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Due to overwhelming demand (>15x applications:slots), we are closing CFPs for AI Engineer Summit NYC today. Last call! Thanks, we'll be reaching out to all shortly!The world's top AI blogger and friend of every pod, Simon Willison, dropped a monster 2024 recap: Things we learned about LLMs in 2024. Brian of the excellent TechMeme Ride Home pinged us for a connection and a special crossover episode, our first in 2025. The target audience for this podcast is a tech-literate, but non-technical one. You can see Simon's notes for AI Engineers in his World's Fair Keynote.Timestamp* 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome* 01:06 State of AI in 2025* 01:43 Advancements in AI Models* 03:59 Cost Efficiency in AI* 06:16 Challenges and Competition in AI* 17:15 AI Agents and Their Limitations* 26:12 Multimodal AI and Future Prospects* 35:29 Exploring Video Avatar Companies* 36:24 AI Influencers and Their Future* 37:12 Simplifying Content Creation with AI* 38:30 The Importance of Credibility in AI* 41:36 The Future of LLM User Interfaces* 48:58 Local LLMs: A Growing Interest* 01:07:22 AI Wearables: The Next Big Thing* 01:10:16 Wrapping Up and Final ThoughtsTranscript[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Welcome[00:00:00] Brian: Welcome to the first bonus episode of the Tech Meme Write Home for the year 2025. I'm your host as always, Brian McCullough. Listeners to the pod over the last year know that I have made a habit of quoting from Simon Willison when new stuff happens in AI from his blog. Simon has been, become a go to for many folks in terms of, you know, Analyzing things, criticizing things in the AI space.[00:00:33] Brian: I've wanted to talk to you for a long time, Simon. So thank you for coming on the show. No, it's a privilege to be here. And the person that made this connection happen is our friend Swyx, who has been on the show back, even going back to the, the Twitter Spaces days but also an AI guru in, in their own right Swyx, thanks for coming on the show also.[00:00:54] swyx (2): Thanks. I'm happy to be on and have been a regular listener, so just happy to [00:01:00] contribute as well.[00:01:00] Brian: And a good friend of the pod, as they say. Alright, let's go right into it.[00:01:06] State of AI in 2025[00:01:06] Brian: Simon, I'm going to do the most unfair, broad question first, so let's get it out of the way. The year 2025. Broadly, what is the state of AI as we begin this year?[00:01:20] Brian: Whatever you want to say, I don't want to lead the witness.[00:01:22] Simon: Wow. So many things, right? I mean, the big thing is everything's got really good and fast and cheap. Like, that was the trend throughout all of 2024. The good models got so much cheaper, they got so much faster, they got multimodal, right? The image stuff isn't even a surprise anymore.[00:01:39] Simon: They're growing video, all of that kind of stuff. So that's all really exciting.[00:01:43] Advancements in AI Models[00:01:43] Simon: At the same time, they didn't get massively better than GPT 4, which was a bit of a surprise. So that's sort of one of the open questions is, are we going to see huge, but I kind of feel like that's a bit of a distraction because GPT 4, but way cheaper, much larger context lengths, and it [00:02:00] can do multimodal.[00:02:01] Simon: is better, right? That's a better model, even if it's not.[00:02:05] Brian: What people were expecting or hoping, maybe not expecting is not the right word, but hoping that we would see another step change, right? Right. From like GPT 2 to 3 to 4, we were expecting or hoping that maybe we were going to see the next evolution in that sort of, yeah.[00:02:21] Brian: We[00:02:21] Simon: did see that, but not in the way we expected. We thought the model was just going to get smarter, and instead we got. Massive drops in, drops in price. We got all of these new capabilities. You can talk to the things now, right? They can do simulated audio input, all of that kind of stuff. And so it's kind of, it's interesting to me that the models improved in all of these ways we weren't necessarily expecting.[00:02:43] Simon: I didn't know it would be able to do an impersonation of Santa Claus, like a, you know, Talked to it through my phone and show it what I was seeing by the end of 2024. But yeah, we didn't get that GPT 5 step. And that's one of the big open questions is, is that actually just around the corner and we'll have a bunch of GPT 5 class models drop in the [00:03:00] next few months?[00:03:00] Simon: Or is there a limit?[00:03:03] Brian: If you were a betting man and wanted to put money on it, do you expect to see a phase change, step change in 2025?[00:03:11] Simon: I don't particularly for that, like, the models, but smarter. I think all of the trends we're seeing right now are going to keep on going, especially the inference time compute, right?[00:03:21] Simon: The trick that O1 and O3 are doing, which means that you can solve harder problems, but they cost more and it churns away for longer. I think that's going to happen because that's already proven to work. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe there will be a step change to a GPT 5 level, but honestly, I'd be completely happy if we got what we've got right now.[00:03:41] Simon: But cheaper and faster and more capabilities and longer contexts and so forth. That would be thrilling to me.[00:03:46] Brian: Digging into what you've just said one of the things that, by the way, I hope to link in the show notes to Simon's year end post about what, what things we learned about LLMs in 2024. Look for that in the show notes.[00:03:59] Cost Efficiency in AI[00:03:59] Brian: One of the things that you [00:04:00] did say that you alluded to even right there was that in the last year, you felt like the GPT 4 barrier was broken, like IE. Other models, even open source ones are now regularly matching sort of the state of the art.[00:04:13] Simon: Well, it's interesting, right? So the GPT 4 barrier was a year ago, the best available model was OpenAI's GPT 4 and nobody else had even come close to it.[00:04:22] Simon: And they'd been at the, in the lead for like nine months, right? That thing came out in what, February, March of, of 2023. And for the rest of 2023, nobody else came close. And so at the start of last year, like a year ago, the big question was, Why has nobody beaten them yet? Like, what do they know that the rest of the industry doesn't know?[00:04:40] Simon: And today, that I've counted 18 organizations other than GPT 4 who've put out a model which clearly beats that GPT 4 from a year ago thing. Like, maybe they're not better than GPT 4. 0, but that's, that, that, that barrier got completely smashed. And yeah, a few of those I've run on my laptop, which is wild to me.[00:04:59] Simon: Like, [00:05:00] it was very, very wild. It felt very clear to me a year ago that if you want GPT 4, you need a rack of 40, 000 GPUs just to run the thing. And that turned out not to be true. Like the, the, this is that big trend from last year of the models getting more efficient, cheaper to run, just as capable with smaller weights and so forth.[00:05:20] Simon: And I ran another GPT 4 model on my laptop this morning, right? Microsoft 5. 4 just came out. And that, if you look at the benchmarks, it's definitely, it's up there with GPT 4. 0. It's probably not as good when you actually get into the vibes of the thing, but it, it runs on my, it's a 14 gigabyte download and I can run it on a MacBook Pro.[00:05:38] Simon: Like who saw that coming? The most exciting, like the close of the year on Christmas day, just a few weeks ago, was when DeepSeek dropped their DeepSeek v3 model on Hugging Face without even a readme file. It was just like a giant binary blob that I can't run on my laptop. It's too big. But in all of the benchmarks, it's now by far the best available [00:06:00] open, open weights model.[00:06:01] Simon: Like it's, it's, it's beating the, the metalamas and so forth. And that was trained for five and a half million dollars, which is a tenth of the price that people thought it costs to train these things. So everything's trending smaller and faster and more efficient.[00:06:15] Brian: Well, okay.[00:06:16] Challenges and Competition in AI[00:06:16] Brian: I, I kind of was going to get to that later, but let's, let's combine this with what I was going to ask you next, which is, you know, you're talking, you know, Also in the piece about the LLM prices crashing, which I've even seen in projects that I'm working on, but explain Explain that to a general audience, because we hear all the time that LLMs are eye wateringly expensive to run, but what we're suggesting, and we'll come back to the cheap Chinese LLM, but first of all, for the end user, what you're suggesting is that we're starting to see the cost come down sort of in the traditional technology way of Of costs coming down over time,[00:06:49] Simon: yes, but very aggressively.[00:06:51] Simon: I mean, my favorite thing, the example here is if you look at GPT-3, so open AI's g, PT three, which was the best, a developed model in [00:07:00] 2022 and through most of 20 2023. That, the models that we have today, the OpenAI models are a hundred times cheaper. So there was a 100x drop in price for OpenAI from their best available model, like two and a half years ago to today.[00:07:13] Simon: And[00:07:14] Brian: just to be clear, not to train the model, but for the use of tokens and things. Exactly,[00:07:20] Simon: for running prompts through them. And then When you look at the, the really, the top tier model providers right now, I think, are OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. And there are a bunch of others that I could list there as well.[00:07:32] Simon: Mistral are very good. The, the DeepSeq and Quen models have got great. There's a whole bunch of providers serving really good models. But even if you just look at the sort of big brand name providers, they all offer models now that are A fraction of the price of the, the, of the models we were using last year.[00:07:49] Simon: I think I've got some numbers that I threw into my blog entry here. Yeah. Like Gemini 1. 5 flash, that's Google's fast high quality model is [00:08:00] how much is that? It's 0. 075 dollars per million tokens. Like these numbers are getting, So we just do cents per million now,[00:08:09] swyx (2): cents per million,[00:08:10] Simon: cents per million makes, makes a lot more sense.[00:08:12] Simon: Yeah they have one model 1. 5 flash 8B, the absolute cheapest of the Google models, is 27 times cheaper than GPT 3. 5 turbo was a year ago. That's it. And GPT 3. 5 turbo, that was the cheap model, right? Now we've got something 27 times cheaper, and the Google, this Google one can do image recognition, it can do million token context, all of those tricks.[00:08:36] Simon: But it's, it's, it's very, it's, it really is startling how inexpensive some of this stuff has got.[00:08:41] Brian: Now, are we assuming that this, that happening is directly the result of competition? Because again, you know, OpenAI, and probably they're doing this for their own almost political reasons, strategic reasons, keeps saying, we're losing money on everything, even the 200.[00:08:56] Brian: So they probably wouldn't, the prices wouldn't be [00:09:00] coming down if there wasn't intense competition in this space.[00:09:04] Simon: The competition is absolutely part of it, but I have it on good authority from sources I trust that Google Gemini is not operating at a loss. Like, the amount of electricity to run a prompt is less than they charge you.[00:09:16] Simon: And the same thing for Amazon Nova. Like, somebody found an Amazon executive and got them to say, Yeah, we're not losing money on this. I don't know about Anthropic and OpenAI, but clearly that demonstrates it is possible to run these things at these ludicrously low prices and still not be running at a loss if you discount the Army of PhDs and the, the training costs and all of that kind of stuff.[00:09:36] Brian: One, one more for me before I let Swyx jump in here. To, to come back to DeepSeek and this idea that you could train, you know, a cutting edge model for 6 million. I, I was saying on the show, like six months ago, that if we are getting to the point where each new model It would cost a billion, ten billion, a hundred billion to train that.[00:09:54] Brian: At some point it would almost, only nation states would be able to train the new models. Do you [00:10:00] expect what DeepSeek and maybe others are proving to sort of blow that up? Or is there like some sort of a parallel track here that maybe I'm not technically, I don't have the mouse to understand the difference.[00:10:11] Brian: Is the model, are the models going to go, you know, Up to a hundred billion dollars or can we get them down? Sort of like DeepSeek has proven[00:10:18] Simon: so I'm the wrong person to answer that because I don't work in the lab training these models. So I can give you my completely uninformed opinion, which is, I felt like the DeepSeek thing.[00:10:27] Simon: That was a bomb shell. That was an absolute bombshell when they came out and said, Hey, look, we've trained. One of the best available models and it cost us six, five and a half million dollars to do it. I feel, and they, the reason, one of the reasons it's so efficient is that we put all of these export controls in to stop Chinese companies from giant buying GPUs.[00:10:44] Simon: So they've, were forced to be, go as efficient as possible. And yet the fact that they've demonstrated that that's possible to do. I think it does completely tear apart this, this, this mental model we had before that yeah, the training runs just keep on getting more and more expensive and the number of [00:11:00] organizations that can afford to run these training runs keeps on shrinking.[00:11:03] Simon: That, that's been blown out of the water. So yeah, that's, again, this was our Christmas gift. This was the thing they dropped on Christmas day. Yeah, it makes me really optimistic that we can, there are, It feels like there was so much low hanging fruit in terms of the efficiency of both inference and training and we spent a whole bunch of last year exploring that and getting results from it.[00:11:22] Simon: I think there's probably a lot left. I think there's probably, well, I would not be surprised to see even better models trained spending even less money over the next six months.[00:11:31] swyx (2): Yeah. So I, I think there's a unspoken angle here on what exactly the Chinese labs are trying to do because DeepSea made a lot of noise.[00:11:41] swyx (2): so much for joining us for around the fact that they train their model for six million dollars and nobody quite quite believes them. Like it's very, very rare for a lab to trumpet the fact that they're doing it for so cheap. They're not trying to get anyone to buy them. So why [00:12:00] are they doing this? They make it very, very obvious.[00:12:05] swyx (2): Deepseek is about 150 employees. It's an order of magnitude smaller than at least Anthropic and maybe, maybe more so for OpenAI. And so what's, what's the end game here? Are they, are they just trying to show that the Chinese are better than us?[00:12:21] Simon: So Deepseek, it's the arm of a hedge, it's a, it's a quant fund, right?[00:12:25] Simon: It's an algorithmic quant trading thing. So I, I, I would love to get more insight into how that organization works. My assumption from what I've seen is it looks like they're basically just flexing. They're like, hey, look at how utterly brilliant we are with this amazing thing that we've done. And it's, it's working, right?[00:12:43] Simon: They but, and so is that it? Are they, is this just their kind of like, this is, this is why our company is so amazing. Look at this thing that we've done, or? I don't know. I'd, I'd love to get Some insight from, from within that industry as to, as to how that's all playing out.[00:12:57] swyx (2): The, the prevailing theory among the Local Llama [00:13:00] crew and the Twitter crew that I indexed for my newsletter is that there is some amount of copying going on.[00:13:06] swyx (2): It's like Sam Altman you know, tweet, tweeting about how they're being copied. And then also there's this, there, there are other sort of opening eye employees that have said, Stuff that is similar that DeepSeek's rate of progress is how U. S. intelligence estimates the number of foreign spies embedded in top labs.[00:13:22] swyx (2): Because a lot of these ideas do spread around, but they surprisingly have a very high density of them in the DeepSeek v3 technical report. So it's, it's interesting. We don't know how much, how many, how much tokens. I think that, you know, people have run analysis on how often DeepSeek thinks it is cloud or thinks it is opening GPC 4.[00:13:40] swyx (2): Thanks for watching! And we don't, we don't know. We don't know. I think for me, like, yeah, we'll, we'll, we basically will never know as, as external commentators. I think what's interesting is how, where does this go? Is there a logical floor or bottom by my estimations for the same amount of ELO started last year to the end of last year cost went down by a thousand X for the [00:14:00] GPT, for, for GPT 4 intelligence.[00:14:02] swyx (2): Would, do they go down a thousand X this year?[00:14:04] Simon: That's a fascinating question. Yeah.[00:14:06] swyx (2): Is there a Moore's law going on, or did we just get a one off benefit last year for some weird reason?[00:14:14] Simon: My uninformed hunch is low hanging fruit. I feel like up until a year ago, people haven't been focusing on efficiency at all. You know, it was all about, what can we get these weird shaped things to do?[00:14:24] Simon: And now once we've sort of hit that, okay, we know that we can get them to do what GPT 4 can do, When thousands of researchers around the world all focus on, okay, how do we make this more efficient? What are the most important, like, how do we strip out all of the weights that have stuff in that doesn't really matter?[00:14:39] Simon: All of that kind of thing. So yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe 2024 was a freak year of all of the low hanging fruit coming out at once. And we'll actually see a reduction in the, in that rate of improvement in terms of efficiency. I wonder, I mean, I think we'll know for sure in about three months time if that trend's going to continue or not.[00:14:58] swyx (2): I agree. You know, I [00:15:00] think the other thing that you mentioned that DeepSeq v3 was the gift that was given from DeepSeq over Christmas, but I feel like the other thing that might be underrated was DeepSeq R1,[00:15:11] Speaker 4: which is[00:15:13] swyx (2): a reasoning model you can run on your laptop. And I think that's something that a lot of people are looking ahead to this year.[00:15:18] swyx (2): Oh, did they[00:15:18] Simon: release the weights for that one?[00:15:20] swyx (2): Yeah.[00:15:21] Simon: Oh my goodness, I missed that. I've been playing with the quen. So the other great, the other big Chinese AI app is Alibaba's quen. Actually, yeah, I, sorry, R1 is an API available. Yeah. Exactly. When that's really cool. So Alibaba's Quen have released two reasoning models that I've run on my laptop.[00:15:38] Simon: Now there was, the first one was Q, Q, WQ. And then the second one was QVQ because the second one's a vision model. So you can like give it vision puzzles and a prompt that these things, they are so much fun to run. Because they think out loud. It's like the OpenAR 01 sort of hides its thinking process. The Query ones don't.[00:15:59] Simon: They just, they [00:16:00] just churn away. And so you'll give it a problem and it will output literally dozens of paragraphs of text about how it's thinking. My favorite thing that happened with QWQ is I asked it to draw me a pelican on a bicycle in SVG. That's like my standard stupid prompt. And for some reason it thought in Chinese.[00:16:18] Simon: It spat out a whole bunch of like Chinese text onto my terminal on my laptop, and then at the end it gave me quite a good sort of artistic pelican on a bicycle. And I ran it all through Google Translate, and yeah, it was like, it was contemplating the nature of SVG files as a starting point. And the fact that my laptop can think in Chinese now is so delightful.[00:16:40] Simon: It's so much fun watching you do that.[00:16:43] swyx (2): Yeah, I think Andrej Karpathy was saying, you know, we, we know that we have achieved proper reasoning inside of these models when they stop thinking in English, and perhaps the best form of thought is in Chinese. But yeah, for listeners who don't know Simon's blog he always, whenever a new model comes out, you, I don't know how you do it, but [00:17:00] you're always the first to run Pelican Bench on these models.[00:17:02] swyx (2): I just did it for 5.[00:17:05] Simon: Yeah.[00:17:07] swyx (2): So I really appreciate that. You should check it out. These are not theoretical. Simon's blog actually shows them.[00:17:12] Brian: Let me put on the investor hat for a second.[00:17:15] AI Agents and Their Limitations[00:17:15] Brian: Because from the investor side of things, a lot of the, the VCs that I know are really hot on agents, and this is the year of agents, but last year was supposed to be the year of agents as well. Lots of money flowing towards, And Gentic startups.[00:17:32] Brian: But in in your piece that again, we're hopefully going to have linked in the show notes, you sort of suggest there's a fundamental flaw in AI agents as they exist right now. Let me let me quote you. And then I'd love to dive into this. You said, I remain skeptical as to their ability based once again, on the Challenge of gullibility.[00:17:49] Brian: LLMs believe anything you tell them, any systems that attempt to make meaningful decisions on your behalf, will run into the same roadblock. How good is a travel agent, or a digital assistant, or even a research tool, if it [00:18:00] can't distinguish truth from fiction? So, essentially, what you're suggesting is that the state of the art now that allows agents is still, it's still that sort of 90 percent problem, the edge problem, getting to the Or, or, or is there a deeper flaw?[00:18:14] Brian: What are you, what are you saying there?[00:18:16] Simon: So this is the fundamental challenge here and honestly my frustration with agents is mainly around definitions Like any if you ask anyone who says they're working on agents to define agents You will get a subtly different definition from each person But everyone always assumes that their definition is the one true one that everyone else understands So I feel like a lot of these agent conversations, people talking past each other because one person's talking about the, the sort of travel agent idea of something that books things on your behalf.[00:18:41] Simon: Somebody else is talking about LLMs with tools running in a loop with a cron job somewhere and all of these different things. You, you ask academics and they'll laugh at you because they've been debating what agents mean for over 30 years at this point. It's like this, this long running, almost sort of an in joke in that community.[00:18:57] Simon: But if we assume that for this purpose of this conversation, an [00:19:00] agent is something that, Which you can give a job and it goes off and it does that thing for you like, like booking travel or things like that. The fundamental challenge is, it's the reliability thing, which comes from this gullibility problem.[00:19:12] Simon: And a lot of my, my interest in this originally came from when I was thinking about prompt injections as a source of this form of attack against LLM systems where you deliberately lay traps out there for this LLM to stumble across,[00:19:24] Brian: and which I should say you have been banging this drum that no one's gotten any far, at least on solving this, that I'm aware of, right.[00:19:31] Brian: Like that's still an open problem. The two years.[00:19:33] Simon: Yeah. Right. We've been talking about this problem and like, a great illustration of this was Claude so Anthropic released Claude computer use a few months ago. Fantastic demo. You could fire up a Docker container and you could literally tell it to do something and watch it open a web browser and navigate to a webpage and click around and so forth.[00:19:51] Simon: Really, really, really interesting and fun to play with. And then, um. One of the first demos somebody tried was, what if you give it a web page that says download and run this [00:20:00] executable, and it did, and the executable was malware that added it to a botnet. So the, the very first most obvious dumb trick that you could play on this thing just worked, right?[00:20:10] Simon: So that's obviously a really big problem. If I'm going to send something out to book travel on my behalf, I mean, it's hard enough for me to figure out which airlines are trying to scam me and which ones aren't. Do I really trust a language model that believes the literal truth of anything that's presented to it to go out and do those things?[00:20:29] swyx (2): Yeah I definitely think there's, it's interesting to see Anthropic doing this because they used to be the safety arm of OpenAI that split out and said, you know, we're worried about letting this thing out in the wild and here they are enabling computer use for agents. Thanks. The, it feels like things have merged.[00:20:49] swyx (2): You know, I'm, I'm also fairly skeptical about, you know, this always being the, the year of Linux on the desktop. And this is the equivalent of this being the year of agents that people [00:21:00] are not predicting so much as wishfully thinking and hoping and praying for their companies and agents to work.[00:21:05] swyx (2): But I, I feel like things are. Coming along a little bit. It's to me, it's kind of like self driving. I remember in 2014 saying that self driving was just around the corner. And I mean, it kind of is, you know, like in, in, in the Bay area. You[00:21:17] Simon: get in a Waymo and you're like, Oh, this works. Yeah, but it's a slow[00:21:21] swyx (2): cook.[00:21:21] swyx (2): It's a slow cook over the next 10 years. We're going to hammer out these things and the cynical people can just point to all the flaws, but like, there are measurable or concrete progress steps that are being made by these builders.[00:21:33] Simon: There is one form of agent that I believe in. I believe, mostly believe in the research assistant form of agents.[00:21:39] Simon: The thing where you've got a difficult problem and, and I've got like, I'm, I'm on the beta for the, the Google Gemini 1. 5 pro with deep research. I think it's called like these names, these names. Right. But. I've been using that. It's good, right? You can give it a difficult problem and it tells you, okay, I'm going to look at 56 different websites [00:22:00] and it goes away and it dumps everything to its context and it comes up with a report for you.[00:22:04] Simon: And it's not, it won't work against adversarial websites, right? If there are websites with deliberate lies in them, it might well get caught out. Most things don't have that as a problem. And so I've had some answers from that which were genuinely really valuable to me. And that feels to me like, I can see how given existing LLM tech, especially with Google Gemini with its like million token contacts and Google with their crawl of the entire web and their, they've got like search, they've got search and cache, they've got a cache of every page and so forth.[00:22:35] Simon: That makes sense to me. And that what they've got right now, I don't think it's, it's not as good as it can be, obviously, but it's, it's, it's, it's a real useful thing, which they're going to start rolling out. So, you know, Perplexity have been building the same thing for a couple of years. That, that I believe in.[00:22:50] Simon: You know, if you tell me that you're going to have an agent that's a research assistant agent, great. The coding agents I mean, chat gpt code interpreter, Nearly two years [00:23:00] ago, that thing started writing Python code, executing the code, getting errors, rewriting it to fix the errors. That pattern obviously works.[00:23:07] Simon: That works really, really well. So, yeah, coding agents that do that sort of error message loop thing, those are proven to work. And they're going to keep on getting better, and that's going to be great. The research assistant agents are just beginning to get there. The things I'm critical of are the ones where you trust, you trust this thing to go out and act autonomously on your behalf, and make decisions on your behalf, especially involving spending money, like that.[00:23:31] Simon: I don't see that working for a very long time. That feels to me like an AGI level problem.[00:23:37] swyx (2): It's it's funny because I think Stripe actually released an agent toolkit which is one of the, the things I featured that is trying to enable these agents each to have a wallet that they can go and spend and have, basically, it's a virtual card.[00:23:49] swyx (2): It's not that, not that difficult with modern infrastructure. can[00:23:51] Simon: stick a 50 cap on it, then at least it's an honor. Can't lose more than 50.[00:23:56] Brian: You know I don't, I don't know if either of you know Rafat Ali [00:24:00] he runs Skift, which is a, a travel news vertical. And he, he, he constantly laughs at the fact that every agent thing is, we're gonna get rid of booking a, a plane flight for you, you know?[00:24:11] Brian: And, and I would point out that, like, historically, when the web started, the first thing everyone talked about is, You can go online and book a trip, right? So it's funny for each generation of like technological advance. The thing they always want to kill is the travel agent. And now they want to kill the webpage travel agent.[00:24:29] Simon: Like it's like I use Google flight search. It's great, right? If you gave me an agent to do that for me, it would save me, I mean, maybe 15 seconds of typing in my things, but I still want to see what my options are and go, yeah, I'm not flying on that airline, no matter how cheap they are.[00:24:44] swyx (2): Yeah. For listeners, go ahead.[00:24:47] swyx (2): For listeners, I think, you know, I think both of you are pretty positive on NotebookLM. And you know, we, we actually interviewed the NotebookLM creators, and there are actually two internal agents going on internally. The reason it takes so long is because they're running an agent loop [00:25:00] inside that is fairly autonomous, which is kind of interesting.[00:25:01] swyx (2): For one,[00:25:02] Simon: for a definition of agent loop, if you picked that particularly well. For one definition. And you're talking about the podcast side of this, right?[00:25:07] swyx (2): Yeah, the podcast side of things. They have a there's, there's going to be a new version coming out that, that we'll be featuring at our, at our conference.[00:25:14] Simon: That one's fascinating to me. Like NotebookLM, I think it's two products, right? On the one hand, it's actually a very good rag product, right? You dump a bunch of things in, you can run searches, that, that, it does a good job of. And then, and then they added the, the podcast thing. It's a bit of a, it's a total gimmick, right?[00:25:30] Simon: But that gimmick got them attention, because they had a great product that nobody paid any attention to at all. And then you add the unfeasibly good voice synthesis of the podcast. Like, it's just, it's, it's, it's the lesson.[00:25:43] Brian: It's the lesson of mid journey and stuff like that. If you can create something that people can post on socials, you don't have to lift a finger again to do any marketing for what you're doing.[00:25:53] Brian: Let me dig into Notebook LLM just for a second as a podcaster. As a [00:26:00] gimmick, it makes sense, and then obviously, you know, you dig into it, it sort of has problems around the edges. It's like, it does the thing that all sort of LLMs kind of do, where it's like, oh, we want to Wrap up with a conclusion.[00:26:12] Multimodal AI and Future Prospects[00:26:12] Brian: I always call that like the the eighth grade book report paper problem where it has to have an intro and then, you know But that's sort of a thing where because I think you spoke about this again in your piece at the year end About how things are going multimodal and how things are that you didn't expect like, you know vision and especially audio I think So that's another thing where, at least over the last year, there's been progress made that maybe you, you didn't think was coming as quick as it came.[00:26:43] Simon: I don't know. I mean, a year ago, we had one really good vision model. We had GPT 4 vision, was, was, was very impressive. And Google Gemini had just dropped Gemini 1. 0, which had vision, but nobody had really played with it yet. Like Google hadn't. People weren't taking Gemini [00:27:00] seriously at that point. I feel like it was 1.[00:27:02] Simon: 5 Pro when it became apparent that actually they were, they, they got over their hump and they were building really good models. And yeah, and they, to be honest, the video models are mostly still using the same trick. The thing where you divide the video up into one image per second and you dump that all into the context.[00:27:16] Simon: So maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising to us that long context models plus vision meant that the video was, was starting to be solved. Of course, it didn't. Not being, you, what you really want with videos, you want to be able to do the audio and the images at the same time. And I think the models are beginning to do that now.[00:27:33] Simon: Like, originally, Gemini 1. 5 Pro originally ignored the audio. It just did the, the, like, one frame per second video trick. As far as I can tell, the most recent ones are actually doing pure multimodal. But the things that opens up are just extraordinary. Like, the the ChatGPT iPhone app feature that they shipped as one of their 12 days of, of OpenAI, I really can be having a conversation and just turn on my video camera and go, Hey, what kind of tree is [00:28:00] this?[00:28:00] Simon: And so forth. And it works. And for all I know, that's just snapping a like picture once a second and feeding it into the model. The, the, the things that you can do with that as an end user are extraordinary. Like that, that to me, I don't think most people have cottoned onto the fact that you can now stream video directly into a model because it, it's only a few weeks old.[00:28:22] Simon: Wow. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's Big boost in terms of what kinds of things you can do with this stuff. Yeah. For[00:28:30] swyx (2): people who are not that close I think Gemini Flashes free tier allows you to do something like capture a photo, one photo every second or a minute and leave it on 24, seven, and you can prompt it to do whatever.[00:28:45] swyx (2): And so you can effectively have your own camera app or monitoring app that that you just prompt and it detects where it changes. It detects for, you know, alerts or anything like that, or describes your day. You know, and, and, and the fact that this is free I think [00:29:00] it's also leads into the previous point of it being the prices haven't come down a lot.[00:29:05] Simon: And even if you're paying for this stuff, like a thing that I put in my blog entry is I ran a calculation on what it would cost to process 68, 000 photographs in my photo collection, and for each one just generate a caption, and using Gemini 1. 5 Flash 8B, it would cost me 1. 68 to process 68, 000 images, which is, I mean, that, that doesn't make sense.[00:29:28] Simon: None of that makes sense. Like it's, it's a, for one four hundredth of a cent per image to generate captions now. So you can see why feeding in a day's worth of video just isn't even very expensive to process.[00:29:40] swyx (2): Yeah, I'll tell you what is expensive. It's the other direction. So we're here, we're talking about consuming video.[00:29:46] swyx (2): And this year, we also had a lot of progress, like probably one of the most excited, excited, anticipated launches of the year was Sora. We actually got Sora. And less exciting.[00:29:55] Simon: We did, and then VO2, Google's Sora, came out like three [00:30:00] days later and upstaged it. Like, Sora was exciting until VO2 landed, which was just better.[00:30:05] swyx (2): In general, I feel the media, or the social media, has been very unfair to Sora. Because what was released to the world, generally available, was Sora Lite. It's the distilled version of Sora, right? So you're, I did not[00:30:16] Simon: realize that you're absolutely comparing[00:30:18] swyx (2): the, the most cherry picked version of VO two, the one that they published on the marketing page to the, the most embarrassing version of the soa.[00:30:25] swyx (2): So of course it's gonna look bad, so, well, I got[00:30:27] Simon: access to the VO two I'm in the VO two beta and I've been poking around with it and. Getting it to generate pelicans on bicycles and stuff. I would absolutely[00:30:34] swyx (2): believe that[00:30:35] Simon: VL2 is actually better. Is Sora, so is full fat Sora coming soon? Do you know, when, when do we get to play with that one?[00:30:42] Simon: No one's[00:30:43] swyx (2): mentioned anything. I think basically the strategy is let people play around with Sora Lite and get info there. But the, the, keep developing Sora with the Hollywood studios. That's what they actually care about. Gotcha. Like the rest of us. Don't really know what to do with the video anyway. Right.[00:30:59] Simon: I mean, [00:31:00] that's my thing is I realized that for generative images and images and video like images We've had for a few years and I don't feel like they've broken out into the talented artist community yet Like lots of people are having fun with them and doing and producing stuff. That's kind of cool to look at but what I want you know that that movie everything everywhere all at once, right?[00:31:20] Simon: One, one ton of Oscars, utterly amazing film. The VFX team for that were five people, some of whom were watching YouTube videos to figure out what to do. My big question for, for Sora and and and Midjourney and stuff, what happens when a creative team like that starts using these tools? I want the creative geniuses behind everything, everywhere all at once.[00:31:40] Simon: What are they going to be able to do with this stuff in like a few years time? Because that's really exciting to me. That's where you take artists who are at the very peak of their game. Give them these new capabilities and see, see what they can do with them.[00:31:52] swyx (2): I should, I know a little bit here. So it should mention that, that team actually used RunwayML.[00:31:57] swyx (2): So there was, there was,[00:31:57] Simon: yeah.[00:31:59] swyx (2): I don't know how [00:32:00] much I don't. So, you know, it's possible to overstate this, but there are people integrating it. Generated video within their workflow, even pre SORA. Right, because[00:32:09] Brian: it's not, it's not the thing where it's like, okay, tomorrow we'll be able to do a full two hour movie that you prompt with three sentences.[00:32:15] Brian: It is like, for the very first part of, of, you know video effects in film, it's like, if you can get that three second clip, if you can get that 20 second thing that they did in the matrix that blew everyone's minds and took a million dollars or whatever to do, like, it's the, it's the little bits and pieces that they can fill in now that it's probably already there.[00:32:34] swyx (2): Yeah, it's like, I think actually having a layered view of what assets people need and letting AI fill in the low value assets. Right, like the background video, the background music and, you know, sometimes the sound effects. That, that maybe, maybe more palatable maybe also changes the, the way that you evaluate the stuff that's coming out.[00:32:57] swyx (2): Because people tend to, in social media, try to [00:33:00] emphasize foreground stuff, main character stuff. So you really care about consistency, and you, you really are bothered when, like, for example, Sorad. Botch's image generation of a gymnast doing flips, which is horrible. It's horrible. But for background crowds, like, who cares?[00:33:18] Brian: And by the way, again, I was, I was a film major way, way back in the day, like, that's how it started. Like things like Braveheart, where they filmed 10 people on a field, and then the computer could turn it into 1000 people on a field. Like, that's always been the way it's around the margins and in the background that first comes in.[00:33:36] Brian: The[00:33:36] Simon: Lord of the Rings movies were over 20 years ago. Although they have those giant battle sequences, which were very early, like, I mean, you could almost call it a generative AI approach, right? They were using very sophisticated, like, algorithms to model out those different battles and all of that kind of stuff.[00:33:52] Simon: Yeah, I know very little. I know basically nothing about film production, so I try not to commentate on it. But I am fascinated to [00:34:00] see what happens when, when these tools start being used by the real, the people at the top of their game.[00:34:05] swyx (2): I would say like there's a cultural war that is more that being fought here than a technology war.[00:34:11] swyx (2): Most of the Hollywood people are against any form of AI anyway, so they're busy Fighting that battle instead of thinking about how to adopt it and it's, it's very fringe. I participated here in San Francisco, one generative AI video creative hackathon where the AI positive artists actually met with technologists like myself and then we collaborated together to build short films and that was really nice and I think, you know, I'll be hosting some of those in my events going forward.[00:34:38] swyx (2): One thing that I think like I want to leave it. Give people a sense of it's like this is a recap of last year But then sometimes it's useful to walk away as well with like what can we expect in the future? I don't know if you got anything. I would also call out that the Chinese models here have made a lot of progress Hyde Law and Kling and God knows who like who else in the video arena [00:35:00] Also making a lot of progress like surprising him like I think maybe actually Chinese China is surprisingly ahead with regards to Open8 at least, but also just like specific forms of video generation.[00:35:12] Simon: Wouldn't it be interesting if a film industry sprung up in a country that we don't normally think of having a really strong film industry that was using these tools? Like, that would be a fascinating sort of angle on this. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.[00:35:25] swyx (2): Agreed. I, I, I Oh, sorry. Go ahead.[00:35:29] Exploring Video Avatar Companies[00:35:29] swyx (2): Just for people's Just to put it on people's radar as well, Hey Jen, there's like there's a category of video avatar companies that don't specifically, don't specialize in general video.[00:35:41] swyx (2): They only do talking heads, let's just say. And HeyGen sings very well.[00:35:45] Brian: Swyx, you know that that's what I've been using, right? Like, have, have I, yeah, right. So, if you see some of my recent YouTube videos and things like that, where, because the beauty part of the HeyGen thing is, I, I, I don't want to use the robot voice, so [00:36:00] I record the mp3 file for my computer, And then I put that into HeyGen with the avatar that I've trained it on, and all it does is the lip sync.[00:36:09] Brian: So it looks, it's not 100 percent uncanny valley beatable, but it's good enough that if you weren't looking for it, it's just me sitting there doing one of my clips from the show. And, yeah, so, by the way, HeyGen. Shout out to them.[00:36:24] AI Influencers and Their Future[00:36:24] swyx (2): So I would, you know, in terms of like the look ahead going, like, looking, reviewing 2024, looking at trends for 2025, I would, they basically call this out.[00:36:33] swyx (2): Meta tried to introduce AI influencers and failed horribly because they were just bad at it. But at some point that there will be more and more basically AI influencers Not in a way that Simon is but in a way that they are not human.[00:36:50] Simon: Like the few of those that have done well, I always feel like they're doing well because it's a gimmick, right?[00:36:54] Simon: It's a it's it's novel and fun to like Like that, the AI Seinfeld thing [00:37:00] from last year, the Twitch stream, you know, like those, if you're the only one or one of just a few doing that, you'll get, you'll attract an audience because it's an interesting new thing. But I just, I don't know if that's going to be sustainable longer term or not.[00:37:11] Simon: Like,[00:37:12] Simplifying Content Creation with AI[00:37:12] Brian: I'm going to tell you, Because I've had discussions, I can't name the companies or whatever, but, so think about the workflow for this, like, now we all know that on TikTok and Instagram, like, holding up a phone to your face, and doing like, in my car video, or walking, a walk and talk, you know, that's, that's very common, but also, if you want to do a professional sort of talking head video, you still have to sit in front of a camera, you still have to do the lighting, you still have to do the video editing, versus, if you can just record, what I'm saying right now, the last 30 seconds, If you clip that out as an mp3 and you have a good enough avatar, then you can put that avatar in front of Times Square, on a beach, or whatever.[00:37:50] Brian: So, like, again for creators, the reason I think Simon, we're on the verge of something, it, it just, it's not going to, I think it's not, oh, we're going to have [00:38:00] AI avatars take over, it'll be one of those things where it takes another piece of the workflow out and simplifies it. I'm all[00:38:07] Simon: for that. I, I always love this stuff.[00:38:08] Simon: I like tools. Tools that help human beings do more. Do more ambitious things. I'm always in favor of, like, that, that, that's what excites me about this entire field.[00:38:17] swyx (2): Yeah. We're, we're looking into basically creating one for my podcast. We have this guy Charlie, he's Australian. He's, he's not real, but he pre, he opens every show and we are gonna have him present all the shorts.[00:38:29] Simon: Yeah, go ahead.[00:38:30] The Importance of Credibility in AI[00:38:30] Simon: The thing that I keep coming back to is this idea of credibility like in a world that is full of like AI generated everything and so forth It becomes even more important that people find the sources of information that they trust and find people and find Sources that are credible and I feel like that's the one thing that LLMs and AI can never have is credibility, right?[00:38:49] Simon: ChatGPT can never stake its reputation on telling you something useful and interesting because That means nothing, right? It's a matrix multiplication. It depends on who prompted it and so forth. So [00:39:00] I'm always, and this is when I'm blogging as well, I'm always looking for, okay, who are the reliable people who will tell me useful, interesting information who aren't just going to tell me whatever somebody's paying them to tell, tell them, who aren't going to, like, type a one sentence prompt into an LLM and spit out an essay and stick it online.[00:39:16] Simon: And that, that to me, Like, earning that credibility is really important. That's why a lot of my ethics around the way that I publish are based on the idea that I want people to trust me. I want to do things that, that gain credibility in people's eyes so they will come to me for information as a trustworthy source.[00:39:32] Simon: And it's the same for the sources that I'm, I'm consulting as well. So that's something I've, I've been thinking a lot about that sort of credibility focus on this thing for a while now.[00:39:40] swyx (2): Yeah, you can layer or structure credibility or decompose it like so one thing I would put in front of you I'm not saying that you should Agree with this or accept this at all is that you can use AI to generate different Variations and then and you pick you as the final sort of last mile person that you pick The last output and [00:40:00] you put your stamp of credibility behind that like that everything's human reviewed instead of human origin[00:40:04] Simon: Yeah, if you publish something you need to be able to put it on the ground Publishing it.[00:40:08] Simon: You need to say, I will put my name to this. I will attach my credibility to this thing. And if you're willing to do that, then, then that's great.[00:40:16] swyx (2): For creators, this is huge because there's a fundamental asymmetry between starting with a blank slate versus choosing from five different variations.[00:40:23] Brian: Right.[00:40:24] Brian: And also the key thing that you just said is like, if everything that I do, if all of the words were generated by an LLM, if the voice is generated by an LLM. If the video is also generated by the LLM, then I haven't done anything, right? But if, if one or two of those, you take a shortcut, but it's still, I'm willing to sign off on it.[00:40:47] Brian: Like, I feel like that's where I feel like people are coming around to like, this is maybe acceptable, sort of.[00:40:53] Simon: This is where I've been pushing the definition. I love the term slop. Where I've been pushing the definition of slop as AI generated [00:41:00] content that is both unrequested and unreviewed and the unreviewed thing is really important like that's the thing that elevates something from slop to not slop is if A human being has reviewed it and said, you know what, this is actually worth other people's time.[00:41:12] Simon: And again, I'm willing to attach my credibility to it and say, hey, this is worthwhile.[00:41:16] Brian: It's, it's, it's the cura curational, curatorial and editorial part of it that no matter what the tools are to do shortcuts, to do, as, as Swyx is saying choose between different edits or different cuts, but in the end, if there's a curatorial mind, Or editorial mind behind it.[00:41:32] Brian: Let me I want to wedge this in before we start to close.[00:41:36] The Future of LLM User Interfaces[00:41:36] Brian: One of the things coming back to your year end piece that has been a something that I've been banging the drum about is when you're talking about LLMs. Getting harder to use. You said most users are thrown in at the deep end.[00:41:48] Brian: The default LLM chat UI is like taking brand new computer users, dropping them into a Linux terminal and expecting them to figure it all out. I mean, it's, it's literally going back to the command line. The command line was defeated [00:42:00] by the GUI interface. And this is what I've been banging the drum about is like, this cannot be.[00:42:05] Brian: The user interface, what we have now cannot be the end result. Do you see any hints or seeds of a GUI moment for LLM interfaces?[00:42:17] Simon: I mean, it has to happen. It absolutely has to happen. The the, the, the, the usability of these things is turning into a bit of a crisis. And we are at least seeing some really interesting innovation in little directions.[00:42:28] Simon: Just like OpenAI's chat GPT canvas thing that they just launched. That is at least. Going a little bit more interesting than just chat, chats and responses. You know, you can, they're exploring that space where you're collaborating with an LLM. You're both working in the, on the same document. That makes a lot of sense to me.[00:42:44] Simon: Like that, that feels really smart. The one of the best things is still who was it who did the, the UI where you could, they had a drawing UI where you draw an interface and click a button. TL draw would then make it real thing. That was spectacular, [00:43:00] absolutely spectacular, like, alternative vision of how you'd interact with these models.[00:43:05] Simon: Because yeah, the and that's, you know, so I feel like there is so much scope for innovation there and it is beginning to happen. Like, like, I, I feel like most people do understand that we need to do better in terms of interfaces that both help explain what's going on and give people better tools for working with models.[00:43:23] Simon: I was going to say, I want to[00:43:25] Brian: dig a little deeper into this because think of the conceptual idea behind the GUI, which is instead of typing into a command line open word. exe, it's, you, you click an icon, right? So that's abstracting away sort of the, again, the programming stuff that like, you know, it's, it's a, a, a child can tap on an iPad and, and make a program open, right?[00:43:47] Brian: The problem it seems to me right now with how we're interacting with LLMs is it's sort of like you know a dumb robot where it's like you poke it and it goes over here, but no, I want it, I want to go over here so you poke it this way and you can't get it exactly [00:44:00] right, like, what can we abstract away from the From the current, what's going on that, that makes it more fine tuned and easier to get more precise.[00:44:12] Brian: You see what I'm saying?[00:44:13] Simon: Yes. And the this is the other trend that I've been following from the last year, which I think is super interesting. It's the, the prompt driven UI development thing. Basically, this is the pattern where Claude Artifacts was the first thing to do this really well. You type in a prompt and it goes, Oh, I should answer that by writing a custom HTML and JavaScript application for you that does a certain thing.[00:44:35] Simon: And when you think about that take and since then it turns out This is easy, right? Every decent LLM can produce HTML and JavaScript that does something useful. So we've actually got this alternative way of interacting where they can respond to your prompt with an interactive custom interface that you can work with.[00:44:54] Simon: People haven't quite wired those back up again. Like, ideally, I'd want the LLM ask me a [00:45:00] question where it builds me a custom little UI, For that question, and then it gets to see how I interacted with that. I don't know why, but that's like just such a small step from where we are right now. But that feels like such an obvious next step.[00:45:12] Simon: Like an LLM, why should it, why should you just be communicating with, with text when it can build interfaces on the fly that let you select a point on a map or or move like sliders up and down. It's gonna create knobs and dials. I keep saying knobs and dials. right. We can do that. And the LLMs can build, and Claude artifacts will build you a knobs and dials interface.[00:45:34] Simon: But at the moment they haven't closed the loop. When you twiddle those knobs, Claude doesn't see what you were doing. They're going to close that loop. I'm, I'm shocked that they haven't done it yet. So yeah, I think there's so much scope for innovation and there's so much scope for doing interesting stuff with that model where the LLM, anything you can represent in SVG, which is almost everything, can now be part of that ongoing conversation.[00:45:59] swyx (2): Yeah, [00:46:00] I would say the best executed version of this I've seen so far is Bolt where you can literally type in, make a Spotify clone, make an Airbnb clone, and it actually just does that for you zero shot with a nice design.[00:46:14] Simon: There's a benchmark for that now. The LMRena people now have a benchmark that is zero shot app, app generation, because all of the models can do it.[00:46:22] Simon: Like it's, it's, I've started figuring out. I'm building my own version of this for my own project, because I think within six months. I think it'll just be an expected feature. Like if you have a web application, why don't you have a thing where, oh, look, the, you can add a custom, like, so for my dataset data exploration project, I want you to be able to do things like conjure up a dashboard, just via a prompt.[00:46:43] Simon: You say, oh, I need a pie chart and a bar chart and put them next to each other, and then have a form where submitting the form inserts a row into my database table. And this is all suddenly feasible. It's, it's, it's not even particularly difficult to do, which is great. Utterly bizarre that these things are now easy.[00:47:00][00:47:00] swyx (2): I think for a general audience, that is what I would highlight, that software creation is becoming easier and easier. Gemini is now available in Gmail and Google Sheets. I don't write my own Google Sheets formulas anymore, I just tell Gemini to do it. And so I think those are, I almost wanted to basically somewhat disagree with, with your assertion that LMS got harder to use.[00:47:22] swyx (2): Like, yes, we, we expose more capabilities, but they're, they're in minor forms, like using canvas, like web search in, in in chat GPT and like Gemini being in, in Excel sheets or in Google sheets, like, yeah, we're getting, no,[00:47:37] Simon: no, no, no. Those are the things that make it harder, because the problem is that for each of those features, they're amazing.[00:47:43] Simon: If you understand the edges of the feature, if you're like, okay, so in Google, Gemini, Excel formulas, I can get it to do a certain amount of things, but I can't get it to go and read a web. You probably can't get it to read a webpage, right? But you know, there are, there are things that it can do and things that it can't do, which are completely undocumented.[00:47:58] Simon: If you ask it what it [00:48:00] can and can't do, they're terrible at answering questions about that. So like my favorite example is Claude artifacts. You can't build a Claude artifact that can hit an API somewhere else. Because the cause headers on that iframe prevents accessing anything outside of CDNJS. So, good luck learning cause headers as an end user in order to understand why Like, I've seen people saying, oh, this is rubbish.[00:48:26] Simon: I tried building an artifact that would run a prompt and it couldn't because Claude didn't expose an API with cause headers that all of this stuff is so weird and complicated. And yeah, like that, that, the more that with the more tools we add, the more expertise you need to really, To understand the full scope of what you can do.[00:48:44] Simon: And so it's, it's, I wouldn't say it's, it's, it's, it's like, the question really comes down to what does it take to understand the full extent of what's possible? And honestly, that, that's just getting more and more involved over time.[00:48:58] Local LLMs: A Growing Interest[00:48:58] swyx (2): I have one more topic that I, I [00:49:00] think you, you're kind of a champion of and we've touched on it a little bit, which is local LLMs.[00:49:05] swyx (2): And running AI applications on your desktop, I feel like you are an early adopter of many, many things.[00:49:12] Simon: I had an interesting experience with that over the past year. Six months ago, I almost completely lost interest. And the reason is that six months ago, the best local models you could run, There was no point in using them at all, because the best hosted models were so much better.[00:49:26] Simon: Like, there was no point at which I'd choose to run a model on my laptop if I had API access to Cloud 3. 5 SONNET. They just, they weren't even comparable. And that changed, basically, in the past three months, as the local models had this step changing capability, where now I can run some of these local models, and they're not as good as Cloud 3.[00:49:45] Simon: 5 SONNET, but they're not so far away that It's not worth me even using them. The other, the, the, the, the continuing problem is I've only got 64 gigabytes of RAM, and if you run, like, LLAMA370B, it's not going to work. Most of my RAM is gone. So now I have to shut down my Firefox tabs [00:50:00] and, and my Chrome and my VS Code windows in order to run it.[00:50:03] Simon: But it's got me interested again. Like, like the, the efficiency improvements are such that now, if you were to like stick me on a desert island with my laptop, I'd be very productive using those local models. And that's, that's pretty exciting. And if those trends continue, and also, like, I think my next laptop, if when I buy one is going to have twice the amount of RAM, At which point, maybe I can run the, almost the top tier, like open weights models and still be able to use it as a computer as well.[00:50:32] Simon: NVIDIA just announced their 3, 000 128 gigabyte monstrosity. That's pretty good price. You know, that's that's, if you're going to buy it,[00:50:42] swyx (2): custom OS and all.[00:50:46] Simon: If I get a job, if I, if, if, if I have enough of an income that I can justify blowing $3,000 on it, then yes.[00:50:52] swyx (2): Okay, let's do a GoFundMe to get Simon one it.[00:50:54] swyx (2): Come on. You know, you can get a job anytime you want. Is this, this is just purely discretionary .[00:50:59] Simon: I want, [00:51:00] I want a job that pays me to do exactly what I'm doing already and doesn't tell me what else to do. That's, thats the challenge.[00:51:06] swyx (2): I think Ethan Molik does pretty well. Whatever, whatever it is he's doing.[00:51:11] swyx (2): But yeah, basically I was trying to bring in also, you know, not just local models, but Apple intelligence is on every Mac machine. You're, you're, you seem skeptical. It's rubbish.[00:51:21] Simon: Apple intelligence is so bad. It's like, it does one thing well.[00:51:25] swyx (2): Oh yeah, what's that? It summarizes notifications. And sometimes it's humorous.[00:51:29] Brian: Are you sure it does that well? And also, by the way, the other, again, from a sort of a normie point of view. There's no indication from Apple of when to use it. Like, everybody upgrades their thing and it's like, okay, now you have Apple Intelligence, and you never know when to use it ever again.[00:51:47] swyx (2): Oh, yeah, you consult the Apple docs, which is MKBHD.[00:51:49] swyx (2): The[00:51:51] Simon: one thing, the one thing I'll say about Apple Intelligence is, One of the reasons it's so disappointing is that the models are just weak, but now, like, Llama 3b [00:52:00] is Such a good model in a 2 gigabyte file I think give Apple six months and hopefully they'll catch up to the state of the art on the small models And then maybe it'll start being a lot more interesting.[00:52:10] swyx (2): Yeah. Anyway, I like This was year one And and you know just like our first year of iPhone maybe maybe not that much of a hit and then year three They had the App Store so Hey I would say give it some time, and you know, I think Chrome also shipping Gemini Nano I think this year in Chrome, which means that every app, every web app will have for free access to a local model that just ships in the browser, which is kind of interesting.[00:52:38] swyx (2): And then I, I think I also wanted to just open the floor for any, like, you know, any of us what are the apps that, you know, AI applications that we've adopted that have, that we really recommend because these are all, you know, apps that are running on our browser that like, or apps that are running locally that we should be, that, that other people should be trying.[00:52:55] swyx (2): Right? Like, I, I feel like that's, that's one always one thing that is helpful at the start of the [00:53:00] year.[00:53:00] Simon: Okay. So for running local models. My top picks, firstly, on the iPhone, there's this thing called MLC Chat, which works, and it's easy to install, and it runs Llama 3B, and it's so much fun. Like, it's not necessarily a capable enough novel that I use it for real things, but my party trick right now is I get my phone to write a Netflix Christmas movie plot outline where, like, a bunch of Jeweller falls in love with the King of Sweden or whatever.[00:53:25] Simon: And it does a good job and it comes up with pun names for the movies. And that's, that's deeply entertaining. On my laptop, most recently, I've been getting heavy into, into Olama because the Olama team are very, very good at finding the good models and patching them up and making them work well. It gives you an API.[00:53:42] Simon: My little LLM command line tool that has a plugin that talks to Olama, which works really well. So that's my, my Olama is. I think the easiest on ramp to to running models locally, if you want a nice user interface, LMStudio is, I think, the best user interface [00:54:00] thing at that. It's not open source. It's good.[00:54:02] Simon: It's worth playing with. The other one that I've been trying with recently, there's a thing called, what's it called? Open web UI or something. Yeah. The UI is fantastic. It, if you've got Olama running and you fire this thing up, it spots Olama and it gives you an interface onto your Olama models. And t

Alongside memories of meeting Brian Clough in the Nottingham Forest dressing room and in the local newsagents, this episode looks back at the fanzine named after him. And after you've listened to the stories behind 'The Brian,' why not visit the digital versions of the popular publication dating back over 30 years? A special project involving Left Lion magazine, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, digitised the original issues. Visit the website here: The Brian There's also an accompanying video: You Tube videoThe Green Jumper has reached the final of the global Sports Podcast Awards 2025. Please cast your vote for us (in the Best Football Podcast category): Sports Podcast AwardsThanks for your support!There are more Cloughie memories at brianclough.com

Chris Holman welcomes back Brian Peters, CEO, of MHA, the Michigan Health & Hospital Association, Lansing, MI. For their discussion, Chris wanted to find out several things from Brian: There was big news last week with an announced joint venture between Henry Ford and Ascension. It seems like hospitals have been in the news a lot in recent years related to hospitals consolidating into larger systems. What is driving these activities? How does hospital and health system consolidation impact access to care, particularly for rural Michigan? What are the benefits of hospital mergers and acquisitions? Do they lead to increased healthcare costs? Do you anticipate we will continue to see more activity like this in the near future? Anything else on this topic or coming up for the MHA that you'd like to share?

In this episode, Susan Moeller, the Director of Marketing at Tailwind, discusses how Tailwind provides small businesses with a marketing team at an affordable price through AI. Susan shares insights into their marketing strategies, highlighting the power of search advertising and leveraging Pinterest for word-of-mouth marketing. The episode also explores Tailwind's latest offerings, including their AI-powered ad creation feature and the benefits of combining TikTok and Pinterest marketing.Susan Moeller is a dynamic marketing professional known for her expertise in audience building through paid media, strategic partnerships, engaging content, and social media. As the Co-Founder of the Women In Content Marketing Facebook Group and the Creator of BuzzSumo Academy, Susan has a passion for empowering marketers and sharing her knowledge. With her role as the Director of Marketing at Tailwind and her experience as a webinar host, Susan is a problem solver who thrives on connecting with others to drive impactful marketing strategies. Here are a few of the topics we'll discuss on this episode of Hard to Market: Small businesses can offload their marketing tasks to Tailwind and focus on what they love. Tailwind utilizes paid search and Pinterest marketing to reach its target audience. The company focuses on word of mouth, reviews, and testimonials as key marketing channels. TikTok has shown promising results for Tailwind with its low CPM and high engagement. Users have reported a 525% increase in traffic and a 92% increase in sales using Tailwind ads. Tailwind is favored by e-commerce store owners, service providers, bloggers, and agencies, especially those with a technical background. Tailwind cuts through the clutter of ad managers and offers a more intuitive user interface. Resources: Tailwind Podcast Chef Connecting with Susan Moeller:LinkedInConnecting with Brian Mattocks: LinkedIn Email Quotables: 13:48 - “I'm really happy because we've seen so much traction in those channels that Tailwind now has a part of our ghostwriter AI interface that will create search ads for you. It will create social ads for you, and we have a beta program that will manage your ads through our AI system. And that has gotten extremely great reviews in beta.” 03:38 - “We provide a way for small businesses to not do their marketing by having them offload it to Tailwind. And our goal really is to make world cost marketing easy for everyone. So we don't want to… we don't want to just tell people what to do. We want to make it easy for them to get things done and be able to move on with the rest of their day.” 24:20 - “I mean for as much as we're a data driven, you know, in many ways what feels like a science, the relationships are really where all the magic is anyway, because you have to be able to do that translation.” 10:49 -  “I mean, it's a very peculiar uptick with TikTok. It's almost like some folks go and they have this wild success, and then they're almost fearful to continue, and they pull back, and it's this back and forth.” 16:12 - Brian: “There are a good number of your clients, no doubt, or at least ideal clients potentially, that don't have a strong technical background. How are you from a, as a marketer getting in front of them, and what do you do to onboard them in a, a friendly way, I guess? You would see that Oh yeah, oh yeah, folks fall off in a month and a half because they just couldn't get their head around the tech.”    Susan: “Right. Yeah, I know. It's a very, it, it's a very, it's an interesting talent. Our, the customers that we see coming to us that stick with us the longest are e-commerce store owners and service providers, bloggers and agencies. So I would say that the people who stick with us longer are, are a little bit more on the, the technically savvy side of things.”

