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n this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, we dive into the entrepreneurial journey of Summer Craig, founder of Craig Group, a strategic consulting firm. Summer shares how a vacation epiphany led her to start a business while caring for a newborn. Her firm now partners with private equity-backed companies, helping middle-market businesses transition from startups to structured entities ready for expansion. We explore the early challenges of entrepreneurship, including securing initial revenue from clients like Gulf States Toyota. Summer discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly fueled growth in the middle market and healthcare sectors. She emphasizes the importance of building high-quality teams through strategic hiring, focusing on complementary skills and an ownership mentality. Craig Group stands out with its hands-on approach and a patent-pending software platform for sales and marketing forecasting. Summer highlights the significance of creating a flexible work environment that prioritizes excellence and authentic client relationships. Her innovative approach to consulting demonstrates how companies can adapt and thrive in challenging business landscapes. The conversation reveals the delicate balance of cost-saving strategies and necessary investments. Summer shares insights into maintaining a remote work culture built on trust and continuous improvement. We learn about the power of problem-solving, client feedback, and the determination required to transform business challenges into opportunities. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Summer Craig, founder of Craig Group, shares her entrepreneurial journey that started with an epiphany during a vacation while caring for her newborn. Craig Group focuses on strategic consulting for private equity-backed middle-market companies, helping them transition from successful startups to structured entities. The early days of the business involved securing foundational clients like Gulf States Toyota, with initial revenues critical for startup success. Summer discusses the positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business growth, particularly in the middle market and healthcare sectors. Strategic hiring decisions and fostering a company culture of complementary skills and flexible work environments are highlighted as key to building high-quality teams. Craig Group differentiates itself with a hands-on, results-driven approach and a patent-pending software platform that enhances sales and marketing forecasting. Building trust with elite clients through effective communication and personal interactions is emphasized as crucial for maintaining successful business relationships. The episode underscores the importance of collecting client feedback to ensure service excellence and continuous improvement. Summer uses her passion for mountain climbing as a metaphor for her entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the determination and vision required to navigate business challenges. The conversation concludes with reflections on the importance of strategic growth consulting and the ongoing journey of team building and client success. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Craig Group GUESTS Summer CraigAbout Summer TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Summer Craig, founder and CEO of Craig Group. Summer's passion for excellence has helped fuel her company's growth, and she and her team's authentic approach to delivering for clients has formed relationships built on trust. Summer, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking the time to come on the podcast. Summer: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Chris: So I know there's a lot for us to talk about. I want to start with giving you the opportunity to tell the audience who your company is and what are you known for. Summer: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I love your podcast. I love what you're doing, telling people's stories, so I'm glad to be here. Chris: Thank you. Summer: Yeah, my story is a unique one, very interesting. It actually started with an actual epiphany that I had. I had a true, you know, entrepreneurial lightning strike moment. That that moment was sitting in Frisco, colorado, on vacation, while rocking my three month old third child, which is never the time that you should start a company. But I but that was my I had an epiphany, and the epiphany really was this that I was always going to work very hard, I was going to outwork the people around me, I was going to outwork my peers and I was in a fantastic role, fantastic job. But I had the epiphany that if I was going to always work that hard, no matter what, I could create more value for myself and for the economy by starting my own firm. And I knew that I needed to start my own firm because of that that, if I'm going to always do this, why not build something instead of working for someone else and creating value for somebody else? So that was the epiphany, and it was a true anxiety ridden, sweat inducing moment when I knew that I was going to start a company, you know, despite having a newborn third child. But fast forward. And you know, we're five and a half years later, and you know, we have a firm of 32 people and it turns out the Epiphany was the right way to go for me, that's a really unique story. Chris: And I'm sure your husband thought it was part of brain fog, but you proved him wrong. Summer: Yeah, actually he's been nothing. I think he said okay, sure, you know a little bit, maybe a little more, thinking like oh, we'll see what, we'll see what actually happens here. Chris: Okay, so. So it sounds like the inspiration for you was I want to do this for myself and build something that's mine. Tell us what it is that you've built. Summer: Yeah, absolutely. So what we've built is we built a strategic consulting firm. So we consult with sponsor-backed typically private equity-backed portfolio companies. We really focus on the middle market, lower middle market. What we do with those companies is we come in at different phases in the hold period even pre, even in LOI and we support top line organic growth. So we've built a system of tools and a system of really smart people and a platform that creates a formulaic way to streamline processes, streamline people, streamline technology for growth in these companies. The solution is really right size for companies that have been really successful but haven't really worked on their operations and growth. So they're selling whatever they're selling widgets, whatever it is but have they truly really looked and said is there anybody else I could sell to? Could I be doing something better? Could I be faster, could I do this more cheaply? They haven't really had to do that, but when the PE sponsors come in, you definitely do have to do that and what we're finding is that in a lot of in-house and PE there is a trend of hiring operating partners, which is a newer trend. So some have expertise on top line growth, but for the most part, that expertise is not in-house. So the PE firms need to go outside of their doors to get support to help these firms grow. Chris: So it sounds like you take a company that's almost been successful, despite themselves. That's right and help them systemize that that's right, so that they can maybe leverage it for more success. Summer: Well, yeah, and I mean I hope some of my clients are listening, but many are in Texas and I'll say it's so impressive, a lot of industrial manufacturing it unbelievably successful, either family businesses or entrepreneur-led businesses. But you're right, they haven't really had to. I'm using, you know, using air quotes here, but try that hard because they've had a great product right they've had a great story. the entrepreneur, the founder, had a really great connected network right, so that gets you to a certain amount of growth. But then when you have, you know, pe dollars coming in who are betting on you, there's a growth mandate and the growth mandate that that activity to grow is not the same as what it takes to start a business, so growth is harder and it takes more structure, and that's exactly right. We come in and say, man, this is awesome, how can we take what's awesome, do more of what's awesome, and let's try to reduce some of the risk that you have in the business, probably because nothing's repeatable, nothing's written down, maybe there's no technology supporting system, so we help them build that structure. Chris: And it helps them go to scale. Summer: That's exactly right. Chris: So let me take you back to the beginning, right after the epiphany. What were some of the first things you remember doing to kind of start the business? And, as you said, you build this thing of your own. What were some of those basic building blocks and things you did? Summer: Yeah, Well, for me personally, it was. The first thing was, you know, pray, look for guidance and then talk to people. So I spoke to a lot of people in my network just saying, hey, I've got this crazy idea, I want to build a firm. And the initial idea, while still very similar to what we do, was really around looking at sales and marketing and being able to tie the two together and prove ROI. So that's the crux of what we do right is show your work, show that this works. And I have a long career of traditional marketing. Marketing and marketing has always struggled to tie themselves to results. And that was really, you know, the core idea, you know, back when I originally founded it. But at the time I was working for Gulf States Toyota best people in the world and I'll never work for another company again. That was the, I think I topped out working for them and being, you know, affiliated with the Friedkin family. They are just salt of the earth. So I was very lucky. At the time when I had my epiphany, I said, well, wouldn't this be great if I built my business plan and I started my company but I already had a client? Wouldn't that just make me feel better? Chris: For those of you listening, it's the ideal thing to do. Summer: It really is the ideal and I think, as an entrepreneur especially somebody that I wanted to do something, but it does mitigate some risk when you first file that paperwork and you know you've got some revenue coming in. So I was lucky enough to have Gulf States Toyota before I actually quit my job, they had agreed to hire my firm, which at the time was me, and we had a great relationship and we ended up entering into a contract where I was consulting with them and I was able to do that the day I officially opened, you know, opened Craig Group and opened my doors, and I think that gave me just a little bit of peace, knowing that there was revenue coming in while I was building all the structure that you have to do, which, honestly, is quite painful. Chris: Right, it's very painful. It's always more work than you even can think. Right, absolutely. Summer: And if you've not done it before, which? Who has? That's something, that's a skill set that you know. I mean, I guess you know lawyers do it all the time. You probably do it all the time, right, setting up entities. But if you I just had this, I you know, probably should have advised, got more advice, but I definitely was able to say, oh well, I can do this, I can. And what state do you incorporate and why, and what do you do, and who do you bring in, and is it all those questions? As an entrepreneur, you have to just do it. Chris: We advise on those issues all the time. I was in a conversation yesterday with someone on the same issues and always tell people look, because as the entrepreneur, the other thing you're doing at the very beginning is trying to save every penny you can, and people will maybe try to do it themselves on the legal side, and I try to counsel people. It's an investment in your business, not an expense, and but try, you have to keep it manageable you're exactly right, exactly right. Summer: And luckily I was at that juncture. It was a small enough entity where I was able to get by with it. I don't cannot today with. I have, you know, a wonderful legal team, but that time, you know, just as an entrepreneur, it's really a pain, it's overwhelming, just to figure out how do I, how do I get you know, a wonderful legal team. But that time, you know, just as an entrepreneur, it's really a pain, it's overwhelming, just to figure out how do I, how do I get you know, get started. But again, I was lucky that I had a client and so I had revenue coming in. It really enabled me to get a lot of things done because you didn't have to worry so much about that. And I remember thinking my first goal was, oh, you know, back half of the year, six months, if I could just, you know, make my salary back right, thinking like, oh, I'll just replace my income. Well, that I quickly got client two, client three, and that I blew past that goal. It was amazing. It was a little bit of a you know it, who you know. I really talked to people and got advice and those ended up being some of my clients eventually, when people that I was asking for advice. So that was great. But it was such a funny little goal, which was okay, because if I can do that, then it's like, okay, I've done something that hasn't been a detriment to my family. I'm adding to the family kitty. Well, we realized like, oh wait, now I can. There's more here. Chris: So I was just thinking as you were answering that question. You said it's been just over five years. Summer: So, given the calendar, that means you started in 2019 and then the world went upside down. Chris: So let's talk about, I mean, every business that starts out. It's going to face some headwinds and obviously this was a pretty big one. But just walk us through some of the challenges you faced and how you managed through that, given that you just had this new business. Summer: Absolutely Well, of course, like you know we. Business. Absolutely Well, of course, like you know we. I was just looking at right before COVID so COVID was in March and February I was just looking at expanding and getting some more office space because I'm hiring people. I was looking at leases. So that was hilarious, right, because the minute COVID hit, you know you don't sign the you don't sign the lease, which was great that we hadn't signed it yet, so that was just a fortuitous that was a God thing, but I will say there's a few good things that came out of COVID. In general, COVID was very good for Craig Group and here's why it was good for Craig Group. I think that middle market businesses that I was working with and we also work with healthcare companies as well, especially healthcare technology, B2B and B2C healthcare I think that what COVID brought to us was that people always did, but then they had to go and find your business online Right, and probably on their phone Right. So if you were not ready with a digital presence and for sales and marketing, so if somebody could not seamlessly buy something from you online or if they couldn't research your product online, you were toast in COVID. Chris: Very true yeah. Summer: And even B2B industrial manufacturing businesses that never cared a day in their life about their website. All of a sudden they need their spec sheets to be posted online because they can't drive over and drop them off in person right? They're not going to trade shows, right? So website, but not just the website, really the content, the interaction. And then how good is your email response? How good is your team on the phone? How good are they at working those leads that just got spotlighted? And on the healthcare side, as you can imagine, about COVID, people are scared to death. At that time, telehealth was nascent. Chris: Right. Summer: Pretty terrible still, kind of, and they realized we have to invest here. Patients don't know how to get in touch with us. Everybody's scared. People aren't coming into the doctor's office or the hospital because everyone's afraid that they're going to get COVID. So the messaging opportunity for what we do, which is growth, really about growth. We no longer had to convince our clients you need to take action, because before pre-COVID, and even either at the same time of COVID, there was also this shift with the markets too. Around PE also said oh wait, this has been like really good times and I actually need to start building organic growth instead of just buying another company and doing roll-ups. So this happened very right after COVID. So those two things we did not. We stopped having to tell people. People would ask us why are you doing growth support? We don't need that, right, and nobody says that now, right, no, there's no argument. So COVID, plus what was happening in kind of the deal-making PE market, which we can, that's another. That was another big change for us, but it just helped people say, oh my gosh, we need help. We need help right now. And that was a huge. It was a huge growth time for us. So we grew significantly in 2020 and 2021. Chris: Stars aligned, it sounds like. Summer: Stars aligned and again, it was just one of those who would have. There would have been no way to know. Chris: Forecast, foresee or plan no way. Summer: The only way that I was able to do is I said we were able to kind of make hay, which was okay. We have a door here, so how can I be really good about scaling in a smart way? So I didn't hire tons of people, I hired slowly. I never wanted to have layoff right, so I was able to say I have an opportunity, let's scale slowly. Due to that growth, we're also bootstrapped. So we were able to fund our whole company out of revenue which, especially at that time, I wasn't going to go fundraise. It was just so we were just. We're really lucky that we were able to build something, grow, but grow in a. We weren't growing too fast that we were getting out over our skis. We were able to service our clients, grow, you know, as needed. Then it ended up being a good time for us to kind of get our feet under us about who we are as a firm. Chris: It's a great segue when you talk about the growth you were seeing from the client revenue side forced you to start building your team. Yes, so let's talk about how you went about. One setting the strategy of not growing too fast, because you can fail when you do that, but really focusing on making sure you're making the right hires and adding to your team in the right way. Summer: Yeah Well, I'll say I don't always make the right hires and I've made so many mistakes. If you said that, we'd know you're lying, yeah if there was a thing that I think I could always do better at, it was being even better at hiring. I mean, to me it's the hardest thing that I think we do as business leaders, as CEOs and entrepreneurs. So that is something that I think you just get better at, but you still fail. So that's hard. I have no secret. I have a few things I've learned on that side, but I will say, on the growth side too. Before that, as a person, I'm just a fiscally conservative person in general, so I think some entrepreneurs can get especially more kind of visionary and I think I for sure hold the vision, but I'm very conservative. But that helped us. I think I've had to almost pull myself off of that, so I almost can be too conservative, right. So that's something that I've had to learn about myself, which is I need a counterweight to say you know, do this. But at that time it worked. It was a good way to scale. So I am conservative there, but I did realize in terms of people, if I was really going to grow and we have this value prop about growing with sponsored backed businesses. I myself while I am married to somebody that works in PE and I know a lot about PE. I never myself worked inside the doors of PE and I really had to have that in my firm in order to just have that credibility, you know, just to. Okay got it right and so I did decide very early on. We're growing, we're having a lot of success. I knew that I had to have somebody else at a partnership level that was going to be able to move us to the next level, and it had to be somebody that did not have my skills. Chris: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom, and thanks for listening to the show. Summer: So I needed somebody that was very, you know, has a different background than me, had a different skill set than me, and so that was, you know, really a game-changing hire. So we brought on at that time Libby Covington. And again, she comes out of private equity, she was in-house at Cap street but also worked at law firms and then had also operated in-house with the Doggett family, so we had a lot in common in that sense. But I knew what she brought and what I brought were going to be complimentary to the market and that was ended up being true. You know that that was. But it was hard right, deciding to bring in, you know, somebody. It's really hard. Chris: You make it sound really easy. Summer: It's not. Chris: Because a lot of people entrepreneurs, maybe just humans in general we tend, you know people that we're like, so you tend to hire people like you Absolutely. Instead of doing. What you should be doing is what you did. And how do you hire someone that fills you out right the other side of the skill sets that you don't have to make the strong team. So you know, kudos to you for seeing that, and I know of Libby from her days at Cap Street. So so then you bring Libby on and there's 30 other people you've hired in a few years. Summer: That's right, that's right. Well, I have, you know, tricia Eaton. She started with me. She was actually my first employee, trisha Eaton, she started with me, she was actually my first employee. She now is in an operations role for me. She's been with me since day one. You can do anything. She's the person that can do anything. You just give her a problem and she just goes and solves it. So she has just been my right-hand woman and I couldn't do this without her. So we had her, we had Libby and then, quickly, we had to hire some subject matter experts. So me and Libby cannot keep delivering all the work. Patricia can't deliver all the work. So we really had to go and fill out the teams and I focused on hiring high-margin employees. So where could I bill and where could I charge for their expertise? Sure, right. And then if there was employees where we didn't really use them that much or it was really low margin, we would usually go with consultants. So I had a bench of 1099s. And we still do. We've less. So now we still do. And again, that was another way where we scaled more slowly. So it didn't, you know, have to get ahead of ourselves on building. When was it the right to have the full-time versus the part-time. That was also a benefit of COVID. So I think COVID and I'm seeing this today too it really, I think, enabled people to work the way that was better for them, like there was a new definition of work. Chris: For sure. Yeah, and it's being talked about every day. Summer: Of course, and especially in your industry too, in law firms with a very kind of traditional track, and I think there's people that say I want to work and do really good work, but I can't work in this way, and whether it was in the office or not, but even if it was maybe I want to do great work, but I need to do it 30 hours a week because I'm taking care of my aging mother or I want this lifestyle. I will make less money, but I need to work this much time from this location. So we leaned in hard on that Huge value prop for us. So I think that was one of my successes of being able to hire really great talent, because I was able to align with the times, because it was what it was but also to truly say I want your best work. I don't care if you need to live in Miami, right, I don't care. If you're telling me I really have to work 30 hours a week because I have personal responsibilities, I'm like great, give me your best 30 hours a week. To me that's better than any you know 40 plus hours a week person. That isn't maybe the best. Chris: Sure. Summer: Right. So I, we scaled that, we scaled through that way, we also would. We have a and we still do this today. We bring people on and we do a 60 day trial, and so and it's written, it's papered up and it says if this isn't a fit fit, we're going to separate fast. Chris: Yeah, there's a lot of value in that and it does help the saying of hire slow, fire fast, absolutely. So you get a test run at it. Summer: That's right, and sometimes you can't hire slow. Sometimes I wish I could. I've got I don't know four roles we're hiring right now and I need them to be filled yesterday. Chris: Right. Summer: But at least we've learned that we do have to have a trial period and we have to be eyes wide open about it. You know we're and I. Just part of our culture and it's part of our values is we do excellent work. So excellence is part of our culture. But also, if you can't meet that excellence, you will be let go, like we fire people, and it's not a scary thing, it's just. You know we're, we just have no tolerance. You know, and what we talked about we something we say in houses we don't have. Just you know we're, we just have no tolerance. You know, and what we talked about we something we say in house is we don't have middle managers. You know we don't have that. You're, you're, everyone's in the spotlight. It's that ownership mentality that's right and everybody's like that, so everyone's in the spotlight. There's no middle, you know. So you years, I mean there's been lots of not home runs you know, it's been you know there's hills and valleys there with hiring. Chris: Well, that's good for people to hear. Right, You're not always going to get it right. There's ups and downs, just like in life. But if you're, if you have a mission, like like Craig group does and like our firm does, then you know what your why is. And if something veers off from that, then you stay true to the why and then make those hard decisions. Summer: Yeah, and it always is. It's always hard. It's the hardest thing we do. Chris: No doubt. I want to talk a little bit about innovation, because clearly what your company's doing is innovative and for PE firms. But just in your space, how do you go about fostering innovation amongst your team and encouraging it within the company? Summer: Yeah, I mean, I think that it is who we are. Honestly, it has to do with every single person that we hire. Again, even going back to that, we don't have any middle managers mindset, which is there's no medium, there's no mediocrity, we're always how could you have done better? How could we have done something faster? Wait, what tools did we not use this time? So those questions are asked. Every engagement we have, I'll say we're doing something pretty different. We do have a few competitors out there not very many, but we do something unique. I mean, we are consultants, we do consult, but we're certainly not a consulting firm typically. You know, we're not an Accenture right, because? Why? Because our people actually get in and then they actually do the work, Not that we don't do at Accenture, but that's our model, it is what we do. So we're boots on the ground, so we actually do the work. So we're not an agency, but we do some agency work right. So and then on the technology side, we have a software platform. It's patent pending. It's all about forecasting and how do we get better at forecasting sales and marketing? And if we can forecast better, we can then make action and take action more quickly. And so those are the three things we do. And again, we have some competitors, but what we do as a company inherently is pretty innovative, Like we're doing something a little different, Like the skill set is a little different. We move faster, you know. We have a different, you know. So we are doing something different. I think everybody at the firm knows that and they're aware of it, it's just ingrained in your culture, it's just who they are. Chris: They know it, and I've been to your website so I'll tell you it absolutely comes across from your website, which I know is part of the thought that went into design of the website. Right, you show up different Yep, so it seems like that's part of when you're hiring these people you're looking for someone that can fit that. Summer: That's exactly right that DNA that innovative mindset. It's right and something that Libby and I talk about all the time and again, I fail on it. Sometimes I succeed, but we hire and we've really landed on this for Craig Group is we have to hire for people that just figure it out? They just get it done. It's like I don't really care what they're, you know exactly what they know or what they've done. It's like can you solve this problem? Just you know, almost like if you just did a business school case and put it in front of them and said solve it. Chris: Well, I'm curious because I've been reading a lot about this lately and we have some internal debate about it in our recruiting process. Summer: Do you do any kind of role play as part of your process to put them in the position or challenge them to see how they problem solve. You know, we don't do it formally and I think maybe we also thought about doing it formally like a formal case. We do it in an informal way, which is here's a situation that we're in Usually, it's a real, it's a real client situation and we say hey, what do you think about this? And let them, you know, talk it through. Right so we do it as part of our interview process, but we certainly don't have it formalized and I think maybe we should. Chris: I feel like there's a lot of value in it. I've heard people a lot smarter than me talk on it, and you know the question is and it is the question of does that scare a candidate away? And my answer that is well, if it does, and maybe we learned something early on we should have won't find out till a year later. Absolutely. I'm kind of at a mindset. It seems like a good idea. Summer: I think it's great. I would agree wholeheartedly. If somebody's scared of any kind of testing, then that's probably not a good. It's probably not a good choice. Chris: It was not going to be the person that says let me prove to you I can do this, I'll figure this out, right. So just interesting. You know people's mindsets on that so that always leads me, maybe, into the culture of Craig Group. How would you describe it and what are some of the things that you believe you're doing that help foster and allow it to grow? Summer: yeah, yeah, I'd say that our culture again, we you know excellence in our work is really the number one pillar. We have a thing on our on our mission also. This is no bs. What we mean by that is we show up authentically. We're real, we're real people, we're real humans. We have, you know, everybody that I work with either is caretaking for somebody else in their family, whether it be aging parents, children. They're passionate about volunteering and they're doing that. So we are whole humans and whole people and so I believe in like I don't want to if somebody shows up in an inauthentic way, it's like I'm fine, everything's fine, and I have no tolerance. So we have this real culture of authenticity, excellence, absolute excellence in client delivery. So everybody shows up with that. It's our culture, because we talk about it in hiring, we talk about it in our all-hands monthly meetings, we talk about it in the way we behave, which is we meet people where they are today. So it's okay in Craig group to be very authentically who you are. So that's just how I am, that's how I run the company, so, so we have an authentic culture. But what that also means is everyone at the company we're on, we're remote. We do have a lot of people in Houston, but we are remote. But that does require people to communicate with each other, which is are you okay, all right, picking up the phone and saying because you, if we're all going to have no bs and we're going to work hard, you have to know what your team how, what is your team okay? Chris: what's going on in their life? Summer: yeah, might impact their ability to deliver excellence 100, which is like tell me, do you need help? Chris: my follow-up question was going to be you sounded like a remote company. So, yeah, creating the, the connectivity of that culture, especially at that level that you're trying to achieve, has got to be challenging because you're not in person. Summer: It's so hard, it's so hard and again, I think it's. You know, we have a cameras on culture, you know, and everyone's cameras are on. I mean, I spend, we are all on. You know, video calls all day. Which pros and cons. Chris: Right. Summer: But I think that everyone's leaned into that. There know we can't be grumpy about that. We're not, you know, and everyone's also required to do really good work. But part from a training standpoint, and I think we're getting better at this, I think we can keep getting better. We're not perfect, but working asynchronously, which is what remote work is Right. Not everybody knows how to do that. Like you can't assume that everybody just knows how to work asynchronously. It's a skill set. Knowing when to do async work versus when do you need to have an in-person meeting, knowing when those workflows that is not something that I think you can just know. Chris: Sure. Summer: And so we definitely have an expectation that everyone works really efficiently asynchronously, and I love asynchronous work. Personally, I think it's way more efficient than getting in a big meeting full of people all at the same time and wasting everybody's time. But there is also this time to get everybody in the meeting and you know, sit together. But we are doing better at training people about asynchronous expectations. So we use you know, very technology heavy, very tool heavy. So we use a tool. There's a tool called Loom. It's a video tool. Basically, you can explain something really quickly on your own time and then send it to people so then they can go figure out what you're trying to explain to them. even if you couldn't meet in person. We use project management software. Basecamp is the one we use. Other people use Asana, so we use Basecamp, and all of our work is asynchronously matched. And so I think that culture though one thing that does it, we move really fast. So the culture is again with the excellence and you can move fast with async work. Sometimes it slows you down, sure, because you need to just pick up the phone Instead of you know, so you can. And that's a lot of times where I get into things Is, hey, let's stop doing this Call like call each other, you know somebody's not understanding, right, but our culture is really, we move really fast. Our clients have extremely, extremely high expectations. I mean our clients are you know? PE firms. They're, you know, there's no tolerance. Chris: And they're worried about the ROI and they want the growth yesterday. Yes. Summer: Yesterday and they, you know. So we work under that pressure with all of our clients high intensity, high growth. So we're high intensity, high. You know that we match our clients. We're yeah, that's what, that's who we are, and I think it works really well with a remote team. I think we've been able to hire people that want that, that high intensity work. If you don't want it, you can tell and it doesn't work with that. Chris: It shows up real quick, it shows up. Yeah, so you were talking about, you know, your base clients, the PE firms. Let's talk about what are some of the things you found to be successful for you and your company to kind of build and maintain those relationships so that you keep them and you get more. Summer: Yeah, absolutely so. I think it's challenging to, I think, sell anything which we're selling a service, right, but I think it's challenging to sell into. I don't want to put them all in the same basket. So not all PE or independent sponsors are sponsored, because they're not all created equal, right, so that's. I can say that but it is a tight group of people. It's a it's tight knit. It's a small group. I think it's an it's elite. Most people that have those roles are very well educated. They have great experience. I think you really have to be trustworthy, like they are not going to pull in a partner that has not been vetted. You know that, had that, that hasn't really been like. You know this is the real deal. So those relationships are really hard-earned. You know those are not easy to come by. I will say me and Libby both have our own sets of networks. That was enabled, sort of the catalyst. But the only reason why that's been able, we've had success, is because we've had to prove it. And when we prove it, you know, we then can build onto the next one and the next one. And I mean our model would be that we become a partner with the firm and that they bring us in on multiple portfolio companies and that's what happens, right. But it's hard. It's not something that you don't. You know we're not selling. You know something that's not high value, high stakes, and we really are a partner. We're not a, you know, a vendor and that takes a lot of trust. We have to spend a lot of time. Chris: Yeah, it's funny because I can totally relate. Our mindset here at the firm is the same. We want to be as we say this all the time the legal partner to our clients, an extension of the C-suite, not a vendor, not a commodity, but an actual value-added partner. Summer: Yes, that's exactly right. And it's hard to get there. You don't just say that and you know you're like oh, I want to be your growth partner. I want to be a member of your management team. It's like OK, prove it. Chris: Right. Summer: Right, and so I think that we do that. I think our team consistently delivers best in class results and best in class work. We're also right sized for the lower middle market and middle market, and I think that's what needs to happen. We can't you know it's not Bain, right? No, and they can't, they couldn't, they can't do it anyways Right, but we're also not, you know, your sister's brother that's going to help you with sales and marketing. That you know out of their garage. So I think we're right size and for our size, like for where we are in the market, I think we're an absolute best in class option and we've had to prove it and prove it and that's also why we have best in class talent, because we've proven it and proven it. But it's definitely been. You know it's a hard fought. It's hard fought. Chris: You know every single win is a hard you're only as good as the last one, that's right. Summer: I mean it's dig and ditches hard. You know, it's like we have to say. I mean we're making sure that every time we deliver the work product, the trust and then also the ability to immediately implement our plan, and that's one of we really stake our hats on that, like we don't just give you a here's some really great ideas that you can't implement, nor do you have the money to go hire the team to do it. So we really just hang our hat on, let's roll, let's go, and it's like ready to go, and so that's hard, it's hard work. You know this is tough and so that's exactly right We've got. You know we need that to be so good that the firm, the CEO of the port co and the firm are going to say man, that was really worth it. What would we do without that team? How would we, where would we be right now without that team? Chris: Where else can we use them? Summer: And that's what they. You know it's like we can't. We have to. You know, we have to keep. I think we can always get better. Chris: The results would suggest that. But to your point, the last word you just said right was if you don't have the mindset of continuing to, how can we improve? You're going to get left behind. Summer: That's right, and I think, a lot of my core team. You know one of my senior strategists, Macy Allen. I think every time she works on something, she comes up with another innovative idea about. You know what, if we would have done this or wait this tool, can we try out this tool? We're really leaned into that technology and AI in our work, but I think that what works so well is the answer is yes. Bring it in, let's try it, let's test it no-transcript and just your leadership style. Chris: How would you describe that and how do you think it's evolved since you started this five years ago? Summer: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it definitely has evolved, you know, I think that also going from having you know two people to this very large team. We're very flat organization so we don't have lots of hierarchy. So most people directly report to me probably too many, which is something we're working on. But I think I've got a very straightforward management style so there's really not a lot of dancing around things. There's not a lot of confusion. If I'm telling you something, it's probably going to be very clear. I also give feedback continuously. I believe in spot feedback so we don't wait and write it down and wait for the quarter end to go back and like report. I think that's just tiresome. So everyone is encouraged to give spot feedback both you know, positive and negative and do it in that moment. Sometimes I will do it in our project management tool and say spot feedback and just put it. And that way if it's written. Sometimes they can have some time to react. Chris: Right. Summer: As opposed to kind of. Chris: I like how you signpost it though. Yeah, I say spot feedback. Summer: Like prepare thyself. You are getting feedback. Yeah, and I put it and I just say it, and I think that I lead with kindness, always, always. I think that truth without kindness is cruelty and that's a direct quote from my husband, jason Craig, one of his themes and I think that being kind to people, even when you're frustrated and is, is the only way to be. So lead with kindness, but also tell the truth, which is this you know this went well, this didn't go well, you know, but it's not. It's not about you as a human. You know this isn't a. You know we're not making a personal judgment about you, but this work product, you know, wasn't what it needed to be or whatever it is. But I tend to give feedback. You know, again, it's rapid, it's in this, it's like I lead. You know, very, you know, crisply in the moment I've had to get even more efficient with that, with a lot of people you know, and I don't see all the things, and so I definitely try to speak to every a lot of people to get you know other people's opinions on work product. So I talked to a lot of people. I talked to clients ask for feedback and then go and manage my employees. That are what I heard from clients. So yeah, I think I'm a management style again. I think I get a lot of feedback, a lot information, but crisp, kind, but really Christmas and some compassion right, always, always. Chris: So that's something you mentioned. I don't think a lot of people think to do or they think to. They think about it but they're scared to do it, and that's get feedback from your clients. Summer: Yeah. Chris: Right, it's the most valuable feedback you can get because you're really trying to serve the clients. But if you're not delivering what they want in the way they want it, you're missing the mark. Right, you can work hard and you can believe it's excellent, but if they don't believe it's excellent, hard and you can believe it's excellent, but if they don't believe it's excellent. So anything you do this kind of systemize that, or is that just you know periodic check-ins with your clients, or I don't like that. Summer: You know people will disagree with me on that and there's a whole theory in marketing around, you know, net promoter scores, which is it's just a survey, essentially that we're just not big enough for that. Like I need to be able to call all my CEOs which I do and can, and I get feedback and write it down. I mean, you know, and I talked to all of my CEOs at least every other week and I asked them all every time, you know, and sometimes they would say I don't even know, go talk to the other team and I do which is great, because if the CEO doesn't know if if anything's good or bad, that's great. Chris: That means there's no problem excellent. Summer: But no, I do it continuously. I see that as really one of my roles in sort of steering the ship is talking and saying you know what's, you know and I want everything. I want silly stuff, little bitty, you know things. I got some of that last week. It was a really super small thing, but that you know it matters. That's right. You know I don't, you know I want all the things. So I just try to have a relationship that's very trustworthy. It's informal in the sense that we can talk. I want that kind of relationship. I don't need it to be something that's this big thing. Chris: You don't need an email saying click the button and fail the survey. Summer: I really hate it. I really do I mean again somebody's going to quote me on that in a few years when we do that and send the email but I just no thanks, We'll ask directly? Chris: I don't. I'm not in favor of them either, and I don't know that you get the most authentic feedback. Yeah, right now, at some point, if you're so big, maybe you don't have a choice. Summer: But yeah never lose the personal yeah, that's right, that's right. Chris: Summer, this has been such a fun conversation. I want to just end on a few lighter notes. Okay, what was your first job growing up? Summer: oh, lifeguard, life lifeguard. Out at pecan grove, country club, out in richmond texas, which might have been my most favorite job I've ever had. I still like love it taught because you had to wear. Chris: You got to wear a bathing suit. You were the most tan you ever did. I was the most tan. Summer: I also love to swim. I love teaching swim lessons and I was a swimmer, and it was just it was great very good. Native texan native texan born in odessa, texas. Yeah, native native Texan Lived in Oklahoma, lived in Illinois, but I'm back in Texas. Chris: Okay, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Summer: Tex-Mex, all right yeah. Chris: I usually ask people this question, but you have three young kids so I don't know. But if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where'd you go and what'd you do? Summer: Yeah, my husband and I, even though we live in the flattest part of Texas I think that's under sea level we really love to mountain climb. So we're hikers and climbers. We try to take a pretty big trip every year or so if we can. We did a really big trip this summer. It would be a no-brainer. I mean we would go and climb a really big mountain. Aconcagua in South America has been on his list. I can't quite get it on mine because it's a 30-day trip and I can't. I've got a 11-year-old, a nine-year-old and a five-year-old and I can't quite do that. But if I could wave a magic wand and I could be gone for 30 days, I would go climb Aconcagua and spend time in South America. Chris: How cool. That's a good one. Well, thanks again for taking the time. Love your story. Congratulations on the success that you've already achieved and that I know that's in your future. Summer: Thanks, Chris, appreciate having me on. Special Guest: Summer Craig.

