Podcast appearances and mentions of chris which

If you missed the other episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz), and the third episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e6incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen and Jordyn Bonds catch up with the co-founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal, where they share insights from their journey during the Incubator program, including the usefulness of the application process in aligning their vision and the challenges and benefits of user interviews and the importance of not overreacting to single user feedback and finding a balance in responding to diverse opinions. They reveal the varied reactions of users to Goodz's product, highlighting the different market segments interested in it. As the Incubator program nears its end for Goodz, Chris and Mike reflect on their achievements and future plans. They've made significant progress, such as setting up an e-commerce site and conducting successful user interviews. The co-founders discuss their excitement about the potential of their product and the validation they received from users. Mike mentions the importance of focusing on B2B sales and the possibility of upcoming events like South by Southwest and Record Store Day. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Transcript:  LINDSEY: Thank you to our viewers and listeners. We are catching up once again with one of the startups going through the thoughtbot Incubator. My name is Lindsey Christensen. I'm joined today by Jordyn Bonds, who heads up the thoughtbot incubator, as well as our Co-Founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal. Welcome, everybody. MIKE: Thanks, Lindsey. LINDSEY: Before we get started, before we put Chris and Mike back in the hot seat, at the top here, Jordyn, we have a special announcement for our viewers and listeners. JORDYN: Application window is open for session 1 of 2024, folks. You can go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. And Chris and Mike can tell you how easy or hard applying was. MIKE: It was easy. It was totally easy. It's a very straightforward process. CHRIS: Yeah, it was way more straightforward than a lot of applications that we've dealt with in the past, for sure. JORDYN: Ha-ha. And if you've got a business idea that involves software but you haven't gotten anything out there yet, come talk to us. We will help you make sure that it's a good idea and that there are people who might buy it, and maybe get you even a little further than that. MIKE: We actually have a friend who's considering applying. I'll tell him applications are open. He's worried his idea is not big enough to actually be a business idea, so we'll see. CHRIS: Even the process of doing the application was really helpful for us because it helped us get aligned on exactly what we were doing, yeah. JORDYN: I love that. And I found that to be true when I was a founder applying to some of these things, in particular, applying for an SBIR grant was one of the most challenging things that we did, but it was so productive. I was so annoyed by it at the time, and then I cribbed from that thing. It actually sort of forced us to make a business plan [laughs], and then, basically, we ran it, and it was great [laughs]. CHRIS: Yeah. I think that was, for us, that was our point where we were like, "Is this idea fleshed out enough to move forward?" And we were like, "Yes, it is. Let's go. Let's do this." JORDYN: So, use the application as a forcing function, everybody. It will help you clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: Yeah. Jordyn, what would you say to Mike's friend who's questioning if their idea is big enough? How do you respond to that sentiment? JORDYN: That is a fascinating sentiment because I feel like so much more often, I am trying to help founders with the opposite problem where they think this thing is so big that they are not thinking about what step 1 is going to look like. They're just, like, in 10 years, we're going to be the next Amazon, and I'm like, "Maybe [laughter]. Let me help you figure out how to get to that giant vision." So, I don't come across the "Is this big enough to be a business?" question as often. And, I don't know, what would I say? I guess I need the details. LINDSEY: It could be a perfect fit MIKE: It could be. JORDYN: It could be a perfect fit. LINDSEY: In a way, that's what you're answering, right? MIKE: Right. LINDSEY: In some of this work. MIKE: That is true. So, yeah, you guys would certainly...just thinking through the process we've gone through the last two months, it would definitely help them flesh that out. LINDSEY: Which is a great segue. MIKE: Great segue. LINDSEY: Chris and Mike, we're actually coming up to the end of your incubator time. CHRIS: It's so sad. LINDSEY: Can you believe it? MIKE: It's gone by really fast. I mean, eight weeks is not a long time, but it has gone by very, very fast. CHRIS: It felt like a very long time in the middle of it. MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: But now that it's over, it feels like a blink that it's coming to a close. MIKE: I don't know. It's funny. I think we had some note in our retro today that was like, maybe the very end of the year is not the best time to do an accelerator just because you have, like, the holidays kind of jumping in here in the end. So, that might have helped make it feel like a... I feel like the end of the year always feels like a rush anyway. So, I think just life gets a little bit busier this time of year, too, but yeah. CHRIS: Yeah, my gingerbread man decorating game is, like, really down this season because we've been so busy. Tragic. LINDSEY: Chris, can you remind our viewers and listeners who might not be familiar what was the idea that you and Mike have been exploring with the incubator or, like, what did you come in with? CHRIS: So, with Goodz, what we're trying to do is make little, physical collectibles objects that connect back to the digital content that a user loves. The idea being that today, we are awash in these digital files, links, so many things on our desktops, on our phones, on our devices, and it's really hard to tell which part of those are really, really important to us. So, by giving them a presence in the physical world, that denotes that's something that's really important, worth keeping, worth sharing, and showing off to your friends and family. And to start this off, mostly because Mike and I are both kind of music nerds, we're starting off with a music focus, but at some point, we're hoping to move into other realms, too. LINDSEY: And a lot of the incubator, as repeat listeners will know, is focused on really kind of evolving user interviews all the way through and narrowing in on, you know, a core audience, a core market. Mike, how has that evolution been? I think the last time we chatted was around three weeks ago. What has the latest iteration of user interviews looked like in terms of the people you're talking to and even what you're asking them? MIKE: It's been a really fascinating process. I mean, I'm trying to think of where we were exactly the last time we talked to you, but I think we'd probably just launched the e-commerce site that we had been experimenting with putting up. LINDSEY: Yeah, exactly. MIKE: And so, and we really then started cranking on user interviews kind of once that was live. And so, moving away from the conceptual and more into like, "Okay, share your screen. Here's the link. Like, tell me what you think is going on here," and really sort of getting users who had never, you know, never heard our pitch, never been involved with us to sort of try to wrap their heads around what we are and what we're doing just based on that website and trying to sort of make iterative changes based on that. You know, for me, because I had not done user interviews very much in the past, like, it's very tempting, like, you get sort of 1 note from 1 person in 1 interview, and you're like, oh, we need to change this word. That word didn't make any sense to them, or this thing needs to be blue instead of pink. I think, for me, it was like, all right, how do we kind of synthesize this data in a responsible way? And it emerged naturally, which, I mean, Jordyn and all thoughtbot folks said that it would, but you sort of started hearing the same things again and again. And we never really got to a place where, like, you heard the exact same things from everyone. But there were enough buckets, I feel like, where we're like, okay, like, this part really isn't making that much sense to people, or, like, we do really need to, you know, structure this differently to convey. So, it was a bunch of that kind of work over the last three weeks or so and sort of just getting a sense of like, are we conveying our message? It's hard. I mean, it's a new, like, we're not the only people making physical products with NFC chips in them, but it is not the most common, like, product. Like, it is kind of a new category out there. And so, really trying to understand just right off the bat, do people get it? And you get wildly different answers [laughs] as to whether they get it or they don't, which has been fascinating, too. JORDYN: Yeah. [crosstalk 7:12] LINDSEY: Chris or Jordyn, anything to add there? JORDYN: Yeah. You get the best, like, bootcamp in the don't overreact to a single user interview experience in some ways because we [laughs]...it would literally be like, interview in the morning someone says this thing. Interview in the afternoon, someone says the exact opposite thing [laughter]. And you're like, okay [laughs], like, which one of these things are we going to respond to, if either of them? CHRIS: Yeah. It's hard. As somebody with, like, a strong desire to please, it's hard to reign yourself in and want to change things immediately, but it definitely makes sense to do so in the long run. MIKE: But yeah, but, I mean, like I said, I do feel like it kind of came down to buckets. It's like, okay, you're that. I can, like, categorize you with all those other people and you with all those other people. And yeah, I hear you. I'm like, yeah, it's tempting to want to please them all. But I think with this one, we're fighting hard to be like...or we sort of have a philosophy that this product is emphatically not for everyone because, at the end of the day, you get a lot of people who are like, "Wait, you're just putting a link to a streaming playlist on a physical object? Why don't I just text someone the link?" And sometimes that breaks down by age group, like, 18-year-olds being like, "What are you talking about, old man? LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: Like, why the hell would I do that? It makes no sense." But it sort of skews all over the age ranges. But then there'll be other people who are 18 or 20 years old who are like, "Wow, I never had cassettes when I was growing up," or "I never got to make, you know, mixtapes or CD-Rs for people." And like, you know, so it's, yeah, it's about finding the people who are the early adopters. As Jordyn has said a lot, it's like, we need to find those early adopters and, like, make them love us, and then other people will come later. CHRIS: I mean, some of the most gratifying moments, I think, are there's been some interviews where people have been so excited that after the interview, they've gone and purchased our products, which is just, like, the coolest feeling ever. LINDSEY: Wow. MIKE: Yeah, it's pretty cool. LINDSEY: Are you open to sharing a little bit more about what those buckets or what those segments look like? CHRIS: I mean, I think there's folks who outright just get it almost immediately, and I think those people tend to be hardcore music collectors, hardcore music fans, Jordyn and Mike, please feel free to jump in if you disagree with any of this. They just get it right off the bat. Then I think there's, in my experience, there's another bucket of people who are a little more hesitant, and maybe they wouldn't buy it, but they seemed really excited about the idea of getting one as a gift, which is really interesting. They're like, "I don't know if I'd buy this, but I'd really like to have one." And then there is another segment, like, which Mike just mentioned, of folks who just don't see the value in this whatsoever, which is totally fair. MIKE: Yeah, totally. I think it's also...I see it almost as, like, a matrix. There's, like, desirability, and, like, technical understanding because people were like, "I technically understand what this is, and I do not want it in my life." Or like, "I get what this is and, oh my God, I have to have that," or like, "I don't really understand what you're talking about, but, man, I love physical stuff. Like, sure I want..." you know, it's like, it goes across those two planes, I think. JORDYN: I will say that it, I think you alluded to this before, Mike, but, like, we're going to run a whole analysis of...because we did a ton of interviews, and we haven't actually done that, like, sort of data-driven thing of like, are there trends in the demographics somewhere that we're not getting? Because the pattern has not been there. Like, someone will talk to an 18-year-old, you know, at 1:00 p.m. who is just, like, "Why on earth would I ever want this?" And then I, like, you know, will talk to a 21-year-old who is like, "I love this." And it's like, why? Like, this is the answer. The thing we're trying to get out now is, like, what is the difference between those two people? It's not a demographic thing that we can see from the outside, so what is it instead? But with consumer stuff like this, often, you don't necessarily...you don't need that in such great detail when you're starting. You just kind of, like, throw it out there and see who grabs it, and then you start to build sort of cohorts around that. And that is kind of what these interviews have shown us is that there are people who will grab it, and that was part of what we were trying to validate. Are there people who Mike and Chris do not know personally who will, like, get this and be psyched about it immediately? And that is, you know, check unequivocally true. Like Chris said, there are people that we were, you know, that we had recruited on this user interviews platform [chuckles] who then just turned around and bought the product because they were so psyched about it. One of the guys I interviewed was like, "Can I invest in your company right now?" Like, during the interview, and I was like, "Maybe?" [laughs] CHRIS: There was, like, another person who wanted to work for us immediately... JORDYN: Yes, great. CHRIS: Which was really interesting and kind of awesome. JORDYN: Yeah, they're like, "Are you hiring?" You're just like, okay. So, it's validating that there are people all over that spectrum. Like, where those trends lie, though, which is, I think, what you were asking, Lindsey, not as straightforward and in a fascinating way. So, we still have a little more, like, number crunching to do on that, and we may have an answer for you later. LINDSEY: That's exciting. Exactly. I'm curious: what are the connecting dots between the folks who are really into it, and how might that impact how you approach the business? MIKE: Yeah, it's hard. It's definitely going to be a niche to start. And so, we got to figure out kind of got to crack the code on how we find those people. LINDSEY: And, Mike, I think you had also mentioned last time that, you know, you or both of you have a network kind of in the music industry, and you've been floating the idea past some people there. Have you been having more of those conversations over the last few weeks, too? MIKE: We have, yeah. Well, so yeah, we've had a couple more just kind of straight-up pitch calls versus like, "Hey, there's this cool thing we're doing," and having those people be like, "Cool. Let's do a pilot." And so, they're ordering, you know, 500 or 1,000 units at a time, which is rad. LINDSEY: Whoa. MIKE: For the first...yeah. LINDSEY: Okay, very cool. MIKE: Yeah. The first two or three of those should happen in January or maybe early February, but yeah, those are done and in production and arriving soon. So, that's really exciting with some cool bands. We won't say the names in case it doesn't [laughs] work out, but it does look like it's going to work out. LINDSEY: And so, it's specific bands that are creating merch for their fans. MIKE: Yeah, yeah. So, we're working with one artist manager on a band that he manages, and then we're working with a record label. And they're going to try with a couple of smaller artists. And so, yeah, it's actually really good for us. One is going to be straight-up sales, most likely, and it's, like, selling these things. And the other ones will be given away as kind of promo items on tour artists, which is also a really interesting use case for us, too, that we're excited about and using them as a way to sort of get email addresses and, like, fans engaged and stuff, so... And then yeah, then I had another conversation, and they want to talk about doing some pilots. So far, like, that side of things is going great. We're sort of 3 for 4 in terms of initial calls leading to pilots right off the bat, which is kind of unheard of from [laughs] my experience. LINDSEY: Yeah, I'd say so. No, a lot of very good signals. MIKE: Really good signals. But then we were able to turn some of those into user interview conversations, actually, as well over the course of the last couple of weeks, which has been really helpful, like, talking to manager and label-type people about what they might want out of a software product that is associated with this because we're not just thinking about making physical products but sort of coupling that with an online toolset. And that part, we haven't gotten as far along as we did with the direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but it's been fascinating. LINDSEY: So, what has been happening with the online shop? As you noted the last time we talked, it was just a baby less than a week-old Shopify site getting, you know, some first hits of people going around maybe putting things in their basket. I'm sure a lot has happened over the last few weeks. What kind of work, what kind of insights have you seen around the site? CHRIS: We've been, I mean, we've been selling stuff at a slow but steady pace. It's been great because it's enough to, you know, because our product really straddles the line between physical and digital; there's a lot of physical aspects to this that we need to figure out and kind of the level of orders that we've been getting have been really...it's, like, the perfect number to think about fulfillment issues, things like what kind of package does this go in? How do we mail this out? Things along those lines, just very basic, practical questions that needed to be answered. But yeah, it's been great. We actually, I mean, we hit our goal for the amount of these that we wanted to get in people's hands before Christmas, which is pretty awesome. And we continue now with the lessons learned. I think our plan is to try and make a push for Valentine's Day because these seem like they would be a great Valentine's Day present: make a playlist; share it with your loved one; share it with a friend; share it with somebody you don't like at all. Who knows? LINDSEY: [laughs] CHRIS: But yeah, that's kind of our next sales push, we think. LINDSEY: The hate playlist. CHRIS: [inaudible 15:40] hate playlist. MIKE: Yeah, perfect. Real passive-aggressive. CHRIS: Just Blue Monday, like, by New Order, like, 14 times. LINDSEY: [laughs] Yeah, every song is just like a sub-tweet... MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: About something they've done and [inaudible 15:53] Have you updated the site? Like, how do you decide what gets updated on the site? [laughter] Everyone laughed. MIKE: It was a little haphazard, I would say, there for a minute. But -- CHRIS: We got the site up very, very quickly. And from my perspective, I've been dealing a lot with the physical side of things, just getting great product photos up there, which is, like, something that thoughtbot has actually been super helpful with. You know, everybody on the team is starting to submit photos of their Goodz in the real world and using their Goodz, which is great. And we continued to update the site with that but also making sure our text made sense, refining copy in response to things that people said during user interviews. The checkout process, the process of adding the URL that we point the Good to that, we did a bunch of experimentation there based on what people were saying during user interviews. So, it has been a little haphazard, but we have made a bunch of changes. LINDSEY: Jordyn, has there been any experiment, like, structured experimentation around the site or how you're getting people to the site? JORDYN: Mike actually did a little bit of ad funnel work that I don't think we've, like, even remotely scratched the surface of. So, I wish I could say that was conclusive, but I think we've found a little bit more...here are plenty of sales that are from people that nobody here knows. MIKE: True. JORDYN: So, people are finding out about this somehow [laughs]. But I think it's a little bit, like, word-of-mouth sort of chain of events is our sense so far. I wanted to say, though, about the site, we did get what Chris was saying about, like, this experiment was, in part, about fulfillment and figuring out how fulfillment would work and packaging, and not just messaging and not just closing the sale with consumers, but also, just, like, how do you fulfill these? But one of the really fun things we've managed to do in the last, since we talked last time, which I can't even believe...I feel like this wasn't even a gleam in our eyes for this project, but we managed to get out, like, stood up and out the door, and working in production in the last few weeks is a way for folks to actually assign the URL to their mixtape themselves. Previously, the plan had just been for Chris and Mike to do that, which is fine but a little bit unscalable, right? CHRIS: That was a huge dream or, like, that was high on our wish list. And we didn't think we'd get to it. And it's been pretty amazing that we have, yeah. JORDYN: Yeah, so that was one thing that is an update to the site. So, then we had to do a little bit of, like, micro iterating, on, like, the messaging around that. Like, how do you communicate to people? This is, like, a little bit of an abstract challenge, right? Like, here's this object. It's going to point to a digital thing. How do you tell the physical object which digital thing it's pointing to [laughs]? So, a lot of our recent interviewing has been to sort of get inside the mind of the consumer about how they're thinking about that and how we can best communicate that to them. So that's been a lot of the, like, recent iteration is getting that mechanism stood up and then the messaging around it. CHRIS: It's also really cool because it adds to the utility of the object itself in the sense that now our Goodz, when a user gets one, they can add a URL to their Good themselves, but they can also change that URL. So, it's much more malleable. JORDYN: Which is something that in one of our early user interviews was, like, a hot request [laughs], and we were like, "Someday, someday." And it's, you know, I should actually go back to her and be like, "Someday is today." [laughter] MIKE: Well, yeah, and just as Chris was saying, it just makes it so much easier to ship these out without having to manually load them, and you could sell them, and yeah, retail outlets, like, it just opens up a lot of opportunities for us for them. LINDSEY: And Mike mentioned that some of the, like, kind of future looking aspirations for the solution are, you know, how might you figure out the B2B, like, SaaS aspect of it? Jordyn, is that something that's been explored at all at this point, or is it early? JORDYN: That experiment I just described is actually sort of the link between the two projects. It sort of proves the concept and proves the value in some ways, and it has given us a little bit more visibility into sort of how we're going to execute some of this technical stuff. Like, how easy, how difficult is it going to be? These little experiments all build your confidence around your ability to do those things and what it's going to look like. And so, this experiment absolutely feeds into that question. But I would say it was really this week where we got to have a really fun brainstorming sort of blue sky conversation about that that I don't think would have been nearly as both creative and blue sky or rooted in reality as it was if we hadn't done these experiments and hadn't talked to so many...we had so much work...we could participate in a conversation like that so much more confidently and creatively because all of us had a lot more shared context. So, we really got to dream big, like, what is a SaaS platform built around these physical objects? And I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to give it away at this moment because we had a lot of, like, really cool ideas. It's one part talking to the B2B customer, which, you know, you mentioned earlier, getting what their pain points are, and what they're looking for, what they need, but then also dreaming big about now we understand the technology a little bit more and how it feels to use it. What does that unlock in our brains? The analogy I used in that conversation and that I use all the time is like, the users of Twitter invented hashtags, right? Twitter did not invent hashtags. And so, hey, everybody out there, newsflash: users invented hashtags, not Twitter or something else, if you didn't realize that Twitter was where those things kind of emerged. But there was just a user behavior that was happening in the wild, and Twitter was just very good at making that easier for them, looking at that and being like, "Oh, hey, is this a thing you all want to do? Here, we'll make that even more useful for you." And it was part of Twitter's early success that they were able to do that. And so, that was the kind of thinking we were trying to employ here is, like, now that we have these objects and we understand a little bit more how it feels to use them, you get these second order effects. What does that then make us think of? What is then possible to us that we wouldn't have been able to dream of previously because we didn't quite get it? So, that was really happening this week. LINDSEY: So, as the incubator time wraps up, what are the kind of final activities or deliverables, one, that Goodz wants and you know that they're going to get? What are the parting gifts as we send you out into the next phase? MIKE: Yeah, well, loads of stuff. I mean, we're getting all that