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About ChrisChris Short has been a proponent of open source solutions throughout his over two decades in various IT disciplines, including systems, security, networks, DevOps management, and cloud native advocacy across the public and private sectors. He currently works on the Kubernetes team at Amazon Web Services and is an active Kubernetes contributor and Co-chair of OpenGitOps. Chris is a disabled US Air Force veteran living with his wife and son in Greater Metro Detroit. Chris writes about Cloud Native, DevOps, and other topics at ChrisShort.net. He also runs the Cloud Native, DevOps, GitOps, Open Source, industry news, and culture focused newsletter DevOps'ish.Links Referenced: DevOps'ish: https://devopsish.com/ EKS News: https://eks.news/ Containers from the Couch: https://containersfromthecouch.com opengitops.dev: https://opengitops.dev ChrisShort.net: https://chrisshort.net Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisShort 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: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Coming back to us since episode two—it's always nice to go back and see the where are they now type of approach—I am joined by Senior Developer Advocate at AWS Chris Short. Chris, been a few years. How has it been?Chris: Ha. Corey, we have talked outside of the podcast. But it's been good. For those that have been listening, I think when we recorded I wasn't even—like, when was season two, what year was that? [laugh].Corey: Episode two was first pre-pandemic and the rest. I believe—Chris: Oh. So, yeah. I was at Red Hat, maybe, when I—yeah.Corey: Yeah. You were doing Red Hat stuff, back when you got to work on open-source stuff, as opposed to now, where you're not within 1000 miles of that stuff, right?Chris: Actually well, no. So, to be clear, I'm on the EKS team, the Kubernetes team here at AWS. So, when I joined AWS in October, they were like, “Hey, you do open-source stuff. We like that. Do more.” And I was like, “Oh, wait, do more?” And they were like, “Yes, do more.” “Okay.”So, since joining AWS, I've probably done more open-source work than the three years at Red Hat that I did. So, that's kind of—you know, like, it's an interesting point when I talk to people about it because the first couple months are, like—you know, my friends are like, “So, are you liking it? Are you enjoying it? What's going on?” And—Corey: Do they beat you with reeds? Like, all the questions people have about companies? Because—Chris: Right. Like, I get a lot of random questions about Amazon and AWS that I don't know the answer to.Corey: Oh, when I started telling people, I fixed Amazon bills, I had to quickly pivot that to AWS bills because people started asking me, “Well, can you save me money on underpants?” It's I—Chris: Yeah.Corey: How do you—fine. Get the prime credit card. It docks 5% off the bill, so there you go. But other than that, no, I can't.Chris: No.Corey: It's—Chris: Like, I had to call my bank this morning about a transaction that I didn't recognize, and it was from Amazon. And I was like, that's weird. Why would that—Corey: Money just flows one direction, and that's the wrong direction from my employer.Chris: Yeah. Like, what is going on here? It shouldn't have been on that card kind of thing. And I had to explain to the person on the phone that I do work at Amazon but under the Web Services team. And he was like, “Oh, so you're in IT?”And I'm like, “No.” [laugh]. “It's actually this big company. That—it's a cloud company.” And they're like, “Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. The cloud. Got it.” [laugh]. So, it's interesting talking to people about, “I work at Amazon.” “Oh, my son works at Amazon distribution center,” blah, blah, blah. It's like, cool. “I know about that, but very little. I do this.”Corey: Your son works in Amazon distribution center. Is he a robot? Is normally my next question on that? Yeah. That's neither here nor there.So, you and I started talking a while back. We both write newsletters that go to a somewhat similar audience. You write DevOps'ish. I write Last Week in AWS. And recently, you also have started EKS News because, yeah, the one thing I look at when I'm doing these newsletters every week is, you know what I want to do? That's right. Write more newsletters.Chris: [laugh].Corey: So, you are just a glutton for punishment? And, yeah, welcome to the addiction, I suppose. How's it been going for you?Chris: It's actually been pretty interesting, right? Like, we haven't pushed it very hard. We're now starting to include it in things. Like we did Container Day; we made sure that EKS news was on the landing page for Container Day at KubeCon EU. And you know, it's kind of just grown organically since then.But it was one of those things where it's like, internally—this happened at Red Hat, right—when I started live streaming at Red Hat, the ultimate goal was to do our product management—like, here's what's new in the next version thing—do those live so anybody can see that at any point in time anywhere on Earth, the second it's available. Similar situation to here. This newsletter actually is generated as part of a report my boss puts together to brief our other DAs—or developer advocates—you know, our solutions architects, the whole nine yards about new EKS features. So, I was like, why can't we just flip that into a weekly newsletter, you know? Like, I can pull from the same sources you can.And what's interesting is, he only does the meeting bi-weekly. So, there's some weeks where it's just all me doing it and he ends up just kind of copying and pasting the newsletter into his document, [laugh] and then adds on for the week. But that report meeting for that team is now getting disseminated to essentially anyone that subscribes to eks.news. Just go to the site, there's a subscribe thing right there. And we've gotten 20 issues in and it's gotten rave reviews, right?Corey: I have been a subscriber for a while. I will say that it has less Chris Short personality—Chris: Mm-hm.Corey: —to it than DevOps'ish does, which I have to assume is by design. A lot of The Duckbill Group's marketing these days is no longer in my voice, rather intentionally, because it turns out that being a sarcastic jackass and doing half-billion dollar AWS contracts can not to be the most congruent thing in the world. So okay, we're slowly ameliorating that. It's professional voice versus snarky voice.Chris: Well, and here's the thing, right? Like, I realized this year with DevOps'ish that, like, if I want to take a week off, I have to do, like, what you did when your child was born. You hired folks to like, do the newsletter for you, or I actually don't do the newsletter, right? It's binary: hire someone else to do it, or don't do it. So, the way I structured this newsletter was that any developer advocate on my team could jump in and take over the newsletter so that, you know, if I'm off that week, or whatever may be happening, I, Chris Short, am not the voice. It is now the entire developer advocate team.Corey: I will challenge you on that a bit. Because it's not Chris Short voice, that's for sure, but it's also not official AWS brand voice either.Chris: No.Corey: It is clearly written by a human being who is used to communicating with the audience for whom it is written. And that is no small thing. Normally, when oh, there's a corporate newsletter; that's just a lot of words to say it's bad. This one is good. I want to be very clear on that.Chris: Yeah, I mean, we have just, like, DevOps'ish, we have sections, just like your newsletter, there's certain sections, so any new, what's new announcements, those go in automatically. So, like, that can get delivered to your inbox every Friday. Same thing with new blog posts about anything containers related to EKS, those will be in there, then Containers from the Couch, our streaming platform, essentially, for all things Kubernetes. Those videos go in.And then there's some ecosystem news as well that I collect and put in the newsletter to give people a broader sense of what's going on out there in Kubernetes-land because let's face it, there's upstream and then there's downstream, and sometimes those aren't in sync, and that's normal. That's how Kubernetes kind of works sometimes. If you're running upstream Kubernetes, you are awesome. I appreciate you, but I feel like that would cause more problems and it's worse sometimes.Corey: Thank you for being the trailblazers. The rest of us can learn from your misfortune.Chris: [laugh]. Yeah, exactly. Right? Like, please file your bugs accordingly. [laugh].Corey: EKS is interesting to me because I don't see a lot of it, which is, probably, going to get a whole lot of, “Wait, what?” Moments because wait, don't you deal with very large AWS bills? And I do. But what I mean by that is that EKS, until you're using its Fargate expression, charges for the control plane, which rounds to no money, and the rest is running on EC2 instances running in a company's account. From the billing perspective, there is no difference between, “We're running massive fleets of EKS nodes.” And, “We're managing a whole bunch of EC2 instances by hand.”And that feels like an interesting allegory for how Kubernetes winds up expressing itself to cloud providers. Because from a billing perspective, it just looks like one big single-tenant application that has some really strange behaviors internally. It gets very chatty across AZs when there's no reason to, and whatnot. And it becomes a very interesting study in how to expose aspects of what's going on inside of those containers and inside of the Kubernetes environment to the cloud provider in a way that becomes actionable. There are no good answers for this yet, but it's something I've been seeing a lot of. Like, “Oh, I thought you'd be running Kubernetes. Oh, wait, you are and I just keep forgetting what I'm looking at sometimes.”Chris: So, that's an interesting point. The billing is kind of like, yeah, it's just compute, right? So—Corey: And my insight into AWS and the way I start thinking about it is always from a billing perspective. That's great. It's because that means the more expensive the services, the more I know about it. It's like, “IAM. What is that?” Like, “Oh, I have no idea. It's free. How important could it be?” Professional advice: do not take that philosophy, ever.Chris: [laugh]. No. Ever. No.Corey: Security: it matters. Oh, my God. It's like you're all stars. Your IAM policy should not be. I digress.Chris: Right. Yeah. Anyways, so two points I want to make real quick on that is, one, we've recently released an open-source project called Carpenter, which is really cool in my purview because it looks at your Kubernetes file and says, “Oh, you want this to run on ARM instance.” And you can even go so far as to say, right, here's my limits, and it'll find an instance that fits those limits and add that to your cluster automatically. Run your pod on that compute as long as it needs to run and then if it's done, it'll downsize—eventually, kind of thing—your cluster.So, you can basically just throw a bunch of workloads at it, and it'll auto-detect what kind of compute you will need and then provision it for you, run it, and then be done. So, that is one-way folks are probably starting to save money running EKS is to adopt Carpenter as your autoscaler as opposed to the inbuilt Kubernetes autoscaler. Because this is instance-aware, essentially, so it can say, like, “Oh, your massive ARM application can run here,” because you know, thank you, Graviton. We have those processors in-house. And you know, you can run your ARM64 instances, you can run all the Intel workloads you want, and it'll right size the compute for your workloads.And I'll look at one container or all your containers, however you want to configure it. Secondly, the good folks over at Kubecost have opencost, which is the open-source version of Kubecost, basically. So, they have a service that you can run in your clusters that will help you say, “Hey, maybe this one notes too heavy; maybe this one notes too light,” and you know, give you some insights into Kubernetes spend that are a little bit more granular as far as usage and things like that go. So, those two projects right there, I feel like, will give folks an optimal savings experience when it comes to Kubernetes. But to your point, it's just compute, right? And that's really how we treat it, kind of, here internally is that it's a way to run… compute, Kubernetes, or ECS, or any of those tools.Corey: A fairly expensive one because ignoring entirely for a second the actual raw cost of compute, you also have the other side of it, which is in every environment, unless you are doing something very strange or pre-funding as a one-person startup in your spare time, your payroll costs will it—should—exceed your AWS bill by a fairly healthy amount. And engineering time is always more expensive than services time. So, for example, looking at EKS, I would absolutely recommend people use that rather than rolling their own because—Chris: Rolling their own? Yeah.Corey: —get out of that engineering space where your time is free. I assure you from a business context, it is not. So, there's always that question of what you can do to make things easier for people and do more of the heavy lifting.Chris: Yeah, and to your rather cheeky point that there's 17 ways to run a container on AWS, it is answering that question, right? Like those 17 ways, like, how much of this do you want to run yourself, you could run EKS distro on EC2 instances if you want full control over your environment.Corey: And then run IoT Greengrass core on top within that cluster—Chris: Right.Corey: So, I can run my own Lambda function runtime, so I'm not locked in. Also, DynamoDB local so I'm not locked into AWS. At which point I have gone so far around the bend, no one can help me.Chris: Well—Corey: Pro tip, don't do that. Just don't do that.Chris: But to your point, we have all these options for compute, and specifically containers because there's a lot of people that want to granularly say, “This is where my engineering team gets involved. Everything else you handle.” If I want EKS on Spot Instances only, you can do that. If you want EKS to use Carpenter and say only run ARM workloads, you can do that. If you want to say Fargate and not have anything to manage other than the container file, you can do that.It's how much does your team want to manage? That's the customer obsession part of AWS coming through when it comes to containers is because there's so many different ways to run those workloads, but there's so many different ways to make sure that your team is right-sized, based off the services you're using.Corey: I do want to change gears a bit here because you are mostly known for a couple of things: the DevOps'ish newsletter because that is the oldest and longest thing you've been doing the time that I've known you; EKS, obviously. But when prepping for this show, I discovered you are now co-chair of the OpenGitOps project.Chris: Yes.Corey: So, I have heard of GitOps in the context of, “Oh, it's just basically your CI/CD stuff is triggered by Git events and whatnot.” And I'm sitting here going, “Okay, so from where you're sitting, the two best user interfaces in the world that you have discovered are YAML and Git.” And I just have to start with the question, “Who hurt you?”Chris: [laugh]. Yeah, I share your sentiment when it comes to Git. Not so much with YAML, but I think it's because I'm so used to it. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome, maybe the whole YAML thing. I don't know.Corey: Well, it's no XML. We'll put it that way.Chris: Thankfully, yes because if it was, I would have way more, like, just template files laying around to build things. But the—Corey: And rage. Don't forget rage.Chris: And rage, yeah. So, GitOps is a little bit more than just Git in IaC—infrastructure as Code. It's more like Justin Garrison, who's also on my team, he calls it infrastructure software because there's four main principles to GitOps, and if you go to opengitops.dev, you can see them. It's version one.So, we put them on the website, right there on the page. You have to have a declared state and that state has to live somewhere. Now, it's called GitOps because Git is probably the most full-featured thing to put your state in, but you could use an S3 bucket and just version it, for example. And make it private so no one else can get to it.Corey: Or you could use local files: copy-of-copy-of-this-thing-restored-parentheses-use-this-one-dot-final-dot-doc-dot-zip. You know, my preferred naming convention.Chris: Ah, yeah. Wow. Okay. [laugh]. Yeah.Corey: Everything I touch is terrifying.Chris: Yes. Geez, I'm sorry. So first, it's declarative. You declare your state. You store it somewhere. It's versioned and immutable, like I said. And then pulled automatically—don't focus so much on pull—but basically, software agents are applying the desired state from source. So, what does that mean? When it's—you know, the fourth principle is implemented, continuously reconciled. That means those software agents that are checking your desired state are actually putting it back into the desired state if it's out of whack, right? So—Corey: You're talking about agents running it persistently on instances, validating—Chris: Yes.Corey: —a checkpoint on a cron. How is this meaningfully different than a Puppet agent running in years past? Having spent I learned to speak publicly by being a traveling trainer for Puppet; same type of model, and in fact, when I was at Pinterest, we wound up having a fair bit—like, that was their entire model, where they would have—the Puppet's code would live in an S3 bucket that was then copied down, I believe, via Git, and then applied to the instance on a schedule. Like, that sounds like this was sort of a early days GitOps.Chris: Yeah, exactly. Right? Like so it's, I like to think of that as a component of GitOps, right? DevOps, when you talk about DevOps in general, there's a lot of stuff out there. There's a lot of things labeled DevOps that maybe are, or maybe aren't sticking to some of those DevOps core things that make you great.Like the stuff that Nicole Forsgren writes about in books, you know? Accelerate is on my desk for a reason because there's things that good, well-managed DevOps practices do. I see GitOps as an actual implementation of DevOps in an open-source manner because all the tooling for GitOps these days is open-source and it all started as open-source. Now, you can get, like, Flux or Argo—Argo, specifically—there's managed services out there for it, you can have Flux and not maintain it, through an add-on, on EKS for example, and it will reconcile that state for you automatically. And the other thing I like to say about GitOps, specifically, is that it moves at the speed of the Kubernetes Audit Log.If you've ever looked at a Kubernetes audit log, you know it's rather noisy with all these groups and versions and kinds getting thrown out there. So, GitOps will say, “Oh, there's an event for said thing that I'm supposed to be watching. Do I need to change anything? Yes or no? Yes? Okay, go.”And the change gets applied, or, “Hey, there's a new Git thing. Pull it in. A change has happened inGit I need to update it.” You can set it to reconcile on events on time. It's like a cron or it's like an event-driven architecture, but it's combined.Corey: How does it survive the stake through the heart of configuration management? Because before I was doing all this, I wasn't even a T-shaped engineer: you're broad across a bunch of things, but deep in one or two areas, and one of mine was configuration management. I wrote part of SaltStack, once upon a time—Chris: Oh.Corey: —due to a bunch of very strange coincidences all hitting it once, like, I taught people how to use Puppet. But containers ultimately arose and the idea of immutable infrastructure became a thing. And these days when we were doing full-on serverless, well, great, I just wind up deploying a new code bundle to the Lambdas function that I wind up caring about, and that is a immutable version replacement. There is no drift because there is no way to log in and change those things other than through a clear deployment of this as the new version that goes out there. Where does GitOps fit into that imagined pattern?Chris: So, configuration management becomes part of your approval process, right? So, you now are generating an audit log, essentially, of all changes to your system through the approval process that you set up as part of your, how you get things into source and then promote that out to production. That's kind of the beauty of it, right? Like, that's why we suggest using Git because it has functions, like, requests and issues and things like that you can say, “Hey, yes, I approve this,” or, “Hey, no, I don't approve that. We need changes.” So, that's kind of natively happening with Git and, you know, GitLab, GitHub, whatever implementation of Git. There's always, kind of—Corey: Uh, JIF-ub is, I believe, the pronunciation.Chris: JIF-ub? Oh.Corey: Yeah. That's what I'm—Chris: Today, I learned. Okay.Corey: Exactly. And that's one of the things that I do for my lasttweetinaws.com Twitter client that I build—because I needed it, and if other people want to use it, that's great—that is now deployed to 20 different AWS commercial regions, simultaneously. And that is done via—because it turns out that that's a very long to execute for loop if you start down that path—Chris: Well, yeah.Corey: I wound up building out a GitHub Actions matrix—sorry a JIF-ub—actions matrix job that winds up instantiating 20 parallel builds of the CDK deploy that goes out to each region as expected. And because that gets really expensive with native GitHub Actions runners for, like, 36 cents per deploy, and I don't know how to test my own code, so every time I have a typo, that's another quarter in the jar. Cool, but that was annoying for me so I built my own custom runner system that uses Lambda functions as runners running containers pulled from ECR that, oh, it just runs in parallel, less than three minutes. Every time I commit something between I press the push button and it is out and running in the wild across all regions. Which is awesome and also terrifying because, as previously mentioned, I don't know how to test my code.Chris: Yeah. So, you don't know what you're deploying to 20 regions sometime, right?Corey: But it also means I have a pristine, re-composable build environment because I can—Chris: Right.Corey: Just automatically have that go out and the fact that I am making a—either merging a pull request or doing a direct push because I consider main to be my feature branch as whenever something hits that, all the automation kicks off. That was something that I found to be transformative as far as a way of thinking about this because I was very tired of having to tweak my local laptop environment to, “Oh, you didn't assume the proper role and everything failed again and you broke it. Good job.” It wound up being something where I could start developing on more and more disparate platforms. And it finally is what got me away from my old development model of everything I build is on an EC2 instance, and that means that my editor of choice was Vim. I use the VS Code now for these things, and I'm pretty happy with it.Chris: Yeah. So, you know, I'm glad you brought up CDK. CDK gives you a lot of the capabilities to implement GitOps in a way that you could say, like, “Hey, use CDK to declare I need four Amazon EKS clusters with this size, shape, and configuration. Go.” Or even further, connect to these EKS clusters to RDS instances and load balancers and everything else.But you put that state into Git and then you have something that deploys that automatically upon changes. That is infrastructure as code. Now, when you say, “Okay, main is your feature branch,” you know, things happen on main, if this were running in Kubernetes across a fleet of clusters or the globe-wide in 20 regions, something like Flux or Argo would kick in and say, “There's been a change to source, main, and we need to roll this out.” And it'll start applying those changes. Now, what do you get with GitOps that you don't get with your configuration?I mean, can you rollback if you ever have, like, a bad commit that's just awful? I mean, that's really part of the process with GitOps is to make sure that you can, A, roll back to the previous good state, B, roll forward to a known good state, or C, promote that state up through various environments. And then having that all done declaratively, automatically, and immutably, and versioned with an audit log, that I think is the real power of GitOps in the sense that, like, oh, so-and-so approve this change to security policy XYZ on this date at this time. And that to an auditor, you just hand them a log file on, like, “Here's everything we've ever done to our system. Done.” Right?Like, you could get to that state, if you want to, which I think is kind of the idea of DevOps, which says, “Take all these disparate tools and processes and procedures and culture changes”—culture being the hardest part to adopt in DevOps; GitOps kind of forces a culture change where, like, you can't do a CAB with GitOps. Like, those two things don't fly. You don't have a configuration management database unless you absolutely—Corey: Oh, you CAB now but they're all the comments of the pull request.Chris: Right. Exactly. Like, don't push this change out until Thursday after this other thing has happened, kind of thing. Yeah, like, that all happens in GitHub. But it's very democratizing in the sense that people don't have to waste time in an hour-long meeting to get their five minutes in, right?Corey: DoorDash had a problem. As their cloud-native environment scaled and developers delivered new features, their monitoring system kept breaking down. In an organization where data is used to make better decisions about technology and about the business, losing observability means the entire company loses their competitive edge. With Chronosphere, DoorDash is no longer losing visibility into their applications suite. The key? Chronosphere is an open-source compatible, scalable, and reliable observability solution that gives the observability lead at DoorDash business, confidence, and peace of mind. Read the full success story at snark.cloud/chronosphere. That's snark.cloud slash C-H-R-O-N-O-S-P-H-E-R-E.Corey: So, would it be overwhelmingly cynical to suggest that GitOps is the means to implement what we've all been pretending to have implemented for the last decade when giving talks at conferences?Chris: Ehh, I wouldn't go that far. I would say that GitOps is an excellent way to implement the things you've been talking about at all these conferences for all these years. But keep in mind, the technology has changed a lot in the, what 11, 12 years of the existence of DevOps, now. I mean, we've gone from, let's try to manage whole servers immutably to, “Oh, now we just need to maintain an orchestration platform and run containers.” That whole compute interface, you go from SSH to a Docker file, that's a big leap, right?Like, you don't have bespoke sysadmins; you have, like, a platform team. You don't have DevOps engineers; they're part of that platform team, or DevOps teams, right? Like, which was kind of antithetical to the whole idea of DevOps to have a DevOps team. You know, everybody's kind of in the same boat now, where we see skill sets kind of changing. And GitOps and Kubernetes-land is, like, a platform team that manages the cluster, and its state, and health and, you know, production essentially.And then you have your developers deploying what they want to deploy in when whatever namespace they've been given access to and whatever rights they have. So, now you have the potential for one set of people—the platform team—to use one set of GitOps tooling, and your applications teams might not like that, and that's fine. They can have their own namespaces with their own tooling in it. Like, Argo, for example, is preferred by a lot of developers because it has a nice UI with green and red dots and they can show people and it looks nice, Flux, it's command line based. And there are some projects out there that kind of take the UI of Argo and try to run Flux underneath that, and those are cool kind of projects, I think, in my mind, but in general, right, I think GitOps gives you the choice that we missed somewhat in DevOps implementations of the past because it was, “Oh, we need to go get cloud.” “Well, you can only use this cloud.” “Oh, we need to go get this thing.” “Well, you can only use this thing in-house.”And you know, there's a lot of restrictions sometimes placed on what you can use in your environment. Well, if your environment is Kubernetes, how do you restrict what you can run, right? Like you can't have an easily configured say, no open-source policy if you're running Kubernetes. [laugh] so it becomes, you know—Corey: Well, that doesn't stop some companies from trying.Chris: Yeah, that's true. But the idea of, like, enabling your developers to deploy at will and then promote their changes as they see fit is really the dream of DevOps, right? Like, same with production and platform teams, right? I want to push my changes out to a larger system that is across the globe. How do I do that? How do I manage that? How do I make sure everything's consistent?GitOps gives you those ways, with Kubernetes native things like customizations, to make consistent environments that are robust and actually going to be reconciled automatically if someone breaks the glass and says, “Oh, I need to run this container immediately.” Well, that's going to create problems because it's deviated from state and it's just that one region, so we'll put it back into state.Corey: It'll be dueling banjos, at some point. You'll try and doing something manually, it gets reverted automatically. I love that pattern. You'll get bored before the computer does, always.Chris: Yeah. And GitOps is very new, right? When you think about the lifetime of GitOps, I think it was coined in, like, 2018. So, it's only four years old, right? When—Corey: I prefer it to ChatOps, at least, as far as—Chris: Well, I mean—Corey: —implementation and expression of the thing.Chris: —ChatOps was a way to do DevOps. I think GitOps—Corey: Well, ChatOps is also a way to wind up giving whoever gets access to your Slack workspace root in production.Chris: Mmm.Corey: But that's neither here nor there.Chris: Mm-hm.Corey: It's yeah, we all like to pretend that's not a giant security issue in our industry, but that's a topic for another time.Chris: Yeah. And that's why, like, GitOps also depends upon you having good security, you know, and good authorization and approval processes. It enforces that upon—Corey: Yeah, who doesn't have one of those?Chris: Yeah. If it's a sole operation kind of deal, like in your setup, your case, I think you kind of got it doing right, right? Like, as far as GitOps goes—Corey: Oh, to be clear, we are 11 people and we do have dueling pull requests and all the rest.Chris: Right, right, right.Corey: But most of the stuff I talk about publicly is not our production stuff, so it really is just me. Just as a point of clarity there. I've n—the 11 people here do not all—the rest of you don't just sit there and clap as I do all the work.Chris: Right.Corey: Most days.Chris: No, I'm sure they don't. I'm almost certain they don't clap… for you. I mean, they would—Corey: No. No, they try and talk me out of it in almost every case.Chris: Yeah, exactly. So, the setup that you, Corey Quinn, have implemented to deploy these 20 regions is kind of very GitOps-y, in the sense that when main changes, it gets updated. Where it's not GitOps-y is what if the endpoint changes? Does it get reconciled? That's the piece you're probably missing is that continuous reconciliation component, where it's constantly checking and saying, “This thing out there is deployed in the way I want it. You know, the way I declared it to be in my source of truth.”Corey: Yeah, when you start having other people getting involved, there can—yeah, that's where regressions enter. And it's like, “Well, I know where things are so why would I change the endpoint?” Yeah, it turns out, not everyone has the state of the entire application in their head. Ideally it should live in—Chris: Yeah. Right. And, you know—Corey: —you know, Git or S3.Chris: —when I—yeah, exactly. When I think about interactions of the past coming out as a new DevOps engineer to work with developers, it's always been, will developers have access to prod or they don't? And if you're in that environment with—you're trying to run a multi-billion dollar operation, and your devs have direct—or one Dev has direct access to prod because prod is in his brain, that's where it's like, well, now wait a minute. Prod doesn't have to be only in your brain. You can put that in the codebase and now we know what is in your brain, right?Like, you can almost do—if you document your code, well, you can have your full lifecycle right there in one place, including documentation, which I think is the best part, too. So, you know, it encourages approval processes and automation over this one person has an entire state of the system in their head; they have to go in and fix it. And what if they're not on call, or in Jamaica, or on a cruise ship somewhere kind of thing? Things get difficult. Like, for example, I just got back from vacation. We were so far off the grid, we had satellite internet. And let me tell you, it was hard to write an email newsletter where I usually open 50 to 100 tabs.Corey: There's a little bit of internet out Californ-ie way.Chris: [laugh].Corey: Yeah it's… it's always weird going from, like, especially after pandemic; I have gigabit symmetric here and going even to re:Invent where I'm trying to upload a bunch of video and whatnot.Chris: Yeah. Oh wow.Corey: And the conference WiFi was doing its thing, and well, Verizon 5G was there but spotty. And well, yeah. Usual stuff.Chris: Yeah. It's amazing to me how connectivity has become so ubiquitous.Corey: To the point where when it's not there anymore, it's what do I do with myself? Same story about people pushing back against remote development of, “Oh, I'm just going to do it all on my laptop because what happens if I'm on a plane?” It's, yeah, the year before the pandemic, I flew 140,000 miles domestically and I was almost never hamstrung by my ability to do work. And my only local computer is an iPad for those things. So, it turns out that is less of a real world concern for most folks.Chris: Yeah I actually ordered the components to upgrade an old Nook that I have here and turn it into my, like, this is my remote code server, that's going to be all attached to GitHub and everything else. That's where I want to be: have Tailscale and just VPN into this box.Corey: Tailscale is transformative.Chris: Yes. Tailscale will change your life. That's just my personal opinion.Corey: Yep.Chris: That's not an AWS opinion or anything. But yeah, when you start thinking about your network as it could be anywhere, that's where Tailscale, like, really shines. So—Corey: Tailscale makes the internet work like we all wanted to believe that it worked.Chris: Yeah. And Wireguard is an excellent open-source project. And Tailscale consumes that and puts an amazingly easy-to-use UI, and troubleshooting tools, and routing, and all kinds of forwarding capabilities, and makes it kind of easy, which is really, really, really kind of awesome. And Tailscale and Kubernetes—Corey: Yeah, ‘network' and ‘easy' don't belong in the same sentence, but in this case, they do.Chris: Yeah. And trust me, the Kubernetes story in Tailscale, there is a lot of there. I understand you might want to not open ports in your VPC, maybe, but if you use Tailscale, that node is just another thing on your network. You can connect to that and see what's going on. Your management cluster is just another thing on the network where you can watch the state.But it's all—you're connected to it continuously through Tailscale. Or, you know, it's a much lighter weight, kind of meshy VPN, I would say, if I had to sum it up in one sentence. That was not on our agenda to talk about at all. Anyways. [laugh]Corey: No, no. I love how many different topics we talk about on these things. We'll have to have you back soon to talk again. 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 and how you view these things, where can they find you?Chris: Go to ChrisShort.net. So, Chris Short—I'm six-four so remember, it's Short—dot net, and you will find all the places that I write, you can go to devopsish.com to subscribe to my newsletter, which goes out every week. This year. Next year, there'll be breaks. And then finally, if you want to follow me on Twitter, Chris Short: at @ChrisShort on Twitter. All one word so you see two s's. Like, it's okay, there's two s's there.Corey: Links to all of that will of course be in the show notes. It's easier for people to do the clicky-clicky thing as a general rule.Chris: Clicky things are easier than the wordy things, yes.Corey: Says the Kubernetes guy.Chris: Yeah. Says the Kubernetes guy. Yeah, you like that, huh? Like I said, Argo gives you a UI. [laugh].Corey: Thank you [laugh] so much for your time. I really do appreciate it.Chris: Thank you. This has been fun. If folks have questions, feel free to reach out. Like, I am not one of those people that hides behind a screen all day and doesn't respond. I will respond to you eventually.Corey: I'm right here, Chris. Come on, come on. You're calling me out in front of myself. My God.Chris: Egh. It might take a day or two, but I will respond. I promise.Corey: Thanks again for your time. This has been Chris Short, senior developer advocate at AWS. 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 and if it's YouTube, click the thumbs-up button. Whereas if you've hated this podcast, same thing, smash the buttons five-star review and leave an insulting comment that is written in syntactically correct YAML because it's just so easy to do.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.