Patrick tackles some tough but crucial topics. He explores the virtues and miracles of St. Philip Neri and grapples with the grave injustices of abortion. He challenges misconceptions about divine power and discusses the pervasive threats of modern ideologies on our youth. He also offers heartfelt advice to struggling parent and defends Israel's right to self-defense.   Ann – How is it justice if God allows babies to die? (01:11) Todd - Faith tells us “don't kill” but it seems like these evil doers must be eradicated. (06:57) Ivan - My son is struggling with gender confusion. How can I help him? (10:11) Chris - Where in the bible does it say that people who don't know Christ through no fault of their own can go to Heaven? (22:33) Daphne (7 ½ years old) - If God is Jesus, who made the world before God? (36:52) Ray – After the National Eucharistic Congress, how do we keep the momentum moving forward? (42:56)

There wasn't a lot of forethought before Chris and Mary Ginder decided to start a hot sauce company. Chris had the idea one day and suddenly became obsessed with making and selling their own fresh pepper hot sauce.It wasn't simple. Because of their commitment to quality and compliance, it took three years to actually launch the business and sell the first case of Gindo's Spice of Life in 2011. And it hasn't always been easy since, like when the couple moved from Los Angeles to Illinois to take control of the manufacturing and work with local farmers. Just when things were looking up, the COVID-19 pandemic brought a host of other challenges.But the Ginders adapted by making a plan and staying connected with their community.Listen in to the latest episode of the Be a Marketer podcast to hear Mary and Chris discuss the ups and downs of their business with host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact. Find out how the Ginders try to bring the engagement of their in-person events online, keep sales consistent throughout the year, and maximize results from their bi-monthly newsletter.Meet Today's Guests: Chris and Mary Ginder of Gindo's Spice of Life

Carol - In the last week my 23-year-old son told me he was going to a protestant church. How can I help him not to wonder? Patrick recommends his book, “Surprised by Truth,” and the original 1989 conversion tape of Scott Hahn found on YouTube. Cornelius - Do they use the three-year cycle in the Latin mass? Latin is a dead language, and that's good. Sam - If the church teaches that we are not supposed to separate the body, why do we have relics? How can the Pope speak from the Chair of Peter? Patrick recommends his book, “Pope Fiction” Pat - How can I explain to someone how to deal with old Papal Blessings? Patrick 11-years-old - I spoke with a Born Again Christian. How can I respond to him about purgatory and that the only way to get to heaven was to be born again by God picking you? Do you have any books I can read? Chris - Where do the souls of aborted babies go? Elias - What are the differences between the different denominations? Gerardo - What are your thoughts on the Cristero Movement in Mexico? What was the purpose behind it? Maggie - Is there any reason an aborted baby would not go to heaven?

