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In today's episode of Building Texas Business, I speak with Chuck Leblo, founder of Interact One. Chuck shares his entrepreneurial journey from working in the corporate world, where he was overwhelmed by paperwork, to starting his own business. He offers valuable lessons learned from launching a side business while employed and the critical decisions that helped him succeed. Chuck leaves us with wisdom on building effective teams and maintaining a balanced lifestyle as an entrepreneur. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Chuck Leblo, the founder of Interact One, shares his journey from corporate America to entrepreneurship, detailing the reasons behind his transition, such as the overbearing workload in his corporate job. We highlight the importance of having a side gig while starting a business to ensure financial stability. He explains how his unique problem-solving skills were instrumental in the exponential growth of his business from a modest $14,000 to a whopping $140,000 a month. Chuck details his process of tackling a telecom company's issue of short duration calls and building a team of diverse fractionals to aid in problem-solving. He talks about the various challenges he faced as an entrepreneur, including the need to make decisions and pivot the business when necessary. We discuss the impact that COVID-19 had on his business and how he successfully managed to meet the new market needs. He emphasizes the importance of building a successful team of partners and fractionals and shares his experience in helping businesses navigate the remote working world. Chuck shares his experience of managing a large-scale door-to-door team in the deregulated electricity market in Texas and the challenges of the project. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, sharing his personal experience and strategies. Chuck advises entrepreneurs to treat everyone with respect, earn people's trust, and widen their network to succeed in business. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller GUESTS Chuck LebloAbout Chuck TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Chuck Leblo, founder of Interact One. Through Interact One, chuck helps business owners solve problems and stresses the importance of building trust with clients as the foundation to successfully growing your company. All right, chuck, I want to thank you for joining me here on Building Texas Business. It's great to have you on the show. Now it's a pleasure to be here. So I know you've got a business or two you're involved with now and maybe others you've had before. But let's just kind of start by you telling the listeners kind of a little bit about yourself and the company that you've got and what it's known for. Chuck: Well, I'm pretty boring story, but so Interact One. Really, we're known for being problem solvers right, and not the type of problem solvers like I need a guy whacked right. Chris: Yeah, we have to stop the recording right now. Chuck: Right, right right, so I can say use the money, you can be my legal counsel, right. So, but now we solve problems for businesses right, and we've been doing that for about 17, 18 years now. I've always been known as a natural problem solver, from the time of a kid all the way through the military, through my corporate days and into my business. So it was a natural, natural evolution for me to just basically start a company that solves problems. Chris: All right. So I guess you mentioned a lot of, I guess, background going back from your childhood and military service. What was the real inspiration for you to kind of becoming an entrepreneur and actually starting a business? Chuck: Well, so 20 years in corporate America I was. I started out as a problem solver on an engineering basis right In telecom and then I got into the business side and I solved business problems which were more to do with like profitability right. And one day I was sitting there and I looked around my office and I just saw stacks in the business 20 years ago, right, everything wasn't digitized then. So stacks and stacks of invoices and contracts and lease cost, routing guides and all of this kind of stuff and I realized I was wasting my life away just doing that, just spending all my time. I was heavily compensated for what I did. Most people would die to have the job, but I was just like I'm not spending time with my family, I'm working 20 hours, sometimes 20 hours a day, right, and I said enough is enough. So I started my. At that point, you know, I had the funds available and I started my own company. Now, unfortunately in retrospect, I started a company doing basically exactly the same thing that I was doing for the telecom companies. I was controlling profitability for helping other telecom companies do that and then helping fortune 1000 clients and government agencies do it. So so that was like my little step in entrepreneurship, because I was really doing the same thing, but just doing it on my own. Then, about five years later six years later is when I really said no, we got to go full tilt into just solving problems. I want to solve them for all types of businesses. So really it was just sitting there looking at all the boxes and just to press the heck out of me. Chris: Yeah, the guy sounds like you're in a situation where you lost your motivation and you had to kind of look introspectively to go. How can I regain the motivation and inspiration I had about what it is I did? Chuck: Yeah. Chris: I wasn't excited about it anymore. Yeah, so. So you step out on your own, whether it was kind of that in that first venture or the five year later, let's talk about that. I mean, what were some of the, the lessons you learned that you were like, oh, I wish I to someone would have told me this. Right, it's like I gotta imagine some things kind of hit you in the face and you had to learn to adapt really quick to now you know, owning your own show. Chuck: Yeah, so the first thing I learned was when I took that first step, right where I owned the company, doing exactly what I was doing before, and what I learned was one it's feast or famine out there, right, as a consultant. It was a. It was feast or famine. The second thing I learned was it's okay to keep your toe in the corporate pond, right. So what I would do is, during those types of famine, I would go get a little gig you know, part time gig help a company out to pay the bills. One of the examples is we did an analysis for state government where we looked at five years of their telecom bills going back. We got them about five million bucks back, okay. So we renegotiated all their contracts, saved them about three million dollars a year going forward. Wow, it took us two years to do that analysis and to start getting that money back and we were paid on a contingency basis. We got a percentage of what we got them back. So two years without money. So if I hadn't known at the time that it's okay, it's okay to be, it's okay to be a part time entrepreneur, and in most cases it's better to get your side gig going before you take a full time side, before you take that side gig full time yeah. Chris: Yeah, that's interesting perspective because I don't know that. I've heard people use that term before, but I think there's some truth to it about that. Okay to be a part time entrepreneur, to kind of get your legs underneath yeah. Chuck: Now most people think that they have a side gig and then that side gig becomes their new job. I looked at it as that, that my business was my job, that I looked at the corporate America side as the side gig. Chris: Yeah, okay. So so you get you kind of learn that lesson and you move forward. What were some of the things, when you look back, that you feel like were the decisions you made that kind of set the foundation for your future success Because anything right, you can use any analogy you want, but also you got to have a strong foundation to be able to build from Anything that comes to mind that you really look back on and are kind of proud of the early decisions you made, in the way you set things up. Chuck: I think that you have to choose your clients wisely, right? There's an old saying out there that if everyone's your potential customer, no one's a customer. Right, you have to and I'm listening up, because I'm not perfect in any means. When I first started, I started going just after telecom companies, and that because that was what I knew. I'd spent 20 years in telecom and I had to learn all other aspects if I wanted to do this. So, you know, I became an expert at digital marketing. I already knew operations from telecom. I already knew finance from telecom. Right technology, of course I knew that one. I really know a whole lot about HR or legal, but what I didn't know was marketing and sales. So I had to become an expert in that Right. And that was really the catalyst is when I went from just being a just knowing, just doing telecom companies to now specializing in really all types of businesses, but only particular size businesses. So I learned that I didn't want to do business with those big fortune 1000s anymore. The big electric providers right, those were our clients. Telecom companies, those were the state agencies, government agencies and things like that. I didn't want to deal in that arena anymore because I can impact a small business much more. Right, if I save a small business you know $100,000 a year or fix a problem that solves, that's worth $100,000 or $200,000, that's much more impactful than getting a state agency back $5 million because it's not real money to them anyway. Right, it's just taxpayer money. It's not like they're going to give it back to the taxpayers. They're going to find someplace else to spend it. Chris: Right, right. Well, I think there's some truth to what you're saying is, as you're starting out with the new business, it's very important to be really laser focused about who your customer is and stay kind of within those bounds and not start to chase every little thing that may come your way because it may not fit your skill set, it may not fit your purpose and it can be distracting. Chuck: It can be distracting and it'll give you, you know, doubt as to what you're doing, whether or not you're competent, right, and that'll kill you as an entrepreneur. When you start doubting yourself and doubting your abilities than others will. Chris: So we've talked a little bit about kind of getting started as you were kind of moving through the process. You've talked about kind of focusing in, I guess after about five years on really just being a problem solver. Let's talk maybe a little more detail about what are some of the things you're talking about when you say you know we solve problems. I know they can vary, but I'm just curious about some kind of specifics, to the extent you can share some specifics on that. Chuck: Sure. First of all, I always tell people is your problem worth at least $2,000? Don't be gonna do me with a problem, right? That's not worth something. I'm not doing it for free, so let me give you an example. So about a year and a half ago I got called by a customer of mine, a roofer, and he goes hey, I've got this company that I want to outsource my back office to and I need you to vet them. So that's a problem. I said, okay, fine, let me vet them for you. So I did that and they were a good company, right. And about six months later after that, I get a call from that company and as owner of the company, and she held up a little sticky note and it said hire Chuck. And I said what's that? She goes. When we had our conversation I know that I knew that I needed a Chuck and I said, okay, so how can I help you? And she goes listen, I've been in business for almost a year now. We're an outsourced VA virtual assistance company and we're just not really making. We're not growing fast enough. We're going to get about $14,000 a month in revenue. And I said okay, and I took a look into our organization and we started making some changes and first thing we did was we rebranded her as a business process outsourcing company instead of a virtual assistance company. Then we made some operational changes with her personnel, helped her grow and hire the right people, got all of her people certified in the softwares that they were using so they could truly be viewed as an expert instead of just a virtual assistant. In less than a year they went from $14,000 a month revenue to $140,000 a month in revenue. Okay, just changes that. We did Another company, a telecom company, swiss telecom, a telecom company right, they were getting a lot of short duration calls that they were being billed for and they didn't know what the problem was. So we've got a problem. So we did an analysis of tens of millions of TCAP messages which are getting technical here in SS7. It's like a phone record, but it's the digital version of it, right and we found that what was happening was, down the line, one of the providers that they were connecting to, because, remember, you go through several switches. You call them the US, it might go here. Anyway, one of those switches was given back what's called false answer supervision, before the call was ever answered. So that's why they're having short duration calls. People would call, it would ring nine, 10 times, no one would answer and they'd hang up but it was showing it's answered. So we fixed that problem. So really, it's any type of problem. It's like I want to open a new location, okay, so one of the things that we do in our LinkedIn reach out, that we do how we find clients is we just ask people what their problem is and we tell them everyone. We tell them how we would solve the problem. One is what's the true problem and what's the real problem? Because a true problem or their problem might be I need more revenue. Okay, so what's the real problem? Or is the real problem you need more revenue because your costs are too high, because if your costs are too high and we bring in more revenue, we put you out of business because you're selling low cost, right? Is it because you're marketing? Is it because you just don't have the right staff in place? So we do that analysis and take them through that and either fix it for them and hand it back to them or, once it's corrected, we can monitor on an ongoing basis. Chris: So when you do these projects, you assume you're not just a one man show. You've got a team working with you, and how have you gone about, I guess, building that team around you to make sure you have the right people? Chuck: So what I? Did is listen. So experience is important, diversity is important right, and diversity from the sense of people with different backgrounds are going to have different ways that they interpret a problem and the corrective action that they would find for that right. So although I'm the chief strategist for the company, I don't really go by the title CEO, but I'm CEO and chief strategist. I'm more of a strategy kind of guy, so I do handle a lot of the problems. Chris: When you know, name of the companies interact one. Chuck: You're going to interact with me, right? In most cases, but what we did is we wanted to find people like me, because I don't know everything that lets surround yourself with people smarter than you, right? So we go out and we find fractional people just like me, right? Possibly someone that's got a full-time job, they are a CEO of a company or they're an entrepreneur that own their own company or they're an accountant, right? So we have a lot of people that are working with us for finance issues, it professionals, right, and we've built a network of these people to where we hold all of their information so that when a problem comes in, we have three or four or five in some cases, 10 people that we can send that problem to and see what their thoughts are on it and then engage that person the one that we want to engage with to help us solve that. And then we do the program management or the program project management of that and we have a lot of employees, but we have a lot of fractionals working for us. Chris: Okay, that's an interesting model. I mean it makes sense, given what you're doing, and then you can kind of pick the right person for the issue at hand, Absolutely. So we were talking a little bit earlier and I know you know we talked about challenges you faced and being an entrepreneur and I just want you know, maybe share, some of the challenges you've gone through and how that's impacted the business or changed what you've done. From you know, from a, I guess, a business strategy. Chuck: Well, I mean, if you're in business, you're always going to have challenges, right. So you know, starting from the very beginning, just being able to redirect yourself. You know don't beat a dead horse, redirect, you know, make a decision one way or the other lead, follow. Get out of the way all those little sayings they say is you know, do that? Make decisions. Some of the you know. The first one was switching from being just strictly telecom to really handling smaller businesses. That was one. Then we diversified into where we had our own public relations firm because a lot of companies, what they were, what we found is a lot of companies have an issue with actually people knowing who they were right. So we created that company and being able to to in the economy, be able to utilize, you know, both companies right. Listen when very small businesses, they can't afford a lot sometimes but they can afford a little bit and that's like the PR company. One of the challenges that we had with that diversification is when COVID hit. Right, we were leading up into COVID. We were spending probably 90% well, 70% of our business was from a revenue perspective, was coming from the PR firm and these are small clients paying $395, $500 a month, right, for our PR services. And the Interact One, the more consulting, the high dollar ones, was really just me at that time, okay, and when COVID hit, basically all those customers call me hey, we don't know what's going on. We've got to stop and we've let everyone out of their contracts, for sure, but we lost about 90% of that business, and at the time I really didn't know what I was. Yeah, it was a very big hit and they really know what to do. But then I started thinking well, people really have problems now. Right, they've got problems that need solved. A lot of problems were, you know, during COVID is. You know, how do we maintain a remote workforce? How do we keep our store open but just have deliveries? How do we keep our employees engaged out? You know, how do we give our customers engaged? How do we transfer our shop from totally brick and mortar to an online right? So it was a godsend for me as far as building back up or getting more involved in the Interact One business. But because if I didn't have that, I don't know where I'd be today. I'd probably be dipping my toe back in the corporate pond again, right, right, but you've got to be able to. Chris: Yeah, the ability to, I guess you know, kind of pivot when necessary and kind of keep going is critical, yeah, For an entrepreneur especially small business owner Yep. What other? I guess, excuse me, what other advice when you think about how you interact with your? You know your partners, your kind of your, these, maybe these what I would call maybe alliances you have with other fractionals. But maybe there are other type of partners you used to keep your business successful, whether that's you know banking relationships, you know accounting, legal. What are some advice you have on that, on you know best practices to make sure you kind of surround yourself with that kind of strong team that you need to kind of have a stable business. Chuck: Yeah. So, listen, a lot of small businesses out there, right, they try to do it all themselves, right and don't. Right, there are professionals out there that can help you and even if you want to build everything in house, you know, make sure that you know, like you said, have a strong relationship with a banker, a financial person, you know, some sort of business coach maybe to help you do things. What I do is I just try to treat everyone with respect and, as a consultant, sometimes we especially when we're solving problems, right, I can't, someone can't say something to me and me go well, crap, how stupid are you? Right, you got to treat that business owner with respect and sometimes, if they're making boneheaded decisions, there's a little bit of dance involved in it. Right, so be respectful and earn people's trust and with, whether it's your business partners like me, you know all the other C level professionals that I work with, right, because most of the people that we bring on as our partner or our hybrid or partner or fractional whatever you want to call it consultants that we lean on in areas that we don't have the expertise, they're all C level, okay, so you've got to be respectful of them and trust their decision. Now we have a leave at them. First, right, trust just isn't given. But you know, be respectful and widen your network. Right, you're only as good as the people that you're surrounded by. Chris: Yeah, no, that's for sure. And they're a reflection of you, right? If you're bringing them in, whether that's an employee and you're putting them on a project or a consultant, and you're bringing them in, whoever that client is sees them as a reflection of you. So it's important to make sure they align, you know, with your fundamental values, absolutely, absolutely so in what I think you referred to this a minute ago, when you're talking about certain problems, you've been helping people solve anything you've seen in the last couple of years where you've been involved and maybe in certain projects and develop some. I don't know if there are best practices, but I'm thinking about work, the work remote world we're in and helping companies kind of navigate to a place that can work for the business, to remain profitable but also allow for some of that flexibility. Anything you can share on that regard. Trust Right. Chuck: So one of the biggest problems Just in case. Chris: I didn't hear that clearly. I want to make sure the audio is clear. You said trust. Chuck: That's what I'm talking about Trust, right, that's my text is coming out Trust. So what happens? And it's instilled a sin from the very beginning? Oh, 40 hours a week, and this is your rate, right? And how do I know that my people are working if they're not here? And I can see what's going on behind the desk? And my answer to them is the work being done. Right, is the work being done? And you, as a manager this is what I tell the business owner you, as a manager, need to make sure that you're giving them the work that can be done in the time period that you want it done in, right? You know, if you give someone three things to do and they can do it in four hours instead of eight hours, well, those are the things you needed them to do and they did it. So why shouldn't they get paid what you would have paid them, which was eight hours, okay, but then again, if you don't have your finger on it to where you know how long it takes them to do something, then that's on you, that's not on them. And if you give them too much and they're not getting it all done, then that's when you've got to start looking into it. Am I giving them too much Right. Chris: So the main thing with work remote. Chuck: That I tell, like I said I tell people is trust your people Trust, trust yourself that you made the right decision when you hired them, right, or it's your fault anyway, and then trust the fact that they're working. I've seen businesses that are like well, they've got to log into this system and stay logged in. Okay, well, they could be logging in while they're taking a nap. That doesn't mean that they're doing the work. Well, you know, we make them have a zoom open so that at any time we can look and see if they're working. I said you know I would quit. I don't, I'm going to do the work, but if you're insisting on having a camera on me making sure that I'm doing work all the time, then it's not a right fit. Right, there has to be trust. Chris: Yeah, you're right. I mean I think you know, in addition to trust, I think what I've seen and I think you're saying this as well is you got to communicate clearly what the expectations are Right. So when you talk about these assignments, I mean you know not only is the word getting done, is it getting done timely and efficiently and correctly Right, and if so, then you know you're on to something. And if not, then you got to correct that from a work performance standpoint and be able to say look, this is what the assignment was, this is what the deadline was, and if it didn't meet the standards, be able to explain why. And then figure out what's the right corrective action from there. Chuck: Yeah, expectations are everything and then being able to you know, another thing you do is get buy in from that remote worker you know how, what can you do, how much can you do it? You know, it's like my telecom days, the old telecom days. You had what was called an occupancy rate, so you had a call center where people are answering the call and then, oh, I want 100% occupancy, which that meant that 100% of the time that people were on the phone. And it's not possible, right, even the best call centers run at 60 to 65% occupancy, right, and you got to realize the way your people are too. If you're paying them for eight hours, you know what you'll be good, you're doing really good if you're getting six hours of real work out of them. Because you got to stop and think sometimes, as, as American culture, we really, I guess we really think that our employee employees owe us when really we owe them. Chris: Yeah, that's a good point. So let's talk a little bit just about you know, maybe on your personal leadership style. How would you describe your leadership style? And first there, and then you know how do you work with some of your clients. Maybe help them with their leadership style when those opportunities present themselves. Chuck: Well, I think that in the business that I'm in, I have to be collaborative, right, you can't make all the decisions and do everything yourself, and really that's what business owners have to do all the time telling them that you're, you know, you're micromanaging your people, you know. Give them some room to breathe, let them have some creativity, let them help make decisions. Don't just tell them what to do, ask them what needs to be done, and that's kind of my leadership style, right. But then I always go back to problem solving. So I want to know what the real problem is, what, not just the problem, the problem, you think the perceived problem, but what is the real problem and how can we correct this with any decision that's made? Chris: Yeah, so kind of we talked a little bit about this maybe. But I want to ask you a maybe different way when you think about yourself and your career, any kind of setbacks that you've encountered, that you look back and go man, that was a tough time, or I made a boneheaded decision or whatever, but what I learned from it benefited me so much that I can look back and be grateful for that experience. Anything come to mind for there that you can share? Chuck: Yeah, Back when I kind of first started the Interact One on the marketing side, when I was learning marketing, I had a company come to me and it was like we want you to help us acquire more customers. You remember back when deregulation happened on electricity in Texas. Chris:So we started working. Chuck: The problem and the problem that we gave them was you need to have a door-to-door team that needs to be trained this way and done this way and do all this kind of stuff. And they said, okay, great, do it for us. And 286 people later right, five locations across the state of Texas, a lot of money, Thank you, but it wasn't worth it and it almost made me to where I didn't want to even continue. Right, it was so stressful having that many people that are working on a commission-only basis right, Selling electricity, training them, looking at Perf and all of that kind of stuff. So it was very profitable and it's one of the things that, if I had my if I go back in time, that's maybe one thing that I would have changed is I wouldn't have went down that path that took so much energy and took three years of my life to do that. I could have done much greater things. Chris: I believe, interesting. So that kind of segues well into the next question I want to ask you and that is how do you go about maintaining you know there's all the. You know the typical word is work-life balance, and I'm kind of a believer and I had some other guests on the podcast and I agree with this is more about work-life integration than how do you manage both, because you have work and you have your personal life and how do you integrate those so you can show up effectively in both? What are some of the things that you do to try to make that happen in your life? Chuck: I take naps. Chris: I love it. Chuck: I'm a big proponent of taking naps, but really OK. So I've got, maybe, a different viewpoint, because I did the corporate America gig for 20 years and I had my business, grew it very big, then pulled it back small again and I work because I want to work. There is no work-life balance. I have life and I work when I want to work. And if I want to work five hours this week, that's what I work this week. If I want to take a week off, I take a week, and I know it's different for a lot of entrepreneurs, you know. But I'm entering the, the, the twilight state. I don't look at that. I'm pretty dang old, right, and I think that for the younger people starting out, or you know, mid-mid-age, right it's important, right? Don't do what I did in the first 20 years of my career, where all I did was work and I saw my kids on weekends, which initially eventually led to a divorce, which meant that I only saw them every other weekend, right? Yeah, 14 years ago I started over again. Wonderful woman, she keeps me grounded and she is my life, makes me want to be a better man, and we started a new family, so that helps out too. So I've got an eight year old son now, right, and I've got an eight year old granddaughter and I've got an eight year old grandson right. Oh, wow, yeah. So it gives you the. It's allowing me to have a second chance with that and I'm not going to fail it. So, yeah, I don't necessarily know how you do it, whether it's working out or yoga. This is the one of the one of the people in the podcast. They were doing yoga and all this kind of stuff. I know that you have to have something that stimulates your brain at all points in time. I've got an eight year old that does that I've got. You've got to have something that exercises your body. I've got an eight year old that does that. I help coaches lacrosse team and the day after practices I can barely walk. So I don't know if I have a great answer for it. I know it's important, but I'm not there anymore. I just I work because I want to work. Chris: Yeah, no, I work great hours. I think what I love there. Everyone has a little different take on it because, look, everyone's situation is different and so you've got to get to figure out what works in your ecosystem and your environment, and that includes, right, the family and the business and the career and all those things, and those things can change over time. Chuck: There's another camp. Chris: All right. So yeah, I appreciate all this has been really good stuff. I'm going to turn it a little bit to the lighter side and ask you what was your first job? Like real job or entrepreneurial job? No, that real job, I mean I don't know, like in junior high you had to pay for route, or yeah. No, I didn't, I didn't do the paper route. Chuck: So my for my, as I was raised by a single mom, right, we didn't have anything. She was a waitress. So I went into the family business and I bust tables and lost dishes at a restaurant. Chris: That will humble you really quick right, make you hungry, and not just hungry to say I want something different. Chuck: Yeah, I know that I want. I always knew that I wanted to have something more than what I had growing up. Chris: I know you said you listened to some of the prior podcast episodes, so I know you're ready for this one Tex-Mex or barbecue. Chuck: Well, it depends where right Sure, you know. So I do my own barbecue. Okay, so if I'm eating out someplace, I don't necessarily do Tex-Mex very well, except for guacamole I'm a great guacamole. But so I would say, if I'm eating out, it's a text. I eat more Tex-Mex than barbecue, but I enjoy barbecue. Chris: Ma'am, I may have to see if you can ship me some of yours and I bet it's pretty good. Yeah, I make some pretty good barbecue. I love. The honest answer there was. It depends where, because so many of us have. Well, if it's, you know, if it's this that I'm hungry for, then it might be this barbecue joint or this different Tex-Mex place. So I have to share. I just saw and I share with my girls, you know the L L L L Roya in Austin in their signs. There, there was, I saw a picture of this. One says Texan a person who chooses a restaurant based on their chips and salsa. Chuck: You know that's very true, Isn't that true? Chris: What we need is a. Chuck: Tex-Mex barbecue. Chris: Yeah, but we have some of that here in Houston. We have some places that are using like brisket in their tacos and things, so it is. Chuck: They have Korean barbecue. Right, they have Korean barbecue, so why not? You know Tex-Mex barbecue and you know have more. Of. You know the beans would be more of the barbecue style beans with some jalapenos in there. So I put jalapenos in everything. So everything is Tex-Mex. Chris: I like it. Well, you and I may have to get offline and we may come up with a new restaurant concept here. Chuck: Yeah, so okay, last question. This one's out of the menu, yeah. Chris: Everything's out of the menu. Yes. Last question is, if you could take a 30-day sabbatical or you just get away, where would you go and what would you do? Chuck: Well. So sabbatical means something different, right, and getting yourself in a different thing. So I like, at least twice a year, we go to the Smoky Mountains, which is my, that's my spot, right. When I first went to the Smoky Mountains, I was like this is where I belong, right. But a sabbatical might be a little bit different, and I think it would be really cool to go over to Africa and do a photo safari. I don't want to shoot the animals anymore. I did that growing up. I don't need to do it anymore, but to get them on camera and to live in the camps and stuff like that would just be. That'd be something to be really cool, yeah. Chris: It's a bucket list item for sure. Yeah, that's great. Chuck: Well, Chuck, I want to thank you again for taking the time. Chris: come on the show and share your story. I love hearing kind of the career you've had and the way you evolved and I love this the way you're helping companies solve big problems, so really appreciate it. Chuck: Well, I appreciate you having me. It was fun. Chris: All right, we're going to stop the recording there. Let me see if I can actually do that. Hmm, no, here we go. I'm not the host, it won't love me, but they know where we stopped, so hey. I was talking, I talk enough. No, you did great. Look, we, you know I was watching our timer. Yeah, we were. We probably stopped the recording in minute 3435 and 30 to 40 minutes is our goal, so we were right in the sweet spot. And yeah, and it always goes so fast because you're just having a conversation and I think everyone gets amazed that I can't believe it went that well. We were actually talking for that long, but yeah. Chuck: In my business I don't talk, I listen. So it's hard for me to fathom that I'm. You know, when I listen like when I do a conference call with a client I one of the people you had said they use order. We use order also and it shows you the stats on how long each person talked and I always make sure and always tell the other people that make sure that the client's talking more. Chris: Yeah, what you're talking, you know. Chuck: you look at the the the recap and it says Chuck talked for 36 out of 60 minutes. Well, that's too much, Right? Chuck needs to talk for eight minutes out of an hour and let the customer talk. Chris: That's good, that was good. Chuck: I look forward to seeing the seeing the episode. Chris: Absolutely, we'll be back in touch. I don't know. So, josie, with my team and Mackenzie they're my marketing kind of folks and I can't remember the name I know you kind of came through, a group that was, you know, helps you book these things, yeah, thanks. We want a headshot, kind of thing and all that. Chuck: They're having great the ride up on me. All that kind of stuff yeah. Chris: Well then, what we'll do? We'll give you a little. Obviously, there'll be some advanced warning once we get it all packaged up and we have a date certain that we're going to release it, and we'll get it all to you and your people, and then it'll be, it'll hit the presses. Chuck: So also, and the next time I'm in Houston I'll look you guys up and we do lunch or something. Chris: Please do. I would love that Love to go grab some barbecue. Yeah, thank you All right man, I talk to you later. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye, bye. Special Guest: Chuck Leblo.