Steph has a baby update and thoughts on movies, plus a question for Chris related to migrating Test Unit tests to RSpec. Chris watched a video from Google I/O where Chrome devs talked about a new feature called Page Transitions. He's also been working with a tool called Customer.io, an omnichannel communication whiz-bang adventure! Page transitions Overview (https://youtu.be/JCJUPJ_zDQ4) Using yield_self for composable ActiveRecord relations (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/using-yieldself-for-composable-activerecord-relations) A Case for Query Objects in Rails (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/a-case-for-query-objects-in-rails) Customer.io (https://customer.io/) Turning the database inside-out with Apache Samza | Confluent (https://www.confluent.io/blog/turning-the-database-inside-out-with-apache-samza/) Datomic (https://www.datomic.com/) About CRDTs • Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (https://crdt.tech/) Apache Kafka (https://kafka.apache.org/) Resilient Management | A book for new managers in tech (https://resilient-management.com/) Mixpanel: Product Analytics for Mobile, Web, & More (https://mixpanel.com/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: CHRIS: Golden roads are golden. Okay, everybody's got golden roads. You have golden roads, yes? That is what we're -- STEPH: Oh, I have golden roads, yes. [laughter] CHRIS: You might should inform that you've got golden roads, yeah. STEPH: Yeah, I don't know if I say might should as much but might could. I have been called out for that one a lot; I might could do that. CHRIS: [laughs] STEPH: That one just feels so natural to me than normal. Anytime someone calls it out, I'm like, yeah, what about it? [laughter] CHRIS: Do you want to fight? STEPH: Yeah, are we going to fight? CHRIS: I might could fight you. STEPH: I might could. I might should. [laughter] CHRIS: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Steph, what's new in your world? STEPH: Hey, Chris. I have a couple of fun updates. I have a baby Viccari update, so little baby weighs about two pounds now, two pounds. I'm 25 weeks along. So not that I actually know the exact weight, I'm using all those apps that estimate based on how far along you are, so around two pounds, which is novel. Oh, and then the other thing I'm excited to tell you about...I'm not sure how I should feel that I just got more excited about this other thing. I'm very excited about baby Viccari. But the other thing is there's a new Jurassic Park movie coming out, and I'm very excited. I think it's June 10th is when it comes out. And given how much we have sung that theme song to each other and make references to what a clever girl, I needed to share that with you. Maybe you already know, maybe you're already in the loop, but if you don't, it's coming. CHRIS: Yeah, the internet likes to yell things like that. Have you watched all of the most recent ones? There are like two, and I think this will be the third in the revisiting or whatever, the Jurassic World version or something like that. But have you watched the others? STEPH: I haven't seen all of them. So I've, of course, seen the first one. I saw the one that Chris Pratt was in, and now he's in the latest one. But I think I've missed...maybe there's like two in the middle there. I have not watched those. CHRIS: There are three in the original trilogy, and then there are three now in the new trilogy, which now it's ending, and they got everybody. STEPH: Oh, I'm behind. CHRIS: They got people from the first one, and they got the people from the second trilogy. They just got everybody, and that's exciting. You know, it's that thing where they tap into nostalgia, and they take advantage of us via it. But I'm fine. I'm here for it. STEPH: I'm here for it, especially for Jurassic Park. But then there's also a new Top Gun movie coming out, which, I'll be honest, I'm totally going to watch. But I really didn't remember the first one. I don't know that I've really ever watched the first Top Gun. So Tim, my partner, and I watched that recently, and it's such a bad movie. I'm going to say it; [laughs] it's a bad movie. CHRIS: I mean, I don't want to disagree, but the volleyball scene, come on, come on, the volleyball scene. [laughter] STEPH: I mean, I totally had a good time watching the movie. But the one part that I finally kept complaining about is because every time they showed the lead female character, I can't think of her character name or the actress's name, but they kept playing that song, Take My Breath Away. And I was like, can we just get past the song? [laughs] Because if you go back and watch that movie, I swear they play it like six different times. It was a lot. It was too much. So I moved it into bad movie category but bad movie totally worth watching, whatever category that is. CHRIS: Now I kind of want to revisit it. I feel like the drinking game writes itself. But at a minimum, anytime Take My Breath Away plays, yeah. Well, all right, good to know. [laughs] STEPH: Well, if you do that, let me know how many shots or beers you drink because I think it will be a fair amount. I think it will be more than five. CHRIS: Yeah, it involves a delicate calibration to get that right. I don't think it's the sort of thing you just freehand. It writes itself but also, you want someone who's tried it before you so that you're not like, oh no, it's every time they show a jet. That was too many. You can't drink that much while watching this movie. STEPH: Yeah, that would be death by Top Gun. CHRIS: But not the normal way, the different, indirect death by Top Gun. STEPH: I don't know what the normal way is. [laughs] CHRIS: Like getting shot down by a Top Gun pilot. [laughter] STEPH: Yeah, that makes sense. [laughs] CHRIS: You know, the dogfighting in the plane. STEPH: The actual, yeah, going to war away. Just sitting on your couch and you drink too much poison away, yeah, that one. All right, that got weird. Moving on, [laughs] there's a new Jurassic Park movie. We're going to land on that note. And in the more technical world, I've got a couple of things on my mind. One of them is I have a question for you. I'm very excited to run this by you because I could use a friend in helping me decide what to do. So I am still on that journey where I am migrating Test::Unit test over to RSpec. And as I'm going through, it's going pretty well, but it's a little complicated because some of the Test::Unit tests have different setup than, say, the RSpec do. They might run different scripts beforehand where they're loading data. That's perhaps a different topic, but that's happening. And so that has changed a few things. But then overall, I've just been really just porting everything over, like, hey, if it exists in the Test::Unit, let's just bring it to RSpec, and then I'm going to change these asserts to expects and really not make any changes from there. But as I'm doing that, I'm seeing areas that I want to improve and things that I want to clear up, even if it's just extracting a variable name. Or, as I'm moving some of these over in Test::Unit, it's not clear to me exactly what the test is about. Like, it looks more like a method name in the way that the test is being described, but the actual behavior isn't clear to me as if I were writing this in RSpec, I think it would have more of a clear description. Maybe that's not specific to the actual testing framework. That might just be how these tests are set up. But I'm at that point where I'm questioning should I keep going in terms of where I am just copying everything over from Test::Unit and then moving it over to RSpec? Because ultimately, that is the goal, to migrate over. Or should I also include some time to then go back and clean up and try to add some clarity, maybe extract some variable names, see if I can reduce some lets, maybe even reduce some of the test helpers that I'm bringing over? How much cleanup should be involved, zero, lots? I don't know. I don't know what that...[laughs] I'm sure there's a middle ground in there somewhere. But I'm having trouble discerning for myself what's the right amount because this feels like one of those areas where if I don't do any cleanup, I'm not coming back to it, like, that's just the truth. So it's either now, or I have no idea when and maybe never. CHRIS: I'll be honest, the first thing that came to mind in this most recent time that you mentioned this is, did we consider just deleting these tests entirely? Is that on...like, there are very few of them, right? Like, are they even providing enough value? So that was question one, which let me pause to see what your thoughts there were. [chuckles] STEPH: I don't know if we specifically talked about that on the mic, but yes, that has been considered. And the team that owns those tests has said, "No, please don't delete them. We do get value from them." So we can port them over to RSpec, but we don't have time to port them over to RSpec. So we just need to keep letting them go on. But yet, not porting them conflicts with my goal of then trying to speed up CI. And so it'd be nice to collapse these Test::Unit tests over to RSpec because then that would bring our CI build down by several meaningful minutes. And also, it would reduce some of the complexity in the CI setup. CHRIS: Gotcha. Okay, so now, having set that aside, I always ask the first question of like, can you just put Derek Prior's phone number on the webpage and call it an app? Is that the MVP of this app? No? Okay, all right, we have to build more. But yeah, I think to answer it and in a general way of trying to answer a broader set of questions here... I think this falls into a category of like if you find yourself having to move around some code, if that code is just comfortably running and the main thing you need to do is just to get it ported over to RSpec, I would probably do as little other work as possible. With the one consideration that if you find yourself needing to deeply load up the context of these tests like actually understand them in order to do the porting, then I would probably take advantage of that context because it's hard to get your head into a given piece of code, test or otherwise. And so if you're in there and you're like, well, now that I'm here, I can definitely see that we could rearrange some stuff and just definitively make it better, if you get to that place, I would consider it. But if this ends up being mostly a pretty rote transformation like you said, asserts become expects, and lets get switched around, you know, that sort of stuff, if it's a very mechanical process of getting done, I would probably say very minimal. But again, if there is that, like, you know what? I had to understand the test in order to port them anyway, so while I'm here, let me take advantage of that, that's probably the thing that I would consider. But if not that, then I would say even though it's messy and whatnot and your inclination would be to clean it, I would say leave it roughly as is. That's my guess or how I would approach it. STEPH: Yeah, I love that. I love how you pointed out, like, did you build up the context? Because you're right, in a lot of these test cases, I'm not, or I'm trying really hard to not build up context. I'm trying very hard to just move them over and, if I have to, mainly to find test descriptions. That's the main area I'm struggling to...how can I more explicitly state what this test does so the next person reading this will have more comprehension than I do? But otherwise, I'm trying hard to not have any real context around it. And that's such a good point because that's often...when someone else is in the middle of something, and they're deciding whether to include that cleanup or refactor or improvement, one of my suggestions is like, hey, we've got the context now. Let's go with it. But if you've built up very little context, then that's not a really good catalyst or reason to then dig in deeper and apply that cleanup. That's super helpful. Thank you. That will help reinforce what I'm going to do, which is exactly let's migrate RSpec and not worry about cleanup, which feels terrible; I'm just going to say that into the world. But it also feels like the right thing to do. CHRIS: Well, I'm happy to have helped. And I share the like, and it feels terrible. I want to do the right thing, but sometimes you got to pick a battle sort of thing. STEPH: Cool. Well, that's a huge help to me. What's going on in your world? CHRIS: What's going on in my world? I watched a great video the other day from the Google I/O. I think it's an event; I'm not actually sure, conference or something like that. But it was some Google Chrome developers talking about a new feature that's coming to the platform called Page Transitions. And I've kept an eye on this for a while, but it seems like it's more real. Like, I think they put out an RFC or an initial sort of set of ideas a while back. And the web community was like, "Oh, that's not going to work out so well." So they went back to the drawing board, revisited. I've actually implemented in Chrome Canary a version of the API. And then, in the video that I watched, which we'll include a show notes link to, they demoed the functionality of the Page Transitions API and showed what you can do. And it's super cool. It allows for the sort of animations that you see in a lot of native mobile apps where you're looking at a ListView, you click on one of the items, and it grows to fill the whole screen. And now you're on the detail screen for that item that you were looking at. But there was this very continuous animated transition that allows you to keep context in your head and all of those sorts of nice things. And this just really helps to bridge that gap between, like, the web often lags behind the native mobile platforms in terms of the experiences that we can build. So it was really interesting to see what they've been able to pull off. The demo is a pretty short video, but it shows a couple of different variations of what you can build with it. And I was like, yeah, these look like cool native app transitions, really nifty. One thing that's very interesting is the actual implementation of this. So it's like you have one version of the page, and then you transition to a new version of the page, and in doing so, you want to animate between them. And the way that they do it is they have the first version of the page. They take a screenshot of it like the browser engine takes a screenshot of it. And then they put that picture on top of the actual browser page. Then they do the same thing with the next version of the page that they're going to transition to. And then they crossfade, like, change the opacity and size and whatnot between the two different images, and then you're there. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm sorry, what now? You did which? I'm like, is this the genius solution that actually makes this work and is performant? And I wonder if there are trade-offs. Like, do you lose interactivity between those because you've got some images that are just on the screen? And what is that like? But as they were going through it, I was just like, wait, I'm sorry, you did what? This is either the best idea I've ever heard, or I'm not so sure about this. STEPH: That's fascinating. You had me with the first part in terms of they take a screenshot of the page that you're leaving. I'm like, yeah, that's a great idea. And then talking about taking a picture of the other page because then you have to load it but not show it to the user that it's loaded. And then take a picture of it, and then show them the picture of the loaded page. But then actually, like you said, then crossfade and then bring in the real functionality. I am...what am I? [laughter] CHRIS: What am I actually? STEPH: [laughs] What am I? I'm shocked. I'm surprised that that is so performant. Because yeah, I also wouldn't have thought of that, or I would have immediately have thought like, there's no way that's going to be performant enough. But that's fascinating. CHRIS: For me, performance seems more manageable, but it's the like, what are you trading off for that? Because that sounds like a hack. That sounds like the sort of thing I would recommend if we need to get an MVP out next week. And I'm like, what if we just tried this? Listen, it's got some trade-offs. So I'm really interested to see are those trade-offs present? Because it's the browser engine. It's, you know, the low-level platform that's actually managing this. And there are some nice hooks that allow you to control it. And at a CSS level, you can manage it and use keyframe animations to control the transition more directly. There's a JavaScript API to instrument the sequencing of things. And so it's giving you the right primitives and the right hooks. And the fact that the implementation happens to use pictures or screenshots, to use a slightly different word, it's like, okey dokey, that's what we're doing. Sounds fun. So I'm super interested because the functionality is deeply, deeply interesting to me. Svelte actually has a version of this, the crossfade utility, but you have to still really think about how do you sequence between the two pages and how do you do the connective tissue there? And then Svelte will manage it for you if you do all the right stuff. But the wiring up is somewhat complicated. So having this in the browser engine is really interesting to me. But yeah, pictures. STEPH: This is one of those ideas where I can't decide if this was someone who is very new to the team and new to the idea and was like, "Have we considered screenshots? Have we considered pictures?" Or if this is like the uber senior person on the team that was like, "Yeah, this will totally work with screenshots." I can't decide where in that range this idea falls, which I think makes me love it even more. Because it's very straightforward of like, hey, what if we just tried this? And it's working, so cool, cool, cool. CHRIS: There's a fantastic meme that's been making the rounds where it's a bell curve, and it's like, early in your career, middle of your career, late in your career. And so early in your career, you're like, everything in one file, all lines of code that's just where they go. And then in the middle of your career, you're like, no, no, no, we need different concerns, and files, and organizational structures. And then end of your career...and this was coming up in reference to the TypeScript team seems to have just thrown everything into one file. And it's the thing that they've migrated to over time. And so they have this many, many line file that is basically the TypeScript engine all in one file. And so it was a joke of like, they definitely know what they're doing with programming. They're not just starting last week sort of thing. And so it's this funny arc that certain things can go through. So I think that's an excellent summary there [laughs] of like, I think it was folks who have thought about this really hard. But I kind of hope it was someone who was just like, "I'm new here. But have we thought about pictures? What about pictures?" I also am a little worried that I just deeply misunderstood [laughs] the representation but glossed over it in the video, and I'm like, that sounds interesting. So hopefully, I'm not just wildly off base here. [laughs] But nonetheless, the functionality looks very interesting. STEPH: That would be a hilarious tweet. You know, I've been waiting for that moment where I've said something that I understood into the mic and someone on Twitter just being like, well, good try, but... [laughs] CHRIS: We had a couple of minutes where we tried to figure out what the opposite of ranting was, and we came up with pranting and made up a word instead of going with praising or raving. No, that's what it is, raving. [laughs] STEPH: No, raving. I will never forget now, raving. [laughs] CHRIS: So, I mean, we've done this before. STEPH: That's true. Although they were nice, I don't think they tweeted. I think they sent in an email. They were like, "Hey, friends." [laughter] CHRIS: Actually, we got a handful of emails on that. [laughter] STEPH: Did you know the English language? CHRIS: Thank you, kind Bikeshed audience, for not shaming us in public. I mean, feel free if you feel like it. [laughs] But one other thing that came up in this video, though, is the speaker was describing single-page apps are very common, and you want to have animated transitions and this and that. And I was like, single-page app, okay, fine. I don't like the terminology but whatever. I would like us to call it the client-side app or client-side routing or something else. But the fact that it's a single page is just a technical consideration that no user would call it that. Users are like; I go to the web app. I like that it has URLs. Those seem different to me. Anyway, this is my hill. I'm going to die on it. But then the speaker in the video, in contrast to single-page app referenced multi-page app, and I was like, oh, come on, come on. I get it. Like, yes, there are just balls of JavaScript that you can download on the internet and have a dynamic graphics editor. But I think almost all good things on the web should have URLs, and that's what I would call the multiple pages. But again, that's just me griping about some stuff. And to name it, I don't think I'm just griping for griping sake. Like, again, I like to think about things from the user perspective, and the URL being so important. And having worked with plenty of apps that are implemented in JavaScript and don't take the URL or the idea that we can have different routable resources seriously and everything is just one URL, that's a failure mode in my mind. We missed an opportunity here. So I think I'm saying a useful thing here and not just complaining on the internet. But with that, I will stop complaining on the internet and send it back over to you. What else is new in your world, Steph? STEPH: I do remember the first time that you griped about it, and you were griping about URLs. And there was a part of me that was like, what is he talking about? [laughter] And then over time, I was like, oh, I get it now as I started actually working more in that world. But it took me a little bit to really appreciate that gripe and where you're coming from. And I agree; I think you're coming from a reasonable place, not that I'm biased at all as your co-host, but you know. CHRIS: I really like the honest summary that you're giving of, like, honestly, the first time you said this, I let you go for a while, but I did not know what you were talking about. [laughs] And I was like, okay, good data point. I'm going to store that one away and think about it a bunch. But that's fine. I'm glad you're now hanging out with me still. [laughter] STEPH: Don't do that. Don't think about it a bunch. [laughs] Let's see, oh, something else that's going on in my world. I had a really fun pairing session with another thoughtboter where we were digging into query objects and essentially extracting some logic out of an ActiveRecord model and then giving that behavior its own space and elevated namespace in a query object. And one of the questions or one of the things that came up that we needed to incorporate was optional filters. So say if you are searching for a pizza place that's nearby and you provide a city, but you don't provide what's the optional zip code, then we want to make sure that we don't apply the zip code in the where clause because then you would return all the pizza places that have a nil zip code, and that's just not what you want. So we need to respect the fact that not all the filters need to be applied. And there are a couple of ways to go about it. And it was a fun journey to see the different ways that we could structure it. So one of the really good starting points is captured in a blog post by Derek Prior, which we'll include a link to in the show notes, and it's using yield_self for composable ActiveRecord relations. But essentially, it starts out with an example where it shows that you're assigning a value to then the result of an if statement. So it's like, hey, if the zip code is present, then let's filter by zip code; if not, then just give us back the original relation. And then you can just keep building on it from there. And then there's a really nice implementation that Derek built on that then uses yield_self to pass the relation through, which then provides a really nice readability for as you are then stepping through each filter and which one should and shouldn't be applied. And now there's another blog post, and this one's written by Thiago Silva, A Case for Query Objects in Rails. And this one highlighted an approach that I haven't used before. And I initially had some mixed feelings about it. But this approach uses the extending method, which is a method that's on ActiveRecord query methods. And it's used to extend the scope with additional methods. You can either do this by providing the name of a module or by providing a block. It's only going to apply to that instance or to that specific scope when you're using it. So it's not going to be like you're running an include or something like that where all instances are going to now have access to these methods. So by using that method, extending, then you can create a module that says, "Hey, I want to create this by zip code filter that will then check if we have a zip code, let's apply it, if not, return the relation. And it also creates a really pretty chaining experience of like, here's my original class name. Let's extend with these specific scopes, and then we can say by zip code, by pizza topping, whatever else it is that we're looking to filter by. And I was initially...I saw the extending, and it made me nervous because I was like, oh, what all does this apply to? And is it going to impact anything outside of this class? But the more I've looked at it, the more I really like it. So I think you've seen this blog post too. And I'm curious, what are your thoughts about this? CHRIS: I did see this blog post come through. I follow that thoughtbot blog real close because it turns out some of the best writing on the internet is on there. But I saw this...also, as an aside, I like that we've got two Derek Prior references in one episode. Let's see if we can go for three before the end. But one thing that did stand out to me in it is I have historically avoided scopes using scope like ActiveRecord macro thing. It's a class method, but like, it's magic. It does magic. And a while ago, class methods and scopes became roughly equivalent, not exactly equivalent, but close enough. And for me, I want to use methods because I know stuff about methods. I know about default arguments. And I know about all of these different subtleties because they're just methods at the end of the day, whereas scopes are special; they have certain behavior. And I've never really known of the behavior beyond the fact that they get implemented in a different way. And so I was never really sold on them. And they're different enough from methods, and I know methods well. So I'm like, let's use the normal stuff where we can. The one thing that's really interesting, though, is the returning nil that was mentioned in this blog post. If you return nil in a scope, it will handle that for you. Whereas all of my query objects have a like, well, if this thing applies, then scope dot or relation dot where blah, blah, blah, else return relation unchanged. And the fact that that natively exists within scope is interesting enough to make me reconsider my stance on scopes versus class methods. I think I'm still doing class method. But it is an interesting consideration that I was unaware of before. STEPH: Yeah, it's an interesting point. I hadn't really considered as much whether I'm defining a class-level method versus a scope in this particular case. And I also didn't realize that scopes handle that nil case for you. That was one of the other things that I learned by reading through this blog post. I was like, oh, that is a nicety. Like, that is something that I get for free. So I agree. I think this is one of those things that I like enough that I'd really like to try it out more and then see how it goes and start to incorporate it into my process. Because this feels like one of those common areas of where I get to it, and I'm like, how do I do this again? And yield_self was just complicated enough in terms of then using the fancy method method to then be able to call the method that I want that I was like, I don't remember how to do this. I had to look it up each time. But including this module with extending and then being able to use scopes that way feels like something that would be intuitive for me that then I could just pick up and run with each time. CHRIS: If it helps, you can use then instead of yield_self because we did upgrade our Ruby a while back to have that change. But I don't think that actually solves the thing that you're describing. I'd have liked the ampersand method and then simple method name magic incantation that is part of the thing that Derek wrote up. I do use it when I write query objects, but I have to think about it or look it up each time and be like, how do I do that? All right, that's how I do that. STEPH: Yeah, that's one of the things that I really appreciate is how often folks will go back and update blog posts, or they will add an addition to them to say, "Hey, there's something new that came out that then is still relevant to this topic." So then you can read through it and see the latest and the greatest. It's a really nice touch to a number of our blog posts. But yeah, that's what was on my mind regarding query objects. What else is going on in your world? CHRIS: I have this growing feeling that I don't quite know what to do with. I think I've talked about it across some of our conversations in the world of observability. But broadly, I'm starting to like...I feel like my brain has shifted, and I now see the world slightly differently, and I can't go back. But I also don't know how to stick the landing and complete this transition in my brain. So it's basically everything's an event stream; this feels true. That's life. The arrow of time goes in one direction as far as I understand it. And I'm now starting to see it manifest in the code that we're writing. Like, we have code to log things, and we have places where we want to log more intentionally. Then occasionally, we send stuff off to Sentry. And Sentry tells us when there are errors, that's great. But in a lot of places, we have both. Like, we will warn about something happening, and we'll send that to the logs because we want to have that in the logs, which is basically the whole history of what's happened. But we also have it in Sentry, but Sentry's version is just this expanded version that has a bunch more data about the user, and things, and the browser that they were in. But they're two variations on the same event. And then similarly, analytics is this, like, third leg of well, this thing happened, and we want to know about it in the context. And what's been really interesting is we're working with a tool called Customer.io, which is an omnichannel communication whiz-bang adventure. For us, it does email, SMS, and push notifications. And it's integrated into our segment pipeline, so events flow in, events and users essentially. So we have those two different primitives within it. And then within it, we can say like, when a user does X, then send them an email with this copy. As an aside, Customer.io is a fantastic platform. I'm super-duper impressed. We went through a search for a tool like it, and we ended up on a lot of sales demos with folks that were like, hey, so yeah, starting point is $25,000 per year. And, you know, we can talk about it, but it's only going to go up from there when we talk about it, just to be clear. And it's a year minimum contract, and you're going to love it. And we're like, you do have impressive platforms, but okay, that's a bunch. And then, we found Customer.io, and it's month-by-month pricing. And it had a surprisingly complete feature set. So overall, I've been super impressed with Customer.io and everything that they've afforded. But now that I'm seeing it, I kind of want to move everything into that world where like, Customer.io allows non-engineer team members to interact with that event stream and then make things happen. And that's what we're doing all the time. But I'm at that point where I think I see the thing that I want, but I have no idea how to get there. And it might not even be tractable either. There's the wonderful Turning the Database Inside Out talk, which describes how everything is an event stream. And what if we actually were to structure things that way and do materialized views on top of it? And the actual UI that you're looking at is a materialized view on top of the database, which is a materialized view on top of that event stream. So I'm mostly in this, like, I want to figure this out. I want to start to unify all this stuff. And analytics pipes to one tool that gets a version of this event stream, and our logs are just another, and our error system is another variation on it. But they're all sort of sampling from that one event stream. But I have no idea how to do that. And then when you have a database, then you're like, well, that's also just a static representation of a point in time, which is the opposite of an event stream. So what do you do there? So there are folks out there that are doing good thinking on this. So I'm going to keep my ear to the ground and try and see what's everybody thinking on this front? But I can't shake the feeling that there's something here that I'm missing that I want to stitch together. STEPH: I'm intrigued on how to take this further because everything you're saying resonates in terms of having these event streams that you're working with. But yet, I can't mentally replace that with the existing model that I have in my mind of where there are still certain ideas of records or things that exist in the world. And I want to encapsulate the data and store that in the database. And maybe I look it up based on when it happens; maybe I don't. Maybe I'm looking it up by something completely different. So yeah, I'm also intrigued by your thoughts, but I'm also not sure where to take it. Who are some of the folks that are doing some of the thinking in this area that you're interested in, or where might you look next? CHRIS: There's the Kafka world of we have an event log, and then we're processing on top of that, and we're building stream processing engines as the core. They seem to be closest to the Turning the Database Inside Out talk that I was thinking or that I mentioned earlier. There's also the idea of CRDTs, which are Conflict-free Replicated Data Types, which are really interesting. I see them used particularly in real-time application. So it's this other tool, but they are basically event logs. And then you can communicate them well and have two different people working on something collaboratively. And these event logs then have a natural way to come together and produce a common version of the document on either end. That's at least my loose understanding of it, but it seems like a variation on this theme. So I've been looking at that a little bit. But again, I can't see how to map that to like, but I know how to make a Rails app with a Postgres database. And I think I'm reasonably capable at it, or at least I've been able to produce things that are useful to humans using it. And so it feels like there is this pretty large gap. Because what makes sense in my head is if you follow this all the way, it fundamentally re-architects everything. And so that's A, scary, and B; I have no idea how to get there, but I am intrigued. Like, I feel like there's something there. There's also Datomic is the other thing that comes to mind, which is a database engine in the Clojure world that stores the versions of things over time; that idea of the user is active. It's like, well, yeah, but when were they not? That's an event. That transition is an event that Postgres does not maintain at this point. And so, all I know is that the user is active. Maybe I store a timestamp because I'm thinking proactively about this. But Datomic is like no, no, fundamentally, as a primitive in this database; that's how we organize and think about stuff. And I know I've talked about Datomic on here before. So I've circled around these ideas before. And I'm pretty sure I'm just going to spend a couple of minutes circling and then stop because I have no idea how to connect the dots. [laughs] But I want to figure this out. STEPH: I have not worked with Kafka. But one of the main benefits I understand with Kafka is that by storing everything as a stream, you're never going to lose like a message. So if you are sending a message to another system and then that message gets lost in transit, you don't actually know if it got acknowledged or what happened with it, and replaying is really hard. Where do you pick up again? While using something like Kafka, you know exactly what you sent last, and then you're not going to have that uncertainty as to what messages went through and which ones didn't. And then the ability to replay is so important. I'm curious, as you continue to explore this, do