asking you questions. If something happens, what do you do if this situation occurs? Walk me through it. If we’re in port, what happens here? So, you can do the same thing with a seller. You get a seller that goes through an onboarding and HR program. They’ve completed their eight weeks, whatever it is. Now, bring them into a room, bring the VP of sales in, bring a regional manager in, bring a sales manager in. Bring somebody from finance, bring somebody from sales operations, put them in a room and grill them. “Hey, demonstrate to me. How do you do your prospecting? Show me what your operating rhythm is, and demonstrate to me how you’re going to set up your weekly schedule. Walk me through what your quarterly reviews going to look like at the end of the quarter. Demonstrate to me where you find prospecting. Let’s do a quick role play.” That simple exercise can take 40 minutes, a half an hour, but imagine all the work and preparation that’s going into it. If you tell your sellers in week three, in four weeks, you’re going to be meeting with the VP of sales, these five people, and you’re going to demonstrate your clear understanding of this material. I’d be willing to bet their pucker factor goes up and they’re going to get really quick about learning it and being able to demonstrate it. SS: Absolutely, absolutely. I think sales can be a stressful role and that’s a situation they should be able to handle it, and it prepares them well for the field. So, we’ve talked a little bit about how you kind of measure, retention of the knowledge from onboarding within reps. How would you say you measure the success of onboarding as a whole back into your organization and particularly your stakeholders? BP: Yeah. In sales, it’s really easy. Are you selling? Are you closing deals? And in the past couple of years, I’ve really been thinking about this and I’m having some really fun and challenging conversations that usually involve alcohol and late nights. So often, I hear sales enablement people get all excited about time to the first deal. Let’s reduce the time to the first deal. Well, I’m going to throw the BS flag on that because I think that is a stupid marker. SS: Please do. BP: Because how many times do we hand things to new salespeople? How many times do we just say, “Oh, here, just try it. Close the deal. Let’s walk them through this.” That’s BS. Stop. I think the best marker of success is the time to pipeline. When you have reached X amount of quality pipeline, now you’ve got it, because the lifeblood of a seller’s process is not the deals that they close. It’s the pipeline that they generate. Quality pipeline. If you teach a seller how to get quality pipeline, they cannot fail, period. SS: I think that is an excellent metric to be tracking the success of an onboarding program. It sounds like you’re going to be very busy for the next year, Bill, so thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. BP: Absolutely, happy to. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, please visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you want to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

I will hold a discussion about SB199, is there any recourse from prior tainted drink reports? Can a person report a tainted drink prior to this new Bill? How did others report tainted drinks without using the local police? --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/susan-weathers/message

宋仲基和宋慧乔在6月27日的时候宣布离婚，这之后就一直各种消息不断。很多人猜测两人离婚的原因，也有韩国媒体爆出了在韩国网上流传的八卦截图，称宋慧乔出轨宋仲基的好友朴宝剑。宋慧乔和朴宝剑曾一起拍摄热播剧《男朋友》，这可能是不少八卦网友和媒体猜的来源。在6月30号接受采访的时候，宋仲基明确否认了这一说法！朴宝剑也通过经纪公司表示，将动用法律手段强力应对，他与宋仲基，宋慧乔离婚有关的谣言。说了这么些，作为吃瓜群众的我们，还是回来学点有用的，那今天就和大家分享点“谣言”“八卦”相关的英文。谣言，流言蜚语[美式] rumor [英式] rumourRumor has it that…据谣言说Rumor has it that she got married to a rich businessman secretly last week. 据说她上星期秘密地嫁给了一个富商。gossip /ˈɡɒsɪp/流言蜚语，闲言碎语I've got some juicy gossip for you. Wanna hear?我有些特别有趣的小道消息告诉你。想听吗？A little bird told me… 据说…Bill: How did you find out it was my birthday? 你怎么知道我生日的？Jane: A little bird told me.有人告诉我的。Word on the street is that... 据说Word on the street is that she's gonna be the one to win the Oscar.有消息说她会是奥斯卡奖得主。

Episode 36 brings us Joshua Heath. Josh served in the Army from 2006 to 2011 as a 91J Quartermaster and Chemical Equipment Repairer. While he was in, he ran a Dungeons and Dragons game for MWR while in Iraq, helping soldiers destress and escape. Now, he uses his company Reach Out Roleplaying Games to help connect people and create communities through gaming. Josh is going to talk to us about the benefits of playing RPGs and the effects he's seen in Veterans. Covered in Episode 36: Women Veterans Summit Interview with Army Veteran Josh Heath   Why he decided to join the Army Playing Dungeons and Dragons with soldiers His use of the G.I. Bill How role playing games benefit Veterans Finding or advertising resources at your VAMC #VeteranOfTheDay Marine Corps Veteran Russell Pool

On this week s episode, we re joined by Bill Kenney. His unyielding passion for design began at a young age, but has been developed and honed over his decade in the industry. As a business owner, Bill has developed both the design acumen and business knowledge necessary for success. He s the co-founder and creative director of Focus Lab. Rainmaker.FM is Brought to You By Discover why 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Launch your new site today! In this episode Brian Gardner, Lauren Mancke, and Bill Kenney discuss: Bill Kenney’s path as a creative Running a creative agency The importance of team Using Dribbble to create a creative following Repurposing content across platforms Complementing a service based business with products Finding your tribe Listen to StudioPress FM below ... Download MP3Subscribe by RSSSubscribe in iTunes The Show Notes Follow Bill Kenney on Twitter Follow Focus Lab, LLC on Twitter Follow Made by Sidecar on Twitter Visit Focus Lab’s Website Made by Sidecar Follow Focus Lab on Dribbble The Transcript Leveraging Social Media to Build a Creative Brand, with Bill Kenney Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM. StudioPress FM is designed to help creative entrepreneurs build the foundation of a powerful digital business. Tune in weekly as StudioPress founder Brian Gardner and VP of StudioPress Lauren Mancke share their expertise on web design, strategy, and building an online platform. Lauren Mancke: On this week’s episode, we are joined by Bill Kenney, the co-founder and creative director of Focus Lab to discuss leveraging social media to build a creative brand. Brian Gardner: Hey, everyone. Welcome to StudioPress FM. I am your host, Brian Gardner, and always joined by vice president of StudioPress, Lauren Mancke. Lauren Mancke: Welcome back, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We are starting a new series on talking to members of the design community. Brian Gardner: Today, we’re joined by Bill Kenney of Focus Lab. His unyielding passion for design began at a young age, but has developed, and he’s honed that in over the last decade in his industry. As a business owner, Bill has developed both the design acumen and business knowledge necessary for success. Like I said, he’s the co-founder of Focus Lab. He’s also the creative director. Bill, it’s a huge pleasure to have you on StudioPress FM. Bill Kenney: Thank you. I’m excited to be here and talk to you guys. Brian Gardner: Yeah, this’ll be good. Lauren and I are huge fans of you and what you guys do there, so it’s always fun to have people that we really look up to on the show. I’m going to get started here. I’m trying to think back. From what I remember, I’m pretty sure the first time I ever came across your work was on Dribbble. Rafal and I have always had a back-and-forth chat session where we show each other things that are cool and really neat design stuff. I’m pretty sure he sent me a link back to the day and said something to the effect of, “Check out this Bill Kenney guy. I think you’re going to like what he does.” That was probably