About BrianBrian leads the Google Cloud Product and Industry Marketing team. This team is focused on accelerating the growth of Google Cloud by establishing thought leadership, increasing demand and usage, enabling their sales teams and partners to tell their product stories with excellence, and helping their customers be the best advocates for them.Before joining Google, Brian spent over 25 years in product marketing or engineering in different forms. He started his career at Microsoft and had a very non-traditional path for 20 years. Brian worked in every product division except for cloud. He did marketing, product management, and engineering roles. And, early on, he was the first speech writer for Steve Ballmer and worked on Bill Gates' speeches too. His last role was building up the Microsoft Surface business from scratch as VP of the hardware businesses. After Microsoft, Brian spent a year as CEO at a hardware startup called Doppler Labs, where they made a run at transforming hearing, and then spent two years as VP at Amazon Web Services leading product marketing, developer advocacy, and a bunch more marketing teams.Brian has three kids still at home, Barty, Noli, and Alder, who are all named after trees in different ways. His wife Edie and him met right at the beginning of their first year at Yale University, where Brian studied math, econ, and philosophy and was the captain of the Swim and Dive team his senior year. Edie has a PhD in forestry and runs a sustainability and forestry consulting firm she started, that is aptly named “Three Trees Consulting”. As a family they love the outdoors, tennis, running, and adventures in Brian's 1986 Volkswagen Van, which is his first and only car, that he can't bring himself to get rid of.Links Referenced: Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com @isforat: https://twitter.com/IsForAt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brhall/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is brought to us by our friends at Pinecone. They believe that all anyone really wants is to be understood, and that includes your users. AI models combined with the Pinecone vector database let your applications understand and act on what your users want… without making them spell it out. Make your search application find results by meaning instead of just keywords, your personalization system make picks based on relevance instead of just tags, and your security applications match threats by resemblance instead of just regular expressions. Pinecone provides the cloud infrastructure that makes this easy, fast, and scalable. Thanks to my friends at Pinecone for sponsoring this episode. Visit Pinecone.io to understand more.Corey: This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Veeam. Do you care about backups? Of course you don't. Nobody cares about backups. Stop lying to yourselves! You care about restores, usually right after you didn't care enough about backups. If you're tired of the vulnerabilities, costs, and slow recoveries when using snapshots to restore your data, assuming you even have them at all living in AWS-land, there is an alternative for you. Check out Veeam, that's V-E-E-A-M for secure, zero-fuss AWS backup that won't leave you high and dry when it's time to restore. Stop taking chances with your data. Talk to Veeam. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This episode is brought to us by our friends at Google Cloud and, as a part of that, they have given me someone to, basically, harass for the next half hour. Brian Hall is the VP of Product Marketing over at Google Cloud. Brian, welcome back.Brian: Hello, Corey. It's good to be here, and technically, we've given you time to harass me by speaking with me because you never don't have the time to harass me on Twitter and other places, and you're very good at it.Corey: Well, thank you. Again, we first met back when you were doing, effectively, the same role over at AWS. And before that, you spent only 20 years or so at Microsoft. So, you've now worked at all three of the large hyperscale cloud providers. You probably have some interesting perspectives on how the industry has evolved over that time. So, at the time of this recording, it is after Google Next and before re:Invent. There was also a Microsoft event there that I didn't pay much attention to. Where are we as a culture, as an industry, when it comes to cloud?Brian: Well, I'll start with it is amazing how early days it still is. I don't want to be put on my former Amazon cap too much, and I think it'd be pushing it a little bit to say it's complete and total day one with the cloud. But there's no question that there is a ton of evolution still to come. I mean, if you look at it, you can kind of break it into three eras so far. And roll with me here, and happy to take any dissent from you.But there was kind of a first era that was very much led by Amazon. We can call it the VM era or the component era, but being able to get compute on-demand, get nearly unlimited or actually unlimited storage with S3 was just remarkable. And it happened pretty quickly that startups, new tech companies, had to—like, it would be just wild to not start with AWS and actually start ordering servers and all that kind of stuff. And so, I look at that as kind of the first phase. And it was remarkable how long Amazon had a run really as the only player there. And maybe eight years ago—six years ago—we could argue on timeframes, things shifted a little bit because the enterprises, the big companies, and the governments finally realized, “Holy crow. This thing has gotten far enough that it's not just for these startups.”Corey: Yeah. There was a real change. There was an eye-opening moment there where it isn't just, “I want to go and sell things online.” It's, “And I also want to be a bank. Can we do that with you?” And, “Huh.”Brian: My SAP—like I don't know big that darn thing is going to get. Could I put it in your cloud? And, “Oh, by the way, CapEx forecasting stinks. Can you get me out of that?” And so, it became like the traditional IT infrastructure. All of the sudden, the IT guys showed up at the party, which I know is—it sounds fun to me, but that doesn't sound like the best addition to a party for many people. And so essentially, old-school IT infrastructure finally came to the cloud and Microsoft couldn't miss that happening when it did. But it was a major boon for AWS just because of the position that they had already.Corey: And even Google as well. All three of you now are pivoting in a lot of the messaging to talk to the big E enterprises out there. And I've noticed for the last few years, and I'm not entirely alone. When I go to re:Invent, and I look at announcements they're making, sure they have for the serverless stuff and how to run websites and EC2 nonsense. And then they're talking about IOT things and other things that just seem very oriented on a persona I don't understand. Everyone's doing stuff with mainframes now for example. And it feels like, “Oh, those of us who came here for the web services like it says on the name of the company aren't really feeling like it's for us anymore.” It's the problem of trying to be for everyone and pivoting to where the money is going, but Google's done this at least as much as anyone has in recent years. Are those of us who don't have corporate IT-like problems no longer the target market for folks or what's changed?Brian: It's still the target market, so like, you take the corporate IT, they're obviously still moving to the cloud. And there's a ton of opportunity. Just take existing IT spending and see a number over $1 trillion per year, and if you take the run rates of Microsoft, Amazon, Google Cloud, it's certainly over $100 billion, but that means it's still less than ten percent of what is existing IT spending. There are many people that think that existing IT spend number is significantly higher than that. But to your point on what's changing, there's actually a third wave that's happening.So, if the first wave was you start a company. You're a tech company, of course, you start it on AWS or on the Cloud. Second wave is all the IT people, IT departments, the central organizations that run technology for all the people that are not technology people come to the cloud. This third wave is everybody has to become a technology person. If you're a business leader, like you're at a fast-food restaurant and you're responsible for the franchisee relations, before, like, you needed to get an EDI system running or something, and so you told your IT department to figure out.Now, you have to actually think about what apps do we want to provide to our customers. How do I get the right data to my franchisees so that they can make business decisions? How can I automate all that? And you know, whereas before I was a guy wearing a suit or a gal wearing a suit who didn't need to know technology, I now have to. And that's what's changing the most. And it's why the Target Addressable Market—or the TAM as business folk sometimes say—it's really hard to estimate looking forward if every business is really needing to become a technology business in many ways. And it didn't dawn on me, honestly, and you can give me all the ribbing that I probably deserve for this—but it didn't really dawn on me until I came to Google and kept hearing the transformation word, “Digital transformation, digital transformation,” and honestly, having been in software for so long, I didn't really know what digital transformation meant until I started seeing all of these folks, like every company have to become a tech company effectively.Corey: Yeah. And it turns out there aren't enough technologists to go around, so it's very challenging to wind up getting the expertise in-house. It's natural to start looking at, “Well, how do we effectively outsource this?” And well, you can absolutely have a compression algorithm for experience. It's called, “Buying products and services and hiring people who have that experience already baked in either to the product or they show up knowing how to do something because they've done this before.”Brian: That's right. The thing I think we have to—for those of us that come from the technology side, this transformation is scary for the people who all of the sudden have to get tech and be like—Corey, if you or I—actually, you're very artistic, so maybe this wouldn't do it for you—but if I were told, “Hey, Brian, for your livelihood, you now need to incorporate painting,” like…Corey: [laugh]. I can't even write legibly let alone draw or paint. That is not my skill set. [laugh].Brian: I'd be like, “Wait, what? I'm not good at painting. I've never been a painting person, like I'm not creative.” “Okay. Great. Then we're going to fire you, or we're going to bring someone in who can.” Like, that'd be scary. And so, having more services, more people that can help as every company goes through a transition like that—and it's interesting, it's why during Covid, the cloud did really well, and some people kind of said, “Well, it's because they—people didn't want to send their people into their data centers.” No. That wasn't it. It was really because it just forced the change to digital. Like the person to, maybe, batter the analogy a little bit—the person who was previously responsible for all of the physical banks, which are—a bank has, you know, that are retail locations—the branches—they have those in order to service the retail customers.Corey: Yeah.Brian: That person, all of the sudden, had to figure out, “How do I do all that service via phone, via agents, via an app, via our website.” And that person, that entire organization, was forced digital in many ways. And that certainly had a lot of impact on the cloud, too.Corey: Yeah. I think that some wit observed a few years back that Covid has had more impact on your digital transformation than your last ten CIOs combined.Brian: Yeah.Corey: And—yeah, suddenly, you're forcing people into a position where there really is no other safe option. And some of that has unwound but not a lot of it. There's still seem to be those same structures and ability to do things from remote locations then there were before 2020.Brian: Yeah. Since you asked, kind of, where we are in the industry, to bring all of that to an endpoint, now what this means is people are looking for cloud providers, not just to have the primitives, not just to have the IT that they—their central IT needed, but they need people who can help them build the things that will help their business transform. It makes it a fun, new stage, new era, a transformation era for companies like Google to be able to say, “Hey, here's how we build things. Here's what we've learned over a period of time. Here's what we've most importantly learned from other customers, and we want to help be your strategic partner in that transformation.” And like I said, it'd be almost impossible to estimate what the TAM is for that. The real question is how quickly can we help customers and innovate in our Cloud solutions in order to make more of the stuff more powerful and faster to help people build.Corey: I want to say as well that—to be clear—you folks can buy my attention but not my opinion. I will not say things if I do not believe them. That's the way the world works here. But every time I use Google Cloud for something, I am taken aback yet again by the developer experience, how polished it is. And increasingly lately, it's not just that you're offering those low-lying primitives that composed together to build things higher up the stack, you're offering those things as well across a wide variety of different tooling options. And they just tend to all make sense and solve a need rather than requiring me to build it together myself from popsicle sticks.And I can't shake the feeling that that's where the industry is going. I'm going to want someone to sell me an app to do expense reports. I'm not going to want—well, I want a database and a front-end system, and how I wind up storing all the assets on the backend. No. I just want someone to give me something that solves that problem for me. That's what customers across the board are looking for as best I can see.Brian: Well, it certainly expands the number of customers that you can serve. I'll give you an example. We have an AI agent product called Call Center AI which allows you to either build a complete new call center solution, or more often it augments an existing call center platform. And we could sell that on an API call basis or a number of agent seats basis or anything like that. But that's not actually how call center leaders want to buy. Imagine we come in and say, “This many API calls or $4 per seat or per month,” or something like that. There's a whole bunch of work for that call center leader to go figure out, “Well, do I want to do this? Do I not? How should I evaluate it versus others?” It's quite complex. Whereas, if we come in and say, “Hey, we have a deal for you. We will guarantee higher customer satisfaction. We will guarantee higher agent retention. And we will save you money. And we will only charge you some percentage of the amount of money that you're saved.”Corey: It's a compelling pitch.Brian: Which is an easier one for a business decision-maker to decide to take?Corey: It's no contest. I will say it's a little odd that—one thing—since you brought it up, one thing that struck me as a bit strange about Contact Center AI, compared to most of the services I would consider to be Google Cloud, instead of, “Click here to get started,” it's, “Click here to get a demo. Reach out to contact us.” It feels—Brian: Yeah.Corey: —very much like the deals for these things are going to get signed on a golf course.Brian: [laugh]. They—I don't know about signed on a golf course. I do know that there is implementation work that needs to be done in order to build the models because it's the model for the AI, figuring out how your particular customers are served in your particular context that takes the work. And we need to bring in a partner or bring in our expertise to help build that out. But it sounds to me like you're looking to go golfing since you've looked into this situation.Corey: Just like painting, I'm no good at golfing either.Brian: [laugh].Corey: Honestly, it's—it just doesn't have the—the appeal isn't there for me for whatever reason. I smile; I nod; I tend to assume that, “Yeah, that's okay. I'll leave some areas for other people to go exploring in.”Brian: I see. I see.Corey: So, two weeks before Google Cloud Next occurred, you folks wound up canceling Stadia, which had been rumored for a while. People had been predicting it since it was first announced because, “Just wait. They're going to Google Reader it.” And yeah, it was consumer-side, and I do understand that that was not Cloud. But it did raise the specter of—for people to start talking once again about, “Oh, well, Google doesn't have any ability to focus on things long-term. They're going to turn off Cloud soon, too. So, we shouldn't be using it at all.” I do not agree with that assessment.But I want to get your take on it because I do have some challenges with the way that your products and services go to market in some ways. But I don't have the concern that you're going to turn it all off and decide, “Yeah, that was a fun experiment. We're done.” Not with Cloud, not at this point.Brian: Yeah. So, I'd start with at Google Cloud, it is our job to be a trusted enterprise platform. And I can't speak to before I was here. I can't speak to before Thomas Kurian, who's our CEO, was here before. But I can say that we are very, very focused on that. And deprecating products in a surprising way or in a way that doesn't take into account what customers are on it, how can we help those customers is certainly not going to help us do that. And so, we don't do that anymore.Stadia you brought up, and I wasn't part of starting Stadia. I wasn't part of ending Stadia. I honestly don't know anything about Stadia that any average tech-head might not know. But it is a different part of Google. And just like Amazon has deprecated plenty of services and devices and other things in their consumer world—and Microsoft has certainly deprecated many, many, many consumer and other products—like, that's a different model. And I won't say whether it's good, bad, or righteous, or not.But I can say at Google Cloud, we're doing a really good job right now. Can we get better? Of course. Always. We can get better at communicating, engaging customers in advance. But we now have a clean deprecation policy with a set of enterprise APIs that we commit to for stated periods of time. We also—like people should take a look. We're doing ten-year deals with companies like Deutsche Bank. And it's a sign that Google is here to last and Google Cloud in particular. It's also at a market level, just worth recognizing.We are a $27 billion run rate business now. And you earn trust in drips. You lose it in buckets. And we're—we recognize that we need to just keep every single day earning trust. And it's because we've been able to do that—it's part of the reason that we've gotten as large and as successful as we have—and when you get large and successful, you also tend to invest more and make it even more clear that we're going to continue on that path. And so, I'm glad that the market is seeing that we are enterprise-ready and can be trusted much, much more. But we're going to keep earning every single day.Corey: Yeah. I think it's pretty fair to say that you have definitely gotten yourselves into a place where you've done the things that I would've done if I wanted to shore up trust that the platform was not going to go away. Because these ten-year deals are with the kinds of companies that, shall we say, do not embark on signing contracts lightly. They very clearly, have asked you the difficult, pointed questions that I'm basically asking you now as cheap shots. And they ask it in very serious ways through multiple layers of attorneys. And if the answers aren't the right answers, they don't sign the contract. That is pretty clearly how the world works.The fact that companies are willing to move things like core trading systems over to you on a ten-year time horizon, tells me that I can observe whatever I want from the outside, but they have actual existential risk questions tied to what they're doing. And they are in some ways betting their future on your folks. You clearly know what those right answers are and how to articulate them. I think that's the side of things that the world does not get to see or think about very much. Because it is easy to point at all the consumer failings and the hundreds of messaging products that you continually replenish just in order to kill.Brian: [laugh].Corey: It's—like, what is it? The tree of liberty must be watered periodically from time to time, but the blood of patriots? Yeah. The logo of Google must be watered by the blood of canceled messaging products.Brian: Oh, come on. [laugh].Corey: Yeah. I'm going to be really scared if there's an actual, like, Pub/Sub service. I don't know. That counts as messaging, sort of. I don't know.Brian: [laugh]. Well, thank you. Thank you for the recognition of how far we've come in our trust from enterprises and trust from customers.Corey: I think it's the right path. There's also reputational issues, too. Because in the absence of new data, people don't tend to change their opinion on things very easily. And okay, there was a thing I was using. It got turned off. There was a big kerfuffle. That sticks in people's minds. But I've never seen an article about a Google service saying, “Oh, yeah. It hasn't been turned off or materially changed. In fact, it's gotten better with time. And it's just there working reliably.” You're either invisible, or you're getting yelled at.It feels like it's a microcosm of my early career stage of being a systems administrator. I'm either invisible or the mail system's broke, and everyone wants my head. I don't know what the right answer is—Brian: That was about right to me.Corey: —in this thing. Yeah. I don't know what the right answer on these things is, but you're definitely getting it right. I think the enterprise API endeavors that you've gone through over the past year or two are not broadly known. And frankly, you've definitely are ex-AWS because enterprise APIs is a terrible name for what these things are.Brian: [laugh].Corey: I'll let you explain it. Go ahead. And bonus points if you can do it without sounding like a press release. Take it away.Brian: There are a set of APIs that developers and companies should be able to know are going to be supported for the period of time that they need in order to run their applications and truly bet on them. And that's what we've done.Corey: Yeah. It's effectively a commitment that there will not be meaningful deprecations or changes to the API that are breaking changes without significant notice periods.Brian: Correct.Corey: And to be clear, that is exactly what all of the cloud providers have in their enterprise contracts. They're always notice periods around those things. There are always, at least, certain amounts of time and significant breach penalties in the event that, “Yeah, today, I decided that we were just not going to spin up VMs in that same way as we always have before. Sorry. Sucks to be you.” I don't see that happening on the Google Cloud side of the world very often, not like it once did. And again, we do want to talk about reputations.There are at least four services that I'm aware of that AWS has outright deprecated. One, Sumerian has said we're sunsetting the service in public. But on the other end of the spectrum, RDS on VMWare has been completely memory-holed. There's a blog post or two but nothing else remains in any of the AWS stuff, I'm sure, because that's an, “Enterprise-y” service, they wound up having one on one conversations with customers or there would have been a hue and cry. But every cloud provider does, in the fullness of time, turn some things off as they learn from their customers.Brian: Hmm. I hadn't heard anything about AWS Infinidash for a while either.Corey: No, no. It seems to be one of those great services that we made up on the internet one day for fun. And I love that just from a product marketing perspective. I mean, you know way more about that field than I do given that it's your job, and I'm just sitting here in this cheap seats throwing peanuts at you. But I love the idea of customers just come up and make up a product one day in your space and then the storytelling that immediately happens thereafter. Most companies would kill for something like that just because you would expect on some level to learn so much about how your reputation actually works. When there's a platonic ideal of a service that isn't bothered by pesky things like, “It has to exist,” what do people say about it? And how does that work?And I'm sort of surprised there wasn't more engagement from Amazon on that. It always seems like they're scared to say anything. Which brings me to a marketing question I have for you. You and Amazing have similar challenges—you being Google in this context, not you personally—in that your customers take themselves deadly seriously. And as a result, you have to take yourselves with at least that same level of seriousness. You can't go on Twitter and be the Wendy's Twitter account when you're dealing with enterprise buyers of cloud platforms. I'm kind of amazed, and I'd love to know. How can you manage to say anything at all? Because it just seems like you are so constrained, and there's no possible thing you can say that someone won't take issue with. And yes, some of the time, that someone is me.Brian: Well, let's start with going back to Infinidash a little bit. Yes, you identified one interesting thing about that episode, if I can call it an episode. The thing that I tell you though that didn't surprise me is it shows how much of cloud is actually learned from other people, not from the cloud provider itself. I—you're going to be going to re:Invent. You were at Google Cloud Next. Best thing about the industry conferences is not what the provider does. It's the other people that are there that you learn from. The folks that have done something that you've been trying to do and couldn't figure out how to do, and then they explained it to you, just the relationships that you get that help you understand what's going on in this industry that's changing so fast and has so much going on.And so,   And so, that part didn't surprise me. And that gets a little bit to the second part of your—that we're talking about. “How do you say anything?” As long as you're helping a customer say it. As long as you're helping someone who has been a fan of a product and has done interesting things with it say it, that's how you communicate for the most part, putting a megaphone in front of the people who already understand what's going on and helping their voice be heard, which is a lot more fun, honestly, than creating TV ads and banner ads and all of the stuff that a lot of consumer and traditional companies. We get to celebrate our customers and our creators much, much more.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Uptycs, because they believe that many of you are looking to bolster your security posture with CNAPP and XDR solutions. They offer both cloud and endpoint security in a single UI and data model. Listeners can get Uptycs for up to 1,000 assets through the end of 2023 (that is next year) for $1. But this offer is only available for a limited time on UptycsSecretMenu.com. That's U-P-T-Y-C-S Secret Menu dot com.Corey: I think that it's not super well understood by a lot of folks out there that the official documentation that any cloud provider puts out there is kind of a last resort. Or I'm looking for the specific flag to a specific parameter of a specific command. Great. Sure. But what I really want to do whenever I'm googling how to do something—and yes, that—we're going to be googling—welcome. You've successfully owned that space to the point where it's become common parlance. Good work is I want to see what other people had said. I want to find blog posts, ideally recent ones, talking about how to do the thing that I'm trying to do. If I'm trying to do something relatively not that hard or not that uncommon, if I spin up three web servers behind a load-balancer, and I can't find any community references on how to do that thing, either I'm trying to do something absolutely bizarre and I should re-think it, or there is no community/customer base for the product talking about how to do things with it.And I have noticed a borderline Cambrian explosion over the last few years of the Google Cloud community. I'm seeing folks who do not work at Google, and also who have never worked at Google, and sometimes still think they work at Google in some cases. It's not those folks. It is people who are just building things as a customer. And they, in turn, become very passionate advocates for the platform. And they start creating content on these things.Brian: Yeah. We've been blessed to have, not only, the customer base grow, but essentially the passion among that customer base, and we've certainly tried to help building community and catalyzing the community, but it's been fun to watch how our customers' success turns into our success which turns into customer success. And it's interesting, in particular, to see too how much of that passion comes from people seeing that there is another way to do things.It's clear that many people in our industry knew cloud through the lens of Amazon, knew tech in general through the lenses of Microsoft and Oracle and a lot of other companies. And Google, which we try and respect specifically what people are trying to accomplish and how they know how to do it, we also many ways have taken a more opinionated approach, if you will, to say, “Hey, here's how this could be done in a different way.” And when people find something that's unexpectedly different and also delightful, it's more likely that they're going to be strong advocates and share that passion with the world.Corey: It's a virtuous cycle that leads to the continued growth and success of a platform. Something I've been wondering about in the broader sense, is what happens after this? Because if, let's say for the sake of argument, that one of the major cloud providers decided, “Okay. You know, we're going to turn this stuff off. We've decided we don't really want to be in the cloud business.” It turns out that high-margin businesses that wind up turning into cash monsters as soon as you stop investing heavily in growing them, just kind of throw off so much that, “We don't know what to do with. And we're running out of spaces to store it. So, we're getting out of it.” I don't know how that would even be possible at some point. Because given the amount of time and energy some customers take to migrate in, it would be a decade-long project for them to migrate back out again.So, it feels on some level like on the scale of a human lifetime, that we will be seeing the large public cloud providers, in more or less their current form, for the rest of our lives. Is that hopelessly naïve? Am I missing—am I overestimating how little change happens in the sweep of a human lifetime in technology?Brian: Well, I've been in the tech industry for 27 years now. And I've just seen a continual moving up the stack. Where, you know, there are fundamental changes. I think the PC becoming widespread, fundamental change; mobile, certainly becoming primary computing experience—what I know you call a toilet computer, I call my mobile; that's certainly been a change. Cloud has certainly been a change. And so, there are step functions for sure. But in general, what has been happening is things just keep moving up the stack. And as things move up the stack, there are companies that evolve and learn to do that and provide more value and more value to new folks. Like I talked about how businesspeople are leaders in technology now in a way that they never were before. And you need to give them the value in a way that they can understand it, and they can consume it, and they can trust it. And it's going to continue to move in that direction.And so, what happens then as things move up the stack, the abstractions start happening. And so, there are companies that were just major players in the ‘90s, whether it's Novell or Sun Microsystems or—I was actually getting a tour of the Sunnyvale/Mountain View Google Campuses yesterday. And the tour guide said, “This used to be the site of a company that was called Silicon Graphics. They did something around, like, making things for Avatar.” I felt a little aged at that point.But my point is, there are these companies that were amazing in their time. They didn't move up the stack in a way that met the net set of needs. And it's not like that crater the industry or anything, it's just people were able to move off of it and move up. And I do think that's what we'll see happening.Corey: In some cases, it seems to slip below the waterline and become, effectively, plumbing, where everyone uses it, but no one knows who they are or what they do. The Tier 1 backbone providers these days tend to be in that bucket. Sure, some of them have other businesses, like Verizon. People know who Verizon is, but they're one of the major Tier 1 carriers in the United States just of the internet backbone.Brian: That's right. And that doesn't mean it's not still a great business.Corey: Yeah.Brian: It just means it's not front of mind for maybe the problems you're trying to solve or the opportunities we're trying to capture at that point in time.Corey: So, my last question for you goes circling back to Google Cloud Next. You folks announced an awful lot of things. And most of them, from my perspective, were actually pretty decent. What do you think is the most impactful announcement that you made that the industry largely overlooked?Brian: Most impactful that the industry—well, overlooked might be the wrong way to put this. But there's this really interesting thing happening in the cloud world right now where whereas before companies, kind of, chose their primary cloud writ large, today because multi-cloud is actually happening in the vast majority of companies have things in multiple places, people make—are making also the decision of, “What is going to be my strategic data provider?” And I don't mean data in the sense of the actual data and meta-data and the like, but my data cloud.Corey: Mm-hmm.Brian: How do I choose my data cloud specifically? And there's been this amazing profusion of new data companies that do better ETL or ELT, better data cleaning, better packaging for AI, new techniques for scaling up/scaling down at cost. A lot of really interesting stuff happening in the dataspace. But it's also created almost more silos. And so, the most important announcement that we made probably didn't seem like a really big announcement to a lot of people, but it really was about how we're connecting together more of our data cloud with BigQuery, with unstructured and structured data support, with support for data lakes, including new formats, including Iceberg and Delta and Hudi to come how—Looker is increasingly working with BigQuery in order to make it, so that if you put data into Google Cloud, you not only have these super first-class services that you can use, ranging from databases like Spanner to BigQuery to Looker to AI services, like Vertex AI, but it's also now supporting all these different formats so you can bring third-party applications into that one place. And so, at the big cloud events, it's a new service that is the biggest deal. For us, the biggest deal is how this data cloud is coming together in an open way to let you use the tool that you want to use, whether it's from Google or a third party, all by betting on Google's data cloud.Corey: I'm really impressed by how Google is rather clearly thinking about this from the perspective of the data has to be accessible by a bunch of different things, even though it may take wildly different forms. It is making the data more fluid in that it can go to where the customer needs it to be rather than expecting the customer to come to it where it lives. That, I think, is a trend that we have not seen before in this iteration of the tech industry.Brian: I think you got that—you picked that up very well. And to some degree, if you step back and look at it, it maybe shouldn't be that surprising that Google is adept at that. When you think of what Google search is, how YouTube is essentially another search engine producing videos that deliver on what you're asking for, how information is used with Google Maps, with Google Lens, how it is all about taking information and making it as universally accessible and helpful as possible. And if we can do that for the internet's information, why can't we help businesses do it for their business information? And that's a lot of where Google certainly has a unique approach with Google Cloud.Corey: I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, where's the best place for them to find you?Brian: cloud.google.com for Google Cloud information of course. And if it's still running when this podcast goes, @isforat, I-S-F-O-R-A-T, on Twitter.Corey: And we will put links to both of those in the show notes. Thank you so much for you time. I appreciate it.Brian: Thank you, Corey. It's been good talking with you.Corey: Brian Hall, VP of Product Marketing at Google Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. Whereas, if you've hated this podcast, please, leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an insulting angry comment dictating that, “No. Large companies make ten-year-long commitments casually all the time.”Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Dawn Brodey and Brian Forrest, talking about the various film versions of “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.”Dawn gave me 4.5 films to revisit: The 1931 version of Frankenstein, Frankenweenie (the feature and the short), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Young Frankenstein.Meanwhile, Brian assigned me the original Nosferatu, the 1931 Dracula, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, Dracula in Istanbul and Bram Stoker's Dracula. LINKSDawn's podcast (HILF): http://dawnbrodey.com/ - showsBrian's Blog and Vlog, Toothpickings: https://toothpickings.medium.com/ A Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12Another Free Film Book: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6Frankenstein (1931) Trailer: https://youtu.be/BN8K-4osNb0Frankenweenie Trailer: https://youtu.be/29vIJQohUWEMary Shelley's Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/GFaY7r73BIsYoung Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/mOPTriLG5cUNosferatu (Complete Film): https://youtu.be/dCT1YUtNOA8Dracula (1931) Trailer: https://youtu.be/VoaMw91MC9kAbbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (Trailer): https://youtu.be/j6l8auIACycHorror of Dracula (Trailer): https://youtu.be/ZTbY0BgIRMkBram Stoker's Dracula (Trailer): https://youtu.be/fgFPIh5mvNcDracula In Istanbul: https://youtu.be/G7tAWcm3EX0Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/Albert's Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcastDawn and Brian TRANSCRIPT John: [00:00:00] Before we dive into the assignment you gave me—which was to watch stuff I hadn't seen and also rewatch stuff I had seen to get a better idea of who's done a good job of adapting these books—let's just jump in and talk a little bit about your area of expertise and why you have it. So, I'm going to start with you, Brian. I was very surprised after working with you a while to find out that you had a whole vampire subset in your life. Brian: A problem, you can call it a problem. It's fine. John: Okay. What is the problem and where did it come from? Brian: I was just vaguely interested in vampires for a while. When I was in my screenwriting days, someone had encouraged me to do a feature length comedy about vampires, and that led me to do a lot of reading. And then I just kind of put it aside for a while. And then I was, I had just finished a documentary for Committee Films and they said, do you have any other pitches? And I thought, and I said, you know, there's still people who believe in vampires even today, that could be really interesting. And I put together a pitch package. Then, the guy in charge of development said, [00:01:00]this is what we need to be doing. And then it stalled out. Nothing ever happened with it. And I said, what the hell. I could do this on my own. I could fly around and interview these people. And I did, I spent a couple years interviewing academics and some writers. And along the way, I started finding all these very intriguing moments in the history of either vampire lore or fiction or even just people who consider themselves vampires today. And all these things would connect to each other. It was a lattice work of vampires going back hundreds of years. It didn't fit the documentary, unfortunately, but I found it way too interesting. And I said, I need some kind of outlet for this. And so I started writing about it on Tooth Pickings. And that eventually put me in touch with people who were more scholarly, and it opened up a lot more conversations. And now I can't get out. I'm trapped. John: Well, the first sign is recognizing there's a problem. [00:02:00] Okay. Now, Dawn, you had a different entryway into Frankenstein. Dawn: Yeah, well, I was a theater major and a history minor at the University of Minnesota. Go Gophers. And, this was in the late nineties, early two thousands, when there were still a lot of jobs for people who had degrees and things like this. Or at least there was a theory that this was a reasonable thing to get educated in. And then I graduated in 2001, which was months after 9/11, when all those jobs went away. And so, I had this education so specific and what was I gonna do? And gratefully the Twin Cities is a great place for finding that kind of stuff. And one of my very first jobs out of college was at the Bakkan museum. So, the Bakkan museum was founded by Earl Bakkan, who is the inventor of the battery-operated pacemaker. And he has always, since childhood, been obsessed with the Frankenstein movie that came out in 1931. And he attributes [00:03:00]his great scientific invention and many others to a science fiction in general. And to the spark of the idea that comes from sources like this. So, when he opened the museum, he insisted that there'd be a grand Frankenstein exhibit. And that means going back to the book, and that meant going back to the author, Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Frankenstein, she started writing it when she was 16.And so, I was hired because—boom, look at me—my degree is suddenly colliding, right? So, I was hired by the Bakkan museum to create a one-woman show about the life of Mary Shelley, where I would play Mary Shelley and would perform it within the museum and elsewhere. And through the course of that research, I read the novel for the second time, but then I read it for my third, fourth, fifth onwards and upwards. Because the show was about 45 minutes long, I referenced, you know, the novel, the books, the popular culture, the science behind it. And the deep dive just never stopped. And so long after I was required to do the research and the show was done and up, I just kept reading. [00:04:00] And it gave me the opportunity to meet experts in this field and the peripheral field, as I would sort of travel with this show and be an ambassador for the museum and stuff like that. And, yeah, it still curls my toes. John: All right, so with that background. I'm going to just be honest right here and say, I've read Dracula once, I've read Frankenstein once. So that's where I'm coming from, and both a while ago. I remember Frankenstein was a little tougher to get through. Dracula had a bit more of an adventure feel to it, but something I don't think has really been captured particularly well in all the movies. But they both have lasted and lasted and lasted.Why do you think those books are still, those ideas are still as popular today? Dawn: I will say that I think Frankenstein, it depends on what you mean by the idea. Because on the surface, just the idea of bringing the dead to life, is, I mean, the Walking Dead franchise is right now one of the most popular franchises. I mean, I think we are really pivot on this idea. And I remember saying to a friend once that the part in [00:05:00]Revelation where the dead rise is like the only part of the Bible that I don't question. It's like, oh, the dead will get up. You know, we always just seem to be real sure that at some damned point, they're getting up. And so I think that that is part of why that it sticks in our brains. But then the story around Frankenstein—especially as it was written in 1818—has so many universal and timeless themes, like ambition and what is right and wrong. And the question that Jurassic Park posed in 1995 and continues to—1993 around there—and continues to pose, which is: just because science is capable of doing something, should it do something? And how do we define progress? Surely the very idea of being able to beat death and not die seems to be kind of the ultimate goal. And here is someone saying, okay, so let's just say, yeah. We beat death and everyone goes, oh shit, that'd be terrible. [00:06:00] You know? And then also, I always love the idea of the creature, the monster, Frankenstein's creature himself, who has a lot of characteristics with which people have identified throughout history. Some people say, for example, that Mary Shelley's whole purpose for writing Frankenstein was a question of: didn't God do this to us, make us these ugly creatures that are imperfect and bumbling around and horrifying? And then once he realized that we weren't perfect, he fled from us in fear or fled. He just keeps going and every generation has a new media that tells the story a little bit better, a little bit different, and yeah, there we are. John: I will say that for me, the most memorable part of the book was the section where the monster is the narrator and is learning. And I think with the exception of Kenneth Branagh's film, it it's something that isn't really touched on that much. There's a little bit in Bride of Frankenstein, of him going around and learning stuff. But the sort of moral questions that he [00:07:00] raises as he's learning—what it is to be human—are very interesting in the book. And I wish they were in more of the movies, but they're not. So, Brian on Dracula, again, we have dead coming to life. Why do we love that so much? Brian: Well, it's one of the questions that made me want to make a film about it myself: why has the vampire been so fascinating for hundreds of years? Why does it keep coming back? You know, it ebbs and flows in popularity, but it never leaves. And it keeps seeming to have Renaissance after Renaissance. Dracula specifically, I think one of the interesting things about that novel is how many different lenses you can look at it through and not be wrong.People have looked at it through the lens of, is this thing an imperialist story? Is it an anti-imperialist story? Is it a feminist story? Is it an anti-feminist story? And you can find support for any of those views reading Dracula. And I think that some of it might be accidental; there's times where Dracula is catching up to whatever the cultural zeitgeist [00:08:00] is right now. And we look at Dracula and we say, oh, he was thinking about this back then. Or maybe Bram Stoker was just very confused and he had a lot of different ideas. John: All right, let's explore that a little deeper. You each gave me an assignment of some movies to watch or to re-watch that you felt were worth talking about, in relation to your subject of Frankenstein or Dracula. I'm going to start with Frankenweenie, just because I had not seen it. And in going through it, I was reminded—of course, as one would be—of watching Frankenweenie, I was reminded of Love, Actually. Because I came to the realization after years of Love, Actually being around that it—Love, Actually—is not a romantic comedy. It is all romantic comedies, all put into one movie. And Frankenweenie is all horror films. Condensed, beautifully and cleverly into one very tasty souffle. [Frankenweenie Soundbite] John: I stopped at a certain point making note of the references to other horror films. Just because there are so many of them. But the idea that it references everything from Bride of Frankenstein to Gremlins. They do a rat transformation that's right out of American Werewolf in London. The fact that they have a science teacher played by Martin Landau doing the voice he did as Bela [00:10:00] Lugosi in Ed Wood. I mean, it's a really good story that they just layered and layered and layered and layered. What was it about that movie that so captivated you? Dawn: Well, so much of what you just said. And also it seems to me the epitome of the accessibility of the story of Frankenstein. The idea that if anyone can think of any moment in which if I could bring someone back to life. But what I love about it too, is that the novel Frankenstein that is not Victor Frankenstein's motivation. It generally tends to be the motivation of almost every character, including the Kenneth Branagh character--at some point, he, when Elizabeth dies, his wife dies for the second time, he says, yes, I'm going to try to bring her back. But it is so not the motivation of the scientist in the book. It is just ambition. He just wants to do something no one else has done. And lots of people die around him and he really never, ever says to himself at any point in the novel, I wish I could bring them back, I'm going to bring them back. That's never, that's never part of it. He just wants to be impressive. And so, I love [00:11:00] that it starts with that pure motivation of wanting to bring the dead to life; just wanting to bring your dog back, so that it's so accessible for everyone watching it. Who wouldn't wanna try this? But then, even in that scene with the teacher, when he shows the frog. And he's demonstrating that if you touch a dead frog with electricity, its legs shoot up, which give the kid the first idea of bringing his dog back. Which is like a deep cut in, in the sense that that's nothing -- Mary Shelley herself and her friends were watching experiments exactly like that before she wrote the book: galvanism and animal magnetism were these really popular public demonstrations happening in London and elsewhere where they would do just that. But because electricity itself was so new, I mean, it blew people's hair back you know, that these dead frogs were flopping around. It was the craziest thing. And a lot of them were thinking to themselves, surely it is only a matter of time before we can, we're gonna have our dead walking around all the time. So, it was so circulating and so forward. [00:12:00] So it's not just movie references and it's not just Frankenstein references. That movie really includes source deep source references for how Frankenstein came to be. And I just love it. John: Which brings me to Frankenstein, the 1931 version, in which Colin Clive has a similar point of view to what you were talking about from the book. He just wants, you know, he wants to be God. [Frankenstein soundbite] John: What I was most impressed with about that movie or a couple things was: it starts, it's like, boom. We're in it. First scene. There there's no preamble. There's no going to college. There's no talking about it, right? It's like, they're starting in the middle of act two. And I think a lot of what we think of when it comes to Frankenstein comes from that movie, [00:13:00] that the stuff that James Whale and his cinematographer came up with and the way they made things look, and that's sort of what people think of when they think of Frankenstein. Now, as you look back on that movie, what are your thoughts on the, what we'll call the original Frankenstein? Dawn: Yeah. Well, I love it. You'll find with me and Frankenstein that I'm not a purist. Like I love everything. Like I have no boundaries. I think this is great. One of the things that 1931 movie did was answer—because it had to, anytime you take a novel and make it a movie, you take a literary medium and make it a visual medium, there's obviously going to be things that you just have to interpret that the author left for you to make for yourself individual. And in this instance, that individual is the cinematographer. So, we're gonna get their take on this. And one of the real ambiguous things that Mary Shelley leaves for you in the novel is the spark of life. What is the spark of life? She does not in any [00:14:00]detail describe lightning or static or any of the recognizable or, or future developments of how electricity would've been. Brian: I was shocked when I first read that book and saw how little space was devoted to that, that lab scene. It's blink of an eye and it's over. Dawn: “I gathered the instruments of life around me that I may infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my.” Period. I just, what I love is what I love about film in general is that they went, oh, spark being all right, girl, it's a dark and stormy night and you know, and there's chains and there's bubblers and there's a thing. And the sky opens. I mean, God bless you, like way to just take that thought. Make it vivid, make it, build a set, make us believe it. And it's so, so pervasive that in Frankenweinie, you know, which of course is about Frankensein. [00:15:00] Like that is one that they do: he's got the white robe that ties in the back and the gloves. And in Young Frankenstein, it's the, you know, that lab scene. And so I love that. And the other thing that they had to do was describe the look of the creature, make the creature—Frankenstein's monster himself—look so like something. Because she, similarly in the novel, says that he is taller than a regular man, has dark hair and yellow watery eyes. That's all we know about what the Frankenstein looks like. And so, in 1931, Boris Karloff with the bolts. And it's black and white, remember, we don't think his skin is green. That he turned green at some point is kind of exciting, but of course he was just gray, but just dead flesh, you know, rotten, dead walking flesh is what's frightening. And, I just thought that the movie did that so well, John: I think the makeup was kind of a green/gray, and that when color photos came out of it, that's why someone went, oh, [00:16:00] it's green, but it wasn't green. Brian: I thought I saw a museum piece of, you know, an actual makeup bit that Jack Pierce did and I thought it was greenish. Dawn: Yeah. Greenish/gray. I think, yeah, the rots, just kind of trying to capture the sort of rotten flesh. Brian: It's just like the bride's hair was red. Dawn: That's right. That's right. My day job here in Los Angeles is as a street improviser at Universal Studios, Hollywood. And two of their most treasured characters of course are Frankenstein and Dracula. So, while most people might separate them, John, they are usually arm and arm where I work every day. And the bride has recently come back to the theme park as a walking character, and they gave her red hair. We don't mess around. John: That's excellent. But you mentioned Dracula, let's jump into the 1931 Dracula. There's a connection point between the two that I want to mention, which is the amazing Dwight Frye, who is Fritz, I believe in Frankenstein. And I'm not the first one to mention his naturalistic [00:17:00] acting kind of putting him above everybody else in that movie. Famously, when he's running up the stairs, stopping to pull his socks up at one point. He's just really, really good in that. And then you see him in Dracula as the, essentially the Harker character. I think he was called Harker -- Brian: Yeah. Well, he's Renfield in Dracula. They merged those two characters. I thought it was a smart move for a first attempt at the film. Yeah. And Dwight Frye, he's in a lot of other Universal horrors, too. Dwight Frye often doesn't get the credit. He somehow was not the leading man he should have been. John: I don't know why that is. He turns up again as an assistant in Bride of Frankenstein. He's a towns person in Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. And then he tragically died on a bus ride to an auto parts job that he took because he wasn't getting any acting work, which was too bad. A really, really good actor. Brian: There is another intersection besides the fact that they were both produced by Junior. Lugosi was put into the [00:18:00] short, the trial film they shot for Frankenstein. I can't call it a short film, because it was never intended for release. But they shot a cinematic test reel and they had Lugosi play the monster, but he was under a sheet the whole time. I think he may have been able to pull the sheet off. It's a lost film. We don't know for sure. We just have kind of the recollections of a few crew people. John: I've never heard of that. I would love to see that. Brian: I would too. I think a lot of people would really love to see it, but it was as much a kind of a testing ground for Lugosi— whether they wanted him to be the monster—as it was for some of the techniques, the things they wanted to try in the film. And what I understand is the producer saw the test reel and they said, yes, we love this look, this is the look we want you to give us. And then it's whatever version of Lugosi not getting that part you want to believe: whether Lugosi turned it down or the producers didn't like him or something. But he ended up not taking that part. John: But he is of course always known as Dracula. So, what are your thoughts on their adaptation? Which [00:19:00]again is not the first adaptation but is the kind of first official? Brian: Yeah. The first to bear the name Dracula, although, well, I'll back up a second. Because some releases of Nosferatu called it Dracula. He would be named as Dracula in the subtitles, you know, because that's an easy thing to do in silent film, you can just swap that out however you want to. But yes, it's the first authorized official film adaptation. John: Well, let's back up to Nosferatu, just for a second. Am I wrong in remembering that the Bram Stoker estate—Mrs. Stoker—sued Nosferatu and asked that all prints be destroyed? And they were except one print remained somewhere? Brian: Close. That is the popular story that she sued Prana Films. She won the lawsuit. All films were set to be destroyed. Now there's a guy named Locke Heiss and a few others who've been doing some research on this. And they will tell you that there's no proof that a single print was ever destroyed. It's a more fun story to say that, you know, this one was snuck away and now we have the film. But there was no real enforcement mechanism for having all the theaters [00:20:00]destroy the film. Who was going to go around and check and see if they actually destroyed this film or not? Nobody, right? So maybe some people destroyed it. Maybe Prana Films destroyed their remaining copies. But the exhibitors kept all of theirs and there's different versions and different cuts that have been found. So, we know that some of these reels went out in different formats or with different subtitles or even different edits. And some of them have made their way back to us. John: There's some really iconic striking imagery in that movie. That haunts me still. Brian: What I always tell people is see the film with a good live accompaniment, because that still makes it hold up as a scary film. If you see a good orchestra playing something really intense when Orlok comes through that door. It feels scary. You can feel yourself being teleported back to 1922 and being one of those audience people seeing that and being struck by it. John: What do you think it would be like to have [00:21:00] seen that or Dawn to have seen the original Frankenstein? I can't really imagine, given all that we've seen in our lives. If you put yourself back into 1931, and Boris Karloff walks backwards into the lab. I would just love to know what that felt like the first time. Dawn: You know, what is so great is I was fortunate enough to know Earl Bakkan who saw the movie in the theater in Columbia Heights, Minnesota when he was 10 years old.And he went, he had to sneak in. People would run outta this, out of the theater, screaming. I mean, when they would do the close up of Frankenstein's Monster's face, you know, women would faint. And of course that was publicized and much circulated, but it was also true. People were freaking out. And for Earl Bakkan—this young kid—the fear was overwhelming, as you said. And also in this theater, I was lucky enough, I did my show in that theater for Earl and his friends on his 81st birthday. So, I got to hear a [00:22:00] lot of these stories. And they played the organ in the front of the curtain. Brian: Is this the Heights theater? Dawn: Yes, the Heights. Brian: Oh, that's an amazing space. Dawn: So, they played the organ in there and it was like, oh my God. And it was so overwhelming. So, I'm glad you asked that question because I was really fortunate to have a moment to be able to sort of immerse myself in that question: What would it have been like to be in this theater? And it was moving and it was scary, man. And yeah, to your point, Brian, the music and the score. I mean, it was overwhelming. Also, I think there's something that we still benefit from today, which is when people tell you going in this might be way too much for you, this might scare you to death. So just be super, super careful. And your heart's already, you know… John: And it does have that warning right at the beginning. Dawn: Yeah. Versus now when people sit you down, they're like, I'm not gonna be scared by this black and white movie from 1931. And then you find yourself shuffling out of the bathroom at top speed in the middle of the night. And you're like, well, look at that. It got me. Brian: That reminds me, there [00:23:00] was a deleted scene from the 1931 Dracula that was a holdover from the stage play. Van Helsing comes out and he breaks the fourth wall and he speaks directly to the audience. And he says something to the effect of—I'm very much paraphrasing—about how we hope you haven't been too frightened by what you've seen tonight, but just remember these things are real. And then black out. And they cut that because they were afraid that they were really going to freak out their audience. Dawn: It's like a war of the world's thing, man. It's oh, that's so great. I love that. [Dracula Soundbite] John: So, Brian, what is your assessment of the 1931 version? As a movie itself and as an adaptation of Stoker's work? Brian: The things they had to do to try to adapt it to film, which they borrowed a lot of that from the stage play. They used the stage play as their guide point, and I think they made the best choices they could have been expected to make. You know, there's a lot of things that get lost and that's unfortunate, but I think they did a decent job. I don't find the 1931 version scary. I like Bela Lugosi. I think he's a great Dracula. I think he set the standard. With the possible [00:25:00]exception of the scene where the brides are stalking Harker slash Renfield, I don't think the imagery is particularly frightening. The Spanish version, I think does a little bit better job. And you know the story with the Spanish version and the English version? Dawn: We actually talk about it on the back lot tour of Universal Studios. Because they shot on the same sets in some cases. Brian: Yeah. My understanding is that Dracula shot during the day, Spanish Dracula would shoot at night. So, they got to benefit maybe a little bit by seeing, okay, how is this gonna be shot? How did Todd Browning do it? Okay. We're gonna do it a little bit differently. It's a little bit of a cheat to say they move the camera. They do move the camera a lot more in the Spanish version, but the performances are a little bit different. I'm going to, I can't get her name out. The actress who plays the ingenue in the Spanish Dracula, I'm not going to try it, but you can see her kind of getting more and more crazed as time goes on and her head is more infected by Dracula. You see these push-ins that you don't see in the English version. There's blocking [00:26:00] that's different. I put together a short course where I was just talking about how they blocked the staircases scene. The welcome to my house, the walking through spider web. And how it's blocked very differently in the two versions. And what does that say? What are these two directors communicating differently to us? In one, Harker slash Renfield is next to Dracula. In one, he's trailing behind him. In one, we cut away from the spider web before he goes through. And in the other one, we see him wrestle with it. That's not really what you asked, John. Sorry, I got off on a tear there. John: I agree with you on all points on the differences between the two films. Although I do think that all the Transylvania stuff in the English version is terrific: With the coach and the brides. The Spanish version, the biggest problem I have is that their Dracula looks ridiculous. Brian: He's not Bela Lugosi. You're right. John: He looks like Steve Carell doing Dracula and there is no moment, literally no moment [00:27:00] where he is scary, whereas Lugosi is able to pull that off. Brian: There's a lot of people who have observed that the Spanish Dracula would be a superior film were it not for Bela Lugosi being such an amazing Dracula in the English version. John: He really, really nailed it. Brian: And since he learned his lines phonetically, he could have done the Spanish Dracula. Just write it out for him phonetically, because he didn't speak English very well. John: If we could just go back, you know, cause a lot of things in history we could change, but if we could just be at that meeting and go, Hey, why not have Bela do it? Okay. So then let's jump ahead, still in Dracula form, to Horror of Dracula. From 1958. With Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. [Soundbite from Horror of Dracula] Brian: For some people, Lee is the ultimate Dracula, and I think that's a generational thing. I think he's great. He's got the stage presence and I love Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. I don't like the film as a whole. It feels like I'm watching a play with a camera set back. It doesn't work for me the way it works for other people. That is personal taste. Don't come after me. John: It does, however, have one of the greatest, ‘Hey, we're gonna kill Dracula' scenes ever, with Peter Cushing running down the table and jumping up and pulling down the drapes and the sun. Brian: Oh, right. Interesting. Because in Dracula, the book, the sun is not deadly, remotely really. But that's [00:29:00]the influence of Nosferatu being pasted onto the Dracula cannon, that the sunlight is deadly to Dracula. Dawn: I remember having this fight very enthusiastically in the nineties when Bram Stoker's/Winona Ryder's Dracula came out and I was already sort of a literary nerd. And they were like, hey, they have a scene with him walking around during the day. And I was like, yeah, nerds. That's right. That's cuz vampires can walk around during the day.I was very already, like, you don't know anything, go back to history. Brian: And there's a seventies version where he's out on a cloudy day, but he is not hurt either. There suggestions in the book that he's more powerful at night. Dawn: He's a creature of the night. I always understood he had to wear sunglasses. He was sort of like a wolf. Like they show him as a wolf during the day; it can happen, but it's not great. Brian: I like the way they did it in the Gary Oldman version. He's suited up. He's got the sunglasses on. There's not a whole lot of skin exposed. But he's not [00:30:00] going to turn into smoke. John: Well, okay. Let's talk about that version and Kenneth Branagh's version of Frankenstein. Dawn: Ug. John: I'm not going to spoil anything here, when I say it doesn't sound like Dawn cared it. Dawn: You open this, you opened this can of worms. John, sit down for a second. Listen. He calls it: Mary Shelly's fucking Frankenstein. I inserted the fucking. I'm sorry, I wasn't supposed to say that. He calls it. He calls it. How dare you, Kenneth, Brannagh, call this Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. So that was A-number one. But I went into it all excited: It's Kenneth Brannagh. Love him. He calls it Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and he starts with the ship captain out at sea, just like the book. And so I pull up my little, you know, security blanket and I'm like, oh, Kenneth Brannagh, do this to me, buddy. Do it to me buddy. Show me Mary Shelley Frankenstein as a movie. [00:31:00] And then he just fucks it up, John. And he doesn't actually do that at all. It's a total lie. He screws up every monologue. He makes up motivations and then heightens them. And it's dad. The acting is capital B, capital A, capital D across the board. Everybody sucks in this movie. It looks bad. The direction is bad, and it has nothing to do. He tries to bring Elizabeth back to life. This is a huge departure from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Brannagh, that's all I have to say for now. John: All right, I was fooled by the fact that he started at, at the north pole. Dawn: That's because he's tricking us, John. That's because it's the whole movie is a lie. John: Okay with that same mindset, what do we think of Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola? Dawn: I love that one. Brian: I'm afraid that I don't have, I can't match Dawn's intensity in either respect. Um, except I thought Robert DeNiro [00:32:00] was really good in Frankenstein. Dawn: But that's no, he's not. you're wrong. Your opinion is valid and wrong. Yeah, I'm kidding for listeners who don't know me. I am, I am kidding. Of course. Everybody's opinion is valid except for that one. Yeah. The movie, everything about that movie is bad. John: He is, I think, miscast. Dawn: And Helen Bonan Carter is one of the finest actresses of not just our generation, but of all time. And she sucks in this movie. John: Right. So. Bram Stoker's Dracula. Brian: Bram Stoker's Dracula. [Soundbite: Bram Stoker's Dracula] Brian: Also produced by Branagh. And I assume that is the connection, why they both start with the author's name. I always call it Coppola's Dracula because it gets too confusing to make that distinction. I thought it was a decent movie, but it didn't feel like Dracula. It felt like someone who had heard of Dracula and wrote a good script based on what they had heard. So many divergences that bothered me, although I think it's aged better than it felt the first time. I remember seeing it when it first came out in the nineties and not thinking much of it. And I think audiences agreed with me and it seems like it's been kinder, that audiences have been kinder to it as it's gotten older. John: Okay. Dawn, you love it. Dawn: I loved it. I loved it. It, you know what though? That was one of [00:34:00] those movies that unlike, unlike Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I can't look at with like an adult critical eye because I, what year did it come out? Was it like 90, 92? I'm like middle school getting into high school and like Winona Ryder was everything. Vampires are everything. I mean, Gary Oldman is the, is a great actor and it's so sexy, very sexy. The sex is Primo. And so I remember loving it, very moving. I don't remember comparing it as certainly not as viciously to the novel because I read Dracula after I had seen the movie. And so there's always that inherent casting where Nina is always going to be Winona Ryder. But I do remember really loving the Gothic convention of the letter and that the movie did seem to utilize and to great effect how letter writing can build suspense and give us different perspectives in a, in a unique cinematic way. Brian: [00:35:00] The two or three biggest stakes that film puts in the ground are not to be found in the book. So there's no love story in the book. There's no Vlad in the book. John: Can I interject there? Isn't that basically, didn't they just rip that off of Dark Shadows, The idea of my long lost love is reincarnated in this woman. I must connect with her. Brian: That is a good question, John. I'm glad you asked that because I call it the doppelganger love interest. Right? We first see that, the first time I know of it happening, I'm sure there's an earlier precedent, is in The Mummy, but then Dark Shadows does it. But that's not where Stoker, I mean, that's not where Coppola and a screenwriter claimed to have gotten the idea. They claimed to have gotten it from Dan Curtis's Dracula in 74. John: Dan Curtis, who produced Dark Shadows, with Barnabas Collins, falling in love with his reincarnated love. Brian: But Dan Curtis's Dracula comes out two years after Blacula. That has a reincarnated love interest. John: Not only does the Blaclua [00:36:00] have a reincarnated love interest, but if I'm remembering movie correctly at the end, when she says I don't want to go with you. He goes, okay. And he's ready to go home. It's like, sorry to bother you. Brian: No, uh, in Blacula, he commits suicide John: Oh, that's it? Yeah. He walks out into the sun. Brian: He goes home in a different way. John: Yes. He's one of my favorite Draculas, the very stately William Marshall. Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That is a favorite of mine. John: Anyway, you were saying stakes in the ground from Coppola's Dracula. Brian: Well, the, the love story, the equating Dracula with Vlad the Impaler. And I felt like they did Lucy really bad in that movie. They had her turn into a wanton harlot, which is not in keeping with the book. Some things are okay, but they really said these are the building blocks of our story and that bugged me. But Anthony Hopkins I liked, so, all right. Dawn: Alright, but see, this [00:37:00] the itch that still that still makes me wanna scratch though: why say Bram Stoker's Dracula? Why say Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? I mean, because I think you heard the venom, obviously. If they took Mary Shelley's name off that thing, you can make Frankenweenie. And I will love, like, I love Frankenweenie. Do your Frankenstein homage all day, all the time. But when you call, when you say it's Bram Stoker's, I think that this is what has been frustrating historians like me and getting high school students Ds in English class ever since. Because it just creates the false perception that you've basically read the book. Right. Or that you, if you know the thing you know the book and it's just a cheap ploy. And I don't like it. Brian: I think, somebody correct me on this, that there, there had been a plan to do a reboot of the Universal monster franchise, and these two movies were supposed to be the reboot of it. [00:38:00] And then they would've then done HG Wells' Invisible Man. John: The Mummy killed it. They've tried to reboot it several times. And that was the first attempt. Brian: Yeah, I've heard that called the dark universe. They were trying to do their own MCU. Dawn: Yeah. Well, at Universal Studios, there is of course in, in LA, in general, there's the property wars, you know? What what's, who has what? And sometimes those get really blurred. Like why does Universal Studios have Harry Potter? When we can see Warner Brothers from the top of our wall/ And that's obviously, you know, those things happen. But when it comes to like the IP or intellectual property, those original monsters are so valuable and they always are at Halloween. And then it's like, sort of, how can we capitalize on this? And yeah. And it's cross generational. Brian: All they really own right now is the look right? They own Jack Pierce's makeup job from Frankenstein. Dawn: But I think that that's exactly the point; [00:39:00] the delusion of what is it that you own if you own, you know, Frankenstein, whatever. But yes, there was definitely an interest to sort of revamp all of the original Universal Monsters they call them and it's the Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Invisible Man. John: It's everybody who shows up in Mad Monster Party. Dawn: Exactly. [Soundbite: Mad Monster Party] Dawn: But yeah, The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, was a tremendous flop. And I think that sort of took the wind out of everybody's sails. John: Let me ask you this, Dawn. If Mel Brooks had titled his movie, Mary Shelley's Young Frankenstein, instead of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, would you have a problem with that? Dawn: Yeah, no, but no, I would not have had a problem, because that would've been irony and juxtaposition. Not just a straight lie. John: So that brings us to some comedies. Young Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, which I was very surprised and a little unnerved to [00:40:00] realize a few years back, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein was made a mere 10 years before I was born. And I had always assumed it was way back then. And it's like, no, it wasn't all that way back then. It was pretty, pretty recently. Brian: That happened to me when I realized that Woodstock was only six years before my birth. And it always seemed like ancient history. John: Is that the common thing, Madame Historian? That people kind of forget how recent things were? Dawn: Oh yeah. Remember Roe V. Wade. Sorry, too soon. Brian: We're recording this on that day. Dawn: Yeah, absolutely. I think that it happens to everybody so much faster than you think it's going to. I remember looking around in the nineties feeling, well, surely the seventies was ancient history, you know, because they had That Seventies Show, which debuted as like a period piece. I am still very young and hip and happening and [00:41:00] they are in production for That Nineties Show right now. And I said to my husband, That Nineties Show. I was like, Jesus, I guess that's 20 years because I was in the nineties they did That Seventies Show. And he goes, no baby that's 30 years. And I was like, I'm sorry. I said, I'm sorry, what? He goes, the nineties was 30 years ago. And I just had to sit down and put my bunion corrector back on because these feet are killing me. John: All right. Well, let's just talk about these two comedies and then there's a couple other things I wanna quickly hit on. What are our thoughts on, let's start with Young Frankenstein? [Soundbite: Young Frankenstein] Dawn: I told you I'm not an idealist and we're not a purist about Frankenstein, but I am an enthusiast. So that is why I told you to watch Kenneth Branagh's movie, even though I hate it so much. And that is also why I love Young Frankenstein, because I think that it is often what brings people into the story. For many, many people, it introduces them to the creature. They may know literally nothing about Frankenstein except for Young Frankenstein. And that's actually fine with me because I'm a comedian myself. And I believe that parody is high honor. And often when you parody and satirize something, especially when you do it well, it's because you went to the heart of it. Because you got right in there into the nuggets and the creases of it. And there is something about Young [00:43:00] Frankenstein as ridiculous as it is that has some of that wildness and the hilarity and The Putting on the Ritz. I did find out from my Universal Studios movie history stuff, that that scene was very nearly cut out. Mel Brooks did not like it. And he just didn't like that they were doing it. And of course it's the one, I feel like I'm not the only one who still has to make sure that my beverage is not only out of my esophagus, but like aside, when they start doing it. [Soundbite: Young Frankenstein] Brian: And I understand they were about to throw away the sets from the 1931 Frankenstein when Mel Brooks or his production designer came up and said, Stop stop. We want to use these and they were able to get the original sets or at least the set pieces. John: I believe what it [00:44:00] was, was they got Kenneth Strickfaden's original machines. Ken Strickfaden created all that stuff for the 1931 version and had been used on and off, you know, through all the Frankenstein films. And it was all sitting in his garage and the production designer, Dale Hennessy went out to look at it because they were thinking they had to recreate it. And he said, I think it still works. And they plugged them in and they all still worked. Brian: Oh, wow. Dawn: Oh man. It's alive. John: Those are the original machines. Dawn: I didn't know that. That's fantastic. John: At the time when I was a young kid, I was one of the few kids in my neighborhood who knew the name Kenneth Strickfaden, which opened doors for me. Let me tell you when people find out, oh, you know of the guy who designed and built all those? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I know all that. One of my favorite stories from Young Frankenstein is when they sold the script. I forget which studio had said yes. And as they were walking out of the meeting, Mel Brooks turned back and said, oh, by the way, it's gonna be in black and white, and kept going. And they followed him down the hall and said, no, it can't be in black and white. And he said, no, it's not gonna work unless it's in [00:45:00] black and white. And they said, well, we're not gonna do it. And they had a deal, they were ready to go. And he said, no, it's gonna stay black and white. And he called up Alan Ladd Jr. that night, who was a friend of his, and said, they won't do it. And he said, I'll do it. And so it ended up going, I think, to Fox, who was more than happy to, to spend the money on that. And even though Mel didn't like Putting on the Ritz, it's weird, because he has almost always had musical numbers in his films. Virtually every movie he's done, he's either written a song for it, or there's a song in it. So, it's weird to me. I've heard Gene Wilder on YouTube talk about no, no, he didn't want that scene at all, which is so odd because it seems so-- Brian: I never thought about that, but you're right. I'm going in my head through all the Mel Brooks films I can remember. And there is at least a short musical interlude in all of them that I can think of. John: But let's talk then about what's considered one of the best mixes of horror and comedy, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein [00:46:00] [Soundbite: Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein] Brian: As with comedies of that age, it, it starts off slow, but then it starts to get very funny as time goes on. And all the comedy is because of Abbot and Costello. They are the, [00:47:00] the chemistry they have on screen. I don't know how much of that was actually scripted and how much of it was just how they rolled with each other. But it works really well. Not much of the comedy is provided by the monsters or the supporting cast or even there's maybe a cute, a few sight gags. But wouldn't you say most of the comedy is just the dynamics between them? John: It is. The scary stuff is scary and it's balanced beautifully at the end where they're being chased through the castle. The monsters stayed pretty focused on being monsters and Abbot and Costello's reactions are what's funny. Dawn: If I may, as someone who has already admitted I haven't seen much of the movie, it's feels to me like it may be something like Shaun of the Dead, in the sense that you get genuinely scared if zombie movies scare, then you'll have that same adrenaline rush and the monsters stay scary. They don't have to get silly. Or be a part of the comedy for your two very opposing one's skinny, one's fat, you know, and the way that their friendship is both aligning and [00:48:00]coinciding is the humor. Brian: I believe there is one brief shot in there where you get to see Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman all in the same shot. And I think that might be the only time that ever happens in the Universal Franchise. During the lab scene, does that sound right John? John: I think you really only have Dracula and the Wolfman. I'll have to look it up because the monster is over on another table-- Brian: Isn't he underneath the blanket? John: Nope, that's Lou Costello, because it's his brain that they want. And so they're fighting over that table. And then just a little, I have nothing but stupid fun facts. There's a point in it, in that scene where the monster gets off the table and picks up someone and throws them through a window. And Glenn Strange, who was playing the monster at that point -- and who is one of my favorite portrayers of the monster, oddly enough -- had broken his ankle, I believe. And so Lon, Chaney, Jr. put the makeup on and did that one stunt for him, cuz he was there. Brian: He did that as Frankenstein's monster? John: Yes. Frankenstein. Brian: I didn't know that. Yes, I [00:49:00] did not know that. So he plays both of those roles in that movie? John: Yes. Let me just take a moment to defend Glenn Strange, who played the monster three times: House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In House of Frankenstein, he is following up the film before that, which was Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, in which, in this very convoluted universe, Lugosi is playing the monster, even though he didn't wanna do it in 31. Because his brain in Ghost of Frankenstein had been put into the Monster's body. So, in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, it is Lugosi as the Frankenstein monster. It is Lon Chaney Jr., who had played the monster in Ghost of Frankenstein, now back to playing Larry Talbot. So, it is Wolfman versus Frankenstein. And the premise of the script was he's got Ygor's brain and it's not connecting properly. He's gone blind. They shot that. They had tons of dialogue between the two characters of Larry Talbot pre-wolfman, and the monster, Bela Lugosi. And the executives thought it sounded silly. So they went in and they cut [00:50:00] out all of Lugosi's dialogue out of the movie. So now you have a blind monster stumbling around with his arms in front of him, but he doesn't talk. And if you look at the movie, you can see where he's supposed to be talking and they cut away quickly. And it's really convoluted. Glenn Strange who then has to play the monster next, looks at that and goes well, all right, I guess I'm still blind. I guess I'm still stumbling around with my arms in front of him. Which is the image most people have of the Frankenstein monster, which was never done by Boris in his three turns as the monster. So with, in that regard, I just think Glenn Strange did a great job of picking up what had come before him and making it work moving forward. Anyway, a couple other ones I wanna just hit on very quickly. Brian asked me to watch Dracula in Istanbul. Under the circumstances, a fairly straightforward retelling of the Dracula story. I would recommend it--it is on YouTube--for a couple of reasons. One, I believe it's the first time that Dracula has actual canine teeth. Brian: Yes. John: Which is important. But the other is there's the scene where he's talking to Harker about, I want [00:51:00] you to write three letters. And I want you to post date the letters. It's so convoluted, because he goes into explaining how the Turkish post office system works in such a way that the letters aren't gonna get there. It's just this long scene of explaining why he needs to write these three letters, and poor Harker's doing his best to keep up with that. That was the only reason I recommend it. Brian: That movie is based on a book called Kazıklı Voyvoda, which means The Warrior Prince and it was written in, I wanna say the 1920s or thirties, I wanna say thirties. It's the first book to equate Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, which I've come back to a couple times now, but that's significant because it was a Turkish book and the Turks got that right away. They immediately saw the name Dracula like, oh, we know who we're talking about. We're talking about that a-hole. It was not until the seventies, both the [00:52:00] fifties and the seventies, that Western critics and scholars started to equate the two. And then later when other scholars said, no, there, there's not really a connection there, but it's a fun story. And it's part of cannon now, so we can all play around with it. John: But that wasn't what Bram Stoker was thinking of? Is that what you're saying? Brian: No. No, he, he wasn't, he wasn't making Dracula into Vlad the Impaler. He got the name from Vlad the Impaler surely, but not the deeds. He wasn't supposed to be Vlad the Impaler brought back to life. John: All right. I'm going to ask you both to do one final thing and then we'll wrap it up for today. Although I could talk to you about monsters all day long, and the fact that I'd forgotten Dawn, that you were back on the Universal lot makes this even more perfect. If listeners are going to watch one Dracula movie and one Frankenstein movie, what do you recommend? Dawn, you go first. Dawn: They're only watching one, then it's gotta be the 1931 Frankenstein, with Boris. Karloff, of course. I think it has captured [00:53:00] the story of Frankenstein that keeps one toe sort of beautifully over the novel and the kind of original source material that I am so in love with, but also keeps the other foot firmly in a great film tradition. It is genuinely spooky and it holds so much of the imagery of any of the subsequent movies that you're only watching one, so that's the one you get. But if you do watch any more, you've got this fantastic foundation for what is this story and who is this creature? John: Got it. And Brian, for Dracula? Brian: I was tossing around in my head here, whether to recommend Nosferatu or the 1931 Dracula. And I think I'm going to have to agree with Dawn and say the 1931 for both of them, because it would help a viewer who was new to the monsters, understand where we got the archetypes we have. Now, why, when you type an emoji into your phone for Vampire, you get someone with a tuxedo in the slick back hair or, I think, is there a Frankenstein emoji? Dawn: There is, and he's green with bolts in his neck. [00:54:00] Brian: Yeah, it would. It will help you understand why we have that image permanently implanted in our heads, even though maybe that's not the source material. We now understand the origins of it. Dawn: And if I may too, there's, there's something about having the lore as founded in these movies is necessary, frankly, to almost understand what happens later. I mean, I get very frustrated in 2022, if there is a movie about vampires that takes any time at all to explain to me what a vampire is, unless you're breaking the rules of the vampire. For example, you know, like in Twilight the vampire sparkles, like a diamond when it's out in the sunshine and is the hottest thing ever. That's really great to know. I didn't know that about vampires. That wasn't necessarily true before, you know, but you don't need to take a lot of time. In fact, when you do read Dracula, one of the things for me that I found very frustrating was the suspense of what is it with this guy? They were like: He said we couldn't bring [00:55:00] garlic and they take all this time. And you're kind of as a modern reader being like, cuz he is a fucking vampire. Move on. Like we know this, we got this one. It's shorthand Brian: That's one snide thing I could say about the book is that there are times where Dracula's powers seem to be whatever his powers need to be to make this next scene creepy and move on to the next chapter. John: He was making it up as he went along. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Episode SummaryWelcome to The Dr. Brian's Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his analysis on today's topic: Confessions of a Social Media Influencer. What inspired Dr. Brian to write INFLUENCED ? How can a rush of dopamine impact your judgment or decision-making skills? What can happen when a successful doctor goes viral on TikTok? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap) Key Takeaways01:12 – Dr. Brian makes an exciting announcement about his upcoming book at https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com) and introduces today's topic: Confessions of a Social Media Influencer 02:02 – Dr. Brian takes a moment to thank the other influencers who helped make his book possible, including Dr. Tony Youn, Dr. Fayez Ajib, and many more 03:07 – The inspiration to write, INFLUENCED 04:11 – Three confessions of a TikTok influencer 05:15 – Dr. Brian's journey to becoming an influencer 08:53 – TikTok Purgatory and Dr. Brian's first viral video 10:52 – A dopamine rush unlike any other 12:54 – One Million Followers and ‘Learned Helplessness' 16:03 – Dr. Brian provides a quick recap of today's episode and provides sage advice on social media and the impact it can have on all of our lives Tweetable Quotes“I came up with three reasons for testing my chops on TikTok. It might be a good way to dispel misinformation being spread. I could gain a more comprehensive perspective as part of my research for the book. And, as I will explain in full subsequent chapters, I thought it showed some promise of providing me with fun and a pleasurable dopamine rush.” (05:40) (Dr. Brian) “There were also occasions when I misstepped and accidentally violated the TikTok community guidelines. Here's an invaluable hint for every TikTok influencer wannabe. Never post a video of eye surgery on TikTok Live. If you do not heed my advice, welcome to TikTok purgatory.” (08:53) (Dr. Brian) “I cannot do justice to describing the elated feeling that enveloped me on my drive home. I had earned my share of accomplishments throughout my career as a medical professional and surgeon, but had never felt anything like this before. The dopamine swarming in my brain made me feel higher than a coffee addict breaking into a Starbucks coffee shop in the envelope of darkness to swipe all the espresso beans and manically knock back one shot after the other.” (10:52) (Dr. Brian) “Once the viral videos resumed, I approached being an Influencer from an entirely different perspective, one that was grounded and healthy. I had to control my dopamine balance and always put my family first. They are far more important to me than my millions of followers.” (15:42) (Dr. Brian) “So there you have it. My confession. I am a recovered TikTok-aholic. Being an influencer has the potential to be addictive and destructive. Mine is a cautionary tale. But at least I can say I safely made it to the other side with my sanity and family intact.” (16:03) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDr. Brian's amazing new book on social media, INFLUENCED, featuring his incredible insights and experiences along with many of your favorite influencers. Endorsed by many influencers including Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski - https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/ (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/) DM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please...

Episode SummaryWelcome to The Dr. Brian's Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Hair Porosity: Tips & Best Practices for Ensuring Your Hair Maintains Enough Moisture. What is Hair Porosity? What's the difference between high, medium, and low hair porosity? How can you check if your hair maintains enough moisture? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:06 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Hair Porosity: Tips & Best Practices for Ensuring Your Hair Maintains Enough Moisture 02:27 – What is Hair Porosity? 04:57 – The difference between high and low hair porosity 06:12 – Helpful tips for managing low, medium and high hair porosity 09:18 – Dr. Brian provides the Cap/No Cap Recap of today's episode 10:18 – Dr. Brian makes an exciting announcement about his upcoming book at https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com) 12:10 – Dr. Brian teases next week's topic and reminds listeners to Subscribe, Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap) Tweetable Quotes“So, let's just first even talk about the anatomy. Let's do a little autopsy on hair. You pluck out your hair; that poor hair follicle is dead. So, we're gonna do a little autopsy now - a little hair follicle autopsy.” (02:45) (Dr. Brian) “The whole concept of porosity has to do with how much moisture your hair can absorb and retain. So if it's low porosity, it means that your hair physically cannot get moisture in it.” (03:08) (Dr. Brian) “You can't necessarily change your porosity. It's usually due to genetics. But, I think it's a good idea to test your hair just to see because there are certain things you can do to manage your hair based on if you have high, medium, or low porosity.” (05:55) (Dr. Brian) “There's certain things you can do, real quick, for low porosity hair. Apply protein-free conditioners when your hair is already wet. Look for glycerin and honey in products like shampoos or conditioners and apply heat to help absorb the moisture.” (09:33) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDr. Brian's amazing new book on social media, INFLUENCED, featuring his incredible insights and experiences along with many of your favorite influencers. Endorsed by many influencers including Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski - https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/ (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/) DM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light- hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: 4 Signs You're Heading for Burnout. What is burnout? What are some of the contributing factors behind burnout? How can you reduce stress and anxiety in order to avoid burnout? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:11 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: 4 Signs You're Heading for Burnout 02:42 – Dr. Brian makes an exciting announcement about his upcoming book at https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com) 05:24 – The many signs and stages of burnout 07:34 – Four key ways to prevent burnout 10:17 – Dr. Brian stresses the importance of exercise and its many benefits 11:08 – Dr. Brian teases next week's topic, promotes his latest book and reminds listeners to Subscribe, Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap) Tweetable Quotes“A lot of times you may not even realize that you are perhaps flirting or in the throes of burnout.” (02:02) (Dr. Brian) “What is the definition of burnout? So, burnout is usually what we consider when we're just so fatigued and don't want to do anything and we're just feeling overwhelmed. And we all have times where stress can get to us.” (04:28) (Dr. Brian) “There's actually different stages of burnout. Recognizing if perhaps you're in the early part of these stages and the interventions we go through can be very helpful.” (06:11) (Dr. Brian) “Number one is exercise. It can just be anything that you enjoy doing that gives you physical activity. If you like to jog, or swim, or do weight lifting, anything that gets your body moving has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety. And coupling that with having a well-rounded diet.” (07:53) (Dr. Brian) “So, just remember those four key things: exercise, eating a well-rounded diet, having good sleep hygiene, and, number four, asking for help.” (09:58) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDr. Brian's amazing new book on social media, INFLUENCED, featuring his incredible insights and experiences along with many of your favorite influencers. Endorsed by many influencers including Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski - https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/ (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/) DM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bty48zdwhoq0hu0/NCHS066%20-%20Is%20It%20Possible%20to%20Regenerate%20Limbs_.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Is It Possible to Regenerate Limbs? What is the connection between electrical current and healing? Is limb regeneration possible in animals? What about humans? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:19 – Dr. Brian makes an exciting announcement about his upcoming book, Influenced 03:07 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Is It Possible to Regenerate Limbs? 07:57 – Dr. Robert Becker's studies and contributions 12:48 – Other examples of healing and limb regeneration 14:10 – Dr. Brian provides the Cap/No Cap Recap of today's episode, teases next week's topic, and reminds listeners to Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes“So the main point about Warburg's discovery is that it's related to energy generation, which can have an effect on voltage. But it's really not voltage, perse, it's really energy generation that's related to the cells.”(06:59) (Dr. Brian) “Electrical current and healing goes back to the 1700s. It was found that, if they injured a creature, the electrical stimulation that's generated by the body at that sight of the injury is increased. And it's actually increased in proportion to the amount of injury.”(08:42) (Dr. Brian) “Then Dr. Becker did some measurements with the skin of humans and other animals. He had discovered that there's this electrical field that's roughly parallel to the body's nervous system. And, if there's a problem or disturbance in the field, such as an injury, then it can stimulate the cells to start repairing.”(11:13) (Dr. Brian) “There's a time in London where these two babies had lost their fingers and their fingers regenerated naturally. This goes back to this concept that the younger an organism is, the more healing regeneration that they have. So babies have the ability to have natural regeneration to some degree.”(12:49) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDr. Brian's amazing new book on social media, INFLUENCED, featuring his incredible insights and experiences along with many of your favorite influencers. Endorsed by many influencers including Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski - https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/ (https://www.influencedsocialmedia.com/) DM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

Episode SummaryCEO of Indoor Ag-Con, Brian Sullivan joins the show to share his years of experience in event management and what led him to acquire Indoor Ag-Con, the premier trade show & conference for indoor vertical farming & controlled environment agriculture. Today, Harry and Brian discuss the highs and lows of the events industry, the resilience Brian showed throughout the course of the pandemic, and the importance Brian places on problem-solving and fostering a familial-type culture among his team. Thanks to Our SponsorsCultivatd – https://cultivatd.com/ (https://cultivatd.com/) https://indooragtechnyc.com/ (Indoor AgTech NYC) Key Takeaways07:14 – Harry welcomes CEO of Indoor Ag-Con, Brian Sullivan, to discuss their shared love of New York City, how Brian got into the events industry and his path to entrepreneurship 18:11 – Brian reflects on two major snags he's experienced while putting on trade shows 21:44 – Acquiring Indoor Ag-Con and Brian's vertical farming origin story 25:17 – What Brian looks for in an event before deciding to acquire it 33:34 – Gathering input on how to grow, change, and make it better 36:44 – Brian speaks to some of his favorite moments from event management 43:36 – Brian shares what he learned about resilience and leadership throughout Covid 48:29 – Where Brian learned his resilience and why fostering familial support is so important 52:33 – Harry thanks Brian for joining the show and Brian makes a specific ask of the audience Tweetable Quotes“I fell in love with the [events] industry. It really is Lights, Camera, Action. It's buildup and it's creating something again and again. There's always a twist. There's always excitement. And business is transacted there.” (12:49) (Brian) “Connors Exhibition Group was the company I worked for. And the show I was brought onto was the National Hardware Show. It was actually the third-largest trade show in North America. I got a lot of experience but then I left honestly because it was very corporate. My wife was working in the same industry which is how we met. And we saw an opportunity to try to start a little company, and it worked.” (13:55) (Brian) “For me, it's fun. I can't see myself ever doing anything else. It gets in your blood and it's a lot of fun producing events.” (21:03) (Brian) “If you're building a farm, in my mind, where do you start? Do you start at building it or do you start on who your customer is going to be? Are you selling it to a restaurant? Are you going direct-to-consumer? Are you going to grocers?” (32:53) (Brian) “There are two things I say to our teams at times. ‘If we run into a problem, it's not the problem. It's how you resolve it.' And I also tell them, ‘The road to success is not a superhighway. It's a goat path.'” (45:22) (Brian) “I believe the best learning moments are when things go wrong.” (47:57) (Brian) Resources MentionedIndoor Ag-Con – https://indoor.ag/ (https://indoor.ag/) Brian's Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-sullivan-13b3651a/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-sullivan-13b3651a/) Sponsor Info Cultivatd's Website – https://cultivatd.com/ (https://cultivatd.com/) Cultivatd's Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/cultivatdco/ (https://www.instagram.com/cultivatdco/) Cultivatd's Twitter –https://twitter.com/cultivatd ( https://twitter.com/cultivatd) Cultivatd's Facebook –https://www.facebook.com/cultivatd/ ( https://www.facebook.com/cultivatd/)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0kd05dz4o5astor/NCHS059%20-%20Cures%20for%20Seven%20Types%20of%20Headaches.pdf?dl=0 (Click here )to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler useshis decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provideshis Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Cures for Seven Types of Headaches. Can dehydration cause headaches? What are tension headaches? What's the differencebetween a migraine headache and an ocular migraine? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://my.captivate.fm/RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap.) Key Takeaways01:12 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Cures for Seven Types of Headaches 05:14 – Tension headaches and sinus headaches, explained 08:16 – Cluster headaches 08:45 – Migraines and ocular migraines 10:30 – Cases where you should consider consulting a doctor about your headaches 11:25 – Treating different types of headaches 12:14 – Dr. Brian provides the Cap/No Cap Recap of today's episode, teases next week's topic, and reminds listeners to Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes“There's really no data to suggest that if you have a frontal headache it means you need more sleep.”(03:05) (Dr. Brian) “There is something called a tension headache and it can feel like a band compressing your head. It's very uncomfortable and, of course, tension can be caused by stress.”(05:14) (Dr. Brian) “Pain around one eye is called a cluster headache. And, in fact, that is a good reason to see a doctor for sure. That's where you get this pain right around the eye or behind the eye that's pretty excruciating.”(08:16) (Dr. Brian) “Migraines usually are associated with visual phenomena - like zig-zaggy lines, flashy lights going off that are bright and colorful - along with the headache.”(09:24) (Dr. Brian) “If you're getting headaches more than fifteen days out of a month for over three months, this could be a chronic headache. But that's another reason to consider seeing a doctor.”(11:16)(Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ua5sbns7mq0uthw/NCHS058%20-%20Does%20Lemon%20Juice%20Help%20with%20Acid%20Reflux_.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler useshis decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provideshis Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Does Lemon Juice Help with Acid Reflux? What causes acid reflux? What are some common treatments of acid reflux? What foods canyou enjoy and which ones should you avoid? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://my.captivate.fm/RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap.) Key Takeaways01:11 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Does Lemon Juice Help with Acid Reflux? 03:39 – Benefits of drinking water with a little bit of lemon 04:56 – Other treatments for acid reflux 05:58 – Foods to avoid 06:38 – How does sleep impact acid reflux? 07:24 – Dr. Brian provides the Cap/No Cap Recap of today's episode, teases next week's topic, and reminds listeners to Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes“We've seen lots of those videos on TikTok and Instagram where people are brushing withlemon juice or eating lemons to try to get whiter teeth. The risk of that is that, when you putsomething so acidic in your mouth - which lemons are - it can actually break down the enamelon your teeth.”(02:48) (Dr. Brian) “The key is not to just drink a big glass of lemon juice. That's like acid overload. So, never dothat. But a little bit - a teaspoon - in a glass of water and that is the way this can help.”(04:09)(Dr. Brian) “Sometimes I will take Prilosec, which is a very common over-the-counter blocker that blocksthe acid-producing system in the stomach. And that can help with acid reflux as well.”(05:33)(Dr. Brian) “There are some foods to consider if you're having acid reflux like coffee, things with caffeine or chocolate. Sometimes those can make acid reflux worse. And, especially spicy food.” (05:58) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/detm6gfqonwfz7p/NCHS055%20-%20Cellulite%20Solutions.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light- hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Cellulite Solutions. What is cellulite? Can anything be done to prevent cellulite? What do procedures like Cool Sculpting and Vacuum Assisted Precise Tissue Release entail? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:09 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Cellulite Solutions 04:26 – What can you do to help prevent cellulite 05:14 – Cryolipolysis, ultrasounds and Cellfina 07:17 – Dr. Brian provides the Cap/No Cap Recap of today's episode, teases next week's topic, and encourages listeners to reach out and Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes“Cellulite is fat that has a little bit of an uneven distribution or uneven surface. Cellulite is actually caused from different formations of fat underneath the skin.” (03:24) (Dr. Brian) “I hate to use the word ‘issue' because I know some people are really concerned about it. There's nothing health-wise [wrong with cellulite]. Like nobody dies of cellulite right? On the coroner's report, you've never seen, ‘Cause of death: Cellulite.'” (03:55) (Dr. Brian) “So there's a procedure out there that's quite effective that's called ‘Cool Sculpting.' It's actually noninvasive. It uses something called cryolipolysis, which is just a fancy way of saying really really cold temperatures can break down and dissolve some fat.” (05:14) (Dr. Brian) “There's another procedure called Vacuum Assisted Precise Tissue Release where this device with little tiny blades can cut these bands of collagen and fat to help smooth things out.” (06:33) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sx8fs0f4gxlz3wa/NCHS054%20-%20How%20to%20Get%20Rid%20of%20Chubby%20Cheeks.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light- hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian is provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: How to Get Rid of Chubby Cheeks. Can rubbing ice on your cheeks get rid of chubby cheeks and give you a chiseled jawline? What's considered the most effective way to achieve a more defined jawline? What is kybella and what other procedures are out there to help get a better jawline? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:06 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: How to Get Rid of Chubby Cheeks 02:48 – Healthy ways to lose weight 03:31 – Caloric restriction, explained 04:03 – Cardio and weight lifting 05:01 – Kybella and other procedures to reduce fat in the cheeks and chin 06:11 – Dr. Brian calls Cap on some other common practices that have not been shown to help with getting a better jawline 06:55 – Dr. Brian provides the Cap/No Cap Recap of today's episode, teases next week's topic, and encourages listeners to reach out and Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes“Ice is really good for inflammation. So, let that be known. Let's shout that from the mountaintops that ice is great for inflammation. Of course, don't put it on for too long because it can burn your skin.” (02:13) (Dr. Brian) “When you exercise or when you lift weights, those are all really good for helping to increase your engine, so to speak, to burn more fuel in your body. And watching and being aware of the calories that you're eating or drinking.” (02:59) (Dr. Brian) “One thing that is becoming pretty well know is caloric restriction. Caloric restriction is where you may keep a window of twelve hours between eating breakfast and eating dinner. It actually has been shown to help people lose weight and be healthy because it stimulates some good antioxidant enzymes in the body.” (03:21) (Dr. Brian) “There's a substance called kybella that can be injected in the cheeks and the jaw and it can reduce fat. And how this substance came to be is it's the same type of bile salts that our GI system secretes when it wants to break down fat that we eat in our diet. They actually got this FDA approved and this substance is now being injected to help reduce fat around the cheek and the chin.” (05:03) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8cyg1q7obdlt1t6/NCHS050%20-%20Powerful%20Tea%20with%20Cinnamon%20and%20Ginger.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light- hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian is provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Powerful Tea with Cinnamon and Ginger. Does cinnamon and ginger help to boost your metabolism? Can they help with weight loss or menstrual cramps? What are ghrelin and leptin hormones and what do they do? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:18 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Powerful Tea with Cinnamon and Ginger 02:22 – What are the health benefits of cinnamon and ginger? 04:09 – Two keys to help with weight loss 06:19 – Leptin and Ghrelin hormones 08:24 – Other tips for helping to increase your metabolism 09:41 – Dr. Brian provides the No Cap Recap of today's episode, teases next week's topic, and encourages listeners to reach out and Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes“Cinnamon and ginger, will it boost your metabolism? Technically it will boost your metabolism, so that technically is Not Cap.” (02:23) (Dr. Brian) “It is Not Cap that it can help with menstrual cramps. Research does show that cinnamon and ginger can help when people are suffering from menstrual cramps.” (03:57) (Dr. Brian) “This is a good entry to talk about a childhood story that I don't think you know. My best friend grew up across the street from Arnold Schwarzenegger; it was in Santa Monica. And, when we were in school we used to go over to his house all the time and wash his motorcycle and his cars. You don't have to get big and bulky like Arnold, but you can still lift weights and not get big and still have more metabolic activity coming from muscles that are stronger and somewhat more developed.” (04:54) (Dr. Brian) “One important thing to know is that if you're not getting enough sleep, it's been shown that sleep deprivation increases that hunger hormone and makes you more hungry. That's why people eat more when they're sleep deprived and they gain weight. So, getting enough sleep is definitely underrated.” (06:19) (Dr. Brian) “There is a combination of a tea which research shows that consuming these two components, a hibiscus tea bag and a lemon verbena tea bag, very likely you will not have the same hunger for the rest of the day and you'll eat less.” (06:55) (Dr. Brian) “So, taking cinnamon and ginger can boost your metabolism a little bit. It can possibly lead to weight loss. It can help with menstrual cramps. The proven, stand-by techniques for losing weight are increasing your metabolism through exercise and getting enough sleep.” (09:46) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9v0s3alkmcjeu6q/NCHS047%20-%20Coconut%20Water%20For%20Hair%20Growth.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode SummaryWelcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light- hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian is provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: Coconut Water for Hair Growth. Can coconut water actually help with hair growth? What are some benefits of drinking coconut water? Can eating coconut meat help with kidney stones or help with weight loss? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways01:14 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic: Coconut Water for Hair Growth 03:43 – Can coconut water help with hair growth? 04:23 – What can naturally help with hair growth? 05:26 – Benefits of coconut water 07:37 – Why coconut meat is good for you 08:59 – Dr. Brian provides the No Cap Recap of today's episode and encourages listeners to reach out and Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap) 10:22 – Dr. Brian reminds listeners where they can watch the award-winning film, Holky: The Steven Holcomb Story Tweetable Quotes“Sadly, it is Cap. Now, I love coconut. I love coconut water. I love everything with coconuts pretty much. But, there's no research to back up the claim that this is gonna help with your hair growth.” (04:06) (Dr. Brian) “Now, I will say this. Coconut water and coconut are really good for you. And, when I used to work out really intensely when I was rowing, I used to always carry a bottle of coconut water because I found that that was incredible for hydration. It's much better than water, in my experience.” (05:26) (Dr. Brian) “Putting that mixture of the coconut onto the seeds of plants actually has been shown to help with plant growth. So, there is research to back that up for helping your plants.” (06:18) (Dr. Brian) “There is a little bit of research that coconut meat may help support weight loss. But, of course, the ultimate for weight loss is making sure you're taking in less calories than you're burning. That's called caloric deficit.” (08:35) (Dr. Brian) Resources MentionedDM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information.