code that [SP] Guillermo and the guys worked on to let people set their own playlist settings. And we've got that up in a GitHub repository now. And we've got a bunch of great design work that's all being handed over, like Chris was saying, product shots that a bunch of the team members were taking, synthesizing all the user interviews. We're actually sort of making some kind of final reports on those, so it's kind of more usable, actionable data for us. The whole website, you know, that didn't exist before. And that will sort of continue to grow as the entire website for Goodz moving forward. I don't know. That's a lot. What else was there, Chris? CHRIS: As a result of all that, I mean, one of the things I'm most excited about is now we have a small user base who actually has the physical products that, hopefully, we can get them to answer questions. That's huge for what's coming next. Starting the path towards the SaaS platform, too, it's really helped narrow our scope and think about, you know, how to make that successful or if it will be successful. LINDSEY: Yeah, that sounded like a big discussion this week that I know has been on your minds from the beginning. Wait, the last time, also, you said you were starting to get emails, too. Have you emailed anyone yet, or are you still holding on to them? MIKE: Oh. No, I still haven't sent a newsletter out [laughs], actually, but we have Mailchimp set up. Yeah, no, we've got a good kind of core of our, yeah, early folks on there. We'll start getting a newsletter out with some sort of regularity. We're building up the socials very slowly just focusing on Instagram mostly right now and trying to get back into that game. It's been a long time since I've had to do kind of social marketing stuff. And so, it's a lot of work, as it turns out, but we'll get all that cooking. I think this was just such a sprint, working with the thoughtbot folks and trying to get all this stuff done. Before the end of the year, now we can sort of take a breath and start engaging folks in the new year. LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, so, do you know what you want to do next or what the next phase looks like? Are you going to do fundraising? MIKE: We're certainly going to continue to have some fundraising conversations. We've had some conversations emerge over the last, you know, since we've been in thoughtbot, again, not the greatest time of year to try to be raising a round. But we're also not, like, desperately, urgently needing to do that right this second. I think, you know, part of it is the fundraising landscape, you know, doesn't look amazing. And we're still sort of building out a lot of traction, and sort of every week, there's some new, exciting thing, or we've got some new, big artists who wants to do something. So, I think, in some ways, to the extent that we can bootstrap for a little while, I think we will, yeah. So, we will focus on...I'd like to get back to focusing on, like, B2B sales. I'd like to hit the ground in January and just start talking to a bunch of music industry folks. And thinking ahead a little bit, sort of Q1 and Q2, like, what are the big tentpole events? You know, you got South by Southwest coming up in March. You got Record Store Day in April, or whenever it is. But, you know, there's, like, a bunch of those sorts of things that it's like, oh, let's not let those things suddenly be tomorrow. Like, right now, they're all still two or three/four months out. Like, let's make sure we're queued up for those things and see what happens. And Jordyn has been giving really good advice on the fundraising side where it's just like, just keep getting cool stuff like that and just do almost like little drip campaigns with funders who aren't maybe giving you the time of day or think it's too early, and just kind of keep going back to them. Like, the best excuse to go back to funders is like, "Hey, we just closed this new thing. We just launched this new thing. We just got this thing working. Hey, we're launching with this major band," Like, enough of those happen, and I think the fundraising will happen more organically. It's a strategy. CHRIS: I think we're really lucky in the fact that, you know, now, at this point, we're not talking about vapourware, you know, like, these are actual things that actually exist that, like, anybody could go onto our site right now and buy, which is awesome. And because of that, the product's going to continue to evolve, and, hopefully, our sales record will continue to evolve, too. LINDSEY: Amazing. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up, maybe. Are you going to hang around in our incubator Slack, the thoughtbot incubator Slack for all our past founders? MIKE: Yes. Emphatically, yes. LINDSEY: Okay. We're holding you to it then [laughs]. CHRIS: I'm excited about that. We met with the other founders yesterday for the first time, and it was a really great and interesting conversation. It was cool seeing how diverse all these projects are and how folks are working on things that we had no idea about and how we're working on stuff that they have no idea about, and it was really great. It felt like a good cross-pollination. MIKE: Agreed. LINDSEY: That's awesome to hear. Jordyn, any final thoughts? JORDYN: [inaudible 26:58] out there listening and watching and want to join this community of founders [laughs], don't you want to have office hours with Chris and Mike? LINDSEY: All right, thoughtbot.com/incubator. You can apply for session 1 of the 2024 incubator program. And yeah, you two, if you have more recommendations, referrals, definitely send them our way. Chris, Mike, Jordyn, thank you so much once again for joining and catching us up on all the exciting developments for Goodz. MIKE: Thank you. LINDSEY: A lot of really cool milestones. JORDYN: I got to say, so much good stuff. And like, you know, just wrapping it all up almost diminishes the impact of any single one of those things that we just talked about, but it's, like, pretty amazing. People out there, apply to the incubator but also go buy yourself a Goodz mixtape. It's cool with playlists on it. MIKE: It's a good point. JORDYN: Give it to your BFF. Come on. LINDSEY: Getthegoodz.com. MIKE: Getthegoodz.com. Awesome. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, Chris and Mike. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito, Jordyn Bonds, and Mike Rosenthal.

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we have an inspiring discussion with Tram Nguyen, the passionate founder of Living Good Candle Company. She shares her journey of launching a natural candle company and the power of her dedicated team. Tram describes the challenges of breaking into retailers like Amazon and Walmart and her three-month struggle that led to reinstating her Amazon account. We discuss her unique empathy-driven leadership approach and strategies for understanding the market. In wrapping up, Tram shares advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and her future plans. Additionally, we hear about her growth habits, first job at Chick-fil-A, and love of Texas barbecue. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS We discuss the entrepreneurial journey of Tram Nguyen, the founder of Living Good Candle Company, and her commitment to using natural ingredients in her products. Tram shares her experiences of getting her products featured on major platforms like Amazon and Walmart and the challenges that come with it. We delve into Tram's unique approach to leadership which emphasizes empathy, understanding, and active listening, contributing to her company's growth. Tram talks about the importance of a dedicated team and thorough market understanding for any budding entrepreneur. We touch upon Tram's strategies for budgeting and the difficulties she faces in accessing capital for her business. Tram offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, stressing the importance of hard work and life balance. We discuss Tram's personal habits for growth, including her love for reading and participating in a book club. She also shares her first job experience at Chick-fil-A. Tram shares her future plans for Living Good Candle Company, including product line expansion and increasing automation. We discuss the process of building relationships with big-name retailers like Amazon and Walmart and the importance of constant and timely communication. Tram talks about the setbacks she faced, including losing her Amazon account and her efforts to recover it, emphasizing the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller GUESTS Tram Nguyen About Tram TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you'll meet Tram Nguyen, founder of Living Good Candle Company. Tram talks about the importance of understanding your market before starting a company and how the power of a team can help you realize your goals. Tram, I want to welcome you on to Building Texas Business. Thanks for being here today. Tram: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be in this podcast. It's a really great to be here today. Chris: So tell us, you started a company on your own and it's a candle company. Tell us about Living Good Candle. Tram: Is that it? Yes, tell us about that. So I'm actually starting out my career as a chemical engineer. So I'm making many difficult products for lives, from plastic to car material, and now I'm making composite for airplane. So I've been making, producing so many useful products, and then suddenly, when I am a person that's really into candles I've burned a lot of candles throughout my whole life and then I got really bad headache from it and then I have to take a stop from burning any candle completely, and during that time I take a step back doing more research about what's going on in the candle industry and find out a lot of misconception or misunderstanding about different time material going to candles. And that's the reason why I decided to start a candle company that only make candles with be wires and only, and we make our own oil too. So we control everything into a product and we transparent about that to our customer, because I wanted the customer, when they burn the candle, not only feel good, but they know that they're not putting their health at risk. Chris: So your passion for candles is what kind of led you to start the company? Tram: Yeah, exactly. Chris: So you mentioned that. So what are the things that got you to? I guess you sound like you control the product mix so that it's more natural than having, I guess, bad chemicals in there. Tram: Yeah, it's 100% natural. Everything you make with be wires and we have the lab in Houston that make our custom oil. So I will come to the lab, I test all of them, reading or I smell them, go, improve all of the things going through with it and then approve them before we, you know, with them in the candle. So we also send our candle to the lab to test them to make sure no suit, no emission, no elegance, and because I have really bad allergy too. So that's the reason why I want a product that you know would my my at peace, knowing that it's not bringing bad chemical to my house. Chris: That's impressive. So when did you start the company? Tram: I started in last year. It took me a while to figure out the recipe. Seeing be wise a little bit difficult to handle, so I spent a lot of time testing it and work with a lot of vendor. So now all of our be was up from not Carolina and we have built trust with our vendor. And then you know, yeah, we've been around for a year and a half now. Chris: Okay, so your candles are all beeswax, and so what did you do to get the company started? Is it self funded? Tram: Yeah, it's actually self funded. So I spent all of my money from my night to five job with them all into the business. I work day and night, like weekend, no day off, and then, you know, put some of my seven on it. But as my plan for next year, we're working on some fund it. We're working towards some bank try to get the business fund it so we can spend them, because right now we focus on Amazon and Walmart, but my next year will be roll into the retail, so we will need a little bit more fun for that. Chris: Okay, so right now, the products excuse me are on. You find them at Walmart or Amazon yeah. What has that been like, dealing with those two to try to get into their system, and you know the logistics of having to be a vendor for Amazon and Walmart. Tram: You know what funny actually use the world for Amazon report. I use the world for Amazon. I used to be their operation manager, so I managed their warehouse and logistics, so I understand how it's work. That's why when I start the company, the first thing I do is I want my company as e-commerce because you know, I don't want to ship our product by myself, and the process again to Amazon is a hustle. You have to. You have to do everything right from day one with Amazon and we improve out the year, a year and a half. We get a lot of customers from all over the country. We do have some customers even from outside the country, but just our candle on Amazon and our Amazon sell it from 87% of previous customers. That's mean we build really big, you know, portfolio on our Amazon and then from there, when we're getting the profit from Amazon, we come back and talk to Walmart. Walmart will be a little bit harder to get in because they will require you to be at a certain revenue. So we come back, talk to them, convince them and now we like Walmart. Yeah, it's a lot of challenge dealing with, you know, those two big e-commerce website, because you have to do everything right and make sure that you know you don't get your company suspended and stuff. Chris: Very good. So let's kind of go back to this. Last year, or maybe even before you started business, you were doing a bunch of research. You said Talk to us about you know if there's entrepreneurs out there maybe that have just started what you're doing or thinking about it. What are some of the lessons that you learned? Maybe some bumps in the road that you encountered and how you got past those in starting this company. Tram: I think I make a lot of mistakes. I do think like that. The first thing I make mistake about is, you know, the lack of understanding of the market research Like even though I'm really good at production testing product but you know the lack of understanding of why people are looking forward. First Challenge Gina. For like three, four months we wasn't able to really push the sale up to where I wanted to be when I get started. So you know, if any intravenous want to start a side business or a business, the first thing to do we understand the market, understand your customer, and then the second thing will be understand your. You know the power of being in a team. I used to do everything by myself. I used to do candle pouring, production, packing, marketing, everything and then at one point I got burned out and that's the reason why I always say you cannot start a business by yourself. It's always needs help, you know from your teammate. And that's when we started bringing in more people, because my sale, my family and even my boyfriend got burned out. Everybody got burned out from helping me and that's why I'm like, okay, this is time for me to hire more people, and then I take in time, interview people and bring in some people to the team. Chris: So that's a great segue, so it does take a good team right at any company. So let's now talk about what were some of the things you did through, say, the interview process, to make sure you were hiring the right people to join your team. Tram: That's a hard question. Actually, I make a lot of bad hire at first because of the rushing feeling you know you got burned out and then I'm like, oh my god, I need help, I need help, and then we just take whatever. But then it's actually creating more problems down the line because I don't understand who I work with. And since I have my night to fight, I do looking for somebody that independent and can be at a warehouse by themselves. So in the interview I have conversation with them, I'm making sure that they okay. Working with the warehouse setting you know where it can hit can be a little bit of problem and it's you just have to look around for until you find a right one. So I, when I'm making so many bad hire, I take a step back. I say I'm not hiring more people. I try to do it by myself. I'm taking my time looking for a right person and then from there you know you just have to take your time talking to people, try to understand the goal. And one of my thing is I love hiring students because you know I used to be a student and working part-time, so I hiring them at part-time and right now we only have part-time worker. We didn't have anybody full-time yet. But you know I start with students because I like the curiosity of them and you know they want, they want to do the best. Chris: The young energy. Tram: I think so too. Chris: Well, I think you mentioned something that's true, I think, when you, when you're hiring out of what I'll call desperation, right, yeah you tend to overlook some things, and that yeah tends to lead to maybe bad hiring decisions as opposed to taking your time yeah and and really digging in to get to know someone and make sure they fit. You know the fundamental priorities of your company yeah, it's important it's very important. You only, you only figure that out if you slow down. Tram: I think so too. Yeah, you need to slow down to go far. This is what I take. Yeah, you need to slow down, take one step at a time so you can go for it. Chris: So let's talk a little bit about your process, I guess, and making your product. Do you, do you feel like what you're doing? It kind of in the candle manufacturing space is somewhat innovative. Tram: When I first started, it's actually was really manual. I actually took it out, like you know wasn't really innovative or efficient, and I'd good love it to be. But you know, of course, that I have to do everything by hand so I can figure out where I can twist stuff around. And the thing is I really listen to my teammate. So I talk to my candle maker almost every day and we ask you know, how was the process? Anything we can make them better. And then you know, from there I start looking more into automation stuff and my goal for next year is so right now we're working on the design not a machine, but a machine. But this can help us to pull the candles, so it can help us to minimize the mistake. But you know, when I first started it wasn't really innovative. It's really manual hand pull everything. But you know, one step at a time, and I always say we look into the process, talk to our people and see what we can improve. Chris: Well, I think at some level, just the fact that you're making such a clean candle is somewhat innovative as well like different than what your competition is. Tram: Of course, yeah, but it costs a lot of problem too because when they so natural, you cannot, you cannot control a lot of them. But then we, I always tell my customer, you know there will be some. The candle can cracking. So that's the biggest issue of BWAS. It cracked really bad and we have to do everything to control our temperature, but it still happened. And I always tell my, I tried to educate my customer that this is a clean product. We didn't put anything else. So there may be some imperfection, but you know it put you at peace. Chris: Yeah, what would have been some of the challenges on that kind of marketing this new product? Yeah, what are some of those challenges and how are you trying to overcome them? Tram: That's the tough question. Yeah, it is. It's a lot of maybe a lot of education for customers because you know you can just go to Walmart and buy some candle that I can never commit with them, you know, but I always tell people you know breathing is so important. You breathe in your air every day, so make sure you rent something clean to your house and it takes a lot of time for customers to get used to the product, understand some of the issues that might happen to be what and accept it. And the thing we do is, whenever a customer feel like you know the candle wasn't looked at, it's a. When it reached out to me, I addressed the issue immediately and tried to explain to them what's going on, and also some media is the same thing we post about our behind the scenes, some of the challenging that we encounter when we're making be what candle and you know, because of all of those issues, it actually make it unique. So we really stand out because we were looking at a product and say it's so natural. I have a customer about our candle on Amazon for a year and a half came to a farmer market to see me in person. Chris: Really. Tram: Just because she told me she's so impressed with the product she had to come all the way to the farmer market to see me. Chris: Well, that that had to make you feel good. Yeah, so you're dealing with two of the biggest companies in the world. What are some of the things that you do to try to foster and grow those relationships with the people you're dealing with at Amazon and Walmart? Tram: I think the first thing we do, we, we I don't always say like when you start out with them, you have to do right from the beginning, we from from even our account, you know reservation. We make sure everything is correct, no mistake, or you know, and we have actually have two people dedicated to just handling Amazon and Walmart. It's just because that this is a really bulky system from them and you need to have certain understanding and I feel like sometimes I'm in and out so much. That's why I'm dedicated to people. Don't do anything, spend four hours a day taking care of Amazon and Walmart for me and you make sure that you follow the rules. They have a lot of policy and rule. You make sure you understand it. You make sure that you you know update about the news because it changed up around a lot. So the thing is, you keep your communication with them. When something pop up, something doesn't, you know, sound right to you, you reach out to them immediately and they're actually very helpful when you calmly reach out to them, you know, and they will definitely get to you. I love working with Amazon and Walmart. Chris: Well, I think you hit on something. I mean that the key is communicating right yeah uh constantly and and timely uh yeah so let's talk about you. There's always learning and setbacks. What's what's a setback that you've encountered kind of along this journey that you know you maybe didn't think you could overcome, but but you did and it's made you stronger and better. Uh, can you, can you think of anything to share? Tram: yeah. So, um, we actually lost our Amazon account beginning of the year. Oh, we thought, we thought, we thought it for three months. It's, it's a. It's a disappointing feeling. You know, I just wake up. I just went too bad. Wake up in the morning, my account gone completely, amazon couldn't look, fired and there were so many people involved. Um, I was thinking that, all right, you know, maybe Amazon, you're not right for me. I have to be out Amazon, grow outside of Amazon. I was so I was really negative, you know, at that time, because you're losing a really big part of three months beginning of year. Sure, that's really hard for me. And we still have candle and a way hand needs to be sell. So, you know, I need to think about what do I want to do with it. So what we do is I reach out to so many people. I reach out to Amazon, prove multiple way. I send them a letter, I reach out from Twitter. I do everything I can make sure I'm in contact with a right person and then, when I'm in contact with them, we try to bring in an Amazon lawyer to just have some help from them, you know, to speed up the process and I really fight for it to get my account back. It's a three month. It's a long three month in my whole life, every day. You know we didn't get the answer we need. They say we cannot be an Amazon again. And then suddenly you know they, we just have to keep trying, send them more email, send them more message. Um, try to be kind with them. Even we be frustrated, but we need them help, they help. So we keep reaching out for three months and then finally they say, all right, we let we. They have to allow me to open a new account, so they allow me to open a new account, transfer everything, but the thing that you have to restart. We love all of our customers. Um, I thought that I would be out Amazon completely because of frustration that I have with Amazon. But, taking a look back now, we have so many great customers, like we have so many customers that reach out to me personally and send another message because just how much they love the candles and you know the fact that the people go out their way to go to the final market to see us, making me feel like Amazon, bring my product closer to more customers, and we actually have some wholesale order from customers on Amazon. So we roll really big on Amazon. Chris: That's right. So your persistence paid off, right. Tram: Yeah. Chris: But I have to imagine that was a pretty trying time for you as a young entrepreneur to lose an account like that. Tram: Yeah, and the thing is you cannot over new account. The moment you over new account, you shut it out completely. So you have to do the right thing. Chris: How did the rest of your team respond during this time? Tram: They actually work in hard with me. So at that time you know my Amazon team working hard every day with me. Sometimes I have to be at work so I wasn't being on the phone with them, so they help me to take on a call with Amazon, follow up with them every day. And the thing is, I'm really grateful for the people that I work with. We have awesome team. I have to tell you that we cheer every single wins, like, let's say, we have really great read, like Friday during this weekend, and it's when it's so great. So you know, that's the thing. You just have to put trust in your team and then know that they will do the best for the business and I just have them like hey, I don't care what you do, what long we, you know, can come back and run again. It should be good. Chris: Yeah. So that kind of leads me to the subject of talking. Maybe you as a leader of this team. How do you try to show up as a leader for your team? Tram: I think the thing is I show that I care in understanding and listening because, you know so we have one of my teammates recently have some of the things happen outside of work which you know affect the candle, because he dropped so many candles on the floor because of, you know, his mind was so busy. But instead of me yelling or upsetting what I tried to do, I tried to be calm and learn from it and ask hey, what's the issue, you know, do you have any problem that you want to share with me? So the thing for me is