three, four years ago maybe. Can’t believe it’s been that long, but I know it’s been a while. Here’s the thing. You got to love getting to interview people who you look up to. For me, that’s something for sure we’re doing here. I don’t know. It’s kind of crazy, a little bit humbling to talk to you. I know we’re good friends. We’ve hung out before down at Circles Conference and so on. So for you, it might not be a big thing, but for me, it sure is. Anyway, funny how things work out. Let’s talk about Bill. Who is Bill? How did he become the creative director of what I call, arguably, the best creative agency on the planet? Bill Kenney’s Path As a Creative Bill Kenney: So much buildup. I need to live up to this now. I appreciate that. Oh boy. Who is Bill? At what point would you like me to start? Brian Gardner: What was Bill doing when he was three that was creative, and how did that just ultimately go through school and into where you’re at right now? Bill Kenney: Oh boy. At three, I can remember … this is going to sound like I was prepared for this question. I was not, and that was my own fault. I can remember distinctly what I would now describe as the beginning of my creative endeavors, kind of like scratching my own itch but not knowing it. I would go to my grandmother’s house. She would always have colored construction paper. I think that was so much fun to me. I would cut out all these shapes. I would make animals out of them. I would layer it. I would cut out the green stuff first because that was the background. That was the skin. Then I’d cut out maybe yellow for the eyes. You cut that a little bit smaller so that you can still have green trim around the sides of it. You glue it on. I don’t really remember much from my young childhood, and that’s not because I did a lot of crazy things in high school and college. That’s just because my memory doesn’t go back that far, but I can still remember things like that. Honestly, if I had to pick where it began, I think I would say all the way back then. All kids play with coloring pencils, and they like to doodle and stuff. But I always was drawn to that more than anything. That just stayed true forever. That stayed true through high school, through college. I wouldn’t consider myself an academic by any means. It was always creative stuff that really struck the chord with me. Brian Gardner: At what point, though, do you think you acknowledged the fact, “I am a creative,” and understood what that meant and really thought for the first time maybe, “Hey, this is something I want to either pursue further in school or actually want to become when I grow up,” that kind of thing? Bill Kenney: Yeah, I think when it got real for me, that would have been college. I still really enjoyed art class even in high school and such, and was sending things away — as the school does, not on my own — to competitions and stuff. One of them got into this Air Force art show. I thought that that was really cool. That wasn’t a career at that point. I wasn’t even thinking career at that point in high school. I just wasn’t one of those types of high school students. But in college, when I learned after two years of a liberal arts degree that I didn’t want to do math, I didn’t want to do science, I didn’t want to do history, and didn’t want to do any of those other things, I went, “Wow, I can become an art major. That’d be pretty flipping awesome. I could draw all day. I’d love that. I could take printing classes. That would be awesome. I could paint.” In a way, it was a little bit of the easy way out, I think at that moment. Subliminally, I was drawn to that, so I followed the path I was supposed to follow. At that point, once I became an art major, school became awesome for me. I really enjoyed it, and I wanted to go to class. I wanted to go early. I wanted to stay late, all those types of things. That’s really when it opened up for me. That’s when it became real. Brian Gardner: I wish I would have had that experience in college. Bill Kenney: It was late in college, mind you. Again, I did liberal arts for a while, still trying to figure out, “What the heck am I going to do here?” When that changed, then I flipped the script. It was that much better. Lauren Mancke: I had that kind of experience in college, except I took all those classes that you want to take right away because I really wanted to take them, all my art classes. Then my last semester, I was left with all the terrible, boring stuff. Brian Gardner: Like the black jelly beans, right? Bill Kenney: With my degree I went to University of Tampa in Florida. It’s not a big school in general. The art program is not big as well, but thank goodness, they had one. Who knows what I would have gotten into because I don’t know that I would have been just transferring around. I don’t know that it was that clear to me that, that was my calling. To get your BFA — which is a Bachelor of Fine Arts, which is what my degree is — you had to at least pass college algebra, and math was always my sticking point. I kind of fumbled along through all the other classes. I wanted to keep my GPA high, and that one was the one that was always going to derail me. So you wait till that last day before you can get a W, you can withdraw, and it doesn’t work against you. It’s very clear that there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to bring that grade for the rest of the quarter, the semester. I actually botched that one all the way until my final semester of school. Then it was very clear to me, like, “Okay, here it is. I need to take it. My GPA is skyrocketing now because of all these art classes. I’m really excelling. I can’t let this one class bring it down.” I just really buckled down, and I ended up — this is not to pat myself on my back — getting an A in college Algebra 101. Brian Gardner: Outstanding. Bill Kenney: Yeah, is not outstanding by any means, but for me, for the class that I had always dodged and ducked, I was like, “I will conquer you.” I did save that one until the absolute end, and I won, thankfully. Brian Gardner: Yep, good job. Lauren Mancke: Let’s talk about Focus Lab for a bit. As you know, I used to run my own creative agency, so I bet we can relate a little bit on what you’re doing and how things are going. It’s been fun to watch you guys evolve over the years through social media, especially on Dribbble, which we mentioned, and we’ll talk about a little bit more. But fill us in. What’s the status of the company these days? Running a Creative Agency Bill Kenney: Focus Lab is going great. It’s the normal ups and downs of any business. It’s not always sunshine every day. We have the best team that we’ve ever had. We are the biggest we’ve ever been. Revenue is the highest it’s ever been. All these simple metrics, if you want to look at those, we’re doing really great. I couldn’t be happier with what we’ve been able to achieve, honestly, in the past six years now. I don’t know that I ever thought that we would get this far, honestly. We started in a little tiny town, Savannah, Georgia. Honestly, the only reason people probably know about it, that it gets its name, is just the big tourism and the history of it all, but it is a small town with not much going on besides the history. That’s really what roots it and gives it its name. We started this little design development shop there with aspirations to do great things, but I don’t know that six years ago I could have told you, “Hey, we’ll be 16 people, and we’ll be doing this. We’ll be doing that,” just all the other things that come with it. I think I would have been shocked, honestly, so I couldn’t be happier with where we are. We’ve always kept a clear mind on the idea that we want to grow slowly. Growth is not the long-term goal. A success for us is not determined by, “Oh, we’ve reached 40 team members, and we make this much money.” That’s not success for us. I would say that we’ve already succeeded, and we just want to continue to build on that, which is having the team that