you have a particular pain point in mind that you'd like to see improve? Or is it more just like, this seems like a really cool, novel idea; how can I incorporate more of this into my world? CHRIS: I think it's the latter. But I think the thing that I keep feeling is we keep going back and re-instrumenting versions of this. We're adding more logging or more analytics events over the wire or other things. But then, as I send these analytics events over the wire, we have Mixpanel downstream as an analytics visualization and workflow tool or Customer.io. At this point, those applications, I think, have a richer understanding of our users than our core Rails app. And something about that feels wrong to me. We're also streaming everything that goes through segment to S3 because I had a realization of this a while back. I'm like, that event stream is very interesting. I don't want to lose it. I'm going to put it somewhere that I get to keep it. So even if we move off of either Mixpanel or Customer.io or any of those other platforms, we still have our data. That's our data, and we're going to hold on to it. But interestingly, Customer.io, when it sends a message, will push an event back into segments. So it's like doubly connected to segment, which is managing this sort of event bus of data. And so Mixpanel then gets an even richer set there, and the Rails app is like, I'm cool. I'm still hanging out, and I'm doing stuff; it's fine. But the fact that the Rails app is fundamentally less aware of the things that have happened is really interesting to me. And I am not running into issues with it, but I do feel odd about it. STEPH: That touched on a theme that is interesting to me, the idea that I hadn't really considered it in those terms. But yeah, our application provides the tool in which people can interact with. But then we outsource the behavior analysis of our users and understanding what that flow is and what they're going through. I hadn't really thought about those concrete terms and where someone else owns the behavior of our users, but yet we own all the interaction points. And then we really need both to then make decisions about features and things that we're building next. But that also feels like building a whole new product, that behavior analysis portion of it, so it's interesting. My consulting brain is going wild at the moment between like, yeah, it would be great to own that. But that the other time if there's this other service that has already built that product and they're doing it super well, then let's keep letting them manage that portion of our business until we really need to bring it in-house. Because then we need to incorporate it more into our application itself so then we can surface things to the user. That's the part where then I get really interested, or that's the pain point that I could see is if we wanted more of that behavior analysis, that then we want to surface that in the app, then always having to go to a third-party would start to feel tedious or could feel more brittle. CHRIS: Yeah, I'm definitely 100% on not rebuilding Mixpanel in our app and being okay with the fact that we're sending that. Again, the thing that I did to make myself feel better about this is stream the data to S3 so that I have a version of it. And if we want to rebuild the data warehouse down the road to build some sort of machine learning data pipeline thing, we've got some raw data to work with. But I'm noticing lots of places where we're transforming a side effect, a behavior that we have in the system to dispatching an event. And so right now, we have a bunch of stuff that we pipe over to Slack to inform our admin team, hey, this thing happened. You should probably intervene. But I'm looking at that, and we're doing it directly because we can control the message in Slack a little bit better. But I had this thought in the back of my mind; it's like, could we just send that as an event, and then some downstream tool can configure messages and alerts into Slack? Because then the admin team could actually instrument this themselves. And they could be like; we are no longer interested in this event. Users seem fine on that front. But we do care about this new event. And all we need to do as the engineering team is properly instrument all of that event stream tapping. Every event just needs to get piped over. And then lots of powerful tools downstream from that that can allow different consumers of that data to do things, and broadly, that dispatch events, consume them on the other side, do fun stuff. That's the story. That's the dream. But I don't know; I can't connect all the dots. It's probably going to take me a couple of weeks to connect all these dots, or maybe years, or maybe my entire career, something like that. But, I don't know, I'm going to keep trying. STEPH: This feels like a fun startup narrative, though, where you start by building the thing that people can interact with. As more people start to interact with it, how do we start giving more of our team the ability to then manage the product that then all of these users are interacting with? And then that's the part that you start optimizing for. So there are always different interesting bits when you talk about the different stages of Sagewell, and like, what's the thing you're optimizing for? And I'm sure it's still heavily users. But now there's also this addition of we are also optimizing for our team to now manage the product. CHRIS: Yes, you're 100%. You're spot on there. We have definitely joked internally about spinning out a small company to build this analytics alerting tool [laughs] but obviously not going to do that because that's a distraction. And it is interesting, like, we want to build for the users the best thing that we can and where the admin team fits within that. To me, they're very much customers of engineering. Our job is to build the thing for the users but also, to be honest, we have to build a thing for the admins to support the users and exactly where that falls. Like, you and I have talked a handful of times about maybe the admin isn't as polished in design as other things. But it's definitely tested because that's a critical part of how this application works. Maybe not directly for a user but one step removed for a user, so it matters. Absolutely we're writing tests to cover that behavior. And so yeah, those trade-offs are always interesting to me and exploring that space. But 100%: our admin team are core customers of the work that we're doing in engineering. And we try and stay very close and very friendly with them. STEPH: Yeah, I really appreciate how you're framing that. And I very much agree and believe with you that our admin users are incredibly important. CHRIS: Well, thank you. Yeah, we're trying over here. But yeah, I think I can wrap up that segment of me rambling about ideas that are half-formed in my mind but hopefully are directionally important. Anyway, what else is up with you? STEPH: So, not that long ago, I asked you a question around how the heck to manage themes that I have going on. So we've talked about lots of fun productivity things around managing to-dos, and emails, and all that stuff. And my latest one is thinking about, like, I have a theme that I want to focus on, maybe it's this week, maybe it's for a couple of months. And how do I capture that and surface it to myself and see that I'm making progress on that? And I don't have an answer to that. But I do have a theme that I wanted to share. And the one that I'm currently focused on is building up management skills and team lead skills. That is something that I'm focused on at the moment and partially because I was inspired to read the book Resilient Management written by Lara Hogan. And so I think that is what has really set the idea. But as I picked up the book, I was like, this is a really great book, and I'd really like to share some of this. And then so that grew into like, well, let's just go ahead and make this a theme where I'm learning this, and I'm sharing this with everyone else. So along that note, I figured I would share that here. So we use Basecamp at thoughtbot. And so, I've been sharing some Basecamp posts around what I'm learning in each chapter. But to bring some of that knowledge here as well, some of the cool stuff that I have learned so far...and this is just still very early on in the book. There are a couple of different topics that Laura covers in the first chapter, and one of them is humans' core needs at work. And then there's also the concept of meeting your team, some really good questions that you can ask during your first one-on-one to get to know the person that then you're going to be managing. The part that really resonated with me and something that I would like to then coach myself to try is helping the team get to know you. So as a manager, not only are you going out of your way to really get to know that person, but how are you then helping them get to know you as well? Because then that's really going to help set that relationship in regards of they know what kind of things that you're optimizing for. Maybe you're optimizing for a deadline, or for business goals, or maybe it's for transparency, or maybe it would be helpful to communicate to someone that you're managing to say, "Hey, I'm trying some new management techniques. Let me know how this goes." [chuckles] So there's a healthier relationship of not only are you learning them, but they're also learning you. So some of the questions that Laura includes as examples as something that you can share with your team is what do you optimize for in your role? So is it that you're optimizing for specific financial goals or building up teammates? Or maybe it's collaboration, so you're really looking for opportunities for people to pair together. What do you want your teammates to lean on you for? I really liked that question. Like, what are some of the areas that bring you joy or something that you feel really skilled in that then you want people to come to you for? Because that's something that before I was a manager...but it's just as you are growing as a developer, that's such a great question of like, what do you want to be known for? What do you want to be that thing that when people think of, they're like, oh, you should go see Chris about this, or you should go see Steph about this? And two other good questions include what are your work styles and preferences? And what management skills are you currently working on learning or improving? So I really like this concept of how can I share more of myself? And the great thing about this book that I'm learning too is while it is geared towards people that are managers, I think it's so wonderful for people who are non-managers or aspiring managers to read this as well because then it can help you manage whoever's managing you. So then that way, you can have some upward management. So we had recent conversations around when you are new to a team and getting used to a manager, or maybe if you're a junior, you have to take a lot of self-advocacy into your role to make sure things are going well. And I think this book does a really good job for people that are looking to not only manage others but also manage themselves and manage upward. So that's some of the journeys from the first chapter. I'll keep you posted on the other chapters as I'm learning more. And yeah, if anybody hasn't read this book or if you're interested, I highly recommend it. I'll make sure to include a link in the show notes. CHRIS: That was just the first chapter? STEPH: Yeah, that was just the first chapter. CHRIS: My goodness. STEPH: And I shortened it drastically. [laughs] CHRIS: Okay. All right, off to the races. But I think the summary that you gave there, particularly these are true when you're managing folks but also to manage yourself and to manage up, like, this is relevant to everyone in some capacity in some shape or form. And so that feels very true. STEPH: I will include one more fun aspect from the book, and that's circling back to the humans' core needs at work. And she references Paloma Medina, a coach, and trainer who came up with this acronym. The acronym is BICEPS, and it stands for belonging, improvement, choice, equality, predictability, and significance. And then details how each of those are important to us in our work and how when one of those feels threatened, then that can lead to some problems at work or just even in our personal life. But the fun example that she gave was not when there's a huge restructuring of the organization and things like that are going on as being the most concerning in terms of how many of these needs are going to be threatened or become vulnerable. But changing where someone sits at work can actually hit all of these, and it can threaten each of these needs. And it made me think, oh, cool, plus-one for being remote because we can sit wherever we want. [laughs] But that was a really fun example of how someone's needs at work, I mean, just moving their desk, which resonates, too, because I've heard that from other people. Some of the friends that I have that work in more of a People Ops role talk about when they had to shift people around how that caused so much grief. And they were just shocked that it caused so much grief. And this explains why that can be such a big deal. So that was a fun example to read through. CHRIS: I'm now having flashbacks to times where I was like, oh, I love my spot in the office. I love the people I'm sitting with. And then there was that day, and I had to move. Yeah, no, those were days. This is true. STEPH: It triggered all the core BICEPS, all the things that you need to work. It threatened all of them. Or it could have improved them; who knows? CHRIS: There were definitely those as well, yeah. Although I think it's harder to know that it's going to be great on the way in, so it's mostly negative. I think it has that weird bias because you're like, this was a thing, I knew it. I at least understood it. And then you're in a new space, and you're like, I don't know, is this going to be terrible or great? I mean, hopefully, it's only great because you work with great people, and it's a great office. [laughs] But, like, the unknown, you're moving into the unknown, and so I think it has an inherent at least questioning bias to it. STEPH: Agreed. On that note, shall we wrap up? CHRIS: Let's wrap up. The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes, as it really helps other folks find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me on Twitter @SViccari. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or you can reach us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. ALL: Byeeeeeee!!!!!!! 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.

Will Smith & Chris Rock Entangled again, Crazy Sunday Stories, Battle Rap, Best To Worst Actors, And More. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/conscience-crazy/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/conscience-crazy/support

01. Yves V & HUGEL - Finally (Extended Mix) 02. D.O.D - Every Step (Extended Mix) 03. Michael Calfan & HARBER - Feelings After Dark (feat. NISHA) (Kiko Franco Extended Remix) 04. Quintino - F Soft Shit (Extended Mix) 05. 4Rule - Be The One (Extended Mix) 06. Yves V & Ilkay Sencan - Not So Bad (Zonderling Remix) 07. Dennis Cartier & BLANDO - Final Night (Extended Mix) 08. Lucas & Steve - Get Together (Extended Mix) 09. Ryos feat. Maggie Szabo - Midsummer Nights (Festival Mix) (Extended Mix) 10. Choujaa - I Try (Extended Mix) 11. Maurice Lessing - Save Us (Extended Version) 12. Zuffo & ZOOTAH - Don't Wake Me Up (Extended Mix) 13. Don Diablo & Ty Dolla $ign - Too Much To Ask (Don Diablo Extended VIP Mix) 14. L3N - Get There (Exteded Mix) 15. Chris Like & J-LIGHT - Without You (Extended Mix) 16. Yves V & Bjorn Verbex - Reflect (Extended Mix) CLASSIC OF THE WEEK 17. Swedish House Maffia - One (Your Name) (Extended Vocal Mix)

Maybe some of these guys workout, maybe none of them do! Pete and Chris walk you through 12 names they like after ADP 300.

How does a solopreneur take on the highly competitive insurance industry and win marketing mindshare? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Chris Greene of the Flood Insurance Guru shares his journey with content creation and why he's committed to creating 365 flood education videos, 150 flood blogs, and 100 flood podcasts this year. Chris proves that there is no excuse to NOT invest in content creation. As a business owner, he runs his company, invests in continuous learning, and still manages to create an insane amount of content every week. The results are pretty incredible. He's closing deals from his YouTube channel and other content on a regular basis, and says that today, 100% of his business comes from his digital marketing and content creation efforts. In this episode, he breaks down exactly how he does it - and how you can too. Highlights from my conversation with Chris include: Chris took a video course and realized there was no educational video on flood insurance. He saw that opportunity and began to create videos for his business. He then realized that his videos would have a greater chance of getting found if he also created written content, so he started blogging. Because he travels so much, he realized that podcasts would also be easy to create and would work well for his audience. Chris creates a new video every single day. He films them himself and keeps them to two minutes or less. Chris took a class called Made You Look Video that got him comfortable on camera and taught him video marketing essentials. Now he has a YouTube channel with separate playlists for each type of person in his audience (ex. realtors, lenders, property owners, business owners, etc.).  To free up more of his time for content creation, Chris hired a virtual assistant to help him run his insurance business and take care of the administrative work. He believes strongly that he needs to be the one creating content because he knows the subject matter best. To save time, Chris will often shoot a whole week's worth of content in one day. He uses Vidyard to create one to one vidoes and to host his marketing videos so that when he sends a video to someone, he can see if they've opened it. He keeps the entire production and editing process simple so that it takes him five minutes or less to edit a video. Chris generates a lot of inbound business from his Facebook presence, and uses his YouTube channel for sales enablement. One interesting benefit that Chris has seen from his content creation is new partnerships with other insurance agencies that don't want to sell flood insurance. They work with him because they see him as the expert on the topic, and that brings him a considerable amount of business. Chris spends about two hours every day creating written content and says that blogs don't necessarily need to be long to be effective - they just need to be as long as they should be to get the point across. In addition to his videos and written content, Chris is creating podcasts that are generally about 10 minutes long. He estimates that, in total, he spends thirty to forty percent of his day creating content. Chris says that 100% of his business comes from his digital marketing and content creation efforts. Resources from this episode: Visit the Flood Insurance Guru website Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Follow Chris on Twitter Connect with Chris on Facebook Email Chris at flood@communityfirstagency.com  Listen to the podcast to learn how committing to creating content can change your business - and your life. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Chris Greene, who is the president of the Flood Insurance Guru. I got a guru today. Welcome, Chris. Chris Greene (Guest): Thank you. Chris and Kathleen hamming it up while recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah, thanks for being here. I was really excited to talk to you, because I think your story is exactly the example of what I love to highlight, which is just consistency, and putting in the work really pays off, because I had heard that you had decided to do a year of flood education videos and 150 flood blogs in 150 days. You're doing videos, you're doing blogs, now you're doing podcasts. It's like, man, you're rolling up your sleeves and getting it done. I can't wait to dig into it. Before we do, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you came to be doing what you're doing today? Meet Chris Greene Chris: Yeah. My name's Chris Greene, I'm president, owner of the Flood Insurance Guru. I've been in the insurance field for about 10 years. Actually hold a master's degree in emergency management with a focus in hazard and flood mitigation. I had a really bad experience buying a house about 10 years ago. I got about two weeks from buying it, found out I was in a really high risk flood zone. It was going to change my house payment by almost $3,000 a year, and the realtor said "Yeah, that happened on the foreclosure." For four years I just didn't bring it up, because I didn't want it to be an issue. And so what happened is, I discovered this really bad process and lack of education. So, over the next eight to 10 years I was working for Captive Insurance Agencies at the time. I kept getting my feet a little bit deeper and deeper. And when I started my own company about five years ago, I wanted a catchy website, so I came up with the Flood Insurance Guru, as a joke, but when people started learning what our educational background was then, they started saying, "Oh, you really have experience, you guys actually have an educational background on this," and it just kind of took off. And then that brought us to this year. Once you get outside the coast, there is no education on flood. We want to spend one full year where all we do is we provide education. It's not about selling, it's about what's currently going on. If we could just provide that, then I think we can compete with these bigger companies, and I think we can beat them because of the value that we provide. And it's just kind of taken off. I didn't know it would be the worst year in US history for flooding when we did it, but now not only do we do the education videos on flood insurance, we do them on disaster assistance, SBA loans, whatever, every single flood map across the country we do an update on. This morning, I just started a podcast for Houston, Texas on the recent disaster assistance that was approved by the president. What does it mean for the people there, who is it impacting and their resources. A year of flood education videos Kathleen: That is awesome. So, let's roll back a little bit. You decided this year to do a year of flood education videos. You started with videos? Is that correct? Chris: It is. I did. I'm in a video course that's been really good for me, and what we discovered as a community, there's no video, there's no resources on this. So it's like, we're just going to commit to video. And once you start committing to video, you realize, you know, Google is not seeing these videos unless it's YouTube. We need to get some text out there. Then I started blogging with it, but then everyone's like, "I'm always on the road. I wish you had a podcast," and we talked about it for a while and then we finally started one about six months ago. Kathleen: That's awesome. So, let's talk about the videos. You're not a huge company. So, the idea of making a video a day is very ambitious. How did you approach that? Do you have a videographer? Is this something you do yourself? Chris: I do it myself every single day. It's just me and I have a virtual assistant who helps us on the back end. Usually all of my videos are two minutes or less. I want it to be quick, I want it to be educational, and I want somebody to be able to take at least one thing away from our video every day. Kathleen: And how are you filming them? Chris: I was using my iPhone for a while, and actually bought a Canon DSLR, I set it up on location. I shoot all my videos on site. So I travel the entire country. If there's a flood issue going on a thousand miles away, I travel there, I talk to the people in that area and actually shoot my videos there. Kathleen: Okay. And did you have any special training for that? I mean, how did you- Chris: Well, I'm in a video course that has kind of taught me the psychological part of your buyer's, persona, you've got the education part, what people want, really learning to be on camera and things like that. And that's what's really helped me a lot. It was a course called Made You Look Video. What was funny was that the first 10 videos we had to do were, not really inappropriate videos, but they were just like, make you really uncomfortable. Like, "Hey, what's your favorite vacation?" Or, "What's the most embarrassing situation you've been in?" And the whole point was, "Hey, we're doing this because we want you to feel comfortable on video." Kathleen: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because I think for people who haven't done a lot of video, I actually think that's harder than the whole technical, how to film and how to produce. Everybody I talk to tends to say, "I'm just not comfortable being on video." I'll be honest, I feel the same way. I feel very self conscious. So, was it doing those really kind of honest and as you said, almost embarrassing videos that broke the ice for you? Chris: That did break the ice. But then if you go back and look at some of our videos now they're like... That course has taught me to, "Hey you have to do something to separate yourself." So I've got one video where I'm actually spitting out spoiled milk. I've got another video where I'm dressed up as a grandfather, another video where I'm laying on a mattress. Stuff that catches people's attention and everyone's like, "Oh, I can't watch your videos because you look like an idiot." Everybody else seems to like them. And I said, "If you think I look like an idiot, means you're watching it, means I'm doing my job." Kathleen: Now, you're doing these as part of the flood education series? Chris: Yep. Kathleen: Oh that's so funny. Chris: I have them all broken down on my YouTube. I've built different lists for realtors, lenders, property owners, business owners where they can go exactly to that list and only watch the videos that pertain to them if they want. How Chris makes the time to create video content Kathleen: So you're uploading each of the two minute videos to YouTube. You said you're using a virtual assistant and what does that person do? Chris: Actually, the virtual assistant doesn't really help me at all in the video. They just help me on the insurance, out of the backend. Like they're helping me with the quoting, the paperwork and all that so that I can spend my time on the content because that's what separating us. I've tried to use other people for content, but it's very difficult in niche markets because they don't have your educational background. And you can tell sometimes when you read a blog that they may not know what they're talking about. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. Now, are you- Chris: Here right now, how to do content creation for us and that's the big struggle. I'm actually having to teach him some stuff on the flood side first so that when he writes it, it makes sense. Kathleen: Are you doing all the editing and production of the videos too? Chris: Takes me less than five minutes to edit because I said they're all short. They're simple. They're easy. Kathleen: Yeah. I was going to say, what's involved in that or what kind of programs, platforms are you using? How complicated is it? Chris: It's fairly easy for me because I just use iMovie and everyone said, "Oh, you screwed up on this word." I said, "That's great, that means people know that I'm human." I will never shoot a video more than twice. Now there's certain situations I'll shoot it more than once, but I will never shoot it more twice because I want people to know that it's real. I want people know it's not a script and yeah I did screw up but that's what you want to see. Just like I use Vidyard for all of our one-on-one videos when I'm doing flood quotes, I send all of our customer's quotes through Vidyard because I want them... They might be 2000 miles away from me, but they feel like I'm next door because of video. Kathleen: I couldn't agree more and we've just had this conversation before I hit record for this podcast where I said, unless all hell breaks loose, we're going to keep going. And people ask me that all the time. Like, how much do you edit the podcast? And I really don't, unless there's some big terrible thing that happens in the middle of it. I believe that people prefer things that are less scripted. And so I leave in a lot, like if the dog barks or I've had podcasts where my 12 year old son walks in, in the middle of it and asked me for a snack, and I think you could see that as unprofessional or you could just see it as lending flavor and context to the life that's happening behind the content as it's getting made. So, I love that approach. All right, so you're spending, let's say, it sounds like less than half an hour a day on the videos. Chris: Like today, I'll actually shoot... This week is the first week I've actually been on a schedule all week. So, this afternoon we'll spend about two hours and I'll shoot the whole week. Kathleen: Oh, smart. So you're bundling it together. Chris: I do that in case somebody comes to me and says, "Hey, we're having a real issue with this." Then I will bump it up in the week. But the reason I do that, I always have a week there. If something comes up, if there's a lot of disastrous stuff going on it may take my time away from video and I like to have a few in my back pocket just in case. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same way about podcasting. I need to have several in the can because you just never know what life is going to throw at you. So, you're putting these on YouTube. When you first started this year of flood education videos, did you already have a YouTube channel? Chris: I really had... Not for the Flood Insurance Guru, for our old company I did. I just set this up this year and everything in the course I went through, really taught me how to set it up. I use a tool called KeywordTool.io, that has really helped me with tags and seeing what people are searching for. And so we really haven't put any money to the YouTube channel yet because we've done so well with it organically. Chris's results Kathleen: So talk me through what "done so well" means, like what kind of results have you seen in this time that you've been posting? Chris: Honestly, most of our inbound market really has come from Facebook, not so much YouTube. YouTube, what we've done is we've built a knowledge base article for it now, that's using snippets with HubSpot. So our customer has a question, we'll send them the snippet and then they can click on it, takes them over to our YouTube channel. And so we've kind of done that. Kathleen: Oh interesting. Now are you also getting organic reach through YouTube? Chris: I am because we've actually sold a few policies last month actually off YouTube where people have searched our videos. Kathleen: Wow. And how much do your videos get viewed? Chris: Honestly, I don't have that many views. I have one video that has like 108 views on there and I have very low other views on it because I haven't really paid money on it because I'm really just using the YouTube part as a resource library. It's the Facebook organically. What we figured out, is how to use Facebook as a search engine optimization tool instead of like an ad. So everyone else is throwing this money at it. We're sharing it on our personal page, but what I've done with my personal page is I've been very strategic with who my friends, who's sharing and all that. A lot of people, what they do is they go search flood insurance on Facebook in Rhode Island and we come up in Georgia. The tags that we're consistently using is pulling our information up for them. Kathleen: I love what you're saying because I've had this conversation quite a bit with some of the folks that I've worked with over the years about how long should you expect it to take inbound marketing to work and to produce results for your business. And there's kind of two schools around that. One school says, "Oh, don't expect anything for six to 12 months. It's an investment in the long term." And I think that can be true if you're putting all of your eggs in the basket of getting found organically because it does take a little time. But there's this other school that says that inbound marketing should work right away if you're creating content that can be used for sales enablement. And if your sales team, which in this case is you, is actively sharing that content with the prospects they're talking to in the sales process because it can speed up the sales process, it can increase your close rate, et cetera. It sounds like that's what you've been doing. Is that correct? Chris: That's correct. And we knew it was going to be a longterm game, but honestly, I said 12, 18 months. I didn't think that we would build a national brand in six to nine months and not really put any money behind it. Because some of the unique information we were providing people just sharing it like crazy and we created a really cool partnership with some other insurance agencies who don't really know flood, don't want to know it. And that's all we do. And that part has just taken off for us because they keep seeing our content. 150 blogs in 150 days Kathleen: Now blogging. You committed to doing 150 blogs in 150 days. We got to talk about this, Chris, because I have been in this game a long time and I cannot begin to tell you how often I hear people complain about the amount of time it takes to blog. And these are marketers who do marketing for a living, complaining about having to blog. Very often they're complaining about having to do it once a month. That doesn't even get to the CEOs I talked to who think they just don't have the time for it. So we need to unpack this a little bit because I have a feeling you're going to just dispel all of this. Chris: Well someone once taught me, and actually it came from I think originally from Marcus Sheridan. From a company called Agency Nation. His name is Joe Giangola. And he said, "Look, it doesn't matter if you write a 3000 word article, or if you write a 500 word article, write as many words as it takes to get your point across." Kathleen: Oh, so true. So true. Chris: So, it's not, "Hey, I need 3000 words and put a bunch of crap in the article that's not value." I'd rather have a 300 word article to get straight to the point and give people what they need. Kathleen: Well and the truth is most people don't have the time to read long things anyway. Chris: And most of my articles are probably 500 words to a thousand words. Kathleen: Yeah. So, how long does it take you to write these articles? Chris: I would say it takes me about two hours a day and I do it at night, usually from about 10 to 12 at night. What I do is now I'm basically putting a blog out for every single one of my podcasts now, so I basically keep three separate blogs. I keep our podcast blog, I keep what's called a flood map updates, and that's if the flood map changes for an area, we do a blog just on that. And then I run a regular blog and so I mix it up, I write three to five blogs a week between the three. Kathleen: Now is your podcast a blog, is it like show notes or is it just a companion article? Chris: No, a lot of times I'll do a full detailed one. It's not like a breakdown. Here's what I try to do, I write an article, just a generic article on that subject matter, for the podcast and I like to come back with our regular blog and take that same blog, but now relate it to a particular area like Birmingham, Alabama and apply it there. And that's what I've kind of started to... Kind of taught myself that last couple of months. Now, Hey, let's just do it on this generic topic. Now let's come back and apply it to a particular city. First of all, it's for SEO, but now we could relate to that audience and we're giving that audience what they need. What is the ROI of content creation? Kathleen: So you're spending about two hours a night. I think a lot of business leaders listening to this might think, how could it possibly be worth my time? Like why wouldn't I either outsource for somebody to do that or hire somebody junior who gets paid less to do that. Talk me through for you, how you see the ROI of that two hours of your time. Chris: Well, the thing for me with the two hours of my time now, is through this whole inbound marketing and learning all this, what I've learned is that actually I have a passion for writing and I enjoy the blogging. I've actually handed off the other stuff so I could spend more time on the blog. Like the quoting, inside our company, our VA's handle all that. So I can handle the content and like someone goes, "Are you going to outsource the content?" I said, "Probably not. I enjoy it." I enjoy when someone comes to me with a question, I can break that question down and I can turn that question into maybe 10 different podcasts. 