Welcome to Season 3!  New episodes will be released througout the spring and summer of 2022. The first episode of season 3 features a conversation with Chris Mann '00.  Chris has built his career around making a difference in the lives of others.  He's joined in conversation with JP Cunningham '23.  They discuss Chris' time at Holy Cross and how he has carried the HC mission to serve others throughout his life and career. Interview originally recorded in November 2021. -- Chris: And so, I think you're seeing companies really say, "This is about our values and being clear on what our values are." Because our most important stakeholders, our people are saying that that's what matters to them and that's what they care about. And so, I think we just think about business differently. Maura: Welcome to Mission-Driven, where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I'm your host Maura Sweeney from the class of 2007, Director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's show. This episode features Chris Mann from the class of 2000. Maura: Chris's career has spanned roles that have one thing in common, making a positive impact on people and communities. He graduated from Holy Cross with a psychology major and art history minor. With this foundation, he joined the Dana-Farber and Jimmy Fund team, and his career flourished. Skilled at fundraising, event planning, marketing, and communications, Chris flexed his talents and roles at New Balance, Cone Communications, Reebok, and City Year. Maura: At the time this podcast was recorded, Chris worked as the Senior Vice President of Development for City Year. At the time this podcast is aired, Chris will have assumed a new role at Bain Capital as the first Vice President of Community Affairs, leading their philanthropy, employee volunteerism, events, and sponsorship. Chris is joined in conversation by JP Cunningham from the class of 2023. Maura: Their conversation is far-reaching but starts with the transformative years that Chris spent at Holy Cross, his time on the track and field team, and serving as senior class president, as well as his experiences during immersion programs and running summer orientation helped shape who he is today. Better yet, he can count the ways that the Holy Cross Alumni Network has supported him through each step in his career. A proud alumnus, Chris exemplifies the impact that one person can make by committing their talents to mission-driven work. JP: Hello, everyone. Thank you all for listening. I'm JP Cunningham. I'm a junior here at Holy Cross. And I'm joined by Chris Mann. Chris, how are you doing today? Chris: Hey, JP. I'm good. Good to be here with you today. JP: Thank you. So, yeah, I guess with that, we'll get right into it. I wanted to start with a little bit before your time at Holy Cross. So, my first question is, during your college search, what were some of the factors that drew you to the college? And was it your top choice? Yeah, if you can touch on that. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So, like most high school students, I was looking at a lot of different schools. I didn't quite know what I wanted. I was the first and oldest child in my family, so I hadn't any brothers or sisters go through the college application process before. And at the time, this was in the mid-'90s, there wasn't as much information. It was kind of the glossy books you got in the mail and things like that, and word of mouth. But I knew a couple of things. Chris: I knew living in Andover, Massachusetts and growing up there, I wanted to be close enough to home that I could get back and forth. So, that kind of kept me looking at New England colleges for the most part. And as I started exploring, I knew about Holy Cross's reputation from an academic standpoint, but also had a couple of people at my high school, Andover High School, that I remember really respecting and looking up to in some ways that had gone to Holy Cross a couple of years before me. Chris: So, Chris Sintros, who was a class of '98, and Christine Anderson, class of '99. And I think it just piqued my interest to say, "Hey, those are people that I think I want to be like, and they chose this school." I actually got really fortunate to end up at Holy Cross. It was one of, I think, five schools I applied to, and I was waitlisted. So, I actually didn't know that I was going to get in until right to the end, and was really relieved and excited when I got in off the waitlist. Chris: And it ended up being a great scenario because I came on campus as the only person from my high school going to Holy Cross in that class. And I was matched up with three roommates in a quad in my freshman year. And it really helped me build some relationships and a network right away in a new place, new environment. JP: Awesome. That's really cool. Yeah, I can kind of relate to that, too, because both my dad and my sister went here, and then a lot of just friends and older classmates at my high school went to Holy Cross. And they're all just role models. And I felt the same way like, wow, this seems like a good place to be and that's what drew me there, too. So, it's great. Chris: Yeah. And I would say too, in visiting the school and seeing it, I mean, I certainly fell in love with the classic New England brick college, IV and setting, and it's a beautiful campus, as you know. And so, that, I was really excited about. And I started to get more and more of a field just as I came to visit a couple of different times. Chris: And as you started to read in and hear about the college's mission, and talking about being men and women for and with others, that all started to really resonate for me and felt a little different compared to some of the other schools that I had been visiting, and I loved that. I also really thought that the size was right for me. I was somewhat of a shy kid. I think I was trying to figure out where my place was. Chris: And I liked the idea of being in a school that felt a little smaller and where I wasn't going to get lost in the shuffle. And I think that ended up being a really big thing for me over the course of the four years, too. JP: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I feel like people might say it's cliche, but I feel like at Holy Cross, the sense of community, just being on campus that first time, at least for me too, visiting that first time, there's something about it that really draws you and makes you feel like, "Hey, this is the place for me." Yes. I guess moving into the next question, after you became a student here, what were some of the things you were involved in during your time on the Hill? And was there one that you were most passionate about? Chris: I got to do a lot of different things, which was to our earlier point, the benefit of going to a smaller school with a lot of opportunities. Off the bat, athletics ended up being a big thing for me, which wasn't something I had planned. I had done sports in high school all three seasons. Really, I was passionate about basketball and track and field, but hadn't expected to be able to do that in college. Chris: And I showed up on campus and I remember, I think it was probably the first week of school, I got a phone call from Larry Napolitano who was the captain of the track team just saying, "Hey, we saw you did track and field in high school. Would you be interested in coming out and joining the team?" And I said, "Yes", and it was one of the great experiences of my time on the Hill being able to be part of that team. Chris: I certainly wasn't a phenomenal athlete or setting any records, but being part of that team environment, getting a chance to get into the daily routine that athletes do I think really benefited me. The structure was really helpful. I think it prepared me for life after college and having a busy schedule of going from weightlifting, to workouts, to classes, to other things. Chris: And just the relationships you build with teammates and coaches and the life lessons of athletics were really valuable and it helps cement a lifelong practice of fitness and health that exists to this day. So, that was foundational. That was a big one. And then, later in my time at Holy Cross, my senior year, I ended up getting encouraged to run for student government. And I ended up being elected president of the senior class of 2000. Chris: And that was a really powerful experience for me, too, so having a broader role in leading fellow students and thinking about our voice on campus. And to be honest, putting myself out there more publicly to run and be elected was not something I was very comfortable with or used to. So, building up that courage and having people believe in me to do that was also really important. And I think it started to show me that maybe I could do some things that I hadn't previously been confident enough to do or thought I could do. Chris: So, that was another big experience. And same thing, balancing those commitments with academics, with athletics really prepared me for life after college and the working world. JP: That's great. Yeah. I feel like balancing all those activities, being a full-time student athlete while being the president of your class can only help you in the long run and having that structure to your schedule and balancing different activities. Because I don't play any sports, but just balancing activities week by week with the schoolwork and all that, it definitely... I feel like it can only help you for after you graduate. JP: So, yeah, going off that, I guess a little more shifting towards the academics. One of the great things about Holy Cross in liberal arts education in general is that you really have the opportunity to major in anything that piques your interest, and then go out and succeed in business or whatever field you choose. So, I know you're a psychology and art history major. Were there any specific skills that you developed from your course of study that have helped you in your professional career? Chris: Yeah, it's interesting. It was another case of I didn't know what I wanted to study. When I came to Holy Cross, I started taking a few different classes in different areas to try and understand what resonated with me and that was what attracted... the liberal arts education attracted me to Holy Cross as well because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Chris: And I found myself really intrigued in the early psychology classes that I took, whether it was Intro to Psychology, or we had some ones later, behavioral psychology and other things, that just fascinated me between the... both the science and the depth of that field, but then also the ways in which humans interact and the way in which our environment influences us just fascinated me. And I really found myself loving that. Chris: And then, on the flip side, I ended up getting a minor in art history, similarly, because I just found myself interested and passionate in the subject matter and human experience behind that. I wouldn't have thought at the time that either of those would translate into a career path or job. I wasn't going to be a psychologist. I certainly wasn't an artist, but I have found over time that I think there are some lessons in the specifics of that. Chris: And in my current job in previous iterations where I'm a fundraiser, and in essence, I sell people on City Year's mission and investing in City Year's mission, some of the experiences and the lessons from psychology come out there, and understanding how you engage and connect with and influence people. So, that is certainly there. Chris: But more broadly, I just think the liberal arts' approach and specifically Holy Cross and the rigor of the academics forced me to really get tight and concise with my thinking, with how to make an argument, with how to take in information, synthesize that and consolidate it and communicate in a really effective, clear way, both verbally, written, visually, et cetera. Those are things I lean on on a daily basis. And I don't think I appreciated it at the time. Chris: But in talking with friends and colleagues and others whose college experiences were very different, either giant lecture halls or other things, the time, the attention, the rigor of the academics was really valuable. And I don't think I realized it until much later. JP: Yeah, I agree. I feel like everyone... and that's also one of the things that drew me to the liberal arts education is the fact that people say, obviously, you study what's interesting to you, but then being able to develop those skills like critical thinking, communication, and just being able to use those skills effectively go a long way in the professional world. So, you touched on some of the activities you were involved in when you are here at Holy Cross. JP: And since you graduated, there have been a number of new programs, activities. For example, the Ciocca Center for Business, Ethics, and Society was established in 2006. Are there any programs or activities happening now that you've become aware of at Holy Cross that stand out to you or you wish were around when you were a student? Chris: I think the Ciocca Center would have been something I would have really enjoyed getting a chance to participate in. I think this idea of business and ethics and where those intersect, and how companies can have an impact on society has been the centerpiece of my career and the different jobs that I've had. So, I think I would have really enjoyed going deeper there in a more formal way, for sure. Chris: I also really appreciate what the college has done in the last few years as we think about diversity at Holy Cross and how is the Holy Cross experience accessible to all. That is, I think, one takeaway from my time. Certainly, we had some level of diversity when I was at Holy Cross, but it was not nearly what it needs to be and what it should be going forward. And I think particularly for fellow classmates that were of color or came from different backgrounds and the majority of students, I think it was a really challenging thing for them and continues to be. Chris: And so, I think the idea of having a college community that does have more representation, does have more diversity across all levels and spectrums of how diversity shows up is valuable because I think, to be honest, it creates a better learning environment, it creates better dialogue, it creates better understanding. And I think that was a challenge, to be honest, during my time at Holy Cross. Many of the students were just like me coming from the same families, communities, et cetera. Chris: And so, that's something that I've been very encouraged to see over the last few years. JP: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like as a student for me and talking to alumni like yourself and just other people I've spoken to, people just say it's awesome to see the way the college is changing for the better, both academically and socially, like you just touched on. Moving a little away from strictly Holy Cross, can you maybe run through your career or professional path starting after you graduated from the college? Chris: Yeah. So, I was really lucky, and this is an area where I talk to current students or students that are considering Holy Cross, and the network of alumni really stepped up and helped me start my career and pursue the opportunities I've had. And I've been really fortunate to come across Holy Cross graduates at every role, every organization that I've been in, which speaks to the power of even the network of a small school overall. Chris: So, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do after graduation. As we mentioned, I had done activities in track and field. I was big into sports, so I was thinking sports marketing and those areas. I also got a chance, while I was on campus, to do a couple of spring break trips via Habitat for Humanity and build some houses down in Tallahassee, Florida for two spring breaks in a row. Chris: That and an internship at the Special Olympics while I was a student started to spark my interest in having a job where I can actually give back and support causes I cared about, and earn beyond a paycheck feel like I was having an impact on a daily basis in my work. So, that was interesting to me. And we had also run and started summer orientations program, the Gateway Summer Orientation Program. Chris: I was fortunate to be part of that first summer orientation program as a leader and then later, one of the co-leads of it. And I found myself really liking and being attracted by events and the planning that would go into preparing for an orientation program or some other event, and then seeing that come together and seeing people have a great time interacting and being part of that event. So, I was looking at sports marketing. I was looking at event management. I was thinking about nonprofits and exploring different things. Chris: And I was talking with John Hayes, who's class of '91. And he was the director of Holy Cross Fund at the time. He was our advisor for our Senior Class Gift. And John said, "Hey, you should really go talk to my friend Cynthia Carton O'Brien now, a class of '93, who was working at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund." And so, he connected me to Cindy via informational interview. I went and learn more about Dana-Farber and the Jimmy Fund, and just loved the idea of it. Chris: It was a cancer hospital, obviously in Boston, doing amazing work for patients and their families, but also had this deep connection in history to the Red Sox. So, as a sports fan, I was excited about that. And I ended up applying for a couple of different jobs there coming out of school. And on the fundraising side, one was potentially to work in plan giving, so helping people think about their giving benefiting those beyond their lifetimes and resourcing the organization for the future. Chris: And then, the other one was going to be a rotational role, which was going to work on different areas of fundraising, the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk, donor advance and stewardship events, and then also cause marketing, which at the time was a fairly new thing that companies were starting to do. And so, I ended up getting that second job on the rotation. And it was just a phenomenal opportunity experience to get to learn different parts of fundraising and to work with some really, really great team. Chris: So, when I think about advice for people coming out of school and what to think about, I think finding a job where you can learn as much as possible and get exposed to as many different things as you can certainly really worked out for me. And it gave me a chance to understand what parts of fundraising and events that I really liked and what worked well for me. And I was also really lucky to work with just some amazing people. Chris: In particular, my first boss and my first teams on the Jimmy Fund Walk, which later included a couple of Holy Cross grads in the years after me that we hired as well, was just a perfect first start into the working world, for sure. JP: Definitely. So, you may have just answered this next question, but I'll still pose it to you. I know you talked about your experience with the Gateway's orientation. So, would you say that was something that from your time at Holy Cross that greatly influenced your post-grad experience and career? Or were there few other things? Chris: Gateways did influence me mostly in that I realized that I really enjoyed working in a team environment and it was with a lot of students from across different grades that I hadn't met or didn't know before. And I think that idea of working in a team that had some diversity in their experiences, et cetera, is definitely something that's resonated longer term and I've realized leads to a great work environment and a great end product in that Gateway's orientation. Chris: I definitely love the event planning piece of it. And so, I think that steered me towards my first job, for sure. As I got older, I realized I didn't love the always on and the stress of the event planning and so I've since moved to other areas. But I think the idea of that camaraderie and coming together to build something bigger than yourselves was really valuable for me. And I also loved being able to share my experiences with others and with other students. Chris: And so, getting a chance to really talk to people and help share my experience was something that I valued. I think it was probably an early stage mentorship. I don't think I realized it at the time, but I think that's what drew me to it was being able to work with students who were coming into a Holy Cross environment, nervous about it, not sure what to do, and really saying, "Hey, this is going to be a great experience for you. And here's all the reasons why or here are some things to look at." Chris: I realized I think later that that idea of being a mentor and having that mentoring relationship is something that I really value and enjoying doing. But again, I don't think I realized it at the time. But I think it was one of those foundational things, for sure, at least in the early jobs. JP: Absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome. I feel like it's cool to think back on the different ways certain events or activities that you took or spend so much time participating in can go such a long way in your life and the decisions you made, and things like that. Chris: I think so. I think other experiences, too, that I had probably more steered in that direction of what I wanted to do for career, I think having the opportunity to do an internship during my junior year with the Special Olympics of Massachusetts and help to do the marketing and recruitment for a Polar Plunge event that they did sparked an interest in, "Oh, you can do marketing, and you can do these types of business things that I want to do that have an impact for our cause." Chris: And Special Olympics was near and dear to my heart because my mom was a special education teacher. And so, I saw firsthand the power that that can have when you have inclusive opportunities for all young people, and give them a chance to participate in athletics and have those same experiences and lessons that I did from it was really valuable. So, I think the idea and the spark of having a job that can have an impact started there. Chris: And then, I had a summer experience in between my junior and senior years at Holy Cross, where I worked in an educational camp for kids called Super Camp and spent a few weeks on a college campus working with students that were struggling academically. And what we learned in the process when you get to meet these kids and work with them is that, in most cases, it wasn't because they didn't have the ability to learn or to do those that work. Chris: It was because there were other things going on in their lives that were either being a distraction or creating additional challenges that made it hard for them to show up in the education environment or in school in the way that they could or they should. And I think that in hindsight really is why I find myself loving the work that we do at City Year right now. And it's come full circle in that way because we see that talent is absolutely equally distributed and it's everywhere, but access and opportunity are not equally distributed. Chris: So, that's part of what we get to do at City Years is to say, "How can we make sure that every student gets the opportunities that they deserve to really tap into their talent and see success in their futures?" And I think that experience at Super Camp really gave me the first understanding of what education can look like when it works for everyone. JP: Yeah, absolutely. So, while we're looking in hindsight and reflecting on your experience post-Holy Cross, I know there's a lot to say about the strength of Holy Cross's Alumni Network. Could you tell a little bit about how that network has influenced your professional career? Chris: Yeah, it's influenced my professional career because I've been lucky to work with Holy Cross grads in every step of the way in every job almost that I can think of. So, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund, we hired Joe Robertson, who was a track and field classmate of mine, class of '02, Rebecca Manikian in the year before, '01. So, I got to work with both of them on the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk and had a community and a shared experience with the two of them. Chris: Worked with Kristina Coppola Timmins at Cone Communications. And Rebecca and Joe also were ended up being Cone alumni at different points. And then, now, a huge number of Holy Cross grads, past and present, that I have worked through, including my current boss, AnnMaura Connolly, class of '86. So, I think at every step, I've seen Holy Cross alumni show up both in the work environment and help in the broader network. Chris: There's not a question that I would have or a connection I'd be trying to make that I couldn't reach out to somebody at Holy Cross and just say, "Hey, we share this background. Can you help?" And there's been countless times where I've had Holy Cross grads that I either know or don't know be willing to offer advice or make a connection, no questions asked and right away all the time. And I think that's fairly rare, at least in my experience. Chris: And it always surprises me how we'll be having a conversation and somebody will say, "Oh, they went to Holy Cross." It's amazing I think how people show up, particularly in the space that I'm in where you're working in the nonprofit field or in other jobs that are trying to have an impact on society. I think that's where the Jesuit teachings I think resonate for folks. And they really internalized that learning and those values, and I think it shows up in their career choices, and it certainly did for me. JP: Definitely. Yeah. Even for me as a student, I feel like something everyone can agree on is the strength of the Holy Cross alumni network. And something I always think about, even before I became a student here, just like walking around, wearing either a Holy Cross hat or that purple shirt, I was surprised and people would be surprised based on how many times you would get stopped, like, "Oh, you went to Holy Cross. I was a grad from this class." And I think that's something really special about that network. Chris: Happens all the time. And you see it in families, too. I mean, you're seeing it in your own with your sister being a grad. And I'm hopeful that my kids will end up being graduates as well. But I think you see that legacy in a lot of ways among families, among communities, where that becomes more than just an individual experience. It's a shared family experience, which is a pretty special thing. JP: Yeah, definitely. And even the fact that, like you mentioned, even just being a student, the fact that any alumni you either reach out to or you meet, they're just so willing to sit down and talk for as long as you need and give you advice or whatever the purpose is for that phone call or that meeting. They really just sit down and are willing to help in any way possible. So, I think that's something that's awesome about the college. JP: So, moving along, I think one of the great things about this podcast is that it highlights and showcases the different ways that Holy Cross mission of men and women for others can play into so many different careers and stories of different alumni. So, I guess just to start, what mission or values fuel your professional work today? Chris: Yeah. It's interesting, I think I've been fortunate to work at this intersection of companies and causes coming together to drive better business and greater good. And it's happened throughout my career and gone full circle starting on the nonprofit side at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund and moving over to the corporate side at New Balance Athletic Shoe and later Reebok, and then now in my current role at City Year. Chris: Seeing how companies can work with nonprofits and advising some of them on how to do that, when I was at Cone Communications and advising clients on those pieces, it's just always fascinated me that you can have a social impact. And it doesn't have to just be about charity, it doesn't have to be just about volunteerism or working in a nonprofit that there's all kinds of ways in which everybody can do that individually and collectively. Chris: Companies have a tremendous opportunity and tremendous power to be able to do that. And so, for me, I realized early on through those internships, experiences that I knew I was motivated by doing something kind of more than earning a paycheck, that I wanted to see that impact. Personally, I want to have a job that at the end of the day, I could feel like we were doing something bigger. And I think that was always a core value. Chris: I think, for me, that came from my parents. I think my example was seeing my mom be a special education teacher and work with students to give them that opportunity and to address some of that inequity and make sure that education was tailored to their needs and their situation, paired with my dad who was an executive in an enterprise rent a car for his whole career, high powered, highly growing business, and getting to see that side of it. Chris: And I think those two sensibilities really steered what I was looking for and seeing it as an example. I wanted to dig into business problems. I love the how do you think deeply about that? How do you try and solve those? How do you get somebody to buy your product or support your company or do something? So, the marketing and advertising and those pieces of it were fascinating to me intellectually, but I wanted to see an impact at the same time. Chris: And so, I think I was searching for that through each role of saying, "How do we combine those two things? And how does that show up?" In my time at the Jimmy Fund, it was really good for two things. I think my first job there was working a lot with families that were participating in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. And what I realized really quickly was, it was such a huge crash course in empathy and in building relationships and in listening. Chris: Because in most cases, I was just helping people that were participating in the event get registered, get their team organized and set up, get the T-shirts for the event, help them with their fundraising, things like that. But in most cases, I was talking with people that were either in the midst of the worst experience of their life because they were having somebody in their family facing cancer, or they were remembering the worst experience of their life and having lost somebody to cancer. Chris: And so, I think what I found is, you'd have a lot of conversations where people would get frustrated or they'd be angry or emotional, all rightfully so because they were dealing with really hard things. And I think I learned to be able to pick up on that and to connect with them and to try and find ways to encourage and support. And I think it was just a hugely valuable early experience in saying, "How do you connect with people and how do you build relationships?" Chris: "And how do you not take for granted both your own health and good fortune, but also how you'd be there when somebody else is struggling and understand what they're dealing with? And can you lift that load in some small way?" And I certainly was not doing anything significant in that regard and in that role, but I could make their day a little bit easier or solve a problem for them, et cetera. I started to really get excited about the ability to do that. And I found that was really motivating for me. Chris: So, the idea of having a purpose and being able to help somebody in a process during that day was, I think, started to become foundational. I think it also gave me a lot of perspective. You could be having a rough day in your job or something else going on. You could walk down the hall to the Jimmy Fund clinic and see the kids there that are coming in for treatment. It puts it in perspective pretty quick on your challenges and what's tough in your life when you're seeing that with a kid. Chris: So, for me, I think it helped build an immense sense of both opportunity to have an impact but then also an immense sense of gratitude for how fortunate I was. And I think those were two foundational pieces of that experience. And then, later, the second big lesson that I learned and this sparked the longer term career path was, I started to work more with the companies that were participating in the Jimmy Fund Walk, either that were sponsoring the event in different ways or they were getting their employees actively walking and fundraising. Chris: And that gave me a different side of it. It gave me exposure to stuff that I hadn't thought of, which was why would businesses do these types of things? Why would businesses want to have some sort of impact socially, which at the time was still relatively, I wouldn't say uncommon, but it wasn't as clear and upfront as it is today. Philanthropy was something that companies did on the side. It was nice to do because they wanted to be good citizens. But it wasn't a business strategy. Chris: It wasn't something that people were asking them about on a daily basis. It wasn't something that they thought about as part of their broader work as an organization and in their community. And so, that just fascinated me was like, why would companies want to do this outside of a classic kind of capitalist structure where they just have to add value for shareholders in the old Adam Smith lessons and things like that? Chris: And what I realized was, there was so much potential and so many resources that companies could bring to bear to help solve social issues. They had incredible skill and knowledge and power behind what they were doing in a lot of cases, really sophisticated ways to do things as businesses. Two, they had amazing people that they can deploy to have an impact in different ways, whether that was volunteering their time or giving access to their customers, things like that. Chris: And then, three, they can really tell a powerful story. Many companies can reach huge numbers of people and customers in a way that nonprofits can't and don't have the dollars or the access to be able to do. So, they could raise awareness and shine a light on different issues and get people to engage and support in a way that no nonprofit could ever hope to do. And I just became fascinated by that, on what a company could potentially do to have an impact in their community. Chris: And so, I think that job gave me two foundational experiences that I think have started to show up in each of the subsequent jobs that I started to have and really got me on that path. So, I think that's where the kind of being men and women for others started to show up for me was it was like a light went on, like, "Oh, this is how I can do that. This is where I can kind of have that be part of my daily life." JP: Yeah, that's amazing. I think what stuck out to me there was the perspective that you gained and you're sharing with us today is going back to at work or at school, you could be having a really bad day and that's that. I mean, obviously, no one enjoys having a bad day and it happens. But being able to just realize that oftentimes it could be way worse, and there's people, there are children and other people struggling, and they may be having a way worse day than you, I think that's a really important perspective for people to develop and take with them day by day. Chris: Yeah, I think so. Now, we have to acknowledge that that's easy for me to do as a white male, heterosexual, affluent, man of privilege in every possible dimension you can probably think of. I've had every advantage I could possibly have. And so, I think it's easy to say, "Have gratitude and appreciate those things when your life is what my life has been." And that doesn't mean we haven't had challenges and I haven't face things that have been tough, but I think it does give you a bit of a perspective. Chris: And I think gratitude and appreciation for those advantages and those experiences I've had is something that's driven a lot of the work for me and the why. But I would say within that, it's not uncommon, people come to try to have a social impact in many ways because of either guilt or a feeling of charity, like, "This is something I should pay it back. I should give back," and I certainly did. I think that was my perspective. I've been given a lot of opportunity. Chris: I owe it to others to give back in that way. I think when you start to do the work and you start to get proximate and really work on different issues, whatever it is, whether it's education or hunger or any way in which racism shows up in all of our systems, you start to realize that you move on the scale from charity to social justice, and really saying, "This isn't about me giving back or appreciating the opportunities I've had. This is about changing a system that is not just." Chris: "And it's my responsibility to play a deeper role there and to do what I can with the resources I have to drive some change there." So, I think you move from charity to social justice as you start to get proximate and more exposed to issues. And I think Holy Cross planted the ideas behind it and the early experiences, whether it was Habitat or other areas where I could start to see and get exposed to that. Chris: But I think later in my career and particularly at City Year, I started to see that more clearly and I think that's why my career has moved more in that direction. JP: Definitely. Yeah. So, I think you also, with those remarks you made, answered the next question I had, but I wanted to just emphasize. Is there something specific that drives you to work hard each and every day? And my takeaway from all you've just said is, I feel like the common theme of impact and purpose. That's what I picked up on, just whether it's you impacting someone or something, or the company you're working for, or just being able to realize the impact that someone else is having or that greater company is having on a specific cause. JP: That was my takeaway. And I think that's awesome just from a professional standpoint, being able to live by those themes of purpose and impact. That's really great. Chris: I think that's right. I think purpose and impact is the right way to frame it. I do think about that, hopefully, every day. Am I having a purpose and am I having an impact? In the day to day, I think you don't probably get up and get out of bed and think about that immediately. But I do think, as I thought about how I want to work and what jobs I want to take and what organizations I want to be at, I think in those times of reflection, certainly grounding back into purpose and impact has absolutely been the question I asked myself. Chris: Where can I feel connected and closest to a purpose? And where can I have the greatest impact in either my experience or in an organization that's working on a really hard problem? So, certainly, when I thought about coming to City Year and in my most recent role, that's absolutely what I was thinking about is, I had missed being close to the impact in a way that I had at Dana-Farber. Chris: And even at New Balance where I was on the corporate side but working closely with a lot of our nonprofit partners, I got to see that impact on a daily basis. When I moved into Cone Communications and advising nonprofit clients and business clients on their programs and their impact, I loved it. It was mentally fascinating and rigorous and an amazing training ground on all kinds of things around strategy and marketing and communications. Chris: Really tremendous skills and experience. But I found myself too far away from the people that we were serving, and I missed that. I wanted to get closer and back to that. And I think that's what drew me back to the nonprofit side at City Year was a chance to really work among people that were having that level of idealism and impact on a daily basis. Chris: And I also felt like it was a chance to take experiences and skills that I gained from other jobs and put them to really good use in helping, so you think about how we work with companies. Yeah. And I think the working hard piece to our earlier conversation, I think the rigor of Holy Cross academically and then all the other things that I got to be involved in really built that work habit in to where you show up and you do the work every day. Chris: And I think good things happen if you consistently spend the time and put in the effort. And again, I would say I had great examples, whether it's my parents or whether it's coaches and others, that really ingrain that work ethic and constantly trying to move forward for something bigger, whether it was a team that you were part of or whether it was the organization and the issue you were trying to support. JP: Definitely. Yeah. So, I guess to shift gears a little bit here, I wanted to talk about the Boston Marathon. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you ran the Boston Marathon not once, not twice, but three times. Is that- Chris: Four actually. JP: Four, okay. So, the Boston Marathon, four times. At least in my opinion, being able to run the marathon one time is one heck of an achievement. So, could you tell me a little bit about what drove you to do that again and again and again and again? Chris: Yeah, yeah. It was working at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute really was the big thing in our first event. And that I got to work on the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. I got exposed to the course because there was a fundraising walk along the route of the Boston Marathon. And we'd have thousands of people walk and fundraise for Dana-Farber along the route. So, I got to know the marathon course, its history. Chris: I got a really good opportunity to work with people like Dave McGillivray, the director of the Boston Marathon, and get to know him and his amazing team and learn from them. And just started to fall in love with that event. I would volunteer at the marathon and see it. And as a former track and field athlete, I wasn't a distance runner by any means, but I started to get it into my head that it would be a really challenging athletic experience. And so, that was interesting. Chris: To be honest, it was my wife that steered me in that direction. She ran the marathon first a couple of times for Dana-Farber and fundraise for them. And so, I got to see her experience doing that. And I'm kind of a competitive guy, so I decided that I wanted to do it myself. And I couldn't just let her have all the fun. So, I did, I signed up and ran for Dana-Farber. I actually got a chance to run that first marathon with my wife who, God bless her, waited for me and dragged me along those last few miles because I was struggling, and she was kind and carried me along. Chris: And then, I had a chance to do it a couple more times, which was great, including when I didn't finish, which was a huge disappointment and a physical struggle. But I got to come back in another year and completed, and it's some of my greatest memories and experiences of participating in that event and being part of fundraising for Dana-Farber, for City Year as part of that. The marathon is a really special event for Boston. Chris: And I think what you learn in that event is that people are always surprised and super like you were complimentary about being able to run that marathon. I fully believe that most people can run a marathon, and I've seen it firsthand on the course. I think what it gets to is our earlier conversation about how do you go pursue your goals and do those things. And anybody that's run a marathon can tell you that the race day is the reward. Chris: It's the thing at the end, it's the countless hours, the 16 weeks before where you're going and you're running three, four, five, six, depending on what your training schedule is, days a week. And putting in countless miles in good weather, bad weather, darkness, snow, rain, cold, your ability to get up and do that each day and keep consistently growing the mileage and keeping the training, that's what leads to the marathon and the success at the end. Chris: So, it's really about, can you do that work on a daily basis? And can you progress over time by sticking with it through the ups and the downs? And then, I was really lucky to train with great groups of people each time. And I think that's another lesson of it is, it's pretty hard thing to go train by yourself and go run a marathon by yourself. Most people that do it have done their training with a group of friends and other people that are running that helped motivate them, support them, and inspire them. Chris: And then, day off, all the people that are out there are cheering you on, supporting you, helping you get to that day. It's truly a team effort. So, I just got to get the rewards of doing it four times. JP: Yeah, that's an awesome achievement. And I have a ton of respect for you and anyone who does that. In fact, one of my buddies here at Holy Cross, Colman Benson, he's a sophomore, and he ran this past marathon. And just seeing him go through that training earlier in the fall, I'd be like, "Oh, what are you doing tomorrow?" He's like, "Oh, I'm running 12 miles in the morning, then I'm going to class." And I just think that's very impressive and definitely an awesome achievement. Chris: Yeah, it's not too late, JP. You can start training, too. JP: Yeah. So, I read in a previous interview that one of your most memorable achievements is your support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure while you're with New Balance. Can you speak a little to that? Chris: Yeah. So, after my first couple jobs at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund, I mentioned I found myself just becoming so fascinated by what companies could do. And I realized that I really wanted to experience it from a company's perspective. I wanted to get over to that side of the work. Around that time, I also decided that I wanted to go deeper into business. I was working with companies. Chris: I was asking them to support us, but I didn't really understand business in a deep way. And so, I ended up going back to graduate school at night to get my MBA while I was working at Dana-Farber. And I ended up making the switch over to New Balance and taking a job there really that was the opposite or the flip side of what I had been doing at the Jimmy Fund. Chris: So, instead of asking companies to support us and asking them to sponsor and have their employees participate in our events, and have an impact in that way, I was helping to guide New Balance's investment in different nonprofits in the community and thinking about how we showed up with our dollars, with our products, with our people to support those efforts. And so, the job was to manage what New Balance called their cause marketing work at the time. Chris: I sat in the marketing department at New Balance. I was measured in the same ways that other marketers were on driving awareness of New Balance's brand, consideration of our product and trying on footwear and apparel and things like that, and then ultimately sales of that product, which was great. And I loved it because I got a chance to really get into the marketing and science of that, which was fascinating, and do it at a brand and in a field of athletic footwear and apparel that I was personally passionate about as a runner and as an athlete. Chris: So, best of both worlds there. And it was just a great opportunity to take what I knew from the nonprofit side and bring that sensibility into the corporate environment into how we showed up and work with our nonprofit partners, whether it was Susan G. Komen for the Cure or Girls on the Run, which was our other major partner. And I just loved it. And I think that really crystallized, this is the career path for me. Chris: I can work with cool products and in areas that I really liked, but I can have an impact in that way. And it just opened my eyes to what was possible for companies. New Balance was such a special place because it was a privately held, family-owned company, had a tremendous number of people that I worked there for years. It really felt like a community of people in ways that the Jimmy Fund and Holy Cross actually felt very similar to me, and that's what I loved about being there at the time. Chris: And we got to do some really cool things, whether it was working on all the different Komen events. I had a chance to meet Joe Biden, President Biden, when he was vice president at the time at an event for Komen and New Balance, which was amazing. We got to do great things, marketing our products, and attending different events, and meeting celebrities. I went on The Ellen Show to give away million dollars for breast cancer research and got to have the big chat out there and hand that to Ellen. Chris: So, amazing, unique experiences that I wouldn't have other ever anticipated getting a chance to do as a result of that job. It's a really special company. And later, I got a chance to really go deep and work with Girls on the Run after my time at New Balance. After I left New Balance, I had a chance to join the board of Girls on the Run and serve on their board and chair their board for a few years. Chris: And to get to work with that amazing nonprofit that focuses on women's leadership development and girls empowerment through a running curriculum and really social-emotional skill building curriculum was just an amazing experience to, again, work for another world-class nonprofit and get a chance to see it grow. So, another really fortunate opportunity for me. JP: Yeah, that's incredible. That seems like such an overall special, I guess, group of things that you got, meeting the president and going on The Ellen Show. That's awesome. So, I guess, it seems like it's hard to top those experiences. But has anything changed in terms of your most memorable milestone since then in your career? Chris: I think you start to look at what are the skills and experiences and most importantly, the relationships you build over your career. And each of those are really cool memories and experiences. But I think what matters is the relationships that you start to have and build over time. So, when I think about those different jobs, it's more about the people that I got a chance to work with and get to learn from. Chris: And I think City Year as my current job and organization now for the last eight years, that's what I start to think about and focus on is how have I gotten the chance to work with and learn from really great people, and continued. I think, even in this kind of midway through my career and later in my career, I feel like I'm still learning and growing on a daily basis, and getting better both at what I do tangibly functionally in my work. Chris: But also as a manager, as a boss, as a co-worker, as a parent, I think you start to pick up those lessons. And I think for City Year in particular, it's by far the most powerful place that I've ever seen as far as helping people really build connection to one another and to help us really explore who we are and how do we show up as our full selves at work on a daily basis. And how do we do that for other people, whether it's our co-workers or whether it's the students we work with in the schools we serve in. Chris: I think that's the amazing lesson and opportunity of City Year. So, I would say I hope I haven't hit the highlights of the careers. I got a lot of work left to do. And I think we've got a lot more to accomplish and learn. So, I'm excited about that. JP: Definitely. The best is yet to come. All right. So, now, to shift over, I know earlier, you talked about the idea of cause marketing and how that plays into your career. And I know that's been around for quite some time now and is becoming increasingly popular and being leveraged by businesses and nonprofits. So, for those who are listening who might not know a lot about it, could you speak a little about cause marketing and what that means to your career, past, present and future? Chris: Yes. It's interesting, you've seen a real change over the decades in how companies think about their responsibility and impact to society. And early on, it was very much about volunteerism and employees coming out doing different things. Or it might be about the company writing a check and the CEO handing it over to an organization. There wasn't really a business strategy. It was, "Hey, we recognize we're part of this community. We want to support our community and we find ways to do that." Chris: And then, what you started to see late into the '90s, early 2000s is companies started to read realize this could actually have a deeper business impact. People want to support companies that are doing good things in their communities. And we can tell that story via our marketing, our public relations efforts, via sponsorships and other things, kind of classic marketing and sales approaches. And so, they started to integrate cause into that. Chris: And so, you start to see opportunities like buy this product, we'll donate XYZ. And then, you started to see buy one, give one like TOMS and other new models of cause marketing come in. But in the early days, it was still very much kind of a business strategy using cause to drive it. So, it was, "We know people care about this cause. And if we talk about being associated with it, it would get them to buy our product or get them to take this action." Chris: And what we've seen over the last decade plus is that's really evolving and going deeper. I think what we started to see, particularly when I was working at Cone Communications and advising clients, we started to say, "What's unique about your company and the work that you do, the industry that you're in, the expertise that you have? And how could you connect your philanthropy to an issue that is aligned with your business?" Chris: "So, if you're in the pharmaceutical industry or other areas, how do you align with health and determinants of health? If you're working in other areas, like cable and telephone and others, how do you think about connectivity and digital connectivity being something that you can provide and connect to?" And so, how do you align the strategy and the impact you can have with your business so that those two things are working in harmony in reinforcing one another? Chris: And so, I think there was an understanding that it can actually drive business. And it's not just a nice thing to do that's over on the side, it's an important strategy to drive business. And so, during my time at New Balance and Cone and later at Reebok, I think we were more in that era of saying, "How do we integrate it into the business? And how do we really see it as a unique business driving strategy?" Chris: Now, I think you're in an even different environment, both with young people like yourselves coming into work and into the environment and being aware of social issues in a way that is deeper and more common than I think it was maybe of my generation and earlier, really wanting to have a purpose at work, and looking at your companies and saying, "How are you helping me do that?" And I only want to be here if I'm having a chance to put my passion and my values front and center in a way that was different than I think previous generations thought about work. Chris: And then, two, I think we're realizing, particularly over the last two years with the pandemic, with the murder of George Floyd, certainly the cracks in our system and how it is not equitable, how racism really shows up across all kinds of dimensions to prevent others from having opportunity that they should, and saying, "That's not okay." And people are saying, "We expect to both individually have an opportunity to affect that." Chris: "And we expect companies to be vocal and to step up and to show what their values are. And if you're not, then that's not going to be a company that I'm going to invest my time in personally as an employee. Or I'm not going to invest my dollars in as a customer." And I think you're seeing a whole new era of companies leading and being vocal in a lot of ways around social issues and taking a stand. Chris: And if they're not, people kind of questioning what's going on and why not. So, I think it's been really impressive and powerful to see. There's a lot that still needs to be done, right? There's a tremendous amount of inequity even within companies. And we see examples every day of bad behavior or other things that companies need to do better and need to do differently. Chris: But I will say, in working with many different Fortune 100 companies on a daily basis, the understanding of issues, the way they talk about social issues, the way they talk about their own diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging efforts within the company is a huge sea change compared to what I saw even five, 10 years ago, which gives me a lot of hope for where we're going. I think we're realizing that capitalism is an amazing system of value creation. It's done tremendous things to grow and build our company. Chris: And the kind of American dream did a tremendous number of things, certainly for my family and many others, but that that's no longer the case for everyone and it probably never was, to be honest. And so, how do we own that and how do we address that? And I think companies are wrestling with that in a more authentic way. And I hope they continue to do that. It's part of what I think my life's work is, is to try and help companies do that. JP: Yeah, definitely. I feel like that, in my opinion, that idea of cause marketing is something that's... I feel like that's got to be something that's just going to become, I guess, take over in terms of marketing. And just seeing it present today, I guess I've been seeing it firsthand with the new Worcester Red Sox at Polar Park in terms of sports marketing. Their whole thing is... I think the program is like In Debt to a Vet. JP: So, they're marketing that product of going to the game and all. And then, every strike out at home, they donate X amount of money to veterans. And then, they also have just other organizations like fighting food insecurity and things like that. So, I feel like I've just been learning more and more about that. And I feel like that's got to be something like revolutionary in terms of marketing and business today. Chris: Yeah. And do you find yourself deciding who to buy from and who to work with as a result of that? Do you see it show up in the decisions you make? JP: Yeah. Definitely, I feel like these days, I see, even buying clothing and things like that, some... off the top of my head, I can't think of any. And shoes too, especially I've been seeing. They advertise the materials they make their shoes out of and stuff like that. And X percent of the money they take in goes to this cause or that cause. So, yeah, I've definitely been seeing it become more and more present today. Chris: I think it's true. I think as a marketer, and I don't even like the term cause marketing anymore because it feels so transactional, and we're well beyond that. I mean, it is a strategy that is useful and valuable, and company should still do. But I think what you've seen is now that you interact with a company and their products and a brand all the time, whether it's in social media or online or in other places, it used to be such a tightly controlled thing. Chris: You kind of created a marketing message, you put it out there in a campaign. You spent weeks developing it and controlling the advertising message and putting it out there. That's just not how we market and how customers engage anymore. It's year round, minute to minute brand building and engagement. It's a very different thing. And so, what you've seen is companies have to evolve to respond to that and say, "Okay, we need to be talking about not just cause marketing, but it's about what are our values." Chris: "And how do those show up in every action that we do, because it's not just the messaging that we put out from a marketing or an advertising standpoint. It's how somebody experienced us in the store, or an interaction they had with an employee, or something our CEO said, or some way they experienced our product." And it's 24-7-365. And so, I think you're seeing companies really say, "This is about our values, and being clear on what our values are." Chris: Because our most important stakeholders, our people are saying that that's what matters to them and that's what they care about. And so, I think we just think about business differently. JP: Absolutely, yeah. And actually, even aside from just that marketing aspect, the whole idea of impact investing and companies just needing to evolve now based on ESG and sustainability and things like that, it's just becoming more and more just the norm. And I feel like more and more businesses have no choice but to evolve and match what other businesses are doing because that's such a pressing topic in today's time as well. Chris: A hundred percent. And you have to, to compete, to succeed. And all the data tells you that companies that invest and do deep things and are high performing when it comes to the environmental, social, and governance measures outperform other companies and succeed. So, it's not just a nice thing to do, an important thing to do for the planet, a good thing to do. It's an imperative. If you want to continue to build a business and have it thrive, you have to lean in those areas. JP: Definitely. So, could you speak about the back and forth relationship you've seen between business and nonprofits throughout the span of your professional career? Chris: Absolutely. That's a great question. I think to our earlier conversation, early on, I think it was more transactional. It was kind of checkbook philanthropy. And we developed some relationships, and hopefully we get some money. And what we've seen, certainly in my time at City Year and why I was excited to come to City Year and work on it, is that changed. And companies were increasingly looking at a much deeper and holistic way to support issues. Chris: And so, they wanted certainly the branding and the visibility, and being able to talk about themselves as being good citizens, and for nonprofits to help validate and help them have opportunities to do that. They wanted to have employees actively volunteering and spending time, whether that was doing different kind of done-in-a-day volunteer projects or weeks of service, days of service, things like that. Chris: Or deeper ongoing skills-based volunteerism where I can share my expertise in marketing or somebody can share their expertise in web design or other things with the nonprofit and help that nonprofit build its capabilities or its skills. And really being able to set ambitious goals, which is what we're seeing a lot of companies do now, and to say, "This is what we care about from a social impact standpoint. Here's how we're going to try and have some impact. And here's some ways we're going to hold ourselves accountable and measure against it." Chris: And so, now, nonprofits are more partners in that process. And certainly, there's a dynamic of where the dollars come. And we certainly are trying to raise money from companies and have contractual pieces of what we do. But in many ways, we're sitting at the table with our corporate partners, and they view us as experts in the space that help them, at least for City Year, understand education, understand urban education, understand racial issues and how those show up in the education space, and are looking for our help and our guidance on how they can have a deeper impact. Chris: And we often think collaboratively and advise and coach them on some of the things they're thinking about. And in many cases, they can offer tremendous support to help us do different things. We've been fortunate to work with Deloitte Consulting as an example at City Year for decades now, and have benefited from having pro bono case teams and others really come and think about how do we grow City Year as an organization. Chris: So, I would say it's much less of a transactional thing and much more of a collaborative partnership, which has been amazing to see. And I think that's the part that I've been fortunate to have worked on the nonprofit side, the corporate side, the agency side, and seeing that from all angles that I think it hopefully helps me be a better partner to our colleagues. But I think there's such a willingness to say, "These are huge social issues that cannot be solved by any individual nonprofit, any individual organization." Chris: And we have to come together and figure out how we work collectively on them to change them. So, I think the level of expertise sharing, information sharing, and collaboration is greater than it's ever been. So, I'm excited about that. JP: Cool, yeah. Thank yo