In today's part two of two Chuck is talking once again to Mike Nunez about his tips for being a successful buyer. We first heard about Mike's nine tips for a successful acquisition, and today he delves into the types of things he looks for in a business he is considering for purchase. We're also diving deep into one tip that Mike shared on part one of this two-part series. Finally, Mike also shares some great efficiency tools he's loving these days. Episode Highlights: What Mike looks for when buying a business. What he brings to the business with his own expertise. Examples of things that stand out to Mike in a listing. Advertising account criteria he checks for in a potential new business. Goals and intentions he has and the opportunities he looks for when on the hunt for a business. The importance of keeping criteria lists. Tips for content sites looking for affiliates. Certain synergies to look for in a search. Lessons Mike has learned through his acquisitions. Tools Mike is using and recommending these days. Transcription: Mark: Chuck in the last podcast episode that we had we had Mike Nuñez on. He offered nine very actionable tips on how to be a very good buyer; how to be a buyer that can win deals by having the right disposition. And I know you guys talked; you guys are friends, you live close to each other there in Florida and all that. So you guys are friends and naturally, your conversations are long but also Mike's got a ton of content to share with us and you guys got into a second episode. What can we expect from the second episode with Mike Nuñez? Chuck: Yeah, so let's start off by saying if you haven't watched the first one or listen to it make sure you do because it kind of leads into this. On this one, we talked about what are the types of things that he's looking for as a buyer and you should be able to get some stuff out of that to help you figure out maybe some ideas for the types of things you're looking for. We also talked about; there was like one tip that we gave that he gave us somebody at Rhodium conference a year or two ago and it gave that guy a 25% boost in his revenue like overnight. So that was a nice little take away there and then at the end of the call, one of the things I always like to do is just ask for any special tools or things that he uses so he gives us a list of additional tools he uses so a pretty little bonus at the end. Mark: Fantastic. Mike is a great guy. I'm super glad that he was able to come back on the podcast. Let's get right into it. Chuck: All right welcome back everybody this is Chuck Mullins here with Quiet Light Brokerage and this is part two of a two-part segment with Mike Nuñez. Welcome, Mike; welcome back. Mike: Thank you, Chuck. Thanks for being accepting of my long-windedness. Chuck: No, I think we had a lot of great stuff in the last one. If anybody didn't get a chance to watch it you might want to go back and watch that one first. What did we end up on; nine super-secret tips? Mike: They go to 9, yeah 9 super-secrets. Chuck: 8 or 9 super-secret tips of how to be a great buyer which Mike Nuñez is a great buyer. Now we wanted to segway in and Mike wanted to make sure that everybody know that he's not wearing, or he is wearing the same suit but only because we're recording these back to back because the last one went pretty long. So you still look great Mike. For anybody who didn't watch the last one, Mike purchased a custom-tailored suit business from us so this is probably why he's wearing the suit because I've never seen him wear a suit before he had purchased that business. So he's definitely stepped up his wardrobe game since then. So today we wanted to talk about what you're looking for when you buy a business and maybe some of the lessons you've learned along the way. So again maybe let's start off; before we jump into that just give a brief introduction for anybody who didn't watch the first part of the series about you. Mike: Well, so I think it's important if you're listening to this one you probably should listen to the first one first because it does set up a lot of the things that we're going to talk about here. But for those that just don't listen, I've been in internet marketing for about 20 years now. I spent most of it working for an agency or owning an agency. I worked for Google for four years in their paid, search division. And so today I own a company called AffiliateManager.com that manages affiliate programs as well as the performance company which manages paid search for companies as well. So that's the super brief synopsis. Chuck: Perfect. So let's jump into what is it that you look for when you're buying a business? Always people come to me and they; Chuck what kind of business should I buy? And I say okay well what are your interests, what are you good at? So I think you probably you're looking…well, let me just let you tell what are you looking for. Mike: Yeah, so I think it's important to say what I look for or what we look for; so I do have a pretty solid team around me but what we look for is going to be very different than what somebody else looks for. And so please take that with a grain of salt; everything that I'm going to say today and I think is important for everyone to just recognize, just be self-aware what is it that you are incredibly good at? If you're good at sales go find a company that has an incredible product and but they're bad at sales and you plug yourself in and you now have an incredible business overall. Or if you're fantastic at operations go find a company that's selling like crazy but their operations just can't keep up with all the offers and plug yourself in there and that's going to work. I like to say that real opportunity is at the intersection of two different expertise or two different types of expertise. So for me, it's online business and online marketing and I'm not so great at everything else. So I'm not an operations person, I'm not a finance person so I don't look for companies that are lacking in those areas. I look for companies that are strong in those areas and that are; I don't want to say lacking because I think that's potentially disrespectful to either the people that I purchased businesses from or will in the future but it's more where I see opportunity where they wouldn't know unless they worked at Google for several years or they wouldn't know unless they've been in online marketing for 20 years or they never had an affiliate program. They never thought about it and we're incredible at it. So plugging what we are really good at into things that maybe they've tried that they're above average at because you have to be above average if you're going to own an online business but they've spread themselves so thin that they couldn't be an expert at just one thing. Another nice side effect that I've seen with buying these businesses, some of the previous owners they just worked so long and hard in the business that when you're so down in the weeds like that it's hard to pull yourself out and kind of take a 40,000-foot view picture. When acquiring a company it's almost a natural thing that happens along the way and you start to say okay let me take a step back and look at this not so closely; so close I can't tell exactly what this is and what's going on. And then as you start to peel that back and say okay this is something that the previous owner did, is this something that I need to take over, do I bring the value? The previous owner either maybe they enjoyed it, maybe they liked it, or maybe they were really good at it but I'm not and so the answer there is who else within the company can take that over. And I got to say that's probably one of the biggest benefits of purchasing an online company not only for the buyer but for the seller that they're able to peel themselves out and all the while that's the transition of okay these are the daily duties that this person does and this is who can take that over. So the new buyer; so myself as an example can go focus on what we're good at. So with that caveat to what it is that you're asking some of the things that I look for and I think just another quick note on this; this is an ever-evolving list, just because I've written this today doesn't mean that there's not more to come. Every time we go through a business or every time actually we have a call we run into an issue with the current business. I say okay that sounds like an opportunity that when we purchase the next business that we need to look at and say can we help there. So some of these are super simple and most listeners might say oh well that that's kind of common sense. Well, it's not always common sense. Somebody on this call is going to really or somebody listening to this podcast is going to really benefit from it but I listed because it's things that I want to make sure that I go and check every time that we're looking at a business. So, for example, we are like I said really good at online marketing specifically affiliate marketing and paid search. So we'll go look do they have an affiliate program? Are they overpaying? Are they not paying out commission based off of the influence that each affiliate had on that actual transaction? It's actually super interesting to see how much people overpay for things. And even more interesting to see when they're underpaying affiliate. So for example affiliates, they are business just like you, just like me and they want to maximize their revenue for their inventory. A lot of people get stuck and they look oh my competitor pays 5% commission, that's what I'm going to go pay. But a really good affiliate is equivalent to an upper-funnel page search keyword. And if you're paying a two to one for an upper funnel page search keyword; let's use my custom suit business, if I'm willing to get a two to one for the keyword custom suits or men's custom suits, if I'm willing to take a two to one return on ad spend for that I should be willing to pay an affiliate who is upper funnel; who's educating customers about me, I should be willing to pay them a 50% commission because they're upper funnel. Chuck: Alright so that makes a lot of sense to use something that you do on a day to day basis with your main business to look to acquire a company. So can you give some examples of specifically what something you might look for is? Mike: Sure. I'll give two examples one of where we succeeded at this and one where we failed but then you use that failure to learn and regroup. So the first business that we acquired we identified that there was a significant amount of overspent. It wasn't the previous owner's fault. They had hired an agency who was just; they were doing good. I would give them a six out of 10. But within 20, 30 minutes we can evaluate a Google Ads account and say we can save this account 10, $15,000 a month. Chuck: And you were talking about like an Ad Words account as opposed to affiliate stuff? Mike: Correct. Yeah, a Google Ads account that maybe this ad, the Google Ads accounts is spending 50, 60, $70,000 a month and if we can look in there and say we can save 10, 15, 20,000 on this and still get the same level of sales based off of our expertise we're adding 1 to $200,000 straight to the bottom line; straight to EBITDA and we did exactly that. We actually just finished reviewing January through October and we actually generated more sales than the same period last year and we spent I think it was $160,000 less to do so in that period. Chuck: It kind of goes against the thought of ad expenses are going up, right? There's more and more competition every day for ads so people think that but yet you're able to cut ad spend and make more money with it. Mike: That's 100% correct. You have to know what you're doing. There are very, very few good paid search companies out there. And I know because I used to work with a lot of them when I was at Google. Kevin who's on our team; his job was to go out and train agencies on how to appropriately use Google Ad Words. Pat who's the mastermind on our team has been doing Google paid search since Yahoo or as Yahoo started before Google was in existence. So it's just such a level of expertise that we have on our team overall that we can go and then apply and get these level of savings overall. And again it's straight to the bottom line and we take that money; the first acquisition was partly done via an SBA loan and the savings that we've got doesn't quite cover the SBA loan but it's about 75% of it. It's almost like we acquired the company for the price of the down payment and a much smaller SBA loan so to speak. So that's got to be our number one criteria; same thing with an affiliate program again with the first acquisition they weren't doing attribution based commissioning. It was a smaller effect on the overall business. We probably saved somewhere between 30 and 40,000 for the entire year on that one. So it's again a much smaller effect but that's a part-time person. That's an initiative that we can go fund now because we're saving 30 to 40 grand that we wouldn't have to spend otherwise. Chuck: So let's call out specifically there what it is you're looking for. So Mike looks at a company, requests access to their ad account, and then Mike looks for what? Mike: So in their ad account I'm looking at are they using negative keywords appropriately, what bidding algorithm are they using on Google, what matching types are they using, are they using segmentation correctly. And this is all super 40,000-foot level things but as Pat, our behind the scenes masterminds like to say, a poorly run paid search program is typically death by a thousand paper cuts. It's not one of these things. It's a thousand of these things that we meticulously go and identify, find, correct, and improve. Chuck: Alright so you will go into an account, you see all these things and they're doing everything right does that mean okay it's a great company I'm not looking to buy this one; like are you specifically, if there's not something you can fix you're not going to acquire it? Mike: Yeah, that's a fun question. The good news is for me at least I've never seen one. That's good. And to be fair I've seen; when we are getting an RFPN for the agency business I've seen two or three that were so well run that we tell them we can't help, they're doing an amazing job. You're going to look to us for growth in three or four months and we're not going to deliver because your current company is doing fantastic so don't leave them. But when acquiring a business and the research that I do before making an offer I have not yet come across that. If that were the case yes it's not a kiss of death but it is a factor in whether or not we feel like we should purchase the business because we know that there's so many out there that do it so poorly. Investing; I know I'm not teaching anybody on the call anything new with this but investing is where's the next best place to spend your dollar? And if they're doing a bad job with paid search that's a good place for me to spend my dollar because I know we can fix that. If they're doing an incredible job well there's probably a better place for me to go spend my dollar. Chuck: Sure. And I don't think it's a negative thing for you to say nope I'm just going to move on to the next one they're doing everything right. Like you're looking for specific things in order to want to acquire and like you said you've only got so many dollars to spend. You need to place it where it's going to do the most good for you. And if somebody else is doing everything right like that's not your area of expertise to grow the business. Maybe again they're not doing sales well and that's not what you're specifically looking at so sales is where the person that is going to end up ultimately acquiring the business is good at. And there's also people who maybe they don't have necessarily an expertise at something and they're just looking for an overall good run business that can keep chugging away for the years to come. And that's not a negative like just because you don't have some really specialized thing that you're good it doesn't mean that buying a business would necessarily be a bad idea for you. Mike: Yeah it's one of those things begin with the end in mind, right? And if the if your end goal is that you want a super stable business but it's not going to grow because everything is so well optimized and you're willing to pay the same multiple for it and you just want to kind of run that business day to day as is without expectation of growth then that's it. And there are people that want that. I would even consider a business like that if it was strictly almost a lifestyle business. But the businesses that we're buying; our goal, our intention is to take this 15 million dollar company and turn it into a 25, 50, 100 million dollar company and so there has to be opportunity when we're purchasing and the bigger the opportunity that we identify that we can do so fairly quickly with what we have the more we're willing to pay for it and the more we're willing to compete for it overall. Chuck: So we were talking recently we had lunch and you said that you recently discovered something with one of your businesses that was something you know I'm going to start looking for that and it revolved around shipping. Do you remember what we were talking about? Mike: Oh yes I have it. It's on my list. And that's funny and that's yet another reason to have a list right, right? Chuck: Right. Mike: And so as we're talking like; I know I'm not alone in this, right? I know you're like this Chuck. I'm sure you, the person listening to this right now is the same way. And I'll wake up in the middle of night and I feel like sometimes not thinking about things or telling yourself think about this in the back of my mind and you'll solve problems; like I'll get things out there just to solve them. I'll wake up in the middle and be like that's the answer to this and literally I'll roll over, I'll pick up my phone, and I'll just type a note to myself and say this is the answer and I'll go back to sleep. And the one that you're talking about is we have a warehouse for both of the business but the one that we're talking about now has a warehouse, a large warehouse; tens of thousands of square feet, I'm not sure exactly how big it is but we were getting fined by the shipping company because the dimensions of our packaging was incorrect. And so as we printed out the shipping labels for it, it was off maybe by an inch or whatever it was. And so when we send it to FedEx who was our shipping carrier and they would measure it we would be off by however much and they would actually fine us and so it added to tens of thousands of dollars in fines that we are receiving; not shipping costs, fines because our dimensions were wrong. And so for less than $10,000, we purchased a dim scanner and basically eliminated that. That dim scanner pays itself in one to two months and then from that point forward we now recovered yet another 20, $30,000 back. So you see the recurring theme here; paid search, this is how much we can save by doing it better, affiliate, this is how much we can save by doing it better, shipping, this is how much we can save by doing it better and then here's the freaking key. Like this is the thing though; don't just sit on that. And again I guess this depends on your goal. If your goal is to just absolute squeeze every penny out of these companies that you want then go and do it. My goal is growth and to turn these companies into large companies so that one day I may list with Chuck and get a great multiple on these companies. But take those dollars that you're taking and now do all of the things on the list; in that plan and the things that the previous owner said I could never afford, I could never get to, I can never pay somebody to do it. Now you found the funds to go and actually do those things. Use that money to fund that growth. Again I'll refer to Pat who runs our paid search; he calls that feed the winners starve the losers, so just taking the wasted money and putting it back into reinvest on growth and winning. Chuck: So with the shipping fines that you discovered how long have you been running this business; it's been a year and a half? Mike: A year and a half, yeah. Chuck: And you just discovered it now. Is there something that you are having; we don't know what we don't know, right? So we don't know what to look for. Is this something that you could have identified on day one to have seen even more value? Mike: Yeah, thanks for pointing it out Chuck. It's always painful to look back and say oh we could have made an additional 30 to 50 grand in the last 12 months if we just would have found this. Chuck: And this is probably not a common problem, right? But it's something you're going to look for in the future. Where would they have identified that; what due diligence would you have done in order to have seen that? Mike: Yeah, looking at the shipping invoices and seeing exactly what those are. And there are some pretty cool companies out there that will A) look at that for you and B) they'll actually monitor your shipping and make sure that it arrives on time. There's one called Late Shipment it's I think the one that we use; LateShipment.com and if FedEx doesn't deliver within the agreed-upon time; the one to two days, they'll actually refund; we get a refund on that shipping cost. So that's another example if they're not using; if you send out a million dollars or if you pay a million dollars in shipping costs every year and I think I know ours is above a million but I'll just use that, so a million dollars, if you can recoup 2, 3, 4% that's 20, 30, $40,000 back in your pocket that just appeared out of nowhere. So that's another one on my list. So are they using a dim scanner? Are they getting fined for this? Are they using LateShipment.com and getting a refund on anything that's late? Again stacking up this $160,000 in savings in paid search, $40,000 in savings in affiliate, 30 to 50,000 in dim scanner, late shipment another 30 to $40,000 just stacking and stacking and stacking. Another one is credit card fees; are they using a good credit card process? Have they negotiated their rates since they grew from zero to 15 million dollars in sales? And if they haven't that's an opportunity like just a one or two; what do they call them? Bits I think is what they call it but it could mean a huge difference in your overall company. Just one or two bits is 15 to $30,000 on a 15 million dollar business. Chuck: And so in your defense, I think on the shipping thing the company that you purchased did have one of those companies in place that were looking at the delayed shipments but that company wasn't looking at the penalties you were receiving. Mike: That's right. Chuck: So even if somebody is using a company that is monitoring the late shipping and getting those refunds they may not be looking at the fees which is strange. You think they'd be doing it but they weren't. Something I've heard you say at conferences when looking at it from a different type of business, so right now we're kind of talking about e-commerce but you also work with people who are doing content sites and their affiliates with other people. So what's your number one tip if you purchased a content site that makes money off affiliates; what's your number one tip for those people? Mike: Go ask for a raise. Chuck: What does that mean? Mike: Go to the affiliate management; either the advertiser or the affiliate management company who's managing them and say I want to make more. And there's many ways that you can position that. One is if you're a content site just know that my affiliate company, AffiliateManager.com is always looking for more content sites. We want to bring that value to our clients and you are in a position; it's a content site's market, let me put it that way. We all want what you have and some make the mistake of because they've been beat down and offered 1, 2, 3, 5, 10% commissions in the past day they just turn away affiliate marketing. Don't do that. You're leaving money on the table. If you find a good advertiser or a good affiliate management company that knows what they're doing and they know that this content site is upper funnel and bringing incremental business to the table they're going to be willing to pay for that and they might pay 20%, 25%, 30%. One of our clients pays 100%. Another one pays up to $150 for an acquisition and they might make zero on it. So it's just one of those things where you have to go and be willing to ask for a raise. And again a good affiliate management company they're going to look at the incremental value, we; not to get too much into us because I know this is more about acquisition but we actually have an attribution tool that we built because it didn't exist that shows where in the clickstream each of these sites are. And if it's a content site going back to your point and we look at their overall numbers and 70% of the time they're the first touch for anybody who's making a purchase on your site, yes we want that incremental traffic and sales coming from that content site. So to you content sites out there you are in a position of desire. We all want to work with you more and go and ask for raises. Somebody who recognizes your value is going to very much be willing to pay it. And if they're not go find somebody else; they're going to be willing to pay it. You are valuable. Chuck: And just to give an example of something like that. I've got a number of content sites and one of them the affiliates that I was getting paid from is a Canadian company and they send me a Canadian check. So every time I cash the Canadian check I get hit with like a 10 or $20 cashing fee. And it's just like annoying and it's small amount of money but it's annoying so I emailed them and I said hey can you just like PayPal me the money or wire me the money or do something else because I want to get ahold of the $10 fee every time I cash your check and they go oh how about we just double what we pay you? Okay, that'll work. So they really are willing; if they see the value in what you're providing them they are willing to pay more, so just a nice little tip there from Mike Nuñez. Mike: Yeah. And there was a guy Greg; I won't say his last name at Rhodium one year and I said that at a table and one year later he came back and said by that one tip that you just said because he was a content site or is a content site, I have grown my revenue by 25%. All I did; I didn't do anything else but go back and ask for a raise and the revenue on my site grew 25%. Chuck: Amazing. Mike: Free, yeah. Chuck: Alright, so we've talked about shipping, we've talked about affiliate, we've talked about ads, is there anything else specifically that you're looking for when you're acquiring? Mike: Yeah if they're not on Amazon I think that's a pretty obvious one. If they are on Amazon and either doing a poor job or no job at Amazon ads; Amazon ads I probably the biggest opportunity right now for everyone that sells on Amazon. Chuck: And this is kind of new to you in the last couple of years, right? Mike: Yeah. Well, I mean it didn't really exist a couple of years ago or it was very nascent. So it's still one of those things like if you remember Google back in the day when clicks used to be available for a penny or five cents and such. Chuck: Yeah man they sent me a refrigerator. I had spent so much money I got a Google refrigerator. Mike: So I'm not saying that pen that clicks are available for a penny on Amazon but if you incorporate the right system and how to manage it you can gross it; like I'll give you physical numbers year over year in November even those Cyber Monday fell outside of November this year. We grew Amazon sales on that outdoor brand by 50% using Amazon ads. So it's another example of having expertise in this paid search world and finding opportunities within it. Amazon ads; I think maybe that's super-secret number 10. I think we've gotten away from the super secrets but maybe super-secret number 10 and it's probably one of the most powerful ones I see right now available for people. Chuck: So what else are you looking for? Mike: So besides being on Amazon and Amazon ads, me personally I'm looking for a strong operational foundation because I'm not an expert at that. I'm not good at that but thankfully the businesses that I purchase have that. I'm looking for a barrier to entry like how replicatable is this business and what is the barrier that people have to get through? And this is a little bit less quantifiable but this is just a general do I want to be involved in this business; how hard is it for somebody who's just as good at paid search as me or Amazon or whatever, if they just got a hold of my supplier could they replicate this and do I want that? And if the answer is it's too easy then I move on. Is it a learnable industry? One of the things I was worried about with the custom suit company was maybe before purchasing it I wasn't as sharp a dresser, Chuck. Maybe my wardrobe might have consisted of free conference t-shirts but I was worried about that and… Chuck: You're pulling it off still. Mike: Thank you. And once I got into it I learned no this is a learnable industry. I can do this and it's worked great since then. Is it Amazon resistant? And I know that's a little counter to saying are they on Amazon. Is Amazon going to move into that space? Are they going to want to replicate what it is that you're doing? And on the outdoor brand, it's more of we joined to them; we couldn't beat them so we joined them and a good 50, 60% of our sales are on Amazon on that brand. On the suit brand, we're looking to sell accessories; expand our brand awareness because you can't sell custom suits on Amazon and it's unlikely that Amazon is going to get into that realm. So we're thinking how can we use Amazon to expand our brand awareness, generate some confidence in the brand, and yet not have to; since we're not able to send custom suits and sell custom suits on Amazon directly so is Amazon a threat to the business is something that we look at overall. Inventory management optimization; so leveraging just in time inventory because anybody that's involved in an inventory-based business knows that a lot of times your profit can go straight back into purchasing additional inventory. And if you want to realize any profits before you sell the business you've got have inventory optimization. Is the current ownership leveraging that inventory optimization? Are there conversion rate optimization opportunities; have they ever even tried it before? I just had a call today for the suit company and this is going to be ultra-specific but it is an indicator of what we've done. We launched a new cart in early November and we just ran the numbers and today on desktop for new customers we have doubled our conversion rate which anybody knows that the lifeblood of a business is acquiring new customers. So to do that is pretty amazing. Now on mobile, it was pretty static but we've also generated significant amounts of more traffic on mobile to the suit company. So that's a little bit misleading to say that it's exactly the same. Well anybody who knows conversion rate optimization and knows how traffic works; if you increase traffic the quality is potentially a little bit lower and so the fact that we slightly beat our previous conversion rate on mobile is a huge win. So are there conversion rate optimization to opportunities in the acquisition? Here's one that you know is near and dear to my heart, Chuck. What is the current platform; are they on Net Suite, on Shopify, on Magento? Because the one thing I never ever recommend is changing platforms. So can you accomplish all of the things on your list that you want to do on the platform? We use Net Suite as one of them and it is extremely difficult to get changes done but we are not moving. So it's just something that I think everybody should really consider. Or are you on an archaic platform like at Yahoo stores; something that's not being updated anymore and there's seven people in the world that can code to Yahoo stores? Now you're beholden to them. You have to pay exorbitant rates for their development because they're the only one that knows it as opposed to a Shopify or a Magento that developers are plenty. Chuck: If you're on Yahoo shout out to Rob Snell, look him up if you need help with your Yahoo business. Mike: There you go. See I didn't even mean that. That helps. And I think the last thing; us particularly we enjoy custom products, so custom made suits is a really good example or even for the branded products; things that other people makes, turning them into custom products. We really think that that's a good market to be and again slightly more defensible against an Amazon. And then finally this is my last on my company acquisition algorithm that I'll share today just I know we're limited on time is what synergies can you participate in? So if you listen to the last call you heard me talking about a brand that we made an offer on that it was a full price offer, quick close, no due diligence because it was a trusted brand. And before Chuck chimes in, he recommends that you never do that but the reason why we wanted that brand is because it was geared towards outdoor enthusiasts and we have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of outdoor enthusiasts that come to our website every day. So looking for synergistic brands that are out there to acquire and diversify the income and now not only sell other people's brands but also sell your own brand; white labeling things like that, finding things with opportunities like that, that's the last opportunity that we're looking for in our algorithm. Chuck: Awesome. Alright, so now let's maybe move into what some of the lessons you've learned from the various acquisitions you've done. And you had acquired some stuff before Quiet Light as well. Mike: Yeah. So I think a lot of them are listed on what I just said but I will say there's; because every time I learn a lesson to me it's an opportunity for the next acquisition. So again I will buy another business on Net Suite but I wouldn't have bought the first one knowing what I know now about Net Suite. But now that we've had to learn it, now that we've had to; our developer is familiar with it now and can make the changes that we need and want, now I'll buy another one. And so to me there's an opportunity there, right? It's harder for people to do that than it is for me. It's yet another level of expertise. So that's one thing is a lot of the lessons are kind of listed already in that but there's one I would say recently and again it's with the custom suit business, don't get so caught up in your own expertise. Again we are really, really good at paid search and one of the reasons why is because we're so return focused. A mistake that we made with the custom suit business is we went straight for a return. If a dollar didn't turn into five; I'll just use that as an example, we didn't spend it. And because of that, we saw sales drop. And I talked to the previous owner about it and said hey we're seeing this, why? And he's like well yes cross-device tracking is good however it doesn't capture everything. And mobile devices; think about who buys suits these days, and it's somebody with a mobile life. It's a lawyer that's always in the courtroom. It's a doctor that's always walking about. It's a financial person that's not necessarily sitting at their desk, they're going to meeting after meeting after meeting and where are they searching up for their next suit? Well, it's probably their mobile device. They find it and then they go on the desktop and they go on and they purchase it. And we had pulled back pretty significantly on the mobile spend because the conversion rate just wasn't as good. And so that's one example of us kind of getting in our own way. But to our credit, we were able to kind of step back and say okay we learned a lesson here, let's get better at it and change our approach. And since then that's when we now had some of our best days that we've ever had. So I like to think of it as a lot of these owners or the previous owners they had levels of expertise; they were doing something right and so it's our job as experts that are better at it to take the lessons that they've learned and apply our expertise to it to just throw some gasoline on it. Chuck: Alright Mike so one of the ways I like to usually end these things is just to ask if you have any kind of tools that you use on a regular basis; just some things that can either help with productivity, it could even be outside of work. One example the other day I was kind of upset about it because you ordered the chicken sandwich from Popeye's through Uber Eats so that you didn't have to wait in line and you didn't bother sending me one. That's a great little life hack. So what else do you have? Do you have any tools that you might recommend or any other little things? Mike: I did the same thing with Amazon two years ago when they were operating like the one-hour delivery and we had a hurricane coming to Florida and I just ordered all the bottled water and had it delivered while everybody else is fighting each other at the store. But now that secret's out. That's no longer an advantage but yeah some tools that I like that we use; so for Google Ads, I'll say if you're using things like maximize for clicks run we prefer an enhanced CPC bidding algorithm or a target CPA. We always test to see which one's better. Prioritization, I love Air Table. I got to give a shout out to my business partner Daniel for that. Air Table is a prioritization tool and basically, it can help identify what is the easiest to implement to get the most impactful change that you can make. And so it just really helps to prioritize what it is that you're doing and the changes that you're making to the company because obviously, we all want to make the biggest impact as quickly as possible. I love Grammarly for sending emails so that I don't sound silly. Chuck: That one saves me all the time. Mike: It's so good. I haven't used their pro version but even just the regular version is fantastic. For the affiliate management company, I got to give a shout out to Mail Shake. We love Mail Shake. We use that very often. It's a terrific tool. I love Moz. So the Moz toolbar is something that I use a lot. And then I think we use a lot of the things everybody else uses like the Evernotes and Google apps and things like that. So I think the first ones that were probably some of the others may not have heard them. Chuck: Awesome. Well, I think everybody who's been listening appreciates your time. I'd love to have you back at another time. We can talk about some more stuff once you've hit that next goal of purchase through us we'll talk about that one. But again thank you for the time today and we'll talk to you again soon. Mike: Thanks, Chuck. Links and Resources: Affiliate Manager

Some of the most popular episodes we've aired have been with guests who have experienced the buying or selling process firsthand. Today's guest has acquired several businesses and is genuinely good at the acquisition process. In part one of a two-part series, Chuck is talking to Mike Nunez about his various acquisitions and his 9 super secret to tips to being a great buyer. Mike has been in the online marketing space since 1999. After gaining experience in affiliate marketing, he launched Affiliate Manager with his brother while he continued to work full time for Google. More recently, Mike has purchased several e-commerce businesses from Quiet Light. We'll hear about how Mike is becoming one of our top buyers, how he's realizing his dreams, and that one last goal he may just reach. Episode Highlights: What it means to be a good buyer. What values the seller looks for aside from the monetary value. Ways to put the seller at ease by focusing on what is important to them. The importance of having a plan in your approach to the seller. How to accept and value of the previous owner's advice during the transition. Why you should avoid poor positioned questions when working with the seller. The buyer needs to find what he wants – the fit has to be right for the buyer too. Finding the component that will help make the business yours and not focus solely on the money piece. The relationship of trust in your broker is also a key factor in being a good buyer or seller. Transcription: Mark: Some of the most popular podcasts that we've put out here at Quiet Light Brokerage are the episodes where we get the chance to interview either a seller or a buyer on their background or their journey of going through a buying an online business. And Chuck I know you had a good friend of ours, a good friend of Quiet Light Brokerage's and a previous podcast guest as well, Mike Nuñez on because he's acquired a couple of businesses from us and more specifically from you in the recent months. How did that discussion go? Chuck: Yeah it went great. Mike is what I would consider probably one of our best buyers. The way he's able to get on a phone call and just talk to people, and sometimes I use the word tactics throughout the call. I don't feel like when he's doing it he's being tactical, I feel like he's just a very genuinely friendly guy who is just really good. His experience is that he's been in internet marketing for 20 years I've been in it for 24 so he's almost up there with me. Mark: He worked at Google so he's got that on you. Chuck: Yeah, he worked at Google for four years in the paid search department. So he talks a lot about on this one so I ended up having to split this up into two podcasts because it was just going so long. So the first one we talked about his nine super-secret tips to being a great buyer and there was a lot of really actionable stuff in there that I think everybody is going to be able to get a lot out of. Mark: Guys that's awesome and you talk about the difference between tactics and just being a good guy and look they can blend together, right? I mean Mike isn't the type of conniving guy saying here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to say this phrase and that phrase to make sure somebody absolutely loves me and then I'm going to be able to get an additional 20% off. That's not the way he works. He is just generally a good guy. He helps a lot. He's got that help first mentality. We preach this all the time and Joe is the one that coined a lot of these phrases which is nice buyers tend to do better. And it's just really, really true that sometimes we need tips on how to do it. This is why Dale Carnegie wrote the famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People just to give us some actionable tips to be like how do you actually encounter people in a business environment in a way that will benefit you. And if you read the book you find out that a lot of it is; well it starts with that right disposition and who you are. And Mike is a good person. I love that you broke this out into nine tips. Are you able to give me any preview of any of the nine tips or do you not remember them offhand? Chuck: Yeah. So one of the questions is around positioning the way you ask questions I think it's a really good tip. I won't get into all the details but you'll see it in the video. Mark: Okay, so not just going out there and hammering people with questions in a very kind of combatant way but I'm sure Mike has a very unique approach to that. Chuck: Well, Mark I just said I'm not going to get into the details. Don't try to pressure me. Mark: Alright. You know what I was talking to Joe the other day and he's like do you listen to the podcasts, Mark? And I said no, I don't because I hear enough of you Joe I don't want to hear more of you and he records all the episodes. So he said your intros are getting to be too long so let's cut it out. Let's get to it. Chuck: Hey everybody today on the call we have Mike Nuñez. Welcome, Mike. Mike: Thank you, Chuck, it's great to be here. Chuck: So people may have heard your name before because we mentioned you quite frequently on the podcast. And the reason we mentioned you so frequently is because you're what I would consider my number one buyer. I think probably one of Quiet Light's top buyers and not from a monetary perspective. You do purchase a lot of businesses, you purchase a lot of large businesses from us but more so just from your personality; the way you interact with clients on phone calls like whenever I'm telling somebody how to be a good buyer I'm always in my head thinking what does Mike do and then I'm telling them what Mike does in order to be a good buyer. Because we're friends and I know you outside of Quiet Light but like I really do mean that. Like you are really a great buyer and you're easy to talk to. And if anybody's watching the video today they're going to notice that you look somewhat like a sports commentator with that headset on and you've got a suit and tie and the suit and tie isn't the normal way I see Mike but one of the businesses he purchased was a custom-tailored suit business so I guess he's got to rep that brand now. Mike: That's right. Chuck: But maybe you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Mike: Oh great. I'm happy to. And first, let me say thank you. That was super just kind of you to say. I always whenever I have any of these phone calls I just take an approach of what I want to hear and recognizing that these business owners have been working on this; their babies, right? And you just have to be careful as you ask questions because we all want to know where the opportunity is and I'm sure we'll talk much more about that here but we want to know where the opportunity is and the way that you find that is by asking questions. But it's a very fine line between asking questions and becoming insulting and so you just have to walk that fine line. But there's absolutely a way to do it and there's a way to lead these sellers into that and realizing that you're both kind of on the same team. But again; well I think we're getting ahead of ourselves or at least I am so I'll tell you a little bit about me to start this off. I've been in online marketing since 1999, I was in college at the time and I know that dates myself a little bit. The first job was in lead generation, online marketing. I moved in to travel doing affiliate marketing and travel. I eventually launched my own affiliate marketing business along with my brother that's still going today so its AffiliateManager.com. Last year we merged with a company called Rhino Fish to create the performance company which is our page search division. Overall that marketing company is about 22 people. We have 3 former Googlers myself included on that staff. So we're quite good at both affiliate marketing and paid search. I like to say so. We also have two other businesses or I have two other businesses; one is an outdoor equipment seller that I purchased from Quiet Light, another is a custom made to measure suit company that I purchased from Quiet Light as well. So overall I'm about 20 years down it hurts to say experience in online marketing and business and online businesses in general and it's been a really fun journey. I always like to say Chuck my dream used to be I want to be able to work from anywhere and now I'm there. The new dream is that I want to not have to work. So someday I'll realize that second dream. Chuck: I don't like to hear that because I think the term not working would be not buying additional businesses and you're one short away from a special goal that I; I told him if you bought a certain number that I would buy him a specific thing. So he's just shy of that goal. Mike: Yeah it's just without getting into too many details like we're talking about less than what is it 4% on millions of dollars that I'm short. Chuck: But I set this goal early on, right? So it's your fault that you haven't reached it. If you have just paid a little bit more in that last acquisition you would have hit that goal. Mike: We need to round up Chuck. That's what I'm saying. We need to just round up and I should hit that threshold. Chuck: I'll remember that on the next acquisition. We'll just round up. Mike: Right. Yeah. Only when it's in my favor, please. Chuck: So part of the reason I wanted to have you on the call today was one just to talk about maybe some tips or just maybe even not tips but just discussing what it is to be a good buyer. But then also from your perspective what it is you're looking at when you're looking to buy businesses. I know you have a specific criteria that you're looking for and your criteria is different than other people's. And I wanted to also maybe talk about some lessons you've learned along the way. So I guess to kick it off maybe let's just dive in a little bit about being a good buyer. So I would start off just by saying that you know I talked to a lot of people; constantly I'm on the phone and people are always asking me what it is to be a good buyer? And some people I talked to think that in order to be a good buyer it's about being aggressive in trying to negotiate. And maybe they're not thinking that as being a good buyer but they want to try to get the best deal by doing that and they'll say negative things about people's businesses. And you take a very different approach than that. So I think you already addressed it a little bit but maybe you want to dive into maybe the approach you take to negotiating and to speaking with others. Mike: Sure. I think it's important context to say both of the businesses that I've purchased from you Chuck and Quiet Light had multiple offers, were very much generating a lot of interest and so there were multiple potential buyers. And I don't want to say we were the lowest offer. I don't think we were. I know in both cases we weren't the highest offer either. Chuck: Yeah just maybe to add a little context before you dive into further, one of the; I think actually both of them said I wanted to sell to Mike. So they're talking to multiple people and they said get Mike up to this number I want to sell to him. Even though that number was lower than what some of the other potential buyers were offering. Mike: Yeah. Chuck: So I think that speaks a lot to you. Mike: Thank you again, Chuck. But I would say that therein lies the quote-unquote the secret which is money is valuable, right? They want money. If you're nowhere near what they're asking or if you're nowhere near what their magic number is, the rest of this conversation goes away. Let's put that aside. I think Quiet Light does an incredible job overall of valuing companies fairly and appropriately. And you know that walking in. So if you know that walking in okay this is a fairly and appropriately valued business now it's a matter of percentage points maybe either way and in either direction of that. The purpose of the call, at least the initial call is to identify; one of the purposes of the call is to identify what value is this seller seeking beyond the dollars because the dollars are going to fall within a certain range. So a good example for the suit business is the seller really cared about his people. He really cared about his co-workers that he's had for the last however many years; almost 10 years that have put in their blood, their sweat, their tears into this. And he wanted to know that they were going to be okay. And I think actually in the ranking of why I won the business even though I had a lower offer than other people had, that's probably number one is just feeling comfortable about that the new owner is going to come in and take care of the people that were there. And I made no promises. Let me say that. I didn't say I promise I'm not going to let anybody go or I promise; I said no, I promise I'm going to be fair and appropriate with everybody and evaluate everybody based on performance. And he was confident knowing that he had hired stellar people. And it was part of what was so attractive about the business is he had incredible people that were already working there so it made it even more attractive for us. So I think that was number one for him. Second I think there was a sense of patriotism maybe. So this is a European company. It was based in Europe. It's in a European country. And this European country is kind of known for textiles and for creating things and such. And so I think one of the other buyers; and again there's multiple people in here that you're kind of competing against and so you got to think of like a pros and cons checklist and I'm being compared to each one of these other potential buyers in their pros and cons checklist. One of the other potential buyers wanted to move the production out of Europe and into China. There's nothing wrong with that if that's where their connections are if that's where their factories are and such; great. That's where they want to move their production, good for them. However this particular seller wanted to keep production because of his pride for his country, because of his desire to benefit his country, he wanted to keep production in his home country. I didn't have any alternative contacts in China or in any other potential production areas and so I felt like that was important to them and so I made it known. And I think a lot of, and I think it's the second thing is kind of just listening on the calls. Maybe that's super-secret number two is listening and hearing what's important to them and asking that question okay let's move money aside what's important to you in the future of this company? And another good example of that is potential branding or taking care of the customers. I know this may sound a little bit cliché but this is their baby, right? They've grown this baby. They've watched this baby grow. They've poured their love, their sweat, their tears, their hours. The seller of the custom suit company is an example. I remember him saying like I can't remember the last time I took a vacation. He just poured everything he possibly had into this company. And so when you're that invested overall they just kind of feel a comfort level that the new owner is going to come in and do right by what they've built. They just don't want to see it go away and it's they've already got their cash at that point and they still care. And I will say one positive side effect and please know that this is partly or mostly; not even partly, mostly because of the owner and this is one of the criteria; we can talk more about this later, but one of the criteria that I look at is an owner that cares and they're selling for potentially a different reason other than they don't care about the business anymore. I think those are the ones that kind of phone it in afterwards. The two owners of the businesses that I've purchased are still very much invested. One of them still works full time in the company and works as hard today as when he owned it. And I am very appreciative for that. Same thing for the custom suit company, he chimes in all the time. Like hey, this is how we did things, this is how we did it. It's so helpful in the transition of a company to have the context of somebody who built this business from the ground up. And I think the super-secret number three there is when somebody is on your side, let them be. Both of their intentions aren't to harm the business in any way. They want to see it grow. And even though in both instances there's been times where we didn't quite agree on how to take things to the next level, we absolutely welcomed their feedback and sometimes they were right. Sometimes we were right. Kind of checking your pride and moving it to the side for a second when you're good at something and allowing them to tell you, yes I know you're good at this, let me tell you how what you're doing applies specifically to the business that you're purchasing from me. It's a really important lesson in the growth of the business which might be a good segway Chuck if it's okay with you to start talking about the lessons learned for some of the businesses or did you want more on…? Chuck: Before we move on you mentioned that both of the owners of the businesses were kind of still somewhat involved in the company. Is that something you're specifically looking for or was that just a happenstance of you buying a good quality business that had an owner that actually cared about the business? Mike: So in neither instance was it a requirement beforehand that the owner would stay on with the business post-acquisition. The first acquisition, the owner requested it. They said hey I see the plan and I didn't intend to call out these super-secrets but let's call it the super-secret number four is have a plan. Don't just walk in and say hey I'd like to buy your business. In that instance, I just so happened to be in London and as I'm trying to buy this business the owner of the business lived in an island off of the coast of Morocco. I had a free weekend while I was in London and I flew over and met with him and his wonderful wife and they were gracious. They took me to dinner. I insisted but they wouldn't let me treat for dinner. I think they were just thankful that I flew to go visit them and talk about the business; so just again that personal connection there. So while it wasn't a requirement that they stay with the business post-acquisition I'm always open to it if they're open to it. And I started talking about the plan; having the plan and being able to approach them. In both instances they got excited. One of them and I'll try to talk vague because I don't want to say anything about either one of them that they wouldn't want me to share. But one of them said when I said why are you selling it they said well I'm almost running out of ideas. Like I don't know what the next thing to do is. I don't know where to take this next and how to make it grow. And so for me, it's a choice of whether we stay at the level that we are now and continue happily down that path. Or do I allow my baby to grow by giving it to somebody who's going to take it to that next level? And so to be able to show them okay not only can we take it to next level here's how; yes, you recognize we have the experience before this on how to get this to that next level but here let me lay out the plan in front of you. And all throughout the while of reviewing the business and going to the website I have a checklist and I'll go over some of the points with you later today, here's all the opportunities that we think that we can have. And based off of those opportunities that's how we create the plan. And then we plug that into our for lack of a better word, our company acquisition algorithm to say okay is this worthwhile? And based off of the competitive advantages that we have with this business can we offer a little more? Do we need to offer a little less? Like where do we think that we're going to fit into this overall picture? So I feel like I didn't fully answer your question. The answer is no we don't require the owners to stay on post-acquisition. We are completely open to it. We prefer it. In both instances, they're both quite engaged overall. And just to reiterate the point maybe super-secret number five is if somebody wants to be on your side let them be. And in this instance, both the previous owners want to be on our side. They want to give us the feedback. We 100% remain open to receiving that feedback even if it's counter to what we want to achieve we'll at least receive it. I have a philosophy that you're not entitled to have a point if you can't justify it. And so if they come to me and say hey I think you're doing this incorrectly or I don't think you're doing this right. I tell myself okay, here's an expert that's owned this business for a long time, they feel strongly enough to come to me and say I think you're doing this incorrectly. I feel strongly that I'm doing it this way. But feeling trolling isn't good enough. I need to go pull data, go look at numbers, go say why are we doing it this way. And then I go back to them and say okay here's the reason why we're doing this way and they can poke holes in it or say no you know what that looks good. I wish I would have known that when I had the business. So I think that answers your question, Chuck. Chuck: Yeah I think so. And maybe secret; what number are we on, number six? Mike: I think we're on number six now. Chuck: Okay, so I would say super-secret number six, what you kind of just alluded to and what you didn't is you know when in school like high school or whatever and the teacher is like oh there's no such thing as a dumb question. There 100% is such a thing as a dumb question when you're talking to a seller. I would say super-secret number six is be prepared when you get on a call, be dedicated to the call that you're on, don't be in a car with a lot of background noise. Be at a desk, be in one place, do some research, if there's an interview to watch, watch the interview with the seller, read the package, ask intelligent questions about the business. It's okay to ask something that's already been addressed in the package if you want some additional information but show that you've actually researched the business because constantly when I'm talking to my sellers and we get off a phone call they're like that guy is not serious, don't connect me with him again. They want to know that you're serious and a way to show that you're serious is to have done some research ahead of time and ask intelligent questions about the business. And that's something that you definitely do. Mike: Thanks, Chuck. And I think that goes with having a plan. Like I don't have the time, I know you don't have the time, I don't have the time, I'm sure the sellers don't have the time to just sit there and answer questions that for somebody who clearly isn't prepared for the call it's a horrible signal to the seller that you're not serious about this that even if you do have the cash, even if all other things fall into place you're not going to be an organized person handling their business moving forward. So it's just an awful signal to send upfront. And I think one of the other things that you said; I don't want to say that there's bad questions, there's unprepared questions. Chuck: There are bad questions. I've had them on my calls. Mike: Okay. Chuck: And I know you're; Mike again this gets back to Mike being a super nice guy and doesn't want to; there are dumb questions and I've had many of them on my calls. Mike: I'm still going to stay that there's poorly positioned questions. And one of them might be hey Chuck I feel like this is a really dumb question and so forgive me for asking what's going to seem like a dumb question but it's just weighing on me and I need to ask it. That's a well-positioned dumb question. Another really good example of that is starting a call. I have a big belief and maybe this might be in one of the other super- secrets but we'll call it super-secret number seven, are we on seven now? So super-secret number seven, figure out what they want and give it to them. And again part of that is money but that's the beauty of working with a broker especially Quiet Light, that part's already figured out. That's almost done. They've declared that this is the multiple that they want now it's up to you to figure out does that fit within your company acquisition algorithm. Can I afford this based off of all of these criteria? And again I'll go through some of those in a little bit. Move that aside and now figure out what do they want. Do they want to stay on with the business? Do they want to hand it over to somebody who's going to keep the work within their country or somebody who isn't going to start selling poorly made products to their customer base that they've built up over time? Figure out what they want and give it to them. It's the best negotiation technique. If you walk into a call or a negotiation and you're trying to think how can I squeeze every dime out of this person on the other side of this phone call; I mean good luck to you, you may win or you may not. I have the philosophy of; I took a course from the Wharton School of Business one time and we talked about negotiation and one of the things we talked about was the difference between an average hitter in baseball and a Hall of Fame hitter in baseball is one in nine hits. If you can get one more hit in nine at-bats, that's the difference between average and Hall of Fame. The same thing with negotiation, if you can get one more hit in nine at-bats it's potentially a huge difference in the overall success that you're going to have. So same thing here, and so I approach the call as hey let's figure this out together and I'm listening the entire time trying to figure out what's important to the person on the other side of the call. Also, another; super-secret number eight is going to be disarming the call. It doesn't have to be this contentious conversation where I'm battling you for information. That's not the case. I start out almost every call and you can attest to this Chuck, and by the way, I've purchased a couple. I've probably had maybe less than 10 but several phone calls with people. Some of them after the call I decide this is not the right fit for me. I can't give them what they want so I just walk away and I go on to the next business. Other ones I've made offers for and maybe somebody else was giving something that they wanted and I didn't get that. But the two that I've got I'm very happy with thus far. But when I start the call I say hey I need to ask some questions and some of these questions might come across the wrong way. They may seem offensive or it may seem like I'm trying to prod or I'm trying to poke, all I'm looking for is opportunity. What opportunity exists in your business? And I'm trying to use it to go justify pulling this money out of other places and spending it and handing it over to you. So I'm looking for your help in bridging that gap here. And so when you position it that way and say help me get there it's amazing how they almost start to fall over themselves to tell you all of the potential opportunities in the business beyond what they've already written into the marketing package. And I'll even call that out. I've read the marketing package. I see that you see that this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity, based off of some research that I've done I think that this might be an opportunity. Is there a reason why you haven't attacked that market? Is there a reason why you haven't advertised on this channel? Is there a reason why this or this or that? And after you've position that I'm looking for opportunity, I want to make this happen, help me get there, usually they're quite open and willing to volunteer that information. So I'll call that super-secret number eight. Chuck: Yup, number eight. I can see the headline of this interview now; eight super-secrets of Mike Nuñez. We've got to get it to like 9 or 10 maybe. So yeah I think that those are some really good tactics. And I hate to use the word tactic because I don't feel like it's a tactic. I guess it is but like that's just your normal personality and maybe some people don't have it. But I think one of the major takeaways there is don't be super aggressive with a seller. Like the businesses we sell at Quiet Light, they're generally speaking super high quality with owners that care. It's not we generally; like sometimes we do but often it's not people that are just starting a business to flip, to flip, to flip. These are people who started a business because it's something they're passionate about and they're ready to move on for one reason or another and they want to pass on the torch to somebody who cares. And when you come in aggressive and if you try to beat down their business or things like that, that doesn't work. Maybe if you're working on a 100 million dollar deal and you got to like get in there and be super aggressive like that doesn't work with what we're doing at all. Mike: I just have to add to that Chuck because I think it's like if it works you should be worried. If it works it's probably not the right business. Like that's not; feel free to take this out Chuck if I shouldn't or can't talk about this but in the last offer I made I did not get the business. I made an offer but in our call, I recognized that what they were looking for was a quick close and a short close. They wanted to make sure that it closed. They wanted to do it quickly. And that was beyond the dollars and it was very fairly priced already, beyond the dollars that's what was important to them. And so for the caller just to give you an example of how much I personally trust after physically spending millions of dollars with Quiet Light already I made an offer, all cash so that they knew that this was going to close. I offered close at your convenience. And third I offered no due diligence. Now I wouldn't recommend that for everybody and all things. Chuck: I don't recommend that either. Do not offer to close. This is a certain special deal with a person that is a known entity that was trusted. You should always do your due diligence. Don't listen to Mike. Don't rely on us to do due diligence. It is your job to do the due diligence. Mike: 100% that was my decision that I was aware of this company, the numbers were small enough where even if this was a complete disaster it wouldn't be a disaster for me. But it was a complete cash offer, it was a complete quick close and I offer that with the hope that that was the value that they were looking for that was not a cash value that would allow them to choose me because they had; I mean I don't even know how many Chuck. Chuck: There were nine offers on the deal and you were; because of that they wanted to sell that component to you but the other offer was just so much; it was more money, the guy was willing to do a quick close as well so it just beats you out. They wanted to sell it to you. The other guy was just; it was a better offer with the other person. Mike: Understood. And so I got close right with the untangible non-monetary aspects of the offer.; it got me super close, right? I almost got that extra hit and that nine tenth bat. So just a good example of listening to what they want, trying to give it to them, and it's going to save you dollars in the long run. And the fact that they were considering me sounds like even though my offer was lower; yet again that seems to be the MO here overall. And by the way, I made a full price offer so it wasn't even like I made an under offer. I made a full price offer but somebody beat the full price offer and I'm still under consideration. Chuck: And just to let maybe another super-secret number nine; this isn't Mike's this is mine so I think that's like two of the nine. Listen to the broker. If I'm telling you something there's a reason I'm telling you it. Like when I say this is going to sell for at or above asking, it's probably going to sell for at or above asking. I'm not just trying to increase the price, right? I do represent the seller and I'm trying to do my best to get as much value for the seller but I'm not going to do that by lying. I'm going, to be honest. There's things I can't say to you. If you say well what's the other asking price is or what's the other offers, I can't tell you that but I will try to lead you in the direction of making an offer that's going to be accepted. Don't think that we're just; if I tell you there's multiple offers, there are multiple offers. I'm not just B-S-ing you. And we get it all the time where I tell people there's multiple offers put your best highest final offer in and then yeah okay asking price and I'm like put your best offer like I'm just telling you and then it goes for above asking and then the person is mad oh why didn't you tell me? I would've put a higher offer. And it's like I did tell you; I told you to put your best offer in. Like I don't want you to stretch, I don't want you to put an offer that makes you uncomfortable but you need to put your best offer in if you want to win this business. Mike: So I just want to say to that people have been kind of beat down and trained to not be trusting especially to brokerages. And at the risk of sounding like a Quiet Light commercial, it's just not the case with Quiet Light. And is it okay with you if I tell the story of how I found Quiet Light and why I just trust you guys implicitly? Chuck: I'm not sure of the story but please do tell it. Mike: I've had the affiliate manager and the performance company; the affiliate managed business overall since 2002. I started it with my brother and we built up the business. And in 2015 my brother passed away. He passed away fairly unexpectedly. And I was working at Google at the time and I had a decision to make; do I leave Google and come back to Affiliate Manager or do I sell the company? And so through some mutual contacts, I was referred over to Mark and Joe. This was before Chuck was there so I totally would've went to Chuck. But I went to Mark and Joe and just talked about the business and they asked me just great questions and they asked me for the P&L and they asked me what does the growth rate look like over the last few years. And we had been growing at like a 50%; no I'm sorry 100% rate year over year. We had doubled every year for the previous three years from '13, '14, and ‘15. And this is in January 2016 that I'm talking to Mark and Joe. And they even though this would have been a multimillion-dollar deal to sell that company; and I'm sure they do many, many multimillion-dollar deals which makes it easier to; I don't want to say turn it away but to give this advice. Chuck: So I will stop you there before I was with Quiet Light which was I've been about three years they weren't doing a lot of multimillion-dollar deals. So at that time a million, two, or three million dollars was a lot. It's just been in the last few years that we've really got up to where we're selling some of these really large businesses. Mike: So that makes it even more impressive, right? And I just remember this phone call with Mark and Joe so clearly where they said Mike when you sell this we'd love to be the brokerage for you. This is the wrong decision to sell right now. If you keep growing at this rate you will get what you want. Because of that conversation; I talked to other brokers who are ready to list my business or promising me the world and because of that especially now knowing that it would have been a very high multimillion-dollar deal for them and that they weren't doing as many at that time, for them to turn away that commission just gave me a level of trust with them that this is the company that I'm going to do business with. I am not comparing myself to Warren Buffett, Chuck. Not in the least. But one thing that he does that I love is he makes things easy and he; I don't want to say he takes shortcuts but he has built-in shortcuts. He can go from looking at a potential deal to executing a deal very quickly. And I don't know how he does it but my interpretation of how he does it is he identifies businesses and companies that he feels confident and he trusts. And so to me the implicit trust that I get from working with Quiet Light is a shortcut. To me, it gets me from here to this point. My comfort level right off the bat knowing that Quiet Light is not going to take a company that's shady or take a company that doesn't have solid P&L numbers or things of that effect, it's just such a comfort level. And if my comfort level was at a 90 pre these two deals because of what Mark and Joe did when they told me go continue to grow your business. It's at 100 now that I've actually purchased two companies and both of them are better than what I had expected. Now granted I'll take some credit for that that I've done the due diligence on it; I hired Centurica actually for both due diligences. We did the due diligence and we got into the company. Both of them feel; were over a year in on the first one, we're almost a year on the second one and both are solid. Both are growing. We just ran the numbers and after a little bit of a rocky start with the suit one because of some of the changes that we were making and that's what happens but we are now; November is our biggest month and we were up 30%. If you shift to include cyber Monday because everybody is obviously one of our biggest days. Chuck: How long have you owned that company? Mike: Since April of this year. So to go from there we beat our biggest day previously in the company not once, not twice, but three times by over 25%. So to beat your previous biggest day which was Black Friday; I'm sorry Cyber Monday last year, we beat it Black Friday this year, we beat it the Sunday after Black Friday this year, and we beat it again on Cyber Monday this year. So we literally doubled Black Friday. So it's been amazing. And again if my comfort level was a 90, it's 100 because of that. Like I'm not walking into a business that's a money pit or that has craters I didn't expect or potholes that I didn't expect. So I think that's just super important overall. Chuck: Awesome. So we're running a little long on this call, we've got a ton to talk about. So would you be interested in having this become a two-part segment where we'll end it here and then we'll keep going but we'll put that as a part two, to be continued? Mike: Yeah. But in case people are watching this on video just know that we cut it into two parts. I didn't wear the same suit on two different days. Chuck: We'll make a quick wardrobe change. Mike: Okay, I'll go change my jacket. Chuck: No. Mike: But that's fine. Yes, I'm happy to do that. Chuck: Alright. So, everybody, Mike Nuñez thank you for the interview today. And for everybody watching stay tuned. Next, we will discuss some of the lessons you've learned and what you're looking for when you purchase a business. So, for now, bye everybody and thank you, Mike, for joining us. Mike: Thanks for having me. Links and Resources: Affiliate Manager