we’ve built, honestly. Being around the people that we get to be around, working with the clients that we get to work with, and the way of life and culture that we’ve created — that’s success for us. We’re in a wonderful spot, and it’s just constantly learning, iterating, and growing on top of that. Brian Gardner: That’s really good to hear and very encouraging. Lauren Mancke: Okay, we got to take a quick break. Did you know all StudioPress themes are powered by the Genesis Framework? Genesis empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Brian Gardner: Want to know why nearly 200,000 folks are using Genesis to power their websites? Here’s why. Lauren Mancke: Here’s a couple of the features Genesis has — search engine optimization, responsive HTML5 designs, unlimited everything, air-tight security, instant updates. Brian Gardner: On top of that — I’m going to keep going — it’s customizable and fast. We have multiple widget and layout options, and a community of developers you can trust. If you want a custom design, we have a list of talented, reliable designers who will knock one out of the park for you. For more … Lauren Mancke: I was going to just jump in. Brian Gardner: You’re so good. Lauren Mancke: I was just going to ad-lib that ending. Brian Gardner: Lauren, tell them where to go. Lauren Mancke: Go to StudioPress.com to get Genesis today. Brian Gardner: All right. Back to Bill. One thing I’ve seen from the outside is that people are important to you and Focus Lab as a whole. Your team matters to you. It’s clear to me that you value camaraderie in the workplace. You guys have Focus Lab retreats. You’re always sharing each other’s work on social media, attending conferences together, and whatnot. In fact, Lauren and I got to witness this team thing firsthand last year when we saw you guys down at Circles Conference in Texas. How accurate is this diagnosis that Focus Lab and the ethos in which you operate is really built around a team? The Importance of Team Bill Kenney: Team is 100 percent number one. To be fair, even to myself and the recognition that I get when people see, “Oh, he has a huge following on Dribbble.” They see these things, and that’s not just because of me. We all benefit from each other. We’re all growing. Even that metric, which is Dribbble following, I really have a good amount of that because of the team, because of the work that we all do. It’s not like I turn out all this stuff myself, and I don’t grow by myself. People don’t grow in a chamber. I’m surrounded by all these great people, and I grow in other ways, personally and all that, from the team. We all recognize that, so team is hugely important to us at Focus Lab. It’s very clear internally, and it’s nice to hear that it’s clear externally. Lauren Mancke: I think running a creative agency is really interesting. I know as creative director you have to wear many different hats. You get to take part in so many different aspects of the company, especially when you are the one producing creative work as well as running the business as an owner. My question is, what is your favorite part of running a creative agency? I know it doesn’t always come without challenges, but as I’ve had my fair share to deal with, I know. What is the most rewarding part of your day or week, and what makes you wake up each morning and say, “I love what I do”? Bill Kenney: Yeah, I guess that changes year to year. As you grow a business, early on what excites you most is new projects, bigger clients, revenue increases, and all those things early on in business. That is still all so new to you, and you’re trying to go from zero to something. That could be your biggest reward metric. At this point, it’s back to team. Team wins and team success for me is the most rewarding, so no longer am I most excited about, “Wow, I got such a great response from a client on a deliverable I sent or something I’ve posted online has been received really well.” I get my biggest reward — and this is going to sound a little bit weird — in a way that parents would feel happier for their kids when they’re playing sports if they won a championship, their kid hits a home run, or whatever it is, that same level of proud moment, I get that. That’s what I want now. That is when I’m at my happiest. I love team member success and when they get put up on the pedestal, if you will. A lot of what I do is to lift them up. I’m sharing all of our work through social media. I’m speaking about them. I’m shining light on them and making sure that clients know that this is not about me. Just because you happen to maybe find us or me on Dribbble first, we’re a team. That’s where my happiness comes from at this point and most of my joy. Brian Gardner: Yeah, I can certainly relate to that. On some levels, and it kind of comes and goes a little bit, people recognize me as the face of StudioPress because I founded it back in the day. Just yesterday, I had a Tweet exchange with somebody who made a comment about the newsletter we sent out, where we had sent him a bunch of traffic. He said, “Well, I knew Brian Gardner had something to do with it.” I kind of wrote back, and I was like, “Yeah, the old Brian would have said, ‘Yup. That’s right. It was exactly me,'” but sort of like what you were just talking about, I wrote him back. I said, “You know, no, it’s not me. It’s StudioPress as a whole,” because Lauren’s there. We’ve got an entire team from a support standpoint, from a development standpoint, a design standpoint, QA, all of that stuff. As you know, as you grow from one person to small company to bigger company with lots of customers and so forth, it does become so much more than just the person. I almost look for opportunities like that Tweet where I can kind of back myself out of it and say, like you said, just put the emphasis on the team. At this point, I sometimes feel the team does a better job at doing all of this than I do personally. Bill Kenney: Exactly right. Yeah, that’s 100 percent. We’re in the same exact boat. We’d have past clients that say, “I don’t want to work with anybody else but you.” I think they’re persuaded by what they see, so that’s like the social following is a little bit of a double-edged sword in that regard. But now, that is not the case. Thankfully now, [inaudible 00:16:16] works to make sure that that was not the case. No one can ever come in and just say, “I want to work with you because I think you’re the best.” That’s baloney. The team at this point is so strong. They are stronger than me in a lot of things, if not most things at this point. We’re constantly having that conversation internally. They know that. We all speak that way — to the point where, even when deliverables are sent out, even if only I, or Summer, or Alex worked on it that week, the signature at the bottom of Basecamp is still ‘Bill and the Focus Lab team’ or ‘Alex and the Focus Lab team.’ It’s pulling in that team all the time. That is where we get our strength. Regardless of whether I did 90 percent of the lifting in a given week or 10, it’s still the formula is team. Brian Gardner: I think Dribbble, and that’s where this next question is going, they really did us all kind of a service in this regard by opening up the idea of teams on that social media platform where you could take individual accounts and put that shot up underneath the team. When I look at the home page of Dribbble, and it’s always filled with Focus Lab things, I see Focus Lab posted thumbnails and not specifically from Bill Kenney. Bill Kenney: Yup. Brian Gardner: Yeah, Dribbble. That’s the big thing that especially with you guys, you personally have 33,000 followers, have posted over 1,200 shots, and each one of them, no doubt, makes its way to that front page. You’ve got that following, and people just always love your stuff. What’s the deal? How do you own them in the sense of … maybe it was just you guys got started early on, on top of just always creating awesome stuff. What’s the back story to Dribbble? More so than probably any other person or group of people that I know through the design community, Dribbble is really your sweet spot. I know that it drives a ton of leads — sometimes good, sometimes bad — but that’s where a lot of your stuff comes through, right? Using Dribbble to Create a Creative Following Bill Kenney: Yeah. Dribbble kind of broke us through the ice, if you will. Again, back to Savannah, this is not a knock to Savannah. Savannah’s a great city. Our headquarters are still there. Twelve of the team members live there, but it is not a thriving, West Coast, tech boom city, you know what I mean? The marketplace for growth and work for a design agency is going to be limited. What Dribbble allowed us to do was quickly bust into a world market instead of just a little local market. We relate a huge amount of our success to Dribbble, just for what it did. It was very clear, even if you look at the numbers year over year, from the year before we were on Dribbble, and then you look at revenue numbers the year after Dribbble. You’re talking about a spike that you could have never guessed at. To be fair, it may have been the following year because it takes you time to grow the following, to get the recognition, to drive those numbers up. But we can find that data to see like, “Wow, this is huge for us. Okay, let’s continue putting energy and muscle into this.” Basically we’ve never stopped. The game has stayed the same. To speak to the teams thing, the teams thing was a long time coming. I’m not an early bird to Dribbble, although I was in there earlier maybe than some, but not the earliest, earliest. I was in there, and we were building a following before team accounts existed. I remember that whole transition. Basically what happened is, we were having internal conversations about, “Okay, well, I’m posting stuff, but it would be nice to have a team feed,” so we talked about it internally, tried to figure it out how to hack the system in a way and say, “Look, okay, if we tag them all Focus Lab, people can search by tag. Therefore, we get a URL by tag. Okay, we can use that URL as the thing that we link to. Now we have a hacked team page in a way.” Then we would put that at the bottom of every shot, “Made with the Focus Lab team.” That was a link basically to just the tag that would show all of our shots. I’m not saying that we started this, but we were early in that game of people doing that, if not the first. I don’t know. Then a lot of people started to see like, “Oh, that works, and that works well,” so then a variety of people were doing that. Then eventually the teams accounts came around, which was nice. At that point, we had been doing it so long. It was like, “Oh, this is refreshing actually to have this now and not have to do it the other way.” That was a great addition, and Dribbble’s been doing great lately with all their new updates and stuff. Lauren Mancke: Yeah, it was really cool to see the team thing. My company, Northbound, got invited to do a beta test of the team aspect by Dan and Rich, and it was fun to be one of the first teams on there. Bill Kenney: Yeah, we were happy when that finally opened, opened up. We knew it was out there. We actually knew that people were testing it. We’re like, “Okay, we’re just waiting for this door to open,” because we’ve obviously been ready. We got this link thing here, and we’re faking teams, like a team account. Brian Gardner: Did you have to go back and update all those links, though, when the team thing came out? Bill Kenney: You know, that’s a good question. We put up so much content on Dribbble that any time you have to backtrack and change anything, that is so much work. I don’t know if we did. I kind of feel like we did, or maybe we didn’t. Again, we have so much volume that we’re going to push all that content so far back and down that it doesn’t really matter. Brian Gardner: Yeah, that’s true. Bill Kenney: It’ll just follow the new structure. Brian Gardner: All right, so you guys started out with Dribbble. It’s obviously done very well for you, but over the last year or two, I’ve seen you guys venture out into other social media platforms in what I think is a deliberate play at leveraging those as well. I’ve seen you guys do stuff more so on Twitter than you have in the past, but also you’ve made your way into Facebook and even have written some things and published them over on Medium. Now, you and I have had some conversations about content strategy. This led up to the whole Sidecar deal, so I had a little bit of inside information there. But how has that been going for you? I know that at Copyblogger and Rainmaker Digital as a company, we talk a lot about not digital sharecropping and investing your assets and resources in places that could potentially go down. Let’s just say Dribbble closed the doors and completely vanished. Your efforts, especially like on Sidecar with the educational pieces and whatnot, how has that piece of strategy gone since you guys started implementing that? Repurposing Content Across Platforms Bill Kenney: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s funny you talk about Dribbble as the example because that’s real. If we think about that right now, what would happen if Dribbble was wiped off the face of the earth, that would be not great for us in some ways. It’s not as if we’d lose all that content. We still have it all. We still created it all. But the exposure, the eyeballs, the following, all of that stuff disappears, and then we have to populate it somewhere else and build all that back up — which is why when I talked to Dan three weeks ago in my podcast with him, I told him, “Don’t mess it up, Dan. We got a good thing going.” Yeah, we’re aware of that to the point we’re hyper-aware. To be clear, so Focus Lab, we have what we call ‘Quarterlies.’ What that means is we all get together as a team onsite for an entire week each quarter, hence the name, and we don’t work on any client work. We just work on internal projects. Each one of those has a focus. In the one that was Focus Lab specific focused, which was our site and how we’re marketing ourselves, if you will, we talked about what are the new platforms, like what’s the new frontier look like for us. Dribbble is basically stay the course, if not get more aggressive. You can always post more. The new frontiers would be basically Twitter, picking up volume there. We were already doing that, so that’s not really new. Medium would be a big new one. We don’t post a ton there yet, and when and if we do, and we will, that content will still come out first on our own platforms. So that content, if you will, to get back to the question, it is safe. It’s not like it would just disappear, but we would post it again basically through a channel like Medium for the added exposure. I’ve already seen that work personally when I took a couple of posts that I wrote for Sidecar that got picked up, 600 recommends, and just so much traffic that they still get the traffic, that it is just so fruitful to post out there. We learned that because Dribbble’s the perfect example. It is the example of we can post whatever we want on our own website, but that doesn’t do us any good. We need to basically go where the people are. Like you read in a lot of these books, you got to go where the people are, and then bring them back to what you want to bring them back to. Instagram has been another one. There’s been a very intentional plan for Instagram this year. We’ve gone from 1,000 followers to, I don’t know, today I think there’s like 16,000 or something. The team that focused on it, that’s been working on the Instagram account specifically, has done an amazing job with that. That will be more of a peer-facing platform, though. I don’t expect that really to drive a lot of work. We’re talking about that. We’re making plans in and around that, but Dribbble still carries the weight. We’re on Behance. Behance is a little bit of a different beast. It’s a lot of eyeballs, but it’s not the same as Dribbble. It