10 different blogs and apply to different areas because my educational background, it's very hard to outsource and have someone else do that. Kathleen: Do you find that it's getting easier over time? Chris: Yes. Kathleen: Is it getting quicker? Chris: But I'm also learning to build it out a better way. Like, "Hey, these are the five ways to do this." All right, let's build a pillar post on this subject matter. Now let's put 10 sub posts underneath that for different areas. Kathleen: Yeah, I mean the consistency part is what blows my mind. How do you stay on track? Because that is, that's a major commitment. Chris: It's tough. Now, the podcast actually is pretty easy. All of my podcasts are 10 minutes or less. So, I do a podcast that morning usually and I'll go out, shoot a video that kind of relates to the podcast that afternoon and then put the blog together that night. Kathleen: Wow. So what percentage of your day overall would you estimate that you're spending on creating content? Chris: Probably 30 to 40%. Kathleen: Wow. And- Chris: I'm also doing this... Now, I do have VA that helps me with some research, but also what I'm feeling is, I actually spend a lot of time driving around during the day though, looking at different locations to shoot certain things on. Like I had one the other day where a house was completely crumbled and so it wasn't a plan, but we ended up shooting a video on cracked foundations. Kathleen: Oh wow. Chris: And so that's where a lot of my content comes from as well. How Chris comes up with topics Kathleen: Yeah. So that was going to be my next question. Can you talk me through how you come up with your topics? Chris: Our topics come from every single question we get from our referral partner, a customer or prospect and what's also currently going on. Like last week, FEMA updates their manual every six months. So I broke down the new manual and made a podcast and a blog out of that. There’s disaster assistance that was approved for last week in Texas. I made a blog out of that because those are the things that people want to know what's going on. As I said, we walk them not just through the insurance process, the disaster assistance and all that because no one else will do it. So what happens though is when we do do that, when they do need something for a flood change, a flood insurance. They're going to remember us because we're providing so much education. I'm a terrible salesperson, I'm the worst salesperson in the world, but I'm really good at marketing and education. Kathleen: Do you have a particular system you use for capturing those questions? Because you're literally running around all the time. Chris: My iPhone. Kathleen: And what do you use on your iPhone? Chris: Notes. Like when they call me asking me, I take that question, I'll put it in there. Last night I was going through about 40 different questions over the last two weeks, I wanted to address this week. Kathleen: Wow, that's a great tip. Yeah. Answering questions, it's tried and true strategy. Chris: So, I would use a notepad and paper, but then I would lose the paper. I'd lose the question. Chris's results Kathleen: Yeah, you definitely have to do what works for you, right. So, let's talk about the results you've gotten from this, because we've talked a little bit about the traction you got with the videos, but now you've got videos, you've got blogs, you've got podcasts. As you mentioned, you are in an insanely competitive industry, insurance. That is one of, if not the most competitive industries from a marketing standpoint, from an SEO standpoint. Talk me through the results you've seen. Chris: Actually, we've seen really good results and everyone else says the exact same thing you do, but they don't realize it's actually the complete opposite. You see, once you get outside coastal areas, no one knows anything about flood. And no one's wasting their time on it. So when we can provide the content in areas like Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, we don't have a lot of competition. The other day when I looked at some of our keywords for Arkansas, Nebraska on YouTube, it was $1.12 And $1.50 because no one else is putting it out there or they're not going to waste their time on it. They're going to go to Houston, they're going to go to Miami or New Jersey, but what about all those areas in the middle where there's no resources and we can provide those resources. It doesn't matter how much competition we have, they can't keep up with us on the content. Kathleen: Now, do you find yourself competing against really, really large insurance companies and how does that play out? Chris: [crosstalk 00:19:46] the other day, because we picked up the phone and we called the customer back. Kathleen: Yeah. How does that play out from a digital marketing standpoint though? How do you take on, I can't think of one off hand, but all the big insurers, right? They have so much money to throw at their marketing. Chris: Because like you just said, they're throwing it at their marketing. They're not throwing it at their content. They're saying, "Hey, I can save you 40% on your flood insurance." That's great, but how do you change my floors out? How do you help me through this process? That's what the customer wants to know. Then yeah, I'd love to save money here, but I need you to get me point B before I get to point C. Kathleen: Now, are you spending money on paid ads now? Chris: A little bit, but I do it completely different than the companies you talk about. Kathleen: Okay, talk me through how you do it. Chris: What I do is these companies that said they'll spend all this money and "Hey, let me save you 50% on this." Well, I get a copy of every single flood map change across the country. Well, what happens is you can make a decision to buy insurance before that map changes and if you do, you get a preferred rate. So I target those areas six months before with content every single week through YouTube and walking them through the whole process. So when it does change or it's about to change, they remember seeing our content for six months. Not that we can save them money, but "Hey, here's what's going to happen, here's the process you need to follow whether you go through us or not." And that's how we've been able to beat a lot of them out. No one else wants to spend that time. They want to capture the sale. Kathleen: Now, what percentage of your business these days is coming in through organic and social and these digital efforts that you're undertaking? Chris: Honestly, from a strictly digital standpoint, pretty much a hundred percent of it now. Like even though the insurance companies we deal with, the process we built out for them is when they send us a customer, we actually build a link that's just for that insurance agent. And what happens is if they submit, a customer submits it, we redirect them. For that customer, leave them a review. We have a thank you card that goes to that customer in the mail with their information on there, not ours. We're here to help with a flood. But we're also here to make them look like a rock star so they have a customer for life. It's a win-win. And so we built all that in HubSpot, now. Kathleen: I mean intuitively you've landed on the best channel marketing strategy, which is make your channel partner look like a rock star and make their life as easy as possible. Yeah. I learned that after 13 years as a HubSpot partner, because HubSpot itself has one of the best channel programs around and they do that exact same thing. Chris: Yeah. And they're always like, "Why the link?" I said, "Because no matter where the customer is in the process, we can keep you involved." Kathleen: Yeah. That's great. Chris: And they like that. Kathleen: Yeah. Fascinating. So tell me about how your business is growing and what it's meant for you as a business owner. Chris: Well, I had this goal of, hey, I'd love to sell $1 million in flood insurance over the next five years. Well, I've had to adjust that goal because we've gotten to about 50% of it in our first year. But that was our whole goal, our five year goal. What happened is its just kind of taken off. We've spoken at a couple of conferences, we've been on a lot of different podcasts, not because we're just killing it on sales. But I guess because of the whole video thing, no one else was really doing that in our industry. No one's committing to it, particularly on flood, but no one's committing to it on anything else. And so what's happened is, being on those podcasts and things like that have helped us organically. People start reaching out to us, other insurance agents and we just walk them through and help them with their questions. And then before you know it, they're telling other people and it's just like a snowball going downhill then. Kathleen: Now how- Chris: Once you get going, if you get behind it. Kathleen: How important has it been to your success in doing this that you took on essentially a niche topic? Because you said that a little bit earlier how no one else was talking about flood. Could you do this same approach if it was a broader topic? Chris: Oh, easily. The reason I've done it though is because that's what my background is in and no one really has the background that I have in insurance. Like they've got some training, but they don't have that master's degree. I'm in the middle becoming a Certified Floodplain Manager. Probably less than 1% of insurance agents in the world have that certification as well. So you could do it with anything. But the reason I chose to do it and what I did it in is because of what my background is. I know people that are doing it in other areas as well. Now not the whole video thing, I mean you'd really have to commit, but the video course I'm in, a lot of people committing to two or three videos a week, which is great. My whole thing was, hey, if I can look back a year later, look at the knowledge base articles we've built, look at the library we've built just over a year. Look at the amount of questions we're going to be able to ask. Kathleen: Yeah. That's great. Well it's definitely inspiring and I think anybody who's ever thought, I don't have the time to invest in content or I couldn't possibly do it because I'm not an expert. I think that you provide a great example of somebody who's just taking the bull by the horns and is running with it and seeing great results. So, very cool. Chris: I've thought about starting a digital marketing agency next year, basically, what we're doing is taking the journey of this year we've been on and we're teaching other companies how to do it. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Love it. That's so cool. All right. Shifting gears for a minute. I have two questions I always ask my guests and you are a prolific inbound marketer so I want to hear what you have to say. Is there a particular company or person that you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? Chris: Yes. Nicholas Ayers, he's the one who actually runs Made You Look Video. I mean his video course, the whole psychological thing he puts behind it. He's got some of the silliest ads on Facebook with fanny packs, but what he's able to do with video, because he's been studying it for 30 years, it's just incredible. Kathleen: So Nicholas Ayers, Made You Look Video? Chris: But also his passion of, "Hey, I'm not going to keep this to myself. I'm going to help whoever I can with it." Now, we do a call every single week, he walks you through whatever you need. I mean, he's just awesome. Kathleen: That's great. Chris: And like I tell people, he's one of the main reasons, where we're at today is because of how they've been able to help us with video. And then Marcus Sheridan is another one. I was turned on to him about nine months ago. About the whole pool company experience. Kathleen: Yeah. Marcus's story is phenomenal. Yeah. And he is a great guy. All right, so things change fast. You are blogging, you're podcasting, you're making videos and putting things on YouTube and Facebook, what have you. How do you stay current and up to date on all of these developments around digital marketing with things changing so quickly? What's your strategy for that? Chris: Well, a lot of it actually is through HubSpot Academy. I spend a lot of my time in there and then I spend about an hour a day studying other things. I've got about 140 podcasts a week that I listen to. Kathleen: Oh my God. Chris: This being one of them, the HubCast, all these different digital marketing ones. Amy Porterfield is a big one. But I stay up to date because I travel so much during the week that I listen to all those. And honestly that's where I give all my content ideas from as well. How to connect with Chris Kathleen: That's amazing. I don't know how you find all the time. I mean, I love podcasts and I think I spend a lot of time self-educating but you make me look like an amateur. That's amazing. So, all right, Chris, you've totally blown me away. I can't wait to see what you do next. I'm betting some people are going to be listening to this and have questions. If they do, if they want to connect with you, reach out and chat with you. What's the best way for them to contact you? Chris: If you go to our website, just floodinsuranceguru.com, we've got our email address on there. It's flood@communityfirstagency.com. They can also find me on Facebook, which is just Chris Greene. They may have to send me a message because I think I am maxed out on friends. Kathleen: Oh no, we can't be friends. Chris: Well, I have to filter it out all the time. I've changed it and added a public image one on there, but I don't do much on there. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I do a lot on LinkedIn. Kathleen: Awesome. All right. You heard it here. I'll put those links in the show notes. If you want to find Chris head over to those show notes and his LinkedIn profile, his email address, his YouTube channel, all of it will be in there. He won't be your friend on Facebook until he clears out some other people, but you can ask him anyway. You know what to do next... Kathleen: That's awesome, Chris, thank you so much for joining me. And if you're listening and you like what you heard or you learned something new, please consider leaving the podcast a five star review on Apple podcasts. It makes a huge difference and helps us get found by other people. And if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Chris. Chris: Thank you.

Clayton eats Haunted Ghost Pepper chips. We discuss the Snowglobe NYE lineup, EDC Orlando’s daily lineup, and our new The Ico Podcast for fans of Odesza and Foreign Family Collective. Come hang with us at Fisher & Chris Like in Denver on Oct. 5. Plus we play two new tracks from Walker & Royce. Help us out with a rating/review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/warehouse-11/id1460175345 TRACK LIST Gorgon City, MK – There For You Cave Studio – No Comment Claude VonStroke – Please Oh Please Oh Please Reinier Zonneveld – Eating Concrete Walker & Royce, VNSSA – Rave Grave Walker & Royce, VNSSA – The Biznes Fatboy Slim – Praise You (Purple Disco Machine Remix) Danny Howard, Eli & Fur – If You Were Patrick Topping – Turbo Time i_o, Raito – Come With Me Skream – Song for Olivia

This week, Shaun, Joe & Chris break down each fight on the UFC Greenville card, which airs live on ESPN+ on Saturday June 22, beginning at 4:00 PM ET. The trio cover every fight leading to the Moicano vs. Jung (Zombie)  main event. Which dog does Chris Like that makes Joe blow a gasket? All is revealed within!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Download this Episode Video marketing is a common discussion among real estate agents right now. Today we discuss some of the things to avoid during when video marketing listings in real estate. reThink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 23:49 RTRE 62 – Video Marketing in Real Estate [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Hey everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I'm Chris here with Christian and Nate. And today we're talking about…Nate what are we talking about?  [Nathan]: What are we talking about? Listing videos and… [Chris]: Listing videos. We're talking about listing videos today.  [Nathan]: We're gonna be talking about listing videos. What's great about this episode, I think is, I'm not gonna be talking a lot, because I don't do listing videos. So that's…that's great. But Mr. Harris here is…is really…God he…what's the proper…he got a wild hair posses on this one. It was brought up I guess. [laughter] [Christian]: Oh boy.  [Nathan]: He has got has got some strong opinions people. About these listing videos and so I mean… I guess I have opinions. It's you don't need to do them. But I guess if you're gonna do them we're gonna let Christian talk about what you should do and shouldn't do. As we always talk about I guess on our podcast. I'm actually intrigued to hear what he's got to say. Because maybe I'll learn something since it's not something I ever venture into. So Christian you want to talk about listing videos and…and how they're done. Right. or how they're done wrong? Or maybe it's about content but you got some strong opinions. But what got this wild hair up, you know, to be so “eick” about it? [laughter] [Christian]: I don't know how much of a wild hair. But, I mean, Nate so what do you do to market your listings? Because that's when I say listing videos, I'm using it as a general term the agents use to market their listings. [Christian]: Well I tell all my clients up front too that if somebody comes in here and tells you they're gonna market their home, well I'm gonna tell them “Dude that's a [censored] word generally.” In our market, again we talked about this in the last two episodes, when I say our market here. You know what you have to do for marketing in Columbus? Put in MLS. It hits Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, boom boom boom boom boom. Right. great pictures I think are a giant, enormous and key. I don't see the need for video and unless it's depending on the caliber of the home. Right. I could…could do it. And then I'll segue. I think a lot of it depends on what you're also charging the client. Right. But…marketing…you put it in…put it in MLS.. Right. now that's about all you need to do. I mean… [Christian]: OK so let me let me ask you so what…so if you believe that all agents marketing is automatic, what value are you bringing your clients? What do you actually do for your clients that other agents don't do? [Nathan]: Boom. I'm better at negotiating then I think about 90% of the people out there. I guide them through the process of preparation getting their home prepared to put it on the market. What may need to be done or not need to be done to that home. Right.  [Christian]: So how's that presented if you're not doing a marketing? And you're doing photos. Right. But everybody does photos. [Nathan]: But yeah everybody does photos. But again everybody does photos, b ut there's a difference in the quality of photos. Right. you got plenty of agents to walk in with their own camera or their iPhone and take photos, yeah. Right.  [Chris]: Stay away from the Galaxy you all. Just… [Nathan]: Yeah right. Or you have an agency and a professional photographer to photograph a home. Right.  [Chris]: Which standard should be standard.  [Nathan]: Should be but I would… [Christian]: They can't…[crosstalk] [Nathan]: 50% of agents in the Columbus market do not use professional photography.  [Chris]: And Christian yes a photographer should be standard even on a vacant house. [Christian]: Oh no it should be. That was a little throwback to our last episode about the value of staging, you know. Yep professional photos help a house.  [Chris]: Photographer yes. Stager maybe not. [Christian]: Right. [Nathan]: And again I think it depends. Now what I do, I offer three options when I go on a listing presentation. You have a four percent of five percent and a six percent. Right. And they all vary with what you get for that amount of commission. Some people don't want to spend six percent. Most people go towards a five. But… [Christian]: So you give them options? [Nathan]: I give them options yes. And a lot of people like… [Chris]: It's a menu. [Nathan]: Yeah it's a menu. Right. It's no more. But I personally don't believe video sells a house. Why? Didn't [censored] sell a house 10 years ago. Why? Because they weren't doing it. And things sold just fine. So… [Christian]: Well I mean that's…I mean it's a, you know, you know, you don't want to get into that topic because there wasn't an internet ten years ago. And things have changed so… [Nathan]: Right. So… [Christian]: You know what that last brokerage said? “This is that we've done for 40 years, I'm not going to change it now.” [Nathan]: Famous last words. [Christian]: I don't think that's what you're saying. I hope not.  [Nathan]: No. But like so you say, well “What do you provide?” Well I also offer…I hate the word [censored] “discounted” but I will list your home and provide what generally is the same as any other agent, I just do it as a better rate. So but go back to your videos. [Christian]: OK OK. I wasn't…that was intended as a joke. As just kind of… [Nathan]: No it's OK.  [Christian]: I wanted to hear what you thought was the value you provide.  [Nathan]: Here is the other thing I provide. I provide them [censored] honesty because most real estate agents are [censored] liars. They won't tell the truth. They'll say anything to get the [censored] listing. I don't know if I talked about it. Let me rant on this one. I just went, did a listing presentation, like three weeks ago. I don't think I've talked about this. Right.Bbut the client walked me upstairs and I walked in the room and I went “Oh my God that [censored] wallpaper has got to go.” [Christian]: Yep you mentioned that in the... [Nathan]: Right. [Chris]: Yeah that's a good one.  [Nathan]: Right. So yes she laughed. Right. And I said what's so funny Jenny? She says “All the other agents came in here, just told me the room look beautiful. You're the first one to tell me it's ugly and I know it's ugly.” Most people just don't tell the truth. [Chris]: Was that the dentist? [Nathan]: Yes. [Chris]: Yeah I remember that one.  [Nathan]: What? What…what do you get? Right. You get pure honesty. You don't like it? Than don't [censored] hire me. Enough about that. [laughter] Let's go back to…we were talking about videos. How do we get back to videos? This all started with videos. [Chris]: Back to listing videos. [Christian]: Right.  [Chris]: Bring it in.  [Christian]: We've believed at this point a little bit. Nat's value is not in the marketing. And I'd say most agents' value is in the market, because honestly it is pretty automatic, it's pretty syndicated these days. And it's something, you know, I tell my…my clients too. It's like “Listen this is what an agent is gonna tell you. This is [censored]. This is, you know, this is…this is how it works.” I think my axe to grind when it comes to listing videos is that what most agents call listening videos are glorified slideshows. Stop calling it virtual tour or a listing video. [Chris]: Yeah we're…we're gonna give you a virtual tour. [Christian]: A moving-picture is not a video with some you know, generic music over. That's, you know, pet peeve of mine. I don't know why people still pay for that, you know, because I'll look on the MLS we have that virtual tour link. Right. Half the time I click on it some, you know, [censored] tour factory slideshow, with some crappy music go over. I'm like “What the [censored] is this?  [Chris]: Like yeah for us its property panorama but it's the same thing. Takes all your listing videos, automatically adds the background music and there you go. I've turned mine off in the MLS. [Christian]: Yeah so that bugs me. So to me I think when it comes to marketing there's two main things you can…you can do. And maybe three. I mean you could do a dedicated, you know, listing website. Which I think could be helpful, especially if you're seller is gonna share it, you know, as opposed to sharing like the MLS link or something, which looks, at least for us, looks archaic and cheesy. So having a dedicated landing page can be a helpful tool. Something like Kingston Lane. Really cheap. They do a good job. Or doing like a Matter Ports [phonetics] for 3d tour. I still think that is really powerful as a way for people to do a walk-through without actually being there. So they get a good feel for the house which you… [Chris]: Matter Ports is good. [Christian]: Yeah so we use that on all our listings. If you're gonna do video, I think you can either detract or enhance the house, to pay on how well it's done. So I say for most agents is probably not what you want to do. One, it tends to be expensive if you do it right, because you're gonna hire it out. If you do it yourself…you…you better be pretty damn good, you know. The reason I go with Matter Ports instead of videos, is because it allows the end user to control the experience. They get…it goes as fast as they want. They get to look at what they want. They're not stuck with “Oh it's a 30 second video and I didn't get to see what I wanted in the house.” Or “It's a 5 minute or 10 minute video and oh my God why is there five minutes of drone footage outside, before you get inside the house. I'm done.” They click off. So the problem with video is that nowadays people want it quick. They want to see what they want to see. And so it can really shoot you in the foot if you're not…if it's not done well and it's not done timely, it doesn't have a specific point. But I do still think there's definitely room for it. And…and there's some great people out there doing some…some really cool stuff.  Like I don't know if you guys saw the listing video for Ryan Lewis's house out here in Seattle. It's, you know, thirty million dollars or some crazy mansion. And they basically hired a influencer to do a twenty minutes basically like a roast of his house, under the guise of he's breaking and entering into Ryan Lewis's house. It is as they're making fun of it the whole…whole time through. And it's hilarious. It doesn't really good job to showcase the house. In like a normal listing video I won't last three seconds, and this thing, you know, watched all twenty minutes of it. Because it was funny. It was memorable. It's an amazing house, you know, then, you know, some more grassroots people, they're doing some amazing stuff with. Like Tim Macy, you know, our common Cameron, which we've had both them. [Chris]: Yeah they've both been on the podcast. [Christian]: Yeah but, you know, the RETV Facebook group is great for kind of forward-thinking, video focused content makers. [Chris]: Erica Wolf just did a new tour of a home.  [Christian]: Right. Yeah…yeah that was pretty…pretty funny.  [Chris]: See those are the things that the MLS won't allow as like listing videos though. Because with an MLS, at least in Georgia, for our listing tours it has to only be the property. So you can use Matterport or could do a video walkthrough, you can't do anything creative on the MLS board. So that's…that's outside of our listing video territory. That's social media marketing. That's promotion… [Christian]: This is if you want to stand out and actually provide something, not just as your own brand, but like if…if your clients want to be aligned with that outside-the-box viral video stuff, you know, I mean…I know like Phil Greeley, locally, he's a Sotheby's and he's just double down on video. And he's gotten some really high-end listings because he's done some…yeah from like doing some amazing videos. That get some great traction, you know. Like that he wouldn't have got that if he just did photos. [Chris]: [inaudible] with Gary Vaynerchuk [phonetics]. [Christian]: Yeah I'm just saying… [Chris]: And he was one of our first guests.  [Christian]: Yes. But I'm just saying it's not like it's worthless. [Chris]: No. [Christian]: But if you're gonna do it, do it right. [Nathan]: Some people do like…what's his name, The wolf of Whistler. [Chris]: Wolf of Whistler?! [Nathan]: Oh tell me you've seen it. [Chris]: Oh I know what you're talking about. Yeah.  [Nathan]: Well I mean his is good. I mean, you know, it's very much like a dollar shape for housing. But it was…I mean it's catchy, it's good, it gets people's attention. [Chris]: So let's talk about quality of listing videos. Because Christiane you kind of got into it and I did a lot of Matter Port. I think Matterport is good spending the money when it's not a seller's market. When…when you don't have to worry about, you know, the property being on the market more than 24 hours. [Christian]: I just do it in all my listings. But I own the camera. [Chris]: So out of Christian… [Christian]: I am just saying it's, you know, it's part of what we offer.  [Chris]: OK. I'm glad, you know, like staging is part of all your listings. I'm sure there's exceptions. [Christian]: If it makes sense. If it makes sense. [Chris]: Yeah yeah it's part of all my listings. So Matterport I've done. And…and I found that the Matterport increased the quality of the showings. Because by the time the people are coming out there, they've seen the property, over and over again. They've already walked the property over and over again. It's decrease the number of showings before contract. And then during the contract period its decrease the number of walk throughs. Why? Because we've already got a diagram that has every measurement of the home that's listed and it's online.  So we've got the entire floor plan of every floor of the house, that Matterport comes with. In addition to that they can continue to walk and do whatever they want. They can be screen shots and save the images. Whatever they need to do at night, in bed, kids are asleep. Whatever it is. Husband and wife. Whoever is buying the house can look at the property together or by themselves and just figure out where their furniture is gonna go, without coming back out to the house while it's under contract. So it's dramatically decreased the number of showings, but it's also decreased the number of times the buyer has to come to the house. In substantially sized homes.  Video. 100% has to be quality. I have fired video or content companies, for photo, Matterport, video. They do it all. I fired them because when I saw the video that they turned out, I can see the footprints in the video going up and down as the photographer's walking through the freaking house. And it just drove me nuts because it's like giving me motion sickness. And I know that my eye is better for that than like most of the public. And hardly anybody's gonna notice. But I notice. That's my brand. So that [censored], not acceptable. It's hard to find a good photographer. Somebody that can do video. Because they've got to have  the equipment. They've got to have the stabilizer. They've got to make it so like they're walking through. They're not like… [Christian]: If you're paying for it they better at least have a gimbal. So you…it doesn't look like they're walking, you know, bouncing walking through the house. I mean it's a basic. You could buy one of those for 80 bucks yourself, you know.  [Chris]: Well if you're using it for an iPhone. But for a camera it's not 80 bucks.  [Christian]: Yeah I mean they're more expensive. But my point is, you know, if you're like that's what you do, you better had the equipment for it. [Chris]: Yeah absolutely. So I've got a great photographer in Georgia. His name is Keith Hirsch, Georgia home view. Best photographer in the state in my book. I've had a lot of people come across my desk and Keith is the only one that I've looked at and I've said “You know what? I can't do this. That's like…that's way above like my…my level.” And I've been in a darkroom since I was 14. So I've been around a camera… [Christian]: They locked you the closet? Under the stairs?  [Chris]: Like developing, you know, each other. [Christian]: Oh OK I thought you were talking about child abuse. OK. I'm sorry. [laughter] [Chris]: A real darkroom. Not Harry Potter's bedroom. [Christian]: Got you. OK. [Chris]: So when I saw that, I got in. and he doesn't have a gimble. He uses a shoulder rig or I think he's got like one of those rigs for his camera, where you hold it with two hands. He's just so good that it looks fluid. Like you can't even tell. I asked him. I thought he shot the inside video with a drone, and he didn't. It was just his camera and he was walking through the property. Look the quality of your media reflects the quality of your work. That's what you're putting out there. If you're putting out a free MLS provided, you know, flipbook, of the properties that you have, the pictures that you've already listed and just putting it to music, nobody's gonna watch that. That's a waste of time. And for you to market yourself and saying “This is a video. Like we're gonna give we're gonna give a video tour of the property too. We're gonna turn all you have pictures into videos.” Welcome to 1997 like tech class in high school. Like that's…that's….we're way beyond that. [Christian]: Sure. Well and that's why I like…I mean when I first got into real estate, you know, I pretty quickly started pushing back against kind of the idea, you know, a lot of agents were being told “Hey you just do something. Just get something out there. Get content out there.” Now I'm like “Well no you better think about it. Better get it right.” Because if you put bad content out there, that's gonna hurt you worse than you if you had nothing out there, in some situations. Because… [Chris]: It's like that note, it's like that saying “There's no such thing as bad press.” [Christian]: That not true. Well because I mean if…if I…if I did…Let's say I did listing photos with my iPhone and you look like [censored] that's not better than having one good picture up there. You know, or, you know, you know, and so far we've talked about like listing videos as far as like if you're gonna do them do them, do them right, do them professionally.  But if there's…I think there's also room for, you know, more on the social media side. For the Facebook lives, Instagram lives, you know, the walkthroughs, the impromptu type stuff. You know, that's not gonna be professionally done edited, that's in on the fly type of thing. There's definitely room for that. But, you know, again have a purpose to it. Don't just be, you know, talking to talk or going live to, you know, to do it. And yeah I don't know.  What are you guys thoughts? Do you go live [Chris]: Nate? [Nathan]: No. Again… [Chris]: [laughter] “No. Not me. I don't do it.” [Nathan]:  I think a lot of these… [Christian]: I think in social media you can. [Nathan]: I think a lot of what we do right now is all dependent upon your market. And were, you know, buy or seller market. What, you know, what you're charging commission. I mean we talk about a lot of things. But a lot depends on what you charge. What condition is your market in. What…what's the house like. How much…you know, let's be honest, you know,  you're not gonna stage one hundred thousand dollar house with three thousand dollars furniture. You know, staging. Right. So it's all relative.  It's each…each situation is different. I am…like I said. I have not staged a house. I've not done video on a home. I do have one that I would consider doing video of. But I think a lot of it is overkill. It's just my opinion. Whatever you do in whoever you use just make sure they're reputable. Like here if I was to have video done, I'd called Joey…Joey T media. He does an awesome job and that's who I would hire. Right out the gate. So just make sure, you know, whatever you do it's…it's professional. That's…that's kind of where I'm at with it. [Chris]: You talked about Facebook live? And go and live on Facebook right now. Just as we're gonna wrap up this episode. [Nathan]: Oh God Almighty. [Chris]: Oh God Almighty. Heaven forbid I go on Facebook live Nate. Like really. So I mean Christian I think you've got some great points when it comes to listing media and making sure that the video is quality. Not using the stupid slideshows of images and how we do the…like the property panorama. What is it? What's the service that you have where you are? [Christian]: I mean whether it's a tool live or a factory. I mean if you wanna do a slideshow, do a slideshow. But don't call it a listing video. You know. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Christian]: Don't call it a virtual tour. [Chris]: Yeah it's a slideshow. It's not a listing video. It doesn't help market the property. Nobody's gonna look at it. Make sure that the quality's there. Or, you know, be like Nate and don't do any of it. Just be honest and, you know, what's your humor show. And there we go. [laughter] Christian is playing us back. [Christian]:  I'm watching you live well recording this.  [Chris]: Hey Christian Harris is watching. Bring them online. I'm not bringing you on camera Christian because… [Christian]: No that would be bizarre. We have like us some time vortex. [Chris]: Yeah be like…we will be looping back and forth for like minutes. So it's…it's important that we make sure that the quality of our marketing material is on par with the brand that we want to portray as our business. So, you know, any last words guys before we wrap this up? [Nathan]: No I'm good. [Christian]: Yeah….yeah I mean it's I'd say for any service you provide, any marketing, I mean it really comes down to what are you doing for the client. You know, like do you have… is this intentional or you just kind of like throwing stuff out there? You know, so whether you choose to do video or not, whether you choose to state or not. What…you know, like however you do stuff. Like make it consistent. If, you know, and…and set the expectations up front.  