Brian Hollins is the Founder of the Takeoff Institute and Founding Managing Partner of Collide Capital. The Takeoff Institute is focused on equipping Black undergrads with the resources and mentorship they need to build a young professional career. Chad talks with Brian about providing students with necessary skills like etiquette and polish to break into Tesla and McKinsey-level companies and facilitating facetime, communication, and mentorship with other Black people within those companies who are at executive levels. The Takeoff Institute (https://takeoffinstitute.com/) Follow Brian on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BHolls1) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-hollins/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Brian Hollins, Founder of the Takeoff Institute and Founding Managing Partner of Collide Capital. Brian, thanks for joining me. BRIAN: Chad, I'm pumped to do this. Thanks for having me. CHAD: So you are obviously the Founder of the Takeoff Institute. So let's start there. Why don't we give folks a brief overview of what the Takeoff Institute is, and then we'll dive right in? BRIAN: Absolutely. Happy Black History Month. Let's start there. I'm a Black undergraduate student in the past, and I'm building something for Black undergraduate students today. So Takeoff Institute is focused on equipping Black undergrads with the resources and mentorship they need to build a young professional career. I was lucky enough to go to Stanford for undergrad and almost get thrown over the wall, if you will, by mentors and people that could advise me as I broke into my young professional career. And I, unfortunately, noticed that that wasn't the same for a lot of other folks. I ran diversity recruiting at Goldman Sachs for a few years and just saw some of the mistakes and little things that people who don't have advisors, people who don't have mentors, people who don't have an older brother in private equity. I saw the mistakes they were making and knew I wanted to build something to help bridge that gap. So we focus on providing the types of things that I think you need to break into a Goldman Sachs or a Tesla or a Facebook or a McKinsey today that might not have been true five years ago. And unfortunately, I think a lot of career development offices and programs out there are helping students break into a job that doesn't exist anymore, and that's more focused on some of the skills that we've tried to tap into. CHAD: And what are those skills? BRIAN: I'll point to a few off the top of my head. One is just polish. If you've never had an internship, you don't know cadencing on scheduling or sending an email to a direct report or really focusing on your LinkedIn, and your resume, and your social media being clean and disciplined. And so we bring to light a lot of the things that I think employers are looking for today. I'll use a good example with our students. If you don't have 500 connections on LinkedIn, the number of connections you have shows. But if you have more than 500 connections, it just shows 500+. And as a recruiter, when you really think about it, at the top of the funnel, they use these little things to guide a lot of their decision-making. For better or worse, I'm not sure it's a great way to decide who should be a good candidate for your company. But when you get 5,000 applications, and you need to get it down to 100 in a couple of days, there are little things like sending your resume in a Word Doc instead of a PDF or having spelling errors in your application, or not filling out some of the boxes that matter. And so we really train them on that etiquette and polish. Another bucket that I think is super important we built a speaker series at the Takeoff Institute called You Can't Be What You Can't See. And I think for a lot of Black undergraduate students, you go through a Superday at some of these places. You might meet 10, 15 people. Most of the time, you're not going to meet anyone Black. And you're definitely not going to meet Black people that are at the executive level. And so we really pride ourselves on bringing in managing directors from banks, and founders and CEOs from growing companies, and leading venture capitalist investors and just help our students see that there are people out there doing what they did. There are people that come from their backgrounds that also weren't sure who they were going to be when they were a sophomore or a junior in college. And so, building confidence is another key pillar of the program that we really pride ourselves on. And we're very lucky we have students at Tesla, at Apple, at Facebook, at Goldman, at NBC Universal. These students have broken into really exciting roles. And as we think about building the full flywheel around Takeoff, now those students become advocates. Now those students become mentors and advisors. And we build proximity for our students to help them realize there are people that very recently went through a very similar program and are now doing the things that they aspire to do. CHAD: That's great. It sounds to me like it really is a combination of things that they might not have the opportunity to have done before or gain the experience and because they're marginalized, historically. And also just things that are good to have that, in general, aren't taught in school regardless of your opportunity. BRIAN: That's right. CHAD: And sometimes people who have more opportunity are getting that exposure in the jobs that they have along the way and that kind of thing. That makes it certainly easier for them to succeed later on, let alone what they look like when they show up to the interview. BRIAN: Yeah, I completely agree. And I think the anecdotal use there is most of the things that I'm teaching these kids you can find on Google. The problem is they don't know what to look for. And when we think about fast-tracking these students or getting them into these rooms quicker, getting them through those interviews more effectively, it's almost like bringing all of these resources right in front of their face and allowing them to soak and absorb them in a very efficient manner. So there's a guide somewhere on the internet of how to break into consulting, and there's a guide on how to crush a product interview. And there's a guide on how to build a perfect resume or a perfect LinkedIn. But we find that most of our students, one, don't know that they should be looking for that stuff, and two, don't know how to go get it all when it matters. And that's really what we focus on, bringing all that stuff in front of them at a more efficient clip and help them build that confidence so that when they do get in front of that interview, they're armed with all the things they need to succeed. CHAD: Well, I know you're already solving a big problem. But is there anything in particular that you do to then make sure that once these people are in the workforce, in the workplace, they're going to companies that are going to treat them right where they're not going to face bias as much as possible and those kinds of things? Or are you mostly focused on getting them ready right now? BRIAN: No, it's a great question. I'd put that in a 2.0 Takeoff University, Takeoff Institute, but it's absolutely critical. It's super important. And we have a long way to go. Chad, I don't want to pretend like the world is ten times better than it was five years ago. But the transparency through which some of this data is being recorded, the accountability that's being held in rooms that matter, so C-suite, executive suite, board meetings, it is changing. And I'm very excited about that because I think for the students that can, and this is in every student, and I don't want to pretend like it is, but for the students that can choose where they go, they're going to choose to go to those companies. They're going to choose to go to the companies where there is active, positive feedback from underrepresented people, so Black, Latin, female, people that don't look like the rich, white guy that runs the company. They're going to look for that feedback. And they're going to look for companies that very, very clearly advocate for supporting those types of communities. And, again, I think we're in the early innings of that. But I think that we're definitely on a path towards that being more and more important and that tailors who we partner with and who we spend time with. And if you look at a lot of our partners, they are people that care about that stuff, and they are people that are actively working on doing something about it, which we certainly appreciate. CHAD: So the core of the Takeoff Institute is the fellowship. Is that right? BRIAN: Yeah, that's right. CHAD: What exactly is that? BRIAN: The Takeoff Institute Summer Fellowship is an eight-week program, again, designed to advance and equip Black undergraduates with the resources and mentorship they need to launch a young professional career. So the first thing that I think about is what we had talked about earlier, just aggregation of resources. So we have a partnership with Wall Street Prep, and so our students have to do an Excel and PowerPoint tutorial within the first two weeks of the program. And that's in after hours, and they have to do it on their own. And we track their progress, and they have to submit it. Because I cannot think of a single role in a post-undergraduate career where it is not important to be literate in both of those platforms and also, maybe more importantly, where top performers are not very good in both of those platforms. So the first piece is resource aggregation. CHAD: And this is happening remotely? BRIAN: This is all remote. This is all remote. I started the Takeoff Institute in 2020. Chad, I hope there's a day where I say that none of it is remote, but it's the world we live in. CHAD: [laughs] BRIAN: And it's what allowed us to scale it the way we did. We had over 500 kids apply for our first fellowship two years ago. We took 50 and had a little over 600 apply for the second year and took 50 again last summer and have some really exciting things coming up for this summer. So we can talk about the goal and where we're headed later. But the second piece is the speaker series that I told you about. And so, bringing in folks during our weekly meetings and allowing them to ask questions and be vulnerable and share that experience. The third piece is mentorship. And so, I wanted to recreate the feeling of having a direct report. I think too many Black undergrads get to their first job without any real internship experience. And I think in an internship, one of the things you do is you make a bunch of dumb mistakes where your direct report tells you they were dumb because you're an intern. And you check that box, like, whoops, I did that I'm never going to do it again. And unfortunately, when you get to your first job, and that's some of the stuff you're doing early on, it just doesn't go well. It doesn't lead to you being ranked highly. It doesn't lead to you getting an offer a year later. It doesn't lead to you getting the advocacy and support of people internally to say that you're a top performer. So we almost try to recreate that direct report internship experience and allow them to make some of those mistakes. And so every student is paired up with a one on one advisor. And so, for folks that are listening, if you want to be an advisor, I'd call it anywhere from 25 to 50-year-olds with a desire to help undergraduate students succeed. We have a variety of different types of advisors. And again, it's really about challenging our students to make sure they send the email to check-in. They send the email to let them know that they need to meet. They send a calendar invite. And if it's in ET, they remember, oh wow, I need to send that in PT. So just giving them that experience. So resources, access to people that look like them in seats that matter, and mentorship and guidance are the three main pillars of the Takeoff Institute. CHAD: I love that idea of learning from experiencing failure. One of the things as someone speaking for myself coming from a place of opportunity and privilege and being a white male, I might approach certain circumstances where I'm just not as afraid of failure. I'm a big believer in learning through failure, and so because of that, I'm less afraid of that. Someone who hasn't had that opportunity and is underrepresented might be much more scared of what might happen if they fail, and that's just missing the opportunity to do that. BRIAN: I think you're absolutely right. And I want to, if you're open to it, have a little fun here. I'd love to flip that question on you and just think about what are some of the things that you would be sharing or guiding to underrepresented ecosystems to help them bridge that gap, to help them kind of get that confidence to know that they do have the right, they do have the skills; they do have the knowledge to break into those places? And it's about quieting that imposter syndrome and going after some of those opportunities. CHAD: Yeah, I've always believed it's really difficult to tell people not to feel something that they're feeling. [laughs] It's really hard to change someone's feelings. And so I would put it on the mentors that they need to work to create the environment where people understand that it's okay to make mistakes. That's certainly the experience that I had in my internship when I was just getting started out. I saw my manager making mistakes, and they owned up to them. And we talked about them. And we were doing a lot of the same work. We were working alongside of each other. And so that close working relationship is one thing. I don't know if you're aware, but at thoughtbot, we have an apprentice program where new people are paired with an experienced mentor, and it's almost entirely working together on work. So creating that opportunity. So assuming you have a mentor that's supportive and wants to work with you, great. And if not, I would say try to circumvent that as much as possible and get yourself working with them as much as possible so that you can get close to them and see them working, and see them failing, and really gain that first-hand experience, which in and of itself can be uncomfortable to force that. I totally recognize that. BRIAN: Totally. Part of the program is they do a research report with their mentor. And so it's sort of this guided I'm here to answer questions, but I am not here to do this for you. And I'm very intentional with our mentors about that. I think a lot of these students, especially the ones who have never had a direct report, they wait until they're told what to do. And they don't know how to turn on that proactive brain. And I think it's a super important muscle to flex, especially at that age. How do you teach a kid to do the thing that he thinks his boss is going to ask for as opposed to the thing that his boss asked for? CHAD: Well, this is sort of a pet peeve of mine because I think that, in some ways, there is a flaw in our educational system. It's centered around people telling people what to do. BRIAN: Do what you're told, yeah, absolutely. CHAD: Right. And so, I was very fortunate that I had some teachers that did more project-based learning and then chose to go to a college that was project-based. And the difference when you're in charge of something, and you're responsible, and people aren't telling you what to do, that really creates the environment where you can do that great work. BRIAN: Totally. What's pretty cool is we keep a repository of all their presentations. And so, a lot of them, after the program is over they'll actually share their presentation on their LinkedIn or through their socials. And just having a body of work that early in your career, mapping the Esports competitive landscape, or how to build a D2C skincare business for people of color. I mean, really cool projects that they're very proud of, that they worked hard on, and now that they can share. And, again, part of what we do is build that LinkedIn, build that thought leadership, help them become experts in their own craft because I think it builds that confidence that we just talked about missing for so many of them. And it's doing all these little things that really just unlock their inner self. I'm not giving them anything that they don't already have. I'm just unlocking it. Mid-roll Ad I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: Let's take a step back. And I'm curious what it takes to start something like Takeoff Institute. How difficult is it to set up a non-profit? From when you decided to do this, what steps did you take as a founder getting off the ground? BRIAN: I'll give you context of how I started it at first. I was a student at Harvard Business School. Nine months into my MBA program, the world blew up. And so what was a trip to Shenzhen or Tokyo turned into hanging out in my apartment. And I think similar to what you described around that participatory learning environment and how that helped you, HBS is known for what's called the case method. And the case method is a very, very powerful way to learn. It's, by far, in a way, my favorite way to learn. And I knew nothing about it before I got to HBS. And the repeat experience of being presented a problem and having to choose a side and then gathering information after the fact around whether that was not necessarily right or wrong but whether that was educated or insightful and then repeating that process over and over again. You just learn a ton about your biases and the types of things that you can and can't accomplish on your own without thinking of other parts of your brain or using other kinds of tools in your toolbox. And so I found myself really challenged after my first year of school, saying, I've never built anything, and I've never put my mind towards some of the problems that I think exist in the world. And I mentioned while I was at Goldman running diversity recruiting at Stanford for a couple of years, and I saw so many problems and flaws in that model. And then my youngest brother was a Marine. So he served in the military for four years and then took the GI Bill, and he's now a junior at Columbia University in New York. And I saw his journey very recently and a lot of the flaws in the system. And so I just knew that this problem wasn't going anywhere. And I knew that I really, really wanted to be a part of the solution. And I think unfortunately, our generation is taught that you're supposed to turn 50 and be rich before you start giving back and before you, whatever, consider building a non-profit, and I sort of call bullshit on that, to be honest. I think I will never be more proximate to the problems I'm trying to solve than I am right now. And I'm 30 years old. I'm seven, eight years out of school, but I still very, very intentionally stay close to the undergraduate ecosystem and understand what it takes and what the problems are with breaking into the industry right now. So I think it was a combination of being a student of the problem, knowing the problem, knowing it exists, building confidence and desire to become a leader while I was at HBS. And third, COVID, just realizing that a lot of these problems were actually being exacerbated, and they were getting worse, not better. I'm sitting at HBS watching some of the smartest kids I know lose internships. And all I could think was, what does that mean for the Black community? What does that mean for Black undergrads who already don't have the internship that's high paying and kind of seasons through these types of things? And so I wanted to do something about it. And I knew it was going to be bootstrapped. I knew I didn't have a million bucks to put towards it, but I knew I could put something together. And like I said, when I saw the demand for 500+ kids applying, I knew we had something. And in the last two years, we've done a lot and have a long way to go but are really excited about some of the things around the corner. CHAD: That's great context. And so, how did you go from zero to something? BRIAN: The first part was just surrounding myself with people that I thought wanted to be contributors and collaborators and building it, so that's both students and mentors, so building an operating board and people around us to help us do it. I can tell you the process of launching a 501(c)(3) is not fun, and it's not for the faint of heart dealing with the government. And I caveat that by saying towards the end of the process, I almost appreciated how difficult it was because it forced me to get a lot of things in place that were not fun to put in place. And as a result, if I wasn't that serious about building this, I think I would have been paused multiple times throughout the journey. While it's a frustrating manual, kind of nasty process, I do think it's a filtering mechanism for the government. Because the last thing you want to do is allow corporations to give people money that they think is going somewhere good and then it not go somewhere good, so I definitely appreciate that. But yeah, the journey is not fun. I think anything that's bootstrapped...I'm sure you've had plenty of guests on here that have experience at bootstrap companies. If you can't go out and raise $10 million like some of these seed companies on day one, well, then you can't hire five people, and you can't set up all of the right systems online that you want to someday. So I think that's another component that I just learned a ton from was how do we put the things in place to allow us to do this thoughtfully but not necessarily the things in place that we want to have in year three when now we have a 500k P&L and can flex into some different things and bring people on full time? So it almost forced us to build a bare-bones mechanism that just went out and really focused on the product, really focused on is this something that Black undergraduate students need and want? And only very myopically focused on that in the early days. Because all of the other stuff, the infrastructure of a non-profit, the operating board, who we bring around, and what money we raise, none of that really matters if Black undergrads don't see it as valuable. And so I very intentionally spent a lot of our time with the students and was very hands-on, still very hands-on. But really spent time getting feedback and gathering feedback from our first cohort around what are the things you love? What are the things we should change? Who are some of the speakers you wish you heard from? What are some of the ways we can engage you guys now that you have graduated? It's been a fun journey. I'm learning a lot still. As you know, I run a venture capital fund alongside this. And so just finding ways for those two things to talk to each other and to support one another. We back predominantly underrepresented founders. And these founders come from the same ecosystems where our students come from. So it's a really unique opportunity to see synergies exist across the two things I'm building. CHAD: As you were getting started with Takeoff, like you said, the most important thing was the students. So was there anything in particular that you did that you thought worked really well to let people know about this and spread the word? BRIAN: Yeah, I'd say less so in season one, chapter one, whatever you want to call it. Less so in that season than last season. And so what I did is I really turned on our brand ambassador program SO taking the students who graduated from the first cohort and using them to push us into career development offices, help them share on their campuses. We had 50 students, but it wasn't 20 from Harvard and 20 from Stanford. We probably had 35, maybe 40 schools represented where we had a few kids from a few different schools. But the network effects of allowing the students to go out, and there are 100 things on a job board at a school that people are trying to get access to these students. But there's not that many students actually advocating for the programs and saying, "Hey, I went through this, and it was valuable, and here's why it was valuable. And here's why you should go through it." We have a ton of our students who are very proud of the program and share what we're building with other students. And I think that that was a really cool unlock because I think that's the most authentic way to get to know your customers is go through people who really have experienced what you're building and allow them to tell the story for you. CHAD: You said you get 500 applications, 600 applications for the latest cohort, and you're choosing 50. How do you do that? BRIAN: We use a couple of different filtering mechanisms, so the first is the application. So there are questions in there around why they would join the program, things like do you have another internship lined up? We tend to focus on kids who either couldn't get an internship or don't have a Goldman Sachs banking internship already lined up. We tend to find that they're just more absorbed by the program. They're more focused. The second thing is there are a couple of questions around just what their aspiration is. I try to look for students who at least have spent some time thinking about who they want to be when they grow up. That doesn't mean you need to know. But oftentimes, if you're not curious or aspirational on your own, regardless of whether you have confidence, if you're not curious or aspirational on your own, it's very hard for me to elicit that in an eight-week program. And so we really try to filter out the students that we think are excited about getting to the other side or are excited about breaking in or excited about challenging ceilings. That's a little harder to search for than did they fill out their LinkedIn? Did they submit their PDF the right way? So that's the second component. The third component is honestly being very intentional about matching with our mentors. So I try to find mentors that are at least somewhat lined up with the ecosystems these students want to go to. So if I have someone that wants to break into product, I actually think it's super-valuable to get some of our friends that work at Facebook or some of our friends that work at Pinterest who are in product as their mentors, regardless of whether they work on a product-related research project. And so, using our mentors to guide that journey from 100 to 50 students to make sure that they all feel like they are getting someone that can really help advance them. And it's funny; it's pretty incredible. At the end of the program, a lot of them will come and say, "I can't believe how similar I am to Tyler, or Stacey, or Rebecca." It's really incredible how connected they become. And I just like to say, "Oh yeah, I can't believe it too." We are very intentional in the background on making that happen. But our mentors stick around with our advisors, and I hear two years later they are helping each other find a job. Or I'll get a picture of them out to brunch because they check in once a quarter. That's the stuff that just gets me super jacked up to keep doing it is recognizing that these people continue these relationships long after the fellowship program is over. CHAD: And that's great and really shows one of the great things about programs like this, and you already alluded to it earlier, is that they compound. As more people go through it, the value of the overall program hopefully goes up. BRIAN: That's right. CHAD: So are there any interviews or anything as part of the process of getting? BRIAN: There's not. That's new this year, which we're super excited about. The first two years were, again, really just us in the background making that happen. And I wouldn't have known what to interview for, to be completely honest. I think now I have just a better understanding of the type of student that succeeds in our program. I didn't entirely understand that before. And I think regardless of whether you're diverse yourself, I think there's implicit bias that comes with jumping on a Zoom with someone and seeing how they interact. And I don't know that those biases always lead you to the best candidate. And so, I think we tried to take a thoughtful approach but didn't want to over-engineer the early days of building our cohorts. And we beta-tested a bunch of different stuff. So we had freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, and first-year out, as well as Harvard, Stanford, Arkansas State, two-year community college, really just the full gamut. There are 1.1 million Black undergrads in the country in every given year. So finding students from all these different places and then kind of honing that in and figuring out, you know what? I think if you do this program right after your freshman or right after your sophomore year, it's super valuable. And it really sets you up to have that strong junior year internship because that's the one that matters. That's the one that changes your trajectory if you go get a good one. And so just learning those types of things over the first two years, I think, really helped us hone in who we focus on, and why we focus on them, and what resources we provide for them. Because it just, again, it just helps us build that treadmill to really accelerate their trajectory into their young professional career. CHAD: You mentioned undergrad, so the program is specifically focused on people in college going to a university of some kind. BRIAN: It's specifically focused on Black undergraduate students. I struggled with this a little bit because there are a lot of people that need help. I grew up in some underprivileged ecosystems as well. And there were plenty of poor white kids that also should get this or underrepresented Latinos that I knew. And while I wanted to build that, I also knew there's just a lot of noise. There's a lot of resources and advice and people out there trying to help. And I kind of said to myself, "This is the demographic that I understand best." And instead of pretending like I know how to build a platform to help someone from an ecosystem I don't truly understand break-in, I'm just going to focus all my effort on getting more people that look like me because I know that there's a need for that and know that there's a gap for that. And I know that historically, companies have not been good at doing that on their own. So that's been our focus. And I hope there's a day where we have the privilege to expand that horizon and spend time because we have the resources to do it. But for now, I still have a long way to go within the Black community. And I'm going to keep focusing our time there. CHAD: Yeah, I was thinking more about the kids who aren't even getting the opportunity to go to college. So they're 1.1 million Black undergrads. There are probably even more people who don't even get the opportunity to go to college. There are so many people you could help with this. What are your goals for growth? And how do you serve more people? BRIAN: Yeah, I'll tell you the one that's top of mine because we're super excited about it. And this hasn't been released to many places, and so for our lovely thoughtbot community, I'm super excited to share this early, but we're building something called Takeoff University. Takeoff University will be the largest resource repository in the world for Black undergraduate students. Again, I think that the positioning is Black undergraduate students. I don't think that there's a paywall set up where if you don't have a .edu you can't use it. And so, I'm still thinking about how we provide access for some of the people you're describing. But regardless, the idea being our fellowship is very hands-on and very intentional, and specifically focused on accelerating 50 people a summer. But how can we build something that more effectively brings in anyone in their undergraduate ecosystem development? Whether you're a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, how can we deliver resources to you and get you some of the things that we know you need at the time that you need them and allow you to more effectively become part of the Takeoff ecosystem? Because what we believe is we can build a pretty unique flywheel around the broader TakeOff University ecosystem and some of the content and curriculum and thought leadership and just sharing that can occur there. I think a lot about our older students. When we talk to them about how they engage with younger students, it's oftentimes younger students are sent to them. So they have a classmate who says, "Hey, you should talk to this guy. He broke in, or he had an internship somewhere." And those students come, and one of the first things they ask is, "How do I do it? How do I become you? How do I do the thing you did?" And I think for a lot of students, they don't have a good answer for that. It's hey, let me send you these 2009 PDFs that someone sent me on banking recruiting. Or "Hey, have you checked this out at the career development office?" But they don't send them to anywhere, at least in a concentrated manner. And that's really what got me excited about building Takeoff University was there is not a centralized resource repository where any and every Black undergraduate student should go to prepare themselves for their young professional journey. And so some of the things that'll be a part of that are the first thing is you come in as a career exploratory quiz. You answer a bunch of questions on what you're interested in, what stage you are in your internship development, what stage you are in your academic tenure. And it just helps guide us towards some of the resources that we know you should look at. And it doesn't mean you can't spend time in the whole library but help us guide you in the early days. And then from there, dynamic ways for students to engage, so building community and allowing them to share resources, ways for companies to engage. So allowing companies to come in and identify students that might be top candidates for their program. So really just building an inclusive ecosystem for Black undergrads where they can come and know that they'll give valuable resources. And so we're really excited. We have some really cool things in the oven around this and excited to launch it to the world later this year. CHAD: That's great. What would it take for you to grow from 50 fellows to 100? And is that something that you want to do? BRIAN: Definitely. If you had used the number 500, I might have paused. [laughter] Again, 50 was like, get it right, do it right. I have 100 kids. I don't want to speak for all of them, but I have a lot of students that love what we did over their summer and really shout it from the rooftops to their community. And that means a lot to us. And I'm not entirely sure that if it had been 100 and then 100 that I'd have 200 students who shout that. I think we were able to build a very intimate and hands-on experience for our first two cohorts. And as we grow, and as we introduce technology, and platform, and resources, I think there are ways for us to expand the number without getting out over our skis. And so 100 is in a very near-term goal for us. I'm not sure that it goes much past that. I think instead, like I described with Takeoff University, we start introducing other opportunities. We start putting more things under the Takeoff Institute umbrella. I think a lot like the Aspen Institute. There are so many different ecosystems and community-building efforts going on underneath the larger umbrella. And so long as Takeoff Institute is known as just advancing opportunities, I think we can build a ton of cool ways to have touchpoints with students across the country. CHAD: Are there specific blockers you would identify? Or you have an attentive audience here, are there things you would ask for to get to that 100 fellows? BRIAN: It's a great question. I think folks that have had any experience building, you know, call it Twitter University, Pinterest University, Plaid University, folks who have been on the internal teams that help stand up curriculum and training for employees, again, that's a large part of what we're standing up with TakeOff University. And I'm very, very fortunate to have the funding now and not be in a place where we're looking for money to do that. And so we have the resources to make this really special, and just getting some of the design and product folks that might be listening who might be interested in helping build a community like the one that we're building, we'd appreciate it. We'd love to chat. You can email me at brian@takeoffinstitute.com. I'd love to chat and learn. And even if you don't have time to chat, if there are platforms that you know that look really cool and look like the type of thing that we should be mocking or mimicking, I think it's always helpful to see comparisons and benchmarks. So I think that that'd be a great one. And the other thing I'd add is if you want to be a mentor, please apply, takeoffinstitute.com. It's an incredible experience. I wish I could say I had 100 advisors, but I probably only have 60 because most of the ones who did the first cohort did the second cohort. And they loved it, and they're doing the third cohort. It's an hour a week. It's a very light touch, eight weeks of the summer. It's a very light touch, but I think it's impactful. So we'd love to have some of the folks. CHAD: Do you specifically look for Black mentors? BRIAN: We don't. We don't. I think that that's a really important part of this experience. Like I mentioned, you don't get to choose who your direct report is. And so your direct report might be White, Asian, Black. I don't care what they are. You need to get used to having that direct report experience and building rapport, and building that relationship regardless of what they look like. And so we appreciate having mentors that are male, female, and come from all different walks of life. CHAD: Great. And that website again was? BRIAN: www.takeoffinstitute.com CHAD: Awesome. Well, I think that's a very natural and great place to leave it. I hope folks will contact you and get involved. And there's so much work to be done in this area. And it's a great opportunity to have an impact. BRIAN: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Chad. CHAD: Thank you. You can subscribe to the show and find notes for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter @cpytel. Brian, if folks want to get in touch with you, you want to say your email again and any other channels they should do that? BRIAN: Yeah, perfect. brian@takeoffinstitute.com. And you can find me on Twitter @BHolls1, B-H-O-L-L-S-1. CHAD: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Brian Hollins.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tht3zdjztgdh0fu/NCHS041%20-%20How%20to%20Regain%20Smell%20after%20COVID.pdf?dl=0 (Click here) to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode Summary: Welcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light- hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: How to Regain Smell after COVID. How can COVID-19 impact your sense of smell? What do mint, orange, garlic and coffee have in common? What is smell training? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Key Takeaways: 01:16 – With the Olympics in full swing, Dr. Brian takes a moment to promote a film that he was a producer on, Holky: The Steven Holcomb Story and encourages listeners to stream it free on Indieflix 01:51 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic, How to Regain Smell after COVID 03:35 – What happens when someone gets an infection like COVID 04:28 – Dr. Brian reflects on his own experience losing his sense of smell after having COVID 06:25 – Smell training, explained 09:09 – What is Parosmia? 09:47 – Dr. Brian provides the No Cap Recap of today's episode and encourages listeners to reach out and Rate and Review this podcast on https://ratethispodcast.com/NoCap (RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap). Tweetable Quotes: “In the nose there are these receptors at the end of what's called the olfactory nerve. IT's the nerve connecting to the brain where people smell. It's kinda the smell nerve if you will. And what can happen is the virus can damage the ends of those nerves and the cells in the nose.” (03:48) (Dr. Brian) “It was awesome, one of my favorite pizzas. So, I'm eating it and I'm saying to my kids and my wife, ‘This pizza doesn't really have much taste. I remember this pizza being really good.' And I'm eating some more and it kinda tasted like cardboard. This was really weird.” (04:51) (Dr. Brian) “There's certain substances that if people smell it for about twenty seconds for two to three times a day, over time it can stimulate those olfactory, or smell nerves, in the nose.” (06:40) (Dr. Brian) “Also, taking things that are decongestants if somebody isn't feeling well is important to help clear up any sort of inflammation that could be active at the time. That can help as well.” (08:48) (Dr. Brian) Links Mentioned: DM Dr. Brian your questions and we will respond back with answers - https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb (https://v.cameo.com/F5MH0Hglnmb) https://www.boxerwachler.com/ (Dr. Brian's Website) https://www.tiktok.com/@brianboxerwachlermd? (Dr. Brian's TikTok) https://www.instagram.com/drboxerwachler/ (Dr. Brian's Instagram) https://watch.indieflix.com/movie/z1jvXp2ah0MZ-holky-the-steven-holcomb-story (Link to the filmHolky: The Steven Holcomb Story) Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See https://omnystudio.com/listener (omnystudio.com/listener) for privacy information. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode of the Success Fundamentals Podcast, Kris Sykes and Brian Goldsack talk about the recent controversy surrounding decorated American Football coach Brian Flores, who recently filed a class action suit against the National Football League as well as three teams: the New York Giants, Denver Broncos, and Dolphins organizations for racial discrimination. Kris and Brian talk about how racism is still entrenched in the NFL and other organizations, and how the odds are still heavily stacked against minorities. The duo also exchange thoughts about the role that race and compromise play in achieving success, particularly for minorities in the United States. HIGHLIGHTSThe Brian Flores - NFL controversy: a recapThe race angle and the Rooney RuleCurt Flood and the supreme sacrifice needed to enact changeRacism is still entrenched in the NFL and other white-dominated organizationsChange only happens with the help of others QUOTESKris: "I believe that in order to make change, you have to do drastic moves but it's gonna be at your expense. You are now suing a league of 32 owners, saying that you did wrong by me. But you wanna be a head coach. If nobody else opts into the class (action lawsuit), then his efforts are gonna be for naught, for one, and two, his dreams of being NFL head coach or any other franchise is dead." Brian: "There is this racism or, what's the word, prejudice, that at this time, it's not in your face like it was back like in the 50s and 60s, where the gentleman was receiving derogatory slurs right to his face. It seems like now, it's masked by almost bureaucratic methods like the Rooney rule, but it's still here. So, with Mr. Flores, you think you're getting a shot, but the whole time it's just smoke and mirrors." Kris: "If the Rooney Rule was instilled to help minority coaches coach teams, why is it every time a head coach hiring job happens, it's a white guy that either has no head coaching experience, or comes from college." Brian: "If you're a white guy in the United States, working, you can just be a white guy in the United States working. The thing that always amazes me about minorities in the United States is that you also have to be extraordinarily well-versed in social issues related to your race. And almost like versed in sociology and history. Whereas, like a white guy. that's optional." Follow Success Fundamentals on the following links below: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4XCvuwxnFi5_7C6Ncm12xQLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/success-fundamentals™Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/successfundamentalspodcastInstagram: https://instagram.com/successfundamentalspodcast

Click here to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode Summary: Welcome to The No Cap Health Show, a podcast inspired by Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler's extremely popular TikTok channel with over 3 million followers. Every week, Dr. Brian uses a light-hearted approach and shares health trends popular on the app. Using his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher he confirms (No Cap) or debunks (Cap) the topic and shares best practices with listeners. New episodes will be released every Wednesday. In this episode, Dr. Brian breaks down the topic, How to Naturally Have Longer Hair. Dr. Brian lists and dives deep into eight tips that can help with hair growth, from medications and procedures to other solutions, such as rosemary water. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. Key Takeaways: 02:28 – Dr. Brian debunks the myth that pouring beer on your hair will help it grow longer 03:51 – Dr. Brian provides eight tips that can help to have longer hair 05:00 – Dr. Brian takes the audience for a stroll through the hormone highway 06:01 – Dr. Brian shares how rosemary water or oil and scalp massagers can help with hair growth 07:45 – Dr. Brian speaks to specific medications like minoxidil (Rogaine) and finasteride (Propecia) 09:26 – Dr. Brian talks about hair transplants procedures and concealing sprays 10:42 – Dr. Brian provides one final tip 11:23 – Dr. Brian recaps everything covered from this episode and encourages listeners to Rate and Review this podcast on RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. Tweetable Quotes: “So I was in college at UCLA and I was on the rowing team. And our coach said that none of the athletes were allowed to drink beer. So in my fraternity, when I was pledging and they would want us to drink beer, I had a special pass. So, instead of drinking beer they said, ‘You can just pour it on your head.' So, that's the only time I can relate to pouring beer on my head.” (03:19) (Dr. Brian) “There are studies that back up rice water being proven to help your hair grow. And not only help it grow, but actually help hair grow thicker.” (04:38) (Dr. Brian) “Studies show that eating rosemary improves memory. And even smelling rosemary can improve memory.” (07:25) (Dr. Brian) “Hair transplants can be hugely effective. And what they do is really meticulous. Imagine taking one hair follicle at a time and then transplanting it to where the hair is thinning or balding.” (09:30) (Dr. Brian) “I think it's important if you're coloring your hair to be aware that there is a risk that over time those hair dyes can cause permanent dropout of the hair follicles.” (11:04) (Dr. Brian) Links Mentioned: Dr. Brian responds to each and every DM question or comment on his OnlyFans page–https://onlyfans.com/brianboxerwachlermd Dr. Brian's Website Dr. Brian's TikTok Dr. Brian's Instagram Dr. Amy's Podcast   Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information.   Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click here to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode Summary: Welcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides his Cap/No Cap analysis on today's topic: How to Cure Hiccups, Part 1. What causes hiccups? Are there proven ways to cure the hiccups? What's the Vagus Nerve and what does it do? Find out in today's episode! If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. Key Takeaways 01:17 – Dr. Brian introduces today's topic, How to Cure Hiccups, Part 1 03:18 – The Vagus Nerve and what causes hiccups to develop 06:02 – Other ways for stimulating the Vagus Nerve 07:57 – The ultimate cure for the hiccups 10:21 – Dr. Brian teases Part Two of today's episode 10:58 – Dr. Brian provides the No Cap Recap of today's episode and encourages listeners to reach out and Rate and Review this podcast on RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap.   Tweetable Quotes “If you stimulate that Vagus Nerve, no matter how you stimulate the nerve – it can actually help with resetting the diaphragm.” (04:41) (Dr. Brian) “The World Record for the longest time somebody had hiccups – you're not gonna believe this, this is true – one guy was weighing a pig back in 1922 and he had hiccups until 1990. That's like 68 years of having hiccups. That is crazy!” (05:01) (Dr. Brian) “Rubbing the eyes through closed eyelids – that pressure on the eye – stimulates the Vagus Nerve.” (06:28) (Dr. Brian) “There was a study done at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine back in 1988. The title of the paper was ‘Termination of Intractable Hiccups Using Digital Rectal Massage.' I'm not kidding. This paper was actually published.” (08:04) (Dr. Brian) Links Mentioned Dr. Brian's Website Dr. Brian's TikTok Dr. Brian's Instagram   Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information.   Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click here to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode Summary: Welcome to The No Cap Health Show, a podcast inspired by Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler's extremely popular TikTok channel with over 3 million followers. Every week, Dr. Brian uses a light-hearted approach and shares health trends popular on the app. Using his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher he confirms (No Cap) or debunks (Cap) the topic and shares best practices with listeners. In this episode, Dr. Brian provides four tips for increasing growth hormone. Chief among these are getting enough sleep, exercising and being careful about what you eat. Dr. Brian even provides a bonus activity that can help with height. The No Cap Health Show provides general information concerning public health and for public interest. Please remember, Doctor Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. Key Takeaways 01:09 – Dr. Brian introduces today's TikTok video and topic of discussion, How To Grow Taller 05:07 – Dr. Brian outlines four aspects that can increase growth hormones and can help with height 05:18 – Number One: Getting enough sleep 08:48 – Dr. Brian tells a quick story about coffee 10:19 – Number Two: Exercising 14:50 – Number Three: Drinking (cow) milk 17:27 – Number Four: Minimizing junk food and soda 19:10 – Dr. Brian provides a bonus activity that can increase heigh 20:58 – Dr. Brian recaps the entire episode and teases Part Two of this episode 21:55 – Dr. Brian encourages listeners to Rate and Review this podcast on RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap.   Tweetable Quotes “Studies now have shown that if you stretch before your workout it will significantly reduce the power that your muscles are capable of putting out. So, do that static stretching after a workout.” (03:40) (Dr. Brian) “Teenagers really need to try to get nine hours of sleep. We know that when you're sleeping your body is releasing growth hormones. That is when you grow. That's why sleep is so important; it's your prized possession.” (05:19) (Dr. Brian) “There is a big myth out there because I get the question a lot, ‘Is weight lifting going to stunt my growth?' I don't know where this came from, but it is totally, one hundred percent Cap. Putting my Cap on here because it has been shown, through studies, that weight lifting does not stunt growth.” (11:17) (Dr. Brian) “The nut-related, non-cow milks will not increase growth hormone. It's only cow milk.”(15:04) (Dr. Brian) “I thought I was dreaming but my brother confirmed this that at one point my mom put a chain and lock around the handles of the refrigerator and freezer so that we couldn't open the doors. True story. Nowadays, child services would be called in a nanosecond.” (16:56) (Dr. Brian) Links Mentioned Dr. Brian's Website Dr. Brian's LinkedIn Dr. Brian's TikTok Dr. Brian's Instagram Link to Super Size Me Documentary   Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information.   Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click here to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode Summary: Welcome to The No Cap Health Show, a podcast inspired by Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler's extremely popular TikTok channel with over 2 million followers. Every week, Dr. Brian uses a light-hearted approach and shares health trends popular on the app. Using his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher he confirms (No Cap) or debunks (Cap) the topic and shares best practices with listeners. New episodes will be released every Wednesday. In this episode, Dr. Brian breaks down the topic, How to Naturally Have Longer Hair. Dr. Brian lists and dives deep into eight tips that can help with hair growth, from medications and procedures to other solutions, such as rosemary water.    If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap Episode Sponsor Tafah Oil - https://tafahoil.com/ Key Takeaways 02:28 – Dr. Brian debunks the myth that pouring beer on your hair will help it grow longer 03:51 – Dr. Brian provides eight tips that can help to have longer hair 05:00 – Dr. Brian takes the audience for a stroll through the hormone highway 06:01 – Dr. Brian shares how rosemary water or oil and scalp massagers can help with hair growth 07:45 – Dr. Brian speaks to specific medications like minoxidil (Rogaine) and finasteride (Propecia) 09:26 – Dr. Brian talks about hair transplants procedures and concealing sprays 10:42 – Dr. Brian provides one final tip 11:23 – Dr. Brian recaps everything covered from this episode and encourages listeners to Rate and Review this podcast on RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap   Tweetable Quotes “So I was in college at UCLA and I was on the rowing team. And our coach said that none of the athletes were allowed to drink beer. So in my fraternity, when I was pledging and they would want us to drink beer, I had a special pass. So, instead of drinking beer they said, ‘You can just pour it on your head.' So, that's the only time I can relate to pouring beer on my head.” (03:19) (Dr. Brian) “There are studies that back up rice water being proven to help your hair grow. And not only help it grow, but actually help hair grow thicker.” (04:38) (Dr. Brian) “Studies show that eating rosemary improves memory. And even smelling rosemary can improve memory.” (07:25) (Dr. Brian) “Hair transplants can be hugely effective. And what they do is really meticulous. Imagine taking one hair follicle at a time and then transplanting it to where the hair is thinning or balding.” (09:30) (Dr. Brian) “I think it's important if you're coloring your hair to be aware that there is a risk that over time those hair dyes can cause permanent dropout of the hair follicles.” (11:04) (Dr. Brian) Links Mentioned Dr. Brian's Website Dr. Brian's TikTok Dr. Brian's Instagram   Please remember, Doctor Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information.   Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brian Ellwood is a business coach, mentor, and real estate entrepreneur, who "retired" from the corporate world at age 30 after amassing dozens of properties to start his real estate portfolio. Through working smartly and forming meaningful relationships, his real estate venture grew into a 7-figure flipping business, which allows him to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a real estate investing coach. As a serial entrepreneur, he turned this new endeavor into a six figures per year business, while helping dozens of people get into their first investment properties. After 4 years of coaching investors, observing the real estate market, and exploring new trends, Brian transformed his coaching business entirely. Presently he helps other coaches break into the online coaching space and scale their businesses to six figures while enjoying the work they do.While Brian's story of being a corporate world “drop-out” isn't unique, most people are afraid to take the risk of giving up a secure position to work on their passion. Brian uses his story and successes as an example to motivate his mentees to become a better version of themselves and getting their business to the level they want, despite difficult situations and setbacks. Having achieved most of his goals, Brian spends his downtime with his wife Carleigh and daughter Everley, discovering Colorado, snowboarding, skateboarding, playing music and video games, and drinking beer with friends.Listen in as they discuss:Brian's journey into real estate investing, business coaching, and serial entrepreneurship.The art of successfully entering the real estate industry.Tips on how to be effective at wholesaling and diversifying your real estate portfolio.The importance of creating a fool-proof business model.Delaying self-gratification to invest in your business and business opportunities.Learning how to solve your money problems by creating a passive income stream.Understanding the importance of a healthy saving habit while growing your business and diversifying your portfolio.Working smarter, instead of harder to find business opportunities and grow your leads and client following.Adjusting your mindset to set up yourself for success.Tips for forming partnerships with people who are capable of helping your business grow.The impact of demographics on business.And, more!Pick the best strategy that resonates with you and stick with it.~Brian EllwoodTIP OF THE WEEKMark: My tip of the week is to learn more about Brian Ellwood, go to brianellwood.net. Start learning about passive income and becoming totally free with rentals.Scott: Check out this website, it's simpdf.com. This is a PDF editor; you can change the whole document.Brian: There's a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, one of the greatest books written about mindset. Just read the first three chapters of that book and it will rewire your brain into a different level of confidence, clarity, and vision for yourself. It will help you in the mindset piece because I believe you can figure out a strategy if your mindset is in the right place.Isn't it time to create passive income so you can work where you want, when you want and with whomever you want?

My guest today is Brian Watkins, former VP of eCommerce for Bulletproof 360, the diet and supplements company. This is Part 2 of the interview where we explore how he grew the Bulletproof business.This is the free edition of Marketing BS. Premium subscribers got access to part 1 of Brian's interview yesterday and twice the content every week.You can also listen to these interviews in your podcast player of choice: Apple, Sticher, TuneIn, Overcast , Spotify. Private Feed (for premium episodes).This interview is sponsored by GoToWebinar:Save up to 23% on GoToWebinar Annual Plans!GoToWebinar eliminates the headache and hassle from webinar hosting. No matter your goal or skill level, you'll quickly see why so many choose GoToWebinar for easy virtual event management, performance data, videos, polls, and email invites and reminders. Try GoToWebinar for free today!TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Brian Watkins. Today, we're going to dive into his experience as head of ecommerce at Bulletproof 360.Brian, can you start by explaining what Bulletproof does?Brian: Bulletproof is a health and wellness brand started by Dave Asprey about six or seven years ago now with the goal of radically improving your own life. What Bulletproof does is basically develop a line of supplements, protein powders, MCT oils, and just a variety of healthy intakes primarily driven around the ketogenic diet. But it resolves, at the end of the day, around the Bulletproof diet, which Dave Asprey created with the idea that by bringing in healthy food into your system you can have better energy, gut health, and mental performance.Edward: What are the main products that Bulletproof sells that drive the majority of its revenue?Brian: There are six main product lines. There's MCT oil, which is modified coconut oil, which is a high fat, low carb, zero carb enhancer for food and diet. There's a supplement business so vitamins and other items that you can take for mental clarity, energy, and immunity. There's protein bars, protein powders, ready-to-drink coffee, and packaged coffee. Those are the six main product lines that are offered to incorporate different parts of the Bulletproof diet throughout your day.Edward: That's a pretty wide variety. It's practically a packaged-goods firm. Are some of those more important than others, or they're all fairly evenly divided?Brian: Back in the day, when it first started, Bulletproof is highly focused on the biohacker. There's a lot around what MCT oil was, and Bulletproof truly developed that category in time. But then also the supplement of a collagen protein regime and then also supplements created with the biohacker community was focused on and looked for.As the company has grown, we've grown beyond what a biohacker is to help maximizers—people that just care or are naturally invested in their health. A lot of this runs back to my days of considered purchases within jewelry because if you're going to be consuming something that you want to know about, there's a little bit more research and a little bit more pause. It made sense as we shifted from biohacking to broader consumer goods, how could we bring education in the consumers along in that process?Edward: Initially, your customers were primarily people who knew your founder, who read his books and were bought into his philosophy rather than his products?Brian: Dave started by blogging (more than anything else) about his own personal journey with food, and energy, and health. He ended up using content in building this foundation and then starting to provide very simple rudimentary products they wanted just falling because they were asking for. Dave, can you get us this? Can you show us this? Can you provide this for us? That then developed into what we know today. As you go down, it ships because what you had day one was a highly knowledgeable person making these purchases. Fast forward today, Bulletproofs at Whole Foods, and Walmart, and Target and it changes the overall value proposition of how you communicate the brand, the brand values, and also what it can do for you in terms of performance onto a single package as you're walking down the shelf.Edward: How do you do that, beyond the fact that he has built a reputation for himself and has a blog and has a book? How do you broaden the awareness and consideration for Bulletproof beyond that core audience?Brian: There's a couple of things. This is what brought me to the company is the product's work. One, people are making these purchases and then coming back like, wow, I can feel a difference. You start with just a very basic repeat-and-referral. You're developing these core pockets of influencers that are starting to communicate out. From that, you can build a foundation.When I think about Bulletproof, especially on the digital acquisition side, we started from the bottom of the funnel and moved up. We were very focused on repeat-and-referral businesses building our email communication and our content. What we did unique about the content is we didn't just spend time talking about the Bulletproof diet, ketogenic diets, or about these products. We went back and said, what are the things we're trying to solve? Are you having a problem with sleep? Are you having a problem with your energy? Are you having midafternoon crashes?What we would do is create content that was more solution-oriented. What that allowed us to do is move up the funnel and get highly qualified prospecting traffic to our brand where they weren't aware of the brand, but they were aware of their issue. We were able to provide a solution both in content and also product recommendations that would help expand that group over time.Edward: I often think of many products as being either Tylenol or vitamins. Either they're solving a specific problem, or they're making your life better in a way that you weren't even aware that you needed. It sounds like Bulletproof started, hey, we make your life better in a way you didn't know you needed and then shifted to be, no, we can solve these specific problems. Were you doing search marketing for people searching for how do I improve my sleep?Brian: We did some of that—this goes back to analytics [...]. We would take all the search marketing information, all the keyword information. You'd also be using the Google search webmaster information to understand keyword volume. If you think about a three-dimensional Rubik, you could understand where's the keyword traffic coming from, what issues are out there.We can then overlay that with the Bulletproof product line, which product lines are doing immunity versus health versus energy versus sleep. Then you could understand the phase of that consumer either based on their search queries—have they already been to the website or whatnot—within this very dimension. Then you have a consumer journey you can communicate to. Is this a prospecting visit, is this a repeat purchase, or is it the subscriber that might be thinking about unsubscribing? You can tailor these journeys to each of these consumers, and we used it across three channels at all times. You had the digital side for sure. Out there, either Facebook look-alikes or Facebook prospecting and Google-branded terms and non-branded terms, depending on what the ROI was. But then we also integrated that very tightly into look-alikes and [...] within Facebook, and then we also did physical mail as well—direct mail. With that, we were touching people across multiple communication channels with their need-solution in mind. That's what helped to elevate the awareness of the brand.Edward: How did you target with direct mail? Was it broad-based, or did you have the equivalent of look-alikes on your direct mail?Brian: We started by focusing on just our existing consumer. Step one was saying look, we know—from our email database—how many of our physical mail addresses have been purchasing or moved to inactive. We started by doing very basic inactive work, which is, hey, we haven't seen you in three months. We've sent you a ton of emails. You haven't opened them, so we're going to send you a physical email. We'll give you a small offer to see if we can get you to re-engage on our website.Edward: How did you know those people hadn't switched to buying at Whole Foods?Brian: We don't, technically. We don't have a single source to a thread online and offline consumer consumption. But what we found is that it's an issue around convenience. If people would typically have shifted to one medium or the other, if they like that, it doesn't matter what we're trying to communicate with them. It's not going to happen. How we thought about our value proposition fell into four lines across all of our channels. The first one was the price. We made sure that Bulletproof maintained the same price. If you're going to buy something at Whole Foods, Walmart, or online, you'd find within 5% or 10% depending on the pricing strategies of certain retailers, but the price would be the same. It definitely was online. The second thing was product selection. Whole Foods was only going to offer two or three items within a protein powder versus online, where we offer the entire assortment. You had a different set of selection. Convenience, nothing could beat that up. You're already at Whole Foods checking out and you're buying that. We can't win on that.Ecommerce convenience is around shopping at home, delivery from home. If you have Amazon, you could have fasted delivery. Then you're left with the brand experience. It's a long way of saying that we knew consumers for passing back and forth between channels. They weren't necessarily passing back and forth because of price. Even by incentivizing some of the 10% coupon or 20% coupon, we typically found they stayed in the channel that they wanted to be in versus having people optimize between channels overtime.Edward: When you found someone who had dropped out of your online purchase channel and you sent a direct mail to them, the assumption was they dropped out of the online channel. They hadn't switched to Whole Foods, they just dropped out completely. I assume you ran a test and control. You held back some people, sent direct mail to others, and saw whether the reactivation made sense in the long run.Brian: Exactly right. What we found is it absolutely did. It had almost a 2X improvement with our test sample size, and we do this for 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-month lapse customers so we could track and see their interaction over time. The other thing you can do is you can go back through and see—if you're using Amazon or whatnot—you can also start to mirror in your shipping addresses across multiple platforms as well. Those other ways to consider overtime, narrow that list of who is inactive versus who is just maybe moved on to a secondary channel.Edward: Talk to me about the Amazon channel. How did you work with Amazon?Brian: You got to love them in Seattle, and there's no doubt they're highly successful. But it's hard to be a brand on Amazon—I say that cautiously. At Bulletproof, we ran a 3P relationship. That means that we were managing our own data on our own pricing within the Amazon ecosystem, and that was important to us because it goes back to this, we wanted to have consistent pricing. We didn't want people to figure out or feel like there is differentiated pricing between our channels. We've grown to be one of the largest 3P sellers within Amazon. We use FBA, fulfilled by Amazon. We ship our product to Amazon, Amazon executes, and ships our product out to the consumer. But what's hard is that when you're in that Amazon ecosystem, you get two types of buyers. One is, you have people who are very brand loyal. It's just more convenient. To be on Amazon, you're going to get it in two days, you can add it to a broader order. Some of their subscription tools are just cleaner. You have brand loyalists that are already on Amazon that have a great LTV, and then you have this group there just discovering.What's hard about that is how do you stay top of mind in your Amazon search results. Because unless you have a brand recall, there are so many places within a page for Amazon to compete against you, either from their own brands or their 1P brands, which are brands that they're buying the merchandise for and selling on behalf of the other brand, or just other product placements and advertising. You're constantly trying to work that piece of it.And then you have to respect part 3 of that is there's a lot of data that shows if you look at where Amazon searches occur—and I don't have this data but Amazon does—but if you were to geolocate people as they are on an Amazon app, what you'll find is there's a lot of people shopping in an aisle at Target, pulling up an Amazon search result. Not because they plan to buy on Amazon or check the price, but because they're looking at the reviews. They're looking for a clean way to know what is the best product to look on the shelf of Target. They're not going to target.com. They go to Amazon because that's a large market. You also have to plan that to create credibility in some of your offline channels as well.Edward: You need the reviews on Amazon in order to drive conversion rates in other places. Is that just an assumption or do you have any data to make sure that's actually happening?Brian: There's a decent amount of research that shows that that is occurring. We never did. I'd have to think through it a little bit more, but I don't think we ever did a tremendous amount. We never plotted our review rates on Amazon to our conversion rates across channels or our adoption rates across channels. In general, if we found that we had a lower product rating in general on Amazon, that was a weaker product across our entire assortment. Is that just because it was a weaker product, to begin with, or was it an Amazon umbrella effect? We don't know. But when you talk to a lot of people working within Amazon advertising within the VC community for CPG goods, they do talk about this additional conversion effect, where Amazon advertising now is lifting overall conversion across a lot of channels outside of just Amazon.Edward: Amazon is definitely a distribution channel for you, people who are looking for Amazon and the review factor. Would you find that it was effective at all for discovery?Brian: It is if you're willing to make that investment. The question there goes into the efficiency of that listing and how are you going to get promoted. The key thing within Amazon is to be on the first page. If we're not doing branded keyword searches, but you're just typing in protein powder. The first question is, are you on that front page? Because if you're on that front page, you need to pay to make sure you're on that front page. If you're on that front page, the question is, are you getting the right traffic, the right keywords, and the organic lift you want to have? That's the key thing to brand awareness or prospecting marketing. When you go out and bid on the keywords of protein powder, it is so highly efficient out there that it goes back to the days of Google where it's probably break-even at best. Then you have to have that following and understanding which says, a first-time protein buyer on Amazon, what's the likelihood they will rebuy your brand on the second purchase? What you'll find is there are certain categories because what we've got at Bulletproof is you research that there are certain categories in certain product lines to have a high propensity of repeat and branded options. Those are the areas where we would spend exponential dollars in or incremental dollars in to promote those products. These just aren't going to be Amazon products that we can do profitably, so we leave that as a distribution solution to our loyal brand followers, but we're not going to use that for prospecting within that ecosystem.Edward: Did you use any of Amazon's display network stuff or only on their merchandising, only on their core search results?Brian: We did display as well. When you think about Amazon display, we viewed it as there are three different ways to apply it. Once again, I'll go back to the marketing funnel in reverse order which is, you could do display advertising around the realm of loyalty.Which one of the benefits of selling supplements is I know that there are 30 capsules in that bottle, which means in about 30 days you need to repeat order. What we do is we run loyalty display campaigns to go re-find those consumers if they had not already placed an order to date.Edward: You are using retargeting, not so much like look-alike audiences.Brian: On a delayed basis, retargeting. That would be one channel. The second channel would be straight retargeting right after they first did their search. That's remarketing. They've probably already seen our results once, chase them down for the next three days, don't know if they've made a purchase or not, make sure that they know about Bulletproof, and then the final one is that prospecting look-alike.What's the benefit of what Amazon does there in their display network is they have a tremendous amount of sub-genres and look-alikes, and so you can use that to mirror it over time. The hard part about Amazon display—and they definitely heard it a lot from us—is that they like to report out on view-based conversions.One of the difficulties with the display is trying to understand the role of view-based, which might make sense at the prospecting level. But it sure doesn't make sense when you get down to this reactivation loyalty level because you only want to spend that if you know it's driving an incremental unique conversion. It has to get down to that click-through because I already know they're converting. I need to know if that display ad drove that conversion or we got them from some other means, and that makes the data very difficult in those situations.Edward: I'd imagine that if you're retargeting, so many of those people are going to come back and buy from you anyway. If you're going to give them credit to anyone who sees the view, effectively, you're just stealing all this attribution you would have had anyway.Brian: There'd be a lot of meetings where they'd come and be like, oh my gosh, you should triple your display budget. It's going incredibly well. I can't take any of that money to the bank because those conversions were happening at a consumer level, but we couldn't attribute back to that channel. That's such a critical piece to this when you get down to the lowest part of the funnel is understanding what role that final conversion piece is. We wanted to use Amazon display more and more for loyalty and for cart abandonment, but we couldn't effectively always deploy it in a way and therefore, it's left in middle effectiveness in terms of a channel.Edward: Let's talk about your physical distribution and retail. How do you drive more sales there? Is it the same thing, hey, get on end carts and do lots of demos?Brian: Yeah. That's one more like, yeah, you should talk to our retail and brand group. Edward: Fair enough because you were only doing ecommerce.Brian: I was only doing ecommerce. I'll tell you two things. One is that it goes back to the days of Ritani, they play off of each other. There's something to be said that when you move your product into Whole Foods, Sprouts, Walmart, or Target and people see it, that's going to help grow the overall awareness of the brand. There's no doubt. The flip side is when we're doing the right things online and we're getting our information out there and we're showing it to people, that's going to help the in-store as well. What we would do a lot of times in store—which goes back to being an ecommerce person, where you can track that transaction, you can track that conversion so much easier—is you find things like we would do in-store demos. It's just really hard to understand. By the time you put a demo team in there—are they a product expert and people are trying it—and then you look at that store lift both that day and then 30, 60, or 90 days later, I'm not convinced that in-store demos truly drive a real change. I think the retailers love it because it's a value add to their consumers walking the aisles pre-COVID, but I'm not sure the economic proposition is there.Edward: Is it the equivalent of a view-through conversion?Brian: Yeah, in my mind it is. It absolutely is. Maybe that's why I don't end up helping out on the in-store marketing is because it's harder for me to quantify that next dollar. I feel confident when I say, hey, I'm going to put a dollar into this channel. I have a 90% degree of certainty I'm going to return X% back, be it two-time, three-time, or four-time [...].When I do an in-store demo or when I do high-level brand impressions and campaigns, I'm told, in 3-6 months, what we hope to see is a lift of X%, and that's important at some point. I always joke around like I appreciate the people of Budweiser when they run the six Super Bowl ads because I think they're hilarious. But as a marketer, I would have such a hard time trying to justify that sixth spin because I couldn't quantitatively put it back into where that sale occurs based on that investment.Edward: Brian, this has been fantastic today. Before we go, tell me about your quake book and how it changed the way you think about the world.Brian: I'll give you two because they are the very far extremes of book reading. One, I'm a huge Dr. Seuss fan. Maybe I created the lowest bar ever for Marketing BS. But Oh, the Places You'll Go! is an outstanding book to create perspective around one's journey. especially if you've ever done a day-one startup or gone through really hard career items. That book summarizes what it feels like and the highs and the lows. The other one that comes around with management is—Gallup produced a book several years ago called 12. It's around the 12 questions of employee engagement. That was a game-changer for me because when you influence people, you have three ways to influence them. You have role power. Being a previous CEO or head of the department, you walk around with this red neon light that says, I can fire you. It turns out people are going to laugh at your jokes and they're going to do what you say you do. That's role power.You can also have expertise power where you can walk in, and because you've done this for so long or you know the patterns better, the people are going to follow you because you've done it and you have this understanding that they don't have.But the real power is around relationship power. The book of 12 talks about highly engaged teams and how do you create engage-core forces over time. It all goes back to a high EQ and emotional understanding of teams. When I finally realized that and understood how to develop teams like that, it's just been a complete game-changer to how I look at my career and how I managed teams going forward.Edward: Brian, thank you so much for being here. This has been fantastic.Brian: Thank you so much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Chenda Bunkasem is head of machine learning at Undock, where she is focusing on using quantitative methods to influence ethical design. In this episode of Experiencing Data, Chenda and I explore her actual methods to designing ethical AI solutions as well as how she works with UX and product teams on ML solutions. We covered: How data teams can actually design ethical ML models, after understanding if ML is the right approach to begin with   How Chenda aligns her data science work with the desired UX, so that technical choices are always in support of the product and user instead of “what’s cool” An overview of Chenda’s role at Undock, where she works very closely with product and marketing teams, advising them on uses for machine learning  How Chenda’s approaches to using AI may change when there are humans in the loop What NASA’s Technology Readiness Level (TRL) evaluation is, and how Chenda uses it in her machine learning work  What ethical pillars are and how they relate to building AI solutions What the Delphi method is and how it relates to creating and user-testing ethical machine learning solutions Quotes From Today’s Episode  “There's places where machine learning should be used and places where it doesn't necessarily have to be.” - Chenda “The more interpretability, the better off you always are.” - Chenda “The most advanced AI doesn't always have to be implemented. People usually skip past this, and they're looking for the best transformer or the most complex neural network. It's not the case. It’s about whether or not the product sticks and the product works alongside the user to aid whatever their endeavor is, or whatever the purpose of that product is. It can be very minimalist in that sense.” - Chenda  “First we bring domain experts together, and then we analyze the use case at hand, and whatever goes in the middle — the meat, between that — is usually decided through many iterations after meetings, and then after going out and doing some sort of user testing, or user research, coming back, etc.” - Chenra, explaining the Delphi method.  “First you're taking answers on someone's ethical pillars or a company's ethical pillars based off of their intuition, and then you're finding how that solution can work in a more engineering or systems-design fashion. “ - Chenda  “I'm kind of very curious about this area of prototyping, and figuring out how fast can we learn something about what the problem space is, and what is needed, prior to doing too much implementation work that we or the business don't want to rewind and throw out.” - Brian “There are a lot of data projects that get created that end up not getting used at all.”- Brian Links Undock website Chenda's personal website Substack Twitter Instagram Connect with Chenda on LinkedIn Transcript Brian: Hi, everyone, Welcome back to Experiencing Data. This is Brian O'Neill, and today I have Chenda Bunkasem on the line, an AI research scientist in question, right? You're not quite sure is that what I just heard? Chenda: [laugh]. Yeah, there's debate within the scientific community about titles. So, you know, you always have to be skeptical. Brian: Exactly. So, maybe we could jump into whether or not you're a scientist, and what the heck you're doing with machine learning and AI. I saw C