How important is content marketing strategy to your e-commerce business? Crafting valuable content helps build brand trust with both existing and potential customers, allowing you to successfully grow your brand. Today we're talking all about content and smart ways to ramp up your strategy. Jeff Coyle is co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of MarketMuse. Coming from twenty years in the SEO and content strategy arena, Jeff's products use AI to accelerate content planning, creation, and optimization. With their spokes-of-a-wheel keyword approach, MarketMuse's content marketing strategy connects ideas, allowing clients to demonstrate product expertise. Episode Highlights: How content relates to growth and where to start assessing the need for your business. Strategies that help tell the story that you are trying to tell. How to gauge the success rate. Where the news dynamic fits into your content campaign. The breadth and depth of your content. Figuring out where the gaps are. When to hire an expert. How the Marketmuse suite of services help the writer. Using smart content to illustrate expertise. Why search volume is not the only strategy for content valuation. Some quick win strategies – aka one-page plans. Packages MM offers for different sized audiences. Tools and hacks Jeff recommends. Transcription: Mark: So there was a time early on in Quiet Light Brokerage when I was doing all of the Content Marketing for the firm and I was writing on average eight blog posts or articles per week averaging about 18,200 words in length. And I underestimated when I started on this kind of venture of can I do these eight to 10 per month; I underestimated how much work it was going to be and it was a lot of work because it's not just writing down your thoughts it's writing for the web and writing for SEO and understanding what do you write about next. It's amazing how quick the writer's block comes in. I know that you had a conversation with Jeff Coyle a mutual friend of ours from Rhodium and one of the founders of MarketMuse which is an awesome company; a great tool from an SEO and content marketing standpoint. You guys talked about everything content which is relevant to buyers, anyone looking to acquire a web-based business and grow it. I know it's been a huge part of our marketing plan. What are some of the things that you and Jeff talked about in this conversation? Chuck: It's quite great. I had a great conversation with Jeff and we're talking about if you've got a dollar spend where to spend it. Most people they're doing basic keyword research, they're looking for what's the keyword that's getting the most searches versus the keyword difficulty. And he takes it like way beyond that and they're looking at not just the specific keywords but what keywords are actually tied to other keywords that show that you're an expert in the topic. If I'm talking about like a specific thing but I fail to mention other words Google then thinks that I'm not an expert because anybody who's an expert would be using these other words or when you're just looking at keyword tools to look at the ones they're getting the most traffic you often miss the additional keywords that are in there. Mark: Right. And I know full disclosure I use MarketMuse with Quiet Light Brokerage and actually with my other company as well. I use their service and the general sales pitch is pretty simple. It's this idea of setting up pillar pages and having this kind of spokes on a wheel branch now so the example that they use I think in some of the marketing materials is if you're going to have a website on craft beer you should have a blog post on craft beer but you should also have an entire section on hops and an entire section on barley and malts and then even from there if you want to be all about hops and afford it to do a page on hops you should also have some satellite pages on imperial hops or these other types of varieties of hops and being able to have this kind of wheel with different spokes coming out. And you know what a bunch of SEO tools use this. Like I've been using Sight Bulb recently; a really cool software that diagrams out your site and the sort of hub sort of format. What MarketMuse does is they take a blog post and had topics so you say I want to focus on craft beer and they say okay if you want to really be known as an expert, make sure that you're talking about hops at least 10 or 15 times in this blog post. And make sure that you're also talking about different types of barley. And then you can use that and say well okay I'll talk about this in this blog post but what do I write on other blog post? It's made for me and I don't do a lot of the writing anymore but it makes the content creation process super easy; like the ideation part, I mean that's the hard part about all of this. How do you come up with new ideas on what you should write about? But I don't want people to think this is just a sales pitch for MarketMuse. It's a great piece of software, obviously, I believe in it from that standpoint. But I think from a buyer standpoint also from a seller standpoint having a solid content strategy is really really key. If you were to spend money; Chuck you've had a bunch of businesses in the past and I know you've used content, if you're going to spend your money somewhere for long term marketing dollar I'm kind of leading you to the answer here, where would you spend it? Would it be in the content marketing world or would it be PPC or what are the advantages in your opinion of this content marketing versus other types of marketing? Chuck: Yeah I mean it really depends I think on the type of business you have. Obviously, if you have a content-related business then you want to hop out as much quality content as you can. If you've got an e-commerce business there's different funnels and then buckets may be that you need to put your money in but you definitely need to be investing in content. Even on Amazon when you're thinking about like selling something on Amazon you go to some people's pages and the content is just horrible and it's so important. One of the things we didn't talk about but like when you're looking at Amazon you'll look at the questions people are asking and then answer those questions. So content is definitely important. We talked just a lot about what you should be writing about next. When you're looking at competitors sometimes you can actually see the direction they're going and then beat them and write a bunch of content. Actually, get in front of them because you look at their keyword list and you know the direction they're headed and you can actually get in front of them. Mark: Yeah for my money I think the two areas that are the most important for a marketing strategy at least long term return will be content marketing and CRO, conversion rate optimization. Those two things alone have such staying power where you invest now and you're going to benefit for years to come as opposed to PPC which is great because you can throttle PPCC; that's the reason people love it. You can throttle up and down. You can really find some gems and it's very immediate. But long term success I think is predicated on this content strategy frank that's something we've even bought a little bit at Quiet Light. I just got to give you a quick shot out Chuck because you are wearing a Quiet Light shirt. So for all those people that are watching on YouTube and I know it's not a ton of you that are watching on YouTube but those that are you can see that Chuck actually has a really cool shirt. I don't even have that shirt. Did you give me one? Chuck: I think I kind of bought Joe one but I didn't get you one so maybe I'll have to get you one as well. Mark: Okay, I think Brad gave me one and it was like enormous. I was swimming on the thing. Chuck: I think that's the one I have with Joe when I bought his it was too big for him so I have to get your size. Mark: Make sure you size it down and hey if we get a few extras of these maybe we can set up a contest for people that actually want a Quiet Light; I don't care what you do with it but it's kind of fun to give that away as a prize. Let's get into the episode. Content marketing is where I cut my teeth early in the Internet world. I love this topic. I think Jeff is one of the smartest people in the industry when it comes to content marketing [inaudible 00:07:02.0] good market views and this is definitely one to learn from. Chuck: Yeah absolutely and two things before we dive right into it; one they're giving a special discount. Again we're not trying to promote it. It's just a good product if you want it great but in the show notes, there's going to be a discount code to get a nice percentage off. And stay tuned to till the end of the video because I also asked Jeff for some additional tools that he likes to use. I always think it's fun to ask entrepreneurs what are some various tools that are unrelated to our discussion from what you're using so. Chuck: All right hi everybody Chuck Mullins here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today on the call we have Jeff Coyle the co-founder of MarketMuse and chief is it, product officer? Jeff: Yeah, Chief Product Officer, I manage the product data science and engineering teams as well as the marketing team at Marketing News. Chuck: Awesome. So I've known Jeff for a couple of years, we run in the same circles. I've been on the Internet world for quite a while. Jeff do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Jeff: Sure. I am as you mentioned the co-founder and chief product officer for MarketMuse. Prior to this, I've been in this space as Chuck mentioned for quite a long time; about 20 years as scary as that might sound in the search engine optimization content strategy game. I have generated like 50 million leads and not as an exaggeration for B2B technology primarily companies in the early part of my career. I worked as an early employee at a company called Knowledge Storm which sold to Tech Target which is also a great B2B publisher and an intent data and ABM platform for enterprise and mid-market B2B companies. I worked for them through their in-house team and in-house capabilities while I was there really focused on driving engaged users through content and content strategy. When I left Tech Target having already spoken with my co-founder about ways that we could grow MarketMuse I came on as a bit of a late co-founder and we've since grown the company to almost 50 people; really, really an amazing story about growth, building a new category about content strategy, what should you write next, what should you update or optimize next that's going to have the biggest impact on your business and everything that goes along with that from how do I assess my own authority, how do I understand where my gaps are, how do I know where my strengths are. And that's been the mission of our business is really to tell the story of I could spend a dollar on content; creating, optimizing, blah, blah, blah, tomorrow what should it be? And that's what MarketMuse is for; to tell that story. Chuck: Alright so kind of you alluded to it but today we'll get you on a call to talk about SEO and maybe more so how content is applicable to SEO. So maybe starting at the base when somebody either acquires a new site or maybe is looking at a site trying to think of how do I grow this site like where's my opportunity, what kind of analysis do you think somebody should start off with? Jeff: Well I think that traditionally the way that people have assessed sites for their strengths sometimes is only by looking at their current and existing rankings or their historical rankings. So it's a bit of you know kind of a tail wagging the dog assessment of where you're at, where you have been, but that as a starting point does provide some value as to where you are. It just doesn't tell typically the entire story about what it means to be about something. So when I'm looking at assessing a site for the merits of its; the collection of its content or its inventory of content, when I'm looking at is to say yes certainly I want to see performance. I want to look at also things that I might get out of my analytics package engagement. I have to understand the goals of the company the key performance indicators of the business. Am I driving those things? Can I peddle out of them? But divorcing those concepts for this point in discussion about conversion rate optimization and such from a search engine optimization or authority perspective I want to see where I've written great content so how much content have I created on core topics that I care about. When I do cover those topics how in-depth do I get and how successful does that; what kind of success does that yield when I write about a concept I care about when I get deep when I write high-quality content on concepts that I care about. Those two things really tell the story of your existing momentum on a concept. And so that when I'm assessing a site that's one thing I want to want to figure out is where do I have momentum? What concepts can I write about and I expect to be successful. And that's Stage 1. Chuck: Before we move on from that one how do we gauge that success rate; what do we think is successful, what are the indicators that say hey I'm already doing well here or I'm not doing well here? Jeff: Absolutely and that's the hardest part. And to run an effective content marketing team and a content production team for any company you've got to start at what are the key performance indicators? If I'm an e-commerce site the key metrics that I have is my average order size, it's my conversion rate close to a closed cart, it's my cart abandons, it's my total revenue. If I'm an affiliate site it might be an RPM metric and I have to be agnostic of and when I have agnostic a reference of affiliate and then I want specific combinations of affiliates because sometimes you can actually fake your books accidentally if you've got great affiliates on one page and not great affiliates on another. So it's really about I think engagement with affiliate opportunities in addition to revenue. You get a look at both of those things. If you are a publisher it's going to be RPM but also it's engagement with those pages. Because again how your ad server validates is do you have paid ads? So if you have a bunch of house ads and those have a different rate you want to always account for that because you might have great content this shooting off impressions engaged users clicks and such. So I always like to look at my current value per visit and then by the way from a B2B tech or something PI attorney; all these places are where MarketMuse does business so I like to kind of list a full fledge. I'm looking at my conversion to lead. I'm also looking at as far down the funnel as I can track and attribute. Every deal no matter what every situation you're looking at you always want to get it back to current value per visit and aspirational value per visit from a channel. In this case, let's say organic. So if I'm in a scenario I want to always be able to back that up. That's the only way I can truly define quantified value. And for MarketMuse obviously, that's the only way we can truly walk in the door and be confident in that ROI analysis. And that's why we've had to do this hundreds of times. When we talk to somebody it's to say how much do you really value each one of these visits? And if you can't answer that question it's okay, let's back into it, let's figure it out. How much is that truly about? Because then if you grow your traffic 20% you can say okay well that's worth this much to me. How much am I willing to invest in that? And that's how I define. So that's a long way of answering a short question that was actually really duped question. But the answer then is my quantified value metric. How much did I publish? How much did I update? How much do those act motions cost or those actions cost? And what was the efficiency rate on the content achieving some sort of baseline goal? I like to use recurring traffic from organic search as my goal. So I might get a boost from other channels and then it dies off. So I want recurring traffic at or above a particular baseline. So if I wrote 100 articles and 10 of them achieved my baseline of ongoing recurring traffic when I have 10 percent efficiency rate in that zone. If I updated 100 articles and 40 of them grew in traffic at or above a particular level. Then I've got a 40% efficiency rate on optimization. So when I talk about effectiveness of content I want to see how much should I publish, how much should I update and how often did that achieve my goals? I see ranges by the way just it scares the crap out of me sometimes, 1 to 2% of efficiency. Like I write 100 articles and only 2 get rankings. Quite often 40 and 45% at best practice that it's so wide. So you need to take stock today whomever you are and say how often did I write, how often did that yield recurring traffic; that's my efficiency rate. Am I in that 10 percent zone? I got some work to do. Am I above 20, 30, 40? I'm kicking butt. Now how do I take advantage of that? What do I do? No matter where you are there's always steps you can take to really maximize your earn. But it's a great question because so many people talk about ROI and they can't explain how they calculated. Chuck: Right. And it sounds like what you're saying is maybe like diving into your analytics but not looking at like how much traffic this page is doing but what is the segmented traffic; how much is coming from Google or Bing or whatever you're targeting. Maybe you're targeting link acquisition with an article then you got to figure out what's the value of a link that's coming in, how many did I get on this piece of content, and then maybe kind of summing up the value of all the different components. Like knowing what your KPIs are for the specific content. Jeff: Absolutely. And so the ways that I do that so it's manageable; there are ways where you can do that so it's manageable because [inaudible 00:16:38.2] I have thousands of pages or I published hundreds of pages how could I possibly do that? It's do it for the site level. Do it by site section; it's the way Google thinks about your site anyway. Do it by site section and then take your marquee pages and do a more thorough analysis of them. And marquee could mean your best pages that you feel are the best but they punch below their weight class, stuff that does really well, stuff that you invested a lot of money in. So build your plat; this is the stuff I'm going to do with deep dive but I'm also going to get my section level and sight levels metrics. An example might be that when Chuck writes an article he's on a 20% conversion rate to my effectiveness metric. But when Ron I don't know who Ron is but well just say Ron, when Ron writes an article he's 5%. So you're to get; you could do person level, you could do section level. You really want to get that slice and dice to know what's the thing that is causing success to happen or is it luck. A lot of sites a lot of B2B companies they rely on all of their authority for 5, 10 pages and they've got hundreds. Not only is it completely scary and unhealthy from a competitive space situation but if you're a Quiet Light listener it's an opportunity. I mean it's an opportunity to see a site that has a risk of ruin. It's an opportunity to see a site that has huge opportunity if they just publish the right content. So all of those things are what we're typically looking at. It's when I publish about Chevrolets it does real well when I publish about smart cars it doesn't. So when I get that site I'm shooting off about Ford and about gosh as my adjacent so I'm talking about; so it's really getting into when I get in how can I write about tangential or semantically related concepts, really expand my inventory in ways I know we'll have more success, and if I do want to cover other things. I think a reasonable expectation about investment need because I can't just go right kitty cats and crush it. But I know that if I cover what hubcaps should be on the PT Cruiser I can. And so those are the types of conceptual analysis, editorial content strategies I have been doing with years. Now you have data to support it. And that's where I think that the next phase of great Search Engine Optimization outcomes comes from this type of content strategy analysis for sure. Chuck: And one of the things I was reading the other day was just and I think everybody already knows this but they were talking about news websites and why don't news websites rank for everything. Like a news website gets all the links because everybody's linking to articles but yet they don't have the ability to rank for all topics, right? Certain news agencies actually get a lot more traffic for specific topics because that is maybe their topical relevance of their business. Jeff: Yeah. Oh, I mean news is so unique. The news algorithm has so many components and so from a Google news perspective and Google top stories there's components of real-time boosting. There's the concept of the fact that news articles appear in organic search. And they're coming from different channels of information. So they cross the chasm from just being news to being appropriate in search results. So then there's the dynamic of some of those items stay forever. Some of them are temporal and they're going to bounce out when that thing becomes less of a temporal story. We actually have a solution for that. MarketMuse allows you to analyze both serps and overlay analysis and it's called newsroom but that's neither here nor there. But the point of the message is what if you write news articles about this topic you care about but there's four to five aggressive publishers also publishing in that that have authority for news and you're just picking up the scraps. You can see that with solutions that are out there now. You're going to just see what those things are and then tracking that back to assessing performance. If I'm looking at my content items and I write 80 articles about some topic I get no news referrals and I get trickles in of organic and I'm writing it for the purposes of news, is that great? Let's say they get other KPIs, let's say they do gather links and they become powerful. But I'm not winning news, I'm not getting the organic search value that I think I should, how do I use that? How do I use the power that those pages are acquiring to my benefit? And most of the time when I see problematic content strategy; document the content strategy at a company they're not looking at their existing power pages. What content are they publishing that is gaining some value and how do we use that? Because I've got something that's a link magnet that every SEO in the world will go we need to do something with that but they don't necessarily know what that is. And a lot of times you see these link magnets and they're out there. They got a little bit of traffic upfront. They're not valuable enough to get recurrent traffic or it's not; it was a temporal staged story so they don't know what to do. And so weaving that article; weaving that item into some real good content strategy, that's the win. That's building my thought leadership, building my clusters of content, and hey this powerful battery. Plug the battery in here, plug the battery in here, and weave it in with internal link, weave it in with appropriate content, upgrade opportunities for conversions, there's so many things you can do to repurpose but when you get a winner use the winner. And we see that older people are scared to touch them because they're like it might break up. So these are the main dynamics that we run into with kind of the Assessment Authority and news as a special case. But it's so misunderstood what to do when you get a news winner. Because if you can predict that every time you publish a news story on Linux you're in the top three of Google top stories. Like, open that wallet every darn day. And I have clients that are in that scenario and we're like you must write about this every day and they cringe at first and I'm like here's the value that this produces; it's not just traffic. It's all the good stuff that comes as a result of that. It's also a long answer to a short question but I think that's usually a theme with me. Chuck: Alright, so number two you're about to say before I ask you a question? Jeff: Oh gosh I don't even remember what it was now. No, I'm just kidding. So it's kind of breadth and depth and then is the things that you see as being really high quality that you've written. These pillar pieces, the centers of the universe, the things that have acquired the KPI. How are those KPIs; they've acquired some metric that gives you that sense. So we've talked about how your existing momentum, well what are these cornerstone pieces, what are the center of the cluster pieces that exist and how are you using them today? Are you weaving them in? Are you using them to write then support pieces, etcetera? And how do you combine that with analysis of your target readership or user or buyer intent? So what's their purchase cycle; do you have coverage in the information phase, do you have coverage in the middle of funnel, do you have coverage late in the funnel, do you have post-purchase troubleshooting and adherence in ownership? So when you have a beacon of power really that's the time your mirror needs to be the most clear. I always say this. Like, stop tilting the mirror your way because you think you have success. The garbage in the game right now as I call it is people looking at search results and saying I need to write articles just like that search result item regardless of whether you want to argue differentiation it doesn't work. It only works if you have existing power to start to do things like that. What you have to do is just say with my site that I'm assessing, do I have coverage at all phases of the cycle that people would care about who are in this motion; I mean research, intent, decision, conversion, adherence, troubleshooting, whatever the metrics of the buy spying journey would be. And that comes to the why I say this way because the pragmatic approach is to say does this site truly represent my business as an authority and as an expert? What about this collection of pages or this content inventory tells a story that I actually am an expert? And so when you're looking at coverage, you're looking at momentum and what's been validated that I am an authority. But then it's also going to be like aspirationally if I truly were an expert what would I have covered? I can do that by doing competitive analysis or I can do that by doing semantic analysis and manual research. And so when you cross-reference; the punch line here is cross-reference the aspirational model against what you have and that's your gap analysis. So think about the outcomes there. I have gaps in this part of the bio journey. I have gaps, I have blind spots I don't ever cover these topics. I have blind spots here blah, blah, blah. I also have ranking gaps where I have striking distance keywords like I'm on page two that's that the SEO trick, right? Go tell them to update the pages where you're on page two and they'll go up a little and hey you did your job. So but if you weave that into this type of semantic analysis; this gap analysis, your content strategy becomes 2, 3, 10x more impactful overnight. And so compare that to keyword gap analysis, think about the outcomes. You get a word out of it. You get a word where you're ranking 12th and you think you should rank 5th. Well, now you know why. And then you know what you need to do. And that's the secret here. It's get yourself out of just keywords; get yourself into the content that's needed to plug the holes. Chuck: So we don't know what we don't know so how do we figure out what the gaps are? Are there tools you can recommend? How do we figure this out? Jeff: Yeah. Well I think that they're certainly on it and they're obviously not just the ones I present with MarketMuse but there are ways if you want to see. You want to be able to look at using your analytics, using any off the shelf Search Engine Optimization suite whether you are a higher-end person in a more enterprise or kind of using an [inaudible 00:27:29.2]. Looking at those pages; again all of your pages trying to organize them or you're looking at you don't want to buy those things, you've got analytics and you look at something that can crawl and analyze the structure of your site like a screening frog or a [inaudible 00:27:45.5] or a solution like that. Get a true understanding about your site and what it's about. What are the things where every time you publish it it's a winner or more of the time versus what's the stuff where you've been tilting at; aspirational goals. So looking at that or even looking at just traffic and revenue versions by section or by page type or by publish state because last year this was under this person's management this year this is under this person's management. Just a combination of this basic information from analytics and page-level data from a [inaudible 00:28:23.7] can get you at least started. And just to start thinking critically about your content inventory. A solution like the MarketMuse obviously is going to give you the sniper rifle to say go write this page, go fill this gap. But even if you if you're just looking to get kind of a basic understanding it can be easily put together to say gosh Chuck I don't know if we should publish any more articles about backgammon we're a chess site, it just hasn't extended. But when I write about you know particular defenses, we crush. Why don't we just lean into that? So you can make those types of decisions but then how do you get where we want to be a backgammon site. What are the ways that we can bridge the gap between chess and backgammon? How can we become more of an authority on strategic board games in general? So those are the types of questions that are out of this type of analysis, if you're real with yourself you stop publishing stuff that's not going to succeed. Try to figure out why it's not succeeding. That's where a person like a business like ours operates. But there's many out of an agency that knows the answer to these questions that can do that introspection that can do that analysis. But if you're analyzing your site I think it's truly to step back and say am I putting myself out there as an expert? Am I really showing it or was I chasing keywords? And it's always that oh man I haven't even thought about; I've just been looking up keywords, building lists, writing articles, keywords, lists, articles, keywords, lists, articles especially in the affiliate side not knocking always [inaudible 00:29:58.8] so much. It clearly comes out of a keyword list. And then I wrote the article some of them get linked together. Some of them don't. It's not leaving the web of somebody who actually knows their stuff. A great example of this; I've got uprise for every product in the world prices or reviews combination; bottom of funnel. That encompasses my contact strategy against this topic. It could have helped with that and then people wonder why they get hit when there's a quality change in the algorithm. It's because they're looking for that thing. They're looking for that stuff. You haven't told the story about buying that thing. Why are you the expert on pricing it? It doesn't make sense. And so that's the thing that; think about; get out of these search engine optimization shoes get into an editorial shoe. Hire an expert to say hey if you were writing an inventory of content about sound bafflers what would you cover; what are the things you need to know? And then cross-reference that against your stuff. Obviously, there's ways of doing both of those things taking technology like what we do. Chuck: So let's talk about that I know we don't want to like hardcore pitch your product but you have a great product that I think is a lot of value to a lot of people. So let's talk about like how your product can help and maybe even hit it as like these are the things that my product can do and some of the stuff people can do without the product so they could do it on their own but you're offering a service that makes it a lot easier. So let's talk about that. Jeff: So if I'm going to assess the value of a site; for example, if I want to see where there's areas of opportunity to create content or update content and be more successful. If I can get that hit list immediately and go execute on those plans; really move the needle quickly, that's a direct value of what one of the components of MarketMuse Suite. So MarketMuse Suite is a collection of; a combination of an automated content inventory and content auditing solution. We'll also take it to the next level and say after you build; after you say I want to create this page or update this page we'll build a comprehensive content brief for your writer. So it acts as a blueprint or an outline or a brief if you're familiar with what a brief looks like. And it tells a story so that the writer can be creative. So that the writer can research imagery; so the writer can research their sources and doesn't have to worry about is this thing going to have success after I hit publish. So many writers the anxiety they have; this is a huge pain point in the writing space is am I doing my keyword research correctly. Ask them. I mean that's the part I don't know. That's the part I really don't care about. I'm speaking from their standpoint. So take that mystery out of it. Take the SEO mystery out of it. Here's the outline we need you to follow. Be super creative. So we answer that question with that side of MarketMuse. We also have some point applications for doing competitive analysis so I can look at any search engine result page and understand who's got great content; high quality, who's got weak content, what are the gaps. And if I were going to put out true best in Class content on this specific intent, this specific topic what would it look like getting into the gritty details. Chuck: So what are some of those details? Jeff: Yeah. So what are the concepts that need to be included, what are the variants to consider, what are the questions to ask, what are the questions to answer, what are the internal linking; things you should do to internally link to other pages to tell the story that this isn't an orphan page on left field that actually weaves into your existing inventory and then grading your existing coverage and understanding how to interweave and to weave those things together. I have this great page; the one that you talked about, the news one, I want to make sure that it's linked. So all of those things we have point solutions so you can do a one-page analysis and get recommendations to improve it. You can get that one-page analysis and recommendations to make it equal to or better than your competitors every time and go head to head or against the whole field; questions and answers analysis, internal and external linking recommendations, and then we have for premium; one of our premium offerings is the newsroom solution specifically for Google News optimization. So basically the story is what should I write next, can you give me details as to how I would execute that so that you're getting me as close as you can to publishing? And then for all of my adjunct workflows; this specific analysis, this one-page analysis, we have applications to solve those specific goals to say okay why is Quiet Light Brokerage beating me for this topic? Is it because of quality; MarketMuse will tell you. Is it because of links and they have a worst page? Darn, they're more authoritative than me; what do I need to do? I need to go write a package of content. Tell me more of the story that I'm the expert because I don't have that off-page authority. So no matter where you sit it's giving you the advice as to what those next steps should be. And that's kind of the spirit of what we do. Chuck: So one of the examples I've heard you say before is like you're writing about a specific topic blue fuzzy widgets, everybody who writes about blue fuzzy widgets also includes pink monkeys and if you're not writing about pink monkeys then you clearly don't know about blue fuzzy widgets. You're not an expert. So maybe can you talk about that a little bit? Jeff: Sure. So our core technology is built on it. It's a topic modeling technology and it tells the story of what it means to be an expert on a concept. So it tells me by analyzing in some cases hundreds of thousands or millions of content items that people who know a lot about blue fuzzy widgets also know a lot about pink monkeys and so if you write about blue fuzzy widgets and you don't include pink monkeys you're not telling the story that you're an expert. So often in the market people have just looked at like the top 10 results to do this assessment. For so many reasons that I could get into there's a great article online called TFIDF is not the answer to your content and SEO problems and it goes into detail of each one of these logic challenges that exist. It's great for information retrieval. It's been around for 30 something years. Obviously, it's still being used. The challenge though is don't base your business content strategy and thousands of dollars of investment on that. And so what we were able to do is to say that but we're also then because we're analyzing so much data we're able to say that well guess what the top competitors aren't talking about orange donkeys and it's very relevant. That's a way for you to differentiate yourself. So you're covering the blue fuzzy widgets, your covering the pink monkeys but then you're going to differentiate yourself by also illustrating that you know all about those orange donkeys and that's what makes you special. And how does that drive back to true expertise? In this, we see constantly being successful with the best content strategies. They're writing about the table stakes content but they're also illustrating that they really know this stuff. And I always use more detailed examples but a cool one I always use for content marketing is a lot of people that write about content strategy don't talk about buyer personas. They don't talk about target audience. They don't talk about the roles on a content strategy team. Do you know why? Because they're chasing keywords. And if you can look at a search engine results page and go ooh, they're chasing keywords, there's my opportunity. Even if they're 9,000-word articles by HubSpot if you can find gaps in their game you can really take advantage of that and you can punch above your weight. And if you can pop a page that doesn't have as much traditional off-page authority link profile to build that beautiful cluster you can start ranking with undersized off-page pages and sections. And that's niche hunting. That's what the niche hunters talk about. That's what the UN fencers of the world; that's what they're really focusing on. How can I punch above my weight with undervalued off page sites? That's the way you get there; great content illustrates that you're an expert every time. Chuck: So we're thinking; traditional people when they're thinking about articles they're doing keyword research they're finding those low difficulty versus high search volume relative and then they're just going after that but what they're missing is just because people aren't searching for a specific word doesn't mean that it's not important. Jeff: You shouldn't have it in there. Chuck: Right. Jeff: Oh yeah. Chuck: Or specific words within content that you need to have to show you're in authority even though people; the average Joe may not be searching for that. Jeff: Exactly right. And that is the funniest thing about to watch the evolution in this market. When we first launched four years ago everyone when they would see a list of topics; this is the most interesting thing I'll say today, four years ago they used to look at that list and go why isn't it sorted by search point? And I said because that's irrelevant to what we're trying to do here. We're trying to tell you what it means to write that golden article to be an expert. Why does it matter what search volume is because you're so ingrained to use volume and PPC competition which that's another story for another day; crazy. Why don't do it? By the way, I'm not correlative to organic competition. I can get into that in a second but they're so ingrained; heavily so ingrained to use search volume as their North Star. They want everything to have search volume next to it so they can sort by it. So if we sort by that and then you discredit the stuff on the bottom, that's bananas. You're thinking about this from a content strategy perspective or from an expertise perspective. And that's what we see time and time again. Fun fact and I think you've heard me speak about this; it's totally exploitable. If you see competitors who clearly take topic lists and sorted by search volume you can; we usually call it chopping down a tree, you can chop down the tree. Every time it works because they have this strategy gap. You can predict what they're going to do. You can also chop down the tree in areas where they have blind spots. They will never fill them because they're using search point as a North Star. And so another way to say it is stop using that four square; that volume competition, you've all seen it. Alright, let's try to find those low competition high volume words. Sure those are great. Lean into those but that's not the whole picture of how you should write your content. Because the last thing I'll say about this is if you have no content at one stage of the purchase cycle and you think that you're not at risk with having content at another stage you've got another thing coming. It's going to catch up to you. Someone is going to fill that. Somebody is going to fill those intent gaps and crush you. It's just common. And we see it with publishers that have been resting on the laurels of their powerful content. They're just getting their tail handed to them by real content strategies every day. Chuck: So what are some quick wins you think people can have? Like okay, I have a let's say a site about; I don't know, let's just say a general content site, you pick the topic. What are some real quick wins I can get? Jeff: I like to call them one-page plans. So I'm going to find a page of interest. So something that's special about my site and maybe it's a small collection of pages. This is my page that's for some reason it's special. It's really long form, it's beautiful, it converts very well. Chuck: Are we defining special meaning like it's already getting traffic or I just think it's pretty? Jeff: I like it and it gets me some KPI that I think is legitimate and is giving me value. So it could be traffic already. It could be rankings that I am already getting; it ranks for lots of words. So that's a signal of comprehensiveness. A quick win could be to look at what that page is ranking for and pick out the words; this is using SEM Rush; using that to pick out the words in that list that the page doesn't actually satisfy the user intent for rewrite those pages; quickest win ever. So that one-page plan I rank this; I'll use a great example. Content Marketing Institute; I love that site, they have a wonderful page on LinkedIn profiles. It dominates LinkedIn profile marketing. They also rank for marketing profiles, not very good. And the site; the page just covers LinkedIn profiles. It doesn't cover generally marketing profiles. So they could beam their other zoom higher and now cover marketing profiles in general and write about other marketing profile presences as a cluster. All boats are going to rise. So you do that exercise, a quick win every time. You can find it. We call them content mismatches or unaddressed intent plants; always a win. You can always find one on your site because you've probably got pages that rank for hundreds of things. No one page can answer a hundred things beautifully. So when you go write that page people are like won't that cannibalize? No. I mean [inaudible 00:43:23.2]. Do I have to explain myself no? Chuck: So the key there is again you've got that one page; it's linking for a lot of words, you've got tons of words, you'll pick out the few that it's not ranking well for and then you'll link through that keyword to a new article that is specifically about that content? Jeff: Or expand it if it's a fit. If it's not a fit writing new but the key is it's not just that it's not ranking. I mean if it's not ranking for that's important but it could be ranking reasonably but not satisfying like user searches for that on Google and then they land on that page and like this sucks this isn't what I wanted. So if that intent mismatched so can you correct that and improve the page or do you need to do that in a new creation motion? So that is a tried and true technique. That's a recycle, recycle, recycle. Inside MarketMuse you just press a button and it tells you those plans which make life a lot easier obviously but you can do it. It's just that manual labor to use that one technique. And if you ask me for a quick one it's always a quick one. Look for that hundred word or more ranking page, find the word that this; read the page. You'd be surprised how many content strategists and CEOs don't actually read their sites; it's amazing. Read the page, know what value it has, and does this page get people to achieve that value. It can also be done on the back end. Andy Crestodina who works at Orbit Media; he is an expert in Google Analytics and content strategy. He wrote a book called Content Chemistry. Inside his analytics book; parts of the book, it shows you how to do this in Google Analytics by looking at exit rate and engagement gaps. So you can do it there or you can do it from keywords or any other ways but those are some quick ones. Look at your worst exit rates. So many people don't break those down by; they don't cross-reference those two things. So they've got a page, this thing is broken it's 90% in exit rate. Go back to the words that are driving the users to that page. What if all of them are out of alignment? You can just flash the content double engagement overnight. So there's so many wins that you can do with just a quick one-page plan analysis. I like to say pick one you like, get started, put few wins on the board, prove it out, and then decide is this something I want to get serious with and invest in technology that can support it. Chuck: I got you. Now when I started first looking at your product a couple of years ago and seeing kind of the wonderful amazing things you were doing, it was at a price point where I actually kind of like when high price points because it keeps; on really good things it keeps other people from being able to do it. But I guess you just launched a new price point for a self-service. Jeff: Yes. It's actually something we've been looking forward to doing. And we are a mid-market enterprise large publisher; people who have really invested in content that's traditionally been our target market. Chuck: Could you give an example of some big players that you work with? Jeff: Yeah sure. I'm trying to think of who's on this site. G2 Crowd is a customer and they're on there; we work with divisions of the Walmart Corporation, Home Depot, large e-commerce but also just great publishers. Business.com; love them so there's a lot of people who are publishing content. A lot of people I can't name and I wish I could. But if you type in MarketMuse case studies you can find a cool example from Tomorrow's Sleep on that one and how their site grew from 4,000 to 400,000 in a year with their agency that works with us. So that was always a big focus of ours. It was make sure that they can write content. Make sure that they can update content, that they've committed; they actually believe content can get them there because then life's going to be a lot easier for everybody. But we then also said let's look at the mirror. I'm always about looking in the mirror and look at the demand that we have. And so we really looked at who's coming in the front door saying we want to be MarketMuse customers. And right now having made that case internally or I just I'm not a profile of a customer that can spend tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars on software. And so what we did was we right-sized for a specific target market, we right-sized a self-serve offering. And there is also a trial experience that everyone who's listening can go to the site. Go to MarketMuse trial. Go to MarketMuse, see the trial and you'll get an experience with your data; we've actually set this up so you can use your site, optimize a page, create a content brief, update some existing content like I mentioned, get that content brief and then there's also a special workflow baked in there that'll amaze you that I'm not allowed to explain but you'll see it when you get there. But you can do a competitive analysis, you can update a page, you get a content brief; by the way, take that with you it's free and make that decision of whether you want to become a MarketMuse Pro customer which is our self-serve offering at 499 a month. Quiet Light Brokerage Podcast listeners have a promo which Chuck will include in his notes which gets you a discount there. Or if you're a larger team, if you have four writers, if you write 10, 15 articles a month it's going to make more sense for you to be in one of our other packages; a bronze, a silver, or a gold, or a higher offering. So it gives you an understanding about the value that we provide, the opportunity to buy, to see if that's a fit, or to immediately recognize oh gosh this is what I need for all of my content items. I need one of the larger offerings. So the experience we typically is that people find the right car on the lot. Or they begin using and saying oh wow I need more of this. I was successful with the first thing I did. I know this makes sense. Making your content higher quality, that's the fun part about being in Market Muse; it's you never look at it and you're like oh man I wish I hadn't made that page better. You're always on this ongoing quest to do a better job, write better content that resonates more with your audience. And that's what we do every day. Chuck: Awesome. So to wrap this up I always like to ask people could you give us a few random tools not really related to what we're talking about but just things you like to use in your daily work or just regular life. What are some of the hacks you may have? Jeff: Man, there's so many. I love this. So a couple that I use, when I had some personal time management issues I tried everything. I tried boards with; con bomb boards and everything. And one thing that helped me analyze where I was spending my time was called Tomecular and it looks like an eight-sided dice and you put stuff on it. And as you're working on stuff you move the dice around and it seems so; maybe it's because I like touching things like that but it really gave me an understanding about where I was spending my time and I fixed some stuff within MarketMuse like the business organizationally just from that information. So that's cool. I love Boomerang. I think it's a beautiful solution for making sure you don't forget stuff if you get a lot of e-mails. It's a really good productivity tool. Chuck: Before you move on from Boomerang I think Google now have something similar built-in where they have the… Jeff: They have don't let me forget this. Chuck: Yeah. It's like a little reminder you can set for different dates and it comes back in. Jeff: Yeah. Boomerang has some features that I'm so used to being able to set and forget things pause so I don't know if Google's ever going to pause Google so that's something that, but I like Boomerang. It's not that expensive. You do need to watch your SaaS subscriptions though. That's another story. Another one I love, love, love, love is Full Story. Full Story isn't; they keep going a little bit a little more expensive each time you look at them. Good for them. It's like having a DVR on every user that ever comes to your site. You can watch the experiences; obviously anonymized but you can watch their experiences, build pattern matching, look at segments, and really get an understanding about why people are doing things. I mean I think that that's really valuable. Chuck: It's kind of like what is it Crazy Egg? Jeff: It's similar to a Crazy Egg but it's more of like a heat map reporting. They've got this capability and a handful of other solutions that are out. I just think Full Story has this like really robust like I can go in and I can find users that went through this specific sequence and just watch all the sessions. I mean so many times. Just learn from that to really tell a story and it really is powerful when you are already doing a new multivariate testing to really catapult that into the next level. I mean if I told you what conversion rates we have you'd blow up. But yeah I mean you really have to think critically and fly the flag of your customers so that when you do get these solutions they don't just sit on the shelf. I mean my goal every day is to make sure that the next article that every one of my clients publish is more successful than it could have been without us. And I think that comes through in our online messaging. It's not just that we're this secret weapon of the elite agencies which I know for a while that's what we were. It's that if you use MarketMuse your stuff will do better more consistently and then I will be happy. And if it does not happen then I and our entire team will not be happy. And we hope that our messaging comes through and we couldn't do it without these other solutions that we work with Full Story, like Pendo; Pendo is a beautiful thing, and some other metrics, some other things we use to really dive deep into our customer experience. Chuck: Awesome well I appreciate you taking the time to talk with everybody today. Is there a way that people can reach out to you or the company? Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. So MarketMuse.com, Chuck's going to post a promo code that's for the MarketMuse Pro self-serve offering as a discount. You can email me directly Jeff@MarketMuse.com, Jeffrey_Coyle on Twitter. I'm pretty active. LinkedIn, please. I typically don't say no unless you've sent me a weirdo request that tells me in an unreal way that you like my profile and you'd love to connect. If it's clear that you bought or sold a website before in your life I'm probably going to connect with you and want to talk in any light. So yeah please reach out and go check it out. We have a lot of content. I have a lot of; this conversation is like this throughout the web that I think can really level up your game and give you the ability to assess deals quickly without just hunches. You got to go with your hunches but it's nice to have hunches and data. Chuck: Yeah for sure. And a quick pro tip from me, if you're trying to get somebody to accept your LinkedIn profile and they don't know who you are, write a message. Don't just send the like later. Personally, I feel like if I've LinkedIn with somebody and I'm connected then I'm somewhat vouching for them so I don't just accept random LinkedIns. Like, everybody, I've accepted for the most part are people I've actually met in person. But then we go to these conferences and somebody sent me a request and I don't remember them so it's like just send a little message with them, take the two seconds to write. Jeff: Yeah, and make it from the heart. We can smell of that. Come on. I think MarketMuse is cool. Oh really do you? I do too. So I guess we are connected I love the thing but you know. Chuck: There you go. All right well I appreciate your time and thank you, everybody, for taking the time to listen and see you soon.   Links and Resources: MarketMuse MarketMuse coupon code (mentioned in the podcast): QLBMM Email Jeff Twitter LinkedIn

