Podcast appearances and mentions of chris what

1 00:00:03.570 --> 00:00:04.259 Paul Casey: Here we go. 2 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:24.840 Paul Casey: it's a great day to grow forward, and thank you for joining me for today's episode with Chris Porter Chris is partner at Porter Kinney and a fun fact about him is he says he's a little germ of phobic or at least people think he is Chris you gotta go get a color on that one. 3 00:00:25.620 --> 00:00:40.440 Chris: Well it's true it's just been a joke a long standing joke going back decades about my German phobia one time for a birthday present somebody gave me some jello with a hand sanitizer inside the jello just to make sure the agenda was clean. 4 00:00:41.220 --> 00:00:45.330 Chris: The whole bottle of hand sanitizer was kind of molded within the jello and that was my. 5 00:00:46.830 --> 00:00:52.530 Paul Casey: love it love it well, we will dive in after checking in with our tri city influencers sponsor. 6 00:00:53.460 --> 00:01:00.810 Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the tri cities well welcome Chris I was privileged to meet you. 7 00:01:01.140 --> 00:01:09.480 Paul Casey: Man it feels like eight or 10 years ago now, when I visited a you're being I grew up your business networking international group I was a sub and. 8 00:01:09.990 --> 00:01:26.970 Paul Casey: ended up joining be and I certainly after that I think it was 2015 I joined the and I and it's been a great thing ever since and you were able to speak at one of my edge events when we used to do those when we combine pizza and professional development that was fun. 9 00:01:27.870 --> 00:01:28.380 Chris: that's right. 10 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:43.770 Paul Casey: And you spoke for mid Columbia score I think once on the same topic and I just love, how you want to help other businesses out of wide rookie mistakes as you would call them and really help them thrive, as they as they launch and in those first years of development. 11 00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:45.420 Absolutely. 12 00:01:46.860 --> 00:01:57.060 Paul Casey: Well, how far Tracy and implication to know you better tell us about what your organization does what you spend 80% of your day doing. 13 00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:08.430 Chris: yeah so porter Kenny we're a CPA firm and accounting firm, so we provide tax preparation services and other accounting services for individuals and businesses. 14 00:02:09.630 --> 00:02:25.170 Chris: So business could come to us for tax advice for the preparation of their annual tax return and then also if they wanted us to run their payroll for them, keep their books up to date, help them make good business decisions, you know we're here to support small businesses in the tri cities. 15 00:02:25.950 --> 00:02:32.190 Paul Casey: Great stuff and So what do you end up spending most of your day as a partner, doing same thing or other stuff. 16 00:02:32.970 --> 00:02:38.790 Chris: yeah i'm about split 5050 right now, half the time i'll work on client work, making sure. 17 00:02:39.210 --> 00:02:45.960 Chris: You know i'm filing my clients tax returns on time, helping them make strategic business moves avoid taxes were legally possible. 18 00:02:46.410 --> 00:03:02.520 Chris: And then the other half of my day is spent on management training employees on sales on trying to improve the business, you know, sometimes with leadership we talked about working in the business versus working on the business and i'm about split 5050 between those two right now. 19 00:03:03.210 --> 00:03:11.220 Paul Casey: Nice and, as we were talking before we started recording you're in a major growth spurt in just the last couple of years right. 20 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:18.150 Chris: yeah about two years ago, we have seven full time staff at porter kinney and now we have 24 so. 21 00:03:18.210 --> 00:03:20.430 Chris: Definitely had some growth over the last couple years. 22 00:03:20.610 --> 00:03:22.440 Paul Casey: amazing congratulations. 23 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:23.310 Chris: Thank you. 24 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:25.590 Paul Casey: Why do you love to do what to do. 25 00:03:26.970 --> 00:03:34.350 Chris: You know I just have always enjoyed business It just seems like something that's really fun it's almost like you're playing a strategy game. 26 00:03:34.770 --> 00:03:46.320 Chris: And if you make the right moves you're going to win, and if you don't think clearly enough or you make a mistake you're going to lose and it's just kind of this it's kind of a big game big game of chess. 27 00:03:47.190 --> 00:03:53.430 Chris: Ever since I was probably 10 or 11 i've wanted to start a business in fact i'll tell you Paul, the first business I ever started. 28 00:03:54.180 --> 00:04:06.090 Chris: A friend of mine His name was john and my name is Chris so we got together and we said we're going to combine our two names and we're going to start a lawn mowing business, so instead of Chris and john we call it crowd. 29 00:04:06.840 --> 00:04:09.000 Chris: It was cron lawn. 30 00:04:09.540 --> 00:04:10.740 Chris: Which arrives. 31 00:04:14.010 --> 00:04:14.580 Chris: So. 32 00:04:15.060 --> 00:04:23.280 Chris: That was me as a 10 or 11 year old try to be entrepreneurial but i've had a million business ideas, since then and thankfully at least one of them has worked. 33 00:04:24.390 --> 00:04:31.350 Paul Casey: How did you land on accounting and tax prep from all those business ideas, how did you sort through land on that one. 34 00:04:32.010 --> 00:04:45.870 Chris: You know it's what I did when I was at byu That was what my degree was in was accounting, so it was kind of the most natural fit, of course, to start an accounting firm when you have a background in accounting when you have work experience and accounting and a degree in accounting. 35 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:51.600 Chris: So that's how I settled on that, but yeah I have debated about doing other businesses but. 36 00:04:52.740 --> 00:05:06.360 Chris: I know a lot of tri cities business owners that have their foot in you know many different businesses, they maybe have a portfolio of five to 10 different businesses that hasn't worked for my own personality, I like to be laser focused on just one one business. 37 00:05:06.690 --> 00:05:20.820 Paul Casey: Absolutely so who do you surround yourself with on your team, what makes a great team Member for you to hang around and also who do you who do you tend to associate with in the Community outside of porter kinney. 38 00:05:22.140 --> 00:05:29.940 Chris: Well, within porter Kenny, we have tried to hire the best person for each position and it's interesting as you try to grow a business. 39 00:05:30.420 --> 00:05:42.300 Chris: there's the lowest hanging fruit employees and that's going to be, you know your brother or your sister or your friend or your neighbor just kind of the people that are around around you that you know that maybe you're looking for a job. 40 00:05:43.500 --> 00:05:53.820 Chris: You could always hire one of them, but but really it is very important if you've read the book good to great you know, Jim Collins really emphasizes putting the right people on the right seat on the bus. 41 00:05:54.450 --> 00:06:06.150 Chris: And spending a lot of time hiring I read a book recently by Dave ramsey who recommends the same thing Dave ramsey says he does like two months of interviews before he hires anyone yeah. 42 00:06:06.690 --> 00:06:18.510 Chris: So we have been very careful in the hiring process to hire the right person for each position, not to hire the easiest person or the lowest hanging fruit or the person that we know or the person we attend, you know church with. 43 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:29.700 Chris: When we hire someone it's it's probably at least 30 hours of my time before we make that higher and so that I think we just have an outstanding team that doesn't need to be micromanaged. 44 00:06:30.270 --> 00:06:37.200 Paul Casey: yeah the measure twice cut once principal at a boss through always said that in hiring you got to do that so way to go. 45 00:06:37.470 --> 00:06:38.760 Chris: Absolutely yeah. 46 00:06:39.690 --> 00:06:43.110 Paul Casey: For outside the organization one who helps you be successful. 47 00:06:43.860 --> 00:06:55.320 Chris: yeah so that's a great question outside the organization, you know, there are a few of business leaders in the Community, that I really respect and i've intentionally take them to lunch and pick their brain and. 48 00:06:55.950 --> 00:07:00.060 Chris: You know it's always good to maintain a spirit of humility about what we do. 49 00:07:00.510 --> 00:07:09.090 Chris: I will be the first to admit that there are you know hundreds of business owners in this area that that do a much better job than I do, and I want to learn from them, I want to. 50 00:07:09.510 --> 00:07:21.720 Chris: have them be my mentor and you know they're further ahead than I am in their business they've been doing it longer than I have and it's good for me to sit down with them over lunch ask him questions learn things from them. 51 00:07:22.920 --> 00:07:36.870 Paul Casey: yeah in fact that's on my list there's no that the reason for this podcast was I did what you did, which is take a leader to lunch, and then I thought, what if everybody else could listen in on that conversation, which is how we've gotten to the truth of the input their podcasts, though. 52 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:40.770 Paul Casey: yeah i'm taking me to lunch, right now, but maybe i'll have to send you a grub hub or some. 53 00:07:40.920 --> 00:07:41.520 instead. 54 00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:58.380 Chris: Well i'll tell you Paul and this ties in several years ago, I took a very successful tri cities business owner out to lunch to anthony's and I sat down with them, and he had grown a business from from one person from just him to over 500 employees. 55 00:07:58.890 --> 00:08:00.660 Chris: As well as the 100% owner. 56 00:08:01.200 --> 00:08:07.320 Chris: And then he sold the business for a very large sum which enabled him to you know be financially secure for the rest of his life. 57 00:08:08.010 --> 00:08:19.230 Chris: And I asked him, you know what What was your secret and one of the things that he told me really has stayed with me, and that is, he said, Chris I grew my business one strategic higher at a time. 58 00:08:19.320 --> 00:08:26.040 Chris: um and I thought that was a great focus, because so many of us think about growing our business one customer at a time. 59 00:08:26.850 --> 00:08:35.610 Chris: Well that's also true there's kind of two sides of the coin right, we have to add customers, we have to have clients, we have to you know, keep them satisfied and offer a high level of service to them. 60 00:08:36.060 --> 00:08:47.370 Chris: But the other side of the coin is getting the right people in the business like I mentioned earlier, one strategic hire at a time that's how he went from one employee to 600 employees, to a large sale. 61 00:08:47.880 --> 00:09:03.480 Paul Casey: That is so good, I hear also that the only way you're going to really bust out and grow is, you have to hire leaders, not just followers but leaders that's going to help you to multiply hiring followers just as addition so yeah great stuff one strategic fire at a time. 62 00:09:03.780 --> 00:09:18.120 Chris: yeah and Paul you hit the nail on the head, you also do not want to be intimidated it's okay to hire someone who's smarter than you it's okay to hire someone that's more educated than you are you don't have to be intimidated by that get the best people on your team and grow together. 63 00:09:18.870 --> 00:09:30.060 Paul Casey: Great stuff and speaking of growth leaders have growth mindset So how do you keep evolving as a leader what's in your own personal and professional development plan. 64 00:09:31.710 --> 00:09:48.480 Chris: What are the things i've done, I really love listening to books on my phone I use audible and I like to listen to business books yeah, but I have long time for a long time i've had the philosophy that you shouldn't consume information faster than you're able to apply that information. 65 00:09:48.570 --> 00:09:51.510 Paul Casey: or flow good let's say that again say that again. 66 00:09:51.870 --> 00:09:52.170 well. 67 00:09:53.670 --> 00:09:58.290 Chris: You should not consume information faster than you're able to apply that information. 68 00:09:59.400 --> 00:10:06.660 Chris: So, in other words, I hear some people that say hey I listened to one book a week on audible and I think well, are you really able to. 69 00:10:07.380 --> 00:10:13.860 Chris: You know, apply those principles that are being taught in that business book that quickly, maybe some people are I certainly am not. 70 00:10:14.760 --> 00:10:20.670 Chris: So i'll go through a book on audible very slowly, as I drive maybe one book every three months. 71 00:10:21.450 --> 00:10:30.000 Chris: And when I get to my location i'll pull up my phone and i'll take notes on a Google sheet as to what I learned during that drive from that business book. 72 00:10:30.780 --> 00:10:43.140 Chris: And then, when i'm done i'll kind of go through all my notes on board those things that I thought were most applicable and i'll try to apply them in my business and I try not to move to the second book until i've made some changes, based on that the first book that I read. 73 00:10:43.830 --> 00:10:53.310 Paul Casey: that's really going deep on a book I do like that I read about 40 a year and, like you said assimilating that so I I to pull over and. 74 00:10:54.270 --> 00:11:01.320 Paul Casey: Then write down the takeaways from the books as I go and then I file them, maybe i'm not assimilating them complete like you're. 75 00:11:01.590 --> 00:11:11.280 Paul Casey: you're talking about, but I do file them in categories for leadership development so that I can pass them on to clients and in seminars, in the future so totally concur with you there. 76 00:11:11.790 --> 00:11:16.830 Paul Casey: And you know i'm probably going to ask you this, so what are a couple of books that everybody's got to read if they're a. 77 00:11:17.250 --> 00:11:26.460 Paul Casey: Business owner or a leader of other people, they want to develop others or develop themselves what are some of those that pop out maybe you've read just the last few years. 78 00:11:27.120 --> 00:11:36.420 Chris: yeah i'll recommend three as kind of a must read and and if there's listeners out there that are thinking about starting a business but haven't read these three books read these three books. 79 00:11:36.900 --> 00:11:44.280 Chris: Seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen R covey obviously this you know timeless written what 40 years ago and still relevant today. 80 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:50.190 Chris: Second, one would be good to great by Jim Collins like I just mentioned, also timeless. 81 00:11:51.360 --> 00:12:07.830 Chris: Book so vital to read if you're trying to grow your business, as the title implies from good to great and then the third one would be the E myth revisited by Michael gerber which is really kind of the small business Bible, how to grow a business from one person to 10 people to 50 people. 82 00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:13.290 Paul Casey: yeah and I think he was the one that coined that in the biz working in the business or on the business right. 83 00:12:13.500 --> 00:12:14.700 Chris: that's right yeah. 84 00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:31.710 Paul Casey: Great great book recommends thanks Chris for that to avoid burnout and negativity and even in the land of Kobe the last couple years here how have you fed your mental your emotional health and wellness on a regular basis. 85 00:12:33.270 --> 00:12:42.540 Chris: yeah that's a great question you know some business owners talk about you know you got to work 100 hour plus weeks in order to be successful, I do not buy into that philosophy and. 86 00:12:43.500 --> 00:12:52.140 Chris: Most of the effective successful people I know don't work 100 plus hours they do work, maybe 50 to 60 hours a week, I mean they're not slackers that's for sure. 87 00:12:52.770 --> 00:13:02.490 Chris: But you definitely want to take some time some personal time completely on your own I like to do some you know i'd call it spiritual time each day kind of Bible study time each day. 88 00:13:02.940 --> 00:13:11.250 Chris: That I take on my own I definitely spend time with my wife and kids each day intentionally during certain times of the day, so yeah don't neglect yourself. 89 00:13:12.570 --> 00:13:24.420 Paul Casey: yeah self care huge love, I put in, so your spiritual practice there at the beginning of the day, so setting the tone for the day what successful people do in the morning is is huge. 90 00:13:24.750 --> 00:13:35.220 Paul Casey: And then also making sure i'm sure core values family is one of your top ones as well, and not leaving them the leftovers, but prioritizing them somewhere in your day love that. 91 00:13:35.580 --> 00:13:43.770 Paul Casey: Absolutely, how do you go about getting things done, I love to know the organizational system of Chris porter, how do you organize yourself. 92 00:13:44.430 --> 00:13:53.490 Chris: Well i'll tell you Paul I went to one of your presentations several years ago, where you said that we should make a to do list for the next day. 93 00:13:53.820 --> 00:14:03.480 Chris: At the end of the day, so at the end of today i'm going to make a to do list for tomorrow, while those priorities are still fresh in your mind that was a very helpful suggestion and i've done that. 94 00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:09.300 Chris: I don't think I do, that every day, I should, but I do, that a lot of days and I appreciate that suggestion. 95 00:14:10.140 --> 00:14:16.380 Chris: So that's one thing i'll throw out the other thing i'll throw it is from Stephen R covey where he talks about that analogy of. 96 00:14:16.710 --> 00:14:23.310 Chris: Having a jar and everyone's heard this before you have a jar you want to put big rocks and it's small rocks and sand and water in it. 97 00:14:24.180 --> 00:14:31.980 Chris: The only way, you can do that is put the big rocks in first and then the sand and then the water, so the sand kind of falls around the big rocks and everything fits. 98 00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:47.700 Chris: And he uses that analogy to basically recommend you take your most important biggest priorities during the week and you schedule them into your calendar at the beginning of the week don't let any anything else interrupt those important items that you have. 99 00:14:49.230 --> 00:14:53.760 Chris: put those in first add the big rocks your calendar first and then other things fall into place. 100 00:14:54.810 --> 00:15:01.770 Paul Casey: That is so good, I was just telling that illustration, is a timeless illustration of the big rocks I was just teaching that and look at a. 101 00:15:01.980 --> 00:15:09.030 Paul Casey: Digital summit recently, because it is so applicable don't let anything crowd out those three top priorities. 102 00:15:09.390 --> 00:15:21.930 Paul Casey: And I don't know why we do this, Chris we seem to like blow ourselves off and our priorities, we would never do that to someone in a coffee shop or a client appointment right, but we do this for ourselves all the time and then we're like procrastinated yet again. 103 00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:24.630 Chris: Absolutely yeah. 104 00:15:25.380 --> 00:15:26.670 Paul Casey: And I think we would say Paul. 105 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:31.890 Chris: Paul you also taught me didn't don't show I say obey your calendar is the phrase that you use. 106 00:15:33.270 --> 00:15:36.960 Paul Casey: is like obey your thirst have a calendar. 107 00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:37.740 Chris: that's right. 108 00:15:39.150 --> 00:15:47.910 Paul Casey: Well before we head into our next question about how Chris looks at the bigger picture versus being reactive and leadership let's shout out to our sponsor. 109 00:15:50.220 --> 00:16:02.430 Paul Casey: Well, Chris it's easy to get trapped in simply reacting to crises and leadership and putting out fires, how do you specifically step back and take a look at the bigger picture and get ahead of stuff. 110 00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:05.700 Chris: yeah that's a great question. 111 00:16:06.810 --> 00:16:11.040 Chris: I don't know I don't have a perfect answer for that, but i'll tell you one thing i've done is i've turned off. 112 00:16:12.090 --> 00:16:17.610 Chris: That little notification on the computer where every time you get an email this little thing pings up you got an email from this person. 113 00:16:18.540 --> 00:16:26.910 Chris: You know I definitely spend times during the day when when that's completely off when I don't hear any beeps for my cell phone and it beeps from my computer and I could just be focused. 114 00:16:28.560 --> 00:16:37.860 Paul Casey: You also take time as a company with your your core team to do some strategic planning for the year ahead or the quarter ahead anything like that. 115 00:16:38.640 --> 00:16:48.120 Chris: Absolutely my business partner and I we meet weekly Mondays at 1pm and we talked about yet planning and how our goals are coming along. 116 00:16:48.780 --> 00:16:55.680 Chris: And then we have a group of directors of the company so there's two owners and then for directors of our different departments. 117 00:16:56.250 --> 00:17:07.020 Chris: And we are all reading good to great even if we've read it before we're all reading good to great and then we're meeting on July 30 for an all day retreat with you know some refreshments and a meal and. 118 00:17:07.590 --> 00:17:12.030 Chris: And some activities and we're going to discuss the principles and good to great and how we can apply them to our business. 119 00:17:12.780 --> 00:17:19.050 Paul Casey: love the book study idea and now ramsey himself his organization, when you get hired there you get a box of books. 120 00:17:19.350 --> 00:17:29.280 Paul Casey: Because he wants everyone to be speaking the same language and so that that's a cool thing you're all going to do together, even if it's a reread for many of you it's a new read for others. 121 00:17:29.610 --> 00:17:35.730 Paul Casey: love the off site retreat to i'll put in a plug there as well, I love doing those leading those with companies because. 122 00:17:36.060 --> 00:17:51.300 Paul Casey: You know it's a chance to relationship build like you said eat some food together break bread and look ahead without without that constant notification barrage or interruptions throughout your day so way to go for getting your team away to think ahead. 123 00:17:52.830 --> 00:18:06.000 Paul Casey: What key moves did you make, for your Organization has this whole coven thing went through in the last couple of years, how are you responsive to that how did you become strategic in an uncertain time. 124 00:18:07.740 --> 00:18:17.550 Chris: You know, maybe, instead of answering how I did that you know I serve a lot of clients and maybe I could just anonymously talk about how some of them navigated through it. 125 00:18:17.850 --> 00:18:26.790 Chris: Right, it was very interesting, you know we serve like I said a lot of businesses in the tri cities and restaurants, I thought were very interesting during coven. 126 00:18:27.570 --> 00:18:34.410 Chris: We have a lot of restaurant clients and some of them just almost instantly you know when march hit when April hit. 127 00:18:34.830 --> 00:18:48.540 Chris: They quickly got on uber eats and doordash or had their own delivery drivers and just quickly revamped their business model and some of them did very well, some of them were selling more food than before the pandemic. 128 00:18:49.800 --> 00:18:56.130 Chris: Whereas some of them who just kind of dogmatically stuck to the old business model really struggled so. 129 00:18:56.910 --> 00:19:10.350 Chris: Whether it's co founder whether it's another crisis or whether it's just a constantly changing paradigm of technology, we absolutely need to be responsive on our feet, we cannot run our business like we did five years ago, and we cannot be afraid of change. 130 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:17.880 Paul Casey: yeah and you bring up that word change, what do you feel most people don't of course don't like change. 131 00:19:18.660 --> 00:19:24.330 Paul Casey: I find leaders are a little bit more comfortable with it because we're the ones, usually driving it you had this huge growth. 132 00:19:24.870 --> 00:19:39.150 Paul Casey: spurt in the last couple of years, so i'm sure with that came some change whether that's procedures, if not just different people, how do you best lead organizational change and how would you recommend other business leaders lead change. 133 00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:44.670 Chris: yeah that's that's a great question there's always resistance to change. 134 00:19:46.230 --> 00:19:50.310 Chris: In fact, well, I probably won't share that story, I was about to share a. 135 00:19:50.310 --> 00:19:53.430 Chris: story, but I don't know if I could do it in a confidential enough medicine. 136 00:19:55.050 --> 00:19:57.600 Chris: But there's always resistance to change but. 137 00:19:58.830 --> 00:20:05.820 Chris: yeah I think you just have to talk about how you know the very obvious truth that if we don't change we stay the same. 138 00:20:06.120 --> 00:20:11.940 Chris: Now that just sounds so stupid, but it's true if we don't change we don't grow if we don't change we don't progress. 139 00:20:12.510 --> 00:20:22.950 Chris: And I think people just need to realize, you know, like my friend my mentor that I talked about earlier that I met at anthony's going from a one person company to a 600 person company. 140 00:20:23.460 --> 00:20:28.530 Chris: Their organizational chart must have changed, you know 27 different times, or more. 141 00:20:29.220 --> 00:20:36.630 Chris: And even in Puerto kitty, you know as we went from when, as a seven person company, you know our organizational chart was basically here's the two owners of the top. 142 00:20:37.080 --> 00:20:45.150 Chris: And here's the five people that report to us it was just very basic we had an organizational chart but it's like okay we're in charge and we're the supervisors that's all it is. 143 00:20:45.750 --> 00:20:53.550 Chris: But now as a 24 person company, the two owners don't necessarily want to be in charge of all 24 so we revamped our organizational chart. 144 00:20:54.150 --> 00:21:02.550 Chris: And that is something that i'd recommend that's something that Michael gerber recommends and the E myth, no matter how small your company is make an organizational chart. 145 00:21:03.090 --> 00:21:13.800 Chris: give each person, a job title give each person, a list of their duties that they need to fulfill and, as you grow annually, you should be updating that organization chart. 146 00:21:15.750 --> 00:21:29.010 Paul Casey: What do you do what became a something you delegated to that next level I think you're calling the directors right, the Director level that you did before, but with growth and you know delegated for someone else to supervise. 147 00:21:30.210 --> 00:21:46.230 Chris: Well, one example would be semi annual performance reviews, yes, so I used to do all of them myself and now i'll do the four directors, will do a semi annual review with me and then each of them will do four or five with the people in their department. 148 00:21:47.610 --> 00:21:59.280 Paul Casey: What do you use for performance reviews what system, do you do some self evaluation is it a is it a rating scale is it more narrative what have you sort of landed on lately I know it's probably always in flux, but. 149 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:12.180 Chris: yeah one thing I mean there's a lot we could talk about there, but one thing I think that we've changed recently that's been very effective is give the staff member of the team Member the feedback before the performance review. 150 00:22:13.050 --> 00:22:22.110 Chris: You don't want to be sitting face to face with somebody and all of a sudden just surprise them with some negative feedback or constructive criticism, as we call it in a more politically correct. 151 00:22:22.110 --> 00:22:22.470 Chris: way. 152 00:22:22.920 --> 00:22:27.930 Chris: You don't just want to surprise somebody in a face to face setting because naturally they'll become defensive. 153 00:22:28.650 --> 00:22:33.840 Chris: So if you send them an email beforehand and say hey thanks so much for meeting with me tomorrow at two. 154 00:22:34.470 --> 00:22:44.880 Chris: Here are some things that I think have been going really well give them six or seven here's two things that I think we can improve on and set some goals on, then they go into the meeting, knowing what's going to be discussed and there'll be less defensive. 155 00:22:45.750 --> 00:22:56.400 Paul Casey: I found that i've got three other clients that also do that same thing they send their performance review a day in advance it's for the people who like to Milan things you know and it probably. 156 00:22:56.820 --> 00:23:08.850 Paul Casey: Well, for mostly it settles them down because they get freaked out on the day of their performance review, but yeah it's sort of like brings it in and more of a conversation the next day, instead of the surprise or. 157 00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:13.800 Paul Casey: This is, you know this is going to be this very tense conversation I think it's a great move. 158 00:23:15.360 --> 00:23:17.280 Paul Casey: Speaking of difficult conversations. 159 00:23:17.520 --> 00:23:36.180 Paul Casey: Conflict very difficult among teams and when you're a supervisor and you have to confront a direct reports someone on your team it's it's usually not a whoo you know kind of day, how do you first of all bolster the courage to have that conversation, and not just let it keep on going. 160 00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:47.220 Chris: yeah I think you bolster the courage by reminding yourself that that conversation is not only good for you, but it's good for that particular team Member to hear. 161 00:23:48.870 --> 00:23:54.990 Chris: You know and Jim Collins again back to good degrade he talks about that a lot he talks about, for example, the ultimate. 162 00:23:55.770 --> 00:24:06.540 Chris: Tough conversation is the conversation where you have to let somebody go and he talks about in his book if there's somebody who is not a good fit for your organization not only. 163 00:24:07.500 --> 00:24:13.920 Chris: Are you doing yourself a disservice by keeping them on you're doing them a disservice by keeping them on the team because. 164 00:24:14.250 --> 00:24:18.930 Chris: They might be a much better fit for another organization with a different culture with different goals. 165 00:24:19.380 --> 00:24:31.830 Chris: And by continuing to keep them on your bus, even though they're in the wrong seat and on the wrong bus you're basically wasting years of their life so do yourself a favor do them a favor by having that tough conversation. 166 00:24:32.190 --> 00:24:50.550 Paul Casey: No, that is so good, because you really want to have the conversation in service of them, and your organization so you're serving two purposes and when people just don't want to have that conversation so you've had to let people go, probably in the course of your leadership over the years. 167 00:24:51.900 --> 00:25:05.940 Paul Casey: Take us there for a moment what have you learned about the the conversation where it's like we're not a match, how does How does that go, but what recommendations would you have to business owners and other leaders who have to have that conversation. 168 00:25:06.930 --> 00:25:10.020 Chris: yeah well there's certainly no easy way to have that conversation. 169 00:25:11.160 --> 00:25:16.770 Chris: But you really just want to treat people very well on their way out. 170 00:25:18.120 --> 00:25:25.560 Chris: Whether that be giving them a generous severance payment on their way out or allowing them to stay on the health insurance for a couple months. 171 00:25:25.980 --> 00:25:40.860 Chris: Just whatever you can do to really kind of make the transition easier from your place to someone else's and if it wasn't really you know, a specific problem with their job performance, it was just in general they didn't fit the culture. 172 00:25:42.090 --> 00:25:52.440 Chris: That you were trying to promote maybe they would be a great fit at another company and you could even help them try to find that next company try to find that next job where they would be a good fit. 173 00:25:53.610 --> 00:26:02.070 Chris: So I think more than just choosing the right words during the conversation I think you have to look at the whole experience as treating that employee with dignity on their way out. 174 00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:15.660 Paul Casey: Oh, so good that we're dignity yeah always helping them save face I had one boss that told me, you know someday I might be working for you, Paul and and as a custodian so I want to make sure we leave on good terms. 175 00:26:16.260 --> 00:26:26.340 Paul Casey: That was good you've never done it in a Community like the tri cities to you're going to run into these folks probably that it's important for us to do it well, always with dignity. 176 00:26:26.790 --> 00:26:31.560 Chris: yeah and Paul that's a key point where we are in a small town, this is not Chicago, this is not New York. 177 00:26:31.980 --> 00:26:41.190 Chris: And with customers and staff members even former staff members yeah you're going to run into them at the grocery store, you know, two weeks from now so just treat everybody kindly and with dignity. 178 00:26:42.210 --> 00:26:53.010 Paul Casey: You mentioned the word culture, when you said you know they may not be a fit for the culture, what kind of culture is porter Kenny trying to develop among the staff so that. 179 00:26:53.460 --> 00:27:04.650 Paul Casey: You know if I were to walk in your business, this would be like the feel that I would get you know, in the air, what do you try to promote there and what are you banging the drum on always with your team. 180 00:27:05.850 --> 00:27:15.300 Chris: yeah that is a fantastic question so we definitely have a culture of continuous improvement and with continuous improvement comes change like you mentioned. 181 00:27:15.990 --> 00:27:23.790 Chris: we're a different company, they will were just two years ago, so people that are resistant to change and don't like. 182 00:27:24.180 --> 00:27:38.250 Chris: Learning a new software program or you know learning a new process or having a new organizational chart they would have a tougher time staying with quarter Kenny, because we have this constant pursuit of excellence and improvement in our organization. 183 00:27:39.510 --> 00:27:47.430 Chris: And then on the flip side of that we also like to have fun and we like to you know, have a good rapport with everyone on the team. 184 00:27:48.900 --> 00:28:02.580 Chris: We like to have a fun culture and we'd like to not take ourselves too seriously and those two aspects of our culture, they might seem like you know, oil and water trying to mix, but I think you could have both. 185 00:28:03.540 --> 00:28:07.920 Paul Casey: So i'm not gonna i'm not gonna see some nerf gun wars in the accountants office is that what i'm saying. 186 00:28:09.570 --> 00:28:16.950 Chris: yeah you might just see somebody converting a desk to a ping pong table in the other room a couple days ago. 187 00:28:17.790 --> 00:28:18.090 Paul Casey: Good. 188 00:28:18.210 --> 00:28:18.870 Paul Casey: I like it. 189 00:28:19.170 --> 00:28:24.150 Chris: I didn't know they solve these little small ping pong nets that you can put on top of a desk and you know, have a couple of games. 190 00:28:24.210 --> 00:28:24.510 that's. 191 00:28:25.830 --> 00:28:34.290 Paul Casey: awesome well Chris Finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence. 192 00:28:35.790 --> 00:28:38.370 Chris: Well, I think i've already given it but. 193 00:28:39.870 --> 00:28:52.170 Chris: I was recently talking to a very new business owner probably had two employees and I could tell during that meeting, you know, he did 95% of talking he didn't ask for any advice. 194 00:28:53.460 --> 00:28:55.980 Chris: The impression I got was that he already knew everything. 195 00:28:57.750 --> 00:29:05.940 Chris: Even though I could tell that certainly there were things that he could do better with his business so just having a little bit of humility and just recognizing. 196 00:29:06.990 --> 00:29:13.680 Chris: Wherever you are in your leadership, development or in the business growth, there are people ahead of you that you can learn things from. 197 00:29:14.610 --> 00:29:23.580 Chris: Some of those people are right here in the tri cities, and you know sit down with them ask them questions and some of those people are national experts who have written books read those books. 198 00:29:24.450 --> 00:29:32.190 Chris: don't ever get to the point where you think you just have all the answers, and you know everything because that's the point in which your professional development is going to go downhill. 199 00:29:32.700 --> 00:29:41.850 Paul Casey: Absolutely stay teachable stay coachable tries to the influencers Chris How can our listeners connect with you and your business. 200 00:29:43.410 --> 00:29:48.480 Chris: Well, I can feel free to shoot me shoot me a question at Chris at quarter can u.com that's my email. 201 00:29:50.010 --> 00:29:59.850 Chris: yeah and you know our business information is pretty easy to find our website is porter can you calm, but yeah one of your listeners can can feel free to reach out to me if they wanted to connect. 202 00:30:00.690 --> 00:30:05.940 Paul Casey: Well, thanks again for all you do to make the tri cities, a great place and keep leading well. 203 00:30:06.750 --> 00:30:07.320 Chris: Thank you, Paul. 204 00:30:08.070 --> 00:30:11.820 Paul Casey: We wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. 205 00:30:12.090 --> 00:30:21.390 Paul Casey: i'm starting a membership Community i'm calling it bullseye bullseye is going to be for team leaders, if you supervise other people bulls is for you. 206 00:30:21.600 --> 00:30:28.890 Paul Casey: for less than like 75 cents a day you're going to get some plug and play resources every week in your email box. 207 00:30:29.130 --> 00:30:35.070 Paul Casey: Things videos you can play for your team meeting icebreakers that you can give in your one to ones. 208 00:30:35.340 --> 00:30:41.850 Paul Casey: They all have performance evaluation forms and one to one flow is there's going to be all sorts of great stuff. 209 00:30:42.120 --> 00:30:50.610 Paul Casey: If you're a team leader, so that you'll actually look forward to opening an email from growing forward services, so you can come to my website at Paul casey.org. 210 00:30:50.790 --> 00:31:00.660 Paul Casey: As that begins to launch and get in on the ground floor of this, because then you'll be part of the discussion as we help each other grow in our businesses and leadership development. 211 00:31:02.910 --> 00:31:10.620 Paul Casey: Again this is Paul Casey want to thank my guest Chris porter from porter Kenny, for being here today on the tri cities influencer podcast we also want to thank our. 212 00:31:11.160 --> 00:31:19.740 Paul Casey: sponsor and invite you to support them, we appreciate you making this possible, so that we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our Community. 213 00:31:20.130 --> 00:31:34.530 Paul Casey: Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence when you lose your focus, you lose your momentum until next time KGF keep growing forward.

What do you get when you mix a worm and a hammerhead shark? Also ants. Steph made some cool new discoveries in bug-land. She also talks about deploys versus releases and how her and her team has changed their deploy structure. Two words: feature flags. Chris talks about cookies: cookie sessions, cookie payloads, cookie footprints, cookie storing. Mmm cookies! The convo wraps up with lamenting over truthiness in code. Truthy or falsy? What's your call? Flipper (https://www.flippercloud.io/) Bike Shed - Ask a Question Form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaFfPYoWmtV3IR3eQRjNz731GJ_a2X6CpZFxKjdPZeztGXKA/viewform) Transcript: STEPH: At the top of my notes for today, I have marauder ants and hammerhead worms. [laughs] CHRIS: I'm sorry, what? I lost you there for...not lost you, but I stopped following. I...what? 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, how's your week going? STEPH: Hey, Chris, it's been a good week. It's been busy, lots has been happening. I learned about a new creature that's in our backyard. They're called hammerhead worms. Have you ever heard of those? CHRIS: I've heard of hammerhead and worms, but not together. The combination is new and novel for me. STEPH: Cool. Cool. So take a hammerhead shark and a worm and combine the two and then you have a hammerhead worm. And it rained really heavily here recently because there's a tropical storm that's making its way up the East Coast. And when I was outside on the porch, I noticed that there were these new worms or worms that I'd never seen before on the back porch. And so I had to Google them to understand because they had the interesting hammer-shaped head. And I found out that they're called hammerhead worms. They're toxic worms that prey on earthworms. And they're basically immortal because if you cut them into multiple pieces, each section can regenerate into a fully developed organism within a few weeks, which is bananas. And a lot of people online highly recommend that you should kill them because they are a toxic predator and they prey on earthworms, which you want in your garden and in your yard. But I didn't, but I learned about them. CHRIS: Wow. That's got some layers there, toxic, intense worms that you can cut in half. And so does their central nervous system just spread throughout their whole body? Where's their brain? How does it...I don't have any real thoughts here. That's just a bunch of stuff, and it's awesome. Thank you for sharing. STEPH: I will warn you. I wouldn't read about hammerhead worms right before bed. Otherwise, you might have some nightmares because the way that they do prey and consume earthworms or other creatures that they prey on is the stuff of horror movies, which I find happens so much in nature, but them especially they fall into that category. So just be aware if you're reading about hammerhead worms and how they consume their food. Now I feel like everybody's going to go read. But as long as you have that warning, I feel safe sending you in that direction. CHRIS: Yeah, first thing in the morning on a very sunny morning, that is the time to do this research. STEPH: Exactly. He got it. I also learned about marauder ants because apparently, this is the day that I'm having. I'm learning about all these creatures. But I won't go into that one, but they're really interesting. And this one's thanks to someone on Twitter who shared, specifically @Rainmaker1973 is their Twitter handle if you want to go see what they shared about marauder ants. So I'll just leave that one for those that are curious. I won't dive into that one because I don't want to take us in the direction of that we're all about worms and ants now. CHRIS: Not all about worms and ants but definitely some. STEPH: But in technical news, I've got some stuff to share, but I was so excited about worms and ants that now I have to figure out which is the thing that I want to share from the week. So there's a couple of interesting things that I'd love to chat about with you, one of them, in particular, is there's been some interesting conversations going on with my client team around deploys versus releases and how we have changed our deploy structure, and then how that has impacted the rest of the team as they are communicating to customers as to what features are available. And there have been some interesting conversations around how to migrate this process forward. So to provide a bit of context, we were previously having very strict, rigid deploys. So we would plan our deploys typically every Tuesday. It was usually once a week. And then we would make sure that everything had been through QA, things had been reviewed and tested. And then we would have one of those more like grand deploys, things are going out. And then hey, if you need to get something into the deploy, let us know; we need to talk about it. So there was just more process and structure to that. And so deploy really mapped to the idea that if we are doing a deploy, then that means all these feature bug fixes are going out, and this is now the time that we can tell customers, "Hey, this new feature is available or this bug that you reported to us has now been fixed." We have since been moving towards a more continuous deployment structure where we're not quite there where we're doing continuous deploy, but we are deploying at least once a day, so it's a lot more frequent. And so this has changed the way that we really map the idea of the work that's being done versus the work that's actually available to customers. Because as we are merging work into the main branch, and then let's say if I'm working on a feature and then I merge that into the main branch and then push it up staging, we have an overnight QA process. So then overnight QA, if they say, "Hey, there's something that's wrong with this feature. It didn't quite meet the required specs," then they can kick that ticket back to me, but that's not true for my code. We could do a revert and take my code out at that point. But at this point, it's in main, and main may have been deployed at that point. So there have been some interesting strategies around how can we safely continue to deploy while we know we often have a 24-hour wait period for QA and to get sign-off on this work? But we want to keep moving forward and then also communicate that just because the code has been deployed doesn't necessarily mean that it's available to customers. There's a lot there. So I'm going to pause and see if you have questions. CHRIS: Well, first, I'm just super excited to talk about this. This is something that's been very much top of mind for me, and it's a direction that I want to be going more and more, so yeah, excited that you're pushing the boundaries on this. I am intrigued. I'm guessing feature flags is the answer about how you're decoupling that and how you're making it so that you've got that separation of deployment and actual availability of the feature. So, yeah, can you talk more about that? STEPH: Definitely. And yes, you're right. We're using feature flags, so we'll use the same scenario. I'm working on a feature, and I want to be able to release it safely, so I'm going to wrap it in a feature flag. And I'll probably wrap it, and maybe it's like a beta feature flag, something to indicate that this is a feature that's going to be available to all, but we don't actually want to turn it on until we know that it's truly ready to be turned on. So then that way, it's hidden, but then we can still merge it into the main branch. We can still have a deploy even if my code hasn't gone through QA at that point, but we know it's still safe to deploy. And then, QA can go to a staging environment; they can test it. And if they say, "No," it's fine because nothing was churned in production. But then, if it gets approved, then we can turn it on, and then we'll have a follow-up to then remove that feature flag. CHRIS: So some follow-on questions. I'm wondering about the architecture of the application. Is this like traditional Rails app rendering HTML on the server, or do you have any more advanced client-side stuff? And then I'm also wondering what you're using for the actual feature flagging, and those will probably inform each other. But what's the story on both of those fronts? STEPH: It's a traditional Rails application. So we're not using any other client-side application. It is Rails and rendering HTML. As for feature flags, so we're not using something traditional. And by traditional, I mean I typically have reached for Flipper in the past for managing feature flags. We're using more of a hand-rolled approach because there's a lot of context there that I don't know is necessarily helpful. But to answer your question, we essentially do have feature flags as columns in the database, and we can just check if they are enabled or disabled. And then that also allows us to easily turn it on, turn it off as well since it's just a database update. CHRIS: Okay, that makes sense. I think the nature of being a Rails application rendering HTML on the server like what you're doing totally makes sense in that context. I think it becomes a lot harder the more complex the architecture of your application is. So if you've got microservices, then suddenly you've probably got to synchronize across some of them, and that sounds like a whole thing. Or even if you have a client-side application, then suddenly you've got to serialize the feature flag stuff across the boundary or somehow expose that, which really does push the issue of we could just render stuff on the server and send it to the client and let that be good enough, then man, is stuff simpler. But unfortunately, that's not the case in a lot of situations. I'm expecting to be introducing feature flags on the app that I'm working on pretty soon. And again, we've got...so it's a Rails server-side thing. So there's going to be plenty of feature flag logic on that side. And then I'll need to do something to serialize it across the boundary and get it onto the client-side without ballooning every payload and adding complexity, and lookups, and whatnot. I think it's doable. Inertia, again, being the core architecture of the application, I think will make this a little bit easier, but I am interested to see what I'm able to pull off and how happy I am with where I get to. Another question that I have for you then are you testing the various flows? So given a Boolean feature flag, you now have two different possible paths for your code to go through. And then there may be even more than Boolean, or you may have feature flags that sort of interact with each other. And how much complexity are you trying to manage and represent in the test suite? STEPH: Yeah, good question, and we are. So we're testing both flows, especially if it's a new feature, then we are testing when the flag is enabled or disabled. One that's been tricky for me is what about a bug fix? Is that something that should be feature flagged? And I think at the surface level, if you're presuming that it needs to go through QA before this is live on production, then the answer is yes, that then you have to feature flag a bug fix, which feels weird. But then the other consideration would be, well, it is a bug fix. And could we find another way to QA this faster or some other approach so that way we don't have to wrap it in a feature flag? And I don't have a great answer for that one because I can see arguments in favor of either approach. Although wrapping everything in a feature flag does feel tedious, it's something that I'm not accustomed to doing. And it's something that then becomes a process for the team to remind each other that, hey, is this wrapped in a feature flag? Or just being mindful of that as part of our process. And it prompted me to think back on the other projects that I've worked on and how did we manage that flow? How did we go from development to staging to QA and then out to production? And one additional consideration with this flow is that we do have an overnight QA team. So in the past, when I've worked with teams, often product managers or even other developers, we would QA each other's work. So then it was a pretty fast turnaround that then you could get something up on staging. Someone could check it out and say, "Yes" or "No." But then I'm also pretty confident most of the teams that I've worked with we have had a distinct staging branch. So we would often merge work into a staging branch, and then deploy that work, and then get it tested. And then, if it passed everything, then we would essentially cherry-pick that work and move it over into production. And I can see there's a lot of arguments against that, but then I have also experienced that and had a really positive experience where we could test everything and not have to worry about going out to production. We didn't have to wrap everything in feature flags, and it just felt really nice to know that everything in the main or production branch, whatever you call your production branch, that everything in there was deployable versus having to go the feature flag route, or the hey, did this go through QA? I don't know. Let me check. Can I include this? Should I cherry-pick some commits into our actual deployment to avoid stuff that hasn't gone through QA? I've been through that dance before too, and that one's not great. CHRIS: I like the way you're framing the different sort of trade-offs that we have there in velocity or deployment speed and ease of iteration versus confidence as things are going out. I have worked with a staging branch before, and I personally did not find it to be valuable. It ended up adding this indirection. Folks had to know how to use Git in a pretty deep way to be comfortable with that just as a starting point. So it already introduced this hurdle of knowledge, and then beyond that, that idea that you have commits going in in a certain order on the staging branch. But then say we verify the functionality of the third commit in that list, and we want to cherry-pick it across to the main branch. Commits don't actually...you can't just take the thing that you had there. That commit existed in the context of all the others. There are subtleties of how history exists in Git. And I would worry about those edge cases where you're taking a piece of work out of the context of the rest of the commits that were around it or before it is, more importantly…that preceded it in the history on the staging branch, and you're now bringing it across to the main branch. Have you now lost something that was meaningful? Ideally, you would get a conflict if it was really bad, but that's more of like a syntactic diff level thing. It's not a functionality-level thing. So personally, I may be overly cautious around this, but I really like as much as possible to have the very boring linear history in Git and do everything I can such that work happens on feature branches and then gets merged in as a fast forward into the main branch or rather the main branch is fast-forward marched into my feature branch such that I'm never working with code that I haven't fully worked with in an integrated way before. But again, even that, as I'm saying that, I have this topological map of Git in my head as I'm saying all of that, and it's complicated. And having any of that complexity leak out into the way we talk about the work is something that I worry about, but maybe I'm worried about a bunch of things that don't matter. Maybe a staging branch is actually fantastic. STEPH: I think you make a lot of good points. Those are a lot of good concerns that come up with...it comes back to the idea that we want to mimic production as much as possible, and we don't want to lose that parity. So then, by having a staging branch, then it feels that we've lost that parity. There could be stuff that's in staging that's not in production. And so staging could be a little bit of this Wild West area, and then that doesn't fully represent then what's going to production. So I certainly understand and agree with those points that you're making. And to speak specifically to the Git challenges, I agree. It does require some more Git knowledge to be able to make that work. Specifically, I think how we handled it on a previous project is where we'd actually cherry-pick our commits into staging and then deploy that. But we always had the PR issued against main. So then merging into main was often a bit easier. But then you're right; things could get out of sync. And the PR is issued against main, so then you still could run into those oddities where then if you are cherry-picking commits in the staging, but then you have your final draft that's going into main. And then what are the differences between those, and what did you lose along the way? And as I say all of that out loud, I definitely understand the Git concerns. And I don't know; I just feel like there's not a great answer then here, which is shocking to me. I've been doing this for a while, and yet here I am feeling like there's not a great answer to this very vital part of our workflow. And I'm surprised even though that we do have a delayed QA process that this still feels like a painful thing to figure out how do we have a continuous deployment workflow even though we do have that delayed QA process? CHRIS: I think somewhat fundamentally your comment there of "I'm surprised that we don't have a good answer to this is," I'm not surprised, I guess, is my reaction. I don't want to go to the software is bad and broken, and we don't know anything end of the spectrum. But I don't feel like we have great answers to a lot of the things about development. I feel like software is more broken than it should be. It costs more to develop. It is difficult. It's hard to create, and maintain, and build over time. And that's just, to get lofty about it, that's what the entire focus of my career is, is trying to solve that problem. But it's a big, hard problem that I do not think is solved, unlike just about any of the fronts. I know how to put stuff in a database and take it back out. And even that, I'm like, oh yeah, but what if the database gets really big? Or what if the database...everything has complexities and edge cases. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: And we've joked a handful of times about the catchphrase of The Bike Shed being it depends, and that really feels true, though. I don't know that that's unique to this industry either. I feel like everything in the world is just more complicated the more you look at it, and there aren't clear, good, obvious answers to just about anything in the world, but that's the human condition. I got weirdly philosophical on this, so we should probably round this out. [laughs] STEPH: Well, I can circle us back because I was providing context, and I went a bit into the deep end providing all of that context. So if I circle back to what I wanted to share with you around deploys and releases, there has been that interesting conversation. Now that we have the context, there has been that interesting conversation around originally; we had this very structured deploys, a deploy map to the fact that features were going out to the world. And now we have this concept of a deploy doesn't necessarily mean that's available to customers. It doesn't mean that the code is running. It is more a deploy represents that we have placed a commit. We have placed code on the server. But that doesn't mean that it is accessible to anyone because it's probably hidden behind a feature flag. But from the perspective of the rest of the team that then is communicating these changes out to customers, they still really need to know, okay, when is something actually available to customers? And we kept using this terminology around deploy. And so Joël Quenneville, another thoughtboter who's on this project with me, has done a lot of great, thoughtful work around how can we help them know when something is truly available versus when something is deployed? Because right now, we're using Jira for our ticket issue tracking. And there's a particular screen in Jira that was showing what's being deployed. And from that screen, you can see the status of the ticket, and you would see stuff like in code review, in QA. So, of course, those looking at the tickets are like, hold up, you're deploying something that's in QA? That sounds really dangerous and risky. Why are you doing that? And then we'd have to explain, well, we're deploying it, but it's not actually live or accessible to anybody, but we want to get close to that continuous deploy cycle. So we have shifted to using the terminology of a release. So a deploy is more for the we're putting the code on the server and then release really represents okay, we have now released these features and these bug fixes, and they're now available all with the goal just to make sure that our teams are working well together. But it's been such an interesting conversation around how tickets move, the fact that they can progress linear and then also get moved backwards. But in continuous deployment, things don't go backwards and then making those things align. Typically, things don't go backwards. Technically, yes. CHRIS: History is a directed acyclic graph that only points forward. The arrow of time is very clear on this matter. Yeah, that really does add one more layer of like; what does it mean to actually be out there in the world? I do wonder if giving view-only visibility to the feature flag dashboard and only when it's fully green does someone think that that's deployed? But if you're putting feature flags around everything, there's complexity. And yeah, it's just one more layer to having to manage all of this. And it sounds like you've gotten to a good place, or at least you're evolving in a way that's enjoyable. But yeah, it's complicated. STEPH: Yeah, it definitely feels like we're moving in the right direction and that this will be a better...I want to say workflow, but it really focuses more around vocabulary and some of the changes to our processes and how we surface tickets in Jira. But it's more focused on how we talk about the changes that are getting shipped and when they're available. So, yeah, that's my story. What's new in your world? CHRIS: Well, I very much appreciate your story. In my world, I am in the thick of the MBP initial drive to get something into production, which is one of my favorite times, especially if everyone's in agreement about what exactly do we mean by MVP? Who are the users going to be? What's it going to look like? What's the bar that we're going to maintain? What features can we drop? What can't we drop? When there's a good collaborative sort of everyone rowing in the same direction set of conversations around that, I just love the energy of that time. So I'm happily in that space hacking away on features building as much as I can as quickly as I can. But as part of that, there are a lot of just initial decisions and things that I have to wire up and stuff that I have to change or configure. Thankfully, Rails makes a lot of that not the case. I can just go with what's there and be happy about that. But there is one thing that I did decide to change just today. But it's interesting; I don't think I've actually ever made this change before. I'm sure I've worked on an app that had this configuration, but typically, a Rails app will store the session in a cookie. So there is a signed HTTP only encrypted. I think those are all the things, but it uses a cookie to store that. And the actual data of the session lives in the payload of that cookie. And so, each time there's a request-response lifecycle, the full payload of that cookie is going up and down from the server to the client and then back and forth with all of the requests. And there's a limit; I think it's 4k is the limit on the cookie session. But there are some limitations to cookie sessions as far as I'm coming to understand them; one is the ability to do replay attacks. So if someone gets a hold of that cookie, then unless you rotate the secret key base, which will have some pretty wide-ranging effects on your application, that cookie can be reused in the future because it basically just has like, this is the user's ID. There you go. And there's no way to revoke that other than rotating the secret key base. Additionally, there are just costs of that payload of data, especially if you're putting a non-trivial amount of stuff. Like, if you're getting close to that 4K limit, then you have 4K of overhead, both on the request and the response of your HTTP requests. So especially in apps that are somewhat chatty and making a bunch of Ajax requests or doing different things, that's some weight that you should consider. So all of those mixed together, more so on the security side, I decided to look into it. And I have now switched from a cookie store, and I went all the way to the ActiveRecord database store. So I skipped over...there's a middle option that you can do with Memcached or Redis. We do have Redis in this particular application. We don't have Memcached yet; we probably will at some point. But you can do a memory store, so do Redis and store the session there, but I opted to go all the way to the database. And my understanding of the benefits here are we have a smaller cookie footprint, so smaller overhead on all the requests because now we're only sending the session ID. And then that references the actual payload of data that's stored in the database. We do have the ability now to invalidate sessions, so we can just truncate that table if we just want to sign all the users out and reset the world, which can be useful at times. We also have the ability...if there's any particular user that's like, "I left myself logged in somewhere," we can…well, I actually don't know how to do this now that I say that. I don't know how to log out a specific user because the sessions don't inherently have the user associated with them. You can have an unauthenticated session, which then transitions to be authenticated when someone signs in, and then the user ID gets installed in there. I would love to have these indexed to users such that I could invalidate and have a button on the admin dashboard that says, "Sign out all instances," and that will revoke all of the sessions or actually delete them from the database table now. I think I would have to add some extra instrumentation to do that. So anytime a user signs in via device, we annotate the session records so that it's got a user ID column and then index on that so that we can look them up efficiently. I think that's how that would work, but that's one of those things that I'm like; I think I should think very hard about this before I do it. It has security implications. It's not part of the default package. There's probably a reason for that. I'm going to do that another day. But yeah, overall, it was a pretty easy upgrade. I think I'm happy with it. It feels like one of those things that it's not clear to me why this isn't the default sort of thing where SQLite is often the database that you use just because it's slightly easier to get up and running? But for any application that we're working on, we're like, no, no, no, we're going to go to Postgres for local development and for everything because obviously, that's what we want to do. And I'm wondering if this should be in that space, like yeah, of course, the session should go in the database. There are so many reasons that it's better that way. I'm wondering if there are some edge cases that I'm not thinking about, but overall it seems cool. Have you ever worked with an alternative to the cookie store? STEPH: I'm thinking back to the recent projects that I've worked on. And it's been a while since I've mucked around with session work specifically. And the more recent projects that I've been on, we've used JWTs, or they're pronounced jots, I found out, which is really surprising. I don't know why, but that's a thing. CHRIS: What? STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: This doesn't feel true. STEPH: It's JWT, but it's pronounced jot, J-O-T. CHRIS: I think I'm just going to not do that. This is a trend I'm not going to get on board with. [chuckles] STEPH: I don't even know if it's a trend. I'm not sure who decreed this into the world. CHRIS: You're familiar with the great internet war around GIF versus JIF, right? I think there's room for different opinions. STEPH: I mean, it's really not a war. There's a correct side. CHRIS: We're on the same side, right? STEPH: [laughs] And this is how The Bike Shed ended. No, this is perfect for The Bike Shed. What am I talking about? CHRIS: This is perfect for The Bike Shed. I'm just going to need to hear you say the word real quick. [chuckles] STEPH: Oh, it's GIF, absolutely, CHRIS: Okay. All right, phew. Steph, I was worried, I was worried. Also, anyone out there that says JIF, it's fine. These things don't really matter. Although I am surprised when you have an acronym that gets turned into...I think it's an initialism, like jot versus JWT. I forget which is which. I think JWT would be the acronym. But jot, that's not even...I'm going to move on and say...[laughs] And so I think that JWTs, which is what I'm going to call them in this context, are, as far as I understand it, an orthogonal, different sort of thing. Like, you can put a JWT in the session, and the session can be stored in a cookie or in the database or wherever. You can also put JWTs...often, they are in local storage, which my understanding is that's a bad idea. That is a security vulnerability waiting to happen from cross-site scripting, I think, is the one that is coming to mind. But I think that's an independent thing where JWT is this signed assertion that you are someone. But it's coming often from an external system versus I'm using devise in this case on a Rails app and so devise is using the warden session, which is signing and encrypting and a bunch of stuff that I'm not thinking about. But it's not using JWTs at the end of the day. Jot, really, huh? STEPH: [laughs] I like how that's the thing that stuck out to you. CHRIS: Of course it is. STEPH: But it's fair because it did the same to me too, so I had to share it. [laughs] CHRIS: This is The Bike Shed, after all. [laughs] STEPH: So, going back to your question, what you've done sounds very reasonable to me, especially because you wanted to address that possibility of a replay attack. So I like the idea. I'm also intrigued by why it's not the default. What's the reasoning there? And I'm trying to think of a reason that it wouldn't be the default. And I don't have a great answer off the top of my head. Granted, it's also been a while since I've been in this space. But yeah, everything that you've done sounds really reasonable. I like it. I also see how being able to sign out a specific user would be really neat. That seems like a really nice feature. I don't know how often that would get used, but that seems like a really nice thing to be able to do to identify a particular user if they submitted and, I don't know, if some scenario came up and someone was like, "Help, please sign me out," then to have that ability. So I'll be intrigued to hear how this advances if you still really like this approach or if you find that you need to change back to using Memcached or the cookie store. CHRIS: Yeah, I'm in that space where as I'm looking at it, I'm like, I only see upside here. I guess there's a tiny bit of extra complexity. You have to watch that database table and set up a regular recurring job to sort of sweep old sessions that haven't been touched in a while because this is sort of like an append-only store. Every time someone signs in anew, they're getting a new session. So over time, this database table is just going to grow and grow and grow. But it's very easy to stay on top of that if you just set up a recurring job that's cleaning them. It's part of the ActiveRecord session store is the name of the gem. It's under the Rails namespace or the Rails GitHub organization. So that seems manageable. Maybe that's the one complexity is it has this sort of runaway trait to it that you have to stay on top of, whereas the cookie-based sessions don't. But yeah, I'm seeing a lot of upside for us, so I'm going to try it. I think it's going to be good. I'm also unfortunately in that space where I think I see all the moving parts as to how I could implement the sign out a user in all of their sessions. But I'm worried that I'm tricking myself there. It's one of those things it's like this feels like it would be built in if it was that straightforward, or it could easily have subtle...it's like, don't invent your own crypto. Like, I think I know how crypto algorithms work. I can just write one real quick. No, don't do that, definitely don't do that. And this one, it seems clear enough, but it's still in the space of crypto security, et cetera, that I just don't want to mess with without really thoroughly convincing myself that I know what I'm talking about. So maybe six months from now, I will have talked myself into it. Or if anyone out there is listening and knows of a good founded, well-thought-out version of yeah, this is totally a thing that we do; here's what it looks like; I would love to hear that. But otherwise, I'll probably just be happy with the ability to wipe everyone's session as necessary. If any one user leaves themselves logged in at a library and needs me to log them out, I'll just log out every user. That's fine. That's a good enough solution. STEPH: Yeah. All of that makes sense. And also, the part that you highlighted around that there is that additional work of where then you have to make sure that you have a rake task that's running to then sign people out since there's that additional lift that you mentioned. But I'm excited to hear what folks have to say if they're using this approach and what they think about it. It is super interesting. CHRIS: Well, yeah, I am very excited about this new development and the management of sessions. And I will let you know if I make any headway on the signing out a user sort of thing. But I think that covers that topic. As an aside, I just wanted to take a quick moment to ask folks out there; we are getting to the bottom of our listener question queue, and we absolutely love getting listener questions. They really help us find novel things to talk about that whenever we start talking about them, it turns out that we have a lot to say. So please do send in any questions that you have. You can send them to hosts@bikeshed.fm. That's an email option. You can tweet at us; we're @bikeshed, or either of us individually. I'm @christoomey. STEPH: And I'm @SViccari. CHRIS: And we also have a Google Form, which we will link in the show notes of this episode. So any of those versions send us questions. It can be about more tech stuff, more process stuff, more team-building, really anything across the spectrum. But we really do love getting the questions in, and definitely helps provide a little bit more structure to the show. So, with that aside, Steph, what else is going on in your world? STEPH: Yeah, I love when we call from our listener questions, for the reason that you highlighted because it often exposes me to different ways of thinking in topics that I hadn't considered before. And you're right; we're often very opinionated souls. [laughs] And along that note, so I have a question for you. The context is another developer, and I ran into a bug. And when we initially looked at the bug, it was one of those there's no way. There's no way the code is in this state. That does not make sense. And then, of course, it's one of those well, the computer says otherwise, so clearly we're wrong. We just can't see how the code is getting to this place. And what was happening is we were setting a value. We were parsing some JSON. We're looking for a value in that JSON, and we're using dig specifically in Ruby. So if it's the JSON or if it's a hash, and then we're doing dig, and then we're going two layers deep. So let's say we're going foo and then bar, and then dig; if it doesn't find those values, instead of erroring, it's just going to return nil. And then we have an or, and then we have a hard-coded string. So it's like, hey, we want to set this attribute to this value. If it's the hash, then give us back that value; if not, it's going to be nil, and then give us this hard-coded string. What we were seeing in the actual data is that we were getting an empty string. And initially, it was one of those; how are we possibly getting an empty string when we gave you a hard-coded string to give us instead? And it's because empty strings are truthy. When we were performing the dig, it was finding both of those values, but that value was set to an empty string. And because that evaluates to truthy, we weren't getting the hard-coded string, and then we were setting it to an empty string, and then that caused some problems. So then my question to you is should we have truthiness in our code? CHRIS: Oh wow. That's a big question. It's also each language I might have a slightly different version of my answer. Yeah, I'm going to have to go sort of across languages to answer. I think in Ruby, I have generally been happy with Ruby's somewhat conservative implementation of truthiness. Yeah, anything that isn't nil false...is that it? Are those the only falsy values? There's maybe one more, but zero is not a falsy value. Empty string is not a falsy value. They're truthy, to name it in the affirmative. And I like that Ruby has a more conservative view of what things are. And so it can have this other surprising edge. I will say that I do reach for present? in Rails, so present? Present with a question mark at the end, that method in Rails, which I pronounce as present, huh? STEPH: Which is delightful, by the way. CHRIS: Well, thank you. That method I reach for often or presence would be the variant in this case where you can presence or and then chain on the thing that you want, and that gets the value. It will basically do the thing that you want here. And so, I do find myself reaching for that, which does imply that maybe Ruby's default truthiness is not quite what I want. And I want a little more permissive truthiness, a little more like, no, empty strings are not truthy. Empty string is an empty value, so it is empty. But yeah, I think I can always convince myself of the other argument when I'm angrily fighting against a bug that I ran into, and I'm surprised by. Like, I've experienced this from both sides many times in my life. I will say in JavaScript, I am constantly surprised by the very, very permissive type coercion that happens where you compare a string and a number, and suddenly they're both strings, and they get smashed together. It's like, wait, how is that ever the thing that I would want? And so JavaScript's version feels like it is definitively foundationally wrong. Ruby's feels like it's maybe a tiny bit conservative, but I like that as a default and then Rails building on top of that. I think I lean towards that most of the time. I will say at the other end of the spectrum, I've worked with Haskell, and Haskell has I want to say it's like a list of chr, like C-H-R list of characters as the canonical way to do strings. I may be mixing this up. It may be actually the string type, but then there's also a text type, and they're slightly different. Maybe it's UTF. I forget what the distinction was, but they both exist, and they are both often found in libraries and in code. And you end up having to constantly convert back and forth. And there are no subtle equivalents between them or any type coercion between them because it's Haskell, and there isn't really any of that. And this was early on. I never got particularly far in Haskell, but I found that so painful and frustrating. It was just like, come on; they're like strings. Please just do the thing. You know what I mean. And Haskell was like, "I do not. And I require you to be ridiculously specific about it." So that was sort of the high end for me of like nope, definitely not that JavaScript of like anything's anything and it's fine. That feels bad. So somewhere in the middle, Ruby feels like it's a happy in the middle. Maybe Rails is actually where I want to land, but I don't know that there is a good answer to this. I don't know that there's a language that's like, we got it. It's this very specific set of things. It's truthy, and these are falsy, and it's perfect every time. Like, I don't think that can happen. STEPH: As an aside, I like how your Haskell voice had the slight air of pretension that really resonated with me. [laughs] CHRIS: I don't know what you're talking about. That doesn't sound familiar to me at all. [laughs] STEPH: I agree. I don't know that anyone has gotten this perfect. But then again, I also haven't tried all the languages that are out there, so I don't feel like that's really a fair statement for me to make either. Specific to the Ruby world, I do think Boolean coercions are a bit nice because then they do make certain checks easier. So if you are working with an if statement, you can say, "If this, and then do that, else, do this." And that feels like a pretty nice common idiomatic flow that we use in Ruby but then still feels like one of those areas that can really bite you. So while having this conversation with some other thoughtboters, Mike Burns provided a succinct approach to this that I think I really like where he said that he likes the use of truthy and falsy for if statements, Booleans for the and statement, and only truthy falsy for Booleans, so no nulls. So Boolean should not have three states is what that last part is highlighting. It should be just true or false. And then if we're working with the double ampersand and in Ruby, that then if you have that type of conditional that you are conveying, then to use a strict Boolean, be more strict and use the methods that you were referring to earlier, like empty and explicitly checking is this an actual...like turn it into a Boolean instead of relying on that that truthy falsy of is it present? Is it an empty string? Does that count? But then, for the if statements, those can be a little more loose. And actually, now that I'm saying it, that first part, I get it. It's convenient, but I still feel like bugs lie down that path. And so, I think I'm still in favor of being more explicit. If I really care if something is true or false, I want to call out explicitly. I expect this to be true or false versus relying on the fact that I know it will evaluate, although I'm sure I do it all the time, just because that's how you often write idiomatic Ruby. So I'm interested in watching my own behavior now to see how often I'm relying on that truthy, falsy behavior, and then see the areas that I can mitigate that just because yeah, that bug is fresh in my mind, and I'd like to prevent those bugs going forward. CHRIS: I really liked that phrase of that bug is fresh. So that bug is going to own a little bit more mindshare than that old bug that's a bit stale in the back of my brain. I will say as you were talking about idiomatic Ruby, I think you're right that the sort of core or idiomatic way to do it would be if the user or whatever to see is the user here, or are they nil? Did we find one, or did we not? That sort of thing is commonly the way it would be done. I almost always write those as if users are not present? I will convert it into that because A, I'm writing Ruby, and I write Ruby because I want it to sound like the human words that I would say. And so I wouldn't say like, "If user," I would say, "If the user is present, then do the thing." And so I write the code to do that, but I also get the different semantics that present? Brings or blank? Is the counterpart, the other side of it. That seems to be the way that I write my code. That's idiomatic me, Ruby, and I don't know how strongly I hold that belief. But that is definitely how I write those, which I find interesting in contrast to what you were saying. The other thing that came to mind as you were saying this is that particular one of an empty string. I kind of want to force empty strings to not be okay, particularly at the database level. So I'll often have null false on a string column, but then I'll find empty strings in there. And I'm like, well, that's not what I meant. I wanted stuff in there. Database, I want you to stop it if I was just putting in an empty string because you're supposed to be the gatekeeper that keeps me honest. And so I do wonder if there is a Postgres extension that we could have similar to the citexts, citext, which is case-insensitive text. So you can say, "Yeah, store this as it is, but whenever you compare it, compare case-insensitively," because an email is an email. Even if I capitalize the third letter, it doesn't make it a different email. I want a non-empty text as a column type that is both null false but also has a check constraint for an empty string and prevents that. And then similarly, the three-state Boolean thing that you're talking about, I will always do null false on a Boolean column because it's a lie if I ever tell myself. I'm like, yeah, but this Boolean could be null, then you've got something else. Then you've got an ADT, which I also can't represent in my database, and that makes me sad. I guess I can enum those, but it's not quite the same because I can't have additional data attached. That's a separate feeling that I have about databases. I'm going down a rabbit hole here. I wish the database would prevent me from putting in empty strings into null, false string columns. I understand that I'm going to have to do some work on my side to make that happen, but that's the world I want to live in. STEPH: I'm trying to think of a name for when you have a Boolean that's also a potential null value. What do you have? You have nullean at that point? CHRIS: Quantum Boolean. STEPH: Quantum Boolean. [laughs] CHRIS: Spooky Boolean. STEPH: The maybe Boolean? CHRIS: Yeah. STEPH: No, that's worse. [laughs] Yeah, I'm with you. And I like the idiomatic Ruby. I think that is something that I would like to do more of where I'm explicitly checking if user instead of just checking for that presence and allowing that to flow through doing the present check and verifying that yes, we do have a user versus allowing that nil to then evaluate to falsy. That's the type of code that I think I'd like to be more strict about writing. But then it's also interesting as I'm formulating these ideas. Is it one of those if I'm reviewing a PR and I see that someone else didn't do it, am I going to advise like, hey, let's actually check or turn this into a true Boolean versus just relying on the truthy and falsy behavior? And probably not. I don't think I'm there yet. And I think this is more in the space that I'm interested in pursuing and seeing how it benefits the code that I'm writing. But I don't think I'm at the state where then I would advocate, at least not loudly, on other PRs that we do it. If it is, it'd be like a small suggestion, but it wouldn't be something that I would necessarily expect someone else to do. CHRIS: Yeah, definitely the same for me on that, although it's a multi-step plan here, a multi-year plan. First, we say it on a podcast, then we say it again on a podcast, then we change all the hearts and minds, then everyone writes the style, then we're all in agreement that this is the thing that we should do. And then it's reasonable to bring up in a pull request, or even then, I still wouldn't want it. Then it's like standard rb or somebody else's job. That's the level of pull request comment that I'm like, really? Come on. Come on. STEPH: This is a grassroots movement for eradicating truthiness and falsyness. I think we're going to need a lot of help to get this going. [laughs] CHRIS: Thankfully, there are the millions of listeners to this show that will carry this torch forward, I assume. STEPH: Millions. Absolutely. CHRIS: I'm rounding roughly a little. STEPH: There are a couple, yeah. [laughs] I'd be far more nervous if I knew we had millions of people listening. CHRIS: I kind of know that people listen. But at the same time, most of the time, I just entirely forget about that, and I feel like we're just having a conversation, which I think is good. But yeah, the idea that actual humans will listen to this in the future is a weird one that just doesn't do good things in my head. So I just let that go. And you and I are just having a chat, and it's great. STEPH: Yeah. I'm with you. And just to reiterate what you were saying earlier, we love getting listener questions. So if there's anything that you'd like to send our way and have us to chat about or something you'd like to share with us, then please do so. 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 in 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: Byeeeeeeeeee. 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._

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends and welcome to the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your cohost CHRIS:, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And again, most of, I think, our listeners know what our goal is but let me reiterate that we love bringing on to the podcast thought leaders in the well-being space doing meaningful work to advance the profession and to in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. CHRIS: Let me introduce my cohost Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing? And how has your summer been? BREE BUCHANAN: Hey Chris, it has been wonderful. I get to be here in Eugene, Oregon so it's just beautiful and getting to do a lot of fun things. I'm really blessed with that. And I just wanted to say, Chris, you're talking about thought leaders and as regards to our guest today, Jen really is, she's not only a thought leader in this space but she's also a teacher of future thought leaders. So we're really glad that we got Jen with us today. CHRIS: Yeah. We got a great guest today. And we are in the midst right now of spending a three-part miniseries within the podcast of really looking in terms of what's going on in the law schools. We know that they are training the next generation in our profession and we know that these issues are becoming much more acutely aware in the environment. We started off our law school series with Linda Sugin from Fordham Law School and we will be followed in our next podcast by Janet Stearns who comes to us from the Miami School of Law. CHRIS: But today's about Penn Law and introducing our, we're really excited to have Jennifer Leonard join us on the podcast. Bree, will you do the honors of introducing Jen. BREE: I'd be delighted. So Jen Leonard is Penn Law's, get this title, I love this, Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Future of the Profession Initiative. Jen's work at Penn Law focuses on developing a deep understanding of what legal professionals need to be successful in the face of constant transformation. Isn't that true? Working with a collaborative group of colleagues across the law school in the profession, Jen designs ways to educate new law students about changes in the profession and the skills they need to thrive in the future. BREE: Before assuming her current role, she served as Associate Dean for Professional Engagement and Director of the Center of Professionalism at Penn Law. And prior to that, she was Chief of Staff to the City Solicitor of Philadelphia and a Litigation Associate with a Center City law firm, and a Judicial Law Clerk. And then Jen went home when she went to work at Penn Law because she's a graduate from there in 2004 from the law school and Penn State University with high honors. Jen's also a frequent writer and speaker on the issues that include lawyer and law student well-being. So Jen, thank you for being here today and welcome. JENNIFER LEONARD: Wow. Thank you so much, Chris and Bree. I'm so excited to be here. And thank you for that lovely introduction. BREE: You bet. So Jen, one of the things we always ask our guests because it provides such interesting information and background and insight into the people that we have with us, tell us what brought you into the lawyer/law student well-being movement. The people that work in this space and really care about it, they have a passion for the work. And typically, there's something that's driving that. So tell us a little bit about that, what that means for you. JENNIFER: Yeah. First of all, I'm so excited that there is an actual movement now around attorney well-being and law student well-being. BREE: Right. JENNIFER: That's an exciting development and a recent development, which I think many law students don't fully understand because they have arrived at law school at a time when the movement is accelerating and is growing which is fantastic. JENNIFER: I have first-hand experience being a law student who really struggled with well-being issues including depression and anxiety and also some of the really common things that law students experience, imposter syndrome, not fully understanding that I wasn't expected to know how to be a skilled attorney on day one. Most attorneys, hopefully, if they've had a really great practice will retire still growing and still learning new things. And I did not understand as a very confused and disoriented OneL that I was just at the beginning of a journey and I felt very isolated and very sort of inept in the environment and that was stunning to me because I had spent my whole life just absolutely loving school from being four years old and pretending to be a teacher in my basement with my friends all the way through graduating from college, it was just the place I felt most alive and most comfortable. JENNIFER: And law school was a completely different experience. I felt very uncomfortable from day one. My involvement in the well-being movement, I would say, is sort of an accident that followed from that experience which followed me into practice and I certainly experienced many of the challenges that the research shows around depression and anxiety in private practice. When I moved over to government work, because of the constraints of resources, you're just sort of thrown into the fire and forced to grow on your own. And that was actually really helpful for me for building confidence and learning that I actually had the capacity to do amazing things if I really gave myself the time to develop and the opportunity to develop. JENNIFER: So when I came to the law school in 2013 and started counseling law students, it was sort of a revelation to me as I sat across from younger versions of myself that they were saying to me the exact same things that I was saying in my own head as a OneL. And that was the first time even 10 years after law school that it occurred to me that I was not the only person who had this experience. And I really wanted to prevent future generations of law students from making the mistake and thinking they weren't capable and not allowing themselves to live up to their potential and contribute to society in the profession. JENNIFER: So I started building some programming, co curricular programming at first, and then programming that eventually became woven into our formal curriculum after the National Task Force report came out. And so I was just thrilled to see the movement grow over time and now to have part in leading some of those initiatives at the law school. CHRIS: Jen, today we're going to talk about the work of you and your colleagues at Penn Law. Let's set the stage a little bit. Tell us about Penn Law, your location, size, focus, types of students, and give us a flavor for the type of law school that you work within. JENNIFER: Well, I have the great pleasure of working at a phenomenal law school. The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School which is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We draw students from all over the world, approximately 250 incoming first-year JDs every year from all over the country and 115 LLM students from around the world who contribute just such a diversity and complexity of perspectives to our experience that we really are a global leader in legal education. And I'm excited to work at Penn as a broader university because its founder Benjamin Franklin really focused on two elements of education that I think are critical to our success. JENNIFER: One is a real focus on interdisciplinarity and learning across different disciplines about how to solve problems and that is a lot of what my work entails, building connections with our colleagues in innovation spaces across Penn's campus. And the second element is really bringing a blend of high-minded intellectual research and academic efforts in translating that work into things that can really have impact in the real world. And so it's the perfect place to be developing innovative projects including some of our work in the well-being space and seeing how that work translates in our profession. BREE: So speaking of innovation, I just think that you have the coolest job title I've ever seen. Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Future of the Profession Initiative. Tell us about that. How did all that come about? And tell us about that initiative. JENNIFER: Oh, thank you. I love my job. I do get to have the coolest title. And I think if I were to make a long story short, I think it's that I chirped enough about all the changes I'd love to see in legal education and in the profession that somebody finally gave me the opportunity to focus just on that. And the longer story is that our dean was really interested in thinking about all the changes happening in the legal profession and how a leading law school really has both an obligation and an opportunity to respond to that change so that our students are entering the profession prepared with the skills they need to thrive and to also lead the profession into the next phase of its existence. JENNIFER: So I had the chance to work with colleagues across the law school and then through our advisory board of alumni all across the profession to iterate and refine the vision for what ultimately became the future of the profession initiative, which I now have the great honor and privilege of leading. CHRIS: Tell me about the scope of that initiative. I'm just curious what you're looking at and what you're hoping to poke and prod around into. JENNIFER: Sure. We have three different buckets of projects that we work on. And I'm part of a day-to-day team of three people, two of my colleagues Jim Sandman who is President Emeritus of Legal Services Corporation and now's our senior consultant and Miguel Willis who is the Executive Director of Access to Justice Tech Fellows which is now formally affiliated with FPI. And Jim, Miguel, and I and our colleagues work on developing new curricular and co curricular offerings that are responsive to the changing conditions in the legal profession. So Jim teaches courses on leadership in law, Miguel and our advisory board member Claudia Johnson teaches courses on law, technology, and access to justice, I teach courses on user center design for the better delivery of legal services. JENNIFER: And so we focus on teaching students about the skills that they need to respond to future conditions. We also focus on leading conversations across the profession of leaders who are doing really interesting things in legal. And those conversations take the form of a podcast, the Law 2030 podcast, a monthly newsletter where we bring in voices not only from the legal profession but from across Penn's campus, across other fields to help us navigate change, to teach us what they're doing in their respective environments that we can draw lessons from. And then finally, we're building out projects for impact, things that we can do from the unique position of being a research university that can have real-world impact. So Jim is working on a variety of projects related to regulatory reform, finding new ways to connect people with legal systems. Jim's focused also on court simplification and form simplification so that it's easier for individuals and small businesses to access the legal profession. JENNIFER: So we teach, we lead conversations and we do it all within the goal of transforming the way we deliver legal services to our clients. CHRIS: That sounds like pretty cool work. JENNIFER: It's so much fun- BREE: I know. JENNIFER: And really, really engaging and worthwhile and so lucky to do it. BREE: I just think you must be so excited to go to work every day. JENNIFER: Totally. CHRIS: Anyone who gets to put the word future in their job description, I think that's pretty fun to be able to look out at. JENNIFER: Oh, it's so fun. CHRIS: So Jen, you've been back now at Penn Law I think in a professional capacity for about eight years. Let's talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the law school environment. Share with our listeners some of the well-being issues you've seen coming out of the student body, issues that students are facing. And how have those issues affected their law school and, in many cases, their post law school experience? JENNIFER: Yeah. So I think, again, to draw from my own experience both as a law student who struggled with these issues and also as somebody who had the chance to counsel students in a career counseling capacity early on in my time at the law school, I would say the biggest thing that I saw and see among students is the idea of imposter syndrome. When you are in an environment where you're surrounded by really talented people who come from all different backgrounds, all different educational degrees, you look around and you think, "How can I be here with all of these smart people around me?" And then you have the opportunity to engage in Socratic dialogue with learned professors and legal scholars at the top of their fields. JENNIFER: And I found it to be, and in my experience talking with first-year law students, some of them also find it to be very overwhelming. And I think that helping them adopt a mindset, a learner's mindset, that you are here because you deserve to be here is a rigorous process for admission. And our admission's office doesn't make mistakes. You should be here. And you are here at the very beginning of what will be a very long journey where you will grow a significant amount over the course of your life. So expecting yourself to understand the complexities of law in the first couple months, I think, is unrealistic. And so helping students understand that all lawyers have been in their shoes, that the people around them who seem the most confident are frequently the ones who are struggling the most and sometimes that manifests as overconfidence or projection of overconfidence which can feed into that imposter syndrome. JENNIFER: And I think just helping students adopt a growth mindset that will allow them to, I don't like to use the word fail, I like to use the word learn, learn from missteps, learn from early misunderstandings of the law, learn even in their Socratic dialogue which was particularly challenging for me. I'm introverted by nature. And I viewed everything as a judgment on me and if I wasn't doing it perfectly, that meant I wasn't capable of doing it. And so supporting students in understanding that they are in a developmental process that is rigorous and at the end will benefit them tremendously if they can adopt that learner's mindset. BREE: I just love how you framed that and that must be so incredibly helpful for the students that you talk to. I definitely dealt with imposter syndrome. I know that a lot of people have but I didn't have the language for it. Do you talk to the students about, do you name it? Do you tell them what imposter syndrome is? JENNIFER: Yeah. I would say most students now coming in are familiar with it from their undergrad work or other graduate work, which is fantastic. As you know, Bree, there was no language when we were in law school for imposter syndrome. It didn't even exist. So we're already starting at a more advanced point. And also the concept of growth mindset is something that people are learning about at a younger and younger age. My kids are in daycare and kindergarten and are already learning about growth mindset. So in 20 years, we'll be admitting people to law school who either they don't need to learn learner's mindset and they don't need to learn the importance of growth mindset. We will be much more ahead of the game. JENNIFER: Now, I think we're in this exciting chapter where we're finally opening up the conversation and naming the issues as you're saying. And students are much more comfortable, I think, than our generation was at being open about the challenges, which is really, really not only helpful for advancing the conversation but helpful for your own mental health to be engaged with other people who are experiencing the same thing. CHRIS: Talk to us about some of the well-being initiatives that make you most proud. You've obviously put a lot of time and attention into creating a culture where people's issues are respected and there's vulnerability and empathy. Talk to us about what are some of the things that you are most proud of in terms of what it does and some of the things that you've been doing. JENNIFER: It's funny, Chris, because I will talk about the thing that we've done that I'm most proud of and on behalf of my colleagues because these are really collaborative efforts across the law school, not just from FPI. But also, what I'm most excited about for the future, but I would say that I'm most proud of our leadership at our school led by our dean really embracing the recommendations of the National Task Force report and developing the opportunity to come into all of our upper level professional responsibility courses which are the only courses that are required after the first year of law school. So it's the only course where we will reach every student before they graduate outside of what is a very challenging and jampacked first year curriculum and talk to the students about these issues and talk to them about what the task force revealed, the current state of the research, some of the potential causes for the challenges we see in the legal profession, why those challenges relate to the provision of legal services. JENNIFER: One thing that I've learned in doing this programming over the years to the great credit of the students is sometimes they don't want to focus as much on these issues just for their own benefit. And even though there are great benefits to doing that, what they really want to know is what does this have to do with being a lawyer? How does this impact my lawyering and my clients? And our solution to that was really to talk to them about exactly that. How does this impact the provision of service to your clients? How can you give the best legal counsel you're capable of if you're not well? How are the ways that we can elevate our well-being? And bringing in experts, I am not a mental health expert, I have the experience of being somebody who was challenged with these issues, but we bring in voices from the mental health community who are trained professionals to talk with the students about some of the challenges that professionals face. JENNIFER: And so I have been the most proud to work with my colleague John Hollway as well to deliver those lessons and guide those discussions in our professional responsibility courses. I'll also say that I was most excited, our dean offered the opportunity to all of the faculty who teach professional responsibility in the upper levels, this is not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination, it was just a chance for them to do it if they wanted. Every single professional responsibility faculty member welcomed us in, has repeatedly welcomed us to come back, and they were really excited to see the law school doing this. So that is what I would say I'm most proud of to date, and again, with my colleagues developing this. JENNIFER: What I'm most proud of in the future is moving into the next phase of that conversation and having a more unified discussion between law schools and legal employers and law firms so that we're not having one conversation at the law school level and helping students develop responsive coping behaviors to respond to stress that work in a law school environment but maybe don't work in practice to thinking about the environments and the systems within which we practice and seeing how we can transform those environments so that it's a shared responsibility between schools and employers and individual students and lawyers to really lift all boats and be sure that we can practice at the highest level. So that is the next phase of our work and we're actively thinking about how we can do that in the best possible way. CHRIS: Yeah. There's no doubt that the work that you are doing and, again, lots of folks in law schools are doing, if we prepare them for a profession that ultimately is very different than what we just did to create those senses of what practicing law's going to be like and if it's very different there's going to be a disconnect, as you mentioned. JENNIFER: Exactly. And we want to teach them skills that they're able to deploy over their entire career, not just skills that will work for the next year or two. How can we bring in more collaborative partners from practice so that we're bridging that gap, bridging that divide more? And how are we thinking about redeveloping systems so that people can have more balance in their life and really be healthier, happier lawyers who are better serving their clients? CHRIS: Yeah. JENNIFER: It's a huge task but one that- CHRIS: It is a huge task and maybe we can come back and touch on this coming back from the break. It feels like to be able to do that, you're going to have to bring those thought leaders in the legal environments into the law school though, almost have them go through their own reflection points about how they think about culture and how they value the attorneys within the firm from a well-being perspective. JENNIFER: And I think that's where we have the real ability to do that is our convening ability and we can do that and we can also bring in our colleagues from Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering. And what are their students and professionals experiencing? And then some of our psychology partners across campus to come in and talk about the complex interplay among professional satisfaction, finance, and some of these mental health conditions that elite professionals experience and how can we work together to come up with some new solutions to the problems. And I think that a law school is the perfect place to do that. CHRIS: Yeah. JENNIFER: And I would love to involve the students because I think that they would be really interested in having the conversation as well and having some agency and some involvement in driving that change. BREE: No doubt. CHRIS: Yeah. So let's take a quick break here because, again, I think we're getting into the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of what you're working to do and why it's going to be, I think, so important in terms of the future of our professionals. Let's take a short break. JENNIFER: Sounds great.   — Advertisement: Meet Vera, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide developed by ALPS. Vera's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake to calendaring to cyber security and more. Vera: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed and to keep your firm on the right path.   Generous and discreet, Vera is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit Vera at https://www.alpsinsurance.com/vera. — BREE: So welcome back, everybody. And we have with us today Jen Leonard who is one of the, I'll say, one of the leading thought leaders around well-being for law students. She is joining us today from Penn Law. And continue in the conversation, Jenn, I think what I'd really like for us to talk about now is focus in on what advice you can give to our listeners out there who are with a law school who are thinking about how to implement some programs, maybe something you've mentioned, something that they have decided they want to pursue on their own. And one of the biggest things within a large school is to get buy in from leadership and I heard you say earlier on that you do have buy in from your top leadership. How did that happen with the administration? And how did you get buy in from the faculty? JENNIFER: So amazing question. Yes. I would say the biggest driver of our success is really the leadership of our dean who is very interested in these topics and interested in supporting our students in developing into the best attorneys they can be. And I can't overstate how much that matters. Our faculty, I would say, are similarly supportive and the culture at our school is, we joke that people talk about it as a collegial culture all the time, but it really is this Quaker-based culture of collegiality and collaboration. So I feel very, very fortunate and maybe uniquely situated as compared with some of your listeners who might be trying to build these programs at other schools. JENNIFER: But what I would say is even if you don't have those conditions, I would not be discouraged. What I would do is I would be strategic. If you want to start well-being initiatives at your own law school, I would say start small and find the people who will be the cheerleaders for you who have voices that people will listen to. One group of voices that are really compelling to faculty and administrators alike are students. So if you have students coming to you who are interested in these topics, and as I said, I think students coming into law school now are so much more well-versed in these issues from their undergrad and other experiences that the movement is growing even among students. So being able to channel those voices and respond to them as an administration is really important. If you can find a faculty member who is really interested or who has had experience with students in their classes who have been challenged around some of these issues and would like to help you build a program, that's fantastic. JENNIFER: But you can build co curricular offerings, I would say that's the best way to start is to offer programs, maybe a brown bag lunch from students at lunchtime, bring in some alumni who are interested in this. I find in my experience that alumni who are practicing law and who are experiencing the stresses of practicing law are really, really interested in reaching back and supporting new law students and they're also really well-respected among the student body. And it also doesn't cost a lot of money usually to bring in an alum to have lunch with students and especially now that we do so many things on Zoom, have some of your alumni Zoom in and talk about things they wish they'd known when they were law students and how they've grown over time. As I said, it doesn't have to be expensive. But if you start small and you're willing to learn and you're willing to get feedback from students on how to improve and iterate the programming over time, then you can start building from there. CHRIS: Jen, it feels like what you're also inferring, correct me if I'm misstating it, is that you are in your effort to nurture the culture within the law school itself, there certainly is a student centric approach to that and just trying to understand where they're at, why they're there, again, how we can assist them on the journey, not just from a law knowledge perspective but also the mental approach to preparing them to become a lawyer down the road? JENNIFER: That's absolutely right. And I love that you say a student centric approach. In our sort of general innovation programming outside of well-being, we're really focused on human centered design. So if you apply that lens to the law student experience, what are we as administrators providing to our students and what is that provision of education and experience like from their perspective? And the way to do that is to really have conversations with student groups, maybe you have a student group in your building that you don't even know about that is focused on well-being. We have a wellness committee of students who are interested in these topics, so meeting with them and learning about what they would find really helpful and building support from there, I would say. Bringing the student voice in is critical though. CHRIS: Yeah. And I know, again, I graduated from a law school class that had 75 students which is significantly less than your incoming classes. And it certainly feels like the faster that you create communities of students together or feeling that you can find people that you can relate to within the law school environment, the more that you got people that just feel more comfortable, avoid the imposter syndrome, and then hopefully we're preparing them for an opportunity to prosper as they go through the law school journey. JENNIFER: That's right. And I think also one other tip could be maybe if you feel that the environment's not receptive to well-being programming or you're having trouble gaining traction, there are programs that you can create that are not explicitly well-being programs but that have the corollary benefit of creating enhanced well-being in your institution. And those programs can be about team building and collaboration and legal practice skills and how those interpersonal impact skills are really being deployed in practice. And they have the benefit of building community among the students, as my colleague John talks about it. He talks about it like fluoride in the water, that you don't really know that it's there but in the end it has the impact of building a healthier environment around you. BREE: Let's talk about getting to the nitty gritty, which is the cost of some of these programs which could be another barrier for somebody to implement. What is, I guess, the fiscal impact of the programs that you put together? And do you have any suggestions for people about that? JENNIFER: I would say that most of the programming we have done costs virtually nothing to do aside from maybe the cost of providing lunch, if you're providing lunch to your students. Having alumni come in and do a panel discussion about some of these issues, if you're at a law school that's connected with a broader university that has a counseling and psychological services group where you can have trained mental health professionals come in and have a conversation with students will cost nothing. Even the professional responsibility module we built out costs nothing to do, other than the energy investment in building the program and engaging our professors and getting their buy in. It is a lot of sweat equity that you will put into these programs but the actual cost of running them is minimal, I would say. JENNIFER: So I would say no matter what your law school's budget is, not to be deterred around having these conversations of building a community that is supportive of them. CHRIS: Bree knows that one of the, I sit in a management role at an insurance company, so we're always data geeks about trying to figure out how do we measure success. And again, the well-being space is such an interesting one in terms of how do you know that you're, so to speak, advancing the ball? How do you feel like you're making an impact in terms of, again, preparing students for the practice of law? And as you think about your work on a day-to-day basis, are there certain metrics that you look at or is it a little bit more instinctual and you just know that you're making an impact but in small and significant ways? JENNIFER: Yeah. I would say our return on investment are the qualitative reports that we have from students and alumni versus more hard data. We've certainly used research from other places to guide our efforts so some of the research that Sheldon and [Krieger 00:34:20] have done about the shift from intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation in the first year we fold into our conversations with students. But in terms of measuring outcomes, I think professional skill development is notoriously difficult to measure impact around but I talk with alumni who are five or six years now who seem to me to be very healthy and happy and thriving and really happy with their law school experience because of the community, and it's not because of the well-being programs in particular, but because of the community that we've been able to cultivate here and the support that we provide to our students. JENNIFER: And we take a tremendous amount of feedback and we have been careful about measuring the feedback from students in the PR modules and finding ways to pivot and iterate and adjust to student feedback. And one of the pieces of feedback that I referenced earlier or the place where we want to move next is thinking about these systems. So students are curious about how our environment's adapting to the research that people in the profession are doing around some of these challenges and how can we be a part of that as well. So it's more qualitative admittedly than quantitative but it's certainly I can feel a shift. I know that it's a different environment from when I was a student there and I can only say from the students to whom I have said, "You are not alone in this," those of us in the building have experienced this that the look of relief and sometimes surprise is really significant feedback to me. BREE: Yeah. Jen, just before we wrap up I just have to acknowledge the time we're in and the context of this podcast which is coming up on a year and a half in the pandemic. So can you talk a little bit about the impact of that on your student body and what you guys at Penn Law have done to address that? JENNIFER: So what I can talk about, Bree, is how we adapted the module that we present to the students and the professional responsibility course. We adapted it pretty significantly over the last year and a half in response to all of the things that happened in 2020, the pandemic, the dislocation, the disconnection in our communities, the social uprising around racial injustice across the globe, the political polarization that we're all experiencing. It's been a lot to process and then to sit and talk with law students about their well-being, the conversation had to be different than the conversation we were having with them in December of 2019. BREE: Absolutely. JENNIFER: Some of the adjustments that we made were bringing in more voices from our counseling and psychological services offices, particularly counselors that are trained on racial identity coming in to talk with students about the experience of being historically under represented person or group in a majority institution at a time when we're going through everything that we're going through. So we brought in that element to our conversations. JENNIFER: We also brought in junior alumni who are in practice to share some of their experiences on the ground, which was a response to student feedback that they really wanted to hear from our recent graduates about specifically some of the things that they're dealing with in practice and how they're responding to them. We talked a lot about toxic positivity. So there have been articles about the idea that telling people they should be adopting positive mindsets in the face of everything that's happening is not helpful and that it's okay right now not to feel okay. And I would say that our approach really was much more student led this year. We really wanted to hear from students how they were responding to the stressful conditions, what had been helpful to them, what were their anxieties and concerns, and then having a trained mental health professional in the room with us to respond to that, and also some people who were dealing with the issues in practice. It was a much more team-oriented approach I think to having these conversations. And I hope it was a more supportive experience for the students and gave them the opportunity to process some of the things they were dealing with. CHRIS: Jen, I want to ask maybe one more question. I have to imagine that as you've visualized where a student starts and where a student walks across the podium and receives that diploma is a journey in the law school. When you look at that journey, are you visualizing what does first year look like, what does second year look like, what does third year look like from a wellness perspective and how you're trying to nurture that as a complement to the curriculum? JENNIFER: Yeah. I think as the programming has evolved, we have definitely adjusted the programming to be more developmentally appropriate depending on the level of experience of the student. So to your point, there are very specific times during the first year of law school that are different in nature than the stressors that our second and third-year students face. So thinking about how stressful it is about a month in advance of your first set of law school exams and how are we helping students feel supported there versus when they're getting close to practice and we're having more contextualized conversations about the rigors of practice itself and some of the stressors that they face in client representation. And that was how we evolved into having a more upper level approach that is also combined with our still ongoing and fantastic professionalism program that is offered in the first year which is co curricular. JENNIFER: So we have been thoughtful about adjusting depending on where the student is. I would say another hallmark of our dean's leadership and our current approach to legal education is really taking a lifelong view of the formation of a lawyer. So you referenced the podium which is a perfect visual, Chris, for thinking about where you are at that point and what is to come and how we as a law school can continue to be your partner. And we've done alumni programming on attorney well-being that is a more advanced version of the PR module that we do and the reception to that is different because, of course, our alumni are actually in practice and have different contexts than our students have. And we have even deeper conversations with them about what it's like to be in practice and what some of the well-being challenges are there. JENNIFER: So we are definitely taking a, no pun intended, a graduated approach to the way that we talk with students about well-being. And I would also say too, I wanted to go back to the question about tips for people developing these programs in their schools. I would say too if the sense is or if you anticipate pushback being that it's too warm and fuzzy or it's diluting the rigor of the program, something to that effect. What I would say is that when I think about the way that we're supporting students, it should be a really intense physical workout. You don't want somebody who's leading a really rigorous exercise session to go easy on you because at the end you're not going to feel like you grew at all. What you do want is a coach to help you work through the really tough parts which is where the transformation happens and I think the analogy works for lawyer formation. JENNIFER: There are really, really tough parts where as a student I didn't feel that supported and I felt very alone. And I think I probably did not push through and grow in the way that I could have had I had a bit more coaching and get more support and that's how I think about the service that we're providing by implementing well-being programming along the way. CHRIS: Yeah. And I think it's interesting that the firms that are likely hiring your students are also now talking a little bit more about the wellness components associated with, in the talent acquisition process. And I'm wondering whether you're doing something similar. You're a highly-respected law school, whether your commitment to this particular issue of well-being and wellness of the student body as part of the experience is also coming into play as you think about the recruitment and the admissions process. JENNIFER: I haven't actively thought about how it would be appealing to applicants to law school. I think as a school, again, our collegial nature is our hallmark and what we think makes us a very strong community where ideally people would want to come and learn. But I think you're right in the sense that increasingly students and aspiring professionals are looking to be in environments where they can grow and learn and be tested and challenged but also supported and develop really strong connections along the way and feel great about what they're doing. And so to the extent that that is a secondary benefit, that's fantastic. I think savvy legal employers are thinking about how to better support their attorneys so that they are not losing that talent. JENNIFER: I think one of the really undesirable outcomes of our failure to pay attention to these issues for so long is the hemorrhaging of enormous amounts of talent from the profession. BREE: Absolutely. JENNIFER: And imagine what we can accomplish together if we just adjusted and had deeper conversations and develop new solutions so that we keep all that brilliant talent working to support the health of society. BREE: Wow. CHRIS: What a great way to end the podcast. I think that's exactly right and indicative, Jen, of again why we see you and your experience at Penn Law as being so much a part of, again, realizing the potential of our profession and how important it is that we focus on these particular areas. Any closing comments, Jen, before we close it out? JENNIFER: Thank you so much for having me on. And again, I really just want to give credit to the entire Penn Law community, alumni, students, colleagues, faculty, staff, administration. This is a team effort and I have the honor of being a spokesperson today but it is far from a solo mission. CHRIS: Well Jen, we certainly are very thankful and grateful for all of your contributions and, again, I think there's a lot of takeaways in your experience at Penn Law that I think can really have ... If our goal ultimately is to engineer a culture shift in the profession, it starts with individuals like you and we thank you so much for your work and your leadership. BREE: We have much to learn. JENNIFER: Thank you so much. BREE: Yeah. JENNIFER: Thank you both so much for what you do to drive this conversation and lead thoughts and conversations like this. So grateful. CHRIS: Yeah. That was Jennifer Leonard of Penn Law School. And again, we'll be back in a couple weeks with Janet Stearns of the Miami School of Law as we continue and close out our law school focus. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in a couple weeks.