Brian Lawson and his brother left their jobs in engineering, IT, and software development to found WebMO (Web Marketing Optimizer), a digital marketing agency. From the beginning, they focused on optimizing organic visibility/SEO and doing Google search ads, not just studying digital marketing tactics, strategies, and analysis, but digging into the “behind the scenes” mechanics. Today, WebMO is heavily data-driven, does everything digital marketing, and serves a large number of diverse and predominantly small-businesses nationwide. WebMO's “super-detailed” understanding of Google Analytics, conversion tracking, visitor engagement metrics, and the conversion heuristic enables the agency to fully understand clients' market spaces. Over the years, the agency built their own analytical tools. The combination of three major Google data points – Google Analytics, a company's Google Search Console data, and the data compiled in a company's Google my Business listing – provides a clear understanding of a company's “true space in the market.” Education is the beginning of WebMO's relationship with its clients. Brian loves to break down complicated technical concepts. He is used to speaking to groups of people, and loves running free workshops to help business owners understand complex concepts. As a result of this proactive training, WebMO became a Google Partner. When Google introduced the Grow with Google program, which encourages small business organizations, chambers of commerce, public libraries, agencies, and other organizations to participate in live feed educational workshops, WebMO was on board. Because of the huge number of people who have gone through WebMO's workshops, Google recognizes the agency as a “high impact partner.”  Education on how Google works, Brian says, “is absolutely critical.” After defining a client's market space, the agency evaluates the client's unique situation, and then makes recommendations. Because Brian's agency works with smaller companies with smaller budgets, “testing” the market and quantifying the response works well. Instead of spending thousands of dollars for a huge campaign, the clients may spend a few hundred. WebMO is then able to quickly show them the ROI on that investment. Brian says, “If it's going to fail, fail fast and fail cheap.” Covid-19 changed the agency's operations. Although WebMO has been unable to meet with clients in person, it continues its educational outreach through weekly updates. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Yelp are constantly tweaking their policies . . . WebMO is working to keep clients aware of these changes. One of Brian's more recent presentations covered “how to look at Google Trends to truly understand the impact that this [Covid-19] situation is having on your business.” Brian explains that Covid-19 has affected businesses in several different ways. Companies that provide such things as bartending services for parties are devastated. For other companies, like air conditioning repair companies and plumbers, it's business as usual. For the last category, exemplified by companies that sell cleaning supplies, provide in-home nanny services, and medical professionals who are still working, traffic has gone “off the charts.” In addition to having its own clients, WebMO partners with agencies that need an invisible number cruncher. When asked what he would have done differently when he started his agency, Brian said, he should have been “a little quicker to respond to where our clients were probably needing us most.” He seems to be doing that now. Brian can be reached on his agency's website at: www.web-mo.com Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Brian Lawson, Owner and Co-founder of WebMO, based in Tucson, Arizona. Welcome to the podcast. BRIAN: Hey, thanks, Rob. I appreciate you having me on. ROB: Brian, it's great to have you. Why don't you start off by telling us about WebMO and what makes WebMO great? BRIAN: Awesome. We are, as you mentioned, a Tucson, Arizona based digital marketing agency. I've always introduced our company as being a little different than quite a few others in our space because of our backgrounds. The co-founders, myself and my brother, come from a much different background than the typical marketing agency background. A lot of times people that provide the types of services that we provide, like websites and digital marketing and SEO and Google and YouTube and Facebook and all that, tend to come from either the design world or sometimes a traditional marketing background. Our backgrounds were in engineering, IT, software development, all those things. So, from the very beginning, we started approaching all of these digital marketing tactics and strategies and analysis with a much greater emphasis on the machinery, the real techy stuff that's lingering behind the scenes. You think about Google as one example; Google's a company that has 20,000 engineers and 300 designers. So, taking that real math-based, almost “super nerd” approach, if you want to think about it that way, is a good way to approach it given the kind of issues we're dealing with. We tend to be – again, compared to most – a little more data-driven, a little more analytical. We definitely tend to be sometimes a little skeptical of other things that some others in our industry are saying. That gave us the foundation for a very unique and somewhat successful agency. ROB: It sounds like that would also shape the sort of client who comes to you and resonates with you. What sort of clients are drawn to and resonate with this approach? BRIAN: We have a pretty large variety of clients, which thankfully serves us well when things in the market go up or down. We don't really specialize in any one kind. We have some larger end clients that pretty much just engage our services purely for the data analysis part of what we do. We're one of the few agencies who have a complete understanding of all the things going on with Google Analytics and conversion tracking and embracing some of the math that's in our industry, like visitor engagement metrics or the conversion heuristic. We really get super detailed on that. But interestingly, that overall idea is also very appealing to a small business. If you're a house painter and you've been through multiple agencies so far and no one's really been able to figure it out, when they hear that story, it's like, “Whoa, these guys are super into this stuff and they're really technical and analytical.” In a way, it gives that client a reason to believe that maybe this time will be different. Our industry, digital marketing, is old enough now to where most businesses out there have had at least one or two or more experiences with other efforts, and most of them haven't been exactly what they were hoping for. So as an agency – and I would say this to any agency – one of the things you have to really get out there for a client is a reason to believe that this time, things will be different. For us, it's that. It's our unique value proposition, that idea that we're going to take a closer look at the data, but because we have this deep level of understanding of how this stuff works, we're going to find a way to get things happening that maybe weren't happening before. Now, on top of that, I also happen to be a business owner, and I have been a business owner for 30 years, so when I'm talking to another business owner, it's like, “Oh yeah, you get it. You understand.” So a lot of our clients – I'd say the majority of them – definitely fall into the small business category, with a few exceptions being some of those higher end companies that want to bring us in for the analytics side of things. ROB: Very interesting. What sort of toolkit do you bring to bear on that analytics problem? I think people look at tools all the time, and often having right thinking is much more important than the tools, but having good execution is also helpful along those lines. What's your go-to? BRIAN: We've actually done a lot of in-house compilation things, if you want to think about it that way. We're very heavy on the technical side. We have a team of 23 people total, very heavy on the techy side. A lot of developers and programmers. Because of our background being software developers/app developers, we really didn't have to rely on finding third party solutions to do most of what we do. We were able to grow them from the ground up. One example is, for instance, if you're trying to analyze a company's visibility. Let's say you've got a local PC repair guy, whatever, and they want to really understand how they're doing online. We rejected this idea of rank reports way before everyone else did. Even when we entered into this business probably close to 10 years ago, we immediately looked at that model and said, “This doesn't make any sense.” Clients were getting these reports that said “Hey, you're #3 on this term and #6 on that term,” and it all seemed so useless, honestly. Clients were already saying it was useless because they were looking at these reports and saying, “Whatever. Yeah, you found that I'm #3 if I type this exact phrase or whatever; what good does that do me? What do I get? Am I going to get a prize for this? What's the reward?” So we almost right out of the gate rejected that model and said rank reports are about useless, especially when it comes to local visibility. We started creating our own analysis tools that combined, at the time – and now more than ever, in today's market – the three major data points in Google, which is the data that's being accumulated, of course, in Google Analytics, your Google Search Console data, and all the data that's being compiled in your Google My Business listing. The only way to get a really accurate understanding of your true space in the market is with all three of those data points being combined. And then taking it a step further – and again, just putting your mind in a small business owner's frame of mind, they say, “Yeah, I get that I have traffic and I understand that all these people are finding me on these different words and phrases, but again, what does it really mean?” So we'll look at a market and say, “You are in Phoenix, Arizona; there are 50,000 searches per month, roughly, for people looking for plumbing repair. As a business, you, Mr. Plumber, are visible about 33,000 of those times.” Like I said, compiling all this data. That's the starting point: understanding your percentage of market share as opposed to just saying, “Hey, you're showing up in the third spot on this particular search term.” Then it just goes from there. If you're going to have any chance of getting a client or winning a new customer, they have to be able to at least see. As a business owner – and of course, we teach them this – the very first question you should be asking is, “How ubiquitous am I? If there's 50,000 people searching per month, how often am I one of those people that at least appears in front of somebody's eyeballs?” That's just one example. ROB: Absolutely, that makes sense. You talked a little bit about your technical background and your co-founder, your brother's background, coming into starting this business. But in particular, what was it that made you decide to start this business when you did? How did you go from the technical background to “I am going to start a digital marketing agency”? BRIAN: It's interesting. A couple things. We're serial entrepreneurs, as most business owners tend to be. From early on, from about the early '90s, about 1991, we had started an IT services company that was pretty much helping businesses with, at the time, the very confusing world of internal LANs and inter-office communication and computer networking and all that, and then branching into internet configuration and everything else. So, I had a very deep, good long list of local businesses that trusted us for pretty much everything technical. This buildup started happening probably around 2009-2010 with clients saying to us, “Hey, you guys are awesome in helping with all this other stuff, but I can't find anybody that can explain this to me or help me with this.” Almost getting dragged into it from that standpoint. We were thinking, “That's interesting, but let's put a pin in it.” Meanwhile, again as serial entrepreneurs, we did a tech startup. It was a home-based internet security product. I won't get into a lot of detail, but we had the old venture capital funding and all that, and we had developed a marketing strategy for that online. And it was good, using a combination of SEO and Google search ads and all the other things. We had it really cooking. After some investors came in, they basically said, “Hey, you guys are engineers. You guys are probably really good at communicating what you know about your product, but you're not marketers. You don't know what you're doing there. Let's hand that over to this agency” – it was in New York City, one of the bigger agencies out there. “Let's let them take care of that part.” We're like, eh, okay, let's see what happens. Sure enough, we watched what they did and we were doing it better. Our results, everything about it was far exceeding what one of the top agencies in the country was doing. So of course, the little lightbulbs go off in our heads, thinking, as soon as this current tech startup is behind us, between the demand that we're seeing from the boots on the ground, all the people out there that were literally begging us to help them, and combining that with the affirmation that we were truly, truly good at this stuff, our course was set. That was about 10 years ago. ROB: It's interesting how oftentimes through that experience in another business, you find out – sometimes it can be wanderlust and you just try to do something different, but in this case you were able to find something that you could do differently and successfully. If I rewind the conversation a little bit, you were talking about some of these rather complex things. I think if you ask a client sometimes to pick an attribution strategy in Google Analytics, their eyes glaze over. It sounds like you have the strength and knowledge to be able to prescribe that for them pretty well. But marketing also requires going one step further when you're working for a client and helping them understand. How do you think about helping these owners understand something like attribution when you get to something like beyond first click, last click, even attribution, and you're trying to tell somebody that an ad gave them 20% of a lead? I think it'd be pretty confusing. How do you think about getting those concepts through to clients? BRIAN: That's a great question. Early on, we really embraced this idea of the client relationship model, starting with education. I'll come back to that in a second, but really making sure that our client is truly educated. We weren't oblivious to the fact that, for the most part, in our industry, the number one reason why clients drift away is because they make a comment that says something like, “I didn't know what they were doing.” They honestly didn't understand what was happening. So first is education. Then it's evaluation of their specific situation. Only after that we make specific recommendations as to what they should be doing. The education side – as it turns out, I love talking about this stuff. I'm a passionate advocate for the entire model of digital marketing. I love getting in front of groups of people and explaining these things. Because of my background working with businesses on the IT side, I spent many, many times in boardrooms and in front of employees from companies, really breaking down very complicated technical things into little anecdotes and analogies and fun ways to think about stuff. So I was always very capable of doing that, and I really truly enjoyed it. We got way ahead of the curve on that and early on started doing workshops, just free education workshops that would be designed to get business owners understanding this stuff. Because they're dying for information. Even today, even though our industry is a little bit more mature, still so many business owners are quite oblivious. They really don't understand even the basics, let alone some of the more complex concepts like you mentioned. So we hopped on that train big time, and interestingly, it led us – because we're also what's considered a Google Partner; we have a Google Partnership status, and about 3 or 4 years ago, Google introduced this program called Grow with Google, where they were encouraging small business organizations, chamber of commerce, public libraries, or whatever to allow Google to do these live feed education workshops. At the time, since we were a partner, they were opening it up to agencies as well, so we started becoming involved in that. We did that so much that we became the only agency, at least in the state of Arizona, that Google recognized as one of its high impact partners. That was strictly because of the sheer number of people that have gone through our workshops. I know that's sort of a long roundabout way to answer your question, but yeah, education on that stuff is absolutely critical. There's also another element as well. There's getting a client to the point to know enough to know that they'll never truly understand it, and then they basically have faith in you at that point. They say, “Okay, I get that it's really complicated. I don't think I fully understand it, but I'm fully convinced that you understand it, and as long as at the end of the day I'm seeing results and I see that you're attentive, that's really the key.” ROB: As we were chatting before we started recording, that background you have in doing this education has really helped in the moment that we're in. We are in the middle of this coronavirus national shutdown, everybody work from home situation. How are you adapting your agency to operate in this new, fully remote environment? What parts of that do you think you might stick with even once we're all back together in person more often? BRIAN: That's a great question. Like we were talking about, I love the live workshop. I thrive in that environment where I can be interactive with people and gauge – if I'm saying something that's flying right over their heads, I can usually pick that up. So the challenge, for all of us really – and this doesn't just go for workshops; it goes for meetings, it goes for everything that we're doing right now – is to try to find a way to offset that disconnect. Like we talked about before, there's no substitute for that live connection. That being said, I think there are also some opportunities right now. I think that as of today – I feel like we're still, sadly, in the early stages of this; we're hopefully maybe a third of the way through, who knows – but I think after we settle into the new normal and people realize that, “Okay, I'm going to be here a while. I can't, even if I wanted to in some cases, be as productive as I was before because I can't do meetings, I can't do this, whatever. I'm stuck at home, not even driving” – I mean, for some people, an hour or two of their day just opened up because they don't have to drive cars. Again, for business owners and for those that are truly entrepreneurial, I think they are going to shift over to this mindset of saying, “You know what? With all this free time, I'm going to use it to make things better. I'm going to finally understand this thing I never really understood before. I'm going to figure out how to program my TV.” Whatever is on their list of things. From a business standpoint, they might actually be more interested in circling back to saying, “When I come out of this, I've always wanted to try Facebook ads, but I don't know how to do it.” So I think there will be an increase in the number of people that are at least interested in listening to or participating in some form of webinar or podcast. I don't think we're there yet; I think people are still in the “I've just got to figure out how to work remotely.” But once that settles in, I think there might actually be some opportunity. Back to your question. We were doing a pretty steady series of live events. We've obviously switched those over to all webinars. Even in the month of April that we're in right now, we've allocated every Thursday morning from 9 to 10 a.m. – we're just doing updates. There's so much information coming out in waves from Google and Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and Yelp, and they're all offering money this and credits for that and changing their policies. So, we're allocating that time just to get everyone up to date. But then we're also layering in really interesting topics. Like I think the one we're doing tomorrow is how to look at Google Trends to truly understand the impact that this situation is having on your business. This is something anybody can do. You don't have to have this high level of analytical skills to go to Google Search Trends and see whether or not people are searching more often for this, less often for that, or about the same. Once you're looking at that data and saying, “Interesting. People are no longer searching for this; however, they really are searching for that now,” that actually might help you course correct and maybe adapt your strategies a little bit. So yeah, we're still 100% all-in on the education side. Obviously switching over to webinar, for better or for worse, and then hopefully getting back to the normal mode once all of this is behind us. ROB: Are there any interesting examples of the Google Trends shifts you've seen on behalf of clients that you might be able to share? BRIAN: Absolutely. People ask me, “How are you guys doing?” We have such a diverse number of clients that we're really seeing all three scenarios. We're seeing some that are just devastated, sadly. We have clients that specialize in providing bartender services for parties and events, and of course, they're wiped out. Their entire book of business from now through May no longer exists. Our guidance to them is saying all the people that had these events are going to have to reschedule, so even though you're not finding people that are looking to do it right now, you might find them later. We have some that are seeing no impact whatsoever. If you're looking at AC repair or plumbing repair – pipes and air conditioning systems have absolutely no respect for the stay at home orders. If they're going to break, they're going to break. They're not going to wait until everything's normal, so there's no reason why there'd be less search on that, and there isn't. If anything, we're probably going to start to see a sudden uptick of that. People are home more often, and if you're in a state like Arizona where it's going to get into the upper 80s this week, they're going to be putting stresses on systems that they didn't really have to before with their kids at home and working from home. So I would expect they may grow a little bit. The third category of businesses that we work with are actually seeing increases. We have businesses that sell office cleaning supplies. We have businesses that offer nanny services for people that come to their homes and watch their kids. Again, there's a lot of people that have to go to work. All the people in the medical industry. So there's an example of a huge uptick. Their website traffic and the amount of leads they're getting is off the charts. So we really are in an interesting situation where we get to see all three of those scenarios playing out. ROB: That's an interesting mix, and probably encouraging to have that combination of some clients that are needing you a little bit more while some of those other clients maybe need a little bit less while they figure out this time. BRIAN: Right. It's almost like having a stock portfolio. [laughs] It's good to have diversity. You've got your winners and you've got some of them that aren't so good. ROB: When you think about your experience in building WebMO – and it sounds like you have some experience from building prior businesses as well – what are some things you would do differently if you were starting WebMO from scratch that you've learned? BRIAN: That's a good question. I saw that previously, and it's always hard for a business owner to do that, when you see yourself as being like “I've got this figured out.” But I would say in the early years, we found our lane. We found this lane and we were very committed to sticking to it. We were like, “We don't want to build websites, we don't want to do social media, we don't want to get into this, we don't want to get into that.” We were very much specializing in really optimizing organic visibility/SEO and doing Google search ads, because we had that down. We mastered those two things. We were probably a little more reluctant than we could've been to just open up and be more responsive to what the market was asking for. There was probably a few years where we just said, “No, no, no, no, no.” Again, hindsight is 20/20. I don't know, maybe it was better to do that. But today, through growing and evolving or whatever, I think the lesson with most small business owners is you have to listen to the market. You have to provide what your client wants, ultimately. You can't be too stubborn about saying, “No, no, this is all you need.” But on the other hand, you can't be running around like a crazy person saying yes to everything and getting into areas that are outside your expertise. I would've probably gone a little sooner into getting more into a lot of the other stuff that we do. Now currently, we do stuff across the board. Of course, we build websites, and we have campaigns running on everything from Spotify to obviously all the social media platforms and LinkedIn and direct email campaigns. You name it, we probably do it, if it's in digital marketing. I probably would've been a little more open to doing that sooner if I could roll back time for a few years. But again, you can't really second guess it too much when you like where you're at currently. We're very happy with where the business is now. It's always tough to say – but if I had done that too soon and I hadn't really mastered it, maybe it would've done more harm than good. It is a tough question, but that's probably about the closest I can get. Just being a little quicker to respond to where our clients were probably needing us most. That would probably be it. ROB: Are there any new directions that you think you might be getting pulled in, but you're not quite sure yet? BRIAN: There's certain things that I've just never been a big advocate of when it comes to marketing in general. There's certain tactics that I'm not probably ever going to be convinced to do. Things like spam. We're never going to tell a client, “You should be blasting spam out to people's inboxes.” Sending advertisements to people's text messages is to me crossing a line that I just will never feel comfortable doing. Yeah, you know you're going to get email solicitations from people you don't know; you accept that. You know you've got to see commercials when you watch TV. You know you're going to see ads on websites. You know if you're a Facebook user, you're going to see advertisements. But texts to me are our one safe space where we can be sheltered from getting bombarded with ads. We've had clients before say, “Hey, what about these?” and I'm just like, “I don't think so.” I think I'd still be reluctant to do something that I know, anecdotally, people in general just really, really don't like. Even if there's a possible ROI on it, there's probably some areas where I wouldn't feel comfortable taking my clients. ROB: I absolutely understand that, and I totally agree with you about crossing those lines. It's interesting what you mentioned on being pulled toward social earlier and resisting it. In a way, one of the things I end up seeing as I have these conversations is a lot of the people who got really good early at doing the core search ads and that sort of thing stayed away from social when it was fluffy and then came back into it when it wasn't “Hey, let me make a nice organic post that goes viral and gets a lot of activity,” but “Oh my goodness, Facebook ads is becoming sophisticated, and look at these tools we can bring to bear.” I think there may be a theme there. Also the case in email. I think a lot of clients weren't ready to use email intelligently for a while. BRIAN: I would say that's exactly correct, and that almost mirrors precisely how we approached it. I didn't like social media management because of that very reason. It was fluffy, like you said. There wasn't a lot of ways to calculate an ROI. There wasn't as much engineering and math and science behind it. It was way too obvious what you were doing and not doing from a client's perspective. There wasn't anything you could bring to the table other than really clever writing skills. It just didn't go to our core value. It's like, we're math guys, we're science guys; how in the world does that apply to making a clever, quippy little Facebook post? But then, like you mentioned, things got a lot more interesting when some of these more sophisticated targeting tools – that's about the same time we started hopping into it, because then there was a value add. That's the thing. As an agency, as a business owner, or whatever, if you're not doing something that's adding value that's obvious, your lifespan with them is going to be limited. I always explain that with any transaction. You have this perception of value that the client or the customer sees, and if they see the cost being at about the same level – there's a value, there's what you're getting, and then there's the cost that they're paying for it – if that is out of balance, if they feel like “I'm paying too much because they're not doing this,” then it's going to be trouble. The problem that we ran into, and a lot of people ran into with social media management, is that it's so obvious what you're doing. There's no secret. They're looking at your posts, and for better or for worse, they're saying, “That's it? My 16-year-old could do that. I'm paying $1,000 a month. I could just hire a part-time person and have them do it all the time.” So it's really hard to explain or to get across to somebody that what you're doing is something that you're uniquely qualified to do, that somebody else couldn't do as well. About that time when ads became a little more sophisticated or whatever, it fit into – one of our core, principal beliefs is this idea that there are no expert marketers, only experienced marketers and expert testers. So, we started embracing this idea that every single strategy out there is probably worthy of testing. If you're looking at Facebook, if you're looking at Instagram, if you're looking at Spotify, whatever, you don't have to buy into this idea that you spend thousands of dollars and do it whether it's working or not. You just have to take a testing mentality and say, “I'll try it. I'll throw a few hundred bucks at this.” And if you're working with somebody like ourselves, who's very good at analyzing data, with a relatively small budget we can drill right down and say, “There you go. That little budget that you ran for 2 months, here's precisely what it got you. We may have run across the tactic that will work.” On the other hand, some things don't work. It's marketing, right? You're going through your ideas; some things are going to work, some things are going to fail. If it's going to fail, fail fast and fail cheap. That is the beauty of digital marketing. You don't have to necessarily do an ad buy that you're committed to for 6 months. You can actually try a small budget test. I know that was a long circle around, but that mindset of adopting this idea that our job is just to test things for our clients – we just need to execute tests – that then opened up everything. Everything from Yelp to LinkedIn to Bing and YouTube and whatever. That's what got us into that, after that first wave of pure social media management abated a little bit. ROB: That seems like a great principle to carry forward, this idea that you might not say no to something you don't believe is effective; you can test it, and you can even probably keep testing it as long as you are changing something and you're not just in a rut of experimental nothingness. BRIAN: Exactly. That idea of A/B split testing everything from your landing pages or conversion pages to your ad copy – again, the beauty of digital marketing comes back to data. If you have data, you can literally look at it and say, “That ad got a 3% click-through rate and led to this sort of visitor engagement when they got to my website. This ad had a 4% conversion rate, but had lower visitor engagement.” Okay, that's some great information. It's very unique that way. It's extremely hard, if not impossible, to get that level of detail on traditional marketing methods. Radio, TV, billboards, magazines – there's basic things you can do, maybe track phone calls, but the unique thing is you can't get into the mind of somebody watching a TV ad and see how they're reacting to it. When they come to your website or a landing page, based on all the math that we are able to apply to this, you can really understand the people that are there that appear to be engaged, the visitor engagement metric. It's pretty common in our industry. It's exciting to me. I'm super passionate about it. This is the kind of thing where I teach people this in a workshop and a lightbulb goes off. They're like, “That makes sense!” You can actually get a better understanding of if your marketing is even moving generally in the right direction. ROB: You definitely know your numbers, Brian. When people want to find you and WebMO, where should they look you up? BRIAN: You can just go to www.web-mo.com. That's our website. Or you can just type “WebMO Tucson” or “WebMO” Arizona, “WebMO.” You're going to find a few references to us out there. We do work with clients all over the country. We're based in Arizona, but we are definitely nationwide in terms of the clients we work with. We love to partner with other types of agencies. We have a lot of partnerships with website designers, traditional marketing agencies, where we provide these services behind the scenes and basically make you look awesome because we're back there crunching all these numbers and generating all this great data and reports. Meanwhile, you're talking to your client and saying, “Hey, look what we did!” Sot hats a good way to initiate the conversation. Sign up for a workshop. Ask for a free report where we can obviously analyze your market. There's lots of actionable steps once you get to the website. ROB: Excellent. Thank you so much, Brian. Best wishes to you and WebMO going forward. We'll look for you online. Enjoy. BRIAN: Thanks, Rob. I appreciate the time. Stay healthy and safe and all that good stuff. ROB: Indeed. Take care, Brian. Thanks. BRIAN: Thanks. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Imagine how different you’d be financially during the economic hardship if you had a Safe Tank. What’s a Safe Tank? Basically, it’s a place you can put your money that is protected, has guaranteed growth, even when you need to use funds for it, and you can use those funds anytime, guaranteed, for any purpose, without incurring taxes or penalties. In this episode of a WTR Discussion, we talk about the current economic turmoil (characteristics of which are similar to other times of economic hardships). We also talk about what a Safe Tank is and why and how to use it. Also, we take you through 5 different, economic scenario stories, any of which could be you during these, or any, uncertain times. Have Questions about what a Safe Tank is? How to use it? How to set one up for yourself?Contact us anytime for your questions. Currently you can reach me, the host, Kevin Dumont at the following email: kevin@wealthtacticrebels.comNOTES: [00:25] Kevin: Today, we have our co-host Brian Dumont. Today, we're going to be talking about how to survive financial turmoil with a safe tank. [01:22] We're going to touch on the market volatility and how it affects your accounts, define what a safe tank is and why you'd want one, and you'll learn about how 5 different common financial tools and situations affect you during financial hardships and how you can begin to start building your safe tank today, which will put you in better financial control the next time there's turmoil [01:46] Let's start with talking a little about the market volatility and what's going on with our listeners today [02:20] Brian: There have been tremendous swings on a daily basis and we just don't know what's coming next and uncertainty is the worst thing for the market[03:13] If you're getting close to retirement or are already in it, you know that you can't rely on what your projections were just a few weeks ago. Things have changed dramatically [04:10] Kevin: Wealth Tactic Rebels, we're trying to help you out today with our talk about the volatility in the world and how you can financially survive it. Reach out to us on whatever the platform is that you listen to this on, give us a rate and review and let us know what you found inspirational. What resonated with you about today's discussion? [04:32] So we have what we call a personal economic model that we use as the model for how money flows. In there, we have what we call a two tank system, and the part of that that's today's discussion is the safe tank. Brian, can we expand talking about those tanks? [04:50] Brian: So the easy one to talk about first of all is the investment tank. Most people have investments[04:57] We put money somewhere with the expectation that it will grow overtime (that's why we're willing to take risk and put the money in there because we want some kind of reward) [05:13] There are two types of primary risk: market risk (the ability for your balance to decrease due to the market) and tax risk (government is in control of this) [06:02] By contrast, and this is where the safe tank comes in, is that we have done our best to position your money in a place where we have eliminated market risk to as little as possible if not any, so that we know that your account can only grow linearly (has to grow better than the inflation rate) [07:40] The main point of having a safe tank is it can only grow, and it must be liquid [07:50] Kevin: Great, so now we have defined what an investment tank is and what a safe tank is. Now comes the fun part. We're going to have a "Zoom dinner meeting with 5 friends". The subject of how they're dealing with this financial storm comes up in our talk with our 5 friends[08:18] Jim: I am one of those guys who likes to put his money in the market, I'm a stocks and bond kind of guy. I follow it every day and it's been painful to see how much I've lost in the last few weeks. I'm mostly sitting in cash waiting for things to...

Summary: Disruption is fast becoming a theme of our daily lives. As we seek out information to make decisions that will impact our businesses, it is more important now than ever to be in communication with our clients. To not only have a seat at the table, but to be taking charge of those relationships and offering stability to our clients in this time of incredible uncertainty. Brian DeMarco has been through the wringer of uncertainty in his life- and he has taken that willingness to adapt into the agency realm as well. In today’s episode we’re diving into the opportunity to deepen relationships during this time of crisis.   Top 3 Curtain Pulls in this episode: It’s important to step up and provide leadership with your clients and prospects. Make sure they know you are invested in their brand now more than ever. Give them the confidence that they can follow your leadership! Brian drops some truth: “In every crisis, there’s opportunity. To be honest with you, you have to be courageous enough to seize the opportunity.” This is a time to rise up to the challenge of not only maintaining status quo during this disruption, but to bring others up with you. More so now than ever, making decisions from a place of fear is NOT the way to go. As we’ve discussed in previous episodes, fear-based decisions almost always have negative results. So during this time of change, it’s important to find stillness and quiet for yourself, to not give into the panic.    About our Guest:  He’s an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, a retired NFL player, and now an agency owner.  He’s built two multimillion dollar businesses in both the physical therapy and fitness industries, and now he’s with the fast-growing marketing agency DRAFTR, where they serve clients like Uber, Universal Music, Ram trucks, and Easterseals. Based in Austin, Texas and joining us via Zoom call, we are so thrilled to welcome Brian DeMarco to the Podcast! Check out Brian’s agency DRAFTR Media Connect with Brian on LinkedIn   About The Guys:  Bob Hutchins: Founder of BuzzPlant, a digital agency that he ran from from 2000 -2017. He is also the author of 3 books. More on Bob:  Bob on LinkedIn twitter.com/BobHutchins instagram.com/bwhutchins Bob on Facebook Brad Ayres: Founder of Anthem Republic, an award-winning ad agency. Brad’s knowledge has led some of the biggest brands in the world. Originally from Detroit, Brad is an OG in the ad agency world and has the wisdom and scars to prove it. Currently that knowledge is being applied to his boutique agency. More on Brad: Brad on LinkedIn Anthem Republic twitter.com/bradayres instagram.com/therealbradayres facebook.com/Bradayres Ken Ott: Co-Founder and Chief Growth Rebel of Metacake, an Ecommerce Growth Team for some of the world’s most influential brands with a mission to Grow Brands That Matter. Ken is also an author, speaker, and was nominated for an Emmy for his acting on the Metacake Youtube Channel (not really). More on Ken:  Ken on LinkedIn Metacake - An Ecommerce Growth Team Growth Rebel TV twitter.com/iamKenOtt instagram.com/iamKenOtt facebook.com/iamKenOtt   Show Notes: [1:00] Bob introduces this week’s guest, Brian DeMarco. “He’s an entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and he’s also a retired NFL player. He’s built two multimillion dollar businesses in both the physical therapy and fitness industries, and now with the fast growing market agency Draftr, where they serve clients like Uber, Universal Music, Ram trucks, Easterseals, on and on. He lives outside of Austin, Texas- Brian, welcome to Agency Exposed!” Brian came into agency ownership the way many do- by accident. He started a business that was successful and became an agency owner out of that.  [3:00] Brian gives context for building his company. Coming out of the NFL he had a severe spinal injury that resulted in fractures in 17 places and 90% loss of function in his right leg. By ‘05 the injuries had gotten worse and worse.  “I was dying in every way a man can be dying- physically, spiritually, financially. Totally destitute, spent every dollar we made in the league on surgeries, rehab, raising our family.”  Amidst poverty and homelessness, he and his wife hinged their hope for his healing on two of the best spinal surgeons in the world, but were devastated by their terrible prognoses.  As a couple, he and his wife prayed together for a miracle, and a short time after that prayer they were inspired to design a machine that would help him learn to walk again. Through a series of miraculous meetings, events they were able to get this machine built, he learned to walk again, and they set out to make it a business. They raised over $4M and built a company from the ground up. They won the top 2 design prizes in the world. [7:05] Brian: “What I loved was the strategy behind building a brand and building community around a brand that was meaningful… I very passionately was just in it every day and building this up, so when the time came around and we got to a certain point, it was obvious that it was just time for me to go.” His passion led him to help other people experience what he was experiencing, and he had a very good idea of what didn’t work for him in an agency. [7:51] Brian continues: “I knew all the things that I didn’t like about agencies, I didn’t like the fact that they would never work with me to talk about revenue, using revenue for KPI, for what was being built on the marketing side. So these tough conversations that not many agencies want to have, but that all went into the building of Draftr Media.” He found a partner, Aaron King, who already had an agency, which became Draftr Media. They were on the same page as far as branding and were able to pursue their passion to be a better agency than what they had experienced.  [9:22] Bob asks Brian about what life is like for Draftr amidst the current shift in the world with Covid-19.  [9:38] Brian reflects on the initial shockwave that everyone had to deal with, and the process of reassuring clients that they could go on.  “Some of them we had to talk off the ledge, so to speak. It’s up to us, as Agency Owners during this time, to help them creatively understand how to re-imagine how they do business and how they meet their clients. Because that’s the effect of the Coronavirus, it’s going to be long lasting in our society. These things aren’t just going to, you know, flip a switch and go away when it’s over.” “Truth be told, we were all migrating there anyways… living more digitally. So that’s been a big part of the conversations with our clients… reassuring our team that we can reimagine how you do business digitally and how you meet your clients digitally.”  [11:38] Brian continues: “Relatively speaking, it’s easy to be a leader or a CEO when the market is just absolutely booming and you can do no wrong. It’s difficult to lead in times like this, when we’re in a massive trial in our lives, the entire nation. This is when it’s hard to lead, but it’s most certainly needed.”  [12:15] Brian: “There’s no way to sugarcoat this, it’s decimating a large part of our economy for now. But you have to have the courage to look boldly at the future and be determined to win.” “There’s an old saying in football, ‘Find a way to win.’ Whether that’s a guy stepping up, or the team coming together, whatever that is- find the way to win. That is most certainly where we are now.”  “Every crisis, there’s opportunity. To be honest with you, you have to be courageous enough to seize the opportunity.” [13:49] Ken responds: “Whether you’re coaching and leading clients or you’re leading your own team- you’re going through something too. And you’d be naive to think that it doesn’t affect you… this is not a passing thing that just goes away. You can’t just hunker down for four weeks and hope that it goes away.”  [14:35] Ken continues: “I believe the better approach is what you said, to assume that this is the new way or a portion of this is, and if you’ve got to do business that way, how can we figure out how to do business that way and thrive. It’s not easy- if it were easy, everyone would do it.”  [14:55] Brian: “That’s why you see brands, like I Heart, stepping up with the concerts and people are going to remember the brand that stepped up during this time to provide them something- entertainment. The one advantage is that people are now walking to the internet in droves to socialize, to be entertaining, to educate, which is another interesting side component of this time… we can educate our kids from home. Our school systems fell in line, our kids are learning. You kind of saw the writing on a wall with schools as we knew them, growing up.” [16:15] Brad asks Brian: “Tell me some of the things that you’re doing with your agency that are practical that other agencies maybe can glean from it and actually do themselves as well, whether they’re large or small agencies.” [16:35] Brian speaks on his efforts to “run lean” and never lose the startup mentality as far as resources and spending are concerned. They’ve had to ask themselves where they can pull back where it won’t impact clients- extracurriculars for staff, parties, etc.  “We’ve been very fortunate to date to not have to cut staff. We’re in this situation because we were so proactive with our clients, we weren’t waiting for them to call us with the situation… as soon as it got to the point where people were whispering about a pandemic, we were calling our clients, our leadership teams. We’re calling clients and dealing with this, letting them know that this is something we need to deal with right now. We don’t need to wait, how are we going to react as a brand?” [19:05] Bob presents: “There may be a temptation to take on clients out of desperation, to take what you can get to backfill things you’ve lost. And I think there’s some wise counsel here.” Don’t just take the scraps that you can get, you’re going to regret it and it will hurt you down the road. [19:57] Brian affirms that there is a shift that is happening for companies without a vision. For so long it was easy for people to throw ads up on Facebook and call themselves an agency. He suggests: “If I were a smaller agency, I would really hone in on what I do well, overstretch your sales pitch and speak out of bounds… Focus on your specialty and what your strong points are.” Stay in your lane! [21:55] Ken adds: “For the last 10 years or so, anyone can throw up a website and get clients… and no one will know the difference. Experience is really being undervalued.” Focus on getting highly specialized- that’s the anchor in ALL times, especially now.  In meeting with peers in the venture capital community, Ken has heard that now more than ever, they are realizing the value of strategic people in agencies. “Not just the person who knows how to spend money, but where to spend it.”  [24:52] Brad adds to Ken’s point- “What you’re talking about is, Is your business a commodity or is there something unique about your business that is harder to find? And so a lot of these, if you build your business around a commodity, then you’re just competitive in price. But if you build your business around something greater than that, where you’re the best or the only, then you’re a lot more valuable.” Oftentimes, companies hire agencies and the agencies don’t really have a seat at the table. But for those that do give you a seat, you have to step up and help them figure things out and provide solutions for them.  Psychologically, there is a huge difficulty in decision-making right now, so if you can get in and provide valuable insight and say “Let me think for you right now.” “How do you help them get over this hurdle?” [27:15] Brian responds: “From that standpoint, when we position ourselves early with the brands that we’re working with, that we’re really integrated.”  If you’re not in a position to be integrated with the leadership team at this point, it’s still important to put yourself in a position where you can offer advice and guidance, and let them know that you’d love to speak with them.  [29:25] Brad: “I’ve heard old war veterans say there’s no bond like those that you go to battle with on the front lines.” It is valuable to take that mindset into consideration in this circumstance- this is a battle that we can equip ourselves to win.  “When there’s a recession, people start to hoard their money and start to pull back their ad spend. That’s sometimes the time where they need to be spending more, but it’s just nature to start cutting, right?” How can we help our clients during this time and encourage them to resist that feeling and instead reinvent themselves into something great.  [31:13] Brian quotes Henry Ford: “Those that try to save money by stopping marketing are those that stop a clock to save time.”  The first gut instinct for a lot of entrepreneurs is to hold back on marketing- this is a massive fundamental mistake.  Brian made this mistake for himself and had to learn that the correct response is to pour MORE into their budget  to get through the hurdle.  Stay proactive as an agency to soothe your employee’s nerves as well.  [34:32] Brian: “We did this with our team, having very real and candid conversations…  I didn’t want them working from a place of panic.” [34:50] Bob asks what Ken and Brad have done to be proactive in their own offices.  [35:02] Ken responds: “We’ve talked about this a lot, acting from a place of fear… this produces horrible results every time.” What is really valuable is helping someone make the right decision for themselves.  “We’re in a really fortunate position in that our industry isn’t feeling a fundamental shakeup right now.”  [40:00] Brian adds that helping your clients with their perspective is valuable as well. Perspective on other difficult times when you’ve made it through and excelled.  [41:05] Bob speaks on previous podcast episodes: “We talked about funds, do you keep a years funding in the bank, how prepared are you truly to lead?” [42:31] Brian speaks on the good that will come from this: “The folks that truly understand what it means ot build a brand will be the ones that last through this.” [44:59] Brad recalls a message from Mark Cuban, who says that he was talking about how after this is all over, he sees our country exploding with new innovation and ideas and energy just because we’re all pent up and we’re all excited and it’s like after a war is finished- our economy will rise. Sometimes when things are so good for so long, it takes a sharp turn of events to challenge you again, and that’s where growth happens. And that’s something to be excited about. [46:00] Brian agrees, and tells a story about a recent discussion with a partner. He asked his client at the beginning of a meeting to just sit in stillness for a few minutes to assess his feelings and thoughts.  “It’s important to realize that this is when the best of us comes to the top. So you need to be your best self more now than ever.” [48:07] Brian asks how we will be impacted by this, as our grandparents were impacted by the Great Depression. Will we hoard toilet paper the way they hoarded canned goods and buried their money in the backyard? [50:05] Ken adds: It’s important during this time to be present, to value the time you have on your hands. It is more valuable than most things in life, so don’t let this pass with you just holding your breath waiting for it to be over.  Inside of yourself, in your business, in all areas of life! “You have a choice- come out stronger or don’t. You won’t be the same regardless.” [52:25] Brian: “You’re dealing with a fundamental human problem, and for a lot of folks, the fear is paralyzing. So this will be a time where the truly smart agencies will rise to the top.”  [53:30] Ken asks one final question: “What are some things from your football days that was ingrained into you that you use when leading and running your agency these days?” [55:38] Brian shares a piece of advice from a former coach of his, “I’ll trade an ounce of athleticism for an ounce of integrity any day” and “United together with a singleness of purpose.” The idea of being united by singleness of purpose has stuck with him through it all. At the end of the day, that unity you have with your friends and family is all that matters. Don't just do the job for the unity of the team, but also be encouraged from that team for yourself.

Are you settling into an office chair today? Or are you manning the driver’s seat? Our guests are right at home in both places. We welcome Maya Hernandez, Brian Johnson, and Chris Chaney to sit down with us in this episode of Terminal Exchange. These three drivers turned driver managers are the breath of fresh air you’ve been waiting for at Terminal Exchange. They share a full-circle perspective of Nussbaum from the heart of a driver and the thoughts of a driver manager. But what brought them into the office? And is there that big of a difference between office work and their first presumptions of it? In one word – yes. Listen to the driver’s voice – the frustrations of both roles, the eye-opening realizations, and the game of Tetris that is the trucking industry. Enjoy Maya, Brian, and Chris’s stories from over-the-road to over-the-phone. Photos Quotes Chris: “This was a great opportunity to be able to come inside and help people with something that I really love doing.”Brian: “There were times where, sitting in my truck, I didn’t say it directly to them, but I was screaming at them sitting in that truck.”Maya: “As long as we are communicating and keeping those doors open, there is nothing that can’t get accomplished.”Maya: “When you call and you think that the planner and your DM have lost their bananas, and they don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to your hours. It’s easily resolvable by a simple phone conversation and a good attitude.”Brian: “I have no problem routing you outside of Chicago. Because I know it takes one person to screw up everybody’s day there.”Maya: “I couldn’t have a job without a driver. The driver could not have a job without our sales team, and our CACs, and our load planners. We all make up this company.”Chris: “I have to take care of my people. I have to care for my team. We want our drivers to be successful.”Maya: “Thirty-four hours is never enough at home… You have to be a wife or a husband. You have to be a mom. You have to be a friend, and you have 34 hours to be all these different things before you have to go back out on the road again.”

Brian Burke, based in Santa Rosa, California, is a real estate investor and the President and CEO of Praxis Capital, which is a vertically integrated private equity investment firm. He established this firm back in 2001. He began his career in 1989, buying his first rental property which led him into the world of multi-family then commercial investing.  Brian is a successful entrepreneur and syndicator - today he shares how he started his real estate career and giving back to his community after the wildfire in California. He also discusses his investing strategy, where he’s looking to invest, what to expect from an investment and his future plans. Some Of The Highlights: His First Real Estate Investment and His Business Today His Work Strategy and Advice For a ‘Rainy Day’ In Business Brian’s Retirement Plan What is the preferred return?    Connect with Brian: Website: PRAXCAP.COM - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  TRANSCRIPTION Intro: Hey guys, this is Eden and today is a very special episode because we are going to host Brian Burke, who is one of the biggest investors on this show to date. Brian had completed half a billion in real estate purchases this year alone after a long and beautiful career that lasted for 30 years and still counting. When listening to this episode, I was personally amazed by how humble Brian is and the sheer perspectives and mindset real estate investors to have despite the fact that they never met before. Also, today we would like to ask you guys for a favor. If you love our content and feel like you're learning from this podcast, please go on iTunes and give us a five-star review. This helps the podcast to rank higher and the best, part if you give us five-star review, shoot us an email at Hello@donandeden.com with the content of the review and your phone number, and you'll get scheduled for 30 minutes phone call with me and Don where you can talk about real estate and get answers for the questions you always had. So, without further ado, let's get started. Lady: Welcome to the commercial real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to off-market strategies. Don: Hey Brian, welcome to the show. Brian: Thanks for having me on Don. Don: How's the weather in Santa Rosa, California? Brian: Oh, it's a beautiful day today, almost 80 degrees this afternoon and in November, which is a little unusual, but I'll take it. Don: I like to skate. It's like my hobby. So, I went to L.A., I went to Venice. I took a month off, just wanted to skate, took my skates with me and went there. Some people said it's the best place for anything that has wheels. And so, when I got there, that was late May and it was raining. It was like rain in L.A. and people told me it's very rare. That never happens. And it was kind of cold. And so, one of my friends that lives in California said that the weather over there was pretty unusual this year. Would you agree? Brian: Yeah, it was unusual. A lot of rain this spring and a lot of heat this fall. So, it's been a little bit unusual. But I would say the best weather in California is probably September and October. Those are usually some of the nicest months and people think that summer is probably the nicest, but it's not always the case. Don: Yeah not always the case. Is it still burning over there? I know you guys had the wildfires. Brian: There's a large fire. The largest fire in our country's history just got fully contained yesterday. And that was about a couple miles up the road from our office. So, we were under mandatory evacuation last week. And this week, we're back in action here in the office. Don: As sad it is to say that, I'm sure that these wildfires pose some great opportunities for real estate investors. Am I right? Brian: Well, once in a while they do and we had a fire in our city two years ago that wiped out 5000 homes in our city. We raised a fund last year to rebuild homes and our city and we raised about $8 million and we've been building single-family homes on burned-out home sites where the owners decided not to rebuild and elected instead to sell or move to a different area, put their lots up for sale and we're putting spec homes on those lots and got a couple of dozen homes under construction right now. So certainly it does breed some opportunity. Don: Not only opportunity, in this case, also give back to the community that is your city. Eventually, you want people to live in it and feel happy about it. Because that's home for you. Right? Brian: Yeah, people want the city to be put back the way it was. And we're doing our part to help do that and at the same time provide much-needed housing. When you lose 5000 homes in a city of 250,000 people it makes a real impact on housing demand, and there's a need for housing here. And we're helping to provide that which is pretty exciting. Don: That's beautiful. So, I know your real estate career is a very long one. You're one of the most successful entrepreneurs and syndicators on the show to date. I know you've amassed a portfolio of 250 to 300 million if my numbers are right and you've completed your half a billion in purchases of properties this year, am I right? Brian: Yeah. 2019 is a banner year for us. We crossed the half a billion-dollar mark and real estate purchase, which is an incredible accomplishment for me to even say that it is weird. I never imagined that in my lifetime I would do something like that. But we managed to pull it off. Now we've got a portfolio consisting mostly of multifamily properties. Our business focuses primarily a hundred units and up multifamily all across the US and we've got about 3000 units that we've done. Our portfolio now is about 250-300 million of value. We still do some single-family here and there. Of course, our fund where we're building homes in our city, so we're kind of a multidisciplinary real estate firm that started in single-family migrated to multifamily, but once you have developed roots and single-family, it's hard to lose those. Don: Yes. I started single families too, and let's be honest, it's fun. Even when you're doing commercial, it's still fun to do some projects there as well. So, let's talk about how it all started. When did you make your first steps in real estate? What was it back then? Because I know you've been doing real estate for 30 years, right? Brian: Yeah, my first real estate investment was a little over 30 years ago. In 1989 was my first real estate investment. Don: Just a side note. I was born in 1989. Brian: You were born? Yes. So, when you were busy being born, I was busy trying to find a house to buy and I made my first real estate investment. I didn't even own my own home but I bought a rental and fixed it up a little bit and a couple of years later sold that and I started doing some house flips, one house at a time and I was still working at the time and this enabled me to make a living on my job and then invest in real estate to build my future. Don: What a smart decision! So, one thing led to another and now you are in control of over 500 million worth of property in multifamily which is amazing. So, tell us a little bit about the first deal in multifamily. When was the first time you decided to buy a commercial property? Brian: My first multifamily was about 16 or 17 years ago. And it was here in California, it was a 16 unit apartment building. And what I was doing is I trying to figure out how to invest in commercial real estate, but I just didn't understand it very well. I didn't understand what the numbers meant or how to value it or how to evaluate it. Two rental houses that I accumulated through my house flipping business and flip one, keep one flip one, keep one. So, I had a couple of rentals I wanted to sell and I wanted to do a 1031 exchange and exchange up into an apartment building. It just seemed like it was an interesting way to grow the business and have more economies of scale and cash flow and all that.  So, I reached out to the real estate agent that was helping me sell my flips because he was a CCIM which is a certified commercial broker. And I said, "Hey, I don't understand any of this and will you teach me?" and he did. He taught me how to read an income statement and what to look for and all kinds of different things. And then not long after that, he's told me my first apartment building. I did a 1031 exchange and never looked back. Don: How was the first investment? Was it a good investment, a bad investment? Brian: Funny story is I just sold that property like two years ago. So, I kept it for a long time and I was able to do a 1031 exchange into an oceanfront condo in Hawaii where I rent that out and, maybe one day I'll even be able to move into it. Who knows? Don: We all have dreams. Being busy in real estate, you never stopped working. So, I know we talked a little bit before the show started. I asked you about the ways that you make money when you own such a massive portfolio, but most of it you syndicated. So, most of it, you had to raise money. And you had to structure a deal in which your investors are being paid first because I know you care about your investors. So how do you make money? How much money do you make on these types of deals that you're acquiring? What are your goals for the future as far as your financials? Brian: I started just entirely doing things with many of the resources that I could collect together. My first single-family investment was done with seller financing and then after that, I was like cash advance credit cards and getting signature lines of credit and all crazy kinds of things. I always tried to learn by putting my own money at risk. Then once I figured out how to do it right, I would go to investors and have investors invest. It took me about 12 years to start raising money from investors. And I did it for my single-family business.  First, I raised a blind pool fund and I split the profits 50-50 with my investors while we were flipping homes, and then when we move into multifamily, we're seeing a lot of money from investors. If you're going to buy half a billion dollars in real estate, it takes a lot of capital to do that. We were fortunate that a lot of investors were interested in partnering with us and putting up capital. So generally, the way we work it is the investors provide most of the capital for any multifamily acquisitions that we acquire. And in exchange, the investors get all of the profits until they've received a certain rate of return. Turn, once they've received that specific rate of return, then we start splitting in the profits and our splits usually start around 30% of the profits as the return goes up, then our split can get a little bit higher than that.  But generally, our investors always get the majority of the profits, and they always get paid first. So, this isn't a big cash flow business for us. I know a lot of syndicators out there, who'll just have a profit split day one where every dollar that comes in some goes to the investors and some go to the sponsor. Ours doesn't work that way, the investors get a preferred return where they get all of the cash flow until they've received a threshold return and then we start to share. So, we keep the lights on here by doing house flips and having other multiple streams of income. For example, us building homes here in our community and the fire damage lots is another source of income and we have a lending company which is another source of income.  Occasionally we sell our multifamily properties and that's when we get paid. We get a payday, not a paycheck. It's not quite as lucrative as many people would think, but eventually, you get there and profit potential is enormous but you never realized that until you start performing for your investors. Don: Okay, so let's talk about the way that you structure your deals with your investors. So, they're getting a preferred return. I guess it's 8% right that's the classic return that they get? Brian: Yeah, ours is 8% general. Don: 8% and then that's going to be a preferred return which means they get that right away as they invested the funds or a little bit after right it could be two or three months after, right? Brian: It doesn't mean anything, they may never receive it. If the dealer loses money and never makes money from day one, they never see a dime. But the way of preferred return works is that the investors get 100% of the cash flow until they've reached that threshold return and that's a cumulative return. So, if you invest today, in the first year, the deal throws off no cash flow, you get no cash flow. But if the second year it throws off 4% you get 4%. In the third year, throws off 8% you get 8%. In the fourth year it throws off 12%, you get all 12 because we still owe you 4% from year two and 8% from year one. So, if for two more years after that it still produces 12%, those two years, you're still getting 12% that makes up the 8% from the first year. And then after that, dropped to 8%, we'd start splitting the difference of what goes over 8%.  So, a preferred return is often confused with a dividend and it's they're not the same. A preferred return just means that you're first in line for all cash flow until you receive your hurdle rate. It doesn't mean that you're going to get distributions right away equal to the preferred return. It just depends on what the property is throwing off cash flow wise. Don: Yes, thank you for clarifying that. Now, I know the investors are putting all the down payment and the capital expenses for repairing the properties and improving the properties. And so, they also get a share of the profits of the entire purchase. So, you're offering your investor 70% 30%? Brian: First, they get 100% until you reach that 8%. So, if they haven't been distributed the full 8% through cash flow during the ownership period, then that's where you catch it up. As you take your sales proceeds, you catch up on your preferred return first. After your preferred return is fully caught up, then any sales proceeds remaining after that are split according to whatever the waterfall is. And if it's 70-30, 70% goes to the investor 30% goes to the sponsor. In our case, we have a couple of different hurdle thresholds where it's 70-30, typically to a 12. And then after a 12% return, anything that goes above a 12% return is then split 60-40. And anything that goes above a 15% return if you actually can ever get above a 15% return, if we do then whatever a little amount goes over would be split 50-50. That's the way at least three quarters to 80% of our deals are structured that way and of course, every once in a while there are slight variations on that theme. Don: So, at the end of the entire purchase in the cycle of purchasing a property, renovating the property, stabilizing it, and then you refinancing the properties or you're selling them? Brian: If we're going to hold over three years we like to refinance and return capital to investors. But if we can sell, we will. I always like to say that we're a buy and watch investor, we don't necessarily buy to flip and we don't necessarily buy to hold. What we do is we buy the asset we watch, we improve the asset, and we watch the market for the most optimal exit point. And generally speaking, the most optimal time to exit is going to be right around year two and a half, two year three and a half, right around that point after you've fixed up units and fixed up the outside, you've increased the income, you've pumped the value.  That's the inflection point where now the business plan would switch from things we physically do to just simply relying on the market for anything additional after that point. And when we reached that inflection point, that's usually when we like to sell. But if the market isn't cooperating and we don't think it's the right time to sell then we won’t sell. We can refinance, return some capital investors, sit on it for another year or two or three until the market is ripe for a sale, and then we could sell at that point. Don: What would you say you're typically improving the property like as far as the value goes? So, let's say you purchase a property for 10 million. After all the renovations and after improving the property, what would you say, percentage-wise, is the new value that you guys can bring the property to? Brian: On stabilization, we're looking for at least a 20% lift that includes, over and above the renovation. So, if we bought a property for 10 million, and then we put 2 million into it, or 12, then you'd be looking for somewhere around a $2.4 million increase. So, you'd be like 14.5, maybe 15 million to exit. So, we're looking for the kind of like that 20% or more lift within that stabilize period. Don: Of course, we got 2.4 million in profit, 30% of that is going to go to the sponsor or is considered profit for the sponsor after the deal is completed, right? Brian: First, you have to catch up with your 8% preferred return. So, let's say you distributed no cash flow during that period. For example, let's say it was a real deep value add and wasn't throwing off any cash. Now the first thing you'd have to do is give 100% of it to your investors until they got an 8% return. If it was three years' worth of time, then that's 8% times three. That goes off first, and then after that, whatever cash is left is what goes into the split here. Don: So, assuming you were cash flowing, and you managed to pay the preferred return during the entire process, and they always got the 8%, right? Hypothetically speaking, so you would be making 30%. Brian: That's right Don: Of the amount that you generated, which is 2.4 million in case of buying a property for around 10 million. Brian: And yeah, so you're looking at maybe $750,000. Could be your potential payday for the value created. That's right. Don: Yeah. So, it's just a matter of being able to get into a few deals like that every year, and then the profit as a sponsor, right as an indicator, the product It is down the line, a few years down the road. Brian: Yeah, that's exactly it. Like I said investors want to see their sponsor is getting a payday, not a paycheck. If you perform for them, then you do well. And if you don't perform for them, then you don't do so well. So certainly assuming you did your job right, the profit potential is pretty substantial. Don: But, something Robert Kiyosaki changed my life twice. Once was when he wrote 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad.' We all did read this book and got influenced by it. And if you didn't, then you should, because it's like I would consider that the Bible for real estate investing and investing in general. The second time he changed my life was actually when he wrote his book 'Fake,' which he talks about how money is not real and how money is a depreciating asset and why you should never have it, why you should never hold any money. And that's so true when you are trying to get wealthy and I think it's something you understand once you've made some money in your life because you realize that it's not real. But the things that money can buy, it just pays the bills. But if you try to get rich, then the only way to do that is to equity, which is what you're doing right? Brian: That's exactly right. Don: I think once this light bulb goes off and you get that principle, then you're okay with putting all the work and assembling a deal and improving the deal and stabilizing these properties that you're buying, just so you can get wealthier down the road. Because in theory, you are already wealthier because you have equity in the property. So, it doesn't matter. Brian: Yeah, you've got the equity and assuming that the market doesn't turn against you and take the equity back from you, that's happened before too. You saw what happened in 2005 through 2007. Equity is fleeting, so it's 100% true, everything you just said. But there is something to be said for keeping some cash for a rainy day and always having reserves and kind of living a little bit of a low leverage lifestyle. The people with the most leverage were the ones that got hurt the most. And it's funny when you live through an economic downturn like I have and managed to survive it, you see the risk that leverage ads and so you have to strike a good balance and you want equity and you want to use debt smartly to help improve your position.  But at the same time, you don't want to over-leverage and you want to keep a safety net. You get it, you guys have built your business completely with equity without debt here so far and seeing what that's enabled you to do. And now you can use debt smartly, to help grow your portfolio. And I think everybody needs to watch that as an example of how to do it the right way, and the safe way. Don: Yeah, I think the main reason why we were able to pull this off was that we were making money in two streams, right. So, one stream was our business, our wholesale business, which created nice paychecks and nice paydays the way you call it before. And it's an accurate way to call it because when you make paydays, then you're able to buy properties and create wealth. And so that was the second way that we've created the portfolio that we own right now, through equity. The equity is the transactions that we made. We never live a lavish lifestyle. And it's different than most people here, Miami because, I don't know if you've been here but if you drive in the streets here, then you're going to see a Ferrari or a Lambo everyday second turn. And that's a lifestyle in Miami.  Being a successful investor here in South Florida, we were able to resist that temptation, to invest the money where it should be parked, which is, in my opinion, real estate and stocks and property and equity. There's a beautiful saying that affected me tremendously, "Rich people are busy making money while poor people are busy showing off money that they don't have." Brian: Right. Yeah, you could certainly see a lot of evidence of that around, that's for sure. Don: Definitely. And especially today with social media, everybody's trying to show off, everybody's trying to faking it till they're making it. You're not going to make it, you're going to blow your first 10K on a Rolex. You should be blowing it on education. That's not even blowing it, that's investing and that's the difference, right? So that's what I think like an investor as I'm growing. Of course, I still have a lot to learn and I interview people like you, people that have made it bigger than me, the people that come to the show they have the same perspectives and the same lifestyle as well. Brian: It's just a matter of prioritizing and realizing that the first thing you've got to do is invest for your future. And it's like I spent almost every dime I had investing in more real estate and more real estate. And so, it's enabled me to accumulate a fairly large portfolio of rental homes just for my own, basically, my retirement plan. I don't get any cash flow off of them because I had them all financed on 15-year loans. So that way, they'll be completely paid off when I'm ready to step back and slow down. And it's a sacrifice now because if the property needs to be repaired, I'm probably pulling that repair out of my pocket and kind of negative cash flow, but I look at it as like a deposit into that savings account, right? And then eventually I'm going to have 40 or some rental units that will be completely paid for and cash flowing for me with no debt and right at the time, I would need it the most. So, it's sacrifice now, but it's a payoff later. Don: Definitely. So, let's talk about the future that a bit since we're already talking about it. What would your thoughts on the multi-family market right now and where it's going because I know it's a little bit overheated, a lot of people want to buy multifamily? And I know people buying properties for five and a half cap rate, which is pretty expensive in my opinion. What do you think about the market and where it's going? Brian: Yeah, you're right, the cap rates are low. And we're buying stuff at five and a half and six caps too. So, I get it, it's where the market is right now. And certainly, real estate is desirable, but it's desirable for a reason. And then, the reason is supported by fundamentals. And that's why pricing is so high right now. And one of the most common questions I get is, what inning are we in and everybody wants me to say that we're in the eighth or ninth inning and this is all going to change soon there's going to be a big downturn, you're going to be able to come in and scoop up properties at a big discount. I just don't believe any of that's about to happen, and doesn't matter what anymore because anybody knows that a game can go into overtime and a game can be rained out early, and can't just say that every game nine innings.  So, we're not at the bottom of the cycle. And if we are at the top, what does the top look like? I think that a top when we reach one if we haven't already, it just looks like a plateau in pricing where we take a pause and the economy catches up to where we are and valuations are still fully supported with incomes right now, even where they stand today. So, I don't think there's going to be a big downturn or a big buying opportunity anytime soon like some people are holding off for. When that does happen, maybe prices have gone up another 20% then they fall 10%. And if they would have got in today, they would have made 10%. But instead, they're going to buy them and gain nothing. So, we're still buying and I think one of my defense mechanisms is to buy in strong markets that have population growth, job growth, and income growth and that gives me a hedge against the downside. I think it's important to do that. It's tough out there. We have to look at about a thousand deals to buy one. Don: It looks like a shiny market. Everything's growing. The population is growing. The jobs are growing and so yeah, everybody would probably want to buy it there. But we're already talking about that, what would you say that market is? Where are you looking right now for properties? Brian: We're looking in Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlanta, Georgia, northern and central Florida, specifically Tampa, Orlando, North Carolina, such as the Research Triangle market, Charlotte, a little bit here and there of Texas. But I think Texas is way overbought. So, we're kind of scaling back in Texas. We still own there, but we're net sellers in Texas. I love to find something in Nashville, but there's very little product coming out of that area. So primarily, I think, Arizona and Nevada, Georgia and Florida are primary markets. Don: So, you're looking at a lot of markets, and how do you analyze all the deals that are coming your way? I guess you got to have some help, right? Brian: Yeah, we've got a fairly robust team here. I've got two other guys on the acquisition side and one analyst. So, we've, every time a new opportunity comes to us, my chief investment officer will do a quick prescreen. If it passes a certain series of tests, it goes to our analysts to build a financial model. And then it goes back to our chief investment officer or our CFO who is like a co-Chief Investment Officer. And then they review the deal and tour it and talk to the brokers and run the comps and tour the comps and do all those other tasks. Our businesses grown pretty substantially, we're vertically integrated. So, we have our own management company and we manage our assets, which means we have employees on the ground, in all the areas where we operate.  So for example, we toured a couple of assets the other day, and it just turns out that we had our manager go with our acquisitions guy and manager knows the manager of one of the properties because they used to work together at one of our properties actually, and so, we have kind of a little bit of good rapport there and can learn more about the property because those relationships. So, we've well ingrained in the markets that we're in, we have people on the ground and the markets that we're in, and we have full control over the whole process. So I'm lucky that between me and my CIO, my CFO and the CEO of my property management company, between the four of us, we have 100,000 units of multifamily experience going back as long as 40 years and it gives us a good leg up on being able to stay on top of the markets in the assets. Don: That's not something you can easily find as an investor or a passive investor who's looking to invest with a sponsor. I mean, your team sounds very professional and experienced and you guys are exploring many markets and have years of experience. So, if I was looking to invest as a limited partner, I would give you guys a call. And speaking of which, if anybody wants to connect with you and get to know a little bit more about what you're doing and your projects and your future deals, what would be the best way to do that Brian: Probably the best way to reach us is through our website. Which is PRAXCAP.COM or a company's Praxis Capital and our website is P R A X C A P. C O M and on there, there are contact forms and you can fill out and our senior vice president and investor relations will set up phone calls. And we'll get to know you and establish your relationship before we start talking about deals. That's probably the best way. You can also find me on biggerpockets.com which is a real estate forum website where people ask questions and get answers about all kinds of real estate topics. I'm pretty active there and love to answer people's questions on that website when they post in the forum. So those are probably the best two ways. Don: All right, Brian, awesome. Thank you so much for that. And thank you so much for the insights that you gave us today. And of course, most importantly, time is the most valuable asset and therefore I want to thank you for investing the time to come to the show today. We appreciate it. I hope you're going to have a great day. Brian: Thanks, Don. I appreciate you having me on the show. I had a great time and humbled and appreciative to be a part of it. Thank you for having me on. Don: You're welcome. Thank you very much, Brian. Brian: Sure thing. Lady: Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes. Till next time!