Today we welcome Chuck (iii) Mullins, we are talking with him about his background, experience, his algorithm knowledge, ask him our rapid-fire questions, and pick his brain about the business. Chuck built his first profitable website back in 1996 when he was an impressionable 18 years old. He studied computer software engineering in college, which taught him the skills to analyze search results and implement strategies. Throughout his career of developing, managing, consulting, and investing in internet-based companies, Chuck has developed a keen ability to spot opportunities and develop strategies that lead to growth and profitability. Episode Highlights: Chuck's background, entrepreneurial experience, and success stories Web-based business ups-and-downs The difference in long-term cash flow from web-based businesses and get-rich-quick cash businesses Chuck's favorite web niches Chuck's favorite audience member (who is also a buyer) Websites that are more/less desirable The importance of knowing your Profit and Loss Biggest mistake buyers can make Best practices for buyers and sellers The importance of understanding the business and doing your research Quiet Light's vision and how we can help you Transcription: Mark: Joe, one of my favorite things about working with team Quiet Light is some of the camaraderie that we have with each other. The fact that we get to tease each other a little bit, egg each other on, but also help each other out; talk about deals, collaborate on our transactions because everybody at Quiet Light has so much entrepreneurial experience that it's like having this built in board of advisors for every single thing that we do. And one thing I think you and I need to do a better job of; I know we've had each of the advisors on Quiet Light at the Quiet Light Podcast. I think we need to bring them on a bit more so that others can enjoy some of the experience that they have. You had Chuck on recently and grilled him a little bit in this episode. Joe: I did. I want people to get to know Chuck for the fun experienced entrepreneur that he is. And so I mixed it up a little bit. I had some fun with him we did some rapid-fire questions. I intentionally; just let me get this upfront and out there for the audience. I intentionally mispronounced somebody's name. I butchered it intentionally. Again I did it seven or eight episodes ago and I got some email saying I think the person you're trying to find is so and so. I did it again. Mark: Same person? Joe: Same person; yeah, if he's listening. Mark: He needs to start listening to the podcast especially my episodes because frankly, I've got a leg up on you. Joe: You have overtaken me for the most popular episode on the Quiet Light Podcast. I will overcome that because I've got some great ones planned coming in here soon. Chuck is a fascinating individual. I've known Chuck for a long time and he's really, really smart when it comes to his entrepreneurial acumen. It's almost annoying to be honest because with a model that we have at Quiet Light Brokerage; we don't have employees, right? No one's an employee of Quiet Light Brokerage. We have a lot of entrepreneurs who work together in sort of a collective group. Well, one of the benefits to that is all the advice and feedback I'm able to get from people. And one of the most annoying things is all the feedback and advice I get from everyone. And sometimes; Chuck especially, Chuck is so thorough. What's the term he gives to himself? Whatever it is he just hyper focuses on the most minute little detail and I fear asking questions sometimes because of the level of detail that he's going to give to me in terms of what I have to fix and correct in a document that I'm creating. Mark: But at the end of the day even though sometimes it can be overwhelming like come on you think I'm doing everything wrong evidently because I keep getting his feedback, it's always on point. And I don't think I've ever received feedback from them where I look at it and say this is not worth considering or looking at; so a smart, smart guy. I'm looking forward to it. What are some of the things that you discussed in this episode? Joe: Well we talked about some of; he's got almost three years brokering now and over 20 years as an entrepreneur now. And he talked about some of his experiences; the pros and cons of A. being an entrepreneur, some of the things that he's found that certain buyers do better than anyone else, and how he wants new buyers to adopt that style, and then the biggest mistakes that someone's selling their business can make as well. And it's fascinating as I just said he's got 20 plus years as an entrepreneur. I'm in the same boat. You're in the same boat. So collectively the team at Quiet Light I'd say what 250 years of entrepreneurial experience that we share with our team with our clients and I think it's fascinating. Chuck is just the tip of the iceberg here in terms of the experience. So it's exciting to share this with him and we had a lot of fun. So that's the key to this one. Mark: Fantastic, well let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley from Quiet Light Brokerage on the Quiet Light Podcast. And today we have the most special guest. His name is Chucky. Now that's not what we call him. It's Chuck. I use his personal email address. I'm not going to tell you at what you can all haul in the mail anyway. You know his e-mail address its Chuck@QuietLightBrokerage. Chuck Mullins, welcome back to the Quiet Light Podcast. Chuck: Thank you, sir. Thank you. For any that's specific it's actually Charles Clifford Mullins III. That's my D-I-I-I. Joe: You know I am from New England I can't talk with a British accent; it's something about us. Chuck: Well I can't either. Joe: Alright. Well listen you know the routine. Normally on the podcast we ask people to give their own background; who they are, what they're all about so that we're not sounding like we're reading from a script which we don't. We wing these things. You know that. Our audience knows that. But before we get into that I want to ask you a series of rapid-fire questions; the first one so that people understand and establish your experience here at Quiet Light Brokerage, how long have you been brokering at Quiet Light Brokerage? Chuck: About two and a half; almost three years. Joe: Almost three years. Okay. So let's start with…I've got a total of six questions. Number one; and you've got to give me a quick answer. Number one, who's your favorite broker? Chuck: Joe Valley. Joe: Good, good, good. Alright, if you were stranded on an island with me, Brad Wayland, and Jason Yellowitz and a rash floated by and they would only carry three of us; there's four altogether, who would you leave behind and why? Chuck: Jason Yellowitz, because he would be able to burn his stacks of cash to stay warm. Joe: And he carries it with him, is that what you're saying? Chuck: Inaudible[00:06:25.8] Joe: Jason I know you all listen to the podcast so everybody make fun of Jason. That's your job here. Alright, this is a really important question. Who is the better podcast me or Andy Youderainan; I mean in Andrew Youderian? Chuck: I would have to go with Mark. Joe: You are… Chuck: Hello? Isn't it you that people come up to the Booze and ask for or is it Mark that they come up and ask for? Joe: That's me. It's me. Mark doesn't go to Booze. Alright, sid you know Walker Diabel wrote a book; and a best seller book? Chuck: Have you heard about the second book that he wrote? Joe: No. He wrote a second book? Chuck: Yes. If you go to WalkerDiebel.guru you can check out the second one that hasn't been released yet. Joe: Okay, Alright. So this is a tough question. This is not a trick question. I want to know if you can answer this one. What's the name of Walker's book? Chuck: Buy Then Build. Joe: You got it. Okay. Alright. Chuck: How can you not get it? I've heard it at every conversation. Every conference I go to there's these three books that are just floating around that conference and I'm like wait a second how did that get there? Joe: And it's the bottom of every one of his e-mail signatures. One of these days you're going to dig way back into the archives when he was actually an actor and find a clip and we're going to change his email signature line somehow some way. Alright, so as you know historically Quiet Light Brokerage does not recruit brokers. I have conversations three or four times a week these days with people who want to join the team. But we, for the most part, don't recruit. We have as you know or Mark has as you know recruited a few starting with Amanda back in the day. She was the first. And I think Brad was also recruited. And yourself was also recruited. Of all of the brokers that Mark recruited; last question by the way, what was his best decision? Chuck: Probably Brad. He's been killing it man. Joe: Man and give yourself some credit Chuck. Come on. Anybody but you would probably be the politically correct answer but essentially you just threw Amanda under the bus. But fortunately Amanda doesn't really listen to our own podcast either. Alright, enough of this nonsense; let's talk about you and your experience. I know all about you but for the audience members, Chuck has been on the podcast before Mark had him on when he first joined the team two and a half years ago, three years ago. And the focus of that podcast was a tiny little bit about Chuck but mostly about Chuck's due diligence experience. And I think you had a list of was it 25 due diligence tools? Chuck: Who can remember? Joe: Yeah, a lot. And it's all; if you Google Quiet Light Podcast, Chuck Mullins, due diligence you'll find it. It'd be at the top of the Google search engine and it's great stuff. And I learned a lot when I did it. But I would say I refer most people out for due diligence; buyers that is to our friend Chris Yates at Centurica. They do a great job. Well, let's talk a little bit about who you are and your life experience and a little bit of your brokering experience now that you're three years into Quiet Light. So who the heck are you? Tell us about your entrepreneurial experience. I know that you started way back when you were in college, right? Chuck: Yeah. I graduated high school in ‘96 and I always wanted a computer but we couldn't afford one. So finally for college I needed a computer so I got a computer and started a free website on it's like Angel Fire or Tripod or one of these things way back in '96. And I remember just putting up some content and that is an online library for college students. And I remember somebody offered me like 10 bucks at some point to put a link on my website. I'm like $10 awesome, I'm making money and then somebody offers me like a hundred bucks and I'm like what $100? So then I was; this is before I even had a domain so it was like AngelFire/blahblahblah. I started thinking about okay we'll buy a domain and back then they were like thirty-five bucks. I was talking to my mom and I'm like mom I'd buy a domain and she's like you're crazy you shouldn't buy you know like you're just wasting your money and why are you spending all this time in front of the computer and then it just started growing and then somebody offered me a thousand bucks. And before you know it I was making about sixteen grand a month off of advertising back in the ‘90s. Joe: In college, right? Chuck: In college; yeah, and so I was just… Joe: That's a lot of Jägermeister. Chuck: And the Internet bubble ended up bursting in like the 2000, 2001 and all that money like dried up overnight. So I was like okay now what? So I had to figure out how to pivot and myself and two other guys; we had different businesses. We all pooled together and started a membership site. The first month with our membership site we made like 60 grand. It was just like mind-blowing like oh my God we're in college. I didn't have keggers I had like full bottle; like full bar parties. Joe: Everybody wanted to be your friend, right? Chuck: It was fun and we'd stay at like the Ritz Carlton for Mardi Gras and like just do crazy things. We rented like a ski chalet; it was like a 15 bedroom house on the slopes and I forget where it was bit we then brought all of like; we had affiliates at the time, all our affiliates to come and ski with us and so we had a great time. And at some point, I was making a lot of money and I didn't really know what to do with it all. I was definitely wasting my fair share of it. Actually kind of going back, my mom, the whole thing with her telling me I shouldn't start the business and this and that in 2003 I think it was about my mom and sister cars for Christmas. Joe: I wrote that down when you said it because I knew that. You told me the story about Christmas and your mom went outside and there was a big ribbon on a brand new car. I guess she's happy you bought that domain name, after all, isn't she? Chuck: Yeah. Yeah for sure and I do not usually tell that story so maybe we'll have to edit that out. Joe: No. No editing. Tell the story. Chuck: I made two giant boxes and I had my mom like a box of some keys and she sees them and it had Lincoln in it which I had a navigator at the time and she's like oh it's a scavenger hunt he put his keys in here and she walks outside and sees this giant box and just like; my mom doesn't curse and she goes oh shit and she runs outside gets ready to tear into the box. And I said wait, mom, hold on hold on there's a card on there you've taught me better; open the card. And so she opens it and it says to my sister and my mom is like inaudible[00:12:57.1] my mom's like…well my sister is like to me? And again I wiggle the keys in front of my sister's face and she's like what?! So she runs and dives in and my mom looks at me like what this like WTF and I'm like you're over there. Then she starts walking and then sees it like buried on the other side of the house in a big box and like runs over and dives in. We're in Georgia at that time at a family house and it was cold and she didn't have shoes on. It was a great time. I've got the video. One day I'll have to share with somebody but I don't know that I want to share it. Joe: What a great experience and a great thing to do for your mother and your sister did. Did your mother get the nicer car or was it equal to both? Chuck: I was actually going to buy them the exact same car and then I was talking to my sister trying to like make sure that it was the kind of she would want and I said well what do you think Mom would like? And she said well my favorite car is a Sequoia and I ended up; my mom a Lincoln Aviator and my mom's Sequoia. They're about the same price. I think my sister was a little more but I did get some grief about that. Also the night before or a couple of nights before we went to Walmart and I bought every single piece of cheesy add on part you could get and added it to the car. So I got like a fuzzy steering wheel cover, dice, a little light-up things that go on the rims, and just totally like made the car look as ridiculous as possible and told them in order to get it they'd have to drive it with that stuff on it. Joe: That's hilarious. So for anybody that's listening instead of watching if you look at my chin and Chuck's chin you'll see some gray; there're probably a little more on mine than his of course. His is more his cheek mine's dead on center of my chin that's because of age and life experience. So you had some amazing times Chuck out of college making more money in a month than most people in this country do in a year; all web-based business experience. It's not always wonderful though. Chuck: No, absolutely not. Yeah, entrepreneurship is ups and downs. We've gotten hit by Google so many times I couldn't even tell you. And most of them were just algorithmic. But I have on one of my big businesses, we had about 12 that were all doing the same thing and one of my partners had used the same email address in our Webmaster Tools account and somebody from the spam team I guess noticed and went in and just manually penalized all of our businesses. I think except for two because those were the only two that didn't have those email addresses. And just overnight it's like poof gone and it's just like oh it's heartbreaking. At least when it's the algorithmic type of penalties it's easy to kind of; well maybe not easy but you're going to recover from that. The manual penalties, we hired somebody who used to work in the spam team. They told us what to do. We did it. We just haven't been able to recover from that on those other sites. Joe: Yeah I know it's always hard. Google algorithm updates I think are getting a little better, a little easier to handle and manage I think ultimately. I always used to say this actually if you do the right thing the way Google tells you to do it, ultimately it's not going to hurt you; the algorithm updates. And I guarantee there are people out there shaking their head no right now because a good friend of mine, he built a great business, a great, great content site, and sold it and there was a an update recently. And the buyer, another great entrepreneur bought it and did have some negative impact. What they both know is that sometimes when Google casts a wide net some of the wrong sites get caught up in it and over time that does get corrected but it does sting initially, doesn't it? Chuck: Yeah. And I will say like the reason we got caught up in a lot of the updates wasn't because we were doing the things that Google tells you to do. We were gaining the system and we deservedly got caught for doing those things and we would adjust our technique and then regain. So like one of our sites had like 100,000 pieces of unique content that we were in Google index for like 30 million pages. Joe: Wow. Chuck: So like how does one do that? Joe: How does one do that? Good Lord. Chuck: Trickery. Joe: Well the grey in your chin has matured you to the point that I think you're beyond the trickery because you look at the long term cash flow and benefits of owning an online business now it's not just a quick cash anymore. At least that's the way I look at it; you too? Chuck: Yeah, absolutely. And you're talking about like the algorithm updates and I feel like there's been so many and that most of the really garbage sites have probably gotten taken out by now. I feel like, and maybe I'm wrong but now it's more of like just tweaking the knobs a little bit. So unless you're in one of these like fringe business models I tend to believe and I could be 100% wrong but I tend to believe that most of the major algorithm updates have been already done and then now they're going after I guess like medical websites and things like that. Joe: Yeah. The updates are far further I'm sure in between and in many cases not as severe. Alright so I'm going to throw a question at you. I don't know if I told you this story or not or if you've heard it. Some of the audience members might have heard it so I'm going to just test your algorithm update knowledge. And if you answer within two seconds then I know you heard the story. So I bought a business, I sold my business in November 2010; yada, yada, yada. People have heard this a million times, or at least tens of hundreds of thousands of times if they've listened to every episode and keep downloading everything. No we haven't done 100,000 episodes that's totally inaccurate. I can't do math by the way apparently. Alright so I bought a content site. I sold a great site. The content was amazing. And then I bought a piece of junk. I had 42 amazing days. I bought it March 1st, 2012. I had maybe 3 or 4 keywords on the first page of Google and then boom they fell to the bottom of page 1 and then page 2 and they were gone and I lost over a quarter-million dollars in the course of twelve months. What happened? What algorithm update was that? It was; again I bought it March 1st, 2012; I had forty-two amazing days. Chuck: Panda. Penguin. Joe: Penguin. Alright, you're close. We're going to have to throw that quiz out there. Everybody in the audience wouldn't throw that quiz out there for a price. Chuck's wearing a beautiful Quiet Like Brokerage…is that a polo shirt? Chuck: Yeah. Joe: We need to get some of those packaged up and give away prizes for that kind of stuff. Alright let's jump on to your Quiet Light Brokerage life; your entrepreneurial life, amazing ups and downs, a lot of great ups and you did some good things for family and friends. The downs, we learn from them and we try to take those lessons and make sure that we are really bringing great listings to market so the buyers are making good safe investments and the sellers of those investments can move on with peace of mind to their next adventures whether that's another business or retirement. In your history of transactions here at Quiet Light, is there any particular niche that you gravitate towards and enjoy more than another because as you said a ton of content and affiliate experience, but I think some of your larger deals have been physical product e-commerce sites. But is there anything that stands out for you? Chuck: Yeah I mean so my heart is in like membership sites. I love recurring revenue. I think everybody does and that's why the multiples are higher because of that recurring revenue and the predictability. So I would say that that's kind of where I'd like to be but my biggest sales have been around physical products inaudible[00:20:53.3] an outdoor sporting equipment one that was great. One that I really love that I sold like six months ago was a company that did custom-tailored suits. That thing it's like awesome. Who doesn't want to say they have a business that sells custom-tailored suits? Like it's just; I think it's got the cool factor. Joe: That's the amazing thing about what you do and what we do at Quiet Light is that we come to this role with a lifetime of experience that; I was talking with Walker and Brad about this recently that we didn't know it but all of our entrepreneurial life was preparing us for this role. And now we get to experience so many cool different business models. You come to this role with a ton of membership experience but custom-tailored suits and you're like that's the coolest thing. Who doesn't want to say they own a custom-tailored suit business? I need to buy a custom-tailored suit. I know who bought it and I can reach out to him. I know who he is too. Speaking of that I do want to ask a random question although its timing is not very random and you have to answer this. There's only one answer to this. This buyer listens to the podcast and he comments and he tells us about us sometimes when he's riding his bike. So do you have a favorite audience member that also happens to be a buyer? Yes or no? You have to say yes and you have to say his name now because he's a… Chuck: Sure. Mike Nuñez. Joe: There you go; Mike Nuñez, this is just a shout out to you. Thanks for listening Mike. Chuck: Well I'll tell you it shouldn't just be a shout out to him. If anybody wants to know how to be a good buyer and how to buy businesses they should talk to Mike Nuñez because he is 100% the absolute best buyer I have. And not like just in a sense of like the actual acquisition of the company. When he gets on a phone call and talks to the sellers he makes them feel like they are the only person in the world; the most important person like he's just so smooth and he's not doing it as like a ploy or a gimmick. He's just a nice guy and he really appreciates these people and the businesses they've created. And it's just he's really good on a call. Joe: It's the unknown secret that we tell all the time to buyers. Look, when it's a great business it's a great opportunity. There are going to be multiple buyers. And it's not always the most money or the most cash that gets the letter of intent. In some cases, it's the buyer that the seller likes the most. And being likable on those conference calls is critically important. Mike does it very well. Chuck: And one of my businesses; actually I think two of them that Mike purchased, the sellers actually said like I want to sell to him. Make him buy this. It doesn't matter; I mean within reason, right? The price; but they were willing to take less than somebody else because they liked him so much. Joe: Oh boy. Now if Mike's listening and he paid full price now he's going to be like inaudible[00:23:49.1]. Chuck: That is the problem because of course I did make him pay more than the other people but they were willing to take less. And what's funny is one of my sellers told him as much oh like I would have taken less from you and I'm like don't say that to him. Joe: In his heart, he was willing to take less but his checkbook and his head was willing to take the highest bidder as long as it was Mike Nunez. That's the key. In your experience both as an entrepreneur and as an adviser here at Quiet Light you've seen a lot of businesses that have come up for first they reach out to us for a valuation, they start thinking about an exit sometimes the day before they want to exit, sometimes months or a year or so in advance. What do you see being the biggest thing; most consistent thing that those particular entrepreneurs do wrong time and time again that there's just if there's one thing you could just like shout into the microphone right now to everyone listening even though some of them are doing it right, what are the majority of folks not doing that that you want them to do to bring more value to their business? Chuck: Silence question. Joe: Yeah it was a long one. I kept rambling on in my sentences because I could see you thinking. Chuck: Yeah. Joe: Maybe I should have asked a little more. Chuck: What's weird about at Quiet Light is we actually get so many great businesses to sell. People bring us quality things. So what are some of the bad things people do? Joe: Let me just get some stats behind that though; because it's true what we bring to market, it's great stuff. But the reality is Chuck if you look at my numbers I've closed 105, 106 transactions in seven years. People say well that's not very many but in order to close those transactions; I've ballparked the math and I've talked to 2,500 entrepreneurs. That's 2,500 valuation calls. Your stats are similar. What is that consistent theme that if you could speak to somebody that someday may sell their business what should they be doing? Chuck: Sure. So when we talk about like specific like product-level things like when people are just selling random shots keys that aren't unique in any way; those are really difficult to sell. When you have an actual unique product that's got some sort of a brand to it that's not easily knock off-able that there's a moat around it like that makes it so much more desirable to people and so much more valuable. One of the things I also see probably is just P & L's; having clean P & L's. Oftentimes people's profit and loss statements are just a complete mess. They'll lump, they want to save; I was just thinking about a specific one, but you see people are just lumping things in because they know they had a cost but they don't really know when it was or where it was and they just kind of guesstimate things and put them in the wrong ones. So then you'll see like really lumpy P & L's. And we always try to work with people to flatten those out and figure out where the real costs are. So that often takes a lot of time to just figure out what the true P & L is on a business. And for doing add backs; what's a real add back? We fight with people a lot on what's a real add back versus something they think they should be adding back. Joe: Yeah I want to just step in and shout out that there's no question I think that preparing your business for sale is the number one thing that people don't do. They decide to sell as I say instead of planning to sell. That means they work their tail off. They launch this business. They work like crazy against all odds. They succeed. And it's producing solid revenue and profit for them. And they just burn the candle at both ends and then the candle starts to burn out. And they're emotionally tired, they're frustrated, they're exhausted, and they wake up one morning I'm just not into this. I'm going to sell. I didn't know I could sell but it just occurred to me. I'm done. I'm calling Chuck Mullins. And at that point because they're tired; because they're emotionally worn out they need to sell because trends will go down. They won't do the things that they need to do to keep the business growing and strong and in great shape for somebody else to take over. And so at that point you get those P & L's and you're like yeah Excel is not really accounting software. Ideally Quick Books and Xero or one of the other so that we can run a historical P & L and do year over year trend analysis and look at the metrics. All that is really hard and then there's the commingling. So I'm going to just mention a podcast; not ours, somebody else's. EcomCrewPodcast247. Chuck as you know I sold Mike Jackness' business ColorIt last spring. And Mike is a bright guy. Mike knew exactly what to do as most people in this audience do. They know what to do. And the mindset that Mike had was simply I'll get to it someday. What happens is you end up chasing too many rabbits and that someday comes when you get exhausted and in his case, he had four brands under one LLC and three of them were really not sellable at the time that we decide to list the business. So what does that do? You've got four brands all in one LLC, tax returns commingled, and you're only selling one brand. What does that eliminate? Chuck: SBA financing. Joe: SBA financing; exactly. Is it required to get an SBA loan? No it's not to sell a business; absolutely not. We sold multimillion-dollar businesses without an SBA loan. But what it does do is it casts a broader net; buyers. And even some of those buyers; I've had it. Have you had buyers that have more than enough money to stroke a check for a multi-million dollar business but they use SBA? Chuck: Absolutely why not leverage if you can? Joe: Yeah, so that's I'd say number one. I'm in total agreement on the documentation. We always talk about that the risk, growth, transferability, and documentation; gets your numbers right, get those P & L's in great shape and it's going to help you learn about your business and set goals and then that passion may get reignited and you may do more in the business and grow it and have a bigger exit someday down the road. It's not that I don't love it when somebody calls me and says I'd like a valuation and part of that is okay, what's your timeframe, when are you ready to sell, right now. Not that I don't mind that; I love that if everything's in great shape. It's just tougher to sell it when it's not. They get a lower value, right? Chuck: Yup, absolutely. Having those four pillars and the clean books it makes a big difference. Joe: It really does. I think I'm in total agreement. Buyers or sellers of businesses, get your documents in great shape. The best way to do that, just call, email inquiries@QuietLightBrokerage.com, Chuck@QuietLightBrokerage.com. Reach out. It's a service that we provide. I mean what do we do Chuck? We help, help, help, and then keep helping, right? Chuck: Build value. Joe: Build the value. It's my; I've got a mentor that I talked to long and hard about all my business opportunities and in this particular one as we chatted about the model and what we do here at Quiet Light he's like well it just sounds like you're giving away all your knowledge for free in hopes that maybe they'll work with you. And I' like that's exactly right. We help first and we're entrepreneurs so there are times that we wish we got good advice and we were too young to listen or there was nobody around to talk to about it. And now we share that when it comes to business values and planning an exit. The number one thing you can do is just reach out to somebody. It's free. Talk to Chuck, he's got a ton of experience. Chuck: I'll tell you kind of in my entrepreneurial days if I wasn't going to be an entrepreneur I always wanted to be a consultant and help other people. And I never had like the actual desire to go out and build a portfolio and charge people to help them grow their business. But like you said I've been do this since '96. I've met so many businesses; a lot of focus on optimization and SEO and just so many things. And one of the things I actually like about is giving unsolicited advice. So when I'm on all these valuation calls I'm constantly asking people like oh have you tried this, have you thought about this? So even if they're not ready to sell I'm often giving people advice on how to increase their business. And even when I do have listings like I think of one and particularly like I give him so many ideas and then he did those and the business just kept growing. That actually came to bite me because the business grew so much that we ended up pulling it off the market after getting multiple full-price offers because it just had grown so much and he wanted to just wait a little bit and we're going to actually getting ready to relist that here soon. Joe: It's a good problem, right? I mean I've been in situations that you say it bit you but ultimately this is a long term play for us; it's building relationships and that person respects and appreciates you obviously because he's coming back for some of your entrepreneurial life experience and it's benefited them financially. It's going to grow the business and ultimately they're going to get a bigger value and tell people about what you did. So that was a little bit more about the sellers and the things that they can do and then number one I think we both agree, plan that exit; call somebody, e-mail somebody, get a valuation. It's not going to hurt. What about buyers; biggest mistakes that buyers can make? Chuck: Disrespecting somebody's business. So getting on a call and like; I'm trying to think of a of a PC term that I could use that's not a profanity, just talking smack about somebody's business, trying to negotiate them down in price, and like trash-talking the business. That doesn't work. At least not at this size but maybe it works when you're dealing with a couple hundred million dollar business or something. I don't know. But at these levels, people care about their businesses at least the ones we sell. Inaudible[00:33:38.9] and when you talk smack like… Joe: It's personal even at the 15 to 20 million mark. Mark just closed one just under 15 million. It's owned by an individual. When you're talking about a hundred million, yes somebody is up there at the top like their shareholders and the CEOs and COOs and all that and big-time attorneys are in there negotiating. It's not you're talking to the guy across the table that actually built it and owns it for the most part, right? So he cares about it. Chuck: He worries about it like he's had the baby. I mean you wouldn't believe how many people I've talked to; sellers that cry on the phone about their business like it happens a lot. People are deeply invested emotionally in their business. When somebody comes in and disrespects it for no reason other than they're trying to negotiate, it doesn't go well. You need to be nice. That's what Mike does so well. And I want to keep talking about Mike. Well like… Joe: Should we talk about Walker again? Chuck: He's about people and he's nice. Joe: Let's talk about Walker again then. Actually you're absolutely right. I remember being at the Rhodium Weekend Conference before you were a member of the team here at Quiet Light. Now he's up presenting and talking and I could swear in that environment and I used the word that begins with an A and ends with an E; figure it out, folks. Everybody's got one. And what's the secret to being a great buyer? And I said don't be one; as simple as that. I can see you out there in the audience shaking your head up and down. And that's exactly right. Mike is very nice, very kind. When I sold my business I had people that were well I remember one, in particular, ripping my business to shreds on a conference call; initial call and I'm like why am I even talking to this guy. I'm not selling it to him even if he gives me an offer over asking. And then, strangely enough, the last call, the person that ended up buying my business first thing he said is thanks for creating such a great site. Your products have helped people exactly like me. By the way I took stuff like this and I ran the Boston Marathon actually the Chicago Marathon last month and it's because of products like yours and I said cool. It was actually a really short call; 20-minute call. I didn't ask any great questions I had going on. That was really nice but I don't see he's buying my business and he almost; he bought it almost full price offer. Chuck: I'll tell you what you just mentioned something that is often overlooked. When you get on these calls don't just wing it; do some research, educate yourself before the call, and ask the right questions. It's so important. So many times I get on a call and the seller or the buyer doesn't ask any decent questions and the seller just writes them off and says let's not take any more calls from that person. They weren't serious. So make sure that you understand the business and you're asking good questions that a good buyer would ask, right? Joe: Yeah. They don't have to be the most intelligent questions the seller has ever heard but that you've done your research and you care. I mean yeah Chuck you put there together a great package and all the great questions are in there. They just have to dig into them and digest it a little bit and ask the same question in their voice and see if you get the same or similar answer from the client on it. I think that's great. I think you're absolutely right. Too many times there has been a few buyers that they're not prepared for. You can hear them walking down the street getting in the car and it just feels like a complete and utter waste of everyone's time including the person who's making the call and asking the questions. Okay, is there anything else; before we wrap up is there anything else you'd like to say about Walker Diebel? Chuck: Visit WalkerDiebel.guru to check out his new book that's coming out in a couple of months. Joe: Let's do this; actually everybody do is too. Go to IMDB and look up Walker Diebel the actor and watch some of the movies he's been in. Add a review, let's see if we can boost that one-star rating up to one and a half. Chuck: Inaudible[00:37:37.6] tomatoes maybe. Joe: Alright Chuck, you're a good man. I appreciate you coming on. We'll wrap it up here with time. Any last thoughts for anybody out there thinking about selling their business or buying one; any last pearls of wisdom and I know I didn't prepare you but any last-minute pearls of wisdom? Chuck: Yeah. I would just say that reach out early. We're not here to be high pressure as far as trying to sign you to sell your business. We're here to lead with value. We're going to offer some hopefully some wisdom that's going to help you sell that business in the future. So don't think that like oh I don't want to reach out because I'm not going to sell it for six months or a year. Talk to us now. Let us help you get the business in shape to sell it later. Joe: Great advice. That's Chuck Mullins folks. We will be back in the next podcast. See you soon. Thanks, Chuck. Chuck: Bye-bye. Thanks.   Links and Resources: Chuck Mullins Chuck's LinkedIn Walker Deibel's IMDB