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Is threat intelligence the only language that physical protection and cyber security can use to effectively communicate the how, the why and the where? Do the cyber and physical realms even have any reason to communicate other than to exchange threat Intel? This week, we're going to be talking with Risk intelligence expert and trainer, Chris Story, familiar to many as the co-host of the Conversations in Close Protection Podcast. Chris has a military intelligence background and currently serves on the board of the IPSB.  In this revealing interview, we ask Chris… Where does his passion for threat intelligence come from? Because threat intelligence isn't considered a ‘sexy' training subject, it often gets overlooked. How do we change the perception and get industry-wide buy-in on this subject? Where should threat intelligence live and where should it be housed to be effective and relevant?   Should everyone sign-up for basic threat Intel training as if they were in the military? Tune in to episode 35 for this and much more on how threat intelligence can increase your capability as a protector. As Chris reminds us… “If you look at the risk and threat intelligence to understand what can hurt you beyond the 15 yards that you're responsible for then it makes your job abundantly easier.” More about Chris Chris Story is a security professional with over 25 years of experience managing, conducting, and consulting in protective and intelligence operations worldwide. Spending over a decade in the US Army, Chris served as a Counterintelligence Agent and Special Operations. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-story-securityleadership/ (LinkedIn) https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/conversations-in-close-protection/id1464565197 (Conversations in Close Protection) More about the Circuit  The Circuit Magazine is written and produced by volunteers, most of who are operationally active, working full time in the security industry. The magazine is a product of their combined passion and desire to give something back to the industry. By subscribing to the magazine you are helping to keep it going into the future. https://circuit-magazine.com/read/ (Find out more >) If you liked this podcast, we have an accompanying weekly newsletter called 'On the Circuit' where we take a deeper dive into the wider industry. http://bit.ly/OntheCircuit (Opt in here >) The Circuit team is: Elijah Shaw Jon Moss Shaun West Phelim Rowe Connect with Us:  https://circuit-magazine.com/ (Circuit Magazine) https://mailchi.mp/the-bba.org.uk/bba-connect (BBA Connect) https://www.theprotectorapp.com/ (NABA Protector) https://the-bba.org.uk/ (British Bodyguard Association)

On this week's episode, Chris and Steph share a speedy step to restart your rails server and chat about accessibility improvements and favorite a11y tools. They also dive into a tale of database switching and delight in a new Rails query method that returns orphaned records. Restart Rails server via tmp/restart.txt (https://twitter.com/christoomey/status/1387799863929212931?s=20) WebAIM: Constrast Checker (https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/) IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker (https://www.ibm.com/able/toolkit) axe™ DevTools (https://www.deque.com/axe/browser-extensions/) AccessLint (https://accesslint.com/) Assistiv Labs (https://assistivlabs.com/) An introduction to macOS Head Pointer (https://thoughtbot.com/blog/an-introduction-to-macos-head-pointer) Rails date_select (https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/DateHelper.html#method-i-date_select) Rails strong_migrations (https://github.com/ankane/strong_migrations) Ruby RBS (https://github.com/ruby/rbs) Sorbet - Ruby Type Checker (https://sorbet.org/) Scout APM (https://scoutapm.com/) Rails 6.1 adds query method missing to find orphan records (https://blog.saeloun.com/2020/01/21/rails-6-1-adds-query-method-missing-to-find-orphan-records.html) Transcript: STEPH: People put microphones in front of us. That is their fault, not ours. We just show up. 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: 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. CHRIS: Happy Friday. STEPH: How's your week been? CHRIS: It's been great. I did something that is wildly overdue, but I got a new chair and one day in. But it's also a very familiar chair because it's basically the same -- I think it's the same model as we had at the thoughtbot office. And it's nice to have a chair that is reasonable. And I think my old chair was maybe ten years old or something, deeply embarrassing and absurd like that for such a critical piece of infrastructure in my house. STEPH: I mean, I guess depending on if it's a good chair. I don't know what the lifespan is of a good chair. [laughs] CHRIS: I would not describe it as such. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: I think it was like $100 at Staples. It was a fine chair. It served me well for many years. I'm very slow and cautious with what I consider to be large-scale purchases. I hate the idea of having a thing that I've spent a bunch of money on, but I don't actually like. And these are very solvable problems. But I just tend to drag my feet and over-research and do all those sorts of things. And so finally I was just like, nope, we're going to get a chair, got a chair. Cool. Now I have a chair, and it's good. It's got all of the adjustments, which is what makes it very nice. I'd say Steelcase Leap is the model for anyone that's interested. STEPH: That's funny. I tend to do the same thing. I tend to drag my feet until I get desperate enough that then I'm forced to make a decision and buy something. I do have an oddly specific question. Do you like chairs with or without the arms? CHRIS: Oh, with the arms. STEPH: Really? CHRIS: Yeah. STEPH: I am team, no arms. CHRIS: Where do your arms go if there are no arms to put on the chair? STEPH: They're always on my lap or on my keyboard. So I just don't rest them on the armrest. CHRIS: Interesting. I feel like that would put -- I've definitely had small bouts of RSI strain fatigue in my forearms. And so I'm very purposeful with how I'm bracing my wrists. I have a little wrist rest that I put my hands on when I'm using my keyboard because the keyboard is slightly raised up because I have a nonsense mechanical keyboard, of course. STEPH: Delightful, not nonsense. CHRIS: Yeah, I love it. I would never trade that in, but I have to make it work and not actually sacrifice my body for a clackety keyboard. [chuckles] But yeah, I think I need some more support for my arms; otherwise, there's too much pressure on my wrists, and things are breaking at weird angles, and that's been my experience. I'm intrigued by the free-flying no arms on the chair approach that you're talking about. This particular model has nine degrees of freedom on the armrest. So I'm able to bring them in and forward and at the exact right height so that they perfectly meet my arm where it would naturally be, and that seems good. That seems like the thing that I want. STEPH: That makes a lot of sense. But yeah, I'm team no arms. Every time I have them, I can't get them at the right comfortable spot. And I like the freedom of where I can quickly get up and out of my chair and not have arms in the way, which sounds like a very small improvement in my life, but yet it's what I want. CHRIS: I just like the idea of you sitting there and being like, I need to be able to make a quick escape at any moment; who knows what's going to happen? And I need to be able to run the other way. STEPH: If there's a gnarly bug, I got to be able to run. I can run away quickly as possible. [laughs] CHRIS: But in other news, so yeah, new chair that's great. I also recently embraced something in the Rails world that I have known about I think for forever for the entire time that I've worked in Rails, but I've never really used it, which is the tmp/restart.txt file, which my understanding of it is if you touch that file, or if that file exists, Rails will recognize that and will restart the server in development mode. And I think I've always known about this, but I've never used it. And I recognized recently that either I was trying to use a gem that I'd added to the Gemfile, but my server didn't know about it. So I was going to do the thing that I normally do, which is kill the server and then restart the server so CTRL+C and then CTRL+P in my terminal and hit enter, and then wait a bunch of minutes and get distracted, all of the bad things there. And I was like, wait; I remember that there's a thing here. And I don't know why I haven't been doing this for years. It's so much better. I actually went the one step further, and I configured a tmux binding so that tmux prefix and then R will touch tmp/restart in the local directory of the tmux session. That's been very nice, I will say. So I keep moving between branches. And I have environment variables that I need to reload or config initializers that I've made a change to, and I want to load that in. Or a gem that I've added to the Gemfile and I've now installed, but the server doesn't know about. All of these are just so quick now. And why wasn't I doing this the whole time? STEPH: I saw that you mentioned this on Twitter a couple of days ago, and I was so excited. But at the moment, I bookmarked it for later, but I didn't have time to actually really check it out. And I'm so glad you're bringing it up because I actually just tried it while we're chatting. So I started up my Rails server, and then I did the touch tmp/restart, and this is amazing. This is awesome. I'm very excited. CHRIS: It just does the thing. STEPH: It just does the thing. CHRIS: Yeah, it's so nice. [laughter] STEPH: Yeah, this is fabulous, almost as good as the pending migrations button. Not quite because that's a very special button, but this is also up there. CHRIS: It's a very, very good button. [laughs] I really got very enthusiastic about that button, didn't I? But I stand by it. It's a very good button, and this is a very good file. But this file has existed for so much longer, this workflow. And so many times, I have restarted the server and have been annoyed that I had to do it. And my brain just had this answer available. I didn't read a blog post and relearn this thing. I've always known it. And it was this one particular time that my brain was like, "Hey, you know how we're always annoyed by having to restart the server? You know there's another answer, right? I know that you know it because I'm your brain, and I'm telling you this." [chuckles] This is my weird internal monologue. So I'm very happy to be on the other side of that and to share that with as many people as possible who may be, like me, know about this but haven't actually leaned into it, small things that make the Rails world very nice. STEPH: Well, I'm glad you internalized it and then surfaced it because this is not something that I had heard of before. So I'm very appreciative of it. This is going to be great. CHRIS: Happy to share the wealth. But yeah, that's some of the stuff that's been up in my world. What's been going on in your world? STEPH: It's been a rather busy week. Most of that week has been focused on improving the accessibility of existing pages and forms, which is an area that I don't get to spend a lot of time, but each time I do, I really would like to be a pro when it comes to accessibility. Well, that's probably a long journey to become a pro. I would like to become more knowledgeable in terms of accessibility because it is so important. And while working specifically on these accessibility tickets and improvements, I've discovered a few helpful tools that I figured I'd share here. So one of the tools that I've started using is a color contrast tool. It's created by WebAIM or web accessibility in mind. And a number of our headers in our application have a white font that's on a background color, and we were getting warnings that this isn't very accessible and that there's not enough contrast. So with the Contrast Checker, you can provide the foreground color and the background color, and then it's going to tell you that contrast ratio. So if you're wondering, well, what's a good ratio? That's a great question. And the W3C Accessibility Guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of 4:5:1 for normal texts and 3:1 for larger texts. Larger text is anything that's typically around 18 px, 18.5 px, or larger. So the color contrast tool has been really helpful because then that's been very easy that we give the blue that we're using, and then we can just darken it a bit to improve that contrast. And then we apply that everywhere throughout the app. The other tool that I've been using that I'm really excited about it's a browser extension called the IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker. Is that something you've heard of or used before? CHRIS: I have not heard of that. STEPH: I would love to know what you currently use for accessibility, and I'll circle back to that in just a moment. But for this particular browser extension, I'm pretty sure they have it for multiple browsers. I'm using Chrome. So I've installed the Chrome extension. Once you have it installed, you can open up the browser console and then tell it to scan the page that you're on. And then it generates a really helpful report that has all the high-level offenses, which are called violations. It also has warnings and recommendations. And then if you click on a specific issue, then the right-hand area shows a detailed description of the offending HTML, what's wrong, why it's important, which I really appreciate that part, and then a couple of examples of how to fix it. So it's been a really nice way as we are working to improve the accessibility of form. We actually have feedback to know that we are making progress and that we are improving the accessibility of that particular page. And then circling back, I'm curious, do you have any particular tools that you use when it comes to improving accessibility or any standards that you tend to follow? CHRIS: Yeah, this is a very apropos question. I'm working on a new project now, and accessibility is definitely something that I want to consider on every project, but it's all the more so important for this particular project, or it's something that we're, as a team, collectively really embracing early on and wanting it to be a core focus of how we're building out the application. That said, I will say that I'm accessibility aware but far from an expert and still very much learning. But some of the things that I have used are the axe DevTools. I forget what the acronym actually stands for there, but we can certainly include a link in the show notes. But those are DevTools that allow you to, I think, do some color contrast checking actually in the browser just right there, which is really nice. There's also AccessLint, which is a project that scans pull requests and, where possible, does static analysis of the HTML. And that's actually by some former thoughtboters. So it's always nice to have that in the reference. There's actually a new tool that I've been looking at. I haven't actually tried it out yet, but it's from a company called Assistiv Labs, Assistiv without an E interestingly at the end. But their tool is, as far as I can tell, it allows you to use screen readers and other tools but across various platforms so that you sort of turn on -- It's very similar to if you've ever used an emulated Internet Explorer session because you're working on not an Internet Explorer machine, but you want to make sure your site works in Internet Explorer, same sort of idea, I believe. But it allows you to do the same approach for accessibility. So using a screen reader or using what the native accessibility technologies are on various platforms and being able to test across a wide range of things. So that's definitely one that I'm going to be exploring more in the near future. And beyond that, there are a handful of static analysis-based tools that I've used. So Svelte actually has some built-in stuff around accessibility. Because they are a compiler, they can do some really nice things there, and I really appreciate that that is a fundamental concern that they've built into the language, and the framework, and the compiler, and all of that. And I've also used ESLint A11y, which is the acronymnified version of the word accessibility. But that again, static analysis, so it can only go so far. And unfortunately, accessibility is one of those things that's hard to get at from a static analysis point of view, but it's still better than nothing. And it allows you to have a first line of defense at the code as you're authoring it. So that's a smattering of things. I've used some of them. I'm interested in others of them. But this is definitely an area that I'm going to be exploring a bunch more in the near future. STEPH: I like that you brought in the static analysis tools because that's the other thing that's been on my mind as we're making these accessibility improvements; that's been great. And we can run this particular browser extension to then check for warnings or issues on the page but then looking out for regressions is on my mind. Or as we're introducing new pages and new forms, how do we make sure that those are up to standard if someone forgets to run that extension? So I really like the idea of -- There's AccessLint that you mentioned, which will then scan PRs for accessibility improvements. That sounds really great. I'm also intrigued if there's a way to also -- I don't know if maybe tests are a good way to also look for any sort of regressions in terms of changes that we've made to a page. I don't know what those tests would look like. So I'll have to think on that some more, but I think some people at thoughtbot have thought about it. CHRIS: My understanding is the testing library suite of testing frameworks, so it's like testing library React, testing library, et cetera. It's primarily used in the JavaScript world, although there is Cypress, which is more of a browser-level automation. But it fundamentally works from not exactly an accessibility but a -- It doesn't allow you to do DOM selectors. It really tries to hide that. And it says, "No, no, no. You're not going to be digging in and finding the class name of this thing because guess what? A user of your application can't do that." What we want are – Typically, it's like find by label or find by things that are accessibility available or just generally available to users of your application. So whether it's users that are just clicking around or if they're using any sort of assistive technology, the testing library framework forces you in that direction. You can't write a test if your code is inaccessible tends to be the way it plays out, and it really nudges you in that direction. So it's one of the things that I really love about that. And I actually miss it when I'm working in a Capybara test suite because, as far as I know, there is not a Capybara testing library variant of it. And really, at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of functions to allow you to select within the context of the page. But again, it does it from that standpoint, and I'm all about that. STEPH: Yeah, that's really nice. That's a good point. Yeah, I don't think Capybara has that explicitly. I know that you have to use specific parameters. Like, if you want to access something on the page that is hidden, that's not something you can just do easily. You have to specify: I'm looking for an element that is hidden on the page. But otherwise, I don't think it goes out of its way to prevent you from doing that. There is an article that this conversation about accessibility made me think of. There's a really fun blog post written by Eric Bailey, who has been or who is a champion of accessibility at thoughtbot and has written a lot of great content around making the web more accessible. And in addition to publishing with the thoughtbot blog post, he has written for a number of publications. And the article that comes to mind that he published on the thoughtbot blog posts is An Introduction to macOS Head Pointer, and we'll link to it in the show notes. But he does a great job walking through what the head pointer is on macOS and then how to use it. And he uses his eyebrows to essentially move the mouse and then click on certain buttons or click on certain links on the screen. And it's incredible. So if you need a little bit of accessibility and joy in your life, I highly recommend checking out that article. CHRIS: Yeah. Eric has absolutely just been such a fantastic champion of accessibility. And he's definitely someone that I think of constantly as being -- I think he's involved with the Accessibility Project. He writes on CSS Tricks. He's around the internet just being the hero we need because accessibility is such a critical thing. And I'm a deep believer in the idea that accessible applications are better for everyone. And I so appreciate the efforts that he's putting in out there. Thanks, Eric. STEPH: Thanks, Eric. And then, on a slightly separate note, I have a slight complaint that I'd like to file. And this one is with Rails specifically. And I'm filing this complaint with the understanding that I'm also very spoiled in terms of Rails does so much, and I'm very appreciative of how much Rails does for me and for us. But specifically, while working on accessibility for a date of birth form field, so it's a form field with three different selects, so you have your month, day, and year. And while creating this, there's a very helpful Rails method that's called date_select, where then you can generate all three of those select fields. And you can even specify the order in which you want them generated, but this particular function doesn't have a way to make it accessible. So you can generate a label for each option that's in the select dropdown. And there's no parameter. There's nothing you can pass through. It doesn't automatically generate it for you. So I was in a spot where I was updating a form that's using the Rails dateselect. I can't use dateselect and make an accessible dropdown selection for date of birth. So instead, what I had to do is I had to split it out. I had to move away from using dateselect, and instead, I'm using selectmonth and then selectday and selectyear because from there, I then can pass in; in my case, I'm using aria-label to provide a label because I don't actually want the label to show up on a screen, which could be another accessibility concern because we do have the birth date label for those three sections. But then we still want at least each text field to have a label, even if it's only visible to screen readers. So then that way, if someone is selecting from year, they understand they're selecting from year or for month they're selecting from month. So by using selectyear and selectday and selectmonth, I could specify the aria-label as month, day, or year, but I couldn't do that with the dateselect. And I just realized that there's probably a number of date of birth forms out there that aren't accessible because us Rails developers are leveraging this existing method. So it just seems like a really good opportunity to improve date_select to be able to pass in a label or generate one automatically. CHRIS: Wow. I'm surprised that's the state of the art that we're currently at. I really wonder if there have been conversations or if there are fundamental limitations because I'd be surprised if such a core piece of the Rails world someone hadn't brought this up in the issues. What's the story there? Because I'm guessing there's a story there. Although flipping it around, I wonder -- I've never loved that input sequence; as an aside, like three different selects, that's not how I think of my birthday. My birthday is one thing. It's not three things that we smash together. But I wonder are we at a point now where IE 11 usage is so small that we can use a native date_select input and then have a polyfill -- And then I start to trail off because I don't know what the story is for. Like, I think Safari doesn't do a great job, and I forget where it's at right now. And what about mobile Safari? And wouldn't it be nice if everything was just easy and everybody kept up? [laughter] But that's an aside. But yeah, that's part of my question here, is like, can we just not use that thing at all? Like, the three select dropdown version of picking a date of birth because, man, that's my least favorite way to do it. STEPH: Yeah. I'm with you. I'm also curious if there is a story behind this and also if anyone has a different opinion, and I'd love to hear it. Because this has been my experience in digging through the docs is I would date_select, and I could not find a way to pass in a label or have one generated to make it accessible. So then that prompted me to use the three different methods, which, by the way, is fine. It made me stop and pause to think this is the method that most people recommend the usage of in terms of creating those three different select fields for a date of birth or for any particular date that you're supplying; it does not have to be a date of birth. So it also surprised me that then we couldn't make it accessible. So yeah, I was a bit miffed in the moment. [laughter] I had to walk myself back and be like, well, if I want to make the world a better place, I should help make the world a better place. And that started with changing the code in this codebase. But then also it means looking into Rails to see if there's an improvement that I could help with there. CHRIS: This is what we do: we take our moments of miffed, and we turn them into positive action in the world. This is what we want to see. [chuckles] STEPH: I figure the least I can do is share a blog post or something on Twitter that shows what it was before and then using the new dateselect functions because that is reasonable, although working with a form is a bit different. It got a little tricky there in terms of making sure that each value for each select field is still being passed within the expected nested parameter. And some of that was available in the public API for selectyear and select_day, but it's not as well documented. So I'm like, well, this seems to be intentionally public, but it's not documented, so I feel a little nervous about using this. Yeah, that's it. I just wanted to share my annoyance with Rails [laughs] or the fact that it made me work so hard to have a date of birth field. CHRIS: You joke, but that's a lot of why we use Rails is because we want these common regular things that we're doing to be as easy as possible, to require as little code on our part as possible but also this sort of thing like there's a lot of subtlety and stuff. Accessibility is one of those things that I want a framework that has security, and accessibility, and ease of use, and all of these things just baked in, so I don't have to think about it every time. It turns out having a date of birth, or generically any date field, is going to come up in web applications a lot, it turns out. And so having all of that stuff covered is frankly what I expect of a framework like Rails. So I'm totally on board with your being miffed here. STEPH: Yeah. Those are all really valid points. So I'm with you. What else has been up in your week? CHRIS: Well, we've been leading up to this, I think, for many weeks. I did a Rails 6.0 upgrade a while back, and a big reason for that was partly just to get on the current version of Rails but also because I wanted to open the door to database switching, and finally, this week, I tackled it. And let's tell a tale because there was a bit of an adventure, if we're being honest. Fundamentally, all the stuff there makes sense. I'm happy with the end configuration, but there was a surprising amount of back and forth. I broke the app more times than I want to actually announce on a podcast, but I broke it only for a brief period of time. It's fine. It's fine. Everybody's fine. [laughs] I feel a little bad about it, but these things happen. But yeah, it was interesting, is how I'll describe it. So fundamentally, Rails just has nice configuration for it. So at a high level, you're introducing your config/database.yml. Instead of it just being production is this URL, you now say primary is this replica or follower, whatever you want to name it is this. So you have now two configurations nested within your production config. And then in your ApplicationRecord, you inform Rails that it connects_to, and then you define a Hash for writing goes to the primary, reading goes to the follower. And you have to sync those up with the thing you just wrote in the config/database.yml but fundamentally, that kind of works. That makes it possible in your application to now switch your database connection. The real magic comes in the config environment production file. And in that, you specify that you want Rails to use a database resolver that says GET requests go to the replica, and anything that is not a GET request goes to the primary. So anytime you're writing data, anytime you're changing data within the system, that's going to go to the primary. And there's also a configuration that, as far as I can tell, gives a session affinity. So for the next two seconds after that, even if you make a GET request subsequently right following it, so you make a right, you POST, and then immediately after that, you do a GET. Like, you create an object, and then you get redirected to the show page for that object, Rails will continue to go to the primary. I think it's probably using a cookie or something to that effect, but you can configure that time span. So you can say like, "Actually, we see that our follower lags behind a little bit more, so let's give it a five-second timeout where all requests for that user will then go to the primary." But otherwise, once that timeout clears, then you're going to switch back, and you're going to go to the follower, and all GET requests will happen to the follower. And that's the story. You have to configure that, and then it works. STEPH: I always love when you start these out with "I have a tale to tell." I very much enjoy these adventures. And you also answered my question in regards to if you immediately just created something, but then you do a fetch that's very close to after you just created it and how that gets rendered. So that was perfect. CHRIS: Frankly, the core configuration is very straightforward, and it's very much in line with what we were just talking about of; this is what I want from Rails: make this thing very easy, hide the details behind the scenes. But as I said, there's a bit of a tale here. So that was the base configuration. It sort of worked but then immediately upon deploying it to production -- So we deployed it to staging first just to test it out. Staging was fine, as is often the case. Increasingly, I'm leaning into Charity Majors' idea of you got to test in production. You're testing in production even if you say you aren't. So once it got to production, we started seeing a bunch of errors raised or a handful of errors. And they were related to a handful of controller actions, which are GET requests, so they're either show or index, but in them, they were creating, or they were trying to create data. And so we were getting an error that was read-only connection error or something to that effect, ActiveRecord read-only, I think, was the error class. And that makes sense because I told it, "Hey, whenever you get a GET request, you're going to use that follower." But the follower is a read-only database connection because it's a follower, and so it was erroring. It was interesting because when this happened, I was like, wait, what? And then I looked into it. And it's frankly fine at all the levels. It is okay to create a record in a GET request as long as that creation is idempotent. You create if it doesn't exist, and then from there on, you use that same one. That still fits within the HTTP rules of idempotents, and everybody's fine with that, except for the database connection. Thankfully, this is relatively easy to work around. You just need to explicitly within that controller action say, "Use the right database, use the primary." And the way I implemented that, I wrote a method within ApplicationRecord that was with right DB connection, and then it takes a block, and you yield to that block. It's basically just proxying to another similar thing. And it's very similar to wrapping something in a transaction; it sort of feels like that. It's saying just for this point in time, switch over and use the primary because I know that I'm going to be having some side effect here. STEPH: Wow. That's so fun. I'm sure it was not fun for you. But as me hearing the story later, that's fun in regards to I hadn't thought about that idea of you're telling all the GETs you can only go to the read, and now you're also trying to create. I am feeling nervous in terms of local development. So if you're working on a new controller and if you have a fetch or GET action, but you're also creating something, you haven't seen another controller that is demonstrating that strategy that needs to be used. Is it just going to work locally? I imagine it does because it was working for the other code that you were running that didn't yet have that strategy in place. So I'm feeling nervous in terms of someone could easily miss that. CHRIS: I think there are a couple of different questions in what you just said. So let me try and answer all of the ones that I think I heard. So for local development, your database/config.yml is still going to be the same as it was. So you're just connecting to database namedevelopment. There's only one of them; there's no primary follower. So this is a case where you have a discrepancy between production and development, which is always interesting. And maybe that's something to poke at because ideally, I want as little gap there as possible. But this is one of those cases where I'm like, eh, I don't think I'm going to run two databases locally and have one be a follower. That feels like too much to manage. Under the hood with that right DB connection method that I talked about where you want to explicitly opt-in, in the case that we're in development, I just yield directly to the block. So instead of doing the actual database switching at that point, the method is basically saying, "If we're in production, then switch to the primary and yield and if we're not in production, then just yield." And so it'll just run that code, and it'll connect to the only database. More generally, I have the connectsto configuration; I wrapped that. So that's in ApplicationRecord where you're saying, "Hey, connect to these databases based on this logic," that is wrapped if we're in production check as well. And the same thing in the top-level configuration that says -- We're getting ahead of ourselves in the story because this is the end state that I got to. It's not where I started, and I screwed some stuff up in here, but basically, all of the different configuration points, my end result was to wrap them in a check that we are in production. STEPH: Okay. Sorry if I rushed your story. I was already thinking ahead to how could we accidentally goof this up? That makes a lot of sense for the method that's with right DB connection, that method that then it's going to check if we're in production, then we can use a primary follower strategy; otherwise, just use the database that we know of. So that helps a lot in answering those questions. And then we can pause and then get to my question later. But my other question that I'm curious about is what helps us prevent the team from making this mistake in terms of where we're adding a new controller, we add a new GET action, and we are also creating data, but then someone doesn't know to add that strategy that says, "Hey, you are allowed to go to the primary to also get data but also to write data too." And I'll let you take it away. CHRIS: I don't know that I have a great answer to that one if we're being honest. As I saw this, it was very easy to find -- I think there were three controller actions that had this behavior in the system that I was working on. They all threw errors. It was very easy to just wrap them in this extra method and fix that, and then we're good, and I haven't seen that error again. As for preventing it from new instances of this behavior, I don't have a good answer other than potentially you share this information within the team and then PR review. Ideally, someone's like, "Oh, this is one of those things you've got to wrap it in the fancy database switching logic." Potentially, and I don't actually think this would be possible, but there's a chance that RuboCop or other static analysis type thing could look inside any index or show action and say, "I see a create or an update or any of the methods." But again, Rails is so hard to do static analysis on that I would be surprised if were actually feasible to do that in a trustworthy way, probably worth a poke because this is the sort of thing that can easily sneak out. But potentially, my answer is, well, it'll blow up pretty loudly the first time you do it. And then you'll just fix it after that, which is not a great answer. I'm open to that being a mediocre answer at best. STEPH: [chuckles] Yeah. That's a fair answer. Just because I pose a question, I don't know if there necessarily is a great answer to it right away. And disseminating that information to the team to then having the team be able to point that out also sounds very reasonable but then still hashes that danger of someone overlooking it. The static analysis is an interesting idea, sort of like strong migrations. As you're introducing a new migration, strong migrations will do a wonderful job of showing you concerns that it has with the migration that you've added. And this is all just theoretical dreams and hopes because, yeah, that would help prevent some of those scenarios. CHRIS: It's interesting now that this is the second time we've discussed static analysis in this very episode. Clearly, it's a thing that I want more of in my world, and yet I work in languages like Ruby that are notoriously difficult to perform static analysis on. STEPH: I had a moment today writing a method that was currently just returning a string each time but then I was about to update that method. I was looking for a way like, well, maybe I don't always want a string. Maybe I actually want a Boolean here. But in the other case, I want a string. And the person I was pairing with they're like, "You could return -- [inaudible 29:31] Boolean in one case and then a string in the other case. Like, this is Ruby." [laughs] I was like, true, but I feel bad about it, and I don't love it. And we just had a phone conversation around that. If you're in the Ruby world following the more functional programming or type strictness and where you're returning specific types or trying to return a consistent type, it's ideal. But then also in Ruby, it's like it's Ruby, so sometimes you can finagle the rules a little bit. CHRIS: YOLO, as they say. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: Yeah, I'm definitely interested to see where projects like Sorbet and...I forgot what the core Ruby typed thing in Ruby 3.0 is called, but either of those. I'm really intrigued to see where they go and how the Ruby community either adopts or doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised if that were part of the outcome there. I've been impressed with the adoption of TypeScript and JavaScript, which is also a very, very free language, not quite to the degree that Ruby is. But yeah, it remains to be seen what will happen on those fronts. But continuing back to our saga, so we've now had the read-only error, we've fixed those, just wrapped them in blocks, and said, "Explicitly connect to the primary." So the next thing that I did after that, I realized that my configuration was a little bit flimsy is probably the best word to describe it. I was explicitly creating a new environment variable with the URL, the Postgres URL of the follower. And so I was using that environment variable to define where the URL like the Postgres URL of the follower database -- But I realized if Heroku comes in and does any maintenance on that Postgres instance, it's possible that the AWS IP address or other details of it will actually change and so that Postgres URL will no longer be valid. So that's one of the things that I rely on Heroku for, is to maintain my databases for me. But they will update, say, the DATABASE_URL environment variable if they change out your database. But now, I had broken that consistency. And so I'd set us up for somewhere down the road this will break, and I realized that because Heroku reached out and said, "Hey, your follower database needs maintenance." And I was like, oh, no. So, I tried to get it from -- It turned out, in this case, it didn't actually change. They were able to swap it out in place, but I wanted to add a little bit of robustness around that. And so I actually reached out, and Dan Croak, former CMO of thoughtbot, actually had written a wonderful blog post about how to configure this and particularly how to configure it in the context of Heroku. And he described how to use the Heroku naming scheme for the environment variables. They happen to have colors in them. So it's like Heroku Postgres cyan URL or orange URL or purple URL. And so he defined a scheme where you set an environment variable that describes the color, and then it can infer the database URL environment variable from that. And then went the one step further to say, "If that color environment variable is set, then treat as if we are configured for database switching. But if it is not set, even if we're in production, pretend like we don't have database switching," which that was another nice feature that I hadn't built in the first place. When I first configured this, I just said, "Production gets database switching. And if we're in production, then database switching is true," but that's actually not something that I want. I want to be able to say, "Upgrade our follower," at some point or do other things like that. And so I don't want to be locked into database switching on production. So that was a handful of nice configurations that I wanted to get to. Unfortunately, when I tried to deploy that switch, man, did it break. It broke, and then I was like, oh, I see I did something wrong there. So then I tested again on staging. Staging was fine. And then I went to production, and it broke again. And this happened like three times in one day. I felt like a terrible programmer. I had no idea what I was doing. Turns out that staging and production had different environment config files, and so their configurations were fundamentally different. They also had a different configuration for the database level. So one of the things I did as part of this was to clean those up and unify them so that staging was production with some environment variables to config it, but identically production, which is definitely a thing that I believe in, and I want basically all the time. I don't think we should have a distinct staging environment config that is wildly different. It should only vary in very small ways, basically just variables that say, "This is where the database is for staging," but otherwise be exactly configured as production. So I eventually got on the other side of that, fixed everything, have a nicely Heroku-fied color-based environment variable scheme, which is a bit of a Rube Goldberg machine, but it works. And I was able to hide that config in one place. And then everything else just says, "If there is a database follower URL defined, then use it." But yeah, so that was the last hard, weird bit of it. And then the only other thing that I did was I realized that this configuration was telling the Rails server how to behave, but there are also background jobs. And this application actually happens to have a ton of background job traffic. And so I did a quick check of those, and there were a handful of background jobs that were read-only. A lot of them were actually sending data to external systems, so to analytics or other email marketing or things like that. And so constantly, as users are doing anything in the application, there are jobs that are queued that aggregate some information, maybe calculate some statistics, and then push it to another system. But those are purely read-only when those jobs execute. And so I was able to add another configuration which said, "Use the read-only connection and configure that to wrap those particular sidekick jobs." And with that, I think I have a working database switching configuration that will hopefully give us a lot of headroom in the future. That's the idea, that's the dream, but we will see. STEPH: That is quite the saga between having GET requests that create data and then also the environment inconsistencies, which is a nice win that then you're able to improve that to make those environments more consistent. And then the background jobs, yeah, that's something that I had not considered until you just brought it up, and then being able to opt-out of the database switching sounds really nice. In regards to moving in this direction, you're saying gave you a lot of headroom for this; when it comes to monitoring performance, is there anything in place to let you know how it's doing? CHRIS: I love that I knew that this was going to be your question. I love that this is your question because it's a very good question. And unfortunately, in this case, it's actually somewhat unsatisfying. So as is my typical answer for this, we're using Scout as the application performance monitoring tool on this. And I was able to go in and monitor what it looked like a week ago, what it looked like after I made the change, and it was a little better. And that's all I can say about it. But that's fine. The idea with this, and at least in the way I was thinking about it, is this should get better at the margins. On the days where we have a high spike in traffic, those are the days where the database is actually working hard. They shouldn't make the normal throughput of the application that much higher in the regular case; it's for those outlier instances. To that end, though, I did analyze it. And so the average response time got 2% to 3% better in that week-by-week comparison, which was fine. The 95th percentile response time, so starting to get out to those margins, starting to get to the long tale of where stuff gets -- a couple of requests came in at the same time, and the application had to try a little harder, those got 8% to 9% better. That shape of improvement where for most requests, nothing really changed for some of the requests that used to be a little bit slower; those got a little bit better. That's the shape of what I would hope to see here. And it remains to be seen. This application has particular traffic patterns where they'll encourage a lot of users to be using the app at the same time. And historically, those have been somewhat problematic, and we've had to really work to shore up the performance in those cases. That's where I'm really interested to see how this goes. It would be hard to replicate those traffic patterns at this point. So I don't have a good way to really stress test this, but my hope is that for those cases, things will just hum along and be happy. STEPH: That makes a lot of sense and something that would be hard to measure, but the fact that you already see a little bit of improvements that's encouraging. CHRIS: But yeah, certainly, if I get a chance to see what that looks like in the near term, I will respond back and let you know how this has played out. But overall, now the configuration seems pretty stable. I think we're in a good spot. Hopefully, we won't have to do too much proactive management around this. And ideally, it just buys us a little bit of headroom. So that is certainly nice. But with that, with your wonderful question getting to the heart of the issue, I think that wraps up the saga of the database switching. STEPH: Well, I appreciate you sharing that saga. That's really helpful. I've been very excited to hear about how this goes because I haven't gotten to work on a project that's going to use database switching just yet. And now I know all the inside baseball. I'm trying to use sports metaphors here as to how to do this for when I get to work with database switching. CHRIS: Sports de force. CHRIS: Along the lines of new stuff, there is something I'm excited about. So in juxtaposition to my earlier statement or my earlier grievance where friends don't let friends use dateselect in regards to trying to keep the web accessible, I do have some praise for something that's being added in Rails 6.1 that I'm excited about. And it's a really nice method. It's a query method that can be used to find orphan records. So if I'm writing a query that is then looking for some of these missing records, so if I have my table -- I didn't come with a great example today, so let's just say we have like table A and then we're going to leftjoins on table B. And then we're going to look for where the ID for table B is nil, so then that way we find where we don't have that association that it's missing. And so leftjoins does this for us nicely. And then I always have to think about it a little bit where I'm like, okay, I want everything from table A, and I don't want to exclude anything in table B if there's not a match on the two. And so then I can find missing records that way or orphaned records that way. The method that's being introduced or has been introduced in Rails 6.1, so anyone that's on that new-new, there is the missing method. So you could do tableA.where.missing and then provide the table name. So there's a really nice blog post that highlights exactly how this method works, so I'll use the example that they have. So for where job listings are missing a manager, so you could do JobListing.where.missing(: manager), and then it's going to perform that leftjoin for you. And it's going to look for where the ID is nil. And I love it. It's really nice. CHRIS: That sounds excellent. That's definitely one of those things that I would have to sit down and squint my eyes and think very hard, really anything involving left_joins otherwise center. Any joins always make me have to think and so having Rails embrace that a little bit more nicely sounds delightful. STEPH: Yeah, it sounds like a nicety that's been added on top of Rails so that way we don't have to think quite as hard for any time; we want to find these orphaned records, and we know that we can use this new missing method. CHRIS: On the one hand, I feel bad saying, "I don't want to think that hard." On the other hand, that's literally our job is to make it so that we encode the thinking into the code, and then the machines do it for us. So it's kind of the game, but I still feel kind of bad. [laughs] STEPH: Well, it's more thinking about the new stuff, right? Like, if it's something that I've done repetitively, finding orphan records is something I've done several times, but I do it so infrequently that then each time I come back to it, I'm like, oh, I know how to do this, but I have to dig up the knowledge. How to do it is that part that I want to optimize. So I feel less bad in terms of saying, "I don't want to think about it," because I've thought about it before. I just don't want to think about it again. CHRIS: I like it. That's a good framing. I've thought about this before. Don't make me think about it again. [chuckles] STEPH: Exactly. 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: The show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. STEPH: Thanks, Mandy. If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes as it really helps other people find the show. CHRIS: If you have feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @bikeshed. And you can reach me @christoomey. STEPH: And I'm @SViccari. CHRIS: Or you can email us at hosts@bikeshed.fm. STEPH: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. All: Bye.