You know, if people are paying you to like be honest and, you know, you…you think all marketing is the same than hey or just, you know, say that out of the gate. You know, but if you think you really do something that kicks [censored] in marketing and that's why they're hiring you, hey make sure to emphasize that. [Chris]: Yeah when…what…definitely. And I will reiterate that. When it comes to your marketing, it is your name, it is your brand, it is you building your business. And if you want to be good at it you need to focus on all of the aspects of your business. You need to make sure that that media that you're putting out there to the public is a reflection of who you want to be. Period. So alright everybody thank you so much for tuning in. this has been another episode of re:Think Real Estate. We're so happy to have you on board. If you haven't already, please go to re:Think Real Estate's website which is rtre.podcast.com. Subscribe to the newsletter. You'll get a notice every time a new episode drops. And please go on…find us on iTunes at re:Think Real Estate. Leave us a five star review. Tell us what you think about the website or about the podcast. You don't even have it…you don't even have to listen to us. For anybody that's watching on Facebook live right now, just go and leave us a review. We'll be happy. [Christian]: I think. I'm the only one live now.  [Chris]: Yeah one person that's watching live right now. More people will see it later. They're always watching the recaps. So thank you so much. We will see you next week.  [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode We've all been there. Life hits you like a freight train and knocks you off course. Today we discuss how to get the train back on its track. Tune in to hear about how we deal with death, struggle, and negative outside voices. reThink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 28:18 RTRE 60 – Breaking Out of a Rut in Your Real Estate Business [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I'm Chris here with Christian and Nate is back. No longer sick. Welcome back Nate.  [Nathan]: Thanks. Thank you. [Chris]: Yes. All of energy today. [laughter]  [Christian]: He is possessed to be here. [Chris]: Oh. Let's see those jazz hands Nate. [Nathan]: Hold on. [laughter]. [Christian]: What are you typing? [Chris]: Not even…Not even ready to start. There we go.  [Christian]: Yeah don't worry about this.  [Chris]: So we were just talking before getting started here about, you know, what do you do when you're in a rut. Like you're just out of it, you know, listening to Nate's voice. He's in a rut right now. Even if it's just for the next hour. So like Christian what do you do when you're in a rut? Like how do you pull yourself out of it? [Christian]: I mean I'll tell you one thing that's key to not do and that's to quit, and to listen to the demons, you know, that are speaking…speaking lives in your head about how your failure and your, you know, nothing's ever gonna change and it's gonna be like this forever. I'm sure I'm just the only one that hears those negative thoughts but… [Chris]: It's gonna be like this forever. You're a failure. [Christian]: Don't listen to them. I know. See now I'm hearing the voices for real. This is so real. [Chris]: [laughter] In your headphones.  [Christian]: Yeah in my headphones. So that's the first thing you don't do. [Chris]: Yeah I gotta agree. [Christian]: For me personally, you know, I just kind of keep my head down and keep going. But I mean I lot of it depends on why I am in a rut. Is it like a family rut where relationships aren't going great? Is it work? Is it financial? You know. Because I think, you know, the solution to those are all gonna be a little different. But the key to getting out of those is leaning…leaning on people. You know, like being honest. Having people that can come around to you and speak truth into that. Whether it's co-workers or family members or, you know, besties, you know. Don't isolate yourself because that's…that's doesn't go well for most people. [Chris]: Gotta have your besties. Nate. [Nathan]: Yep. [Chris]: What do you think? [Nathan]: What's the question again? [Chris]: How do you get out of a rut. [Nathan]: Oh how do you get out of a rut. [Christian]: It's your topic buddy. [Chris]: Yeah this is your choice Mr. “I'm in a rut.”  [Nathan]: How do you…You know, I don't know. You got to find, you know, how you used to work triggers. You got to find….one you got to be able to identify you're in a rut. Right. I mean, you know, yeah I just kind of went through one. Yeah I was sick for a week. Had some unfortunate family things happen. And, you know, it was just [censored] death of you. I mean it's what it was but you know it side tracks you. Right. You know, as I call it the…the train gets off the rail. So you one you got to recognize that the…the freaking train you're on is off the rails. And then you got to figure out what's the trigger to get it back on. You know, for me it's being very scheduled and stuff. And just it's…I don't know you have to just recommit.  You know, what's the…I used to have a mentor who used to say “You kind of have to recenter the salt on the plate.” And I think that's what you got to do. You got to be able to identify it. You got to figure out, you know, why you're in it. OK get out of it, you know, and then , you know, there's certain things. I don't know you can read motivational stuff. I mean Gary Vee I, you know, it's not for all people but he's for me. And I can get on a pity party and he gets me out of the pity party. So [Christian]: Yeah nice kick to the junk to get you back on track. [Nathan]: Yeah and I think in our industry, I think we all get kind of jaded at times. You get….you get I don't know. You get frustrated and then you get sidetracked.  [Christian]: And it's just you. [Nathan]: Yeah all right. [Chris]: No it's definitely not just you.  [Nathan]: Yeah I know it's everybody. I was talking with a colleague the other day and, you know, he said “Man I just…” he said “I didn't do [censored] for six months.” And now you know, he knew it. He identified it. But, you know, he's like the worst part is now I gotta play catch-up. I, you know, we all, you know, we get these peaks and valleys. And I don't…I don't like to get in those peaks and valleys. I like to have, you know, a nice steady stream of income. Right. [Chris]: Well six months is a little bit too long. That…that's not all right. Six months is an active decision to say “You know what, I'm just not gonna work.” [Nathan]: Yeah. [Christian]: I think it's called clinical depression. [Nathan]: Yeah well, you know, he was working on his home doing some other things. Fine. But… [Christian]: OK so he's just distracted. [Nathan]: He's just distracted and I think we all can get distracted. And then I think we just get frustrated. You know, we can get in our own way. So and, you know, it's, you know, you hear a realtor say “Oh I'm…” You know, we talked about this before. You know, “I'm so busy” And you say “What do you have going on?” And they're like “Oh I got one house in contract.” But you're so busy like…I don't know. It's…when I'm not busy, I'm not busy. You know, I don't even like the question what people say “Oh it's spring time right now. You're, you know, you must be busy as all get out. I'm steady. I'm not busy as I'll get out. But when you talk to me in November, December, January and February, guess what? You get the same response. Versus a lot of people say “Well I ain't got nothing going on.” So staying out of a rut I think is important. I think it's important that you identify how long you're in one. And it only took two weeks to get in one. Just because of, you know, being sick. And we're all self-employed. Right. o… [Chris]: Yeah I think I think one of the things is it doesn't take too long to get into a rut. Like one thing can happen and throw you completely off the rails. And then it…you have to go through…well depending upon what it is, you've got to go through these stages of healing to kind of get back into your groove. So if it's…if, you know, if it's family that's throwing, you know, things at you that are like “Oh, you know, what you're wasting your time. You're not in a good environment. The industry is gonna end soon. Your real estate agents are gonna be obsolete. Everything's gonna be AI in tech.” I just got that from my [censored] father the other day. And… [Christian]: Ouch. [Chris]: Yeah like “Really, no I…I don't think it is but, you know, that…that's great that you're encouraging me. I really appreciate that.” But you got to go through this stage of accepting what has happened. Seeing it from, you know, multiple points of view. Realizing that, you know, you're either making the right decision and then you double down on your decision, or there's some corrective action that needs to happen. And then you need to make the corrective action. [Christian]: I mean I'd say that, this is kind of cliché, but I definitely say that it's very important to…as you're trying to, you know, realize, you know, “OK what's…what set me in this rut and how do I get out?” is to try to only focus on things that you can affect. Right. As most of stuff in our life we have no control over. You can't control other agents, can't control the market. You control what you do and how focused you are. And, you know, your attitude and all that kind of stuff.  But I'd say that's definitely key to getting out of it is not…not, you know, what we call catastrophizing, if that's a word, which I don't think it is. But, you know, essentially… [Nathan]: It sounds great. [Chris]: Yeah if it's not a word it sounds like a word and it should be a word. So yeah… [Christian]: It's…it's a word that would they use in in the military's newer…what they call it, resiliency training . Essentially, you know, one of the keys to, you know, not getting in a rut or recognizing when you are going into rut is recognizing, you know, a mindset that's a downward spiral of catastrophizing everything. Where, you know, one thing happens and then you just assume the worst and then that, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy happens. And you keep spiraling downwards as opposed to, you know, “OK let's look at the big picture. Let's not think of the worst thing let's think of, you know, outcomes that are positive and, you know, be optimistic as opposed to pessimistic”, you know.  This is one of the mental tricks of, you know, how are you going to position yourself mentally to get out of the rut. As opposed to, you know, staying in that rut. [Chris]: I like that. That's really good. So Nate, cuz you ran for 24 hours last year, what was like what was going on in your head and do you think that any of those things could be used to get you out of a rut ? [Nathan]: Well I'm getting ready to run for twelve hours soon again. I think it's just it's…it's a semental staying power if you would. Because what's the easiest thing to do in any of those scenarios are with what we do for a living, what's the easiest thing to do? [censored] it. Quit. Right. [Chris]: Like quit. Don't even… [Nathan]: Just quit. Right. I mean I think what most people don't realize and, you know, I can use it running wise or even and, you know, in this rut…What we think of and perceive is something that maybe feels like forever, is really not that long of a period of time. Right. When I did that race out in Colorado or run out in Colorado, there was a gentleman that, you know, he quit after, you know, about 16 hours. And he said “I can't do it anymore.” And I said “Dude just take a break. Don't leave the course. If you leave the, you know, if you leave the course, you can't restart. But you can you could take a rest, that's fine. It's OK. If you want a rest for thirty minutes or three hours then you could start back up on whatever mile you're on.”  Right. And he said no he couldn't do it. He went back to his hotel. About twenty three hours and thirty minutes into it I seen him at the finish line, start/finish line. And, you know, him lapping through and he comes and pulls up beside me and starts running. And I was like “What are you doing back out here?” He's like “I should have listened to you.” He's like “I left. I got back to the hotel. I took 30 minutes. Laid down and I was like nah I feel great now.”  So I think what we do is it's…it's how we perceive that. Right. like “Oh you're in a rut.” And I have been in a rut for two weeks. And it's that like Christian said, you get the self-fulfilling prophecy. And then it does spiral out of control. Right. versus if we can kind of slam the [censored] brakes on things, and go “Hold up. All right. Reset.” And…and grab a hold of it by the balls a little bit, you know, then…then you've got a good opportunity. But I think we just we, you know, society as a whole and what, you know, whether it's real estate or not, we…we just get caught up in that bad moment. So you got to be more optimistic than pessimistic. [Christian]: Yeah well I think it also help if, you know, kind of speaking to people getting into the industry, if there was a more realistic portrayal of what it's like to be a new agent. Because I mean I've, you know, speaking of our first quarter was very, very rough financially. And we have like five agents that just gave up. Just “I'm done. I'm not renewing my license. This was too hard.” And it's kind of that lack of resiliency because they'd…I don't think they had a realistic expectations coming into it. They're like “You can't just sit on YouTube while you, you know, quote to do your calls.” [laughter] Like you're not gonna get…You know, so there's a lack of resiliency. There's a lack of hustle. A lack of urgency and then, you know, no matter what, you know, your brokerage does, or people come up alongside you, they don't do it. They don't listen. And then they quit. And you're like “Yeah I kind of saw the writing on the wall.”  You're like, you know, it's…from the perspective of a broker like it's really easy to become jaded. And, you know, my version of a rut looks differently, you know, because I'm looking at agents and productivity and, you know, margins. And that kind of stuff. From agent perspective, you know, it's trying to get business, you know, having people say no to you. Or if you're new to an area trying to figure out how to get the word out there. And, you know, that kind of stuff. But either way it comes down to like not giving up, being resilient when things don't go perfectly, not letting that spiral and ruin the rest of your day.  [Nathan]: I would agree. [Chris]: Definitely, you know, you've got to be able to compartmentalize a little bit to know “Hey, you know what this is not that big of a deal.” Or, “You know what, this sucks. But, you know, I gotta keep ploughing on because if I stop I'm never gonna get this done. I'm never gonna hit my goal. So I've got to keep going.”  You know, it took, you know, I was in a rut a few weeks ago. And it took me a good five to six days to work my way through it. And it wasn't until I kind of saw some things from a different angle that, you know, it was…I realized, you know what, what I was doing was correct. And, you know, this one situation was an outlier. And it really didn't affect what I was doing as much as I thought it would. [Christian]: Yeah I mean a lot of what we're talking about here is your perspective. Right. And earlier I mentioned not letting yourself be isolated. And the reason for that is that other people can bring a perspective that you don't have. You know, they're looking at that from the outside. Where you may be, you know, kind of myopically looking at your feet. And, you know, where you just stumbled while they're looking at the big picture of like “But look at all this potential and look at where you came from and look at what's ahead of you.”  You know, I think that's very important to have that community around you, of people that can speak into you. Well that's your spouse or business partner or whatever. [Chris]: And sometimes you don't even want to hear it. Sometimes you're just like “You know what, I…I'm not even gonna listen” and you have to hear from some like third party that has nothing to do with you. Because, you know, those that are closest to us sometimes we feel like they're just, you know, boosting us up. And it's not authentic. [Christian]: Right. And then your wife says “That's what I've been saying to you.” And you're like “Oh sorry.”. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: I get that [censored] all the time. My wife's like “Why wouldn't you just listen to me. That's what I was telling you.” And I am like “Oh [censored] you're right.” [Nathan]: Well that's…that's the funny flipside of being resilient. Another word for that could be stubborn. Or [laughter] hard-headed, you know. So what keeps you driving for it could also be what keeps you from listen to people. So … [Chris]: Yeah I think not so much that, but we have…we have this tendency that if something shakes us to our core. like that we're…if something happens it's that messes us up and throws us way off track, then we have this tendency to not exactly trust everything that we've done, up until that point 100%. So if there's something…if there's something that's in our core circle that's telling us something and then whatever happens throws us off our game, then we're gonna immediately have a certain distrust for this. And we're gonna go to an outside source to verify whether we're right or wrong. And once we do that, if we verify “You know what, what we've been doing is right.” then we come back to that circle and like “You know what, everything here is good.” We're happy. If something's wrong then we're gonna come back to that circle and be like “Wait what the [censored] is going on here? Like why…why are you saying this. Or, you know, why didn't…why…” You get it. Yeah it's…it's not just about listening to those that are closest to us. It's a mental thing. Like if something…mentally we've got to recenter ourselves. [Christian]: It sounds like you're saying that insecurity creeps in, depending on where we feel like things went wrong. [Chris]: Yeah definitely. And I mean it all depends on whatever happens. Right. because sometimes it's something small and it's not a big deal and it maybe, you know, maybe it's something that we're just disappointed in, and it's gonna take us, you know, a few minutes to get over. Or maybe it's something…maybe it's a personal attack or something that a relative is going in, the new agents is going. You're not making any money. You need to stop. Right. This is…you're…you're wasting your time, you're wasting your money, you're wasting our money, if it's a spouse. You know, even if you're doing the right things you may have not planned long enough. Nothing ever happens fast enough. Nothing ever happens, you know, the way that we want it. So you've got to kind of have that margin of error that you can work with. [Christian]: Sure and when you come into with…realistic expectations. Right. I mean so much of what happens in relationships that goes wrong, or getting in a rut that…that, you know, the reason we get there is because expectations are unmet, or our situation changes. You know, like if…if we think is gonna be easy and it's not, you know, we get in a rut. If, you know, we expect to make more money in the first quarter than we did, you know, it's easy getting in a rut. I mean it's just kind of…and not letting those quote failures drive you or dictate you. Because I mean what, you know, one man's failures is another person's learning, try opportunity. Yeah and that's something I've had to learn. Is like theoretically I understood. You know, as this ethereal concept I understood that failure was inevitable, and I need to be able to learn from that. But than going through that, that's experientially a lot different.  [Nathan]: So I need to get over this whole thing of how my job interferes me living my best life. [Chris]: You have the one job that you not interfere with you living your best life. [Nathan]: I don't have a job.  [Christian]: This is coming from the guy who's taken like several vacation this month to go down to…[crosstalk] [Nathan]: I know. I know. Listen you…listen I don't even have a job. I have…I do something I enjoy and love. I'm fortunate that I don't even do it as a job. I get to do what I enjoy. [Chris]: That's good. [Christian]: Yeah well let's…let's take us a little deeper and more personal. I mean Nate you kind of brought up the subject, cuz this last couple weeks have been pretty rough for you. I mean what have you found to be helpful kind of getting out of this rut for you? [Chris]: And first do you need to lay down on the therapist couch and put five cents in the jar? [Nathan]: No. Again it's…what's been helpful for me I mean again it's…I think, you know, what's the old saying? You know, you you're the average of the five people you spend the most time around. So I think it's also about the people you surround yourselves with. And that, you know, when you do get in that, they'll help you with that. You know, or they'll, you know, they'll they're kind of champion you and…and support you to say, you know, “Hey yeah…” You know, when you say “I'm in a rut or I'm this” they'll…they'll boost those spirits.  And it won't be an ego boost. It won't be one of those things like “You're the best thing in the world next to cotton candy.” But they know how to push you in the right direction to support you. And I think that's what…having that support is important. And I mean that ranges from colleagues that I have, to neighbors, to a wife. Like, you know, it's…it's all those things. You know, it…it makes, you know, surviving that period of time easier.  And…and sometimes you just need that outer push. And you also need it…I think you need the people around you that are honest with you. You know, what I mean? [Chris]: You don't need “Yes men. Yes.” [Nathan]: Yeah right. Yeah you need somebody to go tell you the truth. I mean that's, you know, that's, you know, my friends, the people I surround myself with will tell me, you know, what they think. And…and sometimes I don't want to hear it. [censored] A lot of times I don't want to hear it. But it is what I needed to hear. [Christian]: Sure. No one likes hearing the hard truth. [Nathan]: Yeah, no you know. [Chris]: But to be able to appreciate it though when it's in front of you. [Nathan]: Yeah. Yeah you're right. [Chris]: That's one of the hard…the hardest thing that I've found is when, you know, getting that criticism. Whe…when you just want to wall up and go into like active defence mode. Like just letting your body language relax. Having, you know, open gestures and trying to be open-minded to put yourself in the other person's shoes, and see what they're seeing.  [Nathan]: Right. [Chris]: And then trying to see if there's some corrective action that needs to be made there. That's…that's hard when you just go into like “Alright go ahead, give me the feedback because it's rare that I ever get feedback like this. So, you know, take advantage of it while you can.” [Christian]: Sure. Well it can be challenging too because, you know, no one's perfect and no feedback is gonna be perfect. So you have to like decide “OK what's an honest truth that I need to hear” versus “OK that part is kind of [censored]. I'm gonna not take that, you know, what I'll take, you know, kind of not throw the baby off the bathwater.” Like taking the truth where you find it whether that's in, you know, quote a rival or enemy, or that's in someone who's, you know, really close to you and has your best interest at mind. You know, like that could be…it can be challenging. Because, you know, typically I find that if you're playing it safe, there's gonna be a lot less friction and a lot less controversy and criticism. If you're really pushing the bounds, that's when things get tough and people can get ugly. So… [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: You know, I know how to…at least I know how to do it. I know how to have a fight with myself. If that makes any sense. You find out [crosstalk] Yeah I know how to like… [Chris]: Elaborate on that. [Christian]: Yes do. [Nathan]: Because you've got to be willing to call your own [censored]. Right. You've got to be willing to kind of punch yourself in the face. Right. you've got to be… [Christian]: I need to watch conversations with you. [Nathan]: Yeah. Right. That's a staff meeting. Remember? It again it's, you know, you…it's like…I mean it sounds crazy but it's having that conversation in your head of “Hey Nathan, stop being a pussy and do what you know, what you need to do. Get your [censored] up off the couch. Or wake up on time. Or eat right. Or whatever it is. You're not doing these things. Stop…stop [censored] yourself.” And just having that honest, you know, that David Goggin [phonetics] said, you know, “You got to be able to look that man in the mirror.” Right. And that man in the mirror is, you know, me. And so if you can't have that honest fight, dialogue with yourself internally, I don't think it matters what anybody tells you then. [Christian]: Well the starting place for that is being self-aware. Like if you don't know yourself like you're gonna have a real tough time having that honest conversation. [Nathan]: Well most people can't do that though. They live in some [censored] fairyland. [Christian]: Well yeah, you know, I mean we all have our blind spots. Some people are more aware than…than others, you know. [crosstalk] The most important thing in life is…is being honest about that, you know.  [Nathan]: Right. Sorry. I don't know. You gotta find what works for you. I know what works for me. [Christian]: Yeah you…you be unique. [Nathan]: I'm good at doing that. Chris are we gonna wrap it up? [Chris]: Yeah so I think we…we hit on some good points. The…I think no matter where you are in your career you're gonna get hit with something that's gonna throw you off your game. You're gonna…you're gonna have a Nate moment where you got to be in front of the mirror and you got to kick yourself in the [censored].  You know, one of the things that I tell some of the new agents is, you're always gonna have a boss. And even when you're self-employed you still have a boss. It's the person in the mirror. And who do you want to work for? Do you want to work for a strong leader? Somebody who's going to step up and challenge the things that needs to be challenged to make sure that things are getting done that need to be done? Somebody that's gonna keep it on track? Or do you want to work for somebody who is just very lackadaisical and doesn't really care when you clock in?  And you have a boss, whether you're working for somebody else or yourself. So it's just a matter of making sure that you're doing the right things for you. When you get stuck in a rut, you got to pull yourself out of it. One way or another.  [Nathan]: Yeah, you know, Henry David Thoreau [phonetics] comes to mind. Sorry. Pulling out the big gun. But, you know, he said “What lies…what lies ahead of us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when you bring what's within you, out into the world, great things happen.” Right so, you know, I think you gotta remember what's inside. [Chris]: We need to set up Nate's…Nate's motivational quotes of the week. [Christian]: I know that's good. That's a good one. And as kind of closing thoughts…kind of reflecting on our conversation here. You know, obviously people's struggles are vary based on them, their personality, situation and what not. A lot of we've been saying is, you know, kind of “Don't give up. Keep trying. Push harder.” Yeah that kind of stuff. But I also want to say that it's not entirely up to you or it's not just about working hard or trying harder. Because sometimes, you know, you push too hard and you work too much and you get sick. And, you know, your body forces you to…to take a break. So I know for me one thing that's rejuvenating, and it can help me get out of a rut sometimes even when I feel like my rut is I have too much to do, is to act…intentionally take a break. Spend more time with the family. Unplug from work. Now some agents, you know, err on that side too much. Where, you know, spend too much time…they spend too much time relaxing. And not enough time working. I don't think that's our problem. And I think that's a lot of agents problems.  But give yourself permission to take a break, rejuvenate, spend time with family, you know, not always be…be working. Because sometimes that's all it takes to get out of a rut.  [Chris]: I couldn't agree with you more. And, you know, it's…sometimes it's hard for…for agents to take off, you know, an entire week from work. Just do a few long weekends every now and then. You don't have to…you don't have to take off a week or two weeks. Sometimes that's…that's not realistic. But make sure that your mental health is in check. And that you're taking some time to decompress and unwind and put things in perspective. What I've found is that when…when I'm able to do that, I'll come back with some new ideas. Because I'm not thinking about, you know, the day-to-day. I'll be able to just kind of, you know, day dream. Whatever it is. Read a good book and come back with, you know, a new perspective on what we're doing. So couldn't agree more with you Christian. Nate great points.  Everybody thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of re:Think Real Estate. If you haven't already ,please go to the website which is rtrepodcast.com. sign up for the newsletter so you never miss an episode, whenever we drop one, which is every single week. Thanks for tuning in everybody. We'll see you next week. [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode This week we discuss how to keep a real estate transaction moving forward. Listen in to hear ways to keep a real estate transaction on track to closing. Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 30:43 RTRE 57 –  Keeping the Real Estate Transaction Under Control [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Hey everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. We're so happy to have you here this week. We've got Nate back. He is not selling homes right now. We've got Christian here and as always here to talk real estate and all thing real estate related. So just before getting started we were talking about how agents can control the transaction better and make deals go smoothly for our clients. Nate you are always taking listings. What are some things that you are doing to make sure that you are on top of the transaction? [Nathan]: Well again I was start thinking about this a little bit more before we got to recording here but I…again I think you as an individual…we all have different types of personalities but it also setting an expectation to our client. Right. Whether you are the list side or the buy side but you have to set that tone up front.  I am a little bit of a controller. Actually a lot but I like to control the situation. You have to have confidence and knowledge in what you're doing to do all that but that is the way I operate. Most of my clients appreciate that. And the reason I brought this us is because I have got a buddy I met the other day. He is a lender and another lender he knew was taking a beating because unfortunately buyers are liars and this buyers agent is calling and is literally in Ethany [phonetics] and all over the phone. And you know at a certain point you gotta tell a client you know whether you're the agent or you are the agent or the client and your client is the buyer or lister, you gotta have control over the certain things you can't do.  For that lender the agent was his client, I would have fired him. I wouldn't have taken that you know, it is just the way it goes. Same thing, I don't tolerate certain things from my clients. I mean we call it respect. You know a lot of people like to whine in our business but it is OK to lose a client. It is OK not to get every client. And I think we often forget that. It is kind of one of that win at all cost mentality maybe. I don't like that. [Chris]: And I think if you are winning at all cost you are not factoring in what makes this industry fun, it is being able to enjoy it. [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: So obviously yeah I mean I feel like you are at the point in your career where yeah you can choose and have the option to fire your clients. But why was it…why do you think it got to that point in the transaction where the agent was calling and cursing at the lender? [Nathan]: Again, you know, I have said this before in our podcast. We want to be emotional. And I have always…I think the best thing I was ever taught when I got in this industry is to take my emotion out of it. [Chris]: Amen to that. [Nathan]: We realtors…You know I am gonna beat us up but as I have said the large majority we just love to feel so important, right? We love to know that “Hey look at me, hey look at me. I am an awesome, awesome relator. I am an awesome realtor”. Like… [Chris]: “Let me tell you about me. Let me tell you about me. It is all about me. Really what do you think about me”.  [Nathan]: Yeah. And so take the emotion out of it. You know, I don't know. [Christian]: Why do you…why do you suppose…I mean I have my thoughts on this. Why do you suppose he thought it was acceptable and call the lender and cuss him out and get all emotional about it? [Nathan]: Well the guy is an [censored] [laughter]. If he were listening, that is what I would tell him. Right.  [Christian]: OK.  [Nathan]: Bottom line is whether we are in realty or not you don't treat other people that way. Like you know… [Christian]: Why… [Nathan]: Yeah why did he treat somebody that way? Probably because he had really bad parents I don't know. [laughter]. [Christian]: Yeah I mean… [Chris]: A lot of people don't think about other people as actual beings. Human. I think that si the problem. [Christian]: I mean and I am on that. Obviously treat people as humans. Treat them with respect. But you know when it comes to like being professional in this industry I mean there is a lot of things that I like to push back on in industry like you know our job is to be the rock when our clients are emotional and deals you know on the brink of falling apart. I mean if we get emotional I mean I don't know any of you…I mean I know you guys have kids. I know that when I am near my kid's emotions and he is getting all ramped up and I am ramped up, that doesn't help. [Chris]: That makes it worse. [Christian]: Worse. But I mean if I can be a consistent calm and I am able to bring it back down to like “OK let's look at the reality of things if you know…” But I think a lot of agents kind of lose their cool because they think “I am advocating for my client. I am passionate when I am doing my job”. No no you are just being a [censored] and you are [censored] things up for your client.  [Nathan]: Yeah well said. [Chris]: So that gets to a great point on helping to control the conversation to control the transaction. Is controlling emotion. [Christian]: Definitely. [Chris]: Because if we can control our emotion and understand that when we are interacting with a client it is a very…they are in a heightened state of emotion. Right. Buying a…Buying a real estate parcel, right a house or a commercial or whatever it is, is extremely stressful for people because they have a lot invested in it. It is a lot of money. It is a big transaction.  So if something bad happens they are gonna think it is the worst thing in the world even if it is just you know a small hiccup. If something miniscule like good happens they are gonna think it is the best thing in the world. So if we can just kind of maintain a level of neither good nor bad on the emotional scale than holy hell like that really can do exactly what it does for your kid Christian. It is just like calm. When something bad goes on don't worry. Got it under control.  [Nathan]: I…you know I wasn't here the last episode we recorded because I had a deal going sideways. Even my client's father flew in from Boston. He was… [Chris]: To help the deal or to ruin the deal.  [Nathan]: Well at first I thought was honestly he was gonna ruin it. He was very emotional. It was his son's house. It is you know a lot of things going sideways on this.  [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: And you know he called me “What are we gonna do?”. And now we're just [inaudible] we're great. We're good buddies now. But I said “We're gonna work the problem.” “What do you mean?” I said “We're gonna work the problem. Work the problem”. I mean we get…this is 3 days of craziness in my life here recently. And he called me and said “Man I gotta tell you kept your cool.” Yeah I did because me getting upset is exactly what Christian said. It is just gonna make everybody else upset.  .So I am..I am like the captain of the ship right. If I am freaking out everybody else is freaking out. I am you know…It was not fun. But we got through it. And now here is a gentleman that like he is my biggest advocate that I could possibly have now. But I think if I would have reacted the way he was initially reacting it was gonna be really, really bad 3 days for me. And it turned out an Ok 3 days, you know what I mean. [Chris]: Yeah you gotta control that. [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: That is definitely one thing that agents can do in a transaction to kind of control the tone, control the pace. It is just control our own emotions because whether you want to believe it or not people are gonna mimic you. That is just how it happens. So obviously in the deal that you mentioned Nate the agent got upset with the lender. Obviously something at some point was not communicated clearly. Because if the lender had all the information and the agent had all the information and the buyer was given all the information than usually…I don't see a circumstance where somebody is gonna yell at somebody. Christian… [Christian]: It sounds like there is an unmet expectation there. I don't know. [Chris]: Yeah it sounds like it. So Christian when you are working with a buyer and you've got all these different wheels that are moving more so than with the seller, what are some things that you are doing to set expectation with people? [Christian]: Yeah I mean I say setting expectations specifically but communication in general that is probably the most important thing you can do as a real estate agent. [Chris]: I agree. [Nathan]: Yeah. [Christian]: Because you can be a terrible agent and totally incompetent but if you can communicate well you look like you're doing your job. You know now whether or not you do the back end and actually have knowledge and stuff that is all a different thing but you can be a rock star agent and know exactly what you're going but if your communication sucks your agent is gonna think you suck. [Chris]: It is like you're up on a show. You've got the curtain right and the clients are seeing what is in front not what is behind. [Christian]: right. And so that is a long answer to basically say I am mister kind of control freak I have got processes for everything. And part of the process is this template email as part of my CRM and first thing we do “Hey we are under contract. OK here is the 5 things you are gonna expect, here is what comes next, here is what we're gonna be doing for you in the next 3 days. Here is what you are gonna be doing”. You know. And after we get past our expectance commencing here is what it is gonna look like.  You know now that is not the only communication but that is like it sets the expectations up front you know because you get a contract and now there is a whole bunch of stuff going on and now they're stressing out. You know I can't be on the phone with them every 10 minutes you know and call them off the ledge. But if you set these expectations and say “This is what happens and this is what we're doing.” And you know checking in with them whenever there is a new bench mark. That has a calming effect you know on them as opposed to they don't hear anything. [Nathan]: Oh yeah you don't have to do a lot. I mean I send out Friday updates. That is what I call it. Friday updates. Every Friday I touch my clients no matter where we are. Just to give them something right. But I mean Christian you hit…all your points were spot on. Maybe you should just have the Christian Harris school of mentoring real estate agents [laughter]. All people can learn from that. [Chris]: Definitely. [Nathan]: You know communication is key. So…I am with you on that one. I am seeing great agents who know everything very well but they are horrible communicators. [Christian]: And to your point Nathan I mean, part of that communication is even if nothing is going on once a week touching in. I do my touching on Monday because typically like if you are working on a listing that is when it is going to be the most information that we can pass. So I do my updates on Mondays. The point is going on “Hey there is nothing going on and I just want you to know so that you are not wondering what is going on”.   [Chris]: Yeah for both of you to reach out and tell somebody nothing has changed, is one of the key differentiators that I have seen for people who are successful  and who are not. Because if you are having that communication level when nothing is happening they know “Oh OK nothing is happening but I am not hearing silence”. Because it is when the seller or the buyer, they hear silence that is when they get in their own head. And they start thinking “Well is this agent really doing things in my best interest. Are they really working on my behalf”. [Christian]: You have to interfere with the doubt and the emotions kind of you know. [Chris]: It comes in the silence. Exactly. Awesome so we're getting about halfway through the episode right now. I want to…we are trying out a new segment called re:Think Realty bonus thoughts where we have a topic to discuss that none of us have seen before. We're just pulling it out of an envelope. So this one is “Things seen in houses.” I am really not sure. I guess we're just supposed to talk about things that we have seen in houses. Things like “Where is Waldo”. Print frames. Eye level in the bathroom. Things like that. Blurred out dog face on a listing photo. [Christian]: So like funny or unique things that we have seen? Is that like… [Chris]: Yeah what are some unique things that you have seen in homes that you have listed? [Christian]: I have seen atrocious staging and unfortunately it was one of my first listings when I was trying out a stager so… [Chris]: Was it really? [Christian]: I had to fire that stager and the stager I use now was the person that came in like 2 days noticed and saved the day. But yeah I have seen that. I have noticed that you want to make sure you have a local stager. Here in Seattle we've got a couple of…Well we've got a lot of island like 107 islands. And one of the…I had a friend who had a mom who does staging so I gave her a hot but she was from one of the islands and she came over and did it and her idea of staging was weaker in floral prints. And it made it look like a grandma's house and it was not gonna fly in Seattle. [Chris]: Wow. [Christian]: That is unfortunately that was kind of my fault but that was something I have seen that was atrocious and made sure it didn't get to the listing photos and that was a learning experience. [crosstalk]. I am sorry? [Chris]: What do you got Nate? What is something you have seen in a house? [Nathan]: Guns. [laughter] [Christian]: Alright. [Nathan]: No, yeah I mean like literally guns just laying out around the house. [Chris]: Oh yeah I have seen that. [Nathan]: Like hand guns and rifles. And magazines in the club. I love guns don't get me wrong but I have got clients who have a kid with me and I am like “Holy snap” like you know what's going on. Like… [Christian]: That is a different world in Ohio I guess. [Chris]: It is not just Ohio we've got that in Georgia too. I have walked through homes and opened up a closet and boom there is a shotgun just sitting right there.  [Nathan]: That is…the oddest…[crosstalk] [Chris]: Yeah so one of the oddest things that I have ever seen in a home is in a basement they…put in multiple urinals in a restroom.  [Christian]: Like a restroom? [Chris]: Like a bathroom but then they…When they finished the basement they made it like a big bathroom with like 3 urinals but no divider. Really, really weird I have no idea why. [Christian]: Were they having like a fight club in the basement?  [Chris]: Yeah yeah it was really weird. I ended up not getting that listing. Because I don't think he liked what I said about marketing that. [Nathan]: Have you guys ever been in a home where they have pad locks on all the doors on the exterior like on a bedroom? [Chris]: I have seen that one. [Christian]: That is creepy as hell.  [Nathan]: I saw that a few weeks ago and I was like “That is really weird”.  [Chris]: Yeah.  [Christian]: I wouldn't want to know what they do. [Chris]: You are either doing some child abuse there or you just got a lot of guns in that room. [Christian]: It's sketchy. [Chris]: Whatever it is. Yeah it is in the living room [laughter]. “You are not getting into my living room. This is mine”. It could be like one of those…Did you all see the listing that it was making the rounds on a few weeks ago, the sex dungeon in the basement? [Nathan]: Awesome. [Chris]: Yeah I mean just things like that.  [Christian]: Yeah like the brokerage had some pretty fun stuff, the lighter side of real estate had some pretty funny things like that.  [Chris]: Yeah definitely the things that they come up with that is absolute hilarity. I can't believe that you know when Kellen [phonetics] when he did his deal to our show got picked up by lighter Real Estate. It was… [Christian]: That was awesome. [Chris]: It was in one of the shows. OK so yeah re:Think Real Estate bonus thoughts. Giving it a shot. Tell us what you think. Make sure you leave us a review on iTunes for anybody listening. I…shoot us a comment either on our Facebook page or on the website on rtrepodcast.com.  So back to today's topic which was the agent's control of the transaction. Where they can make a big impact. Nate what is one of the most impactful things that you find you are able to do for your clients outside of communication and setting expectations? [Nathan]: I don't know. This…I mean it sounds weird but just being upfront and honest. I feel like…I feel like there are so many agents that just are not forthcoming. Do you know what I mean? [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: Again it is the win at all cost or lie at all cost just to get the listing. I mean I just went on a listing in an apartment a couple of weeks ago and she walked me up in the room and she said “Nate what do you think about this room”. I started to laugh and she said “What is funny?” And I said “This is a [censored] ugly room”.  And that is all [laughter] I said all these things in here and in the bathroom too and she starts laughing and I say “What is so funny Jane?” And she says “I have had 3 other agents in here and none of them have had the balls to tell me what I already knew.” [laughter]. She said “I love that you already told me that it is ugly”. She said “I know it is ugly but everybody else says this is gorgeous, this is lovely, we will do this to make it look like this”. She is like “It is an ugly room. Why won't somebody just tell me the truth?” And I told her the truth and guess who got the listing?  [Chris]: There you go. There you go. [Nathan]: Tell the truth. If they don't like the truth than they will hire somebody else that will tell them whatever lie they want to hear. [Chris]: And if you feel like you're not up to telling somebody “This is a [censored] ugly room”. You don't have to say it like that.  [Christian]: You can be more diplomatic to be honest. [Chris]: Yeah be more diplomatic. [Christian]: That is not Nate's style. [Nathan]: That is not my style lets be honest. [Chris]: Just so that our audience knows. You don't have to do it Nate's way. You can tell somebody “No this room may not be up to the aesthetics as the rest of the house. We probably won't focus our marketing efforts on this room”. [Christian]: Or “You can burn this room down”. Or something like that. [Chris]: Yeah. Or “We could put up some fumigation label outside so nobody comes in”. Whatever it may be, but yeah on that line with honestly I think one thing agents have sometimes gotten self-caught up in is when they find something that they don't know they will try and [censored] their way out of it. Instead of saying “I don't know, let me get you the answer. We will make sure that we do this the right way”.  And people feel like you know winning at all cost they want to feel like the expert they always want to be in the expert shoes, they don't want to step back and admit you know, “There might be something I don't know here”. You know that is kind of one thing that I think goes a long way in controlling the transaction is don't be afraid to admit where there is something that you haven't dealt with. That is why it is important to have a good team unless you are Nate. In which case you are solo.  But if you've got a good team or resources or you know even friends and people that you respect in the industry and people that you can reach out to as long as they're you know you are following your broker's direction, you are making sure that everything is legal and ethical. I don't think we have to cover that at this stage in the game.  But yeah just making sure that where your shortcoming are you are not [censored] through them. Christian what do you think are some things that you now can help control the situation a little bit more throughout the transaction especially due diligence, getting into financing and getting up to the posing table? [Christian]: Sure so I mean there is obviously like a minimum standard of what an agent has to do. I am more like how much can I do to help an agent. You know. So for us you know I mean like we all know that is…you know good buyers. You know it is the buyers responsibility as part of their…you know once they get a contract and they're talking to a lender and get all the documents they need and stuff. They need to reach to interns company and get a policy in place and that kind of stuff.  But like that is not really on our shoulders but I still make it a point to you know a day or 2 after to send out an email and say “Hey this is a reminder, these is the things that you need to do. Make sure you get your lenders documents at town manor, make sure you get a quote on home insurance because they can't hold an appraisal before you do”. You know just stuff that is not necessarily in my ball part but it helps them know that, like “These are things that you need to do as part of the process”.  [Chris]: Yeah and going an extra mile is huge. We've got a lot of good feedback ever since we started implementing move easy, which ties into our transaction management system. So move easy when our agents mark that their client is under contract they get this digital check list and resource bank that tells them everything that they need to do during the move from “Don't forget to order your moving supplies, don't forget to line up your child care, you're getting all your pet immunizations” whatever it might be. We put all of it in a checklist and our agents…our clients seem to love it. For those that take advantage of it. [Christian]: And that as I recall it is free for agents right? [Chris]: Well it has to be set up on a brokerage level but yes it is free. [Christian]: So talk to your broker about setting it up for you. Or if you do something like client giant you know per agent they do kind of that concierge. They take care of all your utilities and that is helpful too. [Chris]: That's awesome yeah. And that was Jay O'Brien [phonetics] we had him on last year. Definitely a great episode to go and listen to about providing what was it 7 start service in a 3 start industry? [Christian]: Yes. 5 start service and 3 star…7 start... [Nathan]: 7 star… [Chris]: 7 star in a 3 star. [Christian]: It's a good… [Chris]: Yeah it's a good one. He's a really good person to listen to as well.  [Christian]: Yeah for the service yeah.  [Chris]: Yeah I mean there is so many things that we can do to go above and beyond. You know in Georgia the typical transaction is byer gets contract. Contract gets due diligence. Due diligence gets home inspection. After home inspection there is no other inspection done. They may be right on. I have never seen anybody do a lot of base paint test. They just kind of waive that and you know that is it.  But there is so many other things that we can do. We can advise for air quality testing if there are allergies present which that I have seen happen. Partnering them with an insurance agent to make sure that the home is insurable and check for what the previous claims are. Like getting a clue report pulled. All of these things are huge and can make a big impact in not only your client experience but also controlling the situation, making sure that things are discovered before we get too far. So that at the last minute when we get to the closing table things are reared in their ugly head.  [Christian]: So speaking of kind of above and beyond just us doing our jobs for our clients, I mean what are you guys thoughts about health warranties? Typically I have written those off because they are so limited typically. As far as what they replace in the time frame. But like recently I helped a friend of mine buy a house kind of outside of my normal area a little farther outside in Takoma. And the recommended inspector from some of my you know, agent friends down there, they actually include a very inclusive home warranty that I was very impressed with.  And no extra charge you know like because they already did the inspection on the roof so they guarantee the roof is gonna hold for 5 years and appliances for this long and you know all these extra stuff that seems like a real value add for no additional money either to your pocket or out of their pocket. But what are you guys thoughts on hat? [Nathan]: I mean here in Ohio it is long. A seller typically pays for home warranty. I like them but I like to choose it because there are certain home warranties that have what they are called caps or limitations on what they will cover. And if you know those I don't think that is a good value. The ones that I typically go with on home warranty has no caps. The other side of it form a listing side is they have seller protection from the moment we put that house on the market, the items are covered in warranty. But I think you have to articulate to your client that a home warranty is good for your major stuff. [Chris]: Yeah sure. [Nathan]: Your HVAC furnace. [Chris]: Sometimes. [Nathan]: Yeah well OK again here they're smart like don't go and have a home warranty claim when you had an inspection that said it was bad right. That is not the way to do it so… [Chris]: And on top of that if you have a 25 year old HVAC system it is not gonna pay for a brand new system if it [censored] out. It will have a maximum amount that it will pay towards but on a 25 year old system it is gonna not cover that switch over from you know what was it our 20 to now 4 10A or whatever the new coolant is. So you got explain that to your clients.  Again back to what Nate was saying. Expectation setting. Back to what Christian was saying. Expectation setting. Making sure that everybody understands where the value is when they get it. [Christian]: So what you're saying is that home warranty can be of value just make sure you do your research that is actually a quality home warranty that provides something. [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: 100%. [Chris]: On the first home that my wife and I ever purchased, 3 months in the stove shorted out. It came out 50 dollar call, rewired the entire thing and it worked fine. It is still in that home. But that was a lot less than it would have been you know to have you know a new stove or bring out an electrician so it has its values. [Nathan]: Yeah yeah, I just had to call a client and we were 2 days outside of closing an she was the seller and the hot water tank failed. We had seller protection on it. Guess what 65 dollar call, brand new hot water tank. [Chris]: There you go. [Christian]: Save your 500 dollars. [Nathan]: Saved probably more than that and you know she was already stressed out and called the client. I said “Let's have home warranty take care of that”. Again if you know what you're getting can be a great value. But… [Chris]: Absolutely.  [Nathan]: There are a lot of junk ones. [Chris]: And all of this…yeah all of this goes in line with taking control of the transaction and making sure that we are directing it in a way to get it to the closing table and we are directing it in a way that is in our client's best interest.  [Christian]: Yeah and speaking of staying in control of that transaction one of the things that I see…I moved to a whole other topic on this whole episode, but is that you know what do you do to continue to provide value and stay in front of your clients after closed? Or what the agent is gonna feel at that? [Nathan]: That is a whole episode.  [Chris]: Yeah that is a whole episode. Why don't we get into that next week [laughter]?  [Christian]: OK well I will give a little teaser than. [Chris]: Let's give a teaser and we will get into it next week.  [Christian]: What we started to do is a sort of called home button and that has been great because it is cheap. Right now it is only 25 dollars. You know, to use it and you get it for 500 clients. But basically it provides every month to your home buyer, it provides them with an automated like “Here is what your home is worth and if you refine,  this is what it would look like, if you are AIRBNBed one of your rooms this is the value if you added 300 dollars a month extra payment you know you would pay this much less over the course of yadayada”. So basically provides all these really easy to understand analytics for a client's house that is branded to you.  [Chris]: Awesome.  [Christian]: And instead of you know you sending out some junk email drip thing every month where they probably don't even look at, here is something that directly relates to their house that they're probably gonna look at it. And you can see all the analytics and back end when they're click on it. [Chris]: Thanks for tuning into re:Think Real Estate. Make sure you join us next week as we talk about how to provide value post-closing and control that relationship into the future. Christian you gave a great teaser on that. For anybody who hasn't please go to rtrepodcast.com. Sign up for the newsletter so you never miss when we drop an episode and leave us a 5-star review on iTunes. Have a great day everyone.  [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode In today's episode Chris and Christian briefly discuss their thoughts on home automation and smart technology. Let us know what smart technology you prefer in the comments! Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 13:51 RTRE 56 –  Where's Tech Going? [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris. My man Nate is again out selling homes so he can't be with us here today. But we do want to make sure you're here with us getting the re:Think Real Estate treatment every Monday. So thanks for tuning in. Christian what is going on my man? [Christian]: Hi, I was just thinking about the future of the business and stuff and things and… [Chris]: Yeah what do you think… [Christian]: Things I am not doing because… [Chris]: What do you think it will be like in the future? Take a wild guess. [Christian]: Well I mean I spend a lot of time thinking about marketing, positioning that kind of stuff. [Chris]: OK. [Christian]: You know about 10 years ago podcasting was the new rage. You know it seems like real estate is finally as an industry is catching on to maybe podcasting as a viable medium. We have… [Chris]: Viable I don't know. It is a medium.  [Christian]: Viable like I mean the interwebs [phonetics]. It is not going anywhere. It might be here to stay. [Chris]: Yeah it is here to stay. [Christian]: Yeah you know I have been doing my own podcast for almost 3 years now and I felt like when I started that I was kind of like behind the curb. But I was just kind of thinking you know kind of the newer trends, and I think that there is a big…there is gonna a big push maybe or you know the masses are gonna start adopting kind of the smart homes stuff as opposed to just…I think previously it has been just kind of the more tech savvy people coming out of the fringes.  But I think with Alexa and Echos and Google homes and stuff become more popular as I think that audio content is gonna start becoming you know audio first content is gonna start becoming huge you know. I mean video is just so great but the problem with videos is you've gotta be dedicated to watching that video. And it is the only thing you can do. While audio podcasts are all flash briefing all that stuff that you can be doing something else. You could be driving a car or in your home you can be working. So I think it can be more…as our attention it continues to be demanded in multiple directions so it is gonna be more of a push in adoption for audio first stuff. [Chris]: Like audiobooks right?  [Christian]: What is that? [Chris]: It is like audio books. You just…The way our cars work now with the Bluetooth the moment you get out of the car it pauses, when you get back into the car it keeps going. You know, and you can be driving down the road of in your office and it just the continuity it stops and goes and keeps going and you are able to just load more content while you are doing other thing.  [Christian]: Yeap, exactly you know I was thinking about how this relate to real estate. You know how with the help of an agent or brokerage. And I think it is you know it could be another piece of the content marketing, positioning piece. You know, for me I have been thinking like OK you know I want to start like an Alexa flash briefing, right.  You know those are basically mini 1 to 2 minute…think of them as mini podcast and so you know if you have Alexa at home or Echo you could say…you could enable these skills and say you know, “Alexa play…play my flash briefings for the day”. And what would be a set up 1 minute Gary V sample and then you know social marketing with Chelsey Pites [phonetics] you know or whoever you subscribe to it will give you the little 1 minute blur you know. And the thing that is different about them is that you can't go back. It is kind of like it is today and that is it.  [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: So it is very try and forget but I am thinking like if this starts becoming the norm, the thing, you know if people start going to their Alexa for “Hey Alexa what is the weather, what is the traffic, what is the housing market doing?”. You know like there is gonna be more and more skills built out you know by brokerages, by industry leaders, by marketers you know, all that kind of stuff.  So how can you get in front of that? Because right now there is not very much in the real estate space. You know the couple I know about gear towards the real estate agents, geared towards the industry not towards consumers. So what would that look like? You know. [Chris]: So I am not too familiar with like Alexa and Google Home. And all that because frankly I don't want anybody listening to me and I don't need more tech for my kids to interact with right now. [Christian]: But they are already listening. [Chris]: I know I know. [Christian]: Here. Everything [laughter]. [Chris]: Yeah well so probably. But…so we haven't gone on board with the smart home yet. Our home is dump. It was built in the 70s. It is as dump as dump can be. But I did see an article the other day about some technology that is gonna become an outleap next year. OK so mid to late 2020 and we have a ton of cool things on the horizon.  So, Apple is gonna come out with their glasses. And I saw a report on this. And the things are super lightweight and I can just imagine right in 5 or 10 years you are driving down the street or you are in a showing, and you've got your real estate app on your phone and as you walk through the house it is giving you all the details about every room. It is giving you all the updates. You are driving down the street and there is a house for sale and just in your glasses, on your display it is telling you all the price, the bath and bed features, you know.  That is gonna be the world that we live in in a few years. It's…we're not far away from it and you know technology is exponentially increasing. That is not slowing down anytime soon. So like it's gonna be crazy where this all goes. I don't know about Alexa and all that. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: But you're probably right, pretty soon I am sure I will probably have one too.  [Christian]: Yeah well possibly I mean you know, it is hard to tell where the trend is gonna go. Because you know, Google has their glass and that was a major flop. Now maybe it was just ahead of it's time and people weren't ready for it. Maybe it is a platform issue you know, whatever, but yeah we will see. I mean I am definitely seeing the audio…audio first medium catching traction with masses. [Chris]: Good. [Christian]: It is not nearly as rare as the people have you know Google Home or an Echo. [Chris]: Well if you are listening to this episode, tell your friends to listen to this too because podcasts are cool y'all. [Christian]: Yeah and so initially…so my journey into the smart homes started with the Google Home. Right. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: Because I think its…we bought a new house and we bought a Nest. And when I bought it had like a have and for 20 bucks you could get to buy a Google Home. You know medium or whatever I am not sure.  [Chris]: Yeah why not. [Christian]: And I was thinking “Hey you know Google versus Amazon of course the Google one is gonna be able to do way more”. But it doesn't. Like it's kind of weak. So…But you know as I experimented with the Alexa app which you can actually download for your phone and essentially you know use the same…the exact same commands and just integrate with your house, I started enabling skills and messing around with that.  And I am like “OK well this is cool”. And so I bought one of the nicer Echos because it has a better speaker because I didn't realize…well the big thing is it is able to like “Hey play jazz music or … you know whatever and it will start playing you know a Spotify channel or you know if it is Google it will play Google play or you know an Echo it will play your Amazon music.  And so you essentially have you know these diverse play list at your fingertips and so I wanted a decent sounding stereo and like the Sonos are actually integrated with the…with the Alexa platform.  [Chris]: The Sonos speaker? [Christian]: Yes. So there are some cool options out there but like that's what we use it for a lot but once you start getting like smart plugs and a Nest of [inaudible] stuff you can set up essentially you know, I don't know, work flows or what do they call it. Something different on the platform. But to say you know, “Alexa good morning and do you have a turn on your lights and start a soft jazz music and turn your heat up” or you know whatever you program it to do. You know. Now we could just make the argument “Hey we are getting lazy”.  But I think the future is going in that direction where I think the people are having to pull out their phones or their watches and like touch the screen is gonna become antiquated and too much of a pain. And they much really just be able to say “Hey do this thing” and have an app launch or have a series of functions happen. So for… [Chris]: Absolutely. [Christian]: So for real estate I think there is some huge, huge… [Chris]: And it is kind of cool. Like “Amazon prepare my house for a showing” and then everything kicks on.. the oil diffuser starts making it smell like cookies. The lighting dims, the music is playing. Like that would be a pretty cool Alexa app. [Christian]: Well yeah I mean and that is if you have a smart phone. It is easy I mean. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: Set the workflow for this trigger starts playing this music station and let them. I think for real estate you know my point in this is I think it is starting to get beyond novelty to practical and mainstream. And I think the real estates… [Chris]: And it is inexpensive enough to do that now. [Christian]: Right exactly I mean there are nicer…I think the…I think the Echo starts at 40 bucks and the one I have has a decent speaker and it is like 110. You know like you spend hundreds on the Sonos but you know if you want a rocking audio system but…I think for real estate there is opportunities for things like flash briefings and different things that would put you as a leader in technology in providing value and giving up to the community.  You know it is just…And you could repurpose it from a Facebook live or Instagram live. Cut out the audio and there is your daily or weekly briefing or whatever, you know. So there is definitely ways to leverage content you are already creating for these new platforms to continue building your brand.  [Chris]: Sounds good. I will have to get on that Alexa new wagon. I am not there yet. We'll give it time. [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Well I mean the only thing…[crosstalk]. Unfortunately you know my crystal ball is broken. [Christian]: Yeah is that why you are not rich?  [Chris]: Yeah it is one of those things you know where most predictions never come true but now it is like we are watching this app and… [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: There is definitely something that happens over the next few years. And… [Christian]: Well right and I think the biggest challenge right now with where technology is, is lack of integration. Because you know Google has a proprietor thing. Amazon has theirs you know… [Chris]: They are gonna talk to each other. [Christian]: You know they're different IOT…internet…internet of things. You know I don't think there is a standard protocol so you will have to get stuff that is compatible otherwise you have 2 or  different systems that are smart separately but they don't integrate. Well that is more of a pain than it is worthy. You know. [Chris]: Yeah or you find some manufacturer that makes 2 versions. One that integrates with Alexa and one that integrates with Google. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: Pain in the butt. Well I mean it all makes sense. It is gonna be interesting to where this all goes. But I will be interested to see in a few years if you are not right, and that audio and flash briefings become a more important thing in real estate.  [Christian]: Well I am interested to hear what our listeners think. You know leave comment as in  the future how they are using this kind of leading edge technology whether that is audio or you know VR or AR you know. [Chris]: Absolutely. So please leave a comment. Let us know what you think. Send us a message. Contact us. Hit the form on the website rtrepodcast.com. Christian if you are right on this than maybe in the near future we need to step in some flash briefings together for the re:Think podcast.  [Christian]: Sounds good and you owe me a drink. [Chris]: Argh always. Get yourself over to Georgia and trust me drinks are on the house.  [Christian]: Alright. [Chris]: Alright everybody thank you so much for tuning in. This has been re:Think Real Estate. We'll catch you next week.  [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Download this Episode Body language is one of the most important tools in your arsenal to build a rapport with your clients. Today we discuss how much more important your body language is to your clients than your words and your tone. We discuss the ins and outs of the handshake, when to avoid closing the deal, and what different signals mean. Tune in and don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes! Our body language conveys a clear message. Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 25:59 RTRE 53 – How Body Language Can Improve Your Real Estate Business  [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Everybody welcome back. This is re:Think Real Estate your number one source for real estate, business, news, tech and tactical advice. Today we're talking about body language and why that's important in your real estate business. Christian. What do you think about body language buddy? [Christian]: The language of the body. [laughter] I think it's good. I think it's something we probably don't focus on enough because you know there's a lot of subconscious queues that we take from tone of voice and the…and the disposition of someone's body that we don't really recognize. You know we focus on scripts and what we say but you know it's actually a relatively small amount of our communication, affective or not is through our words. [Chris]: Absolutely. So interestingly enough if you haven't…to anybody out there if you haven't researched how body language works and how communication works, about 7% of all communication is vocal. Those are the words that I speak. The words coming out of my mouth. And 30…what was it? 38% of all of it was actually vocal. That is the inflection, the tone of our voice makes up more of the communication that we're…in the message that we're sending to others, than do the actual words that we speak today. [Christian]: Wait is that why my wife is always upset with me? And she never focuses on what I say but how I say it? [Chris]: Yes. Yeah that's actually… [Christian]: Lessons to learn there. OK.  [Chris]: And yeah. So interestingly enough that you bring that up. People that are naturally able to read a room, so if you've come across somebody and you're like “Wow they're very perceptive”, it's because they pay attention to body language. And women are way better at this than men are. Just naturally they stop and think.  