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends. And welcome to The Path to Well-Being in law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold, executive vice-president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And again, you all know now that what we are really excited about in this podcast is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space.                 And we know that in the process that this army of well-being advocates is growing, and our goal is also to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. And I'm really excited for today's podcast because so much of what the future of our profession ultimately starts with how we're training the next generation of law students. And so we're on the cusp here of starting a three-part kind of mini series and really focusing in on well-being and law schools.                 And we are super excited to be welcoming I think one of really the kind of showcased law schools in the country when we think about kind of focusing on well-being as part of the culture within the law school environment. We are excited to welcome Linda Sugin to the podcast. And Bree, would you introduce Linda for us? BREE BUCHANAN: Absolutely. And hello everybody. Professor Sugin, and we're just going to call you Linda really is you can see, and we have not met before, but looking at your just history, it's clear that you have so much passion for the well-being of the students and that your bio, you've been a part of the Fordham Law faculty since 1994 and moved into the associate dean for academic affairs in 2017. And it seems like that you just sort of took the school by storm in a way and putting in amazingly new, innovative programs to address what I imagine you were seeing, which was at least a lot of dis ease among the student population there.                 And so it's just really clear that you saw that problem and you got to work. Professor Sugin's scholarly interests focus on issues of distributive justice in taxation and the governance of nonprofit organizations. She was the 2021 recipient of the dean's medal of achievement, well-deserved, and the 2007 recipient of Fordham Law School's Teacher of the Year Award. So Linda, thank you so much for being here today.                 I'm not going to go through the details of your bio because we're going to kind of pull that out as we go through this podcast today. But I want to start off with the question that we always begin with. I think it's one of the most interesting pieces that we get from our guests, which is to hear about what brought you to what is now a movement, the well-being in law of movement. And we found that typically people have some passion or experience in their life that drives their work. So tell us what brought you to this work and welcome to our podcast. LINDA SUGIN: Thank you so much. And thank you for that kind introduction. And thank you, Bree and Chris for inviting me to this podcast today. So I have to admit that I actually came to this pretty late in my career, that I spent more than 20 years as a law professor without really being focused or aware of this at all. In my career as a professor, I've always loved my students and I've tried to nurture them as best as I can, but I never really questioned the basic way that law school is structured and the way that students traditionally learn in law school environments.                 But when I became the associate dean in 2017, the first thing I did was convene a student advisory board to hear what students wanted and needed most from the law school. And I was kind of surprised that what I heard was a lot of frustration, a lot of disappointment, a lot of shame, and a lot of anger. And I really saw how much pain so many students were feeling because of what was happening within the law school, with their classmates, with their teachers.                 And so it was really that experience that led me to committing myself to improving the student experience by trying to better understand the emotional reality of students. I realized that we could never succeed with our academic mission if we continue to ignore the emotional toll that law school was taking on so many students. And so that's what really brought me to it. BREE: Wow. I love those words. Just when you talked about the power of those emotions that you were hearing about the shame and anger just those are powerful things. And I also was really impressed when you were talking about the emotional reality of students, and I'll tell you to hear what I would think a stereotypical tax professor, my experience with tax professors to talk about the emotional reality of their students and focusing on that, that's just amazing so I can see why you're so good at what you do. CHRIS: Linda, it sounds like your student advisory group, I'm guessing that your impressions surprised you a bit from that early group discussion. LINDA: They did, they did because I had never really taken such a broad view of what was going on in the law school, that I had my own classes, that I had sort of total control over. But I really wasn't aware of a lot of the dynamic that was happening throughout the law school both in and out of the classroom. And I think that that's what's really important, is to understand that law school is a really immersive experience for students and the culture of law school is very challenging for many students coming in. CHRIS: Well, let's set the stage a little bit. Can you just give us some context for Fordham Law School, right? Location, size, focus, types of students, kind of what the existing culture was maybe before you kind of more kind of deliberately started to focus on it. We'd just kind of love to set the stage on kind of learning a little bit more about the law school itself. LINDA: Okay, great. Yeah. So Fordham Law School actually is a really great place and always has been a great place. It's a Jesuit school, and we have a tradition of public service that really stems from that. And Fordham has historically welcomed students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession. So the first black woman to practice law in New York state was a 1924 graduate of Fordham Law School. And so we go way back in our institutional commitment to inclusion, community and holistic learning.                 But at the same time, we are one of the largest law schools in the country within the top 10 and we have over 400 students who come in every year. The good part of that is it makes a very vibrant academic life. There's tons going on all the time. But it also presents a challenge for creating connection. It's very easy for students to feel invisible in that crowd and so it's really important to find smaller communities within the law school where people really find what they're passionate about and where they can really excel.                 We are also smack in the middle of New York city. Our students come from all over the country and all over the world actually, but most of them want to stay and work in New York when they graduate. We are right next door to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, down the block from the Time Warner Center, which is all fantastic, but we don't have much housing for students on campus. And so many of our students commute from a long distance because our neighborhood is very expensive.                 And actually over the 25 years that I've been at Fordham Law School, the neighborhood has become increasingly expensive. And that physical distance and being in the middle of the city with all of the excitement and stimulation of the city makes community building even more challenging. And so there are many wonderful things about Fordham Law School, but also challenges connected to the kind of issues that we're focusing on today. BREE: So Linda, tell me, I was looking at your bio and the work that you've done there at Fordham, and it looks like a real area of focus that you've been developing is around the professionalism for students. And I want to ask you what were you seeing among the students? I know that you had the focus group, but what are some of the areas that you're trying to address when you're focusing on students' professionalism and what does that mean? We've got that word there and it's easy to assign a meeting, but what do you mean when you talk about professionalism for your students? LINDA: Yes. Thank you for asking that question because I do think that people have different ideas of what professionalism is. I see professionalism as really a very broad category of all the different kinds of capabilities that individuals need to succeed in the legal profession. So mental health and wellness is certainly one important part of it, but I focused on other aspects under that umbrella as well. And I think they're all connected to each other.                 One of the things that I was seeing when I started thinking about doing this kind of work was that depending on where students worked before coming to law school or other experiences that they had in their backgrounds, some students didn't know the expectations that other people might have for lawyers, people like judges, for example. And so we developed some programming around that, what the expectation is going to be, and I call that the integrity programming, right?                 Nothing is more important for lawyers than integrity. But I felt like some students had a more developed understanding and some students just needed more education in what that meant as lawyers. And then in addition, there are lots of professional skills that are not really part of what we think of as the traditional professional skills curriculum that we have in law schools. So every law school has a curriculum that includes interviewing, counseling, negotiation.                 But the skills that I really have focused on are little mushier, skills like effective listening, empathy, self-awareness, giving and getting feedback, growth mindset, understanding cognitive biases. I'm really committed to lawyering as a service profession, a helping profession and that drives a lot of this for me. We need to orient ourselves so that we can really be a helping profession. I sometimes think about former students that I've had and one who comes to mind is I once had a truly brilliant student who would critique his classmates' arguments in the most devastating way. And I tried to teach him how to have a more productive disagreement.                 So I think that it's really important that lawyers recognize the humanity in every person and learn how to advocate, defend and disagree with respect and compassion. And I feel like that's a huge piece of professional education as well. In our polarized times, this is really hard for people to do. BREE: Right. LINDA: But I think that it's a really important part of the project because it's essential, I think for what lawyers really care about, which is justice. CHRIS: That's awesome because, I mean, it feels like we hear a lot about emotional intelligence, right? And it feels like in some respects, you're focusing, again, some of your efforts intentionally on the emotional readiness of lawyers as they enter the profession, which again, I'm not certain a lot of peer institutions in the law schools, they may talk about it, but it seems like you're going at it with some notion of intentionality. LINDA: Yeah. And so we don't think that our students will know everything about the law when they get out, but the idea is that we give them the tools so they can learn what they need to learn when they get out into the real world. And I feel like these are crucial tools to enable them to navigate all the spaces that they're going to be in after they graduate. CHRIS: What a worthy investment. And then it feels like there's a couple of other foundational building blocks in your program, namely the peer mentorship program and the house program. Can you describe those programs and how they work and what they're designed to do for students? LINDA: Yeah. So those are our two biggest initiatives that come under this professionalism umbrella and the key design feature of both of these programs is institutional infrastructure. The students being served are at the center, but there is a whole web of support that we've built around them. And that support includes faculty, it includes administrators, it also includes other students. A really big and important part of our professionals in programming is leadership development.                 And we have been thoughtful about where we use leadership and where we use professionalism because they're related but I don't think that they're entirely the same. So it's key in these programs that we support the students who participate in these programs as the leadership. So the house system we developed primarily for the first year students and it's organized by sections. So law school is still the same as it was when I went where all first year students, or at least at Fordham it is, all first-year students have all their classes with the same cohort, and so we call that cohort a house.                 But what we did within that structure is three things. So the first thing is that we used the house to connect students with faculty and administrators. So there's a faculty house leader who runs programs and the students can turn to with problems and questions. Usually that's a person who's not one of their teachers and the idea is that this is sort of a neutral faculty member who understands the institution, understands where these students are going and what their needs might be.                 In addition, there are librarians, student affairs counselors, career planning counselors, and other people assigned to each house so that students know people in all the administrative offices that they're going to need to work with. And we think that this really eases the entree to looking for a job, getting academic support when you need it. In addition, there are alumni mentors, mostly recent graduates for each house.                 So the house is really designed to create connections for students with people in all these different ways who will be essential to their development as lawyers. The second thing the house does is it's the place where we do a lot of programming around professionalism. So programs on choosing career paths and thinking about co-curricular activities, mental health, equity and inclusion. We have specific programs on a lot of different things.                 Some of them are more formal, some of them are more casual, but the idea is that the students get together for house meeting every week. There is a real curriculum and so it deserves to be treated as part of the academic program. And that has been great in many ways because there were so many random programs that students had to or should take part in and this was a way to organize it and to really rationalize the curriculum as a whole.                 And the third thing is that house is social. It gives students an opportunity to interact with each other in a context other than class. So this was a little hard in the pandemic, but we did the best we could, we hope it'll grow more when we're back in person. But the idea being that there are house parties, there are inter-house competitions, pro bono projects that the houses do, really giving students a way to interact with each other that's outside of the strict confines of their classes in which students seem so one-dimensional to each other.                 And so we think that the community of students that we create the first year is really key to the continued success of students throughout their law school career. The peer mentorship program is really my passion project. It grew directly out of the student advisory board that I mentioned and it's designed for second year students.                 And what I learned in talking to students was that we kind of had been ignoring students starting their second year, but that that's a point of tremendous vulnerability for a lot of students, that the first year we decide everything for them, they don't get to choose any of their classes, it's the rigid schedule and then they have their first summer, some students will be disappointed with their first year grades, some will have had failed job searches, most students will not have made law view.                 And so the beginning of the second year, it turns out, is a really tough time for a lot of students. And after taking care of all decisions for them in the first year, at the beginning of the second year we're like, "Okay, go. Now, do what you want." And so that is an easy moment for students to feel overwhelmed, to feel isolated. But really the law school never recognized how precarious students can be at the start of their second year.                 And so what we did in the peer mentorship program is that we created a system where there would be third year mentors for second year mentees. And the key aspect of the program is that all mentors must take a class that focuses on mentoring skills. There are three of us who teach the program. So the director of professionalism who we hired in 2019 teaches with me as does an additional adjunct who is a 2018 graduate of the law school.                 But the idea is that the teachers support the mentors who support the mentees. And of course, the skills that we teach in the class are skills that are not only useful for being a good mentor, they are useful for being effective lawyers and good professionals after graduation as well. So the program is voluntary for both the second and the third years, but it has grown exponentially since it started in 2018. And I hope that eventually all students will choose to participate because I think it can be a really enriching experience no matter what the students' experiences are. BREE: Wonderful. Linda, when I was thinking about a common theme for both of those programs, and it looks like a lot of your work is to help create connection, which is so vital to a sense of well-being and to break through the sense of isolation. There's a research that came out in the last year or so that showed that lawyers are the loneliest of all professionals. And I think a lot of that can start in law school with the inherent sense of being in competition with everyone that you're there with. I wanted to ask you also going back to the very beginning of the law school experience, and you've done a lot around the orientation process. Could you talk to us about what changes you ushered in for the August orientation for everyone and what issues you were trying to address? LINDA: Yeah, sure. So I'm a tax professor and some years ago I spearheaded a project to teach students some basic quantitative skills that lawyers need. Of course, people come to law school because they never want to do anything quantitative again. But of course, when you become a lawyer, you realize that you actually need to have some quantitative skills. So we put it in orientation because we saw that as part of a toolbox really for students beginning their law school journey.                 You have to learn how to brief a case and you have to have some other basic tools also. So when I became associate dean, it occurred to me that we should do the same thing for professional tools, that we should make sure that students have what they need so that they can better succeed in law school and as lawyers. And so we added a module to orientation that focuses on personal values and developing a professional identity. From day one, we want students to think about how they can be lawyers while also being their authentic best selves.                 In their first days of law school, we talk about implicit bias and anti-racism, growth mindset, vulnerability and empathy, and character strengths. The idea being you came here for a reason and we want you to remember what that reason was and be the kind of lawyer that you want to be. And so we sort of start that message in orientation, all the things you do in orientation, you have to keep doing it again. And of course, it's worth revisiting so many of the things that we do in orientation later on. But our ongoing development of the professionalism curriculum is about building competencies throughout these areas.                 In addition, one of the big things that we did with orientation is that we added an orientation in the middle of the first year in January. So before the students come back for their second semester, they spend a day, this coming year we'll make it a two day program but the idea was that there were some things that we couldn't do in August because the students hadn't yet built the trust that they would need to have certain kinds of conversations. So we wanted to do a deeper dive into anti-racism and engage students in more sensitive conversations.                 And it seemed that students would be better prepared to do that after a semester and it would really be too early to do that in August. And so we made that a full day program in January all about equity and inclusion. And last year, we were able to hire a director of diversity who has been fantastic designing and leading this program. Next year, we're planning to build out the January orientation into a two day program so that students can also reflect on their strengths, values and commitments as they start on their second semester and really dig deep into growth mindset, which is so important to their continued success in law school. BREE: Wow. That's profound. I really am particularly impressed listing to adding in that January orientation and being really thoughtful about where do we place basically this curriculum for our students. And that is just fabulous. Linda, we're going to take a break to hear from our sponsor right now and then when we get back, we're going to get to hear more about what you're working on. So thank you, and we'll be right back. Welcome back everybody. And we have with us today, Professor Linda Sugin, the associate dean for academic affairs at Fordham Law School.                 And Linda, we were just talking about the orientation programs and all of these ideas of really around helping students feel connected and breaking through some of the isolation. Could you just talk generally about these programs we just discussed? How do you see them helping the students maintain, I guess, their mental health and the best place to be able to learn as students and benefit from their law school experience? LINDA: Yes. Thank you. So what we have seen in looking at the success of our students after they graduate is that connection in law school is the most important indicator of success. And so we were very, very purposeful in trying to figure out ways that could find their home, their connections within the law school. And a lot of students do it organically. The students who are on a competition team or on a journal, they often find their smaller cohort that really supports them but there are always some students who fall through those cracks.                 And so those are the students that we are trying to help find connection. And so let me focus a little bit more on the peer mentorship program because that's one of the biggest initiatives that we have. I mentioned it before, but I'll tell you a little bit more about how it's organized. So we have it so that all students are part of a group with more than one mentor. Last year, we had a lot of mentees so most groups had two or three mentors and five or six mentees. And so that gives you a little community within the law school that you can work out any way that it works for you.                 And some of the groups really click as a whole, and that's like a little team there of seven or eight students. Some of the groups end up pairing off in various ways and individuals find connections between mentors and mentees on different issues or for different reasons. And it's all good, we feel like it really works out. I'm going to stick my neck out here a little bit and say I think all students feel isolation, self-doubt and fear, even the strongest students feel those things.                 And it really breaks my heart that so many of them think that they're the only ones having these feelings because that's what they think. And if they could just be a little bit more vulnerable with each other, they would find so much shared experience and mutual reassurance. So having a person or a group to share your insecurities with is really important. The peer mentors are only one year ahead of the mentees.                 So they have just a little bit of knowledge that the mentees don't have, but they are really in the same place as the mentees in so many ways. So lots of the mentors are still looking for jobs, they're questioning whether they want to be lawyers, they're still struggling to finish their homework on time, right? So they're feeling a lot of the same feelings and they can really understand what the second year mentees are going through.                 There's just enough distance there and enough closeness that they can really provide crucial support that I think nobody else can. The faculty can't do that, their families who don't understand what's happening in law school can't really do that. And so that was really why the program was designed. But my greatest surprise pleasure of the peer mentorship program has been seeing the mentors grow. So because they take this class with me, I watch them and I can see how they grow in confidence and well-being over the course of the semester.                 The course that the peer mentors take focuses on skills like teamwork, cross-cultural communication, cultivating growth mindset, right? All the topics that we cover are important to professional success. And the mentors keep journals every week that I read. And what I see is that so many of them get so much gratification from the mentoring work. Helping others, as we know from lots of research, is good for our own mental health. And so the program has been really helpful for both the mentees and the mentors. I guess I just want to mention the one other big leadership program that we have, we call it the professionalism fellows program and it's connected to the house system.                 We just finished the first year of the program and it was a great success in ways that I hadn't really anticipated. Because at the beginning, the fellows started out somewhat timidly, but by the end, the most striking thing I noticed was that the fellows have really developed into partners with the administration in problem solving and program development. And so there was tremendous growth in both the peer mentors and in the professionalism fellows over the time of working with them. And so I think that this is really key to maintaining their mental health as well as setting them up to be successful lawyers. CHRIS: Linda, as I mentioned at the top, this podcast kicks off a three-part mini series on the connection between well-being and law schools. I'm hoping that we can pivot a little bit right now and kind of talk a little bit about again, best practices and what are... I think we really would enjoy packaging this up and making sure that we can get this into the hands as to as many law school leaders as possible.                 So to that end, what suggestions do you have for others who may be interested in developing similar programs? Again, it seems like you've been very progressive, thoughtful and intentional about what you're trying to do with your student body. So what worked, what would you do differently, what advice would you offer others listening in? LINDA: Okay. Yeah, great. So I guess that there were two things that I would advise other schools. So the first one is student leadership. I'm really a huge fan of student leadership. I really believe in the peer mentorship model for all the reasons I was just describing. But you need to be prepared to provide a lot of institutional support. You can't expect student leaders to feel confident without backing them up with training and encouragement.                 I agreed to take on this work in the first place on the condition that we hire someone who would report directly to me and work on these issues full time. And I had the great fortune to be blessed with the most talented and committed person for the job and Jordana Confino has been an amazing partner to me in this work since 2019. So get students involved, give them... empower them to really do important things, but make sure that you're backing them up, supporting them and helping them at every step of the way.                 And then I guess the second thing, and this sort of goes to, we've made a lot of mistakes too as well as our successes, I just don't like to talk about them as much, but I would suggest that people turn to experts if they can. We were lucky at Fordham to get some philanthropic gifts to support our diversity equity and inclusion programming. And it allowed us to hire people with experience and training doing the kind of work that we wanted to do. So I feel like once we did that, it really, really helped a lot of the programming that we have been trying to do without that support which was not going as well and was really challenging.                 So now after three years, I guess I can say I have a lot of expertise in creating a peer mentorship program, but at the beginning it would have been really helpful to have worked with a consultant and I may have made fewer mistakes if I had been able to turn to more expert support. Of course, that takes money. And I hope that one of the things like this podcast will do is really convince the community that it's worth it to invest in these kinds of programs, that they're really meaningful for the students who benefit for them and they can really be transformational for the student experience.                 And that I hope that we can really make them a fundamental part of what law school is. rather than something that's just icing on the cake that we do if we can get some outside support for it. So that's kind of my next challenge, is to try to really bring these kinds of programs into the core of what legal education is. BREE: And I've spent some time as a clinical professor at a law school and my experience in sort of looking around there, that who holds the most power in the law school and who in some ways are the gatekeepers are trying to put on a new program such as this, and that's my experience was the tenured faculty, that block of individuals and the law school administration, particularly the office of the dean. How did you get those two groups on board with these initiatives? LINDA: Well, I was really lucky that the dean was basically on board all along. We had done a strategic plan shortly before I became associate dean and the strategic plan had some sort of general intention to improve the student experience. And so I felt like that gave me the go ahead to sort of figure out what the content of that would be. And so I've had tremendous support from the dean from the beginning, and he's really done a lot of fundraising around this work, which has been tremendous.                 The faculty is always more varied and you get a lot of different views on the faculty. I would say that there were a core group of faculty members who were very enthusiastic, particularly about the house system and they have worked incredibly hard from the beginning to collaborate with the administration to turn the house system idea into reality. And I think that some of it is that other faculty who maybe were a little bit more skeptical were kind of waiting and looking and seeing, but I think that now that the house system is up and running, people see how good it is for the students.                 Now, there are some new people who are getting involved, which is also really gratifying. But I do think that it's important not to pressure people into doing anything they don't want to do. I think that as these things prove themselves to be useful and meaningful, things will be easier going forward. I think that law schools are pretty slow moving institutions in general and making big changes take time. And I don't feel like I need to be in a huge rush because I see that this is a long-term goal that will have really long-term benefits that are worth waiting for. CHRIS: Linda, are you seeing anything on your commitment to well-being in terms of playing out in terms of your strategies on recruiting new students into Fordham? Because it certainly feels like again, there's a more societal recognition of how important this is and I'm wondering whether you're playing that into recruitment strategies in what we know is a very competitive landscape and it comes to recruiting law students into the institution. LINDA: Absolutely. So in our admitted student days, we always talk about our professionalism initiatives. The professionalism office gets a lot of inquiries from admitted students. So there's no question that students are looking for these kinds of programs. I think that students are looking for law schools that understand that students have needs and are prepared to address those needs. And so I think that our students are pretty picky consumers when it comes to what the culture of the law school is and what the approach of the administration is. And I hope that we show ourselves to be the kind of welcoming, caring community that we are because we really are. CHRIS: Yeah, that's great. Well, let's spend the last couple of minutes that we have. I mean, obviously Fordham sits at the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, right? And the pandemic. I'd just be curious, Linda, of what impact the pandemic had on your student body, what some of your concerns were and how you're working in the constraints set by the pandemic to continue to support student well-being in what's otherwise been a very uncertain time. LINDA: Yeah. So it has been a brutal 15 months, I admit that. And the losses that people have suffered are real and varied in our community. And I think that right now we need to focus on recovery. Things are much, much better here in New York now and it seems like things are coming back to life and we are hoping that in the fall we will be back to what we traditionally know as law school.                 The pandemic was really extra hard for the kinds of things that we've been focused on in the professionalism program, so really hard for community building. But I think that our programs were crucial in getting everybody through the pandemic. If you rely only on organic community building, people making friends in their classes, people might not be able to do it in a pandemic. But I think a lot of our students really needed to connect with each other and with their teachers.                 And so I worked with a lot of the faculty throughout the pandemic to help support them in creating welcoming and warm learning communities within their classes. So we had student faculty conversations on all sorts of current issues. We encouraged faculty to make space for more casual student interactions. So faculty did things like they held happy hours and game nights and cooked dinner together virtually with their students and I think all of these things really did make a difference.                 We saw in the peer mentorship program that the mentoring groups that would meet weekly really treated it as a gem of a moment that they could get together and have some social interaction with other students when they really had so few opportunities to do that kind of thing. So I'm not going to say that it was good, it was really, really hard for everybody. And it was hard financially and there were a lot of people who got sick and who had a lot of illness in their family so it was definitely challenging.                 But I do always try to look for the silver lining. And so when we're back in the fall, the plan is that we will continue to use some of the remote tools that we learned how to use that I think that some of them can really enrich the support structure of the law school. We have to strike a balance between flexibility, convenience, and immersion and I think we'll be calibrating that when we get back. But for our fall academic program, I scheduled some online classes in the curriculum even though mostly we're going to be back in person. So I hope that what we'll take from this year of disruption will be some tools that we can use to make a richer learning environment that includes everything. BREE: Linda, this has been fascinating and inspiring too, and we're coming to the end of our time together. But just finally, if one of our listeners was interested in learning more about these innovative programs at Fordham, could you give them some advice on how to learn more? LINDA: Yeah. So we have a page on the Fordham Law School website for the office of professionalism that has lots of information on the programs that we're doing. Even better, I love to talk about what we're doing and so does our director of professionalism. So people should feel free to reach out to me and to her Jordana Confino. Our contact information is on the office of professionalism page. We are really hoping to help other schools replicate particularly our peer mentorship program because we believe it can be really transformational. And so next year when we sort of take this to the next level, that's one of the things that I'm going to be focusing on, is how is it that we help other schools to incorporate some of these things that I think have made a really big difference for us. CHRIS: Well, yeah. What important work that you're doing. I mean, I just love the fact that you've invested so much time and energy into the emotional readiness of the law school experience and I think that that's going to obviously pay dividends for the culture that you're building within the law school itself. But if I'm an employer and I'm thinking about what type of students I ultimately want to hire into my firm, knowing that I have a student who's kind of emotionally ready for the practice of law seems to be a really wise investment from a hiring decision. So any final closing thoughts on that Linda or anything else that you want to raise to our listeners? LINDA: Just that I hope in addition to helping them work more effectively, I hope that all of this will really make our students happier lawyers. And so it's really important that the work that lawyers do to our society, and I think it's really important that we care for lawyers so that they can do that work and have gratifying and happy lives. CHRIS: All right. Professor Linda Sugin, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. And again, for our listeners, our next two podcasts will also be focused on law schools' culture and some of the advancements going on. But again, what a great way to kick off this mini series to talk about the Fordham experience. And thank you listeners for joining and we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Thanks. LINDA: Thanks you so much for having me. CHRIS: Thanks, Linda.

Chris Coopers gets emails from Two-Brain followers every day. And when they start to form a theme, he makes a resource — like this episode of Two-Brain Radio — everyone can benefit from. In this episode, Coop answers a few hard-hitting questions about marketing: "Which marketing strategy do you teach?""What do you do for marketing at your gym?""What's Two-Brain Business' lead-nurture sequence?"Plus, you'll learn what you need to do before tackling any of the strategies he shares.Links:Beyond the WhiteboardGym Lead MachineFree Resources!Gym Owners UnitedTimeline:1:29 – “Which marketing strategy do you teach?”4:52 – Why you need to get the fundamentals right first. 7:33 – What you need to know about advertising.11:56 – Should you learn to advertise yourself or hire someone to do it for you?19:44 –  “Chris: What does YOUR gym do for marketing?”23:52 – The secret of marketing at Two-Brain Business.

After the last episode where database switching was discussed, a number of listeners reached out with thoughts. In particular, one listener gave a reproducible example of how to make things better. Chris talks about why he always moves errors to the left, and Steph gives a hot take where she admits that she is not a fan of hackathons and explains why. Steph and Chris also share exciting Bike Shed show news in that we now have transcripts for each episode, and tackle another listener question asking, "How do you properly implement a multi-step form in a boring Rails way?” Chris talks about his experiences with multi-step forms and gives his own hot take on refactoring: he doesn't until he feels pain! Database Switching in Dev Mode Gist (https://gist.github.com/danott/e698435bb4e1d34bc70853514ba681a7) In Relentless Pursuit of REST – Derek Prior (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HctYHe-YjnE) Transcript: CHRIS: Happy Friday or whatever day it happens to be in your future situation. STEPH: Happy day. [chuckles] CHRIS: Happy day or night. I'm sorry, I'm done. [laughter] STEPH: Shut up. [laughs] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. Hey, Chris, happy Friday. How's your week been? CHRIS: Happy Friday to you as well. My week's been good. It's been busy. I am taking next week off for a quick vacation. So it's that…I think I've talked about this every time before I go on a vacation on the podcast, that focusing lens that going on vacation gives you. I want to make sure everything's buttoned up and ready to hand off, and I'm not going to be blocking anyone. And so, I always like the clarity that that brings. Because a lot of times I can look at well, there are infinity things to do, how do I pick? And now I'm like, no, but really, if I'm going to be gone for a week, I must pick. And so yeah, I'm now very excited to lean into vacation mode and relax for a bit. STEPH: Yeah, that's awesome. I hear you. I always go into that same mode pre-vacation. CHRIS: But in tech news, after the most recent episode that was released where we talked about the database switching stuff, a number of listeners were very kind and reached out with some thoughts. In particular, Dan Ott is one listener who reached out not only with just some generic thoughts, but he also gave a reproducible example of how to make things slightly better. So the particular thing that a few folks honed in on was the idea that I was describing the feeling of in production; we can occasionally run into these ActiveRecord read-only errors, which is a case where you have a GET request that happens to try to create or update a record. And as a result, you're going to get this ActiveRecord read-only because you're using the follower database, which has a read-only connection. All of that is fine, but ideally, we would want to catch those before production. We want to catch them in development. And broadly, the issue that we have here is that in production, our system is running in a different way. It's running with two different database connections, one for read-only, one for writing, and that's different than in development, where we're running with a single connection. As an interesting thing, a lot of the stuff that I see on the internet is about using SQLite in development and then Postgres in production. And so that's an example of development production parity that we've really...I think thoughtbot is definitely a place that I internalize this very strongly. But you've got to have the same database, and especially because it's relatively straightforward to run Postgres locally, I'm always going to be running the same version of the database locally as in production. But in this case, I'm now getting this differentiation. And so what Dan and a handful of other folks highlighted was you can actually reproduce this functionality in development mode with a fun little trick where you end up creating a secondary connection to your development database, but you mark it as replica:true. And so, by doing that, Rails will establish a read-only connection. And then, all of the behavior that you configure for production can also be run in development. So now, as you're building out a new feature, and if you happen to implement a GET request that does some side effect in the database, that'll blow up in development as opposed to production, which is very exciting. STEPH: Yeah, that's awesome. I love that Dan reached out and shared this example with us. I actually haven't read through all of the details just yet. In fact, I just opened it up, and I started going through it, and there's a lot of really...it looks like a lot of great notes here and a really nice example that walks you through how to have that production parity locally. So this is really neat. I appreciate Dan sending this to us. CHRIS: Yeah, this is a wonderful little artifact actually that's interesting just in and of itself. We'll certainly include a link in the show notes to the gist that Dan shared. What's interesting...I think I knew of this, but I've never actually seen it before. This is a single-file Rails application, which is a very novel concept, but it's got a bundler/inline call at the very top. And then there's an inline gemfile block, and then a set of requires to pull in the relevant Rails stuff. And then it configures the database connection, configures a single controller or actually a handful of controllers, it looks like, and then it renders inline HTML. And so it has all of the pieces. And I didn't realize that at first, but then I pulled it down and I just ran it locally. So it's just Ruby and then the file that this just represents, and suddenly I had a reproducible Rails app. I believe this is used in reporting issues to Rails so you can get the minimum reproducible test case. And that's why this works is, I think, the Rails core team, over time, has pushed on any of the edges that wouldn't have worked and made it so that this is possible. But it's a really neat little thing where it's this self-contained example. And so running this file just via Ruby does all of this stuff, installs everything that's necessary. And then, you can click around in the very minimal HTML page that it provides and see the examples of the edges that it's hitting. And again, this is in development mode, so it's pushing on that. But yeah, it's both a really interesting tip as to how to work with this and a really interesting way to communicate that tip—so double points to Gryffindor, aka Dan Ott. STEPH: Double points to Gryffindor. I love it. CHRIS: I'm cool. [laughs] STEPH: That's very charming. [laughs] I've never seen anything like this either, in terms of one file that then can reproduce and run in a Rails app. Agreed, double points to Gryffindor, aka Dan. CHRIS: Aka Dan. STEPH: [chuckles] I hope Dan's a Harry Potter fan. CHRIS: I hope so. And I hope he's a Gryffindor, who knows? Maybe Ravenclaw. It's really up in the air. But the other thing that is interesting that I haven't yet figured out here is this works for development mode. I've tested it in development. It's great. I was able to remove the fix line that I had in my code where I had one of these breaking controller actions and run with this configuration in development mode. And then boom, it blew up in development, and I was like, yay, this is great. Move those errors to the left, as they say. But I realized there are some other edge cases, known ones actually. Another developer on the team mentioned something where he knows of a place that this is happening, but that code path isn't running right now just because it's a seasonal thing within the app. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting. I wish there were a way to test all the behavior. Oh, tests, that's what I need here. And so I tried to configure this in test mode, but I wasn't exactly clear on what was failing. But at a minimum, I know that the tests run in transaction, so I think that might make this more complicated because if you have two connections to the same database, but you have transactions, I feel like that might be conflating things, and it wouldn't necessarily map perfectly in. But if we could get that, that would be really great. Moving forward, any new development the development configuration will cover what I need. But retroactively, as I'm introducing the database switching to the application, it would be great if the test suite were a way to find these edge cases. So that's still an open question in my mind. But overall, the development fix is such a nice little addition to this world. And again, thank you so much to Dan for sending this in. STEPH: Yeah, I agree; having this in tests would be wonderful. I am intrigued not having read through the full example that's been provided. But I'm wondering if this is one of those we default to read-only mode, although that feels like too much because we're often creating data for each test. So maybe we default to...yeah, you have to have both because you have to have your test set up where you're going to write data. So you can't default to just being in read-only mode. But then say you want to run a controller action or something else in a read-only mode. So then you would have to change your database connection for that action, and that sounds complicated. You also said something else I'm intrigued by. You said, “Move errors to the left.” CHRIS: Yes. Now that you're asking me, I'm trying to remember the exact context. But it's the idea that there are different phases in your development and eventually getting to production life cycle, and so a bug that a user sees that's all the way to the right. That's as far along the development pipeline as it can be, and that's the worst case. You don't want a user to see a bug. So QA would be a step right before that. And if you can catch it in QA, you've moved it to the left, which is a good thing. But even better than that would be to catch it in your automated tests, and maybe even better than that would be static analysis that's running in your editor, and maybe even better than that is a type system or something like that. So the idea of moving to the left is to push those errors or when you're catching the errors closer to the point where you're actually introducing them. And that's just a general theme that I like or a Beyoncé song. STEPH: I was just going to say, all right, move over, Beyoncé. There's another phrase in town, moving to the left. [laughs] CHRIS: I'm really going for a lot of topical pop culture references today. That's what I'm about. STEPH: We've got Harry Potter, Beyoncé. We've got to pull out one more at some point. CHRIS: We'll see. I don't want to stretch myself too thin right before vacation. But yeah, thanks again to Dan and the handful of other folks that reached out either on Twitter or via email to point me in the right direction on the database switching stuff. At some point, I should definitely do a write-up on this because I've now collected together just about enough information that it feels like it's worthy of a blog post, or at least that's the story in the back of my head. I got to cross a certain threshold before I'm probably going to write a blog post. But yeah, that's a bit of what's up in my world. What's going on in your world? STEPH: I love it. You're saying write a blog post into the mic, so then that way you know it's going to encourage you to write it later. CHRIS: That's the trick right there. [chuckles] STEPH: Let's see, today's been a lovely day. It's been a lovely week in general. Today is especially lovely because it is thoughtbot's Summit, and Summit is where we all gather. We do this once a year. So the whole team, all of us across all of our...I was going to say offices but now just across all of our home offices. And we get together, and we have a day filled with events, and we usually have a wonderful team that helps organize a bunch of events that then we get together for. So a number of those fun events are like paired chats, which is one of my favorites because I often talk to people that I haven't talked to in a long time or perhaps people that I haven't even met yet that have just recently joined the company. We also have lightning talks, and I know I'm very biased, but I think we have some of the best lightning talks. They are just hilarious. So I love our lightning talks. We're also doing escape rooms. Oh, speaking of which, there's a Harry Potter-themed murder mystery that's happening. We have Nintendo Switch parties and a professional tarot card reading, which I've never done, but I'm actually doing that later today after we're done chatting. CHRIS: Wow, that is an adventurous day. And I like that it's fun, and it's connecting people and getting to know your teammates and all those nice things. STEPH: Very much. I also have a hot take. I don't know if I've shared this with you, so I'm going to share it here with you on the mic in regards to this. So previous years, for Summit, we used to have more coding projects, too. They were often opt-in, but that's something that happened. And specifically, we have Ralphapalooza, which is our hackathon. And it recently came up where a number of us were talking about Ralphapalooza, and I have come to the potentially contentious point of view that I don't like hackathons. I'm not a fan of them. CHRIS: Hot take. I like that you led in calling it a hot take, and then you provided said hot take, so I have to respond as if it's a very hot take. STEPH: That's true. Maybe it's not a hot take. Maybe people disagree. What do you think? Do you like hackathons? CHRIS: I have enjoyed them in the past. But I will say, particularly within the context of Summit or Ralphapalooza, I always felt a ton of pressure. It's so hard to right-size a project to that space, to that amount of time. You want to do something that's not trivial. You want to do something that at the end of it you're like, oh cool, I did that. Either it's like a novel thing that you're creating, or you're learning something new or whatever, but it's so hard to really do something meaningful in that amount of time. And often, people are shooting for the moon, and then they're just like, “Ah, so it's just a blank page right now. But behind the scenes, there's a machine learning algorithm that is generating the blank page. And we think with enough inputs to the model that it'll…” and it is actually super interesting work they did. But there's the wonderful pressure at the end to present, which I think is really useful. I like constraints. I like the presentations; they're always enjoyable, even in a case where it's like, this project did not go well, let's talk about that. That's even fun. But it really is so hard to get right. I've never gone to a hackathon outside of thoughtbot, so I can't speak to that, but I know that I have heard folks having a negative opinion of them. And I don't know that I'm quite at the hot take level that you are, but it's complicated, if nothing else. It's a lot of fun sometimes. I particularly remember the Elm project that you and I worked on. Well, we worked in the same group. We didn't actually work together, but same idea. That was a lot of fun. I liked that. STEPH: That's a good point. Even within the context of Ralphapalooza, our hackathons are more...I'm going to use the word sustainable because they're nine-to-five hackathons where we are showing up; we are putting in the work. There is pressure, and we do want to present. But it's not one of those stay up all night and completely leave your family for a day or two to hack on some code. [laughs] Sorry, I'm throwing some shade right now. But even with that sustainable approach, I've always felt so much pressure. I enjoyed that green space and then getting to collaborate with people I don't typically collaborate with, but it still felt like there was a lot of pressure there, especially that presentation mode always made me nervous. Even if it is welcoming to say, “Hey, this didn't go well,” that doesn't necessarily feel great to present unless you are comfortable presenting that scenario. And I also really look forward to these company events as a way to connect and have some downtime and to just relax because then the rest of our days are often more stressful. So I want more company time for me to connect with colleagues but then also feel relaxed. So I was always, in the beginning, I was like, yeah, Ralphapalooza, woo, let's go. And now I'm just like, nah, I'm good. I'd really just want a chill day with my colleagues. CHRIS: Is there an option to go for a walk with friends? Because if so, I will be taking door number two. STEPH: Cool. Well, I feel better having gotten that out into the ether now. But switching just a bit, there is something that I'm very excited about where we now have transcripts for each episode. This is something that you and I have been very excited about for a while and wanted to make happen but just weren't able to, but we now have them. And so people may have noticed them as we're adding them to the show notes. And I'm just so excited for a number of reasons, one, because there are a number of times that I have really wanted to search the shows or an episode for a particular topic and couldn't do so. So I'm just sitting there listening, trying to find a particular topic. There's also the fact that it will make the episodes more accessible. So for anyone that is hearing impaired or maybe if English isn't their first language, having it written down can make the episode more accessible. And there's the massive SEO boost that's always a win. And then I don't know if this is going to happen, but I'm excited that transcripts may help us repurpose content because there's a number of our topics that I would love to see turned into blog posts, and I think having the transcript will make that easier. CHRIS: Yeah. I'm equally super excited about the addition of transcripts, and across the line, SEO is cool, I think. Yeah, that sounds nice. Being able to reuse the content is very interesting to me because this is definitely my preferred medium. I find that I can just show up on the microphone, and it turns out I have opinions about a lot of stuff but trying to write a blog post is incredibly difficult for me. The small handful of good things that we might have collectively said over the years if we can turn those into more stuff that sounds great and honestly, just the ability to search for and find older episodes now based on like, I know we talked about inbox zero. I remember that was an episode, but I don't know which one, now that's searchable, and that's a thing that we can find. I actually still use the Upcase search for…I know I said something. I know there was a weekly iteration where I talked about some topic. And I built the search on Upcase for me as the primary user because one, I'm often referencing content on Upcase, and I want to be able to find it more easily, so I made the search. I also put a SQL injection vulnerability into the search in my first implementation so, go me. But then I got rid of it shortly after. STEPH: I love when people bring that energy of “I introduced this issue, go me,” because I find that very fun and also just very healthy in terms of we're going to make mistakes. And I have noticed a number of times at thoughtbot standup that whenever we make a mistake, or it's like, I accidentally sent out real emails on production for a job that I thought I was testing on staging. Sharing those mistakes in a very positive light is a very honest way to approach it. So I just had to comment on that because I'm a big fan of that. CHRIS: I'm glad you enjoyed my framing of it. I really enjoy that type of approach or way to communicate, although I think it is a delicate line. Like, I don't want to celebrate these sorts of things because an SQL injection vulnerability is a non-trivial thing. It shows up in tons of applications, and we need to take security seriously and all of that sort of stuff. But I think the version that I think is good for that type of thinking or communication is the psychological safety. If we're scared of admitting that we introduced a bug, that's bad. That's going to lead to worse outcomes longer term. And so having the shared communication style openness to like, yep, that happened yesterday. And there should be a certain amount of contrite in this where it's like, I feel bad that I did that. I even feel worse because when it happened, I recognized that it happened, and then I tried to exploit it in development mode to prove it to myself, and I couldn't exploit it. So I was like, I feel doubly bad as a programmer today. I both introduced a bug, and I'm not even smart enough to exploit it. But I know that an uber lead hacker out there could, and so I got to fix it. But that sort of story is part of the game. It's a delicate equilibrium, but having the ability to talk about that and having a group that can have a conversation, I do think that's very important. STEPH: Yeah, well said. I do think there's an important balance to strike there. Pivoting just a bit, we have a listener question, and this question comes from Benoit. Benoit wrote in to the show, “How do you properly implement a multi-step form in a boring Rails way?” I'm very interested in this question because I am working on a project that has a multi-step form. There are probably about maybe six, seven steps, and those steps can change based on different configurations. And our form is not implemented in a boring way at all. It's a very intricate, confusing design, I would say, which I think is fairly common when it comes to multi-step forms. I'm curious, what experience do you have with multi-step forms, and what's your general feeling with them? CHRIS: Well, I happen to be working on one right now. So generally, I don't have an oh, I got this, I know the answer. This is one of those that I'm like; I feel like each time I reinvent it a little bit. But the version that I'm working on right now is an onboarding flow. So we create a user record, which at this point I only have email associated with, and then from there, when a user lands, they need to provide a bunch of profile information, and it is a requirement. They have to fill it out. We need to have all of it before we can actually start doing the real stuff of the application. And so, the way that I've ended up modeling it is interesting. I'm going to use the word Interesting. I think I like it, but I'm not sure. So I have this model; let's call it a profile that we're going to associate with the user. And the profile has a bunch of fields: first name, last name, address, phone number, and a handful of other things. And again, I need to have these pieces of information. So I want those to be non-nullable columns. But as someone is walking through this form, I'm not going to have all the information. So there's going to be a progression. We'll get first name, then we get last name, and then we get the next piece of information. So I need a nullable storage, but I don't want to just put it into the session or something like that, which I think would be an option. So what I've done is I've introduced a secondary model. So this is a full ApplicationRecord database-backed model called partial profile. And it is almost identically the same interface as the profile, but each field is nullable. There's also a slight difference in that the profile field has an additional status column that talks about once we've gone through all of this, we can add some status and track other things. But yeah, that main difference of in the profile, everything is non-nullable, and the partial profile is nullable. So then there's a workflowy object, a command object, as I like to have in my systems these days that handles the once they've gathered all their information, turn the partial profile into a profile, send it out to an external system that does some verification and some other lookups and things like that. And then, based on the status of that, mark the status of the profile. But one of the things that I was able to do is make that transition from partial profile to full profile. I'm doing that within a transaction. So if at any point anything fails within all of this, I can roll the whole thing back, and I'll be back to only having the partial profile, which was a very important thing. I would not want to have a partial profile and a profile because that's a bad state. But a lot of this for me is about data modeling and wanting to tell truths with the database and constrain what are the valid states of my application? So one solution would be to just have a profile model that has nullable columns for all of these fields. But man, do I hate that answer. So I went what feels like an extreme take of having two fundamentally different models, but that's where it's actually working out well. I'm able to share validations across them. So as new data is added, I can conditionally validate as new things are shared, and I'm able to share that via concern in the two models. So it's progressively getting more constrained as I add data to this thing. And then, in the background, there is a single controller that skips through all of the steps and has an update action that just keeps pushing data into this partial profile until, eventually, it becomes a profile. So that's focused specifically on the data model stuff. I think there are other aspects of a more workflowy type thing in Rails, but that's our thing. What do you think, good idea, bad idea, terrible idea? STEPH: [chuckles] One, I love that you have this concrete example because I have some higher-level ideas around this particular question, but I didn't have a great example that I wanted to share. So I love that you have that, that we can talk through. I really, really like how you have found a way to represent the fact that each valid state of your application as you refer to it….so you have this concept of someone's going through the flow and their address can be nullable at this stage, but by the end of this flow, it shouldn't be nullable anymore. So you have that concept of a partial profile, and then it gets converted into a profile. I am intrigued by the fact that it's one controller because that is where I am feeling pain with the multi-step form that I'm working on where we have one very large controller that handles this entire...I'm going to call it a wizard since that's how it's referred to, and there are seven or eight different steps in this wizard. And the job of this controller is each time someone goes to a new step; this controller is trying to figure out okay; what step are you on based on the parameters that you have, based on some of the model attributes that are set? What step are you on, and what should we show you? And that has led to a very large method and then also complex, lots of conditional-based code. And instead, I would really like to flip that question around or essentially remove the what step am I on? And instead, ask what step is next? So instead, take the approach that each step of the form should have a one-to-one mapping to another controller. And that can get really hard because we're often conditioned to the idea that we should have a one-to-one correlation between each controller and an ActiveRecord model, but that's not necessarily what happens in our form. You have the concept of a partial profile versus being able to map to a full profile. So I am very much in favor of the idea of trying to map each step of the form to a controller. So that, to me, makes the code more boring. It makes it more understandable. I can see what's happening for each step. But then it's not boring in terms that it requires creativity to say, okay, I don't have a perfect ActiveRecord model that maps to this controller, but what resourceful controller can I make instead? What is the domain object that I can put here instead? Maybe it's an ActiveModel object instead. So that way, we can apply ActiveRecord-like behavior to plain old Ruby objects, or maybe it's using a form object. That way, we can still validate all the fields that the user is providing to us, but that doesn't necessarily map directly to a full profile just yet. So I really like all the things that you've said. But I am intrigued by the approach of using a single controller. How's that feeling so far? CHRIS: That part is actually feeling fine. So a couple of things you said in there stand out to me, one, where it's a very big controller. That is something that I would definitely avoid. And so, I have extracted other pieces. There is an object that I created, which at this point is just in-app models because I didn't know where else to put it, but it's called onboarding. And so the workflow that I'm trying to introduce, the resource maybe is what we would call it, is the idea of onboarding, but it's not an ActiveRecord level thing. At the ActiveRecord level, I have a profile and a partial profile, and then there's an account, and there's also a user. There are four different database level models that I want to think about. But fundamentally, from a user perspective, we're talking about onboarding. And so I have an object that is called onboarding, and it contains the logic around given the data that we have now, what step comes next? Is this a valid step? Should the user go back? Et cetera, et cetera. So that extraction is one piece that definitely makes sense. Also, thus far, mine is relatively straightforward in terms of I get data in, and I just need to update my partial profile record each time. So the update action is very straightforward. But I've done different versions of this where there are more complex things that happen. And so what I've done is basically make a splat route. So it's like onboarding/ and then the step name and that gets posted or gets put, I guess, along with everything else for the update. And so now the update says, “Well, if I'm updating for this, then handle it this way; otherwise, just update the profile record.” And so then I can extract maybe another command object that handles like, “Oh, when we're doing the address stuff, we actually have to do a little bit of a lookup and a cross-reference and some other things, but everything else is just throwing data into a database record.” And so that's another place where I would probably make an extraction, which is this specialized case of handling the update of the address is special. So I want to extract that, be able to test around that, et cetera. But fundamentally, the controller thing actually works out pretty well. The single controller with those sorts of extractions has worked out well for me. STEPH: Okay, cool. Yeah, I can see how depending on how complex your multi-step form is, having it all in one controller and then extracting those smaller objects to then handle each step makes a lot of sense and feels very friendly to read, and is very testable. For the form that I'm working in, there are enough steps and enough complexity. I'd really love to break it out. In fact, that's something that we're working on right now is taking each of those chunks, each state of the form, and introducing a controller for it. So let's say if you are filling out an appointment and we need to get your consent for something, then we actually have a consent controller that's going to handle that part, that portion of it. And I'd be intrigued for your form if things got complicated enough that it's the concept of onboarding or a wizard that leads us to having one controller because then we think of this one concept. But there are often four or five concepts that are then hiding within that general idea of an onboarding flow. So then maybe you get to the point that you have an onboarding address or something like that. So then you could break it out into something that still feels RESTful but then lets you have that very boring controller that does just enough and essentially behaves like a bi-directional linked list. So it knows, based on the route, it knows the step that it's on, and it knows where to go back, and then it knows the next step to go forward. And then that's all it's responsible for, so it doesn't have to also figure out what step am I currently on? CHRIS: I like the bi-directional link list, dropping knowledge bombs right there. STEPH: Pew-pew. CHRIS: It's interesting. I don't necessarily feel...right now; I don't feel that pressure. I feel fine with the shape of the singular controller. This is perhaps not necessarily even a good thing, but I think my bias is always to think a lot about the URL structure and really strongly embrace the user point of view. I'm going through the workflow. I don't care if I'm picking from a calendar and setting up a date versus filling in an address field or how you're storing those on the back end; that's your job, developer people. And I try as hard as I can to put myself in that mindset. And so the idea that there's this sequential thing that knows how to go back and forward and shows like, show which page we're on, that feels like it belongs in one controller in my mind, or I guess I'm fine with it being in one controller. And splitting it out feels almost more complicated in that I then need to share some of that logic across them, which is very doable by extracting some object that contains a logic of what goes back, what goes forward. But I think I like to align URL structure to how many controllers as opposed to anything else. And because I'm keeping a consistent URL structure where it's /onboarding/name /onboarding/address, and I'm stepping through in that way for all of those things, then it makes sense to me that those go to my onboardings controller. But I'm interested to see if I start to feel pain somewhere down the road because I expect this onboarding to get more complicated as time goes on. And will I bump my head on the ceiling? Probably. It seems likely. But for now, I'm liking it. STEPH: Yeah, it certainly makes sense. It's one of those areas that you want to start small and then build out as it feels reasonable. But in regard to the URLs, I'm with you, where I very much want there to be a clean, nice URL for the user to see. And then we handle out any of those details on the back end since that is our work to do. But I am still envisioning that there is a clean URL. So it may be you have an onboarding/address and then onboarding/consent, borrowing from my previous example, but then that maps to where you have an onboarding namespaced controller that is then for an address or for consent. So you don't necessarily have an object that's having to be passed along that stores the state and the next step that the person is on. But that way, you do definitively know from the route okay, I am on this step. And so then that's how you get away from that question of what step am I on? Because that's already given to us based on the URL and then the controller. So then you only have to care about validating the input that's provided on that page, but then also being able to calculate dynamically okay, if this person needs to go back, what's the previous step and if they go forward, what's the next step? CHRIS: What you're saying totally makes sense. And I'm now worried that I'm going to wake up a few days from now and look at my controllers and be like, I hate this. Why did I ever do this? I think the hesitation that I had, and this feels like a terrible reason, but in terms of what the config/routes.rb setup would be for this, it's namespace onboardings. And then within that, a bunch of singular routes and inside of that, inside that namespace, would be a bunch of singular resources so like, resource address, resource blah, blah. And I don't know why, but I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that. Now that I'm saying it out loud, I'm like, yeah, that actually would be a pretty clean mapping. And right now, I have implicitly what those available routes are but not explicitly. It also feels like there would be a real explosion of controllers there because there's a bunch of steps and growing in this controller or in this namespace. And they're all going to do the same thing, in my case at least, of just adding data in. But that's not a reason to not make...like, controllers are cheap; I should make controllers so, hmm. STEPH: Yeah. So I think that's the part in my mind that maps to the boring part is because we are creating controllers. There's maybe an explosion of them, and it's boring. Like, the controllers don't do very much. And then that feels a little bit wrong to us because we're like, okay, I created this controller, it does very little. So maybe I should actually group this logic somewhere else. But I think that is the heart of it and how you stay boring is where you have just that code be so simple that it almost feels wrong. CHRIS: That right there, that sound bite that we just had, that was a knowledge bomb drop, and I liked it. Now I've got to go back and refactor to the form that you're talking about because I am sold. STEPH: Oh, I'm glad you like it. I am intrigued if you do refactor then what that would look like and how it feels. But I also totally understand you're busy, so if you don't, that's cool too, no pressure. CHRIS: My honest answer is that I almost certainly won't refactor until I feel the pain. It's one of those things where like, okay, maybe I've now decided that this code is not the best, but the time to refactor it isn't when that code is just humming along working fine. It's a general thing that I think we share in terms of how we think about it. But the preemptive refactoring, I guess broadly speaking, I'm not a fan of preemptive factoring. I'm a fan of refactoring just in time or as we're feeling the pain, which is the counterpoint to that is let's not extract tech debt tickets because then they turn into preemptive refactoring again. It's like, ah, I'm not really feeling...I'm not in there right now. But the version of the code that I have now is probably fine. I don't think it's a problem although I am convinced now of the boring way. I want to go back to the boring way, but it will feel like it's worth changing down the road when I feel any pressure in that system or need to revisit it. So it's like that. That's how I think about that sort of thing. STEPH: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. It's one of those if you refactor...if this is a side project, if you want to refactor just for testing new software theories and then reflecting on what that new refactor looks like, that's awesome. In terms of any other refactors, then I wholeheartedly favor waiting until you feel that pain and it feels like the right thing to do; otherwise, it's unnecessary code turn. And while I strongly believe in experiments, I don't believe in putting teams through those personal experiments. CHRIS: More hot takes from Steph. I like it. STEPH: Circling back just a bit and talking about having one controller for each step of the form, that part I struggle with it frankly because it is hard to think about this is a concept, but what do I call this? Because it doesn't necessarily map to something necessarily in my database. There's a really great talk by Derek Prior that's called In Relentless Pursuit of REST, where Derek does a great job of providing some inspiration around how to create routes that don't necessarily feel like they could be RESTful, or maybe they're following that more RPC format. And he does a great job of then turning around and saying, “Well, this is how we could think about, or this is how we could shift our thinking in turning this into a more RESTful route.” So then it does map to something that's meaningful in our domain. Because we have thoughtfully, or likely very thoughtfully, grouped this form together in a meaningful way to the user. So then that's inspiration right there to give us a way to name this thing because we are showing it to the user in a meaningful way. So then that means we can also give it a meaningful name. That's all I got on multi-step forms. [laughs] CHRIS: That feels like it was a lot. We've covered data models. We've covered controller structures. We fundamentally reoriented my thinking on the matter. I feel like we covered it. STEPH: Yeah, I agree. Well, Benoit, thank you for sending in this question. I hope you found our discussion very helpful. And on that note, shall we wrap up? CHRIS: Let's wrap up STEPH: The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. CHRIS: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. STEPH: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or review in iTunes as it helps other people find the show. CHRIS: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @bikeshed on Twitter. And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: And I'm at @SViccari. CHRIS: Or you can email us at hosts@bikeshed.fm. Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Byeeeee. 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.

It seems like selling a product that is designed to make you feel good should be a cake walk. But as we all know, business is never easy, especially when you’re breaking into the supplement and nutritional bar space, which is overcrowded with industry giants such as Clif bars and KIND. So what’s an upstart company with a solid product and good intentions to do?On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, we found out when we talked to Chris Bernard, the co-founder, CEO and Chief Mood Officer for Mindright, the good mood superfood. As it turns out, there are a few ways that a small new company can make a splash, especially in the digital space. Chris explains how organic reach outs and authentic connections formed through his partnership with Rob Dyrdek has helped Mindright create an influencer and ambassador community that wins against influencer fatigue. Plus Chris, he digs into why a content strategy that blends humor and education is what gets the attention of the digital audience. Enjoy this episode.Main Takeaways:Be Serious… But Have A Laugh: Fun and funny content is a great way to build a relationship with consumers and to sell the lifestyle that you want your brand to be about. But you also have to balance real education and sales tactics into your content along with the comedic elements so that customers can get the full picture of what a brand is, why they should buy it, and to convince them to complete the purchase.Can I Get A Sample?: Free samples used to be a staple at grocery stores and markets everywhere, and those samples were a key way that new companies created buy-in with potential customers. Now that the industry has shifted away from that model, finding a new way to hyper-target customers with influencers, deals, and content is the best way to bring customers into the fold.Influencer Fatigue: Consumers are wise to the influencer strategy these days, and their fatigue is real when it comes to consuming influencer content. In order for brands to fight that fatigue and win engagement, building buzz around future products rather than current offerings is one of the best ways to do it.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey, everyone and welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at mission.org. Today on the show we have Chris Bernard, the co-founder and CEO and Chief Mood Officer at Mindright. Chris, welcome to the show.Chris:Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.Stephanie:It's good to have you. Would you rather have me call you Bernie? Which one do you want?Chris:My friends and my coworkers call me Bernie, but whatever you're comfortable with.Stephanie:I'm your friend.Chris:Okay, call me Bernie.Stephanie:All right. I like it. So in the beginning, I like to always hear about your background, your journey and how you got to Mindright. So maybe if we could start there. What did you do before Mindright, we'd like to hear.Chris:What I did before Mindright was I was in action sports for a little over 15 years. I represented brands like Burton Snowboards in their sales and marketing channels as an independent contractor. I left that business in 2015 and I invested in a company called, Buff Bake which was protein snacks and protein cookies, nut butters and I came on board with them as part of that investment as the CEO and I helped them run that company for a few years until I was ready to try something new and had an idea and ended up launching this Mindright.Stephanie:So did you have the idea for Mindright right after Buff Bake or was there something in between there?Chris:It was something in between and it just evolved very quickly into what it is today.Stephanie:Okay. What was your original idea? And then what is it today?Chris:Vegan cookie dough.Stephanie:Well that sounds good. I dig that.Chris:It was okay. It wasn't great and that's why I kept it out of the vine and I think we'll probably get into it. But one of the things that dismissed the idea was it really for me, I was looking for something condition specific. Functional foods are really driving the category right now and it's all about condition specific. Foods that drive beauty from within, through collagen, immune support, sleep support.Chris:It's really how we came to Mindright. We started to see this trend in supplements and when you're looking for trends that are going to be shifting to food and beverage, you always start with supplements and you see this rise of adaptogens and nootropics and brain supplements and anti-aging and it's just skyrocketing growth in supplements. It was this idea of how do we support our lifestyle through our mindset, our long hours, our drive, our energy levels through ingredients that support cognitive function. And that's where we started was this idea of cognitive food support and I came to my partner with this idea, he absolutely loved it. At the time the working name was Feed Your Brain.Stephanie:Cool. I like that name.Chris:And it was just really focused on brain health.Stephanie:Do you have a background in this world? How would you even know? When I'm thinking about brain health, I'm like, "Feels like there's so many things. I should be doing facial or I should be doing this. I should be doing so many things." Did you have a background in this where you already knew this makes me feel good? Or did you have to learn all about it?Chris:No, I just knew I wasn't feeling good. I always feel this brain fog and slow and besides this fact that you just hit 40, things start to slow down a little bit and you're looking for ways to support your lifestyle and just keep your edge and just keep moving forward and you start researching and there's a lot of great information around brain health, mental wellbeing, nutrition and other things that support those functions.Stephanie:Okay. And so what were some of the ingredients that you started finding that you're like, "We need to have this in some kind of bar."Chris:It was like lion's mane, Gingko biloba, both of which didn't make the cut at the end.Stephanie:Oh, how come?Chris:Well this is where I was going was, as we started with Brain Health, my partner who is a very big advocate of testing and research pushed to really go out and survey a group around 350 people. And while cognitive function was important to them, what indexed the highest was, "Do you have foods and ingredients that help me feel good? Happy, good mood. I want to be focused and feeling good." And this theme of feel good, just kept popping up and popping up and we took a step back and it was indexed so high. Like, "Why don't we just lean into good mood?" We've got a set of ingredients. We've got some data behind some of the ingredients we're using to really support enhancing your mood, decreasing your stress and giving you energy. All the things you need to feel good. So we need to do it. And that's how Good Mood Superfood was born.Stephanie:Cool. And did you always know that it would turn into a bar or did you have other thoughts early on?Chris:We had many thoughts and we still have many thoughts. This was our way of really standing up the brand, getting a feel for our branding, our message, bars is just the starting point. We have a really dynamic innovation pipeline of other snacks, drink blends, hydration drink. Things that will help support other areas of brain health.Stephanie:Very cool. So let's talk a bit about your partner and how that working relationship is and how you even landed him as your partner.Chris:So I was introduced to Rob Dyrdek, legendary TV personality, former skateboard, a professional athlete. Rob has a show on MTV right now called Ridiculousness. I grew up watching his other shows, Rob & Big and Fantasy Factory, as many of us did.Stephanie:Rob & Big, that's a good show.Chris:It was amazing. So then we just look forward to every week watching. He's just such a character and dynamic human being. But what people don't know is he runs a really diverse, exciting venture creation studio. He refers to himself and the people around him as do or diers, people that are interested in investing in themselves, growing businesses from the idea stage to the exit. And he's invested in several brands, primarily at the startup stage. And when I came to him, I was in the transition period in my life. I didn't know why I was meeting him.Chris:I was going to go in and just introduce myself. And I brought Buff Bake with me just in case he was interested in investing because always looking for investors and he made me tell him my life story from the day I was born until the day I ended up sitting in the chair in front of him.Stephanie:Wow. I should have done that.Chris:It's not that interesting. But he really liked it. And I spent 55 of my 60 minutes talking about myself and then he's like, "Okay. So what's up with these cookies? What's up with this Buff Bake? He's like, "Okay. Those are really good. I like them but I really like you. If you have some ideas or you want to do something, come back and let's talk about it."Chris:I left and I got a call two weeks later from him, wanted me to come back again. Again, didn't really know why I was going there. He wanted to pitch me on some ideas. And it just flew over my head. I went home, I called his COO and I was like, "What's he looking for?" He wanted an idea from me. He wanted to work on something. So I had been in the background working on these cognitive ingredients, paired with superfoods and brought it back to him as a whole package. I came in with fully developed samples around bars and coffee creamers and bites to really articulate what this could look like. And he was so excited about the presentation. He just sealed the deal with me on the spot and we were off to the races.Stephanie:That's amazing. What does the partnership look like with him? How's he involved?Chris:He is very, very involved. He wants to be very involved in the creative process, but also through all the funding, the financial rounds, building the infrastructure of the company. He has built a really strong team around him. Managing the finance arm, managing the marketing project teams. So it's an extension of my team. We are true co-founders, he's very, very involved in the business and he and I are either working together on the daily basis or he and his team are fully integrated in.Stephanie:That's really cool. And it seems like once you get access to him and then you had his network, it brings in other investors as well.Chris:Yeah. So that's the next thing that happened. So we stand this thing up and we start to go out to bring in some strategic capital to help push things along. We started with some traditional resources and private equity and some strategics within the space. And then we started talking to his network a little bit and all of a sudden we saw how excited they were and one conversation led to the next, led to the next, the next thing you know it's Marcus Lemonus from the profits. Jonas was extremely excited about the project. He now sits on the board with myself and Rob. Joe brought his brothers on as well. Jordan McGraw, Travis Barker, Ken Roxanne. It's just this star-studded list of really great mindset celebrities and athletes. Very, very exciting.Stephanie:It seems like you have your own portfolio of influencers. You can get the word out there. While most people you're trying to even think about, "How do I even tap into one of those?" You've got this whole little Rolodex just working for you.Chris:Right. So it's exciting. I think that being able to have that leverage and that advantage really puts us in a unique position to tell the story.Stephanie:Awesome. So tell me a bit about, you said that you were getting samples when you were going to go and show him what you could do. What did that process look like? Because to me thinking about even making any kind of food and then getting the packaging and then getting ingredients that maybe some people aren't the most comfortable with. If you hear some of the words you'd be like, "Well, what is that like? Is that even safe?" Tell me what that process looked like to even find someone who could make the bar that you wanted to taste good and have all that ready for the sample day.Chris:It's funny. You start with the manufacturers. Every manufacturer has a food scientist, R&D, most of them do. Food scientists and R&D department. And most of the time, if they're excited about your project, they will help your R&D. It comes with strings attached and not always do you end up owning your IP, which is important if you're interested in exiting your company at some point, but you learn the process of what goes into R&D products.Chris:And I came in, you come in with a brief and your core tenants for, "These are the ingredients that I would like to use as superfoods. These are the outputs that we'd like to achieve, enhance mood, stress, energy. These are the functional ingredients we're thinking about." And then you work with the ingredient suppliers to understand efficacy and transparency around their ingredients. And you let these guys do their job and you like what you like and you don't when you don't. And I think we did about 13 rounds of this bar until we landed in a place that we felt really good about.Stephanie:That wasn't just you testing it or were there other people trying it?Chris:It was Rob and the entire team. His close team is a team of five.Stephanie:That is awesome. What kind of lessons did you learn when going through that process? Anything that you would maybe do different?Chris:Well, I'll tell you one thing. We tried to be everything but the kitchen sink. We wanted to be keto, we wanted to be paleo, we wanted to be zero sugar. We wanted to be everything. Vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free and have functional ingredients that support incredible, feel, good vibes and decrease your stress. And we were realistic that not all of that was going to work and our guiding light really became taste. If it doesn't taste good, I don't care if it has all those things, it's just not going to work for us. So we planted a flag and it was about taste. And we want this thing that tastes good. And if it has five or six or seven grams of sugar, we use a coconut Palm sugar, which we felt really good about. It was therapeutic. It was like, "Okay, great. We don't have to use sugar, alcohol, or stevia or erythritol or anything. We're going to use coconut Palm sugar. It's a low-glycemic sugar. It tastes great. The bar still has 50% less sugar than an RXBAR or competitor. And we felt really great about that.Stephanie:That's awesome. How do you view the landscape right now? Because I know when I go into certain grocery stores, I'm like, "Wow, there's so many bars." There's the original type RXBARS but now it feels like there's so many offshoots. Everyone's trying to do lower sugar. Maybe not what you're doing, but how do you make sure that you're staying ahead of them and also differentiating yourself where people are like, "Oh, obviously we can see why they're different than all these other bars."Chris:I think again, it came down to taste, great amount of protein, our base values of, it is plant-based vegan, it is dairy free, it is protein packed and low sugar were really important to us. But I think we'll continue to stand out with what our functional message around supporting mood through these super foods and ingredients. And we are just sticking with that.Stephanie:How do you get in front of new people though? I'm thinking about back in the day, samples where you're like, "Oh, I would never have thought to buy that, but now I can see it's healthy for me and good." How do you approach that now trying to get in front of new people and have them try it for the first time?Chris:It's difficult, especially through a global pandemic of people at home and not having opportunities sample in the markets or elsewhere. And for us, it's just leaning into our influencers, our investment community, paid ads, really important. Finding unique ways to drive trial, pinpointing and targeting specific communities. It'd be really great to be everything to everyone but if we could just focus on this core group that's committed to their mindset. They're coaches, they're hustlers, they're the boss, they're the mom and they're focused on what it takes for them to be successful every day. We call them the happy hustlers. That's where we're starting. Our initial reaction was the right one. They're really resonating with the product. They're speaking about the product for us organically. And we're just going to continue to focus on that community right now. And then it'll just hopefully grow from there.Stephanie:It also seems like you have a really good idea around your social presence and how you want to present yourself. It's like a fun whimsical looking, at least your Instagram feed and it's not overly product driven, but it's more selling the lifestyle behind it which I really liked.Chris:Exactly. That's exactly right. And that's what's resonated the most is people are realizing that Mindright is a lifestyle. It's not just about the products. We want to support you beyond that. And as you'll see over the next couple months, we're really going to lean into what it takes to have a better mood, to put the work into your mental wellbeing and really drive home this good mood movement. And being approachable and fun, makes it just easier to pay attention and watch and fun and funny is part of feeling good. And that's the message that we want out there.Stephanie:It sounds like your content strategy you're about to ramp up around those areas. How are you going to keep it balanced between educational, which I feel like a lot of people need education around the ingredients and why they're added and how they need to be mixed together and then the other side around even outside of the product. Like you said, just good mood and how to feel happy and mindfulness and it's like a whole different business over there. How are you thinking about balancing that and connecting with the right audience?Chris:It's just that. It's balancing, trying different things. It's balancing being funny with incorporating lifestyle and people enjoying the product. You're going to just start to see more direct response and testimonials. We are looking to partner with therapy based apps and other entities that help make mental health and wellness really accessible. We're going to have our investment team and our influencers talking about the work that it takes to get Mindright. It's not just, this bar is not going to solve your problems, it's not. But if you focus on your nutrition and you incorporate things like the importance of sleep and getting exercise and some type of a meditation routine, all of these things combined bring you to that next place.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah. It's not just try one thing and all of a sudden everything will be solved, like many things and there's no magic potion.Chris:I think that that's where other companies that are trying, mood or all of these other cognitive functional ingredients, they could fall short because they're making it just about that. And I think that we'll go along for the ride and we'll be there to support our customers along the way.Stephanie:That's great. So you just mentioned influencers. I'm going to go and I want to hear how you view working with influencers because we've had quite a few brands on the show and they talked about it. Some people, amazing experiences if you find the right person who is all in, it's not just sharing a quick message of like, "Here's my teeth whitener and it works great for me go buy it." Versus maybe the ones that are really in they're even part the product development. How do you view a good working relationship with influencers? And more than one, since you have many that you have to balance.Chris:I think for us, it's about being authentic. If it's not something you enjoy and you truly believe in it comes through. You see it and you feel it. And I think having our influencers part of our ambassador program, which we're just at the early stages of building out, is a really important part around building the authenticity of their message. Our influencer program is very small right now, we're still identifying how they're speaking about the brand and what are the best ways to do that. But what we've gotten so far comes from a really organic place. We haven't paid for any influencers yet. All organic because people are enjoying the product and sharing the message with their community.Stephanie:Are you sending them free samples or is it more your investors giving it to their friends who are other influencers probably. And then it's organically happening through that way?Chris:A little bit of both. We identified people that live within our community that we would like to target and say, "Hey, we'd love your feedback. No expectations. You don't need to post. We just ask you tell us how you enjoyed the product. How'd you feel? What do you think about the packaging?" And then it just happens organically.Stephanie:How do you view the longterm strategy around influencers? Because sometimes it feels like they'll have this excitement and a big blip where their network sees it. And then there's maybe diminishing returns and people are either hit over the head with it too much. Or like, "I bought it. It's good." Or the person's not as excited anymore as they were maybe in month one. How do you keep them engaged or be like, "Okay. We're kind of good for now."Chris:We see that fatigue all the time. And I think for us, it's the excitement around what's coming. It's creating community around the lifestyle and the future launch of our new products. The bar is here today. It might not be here in three years from now. It's about continuing to evolve and supporting our needs today.Stephanie:Makes sense. So tell me a bit more about this ambassador program that you're building.Chris:We're at the early stages where we're leaning into this mindset community from happy hustlers. We have three investors on the team that live and breathe in that space. And that's Chris and Lori Harder, their lifestyle coaches and then Lewis Howes who also has a podcast, The School of Greatness. And just really leaning into what they do and how they do it and their communities coming to us and we're setting them up and they're incentivized by product. One of the angles that we're working on right now is charity. When they post, we will support a soon to be identified a mental health charity with an investment.Stephanie:When they're posting about the bar or the company, something like that, then it's like, "Okay, that's a point towards this charity or effect."Chris:Exactly. Those are the early stages. We're still in development. It's still being worked out. We're less than two months old in the market, so we're close.Stephanie:Are there other ambassador programs that you look at where you're maybe taking some key learnings from where you're like, "I know this one works well and I want to implement some of those strategies into Mindright as well."Chris:Yes. A lot of them are custom built though. There's a lot of really great app solutions that work really well and incentivize through product or discount or payment. We want to try to be more organic. I've seen some great custom ones that are gamified, that built community around this excitement around this app itself and the message. So work in progress.Stephanie:That'd be cool to circle back and hear what you ended up building and how it's working and the results. So tell me about your distribution strategy and where you're thinking about selling. Are you on Amazon? Is it just your website and how do you think about where you actually want your bars to be sold right now?Chris:It's everything digitally native. So we are alive on our website getmindright.com. We're on Amazon. We're looking at a various array of subscription box companies. But the really big one right now is all of the delivery convenience guys. So this new evolution of convenience, prime is not good enough. It can't be there the next day. It needs to be there in 20 minutes. So we're looking at partnerships with goPuff, FastAF, Dot. We're in the process of vetting those guys out right now and seeing which one makes the most sense. And I think that can meet format. It's just growing and exploding right now. Through COVID people were forced to adapt to Amazon and delivery service and it's here to stay. It's here to stay. Those conveniences will never change.Stephanie:Are you worried about maybe your brand and the story not being told correctly when you're starting to have many outlets for your products going out and you can't fully control the messaging or?Chris:Yeah. I think that's why picking the right partner for these delivery services is key because we want to make sure that we have the ability to tell a story, whether it's this big or in a banner. It's really partnering with the right team to help make that happen. And then we have a lot of work to do on our end. And I think that our community will help push people to these services. Amazon, getmindright, goPuff, that's where we go and they'll really rely on on that. It's challenging.Stephanie:Yeah, no. Especially when you have so many different people you're vetting right now and thinking about all of the control that you could be losing but also all the access that you're going to be gaining. It's tricky. Because this is a commerce show, I want to hear about your ecommerce strategy around what's working. What do you think that you're doing on your website that maybe is unique and others haven't tried out yet or that you're like, "This is a good tip that more people need to know about."Chris:I think it being less templated and more just an experience where it just feels fun. It makes you dive a little bit deeper to find out what's going on. What works for some people doesn't always work for others and I think this format is working well for us right now.Stephanie:Do you find yourself being able to look back at maybe your experiences at Burton and other places and pulling some lessons from there? Or is it such a different market that you're like, "That probably wouldn't work for this product."Chris:I think it's very similar. I think at the end of the day, you're selling an item that you're passionate and excited about and what is the best way to share that with your friends or your customers? It's very similar in that sense.Stephanie:Yeah. That's cool. So where do you guys want to be in one to three years? What are you hoping to achieve?Chris:We're looking to achieve this just amazing platform of good mood foods that span across really great retailers, Whole Foods, all the natural channels. It would be really great to see it everywhere obviously, but this really accessible approach to foods that help support your mood.Stephanie:Have you started talking to Whole Foods and other retailers like that?Chris:We've had some early conversations, but we really want to stay firm on this digitally native approach. I think that one thing that I'll add is testing is worth spending money on. Just test landing pages, AB testing, digital testing, customer testing. It has opened my eyes to this completely different world. And it is a true science. And when you understand that word that works, that picture that works, that landing page that just converted, it's a science. And then you can continue to really invest towards those things that are working because you know there's turn on that.Stephanie:Yeah. I agree. What is a finding that maybe came out of some of those tests where you were like, "We would have never changed this, changed the product, change the website, but now that so many people are saying this, we're definitely moving forward with that.Chris:I would go back to the beginning where Rob and I, Mindright. There was two different names before Mindright. And now I look back, I'm like, "Neither of those would have worked. Mindright should have always been number one." We tested Mindright. Mindright worked really well but We wanted to brand the ingredients themselves. And we were like the unstoppable blend. We're unstoppable. This mentality of you cannot be stopped, masculine. And we were so sure of it and it failed miserably.Stephanie:They were like, "I don't like that."Chris:No, no. So now at the happy brain blend.Stephanie:That makes me feel happy. That's more on brand.Chris:Yeah. And then from that moment on we're like, "That's our guiding light." It makes me feel happy. Does it? Yes Or no. Okay. It's in.Stephanie:And how are you doing these tests? How are you going about trying to get this feedback? Are they surveys or what are you all doing behind the scenes?Chris:Yeah. Surveys. Right now, we've moved to more surveys. We're surveying around our current database of growing email subscriptions and then we're going to start doing some stuff through Instagram, social media. But the original testing went through a market research firm.Stephanie:All right. Well, let's shift over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Chris:No.Stephanie:Nope. Be right back. Need to go get some more tea. Get In the right mood here. All right. Well, we will move on anyways. If you had a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?Chris:Oh my gosh. My podcast would be about thinking big. My whole life I never thought big. I thought pretty small and I put roadblocks up in front of myself and I think that now as I sit on a board with Rob Dyrdek and Joe Jonas, literally anything is possible and it would be about stories and ways to help open up your mind to anything is really possible. And I think as cheesy as that sounds, it really is. And I feel like here in my home with my kids and now that we're talking about getting Mindright and this positive growth mindset and to hear them talking about it, it's a real thing. I don't have a title yet. I'll let you name the podcast.Stephanie:There you go. I'll help you name it. Who would you bring on for your first guest?Chris:I bring in Rob. He is an amazing person to talk to about all of this stuff. His mindset is just next level with what he does to keep his energy and his success where it is. It's remarkable.Stephanie:Awesome. What does your mindfulness practice look like?Chris:I'm sorry.Stephanie:What does your mindfulness practice look like? How do you stay centered and balanced and not getting pulled everywhere when doing a startup?Chris:I think for me, I committed to getting up early every morning. I have to be up by 5:00,5:15 or else I can't do the things that I want to do for myself, which is exercise or just have a moment of meditation. Whether it's a minute or five minutes or 20 minutes. I try to do that every morning. I have four kids so life is really hard sometimes. Here they are.Stephanie:I feel that.Chris:So it's get up early, it's a few minutes of meditating and just understanding where I'm at and being really grateful for that. Exercise, 30 minutes. That is my non-negotiable. I have to get 30 minutes in, if I don't my day is just off and once in a blue moon we have a sauna that was gifted to us by-Stephanie:Wow.Chris:It was miracle. That's another podcast.Stephanie:Yeah. Okay. I want that friend. Gift me a sauna.Chris:It was some local guy just giving it away. He was moving.Stephanie:What area of California do you live in because I don't know about many local areas being like, "Here's a sauna. Do you want ice staff as well?"Chris:I'm on the hunt for one of those. So, if you know one. I started fasting, so I intermittent fast. I don't eat my first meal until 12:00 or 1:00. And I found it's really helped with inflammation and energy and I feel great. I also stop thinking through COVID I just-Stephanie:So impressive.Chris:30 days and then you felt great and 60 days, I'm like, "Wow, I feel awesome." And it just stuck.Stephanie:All right. Last question. Two more questions. What's one thing that you don't understand today that you wish you did?Chris:What don't I understand. I don't understand a lot of things let's be honest.Stephanie:Good answer. Just everything. Lots of things.Chris:No. I think for me, part of the reason why we're starting digitally native is almost a personal challenge to myself. I know retail really well, I know relationships, building brands, building distribution, working with brokers. I don't understand digital that well. And it can be frustrating at times because the learning curve is pretty steep and it's always changing every day because you're learning something new and I think digital marketing I don't know very well.Stephanie:Well, you'll be learning it with this company. So that's great.Chris:It'd be great to hire the right people to help you.Stephanie:Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. 1,000% to that one. All right. And then the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Chris:I think it's these convenience delivery guys. I think they're going to change the game for a lot of people. FastAF is a really good example of what's happening with commerce outside of food and beverage, because they're delivering unique gifts. You need a gift and you're going to a party in an hour, they'll be there in 20 minutes with this beautiful candle or gift item which is just changing the way that we do everything.Stephanie:Yeah. Oh, I completely agree. All right. Well, this has been such a blast. I feel like my mind is really in the right place now after this interview. Where can people find out more about you and Mindright?Chris:Check us out at getmindright.com or on Amazon.Stephanie:All right. Cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.Chris:I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