you'll be there for them when something happened, talk to them, listen to them, text them, like every day. Even I am not at the warehouse, I'm still calling. You know my people has, hey, are you doing good? Or I'm making sure they drink water, and you know we could text them hitting no joke for me. So I'm making sure that I'm taking care of them in everything I can Like. If they need a day off, you know I can cover for them. Or that's the reason why, you know, when I need help, when I need long hours, they will be there for me, because I'm be there for them and I listen to them and I go out of my way to help them, you know. Chris: That's right so it sounds, you know, someone likes servant leadership right, yeah. To make sure that they're taken care of when? How would you describe your leadership style? Where have you learned over the years in your other career maybe to develop these leadership skills? Tram: That's a hard thing, because I think that I see this improvement on my leadership. Chris: It's an evolving process. Tram: Yeah, it's a lot, but when I went to work, graduated walking I've been through it with so many it worked with so many bars, worked with so many managers and throughout the year I worked with them, I figured out what do I lie from them and what I don't lie from them. And now when I have my business, I try to do whatever I like from the manager. I have a boss that used to be there for me. He's so nice, he was helping me so much he could send me a card for Christmas or Thanksgiving and that's really something that, beyond our manager and work, a relationship he goes out of his way to help me when I need. And that's what I want to do for my people too. I want to be a type leader that if something happened at work, the people can feel okay to tell me what's going on, like there will be no upset or no being too aggressive. I want to be a good listener to them too, and I'm still working on that. Chris: Sure, so you're somewhat of an empathetic leader where they yeah. And have you seen that kind of take hold with your employees? The culture is forming where everyone feels safe to share if something's going on. Tram: Yeah, we have a worker just dropped like 20 candles on the floor the other day. If it's won't be before I have a business, I will be really aggressive, really angry. But with me dealing with my so many people, I try to become and try to clean up and I really don't mind to go to clean up their mess. That's what I normally say if I have to. So I really go out of my way to help people and that's actually make people want to work with me and stay longer. And we see that too. We see that even. You know we're small business, we're not big cooperation, so sometimes it's hard for us to keep people. But all of the people are working with us until this point in two years and I can see that they still want to work with me. Chris: Yeah, so you've talked several times at least referenced, kind of plans you have for the next year. So what are kind of, when you look to the next year or next three to five, what are the plans and strategies that you are putting in place and what you hope to accomplish and where do you see this company in the near future? Tram: So every year, like so, right now, I'm doing my six month plan. So I'm working better when I plan everything out and I would encourage all intravenous. You know, do nothing about it, write them down in the paper, do the chart, do everything you can you have. I think, like you can only achieve your goal when your mind is all about it. So right now, everywhere, I could sit everywhere and I could write down. You know how much revenue I want for every single platform. So so my year for next, go for next five years. You know I want that we will become the candle brand, that when customers want a clean candle they will say living, good candle code. So we want we, of course, that we want to become, you know, the goalie. Everybody wants to become a multi-million company, right, but for me, the goalie. You know, when you want something clean, you think about us and that's and that's something that I work hard every day and we and we have to do. You know, be what is so expensive. That's why so many brand cannot make a profit with them. And every day I have to continue, improve, to make, to make sure that a product is profitable. And another thing is you know, you just have to keep you know, thinking about what you want to do in your, what's your end goal of everything, all the hard work, and one of our next year I want to roll out a very, very new product on the market. We we don't want to disclose yet. Chris: That's fine you don't have to tell your secrets. Tram: Yeah, we, you know we will be rolling them out on January, but I think it's really right around the corner. Yeah, so it's really big hit for the market. Chris: So everyone should be looking out. It'll be on Amazon. Tram: Yeah, we Amazon and Walmart and our website Enough, we will be at a farmer market too. So if you locally to Houston, you know, stop by saying hi to us. Chris: Which farmers market. You mentioned that a couple times, so which farmers market are you at? Tram: We are the market for maker. Okay, so they in the highs. That's either only market I'm doing right now, but next year I would love to do, you know, more family market. I love the feeling of going there, going out there, talking to a customer and have them smell. I can't know. Yeah, but back to the question. We have a lot of go for next year. We want it to be more automation. We don't want people to manually apply every single label or every single jar. So we're working with a company, you know, to try to automate our process. We would love to hiring one or two person full-time with us, and that's something I'm working on. And we would love to increase our capital too. And it's really you know when, when you want to go, big capital can be a problem. So I try to get it ready for that. Chris: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that. What? What are some of the the things that you're doing to put in place to Access? Yeah additional capital. Tram: That's a hard question. So right now we still small and I, you know, and I mentioned I invest everything I make from nine to five into my psychic, like my kind of business all the money, all the serving. Another thing that I do a you know we sometimes we will ask help from friends and family and that's the only way that pretty much I'm doing right now to keep the company running. But of course it's still about us hustling. So we try to go to more farmer market, we try to do different things, expanding them on Amazon, like on tick tock we now have tick tock shop and Instagram. So we try to run, you know, expand them out to make a little bit money. But I'm very strict on how I spend it, so I'm budgeting everything. So right now I'm looking at the how much money I need for 2024 and that's helped me. That you know. Try to see where can I get all the old fun? Do I have to get it from the bank? Or you know, like it's a heart, I still try to figure out a capital part. Chris: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it's a very important part of the new business right. I think what you mentioned a minute ago to budget very consciously and thoughtfully so you manage your expenses well. Yeah and that's gonna be important. When you go out for capital whether it's a bank or you know investor one wants to know you actually run in a good business. Tram: Yeah, of course I try to talk to some bank right now to to hopefully get a funded. Hopefully that will be, you know, something I can achieve next year. That's one of my goal. Chris: Okay, have you had any mentors kind of along the way in your career that have kind of Help, guide you or inspire you to do what you're doing now? Tram: I actually have a lot of mentor. I know so many people that I learned so much from them, and you know some people that they probably don't know me, but I learned them from their podcast. I listen some of your podcast to you, by the way. I try to know that, whatever the people do that I'm really enjoying. Like you, talk a lot about innovation and that is something that I really want us to be better at. I want us to be more. You know Concepts about how we can improve thing. So I guess one of my biggest mentor I have a mentor that meant to me how to sail on Amazon and he actually was the one that get me started. So I wish out to him, you know, talk to him about my desire, why I want to have this brain and why I want to start on Amazon, and he actually will help me from day one. So he guided me throughout the way and then I met some other mentor. You know, like we, I learned a lot from people more than most of me. More of the thing I learned is cell top. You know from YouTube. Chris: Well, you, I think, what you Find along the ways, you can kind of learn from everybody, right, I mean some more than others where there's a lot of you, if you're Observing enough and willing to pay attention, that there's always yeah sometimes learning is learning what not to do. Tram: Yeah, yeah, that's true, yeah, it's. We learn from our customers. We have customer that angry right, you know, because on Amazon, so people can just buy our product and change them up there by the next day. So we learn so much about our customer and the thing might go it to review our return rate to almost zero and, to be honest, we don't have a lot of return in the big market like that, but we still have some. And Every time that I have a customer return, I accept it, I reach out to them, I want them to tell me what's happened or what can I make them better, and I do think that dough feedback is something that you know make us better every day. Chris: That's good, I agree. So any One or two things you might tell an aspiring entrepreneur to to think about as they're About to step off and start a company, like you did a couple years ago. Any pointers? Tram: I did so. If I have, I would love to Tell this to all intrapreneur. I think having the business and actually running a business at two different things is a lot of hard work. You have to read yourself out there. I used to be so shy, you know, but I have to go out there hustling, selling stuff at family market, ringing my product out there for people to judging is, but the thing is, when you want to do great in your intrapreneur, you have to make sure that you, you know you just keep pushing, don't care about anybody else, just think about yourself and be in it. And the second one a do not ever think that you can do everything by yourself. It's impossible. They have to be balanced between your life, your work life and your family. And you want to make sure that you know when you at your high point in your career, you still feel happy because your family happy with you. So that's it. Two things that I would love people to think about when I started their internship. Chris: Those are two great things to share, so thank you for that. Listeners out there, well, thank you. Tram: So let's, let me ask you this what was your first job? My first job. I used to work in Chick-fil-A before. Okay, you know, so I can't learn a lot about value. Customer week my in my mind. Customer in my number one, my priority. Everything I do to make sure they happy. Chris: So if you, if you work there, you must have eaten the food a lot. Are you like, done with Chick-fil-A now? They get me every time yeah, yeah, what's not the like about it. So, keeping with the theme of food, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Tram: You. Chris: Very good. Who doesn't like good barbecue? Tram: and Texas yeah. Chris: So are there any things that you do to kind of keep yourself up, like reading or you mentioned podcasts any business related books or podcasts you like to listen to that you share? Tram: I listen to. I read a lot of books, so I actually attend to a book club, so we wake up at 5am in the morning picking the book that we read. So right now I'm reading a book called the Messy Truth from Alie Wab. So that's a really new book. Chris: The Messy Truth. Tram: Yeah, the Messy Truth. So she talks about the behind the scene of intravenous and every new intravenous will find themselves in there. She talks about lots of dark side of the business the busy, the doubt about your business yourself. So if anybody wants to start intravenous, I think that's a good book to start with, Because it will help you to see that everybody out there having a small business dealing with the same thing that you're dealing with. Chris: It takes hard work, it takes courage and a little bit of you know willing to take a risk, right yeah. So that's great, I'm going to have to go check that book out. Tram: Yeah, they actually just released. Yeah, they actually just released, like last week, I think. Okay, yeah, so just now yeah, they just out. Chris: Well, tramp, thank you so much for being on the show. Enjoy hearing your story. Best of luck as you continue to grow, living in good camel company. Tram: Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate the opportunity and, you know, really appreciate that you helping me here. Let me share my story and hopefully it can inspire many small business out there. Chris: No doubt it will Take care. Tram: Thank you. Special Guest: Tram Nguyen.

Chris switched from Trello over to Linear for product management and talks about prioritizing backlogs. Steph shares and discusses a tweet from Curtis Einsmann that super resonated with the work she's doing right now: "In software engineering, rabbit holes are inevitable. You will research libraries and not use them. You'll write code just to delete it. This isn't a waste; sometimes, you need to go down a few wrong paths to get to the right one." This episode is brought to you by BuildPulse (https://buildpulse.io/bikeshed). Start your 14-day free trial of BuildPulse today. Linear (https://linear.app/) Curtis Einsmann Tweet (https://twitter.com/curtiseinsmann/status/1521451508943843329) Louie Bacaj Tweet (https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1478241322637033474?s=20) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: AD: Flaky tests take the joy out of programming. You push up some code, wait for the tests to run, and the build fails because of a test that has nothing to do with your change. So you click rebuild and you wait. Again. And you hope you're lucky enough to get a passing build this time. Flaky tests slow everyone down, break your flow and make things downright miserable. In a perfect world, tests would only break if there's a legitimate problem that would impact production. They'd fail immediately and consistently, not intermittently. But the world's not perfect, and flaky tests will happen, and you don't have time to fix them all today. So how do you know where to start? BuildPulse automatically detects and tracks your team's flaky tests. Better still, it pinpoints the ones that are disrupting your team the most. With this list of top offenders, you'll know exactly where to focus your effort for maximum impact on making your builds more stable. In fact, the team at Codecademy was able to identify their flakiest tests with BuildPulse in just a few days. By focusing on those tests first, they reduced their flaky builds by more than 68% in less than a month! And you can do the same because BuildPulse integrates with the tools you're already using. It supports all the major CI systems, including CircleCI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and others. And it analyzes test results for all popular test frameworks and programming languages, like RSpec, Jest, Go, pytest, PHPUnit, and more. So stop letting flaky tests slow you down. Start your 14-day free trial of BuildPulse today. To learn more, visit buildpulse.io/bikeshed. That's buildpulse.io/bikeshed. CHRIS: Good morning, and welcome to Tech Talk with Steph and Chris. Today at the top of the hour, it's tech traffic hits. STEPH: Ooh, tech traffic. [laughs] I like that statement. CHRIS: Yeah. The Git lanes are clogged up with...I don't know. I got nothing. STEPH: [laughs] Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, hey, Chris, what's new in your world? CHRIS: What's new in my world? Actually, I have a specific new thing that I can share, which is, as of the past week, I would say, switched from Trello over to Linear for product management. It's been great. It was a super straightforward transfer. They actually had an importer. We lost some of the comment threads on the Trello cards. But that was easy enough to like each Linear ticket has a link back to Trello. So it's easy enough to keep the continuity. But yeah, we're in a whole new world, a system actually built for maintaining a product backlog, and, man, it shows. Trello was a bunch of lists and cards and stuff that you could link between, which was cool. But Linear is just much more purpose-built and already very, very nice. And we're very happy with the switch. STEPH: I feel like you came in real casual with that news, but that is big news, that you did a switch. [laughter] CHRIS: How are you going to bury the lead like that? You switched project management...[laughter] I actually didn't think it was...I'm excited about it but low-key excited, which is weird because I do like productivity and task management software. So you would think I would be really excited about this. But I've also tried enough of them historically to know that that's never going to be the thing that actually makes or breaks your team's productivity. It can make things worse, but it can't make you great. That's the thing that I believe. And so it's a wonderful piece of software. I'm very excited about it but -- STEPH: Ooh, I like that. It can make you worse, but it doesn't make you great. That's so true, yeah, where it causes pain. Well, and it does make sense. You've been complaining a bit about the whole login with Trello and how that's been frustrating. But I haven't even heard of Linear. That's just...that's, I mean, you're just doing what you do where you bring that new-new. I haven't heard of Linear before. CHRIS: I try to live on the cutting edge. Actually, I deeply try to not live on the cutting edge at this point in my life. That early adopter wave, no, no, no, that's not for me anymore. But I've known a few folks who've moved to Linear. And everyone that I've spoken to who has moved to it has been like, "Yeah, it's been great." I've not heard anything negative. And I've heard or experienced negative things about every other product management tool out there. And so, it seemed like an easy thing. And it was a low-cost enough switch in terms of opportunity costs or the like, it took the effort of someone on our team moving those cards over and setting up the new system and training, but it was relatively straightforward. And yeah, we're super happy with it. And it feels different now. I feel like I can see the work in a different way which is interesting. I think we had brought in a Chrome extension for Trello. I think it's like Hello Epics or something like that that allows...it abuses the card linking functionality in Trello and repurchases that feature as an epic management thing. But it's quarter-baked is how I would describe it, or it's clearly built on top of existing things that were not intended to be used exactly in that way. So it does a great job. Hello Epics does a great job of trying to make something like parent-child list management stuff happen in Trello. But it's always going feel like an afterthought, a secondary feature, something that's bolted on. Whereas in Linear, it's like, no, no, we absolutely have the idea of projects, of course, and you can see burndown charts and things. And the thing that I do want to be careful about is not leaning too much into management. Linear has the idea of cycles or sprints, as many other folks think of them, or iterations or whatever you want to call them. But we've largely not been working in that mode. We've just continued to work through the next up list; that's it. The next up list should be prioritized and well defined at the top and roughly in priority order. So just pick up the next card and work on it. And we just do that every single day. And now we're in a piece of software that has the idea of cycles, and I'm like, oh, this is vaguely interesting. Do we want to do that? Oh, but if you're going to do that, you probably do some estimation, right? And I was like, oh no, now we're into a place that's...okay, I have feelings. I got to decide how to approach that. And so, I am intrigued. And I wonder if we could just say like ten carts that's how many come into a cycle, and that's it. And we use the loosest heuristics possible to define how we structure a cycle so that we don't fall into the trap of, oh, what's our roadmap going to look like six months from now? JK, what's anything going to look like six months from now? That's not a knowable fact. STEPH: I was just thinking where you said that you're moving into sprints or cycles, and then there's that push, well, now you got to estimate. And I just thought, do you? Do you have to estimate? [laughs] CHRIS: We need a burndown chart through 2024, and it must be meticulously accurate down to the hour. STEPH: I think meticulously wrong is how that goes. [laughs] CHRIS: Which is the best kind of wrong. If you're going to be wrong, be meticulous about it. STEPH: Be thorough about it. [laughs] Yeah, the team that I'm on right now, we have our bi-weekly planning, and we go through the board, and we pull stuff in. But there's never a discussion about estimation. And I hadn't really appreciated that until just now. How we don't think about how long is this going to take? We just talked about, well, what's in-flight? And how much work do people still have going on? And then here's the list of things we can pull in. But there's always a list that you can go back to. Like, it's very...we pull in the minimum and knowing that if we run out of work, there's another place to go where there's stuff that's organized. And I just love that cadence, that idea of like, let's not try to make guesses about the future; let's just have it lined up and ready for us to go when we're ready to pull it in. Although I know, that's also coming from a very developer's perspective, and there are product managers who are trying to communicate as to when features are going to get out into the world. So I get that there's a balance, but I still have strong feelings and hesitations around estimating work. CHRIS: Well, I feel like there is a balance there. And so many things in history are like, well, this is an overcorrection against that, and that's an overcorrection against this. And the idea that we can estimate our work that far out into the future that's just obviously false to me based on every project I've ever worked on that has tried to do it. And it has always failed without question. But critically, there is the necessity to sync up work and like, oh, marketing needs to plan the launch of this feature, and it's a critical one. What's it going to look like? When's it going to be ready? You know, we're trying to go for an event, it's not just know...we developers never estimate anything past the immediate moment where like, that's not acceptable. We got to find a middle ground here. But where that middle ground is, is interesting. And so, just operating in the sort of we do work as it comes up is the easiest thing because no one's lying about anything at that point. But sometimes you got to make some guesses and make some estimations. And then it gets into the murky area of I believe with 75% confidence that in three weeks, we will have this feature ready. But to be clear, I said with 75% confidence that means one-quarter of the time; we will not be there at that date. What does that mean? What does that failure mode look like? Let's talk about that. And can you have honest, open, transparent, useful conversations there? That's the space that it becomes more subtle if you need to do that. STEPH: You're reminding me of a conversation that I had with someone where they shared with me some very aggressive team goals. And it was a very friendly conversation. And they're like, "How do you feel about aggressive goals?" And I was like, "Well, it depends. How do you feel about aggressive failure?" Because then once I know where you stand there, then we can talk about aggressive goals. Now, if we're being aggressive, but then we fail to achieve that, and it's one of those, okay, we didn't meet the goal that we'd expected, but everything is fine, and it's not a big deal, then I am okay. Sure, let's shoot for the stars. But if it's one of those, we are communicating these goals to the outside world, and it's going to become incredibly important that we meet these goals, and if we don't, then things are going to go on fire, people are going to be in trouble, and it's just going to be awful, then let's not set aggressive goals. Let's not box ourselves into a space where we are setting ourselves up to fail or feel pain in a meaningful way. I agree that estimations are important, especially in terms of you need to collaborate with other departments, and then also just to provide some sense of where the product is headed and when things may be released. I think estimations then just become problematic when they do become definite, and they're based on so many unknowns, and then when I don't know is not an answer. So if someone asked, "What's your estimate for this?" And the very honest real answer is I don't know, like, we haven't done this type of work before, or these are all the unknowns, and then someone's like, "Well, let's just put an estimation of like two weeks on it," and they just sort of try to force-fit it into being what they want, then that's where it starts to just feel incredibly problematic. CHRIS: Yeah, estimation is a very murky area that we could spend entire episodes talking about, and in fact, I think we have a handful of times. So with that, Linear has been great. We're going to see just how much or how little estimation we actually want to do. But it's been a very nice addition to the toolset. And I'll let you know as we deepen our usage of it what the experience is like, but that's the main thing that's new in my world. What's new in your world? STEPH: Well, before we bounce over to my world, you said something that has intrigued me that has also made me start reflecting on some of the ways that I like to work. And you'd mentioned that you have this prioritized backlog that people are pulling tickets from. And I don't know exactly if there's a planning session or how that looks, but I have recognized that when I am working with a team, and we don't have any planning session, if everybody is just pulling from this backlog, that's being prioritized by someone on the team, that I find that