James:  Hi listeners and audience, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today, we have Brian Hamrick. Brian owns 370 units which 2/3 of it is syndicated, the remaining is owned by him. He's from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He does multifamily, self-storage and also non-performing notes and Brian is also the past president of Rental Properties Owner Association.  Hey, Brian, welcome to the show.  Brian: Hey, James, great to be here. Thanks for having me.  James: I'm really happy to have you here. I mean, you have been podcasting for the past three years. You have a really good audience because I remember after showing up on your podcast, a lot of people did contact me. So I'm sure a lot of people love your podcast as well.  Brian: That's fantastic. I'm glad to hear that.  James: Yes. So can we go a bit more detailed into what is this Rental Properties Owners Association, how do they add value to syndicators or landlords or tenants? Can you describe a bit more on that? Brian: Sure, the Rental Property Owners Association, which I'm a past president of, I'm currently on the executive committee and I sit on a number of different committees, they are a landlord representation organization.  So we also work a lot with Real Estate Investors and provide all kinds of training for both landlords and Real Estate Investors. Every year, we have an annual conference where we have National Speakers come in and talk about all different types of investing asset classes and whatnot. And really I got involved with it because when I moved here to Grand Rapids, 15 years ago, I was looking for a professional organization that I could become part of that would help me network with other professionals in the industry. People who own rental properties and knew how to profit from it and also just an organization that would help teach best practices so I could learn the ropes how to do it and certainly through the Rental Property Owners Association and the people I've met there, I've learned a lot.  We provide a lot of training but probably what I consider most important of all is we have a legislative committee that works with lawmakers, both local and at the state level, to help push through bills that help rental property owners and also help prevent bills from becoming a reality that would hurt us; anything that has to do with like rent control or some of those hot button issues that as landlords and rental property owners would like to avoid.  James: Yeah, very interesting. So like New York and I think, Oregon now is rent control states, if I'm not mistaken, so they probably have similar Association like yours in that city, I guess. Brian: I would hope so. It sounds like they're fighting a losing battle as you and I both know as rental property owners, you know, I believe you invest out of state, out of your area, is that correct?  James: No. No, I'm from Austin. I invest everything in Austin and San Antonio. Brian: Okay. So would you even consider investing in a city or a state that has rent control?  James: No. Of course not.  Brian: Yeah. It's really detrimental to the market and I think it's going to cause a lot of problems. I used to live in Santa Monica, California where they had rent control and you can see the negative results of that. James: Oh, Santa Monica in California, did they have rent control in the past?  Brian: Yeah, a lot of the Los Angeles counties, you know, it's kind of county by county, city by city, area by area, but there is rent control in Los Angeles in certain areas and you can just see how rental property owners, who own buildings in rent control areas, have no incentive to put money back into them. They're not putting the capital expenditures back into their property to keep them in good shape because there's no incentive to do so. They can't raise rents beyond a certain amount each year and you know, so why would you invest $100,000 back into your building if you're not going to get that out in value? James: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't make sense for a business. So you may not run it as a business, you may be just run it as cash flow, I don't know, it's like a cash flow investment. I guess you don't have to spend any capital on it.  Brian: I can see how if you've owned the property for a long time and you bought it at the right price at the right time, you could probably be doing well with cash flow. But in these markets where you see a lot of rent control, they're expensive markets. So I'm not really sure once rent control is instituted in these markets what's going to incentivize new investors to come in and bring fresh money into the market. James: Interesting interesting. So coming back to your portfolio, can you tell me in terms of your holdings, how much is multifamily, how much is self-storage? How many percents of each one of these and how much is non-performing notes?  Brian: Sure. Sure. So multi-family is my bread and butter. I've been doing that since 2008. I moved to Grand Rapids in 2005 and 2008 the bubble burst, you know, we entered the Great Recession, it was a buyers' market. I bought my first 12 unit, I was using my own money in the beginning, started using other people's money and then started syndicating.  We currently have about 370 units here in the Grand Rapids area, Grand Rapids, Michigan and that's multi-family residential. In 2018 we purchased a self-storage facility, it's about 28,000 square foot, we're currently adding another 15,000 square foot to it and that's been a fantastic investment, I really love self-storage. And then, as you mentioned, I host a podcast - The Rental Property Owner and Real Estate Investor Podcast - and one of my guests over two years ago was a gentleman by the name of Gene Chandler and he was investing in non-performing notes and I really liked his strategy so much that I ended up investing well over 300,000 dollars with them and the results have just been fantastic.  James: So, you now do multifamily and now you're doing two other asset class. So can you tell me what does multifamily did not offer that these two other asset class offers? Brian: Well, I like you, I'm investing in my own backyard for when it comes to multifamily. Even though I've bought and sold over 450 units, in 2015, I stopped buying multifamily altogether because the values had gone to a point where I could no longer justify syndication. I couldn't get the returns that I needed for my investors to be able to to pay the prices that people were asking. The last two deals I found - one was off-market, one was kind of in between market - and I can go into details on that but anything that I saw after that point just, I was so spoiled by the prices I was getting between 2008-2014, that I started looking for other asset classes.  And there were probably about 3 years where I just sat on the fence, waiting to see if the market would change or something else would come along. And at some point, one of the people who I met through the podcast, brought me a self-storage deal that he had found off-market. I looked at it, I like the numbers. His underwriting was very conservative, but the numbers were very compelling and we ended up buying that in 2018. And just in one year of basically bringing the rents up to market value and switching to a virtual online web-based management system, we were able to add over $700,000 in value to that property. So I like the simplicity of managing and owning self-storage more so than multifamily because in multifamily, you have tenants and plumbing issues... James: So it's very Property Management intensive, right? Brian:  It definitely is and the self-storage, it's not. When you have turn-over, you're basically sweeping out a metal shed, you know, so it's a lot easier to manage and own and operate self-storage, especially when you're in a good market and I think we bought in an excellent market. It's just north of Lansing, Michigan. And then with the non-performing notes, I found a strategic partner who handled a lot of the nuts and bolts of that and I was able to invest with him somewhat passively so I enjoyed that aspect of investing there and the returns we were getting were very good.  James: Interesting. Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned in my book, commercial asset classes go in cycles. I mean, I know I'm a multi-family guy and your bread and butter is multifamily but if you find the right operators in other asset classes, you can make a lot more money or equal amount of money as what you're making with multi-family. So, would you think so? Brian: Absolutely. Finding the right strategic partners in other asset classes that's one of the things I set my mind to when I realize I'm just not seeing the returns I want to see in multifamily and apartments in my area where I'm comfortable investing. Now, have you looked at other asset classes? James: I did look at a few asset class. I mean the asset class that I looked at is also like, you know, self-storage or mobile home parks but it's also in demand. I'm surprised to see here that you found something in 2018 because I thought self-storage is a hot asset class as well, I will risk going after that. Brian: Yeah, it was a lucky strike and we've been looking for similar opportunities. But yeah, we're not finding them. What we're doing instead is building ground-up construction in self-storage, finding locations where the demographics are right and the need for more square footage of self-storage space is there and then we go in and fill that need. James: Yeah, but I'm happy that you are looking at multifamily is not like the only asset class throughout the whole real estate cycle. I mean you felt like in 2015, things picked up and you really can't find the prices that you want and you have changed strategy which is how an investor should be. You always want to look at what's available out there, the deal flow because the economy is still doing very well. There's a lot of capital out there and it's just harder to find a great really-making-sense deal. I wouldn't say deals, making sense deals in multi-family, something that makes sense. It's just so hard to find out nowadays. Brian: Absolutely. As an investor, you have to stay nimble and flexible and be open to other opportunities. Now, I know a lot of people in our field, our asset class of multifamily and apartments will find strategic partners outside of their area like in Texas or Georgia or wherever and partner with strategic partners who are able to find better value and better yields in their Investments. But I've had some bad experiences early on with some single-families that I owned out of state so I've always been very hesitant since then to own rental property, residential rental property, out of state. James: So you like to have any property within your own backyard, but you like to diversify within asset classes. Some people have one asset class, but they go across the nation. Like some people like to buy multi-family across the nation, wherever make sense but you are doing it the other way around. Brian: Yeah. Since I've branched out into self-storage and non-performing notes, I'm comfortable switching up asset classes. James: Awesome. So on self-storage, are you the operator, are you the primary guy?  Brian: No, my strategic partner is. He's the one who found the deal off-market, he negotiated it. I basically came in and raised the money; we syndicated that and raise the funds to be able to acquire it. James: Got it. Very interesting. And on the performing notes, you have a strategic partner, I would say, right? Brian: Yeah, I have a strategic partner on that. He's the one who knows that world. He's been doing it for well over six years now and really knows how to negotiate with the lender who we're purchasing a non-performing note from. He works with the homeowners to try to keep them in the home and figure out if that's even possible and then knows who the title company is that he should work with to get the right due diligence done and he's got the different scenarios in his head of how we can profit off of these notes. If we keep the homeowner in the home, what are the strategies there for us to maximize our profit or if we have to go through the foreclosure process. How do we go about that and maximize our returns in those cases as well. James: Interesting. Interesting. So if you get a multi-family deal today, would you still do it? Brian: If I found a deal that made sense and my underwriting shows that I could get the returns to my investors that they're accustomed to, I'd do it in a second, absolutely.  James: Okay. Okay. So let's talk about the market and submarket selection. So why did you move from California to Grand Rapids, Michigan?  Everybody's heading to Texas and Florida from California.  Brian: I'm from Michigan, originally. James: Oh, you're from Michigan? Okay, that makes a lot of sense.  Brian: Yeah, my wife is from here as well. So we met in California but decided okay, if we get married, start a family we didn't want to do it in Los Angeles, it's just too busy there.  James: Makes sense. Yeah, I mean just based on data that 50% of the population move to Texas And I think there's a lot more but Texas and Florida is the favorite destination for people from California. That's why I was asking the question. And how do you select the submarket in Grand Rapids, Michigan? Like how do you select which submarket to really do the deal? Brian:  Well eyes because I live here, I am looking within a half hour to an hour of where I live. Grand Rapids is very strong, has very strong demographics. It's one of the few Midwest cities that really bounce back strong from the Great Recession. A lot of diversified manufacturing industry. Furniture, Amway is here, we've got a lot of different industries and employment based here. So when I look at submarkets, I'm looking more at the neighborhoods, what's the crime rate in that neighborhood? What's the income level in that? What kind of rents can we command and by the way, I'll buy B properties and C properties or you know, C minus properties that we can push into that C plus B minus range. But I will avoid the The D areas and I've seen a lot of opportunities in the D areas. And by D, I mean where you have a lot higher crime rate, where you have a lot more evictions and tenant turnover and problems.  So I'm just very careful about and I work with the property management company that has a good grasp of these areas. So when we look at a property, we can really get a sense of if we buy this, is there an upside value, can we improve it and get higher rents, get better residents in here or is it going to be bound by the neighborhood it's in, that where it is now is what just where it's going to be? James:  Got it. Got it. Interesting. What about underwriting? I mean, when you look at a deal like I mean when you are buying multifamily, right? So how would you select the deal? Let's say a hundred deals been sent to you, do you know how many percents of it you would reject? Brian: Right now 100%. I'm not even looking right now, but what I'll do is I'll do a quick rule of thumb. Okay, what's the net operating income? What's the cap rate that they're asking? Is there upside potential? And of course, if it's listed by a broker, they'll always tell you the market the rents are way under market. you can raise the rent. No problem. That's sometimes true, sometimes not true.  But this area is so strong that any seller right now knows that they can get top dollar and while there's a lot of Institutions and out-of-state investors and even International investors who are willing to pay top dollar, the yields that they are willing to accept are much lower than what I'm willing to pay, which is why I'm not even looking at the moment.  James: Very interesting. Now I see it's happening across the country. I thought it was only happening in Texas and Florida but looks like across the country, that's what's happening. It's just so hard to find deals that used to make sense to us long time ago, right? So it's crazy out there.  Brian: Yeah, and it could just be that I'm spoiled because I was buying during a period when I could buy it at eight nine ten caps. And now, when I see things at five six, six and a half caps, I don't even want to consider them. But had I bought it at those cap rates between 2015 and 2017, I would have made a lot of money. So maybe I'm just a little too stringent in my criteria right now.  James: Yeah. That could be it as well.  Brian: Are you buying right now? James: Well, I mean, well, I'm still buying if I find the right deal. It's just so hard to find the deal that makes sense for my criteria, and I'm sure that's the same thing as your criteria. I'm still buying if I find the right deal but I'm not underwriting a hundred deals, you know, in one month. You know, whatever deal comes to me, I usually know that within the quick look, I know whether it makes sense for me to underwrite or not. And sometimes brokers will call me if they know that a certain deal is something that I would do. That's the only deal that I look at.  Brian: What's your quick back of the napkin way of determining whether or not you want to invest in something? James: If it's an email blast, I probably wouldn't look at it.  Brian: Yeah. Yeah, you kind of eliminate the ones that go out to everybody.  James: Yeah, it's already got everybody on his shop date and coming on an email blast. You know, you have to go on a best and final and best and best and final and then this ultimate best and final offer, which is you're shooting in the dark, right? You're basically bidding against yourself. [20:45 inaudible] I'm not really in a desperate mode to buy deals that go through that kind of process. So when I look for value-add if there's a true value-add deal, I mean, minus the crime rate area, I definitely know the area that has high crime rate, I can check it out quickly Class B and C, but need to have true value-add that we can go and add value. I don't really look at the entry cap rate, but I look for the spread of the cap rate from the time I buy to in the next two years kind of thing without any rent increases.  Brian: I think part of part of my problem, one of the reasons that I've just been on the fence is because we bought a value-add property back in 2015. It was an older building, built in 1920 and it was such an exhaustive process to go in and add value to that property. I was over there like every day. James: It is very tiring to do those value-add deals. To do deep value-adds, I would say.   Brian: Deep, deep value-add. And so my bandwidth for more opportunities was just completely limited because I was so exhausted by working on this one particular project. Now, luckily, we got it to a point where we added tremendous value to it and we're very proud of the work we did but you have to weigh the opportunity cost when you do those value-adds because sometimes they're so intensive that some of the lower hanging fruits, you bypassed that. James: Correct. Yeah. I see some syndicators doing deals every month and they're not doing a deep value-add or they're just doing the lighter value-add. Maybe they're just doing a yield play. [22:30inaudible] they can buy every month. They can claim 5,000 units or 3,000 years versus deep value-add to be like 100 and 200 and 300. It's a really really deep value-add. You probably make a lot more money than the guy who owns 3,000 to 4,000 units, but it's a lot of work.  Brian: It's more than just asset managing. You kind of become a de facto developer. James: Developer, a huge project manager. Yes, so many things but the deep value-add gives you a sense of accomplishment. Brian: It does.  I'm very proud of the work we did on this particular property and more so than any of my other properties because I didn't have to put nearly as much work into them.  James: Yeah, and the deep value-add it becomes a case study, right? Because it truly shows your skills to turn around property.  And people who have done deep value-add it's going to be easier for them to do the lighter [23:30inaudible]   Brian: Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent point.  James: So that's very interesting. So can you name like 2 or 3 secret sauces to your success? Brian: The two or three secret sauces to my success. I'm sorry if you hear that printer going in the background there.  James: It's okay. No worries.  Brian: Hopefully that ends soon. Secret sauces to my success; I think doing the underwriting, running my numbers. I always like to say, I like to see my numbers in bullet time. To see all the Matrix, you know, everything slows down and you can see it coming at you. I want to know what are the real expense is going to be after we've acquired the property. One particular mistake that I see a lot of investors making is they assume that the property tax is going to be the same as what the previous owner was paying and that's just not the case. So right there that's one of the main factors that I look at right away, is what is the property tax going to become once I buy this property and that eliminates 50% of the deals that I would even consider. So number one secret sauce is just really understanding the numbers. Not just where they are today, but where they will be once we acquire the property. Number two is having the right team. I am all about partnering with strategic partners who add value because they understand inside and out the asset class that you're investing in. The reason I was able to expand my multifamily portfolio was that I partnered with someone who owned his own property management company and managed the type of properties that I wanted to acquire. That without his assistance and without his team that really knew how to go in and do the due diligence and help me assess upfront, what are the capital expense costs going to be? What are the true costs going to be when we acquire this property? Without that, I would have made a lot of mistakes. The same with self-storage. I partnered with someone who even though he's young and new, somewhat new to the business, he had really studied it, talked to a lot of professionals, been mentored by people and really understood inside and out how we could add value to that self-storage facility. And everything that he put in his pro forma ended up becoming a reality. With my non-performing note partner, I mean he knows that world inside and out. So when we acquire a note, the first 12 that I bought with him, we only had one that we lost money on and that was about $1,700.  James: Out of how many notes?  Brian: We bought 12 notes to start with because I like to test before I bring other investors in so I bought 12 notes with my partner, I JV with him. Five of the notes our average return was over 80%.  James: Wow. What timeline? Brian: A year and a half.  Well, actually, each note is kind of on its own timeline. So I'll tell you that of the twelve notes that he and I purchased together, five of them are closed and paid off like we've made our profit. Our average return on investment, before we split 50/50, our average return was 81% and that included the one note that we lost $1,700 on. Some of the returns that we're getting are phenomenal. Five of the notes are re-performing, which means that we were able to keep the homeowners in their homes, which is fantastic. That's our number one goal. Our average return on those notes as we collect the monthly income is 30%. And then two of them are in some form of foreclosure. In fact, we're about to sell one. We just listed it today actually, so we should make a decent return on that. We always try to work with the homeowner and keep them in the home. Half the time we're able to do that, half the time it just doesn't work out. But you asked me the timeline so, of those five notes that we closed, our average return was 81%, the average number of days that we were in each of those notes was 163 days so that took less than half a year.   James: I mean, those are good great numbers. I mean, I mentioned in my book, find the right operator in that asset class and partner with them or invest with them for passive investors. So as I said in every asset class, there's always good operators. So the numbers you're telling me in non-performing notes in self-storage are huge, right? I mean, I know multifamily you can make money if the market went up and you have a really good operator that can handle that. On average, not everybody is making what you just told me right now on self-storage. So why is multifamily more popular than other asset classes?   Brian: There are more people teaching it.  James: That's absolutely my point. Brian: Yeah, I mean like there are some excellent instructors out there in multifamily and you and I are both the part of a group with one of them. I mean great top-notch training material. Okay. Yeah, there's just fewer people out there. Whereas you have between 10 to 20 people out there teaching multifamily, you could count on one hand the number of people teaching self-storage and it's even less teaching the non-performing note.  James: I understand. Yeah, it is it is true. There's a lot more people teaching multifamily, a lot more boot camps, a lot more 2 days weekend seminars on multifamily compared to self-storage or non-performing notes. And I think multi-family is also very simple to understand, it's a house. Not many people understand what is non-performing notes.  Brian: Yeah, there's all that educational like just understanding and wrapping your head around the concept. I got into multifamily because I understood the economy of scale and I understood people have to have a place to live. So if you can get them to pay their rent and that rent pays all your expenses plus the mortgage, well, you can make a lot of money that way. And then once I understood the next level of value, which is the income valuation method, how commercial multifamily is valued based on the income method and you can increase your returns exponentially if you understand that. The relationship between cap rate and your net operating income and value that was very compelling to me. And I think that still is very compelling when it comes to investing in commercial real estate whether it be multifamily or self-storage. I think non-performing notes, there's a lot more perceived risk in that because it's not valued based on any  - it's hard to understand how that's valued because there are so many different scenarios in which you can profit from non-performing notes. That you can't just say well we value it this way and if you buy this note, this is what you're going to make, it's kind of a crapshoot. But if you do it right and you partner with someone who knows how to avoid the dogs, you can actually make a lot of money doing it.  James: So what is the most valuable value-add in non-performing notes? Brian: You mean an example of one of our...? James: No, not an example. I'm talking about what is the one thing that if you do the most of the time or the frequency of things that you do in non-performing notes that you get the most value out of? Brian: Well, yeah, it differs note by note. I'll give you two examples. One is a property that was pretty much a teardown property that we bought the note on in Middlebury, Indiana. We paid $5,000 for this note and I asked my partner, I mean it's $5,000, this property is a teardown. How are we going to make money on this? And he said, well, we're not buying this for this property for the house that's on it. We're buying it for the land because it's right next door to a farm and this farm is owned by this Amish family. So he sent a realtor over to the Amish family and they ended up paying $35,000 for that note. So after closing costs and paying the realtor and getting our initial $5,000 investment back, our profit was over $24,000 that represented a 245% return and we did that in less than two months. James: Yeah, but you need to identify that opportunity. I mean, it's not like you can go and buy any deals right now. Okay, very interesting. Brian: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Another quick example of how you can profit on notes and I don't want it to lead you to believe that your best profit is always going to be a few foreclose or take possession of the property because you can still make a lot of money if you can work with the homeowners. We bought a note on a property in northern Michigan, probably about 9 or 10 months ago now. And I believe the numbers were in the line of we paid $20,000 for this note, got the homeowners re-performing, the unpaid balance on this note is $41,000. Once we have them season for 12 months, meaning that they're paying on time for 12 months - we've been working with them with a mortgage loan originator, where they can go and get new financing, permanent financing of FHA or Fannie Mae type loan in place with much better interest rate much better payments. Well, when they go do that, they're going to pay off that unpaid balance. So our $19,000 investment, now that I'm thinking about it was $19,000, our $19,000 investment, we're going to get paid that $41,000 of the unpaid balance on their note, plus the money that they've been paying each year. So our return on that is going to be 100%, it's actually over a hundred percent.   James: Across how many years?  Brian: We'll be out of that in under 15 months. James: Okay, interesting. Brian: Because they're going to refinance and when they refinance, we get paid that unpaid balance. James: Got it. Got it. What about on the multifamily properties that you own before 2015? What do you think is the most valuable value-add that you really like?  Brian: Well, they're all great because just anything I bought between 2008 and 2012, I've achieved an infinite return on those.  James: Okay. So refied it by and you kept it? Brian: Yeah. Yeah, we've refinanced, pulled our initial investment out. We have no money in the properties and we're collecting cash flow every month. So you can't calculate a return on that. Probably one of the best examples is a 37 unit that we purchased. We bought it at a short sale in 2009, was about 600,000 is what we paid for it. We put a $200,000 into it right away to replace roofs, windows. It was a hodgepodge of heating systems. There's electric baseboard heat and hot water boiler heat and then gas forced-air furnace heat. It just depended on which unit you were looking at. So we replaced a lot of the mechanicals, made it as much of a new property as we could, as far as just the mechanicals and the roof and the windows. And we refinanced it once it had over 1.1 million dollar value, pulled all of our initial investment out plus some extra cash flow and then we just refinanced it again, put a tenure fixed loan on it through the Freddie Mac. small apartment loan. So we got great terms on it, 30-year amortization. At that point, it valued over two million dollars. So we've added a lot of value to it and the compression of cap rates didn't hurt either.  James: Yeah. Yeah. Those are the awesome deals, the deep value-adds. That's where you can go and refi and make it infinite written because you pulled out all your cost basis. Brian: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the goal to achieve infinite return. Whenever we can do that, that's what we do.  James: Absolutely. Aren't you worried about the state of the market right now in real estate in general?  Brian: You know, gosh, I was more worried about it two years ago than I am now probably. James: What has changed? Brian: Probably because two years ago, I was thinking, oh, it's going to turn any minute now and then it only got better and better. You and I both know Neil Bala and we talked to him at the last event we were at together and he made a very good case for the continuation of this market. And it basically rests on the fact that the United States, it's one of the few, if not the only places in the world where you can go to get real yield on your investment. We're seeing a lot of international money coming into the United States because in their countries, they're seeing negative yield or 0 yield. Here even if you can still get three or four percent yield on your investment, that's a lot of money. It's bringing a lot of money into this country and that's going to prop up our values for quite a long time. On top of that, I've always fought or believe that interest rates were going to rise and I've been believing that since 2000 and they keep going down. And even now, as we're speaking, they're talking about lowering the rate again by the end of the year. So that interest rate risk, I know we're playing with fire here and eventually, we're going to have to pay the piper but our government seems to keep coming up with ways to prolong this growth and the increase in prices. So am I worried? Not in the short term. No. No. The Economists I listen to are saying, oh, it's going to be a roaring 20s for us. Things are really going to hit the fan and. 2027, 2028, 29. James: Interesting. Yeah, because I think I don't know, maybe my thoughts are similar to yours somehow the Fed has figured out how to do quantitative easing and quantitative tightening. Somehow they're able to contract the economy and bring it down. So they could have found some new mechanism to keep the economy going even though our thought process always has been real estate goes in cycles. But at some point, you will hit an affordability issue, it can't [40:13unintelligible]  go up all the time, right?  Brian: Yes.  James: The prices can go up because the interest rate is coming down because now you can get more cash flow. But at the same time, you can't keep on increasing rent because our wages are not going up so much. I mean, I'm not an economist but at some point, you will hit some roadblock, but I'm not sure where is it and how is going to come.  Brian: Yeah, well, we're seeing a plateauing I think right now in just the rents that we're able to charge, the prices that people are willing to pay but it's still a very strong market. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going out there and just buying stuff like crazy because I am very conservative and like I said if I can't get the returns that I need to bring investors into my deals, I'm just not even looking at it. I don't anticipate that the market is going to have a huge correction, there might be a bump, I think if you're in a good market, like Grand Rapids, that bump won't be nearly as severe as some other places.  I'm keeping my eye on the market but at the same time, investing conservatively in asset classes that I think will be able to withstand the next correction.  James: Awesome. So let's go back to a personal side of things, right? So is there a proud moment throughout your career in real estate that you will remember for your whole life, one proud moment? Brian: One for a moment to put on my tombstone. James: Yeah, absolutely. That you really think that hard, I'm really proud I did that.  Brian: Yeah. So a couple of answers. I mean any time we're able to go in and improve a property and improving neighborhoods, that always makes me proud, you know, that we're adding value to a neighborhood and community. The older building that I told you about here in Grand Rapids, it was built in 1920. When we bought that it was very tired, kind of poorly managed, it was losing money. We were able to turn that around so I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of the fact that we also fought very hard and work very closely with the city to be able to put a restaurant in that building. So the fact that when we bought it it was 96 apartment units and about 6,000 square foot of vacant commercial space. Now we had to work with the city to get it rezoned because it had been vacant for so long, it had to be reverted to being zoned residential. So we spent over a year trying to get it rezoned so we could add commercial in there, but we filled up all 6,000 square foot including a restaurant and that took about two or three years to do.  So when I think about what I'm proud of I think I'm definitely proud of that.  James: Awesome. That there is hard work  because you're turning the zoning from residential to mixed use.  Brian: Yeah, mixed-use residential commercial, just dealing with parking, number of parking spots and green space and tree canopies. I mean, it was a massive undertaking.  James: Yeah. It's very interesting that kind of work. I did one that was borderline and we merged it with an apartment and we did so many things. It was a very unique value-add that we recently refinance.  Brian: What was it, a lot of work for you? James: It was a lot of work because you have to go through, you know, buying the deal - you had to buy two deals at the same time. One is the apartment and one is the land and then we have to go to the city to merge these two plots. Then you had to rezone it, then you had to - I mean replot it, rezone it And then after you do a tree survey, you have to do so many different surveys have to do to get that. It's not normal in a residential, you know, where you buy today and increase rent, reduce expense kind of deal. But it's very interesting and people got 80% of our money within 15 months, which is huge, just by doing this creatively.  Brian: That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, you talk about its zoning and tree, you know.  James: Yeah, zoning and tree and all those. Brian: So it's a whole new world and it definitely is costly and time-consuming because you have to have experts on your team. You got to bring experts like architects.  James: Yeah, we brought in architects, engineers.  Brian: Yeah, engineers who even understand what it is that the city is asking for because if you were trying to do that yourself, you just would be a mess. James: Yeah. I mean the good thing about what you said about what I'm proud of this kind of process and 99% of the syndicators don't have that kind of experience. Brian: Yeah. I didn't have that kind of experience but now I do.  James: Most of the time, you just buy buildings and, you know, look at increasing income and reducing expenses and after that, at some point you sell but you don't do different contracts buying land and doing kind of things. So another question for you, Brian, why do you do what you do?  Brian: I love it. I love what I do. I feel very entrepreneurial about it because I've been an employee up until about five or six years ago. Whatever it was I was doing, whatever job, I always embraced it and did the best I could. But what I love about being an entrepreneur, being a full-time real estate investor, now syndicator/asset manager is that it's all very self-motivated. I'm the one who decides what needs to happen, what I need to pay attention to on a day-by-day basis. I don't have a boss or anyone else telling me, 'Hey, Brian, go do this' when I'm like, 'no, I want to go do this instead.' I get to call the shots. So that's what I love about it. I get to call the shots, I get to take time off if I need to take time off and I get to kind of fill my day with activities that I want to be doing. James: Awesome. Hey Brian, you want to tell our listeners and audience how to get hold of you?  Brian: Sure, James. First of all, you can go to my website, which is higinvestor.com. That's HIG is Hamrick Investment Group. You can also listen to my podcast and James you've been a guest on there so you can definitely listen to me interview James. It's the Rental Property Owner and Real Estate Investor Podcast and it's sponsored by the RPOA, which we begin this conversation talking about. And if you want to get in touch with me, you can also email me Brian@higinvestor.com.   James: Awesome, Brian. Thanks for coming in and adding value to my listeners and audience and to myself as well in the kind of things from our discussion here. I think that's it. Thank you very much.  Brian: All right. Thanks, James. It's been a pleasure. It's a lot of fun. James: Lot of fun, thank you.  

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Fanny: Hey, Brian, what's the most popular sports in Canada?Brian: The most popular sport is definitely ice hockey.Fanny: Ice hockey! So do you play hockey by yourself?Brian: I don't actually. When I was a kid, I wanted to play ice hockey, and I was always like begging my dad and asking him but he always said 'NO'.Fanny: Why?Brian: I think the big reason is that... Well, he told me it was too expensive.Fanny: Is it?Brian: It's not cheap. You know, it costs quite a bit to get all the gear but the big reason I think is the practice was always very early in the morning.Fanny: Oh, I see.Brian: Like five a.m. is when the practice is, and I think he was too lazy to wake up and take me to the practice.Fanny: Oh, I see.Brian: He told me it was too expensive. Deep down I think he was.... he didn't want to drive me.Fanny: So are there many people playing hockey?Brian: There are. It's a great sport. It's very popular with many children, and maybe high schools and universities all have hockey teams.Fanny: Oh, nice. That means you're a lot of rich people in Canada, then.Brian: Or maybe they spend all of their money on hockey gear. Have you ever played hockey?Fanny: No, no, not really. It's not that popular in China.Brian: What kind of sports are more common in China?Fanny: People always play soccer...Brian: Ah, soccer.Fanny: And table tennis. Table tennis is very popular.Brian: You're country is very strong at table tennis I think.Fanny: We always get all the medals in the big, you know, big eventsBrian: Why is table tennis so popular now do you think?Fanny: I think the first reason is that everybody can play it because it's very easy to get the, you know, the... to get ready for the sports. It's not expensive.Brian: No, I guess you just need the ball and the paddle.Fanny: The paddle. The ball and the paddle. Yes, and a partner.Brian: Right. Right. So have you played it then?Fanny: Yeah, I'm quite good at it.Brian: Oh, really.Fanny: Because my mother plays very well and so I always played with my mom, so I got better now.Brian: OK. So she taught you how to play table tennis?Fanny: Actually she didn't teach me but we always played together.Brian: Right.Fanny: Practice makes perfect.Brian: So they sayFanny: Yeah.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Fanny: Hey, Brian, what's the most popular sports in Canada?Brian: The most popular sport is definitely ice hockey.Fanny: Ice hockey! So do you play hockey by yourself?Brian: I don't actually. When I was a kid, I wanted to play ice hockey, and I was always like begging my dad and asking him but he always said 'NO'.Fanny: Why?Brian: I think the big reason is that... Well, he told me it was too expensive.Fanny: Is it?Brian: It's not cheap. You know, it costs quite a bit to get all the gear but the big reason I think is the practice was always very early in the morning.Fanny: Oh, I see.Brian: Like five a.m. is when the practice is, and I think he was too lazy to wake up and take me to the practice.Fanny: Oh, I see.Brian: He told me it was too expensive. Deep down I think he was.... he didn't want to drive me.Fanny: So are there many people playing hockey?Brian: There are. It's a great sport. It's very popular with many children, and maybe high schools and universities all have hockey teams.Fanny: Oh, nice. That means you're a lot of rich people in Canada, then.Brian: Or maybe they spend all of their money on hockey gear. Have you ever played hockey?Fanny: No, no, not really. It's not that popular in China.Brian: What kind of sports are more common in China?Fanny: People always play soccer...Brian: Ah, soccer.Fanny: And table tennis. Table tennis is very popular.Brian: You're country is very strong at table tennis I think.Fanny: We always get all the medals in the big, you know, big eventsBrian: Why is table tennis so popular now do you think?Fanny: I think the first reason is that everybody can play it because it's very easy to get the, you know, the... to get ready for the sports. It's not expensive.Brian: No, I guess you just need the ball and the paddle.Fanny: The paddle. The ball and the paddle. Yes, and a partner.Brian: Right. Right. So have you played it then?Fanny: Yeah, I'm quite good at it.Brian: Oh, really.Fanny: Because my mother plays very well and so I always played with my mom, so I got better now.Brian: OK. So she taught you how to play table tennis?Fanny: Actually she didn't teach me but we always played together.Brian: Right.Fanny: Practice makes perfect.Brian: So they sayFanny: Yeah.

In today's episode, we help Brian figure out if his business idea will make money online. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey y'all, on today's podcast we help Brian figure out if his business idea will make money online. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast where life always comes before work. We're your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online. Now we help other families do the same. Are you ready to flip your life? All right, let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today. Super excited to talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community. You'll have to bear with us. Jocelyn and I are just getting back from a conference, and both of our voices are a little shot. We're still a little jet lagged, but that's not going to hold us back from helping today's Flip Your Life community member, Brian Kelley. Brian, we're tired, but welcome to the show. Brian: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Shane: And Brian's on the road too. He's on the road too. Brian: I absolutely am, yup. Shane: He's in Chicago at a conference, so he might be a little tired too. We're going to go through this now. We're going to fight through it together. How's that? Brian: That sounds great. Jocelyn: We're excited to talk to you today, Brian. You are coming to our event, which is coming up very, very soon so that is super exciting. And I know that you have been taking a lot of action lately which is how you got on the show today, so congratulations for that. And we can't wait to hear a little bit more about it, but before we get there let's hear about you and your background. Brian: All right. I work in restaurants. I've been in the restaurant industry for about 25 years, and I actually love it. I love my job. I'm married with two kids, and the issue I tend to run into is that I'm concerned about our financial future. I like what I do, but both of our kids have special needs, and it requires extra planning for the future. I don't think that there's a way for me to get my family where we ultimately need to be at retirement with just our incomes. So I'm looking to supplement it with something online. Brian: And then the other reason that I've been pursuing it is just because I think it's a lot of fun. I've listened to your Podcast for a long time now, and I've actually been a member for a year. Everything that I learn that's new and sitting down and actually creating a website and stuff is really intriguing to me. I find it exciting, and I like it, so that's kind of why I chose this path. I'm just looking for any bit of success at this point. I think I've done a lot of the base level stuff. I'm up and rolling, and I'm just trying to get that first dollar made. Shane: Dude, I get it, man. I sat there for months and months waiting for any amount of money to flow into my pocket. And what's crazy is we ask our guests on the show, we look for people in the forums who are taking action, filling out success stories, helping other people, and you have just had this flurry of activity. You've been taking all the courses, talking in the forums, coming to the live event in September, and all of this stuff lately. And that's kind of how we were like, "Whoa, what is this guy doing? He is doing everything. We've got to get him on the show, we've got to help him because we really want to reward action takers in the community." What caused this flurry of activity. You said you've been in the community for a year now. What's happened lately or changed or how'd you [inaudible 00:03:42] to get moving forward in your business? Brian: It was two things. It was, one, probably first and foremost, a new idea for a website. And secondly was I just got really angry that I hadn't finished my last idea, that I hadn't succeeded with it. I got mad and determined because of that. So I just committed and said I was starting again and going to try to do it again. Shane: And are you looking to create a full time income right now or is it more like a side hustle like you love your job? Are you looking to create something on the side that's more like, "Hey, now I can make a lot more money and still do this job that I love, and then maybe someday I can use it to get some time freedom back?" What's the ultimate goal right now? Brian: The ultimate goal is to create a full online business. Shane: Right, right, right. Brian: [inaudible 00:04:39] I want now like I really meant it when I said I think this stuff is really fun, and I'm extremely dedicated to it. I don't have to have ... I'm not beating down the door to escape my job. I love it. I love the people I work with. It's not an urgent need, but there is that need. It has to happen over the next 10 to 20 years for sure. Shane: For sure, yeah. Recently I met this guy named Mark Mason. He has a Podcast called Late Night Internet Marketing, and his story reminds me of yours a lot. He was like, "I love my job. I've got a great job. It fulfills me. I love the people I work with. But I like other things too," is what he said. And he's like, "And of course, if anything ever happened I've got this other thing. It's sitting there waiting for me. I've got choices in my life." And that's what online business can do for you. It gives you choices, and it gives you exactly what you need in the moment. Some people may love their job and just want some extra money or some people may love their job, but they're not quite sure how it could handle a recession, so they want to have something in their back pocket to do that. And some people are like, "Man, I love my job right now, but I'm smart enough to look into the future and see I'm going to need something different later," right? Brian: Yes. Shane: All of us should be doing that. Even in our online business right now we do that a lot. We look into the future and be like, "What is our business going to look like 10 years from now? What does it need to look like based on our needs, our kids' needs, our future needs as we get older or whatever?" And we have to think about those things, and it's really cool that you're seeing the flexibility here of, "Hey, let's not get desperate. Let's not get crazy. Let's just build something cool and have fun with it, and it will be there for me if I need it and my kids need it. Brian: Yes. Jocelyn: All right. So you like your job now, but you want some options as far as making extra income, which I think is a great idea. I actually used to work in the restaurant industry too years ago. I don't know if you've ever listened to our Podcast where I talk about I used to work for a commercial dish machine manufacturer. Shane: She puts your dishwasher in the back room is what she did for them. Brian: Right. I heard you say that on the Podcast. I think about it every day when I walk by a dishwasher]. Jocelyn: Yeah. Shane: That's hilarious. You might be the only person that sees a dishwasher and thinks- Brian: I know people who sell this equipment. That's right. Jocelyn: So I actually didn't do a lot of end user work. It was mostly to manufacturers' representatives and that type of thing. But anyway, so yeah I know about the restaurant industry. I've been to many trade shows and all that kind of thing, so I know a lot about restaurant stuff. Anyway, I love that you are trying to branch out and do something different. Let's talk a little bit about that. What have you tried before, and what are you doing now? Brian: Okay. As far as what I've tried before there's probably a list of five or six, maybe more, things going back 10 years all the way starting with Etsy and just trying to make products for Etsy. I looked into doing drop ship stuff for a little while and decided that totally wasn't for me. Most recently when I joined the community I had an idea for online fishing tournaments. I thought it would be really fun to do online fishing tournaments. I have a lot of friends and family that are competitive at fishing, and I thought it was going to be a great idea. The issue I ran into was two-fold. One, it really wasn't ... What I had created wasn't conducive as it was, so the membership model and I really wanted to do that, and it required so much involvement that it just was never going to work with my schedule. I didn't have the time to execute the operation, so I kind of let it die, and I got discouraged because that was my favorite idea at the moment. Shane: What is an online fishing tournament? How would that even work? Would I fish at my house and you would fish at your house and we'd take pictures? Jocelyn: No, this is what I think of. Do you remember there used to be the Nintendo Wii that had those little controllers. There was a fishing tournament on there. Shane: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Jocelyn: That's what comes to my mind. Shane: Oh yeah, we would compete on ... What was ... Brian: Actually it was like real fishing, and it's modeled after the capture, photo, release style of fishing, which is what a lot of kayak fishermen do. So instead of wait it's on links, so I built an app and people could just take a photo of the fish they caught on a fish ruler and upload it. And basically it allowed people to compete wherever they were on the same species of fish. Shane: That's actually a really cool idea though. Brian: It is, but the problem is I had to be there to launch the tournaments, and I had to be there to judge the tournaments, so there were specific times where I would have to wake up at like ... Fishermen wake up at, like, four in the morning, right, to launch a tournament. And then I had to judge it, and then there were issues with faking species. Shane: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian: There's some logistics that ... I still have that website. I have not thrown it away. I still have an e-mail list for it. There's a ton of interest in it. I just can't execute that right now. Shane: Interesting. We'll keep that one in your back pocket, okay? Jocelyn: I have never heard of an online fishing tournament. This is a first. Shane: My nephew comes over. We've got this lake behind our house. And he'll just sit here and catch fish for five hours. He's all by himself, but I could picture that being like what if he was virtually with other people fishing at the same time? Brian: And could win money for if he caught a big fish. It makes it a lot of fun. Shane: What a cool idea? That's an amazing idea. What else did you try? Brian: Oh gosh. We were doing ... I was trying to do something connected to restaurants so I modeled a website after some others I had seen that were basically just promoting websites kind of like an affiliate except it was locations and venues would pay a fee to be listed on the website, and the website would market to people that were traveling to the area, give them itineraries, lists to view, things like that. Shane: That sounds cool. What was the holdup there? It's too hard to get every restaurant in the world on it kind of deal or ... Brian: No, it was honestly ethically I didn't want to promote ... I work at a restaurant. I didn't want to promote my competition, and I didn't think that was the right thing to do. And it was honestly that started out as a way for me to gain a marketing strategy for my own restaurant briefly, and I just didn't feel okay doing that. And also there's a reason that ... I'm very experienced in the restaurant industry, but there's a reason that the things that I'm choosing to do are not related to the restaurant, and that is because I don't want burnout. Restaurant hours are long, so if I were to tackle more restaurant stuff after that I just feel like it's restaurant all the time, and that's just too much for me. I think I'd burn out because [inaudible 00:12:11] something new. Shane: For sure. A lot of people come into the community, and one of the things that you hear online a lot is, "Chase your passion and the money will follow." And there is a lot of truth to that, but like Jocelyn and I usually try to start with something you're more familiar with because it's actually a lot easier to create something and make money with something you're trained for or that you know. But if someone doesn't want to do that there's lots of other alternatives. You don't have to do that, and I totally get the burnout stuff. Shane: Even as much as I used to love football coaching, like I loved it. I ate it, I breathed it, I slept it. I was always on football coaching. But after you start a community for football coaches, you talk to coaches, you go to work and coach, you come home and coach, and you make playbooks, and you go study playbooks, then you use your playbook on Friday night I really felt the burnout. It didn't matter how much I loved or was passionate about coaching football, at the end of the day you've got to do something else, like you've got to do something else. I can totally get onboard with that. Shane: Tell us about your idea now and how did you switch to that, and when did you start it? Brian: All right. My ideal now is to educate people on credit card points, travel points and miles that you can accumulate spending on credit cards and how to cash them in for maximum value to book free trips and vacations. So my website now is learnthepoints.com, and there is a strategy in there which we teach people so they can earn eight to $10,000 worth of free travel in basically nine months. So that's my goal is to have people that are willing to pay for a monthly membership for even if it's a short term be educated on the best way to accumulate these points and to redeem them for the most value. Shane: And also, too, make sure you're paying off the credit card, staying out of debt? Brian: Yes, 100%. Shane: It's always free money, right? Brian: It's free money. Don't spend anything that you weren't normally going to spend and set up automatic payments, pay everything off every month. I came up with this idea. I got shocked, honestly, just recently. My wife and I do not have any debt. It took us a while to get there. We're very credit card averse. I had just never looked into credit card points before. I had heard people talk about miles and flying and all of that stuff, and I just assumed in my head that these were people that fly all the time, and that's how they do this or they're on these big corporate accounts, so that allows them to rack up all these points. And that's just something that's not for me, and I don't apply for credit cards, so when offers come by I don't look into that stuff. Brian: But what happened was we went through a dark time in December as a family, and when the end of the school year was rolling around and it was summertime was coming up, and we were like, "We need a vacation." All I had set aside for vacation for free money was, like, 500 bucks, which is not bad. We can have fun as a family on 500 bucks, no problem. But all of our other money goes to saving. It all goes to retirement accounts or education accounts or you name it. So we've never really taken a really awesome vacation. Brian: It was kind of out of desperation or just, "You know what? I'm going to look into this and see what it's about," that I discovered what the possibility was with credit card points. And then when I realized all these bonus sign up tricks and stuff I just got obsessed and started doing all this research and figured it out and based on that developed a strategy and a plan that's basically going to get us free vacations for the next three or four years for our family. I was like, "This is awesome. How did I not know about this for so long?" I was like, "Hey wait. This could totally be an online business. Other people need to know about this." So I just popped up a website real quick and then got enthused and jumped back into the trainings. Shane: Wow. Brian, what happened in December? Brian: Unfortunately in December we lost our daughter at birth. She died, and we were really excited. We have two boys that are young. They're four and five. Both of our boys have special needs. They're both autistic, and my oldest son has Down's syndrome. We were really excited not just to have a girl in the family but to have what would be most likely our first typically developing child as well. And it was just we were really excited about it, and there were complications during delivery, and she passed away. So it was a really sad time. There's a lot of grief and anger that comes with that, and it really ... My wife and I both went to counseling. We both got help through our church. We had spent probably three months was just like in shock and recovery. And then the next three months was kind of like just rebuilding your life a little bit and trying to return to normalcy. Brian: But after being through those last six months and dealing with that there's just this need for a break like from all of life almost in a way. We work hard. We have separate schedules. It's crazy at the house because the kids are crazy. So I could see it on my wife's face like we need a vacation. Shane: Like an actual remove from the world like- Brian: Like the community pool is not going to cut it this time. We've got to go. Jocelyn: Absolutely. Shane: How did you explain it to your kids? It would be hard enough explaining it to kids who are developing at normal rate. Was it tough? Brian: It was tough because we did a lot of practicing. We did a lot of therapy going up, so we had a doll that we carried for half a year before the due date where we were training the boys on, "Hey, this is Baby Sister, and this is how you hold Baby Sister." It took us three months before they stopped throwing the doll around. We were practicing and training and getting ready, and we had her room ready of course. We found our own special ways to talk about her with the boys and remember her. I feel like we're in a really healthy place thanks to the involvement of others in the communities that we're in mostly. It's always sad. It's just something that you're never going to forget. You don't move on from it so to speak, but you cope better and better every day. Shane: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. I know that's probably really hard to talk about. Jocelyn: That's just heartbreaking. I'm so sorry to hear that. Shane: It is. I'm having trouble even not crying right now, and I stammer over my words for a few minutes. I also want to just kind of highlight that you did recover, and you did move forward, and I love how you harnessed the negative thing to think about something positive like my family needs to more forward. We need to go on a vacation. That's not trivial. That's a thing that's going to help us to take the next step because we have to take the next step. Brian: Right. Shane: And then even to come up with an idea like we have a saying that we always say around our house and around our kids and others is like, "Successful people don't say I can't do that. Successful people say how can I do that?" So you didn't say, "Oh there's only $500 in the bank. I can't go on a vacation." You said, "No, this thing is important for our family. How can we make it happen?" And that's true for life. That's true for online business. That's true for anything like if you're going to be successful you've got to figure out how to do it. So regardless of whatever happens with this online business idea, dude, just the fact that you made that happen, and your family did the thing was totally worth going down that path. Brian: Yeah. Shane: That's a powerful story, man. There's an awesome story in the Bible, I believe it was David's son passed away. I don't want to butcher the Bible, but I'm just going off the cuff here. And he mourned, and then he immediately put on his cloak and got back to work. In the story people were like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "I have to move forward. I've got other sons. I've got a kingdom I have to do," and I really felt that kind of story coming through when you were telling us that, man. I have no words about something like that, but I am very impressed and inspired by that story you just told me because if that ever were to happen to us I know, "Hey look, Brian got it, he stepped up, we can do this." So anybody else out there listening to this I hope you are really inspired by Brian's story too. Jocelyn: Okay. I am kind of curious, and I'm sure other people are too. So you got this credit card thing going. You started learning about it. And were you able to book something? Brian: We're actually we've racked up a ton of points, and we're saving them. We started kind of at the beginning of the summer, and my wife works for the school district. School's about to start, so we're just deciding what date we're going to book and where we want to go. Shane: That's amazing. Brian: We're kind of lined up and ready. We're all excited now. It's like one of those things where we were really anxious to go anywhere. We would've taken anything, you know what I mean, but now that we've got these points in the bank and we can pretty much go anywhere for free we're like, "Hold up, hold up, let's think about this. Let's pick a really good one." Shane: Right. We get a lot of points too. We're like you though. We're like we hate debt. Credit cards scare us. I pay out credit cards. Any credit card use that we have I pay it off every week, every Thursday. I don't mess around. Every Thursday I sit down. But we use two cards. We have a business card, and we have a personal card. And we put everything on it, like everything. And we pay it off once a week because man those points are like free flights here, free all-inclusive vacation in Cancun. You can just book hotels. Jocelyn: We travel a lot because our daughter's on a travel cheer team, and I got every room last year except for one for free. Shane: Yeah, and that's like nine cheerleading vacations. Nine weekends of the year we're on the road staying two or three nights. And it's just you show up, and you have a room for free. Brian: And what I think is crazy is that there are just so many people that were like me six months ago, had no idea that you could do this. Shane: I didn't know you could do it either because we were Dave Ramsey people too of course. We're like, "Get out of debt. Never use a credit card. Credit cards are evil." And I'm like, "But they're giving you free money. Wait a minute. Let me look at this for a minute." Now, you're not going to get rich off of it, but free money's free money. It doesn't matter how you look at it. Jocelyn: And disclaimer, we do not advocate going into debt to get credit card points. Shane: No, don't go into $10,000 in debt to get $5,000 in credit card points. That doesn't make sense. You're losing money there y'all. Tell us a little bit more about that. Brian: What I try to get people to understand, and I don't know if my message is really good. I'm still trying to perfect it to get it quick because there's a lot of pushback. People just don't know that you can do it. There are credit card fees on some of these cards, but essentially I had $500 in the bank. For $500 you can afford the credit card fees on eight different cards at one time. And if you were to do that you'd have somewhere between, depending on your spending, $8,000 and $12,000 worth of free travel. So it's not that it's- Shane: Right, you're spending 500 for 8,000 basically. Brian: Yeah. If you were going to spend 500 you have two options. You can either spend $500 on your vacation or you can spend $500 on the credit card fees and take a $10,000 vacation. Shane: Yeah, that's incredible. We actually know a guy that does something similar to this. He was a member of the Flip Your Life community. His name's Brad Barrett. Have you ever heard of Brad Barrett? Brian: I did. I started researching everybody. I found his ... He has a Facebook group and a training that he does. And it's awesome. Facebook group is an awesome community. He built something really great there, and his training is very to the point and succinct, and it's good info to. So I really liked looking at his stuff. Shane: Yeah. And he was an accountant, and he really did want out of his job. He just went all in. But he focused. He only went like ... It was to go to Disney. It was straight up to go to Disney. That's how he taught it. And we've met other people who do successfully do this. And I was just at a conference this weekend, and someone was telling me like, "You know, I feel like I've got to invent a brand new thing. I've got to go the blue ocean." You guys hear that blue ocean, red ocean stuff? Brian: Right. Shane: And I looked at him. I said, "No, that's not what you do." You don't have to bake a new pie. You don't have to invent a new recipe. You've got to look around and find a pie, and you just want a slice of that. So that's why we always really encourage people like if you see someone else doing something similar to you that's not bad. That's good. That means that they've figured out how to make money at it, and there's 4 billion people connected to the internet. I promise you they're not selling to all 4 billion people. You just need some of the other people that are interested in that space. It's like abundance mentality. There's more than enough customers out there. You don't have to invent the better mousetrap. You just need to find people that need a mousetrap and sell them one. You're on the right path, and there's definitely something to this. So what's holding you back right now? Is there a mindset issue or an obstacle from doing this? Brian: Okay, so I went back and I watched the Vetting Your Idea video. So I had jumped into this full force before watching that video. I wish I would've watched it first. Shane: Wait a minute. So you're saying you should do the Flip Your Life blueprint in order? Brian: Shane, I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to take this opportunity to tell people to follow the plan the right way. Shane: Right. People jump in all the time, and they're like, "I watched video 12, and it was awesome." And I'm like, "Did you watch one through 11 because they're important?" You've got to do it in order. The Vetting Your Idea course, you know what's funny about that course in particular. I laugh because I'm saying watch it in order. When we made the blueprint, when we created the blueprint that course didn't used to be in there. Yeah, because we were so caught up in helping people find their idea and get started. I kind of looked at it, and I was like, "I go through the process whenever we have a new business and I'm like is someone else doing this? How do I find out if it's making money online?" I have a process that I check things, and I realized we were ... Because a lot of times people get held back, and I didn't want to put too much information in front of someone like I just wanted you to get your idea and start because that's where the real magic is when you start. Shane: But then I thought, "Wow, there's really an easy way to tell if people are making money on this, and I just need to show that to them." So we put that course back in later. I actually made that course after the original blueprint was created so that people could properly vet that, yes, this is a real idea. People are definitely making money online, and I can check it empirically. I can go and say, "That is a 100% truth. This can make money online. I just have to do it." And that's kind of probably what you saw when you watched that with the idea course. Brian: Yeah 100%. So I started looking, and what I found a lot of regarding credit card points and miles there's a ton of people who are offering free courses, and they are using affiliate links for their credit card sign-ups. Shane: Yes 100%. Brian: That is what most, like 95% of what's out there is affiliates for the credit cards, which I don't think there's anything wrong with necessarily although I have started my website and really pushed that I am not an affiliate for the credit cards. Shane: Great differentiator. That makes you different. Brian: Yes. I've also noticed affiliates have different promotions and all that stuff, and sometimes teaching others isn't true. It's just not the best version of the information because they're promoting a specific credit card before another one, so I really wanted to focus on ... yeah. I really want to focus on what's going to be my users, my guests on my site, and what's going to get them the most bang for the buck the right way to do it. I'd rather not get involved with affiliates at all. I'd rather just tell them the truth like if you want to get the most money this is how you get the most money. Shane: So one sticking point is like you're kind of ... You said a lot of other people have went down the road because if I can get you to sign up for the credit card I might get a $100 fee. The bad part about that strategy is you're really relying on a lot of traffic. You've got to have a lot of traffic coming in to make that work because you're not getting any recurring off these credit card points that you get people to sign up for. It's just you get 100 bucks, you move on. You know what I mean? So you almost have to get them to sign up for five at once just to make a good chunk of change out of the beginning. Are you concerned that nobody will pay for it because the other ... Brian: Right. I was concerned that nobody would do a membership for the information. There is a lot of free information out there. It's just that my information's better than the free information that's out there, but I need to be able to convince people that it's worth whatever I'm charging right now I set it up to charge $25 a month. Shane: Right. Brian: I did find at least one site that is doing a membership model, and that gave me hope, but it was hard to find. Shane: To be fair the internet's a big place. You know what I mean? So there's probably other people out there doing it to. If you found one there's probably more. Brian: Yeah, I would think so. There is another aspect to it. Some people are also doing one-on-one coaching and booking trips for people using their credit card points to get the most value for it. So those are some one-offs that I found. But my biggest concern is that looking for validation that approaching this from the membership model setting up a $25 a month membership to educate people and provide them with free tools and resources is something that somebody will pay for, that it'll work. Shane: I would say they would if you position it correctly, right? Because there's an old saying in copywriting where if you can give people free money they'll buy your product. And this is a free money product. It is. It's like if you get the cards you will get free money. You will get the points. So if you can say, "Hey look, I ..." Telling your story is the most critical part of your marketing because you literally did this. You're like, "Look, I have no debt. I have these cards. I've got three vacations, enough money for three vacations over the next three years. I have $8,000 in credit card points. I spent $500 to do it. I made $7,500." This is true. These are all facts. You can check it. It's 100% real, and it happens when you do it this way. So like that's free money. It really is. It sounds so scammy but it's not. It's free money. It really is free money. Brian: It is, yes. Shane: And you've actually done this. Your story is where you have to start with your marketing to convince people that that's going to happen. Jocelyn: I almost feel like this is one of those situations where it's a side-by-side. And what I mean by that is that you have a course on one side, and you list all the benefits of just doing the DIY course. And then on the other side you have your monthly payment, which is the same price as your course, but it just recurs. And you position that as this is the courses plus support from me as you go through this. Shane: Yeah. So it is kind of two products. The content is isolated, but then there's a way to interact with you like I'm going to help you make purchasing decisions, and I'm going to help you. I'm going to walk with you as you spend the money. We're going to have a ... A buddy of mine does a membership, so listen to what this is. He does this membership where basically it's a writing hour. So twice a week he shows up, he does a quick writing tip, and then basically he has, like, 300 members and they all just show up to write together. That's what they do, but it's accountability. It's to ask a question. It's to just hang out really. There's no relieving content involved in the membership, but people love it because they've got somewhere to go in the moment to either get accountability or ask a question. Shane: So it's like you could have a weekly pay off your credit card party. Hey guys, last week we got our groceries. Hey Jim, what'd you do? Oh man, I bought a subscription to Netflix. Okay, let's pay that off. You could keep people out of debt parties. It's not like you're really even answering questions. It's just you show up, and everybody's accountable to stay out of debt while they're accumulating their points. And then they can ask questions to you like, "Well, I found this other card. Is this a good card Brian?" Yeah it is. That's a good card. You should do this. You should do that. Don't worry. You can trust my advice because I'm not an affiliate for that card. Brian: Exactly. Shane: But you can throw stones at the other people like, "Hey guys, all these other people they're recommending cards that give them the best affiliate payout. Not me. Brian you can trust because I'm here for you." I love the idea that the course is separate or they can work with you for real, work with you. And your whole story then becomes so important because now they trust you to join your membership community. So you're not selling them content anymore. You're not selling them the path anymore. You're really just selling you. You know what I mean? And your experience, your coaching, and your leadership. Brian: If I switch this over and change it so I've got this side-by-side thing going on on the website would you market or promote the course, and then when they get to the landing page they would see the course or the membership option then? Shane: I'm going to give everybody that's listening a tip right now. Nobody cares what's in your course. Nobody cares about the course. All they care about is your story. The only thing I would be telling yours like you need to go on this vacation, and you need to have some pictures of it, and you need to be able to talk about it, and you need to be able to blog about it. And everything happens going forward is I had this horrible experience. I knew my family needed vacation. I found a way. We did it. And now I'm bringing the torch back from Mt. Olympus. This is a heroes journey story if there ever has been one. Jocelyn: I agree. And I don't think that the course material is unimportant per se. Shane: Right. It's not unimportant. It's just not the most important. Jocelyn: But I do feel that the most important things are being able to relate to you, can you solve their problem, and then the course material is way on down the list. Shane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the second thing. Jocelyn: And I think people get this backwards. People always want to do their sales page look at all these wonderful things that I have in my course or program. And they want to give you the 10-minute rundown of every nut and bolt in their program. People don't care about that. People care about can you solve my problem and do I like you? Shane: What most people remember at any event, like let's say you go to a rock concert, when musicians create their set they really focus on the first song and the last song because that's what you're going to remember. It's like a movie. You remember how a movie started. A lot of stuff happens in the beginning, and we all remember the end. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn: Right. Shane: It's like Avengers. There's like 18 movies over like 20 years, and pretty much it all boiled down to at the beginning Thanos wanted some rocks, and at the end Iron Man fights him. That's what we all remember in between, right? So that's kind of what you're doing here. It's like, "This is my story. This is real. You can trust that it's real because all these other people are only recommending things that pay them good. I'm not because I'm not an affiliate for any of these people. I'm telling you the truth, and inside my community I'm going to help you do it. Shane: So you can have a general list of things like categorical these are the results you'll get inside. Know the first thing you'll buy. Know the first card to get. Know the order that they're going to get. You're more telling the results, but you're not telling the exact courses and all that stuff. There's no reason to. No one cares. But when they get inside we get into detail. Jocelyn: Okay. Shane: First course, blueprint one, second course, blueprint two, third course, blueprint three. That's when you get really into it. Don't try to sell the content. Like you said the content's free. I hate to tell everybody this. All content's free. Every piece of content that has ever existed inside of any course is somewhere free on the internet. Now, can you find it? Is it hard to find? That's where curation and courses come into play. But it's all free. You've just got to figure out how to make your free stuff look better, and your story is the best way to do that. Brian: Okay, great. Jocelyn: Okay, Brian. I think that we have some good ideas about moving forward as far as your product goes. What else do you need help with right now? Brian: I think I'm up to close to 400 people on my e-mail list. That's mainly coming through Facebook and Facebook ads with my lead magnet. However, I have not converted anybody on my e-mail list into purchasing as of yet. Shane: How often do you e-mail your list? Let me ask you a couple questions here. It's a big list. You should've converted something, so let's figure this out. Brian: Yeah. I have an auto responder set up for the first eight e-mails that follow very closely the e-mails in the blueprint. So those go out, and I follow the same timeline, so it's like a couple immediately and then about a week later and then a couple days later. And then there's one at the end two weeks out that's like, "Hey, I'm not going to send you anymore. You'll just continue to get vacation updates from me basically." And I send out whenever I have time to design a new vacation that somebody can take for free I just e-mail that to my whole list. Shane: So basically your e-mail ... So only your auto responder is what's tried to sell this so far. You've only [crosstalk 00:40:30]. Brian: That's true. That's correct, only my auto responder, yeah. Shane: Okay. What if you sent them a message that said, "Hey, I'm doing a live training this week, and I'm going to show you how to get $8,000 for free?" Brian: I haven't done that yet. Shane: Okay. You've got to add more layers to it. The auto responder is just for picking low hanging fruit, the lowest of the fruit. Actually it's like walking under an apple tree, and the apple has already fell off, and you bend down and pick it up. That's where automation comes in. You're never going to convert more than a single digit percentage off of your e-mail list, right? You have to add live Webinars. You have to add weekly Podcasts or blog posts or something. Shane: I'm also looking at your site here, and it definitely needs a facelift. It's just too plain, and it's also too ... It looks too pie and the sky. For example, let's take you. I'm going to describe your website as I go through here. One, at the top you've got all these credit cards. That's cool. Then it says, "Become a member." You know what I'm saying? It's just like okay that's cool. Then it's like a picture of four probably 18-year-old girls running down a beach. That's not Brian. Brian was a dad who had just lost his daughter and went through a dark time. And the rest of his family needed him to step up and help them climb out of the darkness, right? Brian: Right. Shane: So Brian, with his two children and his wife went forward together. I need to see a family here. That's what I need to see. I don't need to see this. Shane: Then the next one is a guy with like a mini Afro and a surf board. He's like, "Whoa, dude, I'm a cool 18-year-old dude on a beach in Thailand making six bucks a day or whatever." That's not Brian, man, I really came home from work at the restaurant and I was tired, and I knew we needed a vacation. So you're not talking to the other guys out there that are like, "Yo, I'm tired. My family really needs me to step up and figure out a way. I've not been able to afford a vacation in three years. What can I do to help my family get a little break?" You know what I'm saying? Brian: Right. Shane: It's just not resonating. The people who are on your list are just not resonating with what they're seeing and hearing in your marketing. Brian: Ah, that makes sense, okay. Shane: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your story is not being told, and that's why nobody's buying anything from you. We tell some pretty deep stories, and we wrestled with how much of our personal life we always want to share on the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast or when we speak on stage. And 99% of the time it's be an open book because our stories are what really help someone else. And we told our stories this week. We were at FlynnCon, and we spoke with Pat Flynn on stage, and we told the story of Isaac being mistreated in a daycare center. That's a really hard story to tell when you find out someone was literally locking your child into a bathroom to punish them for potty training accidents at three years old it's horrifying to even say that out loud. But that story always makes people realize how important their kids are, how important their time is. They want to get their kids out of daycare centers and home with them. Shane: I have to tell that story because if I don't then I can't relate to someone enough to make them change their life. So your story has to take over this page. Your family has to take over this page. And you have to say to somebody, "If we did it you can do it too," and that'll resonate more as well. And then showing up live not just in their inbox is going to give you a better chance to convert those. Shane: If you could get 50 of those people to come to a Webinar, and you told us your story like the way we even talked about it off air today before the Podcast started people are going to resonate with that because they're going to look at their kids, and they're going to look at their family, and they're going to realize this guy's for real. If he wasn't for real he'd be signing up for all the affiliate things just trying to get my affiliate check, right? But he's telling me the truth, and I need to listen to this guy, and he can help me. Where do I sign up? So if you could just plant some storytelling overtop of all of this, and then do the work. And I know you're going to do the work because you're an action taker, you could turn this thing around. 400 people, man, you've got members. We just have to get the message right to do it. Shane: I'd love to see your e-mails too. We don't have time to go over every e-mail in your auto responder today, but your e-mails should be telling the story. It shouldn't just be here's all the benefits. It's like in 2018 December this happened. It moves into why you went down the path to the credit cards, and that creates trust, and it shows them like, "Hey, this guy figured it out. I can figure it out. Let's do this." Brian: Okay. Yes. Jocelyn: All right Brian, it has been great talking to you today, and I can't wait to see what you do next. Before we go we always ask our guests what is one thing that you plan to take action on based on what we talked about today? Brian: I am going to ... Since I am out of town right now I am going to set up the side-by-side course versus the membership on the website and just get that done quickly. And then when I get back home I'm going to start taking some pictures with my family and redoing my story on the website. Shane: Love it. I love that you're like, "I'm going to take some pictures with my family. We're putting them on there." That's good. And I want to see the website, so make sure you send it to me in the forums or hit me up, and I want to see the link when you redo it because it'll be awesome. Brian: Will do. Shane: Hey Brian, before we go let me ask you a question. What made you come to Flip Your Life Live? Flip Your Life Live happens in Lexington, Kentucky on September 19 through the 21st of 2019. It's our big Flip Your Life Flipped Lifestyle Podcast family reunion where all of our listeners, fans, followers, and members can come together in one place to hang out together, eat together, work together, and really get inspired to do big things for our families. I always love to hear people's stories. Why did you come to Flip Your Life Live? What made you look at it and go, "I got to go. I just got to go to Flip Your Life Live?" Brian: I wanted to dive all in. I didn't want to leave anything on the table. Really I am not afraid of failure. I am really afraid of not trying, not giving it my all. And I just felt like, "Hey, this is something I haven't done, and I can't say that I gave it all I could if I didn't go." Shane: I love that, man. No regrets, right. I'd rather have a life full of failures than a life full of regrets at the end of it. Brian: Also I'm not paying for the flight, so that helps. Shane: Shameless plug for the credit card points. I love it. That's amazing. Jocelyn: Love it. That is awesome. Shane: Listen. If you would like to join us and Brian in Lexington, Kentucky at Flip Your Life Live this year go to flippedlifestyle.com. That's F-L-I-P-P-E-D lifestyle.com/live. We have a few tickets left, but they are almost sold out, and this will be the last big conference Flip Your Life Live that we do for a while. We are not doing the event in 2020, so you can't go all in next year. You might as well go all in with us and Brian this year at Flip Your Life Live. Jocelyn: And who knows, maybe if you join Brian's membership maybe he can get you a free flight too. Shane: That's right. Maybe you can fly there too. Go to flippedlifestyle.com/live. We'd love to see you at our live event. All right guys, that is all the time we have for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast today. We would love to see you inside of our community as well. Who knows, you may end up right here on the Podcast just like Brian did. So if you'd like to take action today go to flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife and you can check out all of our membership options. Shane: Before we go today we like to close every show with a verse from the Bible. Today's Bible verse comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19. The Bible says, "Be joyful always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all circumstances. This is the will of God for your life." Shane: Until next time, guys, get out there, take action. Do whatever it takes to flip your life. We'll see you then. Jocelyn: Bye. Links and resources mentioned on today's show: Brian's Website Flip Your Life LIVE 2019 Tickets & Registration Information Flip Your Life community PROLIFIC Monthly Enjoy the podcast; we hope it inspires you to explore what's possible for your family! Join the Flip Your Life Community NOW for as little as $19 per month! https://flippedlifestyle.com/flipyourlife