doesn’t really drive work. Brian Gardner: Really, what you’re talking about is producing original content, putting it out on your own site, and then using some of these other social media outlets, kind of like in a syndication play, which is what Medium’s really known for, which is getting something that’s out there. I think Medium itself has even embraced the fact that that’s how they know they’re being used. They’ve allowed for canonical tags to go back to the original source and whatnot. That’s where the people are. You can take the awesome work that you’ve done originally, put it out where the people are, and then just drive them back to your site. It works almost in a symbiotic relationship there as well. Bill Kenney: For sure. We are organically creating so much content at Focus Lab that … you hate to use the word ‘repurpose’ because it sounds like we’re just spamming everything, but when you think about like a Dribbble shot, we can use that other places. That can then become an Instagram shot. It’s not as if we have to create original content every day for every platform. We have so much artwork that we’re creating in a weekly basis, and then Alicja capturing it, us screenshotting stuff, us building presentations for clients, we’re basically already creating all this content. Then it’s up to us to decide when, how, and where we want to post it. We still have it all. It’s still ours. Brian Gardner: Speaking of the content, and we’ve alluded to this thing called Sidecar, or Made by Sidecar a couple of times. Explain. Lauren Mancke: I think what Brian is trying to say is, what is Made by Sidecar? Why did you guys create it? I know we talked a little bit at Circles Conference last year, which was a few months after it launched, but can you elaborate on the mission of Made by Sidecar? Has the focus of it changed at all since you first launched? Complementing a Service-Based Business with Products Bill Kenney: Great question. There’s two reasons here. There’s a business aspect, and then there’s also the bigger mission. Running a creative agency and a services-based company, you are reliant on client work. That can be taxing year over year over year. You are totally at the hands of, “Did we get leads, or did we not get leads? Do we need to go out and drum more up?” whatever that looks like for a company. For us, we are blessed with the fact that we have a platform like Dribbble, and it drives a bunch through. It’s a lot more of just sifting through what’s coming through, but you’re still relying on that to live. That’s your revenue stream. We want to create a variety of revenue streams for Focus Lab. Sidecar is an easy first step to that, but the bigger mission is not really about us and just making money. It is very much about giving back to the design community and building a community within Sidecar, a tribe if you will, that does a couple of things. On one angle of Sidecar, we’re saying, “Here are the things we build for our clients that take us a ton of time, and our clients pay us a lot of money for. We can actually modify this, create it, and make it a template for you, and we can charge you X, which is nothing compared to the time and energy that we’ve put into it over the years to say that this works for us. Here’s your template.” Yes, $56 or $76 might be a lot of money in a template world for a younger designer out there looking for things. How much are they gaining? How much time and experience are they gaining from that one deliverable that they can now reformat and use for their own client work? That’s the simple, high level, what we’re putting in there and what we’re selling, whether it be photography icon sets, all that stuff. Really, the bigger greater mission for Sidecar, which will take years to play out, and it is in motion, which is the, how do we share knowledge? How do we teach? How does the community come in and help each other on a daily basis? We can build this really tight network of people that are willing to share information with each other, that are willing to encourage each other, that are happy to lift each other up, and do all of these things within the Sidecar tribe, if you will. The goal is to build a tribe there that is that close, that has a variety of skillsets, perspectives on life, and all of these things. Right now, we have our Slack channel, which is our private Slack channel, that we invite people to. We’re starting to build up that tribe behind the scenes, if you will, that doesn’t exist on the site. Right now on the site, we sell the products, and then we do all this free writing basically. We’re putting all this content in the journal of all the things that we know to be true, client experiences, and this is how we do this, this is how we do that. That’s our form of giving back right now, but really we want to blow those doors open and make it more of this community-driven, we’re all here for the greater good of design, if you will, to educate, to inform, to make us all better. That’s basically seeping through from Focus Lab. That’s how we interact with each other. We all want to grow. Even today at lunch, one of our team members gave a lunch and learn on one of the books she read. It has nothing to do with design. It has to do with conversations and how to get through. The name of the book is Crucial Conversations. Just that type of stuff, doesn’t have to be design-specific. I guess what I’m saying is Sidecar is now the outlet to do all of those things. Focus Lab still has to be what it is, which is a design agency. We can’t do all of the things that Sidecar will be able to do, so we’ve basically opened that up so that we can do that with Sidecar. I think that answers your question. I said a lot there. Brian Gardner: Yeah, it’s great stuff. The way I see it is that Focus Lab is the creative agency that drives the revenue. Social media is the outlet in which you do things like build authority, get leads, and so on, but Sidecar seems to be that middle piece, which may have been lacking up until it was created, where you can take some of the stuff that, as you say, learn and have figured out through your experiences at Focus Lab. Sidecar is kind of the distribution channel for sending that out to social media. Most of the stuff that you guys do on social media, that’s not necessarily just visual posting pictures, but more like the content side of it is actually through Sidecar and these, what you call, free writings, lessons, or tutorials where you’re really trying to help teach people. Not necessarily in a way that you hope that they come back and become clients, but just equip them as being tribe members of Focus Lab as a whole and all that. Bill Kenney: Yeah. Focus Lab is very much the client-facing. We have this give back part of who we are, all of us in the team, like in our DNA, but we can’t be so peer-facing as a design agency. We have to be appealing to the clients, so there’s a little bit of a conundrum there when you’re like, “We’re writing for the Focus Lab blog, but really it’s purely peer-facing.” It’s a little bit silly. As your company continues to grow, the company has a focus, and it’s driven by what it’s trying to achieve. Sidecar now becomes the peer outlet. In the Slack room, I’m in there interacting with all these people, and they’re saying, “Hey, can I call you up and just ask you this question about what to do?” Now they have direct access to us and to the team, which is awesome, because we want to be able to do that, but Focus Lab can’t function that way. Sidecar opens that door. Lauren Mancke: Fun question. If you had to pick one, just one social media platform, to build a creative business around, what would it be, and why? Bill’s Favorite Social Media Platform Is Bill Kenney: Well, I think the entire world knows what my answer is going to be to that. Brian Gardner: Okay, you can’t answer Dribbble. Bill Kenney: Oh okay, all right. We’ll take that out of it then [00:33:48]. Brian Gardner: This is not you as Bill. This is you, like what advice would