a bit overwhelming. Because the types of work being done can vary so drastically that I find I'm less able to help my colleagues or my teammates because I don't have the context for what they're working on. It surprises me. I'm like, oh, I didn't even know we're working on that feature, or I don't have the context for what's the problem that we're trying to solve here. And it makes it just a lot harder to review and then have conversations with them. And I get overwhelmed in that environment. And I've recognized that about myself based on previous projects that were more similar to that versus if I'm on a project where the team does get together every so often, even if it's high level to be like, hey, here's the theme of the tickets that we're working on, or here's just some of the stuff, then I feel much more prepared for the work that is coming in and to be able to context switch and review. And yeah, so I've kind of learned that about myself. I'm curious, are you similar, or how does that work for you? CHRIS: I'm definitely similar. And I think probably the team is closer to what you're describing. So we do have a planning session every week, just a quick 30-minute scan through the backlog, look at the things that are coming up and also the larger themes. Previously, Epics and Trello now projects and Linear. But talking about what are the bigger pieces of work that we're moving on, and then what are the individual tickets associated with that that we'll be expecting to work on in the next week? And just making sure that everyone has broad clarity around what that feature set is. Also, we're a very small team at this point. Still, we're four people total, but one of the developers is on a break for a couple of weeks this summer. And so there are really only three of us that are driving on the code. And so, with three of us working on the projects, we try very intentionally to have significant overlap between the various...like, we don't want any one person to own any portion of things at this point. And so we're doing a good amount of pairing to cross-pollinate and make sure everyone's...not everyone's aware of everything, but at least one other person is sufficiently aware of everything between the three of us. And I think that's been working well. I don't think we have any major gaps, save for the way that we're doing our mobile architecture that's largely managed by one of the developers on the team and a contractor that we're working with to help do a lot of the implementation. That's a known we chose to silo that thing. We've accepted the cost of that for now. And architecturally, the rest of us are aware of it, but we're not like in the Swift code writing anything because I don't know how to write Swift at this point. I'd love to learn it. I hear good things about the language. [12:26] So yeah, I think conceptually very similar to what you're describing of still want to have people be able to review. Like, I don't want to put up a PR and people be like, I don't know, that looks like code, I guess. I'm not sure what it does. Like, I want it to be very...I want us all to be roughly on the same page, and thus far, we are. As the team grows, that will become trickier to maintain because there are just inherently probably more things that are moving, more different feature areas and surface area that we're tackling in any given week, or there are different ways to approach that. I know you've talked about having a limited number of themes for a given cycle, so that's an idea that can pop up. But that's something that we'll figure out as we get further. I think I'm happy with where we're at right now, so yeah, that's the story there. STEPH: Okay, cool. Yeah, all of that resonates with me, and thinking about it a little more deeply in this moment, I'm realizing I think something you said helped me put this together where when I'm reviewing someone's change, I'm not necessarily just looking to see does your code work? I'm going to trust you that your code works. I may have thoughts about design and other things, but I really want to understand more what's the change to the product that we're making? What's the goal that we're looking to achieve? How are we measuring this? And so if I don't have that context, that's what contributes to that feeling of like, hard context switching of not just context switching, but now I have to level myself up to then understand the problem that's being solved by this. Versus had I known some of the themes going into that particular cycle or sprint, I would have felt far more prepared for that review session versus having to then dig through all the data and/or tickets or talk to someone. Well, switching back to what's going on in my world, I have a particular tweet that I want to share, and it's one that Joël Quenneville brought to my attention. And it just resonates so much with all the type of work that I'm doing right now. So I'm going to read the tweet, and then we'll link to it in the show notes as well. But it's from Curtis Einsmann, and Curtis wrote: "In software engineering, rabbit holes are inevitable. You will research libraries and not use them. You'll write code just to delete it. This isn't a waste; sometimes, you need to go down a few wrong paths to get to the right one." And that describes all the work that I'm doing right now. It's a lot of exploratory, a lot of data-driven work, and finding ways that we can reduce the time that it takes to run RSpec on CI. And it also ties in nicely to one of the things that I think we talked about last week, where we discovered that a number of files have a high runtime variance. And I've really dug into the data there to understand, okay, is it always specific files that have these high runtime variants? Are there any obvious contributions to what's causing this? Are we making real network calls that then could sometimes take a long time to return? And the result is there's nothing obvious. They're giant files. The number of SQL commands that are being run for each file varies drastically. They're all high, but it's still very different. There's no single fact about these files that has really been like, yes, this is what's causing these files to have such a runtime variance. And so while I've been in the data, I'm documenting it, and I'm making a list and putting it all together in a ticket so at least it's there to look at later. But I'm going to move on. It's one of those I would love to know what's causing this. I would love to address it because it would put us in an ideal state for how we're distributing tests, which would have a significant impact on our runtime. But it also feels a little bit like chasing my tail because I'm worried, like with some of the other experiments that we've done in the past where we've addressed tentpoles, that as soon as you address the issue for one or two files, then other files start having the same problem. And you're just going to continue to chase and chase, and I don't want to be in that. So upfront, this was one of those; hey, let's look at the data. If there's something obvious, let's address it; if not, move on. So I'm at that point today where I'm wrapping up all of that data, and then I'm going to move on, move on to the next thing. CHRIS: There's deep truth in that tweet that you shared at the start of this segment. The idea like if we knew the work that we had to do at the front, yeah, we would just do that, but often, we don't. And so, being able to not treat it as a failure when something doesn't work out is, I think, so critical. I think to expand on the idea just a tiny bit, the idea of the scientific method, failure is totally an option and is part of science. I remember watching MythBusters, and Adam Savage is just kind of like, "Failure is always an option," and highlighting that as part of it. Like, it's an outcome. You've learned something. You have a new data point. You can take that and then carry it forward with you. But it's rough in the moment. And so, I do think that this is a worthwhile thing to meditate on. And it's something that I've had to revisit a handful of times in my career of just like, man, I feel like I've just been spinning my tires all week. I'm like, we know what we want to get done, but just each approach I take isn't working for one reason or another. And then, finally, you get to the end. And then you've got this paragraph-long summary of all the things that didn't work in your PR and one-line change sort of thing. And those are painful, but they're part of the game. Like, that is unavoidable. I have not found a way to just know how to do the work upfront always. I would love that. I would sign up for whatever seminar was selling that. I wouldn't. I would know that that seminar is a lie, actually. But broadly, I'm intrigued by the idea if someone were selling that, I'd be like, well, I mean, pitch me on it. Tell me why I should believe you; I don't, just to be clear. But yeah. STEPH: This project has really helped me embrace always setting a goal or a question upfront about what I'm wanting to achieve or what I'm looking to answer because a number of times while Joël and I have been spelunking through data...And then so originally, with the saga, we started out with why doesn't our math match reality? We understand that if these tests are distributed perfectly across the CPUs, then that should cut the runtime in half. But yet, we weren't seeing that even though we had addressed the tentpoles. So we dug into understanding why. And the answer is because they're not perfectly distributed, and it's because of the runtime variance. And that was a critical moment to look back and say, "Did we achieve the goal?" Yes, we identified the problem. But once you see a problem, it's just so easy to dig in and keep going. It's like, well, now I want to know what's causing these files to have a runtime variance. But it's one of those we achieved our goal. We acknowledged upfront that we wanted to at least understand why. Let's make a second decision, do we keep going? And I'm at that point where, frankly, I probably dug in a little more than I should because I'm stubborn. But I'm recognizing that now's the time to back away and then go back and move on to the next high-priority item, which is converting for funsies; I'll share. The next thing is converting Test::Unit test over to RSpec because we have, I think, around 25 tests that are written in Test::Unit. And we want to move them over to RSpec because that particular just step in the build process takes a good three to four minutes. And part of that is just booting up Rails and then running the tests very fast. And we're underutilizing the machine that's running them because it's only 25 tests, but there are 86 CPUs to run it. So we'd really like to combine those 25 tests with the rest of the RSpec suite and drop that step. So then that should add minimal time to the overall build but then should take us down at least a couple of minutes. And then also makes it easier to manage and help folks so that way, there's one consistent testing framework that's in use versus having to manage some of these older tests. CHRIS: It's funny; I think it was just two episodes back where we talked about why RSpec, and I think both of us were just like, well yeah. But I mean, if there are tests and another, like, it's fine, you just leave them with the exception that if there's like 2% of our tests are in Test::Unit, and everything else is in RSpec, yeah, maybe that that conversion efforts seem totally worth it. But again, I think as you're describing that, what I'm hearing is just like the scientific method, just being somewhat structured in the approach to what's the hypothesis? And what's the procedure we're going to use to determine if that hypothesis is true or false? And then what do we do? And then what are the results? And then you just do that on loop. But being not just sort of exploring. Sometimes you have to be on exploratory mode. But I definitely find that that tiny bit of rigor of just like, wait, okay, before I actually do anything, what do I think is going on here? What's my guess? And then, okay, if that guess were true, what would I be able to observe in the world? Okay, here we go. And just that tiny bit of structure is so...it sometimes feels highly formal to go into that mode and be like, no, no, no, let me take a step back. Let me write down my thoughts. I'm going to have a little checklist and do the thing. But I've never regretted doing it. I will say that. I have deeply regretted not doing it. I feel like I should make a list of things that fit that structure. I've never regretted committing in Git ever. That's been great. I've always been able to unwind it, but I've never been able to not unwind it or the opposite. I've regretted not committing. I have not regretted committing. I have regretted not writing out my hypothesis or approach. I have not regretted doing it. And so, yeah, this feels like it falls firmly in that category of like, it's worth just a tiny bit of structure. There's a reason it is the scientific method. STEPH: Yeah, I agree. I've not regretted documenting upfront what it is I look to achieve and how I think I'm going to answer the question. That has been immensely helpful. Because then I also forget, like, two weeks ago, I'll be like, wasn't there a question around why this was happening, and I need to understand? And all of that was so context-heavy that as soon as I'm out of the thick of it, I completely forget it. So if I care about it deeply or if I want to be able to revisit it, then I need to document it for myself. It's given me a lot of empathy for people who do more scientific research around, oh my gosh, like, you have to document everything you do and then still be able to prove it five years from now or however long. I'm just throwing out numbers. And it needs to be organized enough that someone, if they do question your research that, then you have it there. My research documents would not withstand scrutiny at this point because they are still just more personal notes. But yes, it's given me a lot of empathy and respect for people who do run very serious research, experiments, and trials, and then have to be able to prove it to the world. Pivoting just a bit, there's a particular topic that resonated with both you and I; in fact, it's a particular tweet. And, Louie, I do apologize if I mispronounce your last name, but Louie Bacaj. And we'll include a link in the show notes to the tweet, but Louis shared, "I managed multiple engineering teams before quitting tech. Now that I quit, I can speak freely. Here are 12 things your manager may not be telling you, but I know for a fact will help you." So there are a number of interesting discussions and comments that are in this thread. The one thing in particular that really caught my attention is number 10, and it's "Advocate for junior developers." So they said that their friend reminded them that just because you don't have 10-plus years of experience does not mean that they won't be good. Without junior engineers on the team, no one will grow. Help others grow; you'll grow too. And that's the part that I love so much is that without junior engineers on the team, no one will grow because that was very thought-provoking for me. It's something that I find that I agree with deeply, but I hadn't really considered why I agree with that so much. So I'm excited to dive into that topic with you. And then, as a second topic to go along with that is, can juniors start with a remote team? I think that's one of the other questions when you and I were chatting about this. And I'm intrigued to hear your thoughts. CHRIS: A bunch of stuff there. Starting with the tweet, I love elements of this. Some of it feels like it's intentionally somewhat provocative. So like, without junior engineers on the team, no one will grow. That feels maybe a little bit past the bar because I think we can technically grow, and we can build things and whatnot. But I think what feels deeply true to me is truly help others grow; you'll grow too. The act of mentoring, of guiding, of training, of helping someone on their journey will inherently help you grow and, I think, change the way that you think about the work. I think the beginner mind, the earlier in the career folks coming into a codebase, they will see things fundamentally differently in a really useful way. It's possible that along your career, you've just internalized things. You've been like, yeah, no, that was weird. But then I smashed my head against it for a while, and now I understand this thing. And it just makes sense to me. But it's like, that thing actually doesn't make sense. You have warped your mind to match the thing, not, quote, unquote, "come to understand it." This is sounding too judgmental to people who've been in the industry for a while, but I found this of myself. Or I can just take for granted things that took a long time to adapt my head to, and if anything, maybe I should have pushed back a little more. And so, I find that junior engineers can be a really fantastic lens for the complexity of a project. Like, the world is truly a complex place, and that's just true. But our job as software engineers is to tame that complexity and manage it. And so, I love the mindset that can come or the conversations that can come out of that. And it's much like test-driven development is a pressure on the complexity of your code, having junior engineers join the team and needing to explain how all of the different features work, and what the overall architecture is, and the message passing under this and that, it's a really useful conversation to have. And so that "Help others grow; you'll grow too" feels deeply, deeply true to me. STEPH: Yeah, I couldn't agree more in regards to how juniors really help our team and especially, as you mentioned, with complexity and ¬having those conversations. Some of the other things that have come to mind for me as well around the importance of having junior developers on your team...and maybe it's not specifically they're junior developers but that you just have a variety of experience on your team. It's going to help you lean into a culture of learning because you have people that are at different stages of their career. And so you want an environment where people can learn together, that they can fail together, and they can be public about it. And having people that are at different stages of their career will lead, well, at least ideally, it'll lead to more pair programming. It's going to lead to more productive code reviews because then people can ask more questions around why did you choose this, or why are you doing that? Versus if everybody is at the same level, then they may just intuitively have reasons that they think someone did something. But it takes someone that's a bit new to say, "Hey, why did you choose this?" or to bring up some other ideas or ways that they could pursue it. They may bring in new ideas for, like, why has the team always done something this way? Let's think about new ways that we could do this. Or maybe this is really unfriendly, the way that we're doing this, not just for junior people but for people that are new to the team. And then there's typically less knowledge siloing because then you're going to want to pair the newer folks with the more experienced folks. So that way, you don't have this more senior developer who's then off in a corner working by themselves. And it's going to improve your communication skills. There's just...I realized I'm just rambling because I feel like there are so many benefits that go along with having a variety of people on your team, especially in terms of experience. And that just leads to such a better learning environment and, ultimately, better software and better products. And yet, I find that so many companies won't embrace people that are newer to software. They always want the senior developers. They want the 10x-er or whatever those are. They want the people that have many, many years of experience. And there's so much value that comes from mentoring the next group of developers. And it's incredibly frustrating to me that one, companies often aren't open to it. But honestly, more than that, as long as you're upfront and honest about like, hey, this is the team that we need right now to build what we're looking to build, I can get past that; I can understand that. But please don't then mislead people and say that you're a junior-friendly team, and then not be prepared. I feel like some teams will go so far as to say, "Yes, we are junior-friendly," and they may even tweak their interview process to where it is a bit more junior-friendly. But then, by the time that person joins the team, they're really not prepared. They don't have an onboarding plan. They don't have a mentorship plan. And then they fail that person because that person has worked hard to get there. And they've worked hard to bring that person onto the team, but then they don't have a plan from there. And I've seen it too many times. And it just frustrates me so much because it puts that junior person in such a vulnerable state where they really have to be an incredible self-advocate to then overcome those hurdles from a lack of preparation on that company's part. Okay, I think that's my event. I'm sure I could vent about this a lot more, but I will cut it off there. That's the heart of it. CHRIS: I do think, like, with anything else, it's something that we have to be intentional about. And so what you're saying of like, yeah, we're a junior-friendly company, but then you're just hiring folks, trying to find folks that may work at a slightly lower pay grade, and that's what that means to you. So like, no, no, that's not what this is. This needs to be something different. We need to have a structure and an organization that can support folks at different points in their career. But it's interesting to me to think about the sort of why of it. And the earlier part of this conversation, we talked about some of the benefits that can come organizationally from it, and I do sincerely believe in that. But I also believe that it is fundamentally one of the best ways to find really talented people early on in their career and be in a position to hire them where maybe later on in their career, that just wouldn't happen naturally. And I've seen this play out in a number of organizations. I went to Northeastern University for my college, and Northeastern is famous for the co-op program. Northeastern sounds really fancy. Now I learned that they have like a 7% acceptance rate for college applications right now, which is wildly low. When I went to Northeastern, it was not so fancy. So just in case anyone's hearing that and they're like, "Oh, Northeastern, wow." I'm not that fancy. [laughs] But they did have the co-op then, and they still have it now. And the co-op really is a differentiating thing. You do three six-month rotations. And it is this fundamental differentiator in terms of when you're graduating. Particularly, I was in mechanical engineering. I came out, and I actually knew what that meant in the world. And I'd used Outlook, and I knew what a water cooler was and how to talk near one because that's a critical thing to learn in the world. And really transformative experience for me. But also, a thing that I observed was many of my friends ended up working at companies that they had co-opted for. I'm one of those people. I would say more than 50% of my friends ended up with a position at a company that they had done a co-op rotation with. And it really worked out fantastically. That organization and the individual got to try things out, experience. And then, I ended up staying at that company for a number of years, and it was a wonderful experience. But I don't know that I would have ended up there otherwise. That's not necessarily the way that would have played out. And similarly like, thoughtbot has the apprenticeship. And I have seen so many wonderful developers start at that very early point in their career. And there was this wonderful structure around them joining the thoughtbot team, intentional, structured, supported. And then those folks went on to be some of the most talented developers that I've ever worked with at a wonderfully talented organization. And so the story of like, you should do this, organizations. This is a thing that you should invest in for yourself, not just for the individual, like, for both. Everybody wins in this case, in my mind. I will say, though, in terms of transparency, I currently manage a team of three developers. And we hired very intentionally for senior folks this early on in where we're at. And that was an intentional choice because I do believe that if you're going to be hiring more junior developers, that needs to be something that you do very intentionally, that you have a support structure in place, that you're able to invest the time in where they're at and make sure we have sort of... I think a larger team makes more sense to bring juniors into broadly. That's the thing that I'm saying out loud that I'm like, I should push on that a little bit. Is that true? Do I really believe that? But I think so, my actions obviously point to it. But it is an interesting trade-off space of how do you think about that? My hope is that as we grow as an organization, that we would then very intentionally start hiring folks in a more junior, mid-level to junior and be very intentional about how we support them, bring them into the organization, et cetera. I do believe it is a win-win situation for everyone when done with intention and with focus. STEPH: That's such an interesting bit that you just said because I very much appreciate when companies recognize do we have the bandwidth to support someone that's more junior? Because at thoughtbot, we go through periods where we don't have our apprenticeship that's open because we recognize we're not in a place that we can support someone. And we don't want to bring someone in unless we can help them be successful. I very much admire that and appreciate that about companies when they can perform that self-assessment. I am so intrigued. You'd mentioned being a smaller team. So you more intentionally hire senior developers. And I think that also makes sense because then you need to build up who's going to be in that mentorship pool? Because then people could leave, people could take vacations, and so then you need to have that support system in place. But yeah, I don't know what that then perfect balance is. It's like, okay, so then as soon as you have like five people available to mentor or interested in mentorship, it's like, then do you start bringing in the conversation of like, let's bring in someone that we can help build up and help them be successful and join our team? And I don't know what that