Innovation. We love to talk about it, everyone wants it. Innovation is critical for people and organizations to grow. But we all mean different things when we say it. Today I have a conversation about how innovation is a conversation with Brian Ardinger. He's the director of Innovation at Nenet (which owns my student debt! Hi Nelnet!) and the host of InsideOutside.io, a community for innovators and entrepreneurs that produces a great podcast and a conference that brings together startup and enterprise organizations to talk innovation. There are three key conversations worth designing that we discuss and I want you to have your ears perked up for each as you listen to this episode. Each conversation can help you navigate the innovation process inside or outside your organization.  These three are the pre-conversation, the conversation about where to look for innovation and the conversation about patience. Brian specializes in a unique perspective on where to look for innovation. More on that in a moment. The Pre-Innovation Conversation Before you even start to talk about ideas or technology, it's essential to start with the end in mind. What kind of innovation is the company really looking for? Skip the pre-conversation and you have no idea of where you're heading. As Brian points out “without having that definition, then it's sometimes hard to know if you're playing the right game to begin with...the process itself of level setting... I don't think it takes a long time.” Brian and I didn't dive into tools to help with that conversation, so I put a few into the show notes. Mapping the innovation conversation can be done in lots of ways. One is thinking about evolutionary vs revolutionary change, another is about tangible vs intangible change, like rethinking policies or business models vs remaking product or space design.  I *just* did a webinar on this topic with my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, hosted by the amazing people at Mural. Templates of the two innovation leadership frameworks we outlined are there in Mural for you to download and use, along with the webinar video to help you along. Also check out Mapping Innovation, by Greg Satell. You can download his playbook free in the show notes.  Where to look for innovation Brian's Inside/outside perspective is that innovation can be a conversation between the inside of a company and the outside world. Some innovation will happen internally, and some innovation can be brought from the outside in: the exchange and acquisition of ideas and technology from outside your organization is an important conversation for enterprise organizations to be having. When you're trying to innovate, it can be tempting to look in familiar places. If you're a financial technology firm, it can be tempting to look to fintech startups for what's next and to try to innovate through acquisition. But you'll also be looking were your competitors will be looking. Try an innovation approach based on Horizontal Evolution - look to the sides and edges of the landscape. Brian describes this approach as “playing a different ball game”.  The conversation about patience Innovation does not happen overnight. Real change takes time and that takes real patience. Brian also points out that organizations need to be having a bigger conversation, about what else needs to change to make real innovation flourish inside the organization. Hint: it's generally more than you bargained for.  As he says “Corporations are doing exactly what they should be doing...They figured out a business model that works and they're executing and optimizing that particular business model...And to radically change that, the people, the resources, the compensation, all of that stuff has to kind of morph or change to play in a different environment. And so I think that's where the challenge really begins.” Often people think innovation is about the idea, but it's a much, much longer conversation. That is, in fact, the first “Myth of Innovation” from Scott Berkun's excellent book: The Myth that innovation is about an epiphany, not hard work. It was a real treat to have a conversation with Brian about some of these key issues...I hope you enjoy the episode and happy innovating! Brian on the Web: https://insideoutside.io/ https://twitter.com/ardinger https://www.nxxt.co/ Innovation Leadership Models from the Mural Webinar https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership Mapping Innovation by Greg Satell https://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook-Navigating-Disruptive/dp/1259862259 Download the Playbook for Free: https://www.gregsatell.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook.pdf Horizontal Evolution https://evolutionnews.org/2015/08/horizontal_gene/ An amazing summary from Scott Berkun about his solid book, Myths of Innovation: https://scottberkun.com/2013/ten-myths-of-innnovation/ A few more gems from Greg Satell on the Rules and questions central to innovation: https://medium.com/@digitaltonto/on-december-9th-1968-a-research-project-funded-by-the-us-department-of-defense-launched-a-ee063b7585f0 https://hbr.org/2013/02/before-you-innovate-ask-the-ri Transcription: Daniel: Welcome to the conversation factory. Brian, I'm glad we made the time to make this happen. Um, the reason I'm excited to talk to you is, is that not everybody is, is open or interested in the, the analogy that a company has to have a conversation with the outside world that they can't just, you know, put up some walls and just figure everything out inside those four walls that they have to go outside and have a dialogue with the world in lots of different ways. And the way you do that is, is through helping companies think about inside innovation versus outside innovation, which is my way of like teeing up the how you, how do you talk about what you do with people when you, when you meet people, like how do you contextualize what it is that you do? Brian: Well, I think a lot of things, uh, Daniel around this particular topic, it's this whole inside/ outside innovation. It's kind of come to us over the years of working first on the outside with startups and trying to understand how do they develop new ideas and, and build things. And then, uh, you know, as I was having conversations with startups and helping them navigate that, I kept having conversations with corporations and bigger companies saying, you know, how are you doing this? How are you taking these early stage companies and through an accelerator program and that, and, and kind of getting them traction in that faster than we can do in our own walls. And so that started to have conversations with the corporations and the people inside organizations and saying, hey, how can we interact with the outside world and, and think and move and act more like a startup or, uh, become a little bit more adaptive in how we do that. So I think it was an evolution of just having conversations and figuring out what's working, what's not working in this world of change and disruption that we're living in. Daniel: Yeah. So like there's two layers here, which I think are interesting to unpack. I've learned this new term, the idea of an accelerated work environment and this idea of like, let's speed up the conversation about innovation and let's not just put our feet up and look into space and hope a great idea comes to us. Like, let's structure it and let's do it faster. And so can you talk a little bit about like how you structure an accelerator? Like what does it mean to accelerate people through the innovation process from your approach? Brian: Yeah, so I think a lot of it, like when I go in and talk to bigger companies, first thing I like to do is kind of do a level set of what does innovation even mean to the people in the room. Uh, because innovation has become such a word that's, you know, so limp, so to speak. It can mean anything to anybody. Uh, and so kind of understanding that level set of what does innovation mean to the company? How do they define it? Um, is it transformational innovation where it's, you know, we've got to become the next Uber and disrupt our industry? Or is it a innovation from the standpoint of value creation where we're looking at ways to optimize and incrementally improve what we're building? And so from that perspective, you know, it's, once you have that level set, then you can start thinking about, well, how, what are the particular tactics that you can work through depending on what kind of objectives you want to have and, and what you're trying to accomplish. Brian: So I think that's the first place we start. And then how we do that. Um, again, I think a lot of is trying to help them understand that you've got to place a lot of bets on innovation and innovation is not, um, you know, it's by default working in the new, it's working in this area of gray and this area of uncertainty, Daniel: which means there's got to be failure, right? Like there's going to have to be failure. Brian: Yeah. So, yeah, this uncertainty by default, requires you to figure out and make assumptions and, work through this... Areas of the unknown. And that's very difficult for, a lot of folks to work through. You know, especially at companies and people who are used to having a plan or having an execution model that, that they just execute on. Corporations are doing exactly what they should be doing...They figured out a business model that works and they're executing and optimizing that particular business model… Brian: And to radically change that, the people, the resources, the compensation, all of that stuff has to kind of morph or change to play in a different environment. And so I think that's where the challenge really begins. Daniel: So...I'm comfortable with taking this seemingly simple question of like, we want to innovate more and turning it into this, really stretching it out into a much more complicated conversation. Like I'm wondering if people you deal with ever get frustrated with, (you): "well, Brian, you're just making this complicated. Like, we just want to innovate. Just teach us how to innovate. Let's get started." Versus like, let's talk about your strategic goals. Like I can see how some people might get a little impatient with the, with the bigger picture, with the strategic thinking approach. Brian: Sure. Yeah. And I think, and I think it doesn't have to take a long time on to go through that particular process, but I think if you don't start off on that common definition, then you run the risk later on. And you know, why are we doing this? Why is it not working? You know, we said that, uh, you know, we need to have x, Y, z outcome and these brand new bets that you're putting on the table are not getting us an outcome that we want. Um, but you know, without having that definition, then it's sometimes hard to know if you're playing the right game to begin with. So I think, so the, the process itself of level setting I don't think takes a long time to, to make that happen. And I think, but I do think in general, to change a culture or to move the company towards having that innovation mindset set or innovation as a competency to so to speak, does take a long time. Um, but you can do that through a variety of tactics and in ways that doesn't, um, change, change it all overnight. You know, it doesn't have to be something where, um, you know, you're basically creating something brand new and, and throwing out everything that you've done in the past and, and hoping that the new thing works. Uh, it's really a series of iterative bets that you kind of de-risked these new ideas as you're, as you're approaching them into the world and seeing what happens. Daniel: Yeah. Now, now here's the, the piece that I think that, that we were talking about that's interesting is that companies can innovate through outside acquisitions or through outside collaborations, like through working with startups. And maybe that makes it seem "like, wow, that's neat, there is an easier way to do this". we don't have to do it all ourselves. We can, we can turn outwards and see, uh, not just learn from other people, but actually like bring that outside innovation inside. Like, and that seems to me like, uh, a complicated process to navigate. Like how do you facilitate, how do you facilitate that conversation and make it smooth for people? Brian: Yeah. So I think, at least for a lot of folks, you know, the idea of looking outside is not become, it's not a novel concept anymore. You know, maybe five or six years ago it was like, oh, what's one of these things called startups out there? And you know, we're, we're seeing more and more hearing more and more about it. So it's, it's not a novel concept that, hey, the ability for two women in the garage or in a dorm room to spin up something and get some traction and create something of huge value in the world...that's, that's there and that's not going away. And that's speeding up. And so I think, uh, that, uh, first part of the conversation happening, having people understand that, people have the power and tools and capabilities and access to markets and cheap technology, et Cetera, to really disrupt things is there. Brian: So if we understand that, then what can we do to kind of help navigate that? And, and I think the first thing is just, you know, raise your hand and say, Hey, there are things going on outside. Let's, uh, let's take an inventory or a map on discover what's going on...and one of the, pitfalls I see a lot of companies jump into is let's look in our industry. You know, what's happening in our industry. And that's great, and that you should do that of course. But, um, that's also probably where 99% of your competitors are also playing in that same field. And so I find a lot of times it helps to look at adjacent industries or industries far and away, uh, different from your own to see what's going on, and look for clues or models or technologies or, or talent that may give you a different advantage, if you put those pieces together differently than playing, in the same ball game as your competitors are playing. So, you know, I, I see a lot of people going to these conferences and looking for startups in the fintech space and all you have are corporations in the Fintech area looking at Fintech startups where a lot of times I think, it's better to maybe go to a more of a horizontal conference and looking at AI or uh, you know, different types of data conferences and that would give you a different perspective on how those technologies could be used in your industry or in somebody else's, industry, for example. Daniel: Do you have a story like, cause it's funny as you're telling me the story, like I'm realizing this is, this is the classic innovators trick, right? Which is, yeah, it's, and it's a classic trick from nature, right? Which is, people don't realize that evolution isn't just, um, vertical where you adapt and survive. But there's horizontal transfer of, of genes in nature. Like literally the reason we have mitochondria is because we ate them, you know, a billion years ago. And all of the energy in our bodies is made by an alien organism that has its own DNA, which I find a very, it's always just like an extraordinary fact. Um, but you know, and I've been telling my clients this for a long time too. Like what do you, do you have, uh, a story to share of a surprising transfer of, of innovation from industry to industry in case there's any doubters in the world. Brian: Yeah, it's, let, I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head, but I know I've seen it on the reverse side. For example, we've seen, because I run a conference called inside, outside/innovation. And, one of the things we do is we, uh, go out and find startups in a variety of different markets, bring them to a showcase and then bring corporations around to kind of see what they're building and why and hopefully make some connections for that. And where I've seen it happen is a lot of times where, a startup will be working in a particular vertical market, early stage, uh, and they think they've got a solution in, you know, retail or whatever, and a corporation conversation will come around and they'll say, hey, I love your technology, but you're looking in the retail space. Did you know that you could apply this to insurance? Brian: And the light bulb will kind of go off in the entrepreneur's mind. It's like, oh, this is an opportunity for me to potentially go into a different market or get traction with an early customer that I didn't have before. And so I need to happen that way. Um, and I'm sure the reverse could happen as well where a corporation, uh, is, you know, looking at a variety of startups out there and say, hey, that startup's, not in our industry, but we could definitely apply that technology to what we're doing and leverage it in some way. Daniel: So that actually sparks, I mean, I definitely, I want to make sure we talk about the conference before we, before we leave, but in a way, like you said, this thing that was really interesting about startups, you know, they're, they're trying to, uh, you know, iterate and build their own, um, you know, their own growth engine. Right? Um, I would imagine that some of them are not necessarily open to this idea of like, well look, we're, we've got our roadmap and we're trying to build our own flywheel and move it, get that moving. This, they may not be open to this, this pivot or this expansion. Uh, there's like, oh, you know, well, we're just focusing on market X and like, do you want me to also like expand our, our code base so that we can also take advantage of, of why and collaborate with these guys. Like I how do you sort of, I know you've done a lot of work on building community through, through the conference. Like how do you find startups are expanding their perspectives to being open to this collaborative conversation versus like, nope, we're just doing our thing. Brian: Yeah. And I think a lot of it depends on where the startup is in their lifecycle. A lot of the folks that we bring in are probably seed stage and so they, they haven't figured out their business model. They haven't figured out the exact markets sometimes. Uh, and they're looking for that early traction. And you know, one of the reasons we hold this in the Midwest is because, you know, venture capital and the traditional ways of kind of scaling a business in Silicon Valley don't exist out here. And so you've got to find customers. You've got to find ways to, um, to, to get that early traction. And a lot of that means, you know, getting out and finding those early customers. And so having conversations with customers, uh, real people out there and trying to define what problems are out there in the marketplace and then create a solution, uh, to meet those problems and then meet the market where it's at, I think is more effective way a lot of times in the Midwest here or in places outside of your core tech hubs that don't have the, the against the, um, the advantage of getting a venture capital and being able to have a year or two young, two year runway to figure out, uh, how, where that market is. Brian: So I think, I think so part of that is that, um, I think when I'm talking to start ups, you know, I put my "accelerate" hat on and working as a person who is helping startups through that process, a lot of times I'll quite frankly tell them to stay away from corporates until they, until they figured out some of that stuff. Cause it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole of um, hey, if we just get this one big customer on our plate, we'll be good to go. But a lot of times you know that the timing of the two types of organizations don't match up and it can very, very easily kill start up really pretty quickly. Daniel: Yeah. And it can kill them in that what they're, they're focusing, they'd lose their focus or their, they spread themselves too thin. You know, so like what, what sort of, I think beautiful about what you do is that there's this symmetry in a way you have a community driven approach to innovation through the conference you do building community, but building community so that you have a group of startups who are interested in this type of thinking so that companies can have an innovation community. So they're not just going it alone, that they have a view to what's, what's open in the world for them. I mean, I guess my question is like, have you always been so community driven? Like how did you come to value community as an approach, as in a solution to, to these challenges that you're seeing? Brian: So, I mean, I guess I've always felt community is, is a way to accelerate your learning. Uh, and I think early stage ideas, no matter what they are, whether they're inside a startup or inside a corporation, the key to a lot of those taking place in actually taking hold is that the speed of learning. How fast can you, um, take your assumptions and navigate those and understand where you're on the right track or not, and, um, get to that next stage that you need to get to. So, um, community's always been away from me, uh, personally and otherwise to help accelerate those learnings, whether it's, you know, again, connecting somebody to somebody else who can, uh, an expert in a different field or, um, someone who can help me navigate to something else that I didn't know I needed. Um, and so I think it started from that perspective and it started because, uh, you know, quite frankly, when I started a lot of this stuff seven, eight years ago, uh, the, you know, entrepreneurship and startups were, were smaller, uh, both, you know, nationally as well as in our own backyard. Brian: And so part of it was like, well, if we're going to do this, we're going to, we can't do it all are ourselves. So how do we create a community that allows startups to raise their hand and first say, Hey, I want to be entrepreneurial. I want to try some things. I want to build something. In my backyard. Yeah. And then what do I need and what am I missing and how do I then can be that catalyst to help, um, folks figure that out. Uh, and so it was an evolution of just having conversations, going to different cities, uh, meeting different people, starting a podcast, you know, telling stories, um, you know, starting a new newsletter and then, uh, eventually a conference and everything else around it. Um, and then all the while, you know, consulting and helping companies kind of figure it out on both sides. Brian: And, um, it's been fun. It's been fun to see that journey and continue to figure out what the, what the next phase is as we build it out. Daniel: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess I'd begs the question, what is, what's the next phase? Can you talk about it? Is it Secret? Brian: Yeah, no! Um, so yeah, so inside, outside innovation, you know, we started four years ago actually with the podcast and the original idea was it was called inside, outside, and it was an inside look at startups outside the valley with the idea that their stories, outside the tech hubs that need to be told and how can we help our entrepreneurs, uh, figure that stuff out. And so that's where it started. And again, it'll happen with further conversations as, as we built that particular audience and had conversations around those particular topics, we kept getting asked by innovators in bigger companies, you know, it's like, how are we doing this? Brian: How, how's this working? We want to be connected to startups. We want to understand this new way of innovating things like design thinking and lean startup in that work, uh, becoming methodologies and tactics that could apply to, you know, start ups outside of a big corporation or, or startups within a corporation that were trying to spin up new ideas. So through that we started the inside outside innovation podcast as the, as the way to have those conversations and talk about corporate innovation and how we're corporate matching with startups and how corporate venture play out differently and how we're internal innovation accelerators popping up all around. And what were the different tactics that folks were using through that. We've kind of created this weird community. It's almost like two communities, but the, the advantages by bringing them together, they both learned from each other. So that's kind of how, that's how it's kind of evolved. What's next? We're trying to figure out the third year of the insight off the innovation summit. Uh, we haven't got the dates and, and that solidify, but it's looking like we're probably going to do it sometime in the end of October. I'm in the process, I'm looking at writing a book around this concept of collaborative and innovation and this innovation as a competency. And then, um, we'll just continue with the podcast and the newsletter and keep growing our conversations with great people out there. Daniel: You know, Brian, it's really, it's, I mean it's, it's lovely to talk to you about this stuff because, you know, the, the ecological approach you have to this, to this processes, you know, it's, it's clearly organic. Like, like anything else, it's starting a conversation and then you've gotten feedback from the world and over time you've, you've built more than you've added to it. Like it's, it's a, it's just guy. It's a wave that is sort of, it has its ups and downs clearly. But you're just continuing to, to ride that wave, which was really awesome. Brian: What the, it comes back to, you know, my feeling is that obviously with the world changing in the, in the speed of change that's happening out there, everybody is going to have to take on some of the skillsets of, of the early innovator. You know, again, a startup entrepreneur or, um, or innovator are going to have to have kind of core capabilities or characteristics that allow you to adapt and be nimble and, and, uh, execute. Daniel: Unless you want a robot to do your job! Brian: Yeah. That's executing different ways that, that you didn't have or that were different in the way that you could execute in the past. So things like, you know, curiosity having a bias towards learning characteristics like having a, an a customer focus and this bias towards problem solving for that customer. You know, the, the skill of collaboration and you know, knowing that you can't build everything yourself. Brian: There's bias towards team, um, you know, some of the characteristics of just speed, you know, how can you have this bias towards action and experimentation. And then finally having kind of the reverse of that you are having patience and that bias towards that long term value creation. You know, I think those are some of the core concepts that make up, um, this new world that we're living in. And the more individuals, whether you're, you know, a traditional manager or a entrepreneurial founder, those are the skillsets that are going to take you to the next level in the world that we're living in. Daniel: It sounds like a good book already, Brian. I don't know. I like it. Brian: I'm still outlining. Daniel: It sounds like a pretty good proposal to me. Um, so listen, I, I, we're, we're up against our, our, our time together. Uh, is there anything I haven't asked you about that I should, that we should talk about? Any, any, any final thoughts? Brian: Yeah, I'm curious for, you've obviously been in the space of helping people have conversations and that I'm always curious to understand what have you learned from helping companies and people kind of navigate a, this world of change, uh, and in this world of innovation, what are some of the things that are obstacles or things that stand out that, uh, I could take back to my audience as well? Well, Daniel: I mean, do you have a hard stop in the next three minutes because, no, go ahead. We can go over a little bit. Well, I mean, for me, what really resonated in what you were talking about is the necessity for patients. And I think this is one thing that's really, really hard, um, for people because we want to go fast and we want to have results. Um, but we also need to slow things down. So one of the things that like I'm becoming more aware of in my own work is psychological safety, which people, you know, Google identified as like the main characteristic of effective teams. The ability, the willingness, the openness to saying what's happening, to be able to speak your mind, to say what's right or to say what's wrong. And that, I don't know, that stuff doesn't really come for free. Uh, it's a really, you have to cultivate that environment. Daniel: And so for me, you know, my angle and entry point is always that somebody, somebody has to design that conversation. Um, if a group of, you know, if a group of people is gonna talk about what we're going to do next and how to innovate, we can either contribute content or we can contribute process. Um, if the, to me, the most important and precious conversation is when a group of people is coming together, the fact that you're willing to, that you have a framework, I'm guessing, to stretch out the conversation about what's our innovation roadmap and where are we placing our bets allows people to say like, okay, what's my holistic view of this? It creates, it creates safety, right? It creates a moment where, where we can have the conversation about innovation, we can have the conversation about how we're gonna brainstorm. Daniel: We can have the conversation about how we're going to, uh, evaluate ideas and how we know if they're good or not. Um, and so for me, I think, um, I feel like I'm ranting now, but I was at a problem framing workshop, uh, with my, my friend Jay Malone, who has a company called new haircut. They do a lot of design sprint training and he was teaching a problem framing workshop. And at the end of the workshop, he presented, uh, you know, on one hand, a very straightforward, like, here, this is what problem framing is in the essence. Like, uh, who has the problem, uh, why does it matter? Um, when does it happen? Uh, like, you know, think about like, where to play and how to win. And this one woman said like, well, yeah, what about, uh, uh, how do we know when it's been solved? You know, how do we know if it's working? And this is, I think one of the biggest challenges with, with companies is we don't know like what good looks like. We don't know when to start. We don't know how to stop working and grinding it out. Um, well, and the metrics Brian: are so different from existing business model versus a new business model that you don't even know who the customers are and the value proposition you're creating at the beginning. Daniel: Yeah. So I mean, for me, like I find the, one of the biggest challenges of innovation is that people bring me in to say like, okay, let's help this team coach through this process. Meanwhile, they've already got a job that takes 100% of their time. Um, and they look at me and they're like, this guy has just given us extra work to do. You know, the workshop that I come in is taking them away from their quote unquote real job. The, the work that I asked them to do to go out and do the interviews and to, to get customer contact looks like it's taking away time for them. And so this idea that that innovation's like something you can buy or pay someone else to do. To me, I want people to be earning their own innovation. But the problem is that most people are at 110% capacity. Daniel: And You bring in somebody like me who says, okay, let's do some design thinking stuff. Let's do a, you know, even if it's a week long sprint, which doesn't give you everything you need, you know, if it's a six week process, it's people are like, Oh man, that was great, but oh, that was hard and I never want to do that again. It's like, it's really, really challenging to get people to find time to innovate. And that's frustrating to me. Brian: Absolutely. Daniel: As a person who just really wants people to get their hands dirty with it so that they value it and, and participated in it. So, I don't know. I don't know what the balance is there. That's... I don't know. I don't know if that's a question with an answer, but Brian: I don't know if there's a clear answer for that one. No, no. Daniel: that, oh, so, yeah, I mean that, that's, that's, that's my perspective. I don't know if that, if that's helpful to you at all, but that's, that's… Brian: Very much so, very much so. Daniel: Is there, is there anything else we should I this, this is definitely the shortest episode. You know, I'm, I'm sort of enjoying or slash you know, floundering in the, in the 30 minute time zone. So I just want to make sure that we've covered everything that you want to cover … Brian: No, it's been great, thanks for having me on the show and the opportunity to talk about insideoutside.io and everything we're doing. Daniel: Yeah. So like that's the, that's the final question. Like where, uh, where can people find all things insideoutside and Brian Ardinger on the Internet. Brian: Yeah. Thanks Daniel. Yeah. So, uh, obviously you can go to the website insideoutside.io that has our podcast, our newsletters sign up for that. Um, and obviously I'm very, um, out there on Twitter and Linkedin in that happy to have conversations. So reach out and say hi. Daniel: Well we will do that. Um, Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time. It's really, it's always interesting to have some patience and just slow down and have some of these conversations about this stuff, that's I think really, really important. Like you said, the future is unwritten and uncertain and all of us need to have skills of adaptability, the inside and I think both sides of the ecosystem that you're a co-creating - the innovator, the startups need to learn from big companies how to scale and big companies need to learn from startups, how to be more nimble. So I think it's really a really important dialogue that you're facilitating. It's really cool. Brian: Thanks for having me on the show!

John Cutler is a Product Evangelist for Amplitude, an analytic platform that helps companies better understand users behavior, helping to grow their businesses. John focuses on user experience and evidence-driven product development by mixing and matching various methodologies to help teams deliver lasting outcomes for their customers. As a former UX researcher at AppFolio, a product manager at Zendesk, Pendo.io, AdKeeper and RichFX, a startup founder, and a product team coach, John has a perspective that spans individual roles, domains, and products. In today’s episode, John and I discuss how productizing storytelling in analytics applications can be a powerful tool for moving analytics beyond vanity metrics. We also covered the importance of understanding customers’ jobs/tasks, involving cross-disciplinary teams when creating a product/service, and: John and Amplitude’s North Star strategy and the (3) measurements they care about when tracking their own customers’ success Why John loves the concept of analytics “notebooks” (also a particular feature of Amplitude’s product) vs. the standard dashboard method Understanding relationships between metrics through “weekly learning users” who share digestible content John’s opinions on involving domain experts and cross-discipline teams to enable products focused on outcomes over features Recognizing whether your product/app is about explanatory or exploratory analytics How Jazz relates to business – how you don’t know what you don’t know yet Resources and Links: Connect with John on LinkedIn Follow John on Twitter Keep up with John on Medium Amplitude Designing for Analytics Quotes from Today’s Episode “It’s like you know in your heart you should pair with domain experts and people who know the human problem out there and understand the decisions being made. I think organizationally, there’s a lot of organizational inertia that discourages that, unfortunately, and so you need to fight for it. My advice is to fight for it because you know that that’s important and you know that this is not just a pure data science problem or a pure analytics problem. There’s probably there’s a lot of surrounding information that you need to understand to be able to actually help the business.” – John “We definitely ‘dogfood’ our product and we also ‘dogfood’ the advice we give our customers.” – John “You know in your heart you should pair with domain experts and people who know the human problem out there and understand the decisions being made. […] there’s a lot of organizational inertia that discourages that, unfortunately, and so you need to fight for it. I guess my advice is, fight for it, because you know that it is important, and you know that this is not just a pure data science problem or a pure analytics problem.” – John “It’s very easy to create assets and create code and things that look like progress. They mask themselves as progress and improvement, and they may not actually return any business value or customer value explicitly. We have to consciously know what the outcomes are that we want.” – Brian “We got to get the right bodies in the room that know the right questions to ask. I can smell when the right questions aren’t being asked, and it’s so powerful” – Brian “Instead of thinking about what are all the right stats to consider, [I sometimes suggest teams] write in plain English, like in prose format, what would be the value that we could possibly show in the data.’ maybe it can’t even technically be achieved today. But expressing the analytics in words like, ‘you should change this knob to seven instead of nine because we found out X, Y, and Z happened. We also think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here is how we know that, and there’s your recommendation.’ This method is highly prescriptive, but it’s an exercise in thinking about the customer’s experience.” – Brian Transcript Brian: My guest today on Experiencing Data is John Cutler who is a product evangelist at Amplitude Software. I have been really enjoying John’s commentary on Twitter and some of his articles on medium about designing better decisions of work tools. If you’re in this space and you’re trying to figure out, “How do I get into the heads of what our customers need? What types of data is actually important to track?” Especially, if you’re looking at longer term outcomes that you want to be able to measure and provide insight on, I think you’re going to enjoy my conversation with John. Without further ado, here’s my chat with John Cutler. All right, we’re back to Experiencing Data, and today we’ve got the cutlefish as your Twitter handle is known, right is it cute-l-fish or cutlefish? John: We’re going to go with cutlefish, not cute-l. Brian: That’s what I thought. John Cutler is here from Amplitude Software, which is a product analytics company, and I wanted to have John on today, not because he is cute necessarily, but because I’ve really been enjoying what you’re espousing about customer experience, and particularly, product management. Which for some of our listeners that are not working in tech companies necessarily, there’s not really a product management kind of role explicitly by title. But I think some of the, as you will probably account to, the overlap between design, user experience, and product is sometimes a gray area. I think some of the things you’re talking about are in important in the context of building analytics tools. Welcome to the show, fill in, make corrections on what I just said about what you’re doing. You’re a product evangelist at Amplitude, so what does that mean and what are you up to over there? John: Well, we’re still trying to figure out the evangelist part because I don’t necessarily sell or evangelize our product, I think our product is great and I like to say it sort of sells itself. But what I’m really focusing on is helping up level teams, now that could be like our internal teams, our customers, but largely to just prospects and teams that have never even heard of Amplitude. What we’re really looking with this role is to do workshops, provide content, I do these coaching sessions with just random teams, so it’s like one hour coaching sessions. But generally trying to fill in the blanks, I think a lot of times people think, “Well, I’m just going to purchase this analytics tool or this product analytics tool,” and suddenly it’s going to answer all our questions and everything’s going to be fine. But what they don’t quite realize is that you really have to tweak a lot of things about how you work as a product development team to really make use of the great tools that are available. There are amazing tools available. I believe Amplitude is one of them, but there is so many good software as a service products to help product teams. But really at the end of the day, it’s about the team also being aligned and things like that. I really try to take a broad view of what it will take to help people make better products with this role. Brian: Yeah. Can you give an example? I think I know where you’re going with this, but give an example of where someone had to change their expectation? You need to change the way you’re working or let’s figure out what’s important to measure instead of just expecting. I think you’re alluding to like, “Oh, buy our tool, we know what the important analytics and measurement points are that you should care about and we will unveil them.” Instead it’s like, “Well, what’s important to track? Does time on the site matter? Does engagement in the application matter? Does sharing matter? What matters, right?” Can you talk about maybe where there was a learning experience? John: Oh, absolutely. I think maybe a good way to describe this as well is a lot of the learning, a lot of the questions begin way before the team is unwrapping the problem, unraveling the problem. I’m not sure this answers your question exactly but I think we could lead into something more specific. But imagine you’re a team and someone says, “It’s the second half of 2018, what’s going to be on your roadmap?” You think about it and you know what you know and you’ve heard customers tell you things, and the CEO of the company has subtly but not so subtly hinted he’d really like to see X or she’d really like to see X. You put together this roadmap, and at that point once you’ve got people thinking that those solutions are the right solutions, and you force that level of convergence, there’s not a lot of… measurement will not save you at that point, you’ve already committed at that point to deliver those things in that particular setting. One example of a practice that might change to further or amplify the use of measurement would just be not making… committing to missions, committing to move particular metrics that the company believes are associated with mid to long-term growth of the company, and commit to those things instead of committing to build features. An example, a real world example, maybe for someone’s effort, maybe what you’re shooting at before is do they shift from same time on site was important to something else? But for a lot of these teams, it’s shifting from build feature X to something like shortening the time it takes for a team to be able to complete a workflow. That’s the big shift for that. It’s nothing-to-something that makes sense, not necessarily even something-to-something. Brian: One of the things we talk about on the show is designing for outcomes instead of designing outputs. John: Yep. Brian: Because it’s very easy to create assets and create code and things that look like progress. They mask themselves as progress and improvement, and they may not actually return any business value or customer value explicitly. We have to consciously know what the outcomes are that we want let alone measure them. Do you run into the problem when you… If you’re coaching someone and getting them into this mindset of designing around an outcome and building your sprint or your next, maybe it’s even a strategy for the next six to 12 months around outcomes? That the important things to measure are not quantifiable in the tool? Do you work yourself out of a customer sometimes because the tool can’t actually measure what’s important? Does that ever happen? John: That’s a great question because I think that I do a fun exercise with people, which is called let’s predict the success of a relationship. We start with this activity and we just we forget about what we think is possible to measure and we just start mapping our beliefs. The team will say something like, “Well, I think that they shouldn’t have arguments.” Then someone will say, “Well, yeah, but it’s not just,” and maybe they’re talking about their own life like, “Well, we argue a lot, but we resolve our arguments pretty, we become stronger once we have the arguments.” Then the team will sit there and go, “Huh, okay.” It’s not just about the number of arguments, it’s ability to resolve your arguments. Brian: Resolve. John: We keep playing this game and we map our beliefs out to predicting these things, and some of these things we have more confidence about and some of these things we don’t have a lot of confidence about. Some of these things we strike and we get this big messy network of nodes and edges on the wall and that’s what we start working with. What’s really, really interesting is that we actually, as a company, there’s almost always some percentage of these things that we can contribute to in terms of what they can instrument in using our product. It’s not like…we would much rather our customers map the universe of things and acknowledge some things that might be difficult to measure or they’re just beliefs at the moment, they haven’t figured out how to measure them. Because really what Amplitude is very powerful at is doing behavioral analytics about these long standing customer journeys through products and those types of… Anyone who’s done a 15-table join and tried to communicate it to other people in your company and then tweak it and have people collaborate with it just knows how painful that is. That’s the type of pain that we solve. But back to the particular question, all the coaching really centers around mapping all the beliefs, and we’re usually confident that there are ways to measure some percentage of those things using our product, and that’s fine by us. Brian: There’s almost like a meta-question, right? John: I like, I’m meta, yeah, I got it. I’m there with you. Brian: You’re like analytics, you’re an analytics product and you talk to your clients about what’s important for them to measure. But then at some point, you have to know what’s important to measure to know that your customers are getting the value. John: Yeah. Brian: Is it directly…are you interested in what they’re setting up to measure and then that becomes your measurement? Do you piggyback off that or do you… How do you justify that the sprint or the epic we worked on last quarter provided business value? How do you…? John: Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, we definitely dogfood our product and we also dogfood the advice we give people usually first. To give you an example like in 2018, we had this North Star Metric called “Weekly Querying Users”, WQUs. That seemed about right and we did some analysis and it looked like, “Well, for increasing WQUs, it’s probably going to mean this and this and it’s going to be some early indicator that our monthly recurring revenue is going to keep going up”, etc. But there were obvious problems with that and we saw that. And as 2018 went along, we started to look at it more, and for any SaaS company, there’s a point at which your expansion within existing accounts starts to be really, really important in terms of percentage of revenue that you’re in. We thought, “Well, is that metric, can you hand WQUs to any new team member and say move that or move something that you think moves that,” and then be 100% confident they’re going to make good decisions? It broke down after that. What we did is we shifted to weekly learning users. Now a weekly learning user is not just someone querying, because anyone who uses one of these tools knows you could just sit there and query all day and not get an answer. In fact, querying more might indicate that you are not getting an answer. Not like doing anything with it. A weekly learning user is actually someone who shares some piece of digestible content whether it’s notebook, whether it’s a dashboard, whether it’s a chart, and they share it. We actually have this North Star, which is weekly learning users, we believe these three inputs drive weekly learning users and those are activated accounts. They need to know what they’re doing, they’re broadcasted learnings, which is the ability for the user to attempt to broadcast some number of learnings, and then a metric that is a consumption of learning metric which is the broad consumption across the organization of that particular piece of learning. This is all sounds really heady, why would we go to all these lengths to do this, and Weekly Querying User sounded good. But to us this really encapsulates a strategy. I think that that’s an important thing that a lot of people from pure analytics backgrounds or who are used to sitting with a queue of questions and answering those questions are maybe not used to the idea of moving towards a cohesive strategy as expressed by a number of metrics and the relationships between those metrics. That’s something that we really encourage our customers to do, it’s not data snacking. It’s not like, “Oh, I got this itch today so I’m going to answer this question.” That took a lot of work to come up with that, and we’re confident about those relationships between those things. But more importantly, it helps any new team member like all you need to do is show a skilled product manager or a skilled designer or a developer even and say, “This is our current mental model as described by the relationship between these things. Where do you want to slot in? What do you have in mind?” That’s really, really powerful. I don’t know if that roundabout way of saying we take this really, really seriously. Brian: If I can sum this up, and I’ll need you to repeat part of it, but you have monthly querying users, so what I take that to be is I, the customer, using, paying for the Amplitude software, a querying user means I went in and I looked for content or I literally used a search interface to probably look up an analytic or some stat. You moved away from the number of people doing that and how often they’re doing it as a measurement of your company’s success to this three-stage kind of thing that I heard included sharing some knowledge. But can you repeat what those three grains were? John: Oh, yeah, sure. The North Star is what we call “Weekly Learning Users”, so WLUs. Those are users performing the behavior of interest, which is sharing, distributing some piece of content. Then we believe there are three inputs that explain that metric or three inputs that we really focus on. One is that the accounts are activated, which are meaning that does this account just have a minimum number of people doing that? The next one is broadcasted learnings, which is me, “is the initial attempt to broadcast the learning?” Then consumption is the actual long tail consumption of that particular learning. Let’s say it is a story like I sign up with Amplitude, no one’s really using it all because we haven’t really onboarded and we haven’t really instrumented, we haven’t done any of that stuff. Okay, well, then we get that done, so we get just that we’ve activated, we have at least a certain number of users learning, some amount. I’m in the tool, I’m in a notebook that is really interesting that I’m putting together that tells a story with data, very interesting about the mission that I’m working on. I attempt to invite people to that notebook or get them involved, that’s the broadcast. Then, finally, the consumption of learning would be the accumulated interactions with everyone with a notebook. If that sounds too complex… Brian: Got it. I don’t know, I- John: But the whole idea is for people listening and I think especially folks, designers and other folks is that their experience with analytics might be something very simple like “what percentage of people used feature?” Or something. What they’re not getting is the context, the relationships, and what I’m describing here, there’s amazing belief networks, there’s causal relationship diagrams, there’s just simple stickies and string on the wall, whatever you want to call them. But we’re describing our beliefs as it relates to the data, and I think that, that’s really important. For some background too, I’m not a data scientist, I’ve been a product manager and a UX researcher and that’s been my focus for a long time. It’s not like I’m a pro at this stuff, and even for me, though, it grounds me in what I’m working with and makes my analysis a lot easier. Brian: I imagine you may have some, not resistance, but when you’re working with quote data people or analytics people or data science people in your staff, in Amplitude, are there routine things that you wish they would hear that would sink in or problems that maybe they’re not aware of that you think they should be like, “We need to look at the problem differently.” Maybe you encapsulated that and that’s why you have this three stage thing as a reaction to the data snacking mentality, which is “What data do we provide? Great, they have it, now they can eat it.” Is that their reaction to that or are there other things that… I’m thinking of our listeners, we do have data scientists and analytics type people, and I’m wondering if you were to work with them, it’s like, “Here are the things that I want you to think about here to get our head a little bit out of the tech for a second and into the decision support mentality.” Anything, what would you espouse or advocate? John: That’s a great question. I think I can answer it a little bit with a story. I was the PM for search and relevance at Zendesk, like support software. My background is not in information retrieval or the guts of search but very, very early on working on a team with very, very talented people, data scientists, data engineers really, at the end of the day. One thing that I very much advocated for is we needed to be able to get everyone in the same room, we needed to get the people who were experts in what I would just call the actors, the support agents, or the support managers, or the the person trying to get help on their Uber app. There’s experts in that, there’s domain experts. There’s also people who are experts in the surface area, the surface, like the interface. There’s people who are really, really good at searching or finding information on mobile. There’s people who’s very good at finding information on, in our case, like the support agents view in their web browser. Then you had our people who are really smart and creating data as it related to search and they were great at data engineering, etc. The main thing that I noticed was that there’s just a silo-ing, and the people on my team were just craving, craving to be sitting next to someone who understood these other things really well. I think that for a lot of listeners it’s probably you know that, you know that from a first principles angle, you’re like, “Well, I know that there’s a bigger picture here.” I know that just in our case of searching like we knew that raising the mean reciprocal rank of a search term, we are searching it, where does the person click? Do they click on the second item, the fifth item. In theory, raising that would make a difference but when we look more broadly, it really didn’t relate to deflection of tickets and things like that. Our traditional metrics, the way we were measuring success is locally related to search. If we broadened our horizon to what makes a difference for the human beings out there who need their support tickets resolved or the support agents or things, that perspective was so helpful. What I would say to the folks on listening, it’s like you know in your heart you should pair with domain experts and people who know the human problem out there and understand the decisions being made. I think, organizationally, there’s a lot of organizational inertia that discourages that, unfortunately, and so you need to fight for it. I guess my advice is fight for it because you know that that’s important and you know that this is not just a pure data science problem or a pure analytics problem. There’s probably there’s a lot of surrounding information that you need to understand to be able to actually help the business. Brian: Sure, and you’re echoing sentiment I had a Data Center from the Broad Institute on, he was mentioning how much he’s like, “My work is so much more powerful when I have a great domain expert with me who really knows the space.” We met over music, I’m a musician as well and he was trying to explore creativity in the context of jazz. He’s a enthusiast in terms of music, he’s not a musician, but he’s an enthusiast so he understood some of it but he didn’t have the lingo. It’s just interesting when you look at someone working in that space trying to answer a question about like, “How does creativity work in jazz?” They don’t have all that domain lingo. Being on for a change, being the domain expert, it was fascinating for me to be on the other side because usually I’m the hymn advocate, even though I’m not a data scientist, as a designer and a consultant, we deal with this all the time. It’s like, we got to get the right bodies in the room that know the right questions to ask. I can smell when the right questions aren’t being asked and it’s so powerful so I totally agree with you on the need to provide that bigger context sometimes so you don’t just- John: Jazz is just a mistake played more than once, right? Brian: Yeah. Oh, there’s tons of them, there’s no wrong notes, just bad choices. John: It’s very easy for them to create the model for that. You’re just making a mistake and play it more than once. Brian: Exactly. John: Then you go back to the top. Brian: Exactly. Well, even that, like play the head again. Well, what’s a head? Oh, okay. Well, it’s just one form of the tune and they cycle through it and play chorus. Well, what’s a chorus? Okay, shit. But even having that, you can imagine that on the business client, this was like a fun side project he was working on. But you can imagine that in a business context where you don’t even know what you don’t know yet about it yet. I hear this as happening, they’re still in the, especially, in the non-tech company space, the more traditional companies that are, “Oh, we have 100 years of data and let’s go, we need to go buy some data scientists and throw them at this pile of data and then magic will come out the other end.” John: Oh, I think that that happens in tech companies, too, though. I think that that’s the number of data scientist friends who’ve been hired in is like some large effort. Then, one, they’re like, “Yeah, and data engineering was the actual problem.” Okay, we spent our first year there just going around in circles on solving that problem, and then, yeah, the number of friends I have who’ve been frustrated by that dynamic, even in tech companies, I think it’s a pretty common, more common everywhere than we would think. Brian: Tell me a little bit about, so we’ve been talking about the analytical part of all this, the quantifiable parts largely but you have a UX research background as well. We talk, on this show, we talk about empathy, we talk about the needs to go talk to people to ask good questions, to ladder up, get into all that. How does that fit in? When you’re working on an analytics tool, can you fill us in on your approach to qualitative research and more the soft, mushy stuff that UX people deal with? John: Yeah, and it’s interesting. For context, I’m not a UX researcher at Amplitude but I’ve done that in prior environments that required the chops. But in talking to teams and doing it, I think so many of the basics apply in the sense that you’re really… Not to overuse the jobs-to-be-done stuff, you’re really, really trying to understand what decision this person is hoping to make. You’re really trying and then what impact that decision has on the rest of the organization and who is involved in it. I think anyone who’s done this knows that even as a UX researcher, if I do like a co-design activity with customers related to anything analytics oriented, it’s just, “Oh, we’re going to do an Excel mock up or you know.” Anytime you get customers involved with that, it’s so easy. If either side, and I’ve been on both sides of this, it’s so easy to forget what you were trying to do. I think that has a lot to do with the exploratory aspect of data in general that we have a gut instinct that if we just saw this stuff organized like this, then it would somehow be valuable for something we have to do. I think that for, and I don’t know if it answers the question, but I think it requires the same chops but also understanding that people just have a hard time, users have a hard time talking about what they are looking at and what they’re hoping to get out of the data when they’re looking at it over and over and over. I think that really, it really you have to use all the tools in the tool shed. To give you an example, there was… I don’t know if you’ve done these things too, I’ll do these exercises where it’s like, “Okay, we’re revamping the app, it’s just going to be this mobile browser with three numbers on it.” That’s it, that we’re not going to have all these fancy charts, we’re not going to have all this stuff. And three numbers and then one piece of narrative advice, like “Consider this or do this.” I love activities like that from a UX researcher standpoint when I’m working with people because it really, really forces them to just get out of their own head to think about it. That’s like a common trick and you probably have a lot more. But, yeah, I don’t know if I answered the question but it’s a lot of the same tools. But I think also you have to really… It’s a job environment, they’re making decisions, they’re hiring these analytics to do a job. But then with this added layer that I think that people are just incredibly, they find it incredibly difficult to talk about the numbers that they’re looking for. Brian: When you say it’s difficult for them to talk about it, are you talking about their digestion of what’s on the screen or their expression of what’s important to them to actually find out? What do I actually want to learn about? Is it… John: Both really, and that’s the thing that I think just makes it doubly as hard. It means that if you show them something, and I think that we can all relate to it too, like any of us who have been shown some mock or some prototype of information on the screen, you can see your gears turning. You’re having to process it and where did this come from? Can I trust it? What is it? We see that all the time just in Amplitude, it’s people… Our understanding of how people experience some of these querying screens that we have, when you actually ask them to just talk through what they’re thinking about as they move through it, it’s just it’s so complex. Data trust, where is this stuff coming from, data over time, their challenges with certain visualization techniques, even if it’s “the right technique” like, “Well, I just need a radar chart.” Just like no you don’t really. But that’s how they’ve been anchored or whatever. It’s just complex. I don’t have a fancy answer, it’s just complex. Brian: What you just told me reminds me of you had mentioned you do this exercise, and I’m wondering if it’s the same exercise that I’ve done as well with analytics tools, especially, in the context of monitoring applications. There’s some system that’s monitoring stuff and it’s supposed to advise you on what should I do next or what happens with something like this? It’s like “instead of thinking about what are all the right stats to do”, it’s “write in plain English like a prose format what would be the value that we could possibly show”, and maybe we can’t even technically do it today. But it’s “express the analytics and words like you should change this knob to seven instead of nine because we found out X, Y, and Z happened. We also think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and this is how we know that, and there’s your recommendation.” It’s highly prescriptive but it’s an exercise in thinking about the customer’s experience. How close to that can we get to it, where I don’t have to infer from charts or whatever the date of this format is, how close could we get to something that prescriptive and then try to work backwards from that. We probably can’t get right to that full prose. Is it something like that where you jump to this conclusion, like value conclusion or something like that? John: Yeah, and I do a couple of these like that, one is if I have an Alexa or if I have a tube of crackers or whatever I’m like, “This is the interface now.” You can ask Alexa, that’s your interface. This is a beautiful future world where you just have your smart person, your smart assistant to do these things. Yeah, similar type of, I think, what it does is it creates just enough dissonance to snap people out of just immediately trying to unravel the visualization, which can be I think all of us do that. I think that that’s our instinct whenever we look at something like that. Brian: The default next question is how should we visualize this data that we’ve captured? That’s the itch that we may not be the one to scratch? John: Yeah, but I think that’s also what we can test with, that point, when we’ve got that need to fill, that’s when we can try multiple approaches, I think to see that. That’s my experience, there is that point at which you need to you go back to the drawing board. Although, I would say that depending on the subject, the user in that case or the person you’re working with, some people are really, really good at just the co-design aspect. I don’t know your experience with that, but it seems to have a lot to do with what the people do each day and how they think about visualization and stuff. But I’ve done co-design sessions with people who the next step was, “Well, let’s start thinking about, let’s start drawing, let’s start doing some other things to do it.” I think that depends a lot on the background of the people that you’re working with. Brian: If you were starting over today with Amplitude, is there either a… Not necessarily a feature you would change but is there something that you would approach differently? If someone says, “Hey, we have this JavaScript widget, you paste it in your, all your app or whatever, and we can track almost anything, any activity, whatever. What should we show?” Is there something you would change about maybe how you guys went, the process you went about arriving at the current product that you have? John: That’s interesting. I wish Spencer and Jeffrey were here to answer because they’re the founders of the company. But I think that it’s funny how products have their history about them, so Amplitude, for example, it was a Y Combinator. The founders didn’t go to Y Combinator, they had this fancy voice app or something that they were working on, and this was actually just their effort. They were like, “Well, we kind of had this app,” and they surveyed what was available and then just said, “We really need, there’s a thing, it’s a little different. It’s like an event based measurement thing. We really want to instrument this app and know whether people are using it or not.” That was the founding story, it wasn’t their key thing. A lot of the early customers were folks from Zynga or Facebook or other places that had moved on to other startups and then they wanted something that helped with the 90% of product questions that they had around retention and engagement and complex behavior patterns. Does this behavior predict this or is there a relationship between these things? That’s the founding story, these discerning teams that had a fair amount of autonomy and were tasked with working in these environments and that they wanted a product that they could do that with. When I’m thinking about what I would change as the newcomer to the company, now maybe five years on, was it, yeah, or six years or seven years on, I think it’s what they’re starting to do now, which is interesting. This notebooks feature to me is just so, so, so good and it gets away from a traditional dashboard. But with a notebook, it’s very similar to a data science notebook, you can weave this story and this narrative and you can make the charts live and you can communicate it and you can do those things. As a product manager, that is pure gold to me, and it’s just we’ve started to do those things. I think that the answer would be more of what they’re really digging into now, which is around this learning user concept and how do you create stories with the data to motivate your team and keep everyone aligned and things. I think if it hadn’t existed and I joined a year ago, I would have been like, “Oh, you’re missing this little element like the actual part that integrates it into day to day product development.” But they’ve just started doing that now, so they stole my answer. Brian: Nice, and just for people that don’t know, tell me if I got this right, but the notebooks for people that aren’t data scientist, it’s effectively a collection of both quant data like maybe charts or tables, stats, data collection that you guys have put into some visualized widgets or whatever it may be insights plus qualitative stuff like my commentary on it. Like “Why do we care about this? Well, design is currently tracking these metrics because we’re running a study on dah, dah, dah, and we think we can move this up” and that’s a proxy for this other thing. You can provide all this context in that storytelling mentality so that when someone new comes in, they’re like, “Why do I care about time on site or whatever the metric?” John: Exactly, and that’s the huge thing. One thing that we learned, we’re in this business of teams getting going and it’s like it’s so easy to get to the point where you’ve instrumented your products and any new person joining your company can’t make heads or tails of anything. It’s like you’ve got all these events, are these duplicate events? We’ve invested a lot of time in this taxonomy feature, which helps manage your taxo- It’s way, way, when people try to build this stuff in-house, they just forget about all that stuff. Like, “Oh, it’s just events, it’s semi-structured information, we’re going to put it here and then we’re just going to run queries on it.” But all that’s really, really important, so back to the notebooks thing, one of the biggest use cases we’ve seen in notebooks is people using them to onboard people and orient them with all the available analytics that and metrics and things that are being recorded. That’s actually a really good testament to show that need. Brian: They use it to actually show how they use Amplitude at the- John: Right, it’s pretty meta. Brian: Wow, that’s awesome. John: Yeah, we see them do that or even some of them use it for training like, “Okay, let’s start with this idea that we’ve got this whole universe of users. Well, how would we segment those? Well, here are the key ways that we segment.” Okay, that we’ve gone down one layer, and so I think that that’s kind of cool. But, yeah, for people who don’t know about these data science notebooks, it is a mix of qualitative, quantitative, you can embed charts that are live or you could embed point-in-time charts, you can make comments, and you can do various things. I think for a lot of people who don’t do this for a living, they get intimidated and it’s not, a lot of the stuff is not rocket science, but it’s just annoying to have to go to someone in your company and say, “Hey, can you spend like three or four hours just explaining our information to us.” That’s really hard to do, so these notebooks help with that particular thing. I think that type of stuff is really the future of moving away from just very, very stayed dashboards and things like that. Brian: Right. I don’t know if there’s much in terms of predictive or prescriptive intelligence in the tool, does the tool provide that as well or is it mostly rear view mirror analytics? John: It’s interesting you say that, so we have this new feature called Impact Analysis, and so in Impact Analysis you are able to go from day zero of a particular use of a particular feature and then see the impact that it has on another set of things. We give some statistics and we give some other values in there. So we’re middle of the road moving to more and more complex questions. But one thing that our team realizes that anything… To prevent people from making bad decisions or making poor statements, you need to be so, so, so careful about presenting what you’re actually showing if there’s a correlation between something or even implying that there’s causation without doing the background on it. We’re not completely rear view and we’re in this middle ground, but we’re also going to go on record and say we’re predicting what this value’s going to be in six months. Brian: Right, and the reason, and not just the hype of machine learning, blah, blah, blah, that’s not my main reason for asking was going to lead into my next question, which was do you struggle at all with the expression in the tool of the evidence that backs up any types of conclusions that you’re showing? Do your customers care? Well, how did you guys arrive at this? John: They absolutely care, and so like one of the… We spent a lot of time in the ability, in Amplitude, any data point that you see, usually, if you hover over it, there’s a message it says, “Click to inspect,” or you can create a cohort off of that or you can see the paths to that particular thing. What we really made this effort to do is exactly right, is that people… Working at two analytics companies now, Pendo and now Amplitude, data trust and people being able to unravel what that number means in a way that makes sense to them seems like one of the massive limiters. It’s just that thing that it’s best laid plans start, that’s the entropy that exists with these tools as people use them more and more. There’s just it gets messier, a bunch of hands, a bunch of people are playing around. At least with Amplitude, they try to make a really big effort to like if you want to understand why that number is there and what is behind it, we try to make that really easy. John: But we could always do better because in my mind this is the number one difference between the more data snacking approach like “it kind of looks interesting, that number,” something that you can really pin your business on, which I think is what people… That’s the dream of all this, but then once people start to ask good questions really, it really challenges the tool. Brian: John, this has been fantastic chatting with you, I really appreciate you sharing this with our listeners. Do you have any parting wisdom or anything you’d like to share with people that are maybe working more on the tech side or the data side of the thing and the vents and they’re trying to, “I want to produce more use, whether it’s reports or actually software applications. But we’re trying to provide better stuff, more engaging, more useful…” Any closing advice you might give to someone like that? John: I’m going back to what we were talking about from the UX research angle is that I think that in this area, there’s so much temptation to any one of us who’ve done this is that there’s this constant push and pull between customizability and then this promise of preemptive insights like smart system, it’s intelligent, it’s doing these things. Then so how prescriptive are you? Is what you’re presenting and actually helping someone to do their job. I think that it’s probably reflective of my learning at Amplitude is that really going to human centered design, like really thinking about if the person is able to effectively do their job and really able to answer the questions that they’re answering. I think that what happens is all of us want that, but then we hit this wall and we start to get really some conflating information from users and we start to… Then we’re like, “Well, okay, we’re just going to let them find what they want to find. I think that, that exploratory type of research should be something that’s possible in these tools. In fact, I think that leads to asking some of the best questions when users can do that. But I would really hope that people don’t abandon the idea of being really patient and seeing if before they just throw their hands up in the air and will say, “Well, we’ll just make a query builder and that’s it, that’s it.” Like really seeing if that thing can solve the problem. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I think it’s something that’s really been on my mind a lot lately. Brian: Yeah, I talk about sometimes like with clients and people in this space about knowing whether or not you’re producing an explanatory product or an exploratory product. It doesn’t mean you can’t necessarily have some of both but there’s a big difference between the value, like in your case, I’m guessing a lot of these people really want some explanations when they tell us about what we can do to make our software better. They’re not there for fun, but they might run across some things they didn’t know were possible which begins the questioning. But if you put all the effort on them, you’re just shifting the tool effort over to the customer. You’re making it much harder for them to get the value out at which point they may abandon or quit. It’s not just knowing are we explanatory or exploratory or at least there’s this feature or there’s this outcome that this goal that we’re working on, the sprint. But just being aware of that I think is part of the challenge. Like should they be able to walk away with… I should be in the six to 19 apple’s range, whatever that means, like, should I be able to walk away with that level of clarity or not? I don’t know. John: I think that it’s also something like, that’s interesting you said that, because a lot of features that we’re experimenting with, one thing that Amplitude does is anytime you… We built an undo feature, so we try to make it really easy to go really deep and then just back out really gracefully. It’s like infinite, every version of the chart as you work on one is saved. You can back out of it. There’s a lot of features like Save As or you’re built like you could go to someone else’s chart, and if you have some idea of where you want to take it, you could edit it. But you’re not editing their chart, you’re editing a copy and you can think about it. But back to that point is I think that there’s many things that you can do to encourage, that you can juggle those needs concurrently for having definitive things and then also encouraging exploration. We’ve found that with our product as we experiment more. One, I just told you about it, like the ability to telescope into a metric and then do more exploration around it. That didn’t exist before and then we were like, “Oh, well, how about when you hover over any data point and you allow them to inspect that or explore that?” I would say that there are ways to accommodate both at least from our perspective and what we’ve learned. Brian: Right, and I think there’s always some of both of that, and I don’t think most people are going to take everything on its face value. But I hear what you’re saying. One of the things I’ve been recently working on is a UX framework for this called the CED framework, just conclusion, evidence, and data. It’s not necessarily a literal expression of “Where should the screens go? What goes on every screen?” But the concept that when possible, if the tool can provide conclusions with the second tier of being the evidence by which the tool or application arrived at this conclusion. Level three might be really getting into the raw data like, “What are the queries? What was the sequel that actually ran?” Or whatever the heck it may be, there’s times when maybe that data is necessary early on a customer journey. It may just be, “We need to build trust around this stuff.” We can’t be totally black box, but we don’t actually expect people to spend a lot of time at the D-level. We really want them to work in the C level, but it’ll take time and evidence is required sometimes if you’re going… Especially, I got to go to the boss, I can’t just tell him it’s 18, we should be at 18, not 12. It’s like, “Well, how did you arrive at that?” John: We find a lot is the instrumentation rigor is like that’s one of our big problems to solve really is there are these products on the market that do just try to record everything for it. There’s a lot of entropy there and there’s a lot of issues. They’re very fragile, in some ways, so we as a company definitely believe in explicitly instrumenting these events. But at the same time, you’d be amazed how many product teams… There’s this thing called a user story, you write a user story that’s from the user’s perspective, what are you trying to do? Now you would think that like, “Okay, well, we’ll tack on to the acceptance criteria for any story that you’ll use a noun and a verb, and you’ll get these properties and you’ll get these things. Integrating instrumentation on the product level, not necessarily like, “Okay, we’re instrumenting how our servers are working or anything,” but just, “What did the user do?” That’s still relatively new. People who’ve worked in environments that just do that as second nature that, okay, they’re in another thing, but we find that companies even need to change that approach. You’ve mentioned your CED thing like what’s interesting is that extends to the UX of instrumenting. It’s pretty interesting from that, it’s you’re the user trying to draw some conclusion, you’re doing these things. But it’s almost like service design, in some sense, because you need to design the approach to even instrumenting this stuff. It makes your head hurt sometimes. Brian: Yeah, all this stuff makes my head hurt. But that’s why we have conversations, hopefully, we’re knowledge sharing and it’s like giant aspirin conversations or something, I don’t know. But I found this super useful, thanks for coming on the show. Where can people follow you? I know I found you on Twitter. I forget how but what’s your [crosstalk 00:47:23]- John: Twitter is good, I’ve installed a Stay Focused app to prevent more than 20 minutes a day on Twitter. But you will find me eventually there. I write a fair amount on Medium and it’s pretty easy to find me there. Brian: Okay. John: If you just type in “John Cutler product”, I have about 400+ posts on Medium. Some are better than others but- Brian: Awesome. John: … yeah, that’s the best way for right now. Brian: Awesome. Well, I will definitely link both of those, your Medium page and your Twitter up in the show links. Man, John, it has been really fun to chat with you here. Thanks for coming on the show. John: Cool. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, awesome. Brian: Yeah, super. All right, well, cheers. John: Cheers, bye-bye.

Since 2013 Quiet Light's average transaction size has grown up to ten times. Back in those days, there were no private equity firms poking around the e-commerce space for these listings. Today it is a completely different story and more often than not we're seeing private equity firms come into the buyer spectrum. In fact, once a business reaches a certain size, it is more likely than not that a seller's potential buyer is going to be in the private equity space of the buyer pool. Today we are going to dissect the PE process a bit further. We'll delve into the process, the advantages and disadvantages, and give a general education on the subject for those who are curious about it how it works. Today's guest, Brian Rassel, is Vice President of Private Equity with Huron Capital. He's responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and analyzing investments made by his firm. Brian delves into ways he finds that e-commerce has entered into almost sector of investment that his group is involved in these days. Prior to joining Huron Capital, Brian was an Associate at Prophet, a global growth strategy consulting firm. Prior to Prophet, Brian was a consultant with New England Consulting Group where he led project management in their private equity practice for buy-side clients. Brian is sharing his wealth of private equity experience and how PE is entering more and more into the e-commerce space. Episode Highlights: How Brian defines private equity. How PE funds traditionally start up and get solidified. The difference between small, medium and large equity funds. The holding periods that private equity funds usually need to secure capital. Is PE all about acquiring to grow and sell or is there a category for buy and hold? Do evergreen funds exist? The difference between platform and bolt-on investments. Three things funds do to generate deal flow and types of business spaces they favor. The behind-the-scenes processes of putting a deal together. How many people are involved in the deal on the PE side. The backend investors committee and if that hinders the deal for the seller. Why time commitment is actually a good thing. How many deals Brian's PE firm evaluates per year. The defined process that gets them through the numbers. The growth potential for e-commerce – multiple appreciations and the role of private equity. Brian frames an ideal acquisition structure based on the general private equity model. Why the buyer/seller fit really matters. How private equity can work for sellers who want to get their business to the next stage. Transcription: Joe: Back in 2013 Mark I closed 23 transactions. It was a busy year for me. Do you have any idea what the average transaction size was? Mark: I … what do I guess? Well, it's you so I'm going to say like seven million dollars. Joe: I love putting you on the spot because you do it to me all the time. The average transaction size— Mark: You got to be like 250. Joe: It was 125. Mark: Holy cow. Joe: 125; very small. Mark: Okay. Joe: And at that time there were no Private Equity Firms poking around the e-commerce space for these smaller listings. Today it's a completely different story and my average transaction size was 10 times that last year. And a lot of buyers or a lot of sellers, the question I get asked all the time are who are your buyers? And it's a mix of everyone but more often than not now we're seeing Private Equity Firms come into this space. And I understand you had an expert in that area on the podcast. Mark: Yeah private equity is a topic that's coming up more and more frequently with sellers especially on the higher end of that revenue spectrum that we really work with. And it makes sense because once you get to a certain size of business your buyer is more likely than not going to be at least somewhat in the private equity place … area of the buyer pool. In addition, we've talked before … I had Ryan Tansom on and we talked about selling to a strategic buyer versus a marketplace buyer. And obviously, people always look at this especially at the higher ends and say I kind of want to have a strategic buyer. Well, one thing to keep in mind here is that this is kind of a spectrum right? It's not binary; you're either strategic or marketplace. But when you get into that private equity world, private equity is almost always going to be something of a strategic play. So I thought … look this private equity world is something that people keep asking about let's actually start to dissect it a little bit. So Brian and I talked and we spent probably about half of this interview just kind of going over what is private equity. How does that work? What is the definition of this? What are the sizes of it? And really just trying to ask some of those silly questions that maybe you kind of wonder about but don't want to ask because you don't want to sound like you don't know what you're talking about. And so we went over a bunch of those questions but then we also went over what does the process looked like. What does it look like to sell to a private equity firm? What are the drawbacks to it and what are the benefits of it as well? And really it's kind of a general education podcast but I think also … and maybe more importantly for those of you out there who are thinking about selling down the road and you're looking and trying to peg the different values that you want to get from an exit and maybe you think well I want a 10 million dollar exit or a 15 million dollar exit, if you get to that point what's it going to look like to sell to a private equity and what do you need to do to really make yourself appealing for a Private Equity Firm? And how does the deal change when you're signed to private equity as well. So we really covered a lot of ground in about 30 minutes. Brian is super knowledgeable obviously. He works in this space. And I really appreciated him coming on the podcast because … again I just downloaded a ton of information. Joe: Well let's get right to it. Mark: All right Brian thanks for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate you coming on. Brian: Yeah I know. It's great to be here. Thanks for hosting. Mark: All right so I don't expect people to listen … my guests to have listened to the podcast in advance and I know … I don't know if Joe's been doing this, he records like 9 out of 10 episodes and I don't know if he's continued on the tradition but we like to have our guests introduce themselves mainly because you know your story better than I know your story and I figure it's a little bit easier. So why don't you give just kind of a quick 30 second to one minute rundown on who you are? Brian: Yeah I'm Brian Rassel. I'm a vice president with Huron Capital Partners which is a middle market private equity firm based at Detroit Michigan. The firm is 20 years old and has invested in … we're typically enthralled buyout investors where we'll buy a majority of a business and have done that through five successive fawns starting back in 1999. And the industries that we play in are business services, consumer, and specialty manufacturing. You know it'd kind of be interesting how I got to know you Mark for those listening is that believe it or not all of those basins are being affected by e-commerce or different kind of SaaS business models that are internet based. And I'm taking it upon myself to maybe be the person of the firm who is trying to understand those influences on all of our companies and make sure that we're in a position to incorporate those changes that are going on out and new coming at large number and being done by a lot of people who probably listen to your podcast and make sure that we're bringing more of the [inaudible 00:05:51.4] in the businesses we own so that they can be successful today and be well into the 21st century. Mark: All right, well I got a lot of questions for you because this world of private equity is encroaching or coming into the internet business acquisition world more and more. And whether it's because at Quiet Light our deal value is moving up or private equity is starting to look at different price ranges and maybe this convergence of these worlds and also private equity looking more in the online space is just becoming an increasing topic that we're seeing more and more of. We're also seeing individuals that have started up on their own raising funds to do large acquisitions or to string acquisitions together. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So what I'd like to do and I already kind of told you this in our conversation before I hit record, I'd like to go over some of the basics here of the private equity world and how it looks in the Internet space as well. And then know a little bit more about your fund and some of the things that you guys are doing over there and all that. So a quick shout out to Chris from Centurica and Rhodium I know that we've talked about him so much that it's almost as if he's a sponsor. He's not. But this is again how we got introduced. You spoke at the Rhodium and then you and I had a chance to speak after that and a good conversation. So thanks Chris for the introduction again. So let's start out really really basic here. How do you define private equity? Brian: Private equity is capital … private capital being put to work in private businesses. And so I like to name [inaudible 00:07:22.6] for folks who really don't know much about it a little quick stat just kind of on the US economy. There are half as many publicly listed companies as there were in 1996 or 1994 something like that. So even if the value of the public markets is larger the amount of places you can park that capital in the public markets is small in the total number of listed names. Private equity is a big part of either big institutionally managed money. Whether that's from insurance companies, [inaudible 00:07:52.4], pension funds, universities, those kinds of things. This is their way to go participate in the forces of economy that are still private companies that they can't get access to otherwise unless folks like me help them get access to it. It also includes folks that can kind of go into different flavors of private equity but depending on the size from the bing capitals of the world down to very very small funds that are more entrepreneurial. There's sort of every flavor under design in certain family offices and other things like that. That would be private equity, pooled private capital going into private businesses. Mark: Well how did these funds start-up traditionally? And I imagine that there's a lot of ways that they can start up. You've listed a number of sources of money and I think sometimes we forget just how much money there is in some of these places. So yeah [crosstalk 00:08:46.6]. Brian: For sure I mean there's just [crosstalk 00:08:49.4] I'm going to get this off, I'll be wrong by a hundred billion dollars. But I think something like 600 billion dollars flowed into private equity firms last year. So these … and the source of a fund or the way a fund works is that a fund manager like the folks I work for here where I'm a part of, they go out and they make their pitch about how talented their professionals are and what their track record is and the fact that they can get access to great deal flow and great opportunities, places to put private capital where it will go earn a reasonable return. And they raise this money from these other institutional or independent investors. It could be high in net worth individuals or anybody like that but … so they get started that way. They'll hold this farm estate back to the 1960s and there are new ones being created all the time. And frankly, as hedge funds have declined I believe in a large way in popularity just because of the efficiency of public markets there's been more and more money directed towards these private pools of capital and the private equity market. And when I say private equity I mean both kind of traditional buy-out funds for more mature businesses that have healthy positive cash flows on the one hand and on the other hand I mean venture capital is the son segment of private equity. And that might be for really really high growth businesses like the next dewberry of the world or whatever it might be. Mark: Right, absolutely. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And as far as the breakdown as to sizes what would you consider to be a small private equity firm and what are we talking about in terms of their capitalization rates when they start up? What would be the difference between the small, medium, large type of firms? We can get an idea for how much money we're actually dealing with? Brian: So I would say just kind of from my understanding again all this caviada being dead this is sort of Brian Rassell's take on private equity and my interpretation and may not really be the opinions of United Capital, I can only speak for myself as an individual but they have a dedicated fund. And when I say dedicated fund these are groups of people that other folks, other investors have made a promise and a pledge that is legally binding and written their name at the bottom that that dedicated fund, the small one might be 50 million dollars. That'd be very small. Folks who are trying to invest less than that, generally speaking, have something more akin to a pledge fund. They have a number of people that they can pass the hat with to raise money in a deal by deal basis versus having committed capital to go invest in five, six, 10, 12 companies in that particular fawn. So just kind of … back at the envelope type map that you can think of is every firm should have plus or minus roughly 10 investments that have enough diversification in it. So a 50 million dollar fund is looking to put five million dollars to work in the 10 different companies. And that would be the equity capital going to those companies. There's oftentimes a mix of equity and debt coming into those companies and we could talk about that later. And then a midsize fund might be three or four hundred million up and pawn up to the 2KR's of the world or Apollo or the very big managers who are doing 15 billion dollar funds and so all different world. Mark: Very. Brian: They're taking hotels private or something like that. Mark: I was going to say they're buying something completely different than your Amazon business. Brian: Yeah that's right. It's a whole different world. Mark: All right you talked about you have successive funds. In my understanding again is that we go through these rounds of investment that coming up. We had Andy Jones from PrivateEquityInfo.com on and he talked a lot about the holding periods that private equity looks for. Can you just again quickly touch on that? We're kind of doing private equity 101 here. Brian: Yeah. I didn't hear Andy's remarks but just as it relates to a whole period I would think of it just to be linear about it that a private equity firm once our capital is raised [inaudible 00:13:01.9] the time that it takes to raise that money they committed capital or even the past they had capital they're going to take that money and let's just use this fictional 50 million dollar fund. And they'll take something like four years to deploy the first 80% of it. And the goal would be you take 20% of that money and get it into a new platform company. Companies they had no money in before. In the first year or the next year next 20%, next year next 20%, next year next 20% thus 80%. The point at that point you can't do necessarily new investments you're reserving that last 20% for either a company that's struggling that you need to give more money to to keep it going or to do an add on investment to buy something else and add it on to something that's in the portfolio. That might take four or five years to really deploy the majority of it and then another four to five … you know an investment from year one that you only … you're exiting that investment three to seven years later and let's just use five as kind of a round middle of the road number there. So an investment from year one is maybe gone in year six so it's being harvested. It could be sooner, it could be later. And the investment that was your last platform investment from year four might be heading out the door in year eight or nine. So fund life is something like eight to ten years. It can be longer. And a traditional as you kind of draw it up on the whiteboard like I have behind me here is sort of a five year hold. Now there's … I've seen many that are much much shorter and many that are much much longer but those are the fat parts of the [inaudible 00:14:36.2] if you want. Mark: Sure. So is private equity … is the goal of all private equity companies to grow and sell? So acquire, grow, sell, or are there other strategies? Buy it and hold for long periods of time? Brian: There are certainly evergreen funds out there. They're much more … when I say evergreen they have the ability to hold and recycle the capital. They may be designed to have heard of a number that has committed capital from particularly family offices that never want to do the tax consequences of becoming liquid in an investment and actually realizing the gains so they're structured to reinvest the money that they make. Or if they sell something to quickly find someone else new for it to go into. Now that would be a more unique situation. And then certainly family offices there's a number out there that looks for longer hold periods and there are certain funds that are designed for a longer hold period. Mark: All right so this is going to be again another basic question but I want to make sure our terms are all well-defined here. We hear these terms of platform versus bolt on or add on investments. Just real quick the difference between a platform investment versus a bolt on. Brian: Yeah I'll just keep it simple. I'll say anything that is a brand new business, new industry for that firm to go into. They don't currently own something in that space. Whether that's a tiny initial acquisition or a big one that would be the platform investment. So let's just say with a … I don't know Internet broker pencils, I'm just making this up, all right? And they don't have any other investments in the internet broker pencils space and they invest in a company in that space that would be the platform [inaudible 00:16:17.1] that. And maybe there are 10 companies that make … that do internet broker pencils and they buy two other ones of their competitors and they make it bigger or somebody [inaudible 00:16:25.3] and now they're putting it all together those might be add-ons to that original entity that they purchased or recapitalized. That's what we mean. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with size which can be confusing. Sometimes you start with something small and you get the opportunity and do an add-on that's much bigger than the original investment. So it's more just where is the starting point in you can do a space or an industry. Mark: And if we think about the terms it makes sense right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: You build on top of the platform and you add-on top of the platform. So it makes … that makes complete sense. Brian: Or bolt-on, yup that's where the nomenclature comes from. Mark: Or bolt-on, absolutely. It's amazing when you dig in to definitions it's like the terms actually have a meaning and it makes sense. Brian: They do. Generally, they come from somewhere. Mark: They come from somewhere. There's logic to this stuff. I love it. All right so now I'll get into questions that I'm starting to be genuinely interested in and that is how does a fund develop a thesis or an entire direction to go after a particular platform investment? I mean if you're selling blue widgets and also if somebody comes and says no you don't need widgets what you really need are sprockets, if you don't do anything with sprockets at all how does that enter into a fund's psyche at all? Brian: There's really three things that we're doing here to generate the sort of deal flow and the ideas and spaces we want to go into. So here I'll speak more from Huron Capital. There are other firms who follow a similar philosophy potentially. So the first is businesses we didn't know about but are being represented by a broker or an investment banker like yourself Mark who … those are opportunities that are coming to us. They are being listed. They're being actively shopped around. We may have never thought of the sprocket industry before or we didn't know too much about it or we read materials on it and we say it has a lot of characteristics and things we like; great cash flow, seems very resilient, seems countercyclical, if the economy goes down it'll still do well, it's a leader on its space, any of those kinds of things. Those are opportunities that come to us and that is more of a passive thing. And then we get active once we realize that it fits a lot of criteria and we believe we could be successful with it. And that sets into motion a whole chain of things where we kind of prove out of the pieces that we might like this business and we try to get educated. The second that we spend a lot of time on is networking with executives from a broad, broad variety of industries. Those people know where there are spaces that are changing. And generally speaking, change creates opportunities. Change creates winners on one side and losers on the other side. And less be to the losers but you need that kind of disruption to create any sort of sort interesting investment outcome. The study ID is probably the market's sufficient enough that the study ID is not going to return the greatest returns. So we've spent a lot of time with executives unless I knew them about spaces that could be interesting and trying to listen to areas they know about and start to build some [inaudible 00:19:37.4]. And then even more proactively than that there's a lot of opportunities where we meet the executive who has a view of one particular thing they want to do here at Huron it's got a registered trademark or the like of the firm. We call that an exact factor investment where we will actually flip the process and say we really believe in the sprocket industry. We met Phil who is going to be our perspective CEO in the space and he has this vision that is going to totally turn the industry [inaudible 00:20:11.5]. To do that we need to go find the platform, we call that like getting fuel behind the wheel. We need to find a car to fulfill the drive. We believe he's the best driver in that industry. And we will do all the work, we'll go write a hundred page white paper on it to prove to our investment committee why it's such a fabulous opportunity and Phil is the greatest operator in this space. And then we will commit dollars into going and finding businesses in that space and find Phil the car he can drive and we'll get off to the races that way. So it starts with a commitment from our farms for a certain amount of money behind Phil to go do an acquisition more and more in this space. So it … I guess ranges from that passive we find things and then we get educated too. We educate ourselves as much as possible and align ourselves with an executive who can execute and work the process the other way. Mark: Cool. All right that [inaudible 00:21:04.07]. So let's talk a little bit about the process that goes on behind the scenes when you are evaluating an opportunity. And I think for a lot of potential sellers this sort of conversation is going to be really insightful. So let's say we have somebody that they have an e-com business, 30 million in revenue, eight, nine million in earnings on an annual basis and they've got a couple of private equity firms looking at their business. Where does that start and what is the process going through? And you can talk about maybe Huron's process and then if there are variations that you know as well. The number of people that are going to look and touch that deal as it goes through the steps. Brian: Yeah. Mark: What are some of those behind the scenes looks? Brian: Yeah so once you've got that moment where there's a couple of firms interested there's going to be an incredible amount of information about the business across insurance, benefits, compliance with laws and regulatory statutes, information about the market; anything the business can possibly produce about itself, fairly every file that's off the shelf that they have, every non-disclosure agreement they have with somebody that they on boarded or employment agreement, every contract they have with a customer, or maybe it's an industry where you don't have a lot of contracts with customers but you have a lot of contracts with suppliers. All that information needs to be made available for these perspective buyers to digest. And the more they can be made available, the more that that's organized into different pockets of legal, employee, insurance, benefits, all of that, the better. It's going to save the company a lot of time from serving requests versus being proactive by getting that stuff out there. And you know well everything here all the buyers be under a non-disclosure agreement and that's just a very kind of well-oiled machine around making that information available to give your last few buyers down to the one you would like to choose and have them under a Letter of Intent. And that starts to be an exclusive relationship where the buyer is going to spend a lot of money in due diligence and in exchange for spending that money, they would like the exclusive right to [inaudible 00:23:19.3] business for a period of time. 60 days … 90 days where they engage and here is where it starts to get to be a lot more kind of in your trousers and really analyzing your business but they're going to engage in quality of earnings earned to go and understand did you actually produce the amount of revenue, if you put it in the right time periods, if you really counted for every cost etcetera. They're going to engage legal professionals who are going first to sort of just again a full work up of registration, compliance, [inaudible 00:23:51.9] and then those folks are going to work on the actual transaction documents as well as a host of other advisors. And that would be like again a 60 to 90 day process. It could be 30 days on the short end. There are firms who can do it in that time particularly if you're a smaller business and an add-on to a much larger or a very simple business. Mark: So how many people are we talking about there that are going to be involved in the process? Outside of the consultants like a Q of E … a quality of earnings report that's going to be an outside accounting firm right? Brian: Yeah. Mark: So we're not going to— Brian: Okay so from the acquiring firm? Mark: Mm-hmm. And we can start at the beginning. We can start at your interns that are digesting deals. That's going to be part one. Brian: Sure call it four and they're going to be answering to the remainder of their firm particularly their investment committee. Ideally, it's a tighter team and there's four and if it's an add-on expect more. So you'll have the management team of that kind of platform investment as well. So four to eight and then when you get to the advisor well now you're talking 20 something more. Mark: Right, getting all those outside advisers. Now one of the things I know people get worried about during this process is you start out again with that guy who's that in deals up front and he sees some he passes it on to the team and they end up liking it so now you're dealing with a handful of people that are asking the questions digging deep in that due diligence right? Pages and pages of collecting information possibly even submitting an offer because on the surface things look okay. Brian: Yup. Mark: There seems to be these back end investors committee as well which can also kind of wash the deal far in the process. What would you say to people that get kind of frustrated when they hear that and they think do I really want to work with private equity because there are so many people that could potentially disrupt this deal? Brian: So I would think about the time investment to it. So the private equity firm is in no way interested in wasting any of their time. Huron looks at something like little over a thousand deals a year. That takes a lot of time and we're very thoughtful about moving things to the funnel and connecting our firm's resources to evaluating an opportunity. So if somebody is spending the time I would tell the listeners that they are encouraged. If everything checks out the way I told to them so far or they've written so far about that business then there are absolutely no issues. The firm, an organized and real firm is going to be thoughtful and time is kind of their most valuable resource and they're set up to be able to make a number of staged gates kind of we're interested and we're not interested. We're interested subject to confirm affirmation I want two and three. And you can have a very quick conversation like you and I are having now to say is this the case is this not the case? Here's a big concern we have, should we be worried? And they will both take your answer and that gives them that kind of gumption to proceed. And they'll probably have to go validate that as well later. And that validation just has to support what's been told to them. But they are also making a big commitment with their time in the same way that the seller is and I would take it as genuine on their part that they're not looking for it to fall apart. It's just things do. Certain deals fall apart because new information becomes available. I've seen that happen a number of times where the seller learns things about their business or thinks about their business in a way they hadn't before and can agree that that's a genuine risk and may be something they want to work out within a course of another year and then they might be back to market. Mark: Yeah, that happens often. We see that all the time even in the amount of work that we put a seller through upfront it pales in comparison to what you guys are going to be doing in your actual dig deep due diligence. And the number of times that we have people come back and tell us that was a lot of work but that was really useful. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I have learned a lot about my own business, right? Brian: Yeah a great advisor like somebody like you and using a broker who's been through and understands the questions that are going to be asked is going to save a tremendous amount of time. And we call folks like you Mark a river guide we're using on our side and we love them. Sellers use them too because they're that much more prepared for the process. Mark: Yeah. And I can tell you like the one thing that … I'm going to play both sides here, I would say the one thing that can be difficult with working with private equity is because there are so many people that can come in with a dissenting viewpoint. You're not trying to … convince is a bad word but show the opportunity to one person and have them agree to it; you're having to show a number of people. But the great thing and I love working with private equity on is that it's completely unemotional throughout the process. Brian: Yeah. Mark: I mean it really is does this check the boxes we needed to check and if it doesn't we're going to find out as quick as we can. You said something, I was going to ask this question, you guys evaluate you said about a thousand deals per year? Brian: Yeah the pipeline you think about now it's working its way down at the top of the funnel and so we're a thousand and then that's working its way down to 250 that real solid time is being spent on and then 75 that we're spending real tons of resources and traveling around to visit them … maybe 80. Now I'll get these numbers wrong this is kind of directional and then down to the 30 or so that are getting a Letter Of Intention and we'll close 22 transactions a year. Mark: Yeah so that's an amazing amount of data to be pulling in. And you guys have criteria at every stage I assume that you're looking for up front? Brian: That's right. Mark: Okay. All right that makes sense. Do you publish those criteria? I know we get a lot of just the very broad stuff sent to us. Brian: We don't only because it's just so bespoke for every company. There are so many things that really are as you just said that are check the box and we're highly confident that we will go confirm later. We're highly confident that's not an issue and we are trying to get to it very, very quickly. The three or four things we want to make sure are the reasons we're most excited and confirm that that is factual and that was going to continue. Whatever that might be; on the customer relationship or the recurring purchasing or … whatever it might be. And then at the same time the three or four things that are kind of we're concerned that could be deal killers. We believe we're spending the time because we think that's going to turn out to be true or we need to get to a yes no about is this a real problem very, very quickly. And so you know it's just they're different for every business. Mark: Yeah I know a lot of people listening right now you guys are buyers that are out there looking to acquire. So technically Brian you guys are somewhat of competitors although I think that you operate at a range that a lot of our buyers wouldn't. But I think one thing interesting that they should hear is this idea of having this defined process number one and then number two the amount of deal flow that you have to look at. I've talked to buyers that been out there looking for a year, year and a half but then you find out the number of deals that they're actually looking at doesn't really … this is a numbers game. I mean it's purely a numbers game. Brian: It is and one thing I want to say on that numbers game for us and it may be different for some of your buyers or not is that we're looking for situations that are great for us and we're also looking for situations where the seller in some ways choosing us. Now I don't want to overstate that but I do want to say that there has to be a great fit in every piece and why we're a better owner than someone else for that business. Some angle that we have, some affinity we have for what they do, or some prior experience or something. Otherwise and it could be a little different for particularly small businesses. Maybe it's a little bit less like that and it doesn't need as much of the chemistry but that's a big part of what we're looking for, for sure. Mark: And we talk about that a lot on these pockets. I know you guys are probably tired of hearing Joe and I talk about the need for a buyer being a good fit. And we talked a lot about this general concept of being likable because sellers do eventually choose and for most of these sellers they do have a choice. I mean right now it's a seller's market. They do have a choice of who they're going to work with. I want to talk about the exciting stuff. Let's talk about the actual deals; the money. Brian: Sure. Mark: Why is selling to a private equity something that people should be excited about? Brian: I think I spoke a little bit about this at Rhodium but I just … I see then the difference in multiples that are paid for businesses that are exclusively e-commerce or SaaS based businesses. Those multiples are so much lower than what private equity firms are paying for more traditional businesses out in the economy. And I believe that those worlds will come together. And I believe that businesses that are a hybrid of both or have excellence in both and are flipping both worlds are going to be extremely, extremely valuable. Because on the one hand, they have the relevance for the future, it's coming from kind of the types of businesses that you represent. And also they have that anchor of the traditional business that makes them more under writable and it makes them more predictable because it's a less dynamic place that they're out in. And so that's where I think private equity firms in the coming two, three, four, five years are number one going to become much more comfortable with standalone e-commerce business models that are exclusive that and there are going to be people participating from the much more kind of like formal private equity world participating in your markets. And then I think there's going to be a convergence where a lot of more traditional business models are going to look for the influence and the DNA as well as the revenue and the profits but the influence and the DNA and the growth that comes from the types of businesses you work with Joe. And I think that means that the market that you're playing in, the multiples will rise there. For every dollar of earnings they'll be more valuable in the future and I believe that's for now in a very significant way in 2018. Mark: Yeah and we talked about this this idea of multiple appreciation that we see. And a lot of it reaches over to the fact that this is where private equity starts to play right? So we often talk if your EBIDTA is less than a million dollars per year the … just again for the sake of a multiple, it's going to vary for each business but maybe 3 … maybe 3.5 would be the multiple on that EBIDTA depending on the type of business that you have. But once you start getting up into two, three, four million dollars of EBIDTA now we start seeing the multiples jump up in the different ranges. And the reason for this again is that we're no longer playing as much with an individual investor who really has a much higher risk profile because they don't necessarily have the entire team behind them or a portfolio behind them to be able to take some of that risk but also get the staff in the background and all the resources in private equity. Brian: Yeah. Mark: So let's talk … I am not going to pin you down because it would be a really bad idea for you to say hey we generally paid 25x on earnings which I know you don't. What does a deal structure often look like? Because I know these deals structures do change as well when we're talking about a private equity acquiring a small company. What does an ideal acquisition look like for you in terms of its structure of cash that the owner is going to be getting, maybe equity or debt that you would hope that they stay around and I'd also like to address the idea that a lot of private equity likes to have or prefers to have an owner stay on board with the new company and why that's a good thing also for that owner to think about that. So that's a lot; the general structure, the ideals for a structure. Brian: Okay so let's keep this out of your space and let's just talk about the general PE model. When deals were cheaper a couple of years ago you might get a higher ratio of debt than equity in a deal but for this sake, I'm just going to make it 50-50. I think that more reflects the market today in terms of underwriting. But let's take a deal where a private equity firm is paying at least eight times. That's still a relatively rich multiple. I could have said six but let's use eight times. So we're paying four times the earnings in their own cash that they're talking and they are going and putting the company on the hook or raising four times and they do it. Private equity firm does it but on behalf of the company of debt for the business to take on. So let's say it's a business with 10 million dollars of EBIDTA. So it's an 80 million dollar transaction and a firm like Huron is putting 40 million of equity and raising 40 million of debt in that transaction. And that 40 million of equity can come either from Huron or some portion of it could be rolled over from the seller. If that seller has no debt on the business today, no capital leases or anything else that could be thought of as indebtedness over the normal trade payables. And in your day to day you've got cash coming in and cash going out; that thing that keeps the shop running. And they have no debt on the business theoretically on the day of closing they're getting a check for 80 million dollars. If they choose to roll over some of that … let's just say 10% of the purchase price, eight million of it I would argue that a private equity firm or somebody like me would take that as them stating a high degree of confidence in the future of the business that they want to continue participating and have a relatively [inaudible 00:37:34.7] portion of their net worth tied up in that outcome. Or that they see the opportunity to turn that eight million into 16 or whatever it might be that there is a great opportunity to continue driving growth and equity value in that business. They'll … I start there that the rollover investments are very useful because if you're saying you want to do no roll over whatsoever and you just want to walk away from the business it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. There are certainly reasons to do that but it's not conveying a lot of confidence in the future of the business. And where somebody might have been agreeing to pay you eight if you were rolling over and giving that kind of tacit support for the business going over, they might kind of say this is we're not so sure. It makes them a little more nervous and it might be a seven times deal. So you may actually be shooting yourself in the foot in terms of the total proceeds you perceive. Again so it's an 80 million dollar deal, 40 million of debt, the seller is choosing to roll over. They got their 80 million dollar check, it doesn't work like this you're actually [inaudible 00:28:28.9] but they got their 80 million dollar check and maybe we wrote one back for eight and so Huron holds 32 million of the equity and that seller holds eight million of it. So Huron owns 80% of the business and they own 20% and we've got some obligations to pay. That would be kind of the middle of the road structure. There's certainly a lot more that happens as it relates to creating incentives for management teams and that's a very, very big part of what we do to make sure that if we do well they do well and vice versa so that we're all talking in terms of growing the underlying equity value of the business. And that can often be very different for a business that didn't have that before. And it was just solely kind of the founder driving it or minding the growth of equity value. We believe in creating a broad base of ownership so that we're all on the same page. Mark: Yeah. Brian: Our management team is on incentives exclusively through their salary or bonus or both. Mark: Right so one of the things that I've talked a lot in the past especially on like the main street sort of deals is this almost dichotomy and it really shouldn't be set up as a dichotomy of a marketplace based sale where you only have an investor looking to acquire business in a strategic sale where you have a company that it would effectively be like an add-on acquisition in your world right? They already have the sort of strategic advantage to acquiring that company. Within your world, it seems like so much of what you do is going to be the strategy based type of acquisition anyways. Brian: Right. Mark: So it's like you're not going to do an acquisition unless you think that you have a strategic advantage. And when we … you and I talked out in Las Vegas back last October one thing that you talked about quite a bit was we want to pour gasoline on the fire that's already existing. So whatever that might be and so as a seller who's out there thinking about this and saying man I've been growing my business like crazy but I'm investing all this cash back into acquiring more inventory and expanding the product line and I'd like to take money off the table and then keep growing it. This is that perfect sort of handoff to a private equity because you can say you know what you [inaudible 00:40:54.0] your income statement rich in cash flow pour. Brian: Yup. Mark: We got cash. We'll help you out there. You're going to get some cash on the table and then let's grow this from a 30 million dollar business to a hundred million dollar business. Brian: Right. Mark: And so there's an incentive there for that owner to double dip that [inaudible 00:41:11.7]. Brian: Absolutely. Particularly in situations … we see this all the time where additional capital is going to be an accelerant to growth. So capital is what we have and we're trying to find a smart place to put it work and if that means we can buy a business and continue and support that business with more dollars and we believe in the strategy and what's going on in the way it's being operated there's nothing … that's the easiest dollar for us to put out versus the whole re-under writing process of a new investment. And then for that seller to have all their eggs in one basket … I don't care what their life situation is they could be in their 30's and just want to diversify or they could be somebody who's looking at kids who are about to go to college and it just doesn't make sense to have 100% of their net worth or close to it tied up in their business. And if they could diversify a little bit or generate a little bit of cash but their vision hasn't changed at all that's a great situation to bring on a strategic partner like a private equity firm. And that's where that [inaudible 00:42:11.9] fit it really matters and the chemistry between the seller. For the most part, you're not going to sell it to a private equity firm, they don't want to be in the business or definitely not in the business of operating these companies. So round the business and investing in them helping to bring the right resources to it and bring the right capital solutions or capital availability all that. Helping them set strategy and all the other things but the actual day to day operations. So it's not going to be for your sellers or for buyers [inaudible 00:42:45.1] sellers who are looking to exit the business and hand it off somebody else private equity is not going to be the right solution. But for those companies that they either want to go to be a division of something larger and they think they can be a great cross selling opportunity or the way they've built their mousetrap if just they had more to sell in the same way, and I'll say like let's say you're the number one muffler seller online and you also want to do transmissions and drive cams and stuff but you don't have the capital and you don't have the ability to go source and expand that way, going and selling to a larger entity and being that e-commerce division is a very powerful idea. Or just continue and do your own business and double down … accelerate the organic growth, private equity firm could be a great partner. Mark: Yeah, we're just about out of time in fact we've gone a bit long but one thing I wanted to emphasize here, you said that capital obviously is the resource you guys have and are able to invest and I know a lot of people that I talk to say look I don't really need money from this, the business is making money and I feel good about this. But what I find when I actually start to dig in with these guys is I say well what would it take to move to that next level. Oh well, I would have to hire out this other division or create this other division and you know okay but what's the obstacle to that? I don't want to invest in it. It often comes up. Okay, that's the area where a firm like yours can also come in and say well look we have the capital to be able to invest in this. You know what you need; do you want to invest in it to get to that next stage? And even if that means bringing in someone and you can help with that let's do it. Exactly we can do that and we could— Brian: Not to mention that I think we find that often business owners are willing to do one out of their five ideas that are like that and were willing to do all five knowing that three won't work but two should work out beautifully and we're willing to go [inaudible 00:44:39.4] the bodies of the business and the capital and have the appetite to take two steps backward to take four forward and understand that they're not going to all work. And where maybe an independent owner would do those sequentially, try idea one it wasn't really working, didn't feel pleased with making that investment and losing that cash flow, fired that new sales person who was supposed to do something else. We're willing to go do things faster and make sure that that doesn't hover around in the business and the core of what we're interested in the first place. And so we'll work through that with the business owner by giving them that support and the dollars needed to make that happen. Mark: Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time here [inaudible 00:45:19.8] some of the small questions I had but really good to get those things— Brian: No it's my pleasure. It's fine. Mark: So thanks again and maybe we'll have you back again in the future at some point. Brian: That sounds great. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks, Mark.   Links and Resources: https://www.huroncapital.com/member/brian-rassel/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrassel  