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.

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.

Ever wanted to run your own architectural firm? Today's guest, a Sole Practitioner from Australia with over 10 years of experience in the industry, shares his journey of how he made the dream of running his own practice a reality. In today's episode, I'm joined by the co-chair of South Australia's Emerging Architects + Graduates Network (EmAGN), a first-year course co-ordinator at my university as well as sole practitioner of Echelon Studio - Chris Morley. This is the third and final part of the interview with Chris where we learn about his journey from the very beginning. From getting his first architectural job as a student of architecture, to now running his own practice and working for himself. If you haven't seen the previous 2 parts, I highly recommend going back and watching the interview in order! EP.1: The Key to Success as an Architecture Student – Networking 101 https://youtu.be/7SivcVx7Fu4 EP.2: Architecture Tutor's Best Advice for Succeeding in Architecture School https://youtu.be/gzKlsm13Zlw Here are some of Chris's involvements: EmAGN: The Australian Institute of Architects & EmAGN's “Hearing Architecture” Podcast: https://www.architecture.com.au/category/podcast/ Follow EmAGN on Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/emagn_sa/ Check out their website: https://wp.architecture.com.au/emagn/ Chris's Architectural Practice, Echelon Studio: https://www.instagram.com/echelon.studio/ ----------------------------------- Here are some of the questions I asked Chris: Where was your first job as a graduate and what did it involve? How did you go about getting this job? Can you tell us about Echelon Studio? What kind of projects do you work on and who is your ideal client? Did you always have an ambition to run your own practice? When did you start your own practice and what were some of the first steps you took when transitioning from employee to sole practitioner? What are some of the key differences working for yourself, compared to working for someone else? You label yourself a “sole practitioner”, does this mean you don't have any employees? Do you do all the work yourself or do you have an assistant, contracted workers or casual employees to help? Prefer watching/reading? Check out the show notes: https://successfularchistudent.com/42/