magical number is. I do think it's important for teams to reflect to say, "Can we take on someone that's junior?" All the benefits of having someone that's junior. And then just being very honest and then having a plan for once that junior person does arrive. What does their career path look like while they've joined that team, and who's going to be that person that's going to help them level up? So not only make that choice upfront of yes, we are bringing someone on but let's also think about like the first six months of their work here at the company and what that's going to look like. It feels like an important step that a lot of companies fail to do. And I think that's why there are so many articles that then are like, hey, if you're a junior dev, here's all the things that you should do to be the best junior dev. That's fabulous. And we're constantly shoring up junior devs to be like, hey, here's all the things that you need to be great at. But we don't have as many conversations around; hey, here's all the things that your manager or the rest of your team should be great at to then support you equally as you are also doing your best to meet them. Like, they need to meet you halfway. And I'm not completely unsympathetic to the plight; I understand. It's often where I've seen with teams the more senior developers that have very strong mentorship communication skills are then also the teammates that get pulled into all the meetings and all the different projects, so then they are less available to be that mentor. And then that's how this often fails. So I don't think anybody is going into this intentionally, but yet, it's what happens for when someone is new and joining a team, and it hasn't been determined the next six months what that person's onboarding and career path looks like. Circling back just a bit, there's the question around, can juniors start with a remote team? I can go first. And I'm going to say unequivocally yes. There's no reason a junior can't start with a remote team. Because all the things that I feel strongly about come down to how is your team going to plan for this person? And how are they going to support this person? And all the benefits that you get from being in an office with a team, I think those do exist. And frankly, for someone like myself, it can be easier to establish a bond with someone that you get to see each day, get to see in person. You can walk up to their desk and can say, "Hey, I've got a question for you." But I think all those benefits just need to be transferred into a remote-friendly way. So I think it does ratchet up how intentional you have to be with your team and then onboarding a junior developer. But I absolutely think it's doable, and we should do it. CHRIS: You went with unequivocally yes as your answer. I'm going to go with a qualified maybe as my answer. I want this to be true, and I think it can be true. But I think it takes all the more intentionality than even what we've been describing. To shift the question around a little bit, what does remote work mean? It doesn't just mean we're doing the work, but we're separate. I think remote work inherently is at its best when we also are largely async first. And so that means more structured writing. The nature of the conversation tends to be more well-formed in each interaction. So it's like I read a big document, and then I pass it over to you. And at your leisure, you respond to it with a bunch of notes, and then it comes back to me. And I think that mode of interaction, while absolutely wonderful and something that I love, I think it fits really well when you're a little bit further on in your career when you understand things a little bit better. And I think the dance of conversation is more useful earlier on and so forth. And so, for someone who's newer to a team, I think having the ability to ask a quick question over and over is really useful to someone who's early on in their career. And remote, again, I think it's at its best when it's async. And those two are sort of at odds. And so it's that mild tension that gives me pause of like, something that I think that makes remote work great I do think is at least a hurdle that you would have to get over in supporting someone who's a little bit newer. Because I want to be deeply present for someone who's newer to their journey so that they can ask a lot of questions so that I am available to be interrupted regularly. I loved at thoughtbot sitting next to someone and being their mentor and being like, yeah, anytime you want, just tap on my desk. If I got my headphones on, that doesn't mean I'm ignoring you; it means I just need to make the sounds go away for a minute because that's the only way my brain will work. But feel free to just tap on my desk or whatever and grab my attention for a moment. And I'm available for that. That's an intentional choice. That's breaking up my continuity of the day, but we're choosing that for a reason. I think that's just a little harder to do in a remote context and all the more so if we're saying, hey, we're going to try this async thing where we write structured documents, and we communicate in these larger, more well-formed, communicates back and forth. But I do believe it can be done. I think it should be done. I just think it's all the harder for all of those reasons. STEPH: I agree that definitely makes it harder. But I'm going to push a little bit and say that when you mentioned being deeply present, I think we can be deeply present with someone and be remote. We can reduce the async requirements. So if you are someone that is more senior or more accustomed to the team, you can fall back to more of those async ways to communicate. But if someone is new, and needs more mentorship, then let's just set up time where we're going to literally hang out for a couple of hours each day or whatever pairing environment works best for them because pairing can also be exhausting. But hey, we're going to have a check-in each day; maybe we close out each day and touchpoint. And feel free to still message me and interrupt me. Like, you're going to just heighten your availability, even though it is remote. And be aware, like, hey, this person could message me at more times, and I'm okay with that. I have opted into this form of communication. So I think we just take that mindset of, hey, there's this person next to me, and I'm their mentor to like, hey, they're not next to me, but I'm still their mentor, and I'm still here for them. So I agree that it's harder. I think it falls on us and the team and the mentors to change ourselves versus saying to juniors, "Hey, sorry, it's remote. That's not going to work for you." It totally works for them. It's us, the mentors, that need to figure out how to make it work. I will say being on that mentor side that then not being able to see someone so if they are next to me, I can pick up on body language and facial expressions, and I can tell when somebody's stuck. And I can see that they're frustrated, or I can see that now's a good time for me to just be like, "Hey, how's it going? What are you working on? Or do you need help with something?" And I don't have that insight when I'm away. So there are real challenges like that that I don't know how to address. I have gone the obnoxious route [laughs] where I just message people, and I'm like, "Hey, how's it going? How's it going? How's it going?" And I try not to do that too much. But I haven't found a better way to manage that other than to constantly check in because I do have less feedback from that person that I'm working with unless they are just incredibly open about sharing when they're stuck. But typically, when you're newer to a team or newer to a career, you're going to be less willing to share when you're stuck. But yeah, there are some real challenges, but I still think it's something for us to figure out. Because otherwise, if we cut off access for remote teams to junior folks, I mean, that's where we're headed. There are so many companies and jobs that are headed remote that not being junior friendly and being remote in my mind is just not an option. It's something that we need to figure out. And it's hard, but we need to figure it out. CHRIS: Yeah, 100% on we need to figure that out and that that's on us as the people managing and structuring and bringing folks into teams. I think my stance would be like, let's just be clear that this is hard. It takes effort to make sure that we've provided a structure in which someone newer to a team can be successful. It takes all the more effort to do so in a remote context, I think. And it's that recognition that I think is critical. Because if we go into this with the wrong mindset, it's like, oh yeah, it's great. We got this new person on the team. And yeah, they should be ready to go in like two weeks, right? It's like, no, no, this is a different thing. We need to be very clear about it. This is going to require that we have someone who is able to work with them and support them in this. And that means that that person's output will likely be a little bit reduced for the period of time that we're talking about. But we're playing a long game here. Let's make sure we're clear on that. This is intentional. And let's be clear, the world of hiring and software right now it's not like super easy. There aren't way more software developers than there are jobs; at least, that's been my experience. So this is something absolutely worth investing in for just core business reasons and also good for people. So hey, it's a win-win. Let's do it. Let's figure it out. But also, let's be clear that it's going to be a little tricky along the way. So, you know, let's be intentional about that. But yeah, obviously do it, got to do it. STEPH: Wait, so I feel like we might have circled back to unequivocally yes. [laughs] Have we gotten there, or are you still on the fence? CHRIS: I was unequivocally yes from the beginning, but I couched it in, but...yeah, I said other things. You're right. I have now come around; let's say to unequivocally yes. STEPH: [laughs] Cool. I don't want to feel like I'm forcing you to agree with me. [laughs] But I mean, we just so rarely disagree. So we've either got to identify this as something that we disagree on, which would be one of those rare occasions like beer and Pop-Tarts. CHRIS: A watershed moment. Beer and Pop-Tarts. STEPH: Yeah, those are the only two so far. [laughter] CHRIS: Not together also. I just want to go on record beer and Pop-Tarts; I don't think would be...anyway. STEPH: Ooh, I don't know. It could work. It could work. CHRIS: Well, there's another thing we disagree on. STEPH: I would not turn it down. If I was eating a Pop-Tart, and you're like, "Hey, you want a beer?" I'd be like, "Sure," vice versa. I'm drinking a beer. "Hey, you want a Pop-Tart?" "Totally." CHRIS: Okay. Well yeah, if I'm making bad decisions, I'm obviously going to chain them together, but that doesn't mean that they're a good decision. It's just a chain of bad decisions. STEPH: I feel like one true thing I know about you is that when you make a decision, you're going to lean into it. So like, this is why you are all about if you're going to have a Pop-Tart, you're going to have the highest sugary junk content Pop-Tart possible. So it makes sense to me. CHRIS: It's the Mountain Dew theorem, yeah. STEPH: I didn't know this had a theorem. The Mountain Dew theorem? CHRIS: No, that's just my name. Well, yeah, if I'm going to drink soda, I'm going to drink Mountain Dew, the nonsense nuclear option of soda. So yeah, I guess you're describing me, although as you say it back to me, I suddenly feel very, like, oh God, is this who I am as a person? [laughs] And I'm not going to say you're wrong. I'm just going to spend a little while thinking about some stuff. STEPH: I mean, you embrace it. I think that's lovely. You know what you want. It's like, all right, let's do this. Let's go all in. CHRIS: Thank you for finding a wonderfully positive way to frame it here at the end. But I think on that note, should we wrap up? STEPH: Let's wrap up. CHRIS: The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes, as it really helps other folks find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me on Twitter @SViccari. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or you can reach us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. ALL: Byeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

Chris came up with a mnemonic device: Fn-Delete – for when he really wants to delete something and is also thinking about password complexity requirements, which leads to an exciting discussion around security theater. Steph talks about the upcoming RailsConf and the not-in-person option for virtual attendees. She also gives a shoutout to the Ruby Weekly newsletter for being awesome. NIST Password Standards (https://specopssoft.com/blog/nist-password-standards/) 3 ActiveRecord Mistakes That Slow Down Rails Apps: Count, Where and Present (https://www.speedshop.co/2019/01/10/three-activerecord-mistakes.html) Difference between count, length and size in an association with ActiveRecord (https://bhserna.com/count-size-length-active-record.html) Ruby Weekly (https://rubyweekly.com/) Railsconf 2022 (https://railsconf.org/) Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of The Bike Shed! Transcript: STEPH: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari. CHRIS: And I'm Chris Toomey. STEPH: And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So hey, Chris, happy Friday. You know, each time I do that, I can't resist the urge to say happy Friday, but then I realize people aren't listening on a Friday. So happy day to anyone that's listening. What's new in your world, friend? CHRIS: I'm going to be honest; you threw me for a loop there. [laughs] I think it was the most recent episode where we talked about my very specific...[laughs] it's a lovely Friday, that's true. There's sun and clouds. Those are true things. But yeah, what's new in my world? [laughs] I can do this. I can focus. I got this. Actually, I have one thing. So this is going to be, I'm going to say vaguely selfish, but I have this thing that I've been trying to commit into my brain for a long time, and I just can't get it to stick. So today, I came up with like a mnemonic device for it. And I'm going to share it on The Bike Shed because maybe it'll be useful for other people. And then hopefully, in quote, unquote, "teaching it," I will deeply learn it. So the thing that happens in my world is occasionally, I want to delete a URL from Chrome's autocomplete. To be more specific, because it's easier for people to run away with that idea, it's The Weather Channel. I do not like weather.com. I try to type weather often, and I just want Google to show me the little, very quick pop-up thing there. I don't want any ads. I don't want to deal with that. But somehow, often, weather.com ends up in my results. I somehow accidentally click on it. It just gets auto-populated, and then that's the first thing that happens whenever I type weather into the Omnibox in Chrome. And I get unhappy, and I deal with it for a while, then eventually I'm like, you know what? I'm deleting it. I'm getting it out of there. And then I try and remember whatever magical key combination it is that allows you to delete an entry from the drop-down list there. And I know it's a weird combination of like, Command-Shift-Alt-Delete, Backspace, something. And every single time, it's the same. I'm like, I know it's weird, but let me try this one. How about that one? How about that one? I feel like I try every possible combination. It's like when you try and plug in a USB drive, and you're like, well, it's this way. No, it's the other way. Well, there are only two options, and I've already tried two things. How can I not have gotten it yet? But I got it now. Okay, so on a Mac specifically, the key sequence is Shift-Function-Delete. So the way I'm going to remember this is Function is abbreviated on the keyboard as Fn. So that can be like I'm swearing, like, I'm very angry about this. And then Shift is the way to uppercase something like you're shouting. So I just really need to Fn-Delete this. So that's how I'm going to remember it. Now I've shared it with everyone else, and hopefully, some other folks can get utility out of that. But really, I hope that I remember it now that I've tried to boil it down to a memorable thing. STEPH: [laughs] It's definitely memorable. I'm now going to remember just that I need to Fn-Delete this. And I'm not going to remember what it all is tied to. [laughs] CHRIS: That is the power of a mnemonic device. Yeah. STEPH: Like, I know this is useful in some way, but I can't remember what it is. But yeah, that's wonderful. I love it. That's something that I haven't had to do in a long time, and I hadn't thought about. I need to do that more. Because you're right, especially changing projects or things like that, there are just some URLs that I don't need cached anymore; I don't want auto-completed. So yeah, okay. I just need to Fn-Delete it. I'll remember it. Here we go. I'm speaking this into the universe, so it'll be true. CHRIS: Just Fn-Delete it. STEPH: Your bit about the USB and always getting it wrong, you get it 50-50 [laughs] by getting it wrong, resonates so deeply with me and my capability with directions where I am just terrible whether I have to go right or left. My inner compass is going to get it wrong. And I've even tried to trick myself where I'm like, okay, I know I'm always wrong. So what if I do the opposite of what Stephanie would do? And it's still somehow wrong. [laughs] CHRIS: Somehow, your brain compensates and is like, oh, I know that we're going to do that. So let's...yeah, it's amazing the way these things happen. STEPH: Yep. I don't understand it. I've tried to trick the software, but I haven't figured out the right way. I should probably just learn and get better at directions. But here we are. Here we are. CHRIS: You just loosely referred to the software, but I think you're referring to the Steph software when you say that. STEPH: Yes. Oh yeah, Steph software totally. You got it. [laughs] CHRIS: Gotcha. Cool. Glad that I checked in on that because that's great. But shifting gears to something a little bit deeper in the technical space, this past week, we've been thinking about passwords within our organization at Sagewell. And we're trying to decide what we want to do. We had an initial card that came through and actually got most of the way to implemented to dial up our password strictness requirements. And as I saw that come through, I was like, oh, wait, actually, I would love to talk about this. And so we had the work that was coming through the PR that had been opened was a pretty traditional set of let's introduce some requirements on our passwords for complexity, so let's make it longer. We're going from; I think six was the default that Devise shipped with, so we're increasing that to, I think it was eight. And then let's say that it needs a number, and a special character, and an uppercase letter or something like that. I've recently read the NIST rules, so the National Institute of Standards and Technology, I think, is what they are. But they're the ones who define a set of rules around this or guidelines. But I think they are...I don't know if they are laws or what at this point. But they tell you, "This is what you should and shouldn't do." And I know that the password complexity stuff is on the don't do that list these days. So I was like, this is interesting, and then I wanted to follow through. Interestingly, right now, I've got the Trello boards up for The Bike Shed right now. But as a result, I can't look at the linked Trello card that is on the workboards because they're in different accounts. And Trello really has made my life more difficult than I wanted. But I'm going to pull this up elsewhere. So let's see. So NIST stuff, just to talk through that, we can include a link in the show notes to a nice summary. But what are the NIST password requirements? Eight character minimum, that's great. Change passwords only if there is evidence of a compromise. Screen new passwords against a list of known compromised passwords. That's a really interesting one. Skip password hints, limit the number of failed authentication attempts. These all sound great to me. The maximum password length should be at least 64 characters, so don't constrain how much someone can put in. If they want to have a very long password, let them go for it. Don't have any sort of required rotation. Allow copy and pasting or functionality that allows for password managers. And allow the use of all printable ASCII characters as well as all Unicode characters, including emojis. And that one really caught my attention. I was like, that sounds fun. I wish I could look at all the passwords in our database. I obviously can't because they're salted and encrypted, and hashed, and all those sorts of things where I'm like, I wonder if anybody's using emojis. I'm pretty sure we would just support it. But I'm kind of intrigued. STEPH: You said something in that list that caught my attention, and I just want to see if I heard it correctly. So you said only offer change password if compromised? Does that mean I can't just change my password if I want to? CHRIS: Sorry. Yeah, I think the phrasing here might be a little bit odd. So it's essentially a different way to phrase this requirement is don't require rotation of passwords every six or whatever months. Forgotten password that's still a reasonable thing to have in your application, probably a necessity in most applications. But don't auto-rotate passwords, so don't say, "Your password has expired after six months." STEPH: Got it. Okay, cool. That makes sense. Then the emojis, oh no, it's like, I mean, I use a password manager now, and thanks to several years ago where he shamed me into using one. Thank you. That was great. [laughs] CHRIS: I hope it was friendly shame, but yeah. STEPH: Yes, it was friendly; kind shame if that sounds like a weird sentence to say. But yes, it was a very positive change. And I can't go back now that I have a password manager in my life. Because yeah, now I'm thinking like, if I had emojis, I'd be like, oh great, now I have to think about how I was feeling at the time that then I introduced a new password. Was I happy? Was I angry? Is it a poop emoji? Is unicorn? What is it? [laughs] So that feels complicated and novel. You also mentioned on that list that going for more complexity in terms of you have to have uppercase; you have to have a particular symbol, things like that are not on the recommended list. And I didn't know that. I'm so accustomed to that being requirements for passwords and the idea of how we create something that is secure and less easy to guess or to essentially hack. So I'm curious about that one if you know any more details about it as to why that's not the standard anymore. CHRIS: Yeah, I think I have some ideas around it. My understanding is mostly that introducing the password complexity requirements while intended to prevent people from using very common things like names or their user name or things like that, it's like, no, no, no, you can't because we've now constrained the system in that way. It tends in practice to lead to people having a variety of passwords that they forget all the time, and then they're using the forgotten password flow more often. And it basically, for human and behavior reasons, increases the threat surface area because it means that they're not able to use...say someone has a password scheme in mind where it's like, well, my passwords are, you know, it's this common base, and then some number of things specific to the site. It's like, oh no, no, we require three special characters, so it's like they can't do their thing. And now they have to write it down on a Post-it Note because they're not going to remember it otherwise. Or there are a variety of ways in which those complexity requirements lead to behavior that's actually less useful. STEPH: Okay, so it's the Post-it Note threat vector that we have to be worried about. [laughs] CHRIS: Which is a very real threat factor. STEPH: I believe it. [laughs] Yes, I know people that keep lists of passwords on paper near their desk. [laughs] This is a thing. CHRIS: Yep, yep, yep. The other thing that's interesting is, as you think about it, password complexity requirements technically reduce the overall combinatoric space that the passwords can exist in. Because imagine that you're a password hacker, and you're like, I have no idea what this password is. All I have is an encrypted hashed salted value, and I'm trying to crack it. And so you know the algorithm, you know how many passes, you know potentially the salt because often that is available. I think it has to be available now that I think about that out loud. But so you've got all these pieces, and you're like, I don't know, now it's time to guess. So what's a good guess of a password? And so if you know the minimum number of characters is eight and, the maximum is 12 because that actually happens on a lot of systems, that's actually not a huge combinatoric space. And then if you say, oh, and it has to have a number, and it has to have an uppercase letter, and it has to have a special character, you're just reducing the number of possible options in that space. And so, although this is more like a mathematical thing, but in my mind, I'm like, yeah, wait, that actually makes things less secure because now there are fewer passwords to check because they don't meet the complexity requirements. So you don't even have to try them if you're trying to brute-force crack a password. STEPH: Yeah, you make a really good point that I hadn't really thought about because I've definitely seen those sites that, yeah, constrain you in terms of like, has to have a minimum, has to have a maximum, and I hadn't really considered the fact that they are constraining it and then reducing the values that it could be. I am curious, though, because then it doesn't feel right to have no limit in terms of, like, you don't want people then just spamming your sign up and then putting something awful in there that has a ridiculous length. So do you have any thoughts on that and providing some sort of length requirement or length maximum? CHRIS: Yeah, I think the idea is don't prevent someone who wants to put in a long passphrase, like, let them do that. But there is, the NIST guidelines specifically say 64 characters. Devise out of the box is 128, I believe. I don't think we tweaked that, and that's what we're at right now. So you can write an old-style tweet and that can be your password if that's what you want to do. But there is an upper limit to that. So there is a reasonable upper limit, but it should be