Dr. Chuck and Suzanne Lynn share the results of a recent study by the United Concordia Dental insurance company that shows how patients who take care of their teeth save thousands of dollars in annual medical costs and see a significant reduction in annual hospitalizations versus those who do not. Here is a link to the study. TRANSCRIPT: Dr.Chuck – Hi, I’m Dr. Chuck, welcome to Your Filthy Mouth. The dollars and sense of medical care. Insurance companies want you to stay healthy. Does anybody else? Stay tuned. Narrator – Your smile is beautiful and possibly deadly. Dr. Chuck is here to tell you how your mouth can hold the key to your overall health. Now, about that filthy mouth of yours. Suzanne – Hi, welcome to Your Filthy Mouth. I’m Suzanne Lynn with Dr. Chuck. And, Dr. Chuck, your intro really has my mind going here. First of all, why wouldn’t anybody want you to be healthy? Dr.Chuck – There’s a television commercial on right now from, I think Allstate has it. And there’s a gentleman sitting on a chair in the middle of the road and he says, “The facts are, all auto insurance companies “want you to drive safely, they don’t want accidents.” Well, why is that? The more premiums you pay and the less claims they have to pay, the more money they’re gonna make. Suzanne – Okay. Dr.Chuck – Makes good sense. Is the same thing true with medical insurance companies? Absolutely, medical insurance companies want you to stay healthy. In fact, one of the things we’ll be looking at today, this is from United Concordia Dental, the white paper’s called “The Mouth: The Missing Piece “to Overall Wellness and Lower Medical Costs.” Suzanne – Okay. Dr.Chuck – So do medical insurance wants you to be healthy? Absolutely, again, they’ll make more money. Suzanne – Well, you can’t get money, you can’t get premiums from dead people, right? Dr.Chuck – Well, yeah, and you’re gonna pay a lot less, you’re gonna make a lot less money as an insurance company if you’re paying out a lot of claims. Suzanne – I got you. Dr.Chuck – So the healthier you are, the more money they’re gonna save because you’re staying out of the hospital. Suzanne – Okay, that leads me to the question of who wouldn’t want you to be healthy, then? Dr.Chuck – Well, let’s see, who stands to make money if you stay unhealthy? And I know this is almost cynical on this thing. But when we start looking at it, do hospitals want you to be healthy? I think good hospitals want you to be healthy. I think caring doctors, we have a lot of caring doctors out there, we have caring hospitals, they want you to be healthy. And then we have others might have another motive on that. And when you think about it, our last episode that we talked about, why don’t hospitals have dentists? Because according to this study, there’s an awful lot of illness in the body that is caused from problems in the mouth. And these are problems that we can do something about. My thing is I can’t focus on things that we can’t do anything about. I don’t know how to do anything about pancreatic cancer. It’s horrible. 50,000 people a year die from pancreatic cancer. About 600,000 people a year die from heart attacks. And, according to the researchers, about 50% of those are caused by oral infections, we can do something about oral infections. And there’s something that the patient can do, there’s something the physician can do, and there’s something the dentist can do to really decrease oral infections in our population. Suzanne – So when you mentioned the hospital, unlike insurance, we’re not paying premiums to the hospital, they’re getting paid upon seeing people, fixing people, caring people, you know? Dr.Chuck – Well, that’s how they make money, you know? And they get their money mostly from the insurance companies, some from private pay, but the majority of hospital payments come from insurance companies. If you look at, this is again from United Concordia, the link with coronary artery disease. And by the way, this information is on the website, we’ve got a PDF that you can download, you can look, we got links, so you can look at all of it yourself and go over with a fine tooth comb, see what they have to say. But with coronary artery disease, if you will take care of your dental situation, they show that your medical situation, your annual medical costs, go down a little over $1,000. But your hospital admissions go down 28.6%. Suzanne – Wow, that’s incredible! Dr.Chuck – That’s a lot. Just by having a healthy mouth. Now that’s with coronary artery disease. Suzanne – So we could kind of do, when we call this dollar and sense, it doesn’t have to be S-E-N-S-E, it’s also C. Dr.Chuck – C-E-N-T-S, yes, Big cents. Suzanne – Yeah. Dr.Chuck – So cerebral vascular disease, if you take care of your dental needs, your medical needs go down $5,681 and your hospital admissions go down 21.2% Suzanne – Wow! Dr.Chuck – This was on my research. They’ve got, the nice thing about these hospital, these insurance companies is you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dental insured, you have hundreds of thousands of medical insured. You can compare the two and you can see if these take care of their dental needs, what happens to their medical needs? And that’s what this paper has to show. Suzanne – And right now, so far the stats you’ve shared is one out of four can not be going to the hospital. Dr.Chuck – Not be going to the hospital, that’s right. Diabetes, we have a diabetic challenge in our country right now and it’s only getting worse. If we look at diabetes, if you take care of your dental situation, your annual medical expenses go down about $2,800. But the hospital admissions go down 39.4%. That’s huge. Suzanne – Yeah, I mean, they truly they have no reason to skew these numbers. I mean, this truly is. They are comparing the medical front with the insurance. Dr.Chuck – They want you to be healthy. Again, realize the insurance company wants you to be healthy. And also on, if I can turn the page here, the outpatient drug costs for diabetic patients goes down to about $1,477. Again, so your outpatient costs decreased by taking care of your oral situation. Pregnant women, oh my gosh, your annual medical costs with a healthy mouth go down $2,433 on average. Suzanne – Wow! Dr.Chuck – So we looked– That’s a lot of diapers. and a lot of baby care that you can buy with that. Suzanne – It’s an awful lot. Dr.Chuck – It is. Suzanne – So again, the insurance company has the motivation to keep you well, to keep you healthy. Just like the auto insurance, they have motivation for you not to be in an accident, they want you not to be in an accident, medical insurance companies want you not to get sick. I don’t understand why more physicians aren’t pushing oral health with their patients. Now, there are some excellent physicians that really do this but they’re hard to find. Dr.Chuck – Right, right, right. And that’s the whole purpose we’re doing this is to try to connect the dots between oral care and the rest of your body. I’m having a hard time going back to the fact because in hospitals, there are doctors don’t they take an oath to? Dr.Chuck – Part of the Hippocratic Oath actually says if they come across something that they don’t know how to treat, they will seek the advice of someone who does know how to treat it. Well, if you’re not even looking for it, how do you know what’s going on? So this is why so many dental infections have absolute, I had a new patient this week. Nice guy, we did an oral exam on him, four abscesses four dental abscess going on inside of his jaw. Not one bit of pain from any of ’em, we’re showing them on the X-ray, you can see exactly what’s going, he has no idea these are going on. Now had we not done the examination, he would not know that they’re going on. But remember, and it’s not rocket science, every infection in your body, I don’t care if it’s in your hand, foot or your mouth, every infection produces pus. And that pus is being dumped right into your bloodstream, goes through, makes its way to the heart, to the lungs, back to the heart, and is pumped everywhere in your whole body. Is that healthy? I mean, again, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that’s not okay. Suzanne – Right, a simple dentist in a hospital, is what you’re saying? Dr.Chuck – Yeah, it’s– Dr.Chuck – I mean, an oral department would be ideal. But could we just please get a dentist in there until? Dr.Chuck – Well, at least diagnose that there’s an oral issue there, it could be gum disease, it could be dental infections, it could be an airway issue, it could be the bite, there are different things that can cause different problems within the the body. The hospital doesn’t have to be the one to fix it. But it would be nice if they would at least inform the patient, “Hey, you’ve got periodontal disease. “There’s a real good chance that that has “something to do with your cardiovascular disease. “Why don’t you go back to your dentist “and get that taken care of?” And that’s just not being done yet. Yet, they say that it takes 20 years, we’ve mentioned this before, 20 years before something that’s actually proven to be true with medical research, before it’s implemented into everyday care. Well, it was 19 years ago that the US Surgeon General wrote a large report on oral health in America that basically says you cannot have a healthy body with an unhealthy mouth, you need a healthy mouth. I’m looking forward to 2020 ’cause that’ll be 20 years. So we just got a few more months until this is gonna be widespread, maybe. Suzanne – Well, one of the ways that’s gonna help is people who are watching Your Filthy Mouth, sharing that with your dentist, having them speak up and not be afraid. Dr.Chuck – Yeah, this is not about us. This is this is about you. This is about your family. When one person has a stroke, it doesn’t affect just that one person, it affects their entire family. Suzanne – Amen. Dr.Chuck – When one person has a heart attack, it doesn’t affect just that one person, it affects their entire family. So we when we look at the 300,000 people that have deaths that could have been caused from oral infections, how many million people have that really affected in a negative way? Suzanne – Right, right. All right, well, we’re gonna come back with a question of the week and Joe’s got a good one. Hang on. Narrator – Here’s Dr. Chuck’s Question of the week. Joe – This is Joe. I wanna know if there’s a problem with using mouthwash several times a day? Suzanne – That is a good question. First of all, Joe, we’re gonna be sending you one of the Your Filthy Mouth mugs. I have to say that slow because it comes out your filthy mug mouth, if I say it too fast, but thank you for your question. Yeah, if you send your question in and we use it, you will get one also. But the question, just asked me about multiple times using mouthwash tells me that he’s maybe trying to cover something up, maybe he has bad breath. But is there a harm in that? Dr.Chuck – A lot of times that’s what’s going on. Most bad breath is caused from periodontal disease, gum disease, and so if you can clean up the gum disease, the bad breath goes away. But a lot of people have the idea that if we use the right mouthwash or mouth rinse, I’m not gonna have any more cavities and my gums are gonna be better. And that’s just really not true. You’ve got to get in there and you’ve got to clean your teeth, you’ve got to just spend that five to seven minutes, at least one time a day doing a proper job getting the bacteria off of your teeth, the mouth rinse isn’t gonna take care of that. Now, they’ve shown that about 26% of the bacteria in your mouth are on your teeth and the rest of the bacteria on your tongue and your gums, all around there. So, you know, yes, do mouth rinses help? Yeah, but you can’t rely on them to kill all of the bad bacteria. You have to still get in there and remove the bacteria off your teeth. Suzanne – Despite what the TV ads show, that that’s the magic cure. Dr.Chuck – Well, I don’t think there’s a magic bullet when it comes to oral health care. Yeah, other than doing the right things, eating less sugar, boy, that’s a big thing, and less carbohydrates. I mean, the bacteria can utilize the sugar, turn it into acid, utilize the carbohydrates, turn it into acid, and this acid gets into the teeth, it demineralizes the tooth, causes cavities, affects the gums. So, yeah, our diet, four things we need to be healthy. Number one is what we eat. Suzanne – Okay. Dr.Chuck – Okay, that does play a role. Number two, little bit of exercise. Doesn’t mean you have to pump iron, but you gotta get that body moving. Number three, a healthy mouth. That doesn’t mean a Hollywood smile. You don’t need a Hollywood smile to have a healthy mouth. But you need a healthy mouth and have a healthy heart. Okay, and the last thing is your attitude. Attitude does play a big role in our overall health. So those are four things. And by the way, all four are affordable. Suzanne – And we have control over ’em. Dr.Chuck – Absolutely. Suzanne – All right, Joe, good question. All right, well, let’s go back to talking about the topic today, is about dollars and sense of good oral health care. And before we started filming you shared a sample of, ’cause I can’t understand the idea of people not wanting to do the very best for someone that’s possible. You know, we’re talking about maybe in the hospitals if they can’t cure it or they can’t fix it, they don’t want to diagnose it or something like that. Dr.Chuck – Well, there a lot of examples in history where someone has come up with a real good idea and that idea has been squashed simply because finances, money. If you think back, there was an automobile, I think was called the Tucker, back in the ’50s, that it had a lot of advances. It had headlights that turned when you turned the wheel. It had– Suzanne – Genius! Dr.Chuck – But yeah, special. Well, that that automobile was eaten up by the big three, by Ford, GM, and Chrysler. And so we look at some other things, if you wanna look at when you get in, you know, a little bit out on a limb here, we’ll talk about Tesla. And he had all kinds of information on how we could have electricity for everybody for free. And soon after his death, all of his papers disappeared. And so you know, there’s a lot of things, you know, what’s the real motivation? So it doesn’t matter what someone else’s motivation is as long as your motivation is proper. And if you can be motivated to take care of your mouth and keep it good and healthy, oh, my gosh, the problems that you can avoid. There are other issues. The mouth isn’t the only thing, you know, and I’m not the expert. We are the messenger. And that’s the message we’re trying to get across to you. Suzanne – So the overall message of today’s show is there is a huge facts, like you said, we can show this on yourfilthymouth.com, to download this white paper, correlation between taking care of your mouth and saving a lot of money. Not just a little bit. Dr.Chuck – A lot, yeah. The insurance company wants you to be healthy. They really do. Suzanne – That’s good to know. Dr.Chuck – Yeah, they may have an ulterior motive other than your health, they make more money, and that’s okay. But at least they want you to be healthy. And we have to make sure what is the motivation of all of our health care providers? Do they wanna treat the symptoms? Do they want to get to the source? And that’s the question between every health care provider and their patients. Suzanne – Awesome, Dr. Chuck, thank you so much, great show today, thank you. Dr.Chuck – Oh, thank you. Narrator – This has been Your Filthy Mouth, a weekly podcast about how what happens in your mouth affects the rest of your body. This is important information, so please share it with your friends. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button on YouTube, iTunes, and all the other podcast sites. And drop by yourfilthymouth.com to ask Dr. Chuck a question or find dozens of links to information about oral systemic health. We’ll talk to you next week.

Panel: Eric Berry Dave Kimura David Richards Charles Max Wood In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves on today’s topic, which is “speculation on frameworks.” They consider where the tech community currently is right now, and where it’s heading towards the future. They bring-up topics such as: Rails, Ruby, Angular, Agile, and much more. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io 1:47 – Chuck: Check out the DevRev 2:08 – Panel: A topic about “speculation” would be great today. What are we seeing in the community: what we like/don’t like, and what would you want to change? He talks about action text, JavaScript framework, and more. 3:41 – Chuck: Service-side rendering is what we talked about in the past. Divya does this with service–side rendering. For content sites that approach makes a lot of sense. I have playing around with this for the past week or so. I was taking it to rendering it to text. 4:39 – Panel: Yeah, that’s the way to go. 5:29 – Chuck: You are talking about a fully side UI. 5:45 – Panel: I thought it was just my age so I am glad we are talking about this. The hip kids want to make these beautiful frontend sites. I want to keep it simple and then justify more later. I guess I would never be as hip but as long as my stuff gets out there – that’s all that matters to me. 6:28 – Panel: Yeah don’t get me wrong...nobody will want to develop your product if it was built 30 years ago. If it is a startup you want it to look good with a nice UI. Nobody will purchase if it looks outdated. How much maintenance do I want to invest into this? Why add another component into that if you cannot maintain it. 7:56 – Chuck: Yeah I have come into this issue while building the Podcast Service that I am creating. 8:25 – Panel: These are good frameworks and they feel great. I don’t realize the complexity that I am taking on sometimes. I have a lot of complexity on my hands: did I need it? 9:02 – Chuck: Sometimes my problem is that I am trying to pull it in after-the-fact. Like the forms to animate or this and that have to slide in. I want a natural feel to the UX. I looked at React and then I didn’t go that way. I have been podcasting about Angular for 4 years, but it was a no-go for my project. For my solution – it makes sense to just get it going and get it rolling. 10:45 – Panel: When we do use Action Vue we are prone to get lazy. What I mean by that is making database calls. 12:01 – Panel: You can think: Inside-Out! That creates an identity around the project. If I can think of that before going in, then everyone knows what we are doing and what their role is. It’s really obvious. Simple things grow into bigger things. I am a fan of service-side objects. It’s a daily work process. That feels good to me and it’s programmatic for me. 13:24 – Chuck: You aren’t saying: I don’t want or I don’t need ... what you are saying is: I will get this tool when I need it. 13:45 – Panel: You can say: “Hey this is what we are going to do and WHY we are going to do it.” It’s nice to come back to old projects and to see that it’s still solid. It’s nice to see that and people own that software and didn’t have to keep updating. 15:06 – Chuck: It reminds me of the Agile development stuff. The approach between Angular and React and Vue are fairly different. They are reasonably different. There will be tradeoffs between which one to use. When you are making that decision then you can make the appropriate decision on that. 16:10 – Panel: I remember in the prior years when the Rails community grew their own people and you were a RAILS person; now it’s you’re a WEB person.  17:43 – Panel: In a lot of cases it’s good to see what’s out there and to see what’s new; especially early on if they end up being ahead of their time. Then you are an early pioneer in that area. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when you are introducing new things into your core you are running into unforeseeable risks. I am not an early adapter of React, but I know enough of the pros and cons of the framework. 19:48 – Panel: I like that. Maybe I “should” adapt that framework and maybe I am not the right person to do so. 21:06 – Chuck: Dave brought us to a new topic and that’s: being an early adapter. Some people want a name, some people want to invent stuff and so many more reasons “why.” I don’t want to “poo poo” the idea but you need to know WHY. 21:48 – Panel: The cost of developers is A LOT. I just think if I was building a house and I had that expense then I better get a really nice house out of it. I want to do a good job and that’s important. On the business – side they have to rely on us and decisions that are in the best interest for everyone. 22:50 – Fresh Books! 23:53 – Chuck: So what do you guys think about: what’s coming? Do you feel like things are going to move away from frontend frameworks? Will there be a large adoption curve? 24:30 – Panel: If we are talking about the space of Ruby on Rails then you want it to be maintainable. You don’t want to steer too far away from its core. 28:11 – Panel: Good I like that. There are great tools that we are getting through Google, Facebook and they have great tools for these apps. They are looking for the 1-person startup very much like Basecamp. It’s all possible that we are holding onto these technologies that are great but does it fit ME. Do I want to maintain things? Do I want to make this more complicated? Especially if I really don’t fit into what I’m trying to do. 29:13 – Panel: Yeah some people in the DOT NET world they were really struggling with some modern approaches. 30:42 – Panel: One of our listeners texted me b/c we are recording LIVE. Panelist reads off from a listener’s text message that uses a quote. 31:16 – Panel: When I started Ruby it was a PHP project and I couldn’t get there. I didn’t have enough bandwidth. It was easy for me to build the RAILS way. 32:02 – Chuck: I was introduced to PHP in college, early 2000’s. I really enjoyed it and I was fairly productive and then I found Rails. 32:27 – Panelist talks about PHP, flash frontend, and more. 34:42 – Chuck: Could and will something come along that will affect the way we write code? 34:56 – Panel: Yes, b/c I think technology is sustainable for a certain amount of time before things start to change again. Look at the iPhones and the Android phones. 38:26 – Panel: I think it takes time to do something well. Panelist talks about Rails, Ruby, data, and more! 40:25 – Panel: It’s interesting b/c the tradeoff used to be much bigger. The bandwidth is better, the screens are better, the way we do things are better. There is much of a tradeoff. That’s how people are interacting with our business and our products. I tend to write these flowery articles that I don’t publish. There was something in the air and in the mid-2000’s we were launching Netflix, and all of these things were happening at that time. A lot is happening now but it’s different now. Where are we going? Where would I be happy to work? If we can get on the phone and inside of our data and it just adds more value. It’s not an easy answer to “Where are we going?” but it’s good to talk about it b/c people might be afraid to ask and to answer. 43:13 – Chuck: Anything else or picks? 43:19 – Panel: We are saying today: we aren’t trying to break-out of this bubble, but we are saying: let’s get closer to the user and there is so much opportunity in THIS space!! 44:10 – Panel: The technology is tapped-out right now. 44:50 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course The DevRev Podcast Show Angular DevChat TV Ruby Elixir Ruby on Rails Angular Cypress Vue React Jest.io Mocha.js Book: Desert Cabal Habits for Hackers Home Depot: DeWalt Harbor Freight 11ty Masterminds Webinar Sponsors: Sentry CacheFly Fresh Books Picks: Dave Dewalt Drill Dust Collector David Habits for Hackers Desert Cabal (for funnies) Charles Mastermind Hunter 11ty.io

Panel: Eric Berry Dave Kimura David Richards Charles Max Wood In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves on today’s topic, which is “speculation on frameworks.” They consider where the tech community currently is right now, and where it’s heading towards the future. They bring-up topics such as: Rails, Ruby, Angular, Agile, and much more. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io 1:47 – Chuck: Check out the DevRev 2:08 – Panel: A topic about “speculation” would be great today. What are we seeing in the community: what we like/don’t like, and what would you want to change? He talks about action text, JavaScript framework, and more. 3:41 – Chuck: Service-side rendering is what we talked about in the past. Divya does this with service–side rendering. For content sites that approach makes a lot of sense. I have playing around with this for the past week or so. I was taking it to rendering it to text. 4:39 – Panel: Yeah, that’s the way to go. 5:29 – Chuck: You are talking about a fully side UI. 5:45 – Panel: I thought it was just my age so I am glad we are talking about this. The hip kids want to make these beautiful frontend sites. I want to keep it simple and then justify more later. I guess I would never be as hip but as long as my stuff gets out there – that’s all that matters to me. 6:28 – Panel: Yeah don’t get me wrong...nobody will want to develop your product if it was built 30 years ago. If it is a startup you want it to look good with a nice UI. Nobody will purchase if it looks outdated. How much maintenance do I want to invest into this? Why add another component into that if you cannot maintain it. 7:56 – Chuck: Yeah I have come into this issue while building the Podcast Service that I am creating. 8:25 – Panel: These are good frameworks and they feel great. I don’t realize the complexity that I am taking on sometimes. I have a lot of complexity on my hands: did I need it? 9:02 – Chuck: Sometimes my problem is that I am trying to pull it in after-the-fact. Like the forms to animate or this and that have to slide in. I want a natural feel to the UX. I looked at React and then I didn’t go that way. I have been podcasting about Angular for 4 years, but it was a no-go for my project. For my solution – it makes sense to just get it going and get it rolling. 10:45 – Panel: When we do use Action Vue we are prone to get lazy. What I mean by that is making database calls. 12:01 – Panel: You can think: Inside-Out! That creates an identity around the project. If I can think of that before going in, then everyone knows what we are doing and what their role is. It’s really obvious. Simple things grow into bigger things. I am a fan of service-side objects. It’s a daily work process. That feels good to me and it’s programmatic for me. 13:24 – Chuck: You aren’t saying: I don’t want or I don’t need ... what you are saying is: I will get this tool when I need it. 13:45 – Panel: You can say: “Hey this is what we are going to do and WHY we are going to do it.” It’s nice to come back to old projects and to see that it’s still solid. It’s nice to see that and people own that software and didn’t have to keep updating. 15:06 – Chuck: It reminds me of the Agile development stuff. The approach between Angular and React and Vue are fairly different. They are reasonably different. There will be tradeoffs between which one to use. When you are making that decision then you can make the appropriate decision on that. 16:10 – Panel: I remember in the prior years when the Rails community grew their own people and you were a RAILS person; now it’s you’re a WEB person.  17:43 – Panel: In a lot of cases it’s good to see what’s out there and to see what’s new; especially early on if they end up being ahead of their time. Then you are an early pioneer in that area. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when you are introducing new things into your core you are running into unforeseeable risks. I am not an early adapter of React, but I know enough of the pros and cons of the framework. 19:48 – Panel: I like that. Maybe I “should” adapt that framework and maybe I am not the right person to do so. 21:06 – Chuck: Dave brought us to a new topic and that’s: being an early adapter. Some people want a name, some people want to invent stuff and so many more reasons “why.” I don’t want to “poo poo” the idea but you need to know WHY. 21:48 – Panel: The cost of developers is A LOT. I just think if I was building a house and I had that expense then I better get a really nice house out of it. I want to do a good job and that’s important. On the business – side they have to rely on us and decisions that are in the best interest for everyone. 22:50 – Fresh Books! 23:53 – Chuck: So what do you guys think about: what’s coming? Do you feel like things are going to move away from frontend frameworks? Will there be a large adoption curve? 24:30 – Panel: If we are talking about the space of Ruby on Rails then you want it to be maintainable. You don’t want to steer too far away from its core. 28:11 – Panel: Good I like that. There are great tools that we are getting through Google, Facebook and they have great tools for these apps. They are looking for the 1-person startup very much like Basecamp. It’s all possible that we are holding onto these technologies that are great but does it fit ME. Do I want to maintain things? Do I want to make this more complicated? Especially if I really don’t fit into what I’m trying to do. 29:13 – Panel: Yeah some people in the DOT NET world they were really struggling with some modern approaches. 30:42 – Panel: One of our listeners texted me b/c we are recording LIVE. Panelist reads off from a listener’s text message that uses a quote. 31:16 – Panel: When I started Ruby it was a PHP project and I couldn’t get there. I didn’t have enough bandwidth. It was easy for me to build the RAILS way. 32:02 – Chuck: I was introduced to PHP in college, early 2000’s. I really enjoyed it and I was fairly productive and then I found Rails. 32:27 – Panelist talks about PHP, flash frontend, and more. 34:42 – Chuck: Could and will something come along that will affect the way we write code? 34:56 – Panel: Yes, b/c I think technology is sustainable for a certain amount of time before things start to change again. Look at the iPhones and the Android phones. 38:26 – Panel: I think it takes time to do something well. Panelist talks about Rails, Ruby, data, and more! 40:25 – Panel: It’s interesting b/c the tradeoff used to be much bigger. The bandwidth is better, the screens are better, the way we do things are better. There is much of a tradeoff. That’s how people are interacting with our business and our products. I tend to write these flowery articles that I don’t publish. There was something in the air and in the mid-2000’s we were launching Netflix, and all of these things were happening at that time. A lot is happening now but it’s different now. Where are we going? Where would I be happy to work? If we can get on the phone and inside of our data and it just adds more value. It’s not an easy answer to “Where are we going?” but it’s good to talk about it b/c people might be afraid to ask and to answer. 43:13 – Chuck: Anything else or picks? 43:19 – Panel: We are saying today: we aren’t trying to break-out of this bubble, but we are saying: let’s get closer to the user and there is so much opportunity in THIS space!! 44:10 – Panel: The technology is tapped-out right now. 44:50 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course The DevRev Podcast Show Angular DevChat TV Ruby Elixir Ruby on Rails Angular Cypress Vue React Jest.io Mocha.js Book: Desert Cabal Habits for Hackers Home Depot: DeWalt Harbor Freight 11ty Masterminds Webinar Sponsors: Sentry CacheFly Fresh Books Picks: Dave Dewalt Drill Dust Collector David Habits for Hackers Desert Cabal (for funnies) Charles Mastermind Hunter 11ty.io

Panel: Eric Berry Dave Kimura David Richards Charles Max Wood In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panelists talk amongst themselves on today’s topic, which is “speculation on frameworks.” They consider where the tech community currently is right now, and where it’s heading towards the future. They bring-up topics such as: Rails, Ruby, Angular, Agile, and much more. Check it out! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Sentry.io 1:47 – Chuck: Check out the DevRev 2:08 – Panel: A topic about “speculation” would be great today. What are we seeing in the community: what we like/don’t like, and what would you want to change? He talks about action text, JavaScript framework, and more. 3:41 – Chuck: Service-side rendering is what we talked about in the past. Divya does this with service–side rendering. For content sites that approach makes a lot of sense. I have playing around with this for the past week or so. I was taking it to rendering it to text. 4:39 – Panel: Yeah, that’s the way to go. 5:29 – Chuck: You are talking about a fully side UI. 5:45 – Panel: I thought it was just my age so I am glad we are talking about this. The hip kids want to make these beautiful frontend sites. I want to keep it simple and then justify more later. I guess I would never be as hip but as long as my stuff gets out there – that’s all that matters to me. 6:28 – Panel: Yeah don’t get me wrong...nobody will want to develop your product if it was built 30 years ago. If it is a startup you want it to look good with a nice UI. Nobody will purchase if it looks outdated. How much maintenance do I want to invest into this? Why add another component into that if you cannot maintain it. 7:56 – Chuck: Yeah I have come into this issue while building the Podcast Service that I am creating. 8:25 – Panel: These are good frameworks and they feel great. I don’t realize the complexity that I am taking on sometimes. I have a lot of complexity on my hands: did I need it? 9:02 – Chuck: Sometimes my problem is that I am trying to pull it in after-the-fact. Like the forms to animate or this and that have to slide in. I want a natural feel to the UX. I looked at React and then I didn’t go that way. I have been podcasting about Angular for 4 years, but it was a no-go for my project. For my solution – it makes sense to just get it going and get it rolling. 10:45 – Panel: When we do use Action Vue we are prone to get lazy. What I mean by that is making database calls. 12:01 – Panel: You can think: Inside-Out! That creates an identity around the project. If I can think of that before going in, then everyone knows what we are doing and what their role is. It’s really obvious. Simple things grow into bigger things. I am a fan of service-side objects. It’s a daily work process. That feels good to me and it’s programmatic for me. 13:24 – Chuck: You aren’t saying: I don’t want or I don’t need ... what you are saying is: I will get this tool when I need it. 13:45 – Panel: You can say: “Hey this is what we are going to do and WHY we are going to do it.” It’s nice to come back to old projects and to see that it’s still solid. It’s nice to see that and people own that software and didn’t have to keep updating. 15:06 – Chuck: It reminds me of the Agile development stuff. The approach between Angular and React and Vue are fairly different. They are reasonably different. There will be tradeoffs between which one to use. When you are making that decision then you can make the appropriate decision on that. 16:10 – Panel: I remember in the prior years when the Rails community grew their own people and you were a RAILS person; now it’s you’re a WEB person.  17:43 – Panel: In a lot of cases it’s good to see what’s out there and to see what’s new; especially early on if they end up being ahead of their time. Then you are an early pioneer in that area. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when you are introducing new things into your core you are running into unforeseeable risks. I am not an early adapter of React, but I know enough of the pros and cons of the framework. 19:48 – Panel: I like that. Maybe I “should” adapt that framework and maybe I am not the right person to do so. 21:06 – Chuck: Dave brought us to a new topic and that’s: being an early adapter. Some people want a name, some people want to invent stuff and so many more reasons “why.” I don’t want to “poo poo” the idea but you need to know WHY. 21:48 – Panel: The cost of developers is A LOT. I just think if I was building a house and I had that expense then I better get a really nice house out of it. I want to do a good job and that’s important. On the business – side they have to rely on us and decisions that are in the best interest for everyone. 22:50 – Fresh Books! 23:53 – Chuck: So what do you guys think about: what’s coming? Do you feel like things are going to move away from frontend frameworks? Will there be a large adoption curve? 24:30 – Panel: If we are talking about the space of Ruby on Rails then you want it to be maintainable. You don’t want to steer too far away from its core. 28:11 – Panel: Good I like that. There are great tools that we are getting through Google, Facebook and they have great tools for these apps. They are looking for the 1-person startup very much like Basecamp. It’s all possible that we are holding onto these technologies that are great but does it fit ME. Do I want to maintain things? Do I want to make this more complicated? Especially if I really don’t fit into what I’m trying to do. 29:13 – Panel: Yeah some people in the DOT NET world they were really struggling with some modern approaches. 30:42 – Panel: One of our listeners texted me b/c we are recording LIVE. Panelist reads off from a listener’s text message that uses a quote. 31:16 – Panel: When I started Ruby it was a PHP project and I couldn’t get there. I didn’t have enough bandwidth. It was easy for me to build the RAILS way. 32:02 – Chuck: I was introduced to PHP in college, early 2000’s. I really enjoyed it and I was fairly productive and then I found Rails. 32:27 – Panelist talks about PHP, flash frontend, and more. 34:42 – Chuck: Could and will something come along that will affect the way we write code? 34:56 – Panel: Yes, b/c I think technology is sustainable for a certain amount of time before things start to change again. Look at the iPhones and the Android phones. 38:26 – Panel: I think it takes time to do something well. Panelist talks about Rails, Ruby, data, and more! 40:25 – Panel: It’s interesting b/c the tradeoff used to be much bigger. The bandwidth is better, the screens are better, the way we do things are better. There is much of a tradeoff. That’s how people are interacting with our business and our products. I tend to write these flowery articles that I don’t publish. There was something in the air and in the mid-2000’s we were launching Netflix, and all of these things were happening at that time. A lot is happening now but it’s different now. Where are we going? Where would I be happy to work? If we can get on the phone and inside of our data and it just adds more value. It’s not an easy answer to “Where are we going?” but it’s good to talk about it b/c people might be afraid to ask and to answer. 43:13 – Chuck: Anything else or picks? 43:19 – Panel: We are saying today: we aren’t trying to break-out of this bubble, but we are saying: let’s get closer to the user and there is so much opportunity in THIS space!! 44:10 – Panel: The technology is tapped-out right now. 44:50 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly! Links: Get a Coder Job Course The DevRev Podcast Show Angular DevChat TV Ruby Elixir Ruby on Rails Angular Cypress Vue React Jest.io Mocha.js Book: Desert Cabal Habits for Hackers Home Depot: DeWalt Harbor Freight 11ty Masterminds Webinar Sponsors: Sentry CacheFly Fresh Books Picks: Dave Dewalt Drill Dust Collector David Habits for Hackers Desert Cabal (for funnies) Charles Mastermind Hunter 11ty.io