you give to somebody who’s starting up? Aside from your own plot of land, what would be the most fruitful opportunity for someone to help spread their own word? Bill Kenney: I don’t know how it could be something else, honestly, and here’s why. I can say Twitter. That’s not a niche demographic there, so you’re going to have to fight your way through crowds, which is fine. I think you still want to be on there as well. You want to play amongst the different fields, but Dribbble gives you such a unique opportunity to the fact that it’s super-low cost. You have no price barrier coming in as a younger creative or someone that’s looking to start an agency. You have immediate exposure to both huge players and small players, people that you’re going to be immediately able to interact with on a peer level to say like, “Okay, I feel equal to you. You will interact with me. I don’t know if I can go interact with that person yet. Maybe I feel too shy. Maybe they’d be totally chill,” like I am, and I’ll talk to anybody. It doesn’t matter, but you don’t see that when you first come in. It couldn’t be anything else. I guess here’s the other thing. I am a little bit biased, and that’s fair. I can recognize that. You could do really well on other platforms, like Instagram proves itself really well for type designers. You see a lot of people get really far in type on that, and they actually get client leads and stuff. It’s just a little bit harder for me to speak to because that’s not been our path. Therefore, I don’t know that I could give that advice, but I guess if I knew if they were in a specific realm, I could point them in a different direction. As an overall creative, and if they wanted to follow a similar path as us, I paved the way. Basically just do what we did. We’re not magic makers. I didn’t come in with some secret sauce. I didn’t start with a ton of money and was able to get ahead and all these other things. We just got in and got our hands dirty, and Dribbble is the platform to do it. I do think that some people get ahead on Behance. I have a massive following on Behance. I have a couple hundred thousand followers on Behance, significantly larger than I have on Dribbble. I can tell you that it doesn’t even touch the return as far as revenue, and it doesn’t touch the connections I make on a peer level from all walks of life, junior designer all the way through to people that I would look up to and respect. I could try to break away from Dribbble and say like, “Okay, let me try to think of something else.” I think that would be bad information. I tell everybody, “As a younger creative, just get on Dribbble. Put some energy into it and make it work,” because we did, and I know it works. Brian Gardner: You know what, though? That’s kind of an unfair question, though, now that I think about it. We used the word ‘creative.’ We didn’t ask you specifically, what would you tell a designer, right? Because a creative is more than just a designer. It’s a guy who’s a photographer. He’s a videographer or a writer, and in that case, Medium is a much better place for a writer to go. Bill Kenney: Right. Brian Gardner: Backing up and letting you take the easy route with Dribbble, for sure, as a designer, that’s absolutely the place. I wouldn’t have even asked you to say something other than Dribbble just to answer the question because, yeah, designers need to go to Dribbble. If you’re another type of creative, obviously there’s different types of outlets like that that are probably better suited for you. Let’s not see a copywriter try to use Dribbble to expand their platform. Finding Your Tribe Bill Kenney: Yeah, for sure. When I am posed with that question, which is from anybody, “How should I get out there?” and even if we’re thinking about new angles or new things that we want to release, new products, or whatever, it’s still following the same model, which is go find where your tribe is basically. Focus Lab’s tribe just happened to be on Dribbble. It continues to be there for now. But depending on what industry you’re in, you’re basically going to go out and find your tribe, hang out amongst them, make yourself a name within that group, and then bring that tribe back to where you need them to come back to — whether it’s your personal site, whether it’s a book you’re releasing, or whatever. Yeah, you want to go out there and find your tribe, so whether that be Dribbble, Medium, whatever photography site, community. It’s just about the community. You got to find your own community. Brian Gardner: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Alicja, who works with you guys a lot, is a photographer. Let’s just use an example. Ironically, I think you guys did their logo design, the photography site that just recently you guys launched a design for. It’s sort of the photography version of Dribbble, right? Bill Kenney: Yes and no. To be clear, yes, we did do the branding work for 500px. They’re an amazing client, such a great team, and they are a really large community. It is interesting, though. I don’t have much experience on that platform in the sense of how we use Dribbble, so I don’t know if each community, if the result is the same. I don’t know that there are Hire Me buttons, CTAs, and stuff that really help to drive that type of action that come from Dribbble. But yes, I would always tell people in other industries to at least do what you can to find your Dribbble. I’ve said that many times to many people in different industries, even to developers. “I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what to tell you, but you need to find your Dribbble. You need to find your version of what I did.” That’s the easy first step as far as I’m concerned. All it takes is time and energy. If you don’t have time and energy, you obviously don’t care enough about whatever you’re trying to start or what you’re trying to accomplish. For every industry, it’s going to be different. I think that design is one that Dribbble specifically just worked out great. I don’t know that there is one for every industry. I think that’s really tough for other industries to figure out. Like, “Oh, I don’t know where the tribe is,” and there could be other huge barriers even if you figure out where it is. How the hell do you get into it, and how do you interact? Brian Gardner: It always seems like an opportunity, if those don’t exist for certain media, to actually be the person like … is it Dan Cederholm? He’s the one who did Dribbble, right? He’s got his co-founder, Rich? Bill Kenney: Yeah, but I think Dan seems to get the crown the most. I don’t know if that’s just because he has the most exposure. He’s actually on Dribbble with the big following up on the first page. But yes, it’s both of them. Brian Gardner: My point, though, is that even if you’re a creative, and we do this with our software at our company a lot, if it’s not out there and we need it, we build it. To the really, really savvy entrepreneur who’s a creative, if that medium or that Dribbble doesn’t exist within their niche, that’s an opportunity. It’s just an opportunity to go try to create that thing, be the next Dribbble founder or the next whatever founder. Bill Kenney: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that 100 percent. If you’re a developer and you say, “I wish there was a …” Well, I think there have been some small attempts, but yes, I agree 100 percent. If you remember Forrst, Forrst was before Dribbble, right around the same time, but that was a play to designers and developers. You could actually post code and stuff on there. That was a little bit earlier. I don’t know that people were searching around and hiring as much as they are now from a client perspective. The community was smaller, just because that was a while ago, just like Dribbble’s community was smaller, but there seemed to be other kind of platforms that poke around, but yeah, if you had the opportunity to create one in whatever your space is, it works. That’s the only thing I can ever say to the