very permissive to anyone who's like, I want to crank it up. STEPH: Cool. Cool. Yeah, I just wanted to validate that; yeah, having an upper bound is still important. CHRIS: Yeah, definitely. Important...it's more for implementation and our database having a reasonable size and those sorts of things. Although at the end of the day, the thing that we saw is the encrypted password. So I don't know if bcrypt would run slower on a giant body of text versus a couple of characters; that might be the impact. So it would be speed as opposed to storage space because you always end up with a fixed-length hash of the same length, as far as I understand it. But yeah, it's interesting little trade-offs like that where the complexity requirements do a good job of forcing people to not use very obvious things like password. Password does not fit nearly any complexity requirements. But we're going to try and deal with that in a different way. We don't want to try and prevent you from using password by saying you must use an uppercase letter and a special character and things that make real passwords harder as well. But it is an interesting trade-off because, technically, you're making the crackability easier. So it gets into the human and the technical and the interplay between them. Thinking about it somewhat differently as well, there's all this stuff about you should salt your passwords, then you should hash them. You should run them through a good password hashing algorithm. So we're using bcrypt right now because I believe that's the default that Devise ships with. I've heard good things about Argon2; I think is the name of the new cool kid on the block in terms of password hashing. That whole world is very interesting to me, but at the end of the day, we can just go with Devise's defaults, and I'll feel pretty good about that and have a reasonable cost factor. Those all seem like smart things. But then, as we start to think about the complexity requirements and especially as we start to interact with an audience like Sagewell's demographics where we're working with seniors who are perhaps less tech native, less familiar, we want to reduce the complexity there in terms of them thinking of and remembering their passwords. And so, rather than having those complexity requirements, which I think can do a good job but still make stuff harder, and how do you communicate the failure modes, et cetera, et cetera, we're switching it. And the things that we're introducing are we have increased the minimum length, so we're up to eight characters now, which is NIST's low-end recommended, so it's between 8 and 128 characters. We are capturing anytime a I forgot password reset attempt happens and the outcome of it. So we're storing those now in the database, and we're showing them to the admins. So our admin team can see if password reset attempts have happened and if they were successful. That feels like good information to keep around. Technically, we could get it from the logs, but that's deeply hidden away and only really accessible to the developers. So we're now surfacing that information because it feels like a particularly pertinent thing for us. We've introduced Rack::Attack. So we're throttling those attempts, and if someone tries to just brute force through that credential stuffing, as the terminology goes, we will lock them out so either based on IP address or the account that they're trying to log into. We also have Devise's lockable module enabled. So if someone tries to log in a bunch of times and fails, their account will go into a locked state, and then an admin can unlock it. But it gives us a little more control there. So a bunch of those are already in place. The new one, this is the one that I'm most excited about, is we're going to introduce Have I Been Pwned? And so, they have an API. We can hit it. It's a really interesting model as to how do we ask if a password has been compromised without giving them the password? And it turns out there's this fun sort of cryptographic handshake thing that happens. K-anonymity is apparently the mechanism or the underpinning technology or idea. Anyway, it's super cool; I'm excited to build it. It's going to be fun. But the idea there is rather than saying, "Don't use a password that might not be secure," it's, "Hey, we actually definitively know that your password has been cracked and is available in plaintext on the internet, so we're not going to let you use that one." STEPH: And that's part of the signup flow as to where you would catch that? CHRIS: So we're going to introduce on both signup and sign-in because a password can be compromised after a user signs up for our system. So we want to have it at any point. Obviously, we do not keep their plaintext password, so we can't do this retroactively. We can only do it at the point in time that they are either signing up or signing in because that's when we do have access to the password. We otherwise throw it away and keep only the hashed value. But we'll probably introduce it at both points. And the interesting thing is communicating this failure mode is really tricky. Like, "Hey, your password is cracked, not like here, not on our site, no, we're fine. Well, you should probably change your password. So here's what it means, there's actually this database that's called Have I Been Pwned? Don't worry; it's good, though. It's P-W-N-E-D. But that's fine." That's too many words to put on a page. I can't even say it here in a podcast. And so what we're likely to do initially is instrument it such that our admin team will get a notification and can see that a user's password has been compromised. At that point, we will reach out to them and then, using the magic of human conversation, try and actually communicate that and help them understand the ramifications, what they should do, et cetera. Longer-term, we may find a way to build up an FAQ page that describes it and then say, "Feel free to reach out if you have questions." But we want to start with the higher touch approach, so that's where we're at. STEPH: I love it. I love that you dove into how to explain this to people as well because I was just thinking, like, this is complicated, and you're going to freak people out in panic. But you want them to take action but not panic. Well, I don't know, maybe they should panic a little bit. [laughs] CHRIS: They should panic just the right amount. STEPH: Right.[laughs] So I like the starting with the more manual process of reaching out to people because then you can find out more, like, how did people react to this? What kind of questions did they ask? And then collect that data and then turn that into an FAQ page. Just, well done. CHRIS: We haven't quite done it yet. But I am very happy with the collection of ideas that we've come to here. We have a security firm that we're working with as well. And so I had my weekly meeting with them, and I was like, "Oh yeah, we also thought about passwords a bunch, and here's what we came up with." And I was very happy that they were like, "Yeah, that sounds like a good set." I was like, "Cool. All right, I feel good." I'm very happy that we're getting to do this. And there's an interesting sort of interplay between security theater and real security. And security theater, just to explain the phrase if anyone's unfamiliar with it, is things that look like security, so, you know, big green lock up in the top-left corner of the URL bar. That actually doesn't mean anything historically or now. But it really looks like it's very secure, right? Or password complexity requirements make you think, oh, this must be a very secure site. But for reasons, that actually doesn't necessarily prove that at all. And so we tried to find the balance of what are the things that obviously demonstrate our considerations around security to the user? At the end of the day, what are the things that actually will help protect our users? That's what I really care about. But occasionally, you got to play the security theater game. Every other financial institution on the internet kind of looks and feels a certain way in how they deal with passwords. And so will a user look at our seemingly laxer requirements or laxer approach to passwords and judge us for that and consider us less secure despite the fact that behind the scenes look at all the fun stuff we're doing for you? But it's an interesting question and interesting trade-off that we're going to have to spend time with. We may end up with the complexity requirements despite the fact that I would really rather we didn't. But it may be the sort of thing that there is not a good way to communicate the thought and decision-making process that led us to where we're at and the other things that we're doing. And so we're like, fine, we just got to put them in and try and do a great job and make that as usable of an experience as possible because usability is, I think, one of the things that suffers there. You didn't do one of the things on the list, or like, it's green for each of the ones that you did, but it's red for the one that you didn't. And your password and your password confirmation don't match, and you can't paste...it's very easy to make this wildly complex for users. STEPH: Security theater is a phrase that I don't think I've used, but the way you're describing it, I really like. And I have a solution for you: underneath the password where you have "We don't partake in security theater, and we don't have all the other fancy requirements that you may have seen floating around the internet and here's why," and then just drop a link to the episode. And, you know, people can come here and listen. It'll totally be great. It won't annoy anyone at all. [laughs] CHRIS: And it'll start, and they'll hear me yelling about Fn-Delete that weather.com URL. [laughter] STEPH: Okay, maybe fast forward then to the part about -- CHRIS: Drop them to the timestamp. That makes sense. Yep. Yep. STEPH: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [laughs] CHRIS: I like it. I think that's what we should do, yeah. Most features on the app should have a link to a Bike Shed episode. That feels true. STEPH: Excellent Easter egg. I'm into it. But yeah, I like all the thoughtfulness that y'all have put into this because I haven't had to think about passwords in this level of detail. And then also, yeah, switching over to when things start to change and start to move away, you're right; there's still that we need to help people then become comfortable with this new way and let them know that this is just as secure if not more secure. But then there's already been that standard that has been set for your expectations, and then how do you help people along that path? So yeah, seems like y'all have a lot of really great thoughtfulness going into it. CHRIS: Well, thank you. Yeah, it's frankly been a lot of fun. I really like thinking in this space. It's a fun sort of almost hobby that happens to align very well with my profession sort of thing. Actually, oh, I have one other idea that we're not going to do, but this is something that I've had in the back of my mind for a long time. So when we use bcrypt or Devise uses bcrypt under the hood, one of the things that it configures is the cost factor, which I believe is just the number of times that the password plus the salts and whatnot is run through the bcrypt algorithm. The idea there is you want it to be computationally difficult, and so by doing it multiple times, you increase that difficulty. But what I'd love is instead of thinking of it in terms of an arbitrary cost factor which I think is 12, like, I don't know what 12 means. I want to know it, in terms of dollars, how much would it cost to, like dollars and cents, to crack a password. Because, in theory, you can distribute this across any number of EC2 instances that you spin up. The idea of cracking a password that's a very map-reducible type problem. So let's assume that you can infinitely scale up compute on-demand; how much would it cost in dollars to break this password? And I feel like there's an answer. Like, I want that number to be like a million dollars. But as EC2 costs go down over time, I want to hold that line. I want to be like, a million dollars is the line that we want to have. And so, as EC2 prices go down, we need to increase our bcrypt cost factor over time to adjust for that and maintain the million dollar per password cracking sort of high bar. That's the dream. Swapping out the cost factor is actually really difficult. I've looked into it, and you have to like double encrypt and do weird stuff. So for a bunch of reasons, I haven't done this, but I just like that idea. Let's pin this to $1 value. And then, from there, decisions naturally flow out of it. But it's so much more of a real thing. A million dollars, I know what that means; 12, I don't know what 12 means. STEPH: A million-dollar password, I like it. I feel like -- CHRIS: We named the episode. STEPH: I was going to say that's a perfect title, A Million-Dollar Password. [laughs] CHRIS: A Million-Dollar Password. But with that wonderful episode naming cap there, I think I'm done rambling about passwords. What's up in your world, Steph? STEPH: One of the things that I've been chatting with folks lately is RailsConf is coming up; it's May 17 through the 19th. And it's been sort of like that casual conversation of like, "Hey, are you going? Are you going? Who's going? It's going to be great." And as people have asked like, "Are you going?" And I'm always like, "No, I'm not going." But then I popped on to the RailsConf website today because I was just curious. I wanted to see the schedule and the talks that are being given. And I keep forgetting that there's the in-person version, but there's also the home edition. And I was like, oh, I could go, I could do this. [laughs] And I just forget that that is something that is just more common now for conferences where you can attend them virtually, and that is just really neat. So I started looking a little more closely at the talks. And I'm really excited because we have a number of thoughtboters that are giving a talk at RailsConf this year. So there's a talk being given by Fernando Perales that's called Open the Gate a Little: Strategies to Protect and Share Data. There's also a talk being given by Joël Quenneville: Your Test Suite is Making Too Many Database Calls. I'm very excited; just that one is near and dear to my heart, given the current client experiences that I'm having. And then there's another one from someone who just joined thoughtbot, Christopher "Aji" Slater, Your TDD Treasure Map. So we'll be sure to include a link to those for anyone that's curious. But it's a stellar lineup. I mean, I'm always impressed with RailsConf talks. But this one, in particular, has me very excited. Do you have any plans for RailsConf? Do you typically wait for them to come out later and then watch them, or what's your MO? CHRIS: Historically, I've tended to watch the conference recordings after the fact. I went one year. I actually met Christopher "Aji" Slater at that very RailsConf that I went to, and I believe Joël Quenneville was speaking at that one. So lots of everything old is new again. But yeah, I think I'll probably catch it after the fact in this case. I'd love to go back in person at some point because I really do like the in-person thing. I'm thrilled that there is the remote option as well. But for me personally, the hallway track and hanging out and meeting folks is a very exciting part. So that's probably the mode that I would go with in the future. But I think, for now, I'm probably just going to watch some talks as they come out. STEPH: Yeah, that's typically what I've done in the past, too, is I kind of wait for things to come out, and then I go through and make a list of the ones that I want to watch, and then, you know, I can make popcorn at home. It's delightful. I can just get cozy and have an evening of RailsConf talks. That's what normal people do on Friday nights, right? That's totally normal. [laughs] CHRIS: I mean, yeah, maybe not the popcorn part. STEPH: No popcorn? CHRIS: But not that I'm opposed to popcorn just —- STEPH: Brussels sprouts? What do you need? [laughs] CHRIS: Yeah, Brussels sprouts, that's what it is. Just sitting there eating handfuls of Brussels sprouts watching Ruby conference talks. STEPH: [laughs] CHRIS: I do love Brussels sprouts, just to throw it out there. I don't want it to be out in the ether that I don't like them. I got an air fryer, and so I can air fry Brussels sprouts. And they're delicious. I mean, I like them regardless. But that is a really fantastic way to cook them at home. So I'm a big fan. STEPH: All right, I'm moving you into the category of fancy friends, fancy friends with an air fryer. CHRIS: I wasn't already in your category of fancy friends? STEPH: [laughs] I didn't think you'd take it that way. I'm sorry to break it to you. [laughter] CHRIS: I'm actually a little hurt that I'm now in the category of fancy friends. It makes a lot of sense that I wasn't there before. So I'll just deal with...yeah, it's fine. I'm fine. STEPH: It's a weird rubric that I'm running over here. Pivoting away quickly, so I don't have to explain the categorization for fancy friends, I saw something in the Ruby Weekly Newsletter that had just come out. And it's one of those that I see surface every so often, and I feel like it's a nice reminder because I know it's something that even I tend to forget. And so I thought it'd be fun just to resurface it here. And then, we can also provide a link to the wonderful blog post that's written by Benito Serna. And it's the difference between count, length, and size and an association with ActiveRecord. So for folks that would love a refresher, so count, that's a method that's always going to perform a SQL count query. So even if the collection has already been loaded, then calling count is always going to execute a database query. So this is the one that's just like, watch out, avoid it. You're always going to hit your database when you use this one. And then next is length. And so, length loads the whole collection into memory and then returns that length to the number of items in that collection. If the collection has been loaded, then it's not going to issue a database call. And then it's just still going to use...it's going to delegate to that Ruby length method and let you know how many records are in that collection. So that one is a little bit better because then that way, if it's already loaded, at least you're not going to have a database call. And then next is the size method, which is just the one that's more highly recommended that you use because this one does have a nice safety net that is built-in because first, it's going to check if we need to perform a database call, if the records have been loaded or not. So if the collection has not been loaded, so we haven't executed a database query and stored the result, then size is going to perform a database query. Specifically, it's using that SQL count under the hood. And if the collection has been loaded, then a database call is not issued, and then going to use the Ruby length method to then return the number of records. So it just helps you prevent unnecessary database calls. And it's the reason that that one is recommended over using count, which is going to always issue a call. And then also to avoid length where you can because it's going to load the whole collection into memory, and we want to avoid that. So it was a nice refresher. I'll be sure to include a link in the show notes. But yeah, I find that I myself often forget about the difference in count and size. And so if I'm just in the console and I just want to know something, that I still reach for count. It is still a default for mine. But then, if I'm writing production code, then I will be more considered as to which one I'm using. CHRIS: I feel like this is one of those that I've struggled to lock into my head, but as you're describing it right now, I think I've got, again, another mnemonic device that we can lock on to. So I know that SQL uses the keyword count, so count that's SQL definitely. Length I know that because I use that on other stuff. And so it's size that is different and therefore special. That all seems good. Cool, locking that in my brain along with Fn-Delete. I have two things that are now firmly locked in. So you were just mentioning being in the console and working with this. And one of the things that I've noticed a lot with folks that are newer to ActiveRecord and the idea of relations and the fact that they're lazy, is that that concept is very hard to grasp when working in a console because at the console, they don't seem lazy. The minute you type out user.where some clause, and the minute you type that and hit enter in the console, Ruby is going to do its normal thing, which is like, okay, cool, I want to...I forget what it is that IRB or any of the REPLs are going to do, but it's either inspect or to_s or something like that. But it's looking for a representation that it can display in the console. And ActiveRecord relations will typically say like, "Oh, cool, you need the records now because you want to show it like an array because that's what inspect is doing under the hood." So at the console, it looks like ActiveRecord is eager and will evaluate the query the minute you type it, but that's not true. And this is a critical thing that if you can think about it in that way and the fact that ActiveRecord relations are lazy and then take advantage of it, you can chain queries, you can build them up, you can break that apart. You can compose them together. There's really magical stuff that falls out of that. But it's interesting because sort of like a Heisenberg where the minute you go to look at it in the REPL, it's like, oh, it is not lazy; it is eager. It evaluates it the minute I type the query. But that's not true; that's actually the REPL tricking you. I will often just throw a semicolon at the end of it because I'm like, I don't want to see all that noise. Just give me the relation. I want the relation, not the results of executing that query. So if you tack a semicolon at the end of the line, that tells Ruby not to print the thing, and then you're good to go from there. STEPH: That's a great pro-tip. Yeah, I've forgotten about the semicolon. And I haven't been using that in my workflow as much. So I'm so glad you mentioned that. Yeah, I'm sure that's part of the thing that's added to my confusion around this, too, or something that has just taken me a while to lock it in as to which approach I want to use for when I'm querying data or for when I need to get a particular count, or length, or size. And by using all three, I'm just confusing myself more. So I should really just stick to using size. There's also a fabulous article by Nate Berkopec that's titled Three ActiveRecord Mistakes That Slow Down Rails Apps. And he does a fabulous job of also talking about the differences of when to use size and then some of the benefits of when you might use count. The short version is that you can use count if you truly don't care about using any of those records. Like, you're not going to do anything with them. You don't need to load them, like; you truly just want to get a count. Then sure, because then you're issuing a database query, but then you're not going to then, in a view, very soon issue another database query to collect those records again. So he has some really great examples, and I'll be sure to include a link to his article as well. Speaking of Ruby tidbits and kind of how this particular article about count, length, and size came across my view earlier today, Ruby Weekly is a wonderful newsletter. And I feel like I don't know if I've given them a shout-out. They do a wonderful job. So if you haven't yet checked out Ruby Weekly, I highly recommend it. There are just always really great, interesting articles either about stuff that's a little bit more like cutting edge or things that are being released with newer versions, or they might be just really helpful tips around something that someone learned, like the difference between count, length, and size, and I really enjoy it. So I'll also be sure to include a link in the show notes for anyone that wants to check that out. They also do something that I really appreciate where when you go to their website, you have the option to subscribe, but I am terrible about subscribing to stuff. So you can still click and check out the latest issue, which I really appreciate because then, that way, I don't feel obligated to subscribe, but I can still see the content. CHRIS: Oh yeah. Ruby Weekly is fantastic. In fact, I think Peter Cooper is the person behind it, or Cooperpress as the company goes. And there is a whole slew of newsletters that they produce. So there's JavaScript Weekly, there's Ruby Weekly, there's Node Weekly, Golang Weekly, React Status, Postgres Weekly. There's a whole bunch of them. They're all equally fantastic, the same level of curation and intentional content and all those wonderful things. So I'm a big fan. I'm subscribed to a handful of them. And just because I can't go an episode without mentioning inbox zero, if you are the sort of person that likes to defend the pristine nature of your email inbox, I highly recommend Feedbin and their ability to set up a special email address that you can use to then turn it into an RSS feed because that's magical. Actually, these ones might already have an RSS feed under the hood. But yeah, RSS is still alive. It's still out there. I love it. It's great. And that ends my thoughts on that matter. STEPH: I have what I feel is a developer confession. I don't think I really appreciate RSS feeds. I know they're out there in the ether, and people love them. And I just have no emotion, no opinion attached to them. So one day, I think I need to enjoy the enrichment that is RSS feeds, or maybe I'll hate it. Who knows? I'm reserving judgment. Either way, I don't think I will. [laughs] But I don't want to box future Stephanie in. CHRIS: Gotta maintain that freedom. STEPH: On that note, shall we wrap up? CHRIS: Let's wrap up. The show notes for this episode can be found at bikeshed.fm. STEPH: This show is produced and edited by Mandy Moore. CHRIS: If you enjoyed listening, one really easy way to support the show is to leave us a quick rating or even a review on iTunes, as it really helps other folks find the show. STEPH: If you have any feedback for this or any of our other episodes, you can reach us at @_bikeshed or reach me on Twitter @SViccari. CHRIS: And I'm @christoomey. STEPH: Or you can reach us at hosts@bikeshed.fm via email. CHRIS: Thanks so much for listening to The Bike Shed, and we'll see you next week. ALL: Byeeeeee!!!!!! ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success.