Panel: Lucas Reis Charles Max Wood Justin Bennett Special Guest: Soumyajit Pathak In this episode, the panelists talk with Soumyajit Pathak (India) who is a full-stack developer and cybersecurity enthusiast. The panel and the guest talk about design patterns and designing simpler code for clarity and less confusion. Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Kendo UI 0:31 – Chuck: Our panelists are and our guest is Soumyajit! Introduce yourself please! Are you doing React on the side? 1:02 – Guest: I am a master’s student and I am doing freelancing. 1:42 – Panel. 1:49 – Guest. 2:10 – Chuck: I am feeling very up-to-date. Woo! Universities are teaching this and that and they are focused on theory. The flipside is that they are going to write real code for real systems. 3:10 – Panel: I like your well-written blog posts. You talk about design patterns. 3:50 – Guest: The design patterns at the university had to do with real JavaScript applications. 4:09 – Chuck: I am curious you are talking about the design patterns – how can people from React find/use it? 4:45 – Panel: It depends on your definition of design patterns. 5:35 – Lucas: Maybe you are using one or two here and reading through the design patterns is like going through your toolbox. You only need a screwdriver but you bought the whole toolbox. Get familiar with it and from time to time solve problems and thing: what tool can help me here? It’s clear to me with this toolbox analogy. I understand now – that tool I saw 2 months ago could help me. 7:00 – Guest: I have an interesting story with this about design patterns. Let me share! 7:36 – Justin: It was a similar thing but I wasn’t in JavaScript at the time. I’ve used a lot of C++ code. Design patterns became very useful. I saw it the same way Lucas! 9:23 – Justin continues: How and why to use a certain tool. That’s important. 10:28 – Chuck: Okay this is the default pattern and that’s where we can go for the fallback. Here is the fallback if this doesn’t work here or there. 10:49 – Lucas: This is important to remember. It’s not how to use the tool but it’s why am I using this tool here or there? 11:57 – Justin: It’s so much information in general. People get information overload and they have to just start! One of the challenges we do is that we over-engineer things. Do what you need to know. Look it up but play with it. 12:40 – Lucas: It’s interesting by another blog post that you wrote Soumyajit – and you are using a render prop. You showed a problem and showed the solution. 13:30 – Guest: Yeah I’ve written a lot of blog posts about this topic. 13:48 – Panel: Often times – it’s hard for people just to dive-in. People need to see you solving a problem and it really helps with the learning process. 15:03 – Chuck: What patterns do you find most useful? 15:11 – Panel: Functional components have changed my world! 16:23 – Guest: Around these functional components... 17:17 – Panel: I will go with the patterns that are not useful. Don’t make your code pattern-oriented. This is my favorite pattern now and going back to basics. 18:53 – Panelists go back-and-forth. 19:01 – Lucas. 19:41 – Chuck: You talk about over-engineering things and that’s what I found myself doing sometimes with my new project. When I figure out how to make it simpler I get excited and it’s easy to follow. 20:15 – Panel: We celebrate the person who deleted the most lines of code. 20:28 – Panel: I am going to steal that idea. 21:04 – Guest: I have an interesting story of over-engineering something – let me share! 21:53 – FreshBooks! 22:59 – Panel: Building too much is b/c I don’t have a clear understanding of what I am doing. I get excited about problems. What’s the more simple way / most naïve way possible! 24:36 – Lucas: If you are going to change something you will be changing it in several different places. 25:50 – Chuck: When I heard the concept, all the codes that change together should be together. 26:08 – Lucas comments. 26:53 – Panel: Keeping things contained in one place. We have our presentational component and higher-level component, so you can see it all. 28:28 – Lucas: Different people working on different technologies. 29:15 – Panel: Can I break this down to smaller parts, which makes sense to me? 29:48 – Guest: Looking for keywords will cause a distraction. Finding a balance is good. 30:04 – Chuck: If you have a large rile there could be a smaller component that is there own concern. That feels like the real answer to me. It has a lot less than the length of the file versus... Chuck: If I cannot follow it then I need to keep the concept simple. 30:51 – Lucas: The quantity of lines and the line count – I think it’s better how many indentations you have. 32:43 – Guest. 32:48 – Lucas: Yes, so in the horizontal scrolling you have to keep things in your mind. 33:41 – Panel: There are so many different metrics that you can use and the different line count or different characters. There are more scientific terms that we could plugin here. If you have a lot of these abstract relations that can...write it  34:23 – Chuck: So true. 34:52 – Chuck: I want to move onto a different problem so it’s an attention thing for me too. 35:06 – Panel: We have to get okay with not always writing the best code in that it just needs to do what it needs to do. 35:30 – Chuck. 35:57 – Panel: We write it once – then it falls apart and then we write it again and learn from the process. Learning is the key here – you see where it works and where it doesn’t work well. 36:31 – Panel. 36:47 – Chuck mentions service-side rendering. Chuck: Should we schedule another episode? 37:11 – Panel: I think it’s own episode b/c it’s a complex problem overall. 39:33 – Lucas: Try to find memory leaks in the file components and server-side rendering. Where we have lost a lot of sleep and a higher level of complication. Sometimes it’s necessary. 41:42 – Chuck: Yeah let’s do another episode on this topic. Sounds like there is a lot to dive into this topic. Soumyajit, how do people find you? 42:10 – Guest: Twitter and GitHub! 42:28 – Picks! 42:30 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly Links: Ruby on Rails Angular JavaScript Elm Phoenix GitHub Get A Coder Job React Patterns on GitHub Calibre Book: Engineering a Safer World Designers’ Secret Source Monster Hunter Guest’s GitHub Guest’s Twitter Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Kendo UI Picks: Justin https://reactpatterns.com/ Calibre App Lucas Engineering a Safer World Soumyajit Blog Muzli - Chrome Extension Charles Monster Hunters International Series Metabase Stripe Work for DevChat TV

Panel: Lucas Reis Charles Max Wood Justin Bennett Special Guest: Soumyajit Pathak In this episode, the panelists talk with Soumyajit Pathak (India) who is a full-stack developer and cybersecurity enthusiast. The panel and the guest talk about design patterns and designing simpler code for clarity and less confusion. Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Kendo UI 0:31 – Chuck: Our panelists are and our guest is Soumyajit! Introduce yourself please! Are you doing React on the side? 1:02 – Guest: I am a master’s student and I am doing freelancing. 1:42 – Panel. 1:49 – Guest. 2:10 – Chuck: I am feeling very up-to-date. Woo! Universities are teaching this and that and they are focused on theory. The flipside is that they are going to write real code for real systems. 3:10 – Panel: I like your well-written blog posts. You talk about design patterns. 3:50 – Guest: The design patterns at the university had to do with real JavaScript applications. 4:09 – Chuck: I am curious you are talking about the design patterns – how can people from React find/use it? 4:45 – Panel: It depends on your definition of design patterns. 5:35 – Lucas: Maybe you are using one or two here and reading through the design patterns is like going through your toolbox. You only need a screwdriver but you bought the whole toolbox. Get familiar with it and from time to time solve problems and thing: what tool can help me here? It’s clear to me with this toolbox analogy. I understand now – that tool I saw 2 months ago could help me. 7:00 – Guest: I have an interesting story with this about design patterns. Let me share! 7:36 – Justin: It was a similar thing but I wasn’t in JavaScript at the time. I’ve used a lot of C++ code. Design patterns became very useful. I saw it the same way Lucas! 9:23 – Justin continues: How and why to use a certain tool. That’s important. 10:28 – Chuck: Okay this is the default pattern and that’s where we can go for the fallback. Here is the fallback if this doesn’t work here or there. 10:49 – Lucas: This is important to remember. It’s not how to use the tool but it’s why am I using this tool here or there? 11:57 – Justin: It’s so much information in general. People get information overload and they have to just start! One of the challenges we do is that we over-engineer things. Do what you need to know. Look it up but play with it. 12:40 – Lucas: It’s interesting by another blog post that you wrote Soumyajit – and you are using a render prop. You showed a problem and showed the solution. 13:30 – Guest: Yeah I’ve written a lot of blog posts about this topic. 13:48 – Panel: Often times – it’s hard for people just to dive-in. People need to see you solving a problem and it really helps with the learning process. 15:03 – Chuck: What patterns do you find most useful? 15:11 – Panel: Functional components have changed my world! 16:23 – Guest: Around these functional components... 17:17 – Panel: I will go with the patterns that are not useful. Don’t make your code pattern-oriented. This is my favorite pattern now and going back to basics. 18:53 – Panelists go back-and-forth. 19:01 – Lucas. 19:41 – Chuck: You talk about over-engineering things and that’s what I found myself doing sometimes with my new project. When I figure out how to make it simpler I get excited and it’s easy to follow. 20:15 – Panel: We celebrate the person who deleted the most lines of code. 20:28 – Panel: I am going to steal that idea. 21:04 – Guest: I have an interesting story of over-engineering something – let me share! 21:53 – FreshBooks! 22:59 – Panel: Building too much is b/c I don’t have a clear understanding of what I am doing. I get excited about problems. What’s the more simple way / most naïve way possible! 24:36 – Lucas: If you are going to change something you will be changing it in several different places. 25:50 – Chuck: When I heard the concept, all the codes that change together should be together. 26:08 – Lucas comments. 26:53 – Panel: Keeping things contained in one place. We have our presentational component and higher-level component, so you can see it all. 28:28 – Lucas: Different people working on different technologies. 29:15 – Panel: Can I break this down to smaller parts, which makes sense to me? 29:48 – Guest: Looking for keywords will cause a distraction. Finding a balance is good. 30:04 – Chuck: If you have a large rile there could be a smaller component that is there own concern. That feels like the real answer to me. It has a lot less than the length of the file versus... Chuck: If I cannot follow it then I need to keep the concept simple. 30:51 – Lucas: The quantity of lines and the line count – I think it’s better how many indentations you have. 32:43 – Guest. 32:48 – Lucas: Yes, so in the horizontal scrolling you have to keep things in your mind. 33:41 – Panel: There are so many different metrics that you can use and the different line count or different characters. There are more scientific terms that we could plugin here. If you have a lot of these abstract relations that can...write it  34:23 – Chuck: So true. 34:52 – Chuck: I want to move onto a different problem so it’s an attention thing for me too. 35:06 – Panel: We have to get okay with not always writing the best code in that it just needs to do what it needs to do. 35:30 – Chuck. 35:57 – Panel: We write it once – then it falls apart and then we write it again and learn from the process. Learning is the key here – you see where it works and where it doesn’t work well. 36:31 – Panel. 36:47 – Chuck mentions service-side rendering. Chuck: Should we schedule another episode? 37:11 – Panel: I think it’s own episode b/c it’s a complex problem overall. 39:33 – Lucas: Try to find memory leaks in the file components and server-side rendering. Where we have lost a lot of sleep and a higher level of complication. Sometimes it’s necessary. 41:42 – Chuck: Yeah let’s do another episode on this topic. Sounds like there is a lot to dive into this topic. Soumyajit, how do people find you? 42:10 – Guest: Twitter and GitHub! 42:28 – Picks! 42:30 – Advertisement – Get A Coder Job! End – Cache Fly Links: Ruby on Rails Angular JavaScript Elm Phoenix GitHub Get A Coder Job React Patterns on GitHub Calibre Book: Engineering a Safer World Designers’ Secret Source Monster Hunter Guest’s GitHub Guest’s Twitter Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Cache Fly Fresh Books Kendo UI Picks: Justin https://reactpatterns.com/ Calibre App Lucas Engineering a Safer World Soumyajit Blog Muzli - Chrome Extension Charles Monster Hunters International Series Metabase Stripe Work for DevChat TV

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood John Papa Special Guest: Adrian Faciu In this episode, Chuck talks with Adrian Faciu who is a developer for Visma and is a blogger. The panel talks to Adrian about his blog titled, “NgRx Tips & Tricks.” They ask Adrian in-depth questions about NgRx, among many other topics. Listen to today’s episode for more details! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: AngularBootCamp.Com 0:55 – Chuck: Hi! Our guest is Adrian Faciu. 1:10 – Guest: Hello! I am Adrian and I am a developer who works for a Norwegian company, but I live in Romania! 1:35 – Chuck. 1:36 – Guest. 1:47 – Chuck: The market is so global. I have talked with many different guests from different parts of the world – it’s really neat! It’s this global phenomenon. 2:12 – Guest: It’s a great thing! 2:23 – Chuck: They have an office where you live? 2:31 – Yes. 2:37 – Chuck: How are you guys using Angular over there? 2:47 – Guest: We have several different products. We customize using them with internalized tools. 3:04 – Chuck: Real quick let’s talk about your blog post. I will admit I am not that familiar with NgRx, so I will ask newbie questions. Now do you want to explain what this is? 3:41 – Guest: Sure! The short story of the article is I saw people doing things the hard way. And after I figured out some things, people encouraged me to write about my experience. 4:37 – Chuck: John Papa just signed-in! 4:53 – Guest: Yes NgRx is... 5:02 – Chuck: You used classes for all actions what do you mean by that? 5:05 – Guest answers the question into detail. 6:31 – Chuck: Let’s say we have a class that uses a log error... 6:42 – Guest: For example you have actions that... 7:02 – Chuck: When you use the reducer... 7:10 – Guest: There are other tricks we can use like keeping all of them in the same file... 8:00 – Guest talks about the union type. 8:24 – Chuck: You learned this by doing things wrong – what happens when you do these things wrong? 8:30 – Guest: If you don’t put all of your classes in the right file then you end up with a lot of files. If you don’t create hero types then you’d have to... 10:02 – Chuck: If you import user actions then does it import all of the other types? 10:08 – Guest: Import everything from that file. 10:17 – Chuck: If you have any questions, John, feel free to chime-in! 10:29 – John: Yeah I am scanning through this. The negative I hear a lot of through actions, it’s cause we create constants – the action class creators, it seems to cause an undue amount of stress. How much actual code do you actually have to write – how do you feel about that? 11:12 – Guest: I didn’t want to write all of this code! That’s what I wanted to avoid. 11:44 – John: I wrote them, didn’t like them, I went back to them... It wasn’t just that I created a new action I had to create the constant and other things – also the place you do the union type, I’d forget to do the union type at the end! If you don’t have all of those things then it won’t work. Even on a simple project I’d have 120 lines of code for a simple task. 12:49 – Guest: Yes. Sometimes I would forget this or that. I’d have to figure out what I did wrong. I went back and created classes for a lot of things. I like the benefits. 13:19 – John: I like your ideas and your tips in your blog. How do you feel about the NAMES of those actions? 13:55 – Guest. 14:51 – John: Important part is the naming of the string inside of it – that’s the value... So you can see the actions that are being displayed. 15:25 – Guest: If you didn’t do it right that’s where the problem would be. 15:38 – John: To me it’s a love/hate relationship b/c there is so much code to it. I usually copy and paste which means that I usually forget to change something. I agree, but I don’t’ like creating it. 16:05 – Guest: I’ve been trying to figure out a solution for it eventually I gave up. 16:23 – John: Moving onto effects – inside that happens inside of the Redux cycle – if you want to do something outside of it that’s when you do effects right? 16:40 – Guest. 16:49 – John: Using the effects is good or do it a different way? 17: 20 – Guest: It makes my components cleaner. I have seen projects that DON’T use it and it’s not the best. 17:36 – John: Like getting a list of customers... (I am using my hands and nobody can see me!) It’s weird to me to NOT use the effects! 18:52 – Guest: If you implement some type of caching then it’s everything to put everything in the state. 19:07 – Chuck: I haven’t used it as much as I would like, but I haven’t do much with it. 19:23 – John: I am curious from somebody hasn’t dove into it – does effects make sense to you, Chuck? 19:39 – Chuck: It seems like effects is a side effect? Like calling out an external API... 20:10 – John: Yeah even multiple effects. John asks a question. 20:23 – Guest answers the question. 20:29 – Chuck: I like that you can make constrained assumptions and all of the complicated... 21:10 – Guest: I am using my effects like functions. 21:26 – John’s question. 21:31 – Chuck: Doing everything! You said implement the 2-payload method – that doesn’t make sense? 21:43 – Guest: Not 100% convinced you need it. What people are doing on these actions... 22:43 – Chuck: How much magic you want? 22:50 – Guest. 22:59 – John: I am confused about ERROR HANDLING. What do you advise for people to do? 23:21 – Guest: Basically, when you deal with that effect you deal with the actions, and the actions... If you get an error on it it’s done. I was trying to explain there that...do it on another stream. Try it on another stream and handle it. What happened to me – I did it on the action state and I got an error and then everything will stop. 24:27 – John: That’s not good! 24:32 – Chuck. 24:35 – John: Good tip! 24:40 – Chuck: Angular has gotten better at that. I still find, though... 25:06 – John. 25:16 – John: Hey I appreciate these blog posts that don’t always show the happy path. To show the unhappy path is a good idea. 25:32 – Chuck. 26:00 – Going down your list, Adrian, let’s talk about effects are services. I agree, but not that we have... 26:24 – Guest: I have seen cases where people forget that. They say I want to call a service, how do I do that? They forget... 26:50 – John: You have to provide your services somewhere. The old way was you could go into the... What do you do? 27:28 – Guest: Most of the applications... 28:17 – John. 28:25 – Chuck: I love deleting code! 28:32 – John: You end up in a spaghetti pool, though, if you needed that deleted code. Nooooo!!! 29:00 – Chuck. 29:01 – Guest. 29:10 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job! 29:49 – John: Let’s talk about reducers – the smallest part of your tip sections. You say, “keep them simple” – how do you keep them simple? 30:07 – Guest: I have received this observation from several people. This is the biggest problem I had. How to keep them simple... 31:08 – John: When someone makes that type of code – where would you want them to put it? 31:23 – Guest: It depends on different types of actions. Maybe I have some sort of matter that I added to the data – an action from my application we can catch it into an effect and... Not all of the actions have to go to the reducer. 32:04 – John: I say, “Hmm...” when I see reducers like this...they are running a synchronized code inside of a reducer. And I see that a lot. 32:24 – Chuck. 32:28 – John: You go call a reaction, and...sometimes they are doing HTP there, but it’s hard to explain. 33:11 – John: What are some of the things that they can do to step-into, when they are using these? 33:16 – Guest: That’s why I only have these things about the reducers. 33:48 – Chuck: I am wondering what is the life cycle look like? What do you call a reducer from an effect from an action or vice versa? 34:09 – Guest answers the question. 34:37 – John: It can be confusing with all of these different terms. Where does it end? Your component you have to say: call this action. Perform this action and then the action says get customers – the NgRx library listens for that and helps connect to the reducer for you. Look into the action and then return that to a stream to whatever... 35:29 – Guest: Yes, it sends it to reducers. Guest goes into more detail. 36:09 – John: You never talk to the reducer directly? 36:17 – Chuck: ...is that something I should have done before – or does it call effects and the effects load the information into the state and the reducer pulls it out for the action? 36:46 – Guest. 36:58 – Chuck. 37:03 – Guest. 37:53 – John: It really depends on what you want to do, Chuck. John will give a hypothetical scenario. 38:58 – Chuck: In your scenario, let’s say... 39:14 – John: Everything is right up until the end there. It’s a little magical, honestly. I just know here is my selector and here is my data! 40:17 – Chuck: Selector is essentially I am interested in THIS state or THIS state change. 40:40 – Guest. 40:50 – Chuck: So when that changes... 40:56 – Guest. 40:59 – John. 41:05 – Chuck: A little piece of the overall store. 41:18 – Guest: My tip there was a bout the selectors... 42:30 – Chuck: So I can hand off my selector to multiple places? 42:36 – Guest: Yep. You don’t need to know anything else. 42:44 – Guest: Combine it as needed. Another benefit here is memorization. It says that each time you select pure functions it wont call the function again. 43:42 – I am seeing a trend in your tips, too. I am seeing easier way to code. You are always saying selector technique. There are a lot of terms in NgRx module. Dispatchers and states and stores...it’s nice to have a way to create the code easier. 44:21 – Guest: It does take a lot of time for someone to grasp. 44:30 – Chuck. 44:35 – John: Don’t use the store all over the place – that’s what Adrian says! 44:54 – Guest: I think it’s more like dumb components. I have a container of all of these dumb components. The container is the one that KNOWS. 46:22 – Chuck: It’s just a button. 46:28 – Guest: You click the button and it triggers. Whenever you want to use that component then you... 46:48 – Chuck: Any types of data that you wouldn’t want to use in your NgRx store? 47:07 – Guest: It depends – I am not holding any logging information there, though. 47:51 – John: I like to ask WHY. Property initialization. You are saying... 48:11 – Guest: It’s less code and it’s reasonable. If I can have less code then I’d love to have it. I think it’s cleaner b/c it’s not that much code. Most people might think blah, blah, blah, but I think it looks okay. 48:46 – John: I can see why it would be less code. 48:57 – Guest. 49:07 – John: I haven’t seen this: looking at your property initializer... Looking at your code here, Adrian... The store object itself is a reference to the NgRx store. That means you have to... To me I don’t want my app to know that NgRx is involved. I started to do this...I was creating an Angular service, which... Have you done this before? 50:33 – Guest:  I have seen this function but I haven’t played with it. It makes sense. This takes it a step further. Like you say it’s perfect b/c nobody knows anything about that store, but it’s a new level. I think you have some benefits with that way of doing it, too. 51:23 – John: The one thing that sticks out is company name is your observable, then your... 52:10 – Guest: Yeah that’s good b/c it might be better! They might not even know what NgRx is, and you have a service so just use them. Yeah it’s just an observable. 52:33 – Chuck: You don’t want to see my garage. 52:44 – Guest: Some services are underrated. Like you suggested we could use them for much more. 53:01 – Guest: It was nice writing these tips. 53:19 – Chuck: What are working on now? 53:23 – Guest: Writing a new blog. 53:41 – Chuck: We will keep an eye out for it. Where do you post? 53:55 – Guest: Usually Medium, and Twitter. Search for my name and you will find me, b/c I have the same handler on all the places. 54:15 – Chuck & John: Let’s go to picks! 54:30 – Chuck is talking about future episodes and potential topics. You can vote stuff up on Trello on NgRx so we can go deeper on this topic. 55:40 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 1:02:00 – Advertisement – Cache Fly! Links: Vue jQuery Angular C# Chuck’s Twitter John Papa’s Twitter Adrian’s Medium Adrian’s Twitter Adrian’s GitHub Adrian’s Blog Post Adrian’s Article: Testing NgRx Effects Sponsors: Angular Boot Camp Fresh Books Get a Coder Job Course Cache Fly Picks: John NgRx Data Conferences  - Don’t feel mofo Charles Discord App Adrain Angular In-depth Doc Wallaby

Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Eric Berry Special Guest: Chris McCord In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks to Chris who created Phoenix and is an author, also. Chris McCord is a monumental developer within the community, and it’s exciting to see how LiveView is a great add-on to Phoenix, which is his baby. Finally, the panel talks about topics, such as Phoenix, LiveView, Elm, and Fire Nest. Show Topics: 1:21 – What are you famous for? 1:49 – Chuck: You created Phoenix. There is a new feature, LiveView, can you share with us what that is? 2:08 – Chris: Sure. What got me started with creating Phoenix is similar to how I got into LiveView. 3:13 – Panelist chimes in with his comments. Panel: Questions we are asking: How to give the audience a high-quality experience without a huge overhead. When I watch this video on LiveView, I was freaking out. Are you glad you did it? 5:01 – Chris: The response is really exciting and it really resonated with a lot of people. Often, I thought, working on past projects thoughts along these lines: “this was a huge waste of the day.” And I’m glad this was a good response. 6:08 – Panel: Explain what you can do right now. 6:18 – Chris dives into this topic. Chris: We wanted to offer a rich experience. A lot of things we can target out of the box, with rich UI. 8:20 – Panel: You announced this in your keynote in Washington D.C. The day before you hinted at it. And I thought: Is this even a good idea? Is this a misguided effort? If you have this first impression go, first, and see the video. You explain well your history and what you wanted with web development.  Watch this video to maybe not be skeptical. 9:47 – Panel comments. 9:50 – Chuck: I haven’t seen the video, yet. I am used to doing this with JavaScript. How do you do without JavaScript? Frontend? 10:14 – There are pixies and sparkles, and Chris is bringing these sparkles! 10:31 – Chris: It’s nice because we are piggybacking off the channel level. There is no JavaScript that you have to write today. 11:16 – Panel: Question to Chris. 11:31 – Chris answers the question. 13:13 – Panel: Who else is doing this right now? 13:15 – Chris answers question. 14:51 – Panel: The original dream. Phoenix was just a stepping step to LiveView. 15:08 – Chris: Those who are casting judgment – please watch the video. For years I have had this idea that I want to stay in the server-land... 15:55 – Panel: It’s funny that your path unfolded the way that it did. 16:28 – Chris: It blows me away. 16:38 – Panel: I bet when you wake up your pants just attach themselves to your legs! 16:57 – Chris: I work remotely, so... 17:08 – Chuck: That got weird. 17:18 – Panel: You’ve got a lot going on. When can we expect to see this? I’m sure you get that asked a lot. Phoenix 1.4 has to come first, and you are working on your book. While that’s going on you have a project called Fire Nest. Sounds like you have a couple things you’re doing right now? How do you prioritize? 18:08 – Chris answers these questions. Chris: I do work full-time on Phoenix. Phoenix 1.0 is on my own time. This is at my own discretion. Whatever helps the community is good for them and for me. That’s how I do it without completing losing it. The book has been over a year delayed. It’s always a battle it’s a love/hate relationship. It’s hard when you when you want to work on exciting things like LiveView. The future, the things we want to build for. Some weeks it’s more writing, and some weeks its coding. 20:01 – Panel talks about Chris’ team. 20:25 – Panel: I got to ask you, I am more of a Ruby developer, and this thing that you’ve developed is making me lean towards Elixir. What’s your least favorite thing about Phoenix? 20:56 – Chris: Never have been asked this before. 21:06 – Chris: The thing that bothers me the most is maybe configuration? Lots of folks we did a lot of the configurations. I guess that has been a recent thing that’s come up. Even though, personally, I don’t have a lot of issues with it. 22:38 – Advertisement – Digital Ocean 23:13 – It’s hard to point out ugly features of your own baby. 23:26 – Panel: You’ve talked about your rel. with DockYard, Inc. What’s that responsibility like? 23:44 – Chris: I am a cheerleader for the company. I do work in a consulting role. This is good because I am solving real-world problems. I’d loose touch with that if I didn’t consult. The other time I try to help the team if needed. It’s a good mix for me. Writing Elixir code and not just framework code. 25:02 – Panel: Umbrella project. Your rel. with your clients – when you would suggest an umbrella project or not? 25:26 – Chris: It depends. It’s not so much code structure it’s mostly from an operational standpoint and not from a code structure standpoint. 26:51 – Chuck: Give us a short history of Phoenix. How does LiveView tie into your vision with Phoenix? 27:13 – Chris gives us his thoughts. Chris: In 2013 – I fell in love with Ruby. That’s to show that it wasn’t on my radar to do anything else professionally. Never thought I would develop something like Phoenix. My wife noticed that I came home unhappy when I worked with Ruby at some point. She noticed a difference. Chris continues to share the Genesis of Phoenix. It’s been a crazy ride. 32:32 – Chuck: So it was mostly about the scaling. I’ve played socket IO, do some harm, then come back. Action cables are a little less of a pain. Chuck continues his thoughts and asks a question. 33:10 – Chris answers Chuck’s question. 35:00 – Chuck. 35:14 – Chris. It’s interesting because you could have used a LiveView layer in the mid-2000s and nothing in town would have been able to compete. 35:56 – Panel: One great thing about Rails is the integration. There is a path to it. Is there anything like that for the docket to build that for Phoenix? There is webpacker for Rails but is there going to be that for Phoenix. 36:35 – Chris: No is the simple answer. It just works the way you would expect. 37:46 – Chuck: The other one is partial JS. IT’s interesting because I go back and forth, too. I like the approach with JavaScript. I play with everything. I’ve been playing with an app recently and figured out how to do it in Brunch, because that’s what’s there. Why solve it the Elixir way? As a backend developer I may not want to mess with it. 38:51 – Panel: Another question about LiveView. From the video, from what I understand, is that the data that’s pulled from reads and rights? 39:26 – Chris: I hope this doesn’t sounds like a cop out answer. My answer is that you will handle any system you are building it in Elixir. If you want to have durable state you would use existing tools that you have already. 40:17 – Panel: The facilities you built around the LiveView, is it valuable for someone to... 40:42 – Chris answers the question. 41:22 – Panel: Another question on how LiveView works. Is that dependent on there being a JavaScript connection? 41:49 – Chris: Answer to that is if you are... 42:50 – Chuck. 42:53 – Chris. 43:29 – Panel: How is Fire Nest coming along? 43:38 – Chris: I won’t say it’s steady progress, but it’s coming along. We are working on it. 44:53 – Panel: That was exactly what I wanted to hear. 45:00 – Advertisement. 45: 42 – Panel: The new developments are happening outside of the community of Phoenix, right? 46:07 – Chris: People think Phoenix is “heavy,” but it really isn’t. It’s really I want 80% and the teams and communities can build on top of that. Not in core. Not everyone needs X feature. No reason to shove it in core. It’s not about having it being “lighter.” I am developing resisting the urge to do it because someone says so. 47:40 – Panel: Phoenix for me feels like it’s baked. There really isn’t anything that is lacking. It’s extensible. It’s done. That’s exciting. These add-ons like LiveView are a great plugin. 48:23 – Chuck: How do people keep in touch with what you are doing and your projects? 48:51 – Panel: Anyone on the team working with Elm? 49:00 – Chris answers this question. Elm has been on my radar, but haven’t gotten into it, yet. Not in the foreseeable future either. 50:20 – Chuck: Picks! Links: Chris McCord’s Website Chris McCord’s Twitter Chris McCord’s GitHub Chris McCord’s YouTube Chris McCord’s LinkedIn Chris McCord’s Medium Chris McCord’s DockYard Posts Chris McCord’s Video Chris McCord’s Keynote Talk Elm GitHub – Morphdom GitHub – Drab Fire Nest Article on LiveView Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Digital Ocean Code Badges Cache Fly Picks: Charles Geeking-out about the space stuff. Self-fastening pants – Velcro Book: Soft Cover IO Docking station Mark The Talk Fire Nest Project Josh Website: SmoothTerminal.com Eric Earthrise – Apollo 8 – 1968 picture Earthrise Wikipedia Podcast – American Life Chris Phoenix 1.4 Book Phoenix Programming Book

Panel: Charles Max Wood Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Eric Berry Special Guest: Chris McCord In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks to Chris who created Phoenix and is an author, also. Chris McCord is a monumental developer within the community, and it’s exciting to see how LiveView is a great add-on to Phoenix, which is his baby. Finally, the panel talks about topics, such as Phoenix, LiveView, Elm, and Fire Nest. Show Topics: 1:21 – What are you famous for? 1:49 – Chuck: You created Phoenix. There is a new feature, LiveView, can you share with us what that is? 2:08 – Chris: Sure. What got me started with creating Phoenix is similar to how I got into LiveView. 3:13 – Panelist chimes in with his comments. Panel: Questions we are asking: How to give the audience a high-quality experience without a huge overhead. When I watch this video on LiveView, I was freaking out. Are you glad you did it? 5:01 – Chris: The response is really exciting and it really resonated with a lot of people. Often, I thought, working on past projects thoughts along these lines: “this was a huge waste of the day.” And I’m glad this was a good response. 6:08 – Panel: Explain what you can do right now. 6:18 – Chris dives into this topic. Chris: We wanted to offer a rich experience. A lot of things we can target out of the box, with rich UI. 8:20 – Panel: You announced this in your keynote in Washington D.C. The day before you hinted at it. And I thought: Is this even a good idea? Is this a misguided effort? If you have this first impression go, first, and see the video. You explain well your history and what you wanted with web development.  Watch this video to maybe not be skeptical. 9:47 – Panel comments. 9:50 – Chuck: I haven’t seen the video, yet. I am used to doing this with JavaScript. How do you do without JavaScript? Frontend? 10:14 – There are pixies and sparkles, and Chris is bringing these sparkles! 10:31 – Chris: It’s nice because we are piggybacking off the channel level. There is no JavaScript that you have to write today. 11:16 – Panel: Question to Chris. 11:31 – Chris answers the question. 13:13 – Panel: Who else is doing this right now? 13:15 – Chris answers question. 14:51 – Panel: The original dream. Phoenix was just a stepping step to LiveView. 15:08 – Chris: Those who are casting judgment – please watch the video. For years I have had this idea that I want to stay in the server-land... 15:55 – Panel: It’s funny that your path unfolded the way that it did. 16:28 – Chris: It blows me away. 16:38 – Panel: I bet when you wake up your pants just attach themselves to your legs! 16:57 – Chris: I work remotely, so... 17:08 – Chuck: That got weird. 17:18 – Panel: You’ve got a lot going on. When can we expect to see this? I’m sure you get that asked a lot. Phoenix 1.4 has to come first, and you are working on your book. While that’s going on you have a project called Fire Nest. Sounds like you have a couple things you’re doing right now? How do you prioritize? 18:08 – Chris answers these questions. Chris: I do work full-time on Phoenix. Phoenix 1.0 is on my own time. This is at my own discretion. Whatever helps the community is good for them and for me. That’s how I do it without completing losing it. The book has been over a year delayed. It’s always a battle it’s a love/hate relationship. It’s hard when you when you want to work on exciting things like LiveView. The future, the things we want to build for. Some weeks it’s more writing, and some weeks its coding. 20:01 – Panel talks about Chris’ team. 20:25 – Panel: I got to ask you, I am more of a Ruby developer, and this thing that you’ve developed is making me lean towards Elixir. What’s your least favorite thing about Phoenix? 20:56 – Chris: Never have been asked this before. 21:06 – Chris: The thing that bothers me the most is maybe configuration? Lots of folks we did a lot of the configurations. I guess that has been a recent thing that’s come up. Even though, personally, I don’t have a lot of issues with it. 22:38 – Advertisement – Digital Ocean 23:13 – It’s hard to point out ugly features of your own baby. 23:26 – Panel: You’ve talked about your rel. with DockYard, Inc. What’s that responsibility like? 23:44 – Chris: I am a cheerleader for the company. I do work in a consulting role. This is good because I am solving real-world problems. I’d loose touch with that if I didn’t consult. The other time I try to help the team if needed. It’s a good mix for me. Writing Elixir code and not just framework code. 25:02 – Panel: Umbrella project. Your rel. with your clients – when you would suggest an umbrella project or not? 25:26 – Chris: It depends. It’s not so much code structure it’s mostly from an operational standpoint and not from a code structure standpoint. 26:51 – Chuck: Give us a short history of Phoenix. How does LiveView tie into your vision with Phoenix? 27:13 – Chris gives us his thoughts. Chris: In 2013 – I fell in love with Ruby. That’s to show that it wasn’t on my radar to do anything else professionally. Never thought I would develop something like Phoenix. My wife noticed that I came home unhappy when I worked with Ruby at some point. She noticed a difference. Chris continues to share the Genesis of Phoenix. It’s been a crazy ride. 32:32 – Chuck: So it was mostly about the scaling. I’ve played socket IO, do some harm, then come back. Action cables are a little less of a pain. Chuck continues his thoughts and asks a question. 33:10 – Chris answers Chuck’s question. 35:00 – Chuck. 35:14 – Chris. It’s interesting because you could have used a LiveView layer in the mid-2000s and nothing in town would have been able to compete. 35:56 – Panel: One great thing about Rails is the integration. There is a path to it. Is there anything like that for the docket to build that for Phoenix? There is webpacker for Rails but is there going to be that for Phoenix. 36:35 – Chris: No is the simple answer. It just works the way you would expect. 37:46 – Chuck: The other one is partial JS. IT’s interesting because I go back and forth, too. I like the approach with JavaScript. I play with everything. I’ve been playing with an app recently and figured out how to do it in Brunch, because that’s what’s there. Why solve it the Elixir way? As a backend developer I may not want to mess with it. 38:51 – Panel: Another question about LiveView. From the video, from what I understand, is that the data that’s pulled from reads and rights? 39:26 – Chris: I hope this doesn’t sounds like a cop out answer. My answer is that you will handle any system you are building it in Elixir. If you want to have durable state you would use existing tools that you have already. 40:17 – Panel: The facilities you built around the LiveView, is it valuable for someone to... 40:42 – Chris answers the question. 41:22 – Panel: Another question on how LiveView works. Is that dependent on there being a JavaScript connection? 41:49 – Chris: Answer to that is if you are... 42:50 – Chuck. 42:53 – Chris. 43:29 – Panel: How is Fire Nest coming along? 43:38 – Chris: I won’t say it’s steady progress, but it’s coming along. We are working on it. 44:53 – Panel: That was exactly what I wanted to hear. 45:00 – Advertisement. 45: 42 – Panel: The new developments are happening outside of the community of Phoenix, right? 46:07 – Chris: People think Phoenix is “heavy,” but it really isn’t. It’s really I want 80% and the teams and communities can build on top of that. Not in core. Not everyone needs X feature. No reason to shove it in core. It’s not about having it being “lighter.” I am developing resisting the urge to do it because someone says so. 47:40 – Panel: Phoenix for me feels like it’s baked. There really isn’t anything that is lacking. It’s extensible. It’s done. That’s exciting. These add-ons like LiveView are a great plugin. 48:23 – Chuck: How do people keep in touch with what you are doing and your projects? 48:51 – Panel: Anyone on the team working with Elm? 49:00 – Chris answers this question. Elm has been on my radar, but haven’t gotten into it, yet. Not in the foreseeable future either. 50:20 – Chuck: Picks! Links: Chris McCord’s Website Chris McCord’s Twitter Chris McCord’s GitHub Chris McCord’s YouTube Chris McCord’s LinkedIn Chris McCord’s Medium Chris McCord’s DockYard Posts Chris McCord’s Video Chris McCord’s Keynote Talk Elm GitHub – Morphdom GitHub – Drab Fire Nest Article on LiveView Sponsors: Get a Coder Job Digital Ocean Code Badges Cache Fly Picks: Charles Geeking-out about the space stuff. Self-fastening pants – Velcro Book: Soft Cover IO Docking station Mark The Talk Fire Nest Project Josh Website: SmoothTerminal.com Eric Earthrise – Apollo 8 – 1968 picture Earthrise Wikipedia Podcast – American Life Chris Phoenix 1.4 Book Phoenix Programming Book