On this week's episode, Steph and Chris respond to a listener question about how to know if we're improving as developers. They discuss the heuristics they think about when it comes to improving, how they've helped the teams they've worked with plan for and measure their growth, and some specific tips for improving. Rails Autoscale (https://railsautoscale.com/) Rubular regex playground (https://rubular.com/) The Pragmatic Programmer (https://pragprog.com/titles/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-20th-anniversary-edition/) Go Ahead, Make a Mess by Sandi Metz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi3DClfGuqQ) Confident Code - Avdi Grimm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8J0j2xJFgQ) Therapeutic Refactoring - Katrina Owen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4dlF0kcThQ) Refactoring, Good to Great - Ben Orenstein (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC-pQPq0acs) Transcript CHRIS: There's something intriguing about the fact that we're having this conversation, but the thing that's recorded just starts at this arbitrary point in time, and it's usually us rambling about golden roads. But, I don't know; there's something existential about that. STEPH: It's usually when someone says something very funny or starts singing [laughs], and then that's when we immediately: record, record! CHRIS: I've never sung on the mic. That doesn't sound like a thing I would do. STEPH: [laughs] 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, how's your week going? STEPH: Hey Chris, it's going really well. Normally I'm always like, wow, it's been such an exciting week, and it's been a pretty calm, chill week. It's been lovely. CHRIS: That sounds nice actually in contrast to the "Well, it's been a week," that sort of intro of "I don't know, it's been fine. It can be really nice." STEPH: By the time we get to this moment of the week, I either have stuff that I'm so excited to talk about and have a little bit of a therapy session with you or share something new that I've learned. I agree; it's nice to be like, yeah, it's been smooth sailing this whole week. In fact, it was smooth sailing enough that I decided to take on something that I've been meaning to tackle for a while but have just been avoiding it because I have strong feelings about this, which you know but we haven't talked about yet. But it comes down to managing emails and how many emails one should have that are either unread that are just existing. And I fall into the category of where I am less scrupulous about how many unread or managed emails that I have. But I decided that I'd had enough. So I used a really nice filter in Gmail where I said I want all emails that are before 2021 and also don't have a user label, so it's has:nouserlabels because then I know those are all the emails that I haven't labeled or assigned to a particular...I want to say folder, but they're not truly folders; they just look like folders. So they're essentially like untriaged or just emails that I've left hanging out in the ether. And then I just started deleting, and I got rid of all of those that hadn't been organized up until that point. And I was just like yep, you know if I haven't looked at it, it's that old, and I haven't given a label by this point, I'm just going to move on. If it's important, it will bubble back up. And I feel really good about it. CHRIS: Wow, that is -- I like how you backed me into a corner. Obviously, I'm on the other side where I'm fastidiously managing my email, which I am, but you backed me into that corner here. So, yeah, that's true. Although the approach that you're taking of just deleting all the old email that's a different one than I would have taken [chuckles] so, I like it. It's the nuclear option. STEPH: Okay, so now I need to qualify. When you delete an email, initially, I'm thinking it's going to trash, and so it's still technically there if I need to retrieve it and go back and find it. But you just said nuclear option, so maybe they're actually getting deleted. CHRIS: They're going into the trash for 30 days; I think is the timeline. But after that, they will actually delete them. The archive is supposed to be the place where you put stuff I don't want to see you anymore. But did you archive or delete? STEPH: Oh, I deleted. CHRIS: Oh, wow. Yeah. All right, you went for it. [laughter] STEPH: Yeah, and that's cool. And it's in trash. So I basically have a 30-day window where I'm like, oh, I made a mistake, and I need to search for something and find something and bring it back into my world; I can find it. If I haven't searched for it by then in 30 days, then I say, you know, thanks for the email, goodbye. [chuckles] And it'll come back if it needs to. CHRIS: I like the approach. It would not be my approach, but I like the commitment to the cause. Although you still have...how many emails are still in your inbox now? STEPH: Why do we have to play the numbers game? CHRIS: [laughs] STEPH: Can't we just talk about the progress that I have made? CHRIS: What wonderful progress you've made, Steph. [laughter] Like, it doesn't matter what I think. What do you think about this? Are you happy with this? Does this make you feel more joy when you look into your email in the Marie Kondo sense? STEPH: It does. I am excited that I went ahead and cleared all this because it just felt like craft. So I have taken what may be a very contentious approach to my email, where I treat it as this searchable space. So as things come in, I triage them, and I will label them, I will star them. I will either snooze them to make sure I don't miss the high actionable emails or something that's very important to me to act on quickly. But for the most part, then a lot of stuff will sit in that inbox area. So it becomes like this junk drawer. It's a very searchable junk drawer, thanks to Google. They've done a great job with that. And it feels nice to clear out that junk drawer. But I do have such an aversion to that very strong email inbox zero. I respect the heck out of it, but I have an aversion; I think from prior jobs where I was on a team, and we could easily get like 800 emails a day. My day all day was just triaging and responding to emails and writing emails. And so I think that just left a really bitter experience where now I just don't want to have to live that life where I'm constantly catering to what's in my inbox. CHRIS: That's so many emails. STEPH: It was so many emails. We were a team. It was a team inbox. So there were three of us managing this inbox. So if someone stepped away or if someone was away on vacation, we all had access to the same emails. But still, it was a lot of emails. CHRIS: Yeah, inbox zero in a shared inbox that is a level that I have not gotten to but getting to inbox zero and actually maintaining that is very much a labor of love and something that I've had to invest in. And it's probably not worth it for most people. You could convince me that it is not worth it for me, that the effort I'm putting in is too much effort for not enough reward. Well, it's one of those things where I find the framing that it puts on it, like, okay, I need to process my email and get it to zero at least once a day. Having that lens makes me think about email in a different way. I unsubscribe from absolutely everything. The only things that are allowed to come into my email are things that I will act on that actually deserve my attention, and so it forces that, which I really like. And then it forces me to think about things. I have a tendency to really hold off on decisions. So I'm like, ah, okay. I can go see friends on Saturday or I can do something else. Friends like actual humans, not the TV show, although for the past year, it's definitely more of the TV show than the real people. But let's say there's a potential thing that I could do on the weekend and I have to decide on that. I have a real tendency to drag my feet and to wait for some magical information from the universe to help this decision be obvious to me. But it's never going to be obvious, and at some point, I just need to pick. And so for inbox zero, one of the things that comes out of it for me is that pressure and just forcing me to be like, dude, there's no perfect answer here, just pick something. You got to just pick something and not wasting multiple cycles rethinking the same decision over and over because that's my natural tendency. So in a way, it's, I don't know, almost like a meditative practice sort of thing. There's utility there for me, but it is an effort, and it's, again, arguably not worth it. Still, I do it. I like it. I'm a fan. I think it's worth it. STEPH: I like how you argued both sides. I'm with you. I think it depends on the value that you get out of it. And then, as long as you are effective with whichever strategy you take, then that's really what matters. And I do appreciate the lens that it applies where if you are getting to inbox zero every day, then you are going to be very strict about who can send you emails about notifications that you're going to receive because you are trying to reduce the work that then you have to get to inbox zero. So I do very much admire that because there are probably -- I'm wasting a couple of minutes each day deleting notifications from chats or stuff that I know I'm not necessarily directly involved in and don't need action from me. And then I do get frustrated when I can't adjust those notification settings for that particular application, and I'm just subscribed to all of it. So some of it I feel like I can't change, and then some of it, I probably am wasting a few minutes. So I think there's totally value in both approaches. And I'm also saying that to try to justify my approach of my searchable inbox. [laughs] CHRIS: There are absolutely reasons to go either way. And also, to come back to what I was saying a minute ago, it may have sounded like I'm a person who's just on top of this. I may have given that impression briefly. I think the only time this has actually worked in my life is when Gmail introduced snooze both in the mobile app and on the desktop. So this is sometime after Google's inbox product came out, and that was eventually shut down. So it's relatively recent because, man, I just snooze everything. That is the actual secret to achieving inbox zero, just to reach the end of the day and be like, nah, and just send all the emails to future me. And then future me wakes up and is like, "You know, it's first thing in the morning. I got a nice cup of coffee, and this is what you're going to do to me, past me?" So there's a little bit of internal strife there within my one human. But yeah, the snoozing is actually incredibly useful and probably the only way that I actually get things done and the same within any task management system that I have; maybe future me will do this. STEPH: I think you and I both subscribed to the that's a future me problem. We just do it in very different ways. But switching gears a bit, how's your week been? CHRIS: It's been good, pretty normal, doing some coding, normal developer things. Actually, there's one tool that I was revisiting this week that I'm not sure that we've actually talked about on the show before, but it's Rails Autoscale. Have you used that before? STEPH: I don't think I have. It sounds very familiar, but I don't think I've used it. CHRIS: It's a very nice, straightforward Heroku add-on that does exactly what you want it to do. It monitors your web and worker dynos and will scale up. But it uses a different heuristic than -- So Heroku has built-in autoscaling, but theirs is based on response time, which is, I think, a little bit laggier of a metric. Like if your response time has gotten bad, then you're already in trouble, whereas Rails Autoscale uses queue time. So how long is a request waiting before? I think it's at the Heroku router; it goes onto the dyno that's actually going to process the request? So I think that's what they're monitoring. I may be wrong on that. But from the website, they're looking at that, and you can configure it. They actually have a really nice configuration dashboard for configure between this range, so one to five dynos at most, and scale in this way up and in this way down. So like, how long should it wait? What's the threshold of queue time? Those sorts of things. So they have a default like just do the smart thing for me, and then they give you more control if your app happens to have a different shape of data, which is all really nice. And then I've been using that for a while, but I recently this week actually just turned on the worker side. And so now the workers will autoscale up and down as the Sidekiq queue -- I think for the Sidekiq side, it's also the queue time, so how long a job sits in the queue before getting picked up. And there are some extra niceties. It can actually infer the different queue names that you have. So if you have a critical, and then a mailer, and then a general as the three queues that Sidekiq is managing, you really want critical to not back up. So you can tell it to watch that one but ignore the normal one and only use -- Like, when critical is actually getting backed up, and all the other stuff is taken over then -- Again, it's got nice knobs and things, but mostly you can just say, "Turn it on and do the normal thing," and it'll do a very smart thing." STEPH: That does sound really helpful. Just to revisit, so Heroku for autoscaling, when you turn that on, I think Heroku does it based on response times. So if you get into a specific percentile, then Heroku is going to scale up for you to then bring down that response time. But it sounds like with this tool, with Rails autoscaling, then you have additional knobs like the Sidekiq timing that you'd referenced. Are there some other knobs that you found really helpful? CHRIS: Basically, there are two different sides of it. So web and background jobs are going to be handled differently within this tool, and you can actually turn them on or off individually, and you can also, within them, the configurations are specific to that type of thing. So for the web side, you have different values that you can set as the thresholds than you do on the Sidekiq side. Overall, the queue name only makes sense on the Sidekiq side, whereas on the web side, it's just like the web requests all of them 'Please make sure they're not spending too much time waiting for a dyno to actually start processing them.' But yeah, again, it's just a very straightforward tool that does the thing that it says on the tin. I enjoy it. It's one of those simple additions where it's like, yeah, I think I'm happy to pay for this because you're just going to save me a bunch of money every month, in theory. And actually, that side of it is certainly interesting, but more of my app will be responsive if there is any spike in traffic. There's still plenty of other performance things under the hood that I need to make better, but it was nice to just turn those on and be like, yeah, okay. I think everything's going to run a little better now. That seems nice. But yeah, otherwise, for me, a very straightforward week. So I think actually shifting gears again, we have a listener question that we wanted to chat about. And this is one that both of us got very interested to chat about because there's a lot to this topic, but I'm happy to read it here. So the overall topic is improving as a developer, and the question goes, "How do you know you're improving as developers? Is your improvement consistent? Are there regressions? I find myself having very different views about code than I did even a year ago. In some cases, I write code now in a way that I would have criticized not too long ago. For example, I started writing a lot more comments. I used to think a well-named variable obviated the need for comments. While it feels like I'm improving, I have no way of measuring the improvement. It's only a gut feeling. Thanks. Love the show." And this comes from Tom. Thank you, Tom. Glad you enjoy the show. So, Steph, are you improving as a developer? STEPH: I love this question. Thanks, Tom, for sending it in because it is one that I think about but haven't really verbalized, and so I'm really excited to dive into this. So am I improving as a developer? It comes down to, I mean, we first have to talk through definitions. Like, what does it mean to become a better developer? And then, we can talk through metrics and understanding how we're getting there. I also love the other questions, which I know we'll get to. I'm just excited. But are there any regressions? And also, in my mind, they already answered their own question. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So let me actually back up. So how do you know you're improving as a developer? There are a couple of areas that come to mind. And for me, these are probably more in that space of they still have a little bit of a gut feeling to them, but I'm going to try hard to walk that back into a more measurable state. So one of them could be that you're becoming more comfortable with the work that you're doing, so if you are implementing a new email flow or running task on production or writing tests that become second nature, those types of activities are starting to feel more comfortable. To me, that is already a sign of progress, that you are getting more comfortable in that area. It could be that time estimates are becoming more accurate. So perhaps, in the beginning, they're incredibly -- like, you don't have any idea. But as you are gaining experience and you're improving as a developer, you can provide more accurate estimates. I also like to use the metric of how many people are coming to you for help, not necessarily in hard numbers, but I tend to notice when someone on a team is the person that everybody else goes to for help, maybe it's just on a specific topic, maybe it's for the application in general. But I take that as a sign that someone is becoming very knowledgeable in the area, and that way, they're showing that they're improving as a developer, and other people are noticing that and then going to them for help. Those are a couple of the ones that I have. I have some more, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. CHRIS: I think if nothing else, starting with how would we even measure this? Because I do agree it's going to be a bit loose. Unfortunately, I don't believe that there are metrics that we can use for this. So the idea of how many thousand lines of codes do you write a month? Like, that's certainly not the one I want to go with. Or, how many pull requests? Anything like that is going to get gamified too quickly. And so it's really hard to actually define truly quantifiable metrics. I have three in mind that scale the feedback loop length of time. So the first is just speed. Like, how quickly are you able to do the same tasks? So I need to build out a page in Rails. I need a route; I need a controller. I need a feature spec, those sort of things. Those tasks that come up over and over: are you getting faster with those? That's a way to measure. And there's an adage that I think comes from biking, professional cycling, that it never gets any easier; you just go faster. And so the idea is you're doing the same work over time, but you just get a little bit faster, and you're always trying that edge of your capabilities. And so that idea of it never gets any easier, but you are getting faster. I like that framing. We should be doing the same work. We should never get too good for building a crud app. That's my official stance on the matter; thank you very much. But yeah, so that's speed. I think that is a meaningful thing to keep an eye on and your ability to actually deliver features in a timely fashion. The next one would be how robust are the things that you're building? What's the bug count? How regularly do you have to revisit something that you've built to change it, to tweak it either because it doesn't exactly match the intent of the feature that you're developing or because there's an actual bug in it? It turns out this thing that we do is very hard. There are so many moving pieces and getting the design right and getting the functionality just right and handling user input, man, that's tricky. Users will just send anything. And so that core idea of robustness that's going to be more on a week scale sort of thing. So there's a little bit of latency in that measure, whereas speed that's a pretty direct measure. The third one is…I don't know how to frame this, but the idea of being able to revisit your code either yourself or someone else. So if you've written some code, you tried to solve a problem; you tried to encode whatever knowledge you had at the given time in the code. And then when you come back three months later, how easy is it to revisit that code, to change it, to extend it either for yourself (because at that point you've forgotten everything) or for someone else on the team? And so the more that you're writing code that is very easy to extend, that is very easy to revisit and reload that context into your head, how closely the code maps to the actual domain context I think that's a measure as well that I'm really interested in, but there's the most lag in that one. It's like, yeah, months later, did you do a good job? And so the more time you spend, the more you'll have a measure of that, but that's definitely the laggiest of the measures that I have in mind. STEPH: I love that adage that you shared that it never gets easier, but you get faster. That feels so relevant. I really like that. And then I hadn't considered the robustness. That's a really nice one, too, in terms of how often do you have to go back and revisit issues that you've added? CHRIS: You just write code without bugs; that's why you don't think about it. STEPH: [laughs] Oh, if only that were true. CHRIS: Yeah, if only that were true of any of us. STEPH: To keep adding to the list, there are a couple more that come to mind too. I'd mentioned the idea that certain tasks become easier. There's also the capability or the level of comfort in taking on that new, big, scary, unknown task. So there is something on the Teams' board where you're like, I have no idea how to do that, but I have confidence that I can figure it out. I think that is a really big sign that you are growing as a developer because you understand the tools that'll get you to that successful point. And maybe that means persuading someone else to help you; maybe it means looking elsewhere for resources. But you at least know how to get there, which then follows up on your ability to unblock yourself. So if you are in that state of I just don't know what to do next, maybe it's Googling, or maybe it is reaching out for help, but either way, you keep something moving forward instead of just letting it sit there. Another area that I've seen myself and other people grow as developers is our ability to reason about quality and speed. It's something that I feel you, and I talk about pretty often here on the show, but it comes down to our ability to not just write code but then to also make good decisions on behalf of the company that we are working for and the team that we're working with and understanding what matters in terms of what features really need to be part of this MVP? Where can we make compromises? And then figuring out where can we make compromises to get this out to market? But what's really important then for circling back to your idea of revisiting the code, we want code that we can still come back and trust and then easily maintain and make updates to. And then I feel like I'm rambling, but I have a couple more. Shall I keep going? CHRIS: Keep going. Those are great. STEPH: All right. So for the others, there's an increase in responsibilities that I notice. So, in addition to people coming to you more often for help, then it could be that you are receiving more responsibilities. Maybe you are taking on specific ownership of the codebase or a particular part of the team processes. Then that also shows that you are improving and that people would like you to take leadership or ownership of certain areas. And then this one, I am throwing it in here, but your ability to run a meeting. Because I think that's an important part of being a good developer is to also be able to run a meeting with your colleagues and for that to be a productive meeting. CHRIS: Cool. I like that one. I think I want to build on that because I think the core idea of being able to run a meeting well is communication. And I think there's one level of doing this job where it's just about doing the job. It's just about writing the code, maybe some amount of translating a specification or a ticket or whatever it is into the actual code that you need to write. But then how well can you communicate back out? How well when someone in project management says, "Hey, we want to build an aggregated search across the system that searches across our users, and our accounts, and our products, and our orders, and our everything." And you're like, "Okay. We can do that, but it will be hard. And let's talk about the trade-offs inherent in that and the different approaches and why we might pick one versus the other," being able to have that conversation requires a depth of knowledge in the technical but then also being able to understand the business needs and communicate across that boundary. And I think that's definitely an axis on which I enjoy pushing on as I'm continuing to work as a developer. STEPH: Yeah, I'm with you. And I think being a consultant and working at thoughtbot heavily influences my concept of improving as a developer because as developers, it's not just our job to write code but to also be able to communicate and help make good decisions for the team and then collaborate with everyone else in the company versus just implement certain features as they come down the pipeline. So communication is incredibly important. And so I love that that's one of the areas that you highlighted. CHRIS: Actually speaking of the communication thing, there's obviously the very human-centric part of that, but there's, I think, another facet of technical communication that is API design. When you're writing your code, what do you choose to expose and make accessible to collaborators? And I don't just mean API in the terms of a REST API that people are heading, but I mean a class that you have in your system. What are the private methods, and what are the public methods? And how do you think about the shape of it? What data do you expose? What do you not expose? And that can be really impactful because it allows how can you change things over time? The more that you hide, the more you can change. But then, if you don't allow your collaborators to access the bits that they need to be able to work with your system, that's an interesting one that comes to mind. It also aligns with, I don't think you were saying this exactly, but the idea of taking on more amorphous projects. So like, are you working within a system and adding a new feature, or are you designing a system? Are you architecting? The word architect that role can sometimes be complicated within organizations, but that idea of I'm starting fresh, and I'm building a system that others will then work within I think this idea of API design becomes really interesting in that context. What shape do you give to the system that we're working within, and what affordances? And all of that. And that's a very hard thing to get right. So it comes from experience of being like, I used some stuff in the past, and I hated it, so when I am the architect, I will build it better. And then you try, and you fail, and you're like, well, okay, but now I've learned. And then you try it, and then you fail for different reasons. But the seventh time you try, it may be just that time you get the public API just right on the first go. STEPH: Seven times's a charm. That's how that goes, right? CHRIS: That is my understanding, yes. STEPH: I think something that is related to the idea of are you working in a structured space versus working in a new space and then how you develop that API for other people to work with. And then how do you identify when to write a test and what to test? That's another area that you were just making me think of is that I can tell when someone has experience with testing because they know what to test and what feels important to test. And essentially, it comes down to can I deploy with confidence? But there are a lot of times, especially if you're new to testing, that you're going to test everything, and you're going to have a lot of probably useless slow tests. But over time, you will start to realize what's really important. And I think that's one of the areas where then it does start to get harder to measure yourself as a developer because all of our jobs are different, and we work with different tech stacks, and we all have our unique responsibilities and goals. So it may be hard to say specifically like, "Oh, you're really good at X, Y, and Z, and that's how you know that you're improving as a developer." But I have more thoughts on that, which we'll get to in a moment where Tom mentioned that they don't have a way of measuring improvement. Shall I go ahead and jump ahead to I have no way of measuring that improvement, or shall we talk about regressions next? CHRIS: I'm interested in your thoughts on the regressions question because it's not something that I've really thought about. But now that he's asked the question, I'm thinking about it. So yeah, what are your thoughts on that? STEPH: My very quick answer is yes, [laughs] that there are regressions mainly because I respect that our brain can only make so much knowledge readily available to us, and then everything else goes into long-term storage. We can access it at some point, but it takes additional time, or maybe it takes some practice to recall that skill. So I do think there are regressions, and I think that's totally fine that we should be focused on what is serving us most at the moment and be okay with letting go of some of those other skills until we need to refine them again. CHRIS: Yeah. I think there's definitely a truth to true knowledge and experience with, say, a framework or a language that can fade. So if I spend a lot of time away from JavaScript, and then I come back, I'm going to hit my head on a few low ceilings every once in a while for the first couple of days or weeks or whatever it is. It was interesting actually that Tom highlighted the idea of he used to not write comments, and now he writes more comments, and so that transition -- I think we've talked about comments enough so our general thinking on it. But I think it's totally reasonable for there to be a pendulum swing, and maybe there's a slight overcorrection. And you read some blog posts that tell you the truth of the world, and suddenly, absolutely no comments ever that's the rule. And then, later on, you're like, you know, I could really use a comment here. And so you go that way, and then you decide you know what? Comments are good, and you start writing a bunch of them. And so it's sort of weaving back and forth. Ideally, you're honing in on your own personal truth about comments. But that's just an interesting example to me because I certainly wouldn't consider that one a regression. But then there's the bigger story of like, how do we approach building software? Ideally, that's what this podcast does at its best. We're not really a podcast about Rails or JavaScript or whatever it is we're talking about that week, but we're talking about how to build software well. And I think those core ideas feel like they're more permanent for me, or I feel like I'm changing those less. If anything, I feel like I'm ratcheting in on what I believe about good software. And there are some core ideas that I'm just refining over time, not done by any means, but it's that I don't feel like I'm fundamentally reevaluating those core ideas. Whereas I am picking up a new language and approaching a new framework and taking a different approach to what tools I'm using, that sort of thing. STEPH: Yeah, I agree. The core concepts definitely feel more important and more applicable to all the future situations that we're going to be in. So those skills that may fall into the regression category feel appropriate because we are focused on the bigger picture versus how well do I remember this rejects library or something that won't serve us as well? So I agree. I am often focused more on how can I take this lesson and then apply it to other tech stacks or other teams and keep that with me? And I don't want that to regress. But it's okay if those other smaller, easily Google-able skills fall to the side. [laughs] CHRIS: Wait, are you implying that you can't write rejects just off the top of your head or what's…? STEPH: I don't think I could write any rejects off the top of my head. [laughter] CHRIS: Fair. All right. You just go to rubular.com, hit enter, and then we iterate. STEPH: Oh yeah. I don't want to use up valuable space for maintaining that sort of information. Rubular has it for me. I'm just going to go there. CHRIS: I mean, as long as you have the index of the places you go on the internet to find the truth, then you don't need to store that truth. STEPH: A moment ago, you mentioned where Tom highlights that they have different views about code that they wrote, even code that they wrote just like a year ago. And to me, that's a sign of growth in terms that you can look back on code that you have written and be like, well, maybe this would be different, or maybe this is still a good idea, but the fact that you are changing and then reevaluating, I think that is awesome because otherwise, if we aren't able to do that, then that is just a sign of being stagnant to me. We are sticking to the knowledge that we had a year ago, and we haven't grown since then versus that already shows that they have taken in new knowledge. So then that way, they can assess should I be adding comments? When should I add comments? Maybe I should swing away from that idea of this is a hard line of don't ever do this. I think I just have to mention it because there is one that I always feel so deeply about, DRY. DRY is the concept that gives me the most grief in terms that people just overuse it to the point that they do make code very hard to change. All right, that's my bit. I'll get off my pedestal. But DRY and comments are two things [chuckles] that both have their places. CHRIS: I don't know if your experience was similar, but around DRY, I definitely have had the pendulum swing of how I feel about it. And I think again, that honing in thing. But initially, I think I read The Pragmatic Programmers, and they told me that DRY is important. And then I was like, absolutely, there will be no duplication anywhere, and then I felt some pain from that. And I've been in other systems and experienced places where people did remove duplication. I was like, oh, maybe it would have been better, and so I slowly got out of that mindset. But now I'm just in the place of like, I don't know, copy and paste not now, there was a period where I was like, just copy and paste everything. And then I was like, all right, I think there's a subtle line. There's a perfect amount of duplication, and that's the goal is to figure out that just perfect level. But for me, it really has been that evolution, and I was on one side, and then I was on the other side, and then I'm honing back in. And now I have my personal truth about duplication. STEPH: Oh, me too. And I feel like I can be a little more negative about it because I was in the same spot. Because it's a rule, it's a rule that you can apply that when you are new to software development, there aren't that many rules that are so easy to apply to your codebase, but DRY is one of them. You can say, oh, that is duplication. I know exactly what that is, and I can extract it. And then it takes time for you to realize, okay, I can identify it, but just because it's there, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Perfect duplication, I like it. CHRIS: Coming back to the idea of when we look back on our code six months, a year later, something like that, I think I believe the statement that we should always look back on our code and be like, oh, what was I doing there? But I think that arc should change over time. So early on in my career, six months later, I look back at my code, and I'm like, oh, goodness, what was happening there? I was very much a self-taught or blog internet-taught programmer just working on my own. I had no one else to talk to. So the stuff that I wrote early on was not good is how I will describe it. And then I got better, and then I got better, and I hope that I'm still getting better. And it's something that probably draws me to software development is I feel like there's always room to get a little bit better. Again, even back to that adage of it doesn't get any easier; you just go faster. Like, that's a version of getting better in my mind. So I hope that I can continue to feel that improvement and that ratcheting up. But I also hope that that arc is leveling off. There is an asymptotic approach to "good software developer." People in the audience, you can't see my air quotes, but I made air quotes there around good software developer. But that idea of I shouldn't look back probably this far into my career and look back at code from three months ago and be like, that's awful. That dude should be fired. I hope I'm not there. And so if you're measuring over time, what does your three months ago look back feel like? Oh, I feel like it's a little better. Still, you should look back and be like, oh, I probably would do that a little bit different given what I know now, what I've learned, but less so, I think. I don't know, what do you think about that? STEPH: Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm also realizing I haven't looked back at my code that much since I am changing projects, and then I don't always have the opportunity to go back to that project and then revisit some of the code. But I do agree with the idea that if you're looking back at code that you've written a couple of months ago that you can see areas that you would improve, but I agree that you wouldn't want it to be something drastic. Like, you wouldn't want to see something that was more of an obvious security hole or performance issue. I think there are maybe certain metrics that I would use. I think they can still happen for sure because we're always learning, but there's also -- I may be taking this in a slightly different direction than you meant, but there's also a kindness filter that I also want us to apply to ourselves where if you're looking back three months ago to six years ago and you're like, oh, that's some rough code, Stephanie. But it's also like, yeah, but that code got me to where I am today, and I'm continuing to progress. So I appreciate who I was in the past, and I have continued to progress to who I am today and then who I will be. CHRIS: What a wonderfully positive lens to put on it. Actually, that makes me think of one of -- We may be getting into rant territory here, but we talk a lot about imposter syndrome in the software development world. And I think there's a lot of utility because this is something that almost everyone experiences. But I think there's a corollary to it that we should talk about, which is a lot of people are coming into this industry, and they're like one year in, and the expectation that one year into a career that -- The thing that we do is not easy as far as I can tell. I haven't figured out how to make it easy. And the expectation that someone's going to be an expert that early on is just completely unreasonable in my mind. In my previous career, I was a mechanical engineer, and I went to school for four years. I actually went to school for five years, not because I was bad at school, but because I went to a place that had a co-op. And so I had both three different six months experiences working and four years of classroom education before I even got any job. And then I started doing things, and that's normal in that world. Whereas in the development world, it is so accessible, and I really feel like that's an absolutely wonderful thing. But the counterpoint of that is folks can jump into this career path very early on in their learning, and the expectation that they can immediately become experts or even in the short order I don't think is realistic. I think sometimes, when we talk about imposter syndrome, we may do a disservice. Like, it's not imposter syndrome. You're just new, and that's totally fine. And I hope you're working in an organization that is supportive of that and that has space for that and can help you grow in a purposeful way. In my mind, it's not realistic to expect everyone to be an expert a year in—end rant. STEPH: Well, I would love to plus-one your rant and add to it a little bit because I completely agree. I also love the phrasing that you just said where it's not that you have imposter syndrome; it's just that you are new and that team should be supportive of people that are new and helping them grow and level up. I also think that's true for senior developers in terms that you are very good at certain skills, but there's always going to be some area of the web or some area of software development that you are new to, and that is also not imposter syndrome. But it's fine to assess your own skills and say, "That's something that I don't know how to do." And sometimes, I think that gets labeled as imposter syndrome, but it's not. It's someone just being genuine and reflecting on their current skills and saying, "I am good at a lot of stuff, but I don't know this one, and I am new to this area." And I think that's an important distinction to make because I still want -- even if you are not new in the sense that you are new to being a software engineer, but you still have that space to be new to something. CHRIS: Yeah, it's an interesting, constantly evolving space. And so giving ourselves a little bit of permission to be beginners on various topics and for me, that's been an experience that's been continual. I think being a consultant, being a freelancer that impacts it a little bit. But nonetheless, even when I go into organizations, I'm like, oh, years in technology that only came out two years ago. That's pretty fresh. And so it's really hard to be an expert on something that's that new. STEPH: Yeah. I think being new to a team has its own superpower. I don't know if we've talked about that before; if we haven't, we should talk about, it but I won't do that now. But being new is its own superpower. But I do want to pivot back to where Tom mentioned that I have no way of measuring that improvement. And I think that's a really great thing to recognize that you're not sure how to measure something. And my very first honest suggestion if you are feeling that way is to go ask your manager and ask them how they are measuring your improvement because that is their job is to understand where you're at and to understand your path as a developer on the team and then helping you set goals. So since I'm a manager at thoughtbot, I'll go first, and I can share some ways that I help my team measure their own improvement. So one of the ways is that each time that we meet to discuss work, I listen to their challenges, and I take notes; I'm a heavy note-taker. And so once I have all those notes, then I can see are there any particular challenges that resurface? Are there any patterns, any areas where they continuously get stuck on? Or are they actually gaining confidence, and maybe something that would have given them trouble a couple of weeks ago is suddenly no big deal? And then I also see if they're able to unblock themselves. So a lot of what I do is far more listening, and I'm happy to then provide suggestions. But I am often just a space for someone to share what they are thinking, what they're going through, and then to walk through ideas and then provide suggestions if they would like some, and then they choose a suggestion that works best for them. And then we can revisit how did it go? So their ability to unblock themselves is also something that I'm looking for in terms of growth. And then together, we also set goals together, and then we measure that progress together. So it's all very transparent. And what areas would you like to improve, and then what areas would it be helpful for thoughtbot or as a consultant for you to improve? And then if I am fortunate enough to be on a project with them and see how they reason about quality and speed, how they communicate the type of features they're most comfortable to work on, and which tasks are more challenging for them, I also look to see do people enjoy working with them? That's a big area of growth and reflects communication, and reliability, and trust. And those are important areas for us to grow as developers. So those are some of the areas that I look to when I'm helping someone else measure their own improvement. CHRIS: I really like that, the structured framing of it, and the way that you're able to give feedback and have that as a constant, continuous way to evaluate, define, measure, and then try and drive towards it. Flipping things around, I want to offer a slightly different thing, which isn't necessarily specifically in the question, but I think it's very close to the question of how do we actually improve as developers? What are the specific things that we can try and do? I'm going to offer a handful of ideas. I'd be super interested to hear what your ideas are. But one of the things that has been really valuable for me is exploring different languages and frameworks. I, without fail, find something in every new language or framework that I then bring back to the core things that I'm working with. And I've continued to work with Rails basically throughout my career, but everything else that I'm doing has informed the way that I work with Rails and the way that I think about building code. As specific examples, functional programming is a really interesting frame of mind, and Elm as a language is such a wonderful, gentle, friendly, fun introduction to functional programming because functional programming can get very abstract very easily. I've also worked with Haskell and Scala and other languages like that, and I find them much more difficult to work with. But Elm has a set of constraints and a user-centric approach that is just absolutely wonderful. So even if you never plan to build a production Elm application, I recommend Elm to absolutely everyone. In terms of frameworks, depending on what you're using, maybe try and find the thing that's the exact opposite. If you're in the JavaScript space, I highly recommend Svelte. I think it's been very informative to me and altered a number of my opinions. A lot of those opinions were formed by React. And it's been interesting to observe my own thinking evolve in that space. But yeah, I think exploring, trying out, -- Have you ever used Lisp? Personally, I haven't, but that's one of the things that's on my list of that seems like it's got some different ideas in it. I wonder what I would learn from that. And so continually pushing on those edges and then bringing that back to the core work you're doing that's one of my favorite things. Another is… It's actually two-fold here. Teaching is one, and I don't mean that in the grand sense; you don't have to be an instructor at a bootcamp or anything like that but even just within your organization trying to host a lunch and learn and teach a concept. Without fail, you have to understand something all the better to be able to teach it. Or as you try and teach something, someone may ask you a question that just shakes the foundation of what you know, and you're like, wow, I hadn't thought about it that way. And so teaching for me has just been this absolutely incredible forcing function for understanding something and being able to communicate about it again, that being one of the core things that I'm thinking about. And then the other facet sort of a related idea is pairing, pair with another developer, pair with a developer who is more senior than you on the team, pair with someone who is more junior than you, pair with someone who's at the same level, pair with the designer, pair with the developer, pair with a product manager, pair with everyone. I cannot get enough pairing. Well, I can, actually. I read a blog post recently about 100% pairing, and I've never gotten anywhere close to that number. But I think a better way to put it is I think pairing applies in so many more contexts than people may traditionally think of it. People sometimes like to compartmentalize and like, pairing is great for big architecture design, but that's about it. And my stance would be pairing is actually great at everything. It is very high bandwidth. It is exhausting, but I have found immense value in every pairing session I've ever had. So, yeah, those are some loose thoughts off the top of my head. Do you have any how to get better protips? STEPH: Yeah, that's a wonderful list. And I'm not sure if this exactly applies because it's been a while since I have seen this talk, but there is a wonderful talk by Sandi Metz. I mean, all of her talks are wonderful, but this one is Go Ahead, Make a Mess. And I believe that Sandi refers to or highlights the idea of trying something new and then reflecting on how did it go? And that was one of the areas that I learned early on, one of the ways to help me progress quickly as a developer. Outside of the suggestions that you've already shared around lots of pairing that was one of the ways that I leveled up quickly is to iterate quickly. So I used to really focus on the code that I was writing, and I thought it needed to be perfect before my colleagues could review it. But then I realized that the sooner that I would push something out for feedback, then the faster I would get other more experienced developers' input, and then that helped me learn at an accelerated rate and then also ship more frequently. So I'd also encourage you to just go ahead and iterate quickly. We talk about with software in general, we want to iterate on the code that we are pushing up for other people to look at and then give us feedback on and then reflect on how did it go? What did we learn? What are some areas that we can improve? I feel like that self-evaluation is huge, and it's something that I know that I frankly don't do enough because one, it also prompts us to appreciate the progress that we have made but then also highlights areas where I feel strong in this area, but these are other areas that I want to work on. CHRIS: While we're on the topic of talks that have been impactful in our journeys of leveling up as developers, I want to quickly list three that just always come to mind for me: Avdi Grimm's Confident Code, Katrina Owen's Therapeutic Refactoring, and Ben Orenstein's Refactoring from Good to Great. There's a theme if you look across those three talks. They're all about refactoring, which is interesting. That tells you some stories about what I believe about how good software is made. It's not made; it's refactored. That's my official belief, but yeah. STEPH: Love it. That's also another great list. [laughs] For additional ways to level up, there are some very specific areas where it could be maybe do code katas or code exercises, or maybe you subscribe to certain newsletters, stay up to date with a language, new features that are being released. But outside of those very specific things, and if folks find this helpful, then maybe you and I can make a fun list, and then we could share that on Twitter as well. But I always go back to the idea of regardless of what level you're at in your career is to think about your specific goals, maybe if you are new to a team and you're new to software development, then maybe you just have very incremental goals of like, I want to learn how to write a test, or I want to learn how to get better at PR review or something very specific. But to have real growth, I think you have to first consider where it is that you want to go and then figure out a way to measure to get there. Circling back to some of the ways that I help my teammates measure that growth, that's one of the things that we talk about. If someone says, "Well, I want to get better at PR review," I'm like, "Great. What does that mean to you? Like, how do you get better at PR review? How can we actually measure this and make it something actionable versus just having this vague feeling of am I better?" I think I've ended up taking this a bit more broad as you were providing more specific examples on how to level up. But I like the examples that you've already provided around education and then trying something outside of your comfort zone. So what's coming to mind are more of those broad strategies of goal setting. CHRIS: I think generally, you need that combination. You need how do I set the measure? How do I think about improvement? And then also ideally a handful of tactics that you can try out. So hopefully, we provided a nice balanced summary here in this episode. And hopefully, Tom, if you're listening, you have gotten some useful things out of this conversation. STEPH: Yeah, this was fun. We managed to take this topic and make a whole episode out of this. So thanks, Tom, for sending in such a great topic. CHRIS: Frankly, when I saw the topic, I was certain this was going to happen. [chuckles] This was an obvious one that was going to fill up the time for us. But yeah, with that, I think we've probably covered plenty here. Should we wrap up? STEPH: I'm sure there's more, but sure, let's wrap up. CHRIS: 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 in 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 @_bikeshed or reach me @SViccari on Twitter. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. Both: Byeeeeeee. Announcer: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. 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Some brands are lucky enough to have a built-in audience of millions, while others need to develop an audience from scratch. Chris Mainenti has been on both sides of the coin and he knows that in either situation, once you have a base of potential customers paying attention to you, the next challenge is converting those browsers to buyers. Chris is the Director of Commerce Strategy at Discovery, Inc. where he is helping turn the millions of viewers who tune into Discovery’s channels such as HGTV, TLC, Food Network and more, into customers who buy across various platforms. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Chris explains how he put his history of building audiences at previous companies to work at Discovery — including some tips for young companies on how to utilize newsletters. And he discusses how to use the data you collect as a starting point for creating a more personalized, one-to-one relationship with your audience on various platforms. Plus, he looks into the future to predict how shoppable experiences will be made possible with universal add-to-cart and buy-now options. Main Takeaways:Developing Your Audience: Audience development goes beyond marketing. When you are building your audience, you have to know who you are as a brand and understand the audience you have and want to bring in, and what they want and need. In the early days of a brand, certain audience development strategies work better than others, including tapping into the power of newsletters.Lights, Camera, Take Action: Every company is collecting immeasurable amounts of data, which then needs to be sorted, analyzed and acted on. But the actions you take should be nuanced and applicable to the specific needs of specific audiences. For example, it would be wrong to lump together all of the women in your audience because a woman who is exploring your dot-com presence is likely looking for something different than a woman that is scanning a QR code on their TV. Those segments of women shop differently, and therefore should be approached in unique ways after the data tells you what they each want.Dreams of a Universal Cart Experience: Many believe the future of ecommerce revolves around the development of a universal cart experience. Every business wants to create shoppable moments and engage with customers across many different platforms. But getting to this nirvana means you also have to remove all the friction points.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles co-founder of mission.org. Our guest today is Chris Mainenti, the director of commerce strategy at Discovery Inc. Chris, welcome to the show.Chris:Thank you, Stephanie. I appreciate you having me on and talking all things commerce here in the current climate that we're in.Stephanie:Yeah. I am very excited to have you guys on. I was just thinking about how long Discovery channel, and all the other channels, HGTV, and Food Network and Travel Channel have been in my life and with that, I want to hear a little bit about your role at Discovery. I mean, it seems like there's so much going on, so many digital portfolios that you guys have over there, and I think just a lot behind the scenes that an average consumer wouldn't even know. So, I'd love to hear what you're up to at Discovery. What is your day-to-day look like?Chris:Sure. So, I would say, first and foremost, for commerce specifically in the digital media space, we're probably slightly different than a lot of others. We're really multifaceted in terms of how we work, and who we work with across the org. Obviously, like you said, Discovery is huge, has a ton of major, major worldwide brands. So, we actually sit on the portfolio wide level with our lifestyle brands, and we're really in the weeds with them on the day-to-day basis. And, that really starts with, obviously, our editorial teams. That's our bread and butter, that's our voice and our authority in this space. So again, that's really where we begin, and that's obviously where we're doing our content output, and producing all of this great shopping content for our different audiences, and again pulling our experts from all of these different brands to come together.Chris:So again, folks are really getting the full spectrum of expertise in all of these different categories. And from there, it just really starts branching out into other groups. So, we work heavily with our ad sales and branded content teams, where we work on much larger partnerships and deeper integrations which we can talk about today as well. We have a licensing team, where we work on licensed products, and we take our learnings that we're seeing on our shopping content on a day-to-day basis, and analyze that, and then speak with licensing to see where there may be some room to actually create a new line with one of our partners.Chris:We also, believe it or not, and I know you don't know this, we have a video games team at Discovery, and we work closely with them as well on trying to find those shoppable moments, and again bringing our brand and our voice into those games when they're being built. So again, we're always serving the reader no matter who or where they are, and again pivoting as necessary. So, those are just a few groups, and obviously our marketing and ops, and audience development teams were heavily embedded with as well when it comes to promotion.Chris:So again, there are just, I would say, a lot of areas that we focus on. I know in the beginning it was always all about, commerce is part of diversifying your revenue streams at a digital club. But, we see it more as now, we're trying to diversify our commerce stream into all of these other areas. So again, a lot of exciting stuff has already happened, and we're working on some cool stuff too as we head into next year. So, a lot of exciting stuff in an area that's obviously blowing up for a variety of reasons.Stephanie:That's a lot going on there. It's actually really interesting because you just mentioned video games, and I just did a recap episode with one of my coworkers for the first 50 episodes of this show, and the one thing I was bringing up was like, "I think there's a big opportunity in having shoppable moments in these worlds or video games." And, we were mentioning Unreal and Epic Games specifically, that I hadn't really seen that yet. So, it's interesting that you guys are starting to explore that arena, because it feels like that's something of the future, but it's needed, and that's where everything's headed.Chris:Yeah. And again, I can't stress enough. I mean, our portfolio is just so suited for so many of these different, avenues that we could always find something where, again, we're not being gimmicky just to say we're there. This is our bread and butter, and we're making sure that we stick to our tried and blue, into who we are, and not shy off too much, and again just try to say, "We did something here or there." Really making sure we're always serving our audiences and giving them what they want on the platforms they want.Stephanie:Yeah. Which I think that's a really good jumping off point, then because that was actually my one biggest question I had of how do you strategically think about what an audience wants without disrupting the content? I mean, it seems so tricky, because you see a lot of shows, and whatever it may be where you might have product placement in a show or a movie, but it might not actually uplift sales, because it wasn't done correctly. Where I was also just talking about the Netflix original, the organizing show where they partnered with the container store, and how they had an instant, I think was a 17% uplift in sales after that show aired. That worked, and many others don't. So, how do you guys think about making those shoppable moments, and actually having it work?Chris:Sure. First and foremost, I think, you have to be honest and say, "Look, not everything is going to hit." And honestly, it's not always meant to always hit. So, I think we go into that, first being real with the current situation, and understanding not everyone is going to want every single thing. We're always talking about integrating, promoting, so on and so forth. So, I would say that's first. Secondly, again, we start with, what's our expertise? What do we believe in? And, what do we want to showcase to our various audiences across all of these different platforms? And then, from there is when we start to really start getting down to the nuances.Chris:And look, we have created what we dub internally as the commerce hub, where we're bringing in data feeds from all different platforms, our affiliate networks, our in-house reporting platforms, social, so on and so forth, bringing that all together. And again, understanding, what are people consuming? And, what is their mindset when they're on social, versus linear, versus a DTC, or our dot-coms. And, really starting to look and pull out trends from that. I always like to say I prefer the term data influenced versus data driven, because you can't just take a dashboard of data, and sort in descending or ascending order, and say, "Okay. Whatever is at the top or bottom, do or don't do." And, call it a day.Chris:We focus much more heavily on insights, and use that data as a jumping off point, but then do very, very deep analysis, and pull actionable insights out of that for all of our different brands and teams for when they're creating new content, or when we're optimizing old content. Again, wherever that is. And then, I think lastly with that comes, how do we visualize that to the audience. On digital.com, is it more about, again, really simple to read, simple call to actions to buy items. Again, on linear, what is that? A QR code experience? Is it some type of more deeper integration with a smart TV company on our TV E experiences? Is it more deeply integrated where you can actually tap to purchase within the app? So on and so forth.Chris:So again, there's just a lot of things that we're looking at. We never make it cut and dry, that's probably because personally I don't think anything is ever cut and dry, especially this space and shopping behaviors across, not only brands but the platforms those brands are on, and that's how we look at it. I know that's a lot, and that sounds a bit crazy, but we do really pride ourselves on, again, using these things as a jumping off point and then really diving in deep and making sure that we're serving our audiences, again, where they like to consume this content.Stephanie:Got it. Yeah. It sounds like everything is very custom, and every channel and project you start from scratch where you start figuring out what your audience might like. But, do you have any internal formulas where you're like, "Well, we always follow this in the beginning." and then, it goes crazy after that, because we find other things out. Is there anything that's similar among all the campaigns or projects that you're working on, at least from a starting point?Chris:Yeah. I think, honestly, it's probably not surprising whenever you're talking about items on sale, or whenever we're talking about certain merchants, or price points, or categories, like organizing and cleaning is always up there for us. We know very specific furniture categories that do very well for us. So, we do have our basic what we call playbooks that we start off with, but like you said, we still are always constantly learning and pivoting as necessary. I think a perfect example is in the beginning of the year, I don't think anyone in this world saw what was coming, so we were doing our thing, and then when everything started to unfold, we got together and we had to pivot. And again, the good thing about Discovery's brands is, again, we are so widespread in terms of the categories that we're experts in, that we were able to easily pivot and, again, make sure we're giving our audiences what they need at that moment.Stephanie:Do you see more companies starting to shift? Like media companies turning into ecommerce companies, and ecommerce companies turning into media companies. I've heard that saying quite a bit, especially over the past six months, but it feels like you guys have been there for a while. Do you see other companies looking to you for maybe best practices of like, "How do I make this shift?" Or, "Should I make this shift?"Chris:100%. I think, the beauty in that is that we can coexist and really do things that benefit each of us. I don't think this is an either, we succeed or they succeeded. This is, I think a space where we can coexist. The way I always like to frame this when I'm talking to our merchant partners, and talking internally, is we're really here to humanize the star review. When you come to us, you're not just going to see, again, this is a four out of five, or this is a five star, item, and that's it from the random ecosystem of the internet. We are heavily focused on saying, "Look, here are the things we recommend, and why." And, I think that's where our partners can really leverage us, and where you're really seeing us shine. Again, we don't have to just throw a bunch of random stuff out there and hope for the best.Chris:Again, given our brands and our standing in this space, we can really leverage our expertise and authority there when growing this portfolio with all of our partners. To be honest with you the thing that drove me to Discovery the most was, "Wow, these are huge brands, with huge audiences, and huge respect. Now, we just got to tie all of that together, and go from the moment of inspiration to action." And then again, that's what we've been working on.Stephanie:That's really cool. With all the data that you were mentioning earlier, since you joined have you seen any changes in consumer shopping behavior?Chris:So, yes. Obviously, the biggest one occurring this year, and that was with online grocery. I think it's no surprise that it's been building up now for a year or two in terms of mainstream, but it never really caught on. It's only a five to 10% of folks are really engaging and entertaining the online grocery space. But then again, obviously, earlier in the year when things started to shut down, and people were uneasy about going out, we did see huge spikes in that space, obviously, on our FoodNetwork.com site. And, I would say that continued for a bit, and did peter out a bit recent months which, again, is obviously expected. So, I think that's probably one of the big ones.Chris:The other thing that we have seen, not so much in terms of major shifts in shopping behaviors, just more increased sales in categories that we already know are performing. So, organizing and cleaning is always been a winner for us, and then as the months went on, we've just seen it doing better for us. I think we do a lot of buying guides where we talk about the best cast iron skillets on Food Network, or the best humidifiers on HGTV. We started to see those things gain more and more traction as we went, and we're attributing some of that to us really getting our audience to trust us, and now know that they can come to us as a trusted resource to really be a personal shopper for them.Chris:And again, we've seen that across the board in all of our main categories. The only other thing I'll say in terms of, not only, I wouldn't say shifts in behaviors, but just something else we've pulled out from the data is that, everyone loves a good deal and good price points, but our audience is willing to spend more, especially when those items are either offered at a discounted rate for a holiday or something, or if we've worked with the merchant to get an exclusive discount for our audience, so we have also seen uptakes in that as well. But again, holistically, we haven't seen any huge shifts outside of, like I said, the online grocery, which again is expected given the situation we've been in.Stephanie:Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I saw for the Food Network, I think you had a subscription platform and you partnered with Amazon. Was that something that was already in the works, or did that get sped up once everything was happening with COVID?Chris:Yeah. So, that was already in the works with our DTC group, and for folks who don't know that's our subscription platform on the Food Network side that we call internally FNK, because it's just easier. And yes, that was in the works, and again we're working more and more in getting that to more and more folks who are really looking to get more classes, get more recipes, just be more intimate with our brand. Stephanie:Yeah. It looked very cool. I was on there looking around at, "Oh, you can follow these chefs and have cooking classes with them, and then you can tell your Amazon Echo to order it for you the exact things you need." And, it looked like it would be really fun to engage with that.Chris:Exactly. It goes back to that 360 approach that we have really been focused on, when it comes to our shopping portfolio.Stephanie:Yeah, that's very fun. So, you've talked a lot about partnerships where you've touched on a bit. But, tell me a little about what does a partnership look like from beginning to end? What does that process look like when you're finding a partner, figuring out how to actually strategically partner with them in a way that benefits both parties? What does it look like behind the scenes?Chris:Sure. So, I think there's really two paths there, there's the partnership stuff that we handle directly with merchants through affiliate networks, and so on and so forth. And, for that we do a lot of research on our end, again we already know what type of product hits, what type of merchants hit. So, one thing we do is take that and then say, "Okay. What are similar merchants in this space?" And then, we'll reach out and discuss the opportunity of working together on that front. And then I would say, on the other side, bigger picture stuff is, again, we're heavily embedded with our ad sales team on much larger partnerships.Chris:And, I think a great example of that is our shop the look campaign with Wayfair, which is a deep integration that spans across linear and digital that, again, was really spearheaded by our sales team that we then came in and assisted with. But, for folks who don't know, basically what this is, when you go to any of our photo inspo on hgtv.com, you'll see a little flyout of all the products within the image that are shoppable on Wayfair.com. And obviously, that's not just a basic integration that you just wake up one day and do. So for that, we came together and we've said, again, "What can we do that is going to benefit both of us, that's going to serve our audiences for the long run, and really make a successful integration here?" So again, that's what turned into shop the look.Chris:It's one of our best partnerships that we have across our dot-coms right now, and it's super successful, our audience loves it. And again, I think It's always starting with, "Well, what is the goal? And, what do we want to achieve from this?" I think sometimes people get too focused on, "What looks cool?" And like, "Let's just do that." We wanted to really focus on, "Well, what's the goal here?" And, what do we think we can create that's actually going, again, to help our audiences that come to hgtv.com be inspired and feel comfortable, making purchases based off of what they're seeing.Chris:So, that's really how we approach these, we're super particular about who we work with, and what that looks like. You mentioned the Amazon partnership, we have a really strong relationship with them as well. And for us, again, it's always looking at the brand and our audiences first and saying, "What makes the most sense for them?" And then, that's when we start peeling the layers here, and figuring out what are those experiences that we could bring to them on different platforms.Stephanie:Yeah. I think that's really smart. Like you said, not to just do something because it looks cool or seems cool, but actually do something that you know the audience will like, and will convert into sales to also help the partner. What are some of the success metrics for the shop the look campaign for example? What did you go into hoping to achieve when you set up that partnership? Is it affiliate based, or what do you guys look for and be like, "Oh, this is a successful campaign versus the previous ones that were maybe okay, or good."?Chris:Yep. So, I think just simply put it, consumption and sales are the big ones. Consumption being, are we seeing more and more folks coming to these different integrations across our platform, and then again how are they translating into sales? Looking at things like, "Okay, so we are getting them to Wayfair.com, but once they're on Wayfair.com what are they doing?" So obviously again, looking at conversions, average order value, so on and so forth. Again, just to really gauge what these audiences are looking like, as the days, weeks, and months go by. I would say, one of the things that we were looking for, especially as COVID first hit was, "Are we seeing an increase, a decrease? What are we seeing in terms of shopping behaviors across our platform?" And again, the metrics we looked at for that was, obviously, click through rates, conversion rates, average order value. Because we even saw in some instances where experiences weren't driving as many views or clicks, but the average order value was much higher.Chris:And again, just goes to show that our audience is a very qualified audience that trusts us, and is willing to spend with us. So, we try to pull out all of these different metrics. I think one of the things with commerce that is either for better or worse, is that you can't just look at one metric and just live and die by that number. So again, that's why we have a handful. And look, we also pivot based on what that platform is, what the experience is, who the partner is, so on and so forth. So, we don't have a one size fits all solution, again, that was done by design. And, that's how we approach these things. And again, just making sure that we stay true to who we are, and we're benefiting everyone involved.Stephanie:Got it. How do you keep track of, if there's a TV viewer who's watching HGTV, and then you're trying to send them to maybe Wayfair to shop that look like, what are the best practices with converting those people, but also keeping track of them in a way that's not maybe creates friction? Are you telling them, "Go visit this URL."? Or how do you go about that?Chris:Yeah. So, totally right. I think, obviously, the most common ways of driving from linear to digital is the QR code experience. And, we're actually working on some of those solutions as we speak and trying to understand, again, what will it take to bring more linear folks from TV down to digital, and like you said, make this a frictionless seamless experience? So again, is that as simple as a QR code, or again is this more about a stronger deeper integration that's a bit more sophisticated and partnering up with folks who can actually understand what is on screen at any moment, and then surface that product on screen.Chris:Again, if you have a smart TV and allowing folks to enjoy that experience, or again, when it comes to TV E we have our go apps that you could log into with your cable subscription. And again, obviously, it could be more sophisticated on your mobile device. So, what does that look like? Is it again, while you're watching it at minute three or whatever, five minutes in, do you surface what is currently being seen in the screen and saying, "Look, shop this room?" And, what do you do from that point down to the device. Can it be as simple as just a tap to buy, or do you have to tap and then open up a new browser window? What do those integrations look like? Again, ultimately trying to find the most frictionless experience. So, I think we're still experimenting with that. I don't think anyone in this space has really nailed that down in terms of what is shoppable TV, or just shoppable video in general? And again, how do we go beyond what just looks cool and turn that into actionable?Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, I think creating a frictionless experience is key, and there's a lot of room for innovation in that area. I'm even thinking about just Instagram, where I'll find a blogger I like and I really like her outfit, and then it's like, "Okay. Well, now go to the link in my bio." And then, that's going to open a LIKEtoKNOW.it app, and then maybe you'll be able to find the outfit. But at that point, it's probably just on the home screen if that new app. And, it just feels like there's so many places for a customer to drop. I guess I was just really eager to look at that outfit, so I stuck with it. But any other time, I probably would been like, "Oh, that's too much work." It seems like there's just a lot of room for innovation around this shoppable moments, whether it's TV, social, video, audio, anything.Chris:Yeah. I mean, I think you nailed it right there. I think Instagram is a perfect example, and that's a platform we're looking at as we speak, and we have some ideas around that as well. Because like you said, our goal here is to, how do we cut out all of these extra steps that are unnatural? Normally, when you see a product you like, you want to be able to say, "Okay. Great. Let me buy that." Not let me go to a bio, let me click this link, let me wait for this page to load, let me do that checkout experience is completely different from the platform I was just on. And then obviously, you're playing around with browser settings and everything else.Chris:So, I think you're spot on, and again that's something we're heavily focused on, again, literally as we speak. And, what does a more integrated Instagram shopping experience look like for Discovery and our partners? So, there's going to be more to come on that soon. But, we are thinking about that, and trying to find, again, these ways to make it as frictionless and seamless as possible. Again, no matter where our audience is consuming our content.Stephanie:Yeah. Well, it seems like if anyone can figure it out, it would be all because it's not like you're trying to put your products on someone else's show, or having to utilize someone else's platform. You have your own platform, you have your own shows, you can build new shows, and try out different ways to influence. There's shopping behaviors. That seems like there's just a ton of opportunity for you to experiment with everything that you all have.Chris:Yeah. No. A 100%, and those are these ad conversations we're having with a lot of our partners as well, and understanding from their world how they see it, and then bringing our world into that, and marrying that together, again, so we can coexist here, and at the end of the day just create a better experience for our viewers.Stephanie:Yep. Love that. So, what are some of your favorite platforms that you guys are experimenting with right now? You said, you were looking into Instagram, but what's really performing for you, and what are some of the more moonshot platforms that you're trying out, and you think it will be good, but you're not so sure?Chris:Sure. Yeah. I mean, obviously, the bread and butter is our shopping content on our dot-coms, those are our top performers. But, I will say some of the more areas of interest, again we already spoke about Instagram. But, another one where we are seeing some really good traction, believe or not, is in the Apple News space, most notably on Food Network. We're getting a lot of traction on that platform, and seeing what our audiences are resonating with the most on Apple News, which I again I know it maybe a shock to some folks, but I think-Stephanie:Yeah. So, tell you more about that. I mean, I have an Apple phone, but I have not opened up Apple News probably since I got the phone, so tell me more about, what are you guys doing there?Chris:Sure. Yep.Stephanie:Because you're the first person who said this.Chris:Okay. All right. Again, understood I know that's not always the first thing that jumps into someone's mind when you're talking about commerce, and lifestyle brands, especially because they name Apple News. But again, I know you don't really use it, but again this is just the basic free version that's included with your device when you get it. And again, we're syndicating our day-to-day content onto that platform. And, we've built really strong audiences across Apple News. And again, it's a similar experience to our dot-coms, just slightly different because it has to fit obviously the specs of the Apple News platform. But again, we just have seen some really strong successes in different areas, again most notably in the buying guide space, or sales events that are happening, and dabbling with pushing notifications for that.Chris:Obviously, with some of the recent shopping events that occurred, we built a push notification strategy around that as well, and it did really well for us. So again, I think that's one of those ones that is also intriguing to us. But I think, again, the high level, we really are trying to be everywhere it makes sense, but also really tailoring our content and strategy based on what that platform is. So, for some of the stuff that's working on Apple News may not make sense for Instagram or vice versa, so on and so forth. So I think, again, those are two areas. And I would say, the last thing that we're really, or me personally is really intrigued by, is this universal cart experience/straight to cart experience that more and more folks are dabbling with. There's a handful of platforms out there that can help publishers do this.Chris:And for folks who aren't familiar with this, it's basically saying, if someone comes to HGTV, or FoodNetwork.com, or tlc.com, and they see an item they like on there, instead of saying, "Buy now on X merchant site." And getting thrown off to that merchant, you could hit buy now, or add to cart, and you could actually check out within our platform, which I think is definitely going to be a big piece of the puzzle for the future of commerce on digital publishers. I think the big question will just be adoption, and then what does that look like. I think, again, Discovery is in a perfect position for this, because folks are already coming to us for this expertise, and know and love our brands already. So, there won't be a lot of convincing in terms of like, "It's okay to check out with us as well."Chris:But again, we're anticipating some shopping behavior adoptions that are going to occur during that process. But again, I think that's an area where you really start to open up a lot of new doors here when it comes to shopping for digital media sites. And, I think that's when it gets even more exciting for deeper integrations with Instagram shopping for example.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm excited to look into the Apple News more. And, I was just intrigued by that, because I like hearing things that others have not said yet. Because I'm like, "Oh, that means there could be opportunity there if you know how to work with the platform." Especially, if you can set up a push notifications. That's huge to make it in front of Apple users. And then yeah, I completely agree about the being able to shop instantly from a page. We just had the CEO of Fast on, Domm. And, I thought it was really interesting how he was talking about how every website should have buy now buttons under every single individual products, and he went into the whole thing of, "You actually will have higher conversions." Because of course, I was like, "Well, then you have to get past the minimum shipping amounts, and maybe higher order values, if you let me add stuff to a cart." And he said, "Based on everything they've seen, people will buy more if they can buy it instantly." And, it'll batch it in the background and ship it out after the fact, all together. So-Chris:Yeah.Stephanie:... I think you said it.Chris:Yeah. Convenience is key. I mean, everyone likes convenience, and again that's our hypothesis as well here, that we do plan to see increased conversions by building a more intimate shopping experience across our dot-coms with a lot of our partners.Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. So, the one big topic I also want to touch on was about audience development. So, when you guys, you have these huge audiences that you can tap into, but for especially a smaller brand, I want to hear how you all think about building that audience to then eventually being able to sell some products to them as well. What does that process look like? And, how can a new brand do that?Chris:Sure. So, I think first and foremost, I think it's important to understand what is audience development as it relates to your brand and organization. I think the biggest misconception with the term audience development is, "Oh, yeah, it's just another word for marketing." But it's not, and this has been written about it as well. And, I think the easiest way to think about this just in a very basic form is, marketing is more about how you want to look to the world as you bring those audiences in initially. More on the branding side of things, whereas dev is now like, "Okay. So, who are we to the world?" And, really drilling down on understanding those audiences that were brought in and who they are, and then building those audiences through different engagement tactics and community tactics.Chris:So, I think that's always a good place to start, to understand how those two worlds kind of then meet. And then once that happens, to answer your specific question, again start with understanding who your audiences are, and where they are. I think sometimes and probably not so much now, but in the past when I was first getting into this space, I think a lot of people just thought that, "Well, content is content. It could be put anywhere, and it's going to work the same way everywhere. Obviously not the case, even more so for shopping content, and behaviors. So, it's really, again, drilling down and pulling out insights based on, "Okay. Who is my Facebook audience? Who is my newsletter audience? Who is my Apple News audience?Chris:And, really starting there, and once you understand high level who they are, what they like, what they're consuming. More specifically when you talk about newsletters, what type of keywords are working to increase open rates, and so on and so forth, then you could start drilling down on the specifics. Saying like, "Okay. High level, here are the different topics and content archetypes that are working, now how do we build out an editorial calendar with that in mind." Again, with the understanding that we're not just going to set this and forget this across the board. What this looks like in newsletters is going to be slightly different than how we're positioning it on Facebook for example, and so on and so forth. So, I really think that's the key right there, and using data to your advantage and saying, "Okay. Well, here's all the different metrics that we're currently compiling, which ones can we look at, and pull from to better understand what these audiences are coming to us for." And again, working with your editorial teams, and the branding teams to bring that all together and say, "Okay. Now here's the plan for output."Stephanie:Yep. Got it. So, if you don't have an audience, and you're starting really from scratch, where would you start? Because I read quite a few articles, maybe from your past life at other companies about you increasing conversion rates by 60%, through maybe newsletters or increasing newsletter subscriptions? Is that maybe a place that you would start? Or where would you recommend someone brand new, who's like, "I don't really have an audience. I have five followers on Instagram."? What's the best way to acquire an audience and then keep them around to build it?Chris:Yeah. So I would say, if we're talking about limited resources and funding, I do think newsletters are a great place to start. And that's really because, it gives you an opportunity to have this one-on-one intimate relationship with the folks on the other side that for the most part you're not having to be held against what the algorithm is going to decide to show at any given day. Obviously, you have to worry about, spam and junk mail and things like that. But for the most part, if you're running a really clean newsletter list or lists, you don't have to worry about that so much. So, I do think, starting in the newsletter space is a really low budget, friendly way to start growing audiences, and it's really great to use as a gut check to see what is resonating. You could look at your open rates, you could look at your click to open rates.Chris:Again, you can monitor what the churn is and stop to see if what you're producing is causing people to drop off for good, so on and so forth. So I do think, for publishers where it makes sense that is a great place to start. You can obviously acquire new users through a bunch of different audience development tactics, whether it's on site widgets or modals, or do some small paid spend to try to bring folks in, and do the sweepstake partnerships as well. Again, obviously I'm a little biased, just because that is part of my background. But again, over the years, newsletters, again, I know they're not the sexiest platform to talk about, but they have been the most consistent in terms of performance and really bringing your most loyal and engaged users from that platform.Stephanie:Yeah, I completely agree. And, you also get access to quite a bit of data that you don't on other platforms, and if you can figure out how to properly engage with them, you could have newsletter subscribers for years to come, which is everyone's goal.Chris:100%. Yeah. And, I think even to take that one step further, you could even start to get more and more personalized where you get to a point where you're launching a newsletter to half a million people, and no two newsletters are alike because it's all based on past user behaviors that you were seeing within email and the dot-com, and again adjusting that based on different predictive intelligence tools. So again, I think 100% there's a lot there, and if done correctly, and go a long way. I mean look, this has been tried and true in the space. We see a lot of folks who start there, we're even seeing in the news media space a lot of journalists, and editors, and things like that backing off from the larger brands, and going this newsletter route to get their word and opinion out. So yeah, I think email is here to stay, and it's going to be a huge piece of the puzzle moving forward.Stephanie:Yep. I agree. So, you've been in the media world for a while, I think I saw at least back to 2012, maybe even before then.Chris:Yeah.Stephanie:I went as far as I could on your LinkedIn, I think it cut off.Chris:No, you got it. Yeah. I have been in media basically since the day I got out of college. So-Stephanie:Okay. Well, this is the perfect question for you then. What do you think the future of online commerce in media look like? Maybe in 2025 or 2030, what does that world look like?Chris:Yeah. So, I think it's going to be an extension of what we talked about a little earlier about this universal cart experience, and turning digital publishers into this space where audiences can come and also feel comfortable making those purchases. And again, not being bounced off to third party sites, and really being able to start building an even stronger shopping relationship with your audiences, because again with a universal cart experience, also comes a lot more first party data where you could, again, focus on more one-to-one relationships with your audiences, again, specifically in the shopping space, which I think is key.Chris:And, I don't foresee a place where merchants are going to have a huge problem with this, because, again, you're just helping to legitimize their product. Like your previous guest said about increased conversions. I think that's another huge piece of this puzzle. So again, it's really just now, again, bringing this all together, this whole 360 approach and saying, "Look, you're not just coming to us for flat inspirational content, you're now coming to us for the inspiration, and the ability to take action immediately." Again, versus being bounced off to one, two, three other platforms depending on which platform you're on, like your experience with Instagram.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, I love that answer. Really good. So, now that we're talking a little bit about the future, what do you not understand today that you wish you did?Chris:What do I not understand today that I wish I did? That's a that's a good question. So, as it relates to commerce?Stephanie:Yep. Or the world, where you're like, "I really just wish I knew more about this." But yeah, it could be a commerce one, that would be cool too.Chris:Sure. I would say, I think not so much about not understanding this, but more not understanding why it's not better. And, that goes back to, I would probably say, affiliate data, and what that data looks like, and what partners have access to, or don't have access to. Obviously, being a part of many different networks, and merchants being on all different networks and so on and so forth, it becomes, quite difficult to manage all of that data coming in, and really having a platform that can easily bring this all together in a unified way. We do have a really strong partner that we work with to aggregate a lot of this data. Again obviously, it's never going to be perfect, because you're pulling it from all different places, and you have to understand, "Well, how does this platform leverage conversion rates and click through rates, versus this platform?" And again, just like, "What do those measurements look like?" And, the methodology behind them.Chris:So, that becomes challenging. But, I do think that's probably one of the biggest things that I just wish. And, I know it's not easy, hence the reason why it hasn't really been done yet. But, finding a more universal way to bring all this data into one data warehouse. Again, we were working on some stuff along those lines, but just high level, just generally speaking in this space, I do think that's one of the more challenging situations that a lot of digital media folks are in when it comes to with the shopping space.Stephanie:Yeah. That's a great answer. It does feel like a lot of technologies in general started out in that way. Very chaotic, things are everywhere, data is everywhere, and then things eventually end up in a dashboard, or it starts coming together in a more useful way. So, I hope that world comes to be in the future as well.Chris:Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, that's only going to help all parties. It's going to help the audience, it's going to help the media company, it's going to help the merchant, so there's definitely reason to really get this right. But again, then, to do a bit of a 180, I think that's why you're going to start seeing these universal cart experiences take off more and more, because it does make that a bit cleaner in terms of what you're going to have access to and when.Stephanie:Yep. Very cool. All right. So, we have a couple minutes left, and I want to jump into the lightning round, brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. They're the best. This is where I'm going to throw a question in your way and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready?Chris:Let's do it.Stephanie:All right. What's Up next on your... Well, do you have Netflix? I would say Netflix, and I'm like, "He's going to be like, "No.""Chris:I do.Stephanie:Okay. What's up on your queue? And then, you can also tell me what's up on your Discovery queue?Chris:Fair. So, I'll start with us first.Stephanie:All right. Go ahead.Chris:And, I think this is so obvious, but huge 90 Day Fiancé fans. And, I will say my wife actually started that. I wasn't always, but she was like, "Come on, we got to watch it." And, this was a couple years ago. And, once I started, we have been heavily invested ever since. So, from a brand standpoint, we're 90 Day through and through. So, I think again-Stephanie:I like it.Chris:Yeah. Probably obvious to a lot of folks just because of the success of it, but that is our thing there. And then, she's also actually a huge fan of Discovery ID, it's her favorite channel by far. So, we got both ends of the spectrum there, right?Stephanie:Yep.Chris:Discovery ID, the DLC. But again, that just goes to show the strength of our portfolio. And then, on a personal front, I would say, what we're actually currently watching is the Borgias on Showtime. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. But, it's three seasons, so that's good for me. I'm not a huge binger, but I can get through a three season watch, so we're currently in the middle of that.Stephanie:Cool. I have to check that out. Yeah. 90 Day Fiancé, so I have a twin sister, and she's obsessed with that show, and she's been telling me I need to watch it. And, I've been like, "No, I'm not watching that." So, now that you say you also enjoy it, maybe I'll have to want to check that out.Chris:Yeah. Come on. It's only fitting now. You got to at least give it a shot.Stephanie:Yeah. I think I will after this. That'll be the rest of my day.Chris:Perfect. So, I've succeeded tonight.Stephanie:You did-Chris:I converted someone.Stephanie:You can tell everyone, "I got a conversion."Chris:Exactly.Stephanie:What's Up next on your reading list?Chris:On my reading list. So, this is also probably slightly depressing, but I'm actually currently reading the Plague.Stephanie:That's [inaudible 00:49:47]. I mean, I don't even know what that is, but I'm like, "No." I mean, is it good?Chris:Yeah. I mean, so far, I'm only maybe a quarter of the way in. it's just eerily similar to the situation we're currently in, and obviously this was not written recently. This is old Camus. But yes, so that that's what I'm currently reading. So, not exactly an uplifting read, but I do think interesting to say the least in seeing some of these parallels that, again, just six, seven months ago we thought were just crazy things you would read or watch on Netflix.Stephanie:Yeah. Well, if you enjoy the full read, let me know, maybe I'll check that out.Chris:Will do.Stephanie:Next up, if you were to have a podcast, what would it be about, and who would your first guest be?Chris:That is interesting. If I had a podcast. For me, I think I probably wouldn't fall into the current podcasting world that pulls a lot of talent from different areas, and makes that the centerpiece of their podcast. I would much rather try to get in the weeds with folks who are making a difference on a local level. I think especially in this political climate, I think that sometimes gets lost that we think it's only the top that matters, and nothing lower does, which I think is completely false. I think everything starts at the local level. So, I would love to give more exposure and light to those folks who are doing the dirty work on the ground which, again, sometimes gets lost in the standard media cycles, or across social media for example.Stephanie:Yes, I love that. It's also something we're exploring here at Mission is local level podcasts, because I think that's what people are leaning into now. They have lost that also a sense of community with everything that's been going on, and you might want to know what your neighbors or community is up to, and also what they're doing, like you said, on the ground level. The next one-Chris:100%. I think it's super important. Go ahead.Stephanie:Yeah. What does the best day in the office look like for you?Chris:The best day. So, when that was a thing-Stephanie:When you went to the office, and you weren't just in your house in New York.Chris:Exactly. Honestly, the best part about that is, being able to... And, now I feel it even more, is having that change of scenery, and being able to have those face-to-face interactions with folks. I recently read a study where, I think it came out that people were actually working longer hours, and having more meetings, while working from home, because they don't have those passerby conversations in the hall, or going in and out of the restroom, and so on and so forth. Which, again, I don't think people appreciate until it's gone. And for me, that's been a huge piece of the puzzle that's been missing during these times is that, human interaction. I think everyone wants to think that working from home is the future, I'm just not sold on that yet.Stephanie:Yeah. I think the flexibility, maybe, but I think a lot of people are eager to get back and see their coworkers, and have coffee together and whatnot. So, there'll be pent up demand, as economists would say.Chris:Exactly.Stephanie:All right, Chris. Well, this has been such a great interview, where can people find out more about you and all the fun work you're doing at Discovery?Chris:Sure. So personally, you can find me, Chris Mainenti on LinkedIn, and we can connect there if you'd like to chat further. But more importantly, if you love our brands, you know where to catch us on TV. And then, similar to dot-com, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Travel Channel. We're everywhere and we look forward to continuing to serve our audiences wherever they are, and really helping them through these trying times that we're all in.Stephanie:Yep. And most of all, go watch 90 Day Fiancé, everyone. I mean, I feel like you need that fun.Chris:Exactly. For the handful who haven't yet, including you, obviously.Stephanie:Yeah. I know. Such a veil. All right. Thanks so much, Chris. It's been fun.Chris:Likewise. Thanks so much again. Bye-bye.

We spend about 20 minutes this week talking about Ted Lasso and The Boys… QUESTION: “What do you mean Chris?  What did you talk about during the other 40 minutes of the show??” ANSWER: Annoying, pandering white people.  How black people don’t use the word c*ck.  How Duncan sucks at phone sex.  What minorities are scared of in newscasts.  It’s a fun listen but be warned, some white people are going to get triggered.

》》》》》》一键领取入口《《《《《《更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Ade: Now Chris, in our last conversation you told me you come from Belgium. And I would like to know, what kind of food do you eat in Belgium?Chris: What kind of food, well we eat all kinds of food. I mean there's no restrictions or anything. We have our fish, our meat, our wines, our fruits, our veggies, we eat all kinds of food.Ade: Yeah, I know. But I mean what is popular about Belgium food?Chris: Well if you talk about gastronomy, it's a bit different in Belgium as I think it is in Spain. I mean in Belgium we really enjoy the tables. We don't go out for dinner that often but when we go out we stay on a table for four hours. I mean it starts with little entrants, then it's maybe a soup, then it's the main dish, then it's still an ice-cream or something. I mean it takes long so we really enjoy eating and it goes slow. For example, at Christmas, for Christmas, we meet at maybe 5:30, 6 o'clock and then we start already with aperitifs and it goes all night long, I think we eat from 6 o'clock in the afternoon till 12 o'clock at night.Ade: Wow! So you must be fat people there in Belgium if you eat that much.Chris: Well that's why I just said, we don't do it that often, but if we do it we really enjoy it and then of course next day or next few days you see people just don't eat anything.

Is hybrid homeschooling the perfect flexible learning option for a pandemic? And if so, how can parents successfully implement hybrid homeschooling for their families? In this episode of Emergency Homeschool, we talk with Dr. Michael McShane, Director of National Research at EdChoice, and Chris Peterson, Assistant Director of Admissions at MIT. Here's what we discuss with Michael and Chris: What is hybrid homeschooling? How flexible will public schools be with their hybrid homeschool offerings? Is hybrid homeschooling the perfect gateway preparation for college?

Chris: What do you value the most in this life? "Peace!" ~Falsal Al Mutar Faisal is an Iraqi-born award-winning social entrepreneur. He is an advocate for Universal Human Rights, enlightenment values and the free market of ideas, and is enthusiastic about the intersection of technology and advocacy. He is also the founder of multiple online platforms that together have more than 400,000 subscribers and millions of visitors. He previously worked as a program manager for the Middle East and North Africa to assist dissidents in closed societies worldwide. In 2015, Faisal received the “President's Volunteer Service Award” from President Barack Obama for his special commitment to education and he is founding executive director of Ideas Beyond Borders. Connect with Faisal: www.faisalalmutar.com His handles If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping us get to a new listener. For show notes and past guests, please visit https://www.christopherategeka.com/gratitribe Become a patron and support our creative work: https://www.patreon.com/chrisategeka Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please send us some love here https://www.christopherategeka.com/contact Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisategeka Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/chrisategeka PODCAST Links / Handles / Contact info: Podcast Link: www.christopherategeka.com/gratitribe Instagram: @Gratitribe Twitter: @Gratitribe Facebook Page: Gratitribe Podcast Email / Contact info: Gratitribe@gmail.com Hashtags: #gratitribe #gratitude #podcast #podcastsofinstagram #chrisategeka --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/christopher-ategeka/support

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Chris: Hi, Adelina. Tell me again, you're from Spain. Where exactly from Spain are you?Ade: I come from the south, a region called Andalucia.Chris: As we say, Andalusia?Ade: Yes.Chris: Where is this, that's the south, and then if you say south, everybody would think holiday, beach, staying up late, partying even.Ade: Yeah, they are right. We know how to enjoy life. And actually it's very like ... I don't know, but people go to island for summer holidays, but if they really want to know what the real Spain is, they should go to the south.Chris: Of course, because since you're from the south, that's why you say that.Ade: No, it's not because of that, it's because there is where the flamenco comes from, the bullfighting, and I don't know, we have more Spanish customs there.Chris: Okay. Now, so if you would have to say to somebody, if you have to tell a tourist, instead of always going to the same cities like Mallorca, Benidorm, Tenerife, if you would say three really good places in your country, where would you send someone?Ade: Well it depends what they like, if they are people who enjoy nature I will say ... I don't know, go to Granada and Sierra of Granada, name of Alpujarras, there you can find this little village, that they are so authentic. But Granada city also, they have a very nice castle name La Alhambra, is very, very beautiful. And you also have Sierra Nevada if you enjoy skiing and snowboarding. But if you are a city person I will recommend Barcelona of course, very nice in culture, in art, in shopping, in clubbing, is very, very nice city.Chris: Well I hope you're not going to say football now.Ade: No, no, no, not at all, I'm not a football girl.Chris: Okay, so Granada of course in winter must be beautiful for skiing holidays and everything, but in summer it must be really too hot there.Ade: Yes, it is, it's more a city to go and enjoy in wintertime.Chris: So you tell people to stay away from the beaches and visit the inside of the country?Ade: Yeah, you can also go to the beaches. But I mean like the...Chris: What beaches?Ade: I don't know, Mallorca is very nice, Minorca, Ibiza, all the islands are actually, but the problem is that this is ... these islands are so focused on tourism that they actually lose the real taste of Spain. It's too focused on tourism, because for example, if you go to any place on Mallorca you will find all the restaurants with all the menus writing down in German, in English, in all the languages but Spanish. In my point of view, I don't think it's nice because you go to a place where it's sunny but you find actually the same food and the same language and the same lifestyle that you find in your country or for eating. I don't think it's nice to have a holiday like this.Chris: So you mean that when you go somewhere you really want to know that you're in that place, so for example, if you're in China you want to see the menu in Chinese and that's it?Ade: Why not.Chris: Yeah, okay, you're right. Thank you.

Breeders Part 2: Family, Friends and Mapping a JourneyTop Breeders discuss building a family of dogs with small numbers and defined goals.Wendy Paquette, Amanda Kelly and Chris Heartz return to finish their conversation about building a family of dogs, using the standard as a driver and mapping out a plan. Wendy: “What I've done over the years is lease males from other breeders. I finished (the dogs) for them in Canada and kept them for about six months to a year. I bred 6-10 bitches to that same dog. So, what I did was, I could tell whether there was consistency or not. And I would keep one or two out of every litter and send the dog back home and go from there with the offspring.“So then, I had a basis with one dog being dominant and if I felt that dominant dog was a great producer consistently, then I doubled on it. But if it wasn't, oh well, I had bunch of pets that year. “The Breeders that just breed to the dog next door or the dog in the next state or whatever don't have a clue what they're producing. They just keep the most pretty marked puppy that has an attitude then they wonder why they're not getting anywhere. Well they don't have any idea where those dogs came from to begin with. They have no foresight. Health and welfareChris: “The health of the breed is everything if you want it to continue. We're not preservation breeders if we say it doesn't matter about the teeth (for example), they're not mentioned in our standard. Well maybe it does matter. And so I think, just by seeing what is available in the rest of the world and how other breeders approach your breed and what they got to show for that is the best education in the world. And to just sit at home and say this is how we've always done it. It's not good enough.” All in the familyAmanda: “I loved Wendy's discussion about building a breeding program and having the ability to try different things and having maybe a critical mass of dogs. One of the things I think a lot of people in today's breeding world struggle with is not having the ability to have that many dogs. For whatever reasons they live in the suburbs or they just can't keep that many dogs or whatever. Chris gave me some really helpful advice and she talked about working with other breeders in a family. Chris: “What we really, really are passionate about is, if we can't sell you a dog and we love this person because they have the same passion and the same commitment to the same type of dog that we have … these are people that dedicated their lives to breeding better dogs … we say we can't sell you a dog but we can lease you a dog. So our males have way more miles on them than I do. “All we can give as our gift is our dogs. (We) will share them … with like-minded people and the reason is selfish. Because those people will use that dog and those puppies will have puppies. (I)n the third generation we will see something we love. We then ask them to do the same thing for us and we borrow that dog back and we incorporate … into our breeding program and they just click.” Developing a planAmanda: “It's about having access to a larger gene pool and it's about having access to a larger number of dogs. I think for newer breeders (it’s) about developing an eye. You know if you are in a breed where there's lower numbers, or whatever the case may be, developing your eye can sometimes be a difficult thing. You just see the ones that are yours and maybe go (to) the national once a year, look at pictures on Facebook. But that's not the same thing as looking at puppies and evaluating and sharing information about what worked and what didn't work and the trial and error pieces of it that Wendy talked about. When you have great friends, you can share in their journey as well as in yours. And learn as much from what they've done and what's worked for them. Chris: “You can't drive to Halifax unless you have a map if you've not been there before. It's no different in breeding dogs. All you need is a plan. If... Support this podcast

Christopher Kenna Leila is joined by Christopher Kenna - CEO & Founder at Brand Advance.IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT· Why VE Day is so important to Chris· What led Chris to join the armed forces and, latterly, to found Brand Advance· The powerful yet privileged position that advertisers find themselves inRESOURCES & INFORMATION MENTIONEDhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/chriskenna/

Recorded on 5/1/20 Special Guest Casey Liss Co-host of Accidental Tech Podcast https://atp.fm/ Co-host of Analog(ue) https://www.relay.fm/analogue/ iOS App Developer of Vignette https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vignette-update-contact-pics/id1455924925 Website https://www.caseyliss.com/ Casey joins us to speculate about when Walt Disney World might open Stories referenced during the discussion: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/wdw-reopening-update-orange-county-defers-to-disney-florida-announces-phase-1/ - a good summary of the current situation https://wdwnt.com/2020/04/orange-county-task-force-establishes-initial-guidelines-for-walt-disney-world-reopening-guest-spacing-wiping-vehicles-etc-mayor-believes-june-reopening-realistic/ - a little more detail of orange county's guidelines https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2020/04/28/southwest-airlines-ceo-travel-wont-resume-until-country-reopens/3038342001/ - comments from Southwest Airlines CEO https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disney-is-in-the-eye-of-the-storm-analyst-warns-parks-may-not-open-until-january-2020-04-20 - UBS analyst John Hodulik's prediction that the parks won't open until 2021 https://thedisneyblog.com/2020/04/30/new-opinion-poll-spells-trouble-for-disneys-business-model/?platform=hootsuite - poll on the public's willingness to get back out in public before a vaccine is available. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/disney-world-disneyland-reopening-outlook-pandemic-trnd/index.html What will reopened parks look like? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-disney-focus/long-lines-lots-of-kids-and-plenty-to-touch-how-does-disney-reopen-its-parks-idUSKBN22D53X - more on the reopening projection https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/houston-billionaire-rockets-fertitta-coronavirus-15235646.php - Interview with Landry's Restaurants CEO about opening up with just a fraction of the customers. https://people.com/health/air-conditioning-coronavirus-spreader-9-people-infected-at-restaurant/ - air conditioner spreading Coronavirus Questions for Casey: If you had an hour to spend in the park right now, what would you do? Coke or Pepsi? Casey’s questions for Glenn and Chris What is the most overrated restaurant in WDW? https://threekidsthreecatsandahusband.com/best-restaurants-disney-world/ 

The sisters used their marketing strategies to architect marketing systems for clients accounting for over 90 million dollars in sales. Kay and Shila now seek to share their journey and expertise with other entrepreneurs through their appointment as Marketing Faculty for the John Maxwell Team, podcasts hosts of The Mentorship Quest and as small business and personal growth speakers. Kay & Shila live in their hometown of Reno Nevada with their husbands, children and dogs.Kay and Shi come as a pair and so this is truly a two-for-one deal!Kay & Shi's parents purchased a failing business 17 years ago and bet everything on what other people told them was a huge risk. Despite this they wanted to follow the American dream and become business owners so that they could escape a life of living on food stamps.Because every penny had been invested in the business they couldn't afford to hire staff so Kay and Shi started working there at 10 and 17 years old. It took 5 years to get to know the lay of the land and then the family opened a new site in 2008, yes during the financial crisis!From that time they started working on marketing strategies so that they could build "raving fans" before they were featured on the Food Network. They built the empire to 5 locations but then realized that this was not a great indication of success as it brought a different level of pressure.Kay & Shi will shortly be opening their 12th location.After Mom joined the John Maxwell Team in 2013 it changed their lives. At this time they were able to bring in the values of people and culture to the business and their journey continues as the learn and apply more.Don't compare your "Front end" with successful people's "Front end", instead compare your "back end", in other words what you do every day.Maximizing Your Potential is about learning the behaviors that you need to implement every day in order to develop. Understand what your potential is right now and then shifting he volume up on little dials every day. We do have unlimited potential and that can be exciting, yet also overwhelming at the same time. Ask yourself: What are you passionate about, what do you love to do?When you do what you love to do it doesn't feel like you are working so that is what we should be aiming for in order to maximize our potential.Your potential at this time will be different to other people's so understand what you can do to grow instead of comparing yourself with others. You should be working towards a grand vision and you do this by taking small steps every day. Your aim is not to be the "Best", it is to be better every day. Shift your focus onto "How can I win each day?" This will give you instant gratification that society has been conditioned to expect and want. What are the 5 things that you can do each day that will stack up towards your big goal.Behaviors lead to actions, actions become habits, and habits produce results. Create good behaviors and this will eventually lead to good results!Chris: What 3 pieces of advice would you give a teenager or a parent?Kay & Shi:Find a mentor and seek mentorship. Pick someone who has been where you want to go or is further along the path so that they can help you develop grit.Everything is figure-out-able. There is always something that you can do. Think about the options and then take the action that you know is right.Develop your grit. Be able to persevere and weather the storms that will inevitably come along. Connect with Kay & Shi on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or on their website, Kayandshi.comContact me:Website: www.Chris-J-Baker.comEmail: Chris@Chris-J-Baker.comFacebook: Release Your Unconscious PageFacebook: Leadership Excellence with Chris BakerLinkedIn: Chris BakerInstagram: chris _j_baker_ryuTo purchase my book 10 Steps 2 Freedom from Amazon click here.To purchase my book Organizational Culture and Leadership click here

I have known Craig for 13-14 years since my company in the UK partnered with Martec. He has a tremendous approach to customer service and maximizing potential which is why I know he will add value to you today. While Craig focuses on Businesses and their employees the methods apply to anyone.Craig explains how he started in the automotive industry 25+ years ago and secured a position as a trainee sales advisor at a car dealership - exactly the same as I did in 1989! After a few years selling Craig moved into a Senior Sales position, Sales Manager, and ultimately General Manager of a site before moving to take a position at Martec services. 13 years later Craig is now a Director and Shareholder of Martec.Chris: What is the purpose of Martec?Craig: To help people improve by improving behaviors and skills that will produce the results. This can be in engaging group sessions or on a 1:1 basis. Training is one side of the business in all areas: Sales, Service and Parts. The other side is analytical solutions where we analyze phone calls to understand the communication style, listening style, and the behaviors of the people within the business. It is all about helping people improve!Martec uses the science of NLP in their training and also work closely on visual and kin-esthetic  learning styles. Using positive language and tonality to understand how people think and the language they use to help them connect better.n.b. Chris offers DISC so if you are interested in learning more visit his website to see the different assessments!Conscious awareness of what you are saying and how your customer is receiving the message is key in becoming a better communicator. Active listening is a skill. Many people listen to respond but the skill is in listening to understand BEFORE you formulate your response. Pay attention to the words, nuances, and tonality in the conversation and if necessary repeat back what you have heard to confirm understanding.The "light-bulb" moment comes when someone listens back to their conversation as they often do not realize what they sound like and how this is interpreted. Awareness is key! These sessions help people to maximize their potential. We all have the potential to improve out performance, no matter what level we are at. As our level of awareness increases, so does our potential to increase our potential.Leaders are not born leaders, this is a learned skill. - Chris J. BakerChris: What 3 pieces of advice would you recommend for a business looking to improve their performance?Craig: 1: Does the business really understand how they are dealing with their customers? If they don't it is difficult to improve. Drill down to understand how effective their people are in dealing with inquiries.2: Have they got the right people in place? 3: Have an awareness of the behaviors and habits of your people. Only 7% of communication is from the words we use!It is all about the people!We want to get results and results come from actions and actions come from the behaviors so work on the behaviors!Everyone needs to believe in the process and it starts with the leadership buying into the concept. You can contact Craig on LinkedIn or email Craig.Redford@Martec.co.uk. Alternatively visit Martec's website: www.martec.co.uk.Martec Europe is the leading provider in training and software solutions for the automotive industry, providing a wide range of services to dealers, dealer groups and OEMs. With more than 27 years’ experience, Martec Europe is aimed at helping and developing exceptional people to deliver the very best customer service.Contact me:Website: www.Chris-J-Baker.comEmail: Chris@Chris-J-Baker.comFacebook: Release Your Unconscious PageFacebook: Leadership Excellence with Chris BakerLinkedIn: Chris BakerInstagram: chris _j_baker_ryuTo purchase my book 10 Steps 2 Freedom from Amazon click here.