path we’ve taken is it works. I don’t think I did anything magical. I think I set a course, and I said, “This is what I’m going to achieve, and I’m going to achieve that by doing A, B, and C.” I did A, B, and C, and it worked out. Everybody’s path is different, but it wasn’t rocket science, I can tell you that. Look, it took me until the end of my college career to get the college algebra thing crossed off. Lauren Mancke: Speaking of that, who are some of your heroes or people that you look up to, respect, and say, “I wish I could do X like X”? Who Bill Looks Up To Bill Kenney: Oh, that’s a great question. My answer is not going to contain names I would have read about in art school. The reason is simple. It’s not because I don’t respect what they’ve done and basically the foundation that they laid for design and art in general, and the history of the world, if you will. When I was a sponge and I was coming into the who am I looking up to when I was fresh into, deeper into the design world, if you will, it would have been all of a sudden the bigger names that I would have seen on Dribbble. I hate to go back to Dribbble, but that is such a big part of my evolution over the past six years. When I think about the people that I look up to or that I respect, those are the people I’ve been around the most and have seen the most volume from, week over week. They would just pop out in my mind to be the people that I would look up to. I can tell you typically what I look up to most, whether it be a big name or a small name, would be people that do things that I don’t do or that I can’t do. I love it when I see really great motion work come out of the variety of people that do motion work now. Motion’s really blowing up. When I see that stuff, and we have now a motion designer on our team, Will Kesling. He is awesome. That’s the stuff when you want to get down on your hands and knees and just say, “I am not worthy.” It’s like when I look at people that do the things that don’t cross my plate typically, which are going to be just amazing typography. I just started following these two girls on Dribbble. They do really awesome felt fabric figurines. It’s so obscure. I would never even known that I would have found that. I was just kind of trolling around on Dribbble, not to say that I’m a troll. I just found these accounts. I’m like, “Wow, people make little people, but purely out of felt.” They make little mini Pepsi cans, but the scale of it is like a fingertip. It’s all felt. That’s the stuff. That’s what inspires me. I’m like, “Holy crap. That is amazing. What is that thing?” To say that I look up to somebody, and this is in the most humble voice ever, in the branding space or even a web space, there are people that I’m like, “Wow, you do really great work, and I respect you,” but that’s not really what kind of tickles my feathers, if you will. It’s when I see the really funky stuff that’s completely unexpected. It seems like type illustration, motion work, new mediums, three-dimensional stuff, and blending platforms doing three-dimensional stuff with flat stuff and motion — all that stuff paired together. It’s crazy to me, and that’s what I really love. I think what you were looking for is for me to name drop somebody, but I haven’t done that yet [00:45:09]. Brian Gardner: Give me two or three names. Come on, two or three designers that you want to emulate, not copy, but you know what I mean? A lot of these people are on a much higher pedestal on my level than they are your level. For you, these might be peers, but I want to know two or three people that you say, “Man, that guy or that gal has just killed it in design.” Bill Kenney: Oh, man, that’s so tough. I’m such a people pleaser. It’s like, “Oh, I got to make sure I name the right people.” Let me think about the people that I know that constantly do great work, and let me also make sure that it’s clear that I would consider these people very good people, too. That is important to who we are and who I am. I would say Kerem is somebody that I’ve looked up to for a long time. Kerem can be found on Dribbble. He’s out of San Francisco as well. He’s West Coast at least. Kerem’s last name is Suer, I believe. He does really, really solid work, really great person. He was one when I first started on Dribbble, you’d look up and you’d go like, “Oh my God, I can never touch that level.” Then you finally get to meet them in person, and you have grown as well. Now they’re aware of you, and you’re interacting on a peer level. You’re like, “Wow, this is amazing.” I would definitely say that Kerem is one. You know who jumps out lately who’s totally crushing stuff is Bethany Heck. She just moved on from the IBM team, or I’m sorry, sorry, the Microsoft team. She’s moving on to her new position. I actually forget where it is, but the type stuff that she’s putting out. She just did this thing with Fonts.com when she put out all these baseball card posters using all this new type that they have for sale. That’s the kind of stuff. I saw that poster. I was like, “OMG! I need to have that. That’s amazing.” I would say that she is somebody that I’d look up to, for sure, to this day. Right now when I look at her stuff, I’m like, “Wow, this is really great.” That covers two platforms. That covers basically UI because Kerem’s more of a UI product guy. She does a lot, but a lot of type. What other funk do you want? I could throw out the cliché names, like Draplin. Draplin’s awesome. I love hearing him talk. He does rad work, but like everybody says Draplin. I don’t need to say Draplin. Who else? Who is on your list, Brian? I’m curious to know who you [crosstalk 00:47:38]. Brian Gardner: Well, there was one person, and I don’t know, I kind of assumed that maybe it’s just too obvious. I know that you not saying him isn’t in any way a form of disrespect. Maybe you just didn’t want to say it, but I was thinking GoPro. Bill Kenney: Were you thinking Charlie Waite? Brian Gardner: I was thinking Charlie Waite. Bill Kenney: Mr. Charlie Waite. Let’s talk about Charlie Waite for a minute. Charlie Waite will love this. He listens to all my stuff. Right, Charlie? You’re going to listen to this. Charlie Waite is a great person. That’s easy. You can say that. You can call me biased, but that is the truth. Brian Gardner: And full disclosure, Charlie used to work at Focus Lab. Let’s put that out there, so everyone who’s listening knows that this is all [crosstalk 00:48:17]. Bill Kenney: Right, which is why I’m biased. Yes, Charlie Waite, so Charlie Waite worked at Focus Lab for three years. You can call him number three in command. You have me, my business partner Erik Reagan, and then Charlie Waite was next in line. Charlie is an amazing, well-rounded designer. He’s amazing in two ways. I’m glad you put me on to Charlie because this is just good design discussion. We have this talk now all the time with like, “Should designers be able to code and design it all?” and all of a sudden, it’s like we’re supposed to be everything. Charlie, from a design perspective, taking code out, but from a design perspective, was extremely well-rounded. Projects come in, and they need all this illustration work. Charlie just whips it up. I’m like, “Wow, sh*t, I didn’t think you’d be able to do that much that good that fast. Okay.” UI work, he did branding projects. The well-roundedness of Charlie, and to be really strong basically when I worked with Charlie and Charlie got a project, and although I was his boss — we don’t even like to use that word — I had no fear. I didn’t even feel like I had to check in. Charlie just knocked stuff out. Charlie now works at GoPro, and he leads design over there. I actually just had dinner with Charlie and his wife in the city this weekend because they were on the East Coast. They came in. It was the first time I had actually seen him in a year since Circles, like we were just talking about. Such a good time to see him. Me and Charlie Waite are still the greatest of friends. Leaving a company is