Panel: Charles Max Wood Lucas Reis (NY) Nader Dabit Special Guests: Christopher Buecheler In this episode, the panel talks with Christopher Buecheler who is a web developer and moved into JavaScript in 2000. Christopher runs his own business, and records and edits videos among many other responsibilities. He also has a lot of hobbies, and guitars are one of them. Check out today’s episode where the panel and Christopher talk about how to form a tutorial course from start to finish. Show Topics: 2:38 – Chuck: I always am fascinated by how there are a lot of programmers who are musicians. 3:00 – Panelist: Yes, I agree. Coding takes creativity. People who are programmers are surprisingly into different arts where it asks for the person’s creativity. 3:17 – Panelist: Video games, music, cocktails, etc. 4:05 – Guest: Yes, for a while I liked to make beer. My current kitchen doesn’t allow for it now, though. 4:25 – Chuck: So your 84/86 tutorial course... 4:46 – Guest: I liked to be one or two weeks ahead. Now building the entire app, instead of doing it week-to-week. 5:35 – Chuck: What is the process like – building these videos? 5:51 – Guest: I try to focus on MVP products that are super easy, and that aren’t too complicated. For example, Music List. Add albums and artists, and see other people’s lists. It ended up being a long tutorial. The process: I build the app, rebuild the app from scratch, I start with a script, read the pretty version and have the marked-down one for my use. The script goes up as the text tutorial. Do my video editing in Adobe Premiere. 7:55 – Question from panel. 8:52 – Panelist: I have found that extremely hard to do. 9:29 – Chuck talks about his process of recording his tutorials. Chuck: I don’t have a script; I just walk through it as I am going along. You can get it transcribed, which I have done in the past. I have a license for Adobe Premiere. 11:04 – Panelist: I never recorded a tutorial before but I have written a lot of blog posts. I reviewed it, and reviewing it is a very interesting take. I learn a lot in the process. The things cement in my mind while reviewing. Videos you have the real-time thing going on. 12:00 – Guest adds additional comments. 13:39 – Chuck chimes in. Chuck: We really appreciate you leaving the mistakes in. 14:11 – Guest: Yes, they watch you debug. 14:20 – Panelist: Most of your tutorials are beginner focused, right? 14:23 – Guest: Yes. Christopher goes into detail here. 17:13 – Chuck chimes in. Chuck: My thought is to learn x, y, z in 1 hour. 17:35 – Guest: People are attracted to shorter tutorials. 5-minute React. Don’t build an 84 tutorial course. They are built up to digestible chunks. It’s not wall-to-wall coding, because that would seem overwhelming to me. Let’s learn something in a bite-size chunk. 18:41 – Panelist: Egghead. Because of their guidelines they do good work. 1-5 minutes long tutorials. You can get a good run-down and a good introduction. 19:24 – Panelist: You can find it really easy. You don’t need a 1-hour video. 19:40 – Chuck: Yeah, to break it up in small sections. People will see this in my e-book course. 20:02 – Panelist: Do people give you a lot of feedback? What parts of this React course do people have most difficulty with? 20:21 – Guest: It’s not React based, it’s actually other issues. 210:6 – Guest: Redux. 21:53 – Guest: What’s the best way to use props? Where should I put my Logic versus... 22:15 – Panelist: This is very similar when I teach... 22:46 – Guest: I have seen people say that if you truly see how this works in JavaScript then you really understand how JavaScript works. React can be confusing if you are using class-based components. You have to use binder or error functions, etc. It becomes confusing at times. Another area you mentioned was state: component state or your application state. Two different things, but they interact with each other. Understanding the difference between the two. Should I store it in this store or...? 24:09 – Digital Ocean Advertisement. 24:47 – Panelist: Were you doing this as a side thing? How do you keep up in the industry if you aren’t making “real” projects? 25:25 – Guest gives his answer plus his background with companies, clients, and programs. Guest: I really wanted to build my own company, when I was thinking of ideas I came across some great brainstorming ideas. I have a lot of traffic coming to these tutorials. I really liked giving something back to the web development community. I liked interacting with people and getting them to their “Ah Ha!” moment. It’s able to support me and helps me moving forward. I follow a ton of people on Twitter – the React team. I pay a ton of attention to what people are looking to learn. I play around those things for my own edification. I pick up some contract work and it helps me to stay current. It’s always a culmination for things. Part of the job is not to fall behind. If you are creating tutorials you have to reteach yourself things as things changes. 28:46 – Panelist asks another question. How do you get new leads and new customers? 20:02 – Guest answers questions. Guest: I was on a mentality if “I build it they will come.” This isn’t the best mentality. That was not a good approach. I started working with a consultant: how do we get this out to people? No ads, no subscription service. My e-mail list. I have gone from 1,600 to 4,600 people on my email list. Find the people who are interested. 32:52 – Guest: Find your voice, and how you choose to deliver your information. Text? Video? Or both? What do you want to teach? Don’t teach what you think will sell the most. It’s more important to be excited an interested what you are teaching. 34:05 – Panelist: When I am teaching something I try to remember of the feeling when I was learning it. For example, Harrison Ford. What was I thinking? How did I learn this concept? 35:01 – Guest: When I learned React it was because a client asked me to learn it. 4-6 weeks of exhausting terror and me trying to learn this to make useful code for this client. In about that time (4-6 weeks) “Oh I understand what I am doing now!” We are still on good terms today with this said client. When I am trying to learn something, the next level is here is a blog, and comments. There aren’t a lot of intermediary steps. They explain every kind of step. I took a similar approach with my other course. That’s informed by my own experience when learning these different technologies. 37:08 – Guest: Yes – check out my newsletter, and my new resource every week. Follow me at Twitter or my personal Twitter where I talk about the NBA too much. Email me if you have any questions. 38:11 – Chuck: Anything else? Okay, picks! 38:24 – Chuck’s Advertisement for His Course! 39:01 – Picks! Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Get A Coder Job Redux Adobe Premiere Close Brace Five Minute React Egghead State of JavaScript Statecharts James R. Nelson Christopher Buecheler’s Website Christopher Buecheler’s Books Christopher Buecheler’s Twitter Christopher Buecheler’s LinkedIn Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles Pre-Sale: Get A Coder Job DevChat TV Website – Notion.So Lucas Statecharts Nader Book Title: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Author is a sociologist. Going through their day-to-day lives of these low-income families. A lot of it has to do with a room over their head. How they struggle and how poverty goes from one generation to the next. Christopher Shout-Out to a friend – Christopher’s Site 5-Minute React Videos

Panel: Charles Max Wood Lucas Reis (NY) Nader Dabit Special Guests: Christopher Buecheler In this episode, the panel talks with Christopher Buecheler who is a web developer and moved into JavaScript in 2000. Christopher runs his own business, and records and edits videos among many other responsibilities. He also has a lot of hobbies, and guitars are one of them. Check out today’s episode where the panel and Christopher talk about how to form a tutorial course from start to finish. Show Topics: 2:38 – Chuck: I always am fascinated by how there are a lot of programmers who are musicians. 3:00 – Panelist: Yes, I agree. Coding takes creativity. People who are programmers are surprisingly into different arts where it asks for the person’s creativity. 3:17 – Panelist: Video games, music, cocktails, etc. 4:05 – Guest: Yes, for a while I liked to make beer. My current kitchen doesn’t allow for it now, though. 4:25 – Chuck: So your 84/86 tutorial course... 4:46 – Guest: I liked to be one or two weeks ahead. Now building the entire app, instead of doing it week-to-week. 5:35 – Chuck: What is the process like – building these videos? 5:51 – Guest: I try to focus on MVP products that are super easy, and that aren’t too complicated. For example, Music List. Add albums and artists, and see other people’s lists. It ended up being a long tutorial. The process: I build the app, rebuild the app from scratch, I start with a script, read the pretty version and have the marked-down one for my use. The script goes up as the text tutorial. Do my video editing in Adobe Premiere. 7:55 – Question from panel. 8:52 – Panelist: I have found that extremely hard to do. 9:29 – Chuck talks about his process of recording his tutorials. Chuck: I don’t have a script; I just walk through it as I am going along. You can get it transcribed, which I have done in the past. I have a license for Adobe Premiere. 11:04 – Panelist: I never recorded a tutorial before but I have written a lot of blog posts. I reviewed it, and reviewing it is a very interesting take. I learn a lot in the process. The things cement in my mind while reviewing. Videos you have the real-time thing going on. 12:00 – Guest adds additional comments. 13:39 – Chuck chimes in. Chuck: We really appreciate you leaving the mistakes in. 14:11 – Guest: Yes, they watch you debug. 14:20 – Panelist: Most of your tutorials are beginner focused, right? 14:23 – Guest: Yes. Christopher goes into detail here. 17:13 – Chuck chimes in. Chuck: My thought is to learn x, y, z in 1 hour. 17:35 – Guest: People are attracted to shorter tutorials. 5-minute React. Don’t build an 84 tutorial course. They are built up to digestible chunks. It’s not wall-to-wall coding, because that would seem overwhelming to me. Let’s learn something in a bite-size chunk. 18:41 – Panelist: Egghead. Because of their guidelines they do good work. 1-5 minutes long tutorials. You can get a good run-down and a good introduction. 19:24 – Panelist: You can find it really easy. You don’t need a 1-hour video. 19:40 – Chuck: Yeah, to break it up in small sections. People will see this in my e-book course. 20:02 – Panelist: Do people give you a lot of feedback? What parts of this React course do people have most difficulty with? 20:21 – Guest: It’s not React based, it’s actually other issues. 210:6 – Guest: Redux. 21:53 – Guest: What’s the best way to use props? Where should I put my Logic versus... 22:15 – Panelist: This is very similar when I teach... 22:46 – Guest: I have seen people say that if you truly see how this works in JavaScript then you really understand how JavaScript works. React can be confusing if you are using class-based components. You have to use binder or error functions, etc. It becomes confusing at times. Another area you mentioned was state: component state or your application state. Two different things, but they interact with each other. Understanding the difference between the two. Should I store it in this store or...? 24:09 – Digital Ocean Advertisement. 24:47 – Panelist: Were you doing this as a side thing? How do you keep up in the industry if you aren’t making “real” projects? 25:25 – Guest gives his answer plus his background with companies, clients, and programs. Guest: I really wanted to build my own company, when I was thinking of ideas I came across some great brainstorming ideas. I have a lot of traffic coming to these tutorials. I really liked giving something back to the web development community. I liked interacting with people and getting them to their “Ah Ha!” moment. It’s able to support me and helps me moving forward. I follow a ton of people on Twitter – the React team. I pay a ton of attention to what people are looking to learn. I play around those things for my own edification. I pick up some contract work and it helps me to stay current. It’s always a culmination for things. Part of the job is not to fall behind. If you are creating tutorials you have to reteach yourself things as things changes. 28:46 – Panelist asks another question. How do you get new leads and new customers? 20:02 – Guest answers questions. Guest: I was on a mentality if “I build it they will come.” This isn’t the best mentality. That was not a good approach. I started working with a consultant: how do we get this out to people? No ads, no subscription service. My e-mail list. I have gone from 1,600 to 4,600 people on my email list. Find the people who are interested. 32:52 – Guest: Find your voice, and how you choose to deliver your information. Text? Video? Or both? What do you want to teach? Don’t teach what you think will sell the most. It’s more important to be excited an interested what you are teaching. 34:05 – Panelist: When I am teaching something I try to remember of the feeling when I was learning it. For example, Harrison Ford. What was I thinking? How did I learn this concept? 35:01 – Guest: When I learned React it was because a client asked me to learn it. 4-6 weeks of exhausting terror and me trying to learn this to make useful code for this client. In about that time (4-6 weeks) “Oh I understand what I am doing now!” We are still on good terms today with this said client. When I am trying to learn something, the next level is here is a blog, and comments. There aren’t a lot of intermediary steps. They explain every kind of step. I took a similar approach with my other course. That’s informed by my own experience when learning these different technologies. 37:08 – Guest: Yes – check out my newsletter, and my new resource every week. Follow me at Twitter or my personal Twitter where I talk about the NBA too much. Email me if you have any questions. 38:11 – Chuck: Anything else? Okay, picks! 38:24 – Chuck’s Advertisement for His Course! 39:01 – Picks! Links: Kendo UI Ruby on Rails Angular Get A Coder Job Redux Adobe Premiere Close Brace Five Minute React Egghead State of JavaScript Statecharts James R. Nelson Christopher Buecheler’s Website Christopher Buecheler’s Books Christopher Buecheler’s Twitter Christopher Buecheler’s LinkedIn Sponsors: Kendo UI Digital Ocean Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles Pre-Sale: Get A Coder Job DevChat TV Website – Notion.So Lucas Statecharts Nader Book Title: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond Author is a sociologist. Going through their day-to-day lives of these low-income families. A lot of it has to do with a room over their head. How they struggle and how poverty goes from one generation to the next. Christopher Shout-Out to a friend – Christopher’s Site 5-Minute React Videos