Question: Question on Iodine, Fatigue, and Detox Reaction. Carrie: Remember, iodine belongs to the halogen family and other halogens can bind onto your PT or tyrosine. I have had this before where patients would take iodine and the iodine will push off the fluoride and the chloride and the bromide off of the tyrosine, and so it binds on and now you have essentially a detox reaction. People will say, "I get headaches. I've broken out in rashes. I'm really tired." Because the other halogens have come off the tyrosine and are now floating around your system. I believe in iodine. I'm not sold yet on iodine testing. I feel like there are so many rules of thoughts. But if I use iodine, I warn people of that, of the detox reaction. Chris: What are all the normal things you do for a Herxheimer reaction? Carrie: Wait a minute. Obviously lots of water, exercise, binders, so like fiber and charcoal or zeolite or whatever you're doing to bind this stuff up, clay, those supplements with that sort of stuff in it. Saunas are really good, sweating, dry skin brushing to try to help move it through your body while staying on the iodine. You want the iodine to bind to the tyrosine and not the halogen to rebind because you stopped taking it, which is going to rebind to your tyrosine. I've seen it take up to a couple weeks, depending how halogen toxic that you are. This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/10/19/ask-us-anything-hormones-dr-carrie-jones-may-10-2019 If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, premium features on all my content, and hundreds of dollars of exclusive discounts. You can sign up with a 10% lifetime discount here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/q&a ====== DISCLAIMER: I have a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and my expertise is in performing and evaluating nutritional research. I am not a medical doctor and nothing herein is medical advice. PLEASE NOTE: As a result of the COVID-19 crisis and the time I am committing to staying on top of relevant research, as well as the high volume of questions I receive, it may take me extra time to respond to questions here. For an up-to-date list of where I respond to questions most quickly, please see the contact page on chrismasterjohnphd.com. =======

Chris Brogan is president of Chris Brogan Media, offering business storytelling and marketing advisory help for mid to larger sized companies. Chris is a sought after keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books and counting. He’s working on his tenth: title forthcoming.Chris has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker, Titleist, Scotts, Humana Health, Cisco, Sony USA, and many more. He’s appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, interviewed Richard Branson for a cover story for Success magazine, and once even presented to a Princess. People like Paulo Coelho, Harvey Mackay, and Steven Pressfield enjoy sharing their projects and best ideas with Chris, because they know he’ll share them with you. Tony Robbins had Chris on his Internet Money Masters series. Forbes listed Chris as one of the Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014, plus listed his website as one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Statsocial rated Chris the #3 power influencer online.I ask Chris:What are you curious about right now?How did you and Julien, your co-author, come up with the idea to write the book, Trust Agents?Can you share a healthcare story about earning trust and improving reputation?Are there any common myths about using social media to build influence and amplify one's reputation? What advice do you have for a doctor who wants to write their own book?Fill in the blank - "Trust is your _______."You say, Smart Leaders use stories to do the heavy lifting. Is it obvious or do leaders stumble upon this idea? Tell us about your Three Words idea and what we can take away from Choosing 3 words that will help guide your choices and actions day to day. What are one, two, or three words you'd choose to describe what business and healthcare leaders should do now in the midst of the CoronaVirus? Where will remote working and B2B evolve from today? You live in a cool place. Describe it for us and tell us what's your favorite sound or noise in your house?

Description “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day. I sat there with Sally. We sat there, we two. And I said, “How I wish we had something to do.”” Does that sound familiar? Is your family weary Of viral contagions and weather quiet dreary? Does schooling online seem unfun and boring? Are you finding at nine you’re still in bed snoring? Wake up! There’s a world of learning to learn! Who knows what awaits us at each learning turn? Today we have students who’ll bring you a smile. Instead of leaning ten feet, they learned a Cyber School mile! Discover that learning’s not something you’re given. Learning to learn is there for the driven. So drive with these students as they speak with some glee On learning to learn Epidemiology! Lessons Learned Dennis - Weiyun Cloud for sharing video in China. $158 RMB for 6TB for 6months Daniel – Google FI – Thank you!  Within 2 months, I have been on 3 different continents, 5 different countries and 4 states - only one bill and unlimited data.  Phenomenal! Chris – What time is it in your students’ time zones? Ask no more! https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/personal.html Fun Fact The CDC On July 1, 1946 the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) opened its doors and occupied one floor of a small building in Atlanta. Its primary mission was simple yet highly challenging: prevent malaria from spreading across the nation. Armed with a budget of only $10 million and fewer than 400 employees, the agency’s early challenges included obtaining enough trucks, sprayers, and shovels necessary to wage war on mosquitoes. Today Budget is 1.2 Billion (Source: https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html) Notes & Links GUESTS: High School Applied Learning Epidemiology Students - Kelly, Amy, Maddie, Corey One of the first covid-19 assignments was to create a timeline.  These are two student examples: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1jnaPI3kBxxEmGb69dfD8aQ2LhlYJPEQgRH7ihz_02TY&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650 https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=13-Zgqyk-EXpXzznZwyZz_cA_6rqvsMfmxQBXMs-BMwg&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650 A student made a video including Tips on Mask Usage for our Community: https://youtu.be/BQUBe22P-i0?fbclid=IwAR0wt7QNg1U1nPxcWy2u0KtRXn10YvAoczd9XTmBWoNPGDQAPDD-DWp993k This is a video about the outbreak that a student made “for fun” - it was not part of any assignment.  She does make a mistake that makes Todd grind his teeth but it’s still a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSc3_Ic_pnk&t=128s&fbclid=IwAR0BrCEl5zPKH1hGqa3A8aowx17VnSnHoovX_MnZika2KW2FRE4criLToUI This is a longer video – we got a set of questions from a HS class in Washington state and our kids who are still in Shanghai answered their questions: https://ensemble.concordiashanghai.org/Watch/studentsanswercovidquestions

Published Apr 19, 2018 Chris: G'day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads and I have with me today our usual suspect, Andrew Groat and a guest, Brendon McAlpine from Internet Removals. How are you going Brendon? Brendon: Good morning, thank you for having me, I'm great. Chris: How are you going, Andrew? Andrew: Yeah good. Chris: Awesome, so today we've invited Brendon in because Internet Removals is a company that we believe every business out there needs help from and one of those reasons is because it's all well and good you marketers like us, driving traffic to websites and pages and improving conversions and all the rest of it but it's no good if your reputation is sub-par. Brendon: Correct. Chris: So, Brendon, do you want to tell us a little bit about Internet Removals? Brendon: So, hard to believe, but I am an online content removalist, we help businesses remove content from the internet, quite simply. When you have a negative online footprint, the misdirection's horrendous in the sense you could spend hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars getting directed to website, on Google, we're talking about Google's platform, but it's just bombarded with some negative content from the past or new or for whatever reason. And it's our business to help people let the right platforms know that the content is either misleading, untrue, false, defamation and getting the content down. Google Reviews is a platform that I don't think anyone want to be on sometimes, it's not initiated by the company in themselves, it's just you get an email saying, "Yeah, "let's become Google Reviews." but unfortunately it opens up a can of worms in a sense, simple as a customer not getting her dog cut correctly and they've got a platform to just put a barrage of negative reviews and you're measured on it unfortunately with Google Stars. People, their online footprint's pretty important, it has to be now more than ever. So yeah, that's what we do, remove content from the internet for corporate as well as public and public's more the bad side of the internet in the sense of image-based abuse as well as revenge porn unfortunately that's where you've lost content between yourself and a partner and they post it online, we do our best to let the people know to get it down quick. Chris: What was that term? Brendon: Revenge porn? Chris: I've never heard that one. Brendon: Oh wow it's big Andrew: Yeah it's huge. Brendon: Yeah it's a name now that's, I mean the government's spending millions of dollars on different commissions to recognise it and to get it prosecuted as domestic violence, which it is. As you know, domestic violence isn't just measured by fists and that sort of stuff, it's the mental abuse. Chris: Yeah, it's cyberbullying. Brendon: Yeah, look we've been doing it six years, so we've been at the coalface if not the leader in a sense, getting content down and recognising it but now new laws are coming out and people are starting to recognise that it is abuse and that's as simple as breaking up with someone and sending a barrage of messages threatening them, saying, "I'm going to post this stuff of you," we monitor it and then if it goes online we do everything we can as quick possible to get it down. Yeah that's the nasty side of it unfortunately but in businesses you've just got to look at your footprint and see if there's a problem. Chris: What have we likened having bad reviews to before? Andrew: It's similar to if you had a physical business and you had a whole bunch of people protesting out the front you wouldn't get an awful lot of people through the door and this is basically the digital version of that, the online version of that. And what I found was interesting, what you were saying before is that a great deal of the reviews and stuff, the negative reviews are bogus. Brendon: Yeah, a lot, most of them, I mean you can see it in the review, companies engage us to find out what the problem is and where it stemmed from as well as to remove it, put all our means possible to get the content down. And I've seen cases where, I'll give you an example of a real estate agency had a rental property with a person and that person obviously had a-- whatever happened between the person renting it from the real estate went pear shaped. Which is normal. And in Queensland property laws are pretty strict, you know, there's guidelines on how to do things but either way that person that was renting it didn't like what happened, had all the right procedures in moving them out, they weren't paying rent or whatever but decided to take their grievances online so they found out the person who owned the property had a business. Barraged it, put a massive amount of content on there, where they could, Google Reviews, saying stuff that was really relating to their business but they had no identity with them, they didn't know these people he just wanted-- he was calculated and said, "This is how I'm going to ruin it." And then he found out the daughter had a business, did the same thing and unfortunately that daughter's business relied heavily on the way she's looked in the market, it was all lies. And unfortunately what we've got to do is get that message and that story to Google through all their means and that's exactly what we do. Chris: Which is a full time job, I'm sure. Brendon: Yeah, it is. Chris: So, essentially, it was really a good point that you made there about practically every business out there on the internet, even if you're not on the internet, you can have a Google My Business page which is capable of having anybody from around the world post a review on it. Brendon: Correct. Chris: And you may or may not know it. Brendon: Yeah. Chris: And most people don't, in fact we had a client recently that signed up for our marketing services and the first thing we did was an audit based on all of their channels that they either knew about, owned or didn't know about, unowned. Brendon: Correct. Chris: And found that basically their reputation was quite bad. And that was actually through no fault of their own in some regards, there were some really good ones and really bad ones, so their star rating was sitting quite low under the threes, due to the fact that they've had some people out there post some negative stuff that just either wasn't true or there might have been an element of truth in it and the rest was crap. The interesting thing about that one is they weren't even aware of the Google My Business page being set up and they weren't aware of the Facebook page being set up. Some had been set up by staff that had since left and some of it was just set up by people doing the reviews. They didn't know even know it was there Brendon: That's very common. Setting up fake profiles to discredit a business is huge, there's that many businesses out there I've seen that have had fake profiles up and they've gone, "Wow." And it's explained their reasons for drop offs and turnover and their volume's still good but customer callings have changed and stuff. Yeah attacks like that, it's more common than you can imagine. I mean, let's put it in perspective, let's say there was an employee of a floor shop who was rude. Who was really not a good customer service person, so that business owner's gone through the process of employing this person, he's now recognised that, not just through Google Reviews, but through customer's saying, "This guy's not good for my business," and he'd take the means either of training him or moving him on. Fair enough, the guy's moved on. On those reviews they'll state the name most of the time, that, "This guy, this and this," and should those reviews stay if the business has fixed the problem? Andrew: No. Brendon: Correct. That's a big part of what we see, most businesses fix a problem but unfortunately the bad name stays for good. I look at Google like this, and I probably changed this story a few times, but let's say we back in the Mediaeval times and they used to have billboards, big billboards, so you walk down the village street and there's that sign that has blacksmith, so-and-so and that's Google the billboard. Now if someone put up there the blacksmith and really nasty content, what would happen? The village, I guess the king would come along and pull it off. Chris: Or the guy would go out of business. Brendon: Correct or either way, the village would get together and say, "That shouldn't be there because it's against the law," all these different laws. And that's how it should work, we should be able to pull it down if it's illegal. Unfortunately with Google, there's a long process to let them know. Their problem's bigger than it is, I mean they get a quarter of a million flagging every day and what people don't realise is Google do take content down, it's just the way you take it, you make sure that the content's correct. You've got to look into each review and make sure that it's strength in what you're telling them and then it ticks all the boxes to get it escalated to a moderator, that's that person in whatever country that's got six seconds to read it so you want to get everything correct to there for them to go, "Well I believe everything "at the front end is correct, "so I've just got to read this and yep, "if it seems legit we'll get rid of it." And that's how primitive it is, it's primitive. Andrew: It's an incredibly easy process to set up an account and leave a review or set up a Google My Business page for another business, but it's much harder to get it down, I think that's half the problem here. Brendon: It shouldn't be. Andrew: You don't need any form of identity or anything to be able to leave a review on a business. Brendon: Correct, no qualifying really. I mean, I see reviews, they show you the location where they leave the reviews and you have to scream, "Bots," you have to scream, "It's computerised," or, "Someone's done this." This is on positive reviews, I'll just tell all of the viewers out here, do not engage in companies that give you positive reviews, okay? Because if the ACCC rings up and says, "I want to know that guy's name and I want to speak to him "and I want him to sign a stat dec saying "that you wrote the review," It's a $22,000 fine if you're wrong. And people engage these, I think they call it brushing, these bot companies to increase Google Reviews. Unfortunately the reviewer's not as dumb as you think. They'll look at it and go, "It's a guy's name that I can't pronounce "and then there's another ten of them." And you see different locations all over the world and you put two and two together and go, "No, it's not true. Andrew: Yeah and you're a local Gold Coast business. Brendon: It's the worst thing you can do. Never put false content up in the sense of positive reviews. Chris: Yeah so there you go, you can get stung both ways. I think it's great that Google reviews and the ability to get reviews from people exists because it's important as business owners that we keep our customers centric to the operations of our business. They give us insights to our business that we otherwise just cannot see, you know? And there's a fantastic interview that my co-founder for BeachCity just did with a gentleman by the name of Nicklas Bergman, best-selling author of The Tech Storm, great book, you should go and read it. Nicklas interviewed the chairman of Ikea. Now I'm not going to reveal what the chairman said, but you need to go and watch it. In a nutshell, be consumer-centric. And the way that he did that was fantastic, go and watch the video, we'll link to it in these comments. But that was a really valuable lesson from that chairman of Ikea, that they keep, or he in particular, keeps his customers at the centre of their operations of their business and knowing what they want is valuable for the future growth of the business, it's valuable for the current operations of the business, it's valuable for knowing how to deal with your current clients and what they expect from you and if you can't get around to a lot of your customers yourself, you do need to take heed of the potential that they have already gone and commented online and if they haven't then you should be talking to them anyway you should be talking to your customers. Internet Removals sounds like a fantastic business for my mind and I'm not saying this to butter you up or to tell people to go and get business from you, but I know in everyday operation of running businesses that shit can happen, yeah? Yeah I might deserve some of those bad reviews but if they're managed correctly that potentially I could get them removed, resolved and therefore improve my reputation and because I've improved my systems or I've changed something in the business or I've got rid of that person as you mentioned earlier. So I think it's a fantastic business and service that you're offering because I don't have time to do that. Brendon: That's exactly it and the time it takes for you to go and research the policies of a big provider and find out what's the process to get the content down correctly and be in that part of 150,000 applications, of which ours are coming up front because we're doing it right, is key. Every business owner I know and dealt with respect the customers and listen to them because it's their business, they wouldn't be in business if they didn't understand customers. They would prefer that the reviews are controlled in a sense of it goes to their website, all these big companies have these processes of letting them know there's a problem. The problem is, when you have something like Google Reviews, that it become a mob mentality when someone puts a review up and then you get some disgusting content that just has no relevance and that's where our customers feel it's completely unfair and it shouldn't be their biggest measure really. I mean, Google's it, guys. Google is it. I mean, what else do you use to find content? Andrew: Yeah and your reviews appear before everything else. Brendon: Correct. Andrew: It's the most prominent thing on the search result. Brendon: I had one customer who was going to spend lots of money on advertising and that particular advertiser gave me a call and said, "Man, can you look at this guy's footprint, "this guy's about to dump a tonne of money." I looked and I said, "Man, I would wait six to twelve months "until we can get some results before you even invest." There's no point making that redirection. And the customer stood back and I got to mediate with him and said, "Have you looked at the concerns?" He said, "Yeah," and again, that was about an employee. He said, "We got rid of him, he's gone. "We've done everything that we can "to resolve that issue, we saw." It just didn't need to be made public and stay there and just drag all these customers away. Andrew: The big problem there and we keep saying that you need to take Google My Business and Google Reviews seriously, is people think that they go away eventually because, I mean the old mentality was, if you have a bad name out there and you turn things around that eventually word gets out that you've improved your business. It doesn't work like that on Google, they stay there forever unless you do something about it. Brendon: Correct and it's important, there's no doubt about it. Not only for the corporate world but for the public, as I said, we help the public more than anything with getting content down. I mean, education's a big thing on us, for schools we're about to do education pieces for year eleven and twelve, for me to sit there and say, "Hey guys, "you're about to step into the corporate world, "I just want you to step back and look how you "present yourself online. "If there's any issues, clean it up now." Because we have employers call us to check out people's online-- Chris: I've done that myself. Andrew: That's certainly something that's happened here. Chris: So if you're ever going for a job interview beware of Google because I've done it, I've just Google searched people's names and funnily enough, I still employed someone, even after I saw all of the crap that they were writing on social media channels. But I took it for what it was, they just didn't think. They just went, "Ah you know, "I'm just having a conversation with my friend, "it's only me and my friends that can see it, "we're having a bit of banter." And, you know, lots of swearing and calling each other names and all that sort of stuff. "That's just fun banter, that's what we do in our lounge room." Yeah, that's right. Brendon: It's not in your lounge room, man, it's in a stadium full of 1.5 billion people. Andrew: Yeah, but when one day you're going to be managing business social media profiles and things like that you need to be aware that people need to be able to trust that you're not going to have it come back to you. Brendon: Ever since I've been doing this I've deleted a lot of posts of mine that weren't that bad but I've looked at it and gone, "What's the perception another person's going to take of it?" And go, "You know what? It's not worth it." You know, it's not me, I'm only saying a joke between my mates, yeah plenty of times I've deleted posts, because I've thought about it, only because I know about it. Chris: Well, I've been sued for making a comment on a Facebook group. Because I basically said something about somebody that maybe I thought would have been true but it wasn't. And I was just trying to be a helpful citizen. It turned out to be, you know, if I had my time again I wouldn't have written it. Brendon: It's funny you say that because we have people that ring us to help them, because they're being sued to get content down from a provider. We've actually had people that have rung us quite a few times that have said, "I've said something, I want to get it down." And we go, "Okay, what did you say?" And then we look and it's, right, same process. So there's people out there, a lot of people going, "I wish I'd never said that. "I can't get it down." I talk to my daughter about this every day. How you present yourself online is how you present yourself on the market. Andrew: Yeah it might be just a matter that you got hot headed about something but the problem is it stays there forever now if you don't take it down. Brendon: Yep, and content is a lot harder to take down and a lot easier to put up. I mean I tell businesses, I had a guy recently ring me and ask me about, "Google Reviews, Google My Business sent me an email saying do I want to register." I said, "Don't even bridge with them, "I'd prefer you didn't. "Establish your business now, iron out all the kinks, "all the parts that could go wrong "where people could write a review "about you making a mistake." I said, "Wait twelve months and have a look at your business "and then decide if you're prepared to go on Google Reviews. "Because those twelve month periods are the periods where "you're going to have ups and downs in your business "and you're going to open yourself up "so just wait twelve months." I just said, "Don't, don't open Google Reviews." Google Business, do not, my opinion. Unless you're ready and your business is safe, it's one of those areas where you can't. Chris: What do you mean? Sorry, what do you mean by that? Don't open Google Reviews? Brendon: So Google Business will find out about your business and they'll let you know. "Hey, do you want to be on Google Business?" And you go, "Yes, of course." Details, where your address is and that sort of stuff. Chris: But anybody can go and create one of those. Brendon: They can but they also promote it. Do you know what I mean? We've had them call us quite a few times, saying, you know, not call us but notify us. But I say either don't or just check out your business as a high-risk area where, you know, if you're in the car industry, reviews are are, you know. I feel sorry for those car dealerships because really, all they're doing is selling a brand new car, okay? And you decide to buy it or not. And they invest a lot of money, those people that own those businesses, millions of dollars and the land to store the cars. If you have a pleasant experience coming in. And I don't want to name these particular hashtag because it could promote the thing, but there was one particular hashtag where a guy's bike got damaged and he decided to hashtag with a group of Australian larrikins who had no idea of the context of what happened, and barraged this social media with hundreds of content. And that's terrible and this business owner's invested a lot of money, spending with the Mercedes and the BMWs to get the licence to be part of their website, they pay a lot of money for that just like McDonald's does, to own a McDonalds. And now he's got a one star and there's 300 reviews, because of the hashtag. And these guys had no idea. And the simple thing that happened was yes, they did drop the bike and they scratched it and they fixed it. But the guy wasn't happy, for whatever reason, so he decided to hashtag it. And there was 300 terrible comments. Andrew: From people who had nothing to do with it. Brendon: Nothing to do with it. No idea, don't even know the person it happened to, it was just part of that group. And we spend a lot of time fighting those groups too. Those social media pages, unfortunately Facebook's honestly gone to ground right now and our response time back from is just pitiful. Chris: Yeah shutting down pages is probably easier. Brendon: I mean, yeah, it's all about the numbers, there's 100,000 people on their Facebook page. Pretty bad stuff, it's either got to have terrorism or child or sex related before they'll take it down, if it doesn't, they can do what they want. Chris: So I think we should probably pull it up there, we could go into some really great stories. Brendon: Maybe another time, love to have a chat. I'm pretty sure people want to know more. Chris: Absolutely, Brendon, how do people reach out to you? Brendon: Yeah look, our website as well as we've got a 1300 number that we can-- Chris: What's the website? Brendon: www.internetremovals.com.au If you type in content removal Australia it'll pop up on Google's search words as well. As well as I've got a Twitter page which is @contentremove, I think, I can't remember the exact-- Andrew: We'll put all the links in the bottom. Brendon: But yeah, just be aware of your footprint is all I'll say and have a look, if you watch this, step back and go, "I'll just have a little look." Any issues, let me know, if not, education is to be good. Chris: Don't drink and review, don't just think that you're in your own little lounge room when you're reviewing. And I know I've learned some lessons, maybe the hard way. And it's best not to. Brendon: Thanks for having me too guys. Chris: Thanks for watching guys, that's episode 84 of Get Fact Up, you know where we're at but I'll tell you anyway. We're on memedia.com.au you can watch the full episode there, also on YouTube and on Facebook, just search for MeMedia on Facebook. Thanks for watching, we're back next week for another episode of Get Fact Up.

Welcome to Finance and Fury, The Say What Wednesday Edition Today's question comes from Chris What are your thoughts on TraCRs? I can’t recall if you’ve spoken about them before on your past episodes, if you have which one was that and I’ll go back and listen? How would you say TraCRs compare to using a platform like Stake? Do you think there are better ways of getting exposure to specific foreign stocks than TraCRs? Sorry if it’s an overload. Also thanks for doing the podcast I thoroughly enjoy your material and outlook   What is a TraCR? Transferable Custody Receipts Structure to provide beneficial ownership of the underlying shares of a listed overseas company For example, if you invest in a TraCR issued over a US-listed share, you are buying an Australian security that gives you a beneficial interest in, but not a legal title to, the US share. A single TraCR provides the holder with the beneficial ownership of a single underlying share. The value of the underlying share of a TraCR and the applicable foreign exchange (FX) rate will be the main factors in determining the Australian dollar (AUD) value of the TraCR. Structure - structured to provide a TraCR holder with the beneficial ownership of international shares; and settled through CHESS and held in an Australian registry in the same way as Australian shares. How are TraCRs traded? You buy and sell TraCRs the same way you buy and sell other Australian securities. Exclusively quoted on Chi-X and can only be bought or sold on the Chi-X market or through a Chi-X participant Prices are on a one for one ratio with the underlying shares of a company listed offshore. You can terminate TraCRs and convert them to cash if an ‘illiquidity event’ occurs: if no liquidity is provided by a registered market maker for 20 consecutive business days then you will, under the terms of issue, be entitled to request that the TraCR issuer convert your holding into cash by selling the underlying shares (fees and charges will apply). All TraCRs that are bought and sold on Chi-X are cleared and settled through ASX Clear and ASX Settlement and covered by the Australian regulatory framework. What are the risks? Basic ones with all international investments – but also an additional layer of risk Foreign currency exchange rates: the underlying shares of a TraCR and TraCR dividends are denominated in a foreign currency and so investors are exposed to FX movements. Not being able to exercise rights attached to the underlying share: some rights attached to the underlying shares are not available to non-US residents Trading timezones - TraCRs trading when the underlying shares are not: the Chi-X market will be open at times when global markets, on which the underlying shares trade, are closed. Therefore, trading in a TraCR may take place before the main market for an underlying share has reacted to recent price-sensitive news or when market makers are not present – may not get price wanted Additional risks Not being able to sell/buy when you want: market makers may not provide liquidity all the time and so there may be no liquidity at reasonable prices at the time you want to buy or sell Price variations: TraCR prices may vary from the precise FX adjusted price of the underlying US share and change quickly and by more than changes in the price of the underlying asset. Dependency on the one organisation’s website - holders will not be able to trade TraCRs in the unlikely event that this web site is down. The way TraCRs are structured and the terms of their issue: TraCRs are different in structure and framework from the underlying shares on which they are based – as it is beneficial interest, not direct ownership – removed voting rights, has custodial risks – such as if TraCRs become insolvent or structure frozen in a liquidity crisis Liquidity risks - There is a risk that TraCRs become illiquid – i.e. difficult to sell or buy securities Can come from a lack of demand for the securities – remember you are trading the TraCR – not the share – may be 1,000,000 people wanting to buy the underlying share – but the market for Underlying Shares is likely to be more liquid than the market for TraCRs - possible the Market Makers will not provide liquidity in the TraCRs market – market maker is something that offers both buys and sell – making money out of brokerage or on price spreads (selling and buying are slightly different) = exchange services or large broking companies Issues is that is a TraCRs ceases to meet the Chi-X Liquidity Requirements - has the discretion to suspend or remove that Series of TraCRs from quotation on the Chi-X Market There is a risk that: — you may not be able to buy TraCRs or sell your TraCRs at a reasonable price or at all; and — the price of that Series of TraCRs may be volatile and diverge materially from the price of the Underlying Shares adjusted by the foreign exchange rate. The number of TraCRs on the issue may be small Regardless of the market capitalisation of an Underlying Company, the total capitalisation of a particular Series of TraCRs may be small. There is a risk that this could impact liquidity for a Series of TraCRs. Market Makers do not guarantee liquidity Under the market making agreements, a Market Maker is not required to make offers to buy or sell TraCRs or to otherwise make a market or provide liquidity for a Series of TraCRs. There are agreements in place provide fee relief to Market Makers if they do – but no guarantee that a Market Maker has to provide a role in buying or selling a TraCR – There is a risk that the trading of TraCRs may be halted or suspended by Chi-X at any time. Chi-X may halt or suspend trading in a Series of TraCRs if any of the information required to be made available on the TraCR Website in relation to the Underlying Shares of the relevant Series of TraCRs, is unavailable to the public for more than five consecutive minutes during trading hours on a Chi-X Business Day; Or — Chi-X deems such action appropriate in the interests of protecting investors and maintaining a fair and orderly market in TraCRs. Also - There is a risk that may change the Terms in certain circumstances, including as set out in Sections 9.4 and 14.14, and clauses 22.7 and 24 of the Terms. There is a risk that these changes may have negative implications for you and for the price of your TraCRs. (j) TraCRs expose you to operational performance and counterparty risk The operational performance of TraCRs is dependent upon DAIL, the Custodian and other Persons such as the Registrar and Stockbrokers. You assume the risk that DAIL, the Custodian and other Persons do not or are not able to perform their obligations in respect of TraCRs (e.g. in the event of the Persons’ insolvency). If these persons do not perform their obligations in a timely fashion or at all, it may affect: — the price of the TraCRs; — your ability to buy or sell TraCRs; and — the time it takes to process any Application, Cancellation Request or Sale Request. This is the potential issue with TraCRs – counterparty risk - is an “unsponsored product” as the offshore company is not involved in the creation, trading or operation of the TraCR product in Australia in any way. The issuer of a TraCR has no relationship with the listed company that has issued the underlying shares – so if they go bust, or the company owned in the TraCRr goes bust, lose lose potential What Process Fee is charged? Since you instructed your Authorised Broker to submit your application (rather than submitting the Application directly to the Registrar), DAIL would not charge the Process Fee. If you submitted your Application directly to the Registrar, DAIL would have charged you the Issuance Fee plus the Process Fee of A$40.00. Fees – Insurance fees of around 0.125% for the purchase amount   Other options – Trading platforms like Stake Just note that trading name of Hellostake Limited - authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority While they have an AFSL – Do have some fees – Major Fees – FX – US$0.70 per $100 – have to buy using other currency – so in AUD about a 1% clip ($1 per $100) Few other platforms are available to buy international shares – which is a potentially better strategy than the structure of TraCrs when liquidity in markets is solely reliant on central banks – Difference is counterparty risk to not That is when it comes to individual shareholdings – How I do international shares is through managed fund and ETF structure While can't be picky in individual shares – can focus on sectors or managers who specialise in what you are after – Buy sells are lower – 0.3%-0.5%, so less than half of Stake – plus picking up hundreds of international shares in the hands of investors whose whole job is just to pay attention to one sector and trade it – Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you want to get in contact you can do so here: http://financeandfury.com.au/contact/  

Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley and Digital Travel Show Host Chris Torress discuss the major events of 2019 for the Tours and Activities Industry. includes: OTAs for tour operators. Good or a bad thing or both? The changing face of the tours and activities OTA landscape. Booking.com pulling out of the Experiences sector (for now.) Massive changes at Expedia. What exactly is Groupon doing in the tours and activities space? How was Arival 2019 in Orlando for Shane and Chris? What did we learn? What did we enjoy? We give you our opinions on that res tech debate between Peek, FareHarbor, Checkfront, and Rezdy. Who is our Tour Operator/Tourpreneur of the Year? And Much More

Welcome to the post-series commentary! Today we'll be doing a round-table Q & A session where we get a chance to ask each other questions. For your convenience, I have listed all of the questions discussed and their approximate time-stamp below. Part 1: Ask the Players 1. To all (from Nathaniel): How did character vision match end result? 2. To all (from Nathaniel): Favourite session/moment? (31 min) 3. To Kirk (from Richard): Was Bear always going to turn out to be your son? (53 min) 4. To Chris (from Filip): How/when did the religious aspect of Zero develop? (55 min) 5. To Chris (from Kirk): Who was Janus? (1hr 3 min) 6. To Richard (from Chris): Why was QB a Samoid? (1 hr 13 min) 7. To Richard (from Filip): Why "Quick Brown Fox"? (1 hr 15 min) 8. To Filip (from Richard): What was in the shed that was opened with the key you gave your sister? (1 hr 16 min) 9. To Kirk (from Filip): Was it tough playing Kattix? (1 hr 21 min) 10. To Chris (from Kirk): Is it tough to play the face of the party? (this is in response to the previous question) (1 hr 28 min) 11. To Richard (from Kirk): Why did you play a maverick, knowing you wouldn't be captain? (1 hr 33 min) 12. To all (from Chris): What motivated your actions in session one? (1 hr 37 min) Part 2: Ask the GM 1. From Kirk: Why did you choose "Edge of the Empire"? (1 hr 44 min) 2. From Richard: Why did you pick on QB? (1 hr 51 min) 3. From Filip: What were some other questions we could've asked the Creuss on Cormund? (1 hr 55 min) 4. From Chris: What was at the bottom of Fixta? Could we have "really seen"? (1 hr 58 min) 5. From Richard: Did you have multiple endings? Would you have let us die? (2 hr 6 min) 6. From Kirk: What places did we miss? (2 hr 15 min) 7. From Richard: Who caused the Jorun pox? (this occurs while we're still going through question 6) (2 hr 17 min)

In Part 8 of the Who or What Series, on the only Business Networking Podcast on iTunes, Chris Winfield aka “The Super Connector”, Amy Jo Martin from the Why Not Now? Podcast and Edwin Arroyave from Skyline Security talk to your host Travis Chappell about whether they think who you know or what you know is more important, and why. Episode Highlights: Chris Winfield Anyone can be an expert at something, so who you know is most important. It’s not just who you know, it’s what’s the level of those relationships. Chris talks about a time when a connection lead to a moment of success, it happens every single day. Your bank account is directly related to your mindset. How to add value to someone without expecting something in return. Ask people questions, they love talking about themselves. Enthusiasm is underrated and people want to be seen and heard. Chris has daily routines to ensure he’s in the right state of mind. There’s nothing that will just make you happy, it’s more about the journey. Amy Jo Martin What you know will help you meet who you want to know. Get better at your craft because it will help you connect with more like-minded people. Listen and understand what the tone and trends are with what you want to know. Find ways to start implementing what you know. Amy talks about when a connection led to a moment of success. Edwin Arroyave Who you know and what you know go hand in hand and you have to hang out with people who are doing better than you. If you have a why then the what will come naturally. Ignorance gives you fear. Knowledge gives you confidence. If you don’t have a “why” your urgency doesn’t stay high. 3 Key Points: Your bank account is directly related to your mindset. What you know will help you connect to the right people to know. Humble yourself and hang out with people who are doing better than you. Tweetable Quotes: “It’s not just who you know, it’s what’s the level of those relationships.” -Chris “What you know will always trump who you know.” -Amy “Money attracts money, if you have a good success record people will want to do business with you.” -Edwin Resources Mentioned: Visit Travis’ website at Buildyournetwork.co (http://www.buildyournetwork.co/) Learn more about mentorships and masterminds for FREE at freemmcourse.com/enroll (http://www.freemmcourse.com/join) Download Meet Your Hero at travischappell.com/hero (http://travischappell.com/hero) Explode Your Network at travischappell.com/explode (http://travischappell.com/explode) Book Recommendation: The Millionaire Morning (https://www.themillionairemorning.com/) by Lewis Howes For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy (https://www.acast.com/privacy)

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]  

Who is our third host, Chris? What’s his deal? Why did he get into teaching? (Hint: it has to do with bugs!)

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]  

INVASION SPECIAL: It's a full-on studio invasion as Chris faces the wrath of The Reptilian Commander. Why is he angry? Who is Melvin? Where is Chris? What does he have against Bennigan's? And which side is Jinx REALLY on? The answers begin here... --TRANSMISSION INCOMING-- www.thejustdontnetwork.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dont-shoot-the-messenger/support

On this weeks episode of reThink Real Estate, we discuss ways to clear your mind and focus on your business. There are hundreds of headlines vying for our attention which serve as little more than a distraction to our businesses. We discuss our thoughts on what to pay attention to and what to ignore so that our businesses don't suffer. Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 14:41 RTRE 55 –  Pay Attention to What Matters 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 am Chris here with Christian. Nate can't join us today. He is too busy selling homes. What is going on Christian? [Christian]: Not much just running into the office after frantically dropping off my son at school and yeah trying to stay cool. What are we gonna talk about today? [Chris]: What is going on in real estate. There is some headlines out on Inman. Open Door picks up another 300 million dollars at a reported 3.8 billion dollar evaluation. Caldwell [phonetics] does some rebranding and agents how to become influencers.  [Christian]: Yeah I was really enjoying the comment section of the Caldwell [phonetics] branding. That is always gold you know seeing what people decide to what hill they decide to dive on [inaudible] [laughter] with rebranding and the broker decided to… [Chris]: Well brokerage that are not at and even agents…Everybody has an opinion and everybody wants to voice their opinion in trivial [censored]. I mean remember with NAR. NAR changed the logo last year. And it threw up such a sting that they changed it back.  [Christian]: Did they change it back? I didn't notice. [Chris]: Oh yeah yeah they…So… [Christian]: 100.000 down the drain. [Chris]: So they did a boxed R. The cube with the R on it. And then it threw such a sting that they got rid of it. They spend like 300 million dollars for some astronomical…  [Christian]: It was like 300.000. [Chris]: Yeah it was a lot of money. [Christian]: That's a lot of money for yeah, changing one R into a different type of R so… [Chris]: Yeah and then everybody hated it so… [Christian]: People do. It's funny as we're kind of going over the headlines of what is happening. What is getting all the buzz in real estate. You brought up a good point that all this stuff probably has nothing to do with my business or your business or any agents actually doing business. It's all distractions and shiny objects.  [Chris]: Yeah I mean for a…it gives people an excuse to not focus on doing what they need to do which is sell real estate. Or train their agents to sell real estate if you're a broker. You know it's like watching the local news right? It takes up a lot of time, but what is the same news every single day? Somebody died, somebody got robbed, something broke in the city and somebody is doing something crazy for consumers.  [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: That is the same news every single day and people spend hours of their day, in the morning and the evening paying attention to that [censored]. [Christian]: Right. Well it is funny too I mean you know kind of running with that example. Because what we're talking about here is information, right? We're talking about our awareness of our world around us or what we considered the world around us. It is interesting if you do a little like kind of historic reading of like how technology changes, how we interact with each other and with technology you know like the value of information has changed from 100 plus years ago where the value was largely isolated to your local community. And it only had value if applied to your life directly. You know if like “What is the rainfall gonna be so I know what my crops are gonna be this year”. That's is what mattered. Nowadays most information is human neutral stories. Which means 99% of it has absolutely no bearing on your life whatsoever. [Chris]: What did…What did Breaderman [phonetics] write about today? And usually when he writes something it is pretty good. But you know like what is Zillow announcing. What evaluation is iBuyers gonna have now? And it all is… [Christian]: Sure in 10 years 60% of the market is gonna be iBuyers. So…That may or may not be true but what to do with my business today you know like some of that stuff can inform but by in large nothing comes of it and it doesn't really affect your stuff. Like you know so the question really becomes why do we get so easily distracted, wrapped around excel about stuff that doesn't help our clients or doesn't get us more business or doesn't grow our brokerage. It is just distractions… [Chris]: People need something to talk about. [Christian]: You mean today. Right. [Chris]: It gives people something to talk about at the water cooler. “Oh what about this? What about that?” But you know what, the water cooler doesn't make you money? Does it?  [Christian]: Yeah but you know it gives you that dopamine to be upset about something. Or enraged about something or worried. [Chris]: It allows people to feel about things that aren't important. [Christian]: Yeah. And I wouldn't say like these things aren't irrelevant. Necessary. But by in large it might affect things years down the road. But again you know it's energy. It's…You know you've got  a limited emotional and mental energy and response so much of it on Facebook or on this you know kind of what's the big distractor and whatever else.  As opposed to building something, doing our business, staying in our lane. Doing our thing. You know like when I was at a larger franchise yeah there is people shuffling around doing transactions but mostly it was people sitting around [censored] about other people's business or “Have you seen what that person is doing or that person is like”. What does that have to do with you? Like mind your own business you know.  [Chris]: “I think our broker is sleeping with the loan officer…[crosstalk]. I think our broker is sleeping with the loan officer”. “Really?” Yeah I mean think like that that those permeate offices and corrupt culture. And you know from a macro level it is important to understand where the industry is going. So that you know how to kind of steer and navigate the industry with your business. But for the most part every other day when you see a new evaluation all you need to know is venture capital funds are putting money at high buyers. That's it.  [Christian]: True. Yeah. Well for the average agent like you know if Compass is growing in a market or Open Door has you know some hundreds of million dollar you know the funding you know round fund how does that affect your business? You know maybe if your brokerage is thinking about the future and how you want to structure your business it could you know just looking at trends but I mean I think a lot of it comes back to you know, we've got limited time and resources. Why are we spending it on these things that don't directly impact us? [Chris]: It's easy. Because it is easy to talk about that. And it is harder to go in and put the work into growing our business and to talk about that. It's not…It's not cool to talk about the work that people don't want to do or that aren't doing. [Christian]: Trust me… [Chris]: And when you're at the water cooler and you're sitting there talking about “Oh I just made this call and that call” and people are like “Eh” and they clam up and they're crossing their arms because they don't talk about that because they're not making their calls. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: They're not out there prospecting. They're not talking about you know, the next best thing in growing their business. For a couple of reasons. So there is the idea of competition selling a lot of offices. They don't come up at their training and their culture from an abundant perspective. They think everybody is competing against one another and therefore they don't share ideas. And then you know the other side of that is they don't know what the [censored] they're doing. So they… [Christian]: I mean I think part of that…That is practically true but I think the other side of it is most agents know what they need to be doing but they're not willing to do it. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: You know and so it comes down to why do so many agents hate being real estate agents [laughter]. You know they're not willing to like do the work. You know and thinking about this from a brokerage perspective, you know like I have had to think about whether the different models we could have. How much do we provide? Do we provide leads? Do we just provide systems? Do we provide nothing? You know and we try to do like this middle road of competitive commission split with the essential tools to help them be successful with serving their clients. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Christian]: But you know than there are some models that like provide you know leads and this and that. You know initially that is like “OK well that would be great if we got to a point when there is like abundance of incoming you know business that we could refer at those leads or whatever”. But at the end of the day if a brokerage is providing all that to their agents than what the hell do you need agents for if they're not…I mean what is their job if they can't even provide their own business? [Chris]: A brokerage at that point becomes a big team.  [Christian]: Right because essentially I mean that is what you're doing if you're providing leads. You're doing everything for that agent. They're just sitting there you know. [Chris]: Wrapped up and happy. [Christian]: Yeah they get it handed to them. It's like I mean the point of brining that up is you know what is the role of an agent if they're not willing to like do anything. If they're not willing to provide their own business, grow their business. Find new clients. You know than there can be a lot of different ways. That's not just I mean your classic cold call meeting. I mean you can do so many different things. But the point of it is you have to be doing certain actions everyday to move that ball forward. [Chris]: Oh yeah.  [Christian]: If they're not sure how to spend their time talking about the thread of Open Door or Compass or the NAR or Lumion [phonetics] Legal Battle or how that may change the industry like yeah that is interesting but it's not gonna help you in your business today, you know.  [Chris]: Definitely. I think that you hit it right on the money. If it is not gonna help you in your business today I don't think you need to be paying that much attention to it. Get back. Put the horse blinders on. Look down. One step in front of the other. And you know what a lot of agents don't do is they don't go out and try new things. They will just sit there and look at what other people are doing but they don't actually go out and try something on their own. [Christian]: Well they'll poop on it. They're gonna be like “Oh that is the stupidest thing ever. Until it starts working and they try to copy it. [Chris]: There was a…there was a video that I saw going around and you know gets mixed reactions. There is an agent. Erica Gotiwolf [phonetics] she did a home tour where her entire body was blurred out and looked like she was naked. I am sure she wasn't but she well picture it was naked doing a naked home tour.  A couple of days having that video out, property is under contract. She has 5 listing appointments and 2 referrals. There was a lot of negative feedback on that video but you know what half of the people really thought she was ballsy for doing it. And she got additional business out of it. You know I shared that example with my agents this morning. And low and behold they you know I think a light clicked and they started realizing you know what not everybody has to love what I am gonna do in order to be successful at this. So… [Christian]: Well and the reality is if you're doing something different or better you're probably getting negative feedback than positive. [Chris]: Definitely. [Christian]: And you just have to…You have to know that the people who you know the haters are people who are gonna be stuck in mud and go and hate anything that is new. Don't worry about them. You know if you're doing you know Sutton you know naked home tours, if the goal is to get more eyes in that listing for your client, that is affective. You know you called the stick or, you know, whatever but it was effective and aligned her wish people who likes the outside of the box marketing ideas so got her more business for her ideal client base. Who cares what people who don't understand that think. [Chris]: Absolutely. So I think the whole point of this episode is don't pay attention to everything that is in the headlines in real estate because it is going to distract you everyday. It's all the same stuff. Somebody has gotten more of an evaluation. Somebody is telling you how you can become an influencer. Somebody is saying that this company did something else. Focus on your business and just the how…if you pay enough attention to the headlines you don't understand where the industry is going. Don't worry about all the shiny objects. [Christian]: I mean at the end of the day I wanna say…You know I don't want to say “Don't pay attention to this stuff” but just be intentional about how much time you're spending. I mean I know like people who are really intentional and really killing it on social media they're not doing it that way because they're on social media all day but they're doing it because “This half hour is dedicated to me building my social media” and they don't touch it the rest of the day. So they're actually productive. Do the same thing with these headlines. “OK here is my half hour to read the most sensational headlines and then move on to my day”.  [Chris]: All right. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of re:Think Real Estate. Stick with us. Go to rtrepodcast.com. Make sure you sign up for our newsletter so you get notified every time a new episode drops. Thank you so much for tuning in and please make sure that you give us a 5-start review on iTunes. 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 It's easy to for some agents to get along well with their peers. For others, not so much. Tune in today as we discuss the skills necessary to be a pro that other pros want to be around. Here are the secrets to playing nice in the sandbox. The rules are simple. Play nice in the sand box. Rethink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 31:05 RTRE 36 –  Erica Ramus on Promoting Women Leaders [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]: Hi everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. I am your host Chris Lazarus here with Nathan White, Christian Harris. Guys how are you? [Christian]: Hey. [Nathan]: Hey, I am fantastic and beautiful. [Chris]: Hey Nate how is that CRM going? [Nathan]: I knew that was coming why didn't I [inaudible] [laughter]. The think about my CRM. I am embarrassed. I swear people it is happening. It is going to get out of my head and… [Christian]: We do know you swear a lot. [Chris]: Yeah you do swear a lot. [Nathan]: Yes I am going like…Man it's gonna be bad. It's gonna be bad in my office. I am gonna have to shut the door. There is going to be a lot of curse words probably. Probably. But you know I drink a lot of caffeine and I swear a lot people, if you don't know. So yeah we're getting there. It is process right. So I should…The episode after this hands down I will give you some feedback. [Chris]: It's OK. We're gonna keep your feet to the fire. [Christian]: Focus that caffeine and rage to getting your CRM up and running. [Chris]: Definitely. So.. [Nathan]: Yeah I am going to. [Chris]: For everybody tuning in if you get a chance, if you haven't already. Go to and check out our website and our new newsletter at rtrepodcast.com. If you go there, you can click on the little box. Type in your name and email address and every week when we launch a new episode you will be notified. So this week we have an amazing guest. Her name is Erica Ramus. She is the broker owner and magic maker at Ramus Realty. Erica welcome. [Erica]: Thanks guys. [Chris]: It's great to have you on. For our agents who are not in your neck of the woods, why don't you tell us a bit about you and your company? [Erica]: Sure. I am the broker of a small independent boutique company in rural Pennsylvania. I run the middle of the North East. And so most of the cities around. I am very, very wear off. And we have less than 10 agents. I have 8 agents and me and an apprentice in the office. And while we are small in boutique we are mighty. So, we have only 8 people in the office but we have 13% market share.  [Chris]: What? [Erica]: Yeah. The largest companies in the area have 15, 20 and 80 agents. And consistently we have…typically we have…I checked yesterday. We have 40 sites pending currently. And the biggest company has 75.  [Chris]: Wow. That is incredible. [Erica]: So highly productive.  [Chris]: Very highly productive. So when we first met it was…You know it feels like this entire podcast is right around the Inman crowd because Erica and I we met out at Inman. Christian was there also when we were doing the…feeding the homeless. Before the conference started and we were at the same panel about being a broker and non-producing.  So you operate your brokerage a little bit different than I do. Which is you know I am the trainer right I don't go and do really anything. I hope people build their own careers. Tell us a little bit about how your office is run. How are…how are you able to obtain 13% market share with only 8 agents under you? [Erica]: I think of my office as running almost like a super team.  [Chris]: OK. [Erica]: So my name is on the door and before I was in real estate I was a magazine publisher. And I had multiple magazines which…one was a local scoop living magazine. So you probably have Atlanta Life or Atlanta Living or Seattle Living. Something like that. [Chris]: Yeah. [Erica]: So I started that and everybody in town knew me. I was the magazine lady. I was selling ads. And hawking my magazine. And than I got into real estate so when I got in I was almost an immediate success because everybody already knew my face. And I used the magazine to my benefit as well. All of my houses of course were advertised in my own magazine. [Chris]: Nice. [Erica]: So it as a great jump-start. But I built a team under me. I very quickly realized that I couldn't service the leads that were coming in. And so than I left to go out on my own. I built a team up of people who just honestly want to be fed. I produce the leads. I state myself as the reign maker ruler. I do all the marketing on the back end. My face is on almost everything.  And when we're agent advertising my name is on the door so I have very strict control over quality. I do all the marketing and produce all the materials myself. The leads come in, the get filtered through the agents and than I am to deal with after  in the background if something goes wrong. But that is my role. I see it as feeding the agents and making sure that everybody is happy and productive.  [Chris]: And recently you were telling me I think a couple of months ago that you started doing a lot more travel recently and talking and really try moving into more a leadership role within the industry right? [Erica]: yep. So I have always written. Obviously magazine writing was my background and blogging. And so I have always written articles and so I am speaking locally. But recently in the past 2, 3 years I started taking up national speaking engagements. I spoke at Better Homes and Gardens about 2 years ago at their last region event. And Inman and National…NAR. And so my inner circuit.  [Chris]: I am impressed.  [Christian]: Awkward pause OK. [Chris]: Awkward pause.  [Christian]: OK. [Chris]: There we go. Alright there we go. So…So you…Inman, Better Homes and Gardens, NAR. Now you're on one of the committees with NAR too right? [Erica]: Yep. Next year I am on the research and development committee. This past 2 years I have been on the housing opportunity committee. I have dome some professional development so… [Chris]: That's fantastic. So the reason I am bringing this up is because there has been a lot of talk. And a lot of focus on women leaders within our industry. Because let's face it, Christian, Nate and I are the majority. I am sorry we're the minority in real estate. This industry is almost 60% female and the leadership is skewed the other direction.  So tell us what it is like to be not only a broker owner as a female because that is something we will never know but also to be putting yourself out there in the leadership role as a speaker and travelling across the US to talk about helping other women to step into a leadership role and grow their business also. [Erica]: That is something I have always been passionate about, it is owning my own business. I started my own businesses from scratch. When I was in my early 20s. And it was the magazine business. I was not content about just being the editor or publisher. I wanted to own the magazine. And I did. So I have always been an entrepreneur.  And once I started in real estate I knew very quickly I either wanted an ownership role in my company or I was gonna start my own. So to me it was never a question of why would I try or why would I do it. I question all the time why ever women don't step out into leadership roles. And why they don't start their own brokerages. A lot of women seem to express that they're unhappy where they are. And they search for other brokers. When I was unhappy I just started my own company.  So…But I think it is something that is inside of you. It is innate. And a lot of women I believe are afraid to take the chance. It was a huge risk when I went out on my own and I had a young son and my husband but who totally supports me and everything I do. All my crazy ideas. But you know why don't women say “I want to make a change”? And instead of jumping from broker to broker “I want t start my own company” or “I want to be a manager in the firm”.  But almost all the managers and owners in my area they're all men. So…Local especially when the kids are young and if you have children you can relate. I know you have children and I know Christian and Chris you both have young children. But I didn't have a husband at home taking care of the kids. And he works too so that was challenge and that is probably why I didn't travel and didn't do a lot of speaking. Occasionally I would travel but I didn't do the NAR stuff. I didn't do the contract until the kids were out of the house and it was much easier. Now I just have to worry about the dog. [Christian]: So Erica being the reign maker at your office you mentioned kind of matching leads and giving hose out and kind of working all the back end stuff and being very involved with the transactions. What is your means of acquiring that new business. Do you kind of do the traditional you buy them or are you just a known entity that you actually got a lot of community coming to you? When they have real estate needs? [Erica]: WE do both because while I certainly have enough organic coming into the site…The site is…I don't know 15 years old basically. We get great Google traffic on our own but we also do buy some leads. So specifically we have about 35% of our closing will be repeat referral business. Out at a given point and the remainder are just walk-in office street. We have a very prominent location on a busy highway corner. And we also have a little bit of Zillow paid. Not much. We actually cut that back significantly. But Zillow pushes a lot of Facebook ads. And we get great leads just from Facebook and also some Google paid.  [Chris]: Has there ever been anything that has happened to you that you think would discourage another woman agent from becoming their own business owner or stepping up into a leadership role either on NAR or on a national speaking arrangement? [Erica]: I think there still is a disconnect between strong women and the belief that strong women versus a strong man in negotiating or even running a company, the woman is not necessarily respected as much as the man. I just…I still see that. And I believe that a man who is negotiating a problem on a deal who is a broker and if he is perceived as being strong is not necessarily being perceived as difficult. He is just being a strong businessman and negotiating or advocating for his client.  Whereas women when we step up to the table and argue on behalf of our client or try to push something through that is strong in our belief we're seen in a negative light as opposed to a positive right. And I haven't necessarily seen this happen on a national level. Every meeting and committee that I have been involved with in the state national has been very respectful. But I see it locally. Most of the brokers around me are all men The managers are men and there is definitely still the stigma against the strong women.  [Chris]: In your office what is the breakdown on demographic, men versus women that are working with you? [Erica]: I have one fantastic man [laughter]. [Chris]: One fantastic man so you have 7 agents working for you that are… [Erica]: All women.  [Chris]: All female. So…Christian and I are running our own office. We each have our own company and obviously we do not fully understand the female experience. If we wanted to create an environment that is conductive for females to come in and be successful and grow their business, what should we do as male brokers in an industry that is 60% female? [Erica]: I would say bring them along with you. Bring them up and along. Bring them to meetings. Bring them if you're going to say chambers of commerce function. Or local meetings. Board meetings. Bring them with you and mentor them up. I think women have to be told that it is OK. It is OK to be strong. It is OK to get a babysitter some nights and go out to business functions. You don't have to be home every night with the kids. I… Women feel guilty about this. I know I did. Getting my broker's license I had to have my best friend at the house from 6 to 10 Thursday nights when I took my classes. And I felt terrible that they were in school all day with my friends rather than with me. But…You have to empower them and also listen to them. You should listen to. A lot of women get stepped on their voices get stepped on and they don't necessarily feel like they are heard.  In my office meetings for example the man in my office he's named Will. He is fantastic. He is very open to giving suggestions at our office meetings. His voice is very vocal. And I have watched some of the women step back a little bit when he speaks and I will pull them out of their shell and say “That is a great idea Will. What do you think about it Stephanie?” And pull them up so that they are not shrinking violets in the background. [Chris]: That's a…I think that is fantastic. we'll have to make sure that we are doing things like that because you know right now we…at least my office is predominantly female. So we try and create an environment where no ideas are really shunt. Right we want everybody to feel empowered that when they come into the office their ego is left at the door and everybody is here to either better themselves or better the people around them.  OK If they're not in the office for one of those 2 reasons they're not welcome because every…So we want that environment where people feel “Oh hey you know what everybody's voice is heard and everybody gets the same amount of focus form the office on how they can grow their business.” And I think one of the challenges being a male broker is that we just instinctively we yell at each other. I mean guys, that's what we do. [Erica]: Right. [Chris]: So when we sit in meeting we're gonna yell at each other. Politely but we're gonna basically be vocal. And what I have learnt is that a lot of women let that happen. They kind of step back so I really like that. That's one of the things that I am gonna have to work on. When I am in those meetings recognizing when they are kind of stepping back and binging them forward. That is great. Thank you Erica. [Erica]: What's the body language? And you know when someone has something to say but they're not gonna say it. And I pull them out of it and make them say it because I wanted them to know their voice is important to me.  [Christian]: Yeah I thing that is important as a leader whether male or female. You know people have different personality types and you know kind of as a type females in general tend to be not as aggressive. So…But you know I know that guys are like that too kind of pick them out like “Hey you know I see you haven't said anything during this meeting, what do you think about this” you  know and try to pull them back in. [Chris]: I think that is excellent advice. So take note brokers. Male brokers. This is what you gotta be doing because face it women are on the move and it's…They're the majority we're the minority, I am the user minority because I am not only a man, but I am a millennial. We make up 4% of the industry. So…It's important to pay attention to this stuff. Nate? [Nathan]: So to pick back on that Erica I always like to ask our guests questions that we have on the show. So the first one I would almost think maybe it would be applicable maybe I am wrong, but first question I want to ask you is how is failure and current failure set you up for later success? Question 2 is what are bad recommendations you hear in our profession and then the third one is if you can have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it what would it say? So go [laughter]. [Erica]: OK and the first question is easy. The biggest failure in my entire life was when I had the magazine. I bought the magazine from my prior boss. I got tired of doing all the work. That's what I thought. Doing all the work and not being the boss so I just bought them out. And I blamed the pregnancy on that one.  So I bought it without looking at the numbers without the advice of my attorney, my accountant and my husband. [laughter]. The trifecta and a couple of years later I…the whole industry changed. Destruction came in. The disruptors but we already hear them all the time in our industry. And domino started falling and I was 3 quarters of a million in debt. In this tiny little rural world and I somehow managed to start a second magazine which actually was successful but I learned huge, huge lessons in that first failure, like when you get a pay, pay roll, you don't use a discover card. You know or huge lessons that I never repeated again.  All having to do with my ego and the handling of overhead. Which leads me to number 2. So handling the overhead whether you're the broker or the agent. Everyday my agents come to me I feel with this great news scam. This great new product that somebody wants them to buy it too. “It's only 99 dollars a month. It's only 25 dollars a week. Only…It's only 100 dollars to put a business card up on our program.” You know over and over again. “It's only…It's only”.  And there are people who make lots of money selling products off the backs of agents who should not be spending that money. So, I warned my new agents “Please don't spend any money on any lead generators. I will make your leads for you. Just sit back and work the leads. And do not ever say it's only, because in January when you're adding up your taxes it's gonna be a huge number”. So that to me is one follows the other. Keep your overhead low. [Chris]: Shiny object syndrome.  [Erica]: Yeah the new shiny object thing. [Nathan]: Yeah we have talked about that before but that is a great recommendation. I mean awesome. Awesome recommendation.  [Chris]: “It's only gonna cost me my success”. [laughter] [Erica]: Yeah and than they say “You only need to sell one house”. If you only sell one house you can't pay off the thing. Now I don't want to hear that. [laughter]. And then I guess my billboard would be “Be fearless”. Just that's my motto “Be fearless”. I am… [Chris]: Where would you put it? [Erica]: I would… [Nathan]: I didn't ask where. [Erica]: Yeah he didn't ask where so I don't have to answer that question. [laughter] [Chris]: OK OK ,be fearless. [Nathan]: Yeah I mean literally the question is “If you could have it anywhere with anything on it…” I mean it doesn't matter where it is it's what's on it I guess. Is the message. And be fearless. [Erica]: Yeah. [Chris]: I love that. So Erica we were talking the other day and you were currently working on an article for Inman. About how we focus our business. This kind of piggy bags off of our last episode with Billy a little bit. So what is your philosophy? You are running this business, you've got 8 agents, you are the reign maker. They are killing it. You've got great market share. What is your business philosophy about how you treat your clients and how does that set you apart? [Erica]: I…A lot of brokers say “We're agent centric, we're agent focused, we're all about the agent”. I believe the broker owns the client and I am client focused. It's all about the client. If you serve the client well the agents will be well fed and taken care of and that side of the coin takes care of itself. But it all begins with the broker and the client and so our entire office is very client centric. Even to the fact that if somebody is working with the client they're not handling it well or they are not mixing well with this person, they're getting frustrated. We will just pull them off that one and say “Give it to this person”. And switch them. It's about the client not about you and your commission or the money coming into the office. [Christian]: Preach it sister.  [Erica]: So…Say it again. [Christian]: I said preach it sister. [Nathan]: Preach it is right. I mean if you go by even our last episode part of this. Again it's client. This is like another one of the common themes in our podcast right guys? I mean and lady.  [Chris]: It's tuning in. [Nathan]: Listen listen, this is not rocker science. We are not reinventing the wheel. We are not…We are not coming up with something new. We're actually just going in and doing what we should be doing and taking care of the client. Good Gosh I mean we can't say it enough. But I mean why do we have to keep saying it? [Erica]: Because people are too dump to do it. It's simple.  [Christian]: Right. Well and I think it's because we push it back against the status quo of the industry. The franchises… [Chris]: They're like KPIs KPIs KPIs. [Christian]: All of that stuff is set up to be focused on sales and numbers and money and getting as many agents as possible you know. [Erica]: Yeah. [Chris]: Recruit retain recruit retain. [Christian]: Exactly. So I mean being client focused or caring about people is not…You are going against the flow of how the whole industry works. [Nathan]: Right yeah. You know there are stats and all that good. I had an agents yesterday…sag way real quick. Sorry. They chased bank at their home office. I get invited to their…their first time or their home buyer programs. And it is great being a chased preferred agent but they are having to be another agent there that is new and one of the other agent speaks and said “Hey we haven't lost the house and in our competitive market you probably will.” And she said “Not me” And I was like oh come on just stop. Like here we go with the ego and not making it about the client, you're making it about you. And can we just…More people. I am gonna stop. Just stop making it about you there. [laughter] [Chris]: Yeah it's the ego. [Erica]: And brokers can be afraid to get people out of their office when they don't fit not only the culture but the way the agent should be. I terminated one who was all about her. She rebelled on a client because the client was 10 minutes late on an appointment [laughter]. And the client forwarded me the text message and she said “I don't have time to wait for people at houses”. I was “You need to leave now” [laughter]. [Nathan]: If this was online and like a quote I would be doing that arrow and this…This this right… [Chris]: Yes. [Nathan]: Man that is…Yes. Don't be afraid. [Chris]: One of the…One of the things that I have learned over the last few years in kind of the leadership role of running a company is your culture that you build and that you operate is based off of thousands of tiny interactions. When you have people like that the ego, the meltdown, the trip, like they're just gonna suck and drain all the energy away from the people that are really trying to do good. So I couldn't agree with you more Erica. You just gotta get rid of those people. Unfortunately, I think there is too many brokers that if you got a pulse and a license you're… [Erica]: When you're being judged…When you're in a major franchise and you're being judged by the head count in  your office…I don't judge myself. People ask me...I will go to Inman and the first word out of their mouth is how many agents I have in the office. So I have… [Christian]: It's the metrics of measuring success. [Erica]: Exactly. I am proud of my market share. I am proud of the fact that my agents do a minimum of 24 sites a year. I have 2 that are doing 40 this year and one who is approaching 60. That is a lot of site. [Chris]: That is a lot of site. [Nathan]: That is slaying the dragon. [Chris]: I think that having…A lot of people put pressure on the metrics. “Oh number of agents, volume sold”. But I think the biggest metric is per person productivity. Because I think if those numbers win the per person productivity I think you are destroying Remax who is the…I mean their franchise on average is the highest per person productivity at like 16 sites per agent on average.  They don't even bring in KW because they are the biggest but they don't have the numbers per agent that KW has. That Remax has. And your average real estate agent in the industry is gonna do like what? 3, .4 deals per year? And that's just sites. So 3,4 sites per year I think is the average. And you are destroying that. And that is fantastic and you're doing it with a complete math of 10 people.  [Christian]: Yeah and that's the…That's the business number side of it. Anything else taken into accounts, smaller you know indie brokerages like ours you know can have the luxury of being able to be in charge, in control of developing that culture, how happy are your agents? You know, like on Remax or whatever. You know name any franchise and you know largely they have undefined culture. Like there is no distinguishing factor as to you know….What is like in their office versus anther franchise. Like they're just there to you know have head count. [Chris]: Our office has the best coffee machine. [laughter] Stuff like that. So Erica for any…We've had the theme kind of today of being the woman business owner. For anybody who is thinking about like stepping up like what advice would you give them? [Erica]: I would say that if you're not strong in your leadership skills or don't feel like you're there, that don't know how to be a leader, get a coach, get a mentor. There are at least in my areas there is classes you can take as far as leadership. Or find someone who you admire and ask them to take you under their wing because it really is by osmosis I think in this business and if there is someone in your office who shows promise bring them up with you. I take my agents all the time to chamber of commerce function, to mixers and just have them by my side so they can watch me interacting with other business people an helpfully bring up their confidence level. [Chris]: I love it. That's great. Erica for anybody who wants to get in touch with you and say they've got somebody moving to Pennsylvania or they just want to reach out and pick your brain on some of the things that you have accomplished, what is the best way that they can reach you? [Erica]: They can always call me or email me. My email address is easy, it's my name. ericaramus@gmail.com. And that's –E-R-I-C-A-R-A-M-U-S@gmail. And my phone number is 5704492131. If you google me it's all over. [Chris]: Awesome. Erica thank you so much for taking the time out of your day today to join us here in re:Think Real Estate. For everybody who is listening in please visit us. Go to rtrepodcast.com. Subscribe to the newsletter so every week when we launch a new episode you're gonna get notified. Thank you so much for tuning in. 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]  

Keeping a positive outlook while building a business is not always the easiest. Today we talk about the tips and tricks we use to keep our minds focused and free from distraction and negative thoughts. Mindset matters. Real Estate Podcast Transcript Audio length 28:12 RTRE 52 – Keeping a Successful Mindset 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]: Everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate.  I am Chris Lazarus here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. What is up guys? [Nathan]: [crosstalk] [Christian]: I am possibly feeling good. Kind of good mental outlook. [Chris]: You got a good mental outlook?  [Christian]: I am happy. [Chris]: What about you Nate? How is your mental outlook going today? [Nathan]: As strong as usual.  [Chris]: Fantastic. [Christian]: All the exercise. All this endorphin is gone. [Nathan]: It's also about not letting the…not letting that other devil on the shoulder creep in. [Chris]: Oh yeah definitely. It's always there. Today everybody we are talking about the mental state. The attitude to be peak performance, businessman, person. Whatever you wanna call it. But we're gonna talk about how your attitude and your metal state can impact not only your business but our personal life. Your family.  Everything that you do is impacted by your mental state. So guys who wants to take it off with the first point on this? Nate you're doing a lot with…with running and just being all around crazy person. So why don't we start with you? [Nathan]: Yeah I mean I guess you can. Sure. Whatever. Huh. [laughter] The…you know we talk about mental state right. I guess that's a question I get asked a lot. You know they say “How do you run so far? How do you do what you do?”.  And you know I tell people it's really it's not the physical. It's a couple of things. One is the mind. It is…it is having the mental fortitude to as we…as I said when we were getting into the show, talking that other guy off your shoulder who is telling you the whole time “You know you can quit”.  The other side of the mental state if you would is commitment. You know I probably said it before in our podcast. I talk about Ritual says it but you know he says it the moment of commitment the universe will conspire to assist you. There's Casey Neistat who is a filmmaker. He has a plan or a recipe if you would for success. That he guarantees to work. And I think it is all within this category.  What Casey says is “All you have to do is commit your entire life to something which will result in either 1 of 2 outcomes. Either you will succeed or you will die trying which is in itself its own form of success, right?”.  You know we're always…we're always looking for the easy way to do things either be in life, or even as a realtor. Realtors I think we're the best example of like “Oh wait sweet, that's gonna make me a million dollars. Oh wait look over here that's gonna make me this”. We're looking for the easiest way instead of committing to something and having the right mindset.  I will use us as an example right. We could have been traditional realtors when we said we were gonna set out to do the podcast. And I think you know not knocking on everybody on industry but you know a lot of people would have said “Alright fine after 10 episode…” they call, they call it quits.  [Chris]: They have. [Nathan]: Because the mindset was wrong going into it. When we started this we said before even recording an episode “We're committed to 100 episodes win, lose or draw”. Right. Because we have, we have no way to measure anything by doing it 3 or 4 times. And maybe even 100 is still not where we wanted to be but we stuck with the commitment to do it. Is it a [censored] and a pain the [censored] and do we have to coordinate all these other things that we have to deal with? Yes. [Chris]: At times. [Nathan]: But we are committed. And that takes mindset. Just stay committed to it. Right. I think any of us at any given point could have said “God is this…” You know we probably all said “Is this worth it?”. We have had those moments but you have to fight through the moment of doubt to move past it which generally is very fleeting. And it's quick and then we progress. Right.  So…you know mindsets it's everything we do. It's not just real estate. It's in your personal life and your daily life and your rituals. I mean I could preach about it all day I guess. You know a lot of what I have accomplished I consider myself an average Joe but I think what sets me apart is I have a different mindset.  [Christian]: Yeah I will add to that if I could. [Nathan]: No. [Christian]: I think… [Chris]: No you can't. Nate is gonna talk for this episode. [Nathan]: We don't need your opinion. We're just gonna stop there and work it out. [Christian]: Episode over. I think you're right. I think you know not giving up and being consistent is a big part of it. But I think the mindset as you're going through it and how you respond to you know using the example of the podcast. It takes up time and planning you know. We're blocked out 2 or 3 hours you know every week. Every couple of weeks to knock these out. And you know I could be thinking myself “Oh man this is a pain in the [censored]. I don't have time for this. I don't really like Nate but you know whatever. [laughter]” Whatever are my excuses. [Nathan]: Not liking me is a good one. [Christian]: But…But instead you know I choose to try and focus on “Well this is beneficial. Hopefully we will provide some value to other agents and this thing is gonna start you know being a momentum”. You know it's kind of what do you focus on? Do you wallow in the negatives or do you look towards you know, the positives?  And that's one thing that I think really, really can keep things going. Keep your energy up and just in life will keep you going. Because you could just wide knowingly and try and not give up. But just hate your life and be miserable and you know be an energy suck to everyone around you. Or if your attitude is you know right it will be the other. It will be again life empowering and energy. Giving and inspiring instead of what most people don't like being around. You know.  [Chris]: I think that you know when it comes to the thoughts that people have I think the difference between somebody who is successful and somebody who is not is their ability to control where their focus is going. And I think there is a common misperception by those who are unable to keep a positive attitude about how that happens.  And one of the…I wanna say it was in the Success Principles by Jack Canfield. But one of the best things that I have read is that everybody gets the train of thought. Everybody gets doubt and everybody gets the feeling of optimism at times and everybody struggles with “Is this for me or am I doing the right thing? Am I wasting my time? This is such a pain in the [censored]. I am not seeing the results”.  But the difference between people who are successful and the people who are not is the people who are successful have those thoughts and then they just watch those thoughts you know fly by. Right. Everybody…the train is gonna come and go. You can choose whether to ride it or not. And that's one thing that I have tried to do is that when those come up pay attention to it for a few minutes than get back to work. And you know I don't have time to wallow or think about whether this is gonna work or not. Just get on to the next project. [Christian]: Yeah I think you kind of remind me when you're talking about kind of the thoughts we have. You know because you can just be kind of the positive energy you know feng shui “I am just one with the universe, it's all about the feelings” right. [laughter] How do you get there? You can't just force feelings. [Chris]: No. Yeah. [Christian]: And I think a big part of that is…You know we're talking about intentionality there but I think there is intentionality in your thoughts. You know because like… [Chris]: Definitely. [Christian]: Because we're all…we all have internal voice. Internal dialogue right. We're always telling ourselves there is always a story that we're telling ourselves. Now that story could be full of lies or it could be full of truths. It could be life empowering or life sucking. And so if we're not conscious of… [Chris]: That's good. [Christian]: If we're not conscious of what we're telling ourselves…you know like something bad happens I tell myself and I am subconsciously telling myself “Man there he goes again. I am a total idiot. I am a marron. I can't do anything right. Nothing is gonna work”. Like you're gonna spiral downwards.  But if you're like “OK it's a little setback. I am gonna keep going forward. I am gonna make a suggestion.” You know like that's going to keep you going forward. And if you're not conscious of what we're telling ourselves or what story we're living our lives out of than you know our emotions are gonna be all over the place and we're not gonna know why. Because our thoughts largely will dictate “OK do I respond well to this? My emotions are going to you know get better or am I gonna spiral into the self-sabotaging depression”. Those thoughts that we have and what we're telling ourselves largely will dictate that. [Nathan]: But what did Henry Ford say? He has one of the greatest lines of all time.  [Chris]: Whether you think you can or you can't you're right. [Nathan]: Either way your right. [Christian]: That's right. Exactly. [Nathan]: Believe that like any of the journeys that I have bene on in my life and hell I have been on some. You know they were…they were hard. They were painful. They weren't…they weren't colossi. The reward though was the journey in itself. The not quitting. The really finishing the task, right.  And I think anybody that has been through whatever life experience it may be they are…they already know this. They know what's true. Right? You know I mean so…but it's…it is you know the mind itself it can be your best friend or your worst enemy, right? I mean you know I think and I was doing my 24 hour run and it's 3 a.m. in the morning. You know I've got that guy on my shoulder and that part of my mind going “Why the [censored] are you out here for? What are you doing?” Right.  And at any moment I could have just quit. I could have said “This is enough.” But what I had to realize is that moment of doubt, the moment of fear generally they're very short. They don't last as long as I think one likes to think. If you can get past it than it's OK but you kind of have to…you know you have to commit the daily pressure and what, you know, compels to just progress sometimes. You gotta give yourself you know over and over and over you know…I am good at what I do because I failed a lot. And I think a lot of people when they have failures they…they just quit. [Christian]: Right. But you took those failures and you said “What can I learn and how can I grow?” and not try to give up and not try it ever again because it's risky and painful. Super painful.  [Chris]: And that's the key. Like you learn from the mistakes. You know one of the things that I have seen in being the difference between especially new agents coming into real estate. Those being successful or those that are very fleeting in the industry is how long their outlook is. Because if people are focused on short term , right. If you're focused on “Oh I've gotta get 3 byers in 3 weeks” and that doesn't happen than you get discouraged. OK “Well I've gotta get 3 buyer sin 3 months now, that's a little bit more reasonable”.  But when people start doing things like prospecting and mailing campaigns and maybe they subscribe to do a lead platform like Zillow or Sync or Boom Town or whatever it is, people always expect immediate results and they don't have a long forecast because things don't happen overnight. And if somebody goes into something with a plan of you know “I am gonna try this for 3 months and see if it works” and then 3 months in they haven't…they barely got the system set up and they don't know how to work it yet and they're not getting the results and they throw the hands up and they say “I have been paying for this for 3 months and it's not working”.  People who go in with that kind of mindset have such a completely different and less successful experience than somebody who is like “You know what I am gonna go into it, I am gonna give it 3 months to learn it, 6 months to execute and then I am gonna evaluate in the last 3 months and I am gonna commit a year to this and see if this is a system that I want to continue with”.  And people who go in and they study it and work at it diligently…It's like a CRM right? What's the best CRM? The one you use. Doesn't matter the software. Not to be a jab Nate. [Nathan]: No it's OK. [Chris]: [laughter] But you know when it comes to the fortitude of how well somebody is gonna be…How likely their success is. If they have a long outlook right, if they have a 2 year business plan and something happens to them at months 3 but they know that they're in it for 2 years they're a lot less likely to be negatively impacted by whatever that event is at month 3. They're like “I got a long way to go”. And then they just get back on the saddle. Versus who is like “OK I am gonna give it 6 months”. And than they come in and they barely have enough time to set up their email account. It's gonna be a different story. [Christian]: Yeah I think…I think realistic expectations are important. You know I would say if you want to be successful and you know specifically in real estate or just business in general, don't be a…don't be afraid to take risks. Because if you're afraid of failure like you're never gonna take a big enough risk to really make a difference in your life. [Chris]: Couldn't agree more. [Christian]: Like Nate saying you know…you know like the more you fail hopefully you learn from that and that is what leads to success, not playing it safe and never trying. I know for me I learned this pretty early on form my military career you know because I joined…I joined the army at 25. And my whole goal was special forces.  You know I am like “If I am gonna serve than I am gonna serve the best”. And the elite and whatever. So I knew going into it that it was gonna be a tough road. And I guess it was physically demanding, hardest thing I have ever done but as a mental part that really kills people. There is you know total studs out there that you know as soon as it starts getting tough or inconvenient they are like “I am done I am out”.  You know but one of the things I have learned going through special forces assessment that the qualification course is you know instead of kind of doing the…what we do with the procrastination, instead of saying “I'll start exercising tomorrow, I'll start doing this tomorrow”. You kind of reverse it and say “I will quit tomorrow”. But you know “This road march sucks. Plenty of miles wearing 60 plus pounds. I will quit tomorrow. I will quit in a kilometer. I will quit when I get over that hill. OK there's just one more hill and I will quit than”. And before you know you've finished. Before you know you've succeeded. [Chris]: I like that. That's awesome. [Christian]: It is just these mental games you kind of learn to like keep yourself you know acknowledge the reality that “Yeah it sucks but I am gonna keep going. I am gonna do my best”. You know and that's all you can do. You do your best and before you know it you realize you can actually withstand mental and physically a lot more than you think you can. [Nathan]: I'll…I can talk about this all day but I will leave it with this. I admire a true…I carry him around in my hand all day long because I you know we have talked about my headset and I have to have my little tricks. But Ritual says “Practice your craft. Whatever shape or form that may be late into the evening with relentless giber. Embrace the fear, let go off perfection. Allow yourself to fail. Welcome the obstacles. Forget the results. Give yourself over to the passion with every fiber of your art and live out the rest of your days trying to do better. I can't promise you'll succeed in the way our culture inappropriately defines the term but I can absolutely guarantee you that you will deeply become acquainted with who you truly are. You'll touch and exude passion and discover what it means to truly be alive”.  [Christian]: That's enough said. [Nathan]: Yeah love that man [laughter]. [Chris]: That's good stuff. So for real estate agents we ride an emotional roller coaster. We have periods where we're like “Oh great this is awesome. Get a client, somebody who actually wants to work with us”. And then “Oh man that client they already signed a brokerage agreement with somebody else”. Or “They went out and they bought a home that was a Feesbo and they're now not gonna give me a commission”. Or “They went and bought a new construction and they put me down as the agent”.  Than we've got all sorts of ups and downs. You know. “Got the first contract”. And then the financing falls through right before closing. And I mean it just happens over and over and over in our industry. So guys how do you take a beating and get back up the next day? [Christian]: Yeah it's a good question. I mean it's how the mentality and how what we were talking about applies to real estate specifically is…I don't know I mean Nate just made it kind of simple or whatever but just do your best. Don't worry about what everyone else around you is doing. You know because there is so much especially culturally with kind of the politics and kind of the…what's the word I am looking for, not segregation but you know, the extremes. You know people are very polarized. [Chris]: Oh yeah. [Christian]: Very polarized. So you know it could be very easy to…I don't know what point I am trying to make here. You can cut this out [laughter]. So I guess how it applies to real estate. [Chris]: Yeah how do real estate agents keep taking a beating? How do they get up every morning, get punched in the throat and then go to bed and wake up the nest day with a smile in the face to get punched in the throat again. [Christian]: Yeah I would say just keep…you know trying your best. Do your best. Don't worry about what everyone around you is doing. You know because I mean it's very easy to get cynical and complain in this industry and you know I am a big believer that complaining and negativity is a cancer. You know it spreads like it infects you know culture infects an office, affects those around you. Not in a good way you know.  So I try to tell myself “OK when I find myself complaining or thinking to myself hey this other agent is a complete marron like I go out of my way to like OK maybe they're just new, maybe they're having an off day or maybe they are a marron”. But it doesn't really do any good to like spread that around my office [laughter]. You know. You know so I am just like “OK note to self don't do that. Learn from this”. You know learn from other people's either just traditional things that I don't like or the things I think are wrong. Instead of just complaining about it you know do something about it and you know maybe they need help you know. Maybe they didn't get good mentoring or their brokerage sucks or something. You know just do what you can to help yourself help those that you know ultimately effect and do thing that you can have a change on, have an effect on. You know things that you can't change just write it off your back, let it go. Just take care of yourself. [Nathan]: Let's just go back. How…what's the answer to the question? I don't have one. That is it. I honestly I don't…I don't have one. I think you have to lose a lot. I think you have to fail a lot to appreciate what you have. Because I think it's hard for a lot of people to appreciate what they truly have because they never went without.  I see it a lot. You know it's always the wanting of more, more, more. I can tell you form experience of having nothing. Literally having nothing. I am thankful for what I got every day. So…You know you want to really find out go and test yourself. Go sleep outside for 2 nights with a blanket and nothing else but a cardboard and find your food. And literally do something like that. Do something extreme. Really crazy like that sounds crazy. But go do it.  Just experience for 2 days what it is like to be homeless or something. You know I could think of crazier things but that's just a good one. And then maybe you will take a step back and appreciate what you do have. Again being grateful is I don't know for some people it is a hard [censored] thing. And we should be more of it. So mindset. You are who you are. You control you know what you can control and I can't control you or anybody else. But you can as an individual. So make that choice everyday and have a great day. I would start there. [Christian]: Yeah that's an interesting point because you have been thinking about this a lot because I have an 8 year old kid who you know has a pretty…pretty damn good life [laughter] and doesn't know it you know. And so thinking about like you can try to teach gratitude which is obviously what we're doing you know as parents. But you know the reality is like without the perspective of like never having known what is like to be really hungry or cold or you know lonely without friends or whatever like it's really hard to teach them so we're trying to teach them “OK responding well.”  Just because you know if you're like “This is my expectation up here and nothing in life ever meets it” you're always gonna be dissatisfied. You know versus kind of a more realistic like “Hey I got up in the morning. There is lung in my air and I am upright on 2 feet. Like life's good. [laughter] you know I am not in crying pain or whatever”. You know. So there's always…always something good that you can focus on as far as being grateful.  I think a huge cancer in our society is…has come to this envy class welfare thing where essentially you know we may be like “Hey I am doing pretty good” and then someone on the news brings stuff up well “You know the richest people in the world are getting richer but the middle class blah blah blah”. And like “How does that affect me?” It doesn't. I was fine until a minute ago until I find out someone has aa billion dollars more than I do and now I am just pissed off.  It's like their success doesn't make me less successful. It's all like envy class welfare politicizing all of this you know stuff like that keeps up pissed off and miserable and ungrateful. You know like focus on what you do have. It could be a whole lot worse and don't always be wanting what someone else has. You know. [Chris]: That's awesome. You know one of the things that I think helps agents when they're…you know when they get beat down and they're starting their career and they have those big failures, is you know just look at it in perspective. We try and keep a support system around them so that they're not going off and wallowing on their own. We try and encourage them to focus on the behavior. Focus on what you need to do. Focus on the actions. Focus on reaching out to your clients or your database and creating a great relationship with them. Focus on doing something to improve somebody's day.  So if your client fell through and you know got stood up at a showing, well now you've got some time that you can go and try and brighten somebody else's day. Somebody that is in your network that you can remind them what you do but also at the same time do something nice for them. To let them know that you're thinking of them.  And I find that when agents do that and they go out and they show gratitude towards everybody else which is awesome. I love that you brought up gratitude. It changes their mindset right. If I am in a really bad mood and I go and do something great for somebody I am not gonna be in that bad mood for a long time. Especially if I can feel good about what I was able to do for someone.  And you know if you get stood up in an appointment you get that deal that falls through just take that as an excuse to have some extra free time to do something good in somebody else's life and eventually that's gonna all pay off as dividends. Because I think too many…too many agents, too many people focus on the short term. They focus on “What are my numbers? What are my numbers? What do my numbers need to be? Why aren't they there?”. And they don't focus on the behaviors. They don't focus on “Am I doing the right thing?”. They are going to eventually lead to a better performance. So I think that's kind of the big thing that I have seen. I don't know. Hopefully it helps answers… [Christian]: I mean I would say just kind of say in wrapping up to some up all this in general having a good attitude which you know starts with those right thoughts, the true thoughts that live in your head you know will lead you to gratitude which will lead you to empathy and hopefully understand the people and be more compassionate will lead you to just being a better more happy satisfied human being [laughter]. Which you know how can you not be successful in life if like that's your outlook. [Chris]: People do business with people they know like and trust. You're happy… [Nathan]: You have a choice people, folks. You have a choice. [Chris]: Yeah if you've got a great outlook, people are gonna want to do business with you. You got a great outlook and you know what you're doing people are gonna want to do business with you and they're gonna refer you to other people. Simple as that. So thanks for tuning in everybody. This has been another episode of re:Think Real Estate. We'll catch you next Monday.  [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]  