How can we make real changes within the practice of law to lessen the impact of stress on individuals in this profession? In this episode of the ALPS In Brief Podcast, Chris Newbold checks in with Dallas attorney and advocate for wellbeing, Brian Cuban, to discuss the state of lawyer wellbeing now, the lifesaving impact one lawyer can have upon another, and our ethical responsibility to step up for one another.  CHRIS NEWBOLD:             Good afternoon. This is Chris Newbold, guest hosting today for the ALPS In Brief Podcast. And I'm here in our offices in Missoula, Montana with attorney and advocate for wellbeing, Brian Cuban, who's in here from the Dallas area. I just spoke at our ALPS bar leaders retreat, and we thought this would be a great opportunity for us to have ... We have a similar passion in terms of seeing our profession improve on the wellbeing side, and so I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to just kind of have a conversation about where the profession's at. Where do we need to go? And Brian, you're obviously out on the speakers' network, kind of talking about this particular issue, your personal experience, and so forth. I think I'd like to start with just you kind of putting into your own frame of reference. What is the state of the profession right now when it comes to attorney wellbeing? BRIAN CUBAN:                  It's a state that is a lot better than it was a few years ago. We have much more awareness. We have many more engaged professionals from the bottom up, the lawyers, the bar professionals, the local bar professionals, the state bar professionals. And we have awareness in big law. We have awareness within the boutique and the solo practitioner. There are areas that we can certainly do better, and we can certainly be more impactful, but we are definitely light years ahead of we were just three years ago. CHRIS:                                   And what do you think has driven that improvement in such a short period of time? BRIAN:                                  I think you have to give a lot of the credit to the ABA and the Betty Ford Hazelden Report, and that would also be Patrick Krill, who authored that report, in bringing the issue to the forefront with the staggering statistics, because I think that was a catalyst in really changing the conversation. Whatever people think of the ABA, you have different opinions, but you can't deny that that report was a seminal moment. CHRIS:                                   And why do you think that the issue right now is capturing a lot of attention in the legal community in legal circles? BRIAN:                                  Well, because of that report and because of the cumulative awareness, now we are looking around us and actually noticing what's going on. We may have been aware of what's going on, we may have seen what's going on. When someone dies by suicide, we are aware of it and we grieve it. But we are now much better in taking a look at that, and deciding where things could've been done differently. And three years ago, four years ago, it was more about just grieving and handing out, in the issue of suicide, handing out the 1-800 hotlines. Now we are moving beyond that, and really look at how we can make systemic changes to at least lessen the odds of those things occurring. CHRIS:                                   You talk a lot about kind of the impact that one lawyer can have on another lawyer. Right? And the responsibility that we have to not be kind of casual observers in this. Talk about that a little bit more as it relates to how we looked at, engineer a culture shift in the profession, and how every lawyer can make a difference one by one. BRIAN:                                  Sure. I talk a lot about not minding your own business. We have to create a culture where we are comfortable, or even if we're not comfortable. Let me step back from that because that's not comfortable. It's okay to be uncomfortable not minding your own business. That's a human emotion. But we have to get comfortable understanding that for what it is and taking that step anyways. When we see someone struggling, when we think we might be able to, or we are wondering, you just don't know. Is there a drinking problem? Is there a mental health struggle? Maybe the person's just having a bad day. To be able to not mind our own business for one moment, step outside of our struggles, step outside of our busy day, our billing, the things we have going on, and say, "How are you doing? Are you doing okay? Do you know that if you're not, you can come to me, and we can talk?" That doesn't require anything but empathy. And every lawyer, every person has that ability. CHRIS:                                   Is that a tough conversation for an associate to have with a partner? BRIAN:                                  Absolutely. And we have to follow protocols. Law firms need to establish protocols for when people are struggling. That is not realistic to expect an associate to confront a partner. But big law all have EAPs, so there's that. We all have lawyers assistance programs. Do you know as an associate, you can call lawyers assistance program, and you can let someone know what's going on? And they're not going to out you. I know that is a tough pill to swallow, and I know you don't believe that. But you can make that call. You do not have to identify yourself in any lawyers assistance program in this country, and you can say, "I'm in this firm, and I think this guy is struggling." And they will take it from there, so you can do that. BRIAN:                                  Within big law, we can talk about big law and then move on to something. Go down, go down. Within big law, it's important to establish protocols that are nonjudgmental, where everyone has a path. Everyone in the firm has a nonjudgmental path, a path that they feel safe voicing their concern if they see someone they think is struggling. So I can't tell them what that path is, but there should be multiple paths based on where someone is in the chain, right down to the clerk. CHRIS:                                   Talk about your opinions on ... There's an increasing body of work out there that says that the economics of wellbeing are conducive to a stronger bottom line. Right? And as we think about talent acquisition, talent retention, I know you work a lot in kind of big law firms. Right? BRIAN:                                  Mm-hmm (affirmative). CHRIS:                                   I think there's a really interesting play on the horizon for those who lead our profession from a big law perspective to be thinking about a commitment to this issue that could translate economically for the firm. Talk about that. BRIAN:                                  Absolutely. And I think, I doubt there are any managing partners, senior partners, firm CEOs are the real big ones that are not aware of that issue. It is the messaging is consistent just in general in society about the impact of addiction and mental health issues on the workplace and the economic cost. So the challenge becomes: How do we translate that into risk management? And I think they are starting to do that. That is not what I do. I'm a storyteller, I'm not a risk manager. But I think we are starting to see an industry, and people who do that, to go to a firm and say, "This is how we translate this into risk management to increase value to you," save you money. That saves the client money because on the most basic level, and we talked about the Peter Principle of Recovery. Right? How your level of competence keeps decreasing, and you keep trying to adjust your mindset to stay within that, you tell yourself you're at a high level when you're struggling. BRIAN:                                  That can be, in a general sense, stealing money from a client because you were not effectively representing the client. That is affecting the firm's bottom line, and that is the most basic level. When a lawyer is struggling, and not functioning at the non-struggling level, he may not even, or she may not even understand what that level is because they've been in the middle of it, lacking self-awareness for so long. That is affecting the firm's bottom line. That can affect client retention because there are lawyers out there who are not struggling. Everyone's trying to get the business. Right? So you have to maximize the ... You have to minimize the risk by putting lawyers in a position to succeed and to hit the top level of competence and move beyond that if possible. Keep raising that level. And it's hard to do that when someone's struggling with addiction, problem drinking, depression. BRIAN:                                  And I see lawyers all the time that talk about, well, I'm struggling with depression, but I was killing it, doing this. And I can't judge that. I don't know their situation. But I can say anecdotally, and what I see in the data, that I don't see how a person can look at the big picture, step back, and say, "I was going through all that and giving a dollar for a dollar." So I think all firms are aware of that, and I think that is achieved through a risk management model. CHRIS:                                   Again, it's going to be interesting too as big law tries to recruit talent out of the law schools, how much top talented students are actually looking for a wellness play in terms of the life, work balance that I think, generationally, I think is becoming more common. BRIAN:                                  That's a good question. I forget what the study was. Was it Am Law? Did the Am Law survey just come out? CHRIS:                                   Mm-hmm (affirmative). BRIAN:                                  And I couldn't find it. I think it may have been subsumed in one of the questions. But I reached out to Patrick Krill, who does a lot of the risk management stuff, and who authored the ABA Betty Ford Study, and asked him if he knew if we are surveying firms on wellbeing, if that is part of the survey. And I don't know that he had. I'll have to look and see if he responded, or he had an answer. But I think that may be not so much as a conscious play, but as a lifestyle play. It's just part of an overall lifestyle. Looking at the overall lifestyle, can we say that someone's going to say, "What's their drinking culture? I'm not going there"? There's no way to know that. But in the overall lifestyle play, I think lifestyle and wellness will become major factors, as Millennials and Generation Z, who have different priorities on what they want their life to look at as lawyers and as human beings. CHRIS:                                   Yeah. Talk more about, it's an interesting time in our profession given the fact that we have four separate generations all operating at the same time. Right? BRIAN:                                  Mm-hmm (affirmative). CHRIS:                                   But there are also studies out there, particularly those that have been done within the law schools, that say some of these behaviors and substance abuse and so forth are starting earlier, and are becoming more prevalent for those who have been in practice, particularly in private practice, for less than 10 years. As you think about that dynamic, and Millennials and so forth, that's soon going to be the largest chunk of lawyers in the profession. And as you think about the generational aspects of wellbeing, what's your take on that? BRIAN:                                  I think Millennials definitely have a different vision of what wellness looks like than ... I'm a baby boomer. The baby boomers, I come from, my lawyers' culture was a drinking culture. And I think when we look at things like the Sober Curious Movement, and what the Sober Curious Movement is, is not looking at drinking in terms of whether someone is a problem drinker, is an alcoholic, but what it looks like as a lifestyle, and as part of a healthy lifestyle, and whether you want it to be part of the healthy lifestyle without being judged on whether you're abstinent or not abstinent, and what that means to you, whether you're an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic. I think Millennials and Generation Z are going to look at this differently in terms of just, I want to do the things that make me feel good, and that may not involve drinking. And I don't want to be judged for that. I don't want to have to explain myself. BRIAN:                                  And I think that is going to be a much easier transition and a much easier conversation than it is for my generation because it's beginning. It is beginning. The Sober Curious Movement is out there. We have bars within New York. There aren't any in Dallas and Austin. And you see a lot of the progressive towns, where you have bars, they just serve mocktails. And they revolve the fun around other things besides getting drunk. You go out and you're drinking fake pina coladas without alcohol. And they revolve everything around those, around the mocktails. The mocktail generation, they may be that. CHRIS:                                   That's an interesting one. If you had to assess right now, wellbeing in the legal profession, one being it's at an all-time low, 10 being, I think lawyers are both healthy, happy, engaged, where you put that on the spectrum? BRIAN:                                  I would put we're at a three or four, three or four. And that's great, and that's great. CHRIS:                                   A lot of room for improvement. BRIAN:                                  A lot of room for improvement. Four is opportunity. Right? CHRIS:                                   Yep. BRIAN:                                  Four is opportunity. Yes. And one of the biggest challenges I think we have, and if you look at big law, we with the ABA, and this isn't a criticism of the ABA at all. I think with the Wellness Task Force and everything, they have laid out the groundwork for all levels to participate, all stakeholders, solo, medium, boutique, the bar associations, all the way up to big law, corporate. I think they are laying out that groundwork. But I think when we get further down into the stakeholders, the solo practitioner, the small firm, we have a lot more work to do. And I think in that chunk is where we have the most improvement to do in our messaging, and the most opportunity because we have other challenges when we get down there. BRIAN:                                  If you work at big law, you have health insurance. And I knew big law lawyers who have health insurance, and still can't find a reasonable psychiatrist or therapist. They've complained to me about it. We have this health insurance crisis on so many different levels. And big law within the spectrum, you have privilege. You have health insurance privilege because you're going to have it. And you're going to have the EAP, and you're going to have this, and you're going to have that. BRIAN:                                  I don't know what the stats are, but I know anecdotally that a lot of the solos cannot afford health insurance. So when you can't afford health insurance, what are your options? You're going to 12 step. You are going to county. A lawyer don't want to go to county and get free treatment, that's very shameful. Right? If you even have that option as a reasonable option in your city. A lot of cities have terrible county free health services. And so we have that stigma of a solo practitioner and the medium, I don't have health insurance. I'm a lawyer, I'm not taking advantage of free. I can't. So they don't tell anyone. It's shameful. So how do we solve that? CHRIS:                                   Obviously, in our book of business with ALPS, we specialize in small firms and solo practitioners. And 65% of the policies that we issue are to solos. And they're generally a higher malpractice risk because they don't have a support network around them. BRIAN:                                  Absolutely. CHRIS:                                   You can't stop into Brian's office and say, "Hey. Let's have a conversation about this particular case." You have to build networks. You have to build connections in very different ways, which makes it I think, much more challenging. BRIAN:                                  And it does. And it's a challenge where you're struggling. It's going to be dependent on the particular situation. But you're making what would be decent money, you have a family. You can barely, after everything, then you care barely support your family. And you're more able to speak to this. You have a deductible that you can't meet anyways, even though you have health insurance. That's as almost as being uninsured. So we have all of those issues, and I don't know what the solution is to that. But that is one of the things that is a huge barrier to wellness within the profession, health insurance and the ability to pay for getting well, the ability to find people to get us well. We are becoming a cash only society in terms of wellness. BRIAN:                                  I consider myself very lucky because I have a psychiatrist, I've been seeing for 15 years, and he treats. I have one of the few treating psychiatrists out there with his therapy. But we also have the ghost networks that you may be familiar with. And I'm getting off on tangents, where you can't, even if you have health insurance, you can't find a treatment provider because they don't take insurance. CHRIS:                                   Where do we go? A lot of good activity now happening. You've got Pledge. You've got some state task forces going. Got a lot of discussion. Societally, we're seeing more vulnerability to talk about these issues, whether it's Hollywood stars, or sports stars, there's just more discussion, which I think is healthy. If we're a three or four right now, how do we get to a six or seven? How do we start to move the needle? Culture shifts in any society- BRIAN:                                  It's one person at a time. It's one person at a time. If you're talking, there's no magic pill to culture shift. We talked about this. It is one person at a time. There's one bar association at a time. There's one law firm at a time. And you hope, you hope, that the Malcolm Gladwell theories kick in, and you hit a tipping point. But it is much more, again, it is much more on different levels societal. If I can't afford treatment, what's the difference what the path is if I can't get there? Why should I tell anyone if I can't afford to get there? In Texas, we have a fund where if you go to them, a lawyer can get treatment. I believe it's an endowed fund privately. And maybe someone will correct me on this when they listen to it. But we have to find different ways to ... It's more than just laying the path. People have to be able to walk on it. BRIAN:                                  And if you can't afford to get the help, other than 12 step, and 12 step is great, Smart Recovery's great, Refuge Recovery is great, but they're all mutual aid. Mutual aid is not treatment. Mutual aid is maintaining connection, which is important. If you can't afford the treatment, and you have no way through that path, that's a huge problem that goes beyond the legal profession. When we talk about the legal profession, what we can do, I think we have to have a more societal view of that. How do we correct that? CHRIS:                                   Yeah. There's an interconnectedness to a lot of different- BRIAN:                                  You can't sever this. You can't sever out health insurance accessibility from all the other issues within the profession because most of the profession is solo and small. CHRIS:                                   And even on a tangent, one of the reasons I got involved in the wellbeing movement was I feel like there is a gap in expectations for what people think practicing law will be like, and ultimately what they find that it's going to be like, whether that happens in law school, or whether that happens because of law school debt. That again, to be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer. And more and more, people are finding themselves boxed into a spot where they're actually doing something that they're not finding professional satisfaction in, which is then causing ... It can cause other things to kind of spin off from there. BRIAN:                                  I agree. I agree. Every lawyer is a story. Every lawyer is more than just the person under stress. Every lawyer brings their entire history of trauma, of however they grew up, family. CHRIS:                                   Family. BRIAN:                                  They bring it all through the door of that firm. They bring it all to the courthouse. So whatever that stress is may not just be the product of what's going on at that moment, the case, fulfilled expectations, unfulfilled expectations. It may be the product of a life story that has shaped someone that made them more susceptible to those issues. Does that make sense? CHRIS:                                   It does. BRIAN:                                  So we have to address the story and not just the moment that the lawyer is in. CHRIS:                                   Yeah. Anything else that you want to kind of relay as we talk to our policy holders and other interested listeners about just kind of the current state of attorney wellbeing? BRIAN:                                  If we want to change the paradigm of attorney wellbeing, for me personally, I think the most powerful tool is continue to encourage people to tell their stories. Keep telling the stories. Everyone identifies with aspects of other people's lives. There's going to be something to identify with. The connections, stories bring connection. Keep bringing people in to tell stories. Just encourage that. And I think through the power of storytelling, we will start to see more and more people tell their stories, and then they'll tell their stories. And I think that is how. CHRIS:                                   That reduces stigma. That reduces vulnerability. BRIAN:                                  That's right. I think as we reduce stigma, we will better empower lawyers to seek recovery. CHRIS:                                   Yeah. Brian, thank you. BRIAN:                                  Thank you. CHRIS:                                   We appreciate your time, and we appreciate your perspectives. And obviously, you're doing wonderful work in the storytelling side of the ledger because it's important that through the experiences of you and telling your personal story that it makes a difference. BRIAN:                                  I think law firms need to realize, and I think big firms are starting to do this, is creating a wellness program has different levels. There's storytelling. There is risk management. There is- CHRIS:                                   Scientific studies. BRIAN:                                  Yes. And there is the pure wellness aspect. How do we reduce stress? How do we become happier? What can we do to allow our lawyers, within the framework of our representation of clients, to feel better about themselves and what they do? Law firms are in a business. This is a business, and they are not yogis. We have to be realistic. Law firms are there to represent clients at the highest level possible. What holes do we need to fill to make that happen? Because that is what we do. We represent clients. And so we have to fill all these different gaps, the storytelling gap, the risk management gap, the wellness gap. CHRIS:                                   Got it. Again, thank you so much. And I hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast. As you know, ALPS is committed to being a leader in the wellbeing issues of the day affecting the legal profession. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have any other ideas for topics on the wellbeing, please let us know. Thank you.   Brian Cuban, the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, is a Dallas based attorney, author and addiction recovery advocate. He is graduate of Penn State University and The University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Brian has been in long term recovery from alcohol, cocaine and bulimia since April of 2007. His first book, Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder,” chronicles his first-hand experiences living with, and recovering from, twenty-seven years of eating disorders, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Brian's most recent, best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer, Tales of The Bar, Booze, Blow, & Redemption is an un-flinching look back at how addiction and other mental health issues destroyed his career as a once successful lawyer and how he and others in the profession redefined their lives in recovery and found redemption. Brian has spoken at colleges, universities, conferences, non-profit and legal events across the United States and in Canada. Brian has appeared on prestigious talks shows such as the Katie Couric Show as well as numerous media outlets around the country. He also writes extensively on these subjects. His columns have appeared and he has been quoted on these topics on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, The Huffington Post, Above The Law, The New York Times, and in online and print newspapers around the world. Learn more at www.briancuban.com.

Download this Episode On today's episode, we talk about the shiny object, ways to build your business and modern marketing. Please leave us a review and subscribe for more! reThink Real Estate Podcast Transcription Audio length 24:20 RTRE 64 – Get Off My Lawn: A Guide to Modern Marketing in Real Estate [music] [Chris] Welcome to re:Think Real Estate, your educational and hopefully entertaining source for all things real estate, business, news and tech.  [Christian]: I am Christian Harris in Seattle, Washington. [Nathan]: Hi, I am Nathan White in Columbus, Ohio. [Chris]: And I am Chris Lazarus in Atlanta, Georgia. Thanks for tuning in.  [music] [Chris]: Hey everybody and welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. Chris here with Christian and Nate. What's going on guys? [Christian]: Hey fellas. [Nathan]: What's up? Another week since last week. And I don't know. You know, the usual grind here. It's… [Christian]: You seem excited to be alive. [Chris]: ow's your CRM coming Nate? [laugter] [Nathan]: It's gonna get done after I get back from Key West next week. So… [Christian]: Let me know. I will walk you through it.  [Chris]: Man. [Nathan]: Work hard play hard boys. Work hard play hard. [Chris]: Must be good to be a real estate agent.  [Nathan]: I guess so. [Christian]: It is good to be an agent.  [Nathan]: I like it. What are we talking about today? [Chris]: Well we were just talking about [censored] marketing in real estate and how not to do it. You were just showing us a sign of a real estate agent that put his sign out in the middle of the Utah backcountry. On a…what was that Nate? [Nathan]: I mean literally it's in bum [censored] Egypt. I mean it was out…I mean literally it's a like a 16 mile hike. Like I mean maybe it's genius because here I am talking about it. Right. I don't know. [Chris]: Good marketing. [Nathan]: You know, I mean I don't know. But literally like it's like who's gonna see this, you know. Like you spent a…I mean what's an average sign cost? Hundred bucks? [Chris]: 47. [Nathan]: What's that? [Chris]: 47. [Nathan]: You use the cheap one.  [Christian]: Depends on how many you buy at a time. [Chris]: That's a temporary sign with the thing in the middle. [Nathan]: OK well either way I feel like this guy throw away 47 dollars. Because I doubt he'll ever go back to get it. But, you know, bad marking. You know, Christian was asking me do I do marketing. No. I mean yes and no. I think we've talked a little bit about that. That Ohio running realtor Instagram is of course my marketing. Even though it has nothing to do with Realty. [Christian]: Your Donut Saturday with your son. That's marketing. [Nathan]: It is but it had…I mean that was actually started before I became an agent. So I'll be at…a ton of people identify me through the donut Saturday. But I don't…I don't…I don't mail stuff out. I don't, you know, I'm not out blasting stuff on social media. I really hate most of that stuff. I think there's…there's more organic ways to do it. and I generally find that there's more bad examples than good examples. [Christian]: Yeah so you're saying that there are different ways to do marketing? [Nathan]: Yes but…let's go…there's…there's many different ways to do marketing. The question is can you do it well? And my answer would be no. Most agents do not do it well. [Christian]: So there's plenty of examples of bad marketing. How do you…how do you not do bad marketing and do good marketing? What is that? What does that mean? What are those standards? [Nathan]: Well I think…OK so I, you know, how do you not do bad marketing? OK well that'd be like saying all right, it's same reason I don't take pictures. Right. I'm not a [censored] photographer. And I'm not in marketing either.  If you have a marketing background, maybe I get it. But most of the stuff I see agents do is poor. It's poor video. It's poor pictures. They're there…I don't know what even the terminology is when they create their own business cards. It's just horrible. Like there's a reason there are people they get paid in marketing. And you should go pay them to do it. I mean you get a better result. I'd rather be really… [Christian]: Do you? Do you Nate? [Nathan]: Yeah I think so absolutely.  [Chris]: So please do not go buy the printable like perforated business cards and then use your word art. And print them. [laughter] [Nathan]: Yeah word art. Yeah right. Well you see a lot of that. You see really bad names of real estate teams. And, you know, it's just like oh man it's so tacky. I mean there's…I guess there's a place for them because they're still doing business. But… [Christian]: Well…well I'll back this up a little bit. I don't know if you wanna scratch this or not. So, you know, we've got a bit… [Chris]: No this is all good.  [Nathan]: I know you've been picking at soething.  [Chris]: This is alright.  [Christian]: So so far we've kind of [censored] around about bad marketing which is very subjective. Because… [Chris]: Welcome to the water cooler. [Christian]: What's that? [Chris]: Welcome to the water cooler.  [Christian]: Right, you know, like I myself when it comes to marketing try to put myself at the consumers shoes. And say “OK what's, you know, what…what's the objective of the marketing and am I accomplishing that?” You know, and so I think there's unfortunately most…at least in my experience, most, you know, brokerages and agents. You know, there's kind of the standard of like “Yeah well you do a farm, you know, and you just solds and just listed postcards and you have, you know, your face on your business card and, you know, just kind of all this really low bar like everyone does it. Everyone's told to do it.”  And people who aren't agents don't pay any attention to it. They don't care. You know, it doesn't bring them any value. It goes right in the recycling. You know, you direct me on stuff. And so that brings a question about what is…what is good marketing. Yeah I know what caught my attention as a new agent when I saw social media stuff that stood out or community events or, you know, things that I thought were interesting and unique in this space.  And I think that's kind of the key. Is like is it different? Is it gonna catch people's attention in an industry of white noise? Or, you know…And so I think a lot of that there's not just like hey you do this one thing and that's good marketing. I think in this world of noise, you have to have many touch points. It has to be consistent. It has to be driven towards a specific end result. You know, whether that's someone saving up for email or a meeting or liking your page or following you. You know, like it all has to be designed in a consistent way to…to push people towards a certain desired objective. And most people don't approach marketing in that way. There's kind of like half hazard-ly throw stuff out there without a desired intention in mind.  [Chris]: It's a weak thought Christian. Among real estate agents. [Christian]:  What's that? [Chris]: To think about how the consumer is gonna like the content and the message. [Christian]: Yeah.  [Chris]: You know, it's…I'm not a marketer. By all means like that's not my forte. I can train a real estate agent to sell and have a successful business. I could teach them some of the techniques that they should think about when they're finding how to market themselves. But by all means I am NOT a marketer. Like I'm not gonna create a campaign. I am NOT gonna run all that stuff. I'll leave that to other people who are more creative than I am and just let them do their thing. [Christian]: But it certainly had that desired effect to you once. And you could send that to a marketer. [Chris]: I…I know what we need to accomplish. And so here in Georgia, we…we actually do recruit new agents at my firm. So we have…we get all of the information for the people who pass and we send out collateral. We send out like we send out really nice marketing pieces to them. And so my wife recently got her real estate license to help out in the office because she's a part owner in the company. So some of the things that she's doing, she needs a license now. So she got her license and just for the hell of it we decided “OK we're gonna see what other brokerages are sending out.” And it ranges. Some of them send out, you know, one eight-and-a-half by 11 piece of paper that's a letter. Some of them send out postcards. Some of them send out…there's one KW office. They send out like this worksheet. Right. And it's got this three boxes or three columns and a bunch of rows. And each row it's like “Check about if this broker offers this.” It's like a broker checklist. Interview other brokers and see if they have everything we have. [Christian]: Like a comparison sheet. [Chris]: Yes. Yes that's exactly what it is. And that was probably the most creative. There was a Coldwell Banker office, it sent three po…three postcards from the exact same broker. Brokers face on it. And then it has like no message. Right like the postcard says like “Be bold.” Or like “Be strong.” Like on one. And it's like you've got two or three words taking up the entirety of this like six by nine postcard. And it doesn't say anything of value at all. It's just like motivational [censored]. So then like we look at what we're sending out. And we're sending out this like…we're sending out two mailings, in depth packet of everything that the company offers on this. Like premium glossy photo. And I'm like “You know what? This is why people call us off of this stuff. It's because these other brokers that are in our market doing this, it's garbage.” You got to…you got to focus on what the consumer is gonna want. I'm glad you do that. [Christian]: Sure. Well I think to, you know, the key in on what you said, you know, it's a little cliche these days or whatever. But talking about bringing value. Right. Like you've got to resonate with whoever you're trying to get in front of with something that…that they're going to, well, resonate with. You know, there's gonna be a value that they use. That…that catchphrase. And so it's typically not going to be “Hey I just sold this house or I closed in five days.” They don't give a [censored]. They don't know what that means. Like, you know, but if you are like, you know, you're specializing in a certain community. And, you know, you're sending out something who says “Hey have you checked out this new pizza joint that they just opened? Here's the interview with the owner.” You know, like that doesn't have anything to do the real estate. But you're getting your name and message out there. In alignment with “Hey this person is actually invested in the community. Actually supporting that business of actually providing something to the people that would frequent that business, who might find that interesting.” As an example of, you know, a community aligned marketing strategy that's, you know, one touch piece amongst many.  You know, whether that's, you know, if you're gonna do a farm have that be consistent. And there's technology you can utilize to do, you know, retargeting Facebook or Google Ads that, you know, have that consistent message to those same people you're mailing. If they, you know…you know that kind of thing. But that takes planning. That takes technical expertise. And I think that's a far cry from, you know, Nate was saying “Hey I'm not a marketer. Hire that [censored] out.” And I agree with. That but there's so a lot of low bar marketing stuff out there, that's like…My last brokerage, you know, they've had like a social media company come in who basically said “Hey, you know what Facebook is? We'll take care of that for you. And what they meant by that is “If you sign up with us, we're gonna send out this exact same [censored] generic posting…” [Chris]: That you would. [Christian]: Yeah right. And like, you know, I'd be falling for some this people. And you'd see the exact same posting on six different agents sites in the same company, because they're just sending out the same generic [censored]. I'm like that does more to harm you and your reputation that does to like not send anything out at all. [Chris]: Definitely. One of the major things that I learned when…when we started doing SEO on our website, is that for any third party, like if you really want to get your money's worth, you have to hire in-house. Like if you're not hiring in-house, you're just going out and hiring a firm, unless they are a premium level firm where you have a dedicated account manager that is spending X number of hours on your account every month…you're just not gonna get your money's worth. [Christian]: Right and it's not gonna be cheap. [Chris]: Hire in-house.  [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Where you have to monitor it in-house and then outsource the work itself. But to just go out and say “Here take care of it.” That's…that's like, you know, you're eating in a den of snakes.  [Christian]: Right. Well and if you're gonna hire that out, if you're an agent you're like “Hey marketing is not my forte. I'm gonna hire it out.” you better make sure that wherever you hire is asking you questions. To make sure that that content is, you know, in your voice. It's, you know, it's not gonna be, you know, if someone who's following X agent knows you personally, and they see something coming out, they're like “That doesn't sound like them. They wouldn't send something out like that.” Like now you've got a authenticity issue. And, you know, you're going to be doing more damage. I mean especially as you we're seeing, you know, the demographic shift and the impact of social media. What people care about is…is authenticity, being genuine. If they catch wind of “Oh you just hiring out some generic someone, someone, some bot or some company is running your social media…yeah unfriend. Not interested. I'm not going to work with them because, you know, they can't even bother to post real stuff from themselves.” [Chris]: If you're looking to hire an ad agency, you're gonna be on retainer for a minimum of 5k a month. And that does not include your ad spend. Like if you want a good ad agency, if…if you're just looking to hire, you know, a marketing consultant who's gonna charge you, you know, 150 dollars a month, for this number of posts on social media, it…it's…you might as well light your money on fire. It's not going to do anything for you. [Christian]: Well there's different…I mean they're just from models, you know. I mean I'm a very DIY person. But I also know that me, I'm not a professional marketer. Like I know, you know, kind of the strategy aspect of it and…but, you know, I've hired like a local marketer. Who would sit down with me and flush out, you know “OK this is what you have going on. How to be aware where are your missing pieces. And not leverage things where they're not connected.” That kind of stuff and kind of map it out for me. And then I go execute it. Now if you can hire someone to execute it's, that is gonna be a lot more expensive. Because that's very times, you know, intensive.  [Chris]: Yeah I mean and that's gonna be the difference. Like you can…you can bring in a consultant, for almost anything. But then you have to do the work. And the consultant is not gonna come up with the whole idea for you. They're gonna help you work through it. So but if you want…but if you're…My point is, you know, if you're hiring, you know, the hundred and fifty hundred and ninety nine dollar marketing company online, that's a subscription, versus you really want advertising, it's a difference.  Like you've got that retainer every single month. And you've got to hit that spend limit with them. And that does not include your ads. [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: They'll go through and they'll do everything from your direct mail pieces, to video creation, to all of it. [Christian]: Right. And that's gonna be an actual marketing campaign with multiple platforms and tiers. Not just “Hey we're sending out social media posts on your Facebook.” It's entirely different. And I mean it's some agents who don't, you know, see the benefit of that. Or like “I don't have time for that” you know, like Nate. I mean he stays busy enough and successful enough to not need that. But…but I mean the stuff he does organically is still marketing. It's just not your typical overt cheesy agent stuff. Which I think speaks…it's a lot more powerful than if you did the traditional “Just sold, just listed, hey look at me, I'm in an open house.” You know, and everything's just overtly real estate. Which it doesn't resonate with the majority of people, the majority of the time. [Nathan]: No and, you know, I think you actually…what's you're gonna see and unbeknownst to you guys, but you're gonna see me doing a little more marketing here in the future. But yeah well I have the luxury though of…Our company just brought on a marketing director that has a very strong marketing background. So we will have an in-house marketing department that… [Christian]: Nice. [Nathan]: Make, you know, will be able to take on what visions I have. Or I don't want to say visions. I call them thoughts. Yeah I mean I had a meeting with her last week. She's awesome and I…I equate what she can do to what like my tattoo guy does. Right. I come up with this wild little sketch on a piece of paper that looks like a third-grader did it. I say “Hey here.” And then a week later he hands it back and I'm like “I don't know how you got that, but it's perfect.” You know… [Christian]: Sure. They will take your vision and make it into something. [Nathan]: And make it into something and Karen will be able to do that for it. Some…a lot of brokerages I don't think have, you know, that good fortune of having a marketing director that has a very solid background with a large company that can create some of these things we want. Within the vision that you need to do. I think it's important that whatever your theme is, you have consistency with it. And a lot of people don't do that. I think a lot of real estate and what you do is marketing. Right. So if you're gonna do it, do it well. [Christian]: Sure. Well I think a lot of agents don't realize it like what they're putting out there, you know, is represent themselves. You know, because I mean you can have your marketing and your advertising. Typically people use them interchangeably. But they're not, you know. Like for us, you know, we just, you know, ponied…pointed up. And…and hired Max the designs to…to do our marketing piece, you know, pieces. Which is essentially a design firm, you know, small design team down Los Angeles that walks you through a creation process of like everything, from color scheme to…to fonts to like what's the feel, you know, your brokerage has. And all those kind of stuff to make stuff that's customized for you. All the pieces are consistent. Totally customized to provide a platform. All your agents can log in and create their own stuff. Customize it, you know, download it.  Like all that is like the bare minimum marketing pieces that you can then use for presentations or social media stuff. Or…or whatever. But, you know, something like that gives you a consistency for your agents, for your firm. But then on top of that you've got the actual “OK I'm gonna run a marketing campaign and that requires, you know, some intentional thought behind. What's my desire goal? What messages are gonna resonate with whom? What platforms win?” You know, much more complex than just aesthetic marketing piece.  You're muted.  [Nathan]: Everybody got quiet. So… [Chris]: No one's muted. We just were talking…[laughter]. All right. Well I think that is definitely you now… [Christian]: Helpful. Hopefully it's interesting. Oh boy this is the funny part.  [Nathan]: Anyway.  [Chris]: No I mean it's…it's great. We…we haven't put anything in place like that for our firm right now. Even though we have a…our listing coordinator has a marketing background. She's actually in portfolio school right now. So to kind of an extent we can…we have that ability. She'll bounce some ideas off of us. We'll bounce ideas off of her. Actually just to make sure we're not doing anything stupid.  But for everything with us, it's a lot of…it's word-of-mouth. And I think that that's another type of marketing that people don't pay enough attention to. Going back a few years to when Scott Stratten [phonetics] talked about on marketing. At Inman he said, you know “If you want word of mouth, what do you do? You do something worth talking about.” So there…there's that whole aspect to marketing our businesses. Doing things like Ritz Carlton. Doing things like Disney. Doing things…taking so much advanced precaution with our clients, thinking about their problems before they ever have it. That that way the client has no other alternative but to say how great their experience was. And I think that that's something that, you know, we need to figure out or put more focus on also, because that stuff's free. [Christian]: Yeah well and that's what, you know, for all that you're leveraging the client experience. Right. It's how you do your business, you know. All the marketing advertising is how you build up from, you know, getting in front of people to get them to that place where they're your client. And then that experience comes in and the referral business can happen. It's all part of a, you know, a long cycle of business. Hopefully. [Chris]: Absolutely. So I think that's good. [Nathan]: Yeah. [Chris]: Any final thoughts while you're at it? [Christian]: I would say as an agent, know your strengths, know your weaknesses. Don't try to do everything. Hire out the stuff that you're not an expert in. In this case marketing. But, you know, you got to find…you got to find someone that can draw out what that vision is. So that it's consistent. Enhances your brand as opposed to completely contradicts your…consistency. [laughter] Words. [Chris]: Nate any final thoughts? [Nathan]: No. Stay off Facebook. Don't request me. [laughter]. Get off my lawn you kids. Seriously I was like…all of that stuff that everybody else does, don't [censored] do it.  [Christian]: There's that. [Nathan]: I don't want to be your friend because you're not gonna sell me a house. All right. All right. Guys good luck and hope it works out for you. [Chris]: Yeah. All right so basically there's different types of marketing. Figure out what you want. Avoid the shiny object. Don't think that you're gonna find something that is going to solve all of your problems for one low monthly subscription. And then don't leave out the word of mouth. Make sure you're doing the things for your clients in your daily business. Make sure that your clients are your number one focus. Because guess what? Costs a whole lot less to keep a client than it does to acquire a new one. Everybody this has been 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]  