Addiction, substance abuse and the resulting professional and personal fallout can destroy careers and lives. As another wonderful addition to our Wellness Podcast Episodes, Mark had the opportunity to connect with Brian Cuban, Dallas-based attorney, Addiction Recovery Advocate and author of The Addicted Lawyer: Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow, and Redemption. Brian reflects on the reasons behind addiction and his journey toward recovery. They also delve into the point where choice ends and addiction takes over. And in a profession that doesn't necessarily champion vulnerability, Brian emphasizes the strength in laying it all out there to find that path toward healing. If you or someone you know works in the legal profession and is struggling with addiction, please connect with your state or local bar's Lawyer Assistance Program. The ABA offers a national directory on their site to connect legal professionals with this confidential service. To learn more about all areas of attorney wellness, visit the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being's Resource Page, featuring the report and more information on what is happening in your state. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. As a note, the sound quality on this recording is not optimal. Please don't let that dissuade you from listening to this important conversation. Transcript MARK: Hello. This is Mark Bassingthwaighte. I'm the Risk Manager here at ALPS, welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm delighted to be able to introduce just a very special guest today. I'm very privileged and excited to have the opportunity to speak with Brian Cuban. Brian is, I would assume is known to some of you. He's the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban. But more importantly, Brian is a Dallas-based attorney, author, and addiction recovery addict. He is a graduate of Penn State University and University of Pittsburgh School of Law. MARK: Brian, I am interested in visiting with you in no small part because of the more recent book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow, and Redemption. And it's my understanding you've done quite a bit of speaking on this topic of addiction and recovery. Not only throughout the United States but I believe internationally, if I'm not incorrect. BRIAN: That is correct. And let me, one small correction. MARK: Yes! BRIAN: Addiction recovery advocate, not addict. MARK: Good catch! Mea culpa there, it's a slip of the tongue. Maybe ... can we briefly just start having you, for those that don't know your story, can you share for our listeners a little bit about your story? BRIAN: Sure, well let's start out with I've been in recovery for 11 1/2 years from alcohol, cocaine, and from an eating disorder, bulimia. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). BRIAN: My drinking started in high school, it progressed through high school, and got a lot worse in law school and I discovered cocaine when I moved to Dallas - in a bathroom in a hotel in Dallas. And I became heavily addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Three failed marriages, one where I get a free set of steak knives, and they all failed related to drugs and alcohol. Two trips to a psychiatric facility and near suicide in 2005, finally finding recovery. I failed the bar exam twice, both failures relating to my being more interested in drugs and alcohol than practicing law. An interesting little anecdote from that I tell, the first time I took the bar exam, my study aids were a fifth of Jack Daniels, an 8 ball of cocaine, which is 3.5 ounces that I'd bought that same day. Needless to say I didn't pass. MARK: Right, yeah. Wow. Can I...I'd love to hear, I mean this is, this is pretty heavy news. And it's, my word, being you've really seen some dark places in terms of how I hear your story. When I think about others that are in various stages of addiction and dealing with challenges, I think one of the problems that people face, and please correct me if I'm wrong about this, but there's this fear of what others will say, for instance if I'm struggling with something if I say okay I have an alcohol problem, or I have a mental illness, or I have some other type of addiction, that people are going to view me as perhaps weak, unable to cut it, you know, these kinds of things. In other words, there are social stigma's in play. These...we fear that. I think people at times feel very shameful personally about having these kinds of struggles. May I ask how did you personally find the strength to pull out of all this, to move forward, not caring perhaps? I'm not sure of the social stigmas. But what was the strength, what enabled you to come out the other side of this? BRIAN: That's a great question. And the answer's complex, but to simplify it down, my quote-on-quote "aha" moment was standing in the parking lot of a Dallas psychiatric facility for my second time and at that moment realizing that I was probably going to lose my family if I did not find recovery. And there is really, you know there's my wife, there's my family and you know nothing is more important to me than family. MARK: Yes. BRIAN: And I wasn't going to lose their love but families distance because they have nieces, I mean because they have their children, my nieces and nephews. They don't want someone who is high on cocaine and drunk hanging around them. And so distancing occurs. And families realize whoa there's this gray area between love enablement and recovery, where okay, where does enablement end and recovery begin. And I think that all finally it had come together and I realized that standing in that parking lot and that was the moment when I said, okay I need to take that first scary step forward and release the shame, release the stigma, ‘cause if I don't, not only will there not be a third trip back, because I'll probably be dead. MARK: Yeah. BRIAN: But I will lose everything that is dear to me. Why that happened in April 2007 in that moment, and not say in the summer of 2005, or when my brother came into my house and I had a weapon on my night stand, I was going to take my own life, I don't know. That moment is different for everyone. But that is what was going through my mind at that time. MARK: So what I hear you saying, and I think this is a wonderful message, am I correct that you got to a point where you say 'at some point I realized my family, that people that are in my life, are simply more important to me than getting high'. Is it that, I think it's more complex than that, but... BRIAN: It's more complex, but I can tell you that was the trigger at that moment. MARK: Okay. BRIAN: When we talked about everything that came before that you have to talk about trauma, you have to talk about childhood, a lot of bullying. You know with my relationships at home. And we have to remember that when I talk to lawyers and I talk to law students about the struggling they are facing in that moment, nothing happens in a vacuum. I've had lawyers and law students tell me, and I am the first person they have ever told, about bullying, about childhood trauma, about sexual abuse, about physical abuse. And I of course I am not qualified to talk to them about those issues. I have resources that I refer them to, like the Lawyers Assistance Program, they can see a counselor. But there's a much bigger, there is a trigger in that moment, and then there is everything they thought of to that moment. Does that make sense? MARK: It does. Absolutely, it does. Let me kind of take this a little further in a different way. I see, you know again, in my, I'm a lawyer, I'm a tech geek, I'm not a physician, I'm not trained in drug counseling and these kinds of things. BRIAN: Neither am I. MARK: But my limited understanding of addictions is that a lot of these behaviors get their start, and then I think, become cemented because people will turn to whatever drug of choice it is as a coping mechanism. It for instance masks the pain, masks the fear, whatever it might be. And now being 11 plus years into recovery you, just like everybody else, we continue to have challenges and struggles and like these kinds of things. What have you done in terms of replacing an unhealthy coping mechanism looking at alcohol or cocaine as an example. How do you deal now? What is the healthy way? How are you coping? BRIAN: That's a great question. And lets deal with a current real life example. I am not disclosing this to make people feel sad but its - life and death is real. My father died 2 weeks ago today, at 92 years old and we were very, very close. I was just at the cemetery visiting him before this podcast. That is trauma right? MARK: Yes it is. BRIAN: That is something that 12 years ago I absolutely would have turned to the cocaine. Gone out and gotten hammered. Done who knows what in order to mask that pain. But I learned that doing that to mask that pain, one, is not going to bring my father back. MARK: Yes. BRIAN: Two, was going to set me on a path that he wouldn't want. That my family wouldn't want. And that would end up with me back at that psychiatric facility or dead. So I had to learn to deal with trauma on life's own terms. Whether that is the passing of a loved one. Whether that is the passing...whether that is the bullying of my childhood. Whether that is any type of thing that we try to mask. Right, you go into a high school and you talk to students who were smoking weed or all kinds of polymorphic drug use. And you ask them why, they may not be able to articulate it that they are masking. Masking pain, they're masking rejection, they're masking the need to be accepted. So that starts in high school and this need to use a substance to mask goes on to law school, to college, through college, to our law practice. So what did I learn in that moment in 2007, well I learned that I needed support. To support, my first support was 12-step. MARK: Okay. BRIAN: I am not promoting 12-step. I am not saying that is the way for everyone. But it wasn't even a way that I particularly wanted to embrace. But I knew I had to take some step, and I needed support, and I needed to be able to be with people who understood exactly what I was going through. So I walked into that alcohol based 12 step and Alcoholics Anonymous is the most well-known of those. MARK: Yes. BRIAN: And that was April 8, 2007. And so 12-step has been one of my ways, and the first thing I did, other than relying on the love of my family when my father passed, I went to a 12-step meeting. That is how I cope. And I'm hopeful in counseling. I have been seeing a psychiatrist for 15 years. MARK: I find this a very positive message of hope. What I hear you saying is, or how I'm responding to what your saying is, as an addict you make this choice to fall back on something that numbs, that masks, that hides the pain and all these kinds of things. But now you've realized, and you've identified the same problems that might send you there but you realize that you have choices. And you have people that can be supportive because no one is expected to go through, and should have to go through all kinds of...you're not alone in other words. And I think the world of addiction for, again what I hear and understand, is this loneliness thing is very central and is in part something that drives the poor decision making. You've come out this other side and, and, support ... I love the message. BRIAN: I also want to be careful about how we frame choice. MARK: Yes okay. Please. BRIAN: There's this saying that addiction, and I believe in the disease model, some people don't, I do. MARK: I do too. BRIAN: Addiction is not a choice, but recovery is. Recovery is about choices. Okay. MARK: Yes. BRIAN: And people get kinda caught up on this and it is a very kind of volatile issue. If you asked me, was the first time I did a line of cocaine a choice? Of course it was a choice. I chose to do it. Now was it choice influenced by a lot of childhood trauma and a lot of self loathing issues, a lot of issues on how I viewed myself? But it was a choice. But when I did that line of cocaine and suddenly for the first time in my life, for 15 seconds, looked in the mirror and finally loved myself. MARK: Yeah. BRIAN: The process that took over in my brain told me I need to do that again and again and again to continue to love myself was not a choice. MARK: Yes. BRIAN: That is the difference. I want to be sure we frame choice properly. MARK: And I appreciate, and I absolutely agree with you and understand. I think that's a very important point to make. Can we sort of assume for a moment that somebody is listening to this podcast that may have some level of addiction, some struggle, and is sort of responding to this 'well this is kind of interesting but it doesn't apply to me, I don't really have a problem, counselors are for...they're all trying to fix themselves you know, they don't know what they're doing, they're just head games'? You see where I'm trying to go. That there's all kinds of excuses not to try to acknowledge that we have a problem. And people can get, for the lack of a better term, stuck. And at times stuck for years. And that's where I presume some distancing comes into play and all kinds of things. What would you say to this individual? BRIAN: I think for the most part the odds of it going away are more slim, that it's only going to get worse, this is proven out. Okay. Addiction is a progressive disease. That it is okay to reach out to someone to seek help. MARK: Okay. BRIAN: I would encourage that person to take a real-life stock of what's going on in their life, day-to-day life. How is your relationship with your wife? How is your relationship with your children? How is your relationship with your partner at the law firm, or your friend? What is actually going on in your life? Where does it stand? Because there is no such thing as high function. Because there is no such thing as high functioning, okay. There is only a degree of decline of functioning. And the biggest issue I see in the legal profession because we don't like to be vulnerable, is waiting for the consequences to catch up to the problem. Are you going to take stock of it now? And at least take one step forward to make your life just a little bit better. However you define that outside of drugs and alcohol. Whether it's your wife. Whether it's your children. Whether it's what's doing on at work. Are you going to do that or are you going to wait for the consequences to eventually catch up to what's going on as it gets progressively worse. And that will happen. And all of the sudden it's worse. All of the sudden its malpractice. All of the sudden it's a bar complaint. All of the sudden you're facing suspension, disbarment. All of the sudden you are unemployed. Why wait for that? Take that first step now. Call your Lawyers Assistance Program. It's confidential. MARK: Yes, yes. And I really appreciate your sharing that idea. I think so many people are a little bit afraid of talking to these various Lawyer Assistance Programs because there is this fear that there's gonna be some...its gonna get out. These are confidential situations in terms of communications and what not. And my experience in terms of the people that are involved in running these programs are just down to earth, rock solid, good people that had been there. BRIAN: And you know what, no matter how much I say it, there's gonna be a demographic of lawyers who aren't going to be using them, cause they are just convinced in their mind. We don't have enough time but I have a funny anecdote about that, they're just convinced in their mind that they are an arm of the state bar, they are not confidential and that is going to get out. Let me tell you what is not confidential is when you wait for the consequences to catch up to the problem and that's your name in the back pages of your bar journal. MARK: You are so right and I love that. But that's the reality. That's what's coming if this isn't addressed. You're absolutely correct. You're absolutely correct. Well listen Brian I really appreciate your taking the time today to share a bit of your story and to spend a little time here with me on the podcast, it really has been a pleasure. I hope at some point to have another opportunity. You're the kind of guy I'd love to just sit down and enjoy a nice glass of Italian sparkling water or something, and just have a nice meal and some great conversation. That would be just wonderful. BRIAN: Let me end with one more thing. MARK: Yes please. BRIAN: A lawyer or even a law student who is listening to this who is struggling out there but thinks they're coping, 'I'm coping, I'm doing okay'. Ask your wife if you're doing okay. Ask your children if you're doing okay. Ask your partner if you're doing okay. Ask your...ask an associate if you're doing okay. Ask a friend of yours if you're doing okay. You will get a different answer than you think. MARK: Yeah, yeah. And then have the courage to listen. BRIAN: And have the courage to listen. You have to be able to drop that wall and be ready for the response. Because dropping the wall won't...allowing yourself to be vulnerable is one of the hardest things we can do in the legal profession. Because we're used to...we're trained to take advantage of that, right, in our profession? MARK: That's right. BRIAN: It's not something we allow ourselves to do. To self-explore. MARK: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that, that's solid, solid advice. Well we are out of time here. I do want to say to all of you listening in I hope you found something of value in today's conversation. Please feel free to reach out any time if any of you listeners have any thoughts in terms of topics or other folks that you'd like to listen to, in terms of have them join us on the podcast. Thanks for listening and have a good one. Bye bye.    Brian Cuban, the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, is a Dallas based attorney, author and addiction recovery advocate. He is graduate of Penn State University and The University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Brian has been in long term recovery from alcohol, cocaine and bulimia since April of 2007. His first book, Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder,” chronicles his first-hand experiences living with, and recovering from, twenty-seven years of eating disorders, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Brian's most recent, best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer, Tales of The Bar, Booze, Blow, & Redemption is an un-flinching look back at how addiction and other mental health issues destroyed his career as a once successful lawyer and how he and others in the profession redefined their lives in recovery and found redemption. Brian has spoken at colleges, universities, conferences, non-profit and legal events across the United States and in Canada. Brian has appeared on prestigious talks shows such as the Katie Couric Show as well as numerous media outlets around the country. He also writes extensively on these subjects. His columns have appeared and he has been quoted on these topics on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, The Huffington Post, Above The Law, The New York Times, and in online and print newspapers around the world. Learn more at www.briancuban.com.

Special Guests: Brian Douglas and Bex Warner of GitHub. In this episode, the panelists talk about automating GitHub with Probot. The origins of Probot are discussed, as well as making GitHub apps with the GitHub API, automating workflows with Probot, must-have Probots for every repo, and GitHub's V4 GraphQL API. References: Microstates README Probot github.com/integrations/slack github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders platform.github.community/c/integrations probot.github.io/apps/unfurl-links/ probot.github.io/docs/deployment/ probot.github.io/docs/extensions/#scheduler probot.github.io/community This show was produced by Mandy Moore, aka @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. TRANSCRIPT: ROBERT: Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 105 of The Frontside Podcast. I'm Robert DeLuca, the director of open source here at the Frontside and I'll be your episode host. Today, we're going to be discussing automating GitHub with Probot with Brian Douglas and Bex Warner. I'm really excited about this topic. The idea of automating GitHub workflows with bots is amazing. This is something that I've been wishing the GitHub have the platform support for since I even started using GitHub for open source. Just being able to have a bot to take care of certain things like somebody doesn't leave enough of a PR description and they open up a PR, you can have a bot that just responds to it and saying, "Can you provide more information?" It's pretty awesome. With me as co-host today is Charles Lowell, who is also a developer here at the Frontside. Hey, Charles. CHARLES: Hey, Robert. ROBERT: Before we get into the discussion, I like to make a tiny little announcement. We've been building a composable and an immutable state container called Microstates. I'm sure Charles can talk about this more at length, then we will in the next podcast episode -- 106, but I would like to make a small announcement that Taras who is an awesome developer here just wrapped up a month's worth of work, creating a new ReadMe to describe the vision of Microstates and what you can do with them and everything about Microstates. If you're interested in that, I highly recommend checking out the ReadMe. I'll drop a link in the show notes for you that are interested. CHARLES: If I can add, it really is [inaudible] because it isn't like any other state management solution out there. ROBERT: No, absolutely not. I've been building something with it in React Native over the weekend of the 4th of July and it's amazing. But enough about that, you'll hear about that next episode. For this episode, I want to talk about Probot with Brian and Bex. Hi are you two doing? BRIAN: I'm well. BEX: I'm good. Thanks for having us. ROBERT: No, thank you for joining. This is really exciting. Like I said in the intro, I've been really excited about this project. I do a good amount of open source, I would say and this has been really helpful in all of our repos. We have, I think like 78 open source repos on the Frontside. We have Microstates, like we just talked about and Big Test and all of those repos use some combination of Probots that people have built and it's really nice, especially with the new Checks API that has just come out. You can integrate Probot into that, right? BEX: Yes. I, actually am currently working on shifting one of our bots from using the commits Statuses API to the Checks API. ROBERT: That's awesome. Before we go too deep into it because I want to come back to that because that sounds really cool and what the integration of that is like and what changes because I'm not even really that familiar with it. I just know it was released. I kind of want to go from the beginning here. Where did Probot come from and can we get a little bit of a history for everybody that might not know what Probot is? BEX: Sure. Probot originally started out as this simple idea to make GitHub scriptable. The original idea was you have a single file in your repository that would be like a JavaScript file and it would essentially spell out how the bot would act on your repository and the goal was to make GitHub apps accessible to people because if you ever look through our GitHub apps documentation, I think it can be a little tough to get started. There's, honestly, a lot of nonsense that you have to go through in order to get set up. For one thing, the way our GitHub app authentication works is it requires a JSON web token followed by using that JSON web token to request an installation access token and that process would be really tough for new people to get started. ROBERT: Yeah, it sounds like it. BEX: Yeah, so Probot was created to abstract all of that away and handle all of that authentication automatically and simply leave you with the payload that you get from listening on web token events and in authenticated GitHub client to make authenticated API requests while authenticating as an app. ROBERT: Cool, so that's where it started like a flat JavaScript file in the root but today, you use like EMO files and a .GitHub folder. How do that kind of progress? BEX: Originally, their use case was much simpler and it quickly became clear that a single JavaScript file in the GitHub repo was not scriptable enough and not easy enough to understand. The goal was to make like an API that could make that JavaScript file really, really easy to customize for every API of GitHub and it quickly became clear that that was not really a feasible thing to do. as time went on, it turned into this way to build Node JS applications and essentially, what the configuration files you're referring to are the way in which we make it customizable because right now, there's no way to be officially supported GitHub apps channels to pass secrets because it means you're a [inaudible] and the owners of GitHub apps, so that was just a way to kind of stop that problem. ROBERT: Gotcha, okay. BEX: The actual code for GitHub apps still lives in a Node JS module basically and the configuration file just specifies how that module runs. ROBERT: Right, so they're deployed like Heroku instances, if you want, like anywhere you can host a node app. BEX: Yup. Heroku, Now, yeah. ROBERT: Interesting. BRIAN: As a reason to that, some explorations of doing serverless deployments for Probot, I think there's a couple of issues of them. I'm not sure if anybody's shipped anything like the way they at but it's pretty much it's possible to. BEX: Just a week ago, we even released a new version in which we update our core from Node JS to TypeScript and now that things are typed, we have big plans for serverless. ROBERT: Nice. That's awesome, so then you'll be able to deploy to a Lambda and off to [inaudible]. BEX: Exactly. CHARLES: Can I actually interject here, as kind of a person who doesn't really know the relationship between GitHub apps and the GitHub marketplace and what exactly a Probot is before we hear the origin story. I would love to hear a very high level view of how this ecosystem fits together. BRIAN: I think a lot of people are pretty familiar with interacting with the GitHub API and OAuth integrations. I think I've just spent a lot of time at different companies previously to GitHub, just like making calls, either to cURL or through Node JS or more recently, [inaudible]. GitHub apps itself are a way to take all the things that you had to do to make an integration to GitHub much easier. It has a lot of cool things like OAuth, scopings, so you no longer have ask for all your repos ask access whenever someone logs in with GitHub and the connection between like, "Now have gone from OAuth to Now to GitHub apps," there was a lot of, as Bex mentioned earlier, ceremony that happens to getting set up with GitHub apps and integrations that Probot is like this tool to speed up the process of getting to the point where you just want to script some automation or some sort of workflow and it gives you all that bullet play for you. I don't know if that was a good high level for you Charles. CHARLES: Yeah. I've kind of witnessed this second hand with Robert installing a bunch of things here, so let's use an example, like you did some sort of automation on our repos, Robert, where when someone files a ticket, there's this workflow that automatically adds a triage label, so that we know that this thing hasn't even been dealt with, so we really need to address that issue. It doesn't need to be as a high priority. It doesn't need to be closed as a duplicate of something. One of the different aspects that you described there, how do they fit in terms of serving this workflow onto the end user? Or was that a good example, even? BRIAN: One of the cool thing about GitHub apps and what Probot does for you is that normally, if you want to add a label to an issue, either you Charles or Robert, would have to be admin or maintainer on the team for the Frontside and you could add labels. But somebody who opens up an issue, doesn't have that ability to have write access to your content, which is adding a label. What a GitHub app does, it actually takes a spot as if you would have another user on your platform, instead of creating a dummy account or a dummy user. Probot is basically building a bot for you to then, give you the ability to add that issue. That's sort of workflow that normally would have to happen through an actual real human could not happen through a bot without taking up a spot of like, "I guess, I probably shouldn't speak so ignorant about our platform and what we actually pay for nowadays for GitHub," but I know we used to have like a limited amount of seats for organization, like that seat no longer has now taken up and now, it could be just be used a bot can do something that normally us would take. ROBERT: Right. You no longer have to create a user to do these things. BRIAN: Correct. BEX: [inaudible] within GitHub. It's sort of built in a way that apps can take a lot of power in your repositories. CHARLES: So then, what is the relationship between Probot and an app? BEX: Probot is essentially the framework for building an app. You can definitely make the equivalent of any Probot app outside of Probot. It abstracts away all of, basically, the horrible parts and leave the easy part. CHARLES: Now, I think I'm ready to participate in this discussion. ROBERT: That was perfect, though. That's a great intro because I actually didn't have a total grasp or understanding of the relationship between GitHub apps and Probots. That's really good. BEX: Yeah. Additionally, going back a second. You mentioned the marketplace before. One thing to note that is that there actually are several Probot apps on the marketplace right now. The marketplace is essentially the home for any larger, usually third-party companies that have made apps and Probot is essentially supporting some of those. ROBERT: Interesting, so then my question would then be, do you know anybody selling their Probots. Does the marketplace charge? I'm going to assume it does. BEX: Yes. ROBERT: Okay. Is there anybody charging for their Probot? BEX: Yes. There is a quite a few, in-fact, charging for it. Recently, a pretty popular example is the GitHub Slack integration, which is if you open new issues, you can have them appear in your Slack channel. That whole application was recently rewritten by GitHub. It was previously owned by Slack and that was built on top of Probot. CHARLES: And I actually remember, we upgraded to that version. It's actually way, way, way better. BEX: I'm glad you feel that way. CHARLES: I didn't know the story behind there. I was like, "Oh, I just got a lot of... Awesome," you know? Although I don't know what's the costing. BEX: Yeah, I think that integration is actually free, so that wasn't the best example. I think it's for open source projects, at the very least. BRIAN: Brandon, one of the maintainers for the Slack integration and work at GitHub, also did a really cool talk at the SlackDev Conference a couple of weeks ago, so if you're interested what were the behind the scenes. That integration is all open source as well, so if you have request or you have features that you would like to add to the Slack integration, you can pop into the repo that hopefully will show up on the show notes because I'm not sure if it's like GitHub/Slack, but I guess we'll find that out in the show notes later on. BEX: It's Integration/Slack. BRIAN: But for an example of a paid app of a non-third party, we're not talking like Travis or Circle or another one with the big names but rather, a solo dev created. It's Pull Reminders, which is on the marketplace as of today and essentially, this gives you reminders of your pull quest, so you can actually ping inside the comments and tell Pull Reminders to say, "Tell me about the pull request like next week because it's Friday and I don't have time to look at this." ROBERT: That's awesome. I've also seen the one that's kind of related, that is like you can set your out of office at GitHub, which is actually kind of a neat concept. BEX: Was that the one where we are already changing that profile photos to have the overlay or the one where is just auto-replying to messages because I've seen a couple of -- ROBERT: I think, it's just auto-replies. BEX: Okay. CHARLES: So, it can change like your profile pictures and really, not just related to repo and history related activities but everything? BEX: Anything that you can access via the GitHub API, you can almost access via GitHub apps. There's a list of end points that I specifically enable for GitHub apps because there's something such as delete a repository that there's basically, a very few circumstances under which you want to give that permission to an app. Also, to things very specific like your profile or your personal page. About a year ago, there was an official internal audit of all of the API endpoints because there are lots of inconsistencies over what was and what wasn't enabled for GitHub apps, so they went there and kind of decided, what endpoints should be enabled and what endpoints actually get enabled. Now, that list is much longer than it was a year ago. Now, it's much more comprehensive. ROBERT: That's awesome and is this for the Rest API and the GraphQL API? BEX: Yes. Probot does support both. The Rest API is the one that specifically had all of these endpoints audited. The GraphQL, since it's a bit newer, we sort of built those and more. ROBERT: Cool. I really like working with the GraphQL API with GitHub. It makes it easier than trying to do a bunch of Rest calls. BRIAN: Yeah, there's a community form, it's like a discourse form that the API team actually manages and sort of pipes in there. Again, going back to like, if there's not something in the Slack integration that you would like to have, the form, that community is actually in there, if there's something not in the GraphQL API, that you would like to see. No promises on shipping it within an x amount of time but if enough people are requesting it obviously, there's going to be some resources [inaudible] at. ROBERT: What do you mean? We're doing open source. It has to be done yesterday. BRIAN: Yeah, exactly. And that form is at Platform.GitHub.Community, just a URL to get there. ROBERT: Awesome, that will be helpful to look through and get some recommendations in there. One of my favorite things I was going to say about the new integration for Slack and GitHub is the fact that I can highlight line numbers, paste that linked in and then it just expands it and the chat in Slack. That is so nice and I use it all the time. BEX: Yeah, I love that they built that feature. Actually, the original feature that was built on GitHub to allow those line expansions in the first place, like on GitHub itself, was actually built last summer by some folks who were also a part of my intern class at GitHub last year. ROBERT: Hey, intern power. That's awesome. BEX: Yeah. ROBERT: Everyone there is doing amazing work. I'm also following along with somebody that is also an intern and it's building a weekly digest program. BEX: Oh, yeah. That's actually a Google Summer of Code student. ROBERT: Oh, interesting. BEX: So, being sponsored through Google Summer of Code by Probot as an open source support. ROBERT: Is there anything more to unpack there? That sounds really interesting. BEX: Essentially, we submitted an application for Google Summer of Code because we thought it'd be a cool way to get more people, more students, a mentorship opportunity for the maintainers, basically and we were honestly overwhelmed. We got like almost 100 applications and it ended up being a huge of a deal but we're -- ROBERT: That's a great problem. BEX: Yeah, definitely a good problem but we were really happy. We, initially wanted to accept more students but Google limited us to only two students, so we have two Google Summer of Code students working on projects and one team of women from Rails Girls Summer of Code working on Probot. ROBERT: That would be awesome. What do they working on? BEX: I'm not sure yet. They actually just started a couple of days ago but the other Google Summer of Code student is working on a background checks API to eventually do sentiment analysis of comment history of someone new to your repository. ROBERT: That's interesting. That sounds like there will be some machine learning in there. I might just throwing out buzzwords? BEX: Most likely, I think they're just using some sentiment analysis API, like the perspective API. I don't think they're actually doing that themselves. ROBERT: Okay. CHARLES: Actually, I have a couple questions. Back on the subject of Probot. How does this square with the classic mode of integration because there was a lot out there? I think the first one that I remember that stuck in my mind was like Travis and I don't know if there had to be like a special relationship between the Travis developers and the GitHub developers, that's like, they was able to make that integration happen so many years ago. I don't know how that happened. I just remember it popped up and I was like, "Woah. This is incredible," and we see kind of the integrations gets more and more rich. For someone who's got, like you mentioned a couple of the big names, is the idea that eventually those would be able to be completely supported is GitHub apps or is it they're always going to be kind of a separate track for kind of the really deep integrations? BRIAN: I wasn't around when Travis first integrated with Lyft GitHub and I think that's a really cool integration and I know they have a very nice sized team that's able to do that. I think if we zoom back out like Probot, the way to get started with Probot is that we have the CLI command, which is to create Probot app. I believe it was intentionally copied off of create React app and the cool thing about create React app and create Probot app is that they abstract all the ceremony and boilerplate to get started really quickly. It was like, what developers or smaller teams can get started with integrating with GitHub apps. I highly doubt that Travis is going to rewrite their entire application with something like create Probot app but they're definitely going to be moving towards the new API calls, which would have been like GitHub apps. Part of the Checks API that we had launched at the end of May, Travis had blog post on how their integration with the Checks API works. They're making, though they have a lot of what Legacy endpoints and a lot of Legacy integrations in the way they integrate with GitHub, they are actively moving towards a GitHub app. I don't know if I could actually comment on their status of where they are today, to be honest but actively, we want all new apps and new integrations to follow the model of being a GitHub app, so that way, out of the box, you have access to all the newer features. You have all the access to all the newer GraphQL endpoints, if you want to use GraphQL and that way, we can serve one market, as opposed to everybody who had a GitHub integration from five or six years ago, that was all piecemeal together and sort of duct tape, like we run move away from duct tape everything together. CHARLES: I see. BEX: I definitely agree that I don't think Travis is going to switch to using Probot anytime soon and I don't think most of the large companies will be doing that but I do think, there will be shift towards GitHub apps in general. For those companies that don't already have the buildings of the GitHub app started, I think that Probot could be, in time to free some of them. BRIAN: In addition to that too, Travis and Circle and all the CI integrations, they're doing a really good job. I think the cool thing about GitHub apps is what you take away all that ceremony of getting your checks to work, now we can start opening up the door of like what's the next sort of CICD thing like? There's another term or another, I guess category of applications that can now be built to improve GitHub. CHARLES: The most amazing thing about having a great platform is the apps that you don't foresee, like it just come completely out of left field and you're like, "Woah. I can't believe that's actually a possibility now." When you have started to see some of those, some Probot or GitHub apps, you're like, "Man, I didn't see that coming. That's awesome." BEX: A hundred percent. I think it's the most exciting part of Probot because I think GitHub as a platform, we all know GitHub is the largest developer platform in the world and I think the idea that developers can build on top of this platform is the most exciting idea right now. I have honestly already seen apps that really excites me. The other day, I saw this app that was definitely not near completion but it was essentially updating and issue a comment box over and over and taking response through like checking a box and then listening on that common edit, in order to specify your coffee order. ROBERT: Woah. BEX: I was like, "Do you want an ice coffee or regular? Do you want milk or sugar and cream?" and it was going one at a time. It didn't actually order you your coffee at the end but it was super exciting to watch that. You're just editing the comment. I had never seen that before. ROBERT: That's pretty slick and that's taking the API pretty far. I'm sure there were some parsing in there and each Webhook response are like, "Was this box edited or not." That interesting. CHARLES: Yeah. Actually, now that we're having this discussion is kind of like changing my mind a little bit. Robert and I were actually talking yesterday about trying to standardize on our release management and our plan was basically to have some software that was going to run inside of our CI provider and have kind of a shared library, just a little ntm package that was shared by all of our repos but I'm thinking now, man, we should really explore doing this as a GitHub app. ROBERT: Yes, please. I've had three ideas that I really want to build out as a Probot. I'm just going to list them off and then we can build them all together and take equity and you know. I'm kidding. But the two that really excite me, that I kind of want to do is one concept that we work on this open source project for our clients and if somebody from the outside that doesn't have commit bits to be able to push to master, it would be really cool if we had a Probot that after it had an approved on the PR, from the maintainer, that the person that open the PR could then tell a Probot say, "This is approved by somebody that manages this project. Can we merge?" and then the Probot would then actually merge. I don't know if that's possible. That's something that I definitely wanted to explore. Then the other one, which is less cool, would just be like if we have a couple branches on some of our projects that we want to continue and we're not ready to put it back into master but we want to continuously run the test suite against it, so the idea there would be to have a Probot that would watch for changes on master and rebase as needed and continue to run the test suite and see where you're at. Those are the two things that I'm really excited about to do with Probot but I just want to automate everything with GitHub now. CHARLES: Right. BEX: Yeah, definitely, that first idea was actually pretty viable. I'm curious to know like how you actually get those commit links -- is that what you called it? ROBERT: Commit bits are more like commit permissions, I guess. BEX: Oh, I see. ROBERT: An outside contributor. CHARLES: Yeah, we want to push responsibility to the person who is the maintainer who can approve it but actually, the way we do it at Frontside is the person who actually is making the change is responsible for merging it. Once you get approval, you still have to hit the go button and that's just going to make sure that you're taking responsibility for saying it's done but that doesn't work for open source because people coming off the internet are going to have the right to push but we would like to give it to them, maybe via an app, if there is a maintainer who's approved it. BEX: Yeah. That's definitely something you can do. I've seen quite a few apps that, essentially add outside collaborators to the repo. Are you familiar with the... I forgot what it is called, like the all contributor section, where you cite everyone in your repo and everything and who's worked on it. There was a GitHub app that would add someone automatically after they merge their first change. CHARLES: That's awesome. ROBERT: I may have seen that on React State Museum but I'm not sure. It's a repo that we've contributed to and it has all the contributors at the bottom. It seemingly just kind of popped up there. BRIAN: There's an app that, I would like to mention too that I'm pretty excited about, that it sounds trivial too and it's almost similar... Not similar but it's sort of related to what you were talking about, Rob, with your first app, which is the WIP bot, which is the work-in-progress bot. This is a pattern of whenever I open a PR and I might not ready for a merge but I want to share my code so I can get feedback earlier on, I'll type in WIP so that append to my title of my PR. What this engineer did was every time you do WIP, it's going to go into the GitHub API and actually block the PR for merging, which is a feature available to GitHub. It's nested in your settings but the cool thing about this it actually blocks the PR for merging, so you don't have to worry about getting your, sort of like show and tell code merging the master without being ready. ROBERT: That's one of the first bots that I installed on all of our repos and then you can correct me if I'm wrong, it didn't always have the ability to block the PR from being merged but with the new Checks API, is that something that was introduced? BEX: Not exactly. The way that blocking of merging works is if you set it as the required status, so you can install any sort of CI on your account and have it not being required and ignore it whenever you feel like it, so it's really up to you to make it required. Otherwise, it just isn't checked and that's true for anyone who uses the Statuses or the Checks API. ROBERT: Okay, so that's a Statuses API. Okay, sorry. BEX: Yes. ROBERT: Also, the cool thing about that that I noticed when that was rolled out was I was now able to pick and choose and use workflows on Circle CI and each workflow is broken out as a different status check. I am now required like linting and the build and the test have to pass for these browsers before it can merge, which is really cool to be able to pick and choose. BEX: Yeah. It's awesome. I know personally on some of my repos, I have a few checks that I just don't require because I know I have to make them pass. ROBERT: Yeah. Speaking specifically about the work-in-progress bot, do you know how that works? It's open source, so I am sure I can go look. I think we want to go make a PR. We had some back and forth about this, Charles. CHARLES: I actually just [inaudible] we disagree. ROBERT: Yes. Charles opened a PR and one of his first commits in the PR had work in progress and the title had work in progress and we have this this Probot on our website and it was a blog post. You know, you make a couple more commits and you're further down, you move the work in progress in the title but the PR were still blocked because the first commit on a PR have work in progress in it. I think if it's the most recent commit or if it's in your PR title with work in progress, it should block but otherwise, it should not and Charles feels differently. CHARLES: I have about six commits and the very first one have WIP in the title or in the commit message and it blocked the whole thing but I kind of felt like it actually made me go back and I had to squash it down to two commits because I actually feel that your commit history should tell the story of the development, not like it should an absolute one-to-one journal of what happens but what you are intending. I actually felt that it could help me out because there's six commits that we're kind of all over the place and just kind of slapdash together have made me kind of go back, rethink it and tell a coherent story. I think it did me a service but it was not obvious. I definitely agree with that but I was like, "Why? Why were you still blocking?" ROBERT: Do I really [inaudible] admin privileges? BEX: I would say, I am friends with the creator of the web app. His name is Gregory Mantis and he is actually got a huge work in progress PR shifting work in progress over to using the Checks API and one of the features that he's using with the Checks API is essentially this mark as now work in progress button that will add the special line, like feel free to merge or something like that into your original PR description at the bottom. If that is there, the work in progress app will no longer be blocking. It's essentially like a hard override and honestly, that's the power at the Checks API versus the Statuses API. That's really exciting. ROBERT: Because I have seen the work in progress bot to get into a weird state, where I did remove the work in progress from the title but it didn't quite update and I'm still blocked. It's okay for me because I have admin privileges but other people on the team maybe not and they might be blocked from something that's actually work in progress. It's a lot like that hard override will be probably pretty helpful. BEX: Yeah, definitely. I think sometimes, there's some confusion with that just because of the way what perks work on GitHub and the way our pages are rendered, that you may need to refresh the page before you actually see it take effect. ROBERT: Right, yeah. Overall though, I love that bot. I go weekly, probably to the Probot apps listing and just go shopping. BEX: Wow. I'm actually the person who approves all the Probot apps to the listings so that's pretty motivating there. ROBERT: It's really nice. I am not even joking when I say shopping, I go through and I open up a bunch of tabs, I read through them, "Oh, this could be useful," that kind of thing. BEX: The first app you mentioned, which was like the one that requests more info is actually one that I built, so that was kind of funny. I guess you got that from the Probot apps too. ROBERT: Yup. That one, we definitely use on a couple of our organizations and repos. It has yelled at me a couple of times because of a blank PR. BEX: It yells at me all the time. I think I get yelled at more than people who are actually doing it wrong. ROBERT: I'm a little embarrassed like, "I should do better. I need to set an example." BEX: Definitely. ROBERT: Cool. I'm curious what both of your favorite Probot app is. This ought to be interesting. BRIAN: The app that I'm really impressed with so far, that I actually only use on a junk project at the moment, is the weekly digest one and it's mainly because I built something for this in my previous role at the company but then we shift it, which is basically go through every single repo. I worked at a company called Netlify previously and we had way too many repos to maintain... Oh, sorry, to keep track of and I was moving further and further away from the backend at the time so I was unable to keep up to date with all that was changing. I built a Lambda to watch Webhooks and then give me a digest of what was shipped like issues and PRs closed. It was way over-engineered and I never actually shipped that to actually make it work. But then the weekly digesting came out maybe a couple of weeks ago and it blew me away because I was like, "This is exactly what I needed," and I was trying to make it overly complicated through like a Lambda and like a bunch of Webhooks and this person, with only a few weeks, has the scaffolding of what I needed. That's the one thing I'm pretty excited about. It was already mentioned earlier too, as well. BEX: I guess, I would say one of my favorite ones is the unfurl a link app. I think that one it so simple but so nice. I don't know. I think having that unfurl link preview is just beautiful. Essentially what it does is it listens on issue comment creation or pull request comment creation or issues your pull request or whatever and read through the text or whatever was that issue or pull request and looks for links and then, essentially unfurls them so you can get a really nice preview of what you're going to. I think that's really beautiful and just so simple. ROBERT: Yeah. I love that one too. I have that added to all of our repos. BEX: It's so much nicer. Why would you not unfurl your links when you could unfurl your links? ROBERT: Exactly. CHARLES: I actually have a question. I think it's been touched on, probably at least twice throughout the conversation. I want to actually create a Probot, how do I actually go about deploying it? What does that look like? What does it look like to deploy and maintain it? BEX: We have a page on our docs about deployment and essentially the TL;DR is you can deploy it on any normal cloud hosting service that you wanted to deploy it. There are a few things you need to specify. For example, GitHub gives you a private key that you need to create your JWT and that private key means to be passed into your hosting service however you do that and then, there's a few bits of information that need to be pass in. We have pretty intense docs about it. Honestly, I'm not a deployment person. I usually try to let other people do that and I have never had a problem going through our docs and just getting it working immediately. BRIAN: It's also mentioned that there are examples like Heroku and Now and a couple of other ones. If you have a service that you already like, it's possible it's already in the docs, like steps to how to get that deployed. BEX: Yup and any other services are more than welcome to be added to the docs. Pull request are welcome. ROBERT: Sweet. It sounds like we need to set up a hack date to create a Probot, Charles. CHARLES: Seriously, my mind is brewing. ROBERT: I guess it's not directly related to GraphQL but there's something that I've always wanted to build. For prior history to everybody [inaudible], then the podcast, Brian and I used to work at a company called IZEA and one of the things that we built and I worked on a lot was we would create a collect metrics on people's social accounts that they're connected and do that and graph it over time. This idea came from when I was building up that feature all the way back in 2013, I want to graph the change in GitHub stars. Is there an API available for me to see like weekly GitHub stars or is that something that I still have to manually store and track? BEX: There's definitely an API endpoint to get the amount of stars and I don't see why you couldn't just do that on weekly basis and compare but I don't think there's any track that change API. ROBERT: Gotcha, like a history of it. I could do this by just stealing and looking at what the weekly digest Probot is doing because there is a change in stars section in there. I was just curious if there was now an API that was available. BRIAN: Yeah, that's more unlikely. I'm going to say no without looking at all the reference documentation. I think as far as that database, it's something you'd probably have to collect on your own but it's also a good candidate for a GitHub app, where you build a service that you can actually track stars once you've installed it and then if you want to monetize it, you can actually pay for private repo or whatever stuff like that, if you wanted to. But it sounds like a great opportunity to see this in the GitHub/Probot listings. BEX: I actually just look this app really quick in our docs because I was curious but apparently, you can receive the star creation timestamps. That could be doable through timestamp usage. ROBERT: Oh, and then I just kind of loop through back and build your graph in there. BEX: Yeah. ROBERT: Interesting. All right. Well, [inaudible] I was going to do today. BEX: Yeah. But I think it's exciting to bot the weekly digest and then what you could extract from that into stargazing is that Probot scheduler, which is essentially this all Probot extension we made that triggers a Webhook on a scheduled time period because right now, the way GitHub apps works are so centered around Webhooks. It can be difficult to find a way to trigger an action on something outside of a Webhook, like on a schedule basis. ROBERT: Yeah, that would be really helpful. I can definitely see how that would be a problem, if it's very, very central to reacting to Webhooks and events that happen on the system. BEX: Exactly. ROBERT: You're just hoping that somebody comes through and creates an event at a specific time. CHARLES: Can I ask you a question about, it's definitely on topic of extending GitHub but currently, just a question about, where the line is between what you can and cannot extend? You mentioned, for example in the rewrite of the WIP bot, being able to throw out a big button that says override this merge. Are there any plans to be able to actually extend the UI in novel ways? Everything there right now is happening with API calls, with I assume, UI elements that are related but the UI elements are static. If someone wants to put a novel piece of the UI, that button is going to require an extension of the GitHub UI by GitHub itself. Are there any plans to be able to, I know it's a dangerous waters, perhaps at a limited fashion at first but maybe more so, add different interactions and the actual application. BEX: I think this is actually the most exciting future of GitHub as a platform. In the past, GitHub APIs have only specifically supporting things that you can do through the command line or you can do through GitHub's UI itself. The Checks API introduced the very first non-integration specific UI element essentially and the merge button that I was referring to in WIP is exactly that. It's essentially this button that you can change the text of it to be whatever you want and you can listen on that action and then you can do as an integration or an app, anything that you want based on that. I think that's the most exciting direction for GitHub. Because if you look at Slack, Slack is a platform that has sort of really impressive integrations in that response. Your apps on Slack can really do all of these things, use custom UI elements, so I think the most exciting features for GitHub as a platform is all of this customization and giving the power to the apps. ROBERT: Yeah, that sounds an awesome way to be able to extend GitHub without having to try and throw the feature on to GitHub developers. BEX: Exactly. I feel that a lot of the struggle right now is that there aren't these nice ways of communicating via apps because I feel lot of the apps and bots end up just commenting on issues and pull requests and taking up a ton of screen real estate as a result and I just think that that's not the way that bot should ideally interact with the GitHub platform. They should have their own space to exist and that's the feature I'm most excited for. CHARLES: Yeah. I can think of having like progress bars for CI checks and your various appointments. It's too exciting. I'm glad. That's definitely the response I was hoping to hear. BEX: Yeah. We're excited for it too. ROBERT: Basically, you all have a massive community of a bunch of developers that would want to do this and are willing to get their hands dirty on it. Enabling that community is probably the root of all Probot is about. That's super awesome. BEX: Yup. CHARLES: That's a good place to end, because gosh, it's going to be so exciting to have the millions of developers on the planet, just like surgeon to the APIs that you're developing. BRIAN: One thing to add to that too, about the whole million developers, there's a number that's been thrown out from Stack Overflow and also, some other people who are saying like there's 50 million developers, there's 24 million developers. As far as GitHub, our public user number is 28 million, the cool thing about Probot and GitHub apps is that there's a good chance that all those people that are using GitHub today are not actually developers. They're like PMs or designers and what's really cool about this, like having interactions with that kind of platform in this way is that you can now enable all the non-developers to be able to interact with your GitHub repos and start bringing more designers and PMs onto to the GitHub platform to interact with the developers. ROBERT: That is an interesting point. That is awesome and something that I'm always looking for is a different ways to collaborate with non-developers on my team because... I don't know, developers tend to think everything is always centered around code but it's not. The shifting at work that are awesome, needs a lot of collaboration from non-devs and non-dev skills. That would be really interesting to see. I'm excited for that to play out. BRIAN: Yeah. There's a blog post that was published a month ago, I think about where the design team, design system teams rather, built the integration to Figma to update their icons effectively. I just posted that in the chat to look into but they also built this as a Probot app as well. ROBERT: That is awesome. BEX: Yeah, that one is super exciting. You would have the app comment, the diff between what the old icon versus what the new icon look like and it's just such a beautiful design change to be able to see that shift. ROBERT: Man, I'm happy that this is happening. The future seems super bright. Where can we direct people to get resources to contribute, to get involved and start really going at this? BEX: Basically, Probot.GitHub.io has all the Probot stuff, /app has all the listings for apps you can install today, /docs is where the docs are, if you want to get started and hopefully from there, we link up to the necessary things that you need to do. BRIAN: Also, what I mentioned too via Probot Slack channel, there's a Slack channel as well and they do a weekly call. I think, it's weekly or bi-weekly call to actually chat with the Probot community. If you have questions, you can actually bring your questions to the team. BEX: Yeah, we call it 'Office Hours' and it's once a week and it's under our community page, where we also have a link to our Slack. We have a link to another podcast we run and basically, how to get involved in the Probot community. ROBERT: Those are really helpful resources. I do remember seeing that Office Hours. It's on Thursdays, right? BEX: Yes. ROBERT: I was going to drop in for one and then, I actually forgot. Actually, it might be going on as we talk right now in this podcast. BEX: It starts in half an hour, I think. ROBERT: That's awesome. Cool. Well, thank you Brian and Bex for having a conversation about Probot. This is really awesome. Is there anything that you would like to plug for yourselves? How people can get in contact with you? BRIAN: Yeah, I am BdougieYO on Twitter. Everything you need to know about me is there and I am happy to say hello. I'm also helping with the GitHub developer program, which is sort of getting a soon-to-be announced rebranding. If you go to Develop.GitHub.com/Program and you want to have more conversation about the API and GitHub apps on the GitHub side, you can go there to sign up. BEX: And I am HiImBexo on Twitter. You can ping me in any Probot stuff. I'd be happy to look at any Probot code. I've been looking at it for a while now so I'm happy to do that. ROBERT: That's awesome. Thank you all for having a conversation with us. This was really fun. I'm so excited about everything you can do with Probot. This is a really fun project. I'm happy that this is happening and I will make a Probot in the future. CHARLES: I'm looking forward too. Robert has been excited for quite some time and he definitely talks a lot about it and now, I have some insight as to what -- ROBERT: It's happening, I'm telling you. Well. Thank you for being here and we are the Frontside. We build UI that you can stake your future on. We are specializing in JavaScript. We can build anything that you want throw at us. We do functional programming, React testing, Vue, anything in JavaScript, we specialize in. As always if you want to suggest anything for us to have on the podcast or talk about, you can reach out to us at Contact@Frontside.io and like I teased earlier in the podcast, next episode is going to be all about Microstates, the immutable and functional state container, composable model system that we've been building, it's controls as a brainchild for the past two years. That is next episode and I'm really excited about that. It's a really fun API and expressive to build models with. Thank you, Mandy for producing our podcast and we'll see you next episode.