Today Nathan throws out a surprise topic for us to discuss. We talk about the questions people should ask when determining whether a brokerage is for them or not. We want to know what you love best about your brokerage. In the comments tell us what your favorite part is! RTRE_Ep_48  Audio length 29:24 RTRE 48 – What to Ask When Choosing a Brokerage [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 Nathan White and Christian Harris. Guys what's going on guys? [Nathan]: Hey what's happening? I am trying to stay warm in the polar vortex here but it's only one day people so don't panic, it's not a week long. [Nathan]: How cold is it there right now? [Christian]: It's about 7 degrees. It's the end of January we're recording this.  [Chris]: It's gone up a little bit since we talked last. Our entire state shut down for a little bit of rain so Georgia is closed now [laughter]. [Nathan]: And if it even gets flurries in Georgia it's like the apocalypse like it's hysterical. [Chris]: Well I mean no joke we are 5 years to the date from Snowmageddon. Like the time hop came up on Facebook “5 years to the date from Snowmageddon today”. And last time that happened I ended up having to walk 11 miles on icy roads back to the house because my car wasn't getting me there. So…Yeah I mean Georgia does not know how to deal with that stuff. [Christian]: It's legit. [Nathan]: Like 2 inches of snow or just a little ice? [Chris]: It wasn't 2 inches but it was like a maybe a quarter inch of snow on top of an inch of ice.  [Christian]: Ice will…Ice will mess up your day so… [Chris]: Yeah ice did it.  [Nathan]: When you were talking about ice I saw that you were talking about something. [Chris]: No yeah so… [Nathan]: What are we gonna talk about? [Chris]: Nate is gonna surprise us with today's topic. [Nathan]:[censored]. [Chris]: Nate what are we talking about today? [Nathan]: So you know we've talked about this before but I am gonna go to the…you know we're in a public group. I think all 3 of us are on it. The…the Inman coast to coast and somebody earlier this week posted again about how to choose a brokerage. And I want to say maybe it was Tanya or somebody. I forget who put the…the questions to ask out there.  But did you guys see that about an agent going to choosing a brokerage? Because some of this I agree with, some I don't agree with at all so I thought it might be good to go back and talk a little bit more about this. Maybe we have some new agents since we started doing this that you know are in that struggle bus of “Hey I am stuck here” or “I don' know what to do. I didn't…I didn't choose right”. And so these questions…These questions [background noise] Whats that? Sorry. [Christian]: Did you just say struggle bus? [Nathan]: Yeah. Struggle bus. [laughter]. [Christian]: OK I just wanted to make sure I heard that right. OK. [Nathan]: Yeah so if you guys check your email I just sent you that.  [Chris]: Yeah I am looking at it right now. [Nathan]: Right so like if you look through some of this like I don't know if I agree with all of this. Of course I never agree with everything, right. [Chris]: You never agree with anything. [Christian]: You're super agreeable. What are you talking about? [Nathan]: I am so… [Chris]: You're the “Yes man”. [Nathan]: Oh my God you all are ridiculous. [laughter] [Christian]: I am…I looked over this a little bit… [Chris]: I am seeing this for the first time. Let's talk through it. [Christian]: So you're talking about…You're talking about kind of the generic agent guide to choosing brokerage that is out there? [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: Yeah. We're not gonna say who it is put out by but there's a guide out there. Alright so first step in this guide research. What's this? “Pull MLS numbers for at least 3 years for the office. Volume, transaction count, map the transaction if your MLS offers that feature. Know how far from the office they are.”  I don't know. If you're a new agent, you don't have access to the MLS.  [Christian]: Yeah. So what I found in general is that whatever brokers you go to in you're quote interviewing with them they're going to spat out the stuff that makes them look best right? [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: So if they're agent heavy they're gonna be like “Oh we dominate the market by agent numbers”. If they're you know actually killing it in volume or, you know, gross sales that's what they're gonna…that's what they're gonna highlight.  So you know the thing is if you're a new agent how does the brokerage production help you? I mean it…it doesn't directly. Now it might indirectly because OK maybe there is a lot of experienced agents that you can shadow or piggy back on. But just because they're productive doesn't mean it will help you do yours. They're busy. You know and now they're hinting like if you have in mind “OK I am gonna do open houses.” OK you're gonna need an office that has listings , you know. Now you don't need it in there they're not here. You can call other agents and brokerages if they're willing to collaborate… [Chris]: What they do that? [Christian]: Well it's not…it's not a culturally…I don't know. Some do. You know if they have a more collaborative mind set. I mean I all about that but not…Most franchises don't have that. Might be more in the “Protect your own” mind set. So…They'd rather not do an open house rather than have someone from another broker do their open house. [Chris]: That should never happen. Not in my state. [Nathan]: Well you know here's another one on here that really tripped me up. This is a value aid and establish. “Why the office of the brokerage you're interviewing with is or isn't successful.”  How do you define success in a brokerage? [Christian]: Right what are your metrics success? [Nathan]: Right I mean. [Christian]: Numbers and profitability but you're not gonna know the profitability numbers. [Nathan]: Right. I mean you know our brokerage doesn't do a gazillion transactions but I believe the ones that we do do are very high quality. So, meaning from…you know from a client experience. So again I don't know you know if that counts or not. It's like saying “Oh I am hearing another party say look at agent reviews on yelp or Zillow”. I mean [censored] I am not interviewing like…That's not applicable to me I guess so I struggle… [Christian]: But when it comes to researching a brokerage what would you say? I mean I don't think these are super valid because they center around like on traditional like sales like…Do they do a lot of business? And that than quantifies whether they're a good brokerage which I think has nothing to do with is a good brokerage or not. Maybe.  I mean I guess you could kind of determine market saturation or market share but again as a new agent is that really gonna help you I mean unless you're in a small town and there is a dominant brokerages and a bunch of other small ones that don't do anything. I mean here in Seattle there's tons of brokerage and they all have their…they're all getting those things. They're all doing sales. You know it's not one, It's like crushing it you know. [Chris]: Well I think it all depends because everybody's definition of success in real estate is different.  [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: You know I was speaking to one of my agents about this the other day because as we bring in agents you know depending upon where they are in their life cycle they may have different goals. Like some of our agents are retired from one career. Do we expect that those agents are going to hustle and grind and built a massive business working hundreds of hours every month just for a few years? Probably not. You know those people are probably getting into this to do a few transactions a year, have a place to come, learn, hang out, interact with people and have fun.  And then we have some other people that are getting into this for the exact reason I just mentioned. They want to grow something big. And it's not our job as the brokerage to define what that success is. That's up to them. Our goal is to provide the infrastructure, the culture, the support necessary for them to build what they want to build. At least that's my philosophy on it and you know…go ahead. [Christian]: Yeah I mean that's a good point is that there's not one definition of success as an agent. You know there's gonna be the younger people that don't have family and nothing better to do but grind it out for 80 hours a week. Other ones that are mostly, you know, full time, stay at home parents or something that are gonna do occasional job, you know. [Chris]: Absolutely. So this question that they ask in here, this bullet point I think is excellent which is “Ask the broker about his or her story as an agent, team lead, sales manager or broker owner. To what do they attribute their success? And you want to under…you want to uncover his or her core beliefs about what makes a successful agent”.  I think that is an excellent point. When you're…when you're looking for finding out what firm you want to work for it's gonna be the team of people that you're surrounding yourself with and knowing their core values. If they're not transparent about it. If they're transparent about it you should know their core values you know within you know the first round of interviews with them. But if they're not asking questions like this would be fantastic as an agent looking to find a right…a different brokerage.  [Nathan]: Yeah I agree. That's…That's a helpful question in there. Some of the ones like I said I struggled with. That one is good. I was talking to somebody the other day and they said “What about getting this person to come in and be a manager”. And I was like “Yeah but the problem with them managing is they don't actually have any history”.  I have a big struggle on my struggle bus that there Mr. Harris [laughter] for people who coach or who lead that don't have any history or is very minimal. And so how do you…Say somebody is running this office or brokerage X and they go in and they're recruiting and you ask them you know “How's your history” and they go “Well you know I stopped selling 10 years ago now I just coach”.  I kind of look at somebody like [censored]. Like that's not even relevant now. 10 years I mean that's like 100 years in real estate world so I don't think you would be helpful. I think you have to be current and I think you need to be somewhat of a producing broker to a degree or one that is heavily involved with their agents' development and still maybe…I don't know you guys would probably tell me I am wrong since I am the agent you all are the brokers but you know you only have to do a couple transactions a year just to stay fresh I would feel like. But to tune out I think it would be a mistake.  [Christian]: Yeah I think that's kind of a good point in regards to like I was listening to…I had something in Inman Connects New York livestream this morning and someone was talking about the difference between the focus of the brokerage and the agent or specifically in that context the team. And the brokerage model, traditional brokerage model is head count. They focus solely on head count.  Now you may do that through you know training or some other low thing to lure agents in. But [cough] I think part of the brokerage responsibility is when you're interviewing an agent flashing out “What are your goals for the expectations? Can we match that?” Or you know. Now maybe most brokerages don't care. We're smaller so I think we can kind of customize or at least make sure it's gonna be a good fit. Because one of these questions in here is ask if you can ride along, you know basically shadow an experienced agent. Because I mean that's a great way for a new agent to learn.  Now Chris I know you have like a required mentor program which is great but that's one of the…as many awesome things to see on offers that's one of our weak spots is that we're not huge and so we don't have a lot of agents that can you know that have enough business to be able to “Hey we have a new agent can they shadow you on your listing today?” Like… [Chris]: It took us a while to get to that. [Christian]: Yeah it's gonna take a while. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Christian]: But I think that's good because I did…the one agent I had lost and you know there's nothing I could have really done about it is just the nature of how big we are was they wanted to, you know, shadow someone's business. Someone who is you know doing a lot of business. And we just don't have a ton of agents doing you know huge amounts of business everyday. You know so they left so they can mentor under someone who was. And I totally get that, you know. Hopefully it won't get to the pace where, you know, that won't be an issue. But we're small, new and scrappy so you know your strengths and you know your weaknesses. [Chris]: Yeah I think that I saw here a description of the office culture, head count, tenure of the agents, breaking it down into head count and turning it over rate, the agent or broker's involvement in the local, regional NAR leadership. The broker agents' involvement in state and national associations, outside or NAR and the broker and agent involvement in local community school boards, charities.  I think that's a pretty good description of an office. Like if you can as a broker owner…If I am sitting down having a conversation with somebody these are things that I know and can recite you know in my sleep about who is doing what because these are things that we promote. But, you know, having an office that encourages involvement…A lot of offices don't do it maybe because they're afraid that when they put their agents around other agents the other agents are gonna try and recruit them.  That's not necessarily the case because there are a lot of agents that I get around that I don't want to recruit. Being in those positions. But it's still important that when we're in this industry that we do our best to support our industry and that when we are serving our communities we are doing the best to support our communities through local charities and organizations.  So having a company that supports that stuff goes to describe how their culture operates and it puts the priorities in perspective you know and just know that with turnover rate it's not always…Sometimes that needs a description. Because for us right now we're releasing agents 2 to 1 because we have become a lot more selective in who we are hiring than who we are letting go. We are letting a lot of licenses laps that are non-performers and that's one of the reasons that our productivity has gone from like 300k per person to like 1.1 million per person. So there are other things in there that need to be picked and taken into account. [Christian]: Yeah and I would say that that focus on culture is because big I mean it's really easy to quantify your split or you [cough] some of these other things that agents tend to focus on like how much money are they gonna be taking home. Now what that doesn't take into account is well “Is the brokerage is gonna support me? Am I gonna flourish there? I am I gonna hate it when I am working around. Am I gonna hate doing the work you know into the office you know. Are you gonna be part of something bigger that you're on board with?”  And I think all that closely ties into like the brand of the brokerage. What are they known for? Are they involved? Do they encourage agents involvement? And really if you hone that as a brokerage and you have a line with your agents and that's what they're drawn to you're not gonna be afraid of losing them because a big franchise down the road that doesn't have, you know, a healthy culture like that or doesn't…Isn't known for something other than name recognition of their franchise. Like there's nothing there for them. Like they're gonna love who they're asked you know what you provide. You know it's really hard to quantify that cultural experience, that feeling of satisfaction of knowing “Doing what I am doing, I am involved, I am helping, I am part of the listing and not just you know a number on the spreadsheet”. [Chris]: Absolutely.  [Nathan]: Well you know if you look at this document I mean it's great but I really think they could have skipped all the way to the bottom and point 4 like the bullet points there I think is perfect. “Do you fully understand what a brokerage is offering here?”. What I find most agents even when they switch to another one still don't understand what they're getting offered. “Do you trust the broker?” You would be working with them. I think that's important. “Do the claims of the brand line up with everything that is isn't offered to agents and clients.” “Do the principals and beliefs align with those of brokers and managers?” That's huge. “Does the brokerage provide what you need now in the future and for the development?” Like to me that sums up the only questions you need to answer almost but above the other stuff. Yeah. [Christian]: And I think it kind of makes sense. I mean I think it could be more concise but I mean those are kind of the…These are bottom line what you wanna make sure you're getting and all the questions up above will help you get to those answers.  [Nathan]: Right I mean those are the…That's the guts of my struggle bus for those people. I…And the reason I say like when you don't want people to make a switch…I've got a colleague who just made switch to another brokerage. And when she left her original one she thought you know  “Hey you know I understand everything”.  She went to the new one and 6 months down the road she went “I didn't really understand the numbers”. And I was like…you know I don't want to use her name but “Hey Sussie how did you not of all people”. Like I expected her to really understand the numbers and she didn't. I think she actually might have paid more at the new brokerage that she went to. You know because she originally left brokerage number 1 because her fees were so high. She goes the second one. Didn't know the math well and ended up paying more.  [Chris]: Sure. [Christian]: Well I think that tied into the “Do you trust the brokerage”. I had an agent who…who I think had made up her mind you know that she was gonna leave. You know it implements new monthly fee because we're losing money on not producing brokers…not producing agents. And I am like “Kate you may think that you're gonna pay less over here but let's talk about this”.  And you know after talking about it and she talks to some other people about “Oh I didn't realize that I had to be a member of the NAR which is another $600 every…” whatever, “I didn't realize that they also did desk fee” and blah blah blah and than I was like “OK you actually have it really good here”.  You know and so…and maybe you know putting some of that back on media and brokerage. Can you get the value there and so she thought she would find it somewhere else. But half the time you know they end up leaving thinking the grass is greener. And than “Oh hey they were sold at fallen stolen goods” you know. You don't realize it until after you leave. After you go somewhere else.  [Nathan]: Right. Right they don't understand it. [Chris]: I got that from a couple of agents. They left and now they want to come back and they were on like one of our old legacy plans and they don't get that option anymore. And that they're like “Oh [laughter] wow this is gonna cost me more?”. Like “Yeah yeah we're doing a lot more now. You had it good. You lost”. So I mean that's another thing for agents. If you're thinking about making a move see what your broker can do.  If you're moving…there was an article that came out a little while ago about why agents make a move. And a lot of brokers think that number 1 is because of the cost. But it's not. I think one of the number 1 reasons is the number 1 and number 2 but it was “Is the broker in their corner? Does the broker have their back?” And then the other one was “What is the culture like at the office?” Because if a lot of…for the most part brokers are gonna make relatively smaller amounts of money. And it's all gonna depend on what they're offering and what their expenses are but you know we're gonna make our profit margin. Hopefully. That's the goal. And if… [Christian]: Wait you're profitable? That must be nice [laughter]. [Chris]: We're investing a lot of it back into the company. But we are making what we need to be making off of them so that we can invest it back into the company and our agents see that but the second thing is culture. Are you working in an environment that you feel that you have the people around you supporting you?  And those 2 were the biggest reasons that agents make jumps. It's not because of the desk fees. It's not because of the NAR fees. It's not because of the monthly fees. Sometimes it is but usually that's when we see people going from very high splits to something that is a little bit more along the lines of the Indie broker margin. Kind of the Indie broker model. Where we have a little bit more flexibility there and we lose the franchise fees. But other than that it's culture and is “Does the broker have my back? Is the office there to support me?” [Christian]: I definitely have to agree with that. I think a lot of agents lead with the cost but I mean in the grand scheme of things I mean there's not…If you're productive I mean what you're gonna end up paying isn't that different over you know a year. You know but it does come down to that culture and that…what was that other thing you said? [Chris]: Culture and support. [Christian]: Culture and? Support yes. Yeah that's huge because I have had agents that come over you know who come over because they're like “How available are you? I can't get a hold of my broker when I have questions for 2 days.” And I am like “That's ridiculous. What are they doing? It's their job”. [laughter]  You know and so it being smaller and not having so many agents and you seeing my primary job and been in the office to support agents you know I mean that's big you know. And just a tip. If you had an office you're not really sure what their culture is, if you want to get a good gage of it pay attention to how they respond when an agent leaves. If they're nasty and two faced get out of there. Get out of that office.  And that was my first office. Like day to day it was OK. It wasn't openly hostile but as soon as you know…Someone who you know agent X was quote “friends” with and helping out one day and they left and the next day they're “Oh that person I knew blah blah blah they're terrible”. And you're gonna be like “What aren't we all in this together? What's this brand loyalty to a franchise that doesn't have your back? Like what do you care as an agent whether or not another agent left?” Like you know like they're being personally, like a personal slide against you know the agent that another agent left.  [Nathan]: Man the colleague that I was talking about earlier when she left her original team you know they went [laughter] Death Con 4 on her. I was like “You don't want to be in a place like that”. Like… [Christian]: It shows your true colors either as an agent or you know as…Like if I hear that as a broker I squash that. I am like “No we are collaborative, we are all on this together. I want what's best for them and if they feel going to another brokerage gives them what they need he no pep talk. I want to support them in there”.  [Nathan]: That makes me think of Tracey Chambers, who is my first team lead. I was…the team lead at the office at Callow Aims [phonetics] and I will applaud her. When I told her I was leaving she said “Nathan I wish you all the best and if you ever want to come back here know the door is always opened and I will welcome you with open arms and if you have any questions feel free to call me”. I still call her. She was awesome and that tells you a lot about her.  [Christian]: And speaks to character and that's what's gonna be the biggest differentiator and the difference between agents. It's not skills, not experience, it's character. Are you gonna do the right thing? [Nathan]: I don't know if we answered any questions actually on this list of things. But I think it's important to talk about again from just an agent perspective because again as a new agent and maybe even within the first year or 2 you just don't know all the questions to ask. And it's…and a lot of it is ambiguous because you can't put value on certain things.  [Christian]: Yeah I think it's a good starting point. I mean I have had one agent who came in with questions and I loved it. You know it would be like “Hey these are some questions I have” and I think they kind of got them offline or you know another brokerage they were interviewing or something. And I am basically like “That question doesn't matter because of this. This question is irrelevant because of that. That's a good question. Let's talk about it.”  You know. So it could be a good place to start but like you said as a new agent you're not really sure what you need to be asking. What questions mater or not. [Chris]: Yeah so I mean we…I think the last time we talked about you know choosing a brokerage and how the brokerage works. That was like early early last year, right around when we just launched. [Nathan]: First 5 episodes maybe. [Chris]: Yeah yeah something like that but I think regardless of where you are in your career if you are new or if you are a seasoned veteran I think the message is you need to understand if there is…if your office is toxic, if your office is not fun to work in, if your leadership is undermining management, if your…if you're not receiving the right support the message is there are brokers out there where that does not exist.  There are brokerages that do have proper support, that do have a good culture and that are fun to work at. And I think that a lot of the brokers who have quotas that they need to meet on the recruiting side I think that those…their attention is in the wrong place and that the broker owner does not have enough time to dedicate to the support of the office.  So that's my message. If you're in a position where you're not sure what's gonna happen with your career, if you're not happy with the people that you're working with my message is just go out and try and meet a few brokers because there are places that do exist where that's not a problem. [Christian]: Yeah. [Nathan]: Yeah I mean I agree. That sums it up about as good as you can get. If you got questions you know what you can do? Email us. We'll answer them [laughter]. [Christian]: I am interested and see what questions…you know…Yeah comments, you know. Leave comments. What are the questions? You know what are the questions that agents should be asking or brokerages should be asking to their agents to make sure it's a good fit?  [Chris]: And email us and tell us what you think about your brokerage. Why is your brokerage a great place to work? I think that… [Christian]: Yeah that's good. [Chris]: What do you like most about your brokerage? We don't want to hear the bad things. We hear the bad things all the time. Let us know what you think is the best part about your brokerage? I think that just about sums it up for this episode of re:Think Real Estate. Thank you so much for tuning in for this impromptu topic brought you by Nate. Thank you Nate. 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]  

Panel: Chris Fritz Charles Max Wood In this episode, the panel consists of Chris and Charles who talk about developer freedom. Chuck talks about his new show called The DevRev. The guys also talk about time management, answering e-mails, being self-employed, and their goals/hopes/dreams that they want to achieve in life. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 0:30 – Chuck: Hi! Today our panel is Chris and myself. My new show is The DevRev. There is a lot of aspect of our job that boil down to freedom. Figure out what they like to do and eliminate the things that they don’t like to do. I think it will be 5x a week and I will have a guest every week. What does freedom mean to you? What is your ideal coding situation where you don’t starve? 2:10 – Chris: Let me take a step-back. Why I got into coding it was even before that and it was education. I wanted to work with schools and not necessarily tied to only one school. As a programmer I cannot be asked to do things that I don’t agree with. 3:21 – Chuck: A lot of this thought-process came up b/c of my initial steps into my self-employment. I wanted to go to my son’s activities. I saw freelancing as an option and then had to do that b/c I got laid-off. I hate being told what to do. I have an HOA in my neighborhood and I hate it. They tell me when and how to mow my lawn. This is how I operate it. I hate that they tell me to mow my lawn. I want to talk to people who I want to talk to – that’s my idea of freedom. Everyone’s different idea of what “freedom” is will be different. 5:36 – Chris: I want more time to create more free stuff. Chris talks about DEV experience. 6:28 – Chuck: How did you get to that point of figuring out what you want to do? 6:44 – Chris: I still am figuring that out. I do have a lot of opportunities that are really exciting for me. It’s deciding what I like at that moment and choosing what I want to do vs. not what is going to wear me down. I don’t want to die with regret. There is a distinction between bad tired and good tired. You weren’t true to what you thought was right – and so you don’t settle easy. You toss and turn. I want to end with “good tired” both for the end of the day and for the end of my life. 8:00 – Chuck: I agree with that and I really identify with that. 8:44 – Chris: How do you measure yourself? 8:54 – Chuck: It’s hard to quantify it in only one idea. It’s hard to measure. I list out 5 things I need to do to get me closer to my [one] big goal. I have to get those 5 things done. Most of the time I can make it and I keep grinding on it before I can be done. 9:51 – Chris: My bar is pretty low. Is there more joy / more happiness in the world today in the world b/c of what I’ve done today? I know I will make mistakes in code – and that hurts, no day will be perfect. I try to have a net positive affect everyday. 10:53 – Chris: I can fall easily into depression if I have too many bad days back-to-back. 11:03 – Chuck: I agree and I have to take time off if that happens. 11:13 – Chris talks about open source work and he mentions HOPE IN SOURCE, also Babel. 12:23 – Chuck: When I got to church and there is this component of being together and working towards the same goals. It’s more than just community. There is a real – something in common that we have. 12:57 – Chris: Do you think it’s similar to open source? 13:05 – Chuck: You can watch a podcast in-lieu of an actual in-person sermon. In my church community it’s – Building Each Other Up. It’s not the same for when I contribute to open source. 13:43 – Chris: I ask myself: Is it of value? If I were to die would that work help progress the humankind? By the time I die - I will be completely useless b/c everything in my head is out there in other peoples’ heads. 14:35 – Chuck: When I am gone – I want someone to step into my void and continue that. These shows should be able to go on even if I am not around. I want to make sure that these shows can keep going. 15:48 – Chris: How can we build each other up? We want to have opportunities to grow. I try to provide that for members of the team and vice versa. The amount of respect that I have seen in my communities is quite amazing. I admire Thorsten on the Vue team a lot. (Thorsten’s Twitter.) He talked about compassion and how to communicate with each other and code with compassion. That’s better community and better software. You are forced to thin from multiple perspectives. You want to learn from these various perspectives. 17:44 – Chuck: The ideas behind the camaraderie are great. 17:56 – Chris: And Sarah Drasner! 18:38 – Chuck: She probably feels fulfilled when she helps you out (Sarah). 18:54 – Chuck: We all have to look for those opportunities and take them! 19:08 – Chuck: We have been talking about personal fulfillment. For me writing some awesome code in Vue there is Boiler Plate or running the tests. 19:52 – Chuck: What tools light you up? 20:02 – Chris: I am a bit of a weirdo. I feel pretty good when I am hitting myself against a wall for 9 hours. I like feeling obsessed about something and defeating it. I love it. 21:21 – Chuck: The things that make you bang your head against the wall is awful for me. I like writing code that helps someone. (Chris: I like the challenge.) We will be charged up for different things. You like the challenge and it empowers me to help others out. 22:21 – Chris: I like learning more about how something works. I want to save people a lot of work. There has to be a social connection or I will have a hard time even attempting it. 22:52 – Chris: I also play video games where there are no social connections. I played the Witness a few months ago and I loved the puzzles. 23:45 – Chuck: What other tools are you using? 23:57 – Chris: Webpack is the best took for creating the ideal development scenario. 24:47 – Chuck mentions Boiler Plate. 25:00 – Chris: It was built to help large teams and/or large applications.  I built some other projects like: Hello Vue Components & (with John Papa) Vue Monolith Example. 27:07 – Chuck: Anything else that you consider to be “freeing?” 27:13 – Chris: I like working from home. I like having my routines – they make me happy and productive. Having full control over that makes me happy. The only thing I have is my wife and my cat. 28:12 – Chuck: Yeah I don’t miss driving through traffic. 28:44 – Chris: I don’t like to be around people all day. 30:40 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 31:05 – Chris: Online I get a couple dozen people reaching out to me for different things: completely out-of-the-blue. I want to respond to most of those people but... 33:12 – Chuck: If it’s not on my calendar it won’t happen. I will get those e-mails that can be very time consuming. 33:35 – Chris: When they are asking for something “simple” – it’s not always simple. 34:30 – Chuck: I want to help everybody and that can be a problem. 35:02 – Chris: They are reaching out to me and I want to help. 35:56 – Chuck and Chris go back-and-forth. 36:18 – Chris: How do you figure out how to write a short enough response to the email – to only do 30 minutes? 36:44 – Chuck: Can I answer it in one minute? Nope – so it will go into another pile later in the week. I’ve replied saying: Here is my short-answer and for the long-answer see these references. I star those e-mails that will take too long to respond. 37:50 – Chris and Chuck go back-and-forth. 38:06 – Chuck: Your question is so good – here is the link to the blog that I wrote. 38:37 – Chris: I want to document to point people HERE to past blogs that I’ve written or to someone else’s blog. I feel guilty when I have to delegate. 39:35 – Chuck: I don’t have a problem delegating b/c that’s why I’m paying them. Everyone has his or her own role.  40:40 – Chris: Yeah that makes sense when it’s their job. 41:30 – Chuck: I know working together as a team will free me up in my areas of excellence. 41:49 – Chris: I am having a hard time with this right now. 43:36 – Chuck: We are looking for someone to fill this role and this is the job description. This way you can be EXCELLENT at what you do. You aren’t being pulled too thin. 44:19 – Chris: I have been trying to delegate more. 45:04 – Chuck: Yeah I have been trying to do more with my business, too. What do I want to do in the community? What is my focus? What is my mission and values for the business? Then you knock it out of the park! 45:51 – Chris: As a teacher it is really helpful and really not helpful. You are leading and shaping their experiences. You don’t have options to delegate. 46:27 – Chuck: Yeah my mother is a math teacher. 46:37 – Chuck: Yeah she has 10 kids, so she helps to delegate with force. She is the department head for mathematics and she does delegate some things. It’s you to teach the course. 47:18 – Chris: What promoted you to start this podcast? Is it more personal? 47:30 – Chuck talks about why he is starting this new podcast. 48:10 – Chuck: My business coach said to me: write a mission statement. When I did that things started having clarity for me. Chuck talks about the plan for the DevRev! 55:20 – Chris: I am looking forward to it! 55:34 – Chuck: It will be recorded via video through YouTube, too, in addition to iTunes (hopefully). 55:52 – Chris & Chuck: Picks! 55:58 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React JavaScript C# C++ C++ Programming / Memory Management Angular Blazor JavaScript DevChat TV VueCLI Boiler Plate Hello Vue Components Vue Monolith Example Thorsten’s Twitter Sarah’s Twitter Ben Hong’s Twitter Jacob Schatz’ Twitter Vue Vixens The DevRev Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Chris Vue Vixens Charles repurpose.io MFCEO Project Podcast Game - Test Version

Panel: Chris Fritz Charles Max Wood In this episode, the panel consists of Chris and Charles who talk about developer freedom. Chuck talks about his new show called The DevRev. The guys also talk about time management, answering e-mails, being self-employed, and their goals/hopes/dreams that they want to achieve in life. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 0:30 – Chuck: Hi! Today our panel is Chris and myself. My new show is The DevRev. There is a lot of aspect of our job that boil down to freedom. Figure out what they like to do and eliminate the things that they don’t like to do. I think it will be 5x a week and I will have a guest every week. What does freedom mean to you? What is your ideal coding situation where you don’t starve? 2:10 – Chris: Let me take a step-back. Why I got into coding it was even before that and it was education. I wanted to work with schools and not necessarily tied to only one school. As a programmer I cannot be asked to do things that I don’t agree with. 3:21 – Chuck: A lot of this thought-process came up b/c of my initial steps into my self-employment. I wanted to go to my son’s activities. I saw freelancing as an option and then had to do that b/c I got laid-off. I hate being told what to do. I have an HOA in my neighborhood and I hate it. They tell me when and how to mow my lawn. This is how I operate it. I hate that they tell me to mow my lawn. I want to talk to people who I want to talk to – that’s my idea of freedom. Everyone’s different idea of what “freedom” is will be different. 5:36 – Chris: I want more time to create more free stuff. Chris talks about DEV experience. 6:28 – Chuck: How did you get to that point of figuring out what you want to do? 6:44 – Chris: I still am figuring that out. I do have a lot of opportunities that are really exciting for me. It’s deciding what I like at that moment and choosing what I want to do vs. not what is going to wear me down. I don’t want to die with regret. There is a distinction between bad tired and good tired. You weren’t true to what you thought was right – and so you don’t settle easy. You toss and turn. I want to end with “good tired” both for the end of the day and for the end of my life. 8:00 – Chuck: I agree with that and I really identify with that. 8:44 – Chris: How do you measure yourself? 8:54 – Chuck: It’s hard to quantify it in only one idea. It’s hard to measure. I list out 5 things I need to do to get me closer to my [one] big goal. I have to get those 5 things done. Most of the time I can make it and I keep grinding on it before I can be done. 9:51 – Chris: My bar is pretty low. Is there more joy / more happiness in the world today in the world b/c of what I’ve done today? I know I will make mistakes in code – and that hurts, no day will be perfect. I try to have a net positive affect everyday. 10:53 – Chris: I can fall easily into depression if I have too many bad days back-to-back. 11:03 – Chuck: I agree and I have to take time off if that happens. 11:13 – Chris talks about open source work and he mentions HOPE IN SOURCE, also Babel. 12:23 – Chuck: When I got to church and there is this component of being together and working towards the same goals. It’s more than just community. There is a real – something in common that we have. 12:57 – Chris: Do you think it’s similar to open source? 13:05 – Chuck: You can watch a podcast in-lieu of an actual in-person sermon. In my church community it’s – Building Each Other Up. It’s not the same for when I contribute to open source. 13:43 – Chris: I ask myself: Is it of value? If I were to die would that work help progress the humankind? By the time I die - I will be completely useless b/c everything in my head is out there in other peoples’ heads. 14:35 – Chuck: When I am gone – I want someone to step into my void and continue that. These shows should be able to go on even if I am not around. I want to make sure that these shows can keep going. 15:48 – Chris: How can we build each other up? We want to have opportunities to grow. I try to provide that for members of the team and vice versa. The amount of respect that I have seen in my communities is quite amazing. I admire Thorsten on the Vue team a lot. (Thorsten’s Twitter.) He talked about compassion and how to communicate with each other and code with compassion. That’s better community and better software. You are forced to thin from multiple perspectives. You want to learn from these various perspectives. 17:44 – Chuck: The ideas behind the camaraderie are great. 17:56 – Chris: And Sarah Drasner! 18:38 – Chuck: She probably feels fulfilled when she helps you out (Sarah). 18:54 – Chuck: We all have to look for those opportunities and take them! 19:08 – Chuck: We have been talking about personal fulfillment. For me writing some awesome code in Vue there is Boiler Plate or running the tests. 19:52 – Chuck: What tools light you up? 20:02 – Chris: I am a bit of a weirdo. I feel pretty good when I am hitting myself against a wall for 9 hours. I like feeling obsessed about something and defeating it. I love it. 21:21 – Chuck: The things that make you bang your head against the wall is awful for me. I like writing code that helps someone. (Chris: I like the challenge.) We will be charged up for different things. You like the challenge and it empowers me to help others out. 22:21 – Chris: I like learning more about how something works. I want to save people a lot of work. There has to be a social connection or I will have a hard time even attempting it. 22:52 – Chris: I also play video games where there are no social connections. I played the Witness a few months ago and I loved the puzzles. 23:45 – Chuck: What other tools are you using? 23:57 – Chris: Webpack is the best took for creating the ideal development scenario. 24:47 – Chuck mentions Boiler Plate. 25:00 – Chris: It was built to help large teams and/or large applications.  I built some other projects like: Hello Vue Components & (with John Papa) Vue Monolith Example. 27:07 – Chuck: Anything else that you consider to be “freeing?” 27:13 – Chris: I like working from home. I like having my routines – they make me happy and productive. Having full control over that makes me happy. The only thing I have is my wife and my cat. 28:12 – Chuck: Yeah I don’t miss driving through traffic. 28:44 – Chris: I don’t like to be around people all day. 30:40 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 31:05 – Chris: Online I get a couple dozen people reaching out to me for different things: completely out-of-the-blue. I want to respond to most of those people but... 33:12 – Chuck: If it’s not on my calendar it won’t happen. I will get those e-mails that can be very time consuming. 33:35 – Chris: When they are asking for something “simple” – it’s not always simple. 34:30 – Chuck: I want to help everybody and that can be a problem. 35:02 – Chris: They are reaching out to me and I want to help. 35:56 – Chuck and Chris go back-and-forth. 36:18 – Chris: How do you figure out how to write a short enough response to the email – to only do 30 minutes? 36:44 – Chuck: Can I answer it in one minute? Nope – so it will go into another pile later in the week. I’ve replied saying: Here is my short-answer and for the long-answer see these references. I star those e-mails that will take too long to respond. 37:50 – Chris and Chuck go back-and-forth. 38:06 – Chuck: Your question is so good – here is the link to the blog that I wrote. 38:37 – Chris: I want to document to point people HERE to past blogs that I’ve written or to someone else’s blog. I feel guilty when I have to delegate. 39:35 – Chuck: I don’t have a problem delegating b/c that’s why I’m paying them. Everyone has his or her own role.  40:40 – Chris: Yeah that makes sense when it’s their job. 41:30 – Chuck: I know working together as a team will free me up in my areas of excellence. 41:49 – Chris: I am having a hard time with this right now. 43:36 – Chuck: We are looking for someone to fill this role and this is the job description. This way you can be EXCELLENT at what you do. You aren’t being pulled too thin. 44:19 – Chris: I have been trying to delegate more. 45:04 – Chuck: Yeah I have been trying to do more with my business, too. What do I want to do in the community? What is my focus? What is my mission and values for the business? Then you knock it out of the park! 45:51 – Chris: As a teacher it is really helpful and really not helpful. You are leading and shaping their experiences. You don’t have options to delegate. 46:27 – Chuck: Yeah my mother is a math teacher. 46:37 – Chuck: Yeah she has 10 kids, so she helps to delegate with force. She is the department head for mathematics and she does delegate some things. It’s you to teach the course. 47:18 – Chris: What promoted you to start this podcast? Is it more personal? 47:30 – Chuck talks about why he is starting this new podcast. 48:10 – Chuck: My business coach said to me: write a mission statement. When I did that things started having clarity for me. Chuck talks about the plan for the DevRev! 55:20 – Chris: I am looking forward to it! 55:34 – Chuck: It will be recorded via video through YouTube, too, in addition to iTunes (hopefully). 55:52 – Chris & Chuck: Picks! 55:58 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React JavaScript C# C++ C++ Programming / Memory Management Angular Blazor JavaScript DevChat TV VueCLI Boiler Plate Hello Vue Components Vue Monolith Example Thorsten’s Twitter Sarah’s Twitter Ben Hong’s Twitter Jacob Schatz’ Twitter Vue Vixens The DevRev Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Chris Vue Vixens Charles repurpose.io MFCEO Project Podcast Game - Test Version

Panel: Charles Max Wood Aimee Knight Chris Ferdinandi Joe Eames Special Guest: Heydon Pickering In this episode, the panel talks with Heydon Pickering who is a designer and writer. The panel and the guest talk about his new book, which is centered on the topic of today’s show: inclusive components. Check out Heydon’s Twitter, Website, GitHub, and Mastodon social accounts to learn more about him. To purchase the book – go here! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI 0:38 – Chuck: Aimee, Chris, Joe, and myself – we are today’s panel. My show the DevRev is available online to check it out. 1:30 – Guest: Plain ice cream would be frozen milk and that would be terrible. So I am lemon and candy JavaScript! 2:13 – Chuck: We are talking today about...? 2:22 – Chris: He’s talking about “inclusive components” today! 2:41 – Guest: Traveling is very stressful and I wanted something to do on the plane. I’ve done this book, “Inclusive Design Patterns.” If you don’t want to buy the book you can go to the blog. I have been talking with Smashing Magazine. 5:40 – Panel. 5:47 – Guest: I approached Smashing Magazine initially. They didn’t think there was a market for this content at the time. They were very supportive but we will do it as an eBook so our costs our down. At the time, the editor came back and said that: “it was quite good!” We skimmed it but came back to it now and now the content was more relevant in their eyes. I didn’t want to do the same book but I wanted to do it around “patterns.” Rewriting components is what I do all the time. I use Vanilla JavaScript. Backbone.js is the trendy one. 9:52 – Panel: The hard book did it get published? 10:02 – Guest: We are in the works and it’s all in the final stages right now. It has to go through a different process for the print version. 11:54 – Panel. 11:58 – (Guest continues about the editorial process.) 12:09 – Panel: They probably switched to TFS – it’s Microsoft’s. 12:23 – Guest: There was this argument on Twitter about the different processors. 13:35 – Chris: What are the ways that people are breaking accessibility with their code through JavaScript?  13:59 – Guest: The whole premise is that there aren’t a ton of different components that we use. Generally, speaking. Most things we do through JavaScript – it’s just different ways of doing this/that, and hiding things. I am discounting things with Node or other stuff. Most of what we are doing, with interactive design, is showing and hiding. 18:37 – Chris: I have some specialty friends where they tell me where I’ve screwed up my code. For example Eric Bailey and Scott O’Hara but, of course, in very kind ways. What are some things that I can make sure that my code is going to work for many different people. 19:18 – Guest: You have accessibility and inclusive design. People think of accessibility as a check-list and that’s okay but there could be problems with this. 26:00 – Panel: That’s a great guideline. 26:05 – Chris: You talked about ARIA roles and it can be confusing. One side is: I don’t know when to use these and the other side is: I don’t know when NOT to use these so I’m going to use them for EVERYTHING! I guess both can be detrimental. What’s your advice on this topic? 27:00 – Guest: Scott is great and I would trust him to the end of the Earth about what he says. Guest mentions Léonie Watson and her talks about this topic. 29:26 – (Guest continues.) 29:36 – Advertisement – Sentry.io 30:31 – Chris. 30:40 – Guest: There is a lot of pressure, though, right? People wouldn’t blog about this if it wasn’t worthwhile. It doesn’t matter what the style is or what the syntax is. The guest talks about not throwing ARIA onto everything. 36:34 – Aimee: Is this something that was mentioned in the book: people with disabilities and accessibility. 37:28 – Guest: Yes, of course. I think it’s important to make your interfaces flexible and robust to think and include people with disabilities. 39:00 – Guest mentions larger buttons. 40:52 – Panelists and Guest talk back-and-forth. 42:22 – Chris: It’s an accessibility and inclusivity element. I saw a dropdown menu and worked great on certain devices but not others. I could beat this horse all day long but the whole: what happens of the JavaScript file doesn’t load or just accordion options? 43:50 – Guest: It’s the progressive enhancement element. 44:05 – Guest: I think it’s worth noting. I think these things dovetail really nicely. 46:29 – Chris: Did you do a video interview, Aimee, talking about CSS? Is CSS better than JavaScript in some ways I don’t know if this is related or not? 47:03 – Aimee: When I talk about JavaScript vs. CSS...the browser optimizes those. 47:27 – Aimee: But as someone who loves JavaScript...and then some very talented people taught me that you have to find the right tool for the job. 47:29 – Guest: I am the other way around – interesting. 52:50 – Chuck: Picks! 52:55 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! END – Advertisement: CacheFly! Links: JavaScript Backbone.js Microsoft’s TFS Léonie Watson React Elixir Ember.js Vue GO jQuery Node.js Puppeteer Cypress Heydon’s GitHub Heydon’s Mastodon Heydon’s Book Medium Article on Heydon Heydon’s Website Heydon’s Twitter Sponsors: DevLifts Kendo UI Sentry CacheFly Picks: Joe Chris Ferdinandi's Blog Luxur board game Cypress.io Aimee Blog about interviewing Birthday Cake Quest Bar Chris Web Dev Career Guide: https://gomakethings.com/career-guide/ Use FREECAREER at checkout to get it for free Neapolitan Ice Cream  Netflix Web Performance case study Charles Disney Heroes Battle Mode MFCEO Project Podcast Gary Lee Audio Experience Suggestions for JavaScript Jabber Heydon Bruck What is Mastodon and why should I use it?

Panel: Charles Max Wood Aimee Knight Chris Ferdinandi Joe Eames Special Guest: Heydon Pickering In this episode, the panel talks with Heydon Pickering who is a designer and writer. The panel and the guest talk about his new book, which is centered on the topic of today’s show: inclusive components. Check out Heydon’s Twitter, Website, GitHub, and Mastodon social accounts to learn more about him. To purchase the book – go here! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI 0:38 – Chuck: Aimee, Chris, Joe, and myself – we are today’s panel. My show the DevRev is available online to check it out. 1:30 – Guest: Plain ice cream would be frozen milk and that would be terrible. So I am lemon and candy JavaScript! 2:13 – Chuck: We are talking today about...? 2:22 – Chris: He’s talking about “inclusive components” today! 2:41 – Guest: Traveling is very stressful and I wanted something to do on the plane. I’ve done this book, “Inclusive Design Patterns.” If you don’t want to buy the book you can go to the blog. I have been talking with Smashing Magazine. 5:40 – Panel. 5:47 – Guest: I approached Smashing Magazine initially. They didn’t think there was a market for this content at the time. They were very supportive but we will do it as an eBook so our costs our down. At the time, the editor came back and said that: “it was quite good!” We skimmed it but came back to it now and now the content was more relevant in their eyes. I didn’t want to do the same book but I wanted to do it around “patterns.” Rewriting components is what I do all the time. I use Vanilla JavaScript. Backbone.js is the trendy one. 9:52 – Panel: The hard book did it get published? 10:02 – Guest: We are in the works and it’s all in the final stages right now. It has to go through a different process for the print version. 11:54 – Panel. 11:58 – (Guest continues about the editorial process.) 12:09 – Panel: They probably switched to TFS – it’s Microsoft’s. 12:23 – Guest: There was this argument on Twitter about the different processors. 13:35 – Chris: What are the ways that people are breaking accessibility with their code through JavaScript?  13:59 – Guest: The whole premise is that there aren’t a ton of different components that we use. Generally, speaking. Most things we do through JavaScript – it’s just different ways of doing this/that, and hiding things. I am discounting things with Node or other stuff. Most of what we are doing, with interactive design, is showing and hiding. 18:37 – Chris: I have some specialty friends where they tell me where I’ve screwed up my code. For example Eric Bailey and Scott O’Hara but, of course, in very kind ways. What are some things that I can make sure that my code is going to work for many different people. 19:18 – Guest: You have accessibility and inclusive design. People think of accessibility as a check-list and that’s okay but there could be problems with this. 26:00 – Panel: That’s a great guideline. 26:05 – Chris: You talked about ARIA roles and it can be confusing. One side is: I don’t know when to use these and the other side is: I don’t know when NOT to use these so I’m going to use them for EVERYTHING! I guess both can be detrimental. What’s your advice on this topic? 27:00 – Guest: Scott is great and I would trust him to the end of the Earth about what he says. Guest mentions Léonie Watson and her talks about this topic. 29:26 – (Guest continues.) 29:36 – Advertisement – Sentry.io 30:31 – Chris. 30:40 – Guest: There is a lot of pressure, though, right? People wouldn’t blog about this if it wasn’t worthwhile. It doesn’t matter what the style is or what the syntax is. The guest talks about not throwing ARIA onto everything. 36:34 – Aimee: Is this something that was mentioned in the book: people with disabilities and accessibility. 37:28 – Guest: Yes, of course. I think it’s important to make your interfaces flexible and robust to think and include people with disabilities. 39:00 – Guest mentions larger buttons. 40:52 – Panelists and Guest talk back-and-forth. 42:22 – Chris: It’s an accessibility and inclusivity element. I saw a dropdown menu and worked great on certain devices but not others. I could beat this horse all day long but the whole: what happens of the JavaScript file doesn’t load or just accordion options? 43:50 – Guest: It’s the progressive enhancement element. 44:05 – Guest: I think it’s worth noting. I think these things dovetail really nicely. 46:29 – Chris: Did you do a video interview, Aimee, talking about CSS? Is CSS better than JavaScript in some ways I don’t know if this is related or not? 47:03 – Aimee: When I talk about JavaScript vs. CSS...the browser optimizes those. 47:27 – Aimee: But as someone who loves JavaScript...and then some very talented people taught me that you have to find the right tool for the job. 47:29 – Guest: I am the other way around – interesting. 52:50 – Chuck: Picks! 52:55 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! END – Advertisement: CacheFly! Links: JavaScript Backbone.js Microsoft’s TFS Léonie Watson React Elixir Ember.js Vue GO jQuery Node.js Puppeteer Cypress Heydon’s GitHub Heydon’s Mastodon Heydon’s Book Medium Article on Heydon Heydon’s Website Heydon’s Twitter Sponsors: DevLifts Kendo UI Sentry CacheFly Picks: Joe Chris Ferdinandi's Blog Luxur board game Cypress.io Aimee Blog about interviewing Birthday Cake Quest Bar Chris Web Dev Career Guide: https://gomakethings.com/career-guide/ Use FREECAREER at checkout to get it for free Neapolitan Ice Cream  Netflix Web Performance case study Charles Disney Heroes Battle Mode MFCEO Project Podcast Gary Lee Audio Experience Suggestions for JavaScript Jabber Heydon Bruck What is Mastodon and why should I use it?

Panel: Charles Max Wood Aimee Knight Chris Ferdinandi Joe Eames Special Guest: Heydon Pickering In this episode, the panel talks with Heydon Pickering who is a designer and writer. The panel and the guest talk about his new book, which is centered on the topic of today’s show: inclusive components. Check out Heydon’s Twitter, Website, GitHub, and Mastodon social accounts to learn more about him. To purchase the book – go here! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI 0:38 – Chuck: Aimee, Chris, Joe, and myself – we are today’s panel. My show the DevRev is available online to check it out. 1:30 – Guest: Plain ice cream would be frozen milk and that would be terrible. So I am lemon and candy JavaScript! 2:13 – Chuck: We are talking today about...? 2:22 – Chris: He’s talking about “inclusive components” today! 2:41 – Guest: Traveling is very stressful and I wanted something to do on the plane. I’ve done this book, “Inclusive Design Patterns.” If you don’t want to buy the book you can go to the blog. I have been talking with Smashing Magazine. 5:40 – Panel. 5:47 – Guest: I approached Smashing Magazine initially. They didn’t think there was a market for this content at the time. They were very supportive but we will do it as an eBook so our costs our down. At the time, the editor came back and said that: “it was quite good!” We skimmed it but came back to it now and now the content was more relevant in their eyes. I didn’t want to do the same book but I wanted to do it around “patterns.” Rewriting components is what I do all the time. I use Vanilla JavaScript. Backbone.js is the trendy one. 9:52 – Panel: The hard book did it get published? 10:02 – Guest: We are in the works and it’s all in the final stages right now. It has to go through a different process for the print version. 11:54 – Panel. 11:58 – (Guest continues about the editorial process.) 12:09 – Panel: They probably switched to TFS – it’s Microsoft’s. 12:23 – Guest: There was this argument on Twitter about the different processors. 13:35 – Chris: What are the ways that people are breaking accessibility with their code through JavaScript?  13:59 – Guest: The whole premise is that there aren’t a ton of different components that we use. Generally, speaking. Most things we do through JavaScript – it’s just different ways of doing this/that, and hiding things. I am discounting things with Node or other stuff. Most of what we are doing, with interactive design, is showing and hiding. 18:37 – Chris: I have some specialty friends where they tell me where I’ve screwed up my code. For example Eric Bailey and Scott O’Hara but, of course, in very kind ways. What are some things that I can make sure that my code is going to work for many different people. 19:18 – Guest: You have accessibility and inclusive design. People think of accessibility as a check-list and that’s okay but there could be problems with this. 26:00 – Panel: That’s a great guideline. 26:05 – Chris: You talked about ARIA roles and it can be confusing. One side is: I don’t know when to use these and the other side is: I don’t know when NOT to use these so I’m going to use them for EVERYTHING! I guess both can be detrimental. What’s your advice on this topic? 27:00 – Guest: Scott is great and I would trust him to the end of the Earth about what he says. Guest mentions Léonie Watson and her talks about this topic. 29:26 – (Guest continues.) 29:36 – Advertisement – Sentry.io 30:31 – Chris. 30:40 – Guest: There is a lot of pressure, though, right? People wouldn’t blog about this if it wasn’t worthwhile. It doesn’t matter what the style is or what the syntax is. The guest talks about not throwing ARIA onto everything. 36:34 – Aimee: Is this something that was mentioned in the book: people with disabilities and accessibility. 37:28 – Guest: Yes, of course. I think it’s important to make your interfaces flexible and robust to think and include people with disabilities. 39:00 – Guest mentions larger buttons. 40:52 – Panelists and Guest talk back-and-forth. 42:22 – Chris: It’s an accessibility and inclusivity element. I saw a dropdown menu and worked great on certain devices but not others. I could beat this horse all day long but the whole: what happens of the JavaScript file doesn’t load or just accordion options? 43:50 – Guest: It’s the progressive enhancement element. 44:05 – Guest: I think it’s worth noting. I think these things dovetail really nicely. 46:29 – Chris: Did you do a video interview, Aimee, talking about CSS? Is CSS better than JavaScript in some ways I don’t know if this is related or not? 47:03 – Aimee: When I talk about JavaScript vs. CSS...the browser optimizes those. 47:27 – Aimee: But as someone who loves JavaScript...and then some very talented people taught me that you have to find the right tool for the job. 47:29 – Guest: I am the other way around – interesting. 52:50 – Chuck: Picks! 52:55 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! END – Advertisement: CacheFly! Links: JavaScript Backbone.js Microsoft’s TFS Léonie Watson React Elixir Ember.js Vue GO jQuery Node.js Puppeteer Cypress Heydon’s GitHub Heydon’s Mastodon Heydon’s Book Medium Article on Heydon Heydon’s Website Heydon’s Twitter Sponsors: DevLifts Kendo UI Sentry CacheFly Picks: Joe Chris Ferdinandi's Blog Luxur board game Cypress.io Aimee Blog about interviewing Birthday Cake Quest Bar Chris Web Dev Career Guide: https://gomakethings.com/career-guide/ Use FREECAREER at checkout to get it for free Neapolitan Ice Cream  Netflix Web Performance case study Charles Disney Heroes Battle Mode MFCEO Project Podcast Gary Lee Audio Experience Suggestions for JavaScript Jabber Heydon Bruck What is Mastodon and why should I use it?

Panel: Chris Fritz Joe Eames Divya Sasidharan Special Guest: Eduardo San Martin Morote In this episode, the panel talks with Eduardo San Martin Morote who is a member of the Vue.js team, a speaker, and trainer who currently resides in France. The panelists and Eduardo talk about developing games, coding, WebAssembly, C++, Vue, Angular, memory management, and much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 0:33 – Chris: Today’s panel is Joe Eames who organizes many different conferences. 1:09 – Joe: That was long introduction! Hi everyone! I organize an Angular conference, too; it’s very small. 1:26 – Chris: Divya is also on our panel and is an awesome speaker and conference organizer. Our special guest is Eduardo San Martin Morote! 1:55 – Chris: Actually it’s good that I get your full name. I do speak a little bit of Spanish. 2:17 – Panel goes back-and-forth. 2:33 – Guest: It was good and sounded like American Spanish. 2:47 – Chris: This is about Eduardo and not my Spanish. You used to be a game developer? 3:08 – Guest. 3:17 – Chris: You wrote a lot of C++? 3:20 – Guest: Yep! 3:22 – Chris. 3:50 – Guest: It’s optimized – you can handle 1 million requests per second – but that doesn’t happen unless it’s a huge organization. 4:24 – Chris: Can you talk about C++? Compare it to JavaScript? 4:37 – Joe talks about transferring from JavaScript to C++. 4:48 – Guest: I am an instructor, too, and teach Vue.js to people. The thing to me is the variable scoping of functions. 5:50 – Chris: Variable scoping – let’s not get into too much detail, cause we are an audio medium. 6:10 – Guest: When you look at the syntax and create classes with JavaScript...I think C++ has always had classes from the beginning. 6:58 – Chris: I used to write things back in the day with C++. I remember some features that were added later that I never got to take advantage of. I can’t remember what they were. I thought classes were one of those things. It won’t be a fruitful line of discussion cause I would be guessing. Chris: What’s different about C++ is that the types are more important? 7:57 – Guest: It’s not that it’s important it’s necessary. 8:27 – Guest: Pointers are an integer that... 8:47 – Guest continues. 8:52 – Chris: In C++ when you say memory management you are... 9:23 – Guest talks about integers, JavaScript, memory, C++, and building games! Check out this discussion here! 11:00 – Panelist talks about web assembly and asks a question. 11:23 – Guest: You will always have...the thing is that you are always getting the most out of the hardware. Computers keep getting faster and faster and people are building games with more effects. 11:53 – (Guest continues): Native video games will always be a step ahead of what web assembly can achieve. 12:50 – Have you heard of Blazor (from Microsoft)? (No.) You write it all in C#. Panel talks about Silver Light. 13:57 – Chris: What is different about web assembly compared to trans-piled to JS languages that are basically Ruby. That compile to JavaScript – you don’t have to write the JavaScript (it’s basically Ruby) and your browser will interpret the JavaScript. 14:42 – Divya: Doesn’t it run on the GPU? That it runs on the graphic card? 14:55 – Chris: It works at a very low-level. Take any language and have the same low access that languages do (low as safely as possible) in the browser b/c there is still security concerns. 15:27 – Guest. 15:43 – Chris: What if I am using Canvas? 15:54 – Guest: ...the logic of your game will be faster. 16:20 – Chris: You have more fine-grained control? And you can control the speed of operations? 16:25 – Guest: You should be able to. If you are using a program like C++... 17:02 – Chris: I don’t know this...I know that JavaScript is an interpretive language you read it from top to bottom... 17:25 – Panel: Can JavaScript read from top to bottom? I thought you had to see the entire thing? Correct me if I am wrong? 17:45 – Chris: Yeah, yeah – absolutely. 17:52 – Panel: I think that’s roughly accurate. We are way off topic! 18:21 – Chris: Would it be accurate (since we aren’t all experts), but it sounds like web assembly is that it does work on a lower level than JavaScript, so it’s possible to achieve optimizations that wouldn’t be possible with JavaScript. Is that true? 18:58 – Divya: I think you could say that...there is an article by Lin Clark that you should check out! 19:37 – Panel: See link to show notes to find article and here! 19:48 – Chris: What got you started into web development? Why no longer game development? 20:02 – Guest: When I started coding at 13-14 years old. It’s funny b/c at 15 years old I was coding and I didn’t even know that I was doing it. 22:41 – Chris: Toxic like...? 22:50 – Guest: Before I was thinking of the long hours and people were working too much, and not getting the recognition that they deserve. It was toxic, and it was a diverse environment. I realized that diversity is very important. The field is changing, but that’s why. 23:42 – Chris. 23:52 – Chris: Something else, it sounds like more familiar with C++ is TypeScript. Talk about that please? 24:17 – Guest: What got me into it were the generic types. 24:30 – Chris: What is a generic? 24:44 – Guest talks about generics. He mentions integers and other terms. 25:30 – Panel helps to clarify about generics, too. 27:08 – Panel: I got into generics when... Panel: Did you get into generics around the same time as C++? 27:27 – Guest. 28:00 – Panel: Where I see generics being used is with RJS. 28:33 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 29:15 – Chris: What is the point? 29:19 – Guest: I think there are many points of view with this. When I build my libraries... 31:37 – Chris: You said that in VS code but I can get that in JavaScript. What is the extra advantage of using TypeScript on top of that? 32:00 – Guest. 32:14 – Chris: Let’s say I ignore the auto-completion, I type quickly – would TypeScript give me a warning? 32:31 – Guest: Yes that is true. If you use it with JavaScript you probably won’t have an error. 33:05 – Chris: A compile time... You mentioned that you could enable some of these checks in JavaScript. How do you do that? Say you have an editor like VS Code, but can actually when there is a potential error? 33:47 – Guest: For a project you have to create a... 34:20 – Chris asks a question. 34:28 – Guest: Yes, I think it does. Pretty sure it does. 34:37 – Chris and Guest go back-and-forth. 35:05 – Chris: See Show Notes for TS Config. 35:10 – Panel. 35:53 – Chris: If they choose not to use TypeScript what are the downsides? 36:05 – Panel talks about his experience and why people might not use TypeScript. He also mentioned CoffeeScript, C#, and JavaScript. He gives an analogy of riding a motorcycle and a truck. 38:04 – Panelist continues. He says that people love the freedom of JavaScript. 39:23 – Chris: If most of your bugs aren’t being caught by... 40:00 – Panel: Something that looks and sees and fits super well doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. A big project is totally different. When you dip your toe in the water it might be more overhead that you don’t’ need. You have to think about the smaller / larger cases. I think that’s why Vue is getting a lot of popularity. 41:15 – Chris: I don’t think I have found anyone coming from JavaScript that say that TypeScript is not worth it. 41:41 – Guest: I like TypeScript I don’t like writing applications in TypeScript. I like writing my libraries somewhere else. The flexibility that you have in JavaScript helps a lot. I don’t like my components to be typed. I do like having... 42:27 – Guest continues. 43:35 – Chris: Why is it different bad or different good? 43:40 – Guest: It’s bad. 43:53 – Chris: What hurts your development? 44:00 – Guest: You get typing errors. The guest gives a specific example. 45:11 – Chris: It sounds like with applications you are doing more proto typing and changing requirements. Making the types really strict and specific can really hurt you? 45:39 – Guest: That’s better. 45:44 – Chris asks another question. 46:00 – Panel: That’s mostly true. 46:13 – Chris: Types can make some refractors easier, but overall a lot of refractors are going to take longer with TypeScript. At least with your application - say it’s organized in both cases. 46:55 – Chris: One more thing about TypeScript – some people (if not coming from C# or C++) I have found that people are spending a lot of time (making sure the typing is working really well) rather than writing unit tests and stuff like that. There is an opportunity cost there. Try TypeScript – it might be for you! 48:10 – Panel: As the team grows so do the benefits! 48:20 – Chris: Anything else? Where can people find you? 48:24 – Guest: I am giving a workshop in Toronto in November! 48:54 – Guest: Twitter! 49:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React JavaScript C# C++ C++ Programming / Memory Management Angular Blazor JavaScript DevChat TV Graph QL WebAssembly VuePress HACKS TypeScript: Generics Generic Types TypeScript: TS Config.json VS CODE CoffeeScript Opinion – “In Praise of Mediocrity” by Tim Wu GitHub: Vue-Cli-Plugin_Electron-Builder Eduardo’s GitHub Eduardo’s Twitter Eduardo’s Code Mentor Eduardo’s Medium Eduardo’s Trello Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Joe Framework Summit Videos on Youtube - Coming soon. Divya Lin Clark Cartoons In Praise of Mediocrity Chris Vue CLI Plugins Electron Builder Read nooks Eduardo Remote work due to traveling

Panel: Chris Fritz Joe Eames Divya Sasidharan Special Guest: Eduardo San Martin Morote In this episode, the panel talks with Eduardo San Martin Morote who is a member of the Vue.js team, a speaker, and trainer who currently resides in France. The panelists and Eduardo talk about developing games, coding, WebAssembly, C++, Vue, Angular, memory management, and much more! Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement – Kendo UI 0:33 – Chris: Today’s panel is Joe Eames who organizes many different conferences. 1:09 – Joe: That was long introduction! Hi everyone! I organize an Angular conference, too; it’s very small. 1:26 – Chris: Divya is also on our panel and is an awesome speaker and conference organizer. Our special guest is Eduardo San Martin Morote! 1:55 – Chris: Actually it’s good that I get your full name. I do speak a little bit of Spanish. 2:17 – Panel goes back-and-forth. 2:33 – Guest: It was good and sounded like American Spanish. 2:47 – Chris: This is about Eduardo and not my Spanish. You used to be a game developer? 3:08 – Guest. 3:17 – Chris: You wrote a lot of C++? 3:20 – Guest: Yep! 3:22 – Chris. 3:50 – Guest: It’s optimized – you can handle 1 million requests per second – but that doesn’t happen unless it’s a huge organization. 4:24 – Chris: Can you talk about C++? Compare it to JavaScript? 4:37 – Joe talks about transferring from JavaScript to C++. 4:48 – Guest: I am an instructor, too, and teach Vue.js to people. The thing to me is the variable scoping of functions. 5:50 – Chris: Variable scoping – let’s not get into too much detail, cause we are an audio medium. 6:10 – Guest: When you look at the syntax and create classes with JavaScript...I think C++ has always had classes from the beginning. 6:58 – Chris: I used to write things back in the day with C++. I remember some features that were added later that I never got to take advantage of. I can’t remember what they were. I thought classes were one of those things. It won’t be a fruitful line of discussion cause I would be guessing. Chris: What’s different about C++ is that the types are more important? 7:57 – Guest: It’s not that it’s important it’s necessary. 8:27 – Guest: Pointers are an integer that... 8:47 – Guest continues. 8:52 – Chris: In C++ when you say memory management you are... 9:23 – Guest talks about integers, JavaScript, memory, C++, and building games! Check out this discussion here! 11:00 – Panelist talks about web assembly and asks a question. 11:23 – Guest: You will always have...the thing is that you are always getting the most out of the hardware. Computers keep getting faster and faster and people are building games with more effects. 11:53 – (Guest continues): Native video games will always be a step ahead of what web assembly can achieve. 12:50 – Have you heard of Blazor (from Microsoft)? (No.) You write it all in C#. Panel talks about Silver Light. 13:57 – Chris: What is different about web assembly compared to trans-piled to JS languages that are basically Ruby. That compile to JavaScript – you don’t have to write the JavaScript (it’s basically Ruby) and your browser will interpret the JavaScript. 14:42 – Divya: Doesn’t it run on the GPU? That it runs on the graphic card? 14:55 – Chris: It works at a very low-level. Take any language and have the same low access that languages do (low as safely as possible) in the browser b/c there is still security concerns. 15:27 – Guest. 15:43 – Chris: What if I am using Canvas? 15:54 – Guest: ...the logic of your game will be faster. 16:20 – Chris: You have more fine-grained control? And you can control the speed of operations? 16:25 – Guest: You should be able to. If you are using a program like C++... 17:02 – Chris: I don’t know this...I know that JavaScript is an interpretive language you read it from top to bottom... 17:25 – Panel: Can JavaScript read from top to bottom? I thought you had to see the entire thing? Correct me if I am wrong? 17:45 – Chris: Yeah, yeah – absolutely. 17:52 – Panel: I think that’s roughly accurate. We are way off topic! 18:21 – Chris: Would it be accurate (since we aren’t all experts), but it sounds like web assembly is that it does work on a lower level than JavaScript, so it’s possible to achieve optimizations that wouldn’t be possible with JavaScript. Is that true? 18:58 – Divya: I think you could say that...there is an article by Lin Clark that you should check out! 19:37 – Panel: See link to show notes to find article and here! 19:48 – Chris: What got you started into web development? Why no longer game development? 20:02 – Guest: When I started coding at 13-14 years old. It’s funny b/c at 15 years old I was coding and I didn’t even know that I was doing it. 22:41 – Chris: Toxic like...? 22:50 – Guest: Before I was thinking of the long hours and people were working too much, and not getting the recognition that they deserve. It was toxic, and it was a diverse environment. I realized that diversity is very important. The field is changing, but that’s why. 23:42 – Chris. 23:52 – Chris: Something else, it sounds like more familiar with C++ is TypeScript. Talk about that please? 24:17 – Guest: What got me into it were the generic types. 24:30 – Chris: What is a generic? 24:44 – Guest talks about generics. He mentions integers and other terms. 25:30 – Panel helps to clarify about generics, too. 27:08 – Panel: I got into generics when... Panel: Did you get into generics around the same time as C++? 27:27 – Guest. 28:00 – Panel: Where I see generics being used is with RJS. 28:33 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! 29:15 – Chris: What is the point? 29:19 – Guest: I think there are many points of view with this. When I build my libraries... 31:37 – Chris: You said that in VS code but I can get that in JavaScript. What is the extra advantage of using TypeScript on top of that? 32:00 – Guest. 32:14 – Chris: Let’s say I ignore the auto-completion, I type quickly – would TypeScript give me a warning? 32:31 – Guest: Yes that is true. If you use it with JavaScript you probably won’t have an error. 33:05 – Chris: A compile time... You mentioned that you could enable some of these checks in JavaScript. How do you do that? Say you have an editor like VS Code, but can actually when there is a potential error? 33:47 – Guest: For a project you have to create a... 34:20 – Chris asks a question. 34:28 – Guest: Yes, I think it does. Pretty sure it does. 34:37 – Chris and Guest go back-and-forth. 35:05 – Chris: See Show Notes for TS Config. 35:10 – Panel. 35:53 – Chris: If they choose not to use TypeScript what are the downsides? 36:05 – Panel talks about his experience and why people might not use TypeScript. He also mentioned CoffeeScript, C#, and JavaScript. He gives an analogy of riding a motorcycle and a truck. 38:04 – Panelist continues. He says that people love the freedom of JavaScript. 39:23 – Chris: If most of your bugs aren’t being caught by... 40:00 – Panel: Something that looks and sees and fits super well doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. A big project is totally different. When you dip your toe in the water it might be more overhead that you don’t’ need. You have to think about the smaller / larger cases. I think that’s why Vue is getting a lot of popularity. 41:15 – Chris: I don’t think I have found anyone coming from JavaScript that say that TypeScript is not worth it. 41:41 – Guest: I like TypeScript I don’t like writing applications in TypeScript. I like writing my libraries somewhere else. The flexibility that you have in JavaScript helps a lot. I don’t like my components to be typed. I do like having... 42:27 – Guest continues. 43:35 – Chris: Why is it different bad or different good? 43:40 – Guest: It’s bad. 43:53 – Chris: What hurts your development? 44:00 – Guest: You get typing errors. The guest gives a specific example. 45:11 – Chris: It sounds like with applications you are doing more proto typing and changing requirements. Making the types really strict and specific can really hurt you? 45:39 – Guest: That’s better. 45:44 – Chris asks another question. 46:00 – Panel: That’s mostly true. 46:13 – Chris: Types can make some refractors easier, but overall a lot of refractors are going to take longer with TypeScript. At least with your application - say it’s organized in both cases. 46:55 – Chris: One more thing about TypeScript – some people (if not coming from C# or C++) I have found that people are spending a lot of time (making sure the typing is working really well) rather than writing unit tests and stuff like that. There is an opportunity cost there. Try TypeScript – it might be for you! 48:10 – Panel: As the team grows so do the benefits! 48:20 – Chris: Anything else? Where can people find you? 48:24 – Guest: I am giving a workshop in Toronto in November! 48:54 – Guest: Twitter! 49:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! DEVCHAT code. 30-day trial. Links: Vue React JavaScript C# C++ C++ Programming / Memory Management Angular Blazor JavaScript DevChat TV Graph QL WebAssembly VuePress HACKS TypeScript: Generics Generic Types TypeScript: TS Config.json VS CODE CoffeeScript Opinion – “In Praise of Mediocrity” by Tim Wu GitHub: Vue-Cli-Plugin_Electron-Builder Eduardo’s GitHub Eduardo’s Twitter Eduardo’s Code Mentor Eduardo’s Medium Eduardo’s Trello Sponsors: Fresh Books Cache Fly Kendo UI Get A Coder Job! Picks: Joe Framework Summit Videos on Youtube - Coming soon. Divya Lin Clark Cartoons In Praise of Mediocrity Chris Vue CLI Plugins Electron Builder Read nooks Eduardo Remote work due to traveling

Breakthrough ideas with Chris: What if we could get everyone in here out there, instead of trying to get everyone out there in here? How do we equip and deploy people to really love their neighbors every day of the week? It is hard to love your neighbor when you don’t know your neighbor. Don’t … Read More Read More

KERI: Hey guys! It’s Keri TV. I have a very special guest today. I’m super excited to introduce Chris Dyson, a fellow colleague at the agency. We have something we’re so excited to share with you that’s become a little bit more mainstream in the agent circles.  It started as an agency exclusive, and it’s called the PLS, which stands for the... CHRIS: Pocket Listing Service. KERI: Pocket Listing Service. We’re going to explain a little bit today on our episode on what that means and how it benefits you, agents, and why It’s so great. KERI: First, to start things off, what is a pocket?  That can be a very confusing term. Pocket is slang for listings that we have that are not on the MLS. If something’s on the multiple listing service, It’s pushed out to Zillow, RedFin, and every website possible.  It’s a pocket, so It’s something secretive that you have in your pocket. CHRIS: Correct. KERI: It’s an off-market property.  Off-market, but with sellers that are willing to sell.  That being said, Chris, tell us a little bit more about the PLS.  Thanks for being here today, too. CHRIS: My pleasure, thanks for having me.  Very exciting. KERI: Very exciting. CHRIS: It’s what Keri perfectly described. Pocket listings have actually become more and more prominent in our market, as you know.  Frankly, it was born from frustration in, as you know as as well, we would get sent hundreds, probably, sometimes thousands of emails a month from clients saying that I have this pocket listing.  I’m looking for that pocket listing. Frankly, I was frustrated.  There was nowhere we could go and search for that information when you needed it. If the email came and you didn’t have a client, and it was gone and it was forgotten about. KERI: Yeah. CHRIS: It was really born to try to fix that problem.  To have somewhere agents could find information that they’re already sharing in an email.  If that could live in a searchable platform, that was the goal. KERI: Yeah, and it’s amazing.  Who gets too many emails?  I know I do.  I’m trying to find that random email that had a pocket when you get a new call if the new buyer is just super hectic. CHRIS: That was really the impetus that started the platform. KERI: Cool. How does it work? You’ve got the platform. Tell us more about how it functions and helps agents and clients. CHRIS: The biggest key with PLS is that it is an agent-only platform. KERI: Okay. CHRIS: Obviously, the conundrum is, how to do you market an off-market property? KERI: It’s off-market. CHRIS: Exactly. What does that mean? KERI: How do you do that? CHRIS: The only way you can really do that effectively, the key with it, is that these are sellers who want to adopt an off-market strategy. They either demand discretion, which in the big cities, especially Los Angeles, we have a lot of celebrities who don’t necessarily want their information in the public realm. KERI: Exactly. CHRIS: I don’t know an agent who doesn’t have a client that would say, I will sell it at this number, but I don’t want to go to the hassle of putting it on the market.  KERI: Exactly. CHRIS: What do you do with those? KERI: Hey guys, want my very expensive listing? CHRIS: Yeah!  The key is to make the platform only accessible to agents.  That, one, helps keep the information out of the public domain, which is what the seller is asking for in the first place.  Secondly what that does, which is probably the most important thing that this site is designed to try to achieve, it lets agents leverage this information to give us all a competitive edge.  I think what’s really become a huge problem or an issue for agents is now the MLS is sharing information with the Zillows, the Trulias, and the Redfins. Clients are saying, why do I need an agent?  Everything’s available online. KERI: Right. CHRIS: Part of what the PLS allows the agent community as a whole to do is take the information that sellers want to be kept out of the public realm and leverage that to give us all the information that our clients don’t have access to, and in turn, make everybody more valuable. KERI: Very valuable  What happens if somebody’s got their property listed on the PLS and nothing happens?  Say there’s no showings or offers.  What happens next? CHRIS: This is probably where, again, the PLS can be valuable to potentially all listings.  I’m sure you have clients that think the house is worth more than you think it’s worth. KERI: Not at all! CHRIS: Not at all, right?  One of the coolest things that we’ve seen over the last year is that agents have used the PLS to list properties in a ‘coming soon’ capacity, before putting them on the MLS. KERI: Ah, okay. CHRIS: That’s right.  In a lot of instances, the property is sold, which is amazing.  A lot of agents have actually used it as a tool to get a price reduction out of their sellers.  Those sellers who think it’s too much, if it hasn’t moved and they haven’t gotten the activity, it’s given them the ammunition and the data to go back to the seller and say, listen.  The agent’s have seen this.  We haven’t got a call.  Let’s put it out and get it onto the MLS at a more realistic number.  Zero days on market.  That has been a really cool thing to see honestly. KERI: Yeah. CHRIS: I’m delighted that that’s really happening. KERI: Because days on market can translate to a lack of value. If something’s on the market too long, it becomes a stale listing. You know. The whole nine yards.  So the type of agents that are on the PLS, when you say to your seller, it’s been on here and say we haven’t had much traction, who’s in this, besides the agency’s agents?  These are some of the top agents in the nation.  What other types of agents?  How do we explain to our seller’s who’s looking? CHRIS: I mean, the majority of our agents are LA based. KERI: LA based? CHRIS: It’s only effective if you have a critical mass of agents in any particular place. KERI: Exactly.  Those agents are on the site. CHRIS: That’s right. We now have just a shade under six thousand agents. KERI: Six thousand agents, oh my gosh. CHRIS: I include them. If you can reel off all the top agents in town, they all have memberships. KERI: Mh-hmm. CHRIS: You can really argue to your seller that the best agents in the business are going to see your information KERI: Mh-hmm. CHRIS: If it’s not selling, maybe we should rethink our strategy, going to the MLS. KERI: That’s an amazing, coming-soon platform, to make sure that you hit the market at the right price that attracts buyers. CHRIS: Yeah. KERI: Brilliant! I didn’t even think about that. CHRIS: See? KERI: What about for buyers that are looking?  How would they benefit working with agents who are members of the PLS? CHRIS: Again, it gives those buyer’s agents access of entry that their clients don’t have.  It makes you look better. KERI: Okay!  We like that. CHRIS: That’s exactly. KERI: Good. CHRIS: I think, in any business, someone’s only going to work with you if you offer value and have information they don’t have access too. KERI: Exactly. CHRIS: Part of this is to try to give that to the agents and help protect and ensure the industry as a whole, Keri. KERI: Yeah. CHRIS: That’s the plan. KERI: Transparency and value is the highest of important qualities all our clients want.  They want agents that are doing something, that are different, and that provide valuable information, because there’s so much of that online. They can get properties and comps. They can get all the tools they need, but something like this creates another echelon in our industry. CHRIS: Yes. KERI: Which is amazing. CHRIS: Perfect. That’s it. KERI: What are some examples of times where PLS has made a huge impact?  What are some of the success stories you’ve heard of? CHRIS: Listen, again, I’m delighted to say that I get texts and emails all the time. I actually got a text from Marshall Peck, mentioning him. Marshal listed a house.  He texted me in the morning to say that he had a house that was coming on the flats, Beverly Hills.  He put it on and then texted me back half an hour later and said, just got three calls in ten minutes.  Now, I’m able to go and actually get the listing signed.  We got a listing signed as a result of putting it on the site that he didn’t have the executed contract in full. KERI: That’s amazing. CHRIS: That’s unbelievable. KERI: That’s a huge benefit.  Yeah. CHRIS: Yeah.  We’ve had deals done, we had a deal that we followed. An agent brought a property on at six point five and sold it for seven point two within in a week. KERI: What! Multiple offers off-market. CHRIS: Multiple offers off-market, yep.  KERI: That’s brilliant. CHRIS: A lady at PLG estates, Carey Moore. This was for a property in Griffith Park.  She got her asking price through the site.  It’s really working. KERI: Amazing. CHRIS: It’s amazing.  I’m delighted. KERI: I actually had an interesting case.  I met some buyers, some clients, at an open house.  They knew eight other agents.  They were like, Keri, we know this person.  We know purple bricks.  We know all these different agents who are willing to give us money back, this whole thing.  When I met them for the second time, I let them know about the PLS, and it showed them inventory on there that wasn’t available through their other agent friends who were on the MLS and they were like, Keri, we love you.  Can’t wait to work with you. CHRIS: Amazing. KERI: Yeah. It’s been an incredible tool in this day, with all the information out there.  Yeah.  Okay, speaking of the PLS and some of these beautiful properties, I was just looking through, a couple days ago, I saw this one on Oriole in West LA. Not West LA.  The one for twenty-nine million, that was just listed.  That is unbelievable.  I’ll show you a picture. CHRIS: It’s a cool house. KERI: A few pictures of that one. CHRIS: Yeah. KERI: Then the one in Malibu, on Murphy. CHRIS: Yeah. KERI: Those views are amazing. The one in Playa on Trolleyway, that’s very rare for that area, on the beach there. CHRIS: I mean, we’re very lucky to have a ton of really relevant inventory, and, quite frankly, if you’re not on there, you’re unnecessarily putting yourself at a disadvantage.  I mean, God bless what everyone wants to do, but this is really information you should have access to.  And it’s free.  Still. KERI: And it’s free! CHRIS: There’s no excuse. KERI: It’s free.  We like that. CHRIS: Yeah. Still free. KERI: Definitely, if you’re an agent, let us know if you’re interested in the PLS, and if you’re looking to work with an agent, make sure they are a member of the PLS so you have all the access.  Here Chris, I know you’re busy with this entire new amazing website and obviously servicing all your clients. CHRIS: Yeah. KERI: Thank you so much for being here. CHRIS: My pleasure. KERI: I can’t wait to post this.  Thank you guys for watching.  See you next Tuesday on Keri TV.    

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Special Guest: Kyle Holmberg & Alex Regan In this episode, the panel talks with two guests Kyle and Alex who work together in opensource. Kyle is a software engineer at AutoGravity interested in full-stack web development, graphic design, integrated systems, data visualizations, and soccer. Alex writes code and works with Parametric Studios, and he also loves puppies. Check out today’s episode where the panel and the two guests talk about the different frameworks and contributing to opensource. Show Topics: 3:03 – We got together because Alex mentioned his project. He was looking for something to get up running nice and easy. Boot Strap 4. That is a nice choice and I was contributing as a core team member at the time. He started with how do I get started with Boot Strap Vue. At the time I asked how do you do this...? And that’s how we got started. 4:03 – Guest continues more with this conversation. 4:30 – Chris: How did you start contributing within your company? 4:44 – Guest: There is a lot of autonomy with the last company I was working with (3 people there). I needed more fine tooth hooks and modals. Someone says X and you try to figure it out. So I was looking at the transitions, and there was a bug there. They hadn’t implemented any hooks, and I thought I could figure this out. From there, if you want a change I can help out. I don’t know if that change got implemented first. I started contributing some things to the library. I really got involved where someone (the creator of the library said you could be a core member. He took a trust in me. I started a lot in test coverage. That might not be the normal path to take. 6:39 – How long have you been developing? 6:42 – Guest: A year and a half. 7:00 – Chris: Any tips to opensource for beginners. 7:10 – Guest: Yes, having a thick skin. Everyone is anonymous on the Internet. People say things that they normally wouldn’t say in person. I figure if you put something out there someone will correct you. How can I get feedback? If you put yourself out there it’s like: failure to success. That process is what makes you better. 8:21 – Chris: Issues and chat like that. There is a lot of context that gets lost. When you just see the text it may seem angry 8:43 – Guest: I have a tendency towards sarcasm, and I have to save that to last. People come from different languages, and I’m not talking about software languages. English isn’t everyone’s first language. Good thing to keep in-mind. 9:14 – Internet is an international community. 9:22 – Guest continues this talk. Opensource is good to work on to get started with contributions. Especially with Operation Code it’s geared towards beginners; less complex. 10:30 – That is a good difference to show. 11:01 – Question. 11:05 – Guest. If you are a person with a lot of skin in their projects – I take pride in my work – I think if you have that mentality that you will want to submit to every request. Find some way to test every request against a...is this my concern or their concern? Figure out the boundaries. You will make mistakes and that’s fine. 11:54 – Panelist. 12:02 – Guest: Coming up with good interface boundaries for your libraries. 12:11 – Chuck: Once we figured out what really mattered than it makes it easier to say: yes or no. 12:26 - Guest: Conventional Commits. 13:06 – So Kyle what did you getting into opensource look like? 13:19 – Alex: Boot Strap. Operation Code. 15:07 – Chuck chimes-in about Aimee Knight and other people. Serving people and their country. You are helping people who have sacrificed. 15:58 – It is totally volunteer-based. 16:05 – Chris: What kind of questions did you ask Alex? How did you decide what to put in an issue? 16:25 – Alex: I tend to go to Stack Overflow. If it is in regards to a library I go to GitHub. Real time texts. Next.js – I just contributed to this this week. 19:21 – Chris: This question is for either one of you. For Questions and Answers – do you have any suggestions on what NOT to do when seeking help? 19:46 – Stay away from only asking a question in one sentence. There is so much information/context that you are leaving out, and that can often lead to more questions. Reasonable amount of contexts can go a long way. Code samples. Please Google the details for the markdown if it is a huge code. Context, context, context! 20:44 – I have an error, please fix it. Maybe that needs more context? 20:53 – Guest: What were you doing? There is a bigger overarching element. The problem they can see in front of them and what is the thing that you are TRYING to solve? 21:44 – More contexts that can help with a helpful answer. 21:53 – Guest: If someone used some learning tool... 22:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Chuck: It is something different that it could do something that you didn’t expect. 22:47 – Alex: Those are great moments. I love it when Kyle sees... That snowflake of your problem can help with documentation caveats. 23:44 – People are probably copying pasting. 24:05 – It can be the difference between understanding the page and not especially What not to do and what to do – any other tips? Can you have too much information? 24:32 – Guest: I am guilty of this sometimes. You can have too much information. The ability to converse in a real-time conversation is better. That’s my route to go. Maybe your problem is documented but documented poorly. Go to a real-time conversation to hash things out. 26:15 – Guest: If you do your homework with the different conversations: questions vs. concerns. Real-time conversation. He talks about GitHub issues and Stack Overflow. 27:48 – Chuck: My password is 123... If they can duplicate... Alex: Yeah too much information isn’t good. Some places mandate recreation like a JS Fiddle. Like Sandbox are cool tools. 29:32 – Is there a way to do the code wrong? 29:38 – Advertisement. 30:25 – Guest chimes-in with his answer. 31:31 – Question. If it’s opensource should they share? 31:33 – Absolutely. The difference that makes it for me is great. I can spot things that the machine can help me find. One small tip is when you provide code samples and GitHub issues use... The further you go out to recreate the problem there is a high payoff because they can get something working. The big difference is that it’s a huge pain to the person trying to convey the issue. If I do the simple version...I think you have to weigh your options. What tools are out there? Generate your data structure – there are costs to recreate the issue. 33:35 – Chris: 500 files, apps within the app – intercommunicating. All you do is download this, install this, it takes you ½ a day and how does this all work? 34:03 – Guest: You have to rein it in. Provide the easiest environment for it to occur. If you are having someone download a table and import it, and use a whole stack – you can try it – but I would advise to work really hard to find... 34:50 – In creating a demo keep it simple? 35:52 – Guests reply. 36:02 – Chuck. 36:07 – Chris: I learned about your experiences coming to opensource. Anything else that you would like to share with new contributors? 36:25 – Guest: Start with something that you have a genuine interest in. Something like a curiosity light bulb is on. It makes it more interesting. It’s a nice way to give back. Something that interests you. I have not found a case yet that I’m not compelled to help someone. Putting yourself out there you might be given a plate you don’t know what to do with. My learning experience is how welcoming opensource is. Maybe things are changing?  38:31 – Chuck: I have seen those communities but generally if they are there people frown down upon it. The newer opensource communities are very friendly. These projects are trying to gain adoptions, which is for the newer users. 39:17 – Guest: Final statements on opensource. Even if you think it is a small contribution it still helps. 40:55 – Guest chimes-in. It is important to have a platter for newcomers. 41:15 – Chris: I am curious to talk to you about how you’ve written React applications among others. Any advice? What resources should they 41:46 – Guest: Yeah. If you are making your new React application (from Vue land) there are many things that are similar and things that are different. As for preparing yourself, I am a huge fan of this one course. I had been coding (plus school) so 5 years, it’s okay to dive-into community courses. Dive-into a tutorial. Understand the huge core differences. He goes into those differences between React, Angular, and Vue. 43:30 – Guest talks about this, too. 45:50 – React doesn’t have an official router. Vue provides (he likes Vue’s mentality) other things. There is a library called One Loader. 46:50 – Guest: I was at a Meetup. One guy was doing C-sharp and game development. His wife had a different background, and I think they were sampling Angular, Vue, and React - all these different frameworks. That was interesting to talk with them. I relayed to them that Vue has free tutorials. Jeffry had an awesome Vue Cast. I think that’s what got me started in Vue. I learned from this tool and so can you! 48:11 – Chris: You aren’t starting from scratch if you know another framework? Do they translate well? 48:33 – Guest: I think so. There are a lot of ways to translate those patterns. 49:34 – Guest: React Rally – I just went to one. 49:50 – Chris chimes-in. Slots is mentioned 50:27 – Guest mentions the different frameworks. Guest: I went into functional components in Vue. I learned about the way... It helps you translate ideas. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but if you want to dig deep then it can help bridge the gap between one frameworks to another. 51:24 – Chris adds to this conversation. 51:36 – Guest: They are translatable. They are totally map-able. 5:46 – Chuck: Say someone was going to be on a Summit where they could meet with the React Core Team. What things would you suggest with them – and say these things are working here and these are working there. 52:12 – Guest: I would love to see... 53:03 – React doesn’t have a reactivity system you’d have to tell it more to... 53:15 – Guest chimes-in. Panel and guests go back-and-forth with this topic. 54:16 – Tooling. 55:38 – Guest: With React coming out with time slicing features how does that map to Vue and what can you say from one team to another. What is there to review? There is a lot of great things you can do with... 56:44 – Conversation continues. 57:59 – React has some partial answers to that, too. Progress. 58:10 – When Vue came onto the scene everyone felt like why do we need another framework? We have Ember, and... But with Vue it felt cohesive. It had an opportunity to learn from all the other frameworks. In terms of progress everyone is on the frontlines and learning from each other. Everyone has a different view on it. How can se learn from this and...? 59:12 – Chris: I am grateful for the different frameworks. Anyone comes out with a new tool then it’s the best. Creating something that is even better than before. 59:38 – Guest. 59:49 – Chuck: There are good frameworks out there why do I need another one. That’s the point. Someone will come along and say: I like what’s out there but I want to make... That’s what Vue was right? In some ways Vue was a leap forward and some ways it wasn’t – that’s how I feel. We need something to make things a bit easier to save 10 hours a week. 1:01:11 – Even Vue’s... 1:02:20 – Guest: In terms of why do we need another framework conversation – I don’t think we need another reason. Go ahead, what if it is groundbreaking it makes everyone do things differently and keep up. I love the idea that JavaScript is saying: what is the new framework today? The tradeoff there is that there are so many different ways to do things. It is hard for beginners. 1:03:88 – Chuck: How to find you online? 1:03:49 – Kyle states his social media profiles, so does Alex, too. 1:04:06 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks! 1:04:10 – Code Badges’ Advertisement Links: JSON Generator Ember.js Vue React Angular JavaScript Udemy One-Loader YouTube Talk: Beyond React 16 by Dan Abramov Badgr Kickstarter: CodeBadge.org Alex Sasha Regan’s Twitter Kyle Holmberg’s Twitter Kyle’s website Dev.to – Alex’s information DevChat TV GitHub Meetup Operation Code Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Home decorating shows Charles TerraGenesis GetaCoderJob.com Swag.devchat.tv Codebadge.org Kyle OperationCode Yet Another React vs.Vue Article Hacktoberfest Alex Uplift Standing Desk System 76 Rust

Panel: Charles Max Wood Chris Fritz Special Guest: Kyle Holmberg & Alex Regan In this episode, the panel talks with two guests Kyle and Alex who work together in opensource. Kyle is a software engineer at AutoGravity interested in full-stack web development, graphic design, integrated systems, data visualizations, and soccer. Alex writes code and works with Parametric Studios, and he also loves puppies. Check out today’s episode where the panel and the two guests talk about the different frameworks and contributing to opensource. Show Topics: 3:03 – We got together because Alex mentioned his project. He was looking for something to get up running nice and easy. Boot Strap 4. That is a nice choice and I was contributing as a core team member at the time. He started with how do I get started with Boot Strap Vue. At the time I asked how do you do this...? And that’s how we got started. 4:03 – Guest continues more with this conversation. 4:30 – Chris: How did you start contributing within your company? 4:44 – Guest: There is a lot of autonomy with the last company I was working with (3 people there). I needed more fine tooth hooks and modals. Someone says X and you try to figure it out. So I was looking at the transitions, and there was a bug there. They hadn’t implemented any hooks, and I thought I could figure this out. From there, if you want a change I can help out. I don’t know if that change got implemented first. I started contributing some things to the library. I really got involved where someone (the creator of the library said you could be a core member. He took a trust in me. I started a lot in test coverage. That might not be the normal path to take. 6:39 – How long have you been developing? 6:42 – Guest: A year and a half. 7:00 – Chris: Any tips to opensource for beginners. 7:10 – Guest: Yes, having a thick skin. Everyone is anonymous on the Internet. People say things that they normally wouldn’t say in person. I figure if you put something out there someone will correct you. How can I get feedback? If you put yourself out there it’s like: failure to success. That process is what makes you better. 8:21 – Chris: Issues and chat like that. There is a lot of context that gets lost. When you just see the text it may seem angry 8:43 – Guest: I have a tendency towards sarcasm, and I have to save that to last. People come from different languages, and I’m not talking about software languages. English isn’t everyone’s first language. Good thing to keep in-mind. 9:14 – Internet is an international community. 9:22 – Guest continues this talk. Opensource is good to work on to get started with contributions. Especially with Operation Code it’s geared towards beginners; less complex. 10:30 – That is a good difference to show. 11:01 – Question. 11:05 – Guest. If you are a person with a lot of skin in their projects – I take pride in my work – I think if you have that mentality that you will want to submit to every request. Find some way to test every request against a...is this my concern or their concern? Figure out the boundaries. You will make mistakes and that’s fine. 11:54 – Panelist. 12:02 – Guest: Coming up with good interface boundaries for your libraries. 12:11 – Chuck: Once we figured out what really mattered than it makes it easier to say: yes or no. 12:26 - Guest: Conventional Commits. 13:06 – So Kyle what did you getting into opensource look like? 13:19 – Alex: Boot Strap. Operation Code. 15:07 – Chuck chimes-in about Aimee Knight and other people. Serving people and their country. You are helping people who have sacrificed. 15:58 – It is totally volunteer-based. 16:05 – Chris: What kind of questions did you ask Alex? How did you decide what to put in an issue? 16:25 – Alex: I tend to go to Stack Overflow. If it is in regards to a library I go to GitHub. Real time texts. Next.js – I just contributed to this this week. 19:21 – Chris: This question is for either one of you. For Questions and Answers – do you have any suggestions on what NOT to do when seeking help? 19:46 – Stay away from only asking a question in one sentence. There is so much information/context that you are leaving out, and that can often lead to more questions. Reasonable amount of contexts can go a long way. Code samples. Please Google the details for the markdown if it is a huge code. Context, context, context! 20:44 – I have an error, please fix it. Maybe that needs more context? 20:53 – Guest: What were you doing? There is a bigger overarching element. The problem they can see in front of them and what is the thing that you are TRYING to solve? 21:44 – More contexts that can help with a helpful answer. 21:53 – Guest: If someone used some learning tool... 22:13 – Chuck chimes-in. Chuck: It is something different that it could do something that you didn’t expect. 22:47 – Alex: Those are great moments. I love it when Kyle sees... That snowflake of your problem can help with documentation caveats. 23:44 – People are probably copying pasting. 24:05 – It can be the difference between understanding the page and not especially What not to do and what to do – any other tips? Can you have too much information? 24:32 – Guest: I am guilty of this sometimes. You can have too much information. The ability to converse in a real-time conversation is better. That’s my route to go. Maybe your problem is documented but documented poorly. Go to a real-time conversation to hash things out. 26:15 – Guest: If you do your homework with the different conversations: questions vs. concerns. Real-time conversation. He talks about GitHub issues and Stack Overflow. 27:48 – Chuck: My password is 123... If they can duplicate... Alex: Yeah too much information isn’t good. Some places mandate recreation like a JS Fiddle. Like Sandbox are cool tools. 29:32 – Is there a way to do the code wrong? 29:38 – Advertisement. 30:25 – Guest chimes-in with his answer. 31:31 – Question. If it’s opensource should they share? 31:33 – Absolutely. The difference that makes it for me is great. I can spot things that the machine can help me find. One small tip is when you provide code samples and GitHub issues use... The further you go out to recreate the problem there is a high payoff because they can get something working. The big difference is that it’s a huge pain to the person trying to convey the issue. If I do the simple version...I think you have to weigh your options. What tools are out there? Generate your data structure – there are costs to recreate the issue. 33:35 – Chris: 500 files, apps within the app – intercommunicating. All you do is download this, install this, it takes you ½ a day and how does this all work? 34:03 – Guest: You have to rein it in. Provide the easiest environment for it to occur. If you are having someone download a table and import it, and use a whole stack – you can try it – but I would advise to work really hard to find... 34:50 – In creating a demo keep it simple? 35:52 – Guests reply. 36:02 – Chuck. 36:07 – Chris: I learned about your experiences coming to opensource. Anything else that you would like to share with new contributors? 36:25 – Guest: Start with something that you have a genuine interest in. Something like a curiosity light bulb is on. It makes it more interesting. It’s a nice way to give back. Something that interests you. I have not found a case yet that I’m not compelled to help someone. Putting yourself out there you might be given a plate you don’t know what to do with. My learning experience is how welcoming opensource is. Maybe things are changing?  38:31 – Chuck: I have seen those communities but generally if they are there people frown down upon it. The newer opensource communities are very friendly. These projects are trying to gain adoptions, which is for the newer users. 39:17 – Guest: Final statements on opensource. Even if you think it is a small contribution it still helps. 40:55 – Guest chimes-in. It is important to have a platter for newcomers. 41:15 – Chris: I am curious to talk to you about how you’ve written React applications among others. Any advice? What resources should they 41:46 – Guest: Yeah. If you are making your new React application (from Vue land) there are many things that are similar and things that are different. As for preparing yourself, I am a huge fan of this one course. I had been coding (plus school) so 5 years, it’s okay to dive-into community courses. Dive-into a tutorial. Understand the huge core differences. He goes into those differences between React, Angular, and Vue. 43:30 – Guest talks about this, too. 45:50 – React doesn’t have an official router. Vue provides (he likes Vue’s mentality) other things. There is a library called One Loader. 46:50 – Guest: I was at a Meetup. One guy was doing C-sharp and game development. His wife had a different background, and I think they were sampling Angular, Vue, and React - all these different frameworks. That was interesting to talk with them. I relayed to them that Vue has free tutorials. Jeffry had an awesome Vue Cast. I think that’s what got me started in Vue. I learned from this tool and so can you! 48:11 – Chris: You aren’t starting from scratch if you know another framework? Do they translate well? 48:33 – Guest: I think so. There are a lot of ways to translate those patterns. 49:34 – Guest: React Rally – I just went to one. 49:50 – Chris chimes-in. Slots is mentioned 50:27 – Guest mentions the different frameworks. Guest: I went into functional components in Vue. I learned about the way... It helps you translate ideas. I don’t recommend it to everyone, but if you want to dig deep then it can help bridge the gap between one frameworks to another. 51:24 – Chris adds to this conversation. 51:36 – Guest: They are translatable. They are totally map-able. 5:46 – Chuck: Say someone was going to be on a Summit where they could meet with the React Core Team. What things would you suggest with them – and say these things are working here and these are working there. 52:12 – Guest: I would love to see... 53:03 – React doesn’t have a reactivity system you’d have to tell it more to... 53:15 – Guest chimes-in. Panel and guests go back-and-forth with this topic. 54:16 – Tooling. 55:38 – Guest: With React coming out with time slicing features how does that map to Vue and what can you say from one team to another. What is there to review? There is a lot of great things you can do with... 56:44 – Conversation continues. 57:59 – React has some partial answers to that, too. Progress. 58:10 – When Vue came onto the scene everyone felt like why do we need another framework? We have Ember, and... But with Vue it felt cohesive. It had an opportunity to learn from all the other frameworks. In terms of progress everyone is on the frontlines and learning from each other. Everyone has a different view on it. How can se learn from this and...? 59:12 – Chris: I am grateful for the different frameworks. Anyone comes out with a new tool then it’s the best. Creating something that is even better than before. 59:38 – Guest. 59:49 – Chuck: There are good frameworks out there why do I need another one. That’s the point. Someone will come along and say: I like what’s out there but I want to make... That’s what Vue was right? In some ways Vue was a leap forward and some ways it wasn’t – that’s how I feel. We need something to make things a bit easier to save 10 hours a week. 1:01:11 – Even Vue’s... 1:02:20 – Guest: In terms of why do we need another framework conversation – I don’t think we need another reason. Go ahead, what if it is groundbreaking it makes everyone do things differently and keep up. I love the idea that JavaScript is saying: what is the new framework today? The tradeoff there is that there are so many different ways to do things. It is hard for beginners. 1:03:88 – Chuck: How to find you online? 1:03:49 – Kyle states his social media profiles, so does Alex, too. 1:04:06 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks! 1:04:10 – Code Badges’ Advertisement Links: JSON Generator Ember.js Vue React Angular JavaScript Udemy One-Loader YouTube Talk: Beyond React 16 by Dan Abramov Badgr Kickstarter: CodeBadge.org Alex Sasha Regan’s Twitter Kyle Holmberg’s Twitter Kyle’s website Dev.to – Alex’s information DevChat TV GitHub Meetup Operation Code Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Code Badge Cache Fly Picks: Chris Home decorating shows Charles TerraGenesis GetaCoderJob.com Swag.devchat.tv Codebadge.org Kyle OperationCode Yet Another React vs.Vue Article Hacktoberfest Alex Uplift Standing Desk System 76 Rust