But 55% of all communication is through body language. It's nonverbal. It's in the gestures that we make. It's in how we present ourselves. And, you know, for anybody watching this you're not gonna see anything that I am doing but you'll hear in the vocal inflection more than you'll pay attention in the words that I am saying just statistically. So please keep listening to my inflection. [laughter] But it's extremely important. And I think that in real estate we have all these sales gurus that are telling you “This is what to say, this is what to say. Call them. This is what you need to say to somebody”. They're writing scripts down. They're telling you how often you need to call somebody. They're telling you when like who you need to call. You need to call all your neighbors and you're doing circle prospecting and you're inviting them all to you open house.  But it doesn't tell you that…none of these coaches talk to you and say “And by the way when you call them don't do this and talk like “Hi my name is Josh and I am a realtor and I am listing the house down the street. We have an open house coming up and I would like to invite you there [flat intonation]”. Because you're gonna put everybody to sleep. Not only that but nobody wants to talk to somebody that they don't know and they're not passionate or enthusiastic about anything that they're saying so the inflection makes a difference. What do you think Christian? [Christian]: I think you're real spot on there sparky. [Chris]: Just keep petting my ego. [Christian]: Yes. [Chris]: Like words I never get tired of hearing. “You're right”. [Christian]: Yes it's interesting because so much you know with something like google something like audio podcast, all you're hearing is the voice of the content and the inflections. Right? So like on my other podcast it is interview based. It's the Sea Town podcast. What I started doing is instead of having the guest sit you know across a chair across from me, everybody sitting and talking, I use my stand desk and we put the microphone in the middle and we stand. And have a conversation.  Because there is actually you know statistics that talk about, you know, you actually have a lot more energy naturally and a lot more expressive when you're standing and you can talk with your hands and you're not like standing in a chair. And so you can actually hear them in someone's voice as far as their energy level and their excitements if they're standing versus if they're sitting. You know.  And I notices that myself. Like if I am monologue-ing or something I have to be really intentional like if I am doing video I need in my head I need to be super over the top excited because it might actually come out to the other person like I am talking normally. [Chris]: Yeah and I mean it's really weird because a lot of people talking about the inflection in your voice like if you're selling something you need to be passionate about it. Because people hear the passion more than they hear the words that you're saying. So if you're sitting down with a seller or a buyer and you're talking about “Oh this is the process and this is how we're gonna help you buy the house and we're gonna get you prequalified [flat tone]” versus “Hey this is awesome. You're at a stage now where we have a lot to do and here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get you prequalified and you're gonna talk to X,Y,Z lenders and once we get the prequalification down we're gonna start doing the home search. So you've given me some of the things and…[excited tone]”.  The message is completely different. Inflection in how you talk. People can hear passion. People can hear whether or not you actually care about what you're doing. [Christian]: They can tell whether or not you believe in the product you are selling so to speak. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: “I think everybody should own a home” [flat tone] “I THINK EVERYBODY SHOULD OWN A HOME” [excited tone]. [Christian]: Your examples are killing me. Stop. Stop.  [Chris]: [laughter] So I mean and then it comes down to like the body language. Right? So once you're actually in front of people how important is body language? Well not only it is 55% of all communication but it…body language permeates even our vocal. It permeates our vocabulary. Right? You're got phrases like ‘to shoulder a burden'. ‘To face up to it'. ‘Keep your chin up'. ‘Put your best foot forward'. They all describe how we can approach things and inevitably these phrases give an innate understanding of what that message is supposed to portray. Even if you're not able to communicate it verbally. Right? People just understand what those mean. And that's because we understand the messages that come across through body language.  All right so here is some things that we could talk about how we can add body language into your repertoire. How you can focus on improving things. So there was a study done on using your index finder to point. And first off you should never point with your index finger mainly because there is lots of cultures that consider it rude.  Secondly because this study had 2 different audiences, same speaker, same speech. In one speech the speaker was pointing with his index finger. In the other speech he was gesturing with his hands open, palms open, hands up. And 80…over 80% of the audience was receptive and thought that he was well mannered in the…in the speech where palms were open. Under 40%...actually over 40% of the audience thought he was arrogant and did not know what he was talking about in the speech where he was pointing with his index finger. So there is some food for thought there. [Christian]: I mean I find that pretty interesting. I was talking about a case study. What…if our listening are thinking to themselves “What are we talking about when we're talking about body language?”. Like the things that come to my mind are the obvious ones like if I am sitting you know leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed I am giving off, you know,  the impression that I am closed and I don't give a [censored] about what you're saying. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: If you know I am generally sitting with open posture I am receptive to what someone is saying or respectful or whatever. [Chris]: Yeah. And… [Christian]: Here are some examples. [Chris]: In most times you're right. Now there is a few reasons people are gonna sit with their arms crossed though. People are gonna sit with their arms crossed either they don't give a [censored] about what you're saying and they just…they…nothing you say is gonna get through to them or maybe they're anxious. Maybe they're nervous.  All 3 of those feelings will come across when somebody is crossing their arms. For example, you know crossing arms isn't just it as a…crossing arms is the most common especially for kids. But as people grow up they get more kind of conscious about what they're doing with their hands and arms. They start taking on more of a subtle role.  So if anybody has ever watched Prince Philip. Prince Philip will grab and adjust his cufflink which is his arm crossing his body. It's a nervous tick that he has and he does it whenever he is in large crowds. Same thing Queen Elisabeth. She will clutch a purse. She will hold with both hands so she is crossing her body. And people, adults do this all the time.  So it's just watching for the subtleties and it's learning to understand what they're actually doing. And this is super important because Christian if you're sitting across from me and you're a seller and you're talking about listing your house and your arms are crossed it's not a good time for me to go in for a close and ask you to sign stuff. [Christian]: [laughter] Yeah it doesn't seem like a lot of buy in, you know. [Chris]: No it's time for me to start digging in and asking you questions to find out what's really bugging you. So I mean… [Christian]: What would you say… [Chris]: Go head. [Christian]: Sorry didn't mean to interrupt your example. I was gonna say what are some examples for real estate agents to come across as far as like being in tune not only to your own body language but to your client's body language as far as what they may be saying without saying it? [Chris]: Well for us we want to make sure that we're doing a few things. 1, we want to be open. We want to gesture with our hands open not with our index fingers. We never want to cross our body so when we're seating we're not crossing our legs. Now women in you're wearing a skirt that is an exception. But we're not fidgeting. We're…our arms are open. Our arms and hands are not touching. Arms are not crossed. Sitting upright with a good posture. Those are all extremely important.  Second your handshake. Your handshake is incredibly important. You want to have a firm handshake. There is 3 different styles of handshake and they all mean different things, right. If your handshake is palm up than that's kind of a submissive handshake. Those are things that you would give when you're meeting the pope, right. Somebody who is in a very important higher up kind of status.  And then for the opposite of that is the palm down handshake where you are displaying authority. It could be a power symbol. So for the most part when you're meeting with people especially clients, people that you're doing business with you want to make sure that their handshake is vertical. Right, your palm is up and down and you want it to be firm.  And then starting off with a good handshake because once…if the handshake gets [censored] up, if somebody misses whatever it is just grab their elbow, do it again. Say “Hey let's get this right” because doing something like that is gonna show them that you care enough about them to make sure that you're getting off on the right foot and you're gonna make sure that the meeting is important. [Christian]: Say when I mess up on a handshake I just go in for the awkward like “Hey bro…” bro hug you know. That usually…wait I don't close my deals.  [Chris]: Yeah never met someone with those [laughter]. That usually doesn't work.  [Christian]: Yeah I wouldn't recommend it on the first meeting. [Chris]: So there is actually ways that you can really make a handshake more powerful. But if somebody is…if you just know them, right, it creeps people out if you like touch them and give them a handshake. But if you just spend time like an hour getting very personal with somebody about what they have going on like when you shake their hand to leave you can grab the outside of their hand. Say “Thank you for your time.” Or maybe their elbow and just handshakes shouldn't be more than 3 seconds. [laughter]. If they are they get creepy. But just doing that extra gesture shows that you care, that you can empathize with what they go through.  It's just not something that you do right when you meet somebody cos than it's weird and creepy and they're gonna think that you're inauthentic. So I mean there is a lot of things that we can do as agents to use our body language to make a…the experience more warm, more inviting for our clients and the people that we're meeting on a daily basis.  [Christian]: Alright. So…So Chris give me some examples. Let's do a brief list of body language to dos and body language to don'ts [laughter]. Things not to do. Let's start with some stuff that we should be doing like specifically regarding, you know, maybe common interactions that a real estate agents would have with a client. What are some things they wouldn't be conscious of when meeting a client? [Chris]: Well when you're meeting a client you always want to make sure that you're making eye contact. That you're not crossing your hands. You're not fidgeting with anything. You are giving them your full attention. It's important that you have good posture. That you're upright. Shows that you are caring and paying attention on what they have to say. [Christian]: OK now what if let's say they are from an Asian background. Because a lot of these body language to dos are relevant to the American culture which you know to some other cultures we seem aggressive. [Chris]: Yeah we definitely do. [Christian]: But the Asian cultures you know it's respectful to you know not make eye contact and look down you know or be more passive you know. [Chris]: Culture is definitely something to pay attention to because it is extremely important. There is a great book out there and if I can remember it I will post it in the links. Which is basically like a cheat sheet of how to interact with like 100 different cultures. And what's…what's considered appropriate and what's not. So that's really up to the individual to know who they are gonna be meeting with. And to make sure that they understand how they need to act.  Body language though is gonna be pretty universal. If you are fidgeting is gonna come across that you are not interested. If you're crossing it's gonna be closed off. And the reason body language is so universal is because that's how communication happened before language developed. Like we had silent movies. Silent movies worked before audio came into the movies. People understood what was going on and that was universal. People can understand a story based off of not having words. [Christian]: Sure interesting, interesting reminder yeah. [Chris]: Sure there are cultural things but for the most part you want to be open, you don't want to have anything crossed because you want to be considered trustworthy. You don't want to touch your face. You don't because touching your face is like a nervous tick for a lot of liars so you just want to stay away from all of that and just focus purely on what the other person is doing. Don't fidget. Pay attention. [Christian]: But what about the…the common…I don't know if it's a myth or not. You know I have heard that if people are lying they always look up and to the left. You know like that kind of stuff I mean like is…Because I know like when I think. Like if someone asks me a question I have to think about it. I notice that I look away. While I am thinking I don't look back like I don't know like that is subconsciously picked up or matters. You can't really control it. [Chris]: Well people pay attention to that stuff but I don't know if it's about a lie. So for that I think people look up in a way because they want to focus on their thought process and not be distracted by the person that is right in front of them. You want to pay attention to the person as much as possible. And sometimes they might ask you a difficult question and you need to think about some details but I will try not to pure away if possible. But you know that is a little outside of my realm. I am not too familiar how the unconscious works with you know look up and left or look up and right. [Christian]: Very true.  [Chris]: Based off of what you were saying. [Christian]: OK so what…what…So getting into some of the things not to do. You know you mentioned you want to focus on the other person. What about when you focus on in the wrong way of too much and you know people get a creepy vibe? What are some body language things that give off that that ? You don't want it. [Chris]: I think [crosstalk]. For me really the worst is a bad handshake. The dead fish, the like bone crushes. The…the sweaty palm I mean it's…those handshakes, those meetings never go well. Somebody comes in and they're meeting with me and they come off the back like immediately I need to go the restroom and like wash my hands. And I understand, there is a certain…there is a percentage of the population that is like…somewhere between 10 and 15% of the population I think that suffers from a medical condition where they just overly sweat. I get it. But if you're going into a business meeting before you go in have a handkerchief. Get a little dried off there and than, than start.  [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: And I would probably say that the limp, the limp fish is like way worse the bone crushes. That's probably the second worst in my book. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: But that's like to me that's like the holy grail. You don't violate that. [Christian]: Sure. Would you say that…that you kind of…I know it is a general statement but that…what does a handshake say about someone like either a bone crashes to me that says hey they are trying to…they are coming in aggressive. And they're trying to dominate the other person. [Chris]: Exactly. [Christian]: While the limp fish is like super passive, not gonna have an opinion about things. Doesn't want to offend people. [Chris]: So the limp fish is an interesting one because for the most part yes. They're like…they're the message it conveys is that they're submissive. They're not gonna be very strong. But there's a cavy out there. If they work in a profession where they use their hands like if they're a surgeon don't expect to get a strong handshake from a surgeon. Especially if they're a very good one because their hands are insured. Because if…if they just do that naturally like all means to protect the tool that is their livelihood.  But yeah typically the bone crusher is a power move. People don't do that on accident. They do that because they want to make an impression. And I think a lot of people come in with the bone crushes thinking “Oh I am gonna show them that I really mean business and I am gonna crush their hand and show them that this is a strong handshake”. But the reality is that if you go to do something like that to somebody and you are not their superior, you are not in a position of authority with them it's a complete turn off. I had a home inspector do that for me and you know what I am not messing with them. I don't want to deal with anybody that is just trying to put on a show. And you know be more important than they are. Just vertical… [Christian]: Type a yeah? [Chris]: Yeah. Firm match the grip of somebody…of the other person. That's all you gotta do. It's not hard. It's not rocket science. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: But I am finding out that like I don't know, did your dad ever teach you how to do a handshake when you were younger?  [Christian]: My dad didn't teach me [censored]. I hope he doesn't listen to this podcast. [laughter]. Not now there wasn't a lot of intentional training that I remember from my dad unfortunately. [Chris]: OK so a lot of…a lot of man get that. [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Women don't. That's not something that is taught to women. So women have to get out and learn these stuff because they will come into…if a woman comes in and they do a very weak handshake in a business environment they're gonna be thought of as feminine. And they're gonna be treated as such.  If they don't come in with that firm handshake that says “Hey I am here I am on equal ground with you and we're gonna do this” than there is…it's been traced that they'll be treated differently. Conversely if they come in with a bone crusher nobody is gonna want to deal with them. They're here for a power play which… [Christian]: Sure. I am sure there is gonna be some subconscious double standard where they're gonna be “Me and you rather as dudes and not used to think in terms of…and OK if a guy you know does this thing this is my response but if a woman does it I am gonna think about it differently” you know like… [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: Yeah that can definitely be unfair in the business world. You know kind of a double standard that we subconsciously apply.  [Chris]: Definitely. There is a great book for anybody who is interested in learning more about body language and how it can impact and shape how your business ventures go. Not only in your business life but it also talks about things that you need to know in your daily life. How to read a bar, how to read a party and you're able to see how people are feeling based off of how they interact. The book is called The Definitive Book of Body Language. The Hidden Meaning Behind People's Gestures and Expressions. By Allen and Barbara Peas [phonetics]. It's a great book. Currently reading it now and somewhat sound like an expert based off of that but don't take it for granted.  [Christian]: Oh yeah. [Chris]: I get my info from books.  [Christian]: I will make sure it doesn't go to your head. [Chris]: Thank you. I appreciate that. No it's definitely good stuff. It's important that we pay attention to how we're communicating with people not just verbally, not just vocally but also through our body language. So everybody thank you so much for tuning in. This has been another episode of re:Think Real Estate. We'll be back next week. Nate will be back. And I think we've got some guests coming up soon. So we will have some good guests. We'll see you soon.  [music]  [Chris]: Thanks for tuning in this week's episode of the re:Think Real Estate Podcast. We would love to hear your feedback so please leave us a review on iTunes. Our music is curtesy of Dan Koch K-O-C-H, whose music can be explored and licensed for use at dankoch.net. Thank you Dan. Please like, share and follow. You can find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/rethinkpodcast. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone and have a great week.  [music]  

Panel: Joe Eames Chris Fritz Divya Sasidharan Special Guest: Guillaume Chau In this episode, the panel talks with Guillaume Chau who is apart of the VueJS core team, a frontend engineer at Livestorm, and an open source contributor. The guest and the panelists talk about plugins, Webpack, Vue CLI, and much more! Check out today’s episode to hear all of the details.  Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 1:00 – Chris lists who is on the panel along with today’s guest. Chris: Who are you and what are you working on? 1:50 – Guest: I am working on a startup in Paris. I am calling in from Lyon, France. 2:12 – Panel: Late there? 2:15 – Panel: Almost time for dinner? 2:21 – Guest: Yes, it’s cooking now! 2:26 – Panel asks a question. 2:43 – Guest answers the question. 3:14 – Panel: Anyone who didn’t want to be an expert, they don’t’ have to worry about how things tie together – you could help them with their configurations? 3:36 – Guest: A lot of the work is done for you with the configurations so you can start writing your apps. 3:53 – Panel: How is 3 different from 2? 4:06 – Guest: It’s like a new tool entirely. It’s working very different, too, with a different system. It has a different template base.  5:53 – Panel: To combine templates you have to understand it well, like different Webpacks. 6:12 – Guest: Regarding Webpacks and their configurations... 6:52 – Panel: With the template situation there was an issue where they would make their project and as new versions of Webpack came out...and new versions of Babble, and they will have to manage the dependencies of all of these. There might be some plugins that only work with x, y, and z. IT can be frustrating – can version 3 take care of this for you? 7:44 – Guest answers the question. 9:24 – Panel: How do you update plugins? 9:29 – Guest. 10:26 – Panel: Upgrade your plugins then as long as all of your plugins are the same version it’s okay? 10:34 – Guest: Yes. You can upgrade your... 11:38 – Chris: Divya, you just gave a talk (London) on...plugins, right? 11:50 – Divya: Yes. We talked about Webpack configurations. For example, if there are some testing libraries you can essentially setup a UCLI plugin to create a test – create a test folder – plugins let you generate files or folders (structure your project in a certain way). In London I talked about server less functions with... 13:30 – Panel: Any kind of pattern you want to use in different applications you can wrap that up in a plugin? 13:42 – Divya: Yes. Exactly. Instead of repeating yourself you can wrap it up. It’s really handy. 14:00 – Panel asks a question. 14:02 – Divya: You could do that... 14:10 – Panel: ...or a graph QL – Yes! 14:20 – Guest. 14:33 – Chris: Any thing that third-party plugins don’t have access to? 14:43 – Guest. 14:54 – Chris. 15:08 – Guest. 15:25 – Divya: ...if you want a UCLI service...and so you can grab those commands and add-on those commands and using those default commands. You have access to those commands, so you don’t always... 17:02 – Chris: Like deploy? 17:11 – Divya: Yes. 17:17 – Guest. 17:19 – Divya. Divya: Do you have strategies on how you go about testing your plugins? 17:35 – Guest: Yes, I do. 19:23 – Panel: So this is like end-to-end test for a CLI tool? 19:33 – Guest. 19:50 – Panel: Is there documentation for all of this? 19:59 – Guest. 20:14 – Divya: I think the way I’ve done tests is to edit an example a test project as a local dependency and then seeing that it works. I want to make sure that it works. Divya: And the other way I’ve done it is VUE CLI it is undocumented at the moment. You can test your CLI plugin from within the plugin itself. 21:55 – Guest: I’ve used some of those before. 22:08 – Chris: Speaking of the UI that is something I’d love to talk about. It seems unique to me – a CLI tool that has a UI that is built along with it. That seems strange to some people – how does that work and WHY would you need it? 22:42 – Guest: I’ll start with the WHY. It is way more powerful and as a greeter the API interface is more fixable so you can choose different options. For example when you create a project you can set different things. You basically have to name the project and you have simple options to choose form. Now it’s basically a really fixable system with plugins and stuff like that. I thought it would be nice to free it from the terminal. The best way to do that was creating a graphical interface. The main advantage of this was that you could add more information and explanations to what is going on. You can also create better interface. Guest: Also, it currently improves discoverability. 25:30 – Chris: You could do a search in the UI and type in the name of something you are working with and then your plugin would show up in the list – and then it would just be added to their project. That’s nice so they don’t have to go to the NPM or doing the README. 26:07 – Guest. 26:14 – Divya: I think it’s nice b/c I have used it extensively for my plugin. I want to see what hasn’t been taken already. I have a way of organizing my modules and I’ve used to it see what names have already been taken? 26:47 – Guest: I think sometimes... 27:15 – Divya: The feature that you are able to run tasks from the UI is nice. 27:55 – Chris: It sounds like it offers a nicer way to view a lot of things. One of the other advantages (that I found) is that I have a configuration to the listing rules to Vue – you can pick the exact rule set that you want to use. Normally when you look at a configuration file, you don’t know what rule sets are available, you don’t know what options are available. All of this you have to look at documentation. You can see descriptions of what each rule does. You can do so much in the UI. 29:19 – Guest. 29:40 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 30:25 – Chris: Do they still need a terminal? 30:35 – Guest. 32:41 – Chris: That would be cool! 32:46 – Guest. 33:09 – Chris: They still need a little terminal knowledge right? 33:15 – Guest: Yes. 33:33 – Chris: They need a little terminal knowledge, they need to install the package, then they need to run VUE UI, then they can do anything from the terminal inside of the UI? 33:55 – Guest: You can create and import existing projects. 34:28 – Panel. 34:33 – Chris. 34:36 – Panel: It’s already active? 34:43 – Guest: I would like to talk about what I did in London. That conference I talked about... 37:00 – Panel. 37:07 – Guest. 37:20 – Panel: Nice! 37:25 – Guest. Guest: All of these widgets that I talked about you can use the product API and do anything that you want. 38:47 – Chris: If someone wants to see the dashboard that you are doing – where can they see that stuff? 39:00 – Guest: GitHub. Follow the manuscript instructions. 39:16 – Chris: Your London talk was recorded? 39:22 – Guest: Yes. 39:27 – Guest. 39:38 – Divya: Are you planning on giving this talk in other events? 39:47 – Guest: Maybe not anytime soon. 39:56 – Chris. 40:00 – Divya. 40:09 – Guest: It might be release already we don’t know. 40:15 – Divya: A date you would like to release by? 40:25 – Chris: Where can people support you and your work? 40:35 – Guest: Yes, they definitely can. You can check out the GitHub file. Also, check-out my open source work, too. 41:17 – Chris: Twitter? 41:19 – Guest: Yes. 41:24 – Chris: You have cute cat pictures, too. Let’s go to Picks!! 41:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue VUE CLI 3 Vue CLI – NPM React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Article: Infrequently Noted Vue.js Fundamentals GetKap Snipcart Netlify Webpack.js Guillaume Chau’s Vue.JS LONDON Guillaume Chau’s Twitter Guillaume Chau’s LinkedIn Guillaume Chau’s GitHub Guillaume Chau’s GitHub Repositories Guillaume Chau’s ABOUT in Patreon.com Guillaume Chau’s Medium Guillaume Chau’s Info Divya’s London Talk Webpack – Configurations Graph QL Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Joe VueJS Fundamentals Developer Experience Bait and Switch Divya Get Kap Snipcart How we built a Due CLI Plugin for Netlify Lambda Chris Meditation Gratefulness Guillaume Exercise The Expanse

Panel: Joe Eames Chris Fritz Divya Sasidharan Special Guest: Guillaume Chau In this episode, the panel talks with Guillaume Chau who is apart of the VueJS core team, a frontend engineer at Livestorm, and an open source contributor. The guest and the panelists talk about plugins, Webpack, Vue CLI, and much more! Check out today’s episode to hear all of the details.  Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 1:00 – Chris lists who is on the panel along with today’s guest. Chris: Who are you and what are you working on? 1:50 – Guest: I am working on a startup in Paris. I am calling in from Lyon, France. 2:12 – Panel: Late there? 2:15 – Panel: Almost time for dinner? 2:21 – Guest: Yes, it’s cooking now! 2:26 – Panel asks a question. 2:43 – Guest answers the question. 3:14 – Panel: Anyone who didn’t want to be an expert, they don’t’ have to worry about how things tie together – you could help them with their configurations? 3:36 – Guest: A lot of the work is done for you with the configurations so you can start writing your apps. 3:53 – Panel: How is 3 different from 2? 4:06 – Guest: It’s like a new tool entirely. It’s working very different, too, with a different system. It has a different template base.  5:53 – Panel: To combine templates you have to understand it well, like different Webpacks. 6:12 – Guest: Regarding Webpacks and their configurations... 6:52 – Panel: With the template situation there was an issue where they would make their project and as new versions of Webpack came out...and new versions of Babble, and they will have to manage the dependencies of all of these. There might be some plugins that only work with x, y, and z. IT can be frustrating – can version 3 take care of this for you? 7:44 – Guest answers the question. 9:24 – Panel: How do you update plugins? 9:29 – Guest. 10:26 – Panel: Upgrade your plugins then as long as all of your plugins are the same version it’s okay? 10:34 – Guest: Yes. You can upgrade your... 11:38 – Chris: Divya, you just gave a talk (London) on...plugins, right? 11:50 – Divya: Yes. We talked about Webpack configurations. For example, if there are some testing libraries you can essentially setup a UCLI plugin to create a test – create a test folder – plugins let you generate files or folders (structure your project in a certain way). In London I talked about server less functions with... 13:30 – Panel: Any kind of pattern you want to use in different applications you can wrap that up in a plugin? 13:42 – Divya: Yes. Exactly. Instead of repeating yourself you can wrap it up. It’s really handy. 14:00 – Panel asks a question. 14:02 – Divya: You could do that... 14:10 – Panel: ...or a graph QL – Yes! 14:20 – Guest. 14:33 – Chris: Any thing that third-party plugins don’t have access to? 14:43 – Guest. 14:54 – Chris. 15:08 – Guest. 15:25 – Divya: ...if you want a UCLI service...and so you can grab those commands and add-on those commands and using those default commands. You have access to those commands, so you don’t always... 17:02 – Chris: Like deploy? 17:11 – Divya: Yes. 17:17 – Guest. 17:19 – Divya. Divya: Do you have strategies on how you go about testing your plugins? 17:35 – Guest: Yes, I do. 19:23 – Panel: So this is like end-to-end test for a CLI tool? 19:33 – Guest. 19:50 – Panel: Is there documentation for all of this? 19:59 – Guest. 20:14 – Divya: I think the way I’ve done tests is to edit an example a test project as a local dependency and then seeing that it works. I want to make sure that it works. Divya: And the other way I’ve done it is VUE CLI it is undocumented at the moment. You can test your CLI plugin from within the plugin itself. 21:55 – Guest: I’ve used some of those before. 22:08 – Chris: Speaking of the UI that is something I’d love to talk about. It seems unique to me – a CLI tool that has a UI that is built along with it. That seems strange to some people – how does that work and WHY would you need it? 22:42 – Guest: I’ll start with the WHY. It is way more powerful and as a greeter the API interface is more fixable so you can choose different options. For example when you create a project you can set different things. You basically have to name the project and you have simple options to choose form. Now it’s basically a really fixable system with plugins and stuff like that. I thought it would be nice to free it from the terminal. The best way to do that was creating a graphical interface. The main advantage of this was that you could add more information and explanations to what is going on. You can also create better interface. Guest: Also, it currently improves discoverability. 25:30 – Chris: You could do a search in the UI and type in the name of something you are working with and then your plugin would show up in the list – and then it would just be added to their project. That’s nice so they don’t have to go to the NPM or doing the README. 26:07 – Guest. 26:14 – Divya: I think it’s nice b/c I have used it extensively for my plugin. I want to see what hasn’t been taken already. I have a way of organizing my modules and I’ve used to it see what names have already been taken? 26:47 – Guest: I think sometimes... 27:15 – Divya: The feature that you are able to run tasks from the UI is nice. 27:55 – Chris: It sounds like it offers a nicer way to view a lot of things. One of the other advantages (that I found) is that I have a configuration to the listing rules to Vue – you can pick the exact rule set that you want to use. Normally when you look at a configuration file, you don’t know what rule sets are available, you don’t know what options are available. All of this you have to look at documentation. You can see descriptions of what each rule does. You can do so much in the UI. 29:19 – Guest. 29:40 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 30:25 – Chris: Do they still need a terminal? 30:35 – Guest. 32:41 – Chris: That would be cool! 32:46 – Guest. 33:09 – Chris: They still need a little terminal knowledge right? 33:15 – Guest: Yes. 33:33 – Chris: They need a little terminal knowledge, they need to install the package, then they need to run VUE UI, then they can do anything from the terminal inside of the UI? 33:55 – Guest: You can create and import existing projects. 34:28 – Panel. 34:33 – Chris. 34:36 – Panel: It’s already active? 34:43 – Guest: I would like to talk about what I did in London. That conference I talked about... 37:00 – Panel. 37:07 – Guest. 37:20 – Panel: Nice! 37:25 – Guest. Guest: All of these widgets that I talked about you can use the product API and do anything that you want. 38:47 – Chris: If someone wants to see the dashboard that you are doing – where can they see that stuff? 39:00 – Guest: GitHub. Follow the manuscript instructions. 39:16 – Chris: Your London talk was recorded? 39:22 – Guest: Yes. 39:27 – Guest. 39:38 – Divya: Are you planning on giving this talk in other events? 39:47 – Guest: Maybe not anytime soon. 39:56 – Chris. 40:00 – Divya. 40:09 – Guest: It might be release already we don’t know. 40:15 – Divya: A date you would like to release by? 40:25 – Chris: Where can people support you and your work? 40:35 – Guest: Yes, they definitely can. You can check out the GitHub file. Also, check-out my open source work, too. 41:17 – Chris: Twitter? 41:19 – Guest: Yes. 41:24 – Chris: You have cute cat pictures, too. Let’s go to Picks!! 41:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue VUE CLI 3 Vue CLI – NPM React Angular JavaScript DevChat TV Article: Infrequently Noted Vue.js Fundamentals GetKap Snipcart Netlify Webpack.js Guillaume Chau’s Vue.JS LONDON Guillaume Chau’s Twitter Guillaume Chau’s LinkedIn Guillaume Chau’s GitHub Guillaume Chau’s GitHub Repositories Guillaume Chau’s ABOUT in Patreon.com Guillaume Chau’s Medium Guillaume Chau’s Info Divya’s London Talk Webpack – Configurations Graph QL Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Joe VueJS Fundamentals Developer Experience Bait and Switch Divya Get Kap Snipcart How we built a Due CLI Plugin for Netlify Lambda Chris Meditation Gratefulness Guillaume Exercise The Expanse