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

This is part 2 of my interview with Chris Chapo. Chris has never been a CMO but he has overseen analytics at a number of organizations including Apple Retail, JCPenny and now Amperity. In this part we explore Chris's take on analytics and what he feels CMOs need to know.This is the free edition of Marketing BS. Part 1 was available to subscribers on Wednesday.TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Chris Chapo. Today we're going to dive into his data analytics insights and how they can help CMOs. Chris, let's start with this question, is data science the future of business?Chris: I personally don't believe it is, which is kind of funny given the fact that I am a data person, and I self-proclaimed “data scientist”. I'd say taking an evidence-based approach to understanding business problems and solving business problems, to me, that's the future of business if you want to be scalable and sustainable in the future. Data science is just one of the methods you might use to achieve that vision. Edward: What's another example? What are examples of evidence that's not data science?Chris: Sometimes people look at data science as the fancy statistical model which will say let me predict the future and the outcome of what's going to happen, which could be one approach. But I'd say another simple approach to creating evidence is doing experimentation. If you've got two different potential marketing treatments that you may want to show to consumers and you're not sure which one is going to be the most effective, try it out. The confidence you'll have in that will overcome any sort of doubt you may have and a statistical model which says, well, this person should get message A with 0.76 accuracies, and this person should get message A with 0.72% accuracy. You're like, how do you interpret that? Oftentimes, experimentation is a great example of how to do that. Another one that I find really helpful is bringing consumer insights and what you would call traditional research to bear and combining that with data analytics and data science methods. An example of something where I've seen these people really successful is creating behavioral-based segmentations where you talk to your consumer base about attitudes and beliefs. But at the same time, build statistical models to predict which segment a person may be a member of. That's useful when you want to personalize two people based on their segments versus just create personas that are interesting but not necessarily actionable. Edward: Why is that not data science? Is it data science only when you look at purchase data? But as soon as you do external research data, it stops becoming data science and it starts becoming something else?Chris: I think data science by itself, honestly, is a very overloaded term. It can mean a lot of things to different people, and as such, then it means nothing per se because there's nothing that's specific. But one of the methods that I think most people traditionally think about for data science is the more purchase-based activity drives it or signals such as do I click on something, what did I do on a website? Thinking about it, more focused on propensities and predictions about activities versus understanding someone's core beliefs. One could say—and there are some examples where people I was training—try to approach and model people's emotional states and understand some of those few more “data science” methods. But it's usually not the mainstream when people talk about data science. Edward: Chris, what do you do for long feedback cycles? In short feedback cycles, you can run experiments; or you have the results, you can look at the inputs and the results, and you can run all sorts of data models. What about things that have long feedback cycles? Things around hey, I influence you now and you buy a car two years from now based on the stuff I'm doing for you now. Is there anything that data science can help in trying to understand those long feedback cycles?Chris: I'll give you a couple of thoughts. Of course, data science is not a panacea. It doesn't solve all problems. But one thought of how to approach some of those long feedback cycle problems are creating leading indicators. Actually, doing some analysis understand, yes—to your point—maybe this outcome I want to predict is something which will take a couple of years for it to play out. Customer lifetime value is a great example of that. It takes a while to actually observe it or even products where there's a long purchase cycle. But is there something where we can do an analysis first off to say, usually, people who have higher lifetime value—or in the case you just mentioned—who do go on to buy a car? These are some of the behaviors they exhibit first. While it won't necessarily be 100% predictive, but focusing on experimentation on those leading indicators and using that to help (to your point) to take your best guess using data on if I continue doing more of this thing, this will help us drive something in the future. I'll give you an example of this that wasn't a team that I lead, but it is something I learned when I was in Intuit. One of the things that they wanted to do was get people to go from trial members of QuickBooks online to full paying members. That usually takes a period of time to actually show up. It takes 30, 45, or 60 days. What the team did when they did some analysis is realize, if I can get people to do this one little action within their first seven days, that has a high correlation to someone converting to being a full paying member. They had teams who were focused on driving that little behavior, which was connecting to your bank account. Again, they would have entire teams focused on experimentation to drive that, and how can I get that rate higher? What are the things I could do? Because they knew that it would pay off in the future.Edward: Do you run into selection effect problems? You do that correlation, not causation. I imagine that 100% of people who are paying members connected it to their bank account, but that does not necessarily mean that connecting your bank account leads to payments. It could be that it's the other way around. Chris: Yeah. I think that's one of the challenges with this. This is why an example of that, the team would go back and validate that. Those people who did that action did have a higher spend than people who didn't. But to your point, the question selection buys come in. There are a couple of different methods that one could do to help address that. In this example, because we're selecting who gets this potential treatment versus those who don't because this is an online product, you can validate that in a true AB test fashion. Now, this scenario is not quite as easy. One of the things that I'd seen teams apply are things like propensity analysis where you may not necessarily be able to have a control group, but can look statistically to say this person who does an action that we hope is a positive one or experience is something different, can we find somebody who's very similar to them in terms their past purchase history and use that as a pseudo control group.But it's still not necessarily (I would say) as solid as a lot of the statisticians in the world would like. That comes to one of the pieces that back to this concept of data science is important is not getting super caught up in just the 100% accurate solution, but what is good enough to drive a better business result than we've seen in the past? And how can I make sure that this is not that we want to have random chance to spare only success measures, but how is this better than our other approaches, and can we get better over time? Those are a couple of examples. Edward: I definitely buy that. I think that a lot of the issues with academia is they're trying to get to the right answer. Whereas in a business, the right answer is not what you need. You don't need to know the exact right answer, you just need to know a better answer than what you were doing before. You spend a lot of your time in retail. Let's talk a little bit about retail loyalty. How do you measure loyalty in retail?Chris: That's a great question because most people will measure loyalty based on how much people spend or likely to spend. Honestly, I'll protect the guilty here. There's a cable company that I use, which I spend a lot of money with but I do not like the cable company. I am not loyal to them. And if I had another choice that provided the same level of service in terms of speed, bandwidth, and all those things, I would in a heartbeat choose something else. Oftentimes, how I think about loyalty—particularly in the retail sense—is when you're able to build a strong emotional connection between the consumer and the brand. That connection where people—you've heard the net promoter scores, one surrogate of an example of how to measure that. But if you're so connected, I love this brand so much. I will choose them above others. There's something specific about them that makes me want to buy from them. That to me is an example of when you've got that loyalty. The hard part is how do I measure that? How do I create a system to instrument that? But to me, if you can do that, that to me is a north star for retail analytics. Edward: The finding loyalty as a positive emotion rather than the lack of a negative, you're splitting out the loyalty that is I'm going and searching for this thing versus the loyalty that comes from lock-in. Chris: Yes. I would say it's loyalty, I'm going out to search for what I love in this thing. If I had a choice, I would choose this over others. That to me is that connection. You see it, oftentimes, anecdotally when people talk about their favorite brands, they talk about how it makes them feel. I'll give you an example, I used to love Virgin America. That was my favorite airline. I would choose them over others because of how they treated me as a flyer.For certain people, that emotion isn't important. They may choose something else. They may choose Southwest because they want to feel like a smart savvy flyer, not an emotional connection on what they feel when they experience the brand. To me, it's really around that emotional feeling that, quite honestly, can be difficult to measure, but it is really important, and you know when you've got it. Edward: Can you measure with the price premium? I imagine most people when they fly, find the airline that's going to take them to the place they need to go, at the time they need to go, and then they choose based on price. Whether it's $100 or $99, they end up going with the $99 one. You imagine the more they're willing to pay to go to that $100 one, $110 one, or $200 one. Is that the measurement of how much loyalty there is?Chris: It might actually broaden it. Instead of it being a price point, it's just general friction. One area of friction could be paying more. Another could be—in this example we're talking about the flights—I'm willing to take a connection even if the prices are the same. I'm willing to have a layover because I love this brand, and I want to be part of the experience. Even though I know that there is someone who flies there directly. There could be other pieces as well. You think about the friction side of things if you have a bad experience with a company. Going back to this flight example, say that your connection flight was canceled and you're sitting there at the airport. You may be more willing to forgive that bad experience if you have loyalty to the brand versus if you don't.I actually broaden it to the friction or the discretionary friction you may be able to deal with. The more you're able to deal with it potentially, the higher you have loyalty to the certain brand. Edward: Can you quantify that? Because I imagine things like willingness to do a stopover on a flight, there's a dollar value you can calculate. Someone is willing to accept that stopover versus going direct. Most of those friction things, things that you can put a dollar value on until you eventually get to the point where hey, there's a number that we can put on the loyalty of any given customer?Chris: That's an interesting question. I haven't thought about it in the macro sense. But I think in very specific examples, one could do this. I'll give you an example back in my Apple retail days. One of the big challenges that people face—particularly in the 2007–2011 timeframe—was the stores were busy and getting help could take a long time. We were able to quantify the impact that having to wait for help, whether it be the genius bar or whether it being for help to purchase, actually had on someone's—we used the net promoter score methodology—likelihood to recommend the store experience. For those people who had prior great experiences, the negative effect didn't impact as much as people who were either newer to the store experience or had prior negative experiences.Edward: First impressions matter. If you make a great first impression on your customer, that first impression can be sticky and get you through some bad experiences down the line. Chris: Oftentimes, the people remember how you ended the experience first, then how you began the experience, and then everything in between. There's some research done—and I feel bad I don't have it off the top of my head—by some folks who were studying the impact of lines and how people had the experiences. But the ending mattered more than the beginning in individual experience. Edward: In terms of multiple experiences, are you always better than to invest in those early customers rather than a customer that's been around loyally? It's almost like if a customer's loyalty, that's the one that you'd least need to invest in?Chris: I'd thought about this in three buckets. There are your best customers, your almost best, and then everyone else. Oftentimes, I advocate spending enough on the best customers to keep them there. That is because if you have enough bad experiences, they're going to fall down. We've all probably experienced things like that company used to be great, but they're not great anymore. Enough to keep in there, but it's that next year, the next best that I personally would say you should invest more in. Edward: Chris, is it the best though, or is it the new customers? Because it sounds like you're saying before is that first impression really, really matters. Chris: Next best could be (to your point) the first impression for folks. We know that based on the channel of acquisition, the profile of this customer that they are likely to be, they would be on the path toward best customers. Treat them at the very beginning really well. Or could be people who've been around with you for a while who are starting to increase their purchase frequency, but they haven't necessarily got to that loyalty phase. I wouldn't say that I would choose either over the other. Going back to this concept experimentation, to actually try it, you don't know which one you're going to have the most leverage with. Honestly, I would say—at least my experience from most retailers—you're going to need to balance the acquisition component and your first impression with customers and so forth with those who are buying from you but aren't necessarily up at the top. You'll need to invest in doing both of those. Edward: What are those key metrics? You mentioned NPS, but other metrics that retailers should be using to predict or to be optimizing against to make sure their customers are loyal?Chris: I think the net promoter score is definitely a simplistic measure to use and it's fairly effective. Particularly in driving closed-loop operational improvements around customer experience. That's definitely a key one. Another one that I am a big proponent of is predictive customer lifetime value. Although it can be difficult to understand and interpret. It's really helpful and a barometer to say here's what we think at least the future spend will be. One area that takes a little bit of time to suss out, but if you can actually—for an individual brand—understand those emotional benefits that someone gets in your brand and find a way to measure that. That's another great way to experience this. Edward: What's an example of that?Chris: An example would be—going back to my Virgin example because they're the longer around. Imagine one of their things—the emotional benefit is—makes me feel special and welcomed. Maybe that's the emotional benefit. I'm just supposing that.Edward: Is it market research then? It's a matter of asking your customers survey questions and figuring out which of those answers matter?Chris: Which are the answers that matter, and there's an approach where you can figure that quantitatively through stated importance versus derived importance on these emotional benefits. You can either ask them (to your point) on an ongoing basis or if there's a way to actually—going back to leading indicators—measure that in a different fashion. That can be interesting. The question would be I don't know necessarily how to genericize that because a lot of that has to do with each individual customer and brand. That's why I would think through that. Edward: But it's a matter of the generalized way to ask a bunch of questions, run correlations, and which of those questions end up being leading indicators of the left-hand value of success in the future and then optimizing towards those questions. Chris, this has been great. Can you talk a little bit before you go about what your quake book is and how that changed the way you thought about the world?Chris: The book that stands out for me is a book called Tribal Leadership. Why that's important is it goes back to the example I shared with JCPenney and a few other examples I've had. The team that you're working with—the tribe that's trying to drive change in a company or drive success—matters probably more than the actual strategy of what the company is, at least in my opinion. Because I'm a big believer that teams that are motivated and work well together can solve any problem. Again, that's kind of [...], to some degree. It's something that I‘ve actually experienced personally in my life. What I love about this book Tribal Leadership is it talks about different levels of organizations. Starting with what they call level one, which is like prison gangs and tribes that happen there where they say things like, all lives sucks. All the way up to the very top level words like nirvana and flow. It's that one group you work with where everybody is just completing out their sentences, understand how to work together effectively. It's that once in a lifetime opportunity. What I love about this book is it gives you concrete examples of—if you're in a level two or three group—how do you get to the next level. And what are some tips and tricks to help you as an organization grow? I read this book first when I was in Intuit, it helped me as a leader understand that the craft of my work—which is analytics and data—is important. But what was more important is how to create a tribe or team that is successful and can drive the future. That's my quake book. Edward: Thank you so much, Chris. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate your time today. Chris: You're welcome. Thank you very much too. This is a public episode. 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Patreon member Amanda Keener joins Omar, Elizabeth and Chris to discuss their favorite Time Travel movies. Will Omar need a DeLorean to go back in time to change one of his top 3 movies? Will Elizabeth take a phone booth to the future to see that her top movie is not well received by Chris? Which movies made our definitive top 5 list? Tune in now to find out why we can't fade to gray on time travel movies. Join our patreon group to get in on the discussion.http://www.fadetograypodcast.comSocial media: @fadetograypodcastCheck out our friends over at Facing Off Podcast