Chris: Yeah, yeah we're rolling. Yeah? Kat: Is there enough light? Okay, no that was already on. I think I'm becoming addicted to light. Chris: You've got it down. All right. Kat: Okay, we're live already. Chris: Yeah ... what? Kat: What, mother fucker- I get ... Chris: You're gonna have to redo it. Kat: I can't redo it. I'd have to- Chris: [crosstalk 00:00:30] Oh, no. No, that one's done. Yeah that's- Kat: This is live. We're already live. What you're saying is being heard. What I'm saying is being heard. Chris: That is so funny. Kat: I think people have heard it before. What's up? Chris: Yes, it's working. Kat: We are technological geniuses. Chris: We just did have it take off a certain [crosstalk 00:00:50]. Kat: We've made ... They didn't do much. Hey, I managed to get the internet working for a second and a half. Chris: Oh my God. Kat: Can we kick this off by telling people the quotes of the day, Chris? Chris: All right we can share this. Yeah, all right. Kat: So should I tell them one from the other day or is it gonna off our buyers? Chris: No, no, no, we share. We're truly authentic [crosstalk 00:01:08] Kat: We're here for authenticity. We are literally about to fu- ... We are about to launch. Am I allowed to swear? Chris: No. Kat: No? Chris: No swearing. Kat: Okay, sorry. We are literally about to launch our supplement. We get to that in a moment but first I'd like to tell you three very informative and important quotes that I've been noting down. Chris just ... This is a man who, when you meet him or you see him, even online, you'll see that he is one of the most genuine good guys in the world. Kat: He is the nicest man in the world. He's one of my closest friends. I love him to death, he is the nicest, sweetest, person. Would never hurt anything and yet he just comes out and then he seems very like ... Wow, that was quite rude. Chris: Sorry, that is true. Kat: So the other day we're like "What should we call our livestream for our prelaunch live stream which shoots on Friday?" And I'm like thinking of creative titles cause I'm awesome at that and he's like, "Can we just call it-" Chris: Headlines are key. Kat: "This is why you're fat and we're not." And I'm like, "Wow." Chris: Because within context as well, we were talking about ... Kat: Please explain. [crosstalk 00:02:12] Chris: How we used to do diets before we used to be massive carbophobes and then over lunch we were talking about how we're just been loving eating carbs but doing it the right way. And how much better in shape we are now. And it's just- Kat: Well this leads me into the next quote which i that well ... Chris: Yeah, nicely done. Kat: Which is that we set up the lighting, and I'm like "Damn, that lighting's good." And Chris goes "Damn, it's good." And he goes, "Or is it just cause we look so good?" I'm just like "Wow, just be matter-of-fact about it." Oh, do you need to share that to your page? Do you need to share that to your personal page? Chris: Yeah. I can, with you. Kat: Okay, so we are ... oh and what was the third quote? Chris: What was the third one? Kat: Damn it, there was another really good one from just a second ago. So there was the one about "This is why you're fat and we're not." There was "Is this lighting really good or it just cause we look really good?" And then there was another one that just happened just then and it was so funny. I nearly wrote it down and then I was like "No, there's no way I would forget that." It will come back to us divinely. Chris: Not sure. Kat: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the show. Chris: We've got some big news. Kat: We have huge news, I think we're not even allowing ourselves to be ... Chris: So exciting. Kat: As excited as we are. I know I think we're not letting ourselves be as excited as we really could or should be about this. I think we're excited and we're like this is a big deal, and I'm just like "No, but do you understand what a big deal it is?" Chris: This is a big deal. This is a really big deal. Kat: Two plus years in the making? Chris: It's even longer. Kat: I think it's three years [crosstalk 00:03:49] ... Chris: We can put this dick ends downs. Kat: I think it's like pre ... dick- really? We started to formulate this before time began in our souls. Chris: Yeah, exactly. Kat: That's how good we are. I got to the quote book, the intelligence was coming through divinely from generations before but in a physical human sense, maybe three years. Chris: [00:04:07] Particularly there's star dust in there. Kat: Well it's actually ... Yes. And gold dust. You get a little piece of my soul. That's some powerful stuff. Look what I've created. Chris: That's really funny. Don't worry about the lighting. We're good. Kat: Yeah, we're good. We're good with the lighting. So we might be a little bit excited. We might be coming across as a little bit extra hysterical than normal, but it is such a huge deal. And welcome, welcome, welcome to everybody. I'm so happy and grateful that you're here with us. Kat: Hello over on our business page and hello on our personal page, and hello wherever else you are. I am either going to talk excitedly in a hilarious or just randomly crazy way for now, or I'm going to just stop and let Chris present with deep profound wisdom. Chris: I'll chime in as well. Oh, always. Kat: All the things. But let's just quickly say ... Okay, Lisa just summed up the whole entire situation. Chris: Wee. Kat: He says, "Wee." That's exactly right. We have an amazing founding deal. Chris: Founding special. Kat: But we're not going to tell you about that now, because we've got too many other exciting things to say. Chris: Yeah, we've got some more important news. Kat: Okay, I'm done. Chris: Okay. Kat: For now. Chris: Well we haven't decided on everything at this moment. So we need to do this together. So this is actually like ... Kat: Co-creation. Chris: Exactly. We all need to come together right now and actually sort this out. Kat: Yeah. So just stop what you're doing, put it down. Chris: Because this is literally the only time you are ever going to get this special at this product, this price, ever. Kat: Ever. Obviously if you've been following Kat for any time and even myself, you'll know that we want to celebrate. Actually, you know what's really interesting? This little bit random, I actually went through the ... See, Kat you're looking gorgeous. Chris: Yeah, I'm all right as well. Kat: No, I think that's definitely for you, sorry. Not me. Oh, thank you. I'm going to take that. I'm taking it from here. Thanks, Lonny. Chris: Kat, how high can you go. Random segue, we actually just reviewed the ... With my other coaching business, reviewed what the key parts of what the most accessible coaches are doing right now. What was ... What have they done? There was two things that was actually really interesting. Chris: One was how long they've been in the programme and why they're succeeding. So it's a common factor, and two, was they always jumped on the programme as fast as possible. Kat: Of course. Fast action takers. Chris: I know, but it was actually really interesting for me to actually see it. Kat: Oh, it was actual research. Chris: Yeah, we actually went through everything. Kat: That's gold. I say that all the time. Chris: The most successful people. No, it's legit. Kat: Oh, hello. Yeah. Chris: Yeah, well, exactly. Fair enough. Kat: We literally became business partners over cauliflower. Chris: Cauliflower and chicken? Kat: I could have make that some more exciting. Well, there was one. But it was a two-second decision, wasn't it? Chris: Yeah, it was. Kat: It was. Oh, then you came around and we talked about it the next day again, but it had already obviously ... Really we're just joking around nothing. We did a hilarious life show together. Chris: Yeah. Kat: But that is so true, and I say that all the time when I'm working with high level badass entrepreneurs and creators. I always say, "I want to work with the people who say 'yes' straight away." Because that's like me, and those are the people who get awesome freaking results. So we're really here today not just to ... With such excitement and gratitude and passion launch our product, finally. Kat: But we're also here ... There it is. We're also here to really honour those people who already know that they want one of our ... Oh, look at Ryan. You couldn't have product placed him any better than the hat. Ryan says, "Is this the one I tried last year at your place? It tasted amazing." I think my second one did have vodka in it. All right, just hold the final ... Let's save the shenanigans part of what you can do with this for later. Kat: Let's just talk pure. In fact, it was very healthy in the process of my training. But yes. So we didn't even prepare that little bit of testimonial earlier at all from Ryan who says it tastes amazing. It tastes freaking amazing. Okay, I'm getting distracted again. Continue on. Chris: Okay. There's a few things that we've all got to sort out right now. One, when you actually have to get onboard these founders special. Two, we're going to share with you actually how much of a discount that you're going to get and that's a lifetime discount as well. So we're going to make this as much of a no brainer as possible. Kat: Oh, I just remembered the other quote. Chris: Oh, what was the other quote? Kat: It was I said to you, "Is that really sneaky?" And you said, "Yeah." I really like it. Chris: Okay, just kind of side note, that was ingenious business strategy that we actually did when you just said we ... Kat: Because I'm a ninja. As I proved to you earlier. Chris: We share that later. We share that later. Keep business strategies coming down on this as well. It's all working. So two things we're going to work out. One, when you actually have to get on board by, because this can only last so long and we're going to have to cut it right now. So this, it's actually going to be pretty limited. Because we can only take so many people on board. Kat: Yeah. Chris: Two, the discount you get, which is a lifetime discount. And you know what? Three, we actually just added in. Sorry, for the first 100. First 100? Kat: Oh, I thought it was going to be 50. You're seriously pulling this up for 100 people? Chris: I want to be really nice, because I wore my give shirt today. Because I want to give. Kat: Oh, I want to cut it off really. I like to make people jump on board or work for it. Chris: No, we'll do 100, because there's a lot of ... Yeah, okay. No. Kat: All right, that means I have a point saved for later to make a decision about something. Chris: All right. You got one brownie for later. One video for later. Kat: I'll get to be in charge of something later. Chris: First hundred people that are going to be coming on board, you're going to get a copy of my book, "Craving the Truth", which is actually the book where I show you how to be able to get into the best shape of your life, and how to not do it by doing depriving diets, which we have right here. Tada. Kat: There it is. Fabulous book. Chris: So you'll get a copy of "Craving the Truth" as well coming on board in this, but we can only do that for the first hundred. Kat: For free. Extra fast action, take a bonus. On top of the crazy discount. Oh, wait. Do we make them pay full price if they're getting a book? Chris: I don't want to have to make them pay full price. Kat: All right. Why not? I was just trying to be funny. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's fine, because my lighting's fabulous. Chris: Yeah. You look good, life is good. So if you want a copy of the book for free, where I give you the diets. We talk work outs. We talk actually what Kat and I are doing. You're going to have to get on board really quick as well, but also, lifetime discount. Can we tell them how much the discount is? Kat: No, make them work for it. Send a love heart shower. Chris: Oh, yeah, I love how you do this. Kat: A load of love hearts, and we're just going to tell them the office straight away. Just like that? Chris: Melissa. Kat: Hi. Chris: Thanks, Mel, appreciate that. Kat: Yeah, there you go. Chris: It's a great pull. Kat: Let's. So we just give ... Whoa, you guys loving the love heart shower. Thank you. Chris: Whoa. Kat: Do you want a comment something hilarious or just comment get on with it already? Chris: Let's have best comment. I will just give you a copy of the book straight away. Kat: I can't talk through this offer, because I'm going to get too giggly and excited like a little kid at Christmas, and I'm not going to get the details right. I'm trying very hard to restrain myself here, but I'm so excited. So Chris is going to tell you the deal with it. It's literally more crazy than what we thought we were going to do. We dropped down an extra ... We actually dropped down an additional ... Chris: No, let's prepare for lunch. Kat: Over an additional 20 percent on what was already the reduced founding members price. Chris: Yeah, it was. Kat: Wait, did you just say they get to lock it in for life? Chris: Yeah, it's lifetime. Kat: I thought we were just giving that for the first month. Chris: Lifetime. This is exactly. Kat: What? Chris: When you get on board, but here's the thing. When you get on board, you get it for life. If you ever leave. Kat: You're out. Chris: Never get it again. Kat: We're never talking to you again. Chris: No. We'll talk to you, but you just want to get the discount again as well. Kat: If you buy us a drink. Chris: You've got to ... You actually get the discount for life. Kat: Yeah, that makes sense. Chris: That's a bit of a no brainer. Kat: That is a no brainer. Couple of no brainers. I'll eat anything that tastes delicious, especially if it helps me look that pretty. Thank you. Chris: Oh, that's really sweet. Kat: That's all the alignment. I'm reverse ageing. When you ordered this product, you will reverse age from between two and five years in the first 10 days. Chris: We can't say that. Kat: Hashtag disclaimer. I just it. Chris: The FDA does not agree with that at all. Kat: Shut up. Chris: I have to be legitimate with this stuff. Kat: I mean it. I mean it, because I decided, and I get what I decide. Can we just bring the mindset side into it? It's fine. When you sign up I'll get you a special training for free on the reverse ageing. How's that for a bonus? Chris: All right. Kat: Oh, let's have that in as a top 100 bonus. I will do a training on how I reverse age for free for the first 100 people, and I'm not kidding. Chris: I'll buy that. Kat: Look at this skin. I'm nearly 50. Chris: That's very funny. Kat: Well I'm 38. I'm nearly 39. But I'm reverse ageing at the speed of light. Everybody knows that. Chris: No, actually ... This gets really good. What we haven't actually said as well is if you get on board this offer today, you will be able to join the tribe. So what we're starting in part is our private tribe, yeah. Kat: Oh, yeah. We're getting to our programme. Chris: It's going to be a little bit ... It's probably something we should talk about right now as well. Kat: Wait, do we actually? No, this is for real now. I'm not pretending. Are we actually giving them that? Chris: Yeah, they get a private group. It's already set up. Kat: Oh, of course. Yes, all right, fine. Onward then. Chris: This is stupid. Kat: Okay, I'm done. I'm done with my talking. I've got the entertainment, and now Chris is going to tell you the deal. The deal is about to drop. We are going to give you a link. You're going to click it, you're going to buy, and you're going to have a glass of water to celebrate, since you don't have the product yet. I'm waiting. Chris: Well you do have to wait. Kat: But we'll drink something in your honour. Chris: You do have to wait. So let's break this on down. Number one, first 100 people, I'll give you a copy of the book and I'll send it straight to you. Number two, you get the discount for life, and it's over 40 percent the discount as well. So that's a bit of a no brainer as well. Kat: We want to make it crazy no brainer for sure, legitimately of course. Chris: Yeah, I know. Three, you get access into ... whilst you have your membership, whilst you're getting this each month sent to you, you have access into the tribe, which is where Kat and I are going to be sharing with you what we do with our food, with our diets, with our training. I'm going to be in there giving you as well, because I've got literally 12 months worth of training, nutrition and lifestyle coaching ready to rock 'n' roll for you. Chris: So you'll get access into that private community where it's members only in there, and then ... Kat: That's got content from both of us, which is combining over 30 years of experience and knowledge and application and results. If you can, have some brain power. Chris: We literally needed a team member to go through how much content we had. Kat: It was several staff members who had to go through that and have been doing it for nine months. Chris: I feel so sorry for Jess actually. Kat: And Mim, shout out to Mim. And Jess too. Chris: And Mim. Yeah, sorry, too. Bingo. Kat: And shout out to Ash and Bron as well who've had so much to do with this launch and does so much work on that. Chris: I wish they were here. I got a notification on my page. Kat: I just was reading it over actually. Really. Chris: Okay, awesome. So you get the book. You get 40 percent discount and that's for life. You get access into the tribe as well. Now what we're going to do ... Kat: We were going to ... Sorry. I know I'm just terrible at cutting you off. I'm the worst at that. But we were going to charge for the tribe. We were going to do it as a separate. Chris: No, we are going to charge for the tribe. Kat: Yeah, but we were going to make it like you would pay a bit extra to get the coaching platform, as well as the product, and then it would be extra, extra for people who just wanted the coaching, which is basically means stupid people, because why would you not buy this? Then we decide to give it for free. Chris: So if we actually boil this down right now. Kat: Yeah. Chris: What the offer is is the super food blend will actually be recommended retail for $97. The tribe, our coaching community that's private for members only, that's actually priced at $50 a month for that. So obviously that's $150 a month, but if you get on board now, can we say it? Kat: Let's just do it. We've dragged it out long enough. They've been waiting and wanting. Chris: If you get on board now, you will get everything, which is sent to you each and every month, and your monthly membership into the tribe, and it's only going to be for $59. So we're cutting off $90 every month, and that's a life time discount going into it. So literally, there's a massive discount. So that's something like ... It's a gigantic discount. Kat: Whatever it is. Chris: First 100 people, I'll send you a copy of the book for free. Kat: And you'll get my reverse ... And you'll get my training on reverse ageing if you're in the first 100 people as well, which is completely serious. Chris: All right, Ricky. So Ricky asked a really good question. Can you consume it if pregnant? Now with supplements, you do technically have to say and you'll see on the back here, "Caution, if pregnant or nursing or taking medication, consult your health care practitioner before use." Kat: It's required to say that. Chris: My Lauren, wife, she has been pregnant with two children whilst taking this and my daughters have this as well. So when they ask for chocolate, they're actually asking for this bad boy. Kat: Yeah, I give this to my kids as well. Who are young as you know. It's required to say that. It's required to obviously that you've got to consult with your medical adviser that. Chris: Yeah, good question. Kat: I would take it. Lauren took it, etc. I just want to also clarify, really we had it locked in that launch offer ... That the retail price, the price that we will be selling it at. It's not just like what we're saying is retail. We will be selling it at $97. We were going to do the founding members offered at I think $79. That was locked in, and that was decided. Even up until last Friday. Kat: We did the pre-launch video and had some fun with that on Friday. You might have jumped on on that. Oh, we were supposed to notify people. I will send them a link after this, yeah. Chris: Yeah, we'll send them. Kat: I can't even remember why we decided to drop it down so much more. I think we just ... We get so excited. We are so proud of this and so excited and it's been so much work and blood and sweat and tears that's gone into this on Chris' behalf. I really just want to honour him. He's an amazing business partner and friend, and the work that he's put in. Literally travelling the Earth to create pharmaceutical great product in the world. Kat: It is literally the most exceptional formulation that you could come up with. Digestive health, probiotics, all this good stuff, but then also, working together with somebody that you're obviously good friends with, that's not automatically enough to make a great business partnership as I know a lot of people know. Chris: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kat: So it's just been amazing to have a shared vision for something that we're both so excited to bring to life. It's been a little painstaking at times to get to where we're already, but like any amazing vision brought to life, you've got to be willing to go through those periods where it's things are going slow than you want or you thought something was just going to work, and then it didn't. Kat: So it's been quite the journey, and it's been one that's been heavily supported by the people we just mentioned and shouted out earlier as well. So there's a lot that's going into this and it really is. It's such a big deal. It's something that we know that we're going to take for life, be proud of for life. We really trust and belief that when you start to take this, firstly, the taste of it is incredible. It just tastes amazing. It's chocolate flavoured greens powder. It's flavoured naturally with cacao. Kat: It tastes incredible. Every single person who tried it is like, "Holy crap, where can I get this? I want to take this forever." So we know you're going to love the taste, but the benefits and the health side of it, the brain power side of it. The mineral focus side of it. The fact that you're just getting all these good things covered for yourself and your family in one hit. We know that you're going to be part of this for life as well. Kat: So this is something that for long haul it's not just business on the side of our respective empires that we already have. We really see it as a vision for the community that we want to build of like-minded individuals, like us, like you who are committed to being about us in every aspect of life. In business we brain function, and looking and feeling hot AF as well of course. Kelly says can you use it if diabetic. Chris: Yeah, you can. It actually says on here "diabetic safe". Where did I actually have to say that? Here. Last bullet point. No, extras. No extra added sugar. It is diabetic safe. It is only flavoured with stevia. So you only use the really good stuff. Please post the ingredients out. Yeah, Angela if you click the link that you'll get access to ... Kat: We could give the link. Chris: I will give you the link. If you click the link, you'll get access to the page which has the full ingredients on there for you. So you can actually read this rather than me sticking this up to the camera. It's still not being readable as well. Now, what we also have done is we put a 60-day guarantee on this. So we want you to taste it. Kat: That's how confident we are. Chris: We want you to use it. Exactly. That's how much we ... We're a little bit cocky when it comes to this. Because we know it's that good. We've been using it for that. Angela, you're absolutely welcome. So we want you to get your hands off it ... On it. When you get your hands on it, and you start using it, you'll see. You'll actually notice the difference as well. So what you want to be able to do is number one, it's not about supplements. Chris: Now let's just talk right now. I want to jump in and talk about ... Yeah, sorry, go. Kat: Should I give the link or should we give them preparation that I'm going to give you the link, because we are doing this first hundred thing. Chris: Oh. Kat: Let's tell you what we want to tell you, so that you're paying attention, and then we're going to drop the link. Chris: Okay, let's do that. Kat: Yeah. Chris: We'll jam real quick, and then we'll give you the link so that you can get access to all this stuff right now. So I want it in my mouth right now. Kat: All right. Well, it's a sensory experience, and you can tap into the collective energy. That's right here in this space and place. Here is some we prepared earlier. Chris: Jaya, can you put your email below and I will literally send you a copy of my book, because that was the best comment so far. Kat: Comment of 2018 award. We're adding that to our book of hilarious quote. But we will drink some in honour of everybody. You can tap into our collective energy. Chris: Right, cheers. So I'll answer Theo's question. So this is what we're doing. Because we're doing the very first batch, for all of our members with this super food blend, it's going to take between three to four weeks for everyone to get there. So that's why we're doing this founders special. So we want everybody to come on board. Now, and this is what I want to say and this is why it's so important. Kat: Yeah. Chris: It's not about supplement. Kat: That's why we're doing a huge discount. Chris: It's not about the supplements. Jaya, thank you so much. Can someone remind me to send Jaya a copy of that? Kat: Yes, I'll email you right now. Chris: Or just ... perfect. It's not about supplements, okay? So why are we actually talking right now? Why are we starting a health and fitness company? Why are we wanting to help you with this stuff? It's because you want to be able to look, feel, and function great. You want to be a part of the one percent of the one percent. You want to look great. You want to feel great. You actually want to perform really well, and that's not just the body performing on a biochemical level. It's how your brain performing as well, and you're actually enjoying it. Chris: How do we actually do this? It's not just by taking a supplement. Supplement's the cherry on the top, and we're going to be the first people that now run a supplement company to tell you it's not abut the supplements. This is why we're doing the tribe. So we help you, we show you, we teach you. We're giving you actually what's needed when it comes to, what to eat, how to eat, how to set up your lifestyle. What about when it comes to your work outs? When it comes to your movement as well. Chris: So especially when I break it down in the book, I show you the actual workouts and there's a yang and a yin philosophy. So like a yang, this is going to be a white training. A yin, it's going to be a walking. It's going to be your saunas, your ice punch pools, your meditations, all these kind of things. Kat: Yoga. Chris: Yoga. All these things we need to be able to put together. So it's a holistic approach to giving you exactly what you need. That's why when I first ... One of the reasons, our first conversation, we're like, "Hang on, there's a lot of 'supplement companies' out there and they're doing sometimes great products, sometimes crappy products. Let's not even go down that path." What's missing right now? No one's giving you both. No one's giving you here's the great ... Literally world best formulations, raw products, and manufacturing process. Kat: And taste. Chris: And taste. Which is kind of the most ... It's not technically the most important thing. But it's the most important in the sense that you're not going to take it if it doesn't taste amazing. It tastes so good that you just ... You want to have more. You just want more. I was crying when mine ran out. My samples that I had at home. Kat: Yeah, I had to get more for Kat. Chris: I had to have a massage to get over it. Kat: And a meditation, and some prayer. Some prayer. Then I may have harassed him over what's happened. I literally once was tapping in from every city around the world going, "So can you send some to New York? How about Florida? How about Texas? How about LA?" Chris: I tried to send it to her in two different cities. Kat: But I kept moving too quickly. Chris: And it kept missing. Kat: Come in San Diego, take me around. Chris: Obviously what I want to get across to make sure that we do this right is while we're doing the tribe is so literally Kat and I can give you what's needed to be able to make sure that you look, feel and function the way that you want. It is literally like that. Then when you want to put the cherry on top, when you want to perform. Because this is the thing and I talk about this. Chris: Number one, that our food quality that get isn't as good as it should be. You're not getting all the nutrients. You're not getting everything that you really need at the end of the day to be performing your best. We have high stress levels in our modern lifestyle. We have a lot of chemicals in our environment that help us become toxic. So we want to be able to become un-toxic. We want to be able to get rid of that stuff. Chris: So this is why we started with literally a greens formulation. But it's not a greens formulation. This is ... Kat: So much more. Chris: A super veggie type antioxidant blend. It's got a fruit antioxidant blend. It's got digestion support, and it's got a probiotic blend in here as well. So this is why we want to try and you come at this, because the thing at the end of the day is I don't want you to have a covered or room full of supplements. You want a handful of things, and that's what we're going to be doing, Kat and I together. We're going to be coming together. Kat: There would be new products. Chris: And are really doing a few products that give you the biggest bang for your bucks. So you can actually get on with your life. Because what I don't like is trying to do so many different things, that when we have more important things to do, I don't want to be worrying about my diet, or my work outs, or I'm not looking as I good as I feel like I should be. Or all that kind of shit. Chris: I'm a dad. I am running businesses. I want to be able to enjoy life. I want to be able to have us come together and just have fun. I don't want to be absolutely hating life because I'm doing a dive. Kat: You want to look and feel your best and be your best, and be fitting everything in but doing it just with ease and flow as well. We both, this is another thing. We've both done the hustle life before. I love the word hustle by the way. For me that means something powerful and flow based, but what I mean is we've both done business and life and fitness in way where it was kind of burning yourself out or pushing beyond a healthy limit and that's nothing I look back on and regret, because it made me into who I am now. Kat: But at this point in my life, and for both of us as well, it gets to be about having it all whilst operating at a level of excellence. Feeling your best, looking your best, being at your best, and having it jus be flow and ease. So there's already so many things that each of us do and support our communities to do that create that just through lifestyle and the way we choose to live our lives and live according to our values and so on. Kat: This just takes it to that next level. It's about enhancing a way of life. So that's again another reason why we've created the tribe to go with this to support you with the education, the information, and the empowerment, to get the results that you need. So we will be giving you the nutritional information literally over 30 years or at least over 25 years of combined experience between us. Chris: Over 24 years. Kat: At a really high level as well, where both of us really dedicated our money and our time to learning and studying with the best people in the world, and that's how we met. Through classes around the world. We're bringing you the most cutting edge, real nutrition information, hormone information, fat loss information, digestions, stress management, sexual energy and libido as well. All ties in together. Sleep quality. Kat: Mindset, of course, right? The ins and outs of the trainings side of it as well as the nutrition side of it, and we're teaching from a standpoint of full life in a way that feels amazing. It's not a freaking diet. It's not a quick fix. It's not do this for six weeks or 12 weeks. We're bringing to you our combined experience of well over two decades, and where we can look back and go, "We did all that crazy stuff and maybe you did as well." Kat: It is what it is. Now we actually have a way of living where we get to look and feel and function at a standard of excellence 24/7 always. It's just how it is. We don't sacrifice anything in order to look our best and feel our best. We know that you don't have to as well. So this is not come on board, our magical diet that's going to fix you, and then you're left floundering afterwards, rebounding back. Kat: This is make some small simple adjustments that are going to immediately feel amazing for you. You're going to be immediately be elevated internally and in your energy and your emotions, and even dare I say spiritually, because of course it heightens everything. You're going to see those physical shifts and changes as well. I get asked all the time. I know Chris gets asked all the time, "How we can be such busy, successful entrepreneurs both with our own families and small children, and still get to have ... be in great shape and be legitimately healthy and brimming with energy, and have the energy to do all those things?" Kat: That's so easy. We let it be so easy. It's such a small amount of time or energy that creates such a massive return on that. So everything that this is about. Like Chris said, it's not just a supplement. It's you get this amazing supplement and you get everything that since ... Yes, hold it up. Everything that's inside of us that we've taken all this time and effort and working with literally tens of thousands of clients between us over the past, decade plus, in order to just know what works for life. Kat: So I said at the start of this that I feel like I can't fully express what a big deal it is, and I feel like maybe I'm now starting to express what a big deal it is. But should we? Do you want to add something there or should we give them this link? Chris: I think we should give them the link. Kat: I don't know why I feel nervous. So hang on. Chris: It's good. Kat: Should we give them the link to the Facebook group as well or we just give them this link? Chris: No. Kat: No. Chris: The what? Kat: No, the one from the other day I meant. All right. We'll figure that out later. Chris: Oh, no, give them that link. Kat: Okay, so now, are you ready? Are you excited? Are you eager? Are you going to send me another love heart shower? Are you ready to click by pull out your credit card, get it at the ready, and here's what you're going to do. In about 19.5 seconds or however long it takes me to stop talking, I'm going to ... Which could be 19.5 years. I'm going to put this thing into the comments here. Kat: You are going to click the link. You are going to grab your credit card. You're going to run to the back of the room, and you're going to purchase this product. Chris: All right, hang on. Kat: Hang on. You're only supposed to say three things. That's what I'm telling from this stage, wait. Get your credit card, click the link, buy the product, be in our top 100, get Chris' book for free. For being a fast action taker badass, just like we are, you know your life is going to change for life, and you get a free book as well. It is amazing. And you get my free training on reverse ageing. Chris: I'm really excited for that. Kat: Me too. Yeah. I'll give you the link. I'm ready. This is it. This is it. This is the moment of truth. Chris: They just want us to getting it taken out really quick. I would literally be ... Kat: Yeah, I'd be running to the back of the room or to wherever your credit card is. Chris: Oh, God. Oh, shit. Just happened. Kat: We just? Did we just break the internet. Boom, boom, boom. Okay, I feel like we needed to prepare the drummer as a roll sound. I could have played when I did that. I actually feel like I need to take a breath. Chris: Oh, that's good. Oxygen's really good as well. To set fire. Kat: Can I just add that to quotes? Quotes from Chris. Oxygen is really good for you. Okay, what else are we going to say? Chris: Oh. Kat: Oh, did you tell them to comment there? Or are they just saying how it is over there for the fun of it? How did that just start happening? Chris: I don't know. Kat: Is it because they clicked this? Chris: I have no idea. Kat: What happens? Chris: Yes, it is. Kat: Oh. Chris: Oh, we can see everyone coming through on this one. Kat: We can see who's signing up. Chris: Going up. Kat: Go, go, go, go, go. Oh, we can see all the notification. Chris: I didn't ... This is ... Kat: Tamara's in. Michelle clicked the link. Sarah clicked the link. Chris: That's really funny. Kat: Come on, keep going. All right, and oh, when is this? Ooh, Thalika. She's on it. Just on it. Chris: Laura. Kat: All right. This is so exciting. Chris: This is so fun. Can I share? This is more exciting. I remember when I did my very first online fitness launch. Kat: Laura can't click. Chris: I had the PayPal app on my phone. And when I did the launch, it was like my PayPal app on my phone make a little ding noise. Or no, like a payment would have gone through. This is more exciting because it's a hell of a lot more people coming through. Kat: Sage says, "I can't click." You might have to try different device, because people are definitely clicking. And it's working. So how's this, though? It is so exciting. Last night I was out with a friend, and she's like, "So, what are you doing tomorrow? I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I'm doing whatever and whatever." Then I'm like, "Oh, and I'm just launching a supplement company with my friend Chris till 11:45. Kat: It's like, "Wow, this is huge." That would be huge. We're just quickly launching a supplement company that we're going to take. Angela says, "I can't click on iPad." What can we do about that if people can't click on some devices? Do you have it? Because this is the mo ... Do you have a different link? A longer one? Chris: Can you comment back then or? Kat: No. Chris: PM them? Kat: Do we have a different version of that link? Chris: No. Kat: No, I don't know what to do about that. Ash and Bronwyn, are you on? Chris: What's your problem? The request to the group. Theo. Did you click the link Theo, that Kat has just given you? Kat: Okay, one second. We tested this 1600 times. We will not be swayed. I'm clicking it now. Chris: It's definitely working. We're seeing people still coming through. Kat: Okay, so when I click that, it goes me to Facebook messenger. Chris: Don't worry, Theo. We'll get your link. IPhone can, iPad can't. Kat: It's taking me to Facebook messenger when I click it. Is that right? Chris: Yeah. Kat: Then where is the link that they're going to get that message to them? Chris: The link to ... Yeah. So we'll send you to Facebook messenger, and then Bronwyn said type it in. Kat: Then you've got to press get started. Chris: Then I should maybe put zero admin. Yeah, see, there you go. Kat: Okay. So when you ... We thought we tested it all, whatever. So when you click it, it's going to take you to Facebook messenger. It may not work on the iPad. Then it's going to ... Then you're going to click get started, and then it's going to start, "This is MBB Bot. The My Body Blend's Messenger System." Chris: Oh, my God. Kat: It will say it in that voice. Then it will say, "Do you really want access to a secret launch of Super Food Blend?" It will say it in that voice. Then you'll press "hell yes," which I'm doing now. Hell yes, I just did it. Now it says, "Awesome Katrina, click the prelaunch of verboten below to get our one-time only freelance offer for ..." Okay, I feel that we're being repetitive. For our brand new Super Food Blend. Kat: Plus, if you think there's anyone else who might need to know. I mean why would you take him in unless you want them in the top 100? So now I'm clicking that link, wait for it. Shana says, "Get started." I see you guys on it, just on it. Chris: It's really cool how I can see you from one and then comes through to the other one. Kat: This is a genius. Chris: Theo, you figured that out, great job. Kat: This is a genius strategy. I just got through the sales page. Chris: Can't believe this works. Kat: Right here, live, on this live stream. There it is. Chris: So this is only for the private launch. So obviously once this gets closed down, you're not going to get ... Kat: Take it out. You can't get in on this deal again. Chris: Yeah, you can't get access to this, because we can't keep this up forever. Kat: So talk them through what are they going to receive once they then signup and purchase. Chris: Cool. Kat: Because just a reminder that the product is going to come. Explain all that. Chris: Yeah. So obviously the founders special with what we're doing today is we're doing our very first batch, and you're going to be a part of this. So it's going to take three to four weeks for you to get your actual first Super Food Blend delivered. We're going to be sending it straight to you, but that's why we also have the MBB tribe. So the tribe is going to be where Kat and I are going to be in there making sure that you get access to what's going to be the right meal plan, the right workouts. Chris: I'm going to be in there doing live streams, answering your questions. Kat's going to be talking about anti-aging. Plus, if you get in first 100, which honestly it might be taken up already. I don't know, you're going to have to just get on board. Kat: Just go, go, go. Chris: I'm going to give you a copy of "Craving the Truth". That's going to break down literally what you need to be doing with your meals, with your workouts and lifestyle, and what we're also going to be doing is this special that you get access to today is for life. If you stay on board with this, that means you get this lifetime discount. Chris: So normally Super Food Blend. This has got the RLP of $97 just for one. The actual tribe, that sells for $50 a month. That's $150, but you get access to it today for only $59. So that's a massive discount. I don't know percentage was, what it is, because I'm horrible at math and that's okay. Melissa. Yay, got my confirmation email. So there we go. Kat: Yay, celebrate. Chris: It's coming through already. So that's fantastic. So we want to make sure that everybody come on board because we've got a couple wait up our sleeve. Like tomorrow I'm going to be jumping on board doing a live show, walking you through how we actually get the right meal plan, because what we start with, this is a little bit of secret sauces, how I kick start fat loss is what I do is we do a 14-day metabolic restart. Chris: So what we do is actually in the first 14 days we actually get your body to learn to burn body fat. Now most people are trying to talk about how do I speed up my metabolism? That's actually the wrong question I believe, because let's think about the analogy of driving a car. People are saying, "How do I speed up my metabolism?" They're just thinking about, "How can I drive my car faster?" But what if your car is actually heading in the wrong direction? Chris: So you just say, "Going in the wrong direction faster." So what we got to do first is make sure that you go in the right direction, which is how do you get your body to actually tap into body fat stores, how do you actually burn body fat for fuel. Then we talk about actually speeding our fat loss. But what we do is once we actually get your body tapping into body fat stores effectively, then we actually start talking about stress. Chris: So what the biggest problem is to me people are stressed. They've got too high cortisol levels. They started throwing other things like testosterone, pregnenolone, all these ... Actually, let's not go down the whole monogram, because that's going to be too complicated right now. But what we're going to do is we turn your body into actually being able to burn body fat for fuel first, then we talk about actually being able to lower stress. Chris: So what you'll find is most people when first getting the guides and plans I'm going to be sending through to you, think it's too easy and there's not enough. But you'll find that your body will actually be able to lose weight faster, because we're doing things easier. Because what's the biggest problem so many people fall into and I know we've done it before is you decide that you're going to lose weight. So what do you do? Chris: You cut your foods down, you ramp up your workout. Kat: Do some drastic random stuff. Chris: You do more, more, more, more, more, and then what happens when you hit the plateau? Because you will hit hit the plateau. Kat: What happens is you crack it and eat a freaking container of cookies. Chris: Yeah, exactly. Kat: If you're a woman. Chris: If you're a man as well. Kat: I never did this. Chris: I did. Kat: Okay. Chris: That's the big problem. So you wind up crack it, and you start binge eating, and then you feel guilty, and that's bad. So mentally that's bad. Or you actually have to start eating less and less and less, because you're trying to get to that deficit. So what we do is we say, "Let's actually do a bottoms up approach." So let's start from the bottom and we actually build your food, so you'll see that we actually increase your food intake. So you're actually eating more and losing weight, because the whole just eat less move more scenario, it's a myth. Kat: Boring. Chris: I wrote a freaking book about the myth of it, and it's not fun at all. Kat: Yeah. I just love everything you said. I love how you're just on a ... Did this stuff just comes out of you because you're so passionate about it and you know it so well? Chris: I know I did it wrong for so long. Kat: It is what we live and breathe. It is just ... I think you can see your passion coming through right, and you're just going to continue to get so much more of that and all of our knowledge and learning and support and accountability through being part of this tribe. So originally we will ... completely keep them two separate products. The coaching platform versus the product. Kat: Then we're like, "No, of course we're going to honour the people who buy this amazing thing, and really are committed to change their lives, not just to taking a supplement." The thing is I don't know. There's so many more things that I probably could say. But I think we've kind of covered the best of it, and we're just so excited to welcome you. We can see people ... Thank you and it says thank you. Kat: We can see people over on ... So we've got Chris. My friend here and Chris' friend here. Chris' friend is hooked up to the My Body Blend's page. So that's where you go when you click the link, you'll go to the Facebook messenger of the My Body Blend's page which is our joint business page. You'll then follow the prompts there, and you'll jump on to the sales page that way. So we can see people's responses that are coming up on his phone, which is super cool. Kat: So this is ... It's just huge. It's the bringing to life of something that's been several years in the making in the physical sense. 10 plus years of friendship in the making, decades of learning and knowledge in the making, something I always wanted to do. Something I know Chris always wanted to do, and what an incredible thing to be able to do this with somebody who you have such a close friend in your life, but who you know is also going to deliver the level of support and empowerment for your tribe, that you would do yourself. Kat: That's just such a huge big deal when being in business is somebody else to know that their work ethic and how they shop and their level of passion and commitment to change people's lives is the same. So this is the beginning of an amazing journey for you. If you are joining us, how long will we be keeping the founders special open for? Chris: I only wanted to do ... Kat: We had a little fight about it. Chris: Yeah. That's all right. We're allowed. But what about if we do for just 24 hours? Kat: What? Chris: No, we don't do it in 24 hours. Come on, I'm not the queen of scarcity. I'm making people move fast, but I feel like we could give them. But it doesn't matter, because you would just click and buy it now anyway, otherwise you would have been in the top 100, and you'd be a crazy person. Kat: Well how long do we let this video run for then? Because we have to take this video down. Chris: I feel like I don't know what the answer is that I'm supposed to say now. I feel like we didn't rehearse this properly. That is because we didn't rehearse it. Kat: We didn't. Chris: Yeah. I didn't really walked in and be like, "Let's do it with the camera on." Kat: Let's just turn the camera on and see what happens, apart from running down funny quotes. Chris: What do you want to say to them? Kat: Did you see that I've written down your quotes over here? I've saved it. I've written down the three quotes so far from Chris if you missed the quotes earlier. The quotes were this. He wanted to call our live show "this is why you're fat and we're not". That was one of my quotes of the year from Chris. Another one is that really sneaky? Me asking about a little Ninja trick. He's like, "Yeah." Chris: We just don't cover a really good Facebook ad strategy. Kat: That is good. Chris, that lighting is so good, Kat. Wait, no, it's just because we look so fabulous. That's my personal favourite. Chris: I'm so happy with that. Kat: Well, I think this is it. Chris: All right. We're going to get busy. Kat: Okay, is this? This is? Chris: Yeah, I know. I just saw these already gotten on board. Kat: I didn't ... See, that didn't happen for me. But if you have any issues or concerns at all, or anything doesn't work for you, maybe test it on a different device. Some people did say it doesn't. Didn't work on iPad. I'm not sure why that would be, but it's definitely working for me on my laptop. It's working on the phone. Of course you compare either of us. Or the My Body Blend's page as well, which is probably the best place to go, because then you'll get supported by our team as well and get answer as quickly as possible. Kat: Seeing infomercial broker, I feel like we got so much gold content. You know what's going to happen now. My team will chop up this live stream, get some clips out of it, caption them up, and we'll just be promoting and having a hilarious time. Shouldn't business and life just get to be fun as well? So that's part of our philosophy and part of what we're here to show you. Chris: You're not having fun, you don't enjoy the life. Kat: You can bet your bottom dollar we're going to be having all sorts of shenanigans in that group once you're in there. Because it's how it should be. That's how it gets to be. All right. Chris: Oh, good. Theo got ... Kat: Oh, you're on. Perfect, Theo. Chris: Confirmation done. Kat: Yay, I'm so excited. Chris: All right, awesome. So we've actually got to get to work, because we've got a lot of members. Kat: Just casually launched a supplement company on a Monday morning in Bali. All right, we're going to go hangout with our members. We're going to see what's up. We're going to see you on the inside, click the link, do the thing, be in the thing. We'll see you in the thing. We love you. Chris: Ciao. Kat: Bye.

In this episode of Building Infinite Red, we are talking about cultivating and nurturing community, specifically what goes into forming a healthy community, such as setting boundaries, avoiding neglect, and not taking your community for granted. Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: One of the things that has impressed me with Infinite Red has been the value placed on cultivating and nurturing community. So to start, from your individual perspectives, why is community important to you? JAMON HOLMGREN: I think it's important because that's sort of how we met. We were all part of a Ruby Community, we were contributing to the open source within that community, and we were collaborating on some things. So from the very beginning, it was like, the community itself was kind of the fun part. I mean the technology was fun too, you know, don't get me wrong, but community was such a great part. It allowed for some opportunities including the ability for me to meet Ken and Todd and then of course, eventually get to know them. And so, we saw the value of community right from the very beginning, even before Infinite Red came to be. TODD WERTH: I would agree with everything that Jamon said. Obviously, it's how we met each other. Open source community, speaking at conferences, which is a community event. I met a lot of my, I would call friends through such communities. But more than that it's a way for us to be part of something that's bigger than ourselves, bigger than our little company here and associate ourselves with like-minded people. And I tend to choose communities and hopefully I'm building communities of people that I respect and feel good associating myself with. CHRIS: How would you define community? Because community is one of those words that, we all use the word but do we all mean the same thing when it comes to using the word? TODD: I don't know what the definition of community is. Ken will know exactly I'm sure but to me it's just people who've decided to group up together around a particular ideal, a particular subject, a particular interest. I guess I could sum it up for myself, when I need something or want to express something, this group of people is the first people I want to express that to or ask for help from. KEN MILLER: It's a tough thing to define right? It's one of those sort of squishy concepts, you kind of know when you see it. But trying to pin it down to what exactly is community, what isn't community is pretty hard. For us, community has largely been centered around open source. That is a very particular kind of community. But I'd say it's narrower than that too, right? It's not like we're talking to Linux developers, we're talking to people who have similar professional experiences to us. And that has always been the case. Like you kind of flock to people who can kind of understand your pain. And so, for us, contributing back to the community in the form of sharing insight, in the form of sharing code has always been about saying, "Hey, you know what? We feel your pain, let's make it better together." JAMON: And one of the unique things about the community that we have been a part of is, it's never been about location. There's a community here in Vancouver, Washington. There's a larger community in the Portland metro area. And we're certainly a part of that. I go to meet ups, I go to events here in Portland. And they're good. And you do get to meet people and you have a commonality of location and also to a great degree, interest or technology or whatever it is that you're centered around in a meet up. But our community hasn't been about that, with the Infinite Red origin story. Ken and Todd, did know each other because of location, but it had already become remote before that. I remember when I first started building some open source, one of the people that kind of quickly became a part of my little community there was a guy that actually still works for us here, Mark Rickert. He started contributing and he was over on the East Coast and I believe, South Carolina at that time. And he came in and contributed and we had a lot of great conversations and bonded on some things. There are a lot of interests that were similar at that time. And it was really great because the community could be centered around something other than just location, which I think is something maybe a little bit more new in the past. TODD: It was kind of interesting. So you asked that question, which is difficult to answer, but as we talk more, which is a great thing about conversation, new things are coming to my mind. Community can mean very different things and we all belong to many different communities. One is around physical things. Jamon meant some location, but it could be, you belong to a community of men over six foot four, and you have your own, I'm speaking about Jamon here (laughter), you have your own problems and when you discuss things, there's a camaraderie that comes from a shared experience of a real thing. JAMON: Hash tag, tall people problems. TODD: Yes, a lot of communities, they've grown from a seed of an idea or an ideal and that's probably more common in a lot of the communities we, well, most of the communities, from a professional standpoint, that we either contribute to or belong to or even, in some cases, create are around ideas and shared interest and that kind of stuff. CHRIS: In what ways have you intentionally grown community? You've talked a little bit about open source projects, but what are some of the other ways that you have done that? TODD: We use a product called Community Miracle Grow. JAMON: It works great. One of the things that occurred to me, I think it was, I don't know, a year and a half ago or something like that, was that we had this community. It had already kind of come to be, but there wasn't really a standard place for them to congregate. There were people who were kind of fans of our open source work, who understood what we were doing. They were interested in our conference. We created a Slack team. Slack of course, being the chat system that we use and we created a community version of the Infinite Red Slack. So people could sign up at community.infinite.red. They could go in there. There were different channels that kind of group people based on what they were interested in. Of course, there were some that were more popular, the Chain React channel, the Ignite channel, which is our open source React Native, boilerplate CLI system and also just React Native in general. We pushed the community just to see if there's interest. And there was a lot of interest and we are able to also do some things like, people had some questions about Ignite. In this Ignite CLI, it actually directs you to our Slack channel and we have gotten to know some of those people and also have been able to lean on some of our community members to answer questions and diagnose issues. And things like that. TODD: It's totally off topic. But I love how effortlessly Jamon inserts plugs first off into the podcast. It's inspiring. (laughter) JAMON: My Twitter handle is @jamonholmgren. (laughter) TODD: Well done. KEN: That was not quite as smooth, but I still like it. JAMON: Once you edit it, it will be smooth. CHRIS: One thing that is interesting is, how to you view Twitter in terms of community building as well? KEN: Double-edged sword. Well, actually like the handle is a double-edged sword to a double-edged sword. JAMON: Twitter is an interesting one. KEN: Yeah. Twitter is an interesting place. TODD: I, personally, don't have an answer to that. Back when I used to promote my own personal brand, I used Twitter a lot and that seemed straightforward to me. But I got to a point, this being my third and final company, hopefully, for my life, where I'm much more interested in promoting Infinite Red than myself, and I have not figure out how to do that. I think Jamon does it much better so he probably has lots more interesting to say. KEN: Jamon does it by being genuine, is the thing, right, he's just there, he's being genuine. He's not shy about promoting stuff that we're doing, but he's also not a spam feed. JAMON: Yeah. If I am spamming something like I have been this podcast, to be honest, I will kind of acknowledge that upfront. Like, "Hey, I was spamming this. It was just released. Give me a break." I'll back off after a bit. I enjoy Twitter. It's opened up a lot of opportunities for us. Twitter's been a platform for us and it's been good. I love showing off my team's work and I had a one of my team message me the other day and said, "I love how you're always promoting your team. Telling other people about what your team's doing." That was someone on our team. I feel like there's a lot of really great work being done and nobody wants to talk about it at Infinite Red. So I guess have to because I want people to know what we're doing. It's very cool. You know, this podcast in a way sort of came out of Twitter in some ways. It initially started with my friend, Kyle Shevlin. He and I were chatting a little bit and I was kind of lamenting that, "I don't do much code anymore, so I don't have a lot to talk about when it comes to answering questions on Twitter or kind of talking about various things." He was like, "Well, what about the business stuff that you're doing? That's interesting to people." He was just like, "You have a lot talk about." And so, I put out a tweet saying, "Hey, if you have a business question, if you have anything. You know, I've learned a lot in the amount of time that I've spent doing this." And I got a really good response. A lot of people asking questions. It was really cool. And then the best part about it was that I could bring it back to Todd and Ken and show them the tweet and they would monologue for a bit or dialogue for a bit. And we would go back and forth and at the end of that, we would have something really interesting to say. And I could put that out there. It had my name on it, but I try to be careful about always tagging Ken and Todd in the tweets and saying, "this is kind of a amalgam of all of our responses." And it worked really well and then once we kind of you had that experience then we said, "Well. you know what? We do have a lot to say. And so, since we have a lot to say, why don't we actually say it in a little different medium." I mean that's this podcast. So Twitter has been very influential in a lot of ways and some ways, responsible for this podcast. But definitely a shout out to my friend, Kyle Shevlin for sparking that idea. KEN: Jamon is like my Twitter agent. (laughter) Like I have more followers because Jamon has like quoted me than from anything I've ever actually tweeted myself. JAMON: Ken's a pretty private person and he has a lot of incredibly insightful things to say that will forever die in a Slack channel somewhere, if I don't go out there and say it. (laughter) So. Yeah. I can't help myself. KEN: Honestly, I feel very lucky to be co-founders with Jamon. TODD: Yeah. I agree with that. JAMON: Awww, thank you. KEN: Because you'll go out and do that kind of thing and it's just totally natural for him. It's not like we're pulling teeth to make him do it but it means that it gives us the kick in the behind that we need in order to get out there and talk to people. TODD: I agree. CHRIS: I think what's interesting though is as you're talking though, Jamon's one type of person that you would need in community. Ken, you're obviously the other type. And then there's Todd, who's the jokester that that brings the lightness and levity to the community so it's like, I guess community makes sense in this context with the different personalities. KEN: I was seriously hoping that you're going to say, "Well, nobody really needs Todd." CHRIS: Well, Todd has feelings. And so, we want to make sure that we acknowledge those. KEN: It's not true. We totally need Todd. But Todd...it would have been amusing. (laughter) JAMON: In that context. Leave the jokes to the professional. KEN: Leave the jokes to the jokester. JAMON: But one thing I want to say before Todd jumps in here, is Todd is the sort of you know, he keeps things light and stuff like that but he always has very strong convictions, very strong things that drive who he is and that comes out in our community very much so. That's a very core piece to our community that I appreciate about Todd. TODD: So I want to clarify a few things. A, Todd does not have feelings. (laughter) No, I'm just kidding. You know, it's interesting because I'm a very outgoing introvert, which is funny. And I have no shame whatsoever, but for some reason, I don't promote as much as I used to in the past. I don't know why. I'm glad we have Jamon to do that. This is inside baseball so maybe not very interesting to people but ... JAMON: Todd, you were pretty good about promoting Infinite Red before I joined. TODD: That's true. JAMON: Infinite Red from our perspective. Because we were kind of first to the RubyMotion scene. I think Todd and Ken came in a little later, but they quickly kind of grew like a plague all the way throughout. (laughter) Okay, that's the wrong analogy. KEN: No, keep that. JAMON: They grew very quickly throughout. And it was a very intentional thing now that I know Ken and Todd, I know it was intentional. It wasn't just a happenstance. TODD: I guess this podcast is lot about us. I always feel weird talking about just our perspectives and stuff but Jamon's comment about us, growing like a plague is true. And I think one of the things that I've learned being a ... So I started out pretty shy, introverted person, but one of the things I learned is don't wait for people to invite you to communities, invite yourself, wedge yourself in every ... And just keep on wedging and until a point where they're like, "Was Todd ever not here? I don't remember." Even though I was one of the last people to join, I feel like I was always there just because of shamelessly, endlessly, relentlessly wedging myself into every every situation. KEN: Well, we live in a world where, for a lot of things you don't really have to ask for permission. You want to make a library, make a library, publish it. You want to make a newsletter, make the newsletter, start publishing it and invite people to join it. I think for a large stretch of my career, I would kind of sit around thinking, "Well, I'm not sure if I'm the right one to do this." There's this sort of, I guess it's kind of an imposter syndrome. It's kind of just the shyness, just the laziness to a certain degree. And what we found was like, if you just show up, and you start you know sharing what you have, sooner or later you're going to find people who are interested and that's what's happened. JAMON: And I think there are a lot of people on our team that are more like Ken than Todd and I. You know, Todd and I don't have imposter syndrome in that same way. (laughter) We tend to be maybe a little over confident in some ways. But our team is probably a little more, at least many on our team are more like Ken. But it's great because they add so much value and we can kind of bring them in to the community through their association with Infinite Red and the things that were doing. That is a way of building a community, is to bring people along with you and kind of promote and show them that ... Show other people that they do belong. TODD: I agree that Ken represents a lot of people in our community, in the development community. Not necessarily the designer community. We talk a lot about developers but we also have designers and stuff. You know, I'm 46 years old I've been doing everything in this industry for now, 20 some years and I have evolved a lot over time. The truth is I'm never going to be invited to the country club. Never gonna happen. Just reality. My attitude always been, "Fine, I'll just buy it someday." (laughter) You know that's obviously just kind of a metaphor, but the point is: invitation is overrated. That's all I'm saying. KEN: I was always a very shy kid. I have a six-year-old daughter and there was something that I have observed about her because she's actually kind of different from me. It's a bit of social skills that seems to come naturally to her that I am a little envious of, but it represents what we're talking about here. So I remember there is an occasion where we are at a playground and they had one of those tires swings, where the tire is horizontal and it's got like three chains that support it so you could kind of go in every direction. And there was some kids there, who were playing on it and they were, I don't know three, four years older than her. There were calling over to their parents to come and push them, the parents were like talking and ignoring them. And so Luna just comes up and starts pushing them. Doesn't ask. She just starts pushing them and the kids are like, "Oh, okay." And they invited her to come up on the swing with her after that because she didn't ... She just did it. But she did it in a way that was like, "Hey, I'm gonna help them." Or she didn't ask to help them, she just helped them and maybe that doesn't work in every circumstance but it seems like it's going to work in a lot of circumstances, where if that's how you introduce yourself to people, they're going to trust you in a way that they wouldn't otherwise. TODD: So that brings up a great point. One of the things for instance at our conference, Chain React. One of my kind of high GAFOs or one of the things I cared about a lot, was to actively try to include everyone in the conference in the conference. A lot of conferences I see is just a small group of cool kids and the rest of people sitting in the corner and inspecting potted plants, myself included. So since I was part of creating a conference how do we minimize the cool kids and maximize the majority. And so when we're building community, the people like Ken‘s daughter, don't need our help. They'll just naturally join and be part of it and that's wonderful. But I gave a lot of thought on how to get the rest of the people because you could go to a conference and you could have the worst presentations, the worst content in the world, but if you are actually included in a way that you naturally aren't, you're going to go away loving that experience. And so, that's actually one of my personal goals in life is how to bring that experience that the cool kids get naturally to the majority of people. KEN: Well, and I think the most advance version of that is to enlist the cool kids as social instigators. Take their natural social skills because that's usually what that is, right? And have them come and bring everybody else along on the fun and games. JAMON: I read an article a little while ago, where a grade school student was kind of bullied and sort of kind of ostracized at her school. And she ended up moving to a new school and someone said, "Hey, come sit with me." at the cafeteria. And it was one of the cool kids. And she ended up making an organization that promotes come sit with me and basically go out and find these kids that seem ostracized, that nobody likes, whatever and just invite them to come sit with you at the cafeteria because it can change lives. And I actually sent that over to my son just saying, "Hey, you know ... " Because kind of ... He's looked up to at his school and he's a very kindhearted person. And he really liked the article too. And I think that that was something that he can do at his school. That's definitely something that we still, as adults, there's still that dynamic of come into the group. So we really cared about that with Chain React and that definitely came across I think. TODD: And our Slack community and some other communities. The great thing about out community is whether it's a developer community, the designer community, we belong to the open source community. We tend to be, I think more than the average human being, we tend to be a nicer group of people. I don't know if that's true, but it just seems that way. When recruiting a team, I invite people over to the table. That's how, this is going to sound horrible if our team's listening and they're not all that way. But I always look for people who are underappreciated in all aspects of life. And it makes for such a fantastic team because those type of people tend to be more appreciative, they think more about others. I love our band of misfits that we call Infinite Red. And we've got a variety of different misfits and I highly recommend finding people who don't naturally walk up to the tire swing. CHRIS: I'm interested too, with that philosophy of the band of misfits: How does building this greater Infinite Red Community impact the internal culture of the team? JAMON: I think internally people didn't totally get why we were doing it because it did seem like a lot of time that we had to spend doing it. We had to be out there answering questions and fielding requests for help and things like that. And we're still kind of figuring out what our role is with that; I think we've gotten a little better at that. Also the community is starting to become more self-sustaining, where there are people who are answering questions who are not Infinite Red people. But we've also made some really good friends there. And I think that the Infinite Red team has benefited from the community in that way. We don't get full participation from everybody. We get some people, you know, Kevin, Steve and some others who are a lot more active in the Infinite Red community Slack especially. And that's okay. We're not expecting everybody to be kind of the social butterflies, but we do get a lot of value from that. I think people see that. And they also see, I think Chain React probably had a bigger impact than the Slack community in a lot of ways. Almost everybody was there and they got a chance to see how we are regarded in the community and how they're sort of looked up to as Infinite Red employees. They're a great team so I think they should be. CHRIS: What do people or even companies get wrong with building communities? JAMON: I know that one thing that definitely comes in is neglect. Communities will die if you don't continually spend time making sure that you're paying attention to them, making sure that you're keeping the core principles alive. Things like that. So neglect is a really big one and you are sort of signing up for an obligation at that point. You need to make sure that you adequately pay attention to what's going on. Now, I have other communities that I've started and still maintain outside of Infinite Red for personal interests and things like that. One has 4,000 members. It's kind of an interesting one. And that community, we started it, grew very quickly and then it sort of became more self-sustaining in a way, which lends itself to maybe taking it for granted that it will continue to just kind of keep rolling right along. But luckily I was able to get together a really great group of core moderators that all have very similar goals, although very very different backgrounds. And that was really great way to handle that because they all, at different times, have time to make sure that the community is going strong. So neglect is very much a big one. Make sure that you don't neglect the community. TODD: I haven't done as much as Jamon, for sure, but it seems a very challenging endeavor. So if I'm a listener and I want to create a community. I'm going to run into lots of problems, I imagine. What are similar kinds of problems you've run into Jamon? Were you able to solve them? Are they still problems? That sort of thing. JAMON: In some communities, and actually in many communities, there's like dynamic that happens where people will try to find the edges. They will try to find what the moderators will allow and what they won't. Often what they do is not explicitly against the rules. Like if it is, it's easy. You just delete the comment, you let him know, whatever. Often what they're doing can be kind of sort of defended as being within the rules, but is still a toxic behavior, when it comes down to it. It will turn into something that's much worse. And usually moderators are under moderating. That's usually the way that people deal with it. They under moderate. You know you don't want to stifle people, you don't want to get calls of censorship and things like that, but really you should probably moderate more than you are and it's a really key aspect of maintaining a community. I've found that that's definitely the case. Early on in this other community, there was someone who was sort of misbehaving and I posted a very strong response to them and told them if they did it again that they were going to be banned. And it was helpful because it kind of set the boundary. This is what we're not going to, we're not going to allow this. It has been good because from that point on the group sort of started self-policing in a way. They kind of understood where the boundaries were. KEN: This topic of boundaries is super important. Another place that shows up particularly with anything open source or any other kind of content that you're maintaining, is an incredible sense of entitlement that you'll run into. And the burnout that can create in your team or the people who are working on that software with you. People will be like, you know, "This sucks." Like, "Why haven't you fixed my bug?" Like, "I submitted it months ago. You people are amateurs." Kind of like, "This is free. You paid us nothing for this." Keeping a healthy boundary about that and figuring out how to be responsive to the community without being a pushover is really important, if you're going to have a long-term software project or any other kind of thing that falls in that category of kind of collaborative content. JAMON: Yes. I agree with that a hundred percent. CHRIS: What are some other characteristics of a thriving community? So you've talked a little bit about moderation. You've talked about boundaries and policing, entitlement. And so, what else is there? KEN: One thing that isn't probably obvious if you've never done it, is how much promotion it actually requires. And you want to do it in a way that's consistent with the rest of your values but you have to put the word out and it's not going to happen on its own. That was definitely a sort of a stumbling block I had around open source, in particular or blogs or any of these things. Like, you have to tell people. It can feel really uncomfortable to a lot of kind of maker types. It feels weird that you have to convince people to let you give them stuff for free. But you totally do. You absolutely do. It's really important and finding the right, "Here it comes. Here comes." You got to find the right balance. (laughter) Finding the right balance is really hard. I think we're getting pretty good at it, but it's a non-optional part of this kind of work. JAMON: Well, because it's not really free, right? Because you only have so much room in your Slack sidebar for another Slack team. You only have so much mind share available for various things. And also people have been bitten in the past, where they've join communities that have either died, have been toxic or are just so noisy that you can't keep up. It just sucks all your time. KEN: Yeah, well, any of these things. Whether it's you're trying a new library. It requires some time and effort on your part. And you have to know that you're not going to get sucked into it. I mean there's probably this question in the back of a lot of people's minds kind of like, "Why on Earth do you do all of this? If it has all of these challenges and nobody pays you for it, like, why is it worthwhile?" Todd, you want to answer that? TODD: No, I want to say a bad joke. KEN: Okay. Go ahead and say a bad joke. TODD: I don't know if you're aware of this, but the Hoover Corporation is actually working on a vacuum cleaner that sucked time, never mind, I did that wrong. (laughter) KEN: You're right. That is a bad joke. TODD: I gave the punchline in the joke. KEN: You're right. That's a terrible joke. TODD: The project team was ... Eventually, they gave up on the project because it was too much of a time suck. I just messed that up. (laughter) KEN: I think we have to keep that in. TODD: Let me do it again. I don't know if you guys know this, but the Hoover Corporation was working on a temporal vacuum cleaner, but they eventually gave up on the project because it was too much of a time suck. CHRIS: I think I liked the failed joke attempt better. KEN: I like the failed joke better. Yeah. TODD: Well, yeah. Because that makes me the joke. KEN: I mean okay, so let's address the elephant in the room. Is there promotional value for us in terms of the rest of our services? Absolutely. Almost any attention especially if you know, basically positive attention is going to be good for us. It's a really expensive way of getting that attention. JAMON: It is. KEN: Let me be clear about that. If that's the only reason you're going to do it, go buy Google ads. Seriously. Like, don't do it. If it didn't have any promotional value, I don't think as a business person, you know, me, as the person who looks at the finances that I could justify the amount that we spend on it. If that was our only goal with that. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: So we have to do it partly because it's just who we are. JAMON: Absolutely. It gives us an audience and it gives us the ability to ... Like I did when I promoted this podcast there. If you join the community, by the way, I'm going to insert one of these seamless advertisements. If you join the community at community.infinite.red, your get access to things before the public does. We actually will go in there and and announce things and say, "Hey, you know, come check this out." And we get early feedback and stuff that way. It's really cool, but it also gives us an audience. So we had you know 2,000 people that I could "@channel." (laughter) And yes, I did it and we put enough money and time into the community that I didn't feel bad about doing it once in awhile, once in a blue moon. And I said, "@channel you know, we have a new podcast and go check it out." So that's definitely the promotional value, the built-in audience that we have that we've already built a rapport with because we have put in the time to actually show them who we are and they buy into that already. There's a lot of value there. KEN: It's a great source of folks that we already know or are sort of somewhat aligned with our values to go and find freelancers and that sort of thing. So we'll frequently get people just emailing us saying, "Hey, can we work with you?" And we usually don't have openings. So it was like, "Hey, you know, we don't have openings right now, but if you go hang out here that's usually where we go first." JAMON: Yes. KEN: We've gotten a lot of great contributors that way. JAMON: We have. KEN: Hopefully that's win-win for everybody. CHRIS: I'm still a little curious about this idea of, should every company build a community around their products, employees, and way of thinking? KEN: Not necessarily. JAMON: Wouldn't you say that one would kind of arise naturally though? KEN: Maybe. There's probably something to be said that, if you don't intentionally create the community, you're going to get a community whether you like it or not and it may or may not be aligned with what you're trying to do. But there's so many different kinds of companies out there that some of them are going to make more sense that way, some of them are going to get less sense that way. For us, given how collaborative what we do is, it makes perfect sense but there is plenty of companies that are just like us that don't cultivate that. So it's kind of up to you but this how we did it. This is how it works for us. And I think there's going to be people who resonate with it. CHRIS: Putting on your future facing hat, in what ways would you like to see the Infinite Red Community grow and mature? TODD: Upwards. (laughter) Oh, you didn't say direction, you said ways. Sorry. JAMON: I think from my standpoint, I'd like to see a little more deeper interaction beyond the more active channels. Something that's a little more beyond that. We have some ideas. We're not ready to announce anything yet but if you go to the community, you'll get first access. (laughter) I'm just relentless, aren't I? (laughter) But the deeper interactions, the more value, the better connection between everybody. I think that there's going to be more of that coming. We are going to continue to invest in the community in a way that is very meaningful. Keep an eye out for that. It's already pretty awesome, but we have some ways to make the directions deeper. I'm not looking for numbers. Like we have 2,000, I think almost 2,100 people in there right now. I'm not necessarily just looking for 100,000 people. What I want is for those connections to be more meaningful. TODD: It's not just our Slack community. I would consider our React Native Newsletter, which we have about 10,000 subscribers to be part of our community, the people who interact with us on open source. We have a variety of open source projects to be part of our community and of course, the listeners to this podcast is also part of our growing community. Community is a big umbrella, I think. JAMON: There are some things that we still need to work on with the community, for sure, but I think we do this probably better than a lot of people, a lot of companies. TODD: Ken's absolutely right. If you're doing community for promotion, good on you. Probably not the highest ROI. It's like general branding. You can't put a number on it but I think clearly from a business standpoint, it has its values and ways that we can't quantify or articulate. It's not for everyone. I think every company should find things that they can do to help the world and their business, but for us, it dovetails well with our culture.

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.

We are discussing all of the considerations that go into hiring and maximizing your team: from culture fit and making sure that people are enjoying their work, to what it means to be a leader and why the best leaders bring out the best in each person, not for the sake of the company, but for the betterment of their lives. Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: Where do you start this process of hiring and maximizing your team? TODD WERTH: Hello, Chris. This is Todd, CEO and founder of Infinite Red, for those who don't recognize my voice. It's a super important question. We run the company as a Council of Elders. The three founders all have equal power and equal responsibilities, but we all choose various parts of the company that we focus on. And one of my main focuses is the team, so this topic's very interesting to me. I would start out defining our opinions on what different roles of management, leadership, coaching are, so people have kind of a frame reference. There is management, but that's a purely logistical thing. For example, we're a consulting company, and we have a lot of projects, usually six to eight projects going on at once. And we have to schedule those. So, that means putting blocks into holes on the schedule, figuring out resources, that kind of stuff. That is management. There's no real leadership going on there. There's certainly no coaching. I mean, there's some, of course; it's not a perfect science. But those kind of tasks are management, in my opinion. We manage what's necessary, but we don't manage what's not necessary to manage or what would be better served by being a coach, to use a sports analogy, or being a leader. That's kind of the primary thing. We can talk about later what bad leaders do. One of the things they do—just to highlight what I just said—is they only manage; they never lead, and they never coach. And then we have leadership and coaching. Could be the same thing, but I'm gonna break those up just a little bit. A coach's job is to find the best teammates that they can at the time with the resources that they have, and put people in the jobs that they're best at and maximize those people. Coaches don't say things like, "All players suck. I'm losing because you can't find good players," because it's literally their job to find those players and to maximize them and to put them in the best spot possible. That's what I consider coaching. Leadership is everything else. Leadership is you're leading, and you're guiding people to where they'll be most effective. You're guiding people through problems. You're the first one on the battlefield, in my opinion, and you're the last one on the battlefield. You lead by example. It's everything else that goes in, all the soft skills of helping a group of people accomplish tasks and goals. JAMON HOLMGREN: Yeah, thanks, Todd. This is Jamon, founder and COO of Infinite Red. I think one of the key aspects of maximizing your team comes down to trusting them and providing the right level of support. So, a lot of companies will put in place restrictive policies that are more along the lines of trying to kind of shoehorn their employees into behavior that they want to see. And we take a very different approach here. We're very resistant to putting in place policies. We may give some guidelines that are more along the lines of ideas of how you might approach something, but we rely more on trusting them to make the right call, and if they don't make the right call, to respond the right way. And we can provide support for them if they need help, if they need encouragement, if they need course correction, whatever, we can do that in a supportive way and not so much in a management way. And that's what Todd's talking about when he's talking about the leadership. But, yeah, it's about trusting your team. And it's about putting them in places where they can succeed and not putting them in places where they're not well suited, finding the right path for them. You can put someone in place as, let's say, a programmer. And if they're struggling, you can just sort of like flog them. You know, not literally, but just sort of put a bunch of pressure on them to get their job done faster. And that's how a lot of bad leaders approach maximizing their team. From our standpoint, it's a very different approach. It's more of an open approach. It's about trying to find what they're really good at, and then letting them go, letting them do their thing. There are many examples within Infinite Red, which we can talk about, where people have taken the initiative and done things that are outside of their normal job description, but which they're interested in and which they're good at. And that is more where we see the maximization of the talent that we have. CHRIS: How do you hire for culture fit within Infinite Red? KEN MILLER: Ken Miller, CTO and founder. I would say the easiest way is always a referral. Always, right? I bet everybody's gonna tell you that. The hardest, almost impossible way, is just an interview of somebody off the street. One thing we've kind of done that's sort of in between is we've hired freelancers. So, from time to time, we have more work than our core team can handle, and we'll bring on a freelancer or two. And on a couple of different occasions, we've liked them so much we're like, "Hey, do you want a job?" And that's worked pretty well. TODD: It's actually pretty difficult to hire for anything, much less culture fit. I am still dubious that getting a bunch of resumes, doing interviews, and choosing one of those people is any better than randomly picking someone. I'm sure people have done studies, and it's probably better, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it's better. What we are particularly good at is we have a strong culture, and we have a strong idea of what our culture is. And we have a strong idea on what attributes that our people to have. We let a lot of our team interview. For instance, Chris here, when he was interviewed ... I don't know how many interviews he had, but it's probably like 10. We let anyone on our team -- and we're a team of 26 people -- interview everyone if they want to. We try to get a lot of people to interview them. Different people are looking for different things. For example, I am solely looking for culture fit. I assume that the people that came before me, like Jamon or Ken, if it's a technical position, already interviewed them for technical stuff. I assume by the time it gets to me that they're qualified for the job. So, I really just chitchat with them and try to see if they're a cultural fit. JAMON: Yeah, and one of the dangers with trying to hire specifically only for culture fit is that you can end up with a monoculture, and that can be a problem. And so that's something that we watch for. When Todd's talking about cultural fit, it's very much more about specific values that are kindness and helpfulness and things like that that are more about humanity and the type of person that they are, more so than maybe a specific culture, and I think that term probably needs to be defined a little better as we go through here. KEN: No rock stars. JAMON: That's right. TODD: Or ninjas or unicorns. KEN: No, yeah. No rock stars or ninjas. CHRIS: What about gurus? TODD: No gurus. KEN: Well, we'd have to see about a guru. I don't know, we'll see. TODD: Yeah, so just real quick, our main cultural fits, the soft stuff, is supportive, kindness. I would say even creative would be one of mine now. JAMON: Absolutely. It doesn't matter whether they're a technical person or not, creative is absolutely one of our values ... Todd, you've talked about ... What was that that you sometimes say about creativity? TODD: I do believe very strongly that the company and day-to-day work life should be fun, and as little stress as possible. And the reason I say that is the most creative and the best work comes out when you're having fun. Like, I like to joke around a lot. People sometimes say, "This is more of a serious matter, don't joke." I don't agree. If someone's doing brain surgery on me, the doctor, I want him to be having a great day, feeling good, making bad, inappropriate jokes about my tiny brain, that kind of stuff. Because you know what, when you're in that mood and you're having fun and you're in that mode, you do your best work. I can think of almost no place where that's not true. I don't know if that's what you're talking about, Jamon, but when you're having fun, you're being creative. When you're being creative, you're solving problems with more than just pure nose against the grindstone. JAMON: Yeah. And some of the other attributes that we evaluate on are productivity, leadership, being pleasant, being a good communicator; those are all soft skills. And it's kind of interesting because I sometimes get questions on Twitter, "What do you look for in a developer?" And my answers are usually probably more soft skill than people would expect. I'm not necessarily looking for hard technical skills. That's not what we value as much. KEN: It's always been very important to me that we make the work fun, that we find people that enjoy what they do, find as many as ways as possible to make them juggle. It's not always possible. Different clients are going to be different ways. Different projects are gonna be different ways, but as much as possible make the actual work fun as opposed to, what a lot of startups I've seen do, which is a lot of booze and free food to numb the pain of the work that you're doing. That's a very, very, very strongly held view for me. TODD: It only takes about a week to build culture at a company because that's how long it takes to get the ping pong table delivered. (laughter) KEN: And we have to deliver a ping pong table to every single employee's wing and we have this elaborate system for simulating the trajectory of the ping pong so you like hit the ping pong ball and you kind of measure where it went- JAMON: That's what we spend our time on. KEN: You have somebody send you the ... That's a lot of work. TODD: That's a typical startup. JAMON: We put together a presentation for a change in some of our strategy and showed it to the team when we're all together in one location last fall. And one of the things we had was this sort of like seven points that we were looking for, and I actually pulled it up on my computer so I can remember what they were. It's creativity, productivity, quality of work, communication skills, being a pleasure to work with, consistency, and leadership. Now not everybody is great at all those things obviously. Some people are more strong in the communication side of things. Some are more productive. Some are really, really great at quality. It's a mixture of those things that makes Infinite Red. But that's what Todd's really talking about when he's saying that he optimizes for the culture fit, what he looks for, the things that they do well. And all the technical stuff, I mean, it's important but people can learn the technical side of things. KEN: The reason that we don't focus as much on raw technical skills ... I wouldn't agree at all that we don't focus on it. We definitely want people who can do hard things. It's just that the world of software development began its life in a world where humans had to contort themselves into the world of the machine very heavily. You had to really, really intimately know how the machine worked, and that was a pretty rare skill; people who could kind of form the mental model that they needed to in order to work on these old machines. Steadily, over the decades, the slider between the machine and the human has gotten closer and closer and closer to the human side where your job is not as much to mind meld with the machine, it's to really to intimately understand the human's problem and translate it into the high level languages that we use now for the kind of software that we do, application-level software. Like, we're not writing operating systems or databases. We're not writing Google-scale, massive data-crunching applications, that kind of thing. For things where the human factors even all the way down to the technical level are the most important. So like manageability, that's a human factor even though it's highly technical. Having people with the soft and social skills who can also think in the abstract where you need to to be a programmer or in the way that you need to be a designer as well in this sort of breaking problems down in your mind. We've seen many more project go awry because of soft skills than because of hard skills. JAMON: Yeah, I agree with that. There's a line at which, of course, all of our people have to be competent in their jobs, whether technically on the engineering side or on the designer side. TODD: Yeah, I think it's a lot easier to test if someone who you are looking at to be on your team, whether they have technical skills, it's a lot easier to look at someone's portfolio and see that they're a great artist on the design side. These kind of real, tangible things. The reason we're not talking about it as much is not because it's not important or that we don't have these great skilled people, because we do, it's just a lot easier to determine that part. And by time, it gets to us determining if they're in our culture, we've already assessed that they have these skills. I feel like that doesn't give us a competitive advantage to figure out the easy things that everyone can figure out. So I don't want to give the impression that we just don't care about them, we totally do. The soft skills or the cultural fit is where I think you can have a competitive advantage and where you can as a coach part of your job, select the best players for your particular team. It's a sports analogy. I don't know why I'm using all these sports analogies. I'm not even a sports person. (laughter) JAMON: The truth is that as far as hiring is concerned, I wouldn't say that we're necessarily great at it. And that's not to say that we've hired a bunch of people that aren't good, they're really great. I think in some ways maybe that reflects more of our ability to intuit what will work well and what doesn't. But I think that you get good at something by doing it a lot. And we haven't actually hired a ton. We've purposely have kept the team small. KEN: I don't know if there's a sweet spot some place. I feel like being very small it's harder to do hiring because as Jamon says you don't get a lot of practice. Being large, I think it's also hard to do hiring because you have to have so many layers of filters that you get lots of false negatives and false positives just by virtue of the scale. But like, I wanna believe that there's this place in the middle, but I don't even know if I believe that. Hiring is just hard. There's no silver bullet. JAMON: There's also the turnover is a factor in this too. And we really don't have turnover. Pretty much everybody that we started from 2015 has stuck around until today and that's something that we're very proud of. That may change at one point, but we're very proud of that fact. It does mean that we don't hire to replace, like we haven't. And we only hire to grow and we're growing very slowly. CHRIS: Jamon, that brings up a really interesting point in which, when Infinite Red merged from two separate companies into what it is today, there were two different cultures where, as a team, you had to learn new personalities and learn how to work with new people so how did that change this dynamic? JAMON: Yeah, from my perspective, it was ... It actually kinda floors me how well it went considering what we had to deal with. At ClearSight, we were a ... That was my previous company that I started in 2005. We had a long history, so some people had worked with me for a very long time. I mean, I hired everybody as a brand new junior. I mean, I didn't hire hardly anybody who had experience. We were not remote as we discussed in our previous episode. We were not remote at the time. And we had a different business model the way that we worked at ClearSight versus Infinite Red, LLC, which was Todd and Ken's company at the time, they were very senior-heavy. They had all seniors. In fact, I think almost everybody at Infinite Red, LLC was older than me, and I was the oldest person at ClearSight. So that was an interesting aspect. TODD: There was a lot of Metamucil at Infinite Red. (laughter) CHRIS: This episode of Building Infinite Red is brought to you by Metamucil. Get your fiber in today. (laughter) KEN: You have to keep that in. JAMON: Yes. So that was an interesting aspect because it was very different. We were in Vancouver, Washington area most of us and they were down in the bay area, a little different style there. It was just different vibe in the two companies, but it went really well, and that's something I think we should talk about. TODD: I'll not paint as a rosy picture as Jamon did. It did end up very well through a whole lot of effort and going forward. I do want to interject real quick on the last thing. One of the qualities we look for, and it also plays into Jamon's comment about monoculture, I consider us a little band of misfits, and that's on purpose. And we're misfits in a variety of different ways all over the spectrum. I won't go into different ones, but we have a wide variety of misfits, and I think that's a very important part of our culture, which I enjoy very much. KEN: We're the island of misfit toys. TODD: Correct, except for we're not toys and we're not ... KEN: Yeah, there's no island and we're not toys, but otherwise, we're a totally the island of misfit toys. TODD: Exactly. CHRIS: This episode brought to you by competing metaphors. Metaphors; the things that we compete against. (laughter) TODD: Yeah, the culture was quite a bit different. We put a lot of effort and this is a team effort as well as a leadership effort for sure, and it took a while, but the end results I do agree with Jamon, it came out really well. Obviously, we didn't have anyone quit, which is fantastic, which is a major accomplishment. And, of course, the two cultures changed each other, and we came out as a third culture. JAMON: Yeah, totally. TODD: Which was very hard, but very exciting. KEN: One of the things that happened when we merged was Vancouver, Washington is for the Pacific Northwest anyway, a relatively kind of conservative area. And obviously, we were here in the Bay Area, which is not a conservative area, and we were a little worried about that. Like we were a little concerned like, "How's that gonna play out?" JAMON: Especially during the time that it was, 2015, all of the stuff that was happening back then. KEN: Yeah, and I think that we managed it pretty well in the sense that I think we set standards for how you interact with your colleagues. We created special Slack rooms. People wanted to argue about politics, they can go and argue about politics in certain places and it was pretty much banned anywhere else, saying like, "You know, if you want to talk about these hot button topics, that's fine. Here's the ground rules, right? Like, you're always respectful, and you do it over there where people who don't want to have to interact with that don't." And that's worked pretty well. I don't go to those channels, and I don't really see it come up very much. And people generally ... Like, we will see people who we know have completely different viewpoints working together great and having a great working relationship and having mutual respect, and that is sort of the core value that we brought to that. And I think that's also the core anecdote to any of the monoculture concerns if you set the grounds rules that like, "Hey, you can disagree, but like this is how you can disagree. When you're at work, this is the way you that can disagree." Part of the reason we wanna grow slowly is so that as people come in with their different perspectives, which we really value and we want people to be able to share their perspectives, they abide by these rules about how we get along and make something together. CHRIS: Is this an instance where policy is actually a good thing where you're setting-* KEN: Yes. CHRIS: -maybe rules of engagement for how people should interact in certain arenas? KEN: I mean, it's the exception that proves the rule a little bit. It's not that we don't have policies; it's that we don't want to manage by policy all over the place, right? It's sort of like, "Here's a few ... Here's the constitution, right? Here's a few rules about you interact with each other," but then the rest is like common decency. **CHRIS: Todd, you mentioned something in the Slack channel in preparation for this episode about the question, "what do engineers and designers care about?" And you included some fun things, but the question I have is what do engineers and designers care about and are they similar things or are they different things? TODD: The short answer in my opinion is, no, I find engineers and designers to be very similar. A lot of people think of engineering as math. I think of engineering, and I'm an engineer myself, as much more creativity, at least the kind of engineering we do, than more like mathematics and that kind of stuff. To answer that question, what do they care about? I would love to actually hear Ken talk about what engineers really care about as opposed to maybe some other professions, what they care about. And I'm referring to stuff like money- KEN: You mean, like what would motivate them? Is that what you're asking? TODD: Correct, yeah. KEN: So I always said that like you have basically three levers to pull when you're hiring. One is money, which is not as important to engineers as you might think. I think it's important that they feel that it's fair, but I've seen very few engineers ever be motivated by more money than the fair baseline. I mean, everyone wants more money, right? Don't get me wrong, right? Everyone would like as much as they can get, pretty much. All else being equal. But all else isn't equal. And so lever number two is interesting work. That's a really big one for some engineers. Not as big for some other people, but for some people that's a huge lever, and you could like throw money at them, but if you have to work on a finance system or something that they just don't happen to find interesting, they're gonna be like, "I'll pass." I was always that way. I think most engineers frankly are that way or they'd be working at hedge funds. And the third lever is lifestyle. How close are they to work, like do you have the ping pong table if that's what you care about, do they give you free food if that's something you care about, and for us obviously, the remote work piece is the big giant pillar of our working environment. JAMON: You know, it's gonna be hard for us to compete with Google or Microsoft or something just purely on amenities and dollars and things like that, but when our engineers maybe look around, they have lots of choices. They're great engineers and they have a lot of options, but they look around and they say, "Well, they're not remote work. They don't have this particular culture. They don't put a high emphasis on it." Maybe some of them do have remote work programs, but they're not a core part and piece. And so that's something that we lean very heavily on and the lifestyle part of it where families are part of what we do. If I have my 4-year-old daughter bust in and wave at the sales lead on the video call, that's fine. That's just a part of how we work. KEN: And a huge part of our mission, I think, is that returning people to their families and communities so that they don't have to live in San Francisco Bay area or New York or wherever. They don't have to come in to commute. They can live in the town where they grew up. They can live rurally. We have a number of people that live rurally. They can live nomadically. We have one guy who lives nomadically. That's the closest thing I think we have to like a real mission, like a guiding star for like what we want to see in the world. And it's been central to our belief in remote work, that people's living situation should be based on their personal life and not on their professional life. TODD: It's not just our remote work. We respect people as humans, more importantly as adult humans. I personally have an aversion to people controlling my time. KEN: Well, controlling for no reason, right? Controlling just to control. TODD: We don't own people's time. We don't own people's location. In my opinion, that stops being acceptable after childhood. Now, of course, if you have a responsibility and you've agreed to those responsibilities and you have a responsibility to show up at a meeting at a particular time, that's different. But we don't control people's time or place and I think time is actually a very important part to lifestyle which I agree with Ken, our team especially finds very important. JAMON: So the title of this episode is I think Maximizing Your Team or something along those lines, and when I look at the word "maximizing", we even thought about changing the title when we were first starting this, but because it feels a little bit off in some ways to our core values. It just occurred to me why. We do believe that we should maximize our team, but not in a way that is purely Infinite Red serving. It's more about maximizing them personally, their particular lives. So we give up some productivity in order to maximize their flexibility. We give up some high bandwidth situations so that they can live remotely in other cities. We give up some things that maybe if we were strictly optimizing for maximum productivity would be better in certain cases. And although, even some of those are arguable. I think we'll probably talk about those in future episodes, but maximizing them is more about maximizing them as people and not just as employees. TODD: I'm really glad you brought that up because, yeah, the title's a little weird to me as well. But our job is to lead people towards their best version of their work self. Obviously, everything we're talking about is an ideal and nothing's perfect. But I used to ice skate, for example, and some coaches would just tell me everything's great all the time. Those coaches didn't care. Their job literally is to help me improve. So if I'm doing everything wonderful, then that's not helping me improve. I take the same approach with people and my job is to, in a supportive and kind way, as often as I can given my time help people improve. Well, a couple things for that. One is you want to find the right places for people. Getting angry at a dog because it doesn't climb a tree as well as you wish it would is stupid. You can take a dog and push it towards the best version of a dog, but you can't make a dog a cat. I know, I've tried. (laughter) I'm just kidding. And that's super important. I think a lot of leaders ... Let's call these people managers just to be derogatory. (laughter) A lot of managers will try to make dogs into cats and they complain to all their manager buddies over their cheap beer that employees all suck. And I've said this in a previous podcast, I'll say it again, employees don't suck, you suck. You're a bad manager. Just stop trying to make dogs into cats and try to optimize, make it the best dog that is possible given the time and the particular point of the path that that particular person is on. I don't know why I'm calling the team dogs, I'm sorry about that. I love you, team. KEN: I was gonna say, this is probably the reason we don't have any ambitions to become a very large company because, frankly, once you're at a certain scale, it becomes impossible to do what we're talking about. Like the company needs people to fill particular sized round holes, and they will expect people to shave off their corners in order to fit into the round holes. That's just reality. I don't even think that there's anything wrong with that exactly and some people thrive in that sort of environment, but we try to look at, yeah, what's the best version of this person and like how can they fit into our team rather than doing it the other way around? JAMON: And because of that we tend to hire a little more generalists than maybe a large company would where you can afford to hire a bunch of specialists that only do one thing. Even though we hire generalists, we're still looking for their particular set of properties, what they're good at. TODD: Also, from a leadership standpoint, a leader enjoys working with people who have issues to work on. A manager, which once again I'm using as a derogatory term here, only wants the good people that they can be lazy about and just works. But think about that for a fact. Like I want to be a painter where all the canvas I get already have the paint on them. I want to be a house builder where when I show up to the work site, the house is built. Your job is to literally to help people improve in their work and to help them be the most efficient and the most creative and the most fulfilled that they can be. Why would you complain about team members who have problems? That's literally your job. Team members who are awesome, they don't need me. We have them and that's great, and I still try to help them move forward, but, of course, the further along one's path to their ideal craftsperson or whatever, the less they need you. And, in that case, its more just morale and that kind of support. But what makes me excited as a leader is the people who have quite a few issues to deal with and how to creatively come up with a way to help them deal with that. CHRIS: You're kind of hinting at it, Todd. And I think there's this underlying thread that in order to maximize your team, it's really about being a leader not a manager. So what are some of the ways that people can approach building a team? What does it look like to be a leader? TODD: One, care. Two, work hard. Three, who knows? Four, profit. KEN: That's basically it. I wish there was like a nice summary, a nice silver bullet going, "Hey. Be a leader trying to this one weird trick." The CEO at a startup that I was at for many years where I built a team, he was like, "You know, I don't know what your magic is." I'm like, "There's no magic. I just care." And it can be exhausting at an intense startup. It can be emotionally, physically, super draining to do that really well. I had to rest like to the point like I went and took just a regular engineer job for a couple of years because it took a lot out of me, and so the hard part is not how do you be a great leader. That is, you care and you pay attention. The hard part is how do you be a great leader sustainably over time without it destroying you. And I think having co-founders really helps with that. This is what I've definitely discovered. JAMON: I agree. Some of my most draining weeks have been working on team issues, working on developing people and kind of working through all of that. It's something that you're not really trained at as a software engineer. You end up being, in some ways, kind of a psychologist or something along those lines where you're having to think about a lot of issues and melding personalities and competing priorities and all of those things. I actually talked to my brother-in-law last night and one of the things he mentioned about his job is he went from doing some kind of individual contributor type work to managing a team. And he actually built the team. It was a design team. And he said that it took years off his life doing that because it's not something that came natural to him. And he is the type that absolutely cares. Like he is a very kindhearted, very nice person, and he really cares. And because of that, it was absolutely draining. So I think it's across industries, across disciplines that sort of leadership is ... It's hard. It's not easy to do, so that would definitely up on my list of things that tire me out in a given week. TODD: One thing I want to interject real quick before I go on to my next point, never confuse kindness with weakness. That's a pet peeve of mine. It's sometimes the kindest thing to do is grab their hand and yank them forcefully out of the traffic of oncoming cars. Secondly, I don't ... I guess this is why one of my focuses is team, it doesn't drain me that much to be honest. I really enjoy it. Any day where I'm only interacting with our team as opposed to worrying about business problems or maybe interacting with outside people is a good day for me to be honest. I feel good about that. As far as what does it mean to care and what does it mean to work hard? Well, one, get to know your team. If you can't say your team member's spouse's name whether it's a wife or their husband or whatnot, that's a problem. One of my goals is for us to all to be in a meeting with someone from the outside, and I can go around the table and introduce every single person, know about them, talk a little bit about them. That's huge; just simply knowing people. Also, the other thing that's super, super important ... And, gosh, we could make three podcasts out of this to be honest in my perspective. But one of the things that's super important is when someone does have a problem or they make a mistake or something like that, they feel comfortable coming to you. I had some person recently come to me and say, "Look, I overslept. I missed my alarm and I missed a meeting." It was a client meeting, and that's one of the things that is kind of no-no here at Infinite Red. But they came to me and said, "I just wanted to let you know so you heard it from me first." That's awesome. Well, in this case, I didn't actually say much to be honest because they already knew what they did. They brought it to my attention. Like the end result was done by them. My real job was making them feel comfortable to come and tell me that. If you can have people tell you when they did something wrong instead of hiding it, that's a gold star day for you as a leader in my opinion. That's hard to do, but you have to make people feel comfortable. When they make a mistake, you almost celebrate the mistake because mistakes are what we learn, and you don't beat them up for it but you are firm, fair and kind in response to it. KEN: And on the subject of mistakes, we make tons of them. What we're expressing is our goals and our practice. Just like engineering or design or any of the tasks that our team does, this is our ideals. Sometimes we fall down, and we try to sort of notice and correct. I'd much rather have a system that's built on that feedback loop than on one that is built on never making a mistake. That's part of our kind of our ethos of resiliency that we hope that we are instilling in our employees by embracing ourselves. TODD: Yeah, we make lots of mistakes. One of the things I tell clients is, "Look, we're human. We make mistakes. I would ask you not to judge us on the mistakes that we make. I would ask you to judge us on the speed and the effort we make in correcting those mistakes because that is something we can control. We can't control this being perfect. We're not." And I think the same applies to our team, and hopefully if the team feels it applies to us because I would imagine we make more mistakes than most.