Download this Episode We've all been there on our real estate path. Today we discuss the difference between calling ourselves a professional and actually being a professional. reThink Real Estate Podcast Trannscription Audio length 28:02 RTRE 63 – Being a Pro vs. Saying You're a Pro [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 welcome back to re:Think Real Estate. Chris Lazarus here. Here with Christian Harris and Nathan White. Nate you've got a bone to pick with some people. What's going on dude? [Nathan]: I mean call it a bone or not. But so I was just recently on a trip with some buddies of mine. And I was ranting. Or we were individually ranting I should say, about our industries that we respectively work in. And of course I got some puzzled looks and different things and, you know, about my rants. And ironically enough, one of the guys on the trip called me the day after we got back.  And he says “I have new respect for what you were talking about.” I said “What do you mean?” He says “Listen, you know, my…my aunt, you know, she…she passed away and…and one of my family members is selling her house. And the agent that my aunt hired said ”Listen I don't really want you telling anybody that somebody passed away in the home. Yada yada yada.”” The agent responded with “Trust me this is what I do for a living.” My friend then said “Please ask me how many houses has she sold.” I said “Well Larry how many houses as she sold?” He said zero. And he said “I totally get it.” He said this individual, you know, is making it appear I guess if you would, that they're an expert in our industry and, you know, what we do, but they've not sold a home. They have a license. Right. They're a realtor. Right. But they've done zero business. So again there…there is there's some delineation here between who's an agent who is a licensee. Right. And I get it. Just wound up. I mean I get it, you know, but I don't I also don't get it. I was taught “Fake it til you make it.” When I started. And I don't…I don't think that's the way to go. I think there's a lot of other paths to go through education and training and certain things, that I believe, you know, yourself and Christian both provide. But what would you two tell an agent in this situation? Right. [Chris]: Oh I wouldn't say…I would tell the agent “Look don't tell people this is what you do for a living until you actually make a living off of it.” [Nathan]: Christian? [Christian]: I mean my whole thing…because I was kind of taught same thing. Kind of “Fake it til you make it. Yo here's some scripts to make it sound like, you know, what you're talking about that you don't.” What I tell my new agents is like, you know, “Don't…don't come out and say “Hey I'm brand new. I don't know what I'm doing.” But positioning in such a way where you're saying “Hey, you know, I'm working closely with my designated broker. If I don't have the answer I can get it. You're getting two for the price of one. It's not just new agent flailing out there trying to pretend like they know what they're doing.”” So, you know, essentially don't lie but also don't come straight out say “Hey I don't know what I'm doing and I have no confidence. You know, I'm probably gonna [censored] up and [censored] over your listing, you know, I'm a seller.” But at the same time don't…you merely like you yeah you have all experienced in the world when you don't. because it's not hard to find out information about how experienced or how long an agent's been licensed. [Chris]: Doesn't even require an open records request. You can just look it on Zillow. [Christian]: Yeah I mean and…and…and that's it. And it may not be the case with every real estate firm. But for us, you know, we closely work with our new agents to make sure they're providing the best experience. They know what they're doing. They're not, you know, floundering, you know. And I know business brokerages are supposed to do that. [Chris]:Floundering. Like flopping around flopping around [laughter].  [Christian]: Yeah flopping around the land.  [Nathan]: Like a fish out of water is what it looks like. [Chris]: Yeah. [Christian]: It's hard…it's hard for a new agent to mask that when, you know, you don't really know how the process works, and you don't really know the direction you're supposed to be going and what you're supposed to be saying to your client, you know. [Nathan]: Wouldn't this be an interesting industry change if you had to have some intern or externship with so many transactions under your belt before you were to able to go out and represent a buyer or seller? [Chris]: That makes sense. That's what we do for new agents. They have to have six transactions under their belt before the training wheels come off. At a minimum. And for the first six transactions they're heavily mentored through them. So they're…they're not alone. They have people like their first deals they've got a mentor that's going out. And…and working with them. Teaching them how to do the consults for the buyers. And for the listing consult. So that by the time that agent gets ready to go out and be on their own, they generally have a great idea of what they're doing. [Christian]: Yeah well that's a great way to do it. I mean I love how you formalize that. Obviously that takes, you know, a brokerage's,  you know, certain amount of experienced agents and size. And, you know… [Chris]: Yeah I'll let you know when we get at that level too. [laughter] [Christian]: It is a structure. Because you could say technically the industry requires it. but, you know, when the laws basically says, you know, “Additional designated broker oversight for the first two years” like that's really loose. And it's not, you know, it's not really…there's not really a standard for that. Even though technically new agents are supposed to be more heavily monitored. There's no…there's nothing in place a, you know, firm to firm, insuring that happens. [Chris]: Yeah I mean there…I was talking to somebody the other day he was telling me about a person who's making a switch from another firm. And this person was also a recruiter. And he was like “Yeah this person brought about a hundred and forty people over to the brokerage. And about a hundred and twenty of them left.” And I'm like “What?!” Like I don't even want to turn that number. Like I'll bring ten and one will leave. Like I'm not gonna turn a hundred and forty people to get twenty.  It's just ridiculous the lack of oversight that some of these brokerages put into actual retention and training and development. It's literally taking the pickle, throwing it at the wall and seeing which one sticks. [Christian]: Sure. Well I mean and it's well-known, and I've been saying this for years. You know, like most firms, you know, most of the industry is just focus on numbers. Like all we want is people in the seats. Licensed agents, you know. We're not really concerned about retention and training and empowering because there's gonna be, you know, a dozen new agents with, you know, dollar signs in their eyes waiting to take their spots. You know, when…when they fail. [Nathan]: It will be like “Oh let's look at our checklist. You have a license. Check. You have a pulse. Check. Oh yeah good. You can…you can join us.” And uh, you know, I often get the question “Hey what…what led to your success as an agent?” I don't want to call myself successful but I do well. And I know what I'm doing now. And I think a huge part of it and I will I will tap the shoulder if you would of the team lead, Tim Reel [phonetics], that I had at Keller Williams when I started, is…is that I…part of it… Let me rephrase this. I viewed it as an internship. Right. I knew I was gonna pay a steep cut on my team splits. And KW split. But I also knew I was gonna get an education. And I wasn't standing alone. I wasn't by myself. And I was constantly getting feedback or more importantly I was getting mentorship. I think that's what a lot of people want. And…and that helped me. And then when I did want to go out and do my own thing and kind of stand on my own feet as a solo agent, I had the capability to do that. So, you know, that's always been my win at KW. Don't…you're not a technology company. You're a training company. KW gave me some great bones. You gave me a great foundation. So any agent that is potentially listening to this, that's struggling or is thinking about coming an agent, I would tell “You…you want to do well? Go be on a team. Go…go learn.” I don't…I don't, you know, that's just me.  [Christian]: And I say you're pretty fortunate because, you know, I've heard, you know, I've heard many things as far as, you know, people kind of getting on team. I mean KW is kind of what they're known for. You know. But it's a…it could be very hit and miss. Because, you know… [Nathan]: Yes. [Christian]: I mean you could be, you know, you can be fortunate where the team lead is actually interested in mentoring and training, in empowering their team members. But I've also seen people that, you know, get on teams and all this is a call center. And they were promised “Hey we're gonna train you. We're gonna teach you this stuff.” And they're not learning anything except for making sales calls and scripts. You know, it could be very…very hit and miss, as far as the team structure goes and the attitude of the leadership. [Nathan]: Same as I tell a potential client. Interview realtors. I tell a potential realtor and if you have a lot of teams. [Christian]: Yeah. [Chris]: Interview teams. Interview brokers. Interview office staff. Interview whoever you can. I mean… [Nathan]: Interview your clients. You don't necessarily want all your clients that come to you.  [Chris]: No stay away from my clients. You're another agent. I don't want you talking to them. [laughter] [Christian]: Yeah I am gonna interview your clients. [Chris]: So…but this is…this brings us back to like a great point. Right. Because you've got three types of agents. You've got the full time agents. Right. These are the people that are in here all the time. These are the people that this is how we make a living. Then you have the part-time agents which I don't have an issue with part-time agents. Part-time agents they're putting in the hours. They may not be in at 40, 60, 80 hours a week. But they're in it 10, 20, 30 hours a week. And that's enough so that they generally understand what's happening in the industry. And they're able to build and maintain a client base and, you know, do a few deals every year. Then you've got the problem. The last type of agent it's the sometime agent. The agent that hangs their license. They're just a licensee. They're not in it full-time. They've got another job and they'll sell a house whenever their family member comes to them and says “Hey, you know, you're a real estate agent right?” “Yeah. Yeah I am.” And they're really not. And they…they don't fully understand what's going on. And when they take a deal that's when things go sideways. So I think the clarification is what kind of agent do you want to be? If you're…if you're coming into the industry are you going to be a sometime agent? Or are you gonna be a part-time agent? Because if you're…if you're just dipping your toe in the water and this is new for you, you have to be a part-time agent. If you're anything less than that you're never gonna learn enough to be successful. You know what? You know what? We can just steal from the Game of Thrones on that. Because, you know what we say, to us sometimes agent…not today. [Christian]: Not today.  [Nathan]: Not today. [Christian]: What I was gonna say so…so that's as we jumped into this, you guys are like “Hey let' talk about this thing.” “I don't know what you're talking about.” So…so we talked about licensee versus an agent that's [crosstalk]. That's what you mean? [Nathan]: Yes. [Christian]: I got you. I think… [Nathan]: I think I've told the story once. I insulted a woman. She's…we were having a conversation. [Christian]: You insulted someone? No way. [Nathan]: Yes. And she said something like “Oh you're real estate agent?” And I said “Yeah.” And she said “Me too.” And I was like “Great. How many houses did you sell last year?” And she's like “Four.” And I was like “You're not an agent.” She got all upset. I was like…what…like…I don't know. [Christian]: You have a way with words Nathan.  [Nathan]: Like I mean it is what it is. I mean I…yeah that's right. But there needs to be so many changes in our industry. And, you know, again we can talk about the barrier and entry. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to talk about two things on this episode, I guess. If we want to just get going and keep going.  [Chris]: Well let's keep going. [Christian]: But before we get away can I say something? [Nathan]: Go. Get away.  [Christian]: Get away. So to your point Chris about the licensee versus an agent and the three types of agents, and it's interesting. It seems like there's so many new agents that get into it just to be a licensee. It's basically like “Hey I can make, you know, a lot of money just, you know, accidentally selling a house now and then, to…to a friends.” So they're not invested in learning or building a career. They're kind of testing the waters. And memorably they fail and realize, you know, usually it's too late. “Hey this actually cost me a lot of money and I'm not really willing to put in the time. And real estate doesn't work”. You know. [Chris]: It's…it's like people come in here and, you know, you can go and get a real estate license and you can go and sell your own home and you can buy your next home and you can earn a commission. Great. Yeah it offsets your down payment.  [Christian]: Sure. [Chris]: But you factor in that you do that once every ten years and it's…it's really not worth your time.  [Christian]: Right. Well I like your distinction between basically, you know, the part-time, who is still again with the time they have, they're investing and learning. Versus the “I'm just sitting here with my license doing other stuff until something comes my way. And then I flattened my way through it.” And because I think it's a big difference. I think a lot of people in the industry inflate the two.  Like I was having a conversation the other day with, you know, some agents from another indie brokerage here in town. And I love that brokerage but they're very…very high standards on who they'll accept. Like if three times a week there or you're gone. You know, you have certain production what are you gone. [Chris]: Good. [Christian]: I think that's great but that means… [Chris]: I wish more brokers did that. [Christian]: But that means that they don't do part-time agents. And, you know, this particular agent I was talking to, was basically cuckooing part-time agents. I was like listen “The people that can do it full-time like you you're basically taking it elitist stance, because people have kids or they have other jobs or, you know, it's just not the priority in life to spend 80 hours a week trying to make real estate work.” And I think there's room for that because just because you're part time doesn't necessarily mean you're inept. Or, you know, don't know how to do real estate. It just made you're focusing on other things. You know. [Chris]: Wait really? Because I thought whatever my preconceived notions were, we're correct. [Christian]: But I'm saying I think there's a difference. Because part time agents can invest in their training and knowledge and experience just as much as a full time. But that's a lot different than someone who just is seating on the sidelines waiting for real estate to come to them. [Chris]: As long as they're putting in the hours. And…and it's actually interesting that you bring that up. Because there was a study done by a university talking about entrepreneurship and going and creating your own self-employed income. And the success rates. And somebody who does it part-time at first, believe it or not has a thirty percent greater chance of success rate, long term. Than somebody who just dives in off the deep end full-time. So you can have somebody who's coming in part-time 20 hours a week and as long as they're working those 20 hours there's a greater chance of success that that person is going to be a long-term successful real estate agent. Then somebody who comes in off the bat, full time and has one way to go. [Christian]: What…it's interesting. Is that because they're runways longer because they have a supplemental income. Or something as opposed to… [Chris]: Yeah. The caveat with this is that those people are actually putting in the work. Right. They're working 20, 30 hours a week.  [Christian]: Sure. Right. They're not sitting around at their home office watching Netflix and occasionally making a call or something. [Chris]: Yeah. [Nathan]: Well I mean aren't there plenty of full-time agents who work a lot of part-time hours? [Christian]: That's true. That's a good distinction. They usually don't make it either. [laughter] [Nathan]: I mean I know plenty of full-time agent, who I mean it's like “[censored] if you're full-time than you suck.” [laughter] I mean it's because you look at their sales history. Like great you sold six houses last year. But you're full-time. And then there's the part-time agent who sells twenty five a year. Right. So… [Christian]: Again that comes down to your hustle and your focus. Because I've seen full-time agent that, you know, that are there full-time, but they're mentally…they're all over the place. [Nathan]: Yeah right. So I, you know, I don't like to get into this, you know, “O you're full-time, part-time.” Again sales cure is all, where I come from. And if you have a history you have a history. That's what I…that's what I like to look at is, you know, it's what matters. If somebody says “Well I'm a full-time agent.” Well great you'd be a full-time agent with [censored] sales. Right. I mean that's easy. And so I'd rather say Hey you're an agent with a great history.” That…to me is important. That's where we can delineate the that whole thing.  Is…let's not get into full-time, part-time. Yeah, the sometime, I don't want to get around. But let's just get into “Hey what did you…” I tell them “What did you sell?” Ask them what did they sell last year. What they do. Which may be and, you know, part of this I wanted to ask in this kind of segues into the other side of this, is does area specialization in a normal market, like where I'm at, in Columbus, does that matter anymore due to the amount of data that is available? My argument would be “No it doesn't matter.” [Chris]: I would argue you, against that.  [Nathan]: I figured you would. Yeah Christian too. [Chris]: Yeah.  [Nathan]: But that's just me. So… [Chris]: And I think it comes down to the level of service that somebody wants to bring. If…if you have like three agents going up against one neighborhood, and one agent knows everything about the neighborhood, all the history. Everything that has taken place there. Everything that's going in. All the development that…that's happening. Then that agent can sell not only the house but also the story.  And if you could sell the story, you know, that…that's the best way to market right now. Whereas if you have two other agents that don't know that info, then they're just…they're either competing on price or they're competing on marketing ability. [Nathan]: All right go back in there. There's an agent you left out of this. What about the agent that has the capability to use their commission as leverage on a deal? That's not in the area. [Christian]: I mean I think it… [Chris]: Where would he use that laverage? [Nathan]: Towards closing costs. Say…saying…because in our market you can do that. Right. Say…say I specialize in Dublin. Right. Ohio. But I want to go to…I got a client who want…your potential client who's interested in buying in New Albany, that yeah I've done deals over there. But I'm competing against a New Albany realtor. And…and I can offer…say Christian's my buyer. I can incentivize him to use me because I can say “Hey you're gonna buy $500,000 home. You know what I'll do? I'll take three thousand dollars on my commission and credit that to you towards closing cost and pre-paids and closing cost.” Now in a competitive market I'm gonna choose the agent that's got leeway to give me something. Or that could bridge appraisal, help with closing cost or something like that. Over somebody who says “Oh I specialize in an area.” That's just me and my train of thought. [Christian]: I mean the specializing in an area, I…I'd say the value really depends on which side you're on. Like…like when I'm on the listing side I think it like I specialize in West Seattle. But I do other areas of Seattle in the suburbs. Like I remember specifically like I helped a military friend of mine sell this place and well the suburbs here.  Now I didn't…I've never sold a house in that area. And so one of the questions I had to ask is like “Hey tell me about your neighborhood.” Like “There's a main…there's a main road going through here. Our house is on this side of it. A lot different than this side.” Because I can look at the numbers all day long but as the stats don't tell me, you know, why people move to this area. Or what the demographics are. Or who the ideal buyer is gonna be.  You know, so you've got to do a lot more digging and you actually know the area for that. And on the buyer side I don't think that's as important. I mean it can be. You can leverage it. but, you know, you're not really…I think it's more important on the seller side. Because you're gonna use that information, that knowledge of the neighborhood to target that ideal buyer.  [Chris]: And I think… [Christian]: What to focus on. [Chris]: Yeah and Nate to your point, I think you're you're kind of comparing apples to oranges right now. Because you're…you're talking about two completely different value propositions. That the agents can base on. And, you know, all of them work. Right. There's a million different value propositions on how you can build your business. Whether you specialize in historic or new construction or this one area or whatever it might be. Or you…you leverage some of your commission income to incentivize, you know, the client base.  You know, you can pay. It's one way or another. If you want to take some of your commission and do that on the back end through a rebate, you know, who am I to judge? All of them work. They're all different business models. And I don't call one discount versus one traditional. They're just different business models. It just depends on what's right for the individual agent. And what's right for the individual agent has to line up with the broker that they're with. Because not all brokers will allow their agents to do a commission rebate. Or to donate some towards closing costs. Whatever that might be. But it has to…like they all work. Like one agent may have a value proposition. And their proposition may be “I know everything about this area. Use me because I'm gonna make sure you're fully informed.” And then another agent may say “Well we're not as familiar with the area but we'll make sure that you have this financial instead of…” And then it's just up to the buyer. Right. The buyer may want money or they we may want their choice to be 100%. So it can go either way. [Christian]: And I'd say I mean you can't you can kind of think about in terms of like your commission is one of the terms of the contract. And so it's something that you could leverage just like you can any other terms, you know. That's something that you directly have control over versus, you know, the buyer. But, you know, options. [Nathan]: Right. Just curious. I mean you see it often. I mean…and I've done it. but, you know, we'll waive appraisal. And, you know, I will use my commission as a bridge in case that commits…that appraisal comes in short. And I've had plenty of times. It never has. We've been fine. I've had times where it comes in short and hey that's fine too. Again it's…it's as much for the seller when I represent a buyer to offer, you know, to say “Hey I'm willing to use my commission as a bridge in case it doesn't.” Because then they know they'll, you know, they'll get that money. So… [Chris]: I think that that's something to be careful about. So you're… you're very well versed in that Nate. But for your average agent, like if they're going into putting their livelihood on the line, like they got…they're gambling on themselves. [Nathan]: Yeah they are. [Chris]: And…and that's what you're doing. And you're good. And I would probably gamble on myself if I had to take the bet. [Nathan]: I like it. [Chris]: But I think that there's a lot of agents that for general advice…Don't do that well.  [Nathan]: Yes. You also…you got to remember I am fair. I keep 100% of my commission. Truly 100%. Right. So, you know, I don't have a split. So you got to think on a normal agents, say they're on a 60/40 split, you know, they're already taking a hit. Right. So they're potentially gonna take a bigger hit? Like, you know, they do have to be cautious. I…I have a little…I have a lot more leeway. Let's be honest. But… [Christian]: Sure. Not all the firms are going to support that. You know, so… [Nathan]: No they're not.  [Chris]: And you know as general…for our audience, as general advice I'm gonna say don't do that. Mainly because I don't know, you know, if I'm talking about the average agent, right. [Nathan]: Right. [Chris]: They're not gonna be at that level to where, you know, I would feel comfortable just saying “Hey go out and put your commission on the line.” Because guess what? They do that. They say “I'll bridge the gap on an appraisal.” And the appraisal was four percent off instead of three. [Christian]: Well yeah… [Chris]: Now what's gonna happen? [Christian]: I mean you should always have…always have a cap, you know, as far as how far you'll go. You know, I mean I think in general, the principle I like. Because you're basically partnering with your clients, with skin the game. As opposed to you like “Hey, you know, here's all the terms. If it doesn't work out, well I'm fine. But you're gonna get [censored].”  [Nathan]: Well and my part in it is where I bridge part of the gap. My client will bridge part of the gap. But my commission will supersede their bridge. So but again what we're doing and like you said is, you know, kind of like in Top Gun. Right. You know, when you went fully inverted over the other plane and they're like this, you know. So that's the maneuver I pull. And I just haven't taken the picture yet. So…[laughter] [Chris]: International relations. [Nathan]: That's right. So anyway those are my two concerns or thoughts…would, over the last week. [Christian]: It's a creative way to do what you have to do, in a competitive market. [Nathan]: Yes.  [Chris]: Just make sure you run it by your broker. [Christian]: Always. [Chris]: And have your lawyers look at your language in your contract.  [Nathan]: Yeah you actually have to disclose that too, here. So… [Chris]: Yeah you do in Georgia also if you're doing that with the commission. The buyer has to pay tax on that too. [Nathan]: Really? [Chris]: Yeah. Otherwise you have to claim it. [Nathan]: Yeah that's true. [Chris]: Yeah. All right. Well I mean I think that was pretty good. So just recapping. If you're…if you're brand new in the industry, you know, you you're one of three people, you're a full-timer, a part-timer or some timer. Don't be a some timer. Because if you're a some timer, you're never gonna learn everything you need to know in order to be successful at this job.  And then, you know, figure out how you want to build your business. Right. You can…you could do a bit model like Nathan and use your commissioners leverage as long as you do it right. Or you can be the expert in your field. Know everything about everyone.  And everything that's going on in your neighborhood. And make sure that you're the source of information. Either way the business models work. Pick what's right for you. This has been another episode of re:Think Real Estate. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next Monday. [Nathan]: Peace. [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]  