always tricky in any regard, especially when there’s friendship, too. Brian Gardner: You understood, though. You sent him off well because I know that he’s always been sort of a California, West Coast boy. You really embraced that, understood that, and knew that he was growing into a bigger position. That’s kind of important, though, right? Letting Your Staff Grow into Bigger Positions Even When It’s Not with Your Company Bill Kenney: Absolutely. Yes. That is important to us at Focus Lab in general. It’s easier said than done, but Charlie spent an amazing three years with us. He helped us achieve a lot as well. When it was time for him to leave it wasn’t as if he just said, “Oh, hey, I got this new gig. Thanks for helping my exposure grow on Dribbble, and I’m out of here. Good luck.” He hit me up all along the way as people … here’s the interesting dynamic that happens at Focus Lab. People join Focus Lab, they’re strong. I can see that they’re strong. They’re not at the level where all of a sudden Apple’s going to go out and hire them because their portfolio is not there yet. It’s not been proven to those types of companies. I can see they’re great people. They come into Focus Lab, they turn into even better people, not because I’m there for any reason. It’s just because the Focus Lab ecosystem is such an environment for growth because of all of us that are there. We all encourage it. We all want it. Followings grow. Exposure grows. Here comes the poachers, everybody. That’s fair. It is what it is. You can’t stop that. All of a sudden, all the team members get job requests from everybody because they see all the work all the time, the Instagrams, the Googles, the Pinterests, the Microsofts, everybody. Charlie was very transparent with that. He said, “Listen, I’m getting approached by a lot of people, blah, blah, blah. I don’t plan on doing anything.” As time went by, GoPro was the perfect storm for him. It was a great opportunity for a lot of reasons. He got to move back to the West Coast where he grew up. He actually lives in the town that he grew up in. His daughters now are going to the school that he went to school at. He’s a surfer. He was living in Alabama — time to get out of Alabama, time to go back to the West Coast, and take the great new job. Yeah, let’s put Charlie on the list. I wouldn’t have thought that initially just because it wouldn’t have crossed my mind. Honestly, right now, I would have been looking for the big names, if you will. Charlie is great all around. Lauren Mancke: Do you have any parting words for creative entrepreneurs or just entrepreneurs in general? Any secret tips or recipes for killing it online? Bill’s Secret Tip for Success Bill Kenney: Oh gosh. The secret tip is you got to put your hard hat on, go out there every single day, and bang it against the wall. Some days are amazing, and some months, some quarters, and some years are amazing. Some days, some months, quarters, and years are really a grind. I think the thing for me, and the thing for us at Focus Lab, it’s the longevity. It’s the stay the course. Course correct as needed. Motivate as needed. It looks all sunshine and like it’s all easy every day from the outside perspective. To be fair, it is 90 percent of that, but there are the days where you’re like, “Oh, can I post another thing here? Can I grind out another amazing deliverable on top of the one I just spit out?” That becomes quite a challenge. It’s being a creative on top of running a business and all of these things. It’s not necessarily easy. I think it’s the, can you weather the length of time that you may be doing it — whether it’s three years or 30 years — and can you also weather the storms when they come? Because they’re going to come for sure. When you get on the flip side of it, you’re a bigger, better, stronger person. But can you weather that? That would be my only advice. For me, it’s a time, energy, and intention game. If you put in the right amount of time, the right amount of energy, and the right amount of intention, you should be moving forward. That ball should be moving forward, and it should be growing for you. Just keep doing it. It’s the old ‘don’t give up’ speech, but it’s so the truth. Year after year, that starts to become pretty hard. Where do you find your motivation? Brian Gardner: Yup. Words of wisdom from little Bill Kenney of the big ship, Focus Lab. Bill Kenney: Thanks.

Crushing pressure from Rebecca Frost!! BILL? How much Wonder Woman? Splinter Monk: Germaphobic sewer rat. That guy has range… HE HAS RANGE!! Don’t go see the Jem movie, just show Josie and the Pussycats. Best accidental porn story wins a shirt! Are you going? Oh… I’ll drown. Rebecca is a… Continue reading

Bill: Hi Robert! What's up? Robert: I'm going to the U.S. next week. Bill: Oh, really? I didn't know that. Where are you going? Robert: I'm going to Tampa. Bill: Where's that? Robert: In Florida. Bill: What are you going to do there? Robert: I'm going to visit my family. My grandmother lives there. Bill: That sounds nice. When are you leaving? Robert: On Saturday March 11th. Bill: How long are you staying? Robert: A couple of weeks. Let's practice. Where are you going? To Rock Island. Where's that? In Illinois. When are you leaving? On Monday February 2nd. How long are you staying? For a month. Where are you going? To Abbotsford. Where's that? In British Columbia, Canada. When are you leaving? On Thursday November 1st. How long are you staying? For four years. Your turn... You answer... Where are you going? Where's that? When are you leaving? How long are you staying there?

Who did you talk to? Robert: I talked to someone interesting yesterday. Bill: Who did you talk to? Robert: I can't remember his name, but I was sitting on the train... Bill: Yeah... Robert: ...and this young man started talking to me. Bill: What did he say? Robert: He said that he was from Thailand and he was studying here in Japan. Bill: You mean he was a university student. Robert: No, he was a high school student. He had a uniform on. Bill: I see, so what did you talk about? Robert: Well, he said that he enjoyed living in Japan, but he did not have much chance to speak in English. Bill: How was his English? Robert: Pretty good. So, he asked me if we could chat while sitting on the train. Bill: That's interesting. It's not everyday that you meet a Thai student in Japan. Robert: That's right. Let's practice... I saw someone interesting last week. Who did you see? I went somewhere fun last month. Where did you go? I ate something strange. I don't feel so good. When did you eat it? I read an interesting book. What did you read? I have to go to England next week. Why do you have to go there? www.eltpodcast.com

Bill: How was your weekend? Robert: It was great. I went skiing. Bill: How was it? Robert: It was fun. Do you ski? Bill: Yes. Robert: You should come next time. Bill: That sounds good. How often do you go skiing? Robert: About once a month. Let's Practice A: I went to the movies. B: How often do you go to the movies? A: About twice a month. A: I baked a cake. B: How often do you bake cakes? A: About once every two months. A: I went running. B: How often do you go running? A: About three times a week. A: I had to work. B: How often do you work? A: Five days a week. A: I visited my parents. B: How often do you visit your parents? A: Once a year. Find more at www.eltpodcast.com

First, you'll hear this a basic conversation at a normal speed, then at a slower speed. Next, you'll hear some practice drills. Finally, you'll hear the conversation again at a normal speed. Bill: What are you reading? Robert: A spy novel. Bill: How is it? Robert: It's good. Do you want to borrow it when I'm finished? Bill: Sure. Thanks. Practice: A: What are you eating? B: A tuna sandwitch. A: How is it? B: It's delicious. A: What are you listening to? B: A podcast. A: How is it? B: It's great! A: What are you watching? B: A movie. A: What movie? B: I don't know. A: How is it? B: It's boring. Find more at www.eltpodcast.com