In this episode, the founders of Infinite Red—Jamon Holmgren, Ken Miller, and Todd Werth—are talking about Chain React, Infinite Red’s React Native tech conference this July 11-13th in Portland, OR. Hear the story of how the conference came about, how Infinite Red's remote team worked together to create an in-person event, the value of hiring people with diverse interests and backgrounds, and all of the things that go into making the best conference possible. Show Links Chain React 2018 Derek's Food Report Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: In 2017, Infinite Red started Chain React, a conference devoted to React Native. So the question that I have for the three of you to start is: why start a conference and what was the need that you saw? JAMON HOLMGREN: This is Jamon and I was on Twitter and I was looking for a React Native conference because we had been doing React Native for about a year at that point. And I was thinking, well, it'd be really nice to see if some of our team could attend a conference and potentially maybe share some of the things that we had learned along the way. So I actually put out a tweet saying, "is there a React Native conference around? I'm not seeing one." And got no responses, which partially had to do with my very small Twitter audience at the time and partially just because there wasn't one. Now, it turns out there was one over in Europe, React Native EU, put on by our friends over at Callstack. TODD WERTH: But that was after. JAMON: I believe it was after that. KEN: We didn't learn about that until after. TODD: Not at that time. JAMON: Right. I was just kinda chewing on that. Wow, I didn't get any response to that. I would normally get two or three options if I were to put out something like that. And I woke up one morning, I'm like, you know what, maybe we should do a conference? And what is funny is independently two or three people contacted me after that, that same week saying, "Do you think we should do a React Native conference?" Just independently and it just seemed like that all kind of came together all at once. TODD: And this is Todd, Todd Werth, by the way. Some background here. We've never done a conference at all. We've of course all attended conferences. We're familiar with that. Although Shawni Danner, who ran the conference had never attended a conference, which was funny, but anyways, so Jamon came up with the idea, talked to some other people in our company, they liked the idea and then pretty quickly we decided and then we started building the conference. KEN MILLER: At what point in there did Gant ... Because Gant, who is our social butterfly... TODD: Gant Laborde. KEN: ...so he asked around various people to see whether they would speak. And I don't remember if that was before we decided or after. I feel like that was before. We were kind of mulling the idea around and he was like, "hey, we're thinking about doing this conference. Would you want to speak?" And when a bunch of people were like, yeah, hell yeah. We were like, okay, sounds like the stars are aligning, and it was very much a feeling of the stars aligning to be honest. JAMON: It really was. KEN: This signal is kind of like once we started putting the idea out, it just gathered momentum from a bunch of different places and we're like, okay, and then once you commit, the momentum increases. TODD: And as far as I know, it was the first React Native conference in the world. JAMON: As far as the first one that was held, I think Callstack announced their conference before we announced ours. But yeah it was right in that same time. TODD: Correct, they announced, but theirs came after ours actually. JAMON: Yeah, theirs was in September, ours was in July of 2017. CHRIS: So when you're putting on a new venture, like a conference that you have no experience in and you start seeing the stars align and you start seeing this momentum form: how do you really go from zero to one? KEN: I don't want to say it wasn't hard because a lot of work went into it, but it wasn't super difficult. At the end of the day, the hard part about making a conference is making a good conference. You get a venue, you get speakers, you get food, you get swag. I mean, I don't mean to oversimplify it, but if you've planned a wedding, you can plan a conference, right? It's probably not even as hard as a wedding because it's not quite as emotionally wrought, but where we put the most effort into well how do we make it a good conference? And we sort of came up with a list of things, some of which I think turned out to be true. Like getting good speakers, making sure that there's at least a certain amount of diversity. I think we always want more, but there needs to be at least enough that people can kind of go, look, hey, there's someone like me there. I was big on having good food. I think that wasn't as important as I thought it was. It's important to me, but the things that people cared about it, we're actually different than what we thought. So there was definitely things that we learned from the process, but the process of getting it organized—and a lot of credit goes to Shawni for being an amazing organizer of things—but the process of getting it made, while stressful and hectic at points, went off pretty smoothly overall. TODD: Yeah. So that's all true. One thing we did do though is as a leadership team, is we decided to put a decent amount of resources into it. I think a lot of people are like, this is a little side project and it was a side project for us. But we're 26 people, so we can put a little more wood behind the arrow of a side project like this if we decide to. And we'd probably put a little too much resources in to it, to be honest. And we'll talk about this later, but the results were well worth it. JAMON: Yeah. One of the things you have to remember is back in 2016 when we were first starting to do this, we had been doing React Native for a year. We weren't necessarily quite as well known back then, we were still fairly new player in the space. We had done some things in other technical realms that we were more known for, but React Native we were still a relative newcomer. So for us this was, it was a bigger, maybe bigger deal than just necessarily putting on a conference for the revenue or something along those lines. We wanted to be connected. We want it to be in that space. And so we did put it, as Todd said, we put a lot of resources behind it. We put a lot of thought into it. As a founder team, we put a lot into it. TODD: And it was probably a half of Shawni's main job, which is a significant amount. JAMON: Absolutely. And another person I'll point out here that who was instrumental was Gant Laborde. He's typically the most active in the conference circuit from Infinite Red and he's been to a lot of conferences as both speaker and attendee and he had a really good sense, good instincts about what worked well at those conferences and what didn't. And early on I read an article about how you should really treat your speakers well and I brought it up to Gant and he absolutely agreed with that. The speakers are so key to a great conference and so we spent a lot of time, energy, and money, making sure that the speakers felt comfortable, that they had a good spot, that they were well supported all the way up to the conference and that was definitely time well spent. It was a good investment. All of the speakers that we've talked to felt like they had a fantastic experience. Some said that it was the best conference that they had ever spoke at, which was, a lot of them were very accomplished speakers so for a first time conference, we felt that was very good. TODD: That's a good example of making decisions that produce good quality products, whether they're a conference, software, whatever. A lot of people read those articles. The article says the most important thing is treating your speakers right. They read it, they think about it, they talk about it, they don't actually do it. We accept that we knew nothing about throwing a conference, so we took Everyone-on-the-Internet's advice like that very seriously and we asked our team and then we put resources behind that and we went way out of our way for the speakers. I've spoke at conferences and it is true. Some are very well organized and you feel very comfortable and it makes for a great presentation and some are not. So I definitely think the number one lesson we learned, spoiler alert, was treat your speakers well. CHRIS: Todd, I have a question for you in terms of a follow-up. When you are reading these articles and they say what to do, what is the difference between just reading them and not acting on them and choosing to act on them? Was there just a moment where you're like, okay, we're actually going to do that? TODD: We make make decisions fairly quickly. We do make decisions as a quorum of elders. All the leaders make decisions together. We have no king here at Infinite Red. So we do make decisions pretty quickly, especially if one person doesn't have a passionate opposite position. So when Jamon brought that up and then Gant and some other people, Darin Wilson, for example, other people who spoke at a lot of conferences, agreed with it. We decided almost instantly. Well, I mean there's a lot of things that get in your way. The first one is admitting you don't know anything about something you actually don't know anything about. And so listening is tough for people and especially tough for companies. The second thing is hubris. I've never done a conference. It doesn't stop me from doing the best one I can do and I'm not gonna listen to anyone and you know that happens. And the third one is making the right decision fairly quickly, listening to your team, and then actually putting no one in charge of that, giving no one actual time to work on it, and putting no money into it. This is basically Congress's full time job doing that. (laughter) So we try to avoid that. I mean, I'm not just, it sounds like I'm just cheerleading the leadership team, which is kind of self-serving as I'm on it. But it's not just us, it's just the whole team. When we say we decided, Jamon read this article, a bunch of people have talked to agree with this concept of treating speakers well. We're gonna treat speakers well. The team doesn't roll their eyes and go, "sure." The whole company culturally said we're going to do this and they're going to do it. And truthfully, the leadership, we helped the decision-making but we didn't do much of the actual work for the conference. KEN: I think there's conferences where their idea of treating speakers well is to just throw money at them. And that was not ... I mean, I don't think that's the feedback we got from speakers. I mean everybody likes money. I mean don't get me wrong, but it's about making their experience smooth because no amount of money will stop the nerves or the feeling of not being appreciated. TODD: If you make it easy for people to shine, that's what they remember. People remember the way they feel about things way more than they remember what was said or the logic to it. CHRIS: So when you're doing something that's outside normal business parameters or normal business operations, how does something like putting on a conference cause distractions or disruptions and how have you worked through it as founders and how have you seen the team work through it as well? JAMON: That's a great question and I think one of the early pain points was just in process because ... we're a consultancy and so we have a certain process that's set up for clients. And in this case we didn't have a client. We had an internal project, we had an internal champion, Shawni, but it's still a very different feel. Shawni wasn't handing us all of the requirements and saying go build this thing. We had to do it as a group, so we had to develop processes around that and that was something that was very interesting that took time to develop and in fact, we're still kind of working through some of those things, but I feel like we've learned a lot and there's a lot more shared understanding around how we make those decisions and things like that. So I think process was a pretty big adjustment for us. Another thing that comes to mind with that is allocating actual team time as a consultancy. If anytime that you're spending on that, you're obviously not billing and you're not making revenue for the company. Obviously the hope is that the conference pays for itself by the revenue that comes in for it, but we still had to put a lot of time in on speculation that this was going to work. That's a very different thing than: give us a deposit and we'll start working and we'll send you bills. Again, internal allocation of resources was another adjustment that we had to make and also planning for the future and making sure that we had the revenue, the cash flow to make that happen. And Ken was really good at kind of identifying what we could sustain and what we couldn't as a company. KEN: Part of the initial "should we do this" consideration was like okay, how many people would we need to do to break even? And we were prepared to be happy with break even and that turned out to be a smaller number than we thought. That made it something that we could grapple with and be like okay, if we can get 150 people into a room where, we think we can do that even if we have to go and individually invite 300 people in order to get that hit rate or whatever. And so it ended up being a lot more than that and that was awesome. But it gave us this margin of psychological safety when we went into it. It's kind of like, okay, yeah, we can do this, and we know at what point were losing money, what point where we're making money, at what point we can up the experienced because we've got enough margin to do that. TODD: That's super important. What Ken just mentioned is any time we have an idea we go to Ken and say the main thing is what's our worst case scenario goal to make this viable? That helps us make a decision whether or not it's even a good thing to even try. Because obviously if it was 2000 people we'd be like probably not going to do that. You can tell me Ken, but I don't think it's super accurate. You do it for a couple of hours and come back and tell us what. Is that correct? KEN: I can't predict the future. I don't actually know exactly what's going to happen, but if you can give it enough margin to be like, yeah, I think we'd be safe at this point, then you can usually get to a model like that pretty quickly. TODD: I'm a little confused, to be honest. When we hired Ken, Jamon, he said he could predict the future. JAMON: Yeah, this is a little concerning. TODD: The weird part is Ken was here before Jamon and our companies merged, but doesn't matter. It's time travel. So anything's possible. Just watch Star Trek. Knowing kind of the base goal gets us all a point to reach to. And then going back to Chris's question, how to get from 0 to 1, which is actually a very difficult problem. If you're an engineer, it's very difficult problem, if you're building a company and is just a very difficult problem period. But having a goal and then determining at least the first step direction and then you can see if it's kind of leading towards that goal is very helpful for taking that first step. I do want to mention something else, as well. We did put a lot of resources. We have a tendency sometimes to put too much resources because we're designers and because we're software engineers, we like to build things and so we put a lot of resources into our app that was used for three days. We had beautiful design done and that kind of stuff. Not to skip ahead, but we're re-doing the conference this year. We thought, well, we could just reuse a lot of our designs and stuff and just change it to 2018. We didn't do that. (laughter) We decided to redesign the whole thing again because we just simply can't help ourselves. JAMON: Yeah. And going back to the concept of if it's only 150 people, I think that was our initial number. It rose a little bit later because we had some additional expenses, but if we only had to sell 150 tickets we could literally go and individually pitch people and say, "Hey, come to our conference," and try to sell them tickets. And we kind of actually did that in some ways. We went to our community, our Infinite Red Community Slack team, which is community.infinite.red and if you're listening to this podcast you should definitely join it. And we went through and kind of just said, hey, have you heard about our conference? Is that something you'd want to look at? Individual direct messages, individually crafted. We weren't trying to like spam everybody, but it was just more, let's get the word out there and the response from that because we had built a lot of goodwill with the community up to that point by helping them a lot of times with React Native problems and by releasing open source and doing all the things that we do in that community channel that a lot of people don't realize. We had built a lot of goodwill and so the response was amazing and we were able to, in my opinion, just through the community Slack efforts that we were doing, probably sell that minimum number of tickets. We had obviously sold a lot more than that, but that was more additional beyond that. So it was definitely a factor. Well we at least know that we can go sort of virtually door to door and say, hey we have this conference. Hey, do you want to come? CHRIS: What's interesting is like you're painting this picture that everything worked out perfectly. There were no hiccups in the process at all, and so what popped up as you're going through that was like, oh my gosh, didn't anticipate that one, or was it all just perfect? TODD: Everything's perfect here at Infinite Red, Chris, any other questions? (laughter) KEN: It really was pretty smooth. We were a little surprised by that. Some of the feedback that we got, we definitely overdid it on the food in some ways. That what people want from food is like fast and convenient and not terrible and we went for good but somewhat inconvenient and nobody wanted that, really. I mean they were like the food is good, but this was a pain in the neck and that was a pain in the neck, so that was something that we screwed up. That was partly my biases to be honest. I take responsibility for that one, but in the run up, in the planning, there wasn't a ton that really went wrong. Right? We didn't get major speakers bowing out. The things that we've heard of going wrong at conferences. To some extent we may have just been lucky, but there wasn't a lot of disasters along the way. There were things that we didn't do as well as we could have done, but we didn't get major disasters. JAMON: Yeah. And obviously this is from our perspective, Chris. And Shawni and Gant and some of the others that were more deeply involved in the process may have other perspectives and I think that—no promises, but maybe this isn't the only podcast we do here at Infinite Red and if there is another one, then maybe the team can share some of those more kind of operational things that happen—but certainly from our perspective, it went super smoothly. There was an energy to it and things did kind of align. I do think we probably got lucky. We probably got lucky in a lot of ways and the timing was right and the mood was right. Everything seemed to come along pretty well. KEN: And Shawni worked really hard. I'm really trying not to swear so that Chris doesn't have to edit me as much this time, but Shawni worked really, really hard at the end of it. So a lot of it was that, to be honest. TODD: Yeah. I want to do a quick couple of shout outs. Shawni worked really hard. Gant was our emcee, he's amazing in front of audience. Frank Von Hoven, which is one of our intermediate developers, he has a background in stage, which we had no idea and he ran the stage like a clock and he took care of all the backstage stuff, getting the speakers set up. It was amazing. That was just serendipity. You don't just happen to have that person. So I do want to shout out. There's more people we can shout out later, but yeah. JAMON: And I do want to give a shout out also to the Armory - The Portland Center Stage. It's a great venue and they did an amazing job. They made our lives a lot easier. There were a lot of things where we could just kind of pay them to do it and they did a great job. That was definitely a good find. Actually, Jason Brown who lives in Portland, a developer who I have been connected with for awhile, he was the one that recommended the Armory and it was a great choice. TODD: There were some things that went wrong. The food was good, the situation and how it was served and stuff was a little bit problematic and stuff. And we learned from that. So that was a problem. KEN: That was not our caterer's fault by the way. That was how we set it up and- TODD: It was a little bit our caterer's fault (laughter), but I won't go into that. Another thing is we really tried to take the time to do a proper code of conduct and we are really going to enforce it and we took a lot of time and I think we did a pretty good job. We gave numbers out to text, if there's anything people to approach, if there's any problems. The snafu was we forgot to actually put a link on our website to it. So, that's just a really minor little thing. Another problem of course is resource allocation when you have a bunch of client work. So we had our internal people, who aren't designers or developers working on it and that's just carving off a section of time for them, but we also needed our designers and developers to do work, which means they wouldn't be doing client work. And so sometimes there was resource allocation issues where someone was really busy with a client project and so that's very challenging for a company like ours with the people you have to bring off the field. And then the last thing I would love to talk with everyone is we did have a little debate and issues around do we have our whole team there. We're 26 people. It's basically going to be a week. Do we have our whole team attend? Do we make our whole team attend? Do we ask them, do we have volunteers? What do we do? So that was one of the most challenging things in my opinion. JAMON: Especially since we're a remote team and some people are going to have to fly from Florida or Toronto or all over and so it wasn't just a matter of hey, you're here in Portland, can you make the drive down to Portland? But yeah, that was an interesting thing and I think that it speaks to how much we really cared about the experience of the attendees and the speakers that we did bring most of our team. There were a few that couldn't make it, but most of our team did go and we had roles for them. That's actually something we're going to I think we're going to do better this year where we're going to actually provide some training for our team. Some expectations around how they'll work and stuff, but they wore a specific T-shirt so people could identify them. They weren't just necessarily venue people or volunteers or something. They were actual Infinite Red employees and I actually feel pretty strongly about that representation because this is representing us to the broader technical community in a very strong way. And going back really quickly to the code of conduct. Prior to our conference, there was an incident I think at Facebook's conference, I forget what it's called, and one of our speakers was affected by it and- TODD: Was it F8? JAMON: Yeah, F8 I think. And so I kind of put a stake in the ground on Twitter saying, hey, this is not going to happen at Chain React. We're not gonna allow this sort of thing. It's gonna be a very strong stake in the ground. And so in my opening remarks I said, we have a code of conduct. You need to read it. You need to abide by it. This is not negotiable and I'm six foot four and I will find you. (laughter) TODD: And it's even more challenging because you have to guess the URL. (laughter) JAMON: And by the way, quick shout out to React Native. We were able to deploy a very quick update to our app to get that URL on there and have it working. TODD: Yeah, I think it was the app it wasn't on. Not our website. JAMON: And we're able to get that deployed in a hot fix. That was very cool. So we did stress that we made that very much a centerpiece and we were very, very happy that there were no incidents that were reported or anything like that, which was nice. TODD: I do think assigning roles during the conference for our own team was something we didn't do as well as we could and we're going to work on it this year for sure. Some of our team was much more interested in working it. I mean they've worked it, but they weren't as jazzed about talking to people and that kind of thing. For me personally, it was great because my role was photographer. This project was a project I didn't personally work on internally. Jamon and Ken did, but I didn't. I was working on other projects at that time and so I wasn't really involved. I was the photographer and it was kind of funny because people saw me for the conference as a photographer, you have to constantly get in front of people, look at them with a camera, crawl under the stage to get a good shot and that kind of stuff. I'm just an amateur photographer by the way, but I have good equipment and whatnot. So everyone saw me and sometimes people will talk to me like, Oh you're the photographer for Infinite Red. I'm like, yes, I am. (laughter) JAMON: This is our CEO crawling under the stage to get a photo. TODD: Yes, but what's very cool, I would go, well, what do you think of the conference? And they would tell me the truth because I'm just the photographer. And that was actually kind of cool. CHRIS: That is pretty cool. And now that you've blown your cover, it's not gonna happen this year. TODD: Oh no one's listening to this, Chris. (laughter) CHRIS: Jamon you touched on the fact that Infinite Red is a 100 percent remote company putting on an in-person event. What kind of challenges went into making this event happen as a remote company? JAMON: We cheated a little bit in that we held it in Portland, which is where half our team is. But I will point out that our primary champion of the project lived in ... Did she live in San Diego at the time or was it Reno? KEN: She moved from Reno to San Diego while planning it. JAMON: So this is happening. She wasn't there to look at the venue. We sent some people in-person to the venue from the local area. And then we also flew Derek up. So this was I think it was actually Todd's idea. Did you come up with this idea, Todd? TODD: Did it work out well then? (laughter) Then yes I did. JAMON: I think it actually did. TODD: Then of course it was my idea. JAMON: Talk about Derek's experience there. TODD: This is an example of putting proper resources. Derek Greenberg is one of our senior engineers, which from a business standpoint means one of our most expensive engineers, but he's a super foodie, kind of like Ken. KEN: He's way beyond me. TODD: He is beyond you. And Derek is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful chef. I've been at his house multiple times and him and his lovely family hosted me and served me ridiculously good food. So he was the obvious person to choose what food we had. Now, the question is there's a lot less expensive people. That's horrible to say, but true. And Derek does not live in Portland. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area. So anyways, well we sent him up for, I think a day or two, and he went around and tasted all the food. And then typical Derek-style, he gave us an extremely detailed information about it. And that's how we decided on the food. KEN: Amazing, he had the entire company hanging on his every word as he lovingly described this experience. It was actually pretty amazing. JAMON: I'm going to see if I can dig up the description and we can link to it in the show notes because I kind of want people to see this. TODD: If you listened to our previous podcast, we talked about this a little bit. This is one our core tenants of Infinite Red is find where people shine best and don't judge them for things they do poorly. Judging a dog by how well it climbs a tree is not an appropriate judgment for a dog. KEN: Carve the hole to the fit the peg. TODD: Yes. Now none of us are the dog in this scenario. Well, just to be clear. But anyways, having Derek do that, finding out that Frank has stage experience, of course he's going to be there being the stage manager and that kind of stuff. We have such a cool creative team that have so many different personal hobbies. We really had a grab bag of awesome resources. It's really amazing. JAMON: Even Derek with his incredible attention to detail, one of the things he brought up in one of the meetings was that he was very concerned that we make sure that there isn't garbage around during the conferences, very clean. That we make sure that we keep the garbages emptied and stuff like that. So we made sure, I think with the venue staff, that that was going to happen. So just little touches like that I think go a long way and the team really stepped up to it. They took ownership really of the conference in a way that was maybe a little surprising even. KEN: This is yet another benefit of hiring a team with with what we call nontraditional backgrounds, is that you end up with this much more interesting diversity of life experience and talents and skills, and it enables you to do things that you weren't originally planning your company to do. It's awesome. Honestly, it creates this opportunity for serendipity that is harder if you're full of Stanford CS grads. JAMON: Nothing against Stanford CS grads of course. KEN: Nothing against Stanford CS grads. They're awesome, right? But any monoculture is going to have that issue. JAMON: Like Frank's background, I think Frank was in sort of a corporate America. He has an MBA and his background, he's done a lot of, like Todd mentioned earlier in the podcast, he's done a lot of stage work and performances and things like that. And he actually started coding fairly late. Well he had, he had been coding when he was a teenager and stuff, but he wasn't coding professionally until much later in life. So a lot of times you look at someone who maybe switches careers like that and they're kind of behind in some ways in the technical realm. But what is amazing about that is that they bring all of these other outside experiences and skills to our industry. We kind of need that. KEN: That brings up a really interesting sidebar about career changers, who I think sometimes have a hard time breaking into tech because everybody wanted a cheap person straight out of college or not even college. I think we found that the career changers, the later quote unquote juniors, although it'll take them a little while to ramp up, but once they ramp up, they can accelerate. Once they hit third year, they can pull ahead of a regular junior junior because of all those other experiences that come to play. JAMON: Didn't Robin, one of our software developers, didn't she work for a paper company, like a Dunder Mifflin-style paper company? (laughter) KEN: She had a math degree and she worked as an analyst I think for a paper company for a couple years before taking a coding class and people love to rag on the coding classes. But to be honest, if you're good and you just need to learn to code, they're great. It's a very efficient way of doing that. TODD: This is totally off topic, but we'd look in nontraditional areas and we find sometimes overlooked people who are truly awesome and frankly, I'm glad other companies are blind to this. JAMON: Well, this is a reflection of certainly Todd and my background. Ken came from a little more of a traditional path in that way. TODD: Just a whee bit more? JAMON: I'm Jamon Holmgren and I did not go to Harvard. I worked in construction. I have a thousand hours on heavy equipment like dozers and excavators and stuff. Most people probably don't know that. I spent a lot of my career packing boards in construction sites before I started working in technology and so I was certainly a career changer and I think Todd, you had that experience as well? TODD: Yeah, a little bit different. I started professionally programming at 25, I think. So I did not go to school for it. KEN: Well, it helps that my own father was a career changer. He was physicist, meteorologist, like an academic meteorologist, and just kind of found his way into programming. A, I have some sympathy for that track, but B, honestly my experience with elite institutions also showed me that there's plenty of people at elite institutions who are not that good. It's actually no particular guarantee. It's not, as a gating factor, it's not all that. And when you take into account how much competition there is for those elite people, it just makes sense to look harder. TODD: Just to clarify, we really don't discriminate against elite people. We just don't stack the weight on that side of the scale. CHRIS: Ken, I have a quick question? You said your Dad was an academic meteorologist. Did he have a stage name for like all meteorologists? Like Jackson Hale, or something like that? KEN: He wasn't a weatherman. He just had, he just had a degree in meteorology. TODD: Jackson Hale. That's comedy gold right there. CHRIS: Bringing it back to Chain React a little bit. So was the conference worth it in terms of the investment that you put in and if so, what will you do differently this year? TODD: I don't know financially if the ROI was worth it. Ken can talk to that because we're a consultancy that does a lot of development in React Native, even if we lost money on it and Ken can talk to that, it would still be worth it as long as we didn't lose too much just for the marketing, the goodwill and the branding part of it. I feel we ended up selling out, for example, we never told the end of the story. JAMON: We actually did not sell out. I think we got close though and we certainly almost doubled our prediction, so that was a really good thing. This year we probably will sell out. TODD: We made every speaker wear a bunch of logos. That's how I think we sold out. (laughter) KEN: They all look like NASCAR drivers. JAMON: That's actually a good idea. I'll send that to Shawni. KEN: Financially, it worked out fine. I don't think we ever are going to treat it as a massive profit center. I think the more money we're able to make, most of that we want to pour back in. We do have to account for our own opportunity costs as well as direct outlays, but I think we're fairly confident that we can run it that way. But I would say it was a success, sort of all the way across the board. We're not doing that much different. Like I said, we've tweaked the food. We've dropped a couple of things that no one seemed to care about. So like the social, nobody wants to stick around for the social. They just want to go out and interact socially with the people that they've met or the people that came with or whatever. And so we just gonna let them do that and not waste money on that. But I can't think of anything really big that we're doing differently. Can you guys? TODD: I want to make one quick comment about the social. The cool thing about the Armory in Portland is it's smack dab on a street where you can literally go across the street to good restaurants. You can go down two blocks to good restaurants. So in that scenario, at some conferences I've been to, they're kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So you definitely want some social events. But in this case everyone wants to go out. KEN: Yeah. For those of you who know Portland, it's in Pearl District. For those of you who don't know Portland, it's one of the best sort of visitor friendly walkable neighborhoods in the country, not just in Portland. I mean it's a really, really great neighborhood and that helped. And so our little catered thing probably was not as exciting as the other opportunities out there. TODD: Now we did have a sponsor, Squarespace, who threw a before party. And that was actually a lot of fun. So that's the caveat on that. We're just talking after, I think the first day we had a social immediately after the conference. JAMON: I think bringing it back to the financial side of things, I would actually, from what I looked at, I would actually consider it a financial loss. Maybe if you just look at hard expenditures, we were probably in the black, but we also spent a ton of time and if you look at opportunity cost, we probably lost money on it. That again, like what Todd said, it wasn't necessarily the focus of what we were trying to do as far as making a profit center. And I think there's a little bit of a perception maybe in the tech industry that the conferences make tons of money. I don't think that's the case. If you think so maybe you should make a conference and see what you think. But at the same time, part of that was due to our refusal to kind of let anything be substandard, we kind of overdid it in a lot of ways. I think that this year we will probably sell more tickets. We have some things figured out already. We've sorta refined what we're doing. We might actually do okay on this year, but we're also giving more concessions to the speakers and things like that to try to make it easier for them. So there's a little bit of a mitigating factor there too. TODD: Yeah. Even if it didn't make an actual profit, that's not super relevant to me. I think the return on investment is many fold. CHRIS: Looking into the future, how does Chain React and starting your own tech conference, create a model or framework for maybe future ideas or big ideas that you might want to accomplish? TODD: One thing it did, because we're a consultancy, because we do client work, we have that process down pat. We've redone that process over the years many times and keep on refining it. Internal projects for us is challenging. We don't do that very often, so this is our very first big internal project, so purely as a training or a learning device for our team it was awesome for them. KEN: The first big project that isn't an open source project. JAMON: We actually regularly point to Chain React lessons and experiences when we're talking about other internal projects. It's actually been really good as a reference point. Do you remember this with Chain React? You remember that with Chain React? And it kind of gives a reference point for other internal projects. It exposed certain aspects of our team that we hadn't really considered before. Because it was such a different thing. I know that we as founders had a meeting after Chain React and talked about some of the lessons learned from that and I don't think we'll necessarily go through every last little detail of that, but it was very kind of eye opening to us about the way that we had structured Infinite Red. The title of this podcast is Building Infinite Red and I think that Chain React was a key forcing mechanism within Infinite Red to expose some things that we hadn't been exposed to before. If we just did consulting work, you tend to get some blind spots. So Chain React was amazing for that. It was really, really good for that because it was so different from what we had done otherwise. TODD: Worse case scenario, the team had a lot of fun doing it. JAMON: I think my favorite memory from Chain React was when it was done. (laughter) KEN: I think that's Shawni's favorite memory. JAMON: Thanks a lot, Ken. KEN: Sorry. JAMON: When Chain React was over, I think half the team went to a nearby restaurant and we were all exhausted. We had been up for two days just working from pre-dawn to dusk and there was kind of this feeling of let's just go get some food to eat and let's collapse into bed. We went to a restaurant and we sat in this booth and there were probably, I don't know, nine of us, 10 of us, something like that. And some spontaneous kind of reflective conversations started happening that were just amazing. One of our developers said, this is nothing I expected signing up at Infinite Red. This was an incredible experience to be involved in this. TODD: Was that Kevin? JAMON: Kevin was was certainly on those same vein, but the person who actually pointed this out was Frank and I remember that very clearly. His wife was able to come and help us with the conference. It was really great. TODD: Camille was awesome. JAMON: She was great. And then also my son Cedric, who at the time was 12 years old. He of course was on summer break from school and and he helped out. He had a t-shirt on. He was able to- TODD: Cedric was awesome for a 12 year old. It was amazing. JAMON: Yeah, he's a good kid. And he helped out. He was great. He would talk to people, he would give them directions. If someone needed someone to run and get something. He was very on top of things and he was there at that table as well and kind of just kind of absorbing the vibe. It's one of my favorite moments at Infinite Red. It was kind of a result of all of the work that we had done and what we had accomplished at that point. TODD: Correct. And Robin Heinze's father came and did some volunteering and we had a lot of people come and want to help. It was really, really fun in that regard. One thing I would like to bring up is the Armory is a very cool intimate setting. I'm not using that as a nice way to say small. It's actually not that small and it has a big theater, but it only holds about 500 people, which is about what we sold. So we're redoing in the Armory this year and so we have a cap on how many people can show up because it only holds 500 people. We actually had a big discussion after the first Chain React on whether or not we wanted to get a bigger venue because we could probably sell more tickets. We decided against that because we sent out a survey to all the attendees. We sent a survey to the speakers and we got some feedback. Everyone loved the intimacy of the Armory. And the Armory, just real quick, it has a bottom floor where we had vendor booths set up. It's like an atrium. There's a big hole cutout of the top floor, so the top floor is like a donut. There is a staircase in the middle of the bottom floor that circles around and goes up to the top floor. So we had the whole bottom floor. We had a whole top floor. Up to the top floor, there was chairs, there was the coffee station, an alternative food station when we were serving lunch. And there were some vendors out there as well. Even if you were on the second floor, you're always in this room where all the action's going on. You could look down and see people. So although it's large enough to hold 500 people, which is a fairly large area, you can't put 500 people in a very small area. Fire marshals am I right? Because of the structure of it now and then you left that room and went into the theater, which is more like a traditional theater, like a movie theater, but it was course has the stage and stuff because it's for presentations, but when you weren't in the theater you were always within earshot and always within line of sight to everyone in the conference and so although it was 500 people, it felt like there was 20 people there and I personally got to talk to at least half the people. Anyways, long story short, it was a big decision to say no. We want the feel of the conference to be the same, so we're going to cap on how many people we can attend, which does affect finances and that kind of stuff. Obviously when you scale higher, all of the little expenses get smaller and it's always better financially to be bigger than smaller.

Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: To kick off this episode, let's start with introductions and the hardest project you've ever worked on. JAMON HOLMGREN: Hi, my name is Jamon Holmgren and I'm one of the co-founders of Infinite Red, Chief Operating Officer. Chris asked what's a difficult project that I've worked on in the past and I think early on when I was first sort of getting outside of just building marketing websites, I took on a project for a social media platform. Of course, this was probably 2009, Facebook was sort of coming into its own and they wanted to build a social media. It was a guy that really didn't understand what social media was. He was on no social media platforms himself. He was an older dude who was annoyed that his daughter-in-law kept inviting him to the Facebook and he did not want to deal with that. So he decided instead that he was going to build his own, so he wouldn't have to join Facebook. It was ... it sounds kind of ridiculous and made up, but I swear this was an actual project that we did. KEN MILLER: Well, that is my kind of lazy. (laughter) Really, I mean I'm serious. Where you will recreate the site, from scratch, in order to not have one annoying experience. Ken Miller, CTO/CFO, founder of Infinite Red. I'm trying to think about a hard project. For me, the hardest projects are the ones where you have to keep at for years. A massive, blast through it, kind of hard project is much easier. I've always been a little ADD and I think that some people thrive on that emergency situation, but a long haul where you have to keep at something for a long time is harder. In terms of work technical things, a couple companies ago, we had a very email dependent company and so we had to get a huge number of emails sent in a very narrow window every day. That was a very long back and forth process because you have to keep up with the amount that you are sending out physically, you have to manage the deliverability, you have to monitor your changes and make sure a small change in your rendering doesn't completely blow up your delivery window. And so the process of managing that over time definitely taught me a lot about how you set something up so you can do it over time. TODD WERTH: How many emails did you send out Ken, just curious. KEN: I think we were at 3 million. This was pre-Mailgun, pre-AWS. This was, we had to actually size the hardware- TODD: Is that per week? KEN: Appropriately. Every night. And it had to be finished in about a two hour window. TODD: So you're responsible for most of the spam in the early 2000s. KEN: Yeah, that was me. I'm sorry. (laughter) My bad. Delivering legitimate email is actually pretty tricky because of all the anti-spam measures that are a necessity of modern communications. So that was probably, in terms of the technical project, that has been the most challenging. That, organizationally, was the most for me. TODD: Hi, I am Todd Werth. I'm the CEO and the founder of Infinite Red; long time listener, first time caller. So Chris asked us to talk about a hard problem we've had in the past. So I think most hard problems I've dealt with in the past haven't necessarily been technical, because even though they're difficult, they're fairly straight forward to go through. Some just take a little longer. KEN: That's true. TODD: Most of the problems have been human related. One that comes to mind, and I'm sure there are better examples but, circa 1998, 1999 or something, I did a project for the San Francisco 49ers. The scouts would go out preseason and they would scout out new people and they would go all over the country and they would take notes. Traditionally this was done on paper and then when they finally made it back to the home office they would go over their notes with whomever and what not. So we were developing a system where we gave these peoples laptops for them to take out and then when they got back to their hotel room they would hook up to the phone line and use a modem and upload the data to the database; which was hugely advantageous to the San Francisco 49er corporate office. The problem is, none of these gentlemen have every used a computer before. Didn't know how to use a mouse, didn't know how to use a laptop, so the challenging part there ...actually, a colleague of mine, his name was Milton Hare, he did the training and taught them the very basics of using a computer. That was actually quite challenging. The user interface that we designed had to be geared towards that. It had to be, not just simple, but absurdly simple. It was very fascinating. The bad part of that project was that I got to see a lot of data on professional football players, including things like their criminal records and I will not go into it, but it's not a pretty picture. CHRIS: What we're going to do in this episode is we're gonna look at the art of doing difficult work in three main areas: extreme personal support, collaboration, and transparency. But before we get there, what is difficult work? We've had a couple of different responses. We've had technical, we've had human, but what is difficult work? TODD: I would say...that's a hard question. KEN: Difficult work is work that is not easy. (laughter) TODD: Yes, Ken. That's why we have you here. It's tough to say. As far as from our culture and our perspective, difficult work is what's difficult for individual people. So for example, I'm an engineer and designer, not a sales person. Jamon is also an engineer, not a sales person, but Jamon and I for a long time did sales together. That is difficult work for us, we didn't come natural to it, we didn't have any experience with it. So one of the things we decided early on is, we have a couple of rules. One, you don't have to do something the way other people in the world do it. We're engineers, we're doing sales, we approached it from an engineering standpoint and we engineer our sales process. Later we can talk about that. Two, is anything that is difficult for individuals, they shouldn't be doing alone. They should never be alone on an island. If someone, whatever it is, talking to a tough client, dealing with a tough technical problem, doing something that's outside of your comfort zone such as sales or maybe giving a presentation or whatever it is, we do at least in pairs or more. It's one of the things I really, I beat the drum beat with our team is, if there is something you're dreading, use the buddy system and get people to be there with you because that helps a lot. For example, in our sales calls, Jamon and I would do this thing where if I'm talking and I'm starting to fumble, he would interrupt me and take over, or if I felt like I had nothing to say and I was having a particularly anxious moment or something, Jamon would take over and we would support each other that way. Eventually we became pretty decent sales people. KEN: If I were to take a crack at defining difficult, I would say, something like work where you don't already know how you're supposed to do it. As distinct from hard work, for the purposes of discussion, I would define as more you know how to do it there's just a lot of it and you need to do it quickly or intensively for some reason. One of things that we actually like to do around here is turn hard work into difficult work. Find a way to automate in terms of process or literally automate in terms of code, things that would otherwise be hard work. It's not always possible, but we try to when we can. JAMON: I have a personal example of this, wasn't done within Infinite Red per se, but on Christmas Eve I suffered a house fire and it obviously was quite traumatic but one of the things we have to deal with as sort of a fall out of this house fire is submitting personal items to insurance for reimbursement, to kind of restore what we had. It's a very labor intensive process, to go to the insurance company's website and individually type in items because most people with a normal sized home would have thousands of items. The restoration company had done a spreadsheet for us and they had done a lot of the work, where they had gone through, and I would characterize that as very hard work, where they had to go through a bunch of soot-stained things and inventory them, take pictures of them, describe them in a spreadsheet. They did a really good job with that and they put it into a spreadsheet, but to put those items in was still a manual process of transferring from a spreadsheet over to the State Farm website. I decided that, maybe what I'll do is I'll figure out some way to automate that and that took me like an hour. I could've gotten a lot of things done during that time, I could've entered quite a few items in that amount of time. It took a lot of frustration, of like going down the wrong road, and kind of reverse engineering the web app. But once I had it done, I got it to work and I ran this cURL script for like 45 minutes and at the end of 45 minutes we had 3,000 items entered into the website. So this was a situation where we could've just buckled down and done the hard work, but instead of doing that I did more difficult work of thinking of a way to automate it and that was a net positive. KEN: And if the FBI or State Farm are listening, we had no knowledge of this. (laughter) TODD: State Farm is definitely not listening. KEN: For the record. TODD: Jamon, two questions. One, do you think State Farm intentionally makes it super hard to enter items that they're going to reimburse you for? Two, how long do you think that would take you if you hadn't automated that? JAMON: You know, we've been asked that before. I don't actually think that's the case necessarily, because I've been involved in enough software projects where you're not intentionally making something difficult for users, but when you don't use it, when you are not the end user, when you are not the person sitting there whose been through a fire who has to go through it and do it. It's not as easy as it seems when you're testing it with 14 items, 14 test items. I think actually this speaks more to a lot of what we do where yes, entering 8 dummy items in the course of testing it on localhost, it's actually a pretty good experience. They've actually done a pretty good job of making that pretty decent, but the overall user experience of a real person in a real position of needing to do this- KEN: For a large loss, not just like hey someone stole my bike, but yeah ... JAMON: Exactly, it falls on it's face. So I actually don't think at all that this was intentional. I think that it's entirely within the realm of possibility that this is simply they haven't user tested. It's a fairly new system, hopefully they'll add bulk import at some point. As far as the second question which is how long do you think it would've taken to enter those items. I think I'd gotten through maybe a couple hundred in the previous hour. It was taking me probably between 15 seconds to 30 seconds to enter each item. It would've taken a long time and been very tiring. TODD: We'll give State Farm the benefit of the doubt. KEN: I think this impulse, this is exactly the kind of impulse that leads some people to computers, to programming. This allergic reaction to tedium and repetition and when you find computer programming for the first time, if you're that kind of person who hates that sort of tedium, you're like 'this is the best thing that I've ever seen in my life,' right? I only have to think in enough clarity about what's happening to describe it to the computer, and then it'll do it for me. That's a really powerful feeling and as you get into it of course you discover that you've just traded one problem for another problem, but we're the kind of people who find that to be a higher class, more interesting, better, more rewarding problem. CHRIS: There was an intriguing phrase used the other day: We make difficult things doable through extreme personal support of each other. So can you paint a picture of what extreme personal support means to you at maybe the founders level and then maybe at the Infinite Red team level? TODD: Who said that Chris? CHRIS: That was the brilliance of a guy named Todd Werth. TODD: I do not recall saying that. I wouldn't phrase it that way, even though I literally phrased it that way. (laughter) I don't remember saying that, but it makes sense. It's not only do we give people support when they're doing work that's difficult for them including all of us, and including the three people here as well. Let me tell you a little story. When I was a young man I worked in a warehouse, I drove a forklift around at a job. One thing I noticed in that job, it didn't suit me very well because I like to talk and I like to think about stuff and it was just very tedious. What I noticed a lot of the people in the warehouse, all different ages, young person like myself all the way up to older people, is a lot of people in the warehouse were not in the right job. This one gentleman would constantly get in trouble and the bosses did not like him because he loved to chat and he was really good at it and he was really personable and I have no idea why he was in the warehouse, it made no sense at all. Later on he went to become a successful real estate agent, which is completely appropriate. Now this company I worked for, it was a big company, it was one of the largest companies in the state, so it's not like they didn't have a place for this gentleman to work well, so he ended up leaving. The reason I tell that story is because you have to know everyone individually and what's hard work for one person is not hard work for another. If it's not hard work for another person, one way they can support people rather than just direct interaction is for them taking on jobs that other people find hard. So that's kind of support and of course there's just day to day, I will show up with you on the battlefield, type of support and that kind of stuff. JAMON: I think one of the ways that this manifests itself is how we deal with failure and the inability to get something done here. We're not quick to reach for blame the individual who's there. Sometimes that's the case where someone just falls down and they kind of do their own thing and that needs to be corrected and move forward. TODD: We so don't look to blame. JAMON: We don't look to blame. No it's really, let's look at this from a collaborative approach. How can we, as a group, do this better in the future? How can we adjust our systems? One of the things I don't like is to identify a gap in our system, for example, and then say that the answer is that the people involved need to just try harder. I really don't like that answer. Unfortunately that's something that a lot of lazy leadership will do. They'll just be like, 'you need to get your act together,' and that's the answer. The reality is that's often not the answer. The answer is usually to work with the system until it's at a point where doing the right thing is the easy path, where doing the right thing is the natural and intuitive path. That takes thinking, that takes understanding the problem, it's harder for leadership to accomplish that. KEN: It is occasionally the right answer though. TODD: It sometimes, sure. KEN: But not very often. It's rarely that simple, but I think one of the hard things that I've found in leadership was actually saying to somebody, 'Look, you need to step up. You have what you need right in front of you, the next part is up to you.' Actually saying that is part of it. I think what Jamon is referring to is that if the support is not there, then saying that is meaningless. JAMON: Yes. TODD: Well, I mean, it's like someone is pushing a rock up a hill and you're just saying you need to push harder, push harder. When the person's telling you and you're not listening, why don't I just walk over the hill and get the rock that's already over there? You know what I mean? So- KEN: Yeah, I completely agree with that. TODD: I do agree that asking somebody to step up in a real way, not just a nose against the grindstone type of way. KEN: When you get to the point where you've got all of the easy rocks on one side and what we actually need to do as a team is get this one huge freaking rock on the other side of the hill, and some people are not pushing with you, that has to be addressed. JAMON: Right KEN: But it's much smaller part of the pie than I think some management philosophies would tell you. TODD: I personally convince everyone that pushing rocks is one of the neatest things in the world, it's a rarity, and for a low price they can push my rocks for me. (laughter) JAMON: I think one of the things Ken has said in the past is what we want to be is a high support, high expectations company. Low support, high expectations is just toxic. KEN: That's a sweat shop. JAMON: Yeah, it's a sweat shop. High support, low expectations is a nursery and low expectations, low support that's- KEN: I don't even know what that is. CHRIS: How does this picture of extreme personal support enter your relationship as the three founders? JAMON: I can kind of personally attest to this. There are certain tasks that I'm well suited to, my personality, that I enjoy doing. There are other ones that it's like pulling teeth to get me to do and that's just been exacerbated since I had the house fire and am kind of displaced from my normal routine and I really just want to focus on the things that I really enjoy doing. What we did, actually earlier this year, up until this point we've made a lot of decisions together, we've done a lot of things together and that's was appropriate for the first couple years of Infinite Red. But we've gotten to a point where we kind of understand each other, we kind of have a lot of aligned shared goals and we've actually started to specialize. This was a way for Todd and Ken to support me, in that Todd could focus on a lot of team-oriented things and Ken's been doing a lot of things with the financial and bookkeeping side of the business, which I am not good at. I can focus more on business development and that's actually the part of the business that I find really interesting, so rather than just telling me, 'work harder at managing your projects, work harder at being an account manager, work harder at doing these other things,' which yeah, I could work harder and do a better job. Instead of doing that we've found a solution that wasn't centered around just working harder it was centered around doing things that we felt effective at. TODD: As we are three founders and we govern as a quorum of elders as it were, as opposed to a hierarchical company, supporting ourselves, each other, the three founders, is just as important as supporting the team in my opinion. When there is a financial problem, thankfully we haven't had too many of those, we all have to step up and so we tend to understand each other's personal finances, each other's personal stuff. It's almost like a pseudo-marriage in a way, although there are three of us so it'd be a polyamorous marriage in this case. It's a requirement to be more, I don't want to use to word intimate, but intimate in each other's lives and I think we're really good... What's cool about three as opposed to two or one, for example, because Jamon's done one and I've done one, I've been in another company ...but what's cool about three is, typically it's one person having a communications problem or arguing or having difficulties with another person and the third person mediates. It's either Jamon and I are having an argument and Ken mediates or Ken and I are having an argument and Jamon mediates. Hey wait- KEN: Wait, when do you mediate, Todd? (laughter) TODD: I don't think I've ever mediated, that's funny. KEN: I don't think you have actually. I'm noticing a pattern here, yeah. JAMON: That's not true. TODD: But it is totally true. But it's okay. I tend to draw lightning as well away from people and because I deserve it. I don't know if that answered your question, but I think it's uber important, sorry, it's Lyft important that we do that. (laughter) You know, it starts and then we can all support the team if we are supported ourselves. JAMON: It sets the tone, all the way down and we have to. We have no other way of working. We have to support each other and it's not just when we're having interpersonal problems with each other, but also when someone's just literally having a tough time. What I think we've done really well as a founder team is go into our shared channel and post, 'I'm having a tough time.' It can be for any reason, it can literally be like, I didn't sleep very well last night; I just am so bored with this task, I cannot get started with it. All those things are valid and the answer is never just suck it up, or if it is, it's one of those things where it's an empathetic suck it up. If that makes sense. It's like, I totally get it, I understand where you're at, we really just need to get this done. And sometimes that's what you need, you need a little boot in the rear and that's something that you can take from the other side too. It's been great, really, the last two and a half years having that. TODD: Obviously we're talking about supporting each other as founders, but it's the same with the team. One key thing is if someone is vulnerable, they say they've made a mistake, they say they're having a problem, even if you personally think 'is that really a problem?' Or whatever, it doesn't matter. Whatever your personal feelings are is irrelevant. If you stomp on that person, if you make fun of that person, if you tell them to suck it up buttercup, everyone, not just them, the entire team will contract. They will put up a little more walling around them and they won't do that in the future. They'll do it, they just won't do it around you. It is hard because we're all emotional beings and sometimes you have an emotional reaction to something. But you have to be super careful to not ...when that flame is just starting you need to be very gentle with it and not blow it out. KEN: It's more than just avoiding stomping on people, not that Todd was saying that's all it was, but you have to go out of your way to solicit, to get people to talk about what's going on with them, to check in with them, to reiterate that you're available for that. You can't say it once and assume that everyone will remember that, they won't. Right? People's own internal dialogue about how worthy they are, all that stuff will keep coming back if you don't actively do it. Also, we will make mistakes sometimes, right? So you have to keep doing the active things as well to keep the ship steered in the right direction. TODD: When we make mistakes it's important that we apologize to the team. Not fakely like 'oh, I'm so sorry.' Everyone can smell fake, but if you're genuinely made a mistake because you had an emotional moment and you didn't act appropriately, you have to apologize to them as well. CHRIS: So the interesting thing as you're talking, I get a sense that this isn't something that you just read in a book and you're like, 'I'm an expert at this.' I sense that there are some really real stories behind learning what it means to be not only supporting others but to feel supported. TODD: Yes, for sure. Ken actually is super good at advice in this kind of thing, having been a leader in the past. Typically, leader of only senior people in the last two jobs. Actually, the last one I had some more junior. Infinite Red, when we first started, we had quite a few junior people, so that was a little new to me. One of the things you have to learn ...leadership is hard by the way, I just want to interject that. Leadership is very difficult, it's hard work and that's why we get the support of each other. We not only get the support of the three founders, but the entire leadership team here at Infinite Red and there's a variety of people: Gant Laborde, Shawni Danner, Jed Bartausky, Justin Huskey. It's difficult and not only are we supporting each other, we're coaching them, especially the more junior leaders on how to do it and one of the things Ken said and it's just one of the great gems of wisdom that he gives, is he goes "you have to remember you have very wide arms, when you swing them you hurt people." So you don't have the luxury to be how you were when you were as an employee. I could say things as an employee, I enjoy making people laugh, it's one of my things. I can do a lot of things as an employee that I simply can't do as a leader because when I say something it's taken much more seriously, whether I meant it or not. When I hear other managers, let's call them, say something like employees suck, it's like, 'no they don't, you suck.' Employees don't suck. That's crazy, that's like the coach of the San Francisco 49ers saying my players suck. Well, you chose the players, you're coaching the players, so they don't suck. KEN: One of the things that we do when we're working on a difficult project as a team is make sure there's an owner. One of the things that will kill any difficult project is diffuse responsibility. Partly what we're striving for is that everyone can take responsibility for something. Everyone can be like, 'I'm going to execute my part of this as skillfully as I can,' but if there's not one person who owns the whole vision, it's going to fail. Almost guaranteed. Creating an environment where it's okay for that owner to say, 'hey I need your help to get this done.' Where the culture is like, somebody needs something from you and they specifically ask you, that you try to do it. And that makes ownership less scary. One of the things that I've seen go wrong, if someone is given responsibility but no power, no ability to actually follow through on that responsibility- TODD: That happens all the time. KEN: That is the most demoralizing position, possible. TODD: That's toxic. KEN: Yeah, so that's how you kill your budding leaders by saying 'hey get this done and by the way, all these people over here have their own priorities and they're not going to help you.' That is the worst. So, assign ownership and then back them up. That's been one of the keys to getting certain things done. Chain React is a good example of that. Chain React is our conference for React Native in Portland this July 11-13. So we did it first last year and now we're doing it again this year. Shawni, who basically runs it, had ever run a conference before, had never been to a conference before, but is good at just marshaling resources and taking charge and that's a great example where she could pull on whoever she needed for help. When it came to actually knowing specifically what to do for other peoples' expertise, like we flew somebody up who was a serious foodie, to go and test the caterers, for example. JAMON: That was our team member Derek Greenberg and Derek is such a foodie and it was just a joy to watch him work on that. KEN: He had the most comprehensive report for that kind of selection process that I have ever heard. It was amazing, anyway. None of these things that we're saying are we perfect at. We're not, we don't hit this every single time and I hope that we're not saying that's the standard. What we're saying is here's our guiding star, here's what we try to do, here's how we evaluate whether we're doing the right thing or not. So this is how we nurture leadership within the team, is to say 'here's what we need you to do, and by the way, the team is your oyster.' You can go and pull in what you need in order to make this happen. **CHRIS: This is really bringing up a really interesting point now, we've got this extreme personal support but then when you add the component of leadership and helping each other out, it introduces the layer of collaboration. So how is collaboration different from extreme personal support? TODD: You can have a group of people who hate each other and they can collaborate if they're given the proper motivations. This happens all the time in corporations every day. Sadly, many people work at those corporations. So I don't think those are necessarily required for each other. I do want to digress just for one second. So Ken was saying how we try to give people in leadership positions or in a leadership role in a particular project, whatever it is. We try to do empowering stuff, but we're not perfect at all. One of the coolest things about having Ken and Jamon around is when I do something boneheaded, typically Monday-Friday, they let me know and they help me get through it and they identify it and on the flip side for whatever reason the team is pretty comfortable talking to me. It's just my personality, I talk to people a lot. And so if they have a problem with say Ken or Jamon, they'll let me know, and then I go talk to that person or we talk and try to do it in the most supportive way possible with the goal of improving that person's, how they're performing as a leader and that's awesome because we're all human so having the support. For the team it's the same way. A lot of programming, I wouldn't say design because design's a little different, we do design and development. A lot of development shops are kind of little dog eat dog, kind of situation. People can be arrogant, they can make fun of other people's work, and that kind of stuff. We really hire and try to promote a, you can be critical and explain problems, but do it in a supportive way and that can't be in a mission statement, it can't be something you announce in a meeting. They have to live it every day and especially new people, it takes them awhile to get deinstitutionalized and understand that you can make mistakes, you can put your head above the fray and it will not get chopped off. Every once in a while someone does and I have a private conversation with them and let them know how they were really not being supportive and our team's awesome, they all want to be. It's almost never malice, it's always just they miscommunicated and they didn't understand what they were doing. KEN: Well people are messy, right? That's just the nature of the beast. JAMON: This highlights one of the aspects of almost everything within Infinite Red and that's where we try to design things for iteration over perfection. So even things like support, supporting our people we are iterating on how to do that. We're trying to have a feedback loop, there has to be some level of learning from our mistakes and then continually getting better. There are some things where someone will take on a task as a group that we decide, were going to do this thing and it's actually a very difficult technical thing or it's a very difficult societal thing, where we're going to build a new AR system or something and the tools are not there and we have to build all that. So there are hard technical things that are... KEN: There are, but- JAMON: But I think you're right Ken, in the interpersonal stuff kind of always comes back to that, as far as the things that end up feeling very difficult and very hard. KEN: So just to take that, so let's take like, the Manhattan project. TODD: Why not, take it... JAMON: And of course that was the project in World War 2 where they were developing the nuclear bomb. KEN: Right, so definitely some complicated ethical angles on that one, but how do you do that? Well, you attract the world's greatest scientists and put them in one place in New Mexico, and then you give them the tools that they need to work with and you give them a goal that you can align on. In this case, win the war. TODD: Kind of like Breaking Bad. KEN: Boy, our examples ar going really dark here. (laughter) TODD: Well they brought world class scientists to New Mexico- KEN: Let's pick a better one because it still works, right? If you're not just one person sitting in a room, working on something hard. Not to take anything away from that because a lot of amazing things have come out of one person sitting down with a problem. I think that's a different question than what we work with ever, right? I think we could probably have a whole podcast on how do you recognize a good engineer for example and I think that's an interesting question but it's a little different from the question of how do we as a company work on that. Because that really is about: how do you set up an environment where people can do their best work? And how do you hold people accountable? But also make sure that they are not held back by lack of resources. And those resources can be physical, tangible but in many cases they are emotional resources or organizational resources. Especially in a software business, I think that it's exaggerated in a software business and that dynamic also is worth a whole podcast because of the dynamics of software and how they're different. Because there's nothing to buy, right? Once you have the computer, you're done. What that leaves is all these other kind of softer, squishier resources that people need to do their best work. JAMON: One example of this is an internal tool that we've been working on that is intended to increase the efficiency of certain types of tasks. It's not something that's open source at this time, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but I asked the team that was behind it why we weren't necessarily realizing some of the gains that we had anticipated to start with and interestingly, a lot of the responses were, really had nothing to do with technical issues or anything like that. It was policy related things. Some things that we were doing that were sort of handcuffing them in some ways and there were reasons behind those, there were sort of organizations reasons, strategic reasons behind some of those policies, but it allowed us to look at the end result of this difficult problem that we were trying to solve, and make some decisions based on values and trade offs that were more strategic in nature that we didn't realize were holding them back as much as they were. So that's an example where we had a hard problem and, unbeknownst to us, we were making some decisions that were making it more difficult for them. CHRIS: When does extreme personal support diverge into collaboration? Todd mentioned that you can hate the people that you're with and still collaborate, but what does successful collaboration look like? TODD: I would say successful collaboration is a multi-faceted thing. One, is the stress level of the people doing the collaborating. Two, the most obvious, is a successful work output of that collaboration. Meaning you accomplish your goals, hopefully in a creative, high quality way. And then three, from a business standpoint, that it was the return on an investment of that collaboration was good. JAMON: I think those are good kind of high level metrics that you can use. Another way to do this from a more granular level is to watch how people interact. So some people, for example me, may come into a meeting and may want to kind of expose that this other person is not doing their job or something like that and that's not a very particularly constructive way to approach this. But if you watch the successful collaborations that happen, they go into the meeting with a question and they go into the meeting, we have a challenge in front of us. How can we solve this? They get the people involved that need to be involved and don't make the meeting too big, but they make it just big enough and that's a characteristic of a good collaboration when everyone can go into it with an understanding of a problem, be able to provide their perspective and then the group can come to a conclusion. It's part of this overarching concept of psychological safety that we talk about a lot at Infinite Red that leads to better and better work. CHRIS: We've got extreme personal support, we've got collaboration, what about transparency? How critical is transparency in difficult work and in doing remote work? JAMON: One of the things about transparency that's important, or why transparency is important is this idea of trust. Because trust underlies a lot of dynamics within a company and if people feel like you're being purposefully opaque, they may feel that you're hiding something, they may feel that you don't trust them with the information, you don't trust their opinion, you don't trust ...and then when you don't have a high level of trust than a lot of other things fall apart. You don't get that collaboration, you don't get a lot of other things that you really need. So transparency is a prerequisite to building that trust. When we're able to be open and honest with our team about struggles or how we approach things or issues, were not necessarily saying wide open, everything is just hanging out there, but at the same time we do want to have a high level of transparency and ultimately we have to actually trust our team in order to do that. It can't just be something artificial, it has to be something where we actually do trust our team. Again, it's like there's not this formula where you just say do a whole bunch of transparency and everybody will trust you. No, what you have to do is do the hard work to build that trust. The transparency is a part of that and then that is something that you continue to do. There was a situation where we implemented some new business policies, business way of doing work. Todd was intimately involved with that throughout and all of us were really and some feedback we got afterward was that they didn't feel that there was quite the transparency that they had expected. Felt like a bit of betrayal of trust, and we heard that, we heard that loud and clear. We told people we heard that loud and clear and we changed the way that we implemented larger company-wide changes in that way. It can be a little difficult, just being wide open sometimes will expose you to knee jerk reactions, or a lot of different things that can sometimes bite you, but it's worth it in the interest of establishing that sort of trust. TODD: In what ways are we transparent and what ways are we not transparent? JAMON: Well one obvious way is that for most of our engineers and designers, we actually have a transparent pay scale. People actually know what other people make salary-wise. We get this feedback sometimes, someone will say, 'I think this person is leveled too low, I think they need to level up, I think they've been doing good work.' Without that level of transparency we'd never get that feedback because people wouldn't know and you could easily have a situation where someone is underpaid and we're not getting the feedback that that's the case. KEN: Chronically underpaying someone can be extremely expensive. TODD: Ironically. KEN: Because you can lose your best people that way. So we try to be super involved and see everything. Of course, we try, but that stops being scalable after a while so we have to have mechanisms in place that encourage the right information to come forward. TODD: Jamon mentioned our transparent pay scales. If your company is telling you not to talk to your co-workers about how much you make; A, it's ridiculous because you're going to do that anyways, especially with people you're close with and B, it's a red flag because why? I know why they do it because it's easier. Having a pay scale, everyone can look at a spreadsheet to see where everyone is placed and that kind of thing. It's much more challenging from our perspective because you can't just, such and such you know we want to give them more money for whatever reason, maybe a political reason or whatever, it doesn't matter. You can't just give them that because that's not the level they're at, so it's very fair and the transparency is nice but, I'm not going to go into it right now but we've had many situations where that's been difficult for us. Would've been easier just to have a normal secret pay for everyone, but not all of our team enjoys that as much as some other people. Some people really enjoy that and it also gets rid of problems like inequity between say genders, or race or anything like that because everyone knows what everyone makes. So that kind of transparency is great. Some transparency, I don't think we are transparent, not because we don't want to be, we'd love to be, I personally am a very open book person. Literally if someone asks me a question I'll answer pretty much anything. I won't answer about someone else, like if someone's told me something in confidence, or I won't talk about my wife or whatever but anything about me I'm very open. But, I know not everyone is that way and there are various reasons why but as a company, we try to be as transparent unless it's actively going to hurt people and sometimes that happens. You have to weigh hurting people against transparency sometimes. Sometimes people really, it's not good if they see how sausage is made, just because they may not have the full information. Let me give you an example. So let's say, this is hypothetical, this isn't really what's happened, lets say we're going over financials once a month and we understand what's going on and we've had lots of conversations about financials and then one month we're going to be drastically under and us founders are going to have to put money into the company to keep it rolling. That's one of those things where, if you just announce that we're doing really poorly, we're going to put money in so we can pay payroll, it can make people very nervous. Not because they're not smart enough to understand, they just haven't been sitting in those meetings and they don't understand the big picture. You can say all you want that it's totally okay, it's fine don't worry about it, but when someone's doing a bank robbery with a gun, you don't pay attention to what their wearing, you're looking at the barrel of the gun. It's just situations like that where we choose specifically not to be transparent. We default to transparency, but there are time when we choose not to be. KEN: The first time I really extensively used what I would call social media at work was at Yammer, who semi-invented that. JAMON: Ken, what was Yammer? What was the product? KEN: Yammer was, I think it began life as basically Twitter for companies and it kind of turned into Facebook for companies. It's very similar to that, so it's, you have threaded conversations and notifications and likes, but it was aimed at organizations. It's still going. They were bought by Microsoft, it still exists. Slack pretty much came in and sucked all the air out of that market, but, nevertheless, they had some pretty good norms for how you use a tool like that in business. One of them was, they had private groups, but they would always ask the question: Why is this private? Why is this conversation happening in private chat and not in a channel? Not that you couldn't have things private, because there are certainly cases where you'd want that, but those cases had to argue for themselves, whereas, the prevailing mindset before had been private by default unless you needed to collaborate and so our default is: default to open, default to open channels and we do that in Slack too. The things that we keep private are: client channels are private so that they don't have to worry that random drive-bys are coming in and looking at their stuff. Few things like HR and finance are private and anybody on the team can make as many private groups as they want for themselves. In terms of the official channels, they're as open as we can make them and that's been part of that ethos is that it's not all transparent, it's transparent by default. JAMON: But that even extends outside the company. On my Twitter I'll answer questions and I'm often quite transparent about some of the challenges that we face. This podcast being another outlet for it, where we talk about what we do. It's even outside of the company itself and I think that helps, it's a part of who we are. Todd, Ken, and I initially started on some open source software and that's the height of transparency there. CHRIS: So kind of bringing this episode to a close; What advice would you give to other founders who are looking to build a culture of doing difficult work together as a team? TODD: I would say the number one tip is just try, and keep on trying. There's no magic bullet, I don't know of any particular books you can read, every organization's different and different type people and different type jobs have different needs, but if you just keep on trying and keep on making an effort towards it, if you stumble and you have an emotional moment and you swing your arms too strongly, get back up, apologize, and keep on trying. JAMON: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You start there and you start in a way that is, you don't have this master plan where you have to follow it exactly all the way through. You design something that has a feedback loop. Feedback loops are extremely important. You'll hear us talking about that more, very often. You start with the first thing, then you start with the next thing and you keep working at it. We've never done a podcast together, for example, so we start with the first episode and we iterate on it and we look at what we've done and we see what we like and what we don't like. We provide feedback and we provide feedback in a way that hopefully is constructive and is something that we can learn from. Todd mentioned another time when he and I collaborated on sales and how we would engineer the process. We did it that way. We started with the first sales lead and we evaluated how we did and we continue to chip away at it. Any company that is going to take on a hard problem like that, start with the first bite and see how you did, and have a feedback loop and have a way of iterating, getting better and by the end of that elephant, you're going to be pretty dang good at eating elephants. KEN: That's terrible. TODD: Yeah, we apologize to the elephants out there. KEN: Can we eat Republicans? (laughter) TODD: Can we eat people at Google? JAMON: I get the reference: elephants and GOP. TODD: I don't understand... KEN: See, this is why we had to bring Jamon on because Todd wasn't smart enough to get my jokes. (laughter) TODD: This is all going to be cut anyways so ... I know Chris. JAMON: I hope not. (laughter) TODD: We eat Republicans, really? KEN: Yeah, no you're right. They're probably tough. (laughter) TODD: It's all the wrinkles from too much makeup.

Show Links The Day They Invented Offices Episode Transcript TODD WERTH: Hi, I'm Todd Werth, the CEO and one of the founders of Infinite Red, and I'm located in a very sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. KEN MILLER: I'm Ken Miller, I'm CTO of Infinite Red, and I am based in the east bay, the bay area. JAMON HOLMGREN: I'm Jamon Holmgren, and I am just north of Portland, Oregon in Washington state in Vancouver, Washington, and I am the Chief Operating Officer here at Infinite Red. CHRIS MARTIN: Excellent, so let's start with just defining from each of your perspectives what remote work is. JAMON: For me, a lot of people think remote work is like working in your spare bedroom, or something like that. Which it often is, it can be. But remote work is really more about the ability to be able to do your work at full capacity kind of in a place other than one centralized office. A lot of companies are built around having an office in an office building. I had a company like that before, where everybody is in physical proximity. But remote work is about being elsewhere, and distributed. TODD: Remote work is not, as Jamon said, working from home. Although, I work from my studio here in my house in Las Vegas. Really remote work is working on whatever you're particularly working on at this time in the most efficient place that is efficient for you. For example, some of our team members work in co-location places, because they enjoy being around other people. They work maybe in coffee shop, or that kind of stuff. Personally, I need pretty quiet environment. KEN: I would actually shift the rhetorical frame around this slightly, and say that for us, work needs to happen someplace where you have the resources you need. And what we're calling remote work is just an acknowledgement that for certain kinds of work, a growing segment that I would say is kind of centered around the tech industry, where being next to the people you're working with physically just doesn't matter. Not that it can't be helpful, but that it's no longer required. To the point that we have started referring to non-remote work as commute work. JAMON: Yeah, I love that term. KEN: Meaning instead of saying well there's this normal kind of work where you drive into an office, which we've come to accept as normal. And recognizing that that's actually a phenomenon that's less than 100 years old. It's saying that like there is this thing that developed when you have a car, and before that, the train, where you could live some place that's relatively far away from where you work. Move yourself physically into that office during the day, and then move yourself physically back. And we're saying let's move the office out to where the people are, instead of moving the people to where the office is. That's really the core for me, right? That it's more to do with do you have the resources you need? Meaning do you have a good internet connection, do you have someplace quiet to work that is conducive to the way that you think? And less about where your body is. JAMON: Ken's exactly right. And what we found is that people sort of gravitate to where they work best. One of the things that's a little challenging is this perception that people just kind of slack off, and things like that. But really, people want to work efficiently. They want to find a place where they feel comfortable, like Todd said before, it's quiet. It's not a lot of interruptions. CHRIS:So when Infinite Red started out, was it a remote company to a certain degree? TODD: Yes. JAMON: No. TODD: Yes. KEN: It depends on where you start counting. It depends on which of us you're asking- TODD: Yeah, because- KEN: Because we were two companies before we started. TODD: Yes, there was Jamon's company, which he ran for 10 years. They were not remote. Infinite Red, the previous Infinite Red before the merge, and we became the new Infinite Red, we started out as 100% remote company on purpose, and our intention was to remain that way for the life of the company. JAMON: Yeah, and it was kind of an interesting transition for us. Because we were not remote for sure, and we were all working in an office here in Vancouver, Washington. It was right about the time that I met Todd, and I don't remember exactly to be honest, whether it was influence from Infinite Red that kind of moved us toward remote, or whether we were ... I know that I had some employees asking about it already, so that was certainly a factor. But the other Infinite Red, the original Infinite Red being a model was really helpful to us, for ClearSight, because Todd and I shared a lot of information, and he would tell me about things that he was passionate about, and one of them was obviously remote work. And we were able to start transitioning that way, and by the time the merger happened, we were pretty much all remote, except for me. Because I was building a home, and living with my in-laws. So I didn't really have a great spot to work, so I ended up staying in the office for another year. TODD: Yep. Ken and I originally discussed, I've worked throughout my 20 years of being a software engineer, I've worked in the office full-time. I've worked partially remote, and I've worked 100% remote. I personally feel that in the office full-time, or 100% remote are the two superior options. I don't like the hybrid view for many reasons. So we were very specifically going to be 100% not 99, not 98%, but 100% remote for everyone for all time. KEN: I feel like I should mention something ironic, which actually proves the point a little bit, which is that as we speak, I am in the same room as Todd, which is in his house, and we are here because it's my daughter's spring break, and we just decided to come and visit. But as far as the team is concerned, there's zero difference. They don't care, it doesn't matter, the only hassle is that we had to set up fancy microphones set up in order to make this work. Right? Which kind of proves the point, right? Which is that when everybody's in their own room, there's actually a lot of things are much simpler. Yes. We don't discount the benefits that can come from being in the same room sometimes, it's just we don't value it so highly that we're willing to sacrifice everything else on that altar, which is what tends to end up happening in commute-oriented companies. JAMON: Ken wrote a really great article on our blog, The Day They Invented Offices. It's a hypothetical conversation between a real estate developer, and a knowledge worker, like an engineer. KEN: It's satire. JAMON: And it talks about a world where basically if offices were not invented, people worked remotely by default. But the real estate developer's trying to convince the knowledge worker that they need to change to a commute company. And all of the benefits that that would entail, and all of the costs as well. TODD: Yeah, it's interesting, because when you do that thought experiment, you realize how ridiculous it would be to go from default remote working situation into a commute working situation, because you'd have to build trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure to make it work. So it was fascinating. I do want to say one thing, Ken mentioned that he was sitting in my office, which he is. I feel him breathing down my neck at the moment. Even if, and we actually have a physical office in Vancouver, Washington, which is in the Portland area. Very few people go there. KEN: It's a mailbox with a couple chairs attached. TODD: But sometimes people will go there and work, and anyone on the team is welcome to do that. Or Ken is in a situation. But we have a basic rule where even if you're physically next to someone, we still work the same way. Meaning we don't have a meeting where Ken and I are talking to each other in person, and everyone ... All the remote people are second class citizens where they're not seeing our conversation. We're looking at each other, and we're making body motion, that kind of stuff. So we still work as if we're remote, even if we're physically in the same location. CHRIS: That's really interesting too, I mean what kind of discipline goes into keeping things where everyone can be a part of it, not just defaulting to that person to person conversation when you're in the same room? TODD: I'm in charge of discipline. We tried writing things on the chalkboard many times, it did not work. Detention seemed a little juvenile. So we went to the old classic of cat of nine tails. KEN: Keelhauling. JAMON: Yes. KEN: Yeah. As an escalation. TODD: To answer your question seriously, which I have difficulty doing, there are a lot of difficulties. Fundamentally, they come from the fact that a lot of people have not only never experienced remote work, have never seen it. We're too many generations removed from the 1800's, when almost everyone worked at their house, basically, and their house was downtown. Your parents didn't work that way, your grandparents didn't work ... they've never seen it in existence. So they really don't know how it works. Not only they don't know how it works, their family definitely doesn't know how it works. And probably the number one problem we have is family, and friends, local family and friends not respecting that the person's actually working. One of the tricks I tell people, and it works pretty well, is just tell your family member that your boss is getting mad at you, or your boss wants you to do something. Because even if you're remote, everyone understands the boss. And just throw me under the bus, it's totally fine, and that seems to work. But that's part of the biggest challenge, is family not respecting your space. JAMON: I think Todd touched on something really important, and that's that this is actually not that new. That was the default way to work. People didn't commute to work. They worked on a farm. KEN: Maybe they walked down the street, but in most cases, not. JAMON: This idea that we have gigantic super highways, and huge transit systems and stuff, just to move people from one location that they could work to another location that they could work for no apparent other reason, it's a little bit mind boggling. Now I understand, I understand why it came to be. Remote tools, which we're not going to talk about much in this episode, but remote tools have not historically been that great, and the experience has been pretty bad. But that's changing, it very much is changing. TODD: The industrial revolution when people started working at factories, and started commuting, and the transportation revolution that facilitated a lot of that. Most of human history, work was not separated from life. Their work life didn't make sense, because you're either relaxing and drinking lemonade, or you're making dinner, or you're sweeping your house, or you're pulling out the potatoes in your backyard, if you're a farmer. The reason we have work life balance now, is because work can be fairly distressing, and you need a break from it. But typically back then, let's say you're a blacksmith, your shop would be on main street, and your house would be behind your shop, or above your shop. So your children would live within feet of where you worked, and where your spouse worked. Whether your spouse worked in the home, or did other things. So your children would eat all your meals with you, they would go to school, school is probably pretty close if they were older. If they were younger, they would eat your meals with you. They'd be around your work, they would see work going on all the time. It just wouldn't be work, it would just be normal, for instance, if you're done with your particular task today, and there's a customer coming in who wants something built for their wagon at two, you might hang out with your children, do some housework, or just play games, or whatever. And then when your customer comes in, you go into the shop, and you service that customer. The industrial revolution made it where adults had to start to pretend to work so they didn't get in trouble. JAMON: So my six year old daughter had an assignment at school, and one of the questions was where does your parent or guardian go to work? And she wrote, "The gym." Because to her, that's when I left the house, was to go work out at the gym. TODD: That's so awesome. KEN: The phenomenon that you're talking about Todd, where the industrial revolution began this process where people started working out of the home, there was a really good reason for that, which is that it was the beginning of humans having to collaborate in a large scale way on bigger problems than they had had in the past, right? Before that, the only place where you would see really large scale collaboration like that would have been I suppose- JAMON: Warfare? KEN: What? JAMON: Warfare? KEN: Warfare, yeah. That's the place where people would leave the house, and collaborate in large numbers, that was really it. JAMON: Yeah. KEN: Maybe large farms, I don't know, you could kind of consider that. But culminating in the 20th century, where that was the norm for people to go and collaborate in relatively large numbers some place away from their home. It enabled them to solve problems that you couldn't solve without involving that many people. And of course, we don't want to give that up, and so that's what the modern remote telecommuting company does, is it creates this new kind of collaboration layer, and we've been very deliberate about how we construct that. And I think that's one of the places where companies that kind of dabble with remote tend to fall down, which is that they have all these inherited ways of collaborating that you do when you're in an office together, and some of them don't work anymore. You can't just tap your coworker on the shoulder, you can't just go and like sit next to their screen. You can't all pile into an office on an impromptu basis. So you have to reconstruct habits, technologies, whatever, that can replace those things, and augment them. And we think that, overall, you end up with a better result having gone through that effort of being deliberate about that. And that in a generation, no one will think about these things anymore, because they will simply be the inherited defaults that people who work in an office together enjoy today. And we sometimes meet in person, right? Once a year we get the whole team together, the executive team comes together more often than that. It's not that we don't value that, but we think of it is as a luxury. TODD: Well, it's not necessarily a luxury perhaps, it's important socialization. So Ken and I actually discussed, we went over a pros and cons, like what's good about working in an office? Or in a cubicle, or in hell? What's good about that? Well, you're around other people, and every answer we came up with that was good was all social. It had nothing to do with actually producing any kind of work product. And I basically tell people I commute to socialize, as opposed to commuting to work. So instead of commuting to work five days a week, and socializing one of those days in the office at an office party or something, I work remotely, and I commute to the office party once a week. Not our office, but just local friends, and that kind of stuff. JAMON: It's kind of a funny thing, but yeah, you want to hang out with your friends, not necessarily just with your coworkers. And that may sound kind of weird, and the environment we are now, where often you do make friends with coworkers, and that's all great. But your social life can be something that is a little more deliberate outside of work. KEN: It's not like we discount the social value of people working together in an office, like I enjoyed that when I did it. But I think you're seeing with the rise of WeWork, and similar places, like just in the last five years I've seen the number of co-working facilities explode. And I think that that's part of the same trend, which is that you can have that experience without having to drive for an hour each way, every day. TODD: Yeah. One of our team members, Darin Wilson, he works every day out of a co-location place, and he walks for 10 minutes to the co-location area. That for him is the most efficient, he enjoys that, and that works out well. It's a great example of what works for one person doesn't work for others. I would not like that personally. I also don't like listening to music when I work, other people do. When you remote work, if you like to listen to death metal at extremely high volumes, well have at it. It's great, it's wonderful. KEN: Just turn it off before you get on Zoom please. TODD: Yes. So one of the things I think we shouldn't overlook is some of the great benefits of working say in a cubicle. I would probably estimate 99% of all the funny videos, cool things you find on the internet, were created by extremely bored people sitting in a gray cube. I call them employee fattening pins. So the zombies will appreciate this lifestyle. Not that I dislike commute working, I hope I haven't given off that vibe. JAMON: Not at all. CHRIS: How does remote work make a more engaged worker? JAMON: You know, you have to work at it. There isn't just this appearance of working, right? The only thing that really surfaces is what you actually do, not what it looks like you're doing in your cubicle, right? And because of that, the only way to tell that you are working is to actually work. TODD: Well to actually produce work product, to be more specific. KEN: Yes. JAMON: Actually produce work product, exactly. And we go to great lengths to try to not tie work specifically to time. Because while an eight hour work day is pretty normal, and generally okay, if there are ways to accomplish your work more efficiently, you should be rewarded for that, and not penalized for that by having to sit in your seat for another two hours. It's more about stripping away the appearance of work, and turning to the actual product. TODD: One of our team members moved from Reno, Nevada, to San Diego, California. She moved over a weekend, Friday she worked, and Monday she worked. From the team's perspective, absolutely nothing had changed. Although, she moved I don't know how many miles that is. Hundreds, tens of miles. So that kind of stuff is uber cool. One of our new team members said, "I'm going to New York for a week, can I still work?" And I said, "I assume you can still work in New York. I haven't been there in a few years, but I imagine they still allow that." Turns out they do. Strangely. So I'll tell you a personal story of mine. After I eat at lunch, I don't know if it's my digestive system, or whatever, it sucks the energy out of me so bad. When I worked in a smaller place where people trusted me, I would just kind of take a little nap in my chair. When I worked for bigger companies where such things were frowned upon, I would sit there for two hours from say 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock, trying my best to keep my eyes open pretending to work, and sort of reading Facebook. It's just stupid, and I did that when I was 34 years old. It's just stupid to have adults behave in this way, it really is. JAMON: Yeah, we don't look at that as some sort of a weakness. TODD: Nowadays, I did made a little bit of fun, that's fine. I really enjoy the siesta. I'll go take literally an hour nap after I eat, and then I come back refreshed, and I get lots of work done. And I tell people, I'm going to take siesta, there's no shame in that whatsoever. JAMON: And I think that's important, when the CEO's doing it, it kind of gives people permission to work in the way that is most efficient for them. TODD: Exactly. I personally believe it's super important to have 100% of people remote. The CEO on down. A lot of companies out there that claim to be remote, they're partially remote, and that's fine. I'm glad it works for them. But when you're CEO, and your other executive team have to use all the same tools, remote tools and everything that everyone does, it's not fair, but it's true. Those tools get a lot better. It's true. So if you have the CO sitting in an office, and they don't have to experience the horribleness that is a poly comm conference call, then it's never going to improve. CHRIS: What are some of the common misconceptions of remote work that you often have to explain, or even defend? TODD: Oh, there's lots. One, you're not really working. That's the biggest thing. Two is that you're probably doing your laundry, playing video games, and other such things that people imagine. Those are the kinds of- KEN: Sometimes you are, I'll get to that. TODD: Well sure, sometimes you are and that's fine. But the biggest one if you're at home, people can bother you. Like my mother, which I love very much, she's funny. She comes to visit, and I've worked remote off and on for a long time, so she should understand this by now. But she'll be like, she'll come in and talk to me. And she'll say, "Oh I know you're working," and I have a separate office, so it's very apparent that you're walking into my office. And she goes, "I know you're working so that's fine. Finish your work up, and then we'll talk in an hour or so." And I'm like, "Mom, remember," my mom's retired. I go, "Remember when you worked? You had to go there for eight hours? It was like from 9 AM to 5 PM? It's the same for me, it's not exactly the hours, but it's not like one hour." And so bless her heart, she's going to give me an hour to get my work done, and then we can talk about whatever she wants to talk about. KEN: I think one of the misconceptions that's not a misconception is that it can tend to blur your work time and your personal time. Then one of the things that people say that they like about having a commute and an office to go is that their work time is over there, and their personal time is over here. And I wish I could say that that's not an issue with remote work. It is kind of an issue for the reasons that Todd mentions. Right, it takes a certain amount of discipline to set that boundary. I'm going to make the case that that's not a problem. It is a problem if you hate your work. If you need to like recover from the boiler room that is your work, or the boredom room, or whatever it is that makes your work uncomfortable. That is a problem. I think of this as a feature of remote work, and it echoes what Todd said about it needing to be the CEO on down. Because if it is the CEO on down, the CEO is going to have the same problems that you are. Right? The three of us have the same pressure about when does work begin and end? Are we kind of always working, are we never working? What is that boundary? And it forces the company to either become a good enough place to work that people want to work, and they're not bothered by the fact that it kind of mixes in with their personal life, or die. Like as the evolutionary pressure on the remote work niche, is that you have to be good communicators. You have to be respectful, and you have more ways that you can be respectful, because you're not having to share as much space with people. You don't have fights over what people put in the damn refrigerator. You don't have fights over who's playing what music, and who put up what offensive poster, or all of these things that come when you're forced into this little box together. TODD: The one I really miss is when someone leaves the company, and everyone kind of looks at each other and says, "Is two minutes too soon to go raid everything out of their office?" KEN: Yeah. TODD: And you see these 50 year old people scrambling around like the hunger games, trying to get the better stapler. KEN: The chair, it's always the chairs and monitors. Those are the real prizes. TODD: Yes, and I've worked for places, like I like a very nice monitor. And I always bring my own, because companies never provide that, typically. I've been told, "Oh, we can't have that because if you have a big monitor, other people will be jealous, and so you can't have that." And I'm like, "Well, okay, I'm going to have it. So either this conversation's escalating, or you have a wonderful lunch." JAMON: I think that's something really insightful about this that we'll probably touch on a lot in our podcast, but that is that we're purposely putting these constraints on ourselves that require that we become a better company. That we become a better, we continue to work on culture. We don't have the easy outs that many companies do. And people will look at that and say, "Well, but you can't do that easy out thing that we all do." And we say, "Exactly, we have to do it differently, we have to do it better. We have to work on it." Remote tools are terrible, exactly. We have to go find better remote tools, we have to work on that. Those constraints are good. They're very good. They're healthy. There's something that forces us to continue to innovate, and to self reflect, and look at how we work. I mean the blurring of the lines between personal and work as Ken said, I totally agree. It's about loving your work. And it brings up some positives too, I mean I just spent two weeks in California. We're not at the stage right now where I necessarily want to take two weeks completely offline. I still want to be somewhat available for Todd and Ken. But I was able to be on Slack on my phone at various times. Let's say waiting in line at Disneyland, or something like that. And that may sound terrible to some people, but it wasn't a big deal to me. It was totally fine, and I loved that I could actually take two weeks for my family to be away, and enjoying the sun, which we don't get a lot of here. KEN: In a way, it also makes your vacations more enjoyable, if you know that you're not coming back to two weeks of email. JAMON: Exactly. KEN: Or things that have fallen apart, or who knows, right, where ... yeah. TODD: I love that spin, that's fantastic. JAMON: I don't see it as spin- KEN: Not for me, anyway. I think some people might not feel that way. JAMON: I understand that. KEN: Yeah. JAMON: A lot of people don't, and I am speaking personally here. This is not for everybody, some people totally on the uninstall Slack when they go on vacation, that's fine. For me though, I was on the plane, and I was basically archiving a bunch of emails, and I get into work this morning, and I could hit the ground running, and I'm good to go. What is the real cost of totally disconnecting? The real cost would have been I couldn't take two weeks. I couldn't be away that long. That's what it would have been. I was able to benefit from that, you may only see the downsides, but there's positives there. KEN: And to be clear, this is how it is for us as founders. Right? When it comes to our employees, we pretty much encourage them to mute, or uninstall Slack while they're away. JAMON: That's right, that's right. KEN: They don't have as much need to be sort of always on that we do. Yeah, but for us, it's actually ... I mean from my point of view, it's a benefit. JAMON: But even that, we have some employees that want to travel, and they want to be gone for a couple months. Three months, even. Taking a three month vacation, that's pretty tough, that's pretty tough to do. So with some of them, they may work in the early mornings, or they may work in the late evenings to coincide with their time zone, and then they can be out on a trip for three months. So they are able to continue to be productive during that time. KEN: And that's a perk that Google cannot match, period. That is just something that you cannot do if you work for Google. TODD: Yeah, screw you Google. KEN: Or whomever, right? Any of these companies that expect a physical presence. TODD: We're coming for you, Google. KEN: The point is, so we have one person who doesn't have a permanent home. Right? He moves around pursuing his hobbies, and makes it work. We have other employees who have done exactly what Jamon has said, and they've gone on extended workcations, right? Where they're able to get their work done, and they have the experience of frankly, actually living in another country, as opposed to just being a tourist. And we have high standards for how they get their work done while they're doing that, but because we've had to develop standards that really measure people's impact rather than their face time, it works. TODD: Copyright Apple. KEN: There was a space, you couldn't really hear it when I said it- TODD: Space? JAMON: Face. TODD: Face. KEN: So there was a face, space time. Yeah, right, anyway. TODD: Yeah, we talked about people who want to take longer physical trips around, whether it's around the US, around the world, what not, the benefits. But there's a benefit for another set of people, and I would probably consider myself in that group, as well as some of our other team members, and that's people who choose to live rurally. JAMON: Yes. TODD: We have one person who lives really rurally, and he has a lot of land and stuff, and he can have the lifestyle that he enjoys, and still have a very productive and successful career. Myself, I do live in Las Vegas, but I live in rural Las Vegas. I have a little bit of land. It allows me to live in this way, when I used to have to live in San Francisco, which I enjoyed for a long time, but as I got older I wanted to go back to living on the land and stuff. So for people who want to live rurally, or not just the typical urban or suburban lifestyle, it's fantastic. CHRIS: So when it comes to the client experience of working with a 100% remote company, how do they respond to this way of work? TODD: That's a great question, Chris. Various ways depending on the client. Some clients, that's the way they work, and they love it. Like they see us kindred spirits, that's the way they like to work. Other clients especially if maybe they're more enterprise city type clients and stuff, maybe aren't as familiar with it. We kind of insist on it to be honest, even if the client's local to some or many of our employees, our team. And we just explain it, and we are very articulate in the way we describe how we work. And sometimes they have to have a little faith in us, but after they work through our process, they probably never seen a remote company that works well. I think our company works as well as I've seen. We work with a few companies who are both I think do a good job like we do. A lot of them do not, and I'm very proud to say that quite a few customers who maybe have part-time remote work started opting our procedures, which is a fantastic compliment, and it makes me proud. Because we do spend a huge amount of time thinking about this stuff, and working on it. JAMON: That's actually more common than you think, that we influence our clients in the way that they work. TODD: Can you expand on that Jamon? JAMON: When clients come in, and they experience the Infinite Red way of working, and they see the thought and care that we put into it, and how we're all kind of bought into it, and how we also iterate on it, because it's an ongoing process. We don't have it perfect yet, we're continuing to work on it. They see that things get done, that it can be done well, and that they have the flexibility that remote work affords. It's a pretty neat thing to see them working the way that we love to work. TODD: I don't want to digress, but we use Slack quite a bit for chat communication, that sort of thing. We use email next to nothing. But we have a channel we call rollcall, and the channel is very simple. It's just kind of describe where you are, and if you're working or not. It's analogous to walking in the office and saying, "Good morning everyone, gosh my back hurts, I've been at the gym." And it works really, really well, because it's not forced on people, and people really enjoy the back and forth. So let me just go through this morning's rollcall. One of our team members signed on at 3 AM, and then she went out for breakfast at 6 o'clock. Other people started signing in, one person signed in. It said they laptop issues that they fixed, they explained why. People gave some reactions. Other people just signed in, I said, "Good morning." One person said, "Short break," this is at 9 AM, "Picking up the car from the mechanic." We won't have exactly specific times people have to be working, or available, we want people to be so many hours a day where they can coordinate with other people, have meetings, have work sessions, that kind of stuff. But it's not uncommon people say, "My daughter's having a recital, I'm going to leave after lunch, I'll be back and probably work some this evening." No client meetings, no one's being impacted by that, great, we all give him thumbs up, we say, "Hope it goes well." No one asked if they can do that, no one says, "Hey Todd, can I go to that?" And then around lunchtime, everyone says they're lunching. They might talk about what they ate, some sort of friendly conversation, and you just kind of get a feeling of your team going about their day. And I will finish this long story up by saying it's kind of fascinating. So one of the people I work a lot with is Gant Laborde, who lives in New Orleans. And we work a lot during the day. And when he comes and visits me physically, or I go to New Orleans and visit him, it doesn't feel like I'm visiting a friend I haven't seen in a while. There isn't a lot of chat about how things have been going, it's nice to see you again. Because I've seen him every day for hours, and I just saw him this morning. And by see him, I mean interacted with him either in a video call, or on Slack, or whatever. It doesn't feel like I'm just finally meeting him, it's like we're just continuing what we were doing this morning, it's just we happen to physically be in the same space. It's very interesting phenomena. JAMON: I find it kind of flabbergasting in a way that companies would care about someone taking a break, or going to pickup their daughter, or having to go pickup the car from the mechanic. TODD: Lazy leadership. JAMON: That's exactly right. TODD: I recommend if you're a lazy ... for the lazy leaders out there, or the bad leaders, yeah, don't do remote work. Stick with cubicles, make the cubicles as comfortable as possible to get the worst employees so the rest come to us. KEN: It's probably worth talking about people for whom it wouldn't be a good fit. Obviously there's still plenty of jobs out there where physical presence is implicitly required. Anybody who works in retail, anybody who works with their hands, has to actually physically manipulate things. I think our point has always been that there's just not as many of those as people think. And to be honest, I suspect that over the next 20, 30 years, as robotics and telepresence, and that sort of thing start to really come into their own, that even those sorts of jobs will start to diminish. You already have that even with like medical, the medical field, legal field, things that used to be sort of a high, high physical presence will become more low physical presence. TODD: Surgeons right now are doing surgery with a DaVinci system, both physically, and I think they can do it remotely now. Like they're standing next to it typically, but I think they can do it remotely at the moment. JAMON: What's kind of funny about that is my dad owned an excavation company, and he was one of the first people to get a cell phone, because for him, everything was remote. Like he had to be remote, because he was driving his dump truck to the job site, he had to be there working, and he had to do his office work, because he was like the only guy. He didn't have an office, he didn't have someone handling the paperwork, he had to create invoices on the fly and stuff. So in some ways, some of those blue collar jobs had some of these things figured out way before we did. TODD: That's actually a super interesting point. Logistic companies, or shipping, truck drivers and stuff. They've had to deal with this, I don't know how old you all are out there in listening land, but if you remember Nextel phones, with the automatic walkie talkie feature- JAMON: Totally. TODD: They're useful, very useful. Kind of like an analog Slack, really. So yeah, it's fascinating. A lot of the so called blue collar work has had to deal with this for a very long time. KEN: And it's worth mentioning that even for the core of jobs that will always be physical in person, if you took every office out there that didn't need to be an office, and you converted that to a remote job where people can live anywhere, the reduction in pressure on the real estate market, on the transportation system that would ensue, would make life better for everybody. TODD: Right. KEN: Right? The people who have to commute can commute, because I mean you have this phenomenon as cities grow, where they'll build a new highway, and for five, 10 years if you're lucky, things are great. Because there's all this extra capacity, but what happens in the meantime, is that further down that highway, developers start cramming new houses in, because suddenly it's a doable commute. And then within that five, 10, maybe 20 years, it's back to the way it was, maybe worse than it was, because now there's even more people trying to cram into this road. But if you just snap your fingers, and moved all of those offices out so that that knowledge workers, the people who are working with their brains, and with words, and with digital images, and that sort of thing. And they all scatter to the winds, and live where they want to live, and not in Fremont, or wherever it is that they're living to commute to San Francisco. I feel like, right, maybe like I don't think I've ever seen a study like this, but it seems like it would stand to reason at least that the pressure on transportation would reduce to the point that everybody's quality of life would improve. I don't know, we'll see I guess. JAMON: Yeah, even when you look at something like a dentist office, which is probably extremely resistant to this sort of thing, there's just the robotics are not there yet. And maybe even if they were the trust isn't there yet, with the general public. But how many other people are in that office that don't need to be drilling on teeth? They could be elsewhere. And you're exactly right, the infrastructure, and it's actually kind of happening in some ways. You look at some of the high rises in downtown Portland and stuff, people are coming and living in the city because they want to live in the city, and not because it's next to their office. And a lot of these offices are now being converted into apartments and condos, and being kind of near offices, where you can work from your house. And what would cities look like if every job that could be remote was remote? KEN: I mean yeah, can you imagine a world where the city center is the bedroom community, right? JAMON: Right. TODD: That would be awesome. KEN: Where people live because they want to be next to the cultural opportunities in the city. And the minority of people who actually have to physically work at some job in the city, can live next to their work, because there's just more housing, because like much less of the city is taken over by the kind of white collar workplaces that have been traditional for city centers. TODD: That's actually really interesting to think about. KEN: Yeah. TODD: I imagine somewhere in hell, there is an eight hour bumper to bumper commute, and you're not in a car, but you're literally in a cubicle with a steering wheel. CHRIS: One of the things that I want to go back and touch on is this idea of leadership, and how remote work isn't for the lazy leader. So let me ask the question of the three of you, how has being 100% remote made you a better leader? JAMON: Well, I can speak to my experience going from ClearSight not being remote to being remote. I'm kind of in some ways a forceful personality. I'm kind of a person who likes to move fast, and bring everybody along with him. And in an office, there's actually a sort of almost like a physical component to that. Like the leader's right there, and he's enthusiastic about something. He's moving fast, and he's doing his thing, and he's talking about it where everybody can hear. When I look back at it now, that was sort of lazy leadership. It was. It wasn't necessarily the type of leadership that was people coming along because they were enthusiastic about it, it was more that they were just kind of following the force of nature that was moving that direction. Now that I'm remote, I don't have those physical cues, verbal cues, things like that, to bring everybody along. And it requires a lot more thought and planning around how to get people on board with concepts, and how to get people moving in the right direction. It's a really interesting thing, and it's not something I've totally figured out yet, but it's something I'm moving toward. KEN: I would say that it has forced me to be more explicit about expectations, since you don't have this inherited set of defaults. You have to say, "This is what we expect from you." It's not, "We expect you to come in the office at nine," it's, "You need to be available to clients during an agreed upon window," for example. Or as we had mentioned before, "Here's our productivity benchmark, and this is what we're looking at." You might have to develop some of those in any kind of company, and you should. But our setup, it exposes any fault lines in your expectations, and you have to address them. As Todd said, like if you want to be a lazy leader, don't do it. TODD: I would pile on what Ken said, you have to be able to measure what people, their work output, their work product. That is not easy, even in industries where it's obvious what their work product is. Say they paint paintings, you can see that they painted a painting. That is probably the most challenging thing, and then there's the emotional part. Where if you can't measure their work product, and you can't see them sitting in a seat, you're just going to have to have faith in them, and get over yourself worrying about it. But it is challenging to make sure that you have a semi-accurate view of who's actually being efficient, and who's not. And just not 100% thing. JAMON: That's more on the management side of things. Leadership side of things too is difficult, because getting people to see a vision is much easier when you can just say, "Okay," kind of the Michael Scott thing. "Everybody in the conference room in five minutes." That's a very different thing than what we do. TODD: I think it's challenging, but to be honest, I'm not staying awake at night worrying about those challenges. I find them fairly straightforward, you just have to put effort into it. Keep on walking down that road, and I think it works out really well to be honest. It's not a big deal to me. JAMON: You just have to strike the right balance. TODD: There was a tweet last week where basically it said, "During any meeting, you don't have to listen, just at one point you have to comment and say, 'I think the solution to this problem is just striking the right balance', and then everyone in the meeting nods, and you were involved." KEN: Because it's always true. JAMON: It's always true. TODD: Yes, so that's a running joke here at Infinite Red, where in the meeting at some point someone says, "We just need to strike the right balance." We all laugh. CHRIS: Looking into the future, do you see more and more companies adopting remote work? TODD: It's one of our missions, our side missions as a company, to make it more. It's probably other than software engineering, and software design, which is obviously our main focus of our company. Other than that, probably the number one thing that we're interested in promoting in the world is remote work. So I hope the answer is, it's more I don't know, I'm sure Ken and Jamon have some good insight in what they predict. JAMON: I think that one of the factors that will influence this is I look at my kids, like generation Z. And they don't know what it's like not to be connected, and they don't know what it's like not to be able to just talk to their cousin via FaceTime, no space, and who lives in South Carolina. This is normal to them, this is a normal thing to them, this is a normal way to live and to work. Well, they don't really work, but just to do things. KEN: We'll fix that. JAMON: Obviously for my kids, they're around remote work all the time. But it is a way of life, and I think that you'll also see other things like there are more ways to learn online, versus going to a university and sitting in a classroom. There are plenty of other opportunities for them to get used to this way of doing life. And I think that will have an impact. It may not be moving as quickly as we would like, we would like to see a lot more industries move into being remote work for a variety of reasons. But I think that that is a factor. KEN: I will echo that and say that both my wife and I work from home. And my daughter makes the same face when you say that some people have to like drive to a special place, as when you say that you used to have to come to the TV at a particular time to watch your show. Right? But even before the generational shift, I think it is happening more and more. Ironically, Silicon Valley, which should be at the vanguard of this, is one of the most resistant to the idea. I think that's partly because they've had so much money flowing through, that they've been able to afford the enormous luxury of moving everybody to this expensive place, and then putting them in an expensive office. And to be honest, for a company that is chasing a multi billion dollar idea, and trying to beat their competitors over the next six months, there's a case to be made for doing that. But I think way, way more of those companies think that they are doing that than actually are. JAMON: I actually have a question for you Ken, do you think that this will ... you know you said Silicon Valley is resistant to this, and that's a very location based geo fence there. Do you think that the revolution of remote work will happen irrespective of where people are located, but maybe in a different cohort? A different type of people will bring remote work to the forefront more so than a specific place. Let's say for example Detroit, or something, decided it all of a sudden is all remote. That's probably less likely to happen then- KEN: I think that that's one of the key pieces of this, is like it's like it's creating it's own virtual location. That there's a set of people who don't have the same relationship with place, and that sounds really pretentious kind of. But like they just don't think about physical locations in the same way. The cost aspect of it has caused it to grow in more cost sensitive industries than venture backed startups. And it's not that they don't have those, but I think it's also a certain amount of bias on the part of the venture capitalists themselves, and the kind of people that appeal to them. This is my guess, they will crack eventually. TODD: Having worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years, I do love Silicon Valley, and love San Francisco for sure. But when it comes to remote work, they have an inherent bias against it, because when you endure the heavy cost of relocating to Silicon Valley, and you've got your foot into that door, and you're part of that community, anything that would diminish the rewards from that suffering diminishes you. In other words, it's wonderful being there as an engineer. Everyone you meet is engineers, they're all working on interesting projects. There's a real benefit, I think there's other cities too. Especially some secondary cities like Portland, Oregon, or- KEN: Seattle. TODD: Seattle yeah, and Texas. KEN: Austin. TODD: Thank you. Austin, Texas. I think these are up and coming and stuff. And there's still benefits socially to it, but I think a lot of times they resist it because it diminishes their specialness in many ways. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: And really when we started Infinite Red, and we decided that this will be a remote company forever, and that this is my third and hopefully last company I build, it allowed me to move back to my home state of Nevada without worrying about my career, and that is an incredibly powerful thing.