Panel: Charles Max Wood Aimee Knight Chris Ferdinandi AJ O’Neal Special Guest: Andy Bell In this episode, the panel talks with Andy Bell who is an independent designer and developer who uses React, Vue, and Node. Today, the panelists and the guest talk about the power of progressive enhancements. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI 0:34 – Chuck: Hi! Our panel is AJ, Aimee, Chris, myself and my new show is coming out in a few weeks, which is called the DevRev! It helps you with developer’s freedom! I am super excited. Our guest is Andy Bell. Introduce yourself, please. 2:00 – Guest: I am an independent designer and developer out in the U.K. 2:17 – Chuck: You wrote things about Vanilla.js. I am foreshadowing a few things and let’s talk about the power and progressive enhancement. 2:43 – The guest gives us definitions of power and progressive enhancements. He describes how it works. 3:10 – Chuck: I’ve heard that people would turn off JavaScript b/c it was security concern and then your progressive enhancement would make it work w/o JavaScript. I am sure there’s more than that? 3:28 – The guest talks about JavaScript, dependencies, among other things. 4:40 – Chuck: Your post did make that very clear I think. I am thinking I don’t even know where to start with this. Are people using the 6th version? How far back or what are we talking about here? 5:09 – Guest: You can go really far back and make it work w/o CSS. 5:49 – Chris: I am a big advocate of progressive enhancement – the pushback I get these days is that there is a divide; between the broadband era and AOL dialup. Are there compelling reasons why progressive enhancements even matter? 6:48 – Guest. 8:05 – Panel: My family lives out in the boonies. I am aware of 50% of American don’t have fast Internet. People don’t have access to fast browsers but I don’t think they are key metric users. 8:47 – Guest: It totally depends on what you need it for. It doesn’t matter if these people are paying or not. 9:31 – Chris: Assuming I have a commute on the trail and it goes through a spotty section. In a scenario that it’s dependent on the JS...are we talking about 2 different things here? 10:14 – Panelist chimes-in. 10:36 – Chris: I can take advantage of it even if I cannot afford a new machine. 10:55 – Panel: Where would this really matter to you? 11:05 – Chris: I do have a nice new laptop. 11:12 – Chuck: I had to hike up to the hill (near the house) to make a call and the connection was really poor (in OK). It’s not the norm but it can happen. 11:37 – Chris: Or how about the All Trails app when I am on the trail. 11:52 – Guest. 12:40 – Chris: I can remember at the time that the desktop sites it was popular to have... Chris: Most of those sites were inaccessible to me. 13:17 – Guest. 13:51 – Chuck: First-world countries will have a good connection and it’s not a big deal. If you are thinking though about your customers and where they live? Is that fair? I am thinking that my customers need to be able to access the podcast – what would you suggest? What are the things that you’d make sure is accessible to them. 14:31 – Guest: I like to pick on the minimum viable experience? I think to read the transcript is important than the audio (MP3). 15:47 – Chuck. 15:52 – Guest: It’s a lot easier with Vue b/c you don’t’ have to set aside rendering. 17:13 – AJ: I am thinking: that there is a way to start developing progressively and probably cheaper and easier to the person who is developing. If it saves us a buck and helps then we take action. 17:49 – Guest: It’s much easier if you start that way and if you enhance the feature itself. 18:38 – AJ: Let me ask: what are the situations where I wouldn’t / shouldn’t worry about progressive enhancements? 18:57 – Guest answers the question. 19:42 – AJ: I want people to feel motivated in a place WHERE to start. Something like a blog needs Java for comments. Hamburger menu is mentioned, too. 20:20 – Guest. 21:05 – Chris: Can we talk about code? 21:16 – Aimee: This is the direction I wanted to go. What do you mean by that – building your applications progressively? Aimee refers to his blog. 21:44 – Guest. 22:13 – Chuck: I use stock overflow! 22:20 – Guest. 22:24 – Chuck: I mean that’s what Chris uses! 22:33 – Guest (continues). 23:42 – Aimee. 23:54 – Chris. 24:09 – Chris 24:16 – Chris: Andy what do you think about that? 24:22 – Guest: Yes, that’s good. 24:35 – Chris: Where it falls apart is the resistance to progressive enhancements that it means that your approach has to be boring? 25:03 – Guest answers the question. The guest mentions modern CSS and modern JavaScript are mentioned along with tooling. 25:50 – Chuck: My issue is that when we talk about this (progressive enhancement) lowest common denominator and some user at some level (slow network) and then they can access it. Then the next level (better access) can access it. I start at the bottom and then go up. Then when they say progressive enhancement I get lost. Should I scrap it and then start over or what? 26:57 – Guest: If it’s feasible do it and then set a timeline up. 27:42 – Chuck: You are saying yes do it a layer at a time – but my question is HOW? What parts can I pair back? Are there guidelines to say: do this first and then how to test? 28:18 – Advertisement – Sentry.io 29:20 – Guest: Think about the user flow. What does the user want to do at THIS point? Do you need to work out the actual dependencies? 30:31 – Chuck: Is there a list of those capabilities somewhere? So these users can use it this way and these users can use it that way? 30:50 – Guest answers the question. 31:03 – Guest: You can pick out the big things. 31:30 – Chuck: I am using this feature in the browser... 31:41 – Guest. 31:46 – Chris: I think this differently than you Andy – I’ve stopped caring if a browser supports something new. I am fine using CSS grid and if your browser doesn’t support it then I don’t have a problem with that. I get hung up on, though if this fails can they still get the content? If they have no access to these – what should they be able to do? Note: “Cutting the Mustard Test” is mentioned. 33:37 – Guest. 33:44 – Chuck: Knowing your users and if it becomes a problem then I will figure it out. 34:00 – Chris: I couldn’t spare the time to make it happen right now b/c I am a one-man shop. 34:20 – Chuck and Chris go back-and-forth. 34:36 –Chris: Check out links below for my product. 34:54 – AJ: A lot of these things are in the name: progressive. 36:20 – Guest. 38:51 – Chris: Say that they haven’t looked at it all before. Do you mind talking about these things and what the heck is a web component? 39:14 – The guest gives us his definition of what a web component is. 40:02 – Chuck: Most recent episode in Angular about web components, but that was a few years ago. See links below for that episode. 40:25 – Aimee. 40:31 – Guest: Yes, it’s a lot like working in Vue and web components. The concepts are very similar. 41:22 – Chris: Can someone please give us an example? A literal slideshow example? 41:45 – Guest answers the question. 45:07 – Chris. 45:12 – Guest: It’s a framework that just happens to use web components and stuff to help. 45:54 – Chuck: Yeah they make it easier (Palmer). Yeah there is a crossover with Palmer team and other teams. I can say that b/c I have talked with people from both teams. Anything else? 46:39 – Chuck: Where do they go to learn more? 46:49 – Guest: Check out the Club! And my Twitter! (See links below.) 47:33 – Chuck: I want to shout-out about DevLifts that has $19 a month to help you with physical goals. Or you can get the premium slot! It’s terrific stuff. Sign-up with DEVCHAT code but there is a limited number of slots and there is a deadline, too. Just try it! They have a podcast, too! 49:16 – Aimee: Yeah, I’m on their podcast soon! 49:30 – Chuck: Picks! END – Advertisement: CacheFly! Links: JavaScript React Elixir Ember.js Vue GO jQuery Node.js Puppeteer Cypress Past episode: AiA 115 Past episode: JSJ 120 Vue.js – Slots Using templates and slots – Article Web Components Club GitHub: Pwa – Starter – Kit Progressively Enhanced Toggle Panel Time Ago in under 50 lines of JavaScript GitHub: ebook-boilerplate Chris Ferdinandi’s Go Make Things Site Game Chops CNBC – Trump Article New in Node v10.12 Quotes Archive My Amazon Interview Horror Story DevPal.io Honest Work Relative Paths DevLifts Andy Bell’s Twitter Andy’s Website Sponsors: DevLifts Kendo UI Sentry CacheFly Picks: Aimee Hacker News  -  Programming Quotes My Amazon Interview Horror Story Chris Time Ago in Under 50 Lines of JavaScript E-Book Boiler Plate JSJABBER at gomakethings.com AJ Experimental Drugs Bill My Browers FYI New In Node,10.12 Arcade Attack Charles Getacoderjob.com Self-Publishing School MF CEO podcast Andy Devpay.io Honest.work Relativepath.uk

Panel: Charles Max Wood Aimee Knight Chris Ferdinandi AJ O’Neal Special Guest: Andy Bell In this episode, the panel talks with Andy Bell who is an independent designer and developer who uses React, Vue, and Node. Today, the panelists and the guest talk about the power of progressive enhancements. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI 0:34 – Chuck: Hi! Our panel is AJ, Aimee, Chris, myself and my new show is coming out in a few weeks, which is called the DevRev! It helps you with developer’s freedom! I am super excited. Our guest is Andy Bell. Introduce yourself, please. 2:00 – Guest: I am an independent designer and developer out in the U.K. 2:17 – Chuck: You wrote things about Vanilla.js. I am foreshadowing a few things and let’s talk about the power and progressive enhancement. 2:43 – The guest gives us definitions of power and progressive enhancements. He describes how it works. 3:10 – Chuck: I’ve heard that people would turn off JavaScript b/c it was security concern and then your progressive enhancement would make it work w/o JavaScript. I am sure there’s more than that? 3:28 – The guest talks about JavaScript, dependencies, among other things. 4:40 – Chuck: Your post did make that very clear I think. I am thinking I don’t even know where to start with this. Are people using the 6th version? How far back or what are we talking about here? 5:09 – Guest: You can go really far back and make it work w/o CSS. 5:49 – Chris: I am a big advocate of progressive enhancement – the pushback I get these days is that there is a divide; between the broadband era and AOL dialup. Are there compelling reasons why progressive enhancements even matter? 6:48 – Guest. 8:05 – Panel: My family lives out in the boonies. I am aware of 50% of American don’t have fast Internet. People don’t have access to fast browsers but I don’t think they are key metric users. 8:47 – Guest: It totally depends on what you need it for. It doesn’t matter if these people are paying or not. 9:31 – Chris: Assuming I have a commute on the trail and it goes through a spotty section. In a scenario that it’s dependent on the JS...are we talking about 2 different things here? 10:14 – Panelist chimes-in. 10:36 – Chris: I can take advantage of it even if I cannot afford a new machine. 10:55 – Panel: Where would this really matter to you? 11:05 – Chris: I do have a nice new laptop. 11:12 – Chuck: I had to hike up to the hill (near the house) to make a call and the connection was really poor (in OK). It’s not the norm but it can happen. 11:37 – Chris: Or how about the All Trails app when I am on the trail. 11:52 – Guest. 12:40 – Chris: I can remember at the time that the desktop sites it was popular to have... Chris: Most of those sites were inaccessible to me. 13:17 – Guest. 13:51 – Chuck: First-world countries will have a good connection and it’s not a big deal. If you are thinking though about your customers and where they live? Is that fair? I am thinking that my customers need to be able to access the podcast – what would you suggest? What are the things that you’d make sure is accessible to them. 14:31 – Guest: I like to pick on the minimum viable experience? I think to read the transcript is important than the audio (MP3). 15:47 – Chuck. 15:52 – Guest: It’s a lot easier with Vue b/c you don’t’ have to set aside rendering. 17:13 – AJ: I am thinking: that there is a way to start developing progressively and probably cheaper and easier to the person who is developing. If it saves us a buck and helps then we take action. 17:49 – Guest: It’s much easier if you start that way and if you enhance the feature itself. 18:38 – AJ: Let me ask: what are the situations where I wouldn’t / shouldn’t worry about progressive enhancements? 18:57 – Guest answers the question. 19:42 – AJ: I want people to feel motivated in a place WHERE to start. Something like a blog needs Java for comments. Hamburger menu is mentioned, too. 20:20 – Guest. 21:05 – Chris: Can we talk about code? 21:16 – Aimee: This is the direction I wanted to go. What do you mean by that – building your applications progressively? Aimee refers to his blog. 21:44 – Guest. 22:13 – Chuck: I use stock overflow! 22:20 – Guest. 22:24 – Chuck: I mean that’s what Chris uses! 22:33 – Guest (continues). 23:42 – Aimee. 23:54 – Chris. 24:09 – Chris 24:16 – Chris: Andy what do you think about that? 24:22 – Guest: Yes, that’s good. 24:35 – Chris: Where it falls apart is the resistance to progressive enhancements that it means that your approach has to be boring? 25:03 – Guest answers the question. The guest mentions modern CSS and modern JavaScript are mentioned along with tooling. 25:50 – Chuck: My issue is that when we talk about this (progressive enhancement) lowest common denominator and some user at some level (slow network) and then they can access it. Then the next level (better access) can access it. I start at the bottom and then go up. Then when they say progressive enhancement I get lost. Should I scrap it and then start over or what? 26:57 – Guest: If it’s feasible do it and then set a timeline up. 27:42 – Chuck: You are saying yes do it a layer at a time – but my question is HOW? What parts can I pair back? Are there guidelines to say: do this first and then how to test? 28:18 – Advertisement – Sentry.io 29:20 – Guest: Think about the user flow. What does the user want to do at THIS point? Do you need to work out the actual dependencies? 30:31 – Chuck: Is there a list of those capabilities somewhere? So these users can use it this way and these users can use it that way? 30:50 – Guest answers the question. 31:03 – Guest: You can pick out the big things. 31:30 – Chuck: I am using this feature in the browser... 31:41 – Guest. 31:46 – Chris: I think this differently than you Andy – I’ve stopped caring if a browser supports something new. I am fine using CSS grid and if your browser doesn’t support it then I don’t have a problem with that. I get hung up on, though if this fails can they still get the content? If they have no access to these – what should they be able to do? Note: “Cutting the Mustard Test” is mentioned. 33:37 – Guest. 33:44 – Chuck: Knowing your users and if it becomes a problem then I will figure it out. 34:00 – Chris: I couldn’t spare the time to make it happen right now b/c I am a one-man shop. 34:20 – Chuck and Chris go back-and-forth. 34:36 –Chris: Check out links below for my product. 34:54 – AJ: A lot of these things are in the name: progressive. 36:20 – Guest. 38:51 – Chris: Say that they haven’t looked at it all before. Do you mind talking about these things and what the heck is a web component? 39:14 – The guest gives us his definition of what a web component is. 40:02 – Chuck: Most recent episode in Angular about web components, but that was a few years ago. See links below for that episode. 40:25 – Aimee. 40:31 – Guest: Yes, it’s a lot like working in Vue and web components. The concepts are very similar. 41:22 – Chris: Can someone please give us an example? A literal slideshow example? 41:45 – Guest answers the question. 45:07 – Chris. 45:12 – Guest: It’s a framework that just happens to use web components and stuff to help. 45:54 – Chuck: Yeah they make it easier (Palmer). Yeah there is a crossover with Palmer team and other teams. I can say that b/c I have talked with people from both teams. Anything else? 46:39 – Chuck: Where do they go to learn more? 46:49 – Guest: Check out the Club! And my Twitter! (See links below.) 47:33 – Chuck: I want to shout-out about DevLifts that has $19 a month to help you with physical goals. Or you can get the premium slot! It’s terrific stuff. Sign-up with DEVCHAT code but there is a limited number of slots and there is a deadline, too. Just try it! They have a podcast, too! 49:16 – Aimee: Yeah, I’m on their podcast soon! 49:30 – Chuck: Picks! END – Advertisement: CacheFly! Links: JavaScript React Elixir Ember.js Vue GO jQuery Node.js Puppeteer Cypress Past episode: AiA 115 Past episode: JSJ 120 Vue.js – Slots Using templates and slots – Article Web Components Club GitHub: Pwa – Starter – Kit Progressively Enhanced Toggle Panel Time Ago in under 50 lines of JavaScript GitHub: ebook-boilerplate Chris Ferdinandi’s Go Make Things Site Game Chops CNBC – Trump Article New in Node v10.12 Quotes Archive My Amazon Interview Horror Story DevPal.io Honest Work Relative Paths DevLifts Andy Bell’s Twitter Andy’s Website Sponsors: DevLifts Kendo UI Sentry CacheFly Picks: Aimee Hacker News  -  Programming Quotes My Amazon Interview Horror Story Chris Time Ago in Under 50 Lines of JavaScript E-Book Boiler Plate JSJABBER at gomakethings.com AJ Experimental Drugs Bill My Browers FYI New In Node,10.12 Arcade Attack Charles Getacoderjob.com Self-Publishing School MF CEO podcast Andy Devpay.io Honest.work Relativepath.uk

Panel: Charles Max Wood Aimee Knight Chris Ferdinandi AJ O’Neal Special Guest: Andy Bell In this episode, the panel talks with Andy Bell who is an independent designer and developer who uses React, Vue, and Node. Today, the panelists and the guest talk about the power of progressive enhancements. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI 0:34 – Chuck: Hi! Our panel is AJ, Aimee, Chris, myself and my new show is coming out in a few weeks, which is called the DevRev! It helps you with developer’s freedom! I am super excited. Our guest is Andy Bell. Introduce yourself, please. 2:00 – Guest: I am an independent designer and developer out in the U.K. 2:17 – Chuck: You wrote things about Vanilla.js. I am foreshadowing a few things and let’s talk about the power and progressive enhancement. 2:43 – The guest gives us definitions of power and progressive enhancements. He describes how it works. 3:10 – Chuck: I’ve heard that people would turn off JavaScript b/c it was security concern and then your progressive enhancement would make it work w/o JavaScript. I am sure there’s more than that? 3:28 – The guest talks about JavaScript, dependencies, among other things. 4:40 – Chuck: Your post did make that very clear I think. I am thinking I don’t even know where to start with this. Are people using the 6th version? How far back or what are we talking about here? 5:09 – Guest: You can go really far back and make it work w/o CSS. 5:49 – Chris: I am a big advocate of progressive enhancement – the pushback I get these days is that there is a divide; between the broadband era and AOL dialup. Are there compelling reasons why progressive enhancements even matter? 6:48 – Guest. 8:05 – Panel: My family lives out in the boonies. I am aware of 50% of American don’t have fast Internet. People don’t have access to fast browsers but I don’t think they are key metric users. 8:47 – Guest: It totally depends on what you need it for. It doesn’t matter if these people are paying or not. 9:31 – Chris: Assuming I have a commute on the trail and it goes through a spotty section. In a scenario that it’s dependent on the JS...are we talking about 2 different things here? 10:14 – Panelist chimes-in. 10:36 – Chris: I can take advantage of it even if I cannot afford a new machine. 10:55 – Panel: Where would this really matter to you? 11:05 – Chris: I do have a nice new laptop. 11:12 – Chuck: I had to hike up to the hill (near the house) to make a call and the connection was really poor (in OK). It’s not the norm but it can happen. 11:37 – Chris: Or how about the All Trails app when I am on the trail. 11:52 – Guest. 12:40 – Chris: I can remember at the time that the desktop sites it was popular to have... Chris: Most of those sites were inaccessible to me. 13:17 – Guest. 13:51 – Chuck: First-world countries will have a good connection and it’s not a big deal. If you are thinking though about your customers and where they live? Is that fair? I am thinking that my customers need to be able to access the podcast – what would you suggest? What are the things that you’d make sure is accessible to them. 14:31 – Guest: I like to pick on the minimum viable experience? I think to read the transcript is important than the audio (MP3). 15:47 – Chuck. 15:52 – Guest: It’s a lot easier with Vue b/c you don’t’ have to set aside rendering. 17:13 – AJ: I am thinking: that there is a way to start developing progressively and probably cheaper and easier to the person who is developing. If it saves us a buck and helps then we take action. 17:49 – Guest: It’s much easier if you start that way and if you enhance the feature itself. 18:38 – AJ: Let me ask: what are the situations where I wouldn’t / shouldn’t worry about progressive enhancements? 18:57 – Guest answers the question. 19:42 – AJ: I want people to feel motivated in a place WHERE to start. Something like a blog needs Java for comments. Hamburger menu is mentioned, too. 20:20 – Guest. 21:05 – Chris: Can we talk about code? 21:16 – Aimee: This is the direction I wanted to go. What do you mean by that – building your applications progressively? Aimee refers to his blog. 21:44 – Guest. 22:13 – Chuck: I use stock overflow! 22:20 – Guest. 22:24 – Chuck: I mean that’s what Chris uses! 22:33 – Guest (continues). 23:42 – Aimee. 23:54 – Chris. 24:09 – Chris 24:16 – Chris: Andy what do you think about that? 24:22 – Guest: Yes, that’s good. 24:35 – Chris: Where it falls apart is the resistance to progressive enhancements that it means that your approach has to be boring? 25:03 – Guest answers the question. The guest mentions modern CSS and modern JavaScript are mentioned along with tooling. 25:50 – Chuck: My issue is that when we talk about this (progressive enhancement) lowest common denominator and some user at some level (slow network) and then they can access it. Then the next level (better access) can access it. I start at the bottom and then go up. Then when they say progressive enhancement I get lost. Should I scrap it and then start over or what? 26:57 – Guest: If it’s feasible do it and then set a timeline up. 27:42 – Chuck: You are saying yes do it a layer at a time – but my question is HOW? What parts can I pair back? Are there guidelines to say: do this first and then how to test? 28:18 – Advertisement – Sentry.io 29:20 – Guest: Think about the user flow. What does the user want to do at THIS point? Do you need to work out the actual dependencies? 30:31 – Chuck: Is there a list of those capabilities somewhere? So these users can use it this way and these users can use it that way? 30:50 – Guest answers the question. 31:03 – Guest: You can pick out the big things. 31:30 – Chuck: I am using this feature in the browser... 31:41 – Guest. 31:46 – Chris: I think this differently than you Andy – I’ve stopped caring if a browser supports something new. I am fine using CSS grid and if your browser doesn’t support it then I don’t have a problem with that. I get hung up on, though if this fails can they still get the content? If they have no access to these – what should they be able to do? Note: “Cutting the Mustard Test” is mentioned. 33:37 – Guest. 33:44 – Chuck: Knowing your users and if it becomes a problem then I will figure it out. 34:00 – Chris: I couldn’t spare the time to make it happen right now b/c I am a one-man shop. 34:20 – Chuck and Chris go back-and-forth. 34:36 –Chris: Check out links below for my product. 34:54 – AJ: A lot of these things are in the name: progressive. 36:20 – Guest. 38:51 – Chris: Say that they haven’t looked at it all before. Do you mind talking about these things and what the heck is a web component? 39:14 – The guest gives us his definition of what a web component is. 40:02 – Chuck: Most recent episode in Angular about web components, but that was a few years ago. See links below for that episode. 40:25 – Aimee. 40:31 – Guest: Yes, it’s a lot like working in Vue and web components. The concepts are very similar. 41:22 – Chris: Can someone please give us an example? A literal slideshow example? 41:45 – Guest answers the question. 45:07 – Chris. 45:12 – Guest: It’s a framework that just happens to use web components and stuff to help. 45:54 – Chuck: Yeah they make it easier (Palmer). Yeah there is a crossover with Palmer team and other teams. I can say that b/c I have talked with people from both teams. Anything else? 46:39 – Chuck: Where do they go to learn more? 46:49 – Guest: Check out the Club! And my Twitter! (See links below.) 47:33 – Chuck: I want to shout-out about DevLifts that has $19 a month to help you with physical goals. Or you can get the premium slot! It’s terrific stuff. Sign-up with DEVCHAT code but there is a limited number of slots and there is a deadline, too. Just try it! They have a podcast, too! 49:16 – Aimee: Yeah, I’m on their podcast soon! 49:30 – Chuck: Picks! END – Advertisement: CacheFly! Links: JavaScript React Elixir Ember.js Vue GO jQuery Node.js Puppeteer Cypress Past episode: AiA 115 Past episode: JSJ 120 Vue.js – Slots Using templates and slots – Article Web Components Club GitHub: Pwa – Starter – Kit Progressively Enhanced Toggle Panel Time Ago in under 50 lines of JavaScript GitHub: ebook-boilerplate Chris Ferdinandi’s Go Make Things Site Game Chops CNBC – Trump Article New in Node v10.12 Quotes Archive My Amazon Interview Horror Story DevPal.io Honest Work Relative Paths DevLifts Andy Bell’s Twitter Andy’s Website Sponsors: DevLifts Kendo UI Sentry CacheFly Picks: Aimee Hacker News  -  Programming Quotes My Amazon Interview Horror Story Chris Time Ago in Under 50 Lines of JavaScript E-Book Boiler Plate JSJABBER at gomakethings.com AJ Experimental Drugs Bill My Browers FYI New In Node,10.12 Arcade Attack Charles Getacoderjob.com Self-Publishing School MF CEO podcast Andy Devpay.io Honest.work Relativepath.uk

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

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

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Subscribe on iTunes Have a question for the Podcast? Ask Jeff Joseph - I am a 44 year old professional that would like to accomplish one of my all time goals: passing the CPA Exam. It has been 15 years since I was in school. What is your opinion on the most effective way get up to speed on the new exam content, requisites and review methods? Michael - I'm having a hard time finding someone to verify my work experience as required by my state. I had a disagreement with my old boss and now I'm working on my own and can't find anyone to verify my work experience. The state requires that a CPA, from any state, verify that I worked for 1 year in public accounting, which I have been doing. What should I do? Greg - As I watch lecture videos and take notes, how detailed should my notes be? Does it make a difference if I type or handwrite the notes? How do I incorporate my lecture videos, the text, and NINJA Notes? Andrew - I have failed REG twice, but raised my score ten points (to a 74) after buying the Ten Point Combo. Would you suggest watching the review course videos again and taking notes, or re-writing the NINJA notes while listening to the NINJA audio? I still plan to hit the MCQs either way. Christina - Does the AICPA grade you on the number of MCQ questions you answered or the total MCQ questions in the test? So, if I only answered 80 out of the 90 MCQ, do they grade me on just those 80 or the total 90? Lauren - How many questions in each FAR testlet are pretest? Myles - How should I study during the last week before my exam? Chris - Where can I find the codification tutorial for FAR? Is there a free resource? Justin - Say I had two research questions on my Audit exam. Is there any chance that they both count? And how much does each count for? Are they equal weight to the other questions in the Sims? Carmela - FAR has a massive amount of information to memorize. I am studying the Fixed Assets section, and there is so many formulas. How do you remember everything? Get More CPA Reviewed Podcasts Free NINJA CPA Review Materials Want to Study Less & Get Higher CPA Exam Scores? Can I send you $162.12 of Free CPA Review Materials that will help you... Study Less Avoid Common CPA Candidate Mistakes Get Higher Scores Spend More Time with Friends and Family Finally Pass and Get On With Your Life?