Published Sep 6, 2018 - [Chris] G'day world, Chris Hogan coming to you live from the Gold Coast, and I'm here with Jack Corbett, who is co-founder of ISR training, and we're here for Get Fact Up!, episode 94, on why, focusing a disproportionate amount of energy on sales and marketing is critical to your business success. Thanks very much for joining me, Jack, how you going man? - [Jack] Really good, really really good. Thank you for inviting me along. - [Chris] No worries, mate. So why is it important that companies focus a disproportionate amount of energy on sales and marketing? - [Jack] I think the reality is that in all facets of business, without sales, you are scheduled to fail. I think that a lot of small business owners, especially people that are in that seed or startup phase, think in the first 12 to 18 months, it's all about R&D, it's all about product development. It's all about message to market. But the reality is that, if nobody wants to buy your product from you, because it's not either fulfilling a void in their life, or alternatively it's not meeting the budget they've got available to creating a solution to that problem, then you've got something that looks beautiful, but you're really the only person that's having a chance to use it. - [Chris] Perfect, so you guys have a sales system, you call it SWISH. - [Jack] We do. - [Chris] And what does SWISH stand for? - SWISH stands for selling with integrity, and selling honestly. After arriving here on the Gold Coast 10 years ago, from Birmingham in the UK, I found that unfortunately we don't have the greatest stigma in terms of the ethics that we have, and the customer-centric approach to our sales mechanisms. I saw that firsthand when I began to recruit salespeople around the Coast, most Gold Coast boiler rooms is the term they like using in mass media at the moment. Had one focus, which was how much money could they make and how quickly. And what I, I'm very much somebody who has the opinion that if you can solve a problem, a lot of money is the natural byproduct of doing so. - [Chris] Absolutely. We have a big belief at MeMedia that we need to create value for our clients. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] So we are all about creating value. - [Jack] Absolutely. - [Chris] And solving, I guess, global problems on a local scale. - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] Global minds is super important. So, what's one tip that people need to do, maybe, I guess in those very early stages of starting a company. - [Jack] - Yep. - [Chris] And, we'll start with that one. - [Jack] For me, I'd really focus on understanding your own price point. A lot of the times, I meet and I train an abundance of entrepreneurs, that have designed a product that fills a void in their life. One thing I will tell you, as entrepreneurs, is you are unicorns. You're very unique. We're not logical people, you know. We're somebody that's given over, 60, 80, 90, 100 hours of our week, to potentially never get paid for doing so. So I need you to appreciate you're not like the average Joe. Now if you want your product to be able to achieve global scale, then it needs to have mass appeal. So what I would do, first and foremost, is take my product to the market, I would give it to people who are not in my friend or family groups, because they will always have a biassed opinion, give it to your demographic of people you expect to purchase the product from you, for free, or for the bottom line expense, and ask them how much would they be willing to pay you for it. How often would they expect to purchase it from you, or with what regularity. And then I would scope my revenue model accordingly. Once I knew that, then I would say to myself, okay, if sales are what are going to help me to achieve growth within my business, how much time should I put aside, or should I actually assign to that task, for me in the early stages, follow the Pareto principle, 80, 20. If you're going to work for 10 hours a day, eight hours of those should be spent in revenue generating activities. - [Chris] Okay. And how does marketing tend to fall in to the whole sales and marketing process for you? - [Jack] For me, it's salt and pepper. They don't belong, either of them, on the plate without the other. So, you can have all the sales skills in the world, I've met these people. I've trained these people. They are guns. But they don't have a single customer's name, email address, or phone number to utilise or to engage conversation about the product or service. On the other side of that, there have been an abundance of businesses that generate high volumes of leads, they have to switch off their digital marketing, because they can't even communicate with the volume of people that are wishing to engage their services, yet, they don't have the customer communication skills, the rapport building skills, to make sure that they turn that lead into dollars in the tin, or dollars in the pocket. So for me, one cannot exist without the other, and there is really no value in disproportionately applying your time. I think they really are salt and pepper, 50, 50. - [Chris] Okay so, you've brought up a lot of points there, which is somewhat overwhelming for many people out there, especially when they're thinking about their marketing. - [Jack] Yep. - [Chris] So, we at Me Media, we're focused heavily on content. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] Distribution. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] Staying in constant contact, communication. - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] Which one has the highest priority, there, do you they come in that order, or? - [Jack] I'm about to answer this question like a politician, and I apologise for that, because there isn't a one size fits all answer there. I believe you need to be both recent and frequent, I think if you look at most consumer activity, you will purchase a product or service that was either made available to you most recently, i.e., I've walked through a shopping centre, oh, there you go, there's somebody that does what I need. Go in and purchase it. Or alternatively, you will do it with a company that has communicated with you most frequently. So, I believe you should be adding value to your database, with some content, approximately every three to four days, just to stay recent in their thinking, remain in their conscious thoughts, and therefore they're more likely to take activity against your product or service. But, the other side to that, is, content for content purposes is the quickest way to lose an audience. So, if that content in context to why they contacted you in the first place, or the problem they're experiencing, then you could lose me very quickly. You know, I won't name a business, but, I subscribe to a lot of development and building material, because I like to know, what big buildings are coming up in my city, and how I might be able to invest in them. And when a company then sends me information on their newest retirement village, you have immediately disconnected me as your audience, I'm probably not going to open their next email. - [Chris] Fantastic. So, that can actually come into tagging in sales and marketing automation systems, - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] So you're only sending out content that's of interest to that audience. - [Jack] For sure. - [Chris] And also, we have the content types. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] So, video, obviously text. - [Jack] Yes. - [Chris] Imagery, being photographs, or infographics, case studies, all of those types of things, all of huge value, but if they're out of context. - [Jack] They serve no relevance. - [Chris] Yep. - [Jack] Yep, absolutely. - [Chris] Fantastic. What would be one of the things that, you've had a tremendous growth trajectory in probably the last quarter of this year. What would be one of the things that maybe you would go back and change about your sales and marketing, sales and marketing, that maybe would have made this last three months even better? - [Jack] Yeah, I mean look, we've been quite fortunate in the fact that we've had an abundance of PR. And for me, true public relations are really the most powerful form of marketing, 'cause it's not you telling the world how good you are, from your first-party, biassed perspective, it's somebody else writing a news story on you or having an opinion that solidifies the services or the quality of the service that you're offering. But if I was to rewind the clock three months ago, and we aired on our episode of Shark Tank, aired on the fifth of June, so that's coming up in and around that two and a half month mark, what I probably would have done is been a little more tactical in my spend in the pay-per-click space. I very much targeted the major key words, such as sales training, business coaching, very competitive, very expensive, and hasn't shown to have the best conversion as there's a lot of window shopping in that space. So what we would have probably done is focused more on long tail key sentences, and definitely on search that's done in the spoken word. We're becoming aware that roughly one in every five searches on Google is now done through Alexa, through Google, through Siri, and the average person will speak about 17 words. Whereas when we type, we'll only type 3.4 to 3.7 words, before our Neanderthal impatience causes us to go, I need to search! - [Chris] With that noise. - [Jack] Yeah, I need answers, now! We will get very granular on our spoken search, you know, who are the best sales training organisation in and around the Gold Coast, that can support my call centre of 25 people in the insurance industry. Now what I've found, is that only gets searched three times a month, but there is nobody bidding on that search. So instead of paying 10 to 12 dollars, I'm paying 10 to 12 cents. And my conversions are probably three times greater, because I'm speaking to someone who actually knows what they're looking for. - [Chris] Fantastic, so data backed research, super important, something we absolutely focus heavily on as well. You're looking for those shoulder searches, shoulder niches, in and around your key service offerings. Fantastic advice. Thank you very much for your time, how do people stay across what ISR is up to? - [Jack] Look, with myself personally, I'm not huge on social media, which Chris is riding my back for, but you can always find me on LinkedIn, Jack Corbett, alternatively we're across all social media handles just at ISR Training.

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

Published Nov 13, 2017 Chris: Good day, world. Chris Hogan and Andrew Groat coming to you live from the MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads for "Get Fact Up" episode number 68 - on important marketing metrics to track. How you going, Andrew? Andrew: Good. How are you? Chris: Good, mate. So website traffic is probably the number one metric that people tend to track when they're looking at - obviously their marketing reports. And we know that being that high a level probably isn't good enough. Andrew: Yeah, traffic's not really that important. There're other things that you should be looking at. Chris: Cool. So we've got some example Google Analytics snapshots that we've got here from the Interwebs. And we wanted to just have a look over those and break some of them down. So here we have the Google Analytics snapshot of acquisitions and channels, it's real easy to find. And it's breaking down that high level traffic into multiple different channels... Andrew: The different marketing streams, yeah. So this one's eCommerce business, and straight off the bat you can see that something's wrong here, ‘cause you've got paid searches as the highest traffic. But, you need to circle a few things here, so the problem here is the bounce rate is massive. Paid search, high bounce rate, a lot of money's gone down the drain quite frankly. Chris: So let's talk about bounce rate while we're on that. So between 55% and 70% bounce rate is considered high. Anything over 70% is considered pretty much extreme. So it's time to bring that down. Andrew: So just to explain what a bounce is, it's when someone comes to your page - doesn't click on anything and then they leave. So someone that didn't interact with your page at all. Chris: And bounces can happen a lot. Especially in search and social - ah sorry, in paid search and social, because people have searched for a particular product. Andrew: They may not necessarily wanna see it. You might have put it in front of them when they don't want it. Chris: In paid search they've searched for a particular product, they've clicked on that link to that paid page and they've seen what they wanted to see - probably priced, they're shopping around, boom they're gone again. If you didn't entice them to click through to another page, then essentially they've bounced. And they could've been sitting on that page for a long time. In fact, they could've been sitting on that for hours, all day, reading all the content that you had to offer, but if they didn't click through to another page it's called a bounce. So the same thing can happen in social, right? Because... Andrew: Yeah, we say this all the time that social's people's down time. And if you're putting ads in front of them and they don't realise it, they've clicked through to an ad, they're often just gonna bail back out of that. Social traffic tends to have high bounce rate and lower engagement metrics because of that. But, it's a great branding opportunity, it's not a right off there. You just have to be showing the right sort of content, maybe not necessarily trying to get someone to buy something straight from Facebook. Chris: And then we've got on that same slide we've got their conversion rate, and 3.11 conversion rate. Conversions categorised as 2% as average, 5% is good and 10% plus is great. So they're sitting between averaging good. Now if we were going to say, for example if the client said, "Hey, while I'm getting lots of traffic on paid search, that's great, I'm gonna increase my spend." Andrew: Well I would say don't even bother. Especially when you have a little bit further down that email traffic is a 10.24% conversion rate. I would be saying do more email campaigns, 'cause that's obviously working really well. And then maybe have a look at bringing this bounce rate down, put a bit of work into that. Make some more relevant content, have a look at your page load potentially and have a look at your targeting - maybe you're showing your ads to the wrong people. Chris: There's so much you can do in eCommerce. Show that there's a sale on and that it's a limited time. For example, there's a counter there just above the "add to cart" button that says buy now or you'll miss out. For instance... Andrew: Get some more testimonials. Get some more reviews and writings and things like that. Chris: More content on that page essentially. So that is called conversion rate optimisation. Improving your page to improve conversions. If you can improve those conversions then potentially go back and invest more dollars into that paid advertising. Andrew: I would also say maybe get a heat map or a screen recording software installed on the website and actually get some hard data - hard evidence about what's going on there. It might just be as simple as there's no calls to action above the fold, it might be a real easy fix. Chris: Could be an error. Paid search - don't forget if you've got so many heaps of campaigns, that's a very high level view. You could have one campaign that's absolutely tanking because for whatever reason your products are no longer available, discontinued or something like that. Andrew: Yeah, that's right. Especially with AdWords, it could just be one keyword's just ruining your entire campaign. It's really important to be looking at those metrics as well. Chris: So let's move on to slide 7 where we've actually got a different eCommerce business where their highest traffic source is organic. Andrew: Whoa, yeah, they're doing really well. 11% conversion rate. Chris: And they're converting 11% on that organic traffic. That's really good. Essentially then we looked at paid searches, their second biggest paid channel. And they've got a 7% conversion rate there. And so therefore they're advertising campaign on AdWords needs tweaking and improving because obviously there's a good conversion rate happening in organic. There's not a lot wrong with their pages, but that conversion rate indicates to me that maybe their actual advertising campaigns wrong. Andrew: Yeah, that's what I think. Maybe they just needed to tighten up what they're targeting there. Another good thing that I've seen with this one - we've got a great ad, but they've got their revenue filled in there. So they're actually pushing data of all their sales back, which is awesome because that means they can actually measure ROI properly, so you can have a look at your AdWords page and analytics - you can see how much you spending and what you're getting back for it, then you get that ROI metric. That's awesome if you can actually get that, it's not possible for everyone. Chris: Which comes down to cost per acquisition. Andrew: That's right, so if you know that then you can scale as far as you want. Chris: So cost per acquisition is basically cost per sale. Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Chris: Instead of tracking cost per click, track cost per acquisition. If you bring that down... Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Also, here their bounce rate is incredibly low on this one. Chris: Yeah, 19.43% on organic search and 14.78% even on paid, which is just awesome. Really good. Andrew: Two other metrics I think worth mentioning here because this is so high on this one I just want to say. Under behaviour on here, you've got bounce rate, pages per session, average session duration. Pages per session is really important, that's how many - for each person that comes to your site, that's how many different pages they go on there. And if you're above 2.5% that's pretty good. Their average pages per session across all channels is 6.89%, that's great. That means people are really searching around going through everything. Chris: Yup. Andrew: Also, the session duration: 3 minutes, that's great too. If you've got above 2 minutes that's awesome. People spending a lot of time on their website. They've obviously got a lot of really good related content, a lot of good internal linking. I'd say they've got a really good interface there as well. Chris: So, on product pages you may also be interested in if they're doing blogging then potentially they've got interlinked pages. Here's the product we're talking about - go and check it out in the cart, all that sort of stuff. Andrew: They've got a great funnel, that much is obvious. So yeah, they're doing great. Chris: Slide 8, we've got a service based business, and obviously which means no eCommerce tracking on the site. And the highest channel - highest volume of traffic coming through is via organic for this one. Now, they've got a 56% bounce rate on their organic and 2.12 pages per session. Andrew: It's not bad. Chris: Yeah, that's right. Andrew: But there's room, room to improve, that's for sure... Chris: There is room for improvement. So, with bounce rate, like we said, that people are coming in and their not exactly seeing what we wanted them to see and they're leaving. But with 2.12 pages per session on organic - they kind of are finding what they are wanting to find. They're not really that eager to make an inquiry because their actual conversion rate is low, in the 2%'s, so it's an average conversion rate. Andrew: Yeah, so maybe there's a trust issue there and that's where I'd say probably maybe looking at getting some reviews, testimonials, that sort of thing - maybe having a look at the form, reducing the amount of fields in the form. Just to bring down all the barriers, make it easier for an inquiry to happen there. Chris: Really good point you've made there, Andrew, about the barriers to inquiry and completing a form. Those - Don't ask for too much information, what do you really need from people? Name, phone number, email address - that's pretty much it. Andrew: Yeah, like that's it. Even have a request to call back can be a better option than having an inquiry. Sometimes people don't feel that comfortable about filling all that information in. Chris: An optional message field is good. I think leave that one optional. So the top 3 required and an optional message field, boom. And then that could absolutely increase the conversion rate on those inquiries. Andrew: If I was to give these people any advice, though, it would be look at they're social campaigns, though here. Cause you can see there that their conversion rate is .9% on social. Bounce rate's 84%, like obviously they're sending the wrong message out there or maybe just reaching the wrong people. There's massive room for improvement there. Chris: Yeah, hard one, I'm with you on that. There's definitely some improvements that are needed. I mean, what are they sending people to this site for? Is it to consume content? They're not really clicking through to other pages on the site. It's - pages per session 1.6, time on site a minute ten. They really do need to reconsider why they're sending people there and... Andrew: Obviously sending them there for maybe promoting blogs or something like that. But then you just have to look at what they're doing next. Chris: They need to encourage and click through... Andrew: Calls to action in their blogs. Chris: Yeah, super important. Cool. Slide 9, we've got another service based business. So again organic search is the highest traffic source. Bounce rate is lower, 48%, that's great. It's good, rather. And 2.39 pages per session, which is pretty much average there. And a conversion rate of 4.84%. So, their conversion rate's obviously better than the last. And that means that their calls to action are much better and their barriers... Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative)... Chris: Their forms are probably better. They potentially got testimonials or some kind of - they've developed some kind of trust with the audience to encourage that inquiry. Maybe there's some sort of free offer, potentially round that... Andrew: Yeah, their funnel could just be better overall. And it might just be a type of service that people are more interested in, in general, you never really know that. Chris: Industry comes in... Andrew: That's right, yeah like some people just have a tough industry that you always have to consider. Chris: Exactly. So apart from website traffic sources we wanna focus on what's happening out there in amongst the other - I guess campaigns that we could be running. So, obviously social is probably the most popular and most common activity that people are undertaking when they're doing marketing. I think we've spoken about this before, but just to recap, what's some of the metrics people need to be tracking when they're doing social campaigns? Andrew: Okay, big thing for me is always engagement, especially the social. You wanna say that people are actually interacting with your content. Clicks through the website not always that important, 'cause you can see that they might be doing nothing when they get to the website. Most important thing is that they're having a good time on the social platform first and foremost. And then something that people don't often look at is one called "social clicks", which is a sort of like the viral effect. It's when someone's interacted with your content and then their friends doing it or maybe they've shared it to someone else. That's that sort of roll off growth effect that happens on social, that's a really important one, cause that means that the community's accepting it. It means it's getting shared around. Chris: And another really important metric that people need to be targeting - I'm sorry, monitoring when they're looking at their reports, their monthly reports, is search into results pages. So the results of their ranking of their keywords in search. Andrew: That's right. So you can look at your traffic for organic and that's great but you really wanna know where it's coming from, because you wanna know what you wanna optimise for on what you should be creating more content for. If you're not using a software for tracking your search engine results, you can go into search console and everyone should have search console. Google search console set up. You can have a look at your keyword report in there and that'll show you all the traffic that's coming in for different keywords and it will also show you the impressions for different keywords. So you can see who's seeing you for different keywords. And that at least is very important because that data's not in Google analytics anymore. Chris: It's not a complete picture because Google has wiped out a lot of the keywords that people actual typing in under a category called, "not provided", but... Andrew: It shows a lot more than Google analytics at least. Chris: Exactly. Andrew: So you get something there. Chris: Yeah. Is that all we got time for? Look I think this is a very high level view. Still, we've sorta dived in a little bit. But, with eCommerce there's so much more you could be looking at. Once you've got some of that conversions - what's happening with the conversions? Well potentially people are getting to the cart, and they're abandoning cart. So you need to look at the exit pages and what can you do there? Well you can be running automated email campaigns. You can be running remarketing campaigns on Google AdWords and social. There's lots of opportunities there. But again we said we're gonna have a high level view, and I think we've done that here so hopefully that's - I guess helpful. Anything to add, Andrew? Andrew: You know what? We could just go on forever. But I think maybe we'll do one on each specific channel, in the future, I'd think it'd be good. Chris: Yeah. Great! Well, thanks very much for your time. That was "Get Fact Up", episode 68. And you're here with Andrew Groat and Chris Hogan from MeMedia, here at the Burleigh Heads Studio's on the Gold Coast. Cheers.

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

Here we go again! We're back and talking about what we did over our long weekend! How was Dragon*Con? Who is the best Chris? Which actors did we not know were British? Find out all of that and then some in this extremely silly episode! Also make sure you join our new discord channel and hang out with the community! discord.gg/7DqMZSy ENJOY! Intro / Outro - Feelin Good provided by Mike (Pound 4 Pound Podcast) & Marion Moore from ALBM Production

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