Show Links Management by Walking Around Herman Shooster, founder of Global Response, on "management by walking around" GAF-o-meter Episode Transcript CHRIS MARTIN: Gentlemen, welcome to the first episode of Building Infinite Red, welcome. Why don't each of you take a minute to share your background and what your role is at Infinite Red? TODD WERTH: Hey, there, I'm Todd Worth, I am CEO and co-founder of Infinite Red, along with Ken and Jamon here. This is my third business. This is a traditional business, meaning it's not investor backed. My first business was also similar to this, and my middle business was a venture capital backed business. So, I went through all that fun Silicon Valley interviews with the VCs that we get to see on HBO. I've been a developer and I did some design as well for the last 22 years. So, I spent most of my time in the Bay Area working at various startups, some enterprises and that kind of stuff. KEN MILLER: I'm Ken Miller, I'm the CTO and founder. I've mostly done startups in my career. A whole long string of venture-backed startups and that's what convinced me that I wanted to do something different this time. JAMON HOLMGREN: I'm Jamon Holmgren and I'm the Chief Operating Officer here, and the other co-founder here. I started my business in 2005 and some variation of that has persisted all the way to today, obviously with the merger that we'll probably talk about at some point in this podcast with Todd and Ken. But, I've been coding since I was 12 but really professionally since then, since 2005. So, 13 years now. CHRIS: How did the three of you meet? TODD: Actually, I met Ken when he did a phone interview for me about 10 years ago. Ken was my boss at one point. We worked together at a company called Mamapedia / Mamasource. So, I met him on the phone. He asked me a bunch of very tough technical questions. That was interesting, and then we had an interview, at which he sat behind me, over my shoulder and watched me program. That wasn't uncomfortable at all. KEN: Yeah, he's never let me forget that. JAMON: And I met Todd and subsequently Ken ... I think in person we met in 2014 at a conference down in San Francisco, Fort Mason. We were all three of us were speaking at conferences about iOS development. Todd and I had kind of heard of each other, maybe done a little bit of communication at some point. TODD: We had been chatting at that point because we both ... you did digs at me, and your speech, and my speech came a couple of people later, and I digged back at you and we wouldn't have done that if we hadn't already been chatting a lot. JAMON Some friendly banter. We had kind of hit it off right away, which was kind of cool. Then we ended up a little bit later collaborating on some open source work, which was really fun. TODD: Yeah, I do believe I won that banter war, during that 2014 conference. JAMON: The jury's still out. TODD: I got more laughs. CHRIS: So, you all get together and you all meet and you all have familiarity with each other. Why merge companies and form one company? TODD: That's a great question. That was a fairly long process. Jamon and I started knowing each other pretty well in the particular tech stack that we were all in. The three of us had very popular open source libraries. JAMON: That was called RubyMotion back in the day. It was an iOS framework and since we were all Ruby developers it kind of brought us in. TODD: Correct. We worked with each other in the industry in our local little culture. Not local physically, but meaning in the RubyMotion community. And then Jamon and I just talked a lot. We chatted a lot on Slack or whatever it was at that time, and we just got to know each other pretty well. Then what happened was in an industry where you're doing client work, it's very roller coaster-ish often, which means you're either slow or you're really busy. When that happens, after a while you start looking for partners who can help shave off the high and low points. We started doing with ClearSight Studio, which is Jamon's company, and they were helping us work on some projects when we were a little too busy. JAMON: Yeah, and then we ended up competing on one project, which was ... this industry is kind of interesting because most of the time you don't end up competing directly with people you know. There's enough work to go around that people tend not to shop around a ton. But, we ended up competing head-to-head on a project and both of us agreed that we didn't really like competing against each other. We would rather work together, which was kind of cool, and what was interesting was, Todd's the glue guy here. I mean, he's a guy that kind of brought everybody in. I didn't really know Ken. I'd met him at Inspect briefly, talked to him a little bit about ... TODD: Inspect was a 2014 conference we spoke at. JAMON: Yeah, that was the one in Fort Mason there. I got to know Ken a little bit later when Todd invited me down to San Francisco. KEN: It's a little funny because of that dynamic that those two knew each other, but I was a little apprehensive when we started talking about merging. Because Todd and I had a pretty good dynamic. I was a little worried that those two would outvote me, since they were both a little more front end than me. But, we find when we disagree, it's more often Jamon and I are the ones who are in agreement. JAMON: Knowing you now Ken, I don't know how you ever agreed to the merger. TODD: Yeah, we did work well together, which mainly consists of me telling bad jokes and Ken rolling his eyes. JAMON: This is true. KEN: It's still how we work together. JAMON: Yes. TODD: That is true, and Ken is absolutely right, most often it's Ken and Jamon voting against me. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: That's fine, though. KEN: And to be clear, we always have kind of a consensus process, so it's not like we have a vote and one person walks away unhappy. It's really more like we just keep at it until we can find the place that we all agree on. JAMON: Yeah, totally. TODD: Yeah, I'm technically the CEO of the company but we're actually all three have equal power and we run the company as basically a council of elders. It's not just us three, we have some other people on the team that also help us make decisions, plus the whole team also helps us makes a lot of decisions. This system is chaotic. It's like democracy, it's messy and chaotic but it's the best thing we have. It does sometimes require us to vigorously debate each other before we get consensus, but I think it works out really well. JAMON: One of the things that I think we're gonna be able to delve into in this podcast that will be interesting to the listeners, is some of the things that we've learned being more of a council of elders, like Todd said. So, this sounds very kind of self reflective, here we're kind of talking about how we met and how we started the company. But I think it's interesting background. It kind of sets the stage for why we operate the way that we do. What has worked, what hasn't worked. I think it'll be an interesting aspect of this podcast. TODD: Yeah, there's a lot more to the story of our merge, of course. It was over a long period of time. Maybe we can talk about that more in detail at some point. CHRIS: What are the benefits of having three founders? Because there's ... oftentimes I imagine that there's one, so you have that one person view of the world, but now you have three people and you have to come to consensus. JAMON: Well, I can speak to this probably because I did run my own company as a sole founder for 10 years. And certainly being by yourself has certain advantages because you can kind of pull the trigger and say, "Okay, we're gonna do this. We're gonna shift direction. We're gonna go this direction." And you can do it very quickly. I'm not very risk averse, I just kind of like dive right into things as Todd and Ken can attest. TODD: That's another way of saying, "There's a China shop, no need to open the door, let's go through it." JAMON: Let's go right through the door. That's me. It allowed for certain really great things in my company, like being able to go from, hey, we're a Ruby on Rails shop to we do iOS apps, never having done one, but yeah, sure, we do them, and jumping right into it. Had some downsides, too. Being on a wild ride like that is very stressful to most personalities, and I had 12 people with me. And it wasn't just me. Not to mention my family. So, I can tell you that the difference, the main difference, is that, it forces me to slow down a little bit. It allows me to kind of lean on the strengths of Ken and Todd, which I've learned over the past two and a half years, three years really, they're very strong in certain areas that I'm not. Honestly, I don't know at this point what I would do without that. It's really great to be able to say, "Okay, Todd, what do you think about this particular issue, because it has to do with team." Or something like that, something he's really good at. Or Ken, for strategy and kind of understanding the deeper implications of what we're looking at doing. So, it allows you to kind of add additional strengths to the leadership, to the ownership team without necessarily adding weaknesses because you can kind of identify what those weaknesses are, and say, "Okay, this is a weakness of Jamon. Let's avoid going down that path." Let's do the things that I am good at instead. TODD: Yeah, I agree with that. Jamon also is our engine. He keeps on going and pushing and going and pushing and going, pushing. So, that's one of his main strengths that he brought. KEN: And to be honest, that was a big factor in deciding to merge. Seeing how he just has this natural energy and productivity, that Todd and I are not as much that way. So we saw it as a pretty natural complementarity. TODD: To answer your specific question, having multiple people. Basically all three of us have two other people we can't tell exactly what to do. We have to convince them to do what they do, and I'm a big believer that the best leaders are reluctant leaders, and I would consider myself this. I think I'm a pretty decent leader. I certainly work hard at it, but I don't particularly ... it's not like something I seek or particularly like per se. The reason I think reluctant leaders are better is because they don't really enjoy the power like enthusiastic leaders do. So, because of that I'm perfectly happy to do things in consensus and that kind of stuff. All three of us can and have in the past led individually. CHRIS: So, what about the challenges? You've mentioned a lot of benefits but what kind of challenges present itself when you have to convince two other people? TODD: Sometimes there's yelling. Not too often but it's happened. Jamon came up with something ... I don't know, I'm sure you didn't come up with that but Jamon's company, they did something where they have a gafo, which is give a frick... JAMON: G-A-F-O. TODD: But basically this system works really well because a lot of times if you're discussing any subject and your job is to add your opinion to it, whether you're particularly interested in that subject or not, you do. And a lot of times people argue with each other over things that one of them doesn't really care about and they're arguing as if both of them have equal degrees of their opinion. So, what we'll often do is say, "What's your gafo on this?," which is one to 10, and if I'm arguing, not arguing, but if I'm expressing my opinion on a particular subject and Jamon says "What's your gafo in this?", I'd say a two, and his is a nine, then Jamon automatically gets that. JAMON: Yeah. And what you find is people don't really abuse it. Like, most of the time you find out that two people are arguing over something that they both have a two or a three, versus once in a while you'll get a situation where both are a nine or a 10. In that case you know that you're dealing with something really important and it actually, even just saying that, like we both really, really care about this, is still an aid in doing this. It actually came from an article, I don't remember who wrote it but we can put it in the show notes, Chris. I'll give it to you after the show and we can put the link to the article in the show notes. TODD: Just to give you an example, I brought up the other day that I deserve a much, much larger salary. Now, I had a high gafo on this, about a 10. And it turns out Ken and Jamon both had a one. So, I won. And now I have twice the salary. It's a good system. JAMON: I was not informed of this event. TODD: This may or may not have happened only in my mind. I rarely can tell. CHRIS: Has there ever been a moment where the gafo on all three of you was very high? JAMON: Yes. CHRIS: And, in that case what happens? TODD: We have a very large closet where we keep the dead horse, and since we can't agree on that and there's lots of vigorous debate we bring that dead horse out and beat it regularly. Which is fine. That doesn't happen too often, to be honest, but we do have some things where it keeps coming up over and over again. KEN: We have had some pretty heated conversations, sometimes, and I'm not gonna call it a disadvantage of having three people, because I actually don't think that it is. So, I'm personally fairly risk averse, and tend to sort of make decisions cautiously. So, for me, having three people, and we can hash this out, actually makes it easier for me to make decisions with more confidence, but sort of ironically. Right? Because, having sounding boards whose perspectives I know will be different and yet exist in the context of some shared values, from my point of view that's pretty much unalloyed positive. Even if it doesn't mean that there's a few uncomfortable conversations. CHRIS: So, Ken, how do you deal with uncomfortable conversations and disagreements that inevitably happen? KEN: Well, I think the emphasis there is on relationship building and after care, as it were. We treat the tripartite relationship as one of the most important things that we can work on. So, we make a point to meet in person more regularly than the whole team meets. We have founders' meetings on Zoom several times a week. Sometimes those meetings are just kind of chatting about the news of the world or something like that. I mean, often there's plenty of business but we also make some time to just shoot the shit, as it were. That creates the container in which that happens. So, even if, in the heat of the moment, as people do, you might forget that these people are on your side. There's that container to return to, so that when the fight is over and when the sort of tempers have died down we can come back and say, "Hey, you know what? I get where you're coming from." We're all on the same side here and we can kind of take that and look through the ashes for the refined bits of ore that we wanted to take out of that conversation. That's pretty much how it always happens. JAMON: One of the other things that we do is, we know that if things are starting to get heated in Slack, because we are a remote distributed company, and we use Slack a ton, if things are starting to get heated in Slack, we're supposed to increase the bandwidth, which means essentially go into Zoom, get face to face, look each other in the eye and talk. We don't always do that. There are situations where we look back and we say, "You know what? We violated our rule there where we were supposed to go to Zoom and we didn't do it." TODD: That actually causes quite a few ... not quite a few, but I would say a majority of our intense arguments came because we didn't switch out of Slack into Zoom, which is what we use for our video calls, which I highly, highly, highly recommend over the rest of the crap out there. One show note for the audience, if you're listening, if you feel like you have to look up many of the words Ken says, don't worry. I do that all the time. JAMON: Before I met Ken, Todd told me, "Don't worry if you feel dumb. He talks like he swallowed an encyclopedia." TODD: Which is great. We love Ken just the way he is, but ... JAMON: I don't know if people know this, but Ken went to Harvard. Todd and I did not go to Harvard. TODD: I liked how you phrased that. I will now say, I am Todd, I did not go to Harvard, which places me much higher than what I actually did. CHRIS: So, how do you think the relationship that you've strived to continually build as the trio affects the greater culture of Infinite Red? TODD: I think it's paramount. When you get to a certain size, well, even in smaller, but especially when you get to a certain size, the entire team has just as much power to set the culture as we three do. Ken said it really well that basically we're like a black hole, where we kind of set the culture and we pull the team in and they orbit around and if we put in a little extra effort we can pull them in tighter to our culture, but ultimately it's not a destination. We simply pull them in a direction. So, the way we interact with each other, the way we interact with everyone else, and the way we interact, really, in public, I think completely sets the tone for everyone else. KEN: I'd say we pay more attention to emotions than your typical tech company founders. In terms of like the whole health of the organization. We talk about feelings. It comes up in the work we do in design and that sort of thing, but we certainly value intellect and litigal ability very highly, but we also will check in with, like, "Well, how does this feel to you?" Like, "How does that land?" How does it ..." right? And we value the subjective and emotional as coequal with the intellectual. JAMON: Yes. KEN: And that probably doesn't make us unique but it is a little unusual. JAMON: I think to the degree we do it, it's fairly unique and that stems out of some decisions that we made early on in this partnership. One was obviously what we talked about before, that the biggest existential threat that we face is that us three, Todd, Ken, and I, is that we would have a falling out. And then coming out of that is we have to be talking about our feelings a lot. We have to be talking about how we're interacting, we have to be thinking about it. We have to really resolve differences because if we don't, we kill the golden goose. It's gone. Beyond that, then we've also made some decisions around what kind of company we wanna be. One of the big things is we wanna be the type of company that we would wanna work at. It's an easy thing to say. It's a much harder thing to do. TODD: I think a lot of people wanna be that, but they don't actually put any effort in. I want to have the body I did when I was 24, but the amount of effort I put in, I have the body I will have when I'm 84. The short of it is tech bros need not apply. We each have different skills. I'm definitely the heart of the company. Ken's more the brains and Jamon's the muscle of the company. I would say, I don't know if you guys agree with that, but, I talk about feelings more than some people, I'm sure, like. CHRIS: So, building on that heart, mind and muscle analogy, how do you inspire and empower one another throughout the day and throughout the weeks and the months and the years? JAMON: One thing that I think is important is that we understand that we're not always going to have a high level of energy, individually as well as a founder group. We'll have periods of high energy, where we're really pushing hard on something, and then we'll have periods of time where we're kind of coasting a little bit more, and that's okay. That comes out of our decision that we wanna have a company that we would wanna work at, that we can stick around for a long time, maybe that everybody can retire at. This isn't a company that's here for the short term. TODD: I'm super proud of the fact that since we merged and became Infinite Red we've had no one leave. No one's quit. A few people we let go for various specific reasons. But, I'm super proud of that. My specialty is dealing with the team and I do something called management by walking around, which I try to say good morning to everyone. KEN: From HP, right? TODD: I don't know ... I saw this elderly gentleman talking about how he did this to his company on YouTube, and that's where I got that term, but I'm sure other people used to... we're 26 people plus, some freelancers. I try to talk to everyone at least every couple of days, if it's nothing more than just saying hey and that kind of stuff. I take great pride in that. However, what I'm not sure I'm good at is things like strategy, and Ken, as you've all noticed, talks a lot less than Jamon and I. But, when he talks about strategy, and truthfully, when he talks about anything, it's pretty gold, and I really pay attention. I know I ran a company for nine years, and I'm not particularly good at the strategy at all. So, I really wouldn't want to do, any company, this company or any company, without Ken and Jamon, to be honest. JAMON: That's an interesting point. Todd's our CEO and he doesn't feel like he has to be the strategic mind. A lot of times you think, okay, CEO, has to be like setting the course, leading the way, at the helm. But, it goes to our priorities. Our priorities are our team, and Todd's really great at that. That's our important thing. Strategy, it's a supporting thing. It's not the main thing. KEN: One of our inspirations, I remember Todd talking to me about this, was Richard Branson. He at one point said that your shareholders don't come first. Your customer doesn't come first. Your employees come first. And the reason is, it's their job to take care of everybody else. That ethos kind of starts with us, which is that we take care of each other and make sure that we're supported, right? And we take care of our employees, make sure they're supported, because they're the ones, who, at the end of the day, are taking care of the customer or not. And if the customer's taken care of, then the financial health of the company is taken care of. In some ways that's a harder way to work. It's much quicker and easier to just sort of feel the customer, okay, yeah, well, we'll do whatever you want, and then take it out on your employees. And that is a very typical way that consultant companies end up. JAMON: I think we're gonna do some more talking about that in future episodes, for sure, because that- KEN: We can bookmark that and talk it as a whole topic unto itself. JAMON: I didn't mean to cut you off on that, Ken, I just kind of wanted to make a note that that's something that's really core to who we are and- TODD: It really is. JAMON: ... and we need to do more time than we have right now, but where there's a lot of discussion that needs to happen around that. KEN: It is, but in terms of like ... I said that shared values, that container of shared values is also partly what makes this work, and that's one of those values, that taking care of your employees is never bad for business, and it's never bad for your customers. TODD: I would pile on to something Ken said. It is much more difficult. I have a lot of problems. I had a lot of problems as an employee, of leadership, and I still have a lot of problems with leadership. Some people are just literally jerks and they're just sadists, they like to abuse their power and make people miserable. But disregarding those people, in quotation marks, just disregarding those, most leaders fail just because they're just lazy leadership. They take the easy route. The easy route is to make processes and jump on people, and be what we call seagull manager, which is you fly in and you crap all over everything and you fly away. We're not perfect, we're human, we make mistakes and stuff, and sometimes our team points out mistakes and we try to take it super seriously. But, it takes a constant weekly, if not daily, effort to put your team first. It's not easy but I love it. I love our team. I consider them family, to be honest. JAMON: Yeah. TODD: Sometimes talking about clients, they have a problem dealing with clients, that can be nerveracking and I don't look forward to that. I never dread talking, having any meeting or having any conversation with any of the team. JAMON: This is also why we haven't added a lot of additional people to Infinite Red. We're 26 right now. We could add a lot of people. We've had the opportunity. We have the work. We have people in some ways beating down the door to work with Infinite Red. We're a consultancy and people wanna work with us because of our reputation. We also have a lot of developers coming to us. Every week I'm getting multiple messages saying, "Hey, do you have any openings there at Infinite Red? I'd love to work with you. I love the ethos. I love what you do." And yet, we're only 26 people. TODD: Plus some freelancers. JAMON: Plus some freelancers, for sure. Freelancers is one way that you can kind of increase your capacity without necessarily bringing on a huge commitment. That's nice but they're also very hard to find, as far as reliable ones. TODD: And it's challenging. That's not an easy route. JAMON: Right. We've had a few misses on that and ... TODD: That's another show. JAMON: It is. KEN: Yeah, that's another whole topic. JAMON: But that's why we're not much larger, is because we wanna grow very purposely and we wanna make sure that we're making the right choices along the way. KEN: We don't wanna grow any faster than our culture can absorb. TODD: Yes. KEN: I've been at enough startups, and watched them grow from small tight-knit, great culture, and then there gets this point where there's pressure from investors, usually, to grow as fast as possible. And there's a rate at which that happens, that the culture gets overwhelmed and diluted and destroyed, and you can never get it back. So, we're very, very keen to stay out of that trap and grow only as fast as the culture can absorb and as we as leaders can adapt to the increase in scale. TODD: My arms aren't very large and whipping the team all day, it really gets sore. I couldn't handle many more. In all seriousness ... I don't think I've ever been all serious ... JAMON: Never. TODD: ... but I'll try. Ken and I, when we first ... one of the things, having worked at startups, having owned startups and that kind of stuff, there's nothing against VC, venture capital based startups and investor startups. It's a different type business and it's a very specific business that works very well for certain type businesses. Ken and I enjoyed doing that for a long time. We just got a little tired of it, and we don't have an exit strategy for our company. We always say that our exit strategy is death. We also want a company where people can retire in, whether designers, developers or people in leadership, that kind of stuff. JAMON: This is really unusual, by the way. If you talk to other tech companies. TODD: Yeah, and they don't have to switch to management, which isn't moving up. It's a different job. You should be able to be a designer, developer your entire career and become a master and retire. So, long way of saying we're not going anywhere for a very long time. As far as what direction we're going in, I'll let these two talk about that. JAMON: I think that kind of flavors the decisions we're making. I'm not a huge fan of making, like, very specific targets way out in the future, because just like building software, it doesn't work very well. You're making your decisions when you have the least amount of information. The further back you can delay decisions, the better, but you really need a framework to make those decisions in. That's the important thing. So, we work on the framework. We work on how do we make decisions when opportunities arise? How do we decide whether to do something, whether to not. I think it's Steve Jobs said that one of his greatest strengths was the ability to say no, and that's important for us, too. But, like Chain React, our React Native conference we had an opportunity to create that, to make that happen. It fit our framework and we went for it. It was a success, and we have the second one coming up here in July. That's the sort of thing that I think I really focus on, is the framework through which we make decisions. We obviously have some longer term plans, some of which the team knows about, some of which not, but the main thing is that they will look at the decisions we make, and know why we're making the decisions, because of that framework. TODD: Yeah, and if the team doesn't have buy-in or they don't agree, it won't happen, because Jamon, Ken and I aren't gonna do it. JAMON: Yeah, we don't do it. KEN: Questions like this are sort of like, on this long car voyage that you're planning to take, when do you plan to turn left? Right? When the road tells us that we should turn left is the answer, right? Jamon happens to be right that it's about setting a framework, it's about having a certain set of values, it's about being prepared for certain kinds of opportunities so that when luck comes our way we can take advantage of it. But we don't have a five-year plan. We don't have a master script for where we're going, and that is very much on purpose. TODD: Well said. CHRIS: Any closing thoughts? TODD: I would say that Ken's extremely good at making very eloquent remarks on why he didn't do his homework. KEN: It's worked well for me so far. TODD: It's true. JAMON: It's actually true. TODD: That's a fact. JAMON: I think that what Ken said about our company will also apply in some ways to this podcast. We're not necessarily going to have a very specific thing that we hammer every single time that we release an episode. There will be a little bit of kind of organic turning left and turning right as we go, but we have a framework around this podcast. So, I'm hoping that the listeners got a lot of value out of this. I think that this is gonna be a lot of fun for us, as a founder group, and hopefully they'll join us for the ride here. TODD: I would also like ... the reason this podcast came into existence was Jamon was reaching out to new founders or founders that have been around it for a while or entrepreneurs or business owners, and he just said, hey, if you have any questions about that, fire it off, and a lot of people did ask Jamon, and Jamon and Ken and I would discuss it and kind of come with an answer and we'd post it on Twitter. People really seemed to enjoy that. You think you don't have too much to share, but then when you share and people give you a good response, you're like, "Oh, I do have more to share." So, this is a direct result from that, and the reason I bring it up is, I think we're gonna continue doing that, so feel free to reach out on Twitter. JAMON: My Twitter handle is @jamonholmgren. Todd's is @twerth, and Ken's is @seriousken. We'll put those in the show notes as well. TODD: Yeah, and Jamon's a great person. He's a great person to reach out to, and the three of us.

Some stories are so good that they seemingly defy reality. Enter Chris Lynam.He dropped out of school. His mom fired him from the family business. Like me, he wasn't going to become a professional basketball player.Fast forward to 2018, and he and his wife Daisy are owners and franchisees of four of the top ten Arthur Murray Dance Studios--a brand that has been dominating dance for over 100 years.How did dancing until 2am set off a chain reaction of success for Chris? What help did he get along the way? What's going on the NBA playoffs this year, and why do neither Chris nor I think the Rockets will win it all?It's all here. Enjoy this episode. Relevant links:https://soundcloud.com/off-the-floor-podcast (Chris's podcast Off the Floor)http://www.arthurmurraylive.com/ (Chris's Bay Area Franchises)https://www.quora.com/profile/Chris-Lynam-2 (Chris's writing)https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/briefing/isis-britain-monkeys.html (New York Times' recent celebration of Arthur Murray)

Love reigns supreme over the ‘Chive Cast when Skye and Steve host a round table of Rebel Commando connoisseurs comprised of Chris “What's in the” Botkins; Stephen “Wward” Ward; and Chris “Special” Leddy. We cover it all from mock-ups, to blueprints, to Presto-Magix to mini-rigs. For the first time in years we really go deep to understand what makes a focus collector concentrate on one character and why. Ron “Ron” Salvatore joins us as well to talk about the devastating Commando Acetate Sculpt and defines what a Plaster Cast is. All this plus many extended heart-warming meditations on the meaning of our hobby in this month's Vintage Pod. 02:01 - Show intro 07:13 - Skye's Movie Thought 10:30 - Flip the Script – Two Death Stars? 18:35 - Skye-Ku 25:00 - Skye's new (dumb?) Focus Collector Classification System 30:56 - Love Segment 31:27 - Bob Martinazzi Love 35:36 – Tessa Love 38:35 – Empire State Collector Club Love 43:13 – Skye and CAS Love 56:00 - MOC(k) is Love 57:13 - ICCC Love 58:01 – Star Wars in the Movies Podcast Love 01:01:27 – Vintage Rebellion Love 01:04:03 – Nugget From the Archive (Acetate Sculpt, with Ron Salvatore) 01:25:29 - Vintage Vocab (Plaster Micro Mold) 01:39:52 - Rebel Commando Roundtable Introductions 01:44:09 – The C-Team Intro Song (Why you collect Rebel Commando?) 02:01:18 – Stephen Ward's ToyShop talk 02:17:34 – Molded face a thing? 02:20:19 – Rebel Commando's Odditys 02:25:05 – Endor Forrest Ranger Talk…really? 02:30:28 – One Dollar Vilx Market Watch (Rebel Commando competition) 02:46:19 – (Three-Way) So be it Lightning Round 03:02:32 – Unloved (Presto-Magix) 03:05:55 - Outro

This week we discuss one of the biggest and most important films of this year, Black Panther. We discuss how this film transcends the usual superhero genre tropes to position itself as an important commentary on world politics, and in particular African politics. We also delve into spoiler territory for Cloverfield Paradox, The Good Place and Black Lightning There's also a contentious question from Chris: What is the greatest TV show ever? Is it Game of Thrones or, like Chris are you stuck between 24 and Breaking Bad? We have a poll on our twitter page so vote for your favourite and tweet us if we've missed any! Twitter - yacpodcast17 Facebook/ Instagram/ Soundcloud/ iTunes - Your Average Critics

A micro-interview recorded at Rust Belt Rust 2017, in Columbus, Ohio, October 27–28. ## Transcript **Chris:** hello! Can you tell me your name and a little bit about yourself? **Anthony:** My name is Anthony Deschamps, I, um, I’m a software developer, I work in Automotive. **Chris:** Oh! Very interesting. Long-time listeners will recognize Anthony’s name as a sponsor of the show; thank you for sponsoring the show! **Anthony:** You’re welcome! **Chris:** So, what got you into Rust? **Anthony:** I’ve talked about this earlier; I actually can’t remember how I first came across it. Um, I remember my friends being excited about it and looking at it at some point, um, but what really hooked me is that I have a huge amount of respect for C+ +, uh, it was one of my first languages, and to me, Rust feels like C+ + with decades of learned lessons. If we have a clean slate, and what you can do with a fresh start. **Chris:** Yeah. How long - do you remember roughly, obviously you don’t remember exactly when, but - do you remember roughly how long...pre 1.0, post 1.0? **Anthony:** Uh, probably about a year ago, so, somewhere after 1.10 or roundabouts. **Chris:** Okay. Very good. What has your experience of learning Rust been like? Good, bad, ugly? **Anthony:** Um, it’s made my C+ + better. **Chris:** Yeah. **Anthony:** Everything thing that I struggled with in Rust was really just a lesson for what I could be doing better in other places. **Chris:** What are you using Rust for presently? Are you able to use it at work at all, or is it side projects entirely, still? **Anthony:** So, a combination of hobby projects, uh, when I have time. And, a little bit at work. It’s one of those things where it is a little bit of a risk, a newer thing, so it’s been nice to try it out on some small things, see how it goes, and realize that I do like it and get excited about hoping to use it more. **Chris:** Yeah. What kind of side projects have you been able to do? **Anthony:** Um, when I get around to strapping a Raspberry Pi to a balloon and sending it up to the stratosphere to take some photos, that’ll be in Rust. **Chris:** That’s awesome. **Anthony:** I also like to play around with arduinos, and LEDs are fun, and I’m using a little bit of Rust there. **Chris:** Cool. Is there anything in particular that’s caught your attention either with this conference or with the Rust community in general? **Anthony:** The most exciting thing to me is meeting the people who are making the things that I enjoy using. Uh, it seems obvious when you really think about it, but, um, the things that you use are not made by some...cloud, or void, or they don’t just come out of nowhere, they’re made from real people, who really enjoy working on what they’re doing, and are really excited to talk to you about it. **Chris:** I share that sentiment deeply. Thank you for your time! **Anthony:** Well, thank you so much for the podcast. I really enjoy it. **Chris:** My pleasure, and absolutely awesome, speaking of meeting people in person, it’s great to meet you in person! **Anthony:** I agree. Thank you so much. **Chris:** Thank you!

Highlights: Ask Alexa: “Play W W 1 Centennial News Podcast” |@ 01:00 Second Liberty Bond drive launches |@ 02:00 Spy ring in Palestine - Mike Shuster |@ 06:25 War In the Sky - RiesenFlugzeug - behemoths of the sky |@ 10:10 Great War Alliance Forum |@ 13:05 Follow up on Cardines Field rededication |@ 13:55 Holding talks about WWI in communities - Richard Rubin |@ 15:15 Speaking WWI -  This week: “Booby Trap” |@ 21:30 100C/100M in Ridgewood, NJ - Chris Stout |@ 23:10 “Rendezvous With Death” - David Hanna |@ 28:30 Pershing/Lafayette statues rededicated in Versaille |@ 34:40 Trek through the Dolomites - WWrtie Blog w Shannon Huffman Polson |@ 36:00 The Buzz on #CountdownToVeteransDay -Katherine Akey |@ 36:55----more---- Opening Welcome to World War 1 centennial News - It’s about WW1 THEN - what was happening 100 years ago this week  - and it’s about WW1 NOW - news and updates about the centennial and the commemoration. Today is October 4th, 2017 and our guests this week are: Mike Shuster from the great war project blog,    Richard Rubin, author of The Last of the Doughboys and Back Over There Chris Stout from the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project in Ridgewood, New Jersey And David Hanna, author of the WW1 book and now website - Rendezvous with Death   WW1 Centennial News is brought to you by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. I’m Theo Mayer - the Chief Technologist for the Commission and your host. Welcome to the show. Preface Before we get going today I wanted to let you know, especially all of you who own Amazon Echo or other Alexa enabled device, Alexa has a new skill. If you say “Alexa, play the “W” “W” one centennial news podcast” she will dutifully find the most current episode on the internet and play it for you. We are excited because that opens up WW1 Centennial News to 20 million new player and all you have to do is ask! Welcome to the future - but right now - let’s jump into our wayback machine and head 100 years into the past! World War One THEN 100 Year Ago This Week [MUSIC TRANSITION] Yes, we’ve gone back in time 100 years to explore the war that changed the world! And It’s the first week of October 1917. What’s on the US government’s mind this week? Raising money to pay for the war! [SOUND EFFECT] Dateline October 1st 1917 Headline: Secretary of the treasury - McAdoo begins Second Liberty Loan Drive... Five Billion Dollars from Ten Million Subscribers fixed as goal! So In 1917, financing a war with deficit spending is not at all the plan. The Wilson administration is determined to raise the money needed for this immense effort, and in part, by issuing of government backed war bonds. This is innovative… and it is interesting to note, that the same 1917 law that authorizes the war bonds will continue to be used to sell US treasury bonds 100 years later! Back in June (during our episode 24), we reported on the Wilson administration touting the first liberty loan drive was an unprecedented and huge success. In fact, they raised $2 billion dollars from five and one half million people! A century later that $2 billion is the equivalent of 38 billion dollars. So - not too bad! This Second Liberty Bond drive is targeting twice as much revenue from two times as many subscribers. Though there is a lot of controversy about how successful the liberty bond program is, with the government claiming HUGE success and other press of the time criticizing lackluster enthusiasm and talking about the discounting of the bonds,  anyone who has ever undertaken to raise substantial amounts of money KNOWS, it’s no cake walk! Focusing on participation by the general public as small investors -- Secretary  Mcadoo reaches out to the administration’s secret weapon --- their powerhouse of propaganda, their empresario of promo, their master of emotion, their superman of spin - George Creel’s Committee on Public Information! This is the same outfit that publishes the daily Official Bulletin that we use here on the podcast every week to tell you the story of WW1, and whose pages we re-publish daily on the centennial anniversary of their original publication at ww1cc.org/bulletin. Anyway, Creel is probably America’s first marketing genius. He shows up as the man behind the curtain all over the place during this period... And with outrageous but brilliant ideas - like in late May -- as the first Liberty loan drive wraps up, he gets all churches, schools and city halls around the country to ring their bells every night in a countdown to the end of the first drive! Talk about taking your promotion to the grassroots. Last week we reported on the massive national billboard campaign for “Food will win the war” including using electric lights to light up the billboards at night. We have not verified that Creel was the man behind this endeavor, but it has his style written all over it. He is also a multi-media and social media genius… and In 1917 that means the flaming hot new media of the MOVIES and the Phonograph. Before the 4th liberty bond sale is over, and there will be 4 of them - Creel will have recruited the biggest stars of the day including Al jolson, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and his premiere celebrity pitch man - Charlie Chaplin Creel doesn’t just go big, he also goes wide. George puts together a citizen army of 70,000 called “the 4 minute men”. He arms them with 4 minutes speeches - And in this case - on why buying Bonds is the key to Liberty and Freedom for Americans and why it is every citizens patriotic duty to participate He sends this army into every movie theater in the nation, arranging for them to make their presentation just before the features film. And so McAdoo launches his second liberty loan campaign 100 years ago this week! [SOUND EFFECT] Great War Project Now we are joined by Mike shuster, former NPR correspondent and curator for the Great War Project blog, to walk us through his fascinating post - A Ring of Spies in Palestine… all about a Jewish Spy ring assisting the british against the turks --- that gets busted by the turkish Secret Police... Welcome Mike! [Mike Shuster] Thank you Mike. That was Mike Shuster from the Great War Project blog. LINK: http://greatwarproject.org/2017/10/01/ring-of-spies-in-palestine/ War in the Sky This week in the Great War in the sky, there are two stories worth noting. The first involves a british Battle cruiser - The HMS Repulse. At the time, she is touted to be the fastest battle ship of the fleet. On October 1st 1917, having built a strange - slightly up-angled - platform on top of the turret of one of the big 15-inch guns  - her captain faces the Repulse into the wind --. Sitting atop the platform, Royal Naval Air Service Commander F.J. Rutland fires up the engine on his Sopwith Pup fighter plane. He cranks the RPM, higher, higher and higher still as the battle cruiser pushes into the wind - Finally he lets loose the brakes and his planes takes to the air making it the first fighter plane ever launched from such a ship! He, of course, does NOT attempt a landing on same! And we have a link in the podcast notes showing you a picture of the rig they used. Also this week, on October 5th, after a long period of unfavorable weather, the Germans finally send planes to the UK for a night raid on London. Nineteen Gotha bombers and two Reisenflugzeug bombers come at the brits in several waves causing quite a bit of damage but inflicting no casualties. Now… Reisenflugzeug literally means GIANT AIRPLANE in German… and they were. These multi-engine behemoths had wingspans of 100 feet or more and seemed more like an exercise in the art of the possible instead of the art of war. This was to be the last German raid against the UK until January of 1918 - the Gotha bombers and two of these behemoth flying machines let loose their payloads over the UK during the war in the sky - 100 years ago this week. We also have a link to a picture of a Reisenflugzeug in the podcast notes. Link: http://media.iwm.org.uk/ciim5/331/146/mid_000000.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Riesenflugzeug_Siemens_Schuckert_VIII_1918.jpg/1200px-Riesenflugzeug_Siemens_Schuckert_VIII_1918.jpg [SOUND EFFECT] The Great War Channel If you’d like to watch some videos about WW1, visit our friend at the Great War Channel on Youtube - They have well over 400 episodes about WW1 and from a more European perspective. New episodes for this week include: The Battle of Polygon Wood Recap of Our Trip to Italy and Slovenia And Denmark in WW1 Follow the link in the podcast notes or search for “the great war” on youtube. Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWar World War One NOW [SOUND EFFECT] We have moved forward in time to the present… Welcome to WW1 Centennial News NOW  - This part of the program is not about history but how the centennial of the War that changed the world is being commemorated today. Commission News This week in Commission news, we highlight a panel discussion about the Origins of the Trilateral Alliance - The alliance between Britain, America and France during World War One, its difficult birth, and its enduring impact after the war. The event was part of the Great War Alliance Forum at the Meridian International Center, a premier nonprofit global leadership organization headquartered in Washington DC Our own Commissioner Monique Seefried was part of the team that explored the history of the trilateral alliance; societal changes and the future of global conflict. You can read more about the event and watch the videos of this insightful discussion by following the link in the podcast notes. Link:https://www.meridian.org/project/the-great-war-alliance-forum/ [Sound Effect] Activities and Events Cardines Field Next, in our Activities and Events Section, we wanted to follow up on our report about the Rededication of Cardines Baseball Field which took place on September 29th, US Centennial Commissioner Jack Monahan attended the event in Rhode island,  that included an Army-Navy baseball game played by students from the U.S. Naval War College dressed in period baseball uniforms. Thanks to Associated Press reporter Jennifer McDermott from Rhode Island, the story about this unique and fun WW1 commemoration event got picked up by newspapers, blogs and posts all around the country This includes the New York Times, the Washington Post and local papers in Washington State, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and more. Check out the articles from across the country in the podcast notes. We invite YOU to add your own event to the National U.S. WW1 Centennial Events Register. Go to ww1cc.org/events, click the big red button and post your WW1 commemoration event for all to discover. We just added a new category this week for Social Media Events - so if you are planning a Facebook Live, livestream, WW1 Hackathon or other online WW1 commemoration event - get it posted and let our community of interest know! links: http://ww1cc.org/events https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/09/29/us/ap-us-wwi-baseball-game.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/09/28/army-soldiers-and-navy-sailors-to-recreate-world-war-i-era-baseball-game/?utm_term=.aa623b76c64e http://www.thenewportbuzz.com/batter-up-naval-war-college-to-host-wwi-baseball-at-cardines-field-this-friday/12817 http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/article175660656.html http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/article175660656.html http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Sailors-and-soldiers-to-recreate-World-War-I-12240885.php http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/sports/article_d3a6e966-fb51-5b87-8718-dc03ab061fae.html http://newsok.com/sailors-and-soldiers-to-recreate-world-war-i-baseball-game/article/feed/1435175 https://www.theet.com/web_exclusive/us/sailors-and-soldiers-recreate-world-war-i-baseball-game/article_3da2b656-0e29-5316-845e-0fa637e2e5d2.html http://www.phillytrib.com/news/state_and_region/sailors-and-soldiers-recreate-world-war-i-baseball-game/article_2bc1387a-441a-5107-a1b6-00254a8585a9.html [SOUND EFFECT] Richard Rubin Talks To Towns We are joined by our good friend Richard Rubin - author of the WWI books, The Last of the Doughboys and Back Over There. Richard is joining us today to talk to us about his experiences during speaking engagements across the country about World War One. Welcome, Richard! [exchange greetings] [So Richard, you have gone around the country to speak about your books, the research that went into them and World War 1 at large -  tell us a bit about these events?] [Richard, you mentioned that people often come with artifacts,  photos, mementos, and family histories. Why do you think people are so eager to share these with you? ] [-Is there one story or artifact that someone brought in that stands out in your mind?] [-If somebody wants to have hold one of these events, how do they get a hold of you?] Richard Rubin - Thank you very much for coming on! That was author Richard Rubin, we have links in the podcast notes to Richard’s website which is also a great way to contact him. link:https://www.richardrubinonline.com/ [SOUND EFFECT] Speaking WW1 And now for our feature “Speaking World War 1 - Where we  explore today’s words & phrases that are rooted in the war  --- First some background - In spanish, a bobo is a fool, a clown, or someone who is easily cheated" … in the late 1800’s the term was anglicised into “booby” for terms like Booby Prize - and Booby Trap… then, it signified a prank like a book, or water put atop a door left ajar - so when someone walked in - Sploosh! And a great big guffaw! In WWI the word ‘Booby Trap” this week’s speaking WW1 word - took on a whole new sinister meaning! The English journalist Sir Philip Gibbs wrote in his war memoir From Bapaume to Passchendaele: “the enemy left … slow-working fuses and ‘booby-traps’ to blow a man to bits or blind him for life if he touched a harmless looking stick or opened the lid of a box, or stumbled over an old boot.” So troops picked up the phrase to describe a myriad of explosive devices deliberately disguised as a harmless objects often left behind in territory that exchanged hands, hidden in doorways, set to go off when a curious soldier opened the lid to a box or rifled through abandoned equipment. In modern times with this tactic becoming a major tool in asymmetric warfare the term was updated to IED - Improvised Explosive Device. Booby-trap --- a fool’s trap - one more word that was altered forever during the War that Changed the World. See the podcast notes to learn more! link: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/28/first-world-war-one-soldiers-tommies-common-language-trenches http://joellambert.com/123/history-booby-traps/   [SOUND EFFECT] 100 Cities/100 Memorials Chris Stout - Ridgewood, NJ Next, we are going to profile another 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project. That is our $200,000 matching grant giveaway to rescue ailing WW1 memorials. Last week, we profiled a project from Swanton Ohio. This week, we head to Ridgewood, NJ. Joining us is Chris Stout, a member of Ridgewood’s American Legion Post 53 and a self-appointed amateur local historian. Welcome, Chris! [exchange greetings] [Chris.. The saying is “a man is not dead until he is forgotten” and that frames your 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project. Tell us about it.] [What was your reaction when you learned about being one of the awardees for a Matching Grant by the program?] [Can you tell us about the rededication that took place on Memorial day?] [Chris - What distinguishes your project - for me - is that it is a fairly small project that is righting a large issue… Congratulations to you and your whole post!] Thank you so much for being here with us today! That was Chris Stout, member of American Legion Post 53, local historian and resident of Ridgewood, New Jersey. We will continue to profile the submitting teams and their unique and amazing projects on the show over the coming months. Learn more about the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials program at ww1cc.org/100memorials or follow the link in the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org/100memorials http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/3166-first-50-official-wwi-centennial-memorials-to-be-announced.html   [SOUND EFFECT] Stories of Service Rendezvous With death - Interview with David Hanna In our “Remember the veterans” section, today we have David Hanna with us. David is a history teacher at Stuyvesant (Sty-ves-ant) High School in New York City and author of two books, Knights of the Sea about a naval battle that occurred off the coast of Maine in 1813; and Rendezvous with Death, about the original group of American volunteers in the French Army in 1914. Welcome, David! [exchange greetings] [David, how did you come to write a book about the American Volunteers of WW1?] [As you’ve noted, the dozens of Americans that volunteered in 1914 represented a cross-section of American society at the time. What common impulse made them volunteer for the war?] [There are many famous individuals who volunteered early on in the war: Ernest Hemingway, Alan Seeger, e. e. cummings, Walt Disney… but of all the many volunteers you’ve researched, does anyone stand out to you?] [David: How did you decide on the title “Rendezvous with Death”?] [David - put up a website on the Commissions server - what kinds of information can I find there?] Thank you so much for joining us! That was David Hanna, author of Rendezvous with Death and curator of the website at ww1cc.org/rendezvous The links are in the podcast notes. Link:http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/rendezvous-with-death-home-page.html https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Death-Americans-Foreign-Civilization/dp/1621573966/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 International Report For our International Report, we head to France, to the town of Versaille for an interesting story about two companion statues one of General Pershing and the other of the Marquis de Lafayette The statues were recently restored and re-dedicated on October 6th 2017. The dual monuments to the generals were originally built in 1937, two equestrian statues of the generals on nine meter tall pedestals on either side of the road leading into the town of Versaille. The two statues were erected to commemorate the friendship between France and the United States and to pay tribute to the Americans troops for their significant contribution to the Allied victory in 1918. The statues were hastily built in plaster with a bronze patina (puh-tee-nuh) so they could be in place and on view for they’re inauguration, which took place with General Pershing present on a European tour. The plaster statues were quickly damaged by exposure and had never been replaced, until now. On October 6th 2017, exactly 80 years after the initial inauguration, permanent versions of the statues were re-dedicated.  Read more about the statues and the rededication at the links in the podcast notes. link:http://www.pershing-lafayette-versailles.org/ http://centenaire.org/fr/en-france/versailles-ceremonie-restauration-monument-pershing-la-fayette   WWrite Blog It’s time for an update for our WWRITE blog, which explores WWI’s Influence on contemporary writing and scholarship, this week's post is: “What the Mountains Hold: A Writer's Trek Through the Dolomites of Mark Helprin's WWI Italy” The post brings a fresh face to the WWI Italy described in  Hemingway's “A Farewell to Arms”. Author and veteran, Shannon Huffman Polson, takes us on a spellbinding trek through the Dolomites, where 689,000 Italians perished during the war. Following the footsteps of characters from Mark Helprin's novel, “A Soldier of the Great War”, Polson leads us through the stark, striking landscape of one of Italian-history's most indelible memories. A stunning narrative not to be missed! Read it by following the link in the podcast notes. Link: www.ww1cc.org.wwrite http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/articles-posts/3190-what-the-mountains-hold.html   The Buzz - WW1 in Social Media Posts That brings us to the buzz - the centennial of WW1 this week in social media with Katherine Akey - Katherine - You have two stories to share with us today - Take it away! Thanks Theo! Fort Riley and the 1st Division Museum Watch a great video series about the 1st division in WW1! link:https://www.facebook.com/FtRileyMuseums/ https://www.facebook.com/FtRileyMuseums/videos/1217575371721494/ Countdown to Veterans Day Follow us as we #countdowntoveteransday . You can join in, too! link:https://www.facebook.com/ww1centennial/photos/a.290566277785344.1073741829.185589304949709/845531832288783/?type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/countdowntoveteransday https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/countdowntoveteransday/?hl=en   Closing Well It’s time to wrap things up - and for those who listen through to the very end of the episode you know about the little treats we always put there. We want to thank our guests: Mike Shuster and his report on espionage in the middle east   Richard Rubin, telling us about his experiences speaking across the country Chris Stout from the 100 Cities / 100 Memorials project in Ridgewood, New Jersey David Hanna giving us insight into the Americans who joined the war well before America did Katherine Akey the Commission’s social media director and also the line producer for the show. And I am Theo Mayer - your host.   The US World War One Centennial Commission was created by Congress to honor, commemorate and educate about WW1. Our programs are to-- inspire a national conversation and awareness about WW1; This program is a part of that…. We are bringing the lessons of the 100 years ago into today's classrooms; We are helping to restore WW1 memorials in communities of all sizes across our country; and of course we are building America’s National WW1 Memorial in Washington DC. If you like the work we are doing, please support it with a tax deductible donation at ww1cc.org/donate - all lower case Or if you are on your smart phone text  the word: WW1 to 41444. that's the letters ww the number 1 texted to 41444. Any amount is appreciated. We want to thank commission’s founding sponsor the Pritzker Military Museum and Library for their support. The podcast can be found on our website at ww1cc.org/cn   on  iTunes and google play ww1 Centennial News, and on Amazon Echo or other Alexa enabled devices. Our twitter and instagram handles are both @ww1cc and we are on facebook @ww1centennial. Thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to share the stories you are hearing here with someone about the war that changed the world! [music - The man behind the hammer and the plow - Arthur Fields - Edison Record] Alexa: Play the W W 1 Centennial News Podcast [Alexa response]   So long!

The Essential Equipment You Need To Start Your Own Podcast Are you dreaming of starting your very own Podcast, but don’t know where to start? Maybe you’re thinking it is really complicated, you don’t know where to start, and that is why you are reading this page. I can understand, it does sound super technical to get setup, there are a million and one things you have to get done you have to get extra equipment to enable you to begin Podcasting. Or do you..? I often get asked, Chris… What equipment do I really need to start a Podcast? My answer quite often surprises them… (My Answer…) – Not very much to be honest! In short, you may only need a simple headset ($20/£15) with Microphone, a computer and somewhere to host your audio files, and that’s it. If you have a smartphone and a simple set of headphones with in-built microphone you have pretty much what you need right there. Now don’t get me wrong here, you can add a lot more bells and whistles to make your show better, the audio cleaner, better hosting with more details or basic stats so you can check and keep an eye on your essential numbers… …but to get started do you really need all of the equipment? That’s up to you to decide, but remember you can create and run your very own Podcast on a very limited budget with limited resources. Anything else is just there to enhance the experience for your listeners and subscribers or to enhance the show and business overall.

Totally Professional Support Podcast 001   Sonia Caprari and Chris Dabbs CHRIS: Well hello there and welcome to Totally Professional Support’s first podcast ever! My name is Chris Dabbs and I will kind of be your host and with me I’ve got Sonia Caprari, say hello Sonia. SONIA: Hello. CHRIS: Hello. I’ve got Sonia Caprari who is basically the person for Totally Professional Support who deals with all sorts of things and helps lots of small businesses to be able to accomplish their administration tasks properly. So I’m sure I didn’t do you justice there Sonia so do you want to explain exactly what Totally Professional Support does? SONIA: Yes I will. I will start by saying that I’m a virtual assistant and a lot of people as soon as you say that sort of go, “Huh, what does that mean?” CHRIS: Exactly, what does it mean? SONIA: Well I can provide you with administrative support sat at my home office so I don’t have to come to your office, I can do everything that needs to be done from my desk at home. CHRIS: So hang on a second, so I am an employer and I need some – well obviously you will go into what sort of administration tasks you perform – but I need some whatever done and you will be able to do that for me from your own office and not have to come to my office. How does that work? SONIA: There are so many things online now, the software doesn’t really get installed on your computer at work, it can all be done remotely. So that’s how I manage to work from home because all my customers use software that I can access from anywhere. CHRIS: So what sort of software are you talking about there? SONIA: Well predominantly I use email management software which means… CHRIS: So like…sorry, is that like Outlook and things like that? SONIA: No Outlook is completely different. Email management software such as Mail Chimp and A-Webber or Constant Contact, they are the three systems that I can use. And what we do is we use them to send out bulk emails, so things like newsletters, people do e-zines, they send out reference emails or emails that they want their customers to read that contain information that is useful to them. And obviously sending out offers, high value gifts – things like that so you’re engaging with your client, you’re engaging with your customer on a constant basis. CHRIS: Okay, so what you’re saying is like…I guess it’s sending out newsletters to your client base. SONIA: Yes. CHRIS: Oh right. So when I get a, I don’t know, an email from Microsoft or something saying that I subscribe to Microsoft products, would I like to buy another product or we’ve had a change in a product or something like that; they send that out to tens of thousands of people I guess and you manage that for other companies. SONIA: Yes I do, that’s exactly it yes. CHRIS: That would be useful; I think I could do with a service like that actually, to be fair. I’ve got loads of clients and I hardly ever email them properly and that’s completely due to lack of time. SONIA: Well…oh sorry. I was going to say that this is the problem that most people have, it’s a lack of time to collate the information, to get your emails in one place and then to be able to sit down on a regular basis and work out what you’re actually going to send to your customers – so what is it that they want to read from you. There’s a fine line between bombarding them with information and being there on the outskirts so if they ever need you they remember who you are. CHRIS: I think that’s one of the problems, I mean i unsubscribe – I guess this is the kind of thing you are talking about as well about mailing lists – is that I unsubscribe from so many emailing lists because I get three or four emails a day from some people. And I suppose that is not something that you would become involved with I guess that is your client. Okay, let’s have a chat then about how your particular email services or your email management services have helped people. I mean I’ve looked at your explainer video as I say the one that is on your website, which is really great by the way, it just looks so cute. Looking through all the services, you talk about Mail Chimp which you mentioned earlier on, so what happens with that then? I mean so I would, as an employer, would say to you, “First of all here is my account details, you can log in there” and what happens from there? SONIA: Well I can have a login as the client or I actually do have my own Mail Chimp account, I can actually go into the clients email account and set me up as part of their account. So I don’t actually have to log into their own specific account all the time, I can actually access their account through my own. CHRIS: Okay, like a management account or something. SONIA: Yes so you don’t have to leave out passwords and things, especially in my case, if I have another VA that’s working for me I don’t want to give my client’s details to her so I set her up in a different way through her own mail chimp system and therefore she never sees the client’s password. CHRIS: That was a question I was going to ask because you know the privacy of all of these email accounts is paramount, isn’t it, because isn’t there a problem with data protection or something like that? SONIA: Yes you want to make sure that, if you have people working for you, you protect your client and make sure your client’s customers – your clients information – is well protected. CHRIS: Yes I think the penalties, if I remember correctly, for letting your information leak are quite severe nowadays aren’t they? SONIA: Yes. And Mail Chip has a policy anyway that anybody on a list should be there because at some point they’ve given you permission to be on that list, you can’t just spam people. CHRIS: Exactly. So the list, if I remember correctly, whenever I’ve signed up for things I put in my email address and that sort of stuff and then the system – whatever system it is I guess – sends me an email to verify that I have actually requested to be part of that mailing list. SONIA: Yes, Mail Chimp doesn’t actually do that, A-Webber does but Mail Chimp doesn’t. CHRIS: Oh okay, does it not? SONIA: No, Mail Chimp actually believes that you have put these people onto a list because at some point they may have subscribed to a product or a service or they may have filled out a lead page and given you their details. So you are clicking a button in Mail Chimp to say, “Yes, I have permission from this person to use their details.” CHRIS: Oh okay. SONIA: But as I said, A-Webber works in a slightly different way and it does send out a confirmation email. CHRIS: Well it would be interesting, for our next podcast perhaps, to talk about the differences between Mail Chimp and A-Webber you say? Is that the other one? SONIA: Yes. CHRIS: …the differences between those and any others that you think are relevant to our listeners. Okay, now I suppose one of the things that I’ve noticed, we’re talking about mailing lists and all that sort of stuff here, is that there’s some big change coming up – immediately I think there is isn’t there? – in terms of being able to use a return address or something complicated like that. What’s all that about? SONIA: What it is is it’s actually taken effect now, I’ve been telling my clients for months to sort out their email address. So what’s happened is that Gmail and Microsoft have made a policy change, which means this policy change affects the deliverability of your emails if you’re using email management software. So for example, if at the moment you have yourcompanyname@gmail.com... CHRIS: So totallyprofessionalsupport@gmail.com? SONIA: Yes, for example. And you use that email address when you set up your list in Mail Chimp or A-Webber – this will be a policy that is going to take effect throughout everything. CHRIS: So InfusionSoft and all those sorts of shopping carts and all that sort of stuff I guess? SONIA: Yes, anything that is sending out bulk emails to people. So if you’re using as I said, totallyprofessionalsupport@gmail.com, what will happen now is that it’s not going to like that email address because all of these domains…I don’t want to say to people it’s not going to work, your email will be delivered to your clients but they can’t guarantee that it will be delivered to every client. This policy changed is called DMARC and what it does is it looks at the email address that it’s coming from and if it’s not coming from a proper domain name, so I have a domain name that is totally professional support, if it’s not coming from that domain name and it’s just coming from a Gmail account or a Hotmail account or a Live account, it looks at that and thinks it could possibly be spam. CHRIS: Okay, why would they think it’s spam? SONIA: Well in reality if you have a company, you’ve set up a business, you’ve got a website, why are you not using an email that has the same branding as your website domain name? Why are you not doing that? So in reality I’ve got a Gmail account but it’s my personal Gmail account, so I use that for personal emails which is fine because sending an email from your own Gmail account is not bulk sending, you’re just sending emails to whoever you’re sending them to. but I am talking about business accounts, I’m talking about people who are sending bulk emails through a particular email management system, the email management system will look at those email addresses and think they’re spam – that is really what it comes down to. CHRIS: Oh okay. So basically, if you use one of these email management systems and you set it up where it is joeblogswidgets @ gmail.com and that is the address that people see in their email – Outlook or whatever it is. When they receive the email it says “From: joeblogswidgets @ gmail.com” the chances are, what you’re saying is Gmail, Microsoft and all those sorts of people, that email that arrives from that address – in other words from a free address like Gmail – is going to be put into the spam folder and therefore you could end up with your clients not receiving your message at all just because of that. SONIA: Absolutely yes because up to now a lot of spam emails have been created, haven’t they, through Gmail accounts or Live accounts or AOL accounts, Yahoo… CHRIS: Hotmail. SONIA: Exactly, how many people have received an email from a friend with a Yahoo account and it turns out to be a virus? So what it’s trying to say is, “Well if you’re running a legitimate business you should have a legitimate email address.” So you cannot now send bulk emails using a free email address that is really what it comes down to. CHRIS: And you can help, obviously, your clients to make sure that they’re not going to fall foul of this new system by auditing their Mail Chimp setup. How would you go about that? SONIA: Well with my current clients obviously I’ve alerted them all months ago to this and slowly, slowly they’ve been changing their email accounts so they’ve actually got a proper domain name email that can be used in Mail Chimp or whatever. If you haven’t done that yet you need to go back to wherever you purchased your domain name because more than likely you’re given a free, or number of free email addresses anyway when you sign up for your domain. And I think the problem people have is they don’t understand this bit when they set up their website so they end up going to Gmail or somewhere, creating an email account because it’s much easier than doing it through their actual domain provider. CHRIS: Yes I know what you mean because obviously putting in all the settings and all that sort of stuff can be a real pain in the…well backside really I guess because it can be quite complicated. You’ve got IMAPs and POP3s and all that stuff so I can see why people would go to a free service like Gmail or Hotmail or Live or whatever it is to do that. So I can understand that. But you would be able to guide somebody through setting up their email, what is it, server or an account? SONIA: You need to obviously…I don’t know how many people I’ve spoken to who said, “But I don’t know how to get into my domain” uh well I can’t help you there I’m afraid, if you can’t remember the login and password that is a bit of an issue. CHRIS: That’s true, they would have to go back to their domain supplier and request a new password and stuff. SONIA: Yes they would. But if they don’t want to do this themselves then I could certainly do this for them but they would have to give me their login details so that log into their account and then I can have a look from there to see whether they do have a free email address or whether they have to pay to set one up. CHRIS: So really, this could be pretty much a nightmare couldn’t it for people? SONIA: I think it could if you don’t realize the policy has changed because what will happen is a lot of your emails are going to end up going into spam boxes and your customer will never receive the email. CHRIS: Which of course they’ve slaved and worked really hard to make it engaging through the content, through the design and everything else and then it’s just completely wasted and they’ll be scratching their heads thinking, “Why does no one respond to my emails?” SONIA: Well yes and I am going to start looking at people’s stats over the next month, this has only taken effect within the last week, so in the next couple of months I will have a look at that for my current clients and see whether it has gone down with the people that haven’t changed their email addresses yet. CHRIS: So you can actually check out the response rate and the open rate… SONIA: You can see who’s read them, you can see whether they’ve clicked them – there is a little bit of data you can collect from that. Looking at what we’ve done already and looking at what will happen after the first of July it will be interesting to see where the customers have changed their email addresses versus the customers that haven’t changed their email addresses. CHRIS: Yes absolutely. So what is this called again, DMARC? SONIA: It’s called DMARC; the point of it is that…a lot of providers did this a while ago, so people like Hotmail it did actually happen a while ago. It’s Gmail and Microsoft, the two biggest, who have now said, “Right, that’s it” 30th of June it actually to effect. And that’s it, it’s done, it’s happened. CHRIS: Right. And all of this is to stop people from sending spam out really because, as you said before, it’s easy to pick up a Gmail address, easy to setup an account of this, easy to pick up a mailing list of people – which you shouldn’t be doing of course, really you shouldn’t be using any old email list, you should have people who’ve subscribed to your own list – and then they just send out lots and lots of spam, millions of emails a day. SONIA: If you look at your own inbox, your spam box, and I look at mine, I can see the amount of rubbish that goes in there. And unfortunately sometimes people do have a free email account, you don’t receive their emails and the reason for that is because they are being thrown in the spam box, especially if they’ve sent a lot out in the course of day it’s quite feasible for them to end up in a spam box or be stopped because of maybe an attachment that’s in it or something that has been put into the email. So you have to be aware that it’s all very well and good having a free email account but I would only use that now for personal use. If you have a business you should be using your branding for sending out emails so people can recognize you instantly. CHRIS: And actually if you think about it I guess this will help people to understand the implications of your emails being marked as spam and what you can do about that as well. Is that something that you can help people with? So in other words designing their text in their emails and their subjects for the email, which I think also has an impact on this stuff doesn’t it? You know, so that it’s not picked up as spam by whichever email client someone’s using like Outlook or Outlook Express or whatever. Can you help them with that? To make sure that it’s all friendly for the email clients? SONIA: Of course yes. We do try to put relevant subject lines in and not ones that are going to cause an issue. CHRIS: So what sort of ones would cause an issue? I mean I always think that if you see an email that says “Open this!” or “Watch that!” or “This will be great” or something like that, they’re always going to be picked up as spam because who would normally write an email like that? And who would normally put the subject like that? I think that would be a bit strange wouldn’t it? Am I right in thinking that or are those things okay? SONIA: I usually say to my clients if you’re going to use a subject line with such a big exclamation mark at the end of it like “Open now!”, then you should maybe follow that up with the name of your company or you start the subject line with your company name and then you put “Open this now!” CHRIS: So that would make it easier…that would make it more sensible, or sorry, the system would look at it and think, “Okay well that’s probably real because why would there be that name in there.” SONIA: I understand why people want to use a subject line that has that impact because you’re hoping that the person that receives it will actually open it, but yes I think that the subject line is important. CHRIS: Okay, so let’s have a think about exactly how you can help your clients or potential clients or existing clients or whatever, to make sure that their emails aren’t being wasted. You know I know from my own points of view, I work very hard to create my mailing list, I make sure my website’s good, I make sure that all the communication that I send out is interesting and people join my mailing list because they want to know more about me, they want to know about the services I offer and it’s hard. You build up all of these people one by one and then this DMARC comes along and potentially throws all of that out of the window just over one simple mistake that I could make. So can you explain how your system, or sorry, the Totally Professional Support’s system would make sure that that doesn’t happen for somebody? Does that make sense? SONIA: Yes it does. What you need to do is you need to login to your email management software and you’re going to have to make some changes to your lists. CHRIS: This is in Mail Chimp or A-Webber or something right? SONIA: Yes because as you’ve set a list up and you’ve added subscribers to it over a period of time, your list will already have the email address that it’s going to be sent from. So if you need to change your email address because of this DMARC process then you need to go to every single one of your lists and change the email address to a new email address that is part of your branding. So don’t forget, you need to go and log in to your email service provider and check to see whether you have a free email account that you can actually create yourself an email account if you don’t have one already. CHRIS: Based on my domain name already? SONIA: Yes, based on your domain name already. And then once you’ve done all that you can then go into Mail Chimp or A-Webber and change the email address from the old one to the new one. CHRIS: What happens if I haven’t got time for that? Can you do that for me? SONIA: Of course I can, of course, just give me a call. CHRIS: See now this is the power of a virtual assistant because I can call you, you don’t have to come to my office to do all this do you? You can do it from where you are you said earlier on. SONIA: I can, I can do it sat at my desk. CHRIS: And not in my office so that’s a good thing. So basically I save, I’ve got to think of all this from an employer’s point of view; I save money on your travelling, I save money on having a desk space for you to use whenever you come in and there are all sorts of things. And of course, because you’re a contractor, I would also save on any employment costs as well – PAYE, that sort of thing, insurance costs and things. SONIA: Exactly CHRIS: Alright, okay. And how do you charge? Do you charge like hourly or weekly? How does that work? SONIA: I can charge hourly, it depends on the job that I am being asked to do. Most of my customers are on retainer packages which means they buy a package of hours from me and that makes it a little bit cheaper for them to use me. CHRIS: That’s useful I guess, but also, if someone’s away on holiday or sick or something like that and their tasks need to be covered – and I suppose depending on what your skillset is – you could cover those tasks. SONIA: Yes definitely. CHRIS: Oh that’s interesting. I have to talk to you about some other bits and pieces; social media management I think is something that really is something that causes me a lot of problems because there is so much of that social media that needs to be managed in terms of Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus and Pinterest and whichever other ones there are. But is that another service that you guys provide? Please say yes! SONIA: It’s certainly something we can help you with yes. CHRIS: Excellent. Okay well Sonia I tell you what, tell people how they can contact you – you know your telephone numbers and emails and all that sort of stuff – and we’ll go from there. SONIA: If you want to email me its sonia@totallyprofessionalsupport.co.uk, my website is the same www.totallyprofessionalsupport.co.uk, my mobile number is 07526 992 184 if you want to call me. CHRIS: Fantastic. And I guess that if people go to www.totallyprofessionalsupport.co.uk they can sign up for your mailing list so they can get more details and obviously be told when your podcasts are coming out and so that they can subscribe to those. SONIA: That’s right yes. CHRIS: Well everyone thanks very much for listening and we hope that the DMARC system is now completely explained to you. It’s quite an important thing if you want your emails to get through to your clients or potential customers that you fought so hard to build up in your mailing list. You really need to make sure that you’ve changed your from email address from a free one that you may have set it up with. So in other words bill @ gmail.com or fred or bellinda or lucy or whatever @ gmail.com, change it from that and change it to your own domain name’s email address. So in other words change it to bill @ totallyprofessionalsupport.co.uk, otherwise you run the risk of your emails not being delivered to your recipients and that can’t be a good thing. Now Sonia I hope I got that right, is that right? SONIA: You did, yes you did. CHRIS: Hey I’ve learned something, fantastic. And also, the thing I’ve learned is that if I need any help with administration tasks, you guys are the people to call. Okay so thanks very much for that, as I said, my name is Chris Dabbs and that was Sonia Caprari from Totally Professional Support and this is Totally Professional Support’s first podcast. Join us for Sonia’s next podcast where she’s going to be looking at something else that’s really relevant to small businesses and how they can really push forward their marketing by using a virtual assistant like Totally Professional Support. So thanks very much Sonia, is there anything you want to add at the end? SONIA: No thank you. CHRIS: Okay, well thanks very much and bye-bye. SONIA: Bye-bye. www.totallyprofessionalsupport.co.uk www.thepodcaststudio.co.uk

In episode 034 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, I interview my co host, Christian Knutson on protecting the environment through security and we also talk about how civil engineers can make a difference to it. Here are some of the questions I ask Chris: What is environmental security? What is included within this framework? Can […] The post TCEP 034: Protecting the Environment Through Security: What Civil Engineers Should Know appeared first on Engineering Management Institute.

Episode 31 of the Old Dominion Wrestling Monarch Matcast talks with two-time All-American Chris Mecate, the 2016 Old Dominion Alumni Association Male Athlete of the Year. The California native became the first wrestler in Old Dominion's Division I history to become a back-to-back All-American and just the third wrestler in the program's history at the Division I level to be a two-time All-American. Mecate recently graduated and was also named the NWCA's All-Academic team earlier this week. What's next for Chris? What's his favorite funny Steve Martin story? Find out on the ODU Wrestling Monarch Matcast. SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW iTunes | Stitcher | Spreaker | Soundcloud | TuneIn | Google Play Music | RSS | Android App | iOS App JOIN THE TEAM And if you're a fan of the extensive and broad-based reach of the shows on the Mat Talk Podcast Network, become a TEAM MEMBER today. There are various levels of perks for the different levels of team membership. If you like wrestling content -- scratch that -- if you LOVE great wrestling content, consider becoming a team member. You'll get some cool stuff too. Looking to start a podcast of your own? Get a free month with Libsyn by using the promo code MTO when you sign up. You'll get the remainder of the month from when you sign up as well as the next month free. It'll be enough time to kick the tires and lights some fires. Follow @mattalkonline on Twitter for updates and nuggets of information about the ODU Wrestling Monarch Matcast and all the other shows that are part of the Mat Talk Podcast Network. You can also check out our network home page at www.mattalkonline.com.

Chris Morton the Founder & CEO @ Lyst, the fashion aggregation and discovery app and universal checkout cart that has pulled in more than $60m in funding from the likes of Balderton, Accel and DFJ. Chris was previously in the wonderful world of venture himself as an early stage investor with Balderton Capital where he focused on consumer internet companies. Prior to that Chris worked on various projects from making custard suits to working in renewable energy!    In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Chris come to found one of the hottest fashion startups, Lyst? What was the interview process with Benchmark like? 2.) Why did Chris become a VC first before an entrepreneur? What does being a VC allow you to become a better entrepreneur with? 3.) Chris has said before that we have not scratched the surface of e-commerce, so why have we not? What is the vision and what are the challenges that stand in the way? Question from Harry Briggs: Will we see physical retail stores largely disappear?  4.) Lyst place heavy emphasis on data collection and usage. Why is this? What does it power to Lyst to do? What interesting consumer trends and behaviours have been revealed from the data? 5.) How was the fundraising process for Chris? What did being in VC teach him about the process that he could implement in entrepreneurship? What were the challenges? What would he do differently if he were to raise again?   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Chris on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Matt Mazzeo is Managing Director at Lowercase Capital, alongside legendary angel investor, Chris Sacca. At Lowercase Matt leads a seed and series A investment strategy managing a portfolio of over forty investments including Uber, Twitter, Stripe and Optimizely just to name a few. Prior to joining Lowercase Capital, Matt spearheaded many of the digital and venture efforts at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Matt helped shape the agency’s seed stage investment strategy and played an integral role in the founding of CAA’s incubated start-up companies, including Funny or Die, WhoSay, and Moonshark. Matt has been recognized as an innovative force across technology, entertainment, and advertising for which Fast Company named Matt one of the Most Creative People in Business. In addition to making Forbes Midas Brink List in 2014, Matt has been recognized on both Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 List in 2013, and The Wrap’s Inaugural Innovators List.  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Matt made the transition from the world of celebrity management to the world of venture capital? 2.) How have we seen the personalisation of VCs in the emerging eco-system? Are VCs themselves brands now? How does Matt look to establish his brand? 3.) What are the required KPI's to make a successful investor? What is Matt pleased with in himself and what would he like to improve? 4.) Why will we see the decentralisation of VC away from the traditional Sand Hill Road? How does being in LA affect the operations and deal flow of Lowercase? 5.) What are Matt's biggest learnings from being partner with Chris? What has Matt founded the most challenging in making the transition from CAA to VC?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Matt's Fave Book: Fooled By Randomness Matt's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Jessica Lessin: The Information Matt's Most Recent Investment: Mobcrush   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.  

For SPP listeners only, the first 100 people to purchase a book via www.leadtosucceed.me will receive a signed copy of "Lead to Succeed". Order now and thank us later :) Chris Roebuck  - Everyone, everywhere is under pressure to work harder.  Many of us work to survive and get paid.  Bored and trapped, performance is low, family relationships suffer and organizational performance deteriorates.  To deliver real success, people must be inspired to be their best.  Whether you're an individual leader, a boss, a manager, an HR professional or a CEO, you must know how to transform both your own and your employees' performances.  So I guess it's a good thing that this week we are interviewing the guy who wrote the book (literally) on leadership. Chris Roebuck is the author of the new bestselling book, Lead to Succeed: The Only Leadership Book You Need. Based on over 30 years of being a leader and developing, assessing and coaching leaders around the world, Chris explains the tried and true basics of leadership and describes them in engaging, useful details. His book has been described as a “breakthrough” in thinking about leadership. Chris takes a view of leadership that can help you or other leaders be effective, ethical, entrepreneurial and engaging. The principle is simple – just two steps – one, maximize the effort your people give, then focus that on what really matters for the organization. In this episode, Chris lays out the first step – maximizing the effort of people – Mach 1 leadership as he calls it. Chris is a visiting Professor of Transformational Leadership at Cass Business School in London and advises major global organizations on improving performance through their people. The UK National Health Service, top legal firms, global investment banks, SMEs and even the Red Cross in Myanmar and Chinese Space Program have all relied on his expertise. He has held senior leadership roles at UBS, HSBC, KPMG & London Underground and has served in the British Army. While Chris was the Global Head of Leadership at UBS the bank won the title Best Company for Leaders in Europe and the story of the organizational success is now a Harvard Business School case study. "Leadership is about making a difference and transforming lives, nothing less. Sadly too few leaders even think that, let alone do it.” - Chris Roebuck Quotes from Chris: What we learn in this episode: What's going on currently in organizations? What is the "new world of work"? What do we all truly want from our boss? How can you maximize the effort your employees want to give you? What is leadership at its most basic level? Resources: To learn more about Chris ideas, blogs, media interviews: www.chrisroebuck.net To learn more about the book and the 2nd step (focus onto what matters - Mach 2): www.leadtosucceed.me To follow Chris on Twitter : @Chris__Roebuck To join the Lead To Succeed Online Community:  http://linkd.in/1sOnSHZ -- This episode is brought to you by: Igloo: Go to igloosoftware.com/smartpeople to use Igloo for free with up to 10 of your favorite coworkers or customers!

Chris LoCurto is the host of Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership podcast, which Andy was a guest on a few weeks ago (you can listen to the episode here). You can find Chris at http://ChrisLoCurto.com and www.twitter.com/ChrisLoCurto. Andy asks Chris: “What is the coolest thing going on your life right now?” • Chris says teaching business owners and leaders the information from EntreLeadership is the most exciting thing for him • Andy thinks EntreLeadership is an important book because it gives business owners a direction that they previously couldn’t put into words The lesson from EntreLeadership that has the biggest impact is personality styles • We give direction the same way we like to receive direction • If you try to give someone direction that way they don’t like to receive information, you’ll never get through to them • As a leader, it’s your job to learn how to communicate to people in a way they will understand, not theirs • Responsibility is great because it gives us hope and control over situations When you can change the culture of where you spend your most time (for most, your workplace), it starts changing the way you look at everything: • Your family • Your kids • What you do on your weekends When your home life, finances, or personal fulfillment is suffering, it’s inevitable that your work performance will also suffer • This is why Andy’s message works for companies in every industry • Regardless of your profession, the principles of leadership and entrepreneurship apply to you, because we’re all in sales Questions for Listeners • What’s the best example of leadership you’ve ever seen? o Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY o E-Mail: InTheLoop@AndyAndrews.com o Facebook.com/AndyAndrews o Twitter.com/AndyAndrews

Wherein we talk about nothing.CHRIS: Well, what’s the show about? COREY: It’s about nothing. CHRIS: No topic? COREY: No, forget the topic. CHRIS: You’ve got to have a topic. COREY: Who says you gotta have a topic? CHRIS: And it’s about nothing? COREY: Absolutely nothing. Yeah. I think we’ve really got something here. CHRIS: What do we got? COREY: An idea. CHRIS: What idea? COREY: An idea for the show. CHRIS: I still don’t know what the idea is. COREY: It’s about nothing. CHRIS: Right. COREY: Everybody’s doing something, we’ll do nothing.Theme music by Latché Swing.

The news of a fourth series of Torchwood becoming a reality dropped like a bomb in the Doctor Who fandom world, as many had written off the idea once FOX stepped away from the table. With Warren unavailable, Steven and Chris are joined by Chip from the Two-minute Time Lord podcast to talk about Torchwood, cover the latest episode of Doctor Who (Gareth Roberts’ “The Lodger”), as well as the news of the week. Will this be another Planet of the Dead, or will Gareth Roberts redeem himself in the eyes of the RFS gang, particularly the relentlessly unforgiving Chris? What does our esteemed guest think of the latest Who?Check out the show notes at www.radiofreeskaro.com.