Katrina Ruth: So I think it might be the best thing that was ever invented in the history of mankind. Chris: I think it would be. It is. Welcome to Katrina Ruth. Katrina Ruth: Welcome to Katrina Ruth. I am Katrina Ruth Show I think you will find, hashtag. Katrina Ruth: Quick bring the kitchen over here so everyone can see your wizardry. Hello people of the internet. We have an amazing presentation for you today. I'm even going to call it a presentation. I'm going to be super American. Katrina Ruth: Hi Theo! Hang on. We is live! We is live. Okay. Don't even show them. We should do a [inaudible 00:00:59]. We can't just give it away right from the start. Chris: So... Katrina Ruth: We are going to talk about many things. I can't see how many people are on my live stream because that little thing is [crosstalk 00:01:08] Chris: Let's... Katrina Ruth: This makes me feel upset. Do you think it was kind of selfish of us that yesterday we had an entire conversation over lunch about recording it and sharing it with the world. Chris: It should always be recorded when we actually talk at the end of the day. What? Katrina Ruth: We have a WiFi issue already. We won't be foiled. No don't finish. It might have changed itself onto the hotspot. The hotspot of the villas. If you go into settings and see what WiFi it's telling you. Just talk amongst yourselves. Chris has a Wifi issue on his livestream. It's a presentation. It's a conversation. Chris: Do you see this? Katrina Ruth: I don't know. Maybe it doesn't care for having two live streams on it at once. Try again. Now, we're back. Chris: Ta-Da!! Great job! Katrina Ruth: Well done. So yesterday, we had an incredible conversation about being in fantastic shape and eating potatoes. Chris: Sponsored by carbohydrates. This episode. Katrina Ruth: This episode is brought to you by the letter P, for potatoes. Chris: We were extreme carbo-phobes. We both kind of came from the same school of thought. Katrina Ruth: The worst kind. Back in the day. Chris: [inaudible 00:02:45] Katrina Ruth: Just see what happens. Chris: We came from a very carbo-phobe... Katrina Ruth: Upbringing. I want to say upbringing. Chris: School of thought. Katrina Ruth: In the fitness world. Chris: In the fitness world for sure. Katrina Ruth: We are going to get to a point at some time, and we are going to reveal to you the best tasting super food blend in the world. Then we are going to sell it to you. With just incredible flare and pzazz. Chris: Jazz hands. Katrina Ruth: Your mind will be expanded. But first, we are going to tell you a few things. We have known each other for over 10 years. That's a long while anyway. Chris: Would be, yeah. Katrina Ruth: It would've been 2008. Chris: Yeah. Katrina Ruth: It's been 10 years this year. The first [inaudible 00:03:28] course in Sydney. We used to go to the same courses. We were indoctrinated as maybe you have been, into the idea that carbs are bad for you. You can't eat carbs. We are going to talk about many things today. Katrina Ruth: We are going to prove an amazing product. We are going to have a conversation about nutrition. Chris: I think this is also now printables or ideas on why we think you can be in better shape. Live a better life. Ultimately what we are doing and why we really connected, we went through so many bad things. I'll just speak from experience. From street dining, through competing as a fitness model, I went through a bout of bulimia. I went through really unhealthy relationships with food. It sucked. It was really bad. Chris: Now, I do things completely different and that's why we are laughing about it. We remembered while we were having lunch, we completely go by a different set up principles when it comes to food, movement, and life. We are so much happier. I'm in better shape. I am stronger. I literally beat my dead lift last week. This is all through not through dieting. Katrina Ruth: Oh you're back. How come much of this show is there? And only a little bit here. Chris: We are talking into two phones. Katrina Ruth: We have some high tech studio shoot set up. We are very impressive. We impress ourselves. Katrina Ruth: Mine is similar to what Chris just said. I went through fitness obsession days from when I was not even 20 years old. Then into fitness competing. I was a personal trainer for 13 years, that's how we met. Chris is from Sydney and I'm from Melbourne but we went into the same courses and we connected on our principals and values and outlook on life. Then we both started building on my brand and we both feel super successful on my brand. That's just a little bit about us. Katrina Ruth: I was so obsessive about food in my body. I thought I was really committed to health. I wanted to be really committed to health. I think like a lot of women and men, in my twenties, I was so desperate to look a certain way and I wanted to look a certain way. I thought I had to look a certain way in order to be good enough. Katrina Ruth: Can you do me a favour? Can you put the flashlight on my phone. The little light. No, no. The front of it. You see the flash button. Can you press that? I don't know if that makes a difference. Why does it look so dark. Okay, I won't worry about it. Chris: It's kind of the shading. Is it on the camera or no? Katrina Ruth: No. It's just my imagination. Katrina Ruth: I went through all the food obsession stuff. Ten years of eating with some bulimia off and on. At one stage, I was taking 50 or 60 supplements a day. Chris: Like Skittles. Katrina Ruth: I remember being in the gym and you would have a little bag with your supplements in it. It would have 30 different pills in it for each meal, minimum. Sometimes I think I had 40 and you needed a 20 minute break between [crosstalk 00:06:55] Chris: Have you ever thought about how much money you spent on supplements? Katrina Ruth: I might have some point. I always made more than I spend. It was good stuff. We would take some of the best supplements in the world and we were committed. We were doing what we thought was right. If you fast forward to now where we are both older. We both have families, kids, busy businesses as entrepreneur's, living location. Still just as committed to wanting to look and feel fucking amazing. In fact, I would say more committed. Katrina Ruth: At this point in life, there's no fucking way I'm going to take 30 or even 10 different supplements with each meal. I'm not going to do crazy extreme shit to my body any more. I still want to look and feel my absolute best. Which I think is a perfect segway into our amazing product. Chris: Exactly right. For me, this was born out of necessity. I literally looked at myself in the cupboard one day and was like, "This is a joke. Why is there so much going on. It shouldn't need to be this way whatsoever." This is how it was created. What is it that we need at the end of the day? What is it that we actually need to thrive? Let's just focus on that because we don't have the time to do the other stuff. Chris: Time is our most precious asset that we have right now. Katrina Ruth: We don't want to, we don't have the time. I kept buying supplements and they just kept sitting there and then I would feel guilty about it. I do know and understand that in a perfect world you shouldn't need supplements but it's not a perfect fucking world right? We are absorbing so many toxins continually from the environment. We are not always eating ideal food or getting enough sleep and stress. There's so many other considerations. Katrina Ruth: Both of us with our knowledge and backgrounds, if you want to be at your absolute peak and have a standard of excellence in your brain or your body, your gut and all those things. How you look as well, then it is beneficial to take an amazing quality supplement but you're not going to take all this shit. Katrina Ruth: I really tried so hard to get into the greens powder thing. As a fitness queen from way back and somebody who is still obsessive about fitness I was like, "I got to do this freaking greens powder shit." All my friends would be getting it down and working it down and I'm just a little bit defiant, you know? Katrina Ruth: Your screen just exited itself. Your phone is just like it's not happening. I'm a little defiant. A lot of people I know would force these vile tasting greens powders down because they were like, "It's so good for you." I would buy it. I think at one stage I had 10 different containers in my cupboard and I would just not take it. Like most of the people who follow me online, I'm a rebel. I'm not going to do something that doesn't feel good for me. Katrina Ruth: I'm done with the green thing even though I know it's so good for you and amazing. You can see this story is in a long drawn out many, but I think we should reveal our product and then maybe talk a little bit about how this came about. I don't know. Chris: Let's do it. Let's reveal it right now. Katrina Ruth: Reveal, wait! Send a love hash out if you want to see our product. Send me the love heart. Chris: Let's go. Should we wait? Katrina Ruth: Don't try to wait for the love hearts. Make them work for it. Chris: You got to. Katrina Ruth: You got to. Chris: Make the love hearts. Katrina Ruth: My audience knows that I love-[crosstalk 00:10:28] That was really cute and it's broken. I feel like you guys can go more. Go more. Go More. You can do it. Chris: That's very funny. That's so cute. Katrina Ruth: They know what I like. They take care of me see. Chris: Oh, it's like a flower. [crosstalk 00:10:45] Katrina Ruth: How long did it take to formulate this? Chris: It's about two years in the making. Can I just say something as well? Katrina Ruth: Say it all. Chris: When you said, we used to take the best supplements in the world, this is actually made by the same manufacturer. Katrina Ruth: It is the best pharmaceutical grade stuff in the world. All U.S. based. Incredible quality. There it is. There's our product. We are ready to bring it to market. Chris: Super food blend, the company that we have formed is My body blends because it's really all about your body. It's like what is it that you need? The blend of everything you need. That's kind of the conceptual of what's come through. Chris: The reason that we've chosen a chocolate greens to start off with, is number 1, this is the best tasting greens you will ever drink. I'm so happy to say that. It is the best. We put a lot on the line for that. Katrina Ruth: I have footage of over 20 entrepreneurs who've taste tested this at a party at my house. Late last year they were the first to taste test it as far as the public. I'm not kidding. Every single person was like, "Give it to me now, I need to buy it now." They have basically been harassing me ever since. Chris: So sorry to you for making you wait. Katrina Ruth: Everybody's whose tried it's actually here now. Chris: So sorry. Katrina Ruth: It is so good. Chris had done the work and put the time and effort into this to create this and bring the formulation to life. When he was first telling me on how to taste it, I was like, [crosstalk 00:12:20]. We were here in Bali have dinner together and he was like, "I will bring you some around tomorrow and you can try it." I'm like, "Okay, sure I'm going to try it obviously. Sure Sure." Everybody in the health market says that their product tastes amazing. You're like, "It's palatable if I hold my nose." Katrina Ruth: Then, we made some up. What a great idea! Let's have a live demonstration right now. Suffice to say, when I did try it, I was like, "are you kidding me?" It's so hard for me to not curse. I'm trying to restrain my language here. It just comes out. It tastes phenomenal. We are going to tell you about everything that is in there in a moment. Katrina Ruth: What do you need? We have a bowl of ice that we prepared earlier. Actually the butler brought it. Who takes a greens powder currently? Do you take a greens powder? Don't put your hand up, I'm not going to be able to see you. Put a comment in. Do you take a greens powder? I wonder why your live stream is sideways. Your comments are showing up sideways. Chris: It's Instagram. Katrina Ruth: Oh, your on insta. Chris: Facebook kept crashing. Katrina Ruth: Oh okay. Cool. That's why it's staying up there. Katrina Ruth: Do you take a greens powder currently? Or, do you have the greens powder in your cupboard that you feel guilty about not taking because it tastes so bad. Chris: How many different greens have you had before? Katrina Ruth: Well, I've purchased like 10. Then tried one scoop of it. Trainers and friends kept recommending which ever one. Chris: I've had about 30 or above. Katrina Ruth: Then I used to have to put 4 or 5 lemons or limes in them in order to make it drinkable which is not terrible. Chris: Like putting it in a smoothie or something else. Katrina Ruth: But then you kill the smoothie. It's not the worst thing in the world. It's like you would force it down. Katrina Ruth: Theo says, "Used to but haven't in a while." Did you make it strong? Chris: Exactly, you tell the story. Katrina Ruth: But we were going to do a- Chris: What happens when you're having something really good? Let's say you are having a chocolate greens. Maybe it's a really good coffee. Or something else you can mix up in water or a shake. The dilemma that you have is what happens when you get right to the end and you've got maybe a little bit too much for one serving? Katrina Ruth: Like one and a half scoops left. Chris: Yeah, like one and a half servings left. Do you have one really good one? Or, do you break it into two? I'd love to know your answers because we went through and we had the exact same answer yesterday. Katrina Ruth: What a dilemma. Do you go with two half assed ones? This is a true story because I've had three bottles of the product at home. A bunch of my greedy friends kept coming around and helped themselves. Literally people would come to my house, no kiss hello, just like, "Where's the chocolate greens Katty? Can I have some?" I'm not making this up. Chris: That's rude. Katrina Ruth: Mainly the boys. The girls are a little more polite. This is a true thing, right? So then it went really quickly. Then there was enough left for one really amazing shake. I would go like, "It's my last chocolate greens powder until we launch this thing." It was just the samples. So I'm going to have one amazing one or two half assed ones. Well, guess what you think I did? Katrina Ruth: Shauna says, "One big assed one." Yeah, we were on board with that as well. Alright, let's do a live demonstration right now. Oh my god. This is the most amazing thing I ever tasted. We should manufacture and sell this. Chris: It's almost our conversation. Katrina Ruth: Can we do that? That really was my reaction. The first time I drank it I was like- Chris: That's so funny. Katrina Ruth: Holy shit. I feel like it's not possible to impact to you how good this tastes. I feel like you think I'm probably taking this up a little bit. I'm not and I did give it to 20 entrepreneurs when they came to a party at my house. We've got all their testimonials and we have their live immediate reactions on media. We filmed there initial reactions. We will release that video on Monday. 100% of them were like, "Holy shit!" And they were glugging it down like thirsty nomads in a desert out of Vera Wang glasses. Katrina Ruth: It's incredible. It tastes so good. Honestly, I said to Chris, "Can you bring around some of the samples today so we can use it on the live." My real reaction is that I just wanted to drink it. Screw the live. I just wanted to have some. Chris: It's perfectly fine. I think there are a few things we can talk to when it comes to the actual product. Number one, I don't care how healthy or good it is for you. If you can't take it. Or if it's not nice and you can't continue on with it, it's pointless at the end of the day. Katrina Ruth: Right. You're just going to leave it in your cupboard which is what I did and I'm super health orientated, right? Chris: Yeah. Katrina Ruth: But I still didn't take it. Chris: Exactly. You're very motivated individual. You're a go getter. You make stuff happen. Still, if something tastes like ass, you're not going to drink. Katrina Ruth: I don't hate ass. You heard it here. I don't. Some people will. Some people will force it down. A lot of friends and followers are defiant by nature and I don't want to do something that doesn't feel good for me even if I know it is good for me. Chris: You shouldn't. Katrina Ruth: I believe there is a way for everything to feel amazing. Chris: It's like a diet. A diet can be really good for you but if you're not going to follow it then it's pointless because you're never going to stick with it and you're never going to get the results with it. Hands down, it's as simple as that. Katrina Ruth: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-we should talk about the screw macros after this. Chris: Yeah, we will. We will talk about those macros. That's why number one, it does taste so good. You're probably like, "Okay, you're just saying that." But no...literally it's this good. Chris: When my daughters ask for chocolate, they are actually asking for this and that's what they think as a chocolate drink. It's filled with the good stuff. We can talk about the signs for the good stuff, why its got a super veg antioxidant blend. Why it's got a fruit anti-oxidant blend. Why it's got digestive support in it. Why its got a probiotic blend. Why it's actually only flavoured with stevia so it's a good sweetener. It's non GMO. It's gluten free. It's good. That's the thing. Chris: We wanted to have the best quality product because it's going to have to be good, we have it. Katrina Ruth: We both have an extremely high standard when it comes to what we put into our bodies. We've both been in the fitness industry collectively for decades. It's just how it is. If you are going to bring a product to market, it's got to be the best in the world. It's not let's just label something and sell it out there. That's why it has taken several years to bring this to life. This is a huge big dig. Two years of formulating and another six months or so trying to figure out amazon subscriptions. Katrina Ruth: We did it right and we are so proud of this. We are about to give you an insanely amazing [inaudible 00:19:35]. Chris: Maybe we should say, what we are really doing is getting everything ready. This is only for people who are serious with their health and fitness. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. Kind of like an inner circle. Chris: Yeah, that's what we thought. People that we know are going to be jumping on board with this. The people that are like us who are in our inner circle and that's what we like. Number one, what we are going to be doing on Monday and what you will be getting access to on Monday, you literally won't be able to get access to any other time. Katrina Ruth: It's going to blow your mind. Chris: We are making it so much of a no brainer for you to actually want to join us. It goes beyond this. Number one, supplements aren't the be all end all. We going to be the first people to say, it's not about supplements. It's about helping you eat right, move right, live right and be happy with what you are doing day to day. That's going to be a big part of what we are doing. Chris: I even included it in my book as well. I freaking wrote a book that's all about this. Katrina Ruth: A scary amount of references in the back. Chris: 220 scientific references that goes into this as well. The food quality that we have these days isn't as good as what we need to thrive. We have a lot more stress and we have a lot more chemicals in our environment as well. So therefore we need that little bit of extra. Chris: If you are a believer that you need to get everything from your food, I'm not 100% on board with you. The model lifestyles that we live, don't allow that. Katrina Ruth: I think that's true in theory. I agree that's the ideal but is it available? No it's not. Chris referenced stress and I'm just thinking of the pace we live our lives. You kind of want to have it all right? You want to have the thriving business or career and the relationship and the family, if that's relevant, the active social life, and fun and adventure and look and feel amazing as well. If you want to have it all, that's available for you. That pace of life is not necessarily what we were originally designed for and in this environment as well. Chris: This environment is different. This is pretty sweet. [crosstalk 00:22:08] Katrina Ruth: Which is why we are in Bali. You know what I mean. There are so many things that rob out food of nutrition and this is simply about putting into our bodies what is meant to be there in the first place. Treating your body as the premier machine. I've always loved that saying, If you had a Ferrari and you drove it around town, like at an insane speed. Never took care of it and just fully trashed it at some point in time it's going to be a pretty banged up Ferrari. Katrina Ruth: Your body is a high quality vehicle so why not take care of it as one? We made this incredible product and have an incredible supportive community around which includes access to us and to our teams. So many cool things because we are so committed to sharing with our tribe and our like minded friends, clients, etc. There is a really easy and simple way to take care of your nutritional needs. Katrina Ruth: Specifically thinking about busy and driven people, who are conscious of their health in a very real sense; digestive health, mental health, emotional health, physical health. Who also want to look hot and feel hot. I feel like looking hot reflects how you feel. That comes from how your health is on the inside. You want to be operating at a high performance level in different areas of life. Katrina Ruth: Those are kind of the three areas that we address that body, brain and beauty. Chris: Totally. Katrina Ruth: I came up with that. Chris: Obviously. You really just made that up. Katrina Ruth: Carlos Kate says, "What makes it taste like chocolate?" Chris: It's actually the cacao beans. You can see that it has chocolate bean powder which is the natural flavour in it. Katrina Ruth: So good. Chris: Great question. That's why it tastes like chocolate and it is the good stuff. Katrina Ruth: Let's tell people about the offer. On the sales page, which we aren't going to give today. We are going to give it on Monday. We will tell you about this now and how it's going to work. If you definitely want to know when the cart opens, then comment below on this live stream. That way we can come back and notify you. Katrina Ruth: Once you go over there on Monday and read over the sales page, if you wanted to, you can see a whole lot more of the kinds of ends and outs of the formulation- Chris: Technical sides. Katrina Ruth: All that sort of stuff. We are giving you the highlights reel right now. What do we got for these guys on Monday? Chris: There's two big things that we want to be able to give you as apart of what we are doing with Mind Body Blends. One, is the top quality product. You are going to be able to get access to this every single month. It will last you one month. Chris: The second is community. What so many people are lacking right now, is the help along the way. This is where we want to give you the right information. It's not about more information. The first quote that I put in my book was from Derek Sivers. It says- Katrina Ruth: I like Derek Sivers. Chris: I have such a bro crush on that guy. Katrina Ruth: That's so cool. I didn't know you were into him. Chris: I absolutely love him. The quote is, "If it was just more information we need, we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs." It's not about more information. It's not about what you can get on google, watching another video, listening to another podcast, or trying to dive into another book. Chris: What's actually going to create transformation, information to transformation, that's where we want to give you the information so you know what it needs to do. Katrina Ruth: Some Perfecatation. Chris: Oh, I like that. Exactly. Katrina Ruth: And transformation. Chris: She's wired. Katrina Ruth: It's because I had the chocolate greens. My brain powers are activated. I want some more please. Chris: Yes ma'am. Katrina Ruth: Thank you. Chris: What we want to be able to give you, not just the product itself. We are going to be getting you to join the community. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. Critical Chris: This is about building the Mind Body Blend Tribe. Where we are going to be helping you to know what to eat, how to move, how to live. Giving you a behind the scenes and giving you the answers so you know that you can be in the best shape. Supplements aren't the be all end all, okay? We are going to be the first ones to say that it isn't about taking the product. You've got to be able to do the other basics first. Chris: You've got to move right. You've got to eat right. You've got to sleep right. You've got to be happy with your life and thriving in all areas of your life. This is going to be the icing on the cake. Katrina Ruth: Yeah, I love that you just said that. While we are obviously incredibly proud and excited to bring this product to market. Here's the flat out reality. I've given this to well over 20 of my clients and friends. Probably about 30 people in total. 100% of people were like "Oh my god. How quickly can I get this?" Pretty much all of them have followed up and asking if it was ready yet. Katrina Ruth: It tastes so good. People just want to keep drinking it. Then, when you add the high level ingredients, literally the best in the world. How we cover digestion probiotics. It is a no brainer as Chris said. I like to call it a Hell yeah no brainer offer which is what I tell my clients. Katrina Ruth: I know you want to hear the price point for everything we are doing for you. You're going to try it, and if you try it, there's zero doubt in my mind that you are going to continue to order it. We wouldn't bring anything other than that to market. Katrina Ruth: However, I love that Chris just spoke about, we are not here to give you a magic full of solution. Let's not dilute ourselves, are walking around with an exceptional quality of health, physicality, lifestyle, etc. just from taking this, right? It's coming from a way of life. It's coming from our underlying value system. Katrina Ruth: What the Mind Body Blends Community is about, it's about being in it for life. The life that you want to live for life. We really see this as an incredible community to obviously support year round health, nutrition, fat loss, brain power, all that cool stuff. We have so much cool content we have already created. Chris: It's disgusting. Katrina Ruth: Over 12 months of work content already created. Just teaching you everything from our combined expertise of years and years. Sharing and educating with you. Mostly we want to provide that community of like-minded people who are committed to their health, having it all in body, business, career, and in life. Chris: Kat actually just spilled the beans right there. When we were having dinner- Katrina Ruth: The cauliflower. Chris: Cauliflower and chicken. Katrina Ruth: Oh my god. How you felt about that cauliflower before you tasted it. It's how I felt about this. You were like, "I'm sure it's great Kat." Then when you tasted it you were like, "Oh my god!" Chris: Cauliflower is good but it can't be that good. It was legitimately amazing. Katrina Ruth: What were we talking about? Chris: The conversation went to having it all. I was like why do we make so many compromises in life? Why do we say, "Oh I want to build a great business. I want to build a great career but I therefore I have to let my body go and I get fat and I get inflamed. I'm getting unhealthy. Why do I become a dad?" Therefore I have to not be able to build my business or I get a Dad bod which is a bad thing. All of those things. Chris: There's so many compromises we make in life. Stop making all these compromises. Katrina Ruth: Right, you get to have it all. Chris: Just be able to have it all. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. Chris: I love it. Katrina Ruth: Kate said, "Can we sent the list of ingredients because she might want to share it with her clients." We can do that but it's also on the sales page right? Chris: Totally. Yes, so on Monday, you will get all access to that stuff. Katrina Ruth: Are we going through the prices now? Chris: No, hold your horses. Katrina Ruth: Kate asked for that too. Chris: Sorry Kate. Katrina Ruth: This is a pre-launch, Monday we are opening the cart. We are pre-launching the pre-launch right now. That's what's happening right here. Monday the cart goes open where you can jump into our community and some amazing offers on this. We are doing a one time never to be repeated. What we call "Founding Members deal" situation to honour those in our community who are already waiting for this and have had enough of us taking so long with it. Katrina Ruth: We already know so many people who are like, "Just give it to me. Where do I sign up? I don't care about the details." We feel that there is going to be other people who are hearing what you are putting down. I'm willing to put my faith in you. We are giving you an incredible offer with that when we go live on Monday. We will give you all the details of that. Katrina Ruth: On Monday, we will do a live stream as well from our Facebook page for the group. Helen says, "I'm totally sold of course." Kate says, "Do you have a trade price?" I think we will just go through all prices on Monday, right? Chris: Yeah. Totally. Legitimately Monday, you will get access to the price. The big thing we wanted to do is build the community at the start. We are going to go worldwide with this. We are going to go into retail everywhere with this. Katrina Ruth: We are flying a jet. Chris: Yeah. That as well. The biggest thing is that we wanted to make sure that we've got this community with us at the start. We build together. Katrina Ruth: Try to make members. Chris: Exactly right. Katrina Ruth: We always honour those people who are fast action takers just like we are who want to jump on it straight away. Chris: Those people who get results. Katrina Ruth: Of course. Those people who don't over think. Chris: Exactly. Should we get them to join-[crosstalk 00:31:58] I put it into my girls smoothies in the morning. It mixes really easily with water. Katrina Ruth: It's just water and ice. I really enjoy it with just water and ice. Chris: It goes really well with black coffee. Katrina Ruth: I may have made it into a Paleo espresso. It goes great with vodka. It really does. Chris: Or hot coconut milk. Katrina Ruth: I haven't tried that. There were plenty of entrepreneurs at my house that were drinking it with Paleo Espresso Martini's. We put cinnamon on top. Chris: We have a video. We will put it on on Monday. You will see everybody- Katrina Ruth: We put cinnamon on top to make it extra healthy. It tasted amazing. Everybody was just like, "Give it to me. Give me more." What else were you saying? I think I cut you off. Chris: Are there any other questions? Katrina Ruth: No. No. That's all the questions. Chris: Okay. Katrina Ruth: We are going to give them a link to what sir? Chris: Should we give them the link to the private group? The Mind Body Blends Group? Katrina Ruth: Yes, can you? Chris: Actually I already have the URL. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. Just scroll here. Chris: Got it. Katrina Ruth: Chris is just giving you now a link to our closed Facebook community that already exists which is about to blow up in the most incredible way as we start to build up what we are doing in there with the official launch. We've had that group already operational for a little bit of time but now we are officially launching. Chris: What you are going to want to do is make sure you join us in the group. You'll obviously get a lot of access to everything when we are going live on Monday. Plus, you're going to get everything else that we start putting in there as well. Katrina Ruth: Post it all in there. We will do a live stream as well. Chris: On Monday, we will be putting everything together for you. Katrina Ruth: Why won't it let me out of this comment. I was just going to add a note saying, we are already telling you that anyway. I was going to say be in the group to get first information or whatever but we have already told you that. It's so exciting. I think we have said everything haven't we? Chris: Yeah. Katrina Ruth: It's such an honour to be able to share this. Chris: We are so excited. Katrina Ruth: We are joking around and having a good time obviously as you should in business and life. In all seriousness, this is just the most incredible product in the world. I have desire to have my own company or supplement brand for over 10 years. I was a personal trainer for 13 years. How long were you a trainer? Chris: 11. Katrina Ruth: Right, so there you go. 24 years of personal training experience between us. Both of us were so committed to our education and growth. That's how we met. Just going to some of the best nutrition and hormone, strength training and that stuff. I think a lot of trainers are really committed to a standard of excellence. We both thought it would be super cool to have your own supplement company but I looked into it and saw that some people were just buying stuff and putting there own labels on it. Chris: There's a lot of charlotons out there and there's a lot of liars. The scary thing was actually getting into the business now- Katrina Ruth: This took us two years. It wasn't the easy way it was the right way. Chris: It's scary how many people are lying about their products. There's an outpour of quality. A lot of stuff is getting manufactured through China, the sourcing. The manufacturing gradiance is really bad. What they are saying is actually is in the product is simply not there as well. The actual potency of their raw and effective ingredients in there is just not there. Chris: There's a lot of lies. That was one thing for me, is that I want to create something that's really bloody good. So when Kat and I came together, we saw this fusion of what it is we can do and how we can actually create something that's so much easier for people to use and combine it all. As we said earlier, it's not about just the supplements by itself, it's far from that. It's about putting everything together and giving it to you on a silver platter so that you can move forward. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. Chris: Simple. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. You said it all. I'm so excited. I'm also excited to be in business with this guy because we have known each other for so long that you just know how someone is and who they are in business, in life, what their values are. I couldn't think of anyone better to go into business with. Katrina Ruth: I'm such a solid person in so much of what I do. I have my own companies and Chris has his own companies. Now, it's just an incredible thing to come together with a close friend and create a product that's such an incredible quality and be able to share it with the world. I feel like this is a 10 year plus dream that is coming to life for me in terms of having my own supplement company and to be in partnership that shares that vision obviously. Does the work. Comes back to you and supports you. I could go on and on all day. Katrina Ruth: Get in the Facebook group. The comment is pinned there. Get into our free Facebook community. We will be dropping links on Monday. We will be dropping the deal on Monday. We will do a live stream together on Monday. Don't know what time yet but we will announce that obviously. Chris: Exactly. Make sure to join the group so you get access to everything. Katrina Ruth: Yeah. Chris: Drop a comment here as well. I will comment back here when we go live on Monday and let you know. We will be open for a couple of days next week but then we will close it off. It will really just be a limited time for those people who want to get in on the ground floor to jump on board. It's going to be freaking amazing so that's all. That's the whole story. Katrina Ruth: Beautiful. Chris: Alright! Katrina Ruth: I'm so excited that I'll go away. Chris: You're so excited that you'll go away? You may go away. Katrina Ruth: Alright. Chris: Peace. Katrina Ruth: We are going to go. Have an amazing, epic rest of your day. We will see you on Monday and we will be sharing how you can get this incredible product. Katrina Ruth: Oh shit, I've spilled it everywhere. There it is again! Sending you love! Don't forget...life's now, press play.

GREEN ROOM, directed by Jeremy Saulnier (of BLUE RUIN) is more than just another classic tale of punk band vs. neo-nazis. It also has an amazing cast of Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and a gripping concept. But is its thrilling, violent contest of wills enough to make Chris LIKE a horror movie? Find out in this episode! Let us know what you think of Green Room on Twitter: @TTYLshow! Be an Earbud: Rate and review the show on iTunes, and tell a friend!

2016 albums OUT NOW! Touche Amore How to Dress Well Against Me! Banks Yellowcard Cymbals Eat Guitars Every Time I Die Bad Suns Bon Iver Taking Back Sunday Why you gotta play me like that, Brand New? PSVR Reviews not so great HD Receiver Still needed Rock Chris like a Hurricane 43 Days until Pokemon Sun/Moon! ...An more!!!