One of the Gospel Topics essays on polygamy produced by the church indicates that Joseph Smith married young women, one of “who[m] was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.”  I talked to polygamy expert Dr. Brian Hales about these sealings.  What does he have to say about this? Brian:  There are two 14-year-olds.  The other 14-year-old was Nancy Maria Winchester.  We don't know anything about that relationship, when it happened.  She may have been 15; my bet is she was 14.  Helen Mar Kimball is the one 14-year-old.  For several reasons I don't believe that relationship was consummated, but Joseph gets accused of all kinds of crazy things.  People even call him a pedophile. Now a pedophile is someone who's interested in children under 11, which would not apply to Joseph in the wildest of rumors, but he was sealed to probably two 14-year-olds, and a 16-year-old. Brian indicated that these were non sexual marriages, and he discusses Helen some more. We can piece together from what Helen wrote, the sealing occurred, and after the sealing, Helen continued to go to dances and balls and socialize for the next several months until at one point Joseph stepped in and said, Look.  We don't want her doing this anymore. Later Helen said that she hated polygamy.  She wrote this down early on.  This was one of the early writings before she wrote her books defending it.  But the reason why she hated polygamy was not because of her own relationship with it, but because of how it affected her mother.  I argue that if she were having conjugal relations with Joseph and finding that to be undesirable, she might have actually used her relationship with Joseph as a reason for hating polygamy. I asked Brian why she wasn't sealed as a wife rather than as a child under the Law of Adoption. Do you know there were no adoptions performed during Joseph's lifetime.  The only adoptions that we have any record of occurred in the Nauvoo Temple and they occurred around, depending on your definition of an adoption, there's 205 or something.  A lot of these, I use the word adoption to mean a child is sealed to parents who they are not biologically related. What do you think of these marriages?  Do you agree that these sealings were likely non-sexual? Don't forget to enter our contest for a free book!  Check out our audio, video or transcripts here on our website, or on Amazon!  Don't forget to check out our previous episodes with Brian Hales, as well as our discussion of polygamy with Dr. Mark Staker! https://youtu.be/hBq9ZAW2bJQ https://gospeltangents.com/shop/transcripts/joseph-smiths-youngest-teen-brides/        

Welcome to Beyond Prisons: a new podcast examining incarceration in America through an abolitionist lens.  In our first episode, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein introduce the idea behind the podcast, dissect and critique the current conversation around prison reform, and discuss the need for a broader vision for justice that should guide those efforts. What is prison abolition and what would it mean to live in a world without prisons? What's missing from current efforts to reform the criminal justice system? What kind of topics will this podcast cover? We tackle these questions and more in our first episode. Going forward, we will conduct interviews and delve much deeper into the various issues we touch upon in this first episode. So, stay tuned! -- Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Music & Production: Jared Ware -- Transcript Brian: Hello everybody and welcome to the first episode of Beyond Prisons. I am one of your hosts Brian Sonenstein and I’m joined by my co-host Kim Wilson. How ya doing, Kim? Kim: I’m doing well. Hi Brian, how’s it going? Brian: It’s going alright. I’m excited to be here. I’m glad we’re getting this off the ground. Kim: Yeah, me too. Brian: So what Kim and I are trying to do is something a little bit different. Oh, my dogs are barking in the background. (laughs) Kim: We’re gonna have dogs, we’re gonna have cats. We might have you know, who knows what else is going to show up so I say let’s just roll with it. Brian: I know, it’s fine. Kim and I decided to start this podcast to talk about the issue of prison reform and mass incarceration, and offer some different perspectives than a lot of the things you hear going on in the news right now. So I thought we could introduce ourselves a little bit. Kim, why don’t you go first? Kim: Ok, well, I’ll tell you a little bit about what my motivations were, and I think that will be a nice segway into my intro. But the motivating factor behind me getting on board with this podcast really stems from a place of frustration. I’m frustrated with the policy choices around mass incarceration, around prison specifically, and I’m seeing so many things that are impacting communities that I care about and that many people that I know live in, and I feel like we could be doing something better and so I’m coming at it from that perspective. That said, on a personal level, I’m the mother of two incarcerated men who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole or at least that was their sentence. My professional and academic interests in incarceration began long before either of them had any encounter with the criminal justice system and I’m thinking of that in a broad sense particularly when we talk about schools and school to prison pipeline, which I’m sure we’re gonna spend quite a bit of time talking about in later episodes. And then I’m also coming at this as an activist who started out very much on board with prison reform and the prison reform movement if you want to call it that, and quickly evolved from that perspective to one of being strongly committed to prison abolition. So that’s a little bit about me, where I’m coming from, and what I’m hoping that this podcast is going to be about. What about you, Brian? Brian: Well, so I am a journalist. I’ve been writing about incarceration and the criminal justice system for about five years now. My work has primarily been to address these issues from the perspective of the people who are most directly impacted by it and that’s how I actually got to know you Kim. I’m also deeply interested in the issue of prison abolition after having been an activist myself for a number of years on a number of issues from drug policy to whistleblowing. I’ve seen a lot of people have interactions with the system and none of them have been good, including friends of mine. I grew up in sort of a blue collar, very small town in New England and saw a lot of people who fell into drugs and other problems, wind up in the system and it just destroyed not only their lives but the lives of their families and friends, and so I just had a growing interest in this. I’m very interested in the topic of reform, I’m also interested in critiquing reform, which is something we talk a lot about here. And we’re also going to try to break away from sort of this large statistical view of incarceration where we’re focusing on numbers. What we’re gonna try to do is bring perspectives from the people who are involved and use those to sort of guide our arguments about what the criminal justice system should be like. So why don’t we talk about like the major narrative around mass incarceration, you know maybe we can start by just critiquing that there. So I don’t know, when you think about mass incarceration , what are some things that jump out to you, like what are the things you know about it? Kim: You know, coming at this from several different points of view and those things have deeply informed where I am today regarding mass incarceration. I think that’s an important thing to talk about because, again, as someone who was trained as a policy analyst, the policy perspective or that school of thought can really be distilled in terms of cost-benefit analysis and I want, as you pointed out, for us to move beyond statistics and to think about the real issues, to dig down deep into the racialized nature of mass incarceration, which is one of the things that jumps out to me. I mean, I think it’s important to address the numbers and to account for those and also to explain what those numbers mean in the context of people’s lives in the context of communities. How do those numbers translate into problems for the people who are behind the numbers, right? So I think that first and foremost addressing the racialized nature of mass incarceration and more broadly what we refer to as the prison industrial complex. That’s one of the main things that I want to talk about and I don’t feel is actually discussed enough in public policy circles. Now, that said, I think that there are public policy institutions that are doing this kind of research and that are publishing reports and white papers and what have you that do address the racialized nature of mass incarceration. But this doesn’t actually seem to make it into the spaces where policy makers are making decisions and that gap right there really frustrates me and it’s something that has frustrated me for a really long time. We know, for example, that Black people are disproportionately represented in the system and what does that mean?  You know, what does that mean in terms of communities? And I want to talk about that and to explore that. We know, for example, that in terms of placing this in a global context that the U.S. has one of the largest prison populations in the world. So what does that mean you know and what does that look like on the ground and what does that mean in the context of the politics of today? Because I don’t think that we can really launch a podcast in 2017 and not talk about the current (laughs) political situation in this country. Brian: Right. Kim: If that’s not a source of frustration for people, I don’t know what is and it’s certainly a major source of frustration for me. Then there is the gender component of mass incarceration. We tend to talk about men who are incarcerated and particularly black men. To neglect an oversight of talking about women and how those numbers have grown exponentially over the last decade and a half, and I think that’s an important piece that needs to be addressed as well. So there’s a lot of stuff that I’m thinking about when I’m thinking about mass incarceration. I think that that this is a good place to start. I’m also thinking about mass incarceration in broader terms and this goes to the title of our podcast as well, Beyond Prisons. I want us to imagine what that means. What does it mean to see something beyond prisons? Can we imagine a world not only without prisons but what are some of the creative solutions that we can come up with through these conversations that are going to be I would say not only realistic but that are necessary in light of the fact that we have, what, over six million people under correctional supervision in this country with about two million of those incarcerated? So when we think about, when I’m thinking about incarceration in this country, I’m thinking about it in really broad terms. I’m thinking of policing. I’m thinking of surveillance. I’m thinking of all the various ways, the mechanisms that are used to control certain populations in this country particularly marginalized groups in this country. What about you? Brian: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that on a very basic level, one of the things that I want to do is talk about what we as Americans by and large think prisons do, who goes there, what happens there, and this includes even through the lens of the reform movement. But as activists, when we’re thinking about policy that we could be implementing and if we’re thinking about what comes next after prison, I think one of the most important things that we can do is have conversations that could lead to a cultural shift among people that will lay a stronger foundation for these policies, and I think we can get there. As we know, prisons and the system in general are largely out of the public view. Attempts to, I know this as a journalist and you know this as both a scholar and a parent, but any attempts to get more information about the system or to question actions by officials, you get the silent treatment or worse. I think in order to really lay the groundwork for a lot of this policy, we need to have conversations and clear some things out about punishment, and about crime, and about safety and the role of prisons in all of this, right? And I think that there is this idea that people are criminals instead of people that do things that are against the law or maybe have low moments. I think there’s this idea that when you go away to prison,  you deserve harsh treatment and certain things as punishment and there’s no thought that these people are eventually going to get out. They’re going to have to reintegrate into society under even more difficult situations than the average person trying to get a job out there today, when you have this scarlet letter of a conviction hanging over you. What I hope that we can do in addition to all the things that you said that I totally agree with. In addition to getting into the various issues that go on in prison, and at the front end and back end, before people go in and after, I just really want to challenge our assumptions, and I want us to really think about the myriad costs that are associated with decisions that we make with punishment. And even on just a basic and theoretical level, we talk about prison sentences, right. We talk about sentencing reform, but we attach arbitrary years on prison sentences because I mean there really is no science behind a lot of this and it’s just interesting to think a lot of times—I hear people on the left and liberals are always talking about how oh, the Republicans are so anti-science. Well, the truth is that as a society, we have this looming system that is very pseudo-scientific and very anti-scientific in a lot of ways. And so these are the ideas and little things that we want to chip away at. We’re gonna bring guests on to talk about these things and a lot of the things that you and I are going to chat about today. We’re gonna gloss over a lot of things, we’re gonna mention a lot of things, but trust that in coming episodes, we will dig into these issues deeper. So, what else? What else should we talk about here? Kim: Yeah, I mean playing off of those points that you just made about prison, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about as I was preparing for this episode today was something that Angela Davis writes about in ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’  And she says, ‘stop thinking of prisons as inevitable, ‘ right? We think of the prison as this natural thing, and that we can’t imagine life without it. And I think that our name again captures that, but our approach to what we’re attempting to do with these conversations is to think about what is life without a prison. It’s not some Utopian ideal. It’s not politically naïve to talk about a world without prisons, a society without prisons, and the difficulty that I’ve encountered in my work with people, including a lot of liberals. It’s mostly liberals who I’ve been working with around issues of prison abolition, that any time I say, ‘Ok, imagine a world without prisons? What does that society look like?’ The first thing I hear is, no, no, no, you can’t possibly mean you want to get rid of prisons. And again, this really is super, super frustrating because it’s not even... I’m giving you a magic wand. You can make the world whatever you want it to be, right? It’s like, it’s a theoretical exercise in a lot of ways. And people don’t even want to imagine that world. Brian: Why do you think that is? Like why do you think people—I have my own thoughts on this, obviously, but I’m curious of your thoughts on why people are resistant to the idea of having that radical imagination. Kim: Well I think a lot of people are afraid, right. I think that there’s a lot of fear that they watch these television shows, they see things depicted in the media and presented a certain way, and their fantasy about what someone in prison looks like or is capable of is informed by these things. They don’t necessarily—even if they have an experience with someone who’s been to prison, they tend to have this wall up, like okay, I like the idea of improving conditions for people in prison, but what are you talking about? This is going a little too far. You can’t really be talking about getting rid of prisons. And, I’m like actually I am. So institutions where we put people in cages for long periods of time without any consideration as to what that is doing to someone. It’s a problem. It’s problematic. We need to have, I’m fond of saying, the courage, the backbone, like we need strong backs to be able to say this is wrong, right? And how do we disrupt this system? How do we change this system? How can we make something that is different from what we have now, right? Not just substituting and moving this around or you know they say rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, right? You know, just a couple of days ago, de Blasio, Mayor de Blasio of New York, announced that they’re closing down Rikers and that’s great, and I’m cheering for the fact because Rikers was a really shitty place. It was a horrible place by all accounts and it needed to be closed. However, what he’s proposing is setting up new prisons. So for me, and this is where I have to depart with the reform movement: Substitutes for prison, including other prisons, doesn’t really help the issue. It doesn’t address the social, the economic, the political problems that have created the issues that we have regarding mass incarceration, and I think until we get to that, until we get to that point where we can, I mean, good grief, have a conversation about what a world without prisons could look like. And to move people just a tiny little bit to say ‘ok, what does transforming this society mean? How do we deal with really scary things? Okay, so someone’s committed murder or someone’s being raped. These are horrible things and how do we address the victim’s legitimate concerns here while also addressing what is happening in terms of incarceration that we know doesn’t actually act as a deterrent, right? It doesn’t work, so what do we do about this? We need a better way to approach this and I’m thinking of this podcast and our conversations as a way to explore various approaches to what that landscape would look like. I’m looking at it also in terms of how do we challenge white supremacy as part of this project? I see a lot of talk about prisons and carcerality that want to leave out the race component. And that’s one of the hang-ups I think that we have and that we confront, particularly in the terms of policy making and policy choices that are being made because these policies around prison are meant to appear race neutral, and they’re not. We need to have not only a language but a process by which we can assess, analyze, and understand what racialized carceral system is, and what do we do about that. Brian: I agree. I completely agree. And I think that there is a lot of danger in compartmentalizing reform efforts instead of taking these broader approaches like abolition. My head is spinning. There’s so many things I want to say in response to what you just said. I mean one thing I want to say is that I think that for people who don’t really know what prison abolition is, they’ve never heard of it, or maybe they have somewhat of an idea. I think that one of the helpful ways to think about this too is that there is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution to prisons, much the same way that much the one-size-fits-all of prisons doesn’t work for the justice system. I think when we’re talking about getting rid of prisons, like you said, we’re not talking about replacing it with a different kind of prison. I really resent a lot of this talk about looking over to Sweden and see how awesome it is to be a prisoner in Sweden. I think that’s totally the wrong way to look at prisons. It’s also a hard conversation, I think, and I wonder if you ever butt up against this, Kim. The needs and the problems are so bad for people who are incarcerated that the needs are very immediate, right? So I’m not sitting here saying we shouldn’t support these reform efforts that look to increase the quality of life of prisoners, because we need to help people right now. But we can’t do that at the expense of a broader vision. I see a lot in these reform efforts of reducing or showing greater leniency toward low level non-violent offenders, but at the same time, we are going to increase penalties and introduce new penalties for violent offenders or for other drug crimes. They talked about introducing a new Fentanyl mandatory minimum sentence in the last criminal justice reform bill. It probably will be added to this one, I assume, with Republicans being in control of legislature. Another thing that I want to say and I’m jumping around a little bit here, but I’m just thinking about your comments, is a lot of times what we see in reform is euphemism, to make it look like things are changing or to modestly or slightly tweak a prisoner’s experience. But the abuse and the fundamental issue of why a certain thing in prison is bad remains the same. So, for example, with solitary confinement, we say that solitary confinement is torture and I think that it is pretty widely accepted now that solitary confinement is torture. And at the same time, the reforms that we get are two extra hours out of your cell per week, and reformers call that a victory. Or only certain groups of people are not allowed to go into solitary confinement, or they opened a new housing unit that is basically solitary confinement in everything but name. So it’s really tricky and that’s another reason why I think it’s important to consider abolition and to take it seriously because a lot of these problems. We are at where we are today because a lot of these politicians have been kicking the can on these issues ever since we had prisons. I mean, Attica, the reform efforts followed Attica. Rebellions have been going on for years and years and years. Things haven’t gotten materially better. I think when we think about abolition, another thing to think about like you were saying, is how do we think about somebody who’s committed an act of murder, an act of rape? How do we think about justice? But it’s also that the prison and the system that we have set up does nothing to sort of head off these things from happening by changing the material conditions and environments, social contexts and racial contexts like you were talking about, that people live in, that limit their options and push them in or silo their paths in life. So it’s not just what can we do differently when someone commits a crime but it’s like how can we invest in communities. All the money we spend on federal, state, and local jails, all that money could be so much better put to use with education, jobs, healthcare in society in ways that would reduce the number of people winding up behind bars. Kim: Absolutely! And I think to your first point regarding reforms and changing things in the immediate and looking to European models of prisons and what not. I think that there is a space for having a comparative analysis as to what other countries are doing that are better than what is happening here in the U.S. and if it improves the conditions of people on the inside, then Ok, great. However, what an abolitionist’s perspective actually does is that it provides a framework for understanding and placing that conditions have to be improved right now, however, the long term goal is not to just sit back and say, yeah, we improved conditions, but how do we not use prisons as an anchor for the problems that are happening in society? How do we or what other things can we use? And you mentioned some of those things: investing in communities, providing healthcare, mental health. Mental health is such a big part of this problem, not criminalizing drugs and seeing that these things don’t actually improve safety or security, but are used as the pretext for increasing the carceral state. I think that one of the things that we’re going to do in upcoming episodes is really delve into what do we mean by prison abolition. Today, I think that we can just give a quick definition of that, a working definition so people have that and to talk a little bit about what we mean when we say prison industrial complex so that we understand the language that’s being used here. Because I think particularly in this day and age, particularly in this political climate that our words matter and our words matter more than they have in the past. So providing clear definitions gives us a place to begin. It may not improve or increase understanding very much, but at least it gives us a place to begin so that we know that we’re talking about this thing over here, and not that thing over there. That said, one of the things I talk about when I talk about prison abolition and again using a lot of Angela Davis’ work, using the work of people from Critical Resistance, as well as Insight, and a number of other groups is to really think about it as a political vision. To think about how prison abolition constitutes a set of long term goals. There are things that we are doing right now, however, the goal is to eliminate and get rid of imprisonment, to get rid of policing and surveillance as the mechanisms that we use to address social problems. I think that’s really the most concrete way of putting it in really simple terms. It sounds easy but once we start unpacking that, I think there is just so much happening in that. So that framework include, for me at least, that framework of abolition is also anti-racist. It is when we talk about gender disparities. We’re including trans’ rights. We’re talking about immigration policy. We’re talking about all of these things that are happening right now and the kinds of policies that are being implemented by this administration that work against an abolitionist framework. I feel a sense of urgency now more than I have I think before. And I think I’ve had a sense of urgency for a long time. I don’t know. What do you think about that? Brian: I totally agree, and I think that we really need to have goals. And I think a lot of what’s happening in the prison reform movement and even just sort of larger on the left, I think you see that it’s a little different when you talk about when you talk about something like single-payer healthcare, for instance. I think we need to have these goals that even if they seem politically unfeasible in this moment, we have to have something to work toward. Like you said, provide a framework for what we’re doing, not only so that we don’t shut off any avenues to fully realize reform or anything like that, but just so that we’re going somewhere with this. This is the work of movements. You know, we might not see this in our lifetime. A lot of people that I talk to about abolition for their first time kind of scoff at you. They’re like, yeah right, there’s no way that would ever happen. The prison is such a fundamental institution in our society that obviously it’s much bigger than any one issue. I think that something that you were touching on or something that it made me think about when you were talking is that if you bring an abolitionist framework to this, it does inform the way you look at other policies and other areas of government and society instead of just sort of being content to fiddle with whatever problems are going on. It makes you want to investigate the root causes more, to question the system more. It also sort of gives you more empathy in a way. I feel like even the worst political foes that I could imagine, I definitely would like to understand more about why they are the way they are. That doesn’t mean I’d excuse their behavior, but just sort of a strategy. I feel so much that political fighting and everything today is like very in the moment and lacks a broader context. So, anyway, I think abolition is something that if there were ever a good time to talk about it, it would be now with things as awful as they are. I feel like we almost have more space to talk about abolition than we might have had a few years ago. Kim: Absolutely! Absolutely! Yeah, I think that one of the things that I wrote down in my notes in my preparation for today had to do with reforms, and one of the things that Angela Davis says is that the idea of reforms doesn’t go beyond the prison. So if all of your solutions begin and end with prisons, then there is really no room for alternatives in that reform model, and that’s the problem that I have as an abolitionist with the reform movement – that all of the solutions maintain these carceral institutions, so whether we’re talking about house arrest or surveillance, parole, probations, what have you, then it’s not really an alternative. You’re trying to give something a different look without doing much about the actual problem and this resonates with people. This is very appealing and again, this is extremely frustrating for me because again, as someone who was trained in policy and public policy research and what have you, the literature really approaches mass incarceration from those perspectives. So when we’re writing policy documents, when they’re doing evaluations of re-entry programs, for example, there are really no alternatives that are being presented that are not carceral alternatives. And that, for me, has been part of the problem for years. That, for me, the ‘Aha’ moment or the lead-up to the ‘Aha’ moment if we can even call it that, came a number of years ago, where it was evident that the further I dug down into re-entry and what was happening in communities was people returning from prison to certain communities. There’s a pattern there and that pattern is repeated over, over and over again across communities in this country. So the policies weren’t working. But it wasn’t enough to just say the policies aren’t working. What is actually happening here? What is informing these policies, and I think that was where I really started to go into the abolitionist literature because the public policy literature doesn’t discuss abolition. It completely neglects it. Abolition is something that, if you’re a political theorist that was talking about abolition from that perspective, and people are writing brilliant things about Foucault and what have you. But that information, that knowledge doesn’t transfer over to the public policy space. So how do we bring these things together? It’s not just political theorists, but philosophers and other people who are doing work on prison abolition, not just theoretical but practical work as well. How do we bring that knowledge to bear on policy choices so that in the choosing because people talk about public policy in sort of a disconnected way in this thing that’s happening somewhere in Washington and in the halls of the State Capitals and what have you, it’s some kind of mysterious process. No. People are making decisions, and those decisions are informed by people’s values, people’s understanding of the problem, etc., etc. And if we’re not attempting to understand that part of it in terms of what’s happening with so many people and disproportionately, black and brown people in this country going to prison, then we’re actually not being honest about trying to address what is happening here. What we’re doing is something else, but it’s not rooted in an honest, intellectual project that is going to give us public policies that improve the conditions for communities and the people that live in those communities. I think that, for me, that’s one of the strengths of an abolitionist’s perspective, and one of the things in my activism and in my scholarship and in my personal life that I have really committed to understanding in a lot of different ways. And I think that it presents a lot of challenges. It’s a difficult task to be an abolitionist. It’s not an easy thing to say that publicly and it’s even more difficult thing if you write about these issues, or facilitating workshops and conversations with people around these things. They always want to talk down to you and tell you that you’re misinformed somehow and that letting people out of prison is just going to run society. I’m like, have you read the paper? I mean, have you looked around? Angela Davis says this all the time: not having any prisons would actually improve things. No alternative would be better than having prisons and that really gets people’s backs up. They can’t handle that. I think to your point earlier about trying to understand where people are coming from with that, I think that’s an important piece of the overall puzzle in conversation here, and I’m looking forward to these conversations as the podcast unfolds and as we get deeper into these things. Brian: Yeah, and I just think one last thing I’ll say on your discussion of policy-making and peoples’, like you were saying, sort of arching their back and a lot of this stuff. I think it speaks to a lot of political incentives that end up shaping reform and that need to change, and hopefully conversations like the ones we’re going to have on this podcast can help change. Because it’s really hard, you have to admit on a certain level that it’s hard for policymakers to go out and maybe put out a reform that would reduce the number of violent offenders in prison because all it takes is one violent offender to make the news to cause a political backlash to that. I think because of that the incentives are so stacked to be harsher, whereas the political gain for showing leniency is so unfortunately low, and I think we need to completely invert that and sort of show politicians and these political figures, including prosecutors. To a certain degree, they’re followers. They’re going to take certain cues from the public in terms of what the public will support and what the public won’t support. So I do see the tide changing a little bit in terms of how people view ‘offenders.’ Obviously, it’s like a very niche group of offenders are given leniency right now, but it’s hopeful in the sense that it could–if we could have these conversations to get people to think differently, we could change those political incentives so that there is less of a risk for a politician to craft a policy or sign on to a policy that would decarcerate and that politicians won’t so strongly overreact to rises in crime and the public doesn’t prioritize the safety of some communities at the expense of others. Kim: Absolutely! And I think that this whole thing about who we let out of prison, and what is an acceptable kind of level of criminality–if we’re aiming for zero crime in society, we’re neglecting the fact that we’re dealing with human beings. So we need to talk about that. We need to address that on the front end and I don’t see where politicians do this very effectively, and I’m sure we’ll certainly critique the politician’s approach to public policy around incarceration and what have you. But we don’t have a world where we will be crime free. That world actually doesn’t exist. So a world without prisons is possible; a world without crime I’m not so sure. So I think that, how would we handle that crime? What constitutes a crime? So we have all sorts of examples currently in the news: defending yourself against a domestic abuser is considered a crime. So that’s a problem. What do we want to do with that? I mean, what we’re really saying to victims of violence is well we don’t care about you if you tried to defend yourself, then you are really the problem. How has that changed anything for that community, for that person, for their family or anything like that? So I think we need to move beyond the surface level analysis that is really popular and talk about the complexities involved with letting people, not just opening the doors and letting people run out of prison. We’re talking about a more thoughtful approach to decarceration, getting rid of cages. We’re talking about, as you mentioned earlier, providing people with healthcare and for me, particularly mental health, and what that would do. We know that there is a large proportion of the incarcerated population that has a documented mental illness. That’s a problem. And if our approach to these issues is basically to just lock them up for some indefinite amount of time, don’t provide them with any kind of counseling or support while they’re incarcerated, that somehow through the isolation and solitary monastic existence that these people are going to have some kind of ‘Aha’ moment, and magically come out being okay. Brian: That’s what I mean. Yeah, when I was saying earlier that I just feel like incarceration is so anti-science. I mean listening to the way you just described it, it sounds ridiculous! And we have at this point mountains of evidence showing how incarceration harms, and I would argue that we have very little evidence suggesting that incarceration as an end in itself works to do anything other than perpetuate misery. So, yeah, sorry I just wanted to chime in here. Kim: No, Absolutely! Brian: Because it always baffles me that we cling to this institution so strongly, but it’s complete pseudo-science the more that you dig into it. Kim:  Uh-huh, Absolutely! Absolutely! And I think that’s a valid point and that we need to talk about that more not just on here, but in the context of public policy choices that are being made. Targeting specific groups of people or to put people in prison who have drug problems makes no sense. It makes absolutely no sense. You don’t actually change the conditions for that individual by putting them in prison. Not just putting them in prison, but putting them in a cage and not giving them any kind of assistance. These things don’t happen, like they don’t just fall out of the sky and all of a sudden they walk out of prison and they’re going to magically never use again. And that seems to be the sort of approach towards carcerality here, why reforms are a huge problem because it relies on this notion that if you lock someone up and you take away everything that is meaningful to them, that is of value to them, their ties to the community no matter how strained those are, their ties to their family no matter how difficult that family might be, those are still ties that we are basically cutting off and say, Ok, we’re going to remove you from society, from everything that is near and dear to you, and now we’re expecting you to be ok. So when you come out, you should be ready to conquer the world. And then we set up this system of obstacles for a person who’s returning from prison and into the community, and we say, well you need to follow all these rules. Okay, so you go to prison from a community where most of the people that you know have also gone to prison, but we have laws in this country that prevent the association of people with a felony conviction from associating, so that can get you back into prison. That’s just so ridiculous! Who else would you know? It’s like if your parent went to prison and you’re their child and you also went to prison, we’re basically saying, well mom, dad, aunt, uncle, cousin, whatever the ties are, you can’t be around each other. So now we’re undermining the support system that would be there by making the association a criminal act. It’s like, God! How is this supposed to work? Brian:  Yeah, and I think one of the things that we all are going to need to talk about, and it’s going to be hard given just American culture in general, are these limits of individual responsibility. I think, as you were talking about earlier, that a lot of the way carcerality bleeds in, and the punitive structure bleeds into post-release and things like that, and you were talking about drug treatment programs and things like that. You know, even in that situation- let’s take drug treatment programs for instance. A lot of these programs are 12-step programs that are built around the individual basically accepting full responsibility for their actions, making no excuses outside of themselves, and supposedly being able to stay sober with that as their backing. And the truth of it is that there are limits to personal responsibility for somebody like that. I mean, if you live in a context in which drugs are always around, or maybe you have a chronic health issue and that’s how you became addicted to opiods. I mean, taking responsibility like that is just another, it’s like another one of these examples of sort of puritanical anti-science approach. It’s like disproved by incredible amounts of evidence. But we’re going to need to really as Americans dial back our desire to pin 100% total responsibility on people who commit crimes. And I just want to…I think this is a good time to talk about in terms of abolition too, Kim and I’m wondering what your thoughts are on this. When we talk about prison abolition and you said this earlier in a way, we’re not just talking about letting people out of prison. We need to… there still will be accountability after prison, right. There still will be justice. And hopefully, it won’t look like this. So, yeah, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that. Kim: Yeah, I mean we need to talk about and explore new forms of justice. So the whole theatre that’s associated when someone gets sentenced to a long prison term is one of the problems. I obviously experienced that with my sons and this idea that somehow justice was being served within that context felt so…it’s painful and it’s still painful today. To think back on this and part of what that does is it creates further divisions within communities because we’re all in this together. We’re all in this together, and like you said, the American ethos of individual responsibility and resiliency and this kind of ‘you can do it, and I built it myself…and I didn’t need any help, and it’s not my responsibility to take care of you, etc., etc.,’ which is at the core of American society. People really really believe that, uncritically believe that. They don’t examine what they say around resiliency and individual responsibility at all, and we have medical models that are informed by this perspective. A lot of this probation and parole are informed by this perspective. A lot of re-entry programs are based on these perspectives, and the need to rely on personal transformation strategies as the preferred approach to dealing with crime and to dealing with people’s problems. Because I think we conflate that. We make people their problems. We don’t separate the two. We don’t say, Ok this person has a problem…we say, these people are a problem. So drug users are a problem, not wait a minute, let’s think about what is actually happening here. And as you pointed out, we’re living in a really un-scientific time. The lack of critical thinking around these things or the willingness to approach this from a scientifically informed perspective is another huge issue that we’re probably going to talk about in one way or another throughout every conversation that we have because it’s there. It’s part of every single issue, and to lay blame at an individual’s feet is…one of the things that I say quite a bit is that when we individualize, we moralize. It makes it really easy to moralize. We do a lot of finger wagging and we can say, oh you need to get your act together, you need to stop doing drugs, you need to stop doing this, and we’re very much invested in this notion of choice; that an individual chose this path as opposed to this other path. And when we do that, what we’re doing is obscuring the fact that there are conditions and that there is a system in place that perpetuates these conditions that can strain your choices. So if you can’t eat because you don’t have a job and because you can’t go to your mama’s house because of whatever reason or because there are federal policies that prevent you from crashing on her couch because she lives in HUD housing or something ridiculous like that. And you’re back on the street. I mean, what would you do? Because I think about that quite often and I would do whatever I need to do to eat. I would do whatever I needed to do to survive, and I live in L.A. I have been in supermarkets out here where I’ve seen people arrested who are hungry. They’re coming in and they’re stealing a loaf of bread or something small like that, and the police are called because that is the system that we have. Instead of the manager just giving them the damn loaf of bread and keeping it moving, it’s like…No, we have to call the police. Now you have another set of problems there. I think that part of our…part of what I’m hoping we’ll do is to unpack that a little bit more in a more critical way, and bring people on as guests who can discuss these issues in a really well informed way to get us to think about this stuff beyond the superficial, beyond this sort of knee-jerk reaction to petty crime. But, that said, I also feel that we need to talk about violent crime, and that without the conversation or a set of conversations about violent criminals that we would be doing a disservice to what we’re saying we want to do with this podcast. I think that we need to address what happens when the unthinkable happens, and how do we deal with that and how do we address that? How can communities come together and what does a justice model look like that says, ok, well we need to talk about that more… We need to address the fears that people have and discuss ways that someone who has committed a really horrific crime can be held accountable. It doesn’t produce more harm. It doesn’t perpetuate the pain that already exists because I don’t think, in speaking from my own experience…the pain doesn’t go away. The pain when something horrible happens in your family with crime …that pain doesn’t leave. It doesn’t get better with time. It is just as fresh today as it was the day that it happened, and I think that is something that for me, on a personal level, that I want to talk about more and to bring in families that have been impacted in these ways by crime on both sides. I think that’s an important conversation to have, and something that in transformative justice circles and restorative justice circles has been happening for a lot of years, and there are ways to approach those conversations. But we can’t do that until we talk about accountability. But if accountability is happening in very narrow terms of ‘lock them up and throw away the key’, that doesn’t cohere with an abolitionist perspective, and as you can see, there is a lot to talk about. Brian: There is. Kim: There is no shortage of topics here. I think we barely scratched the surface today. I’m excited about what we can do with this podcast. I don’t know. Do you have any additional thoughts? Brian: There’s just one more thing that I wanted to bring up, and I am curious what you think about this, too. I think a lot of times when people bring up these arguments somebody might say to you, Well, Kim, what about the victims? What about the people who the crimes are perpetrated against? Don’t you think that deserve our empathy too? I don’t know what you would say. I would say our system is not designed at all right now to really empower victims in any meaningful way outside of punishment. I think prosecutors by and large aren’t really interested in what a victim would like to do. I wrote about earlier this year that the vast majority of crime victims, including violent crime victims would prefer rehabilitation over incarceration. There’s a lot of myths that, I would also say that maybe people wouldn’t be victims if we didn’t have incarceration and were addressing these root causes. That was really the last thing that I want to bring up. I’m just thinking about some of the things that might come to your mind when you’re thinking about prison abolition for the first time, sort of these ingrained defenses that we have as Americans against imagining a world without prisons. Like you said, a lot of this, we will be digging in very deeply on all these subjects with guests, and I’m very, very excited. So, yeah, we want to know what questions you have. You can email me at brian@shadowproof.com. We would be happy to take tips from people and hear how people react to the show and a lot of ideas that we have. Honestly, I want to hear what sort of problems people have with a lot of these ideas because I think that a lot of these conversations are going to be really uncomfortable for a lot of people. They’re gonna be really difficult. We’re going to be talking about violence, and sexual offenses and things like this that we react to in a certain way. But we need to have these conversations if we’re really going to make a meaningful impact on this issue. What about you, Kim? Do you have any final thoughts? Kim: Yeah, I think that there are a number of victims groups around the country that have been very outspoken against things like the death penalty, and I’ve been working with some groups, some people in Delaware around this as well, whose families have been the victims of violent crimes. And it’s a difficult conversation, but I can tell you that from my own experience, talking with these families, they have been out front of the death penalty abolition movement, and they have said things not in their name, like you can’t kill someone because you lost someone in their name. And this notion of state sanctioned violence as a way to mete out justice is deeply problematic for a lot of people, not just on a moral level because they do think that it’s wrong, but in terms of what this actually does. What does this actually do? It doesn’t feel good, but then again, I think that the people who are best able to talk about this issue are the victims. I don’t want to speak for anyone. If anything, another goal that I have for this podcast is really to amplify and marginalize people’s voices, and to let people speak for themselves rather than talking over them or for them. You’ll hear me say a lot, I’m speaking for myself, because I think that needs to be clear that I’m not talking for other folks here. I think that in general, I look forward to hearing what people have to say. I think that these are courageous conversations that we need to have, that they’re going to require us to have really strong backs to address. We’ll certainly give people trigger warnings around certain issues. There might be a trigger warning around the entire podcast. I mean, I don’t even know. That includes just as much for my own benefit as for anybody else’s because this isn’t easy. I’m on board with this project because it gives me a way to sort of channel this energy that I have and to bring this work to a much bigger audience, and to include a lot more people in this conversation. Before I forget, if people want to contact me, I’m at wilsonk68@gmail.com and I look forward to hearing about what people have to say and if they want to chime in, and if they want to have ideas for future topics. Certainly, I’m open to these things. Hate mail you can send somewhere else. I’m not interested in the hate mail and the abusive nonsense that I’m sure we’re going to get as a result of putting ourselves out there on these issues. It’s been, this has been great. I enjoyed this conversation. I think it was a lot easier than I thought, huh. Brian: Yeah, I know seriously. I’m really glad to be doing this with you Kim so thank you very much and thank you everybody for listening. We will have another episode out soon. You can subscribe to us on Itunes Beyond Prisons and stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you so much.

Everyone has a story, but few people take the time to tell it. My guest today started a podcast to tell his story, despite having little experience with podcasting. As a result, he’s growing an audience, making new friends, and learning a lot along the way.Brian Sanders is a project manager and app designer who formed a startup to build a new podcast app and platform called Nexcast. He’s joining me today to share what he’s learned in his startup and podcasting journey so far, and how podcasting is helping him learn more about his target audience and his product.Key Takeaways:People will reach out to you if you take the time to share your story.People relate to struggles. Don’t be afraid to share yours.It’s important to go make things happen—don’t wait for good things to happen to you.If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing.Podcasting, videos, and blogging all come back to opening up, sharing your experiences, and telling your story—that’s how you build community.You don’t always have to have the best equipment—use what you have and start telling your story today.Aaron: Joining us today is Brian Sanders from Nexcast. Brian, you’re trying to build a podcast app and maybe a platform. What’s your backstory?Brian: I grew up in Hawaii and I got into UCLA for mechanical engineering, so I came to LA and I’ve been here ever since. I started in the engineering world where I actually got to design some rides for Universal Studios and Disneyland. So I was doing engineering, but I didn’t like it that much. The company I was working for went out of business during the recession and I went to another similar company.That’s actually when I found podcasts, when I was sitting at a computer working on 3D models all day. It was kind of boring, so I was listening to podcasts eight hours a day. I would be laughing in my cubical and none of my coworkers even knew what podcasts were. I realized I wanted to be more entrepreneurial—I liked to design and be creative—so I started doing that on the side.I started doing design for other people and getting paid for it. I joined up with a developer and we started building whole products for people in LA, New York, and Chicago for a couple of years. It took a while to figure it out because I was learning on my own, but eventually I got a job. One of my clients hired me on and we started working at a tech company in Santa Monica where I got to learn a lot more about the processes of building technology and managing an engineering team.I still had projects on the side. I had an app that was like Instagram for writing, where you could post a photo with stories and you add chapters. People could comment and follow you. I decided to sell it to a private company, quit my job, and started working on a podcast app idea that had been in the back of my mind for awhile.Overlapping & Taking Your Side Project Full TimeAaron: So you worked your day job for a few years and saved up money and stripped back your expenses so that when you quit, you could support yourself doing your own thing.Brian: Exactly. The biggest thing is to start pretending you’re not making a lot of money (even if you’re working a good job), and save as much money as you can.Aaron: That’s very long-term focused. I think a lot of people struggle with that.Brian: It takes a lot of discipline. I pretended like I was making minimum wage, but I was really happy. I had a couple of roommates from Hawaii that I grew up with and we still had a great time. You can get a lot out of life even if you aren’t spending much money.Aaron: If you’re trying to go freelance or do anything that doesn’t guarantee you a steady paycheck, it’s important to practice for that while you’re working a day job. I know that’s not related to podcasting, but it’s important. Living cheaply is why I’m able to do what I do—podcast editing and helping people make podcasts. I learned in my twenties to save money and to really think about what was important for me to spend money on.There are a lot of things that you can spend money on, but sometimes it’s better to not spend money so that later you can pursue your dreams. For example, you quit your job and you had this idea to work on a podcast app, maybe even a platform. Was that your plan when you quit your job, or was that a more recent development?Brian: I didn’t pursue it fully until I put that platform bigger picture together. I wondered if we could listen to podcasts in a more interactive way or have more features. Why isn’t anyone building a better podcast app? The problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to make it a business and it seems like not many other people have either. The podcast industry is weird, but it’s growing. It’s hard to put together the business model. The day I figured out the business model, I started focusing on it for real and I put everything else to the side.Your Life is a Story – Document ItAaron: When did you start your own podcast to tell the story of what you’re doing?Brian: It started about five months after I got the idea for the app. Now that it’s happening, it’s like, “Of course we should be doing a podcast. We have to tell our story and get people involved.”Aaron: There are so many people who have stories, but they don’t document or share them. If you’re not writing, publishing blog posts, or even journaling, you’re going to regret that in the future. Brian, you’re going through a period in your life where you’re trying to start a company and you’re documenting the process so anyone who’s interested can hear it.12:43 Aaron: You’re seven episodes into your podcast so far. Do you have a background in working with audio?Brian: No, but in high school I worked a little bit with video. That really helped. I haven’t done anything with video since then, but I always think I can teach myself anything, and anyone can learn. It’s easy these days with all the tools and resources online. You just have to start.Getting a Team TogetherAaron: You’re trying to build a team to help you create this podcast app. How’s that going so far? I know you’ve been struggling to find a new CTO.Brian: We had an interesting process of getting a team together. As a non-developer, it’s always really hard to get developers on your team. It’s the #1 goal of your life. You don’t want to hire people from other countries because that never really works out well, and great developers always have jobs and are very expensive. Sometimes it seems like there are no options.Aaron: Do you have funding or enough money to pay a full-time developer’s salary?Brian: Well, Troy has a good job, so he’s busy all day and he has some money, but we’re not paying anyone. We have to find people who are in it for equity. Our next episode is about this crazy battle with some teens in the Philipines that have my Twitter handle (we’ve been in this crazy journey for nine months trying to get it back from them). After that, there’s going to be an episode about getting our new CTO.Aaron: I usually want to be paid for work I do, but at the same time, when I started editing podcasts, I was working for free. I started a podcast with some people I knew online and they needed someone to edit the show, and because I was interested in becoming a podcaster and podcast editor, I was willing to do the editing without getting paid. I’m glad you found someone though, because that can be really hard. Did he listen to your podcast?Brian: He didn’t initially, but the fact that we had a podcast helped. I could point him to it so he could see we were legit. But other people who listen have been getting in touch. There’s another developer who wants to join who happens to be in LA who found us by listening. That guy just wants to be part of the journey. It’s huge, having a podcast has been great.Share Your MistakesAaron: It’s one thing to be a stranger randomly emailing people on the internet saying, “Hey, help me with my project.” It’s a whole different thing if you open up and you share your journey, what you’re struggling with, who you are, and where you’re planning to go—sharing your story rallies people around you. This is not just for startups or businesses. You will make connections and people will find you. You’ll build a community.People will reach out to you if you take the time to share your story.Brian: Looking back, I can’t imagine not doing a podcast. There were different routes to go down and it was important to us to share the shortcomings and the mistakes. We didn’t want to be startup bros saying, “We’re killing it! This is going awesome! Everything we’re doing is cool!” I edited the first episode and people don’t realize I left all the bad parts of the pitch. I made it sound worse than it probably was.Aaron: So you went to pitch an investor. You recorded the conversation and included it in the first episode of your podcast. You left the rough parts in because people relate to struggles—winning all the time isn’t interesting to most people. The first episode really grabbed me and I’m pretty picky about podcasts. I’m choosy about what I listen to and I really enjoyed your show.Brian: I’ve only had one bad podcasting experience. All the other podcasters I’ve talked to have been amazing. This one guy thought I was the worst sales guy ever because he listened to that first episode and he heard me stumbling my way through that pitch. When I was interviewed on show, he said, “So, you’re the worst salesman ever. What do you do? You don’t build the technology and you couldn’t even get through a simple sales pitch.” I guess he didn’t realize that I edited that episode and chose to put that stuff in.Aaron: Did you find it hard to put out those imperfections and mistakes?Brian: Yeah, I regret it sometimes. I worry that it makes us look like idiots. There could be VC’s listening and they might be discounting us now. It might make a better story, but I might be losing my chances at investment. Sometimes I wonder if I can pull the episode, re-edit it, and put it back.Get UncomfortableAaron: You told me on the phone the other day that you’re trying to get on Planet of the Apps. Can you explain why and give a brief overview of what that is?Brian: Apple hasn’t released all the details yet, but they’re producing a show with some big names like Will.i.am, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Gary Vaynerchuck. They haven’t told us the exact format of the show, but it sounds a little bit like Shark Tank, or a reality show about app developers. The developers who are accepted to the show get access to mentoring, funding, and marketing and promotions.Aaron: It sounds like a great opportunity for you. So you drove across town to audition?Brian: Yeah, there was an event. Will.i.am was there and he talked about what he wanted to see. There were a bunch of casting agents there. There was this one casting area that no one was paying attention to. Everyone was wanting to talk to Will.i.am or nervously milling around, and I told my partner we needed to just charge these casting guys. We needed to sound like we had something really cool, and eventually we did that.We found the lead casting agent and got him to sit down with us. We said, “We’re building something cool. Podcasts are awesome.” He didn’t listen to podcasts, so we had to make sure he knew how big podcasts are. We told him, “They change peoples’ lives, and we’re going up against Apple, who has their own podcast app already. This is good tv! We’re taking on Apple and we’re already doing a podcast about us building this app.”He said, “I’m going to skip you ahead of the casting process. Make me a 10-minute video.” So we made the video and they emailed us the next day and wanted headshots. They wanted to see the app, but I had to tell them it wasn’t ready yet. We’re hoping to hear back from them soon.Aaron: The takeaway here is that you could have just said, “Our app isn’t ready yet. We’re probably not going to win this,” and you could have stayed home, but you drove across town and you showed up. You tried to talk to people and make stuff happen. I just wanted to highlight that.It’s important to go make things happen. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.Brian: There was as a specific moment where we were nervous and it could have gone either way. We had a choice; either just turn in our 1-minute audition video like everyone else and hope we’d get noticed, or go talk to the casting guy and try to make something happen. I’m happy we chose the latter.Aaron: It’s scary, but if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing.What’s Next for You?Aaron: What do you see in the future for yourself and your startup?Brian: We had a few hiccups, but now we’re finally moving and things are back on track. Our overarching goal is to make podcasting better for everyone. We’re working on an app that brings the content right into the app. For example, you’ve got show notes and you send people to your site, but not everyone is going to do that, so we want to put that stuff right in the app.It will show the visual content, photos of guests, promotions, links to your products, etc. It’s all right in the app. We’re also working on discussions and comment threads.There are different comment areas on the internet that aren’t so great, but podcasts audiences are passionate and enthusiastic. It seems to me like the best place to have discussions.Aaron: Having the ability to have a discussion about a podcast episode and go back and forth with other people inside the app would be really interesting. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, though.Brian: It’s just the beginning, but I think we’re positioned in a good way. All of my team members have their own jobs, which could be seen as a down side, like they’re not focused or it’s not a career, but that’s what’s going to help us last a long time without investment. We’re going to see what happens and get advice from the community we’re in to see what features they want. It could take years, but I’m ready for that.Aaron: It make take even longer than that, but you’re learning in the process. You’ll make some mistakes but you’ll document them for others to learn from, which is great.Q&A:Alex Castro asks: “Should I document the development of my brand, maybe on YouTube or a blog instead of podcasting? Sharing the journey as I go seems super scary.”Brian: It is scary. YouTube might fit better if you’re doing a lot of visual things or if you’re already good at doing video. Why not? It will be scary, but you’ll realize that it doesn’t really matter. I’ve had 99.9% positive feedback, except for one weird guy on a podcast. He was just a hater who hasn’t really built anything of his own.Aaron: Alex is a phenomenal visual designer, and I think sharing your story in a video format or blogging with pictures is fine. The lines between blogging, podcasting, and video are all starting to blur for me.I’m starting to think of these just as sharing a message or telling a story, instead of separate things. They are separate things, but if you start off by writing a blog post, you’ve got words that can be recorded and that’s a podcast. Or you could record a video of yourself saying those words. There’s different formatting and editing you can do, but it’s really all the same thing.Podcasting, producing video, and blogging all come back to opening up, sharing your experiences, and telling your story.That’s how you build community. That’s how you attract like-minded people and make friends. Opportunities will come from it. Even if you don’t think you have an interesting story yet, start telling it. You’ll find your story if you dig.Brian: Just start doing it. It took us a few months to put everything together before we even went live with it. You figure it out as you go and you write ahead. No one has ever regretted putting their story out there.Links:Podcast: https://podcastingwithaaron.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/aaronpodcastingYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/aarondowdBlog: https://www.aarondowd.comRecommended Gear: https://kit.co/podcastingwithaaron

Heyang: See if your answer is yes to the following questions: do you store your pans and pots in the oven? Do you put your sewing equipment into a cookie container? Apparently, it's only Chinese people who do it. Here are 7 things that Western people say they are shocked when they hear Chinese people do it. Let's check them out then! What's first on the list for you, Qinduo?Xu Qinduo: I think a lot of them are obviously different practices between Chinese people and Westerners here. Like the container, I love to see that. You put the utensils into the oven. I do see people do that, I do see people do that. I somehow pause a little bit, thought of it, and give it a go. I think it's empty, right?Heyang: Yeah, but the thing is oven is sort of alien or foreign for most Chinese households. But it is a wonderful place to store things if you don't use it, you know. And also, what is it called, yes, a dishwasher, that's something pretty alien and foreign for Chinese households and what better place is it to store some shoes and things in my eyes cause I'm not going to use it. Brian: See, an oven I can get that! Because if you're not using it, you can put pots and pans, they're going to go there anyways, sure, although not a lot of households seem to have them. Dishwasher, even more rare, but a dishwasher is a place for things to be clean. Shoes are not clean, they should not go in there.Heyang: Oh! You have not seen my fancy shoes! They are clean and they are beautiful. I can't think of a better place to store them cause I don't use dishwashers, you know. That is the prerequisite I suppose. But what about dipping your finger into the rice cooker?Xu Qinduo: Well, I have never done that…Heyang: Is it because you never cook, mister?Xu Qinduo: Well, I do occasionally. I just guess it. There is this much rice, I will probably add this much water, yeah enough!Brian: Eyeball it. Yeah, some of these are odd, some of these are normal. This one, your fingers are not always, actually, they are frequently not very clean. So, if you want to eyeball it like Qinduo does and I do myself frequently or mostly, that's fine. But, you can also get a measuring cup like a lot of these rice cookers now; they have those little measuring cups with them. So, you can just use them, figure out how much water you want to put in exactly, how much rice, and there you go. There's no need to go by your finger, varies from person to person anyways. Heyang: But I know exactly how my finger is going to measure in that kind of situation and also reaching out for the measuring cup. Are you kidding me? That is an extra step and you need to store for that cup. So, yeah it could be a little troublesome. But I think joking aside, it shows the very different perception towards cooking and many other things that Chinese people tend to do is that I think we are into abstracts. We are free spirited sometimes. We don't want the specific degrees, the scientific mode towards cooking. No way, we want to do it as what masters do: that is according to our mood, according to our fingers, we know how to cook. Xu Qinduo: or Chopsticks!Brian: Okay, that's all very well and fine. But, you don't have to stick your finger in there with the rice to do that. You can eyeball it.Xu Qinduo: Brian always has a problem with that! Make good use of your chopsticks right with your first knuckle of your finger, maybe next time you use your chopsticks instead of your fingers. It's easy to solve that problem. But, I think it's largely partly not only Chinese and Western different practice, but also its traditional and modern facilities and putting them together somehow, what's the right way to do it? In the past, Chinese don't use modern facilities like the microwave but now we have that, how do we cope with that? How do you put your traditional practices somehow compatible with modern facilities? Also, some of the differences are typically cultural. Chicken feet, we consume chicken feet but it's a shock for Westerners. Brian: But, it's very efficient, it's very efficient making use of something that would otherwise be thrown away. Xu Qinduo: Exactly. I consider it as a virtue of the culture.Brian: Absolutely.Heyang: I don't agree with you guys despite everything. But what about the one that is sticking chopsticks vertically into a bowl of rice is strictly prohibited because it is bad luck? It is attracting ghosts and things, you know attracting substances that you don't want.Xu Qinduo: Do you still do that? But I think in my parent's family, if you do that, probably my parents won't be happy. But in my family, if my kid does that, I will say, it doesn't look good, but I don't associate it with attracting ghosts. Brian: See, again it's this changing: the modern and traditional meeting together and things kind of get diluted over time whether or not this is a good thing, this may vary from practice to practice but you know when your kid grows up Qinduo, she's probably not going to care about doing that or if her kid does that. Xu Qinduo: That's true.Brian: It will just kind of go away.Xu Qinduo: I agree.Heyang: Well, but yes, maybe she will think attracting unclean substance is not the reason why you shouldn't do it. But there's no way she thinks this is civilized right. I sound super judgmental now, but…Xu Qinduo: Not good dinner table etiquette, I would say. Heyang: Exactly. I think it still matters and it is part of the home education that every kid should go through I think.Brian: There are bigger problems in that to deal with table manners, but sure, like for example better to put your cell phone down and away before eating. That's a more important one I would say. Heyang: Also, just turn your cell phone screen down, like that's courtesy to people.Brian: Put it away.Heyang: Also having a sewing kit is kind of necessary in any household but storing it in a cookie container. It used to be that those cookie containers are so fancy and it's like a nice place to store things. Xu Qinduo: Again, making good use of this wasteful stuff.Brian: PracticalityHeyang: But, no longer really is that the case as now you can just get a fabulous sewing kit container from Taobao or wherever these days. So easy and so cheap

Brad Sullivan St. Mark’s, Bay City May 1, 2016 6 Easter, Year C Acts 16:9-15 John 5:1-9 Alms for An Ex-Leper? In the movie, The Life of Brian, Monty Python showed a rather silly example of this idea that being healed can actually be rather difficult. The movie was a comedy, which took place in Israel during the lifetime of Jesus. Brian, a historically insignificant and unknown Jew, found himself caught up in a series of crazy situations, his life often mirroring the life of Jesus. In the scene showing the difficulty of being healed, Brian is walking through town when a man comes prancing up to him asking, “Alms for an ex-leper?” Brian is not initially interested, and there is some haggling going on as the Ex-Leper continues to reduce the amount he is asking for when he finally comes to his rock bottom offer: Ex-Leper: Okay, sir, my final offer: half a shekel for an old ex-leper? Brian: Did you say "ex-leper"? Ex-Leper: That's right, sir, 16 years behind a veil and proud of it, sir. Brian: Well, what happened? Ex-Leper: Oh, cured, sir. Brian: Cured? Ex-Leper: Yes sir, bloody miracle, sir. Bless you! Brian: Who cured you? Ex-Leper: Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business, all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as a by-your-leave! "You're cured, mate." Bloody do-gooder. Brian: Alright, well, here you go. Ex-Leper: Half a denarii for my bloody life story. Brian: There’s just no pleasing some people. Ex-Leper: That’s just what Jesus said sir. The ex-leper did admit that leprosy was awful and that he would have preferred Jesus to have come back and given him some less-bothersome, yet alms-worthy malady, so that he could have continued to ply his trade of begging alms. Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is to be healed. Without healing, life may be kind of crummy, but we adjust and adapt and become so accustomed to how things are, that we’d prefer not to be healed over risking changing how things are. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asked the man who had been ill for 38 years. I heard the suggestion recently that Jesus’ questions was not rhetorical, but an honest question. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus had a gift to offer this man, but he would not force it on him. Imagine the change that would come upon this man when suddenly he was made well, when suddenly he wasn’t lying by this pool anymore waiting to come into the waters. When he didn’t’ have people pitying him anymore, he whole world was going to change. Responsibilities would be now upon him. While welcome, that was probably going to be a daunting transformation of his life. If we look at this story of physical healing and apply it to our spiritual healing, we see Jesus asking us that same question, “Do you want to be healed?”, and we find that our answers are not always “Yes.” For the healing that comes through accepting Jesus’ grace and love, through trusting in him and following in his ways, sometimes our answer to “Do you want to be healed?”, is “Yes, but not yet.” That was St. Augustine of Hippo’s famous prayer, “Lord, please make me a Christian, just not yet.” He believed that if he were to become a Christian, he would have to change his life; he’d have to give up a rather carefree, womanizing life, and actually be dedicated to Jesus’ teachings. He believed that following in Jesus’ way would be a better life for him. He believed that it would be more fulfilling, that it would bring about more good, that he would actually enjoy life more, but he just wasn’t ready to bite the bullet and stop his carousing, carefree, party-boy life. So, his response to Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?”, was “Yes Lord, just not yet.” Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to be healed. The healing that Jesus offers means transformation, and transformation is a daunting prospect. I may know that things aren’t good the way they are, but I can’t imagine life any other way. We may hold onto our past hurts, cling to our pain, because it feels like a shield against future pain. The man Jesus healed had been ill for 38 years. The story doesn’t say what his malady was, just that he was ill. He said he had no one to put him into the pool when the water was stirred up (when the healing powers of the water were present), and so someone else would always beat him to the water. I’ve always imagined the man as a cripple who was crawling to the water with lifeless legs dragging behind him, and perhaps that is the case, but perhaps not. Perhaps the man could walk, he just walked slowly, fearful of what would happen if he was healed, or maybe fearful that he would enter the water and not be healed. Perhaps he was afraid that he would enter the water and not be worthy of being healed. Remember that sickness was often seen as an affliction given by God as punishment for sin. If the man entered the water and was not healed, then he was not forgiven. Perhaps that fear of being unforgiven, that fear of being unlovable was too great, and the man remained as he was. Ultimately, that was the healing Jesus gave to the man. He cured the man’s illness, whatever it was, and in doing so, he declared the man forgiven of his sins and beloved of God. Be not afraid, be not ashamed, for you are God’s beloved, and God’s grace is more than sufficient for your sins. Lutheran Pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, wrote of God’s grace being enough for her sins. She had at one point been a bit of a jerk to a parishioner, totally unknown to the parishioner, but it was weighing on her, and she needed absolution; she needed to say out loud to another human being the crappy thing she had done, and she then needed to hear the words of God’s forgiveness spoken over her. So, she called her friend, Caitlin, who was also her confessor. Of Caitlin, she wrote: [Caitlin] knows me. Really well. And she is unimpressed with my sin. I’ve told her things about myself that I’ve not told anyone else and she still wants to be my friend. Not because she is magnanimous but because she believes in the power of forgiveness and the grace of God. Caitlin was unimpressed with Nadia’s sins. That’s how God is with us, unimpressed with our sins. Our sins are a big deal to us, and in one sense our sins are a big deal to God. Our sins are a big deal and they matter to God because our sins are the ways we hurt ourselves and each other. Our sins are a big deal to God because we are a big deal to God. Through our sins, we end up separating ourselves from each other and from God, and God wants to be united to us and for us to be united to each other. So our sins are a big deal to God, a big enough deal that God became human in the person of Jesus and let us kill him on the cross so that he could receive all of our sins, receive all of our sins in that macabre embrace, and having taken all of our sins upon himself, could say, “Father, forgive them.” Such is the grace of Jesus, that having taken all of our sins upon himself and having been killed by us, he has forgiven us. So, while our sins matter to God, God is also totally unimpressed by our sins, because his grace, forgiveness, and love are so much greater. The sins of the entirety of all human kind throughout all time are very great indeed: pettiness, insults, jealousy, abuse, rape, murder, genocide, holocausts. The sins of humanity are vast as the ocean, limitless as the sky, beyond our reckoning, and the sins of humanity are totally unimpressive when met with God’s grace, forgiveness, and love. That is what Jesus offers us when he says, “Do you want to be healed?” Imagine a life not held captive by guilt or shame from past sins. Imagine a life not constantly scrambling to be good enough to be worthy of God’s love. Imagine a life not held captive by the past hurts that others have given because you have been forgiven yourself by God and therefore able to forgive others. Imagine a life transformed, sometimes a daunting prospect, and so Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed.” Do you want to be transformed by God’s grace? Do you want to be transformed by God’s forgiveness? Do you want to be transformed by God’s love? Do you want to let go the sins and the hurts of the past as God has let them go for you? Do you want to accept that there will be more sins and hurts in the future and let go of those as well? No longer clinging to our sins and our hurts, no longer clinging to our feelings of needing to be good enough to be worthy of God’s love, not longer clinging to all of the past and future mess, “Do you want,” Jesus asks, “to fall into God’s grace and accept that you are forgiven and beloved?” Amen.

Brad Sullivan St. Mark’s, Bay City May 1, 2016 6 Easter, Year C Acts 16:9-15 John 5:1-9 Alms for An Ex-Leper? In the movie, The Life of Brian, Monty Python showed a rather silly example of this idea that being healed can actually be rather difficult. The movie was a comedy, which took place in Israel during the lifetime of Jesus. Brian, a historically insignificant and unknown Jew, found himself caught up in a series of crazy situations, his life often mirroring the life of Jesus. In the scene showing the difficulty of being healed, Brian is walking through town when a man comes prancing up to him asking, “Alms for an ex-leper?” Brian is not initially interested, and there is some haggling going on as the Ex-Leper continues to reduce the amount he is asking for when he finally comes to his rock bottom offer: Ex-Leper: Okay, sir, my final offer: half a shekel for an old ex-leper? Brian: Did you say "ex-leper"? Ex-Leper: That's right, sir, 16 years behind a veil and proud of it, sir. Brian: Well, what happened? Ex-Leper: Oh, cured, sir. Brian: Cured? Ex-Leper: Yes sir, bloody miracle, sir. Bless you! Brian: Who cured you? Ex-Leper: Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business, all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as a by-your-leave! "You're cured, mate." Bloody do-gooder. Brian: Alright, well, here you go. Ex-Leper: Half a denarii for my bloody life story. Brian: There’s just no pleasing some people. Ex-Leper: That’s just what Jesus said sir. The ex-leper did admit that leprosy was awful and that he would have preferred Jesus to have come back and given him some less-bothersome, yet alms-worthy malady, so that he could have continued to ply his trade of begging alms. Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is to be healed. Without healing, life may be kind of crummy, but we adjust and adapt and become so accustomed to how things are, that we’d prefer not to be healed over risking changing how things are. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asked the man who had been ill for 38 years. I heard the suggestion recently that Jesus’ questions was not rhetorical, but an honest question. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus had a gift to offer this man, but he would not force it on him. Imagine the change that would come upon this man when suddenly he was made well, when suddenly he wasn’t lying by this pool anymore waiting to come into the waters. When he didn’t’ have people pitying him anymore, he whole world was going to change. Responsibilities would be now upon him. While welcome, that was probably going to be a daunting transformation of his life. If we look at this story of physical healing and apply it to our spiritual healing, we see Jesus asking us that same question, “Do you want to be healed?”, and we find that our answers are not always “Yes.” For the healing that comes through accepting Jesus’ grace and love, through trusting in him and following in his ways, sometimes our answer to “Do you want to be healed?”, is “Yes, but not yet.” That was St. Augustine of Hippo’s famous prayer, “Lord, please make me a Christian, just not yet.” He believed that if he were to become a Christian, he would have to change his life; he’d have to give up a rather carefree, womanizing life, and actually be dedicated to Jesus’ teachings. He believed that following in Jesus’ way would be a better life for him. He believed that it would be more fulfilling, that it would bring about more good, that he would actually enjoy life more, but he just wasn’t ready to bite the bullet and stop his carousing, carefree, party-boy life. So, his response to Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?”, was “Yes Lord, just not yet.” Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to be healed. The healing that Jesus offers means transformation, and transformation is a daunting prospect. I may know that things aren’t good the way they are, but I can’t imagine life any other way. We may hold onto our past hurts, cling to our pain, because it feels like a shield against future pain. The man Jesus healed had been ill for 38 years. The story doesn’t say what his malady was, just that he was ill. He said he had no one to put him into the pool when the water was stirred up (when the healing powers of the water were present), and so someone else would always beat him to the water. I’ve always imagined the man as a cripple who was crawling to the water with lifeless legs dragging behind him, and perhaps that is the case, but perhaps not. Perhaps the man could walk, he just walked slowly, fearful of what would happen if he was healed, or maybe fearful that he would enter the water and not be healed. Perhaps he was afraid that he would enter the water and not be worthy of being healed. Remember that sickness was often seen as an affliction given by God as punishment for sin. If the man entered the water and was not healed, then he was not forgiven. Perhaps that fear of being unforgiven, that fear of being unlovable was too great, and the man remained as he was. Ultimately, that was the healing Jesus gave to the man. He cured the man’s illness, whatever it was, and in doing so, he declared the man forgiven of his sins and beloved of God. Be not afraid, be not ashamed, for you are God’s beloved, and God’s grace is more than sufficient for your sins. Lutheran Pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, wrote of God’s grace being enough for her sins. She had at one point been a bit of a jerk to a parishioner, totally unknown to the parishioner, but it was weighing on her, and she needed absolution; she needed to say out loud to another human being the crappy thing she had done, and she then needed to hear the words of God’s forgiveness spoken over her. So, she called her friend, Caitlin, who was also her confessor. Of Caitlin, she wrote: [Caitlin] knows me. Really well. And she is unimpressed with my sin. I’ve told her things about myself that I’ve not told anyone else and she still wants to be my friend. Not because she is magnanimous but because she believes in the power of forgiveness and the grace of God. Caitlin was unimpressed with Nadia’s sins. That’s how God is with us, unimpressed with our sins. Our sins are a big deal to us, and in one sense our sins are a big deal to God. Our sins are a big deal and they matter to God because our sins are the ways we hurt ourselves and each other. Our sins are a big deal to God because we are a big deal to God. Through our sins, we end up separating ourselves from each other and from God, and God wants to be united to us and for us to be united to each other. So our sins are a big deal to God, a big enough deal that God became human in the person of Jesus and let us kill him on the cross so that he could receive all of our sins, receive all of our sins in that macabre embrace, and having taken all of our sins upon himself, could say, “Father, forgive them.” Such is the grace of Jesus, that having taken all of our sins upon himself and having been killed by us, he has forgiven us. So, while our sins matter to God, God is also totally unimpressed by our sins, because his grace, forgiveness, and love are so much greater. The sins of the entirety of all human kind throughout all time are very great indeed: pettiness, insults, jealousy, abuse, rape, murder, genocide, holocausts. The sins of humanity are vast as the ocean, limitless as the sky, beyond our reckoning, and the sins of humanity are totally unimpressive when met with God’s grace, forgiveness, and love. That is what Jesus offers us when he says, “Do you want to be healed?” Imagine a life not held captive by guilt or shame from past sins. Imagine a life not constantly scrambling to be good enough to be worthy of God’s love. Imagine a life not held captive by the past hurts that others have given because you have been forgiven yourself by God and therefore able to forgive others. Imagine a life transformed, sometimes a daunting prospect, and so Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed.” Do you want to be transformed by God’s grace? Do you want to be transformed by God’s forgiveness? Do you want to be transformed by God’s love? Do you want to let go the sins and the hurts of the past as God has let them go for you? Do you want to accept that there will be more sins and hurts in the future and let go of those as well? No longer clinging to our sins and our hurts, no longer clinging to our feelings of needing to be good enough to be worthy of God’s love, not longer clinging to all of the past and future mess, “Do you want,” Jesus asks, “to fall into God’s grace and accept that you are forgiven and beloved?” Amen.

非常感谢热心听众，文稿精英小分队的成员【吉祥三宝-郭新燕-Maggie】和【大声-屠清音-Helen】对本文稿的贡献！几乎100%的正确率，赞一个！ 赠人玫瑰，手有余香。想为文稿做贡献的童鞋请微博私信联系@CRI罗煜。我们撒花欢迎你的加入！ 听写完的文稿都会由主持人们负责Check，然后发布给小伙伴们。同时，通过对比，也可以学习到很多有用的单词和短语呢！希望大家能够加入我们，让圆桌能够陪伴更多小伙伴们的成长！Heyang: Mysterious crop circles, so called “麦田怪圈”, provoke puzzlement, delight and intrigue for many people. Now in a village in Nanjing, dragon-shaped patterns have been flattened in a wheat field by local villagers. It is said that poisonous weed killers have been used to create this pattern. For what purpose? Well, to attract tourists. And does this end justify the means is my ultimate question. But guys, tell me more about the story.Brian: Interesting question there. But about the story: as you mentioned, these dragon-shaped patterns going on in this village over by Nanjing, one of them is two dragons playing with a ball.Heyang: Dragon ball!Brian: Oh yes, that’s what I Luo Yu: Is it a ball or should it be a pearl?Brian: A pearl, well, something…Heyang: Dragon pearl!Brian: I’m not sure if you can tell the difference when it is a pattern in the field there. But anyway auspicious symbol in China, cool staff there, but apparently they used herbicides. Another thing is if you look from the sky, you can also see an imposing imperial robe with dragons which, again, looks cool, but again looks like weed killers were used to turn some of the wheat - the green wheat - yellow, which is not so cool.Luo Yu: Right, I think it’s quite a good thing. For one thing, the village can obviously upgrade the local economy because previously those farmers rely heavily on husbandry, on stock-breeding, but now they can turn to tourism sector. And because of the ripple effect it can bring to the village, actually you will see probably more visitors will come in to the village to see this either imperial robe or the two-dragons-playing-with-the-ball images, and they probably will stay in either hotels or hostels, and, you know, spend money there. So, generally, it is a very good idea for the local village.Heyang: I think you make a really good case for it. But, Luo Yu, do you honestly think that tourists will want to go to this place just to see these crop circle things?Luo Yu: That’s my concern as well because nowadays the drones have become very popular already, right? You can see these beautiful pictures meticulously photographed by those drones through aerial images. And to that extent, there’s not any need for you to go to the scene yourself, right?Brian: There, there’s that. But there’re environmental concerns. But those aside for the moment, like we’re talking here, how sustainable is this? I mean, to me it feels like kind of a gimmick. For most people, I feel like no, you’re not gonna go there. And again, you know, if it was like a real tourist attraction that had like, that was really interesting, you had some value there, that’s one thing. But the idea, you know, okay, let’s try, everybody let’s try and have our town become a tourist spot whatever. That’s, I don’t think that’s a good idea, I don’t think it’s sustainable, I don’t think it’s gonna work.Heyang: Well, there you go. The other side of the story.Luo Yu: Right. Definitely. Whether it is sustainable, I think it needs some time for us to see whether it can pan out. But probably this village is becoming smart enough to create more wheat images in the future.Brian: I guess if it became really famous for having like just really exquisite patterns and doing like a world-class job whatever, a national class job, yeah, maybe you could do that. But that’s not likely what’s gonna happen here because that kind of staff doesn’t happen, you know, on accident there. I feel like it’s hard to get to that level where it’s really worthy of tourists seeing. And again, not to mention the environmental concerns.Luo Yu: They should have invited some craftsmen into the village to do the job. But environmental concern definitely is one thing.Heyang: Okay, sure. And I think, what about the conventional farming bit? What about these fields used to plant wheat and other grain and all kinds of staff? Is abandoning that and going for tourism a good idea here?Brian: I would say no. I mean not there’s tons of money in farming, but if you look at, again, just these farmers themselves, I don’t think it’s a very sustainable move like, if they had some, again, really “wow” kind of tourist attraction, then yeah, that might be a smart move. But if it’s just this sort of thing they’re planning on, you know, giving up farming just ‘cause they made some crop circles that, you know, people in other places could do just as easily, no, that’s not a smart business move.Luo Yu: Maybe you don’t think it’s a “wow”, but for a lot of people it’s a “wow”. Different people have different standards and criteria for “wow”, right?Brian: That is true, but you...Heyang: I haven’t heard so many WOWs in one conversation ever, that’s the WOW factor of that part.Brian: Yeah, yeah.Luo Yu: If you talk about conventional farming, come on, it only costs those farmers 80,000 yuan, which is not that much. It’s only about 12,300 US dollars. At the same time, they get...Brian: That’s US dollars, we are in China.Luo Yu: Well, but they get compensation. And if they can really upgrade from husbandry to tourism sector, that’s a very good sign.Brian: If it was good tourism, but I don’t think it is. And also, they’ve compensated by who, the local government? Wouldn’t it be better to put that money in a place where you might get a better overturn on your investment? A more...Luo Yu: What sort of investment? If they rely on money, they can never get enough money.Brian: Well, if the problem is only relying on farming, then they may look to diversify. But I’m not sure that tourism, by doing something that could be replicated by other people, is the best way to do it.Heyang: And the local official has been saying that it’s up to the farmers to decide whether they want to go for conventional farming which is not earning people a lot or go for other ways to earn money like tourism. I think that statement alone, itself, I don’t have anything to say against it. But look at the way that China has developed in the last two decades. Can we reject to the statement that we’ve developed so fast at the expense of the environment?Brian: At the expense of many things besides that too.Heyang: There you go. So here’s my other question, gentlemen. What about the environment? Is this causing harm to the environment? Are we doing exactly the same evil thing again?Luo Yu: I don’t think it’s an evil thing, because according to the...Heyang: Just dramatize, to sensationalize and people, our listeners tuned in...Luo Yu: No, I don’t sensationalize. Because according to the village authority. This village has been saying that previously they didn’t want to use herbicides. Why they used herbicides? Because some of the farmers didn’t know about the planting very well, so there was an accident that has happened, that’s why they have to use herbicides to create the images.Brian: Yeah, but they didn’t have to do this in the first place. And herbicides are not good, so there’s the dread damage to that. There’s the damage that, the fact, well there’s the crops have been wasted, and then maybe that will cause other problems that will not seen directly, maybe indirect problems there. And also if you want to talk about evil and doing bad to the environment, you can take a look at Miyazaki movies. He has very good ones that show that the evils of harming the environment.Heyang: Hmm.Luo Yu: Don’t dramatize it. I think you know, at least those people should give it a try. Come on. It shows their passion as well as wisdom to trying to develop themselves, upgrading their economy.Brian: Ok, I agree with that sentiment that, you know, there should be innovative and creative ways to get better, especially when it’s just agriculture, which is not a big money maker. But I think there are better ways, I mean, not that the farmers can decide this themselves, but if the local government wanted to do it, maybe they could turn it into a special economic zone or a free trade zone or something.Luo Yu: No, that’s not very easy to establish an industrial park or economic zone. Brian: It is not easy. Luo Yu: At the same time, you don’t know about local situation, maybe this is just a normal village that doesn’t have abundant tourism resources. And they want to create some of the resources themselves from scratch. What’s wrong about this?

Xiaohua: A recent report shows the average height of Chinese adult is 167.1cm for male, and 155.8cm for female. Is your height higher or lower than the average?So I want to ask you guys what is your very first reaction after seeing this?Heyang: I couldn’t believe my eyes. As a northerner growing up in Beijing... Yeah, I had like higher expectation, I suppose. I thought that it is a bit low both for men and women. And judging by the figures, I’m a giant, I suppose. Well, I’m 174cm tall, so yeah. Brian: Ok, I guess I’m not surprised. I obviously come from a little bit different perspective. Actually, it’s interesting. I would say, maybe, Americans might be surprised because a lot of Chinese people who have come to US over the past hundreds of years, a lot of them have been from the south, especially Guangdong, and in general as you might know, they tend to be a little bit shorter there. So when Americans think of Chinese people, they tend to think of people on the shorter side. So this makes surprise to Americans. But for me, that actually sounds about right. I don’t find it surprising at all.Xiaohua: Or for someone who is above 180, 160 or 170 actually doesn’t much of any difference to you.Brian: There is some truth of that, yeah. Xiaohua: I guessed so. My first reaction after seeing this is YEAHHHH, because my husband has passed that average height. Not very far, I have to admit, but yeah good for him. Heyang: And you have also passed the average height of women.Xiaohua: Yes, of course. A bit further above but I mean, I’m 165. I always thought that is the average height. I thought this is the average height for Chinese female, but no, it seems I’m 10 centimeters taller than the average.Brian: COOL for you. But this is once again. This is like “oh, gotta beat the average here”... This seems be like a craze in Chinese society as of late like “oh, there is this average, gotta compare it, and am I above that or not? I better be above it, because that matters for some reason, apparently”.Heyang: Of course it matters. You need a benchmark of measurement in anything, I think, in any field. You want to know what the average is and then do a little comparison. Brian: Heyang, is your self-esteem based on the fact that you are taller than most people? Cuz that’s not a good way to do it. Heyang: Well, I wouldn’t say be based on my height, but I have to say the air is really fresher up there. Up here, I mean. Xiaohua: Oh, man, you have just drawn yourself so many criticisms.Heyang: I’m sure. Feel free to say bad things about me...Brian: Rarefied air where Heyang’s getting it all.Xiaohua: But I don’t know, is it a Chinese thing? I hate to say it is a Chinese thing, but I think we like to compare ourselves in these bigger or smaller areas that can somehow give us comfort or a little bit of superiority in front of others.Brain: That does in some ways seems to be something you see a lot in modern China. I will tell you something interesting in the US, though. People in US don’t compare themselves about that, but in surveys, if you look at what the average is and what people think they are, the majority of people in the US think they are above average, which is statistically impossible because it is the average.Heyang: Yeah, I think height could be a plus as most girls prefer to go out with a guy that is a bit taller than them. But, sorry to put my own story here all the time, I’ve realized it is difficult to find men that are suitably taller than I am. So I realize sometimes looks don’t always matter, I think it’s really the person’s personality that I would value the most and first.Brian: Absolutely. And on that, heels... (Heyang: for men as well?) Actually interestingly, heels were first worn by men there. And I’m gonna say that neither men (Frenchmen, maybe), somewhere in Europe. You know, heels are not necessary. There’s this idea “oh, I need to be tall or whatever, and this is important”. But don’t damage yourself by wearing heels or something ridiculous like that. I even heard of reports a few years ago about people trying to do some kind of surgery where they lengthen their bones and their legs, which sounds so sad when people do that because it must be so painful and so bad for you.