Today we are talking to Chuck Mullins all about due diligence. An internet business veteran who is now a part of the Quiet Light team, Chuck purchased his first internet business while still in college and was more successful at 18 than some of the most seasoned entrepreneurs. For both the buyer and the seller, the due diligence process is one of the most difficult parts of buying and selling an online business. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools that can be used to simplify the process. In this episode, Mark and Chuck look at over 20 different due diligence tools and explain how you can use them in our due diligence processes. Episode Highlights: Chuck guides us through a group of tools that can be fundamental to any well thought out due diligence plan. Any buyer knows that this is the most important thing you can do to make sure that no stone is left unturned when preparing to make that purchase and hit the ground running. Try using a due diligence consultant service. We don't advise leaving it all up to them but they can take some of the work out of your hands. Never just research the business but remember to also research who is selling the business. Google trends is very powerful. Google Trends lets you read the trends that any given business may have experienced. Be sure to be aware if your acquisition is “trendy” or “evergreen.” SEM tools can provide insight into the business potential and the size of any risks. Website crawling tools are used to determine customer and market trends. Social media tools are an additional way to gain insight into connections for that business and also the business owner's niche interactions in their niche. Lessons from Due Diligence: For first time buyers the best advice Chuck offers is that you don't know what you don't know. Due diligence gives you the answers. Know what a tool is good at, put it in your due diligence toolbox, and use it correctly. Surround yourself with the types of people who can help you. Be careful to use your lawyer for law and your accountant for money. Always remember that you as the buyer ultimately make the business decision. Don't be afraid to ask questions! Keep good records of what you have looked at. Work off a checklist and be meticulous about it. A seller is as interested in you in the success of their business. Transcription Mark: Hey Joe, how are you? Joe: Doing good Mark, how about yourself? Mark: I'm doing well, I'd talk to somebody that we both know well and that's one of our own Chuck Mullins. Joe: Mr. Chuck Mullins, good man he is. Mark: He is, yeah. He joins us on the interview on the video part push on the interview wearing his Quit Light shirt which he had embroidered. The only person at Quiet Light that has one. Although, He didn't tell me that he made one for you. And I haven't seen you in it yet. Joe: He did I almost put it on today. It's just, it's a little big so I [inaudible 0:01:16] it. I need to put on some layer, run it through a two cycles of the dryer. Mark: It would have been so appropriate because, you know, he's wearing his shirt in this interview and you've been wearing your shirt in, and he's getting, make one for me though of course. Joe: He should. You're the founder of Quiet Light Brokerage. Mark: Absolutely. Joe: You should have like a logo on the back of your office chair that says Quiet Light Brokerage, what's wrong with you? Mark: I thought about it but. Most of my office is really a mess. If you seeing this on video and we'll talk about this one a bit. My office is usually a mess. It's all about angles, right? My angles a little bit of center today because I don't want to show you the rest of my office. So, yeah. But this actual episode is going to be great for a video. If you're listening in your car, if you're listening on the podcast, you'll still get a lot of value out of it. But I'd recommend at some point checking out the Youtube channel. We are separating our channels, so we will have a new channel, just for the podcast episodes. And this episode will, going to kick that off. So make sure you'll go there and you subscribe. And the reason that is a good one to watch on the Youtube channel is because we're reviewing due diligence tools in this episode. We actually go over 27 different due diligence tools. We bring them up on the screen and you can see, we kind of browse around and fumbling around on somebody's sites. As we talk about how you can use this in your due diligence process. Any buyer out there who is looking to acquire a business in the next few years or so, you know due diligence is probably the most important part of that process for you making sure that you're checking under every rock and every hidden area to see is there anything wrong with this business that I need to be aware of. Well Chuck and I go over 27 tools that he has used personally in his past of buying businesses. So we bring real interest in episode from that stand point. He brings a lot of experience in buying and selling businesses for.. Do you know how long he has been doing it? I can't remember off hand. Joe: In 1997 I think. He was self-employed in college, making more in one month the most people make in a year when he was in college. Mark: Right right and then, He and I have been presenting at Pubcon for 7 years. We go over this video a little bit but we've been presenting for 7 years at Pubcon together and people always come to see Chuck and then hopefully I can pick up a couple of the scraps to come off the table when presents. So it's a great presentation on a how to go about buying online businesses. Joe: And just a point out of the obvious remaining, not so obvious. Technically we represent the sellers in what we do. Well we can't help them and help them while unless we also help as many buyers as possible. So it's, many people would think that what you're about to present with Chuck is in contrast to what we do. But we're always about full disclosure, always making sure that buyers are making good investments and so that both they and the sellers are happy to closing table and it's successful transaction down the road as well. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Again, we going to do represent the sellers, but if our seller's getting sued, 3 or 4 months later that is a pretty bad job on our part. So it's important that both buyer and seller walk away from a deal, happy and when you know that deal. So that's the goal. We get a transaction wins. And part of that process is due diligence. I say, I hate like throw a due diligence. When I first started Quiet Light and I got like, you know, a monster due diligence, I would kind of [inaudible 0:04:31] and be like, Oh man, this is going to be a pain. Now when I see a well thought out due diligence, it's makes me happy because I know that, that buyer is going to be really happy and that deal is gone go through. Because where they're going to really inspect that business thoroughly. Joe: Yeah, well thought, that was important. Not just a massive list but a well thought, that was specific to the business that's being purchased. I've seen blank at due diligence less come through where somebody clearly copied and paste it. But I'm excited about this episode Chucks a really, really smart guy and successful entrepreneur and I think a lot of people would learn some good stuff here. Mark: That's good, very good. Let's get to it. Mark: Hey Chuck, how are you? Chuck: Doing great. How are you Mark? Mark: I'm good. Thanks for joining me on the call. I see you have your nice Quiet Light shirt on. You're the only one at Quiet Light that has that shirt. Chuck: That's because I took the initiative to have it made. Mark: Right. We'll get them for everybody else eventually. Chuck: Actually, I think I bought Joe one. But he didn't want it. Mark: Oh really, I got to start getting on him so he wears it from the Podcast. Chuck: Yeah Mark: Yeah, anyway for this Podcast, if you guys are listening to this in your car, this would be one of the once that I would recommend over going to Youtube and we've set up a new channel on Youtube just for the interviews. We're going to put all our interviews on that channel. I'd recommend looking at that because we're going to review a bunch of due diligence tools. A little bit of background between Chuck and myself. Chuck and I have been presenting at Pubcon. What? 7 years I think? Chuck: Yeah, I think so. Mark: Yeah, a very long time. Chuck invited me to speak within that Pubcon a while ago. We've been doing it ever since we've had all the people join us occasionally, to talk about buying and selling websites. But he and I have been talking about that night. Typically we talk on the sell side and Chuck was talking on the buy side. And the result was that more people are interested in what Chuck had to say than I was ever had to say. So I figured, it would be good to have you on here. Both, so I think we can get to know you a bit better. I'd also review some of the due diligence that you've use in the past in buying online businesses. So let's just do a quick introduction for you as far as your background. What's your background in buying and selling online businesses? Chuck: So, I started my first website back in 1996. Through the few years, made a bunch of money in college just a kind of doing really well. And made more money than you know, than I was living on. So I start looking at doing various investments. So, start looking at real estate, franchises, I was looking at car washes, and a storage facilities, and a Laundromats. And nothing ever, just kind of, really worked for me or really peaked my interest enough. You know like, I dabbled in real estate. But everything just kept kind drawing me back to the internet business. So then, you know, I made a few websites that were successful. But I started thinking about you know, what if I could acquire somebody's company and then just build upon that and stand on somebody else's shoulders, instead of trying to prove out a model myself. You know, use a model that has been proven by somebody else. And then just take all the knowledge I had, and expertise, and grow that. So I start doing really well, and at a certain point I just fell alive, you know presenting at a conference, and kind of just, giving back, and then that's when I reached out to you and I think my initial presentation I gave was with Jason, Quiet Light, we did it at affiliate summit. I don't even know, 8 or 9 years ago.   Mark: Yeah, I remember that. I was in the audience for that presentation and then, that was January. I remember specifically because it was really cold at that conference in Las Vegas. The fountains were frozen when we got out of the hotel. I was kind of surprised about that. So it's cool! So yeah, you've been doing this presentation for a long time and I know whenever we do the presentation, when we get to the slide on due diligence, whereas all the phones in the rooms go up to take pictures, because people are really interested to know what's our tools they can use to do due diligence. So we're going to review some of these tools here, as well as talk about some of the principles, buyers might want to apply when you're doing your due diligence. As always, we'll just throw out the blanket; cover your tails sort of a disclaimer here. Due diligence is ultimately a buyer's responsibility. Make sure that you're doing it, make sure that you are bringing in professionals. What we're going to do is were going to give some advices to things that we've seen work, but by all means, this is not complete when you're talking about due diligence. Wherein you need to apply a complete process to the business that you are looking at. So I'm going to share my screen here and open this up, and I'm just going to share the full screen, and hopefully on my [inaudible 0:08:56] of so that people don't get those. But can you see that chart does that come up for you? Chuck: Yeah. Mark: Alright. Good, good. So here we go, where going to just get started right away with this list of tools and I'll be browsing to the website as you talk about the individual ones. The first one that we're going to talk about is Centurica and they're full service due diligence firm. They are the only one of that sort that we have on this list. So why don't you talk a little bit about Centurica, what they do and why they made this list. Chuck: Sure, So Chris Yates is the owner of Centurica, they've been around for quite a while and Chris runs a buying and selling website conference called and Rhodium. Rhodium Weekend I think is kind of, the official name. I ran into Chris way back when I started to look at buying and selling businesses. he was the first person.. I'm always looking for knowledge where I look into learn more. So doing some searches and came across his conference and went to it. Kind of on a whim, because there was no information about the conference because that was the first one that they've had. So it was like, trying to figure out and I thought well, for the money, maybe I'll pick up something and if not, it's not a total lost because you know, I'm just come and go to Vegas to hang out. You know Chris is really a smart guy and I ended up I think I was probably the first one we, to get into his master mind group. So I'm going to master mind group with Chris and a bunch of other entrepreneurs and he does this great due diligence product were he just kind of takes it over from you. Will do like a full blown due diligence review on a business that you're going to acquire and I would never say that you should handle fully the [inaudible 0:10:33] somebody else do the due diligence. But you should allow, if you're going to hire somebody, do it in parallel with them. So that way you're just getting, you know, a second, third set of eyes on a due diligence and on the business that you're looking to acquire. So they offer various levels and, so it looks like they've got something from 59 dollars right there and all the way up to, I think a 5,000 dollar package. That's kind of like a suit to nuts version. Mark: Yeah and just look at the website; they have a whole team of people here that are associated with them. A lot of these people, you and I know, we know them through Rhodium Weekend and through that master mind group as well. These are some really smart guys, good guys, to be able to just get on the phone with and get their feedback. In fact, I'm seeing n a few guys here, Mike Nunez, he has been on a Podcast with us before and a super smart guy. Well, these guys are [inaudible 0:11:24] really good contact as well. These are people that you can arrange calls with and bounce my ideas of. The amount of money, 5,000 dollars, some people might [inaudible 0:11:35] sort of price tag, but what do you think? Do you think that's worth spending that much money on due diligence support? Chuck: Yeah I mean, with Quiet Light, we're generally not dealing with the lower end deals, right? We're generally dealing with mid to high six figures, mid to low seven figure deals, so you know, five grand and that's their highest package, right? They got stuff that's cheaper, but how could you go wrong, you know, spending.. If you're on a million dollar deal, what's five grand, is what? Half a percent? I think it's probably money well spent. Mark: Yeah, absolutely I agree. The only assets that you put an end, this is, that whenever you are hiring somebody on the outside to potentially look for problems, understand that, what they're going to do is they're going to find problems because that's what you're hiring them to do, and they should do that. So this is not a criticism or some trick or by any means or attorney that's looking up for liability issues. But as the buyer, understand that you need to take that information, process it, through a business decision that you're making. Any sort of due diligence tool? I knew the ones that we offer here, that's the way that you should be going about using that information, that fits into the larger scheme. Alright, let's move on, Centurica is a good service. If anyone wants an introduction pres, it's either Chuck or I can provide an introduction pres as well. The next two are related obviously, Google.com and Google Trends, everybody knows what Google is, I'm sure most know what Google Trends are. How would you use each of these sites in a due diligence process? Chuck: Sure! So with Google, right? I mean, it's just a matter of Googling things either about the business, about the person, if you're buying the business, Google the terms around the business, and look for red flags, right? Look for if they've got one star review, average one star review, maybe that tells you something about the business. You know, look for complaints, things that are negative about the business, right? It's kind of one of those, you'll catch all due diligence place where you just, kind of sorting through all of the information that you can find on a given business and/or a person. Never just research the business, always research the person who is selling the business as well because, you could find out a lot of stuff and make sure that you're avoiding, potentially avoid some of the pitfalls, if somebody has done some sketchy stuff in the past, and find that out. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. You can learn a lot about their background as well, and all you have to do is search for all of the places that I have written for, come up, but years ago, I was involved in a lawsuit in those couple of pages. And so, anyone that was doing research on me, I would often get those sort of questions, “What happened then?” everything was fine. I didn't mind the questions, but people that were being smart and doing due diligence would ask about that. Chuck: And don't just look at the first page of Google. Look at the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, right? Because anybody can hire a reputation management company that will push some of those negative reviews, you know, to the 2nd or 3rd page. But they'll be there generally, still, just maybe a little lower. Mark: Right, Now if anyone wonders and are looking at the screen, I did not play hockey. Even though I'm from Minnesota I'm not a hockey player. There's a couple of them, that's out there that have gotten their name out there. Google trends, what search term I put in there? Chuck: Yeah so type in Paleo Recipe, or Paleo Diet I mean, because Paleo is a little different. So, if you look at the screen. Mark: You changed the date range? Chuck: Yes I changed the date range. That's, in January, you see that giant spike. Because that's when everybody is getting into a diet mode. Check that out even further. Mark: So we're looking right now. Let's set 2004 to present. So we'll do the entire history in Google Trends. There we go. Chuck: Sure, so you know, if you're looking to buying a business, and you're seeing.. Well use Google Trends to figure out what the trends are. Here you'll see is like a giant up peak that just kind of went up, and then all of a sudden it just kind of, trail off, and you're going to find things like this. Then you'll also notice that there is like ups and downs, like inter year, so that would be like the seasonally of the business, right? So just because you see, like this one giant peak, which correlates with January, and then you know, throughout the rest of the year it drops until December where December is at it's low, around Christmas time then it spikes immediately back up. So you're going to look for not only seasonality but you can look for long term trends. And when you're looking at businesses, think about whether the business is a trendy business first, it's an evergreen business. So, diet in general is a trendy business. If you look almost any diet, you'll see that there's a, it goes up, up , up, up and all of a sudden it tails off, right? There's something made it go up, usually it got unpopular, and then it'll trend off. I personally, one of the businesses that I bought was a Paleo website, and I managed to buy it exactly at the peak market, and then.. Mark: Right about there right? Right around January of 2013, early 2013. Chuck: Yup, definitely it's like, it was going up, up, and up, I'm like, great! Then it went down, down, down, and it was less great. So, luckily, we were able to so a little bit of magic and kind of keep the revenue going by trying to grow the business but it's another story. Mark: Something else that you can do with this, so as many people know, I own CatholicSingles, and the turn chart out for CatholicSingles doesn't look that great, when you look at it. Something I've learned from this chart from a few other places is, if you think that you're buying a website that gets lots of natural search traffic, be careful to make sure that it's not branded search traffic. So what's happening here is, the previous owner was losing out to a competitor who was beating him in a brand search, and so, the site still gets lots of natural search traffic to a keyword that still has a lot of relevance. But he lost a lot of brand relevance as well. So you can, if it's a large enough property you can often pick up on brands trends and what are not, you're going to have to compete on that [inaudible 0:17:34] as well. You can type in competing services and see what their trend is overtime as well. And you can actually compare the two together. So you can see how competition is playing along with. Maybe what you're looking at acquiring. Chuck: And then if you scroll down, you can do it by region as well. So what are the countries that has something popular. So maybe it was a US based company, and you see “Hey look! It's doing well in Canada and South America” or I guess none of that case was in South America, but Australia, and I think it was Mexico maybe. So maybe you expand into some of those other countries. Mark: Right, right. Exactly. Yeah Google Trends has some good date out there, I recommend again putting in your, whatever, competitors you know of, and comparing the traffic and the trends for the competitors and get the sense for, how those are working together. Chuck: And one additional point would be, Google trends is the search volume of a specific keyword, so it's not some magic formula, it's how many people are searching for something. So sometimes, people search, the way they search for things changes overtime, so you just want to, kind of remember that. That just because, you know. People might have been searching for, I don't know, Blue Widgets but now they're calling it, instead of Blue Widgets, they're calling it Blue Fuzzies, right? So it doesn't always mean that the actual market is declining at it. Sometimes it can just be a change in the way people are searching. Mark: Yeah, I think an example, that would be internet marketing has pushed toward in digital marketing. And so you see, the phrase you use to refer to something, is slightly different overtime. So, that's a good point. Now let's move off this chart because it's sort of depressing. State business websites, this is one that I haven't really seeing people a whole lot of, but it's a really good idea to use state business websites. Chuck: Yeah, I mean it's just the basic of going to whatever state the company is in, doing a search for the business, finding out who the owners are, and if there's any kind of red flags that maybe appear on that, just some basic due diligence there. Mark: Yeah, that one's not coming up here, but when you do the search, what will happen is, you'll see the records with the state, whether or not if filed in good standing, any other possible red flags that would come up. It's really just checking their box, making sure that everything is on the up and up with that business search. Maybe we can get back to this, if that comes up again. BuiltWith is a really cool tool and it shows all the technologies that a website was built with, right? Chuck: Yeap! Absolutey! So if you want to look at, like the technologies that go.. Is your internet out? Mark: No, I just typed it in wrong. Chuck: I guess your internet wouldn't be out, considering we're.. Mark: Right, right. So we could take a look to see what Quiet Light Brokerage is built on. And you can see that we have Googled conversion tracking, you can you see the whole technology stack and all the services that are used. When this might be useful as if you're looking at the P&L and you don't see a subscriptions but you would see here Drip. And you know that Drip is a subscription based service maybe that's not their P&L. That would be something to catch and maybe ask them about to find out what's going on there. Maybe they just start using [inaudible 0:20:47]the website. Chuck: Absolutely! And you know, one of the things you want to do as part of getting ready to acquire a site is make sure that you have the people and place to take over any kind of service that you need in advance. Right, so, if you have no idea how to use Drip and you're taking it in purchase in your company, maybe you need to has somebody in place who does know how to use it or request a standard operating procedure so that you can learn how to use it. So I would definitely have a list of like all of the kind of aspects of the business that you're not proficient at. And make sure that you have people in place that can help you with that [inaudible 0:21:26] running when you do take over the business. Mark: You know something that, speaking of Drips, I talked to Rob who sold Drip to Leadpages a few years ago, and he talked to me about how Leadpages was completely ready and able to switch over to a new website surely after they closed. They were making plans and building out technology as they were going through due diligence so that they can hit the ground, running right away. Something that might you want to do as you're going through a website's technology stack is take a look at what services are you using. If you are going to the Quiet Light website you'll notice that we have Hotjar, for example. Now I haven't tracked anything with Hotjar on the website in a while. We use it for surveys once in a while, but this would be a service for, maybe those report that you want to ask for during due diligence. Maybe some heat mapping that would just be useful information for you to be able to see and as you're making plans. Or OptinMonster, asked, have you run these campaigns before? What was the conversion rate like on these campaigns? And you can start getting really prepared as you're doing your due diligence to make that transition. Of course some sellers may not be eager to share some of that information with you, so go about that with some level of sensitivity understanding that they might be ready to open up all the books to you, but knowing what's there can help you request different reports. And Chuck you said something before in one of your presentations, probably multiple presentations and that was ask questions. Ask lots and lots of questions. Chuck: Yup, absolutely. I always say ask, ask, ask, and even ask questions you know the answers to. I feel like that's like some kind of weird tactic that people do. But they ask questions regardless of whether you know the answer because you almost want to get a seller to lie to you, because then you know how trust worthy they are right? If somebody's going to lie to you about something, it's a red flag. So, I've seen a lot of people that will ask the same questions in multiple ways. You don't want to be annoying right? Like, don't ask stupid questions but definitely ask. I shouldn't say, you don't want to ask stupid question because almost no question's stupid right? But we all understand there are all stupid questions that you shouldn't ask, that's just, are irrelevant. But don't feel like, if it's relevant to you then it's not a stupid question. So, ask everything. Because the time to ask is before you buy it. Right? You don't want to have a bunch of questions after you've inked the check. So, ask early and then ask often. Mark: Then the other thing too is you can get more callers on a particular answer. I know when I talk to some sellers and ask them why are you selling? They'll give me an answer one day and had talked to them another day and they give me s slightly different answer. And it's not that they're lying. The reasons are complex. There's more than one reason going on there and you gain caller, you gain more information about what's really going on behind the sale. By asking the same question, and looking at, in different formats, I know when you started to do video interviews or recording interviews of some of our clients and part of the reason for that is because people talk about questions differently then they might write them out. So this could ask a lot of those questions. Chuck: Yeah, absolutely! Archive.org. Mark: This is a great one. So if you're doing some due dilligence there's a whole industry people who just buy expired domains, stir a new content on it and then run with the site. Some of the amazing firm like [inaudible 0:24:38]some of them are buying like big sites, or what used to be a big site and for whatever reason, site's no longer so, this will give you an idea like in 2008. What was the site look like? Was it a brokerage site or not back then, you know. It's not always a bad thing but if it was something spamy back then, It might still have some problems moving forward. So it's also good just to see if you had some ideas of you wanted to try this or try that. And getting an idea for some of the things they've tried in their past or looking at previous screenshots of what the site was like one, two, three, four years ago? Mark: Yeah, I think one of the big challenges that you always have as a buyer and.. Sellers as well have this issue, right. Sellers know their business intimately because they've lived with it for so many years. As a buyer, you're coming in and trying to compress knowledge that they've gain over the course of sometimes 20 years now. And to a decision that you have to make within or week or two. Going back in the scene, what the history of the site was, just kind of, again it adds color, it adds more information into what does this person done in the past for the business. Like you said maybe we can see some things that they tried and you can ask them about that, if you're looking at the Quiet Light site, yeah, you might see that we sold some domains in the past. And if there's someone looking to buy us they could ask a question on that, you know, why don't you sell domains anymore? And we could go into that whole discussion. Chuck: Something else to look for is to look for gaps in the years so you know, you can put something on your website, right? And your like, your a [inaudible 0:26:14]telling a way back machine not to cross your site anymore. So if there's like a three year gap, why is that gap? Most legitimate sites aren't blocking the way back machine. From calling their site, so you know, that might raise a red flag and might be something you want to dive in on a little deeper. Mark: Awesome, alright let's move on at Trademarkia.com. Chuck: Yeah, you know it's a, if you're, if they told you to have a trade mark, search for it, figure it out. If they have told you they don't have a trade mark, search for it. See if somebody else has a trade mark right? Make sure that they're not infringing on somebody else's.. What's the word I'm looking for.. Somebody else's IP. You don't want to buy a business if they're infringing on other people's stuff. Mark: Yeah, and this can also be a very useful in search results if you're advertising on Google and you have competitors that are stepping all over that brand search. If you get that trade mark and you have the ability to get a trade mark you can keep all of those guys off, and brand is usually a very cheap way. But if you have competitors branding against it, that's [inaudible 0:27:16] your IP, so, searching for that trade mark is a useful thing to do. Alright, moving to the next set of tools and these tools here seem to be more of, search competitive intelligence and taking look at a site's search profile and I should just say probably maybe SEM. All [inaudible 0:27:33] right? Because this still include adwords as well? Chuck: Yeap, yeap! So organic and paid, my likes spy for a lot. It's a.. You can look at people's history of what kind of ad campaigns they did. As so, if somebody says “Oh we've only ever run one ads set and haven't done much testing” and then you look back at, and shows you. Well actually they ran a hundred different variations of this ad. Cross, you know 5 years and blah blah. So you will able to see a.. Verify some of the information they said. You can also check and it will show you, like literally shows you, what paid ads they ran. And like detects in them. So if you think, “Oh I wonder if they try this”, so you're going to look back and see what sorts of ads they've run. It's kind of interesting, you can also use this right here, like you see their competitor. So that'll show you overlap, so if you know some of, some competitors, you'll be able to see like what keywords they have overlapping using this venn diagrams. It's some really cool stuff and then you can look for opportunity, for words that they're going after, that your knots. They also have they a tool in here somewhere that will allow you to look at specific keywords over time and then it puts it over a timeline and has the Google updates. So you can see like, ok they had this key word was, you know, rank number 1111, and then drops off to like number 7, and [inaudible 0:28:57] Google get an update right when this happen so you can potentially know why they dropped off, it's because, well, Google did this update. So seeing what people are using like a private blog now, where to get a bunch of links and it's like doing really, really well then everything drops off a cliff. Because of Google did an update and it affect it, or, the reverse is true where they went from having nothing to all off a sudden number 1 rankings, just like overnight. And you can see, okay, well nobody just all send this from zero to number 1 ranking for 20 different keyword terms so then you know, Well, they must have done something to have that spike and then you can dive into what they're using like, blog that works for paid links or whatever. Mark: Yeah, any sort of quick changes in these results are going to be something to watch out for. So that's over all a good tool. And a lot of these tools out here, Moz, Open Site Explorer, Semrush, Magestic, AAtraps, I personaly like AAtraps. These are all really good tools, using in combination. It's going to give you a sense for how the data all adds up. Understand that when you're looking at data, in any of these tools, they have to use third parties to estimate what this is, for example, they're estimating for Quiet Light Brokerage, where estimated adwords budget is 3,000 bucks. Actually not too far off from that, but it's not accurate. Just understand that these are useful for trends, these are useful for getting another point of data, nothing's going to replace first hand tracking, it should be Google and Linux, or whatever tool people are using to analyze something. But you can use all these external tools in combination as well to try complete picture of what a website's doing and how it's ranking. Chuck: It's a bit [inaudible 0:30:45] That was I think only Google adwords, so if not taking your account, pay traffic, whether it's Facebook or other things. Right? Mark: Yep, yep! Absolutely that's right! Let's move on to a.. You like Spy for the best from all of these? Chuck: They are all kind of different. So there's like different reasons to use different ones, right? Some are for keyword research, some have like keyword difficulty tools, so part of due diligence isn't just looking at what the site has done, but where you can go with it. So I like to use a couple of them to do keyword research. See where their gaps are, you know, opportunity for me to grow the business. They're all kind of hit, different things to different things well. So I don't have one favorite. I do like SpyFu, I like Moz in the past, [inaudible 0:31:31], Majestic. And then on that list, we kind of didn't point it which I'm guessing maybe you thought I put in a wrong spot, but the alexa.com won. I haven't actually used this yet, but it's apparently a new tool that they rolled out. It's a competitor to all these other ones, Moz and Majestic. So they're doing a paid tool just like all these other guys. So, I haven't really dove into it yet, but it'll be interesting to maybe see how their data looks. Mark: Yeah, I actually just saw this the other day. And was intrigued by it. I haven't dug into this at all. But you would imagine that Alexa's by Amazon. You would imagine that they have some pretty good access to tools to be able estimate this information, with some level of accuracy. Chuck: And you know they've been around, since when, like early 2000 or earlier. So they've been crawling off these sites. So who knows what kind of information they've stored. I see [inaudible 0:32:34] has really good info going pretty far back. Mark: yeah, I know you're right on that. I think actually Alexa may have been the first competitive intelligence tool. That try to rank websites. Maybe there was somebody else before that. But they were the first one's who really gain attraction. Or that for a long time, everybody I knew had their Alexa bar. Up in their browser and you can see what, aside Alexa ranking was along with its paid rank. Right every marketer back in early 2010 and those two things, up in their tool bars. Chuck: It's fine, so I went to the site yet the other day, just checking it out and looking for their little site ranking. I could find it anywhere, so I'm not sure if they still have it or not. Mark: Yeah, I don't know. I try to look that up recently as well and I wasn't able to find it. I was behind actually this pay wall which is how I came across [inaudible 0:33:24] they are now offering this. Chuck: Yeah, yeah. It didn't, for a long time, like, right Google paid rank and the Alexa ranking have been dead like nobody uses those as a real stat anymore . But I just wanted to check it out. Mark: Yeah, yeah I know it's always interesting stuff. Alright let's move on to page 2 here. We're going to get into 3 tools here. [inaudible 0:33:46], deepcrawl.com and Copyscape. What do these tools do? Chuck: Yeah, The first two are pretty similar to each other. And what they do is you can plug in a domain name that it will crawl the entire site and it will look for all kinds of things. Like errors or not errors. Right, so it can show you just by crawling to the site. It will crawl every single link on the site from every single page. So it shows you like if there's dead links so if there are stuff that's going for like 404 pages, no errors, 500 errors, it will show you the redirects. So what I've used it for in the past is the one finding those dead pages or the 404 errors and then also finding the redirects and sometimes you'll see like stuff gets layered, where it will be redirected to this page, which layer's was then redirected to this page, which layer's then redirected to this page. And ultimately, what should you be doing is just going back and linking from the first page to the last page. And not using all of these bounces because with each bounce you have the a, potentially you're losing some of that authority has being passed through. Mark: Yeah, and there are the futuristic will do an on-site SEO analysis for even, one that I've used in the past that all definitely throw a, [inaudible 0:35:01] to be Orange Fox, Jacob Hagberg, has done some reports from Quiet Light Brokerage. and a lot of these tools do is, what these services work, will do, they just to analyze in a condensed manner. Because they look for opportunities and they also look for potential issue. Like you're saying, if there's tons of redirects in there, that's a problem, you are losing out an authority on those pages. 10 pages , 404, broken images. Images without all tags, accessibility issues. These are all things that you want to be looking for. Not necessarily as like major red flags but you know, a buyer beware, but also as opportunities that if you start to fix and clean these things up, there's going to be a natural lift in rankings on its long tale keywords that maybe you're on page 10 to 20 right now for, maybe that will bump you up to the first 10 results . So wait for you to just grow some opportunity. When you're looking at these 3 tools Chuck.. Chuck: The first two are very similar, right? Screaming Frog, is one that you have on your own computer, and then it use your internet connection to then crawl the site. DeepCrawl, they are running it from their servers, the Screaming Frog is relatively cheap. I forget the amount but it's hundred to 200 bucks a year. The DeepCrawl one is fairly pricey so, I would always recommend this Screaming Frog but the other one is a good service as well. Just cost a bit more. It's a 150 pounds a year. Mark: Right. They do have a free version? I've used the free version to be honest it's worth just upgrading to a paid version. Free version will give you just a flavor of what they can do. But if you really want to dig deep and really figure things out. Yeah, again, here's a 500 URL limit, most websites are going to blow through that 500 URLs because you have all their images, you have everything else connected with an individual page, so you'll go through that 500 pretty quickly. Copyscape is a bit different from these two though. Chuck: Yeah, it's different. I threw it, kind of witness just because it's one of those things, where again, you're looking for problems, so you type in your domain and It'll give you list of you know, places that content made and stolen from. So kind of, similar, but different. Mark: Right. This can be useful to see if you have people that are maybe trying' just scrape your pages entirely or if the page you're looking at for some reason is built on a shakey ground. This was something that was used a lot more probably, I don't know, 5, just 7 years ago. I know Copyscape has a really big issue on a really big useful tool for duplicate content issues. A lot of that is going away now. But I would imagine you would find copies of content that somebody's publishing their blog contents, say, on Medium or LinkedIn. I imagine this would probably pick up on that. Chuck: Yeah. I believe so. And you know when we talk about the duplicate content issue, where talking about like, right for organic search but there's also the duplicate content issue where, “Hey everything on this website was stolen from somewhere else and you're going to get sued because you stole our base content.”, Right so, I would be checking to make sure that people aren't stealing other people's content. You know, so I think that's a good part of due diligence. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Alright Public WWW. This is a tool I have not heard of. Chuck: Yeah, that's a great tool. It kind of isn't a vain, of like, a Google right? But what's cool about it is instead of like.. If I want to search for something on Google. Google looks at what is this plate on the page meaning. If I search for Chuck it's looking for.. If somebody would look at a web page and see the word Chuck on it, then it might come up, right? But with this website, it's actually looking at the source code. So if somebody had a comment that was Chuck, it would potentially come up there. So, anywhere from the word Chuck, right? It's more for if you want to look a analytics code, or if you want to find somebody's affiliate ID. So if somebody's says, “Hey, I'm just running AdSense on this site, and I don't have it anywhere else.”, So we could took.. Put in the AdSense number, and it will show you all the sites that are using that same AdSense ID on their website, right? So you can look for, maybe they're doing some competing stuff, maybe they just, you know, they're driving more income through the AdSense, but having a multiple sites vs the one. And it's not complete, right? There's, it's only as much as they crawl so they're only going to have as much data of the websites they crawl. But you can definitely find some stuff. You can also use a little tip here, would be.. Let's say you have an affiliate product your promoting, right? And you're making some money off of that, and say, you found a new product you want to promote and it makes 10 times the amount of money for each one you sell and you know that like, “Oh! This product, if I switch it to this one, I'm going to make 10X.” Or you could look for everybody who is promoting this old product, and then you're going to try to acquire those sites, and switch them to the new affiliate product and 10X the revenue. A lot of different things you can do with that. Mark: I've heard some of people ask about that, specifically with affiliate sites. You know, “How do I know that this is all coming from the site that I'm buying.”, and so that would be one tool that you could use. The other thing I could see this being useful for is if you have a tool for it. This would be a pretty rare case, but if you're buying a business as a tool, that's using on outside websites. WordPress plugins site, WordPress themes site, or any other tool like that, you could start to get some ideas as for the installation volume. Using the tool like this. Alright, SpyOnWeb.com. Chuck: So similar right it's a looking for people's AdSense IDs and things like that. It's not as complete, with the other one you could search for a lot more different types of things. But still a useful tool. Mark: Right, it gives you some machine information as for our tools also sharing this IP address, DNS server. So again, not [inaudible 0:40:53] information here, but just acquiring [inaudible 0:40:56] this. We have our [inaudible 0:40:58]. So If you want to find out what the [inaudible 0:41:02] rank is, just go to SpyOnWeb and you could also see the page rank which is saying Quiet Light Brokerage just a like a question mark for page ranks. So that would be an information. That would have scared me about a 6 or 7 years ago. Alright, DomainIQ. Chuck: Yup, so DomainIQ and the other two that were listed. This are for finding out information about a domain name. So when was it registered, how many times has the DNS changed, has the ownership changed recently, what other domains are on the same server, or same IP block or same IP address, so if you know, if you're buying something from somebody, and they say it's the only site they have and then you look start looking up and down the IP range or looking on the server or the same IP and you see there's other domain names that are the same thing and are not disclosing it you, you know, that's potentially going to be an issue. You can look up who is the owner, so if it's like similar registration name or similar email address used to register the domain, it will show you all of the domains they own. That are using that registration information. These are all for the most part paid services. So if you want to get, like the good data, you got to pay for it. But they do give you a basic level of information for free. Mark: Right. I don't think anybody has to use all these tools. You pick 1 or 2 out of each of these categories that you want to use. The only one that I would recommend maybe use in multiples one would be in this search intelligence the SpyFu, Moz, and SEMrush. I think it might be worthwhile having upwards of three maybe four depending on how lights would turns out those services. Because like you said they all do slightly different things. Chuck: It's a matter of like what they've indexed right? So they each have their own crawlers, and none of them are going to crawl exactly the same subset of the internet. So, it's just, you're going to find different things while using different ones. Mark: Right, and they all have different levels of accuracy you could see here DomainIQ is [inaudible 0:43:04] to be higher than the last one. And also, few other bits of information that I would say are incorrect but again you use these points of data… Chuck: That was 5,000 dollars? The appraisal value? Mark: That was [inaudible 0:43:17] it's less than 500 dollars. And we have more than 24 backlinks, but again, all these tools are to be used in combination with each other to put together a large picture. Obviously a tool like Google Analytics or [inaudible 0:43:31] you'll going to want to use that first. And then, these tools are been used to fill in the gaps. Chuck: And also like know what a tool is good at, so like last one, you're not going to use that tool for the appraised value right? Like, that's nonsense. But if you scroll up, scroll up a little bit. If you click on, click on the ownership record in the blue, the blue button is there. Let's see if we'll.. Mark: We got gears turning here.. There we go Chuck: Okay so just search who the owner is, when is the last time you updated, when it expires, the age of it, right. So you've owned it for just about almost 11 years, you're using Cloudflare, here's the “who is” info…. Mark: It's kind of a bad corporation name, I got to update that. Chuck: Well there you go. And go back one more time on it, I'll click on one more thing… Mark: All these tools take too long to load up. Let's move on, because this one's getting a little bit longer. Let's get it on to a Bannedcheck.com. Chuck: Yeah, so this one is a, and it's not 100% right. But you can type in AdSense account and I'll tell you if the AdSense account has been banned. Again, not 100%, but if it's says it's banned, that's probably a good indication. I'm sorry not the AdSense account number but the actual domain name. Right so, if somebody says, “Oh! I switched monetization methods, because I didn't like AdSense and I was making a bunch more money with this.” Well, maybe that's not the case, maybe it's that they got banned. So, this is a good one. They can tell you whether they've been, not a 100% right. But if it's says that they've been band, then they've probably have been, right? Mark: Good news with this, I'm making money with Quiet Light Brokerage because it came back and it says that it's not banned for Google AdSense. Chuck: I wonder how that helps with our value of the 500 dollars. Mark: Hopefully, this is a little bit, so all you buyers that are looking to buy a business, we're going to require that you click on an Adsense ad. Because I think that's completely [inaudible 0:45:16] with our terms of service. Mark: socialmention.com. Chuck: Yeah, so just you know, you type in various things here and it will just tell you where it's being mention as far as social goes. So just a good tool for doing some basic due diligence. Mark: Yeah, let's repeat, useful to do, using combination with a Google trends to be able to see. Google Trends is measuring the data on Google itself. Looking at how the different social media networks are also processing the data. It's going to have a different look than just what Google has. On that note, I would say BuzzSumo, which is not on your list. It's another tool that I would recommend adding and it's a page where they do the free option but you can take a look to see what content has done really well on a particular domain name. As well as what content in that specific niche also does well. So you can really got a sense for how popular [inaudible 0:46:15] and what's getting shared and what's not. Well for then Google but also within the social media. It seems fantastic. Chuck: This one definitely should've been on my list then I'm not sure why it wasn't but I actually like this one a lot better. Mark: Will add this to the list. For people who want to download it. Last one it would be just going direct to the source of Facebook LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., etc. Almost every websites these days has presence on all the social media networks, visit their pages I assume that's kind of a lesson there. Chuck: Yeah and again, with like a LinkedIn, right? Looking at the person's profile looking how many connections they have. Are they in a niche where they should have 500 LinkedIn connections and they've only got 3, Maybe that tells you something, right? Why are they connected with all of these hackers or whatever, right? It's just a matter of again, researching the people and not just the business. So I think it's a good tool for researching people. Mark: Awesome, right. So that's a lot of tools that we just went over. Let's talk just a some couple of lessons, and we're running pretty long on this Podcast. So, we'll talk just a couple lessons about due diligence. I'm going to turn off the screen sharing here and talk about couple lessons about due diligence. What would you say for somebody who's going about due diligence the first time? What couple of lessons would you, or principles, should they really use in their due diligence efforts. Chuck: So I think one of the biggest things, is first in for most you don't know what you don't know. right, so having people to help advice you on what to search for and what to look for can be critical. So don't just think you know everything! Because none of us know everything especially when it comes to different tricks and tactics people can employ to inflate the numbers in what they're doing. What else, do you have any idea you would suggest? Mark: I would, and so on that note, obviously bringing people like an attorney, bringing an accountant, as I said before that be careful when you do so because they are being brought in with their specific purpose in mind, that are being brought in to look for liabilities, for being brought in to look for problems, and you are the business owner trying to make a business decision. Your accountant that's trying to make an account decision. Your lawyers try to make in legal decision. And so, you have to take their advice and put it into a broader framework business . It's a good business choice for you. You use their bits of data as [inaudible 0:48:41]data. And create a whole picture with that. The other thing that you said, where you cover this one's ask, ask, ask. Don't be afraid to ask for questions and then the third thing that I would recommend is keep good records of what you have looked at. And I'm working through the due diligence for the client, if a buyer comes back and ask for the same documents that they may have already received earlier on. Extremely annoying for a seller who doesn't understand why they even needed it in the first place. And a lot of sellers get skeptical buyers. They think this person isn't really serious about it. they're just looking fishing for information and if you end up passing the same documents 3 or 4 times, even twice. It start to grow those seeds of doubt and to bigger than just seeds and it cause a lot of problems really later on. So be organized in your due diligence just as you want your seller to be organized. Even your documentation. So that you'd know what you have and work off a check list, where be the last thing that I would ask. But don't be afraid to add to that check list as you go through. Chuck: Sure and something else I would add, kind of similar, not a little different, is with the seller. They're interested in knowing that you're going to do well with their business and whether they realize it or not, the questions you ask them are important to them. Almost always. So if you're not asking good questions, they're going to think that you're not serious or that you're not going to do well with the business and we often see that buyers, or sellers won't always sell to the person who offers the most money often times they're selling to the person they think who's going to do best with their business or somebody that they like. I see it time and time again. Recently I had a nice 7 figure deal, I was working with and every time I get off a call, you know, I do a wrap up call with the seller, “Okay, what do you think? and he went like, “Well that person didn't ask any good questions like, I don't want to sell my business to them.”, So make sure that you're doing some due diligence upfront, you're looking into these things and you have good questions that you're asking that are relevant to the business. Mark: Yeah, absolutely! Do not research ahead of time, not wasting your seller's time on the conference call is important. A lot of good sellers, when they go to sell a business, within that first week, they're going to do half of dozen to a dozen conference calls and it's exhausting to do. So if they get into a call and somebody asks, ask them question that was covered right up front. There's a good place to ask questions that have never been answered, and there's obviously you haven't done your homework, sort of questions. So do have basic homework ahead of time so that people know about, that you've put in that upfront research. One thing I'll add at that fellows, is if there's something that you're not familiar with, ask them about it and don't be afraid about that. And at the end of the day, as a buyer you want to protect your money, but make sure you're not making a bad investment so, don't be afraid to ask those questions. If you ever have questions about, “Can I discuss this or what do you think?” Use the broker. We're here to advice with the buyer and the seller through that process, we want to see a good deal done for our client. Chuck: Absolutely! Mark: Alright, this has been really long, but I think, good information so, Chuck thanks so much for coming on and maybe down the road, we'll do another one of these. Chuck: Sounds good. I appreciate it! Mark: Cool, thanks! Chuck: Alright, thanks everybody! Links and Resources: Centurica offers a full blown due diligence services. Google Google Trends Builtwith Archive Trademarkia.com SEM tools: Spyfu moz majestic alexa semrush Website crawling tools: screamingfrog deepcrawl orangefox copyscape Publicwww is a source code search engine Spyonweb for looking for peoples adsense tools. DomainIQ provide information for domain pages Bannedcheck.com Social media: Linkedin Buzzsumo fantastic sm network tool.

Intro: Hi! This is Glenn McQueenie, and welcome to 20 Minutes of Insider Secrets of Successful Niches. This is where you learn the insider secrets to dominate your target market. You'll learn to work with high-margin, super-happy clients, and build a tribe of loyal, raving fans for your business. So excited to have you join me today, so sit back and enjoy 20 Minutes of Insider Secrets of Successful Niches. Glenn: Well hello, and welcome to our Success Series. I'm just so thrilled today to have Chuck Charlton from The Charlton Advantage Real Estate Team. How are you doing, Chuck? Chuck: I'm great, Glenn. How are you? Glenn: Oh, so great. And thank you. Honestly, I know you run a very big, high-producing team. You're a busy guy, but I just really want to thank you and acknowledge you for taking some time to share some of your insights with our audience today on how you built your niche market and have now expanded it to such an amazing real estate team. So before we get into that, I just want to give people some background. So The Charlton Advantage Real Estate Team is really run by Chuck and Melissa Charlton. They moved to Milton in 2004, didn't know anybody, basically took all of their life savings, their $40,000, and started just building a real estate team, and became such an immediate success that they had paid off that loan by the end of the first year. And since then, Chuck and Melissa have become really nationally recognized as teachers and leaders in the industry. They've been guest speakers in Las Vegas, San Diego, Orlando, Toronto for various real estate conferences. What I love about them is they're just so kind and giving, and they've worked hard to get their wisdom, but I think they just love to share it with everybody. I mean, they've helped over 1,000 families already, helped buy and sell homes. So I'm just so thrilled to have Chuck with us today. So Chuck, I gave a little bit of your bio, but is there something I missed there? Or can you just really just take us on a journey about how you started your own journey in real estate? Chuck: Yeah. I mean, we've known each other for a long time, too, so we knew each other when neither one of us was a big deal, right? It's been fun. I think the first thing you do is you start to master sales. And I remember hearing this at The McQueenie Method Conferences. You master the sales part, and then you start to go, “Okay, I'm getting overwhelmed here.” And so now you need to hire and leverage. And then after you get some hiring done, and you figure out what's good and what doesn't work, then you reach a point where now you become a leader. And I think that's where I'm trying to go now, is to just really be a good leader to the people around us, going from “me” to “we,” to in some cases, “they.” Glenn: Well I think you'll find, and I know you're probably already seeing this, is just the freedom you get when you're not the one who has to do everything anymore. And when you stay in your Unique Ability 80% of the time, because you're just good at doing this, then you get to leverage everyone else's Unique Ability. But your team didn't just go, “Poof!” and you had a team. I mean, tell us a little bit of your journey. You started as really just you and Melissa. Chuck: It was a husband-wife team, and we had no kids. It was just the two of us. We worked 80-90 hours a week. We had a house that we worked out of, and it was three bedrooms. There was the master bedroom, and then there were two offices upstairs. And so, we just worked and worked and worked until we got so tired we had to take a vacation probably every 90 days. And what really changed for us was when we had our first daughter, Vivian, who's now almost 8 years old. I mean, you can't work like that when you have kids, when you have a family. It's not balanced. So that was the prompting to start. We started with the assistant, went through that whole process. Our business went down when we got an assistant, funnily enough, which is not what's supposed to happen, but it did, because I think we kind of put it on cruise control a bit, and you can't really do that. You've got to stay focused; you've got to be hungry. One of the things that I've learned in my life is I either need something chasing me, or I need something that I'm striving towards in order to really be an effective human being. Because otherwise, I come from pretty humble beginnings, and I almost feel like I'm already in the bonus round. So I've learned that I need that discomfort. I need to feel like I'm moving in a direction in order to really just fill my day with the right things, and just to be on the bleeding edge of doing something positive. Glenn: That is so amazing. What I heard you say there is you're almost just striving to get better for the sake of getting better just to keep your interest going. Chuck: Well, you do, because I think there comes a point with moving from survival, (and I've been in survival before), and then you get a little bit of success, and then you move to that significance, and the money doesn't drive you, right? It just doesn't. It reaches a point, and I'm still not at a point where I could live the rest of my life on what's been saved up, but I think that it has to be about something more, which leads us into this whole conversation of niches, is: “Who do you want to be a hero for?” I think that's a very enticing message for somebody, is that you can show up like that, versus “I need to get a commission cheque.” Glenn: Right. So how did you discover your niche? I know a lot of people will kind of flip back and forth and chase the next shiny object, and I find people like yourself, they tend to almost just line up what they're really interested in and their natural strengths to find their niche. So how did you discover about Milton Daily Homes niche? And if you can, tell everybody about what that is. Chuck: Yeah. So we started back in 2010. We started a daily video called “Milton Daily Homes” and we talked about all the homes that have listed in the last 24 hours in Milton. We do it Monday-Friday. So I think there's like 1,400 episodes up at Milton Daily Homes. And where that started was, we had a pile of leads that we weren't getting to – which is a problem, by the way. I think a lot of people listening would say “Well that's a good problem to have.” It's still a problem, because it's like you're burning money. You're generating leads, and they're not being cared for properly. So I looked at it and I said, “All of these people want the same thing. They want to receive listings by email.” So then I started talking with our mutual friend, Dean Jackson, and we came up with this idea. Originally, the first idea was, “Well every home that's listed, why don't we go and see the home, and then we can film it, and say ‘Look, I've been in here. Here's what I like about it, here's what I don't like in some cases.'” But then I thought, logistically, that would take so much time. But what I do every morning is I wake up and I see what's come new on the market, and I thought, “Could I just make something where it's almost like someone looking over my shoulder?” And all I need to do is just say the things that are going on in my brain, because I think all realtors are going to look at a list of homes that come out, and there's going to be a list that they really love, and there's going to be a list that's just okay, and there's going to be a list that really they're not that into, for whatever reason. Maybe it's a bad location. Maybe the price is high. And so I started looking into the technology of how I could make that happen, and we use a program called ScreenFlow for Mac. It's only for the Mac. I think Camtasia would work for a PC, but you can actually just record what's on your computer screen, you can record through a webcam, yourself in front of the computer, and then you just grab a microphone and get the audio. And that's how it started. So Milton Daily Homes was just me telling people my thoughts on what's been listed in Milton. And that list – at the time we were already building a list of about 6,000 people – it's now up to almost 15,000 that we send an email saying a new episode's up. Glenn: That is, just, one of the best leverage examples I think I've ever heard. You can actually record once and distribute it, at really no cost, to 15,000 people in your community. Chuck: Right. And how we get that list is we offer something. The only way anyone's going to fill in a form on a website is if they believe it's of benefit to them. So we have a lot of squeeze pages and landing pages and things that we've set up so that people would fill in that form. I think sometimes people try and do too much with their websites. So Milton Daily Homes is a bonding tool to help us move the relationship along. We don't believe we can make someone move faster than they want to, but we're always there saying “By the way, here's the new episode.” But I think that if you can get that name and email from the website, (and this goes for whatever their niche is). So if you can get their contact information and you build that list, and the list is all of a common interest. So in our case, it's people that want to hear about listings in Milton. For other people, it may be first-time buyers. For other people, it may be downsizers. But that list all shares the common thread, that they want to buy, and in some cases, sell a home in Milton, and they want to be informed about their decision. So that's the fun thing. That list, when it's congruent like that, we can start to make offers to the list, saying “Would you like to come on a tour of homes?” “Would you like to come to a buyer class?” And they've already said that they're interested in some kind of real estate. So oftentimes, it's just a matter of if they're ready, and if they're free on that day. So we always get good responses when we put those offers out to the list. Glenn: What I love is you're just in perfect alignment with what the consumer wants, right? And the consumer can search MLS by themselves, or they can have a bit of a coach, with you sending out your feedback on every listing. And I love how you're edgy on it, too. You don't just say, “Oh, and here's another beautiful house.” You're like, “This one is really great.” “This one, not so much.” “Here's my top pick.” And you're really building trust and rapport, and you're really allowing them to move when they're ready to move. It's so interesting. So many agents are like, “Oh, I've got to get a deal this month” or “My buyers aren't buying.” And it's kind of like, “You know what? People are going to move on their own schedule, and the more that you can scale up your numbers, then the law of numbers and percentages just starts working in your favour.” And I love how you started, and you've just built it. And I'd love to know, really, what the payoff has been just over the last couple years? It's gone from you and Melissa, to what does your business look like now? Chuck: So there are 10 of us on the team now. There's eight licensed, two admin, although my wife doesn't really sell anymore. That was one of the results of having kids, is that one of us needed to step back a little bit. But she runs the team. She's incredibly talented at being a leader on the team. And I still do some team leadership. I'll sell my 30 homes a year kind of thing. I'm not going full tilt at the business, but my job is to really mentor and to help the agents become, in my eyes, even better than me. I think a lot of people, when they grow a team, they're afraid of that, right? Some people feel like they need to almost hold people back. But I think, and you and I have talked a lot about hiring and finding talent, I think you can't hold talent back. You've got to just boost them up. You've got to give them rocket fuel, you know? That's what they want. Glenn: The moment you put a lid on talent, it's just like anyone saying, “Okay, Chuck. You're not allowed to do anything more right now in your life.” That's the moment when you're out of there. You're like, “No one's putting a limit on me.” And talent just wants the opportunity. Chuck: Yeah. Talent wants to go big, right? Yeah. So, I mean, when you talked about edgy, I mean, it's just, we try and have fun. You have to have some kind of personality to show up and to talk to people about what's going on in the market. But I think the missing link, and the thing that as the real estate industry changes, and you've talked about in The McQueenie Method, a lot of the trends, you know, the move towards teams and the move towards niches, but I think the other thing that's going to happen in the future is the information is almost going to become ubiquitous. It's not going to be anything special to have information. But I think the interpretation, I think the curating of information, so, for example, the 5 best homes with pools in Milton – that's something you can't Google. Being inside of the last house that sold and knowing what that's about – you can't Google that. Knowing that 50 of your past clients live in a very small area, and to have in-depth knowledge of schools – those are things that you just can't put in an algorithm. So there's a guy named Dave Pell who writes a great blog called “Next Draft,” and I love what he put on his website. He said, “I am the algorithm.” I love that thought that I'm the algorithm. Glenn: Well you are. Because everyone can Google the general, and even sometimes some specific, limited information. Then what's the perceived value of a realtor now? But the more you can create, and I love what you're doing, is creating, it's almost like that hyper-local, organic knowledge and wisdom that will never be able to be Googled. Chuck: Right. And there's the whole idea of competition. It's very hard to come second after I've created the space. There's value in being the pioneer. There's a little bit of that celebrity factor where people kind of meet you and they're like, “Oh my God. You're Chuck! I've watched you.” And I've had people say that we watch you in bed together, and it's really funny to see the real human connection that's there. But I think after doing this for six years, I still believe that the videos will build the relationship with somebody, but I think it's not the money-maker. And so all those fundamentals still have to be there. Like I think you've got to follow-up thoroughly with people. You've got to make sure that you're responding in a timely manner. You've got to put lots of calls to action around the video. You've got to move that forward. Like I said, come on a tour of homes, come to a class, get a copy of this guide. You've got to have good conversation skills, right? And I mean, even the fact that I send an email 14,000 times, or basically every day 14-15,000 times, that's that leverage thing. I mean, if you're going to do videos, because I've had people that have asked me, “Can I do Barrie Daily Homes?” or “Toronto Daily Homes?” But you've got to build that list first, because if you don't have the audience, it's just not worth your time. Glenn: I was just going to say, your business is your database. And that's what you've got. You've got a massive database. And I'm always, not surprised, but amazed when agents are like, “Well Chuck, I want what you've got. But I don't really want to do what you had to do to get it.” Chuck: Right. Well that's the thing. I mean, if you look at how much we've spent, like we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get that list together. It's still multiplied the investment many times over, but it's a business. Money goes in one side and then more money should pop out the other end. And my involvement is pretty much about a half hour a day to make that happen. Glenn: That's great. So why do you think the conventional wisdom of two hours of lead-generation, like cold calling, door-knocking, is so prevalent in our industry right now, rather than your more targeted, niche-based approach? Why do you think that is? Chuck: Well I still think that it's indisputable that more efforts toward lead conversion is going to be a good thing for any business, and that includes ours. But I think the game is, can you somehow make it so that if you're going to make 100 phone calls in a day, or speak to 100 people, how can you make sure that list is as concentrated as possible? And the whole game of Internet lead-generation is: provide something, a form or some information where they leave their contact information. And maybe 10% of those people out of the calls you make are going to be ready. When you're door-knocking, the same kind of thing. But the nice thing about a niche is that if you could line it up so that they're all responding or they're all coming to you, and let's say 50 of those people are ready out of the 100. Because time is finite, right? If you only have 100 attempts to make, you want to make sure that concentration is as high as possible. I mean, the example everyone thinks of is like a referral-based business, where almost every time your phone rings, it's somebody who's like, “Yeah, my brother told me about you.” That's a very high probability piece of business right there. That's why people that run referral-based businesses have such a good life. And you can do that with a niche as well. Glenn: Yeah. Well it's high-margin, right? And it's also working with people who like, trust, already know you, probably have a similar mindset to you. It's more friction-free. It's just a much easier, high-margin business than, you know, this model of everyone trying to be everything to everyone, you know? It just amazes me that sometimes we even have to argue that, right? Because to me, I'm like, “Just look around. The whole world's gone niche.” And the Internet really created a lot of these niche markets, because that's where people who like purple poodles wearing polka dot hats – there's going to be a site for that, because that's what they're all interested in. And I think that's what you've done. So what advice, or specific action steps, would you tell someone who's listening to this podcast to take? What would be the first step if they wanted to get into their niche and find their niche? What would you tell them? Chuck: Well I saw at the conference that one of the hardest things for people to do is to choose the niche, is just make a decision. But I think one of the things is, you can't be too specific, right? I mean, I hear people saying that they want to work with doctors who are pet owners in a particular building. And there are maybe five of those that exist in the world. It needs to be small enough that you can define it in its edges, but it also has to be big enough that you could run a business of significance. And one of the reasons we moved to Milton is because it was just kind of a smaller pond, and I think one of the dilemmas in a bigger city like Toronto is, it's almost like you become this “from sea to shining sea” agent, where you're driving an hour to get to your next appointment. And I love the purity of saying, “What if I could only drive 10 minutes in either direction to do business?” Glenn: Right. Well it's just more effective in higher margin, isn't it? Chuck: It is. Yeah, absolutely. I love the geography of being in a town that's just over 100,000 people. And that doesn't mean that we can't choose to work in other areas, but we've really kind of carved out and said, “This is where we want to do business.” And just in creating that trusted relationship through Daily Homes, gives us, I think, an advantage that no other agent is doing. I think that while they're doing their whatever it is, magazine ads or billboards, we're sitting here online, saying, “Look. Come into our house, and we're going to make sure that you're taken care of really, really well, and we're going to tell you everything we know. And when you're ready, all you need to do is ring the bell.” Glenn: What an amazing system you've developed, Chuck. Is there anything else that you'd like to add, or a question that I did not ask you? I know you're a really big deal, and a busy guy, so just before we wrap up, is there anything else that you'd like to add? Chuck: You know, I'm just thankful to even be a part of the conversation around niche markets, and I love what you're doing. I love the course. The conference that you created is amazing. And I've been to a lot of conferences in my life, and I kind of show up a little bit sceptical now, saying, “Okay, how much am I really going to learn at this point?” because it's a point of diminishing returns. But I was drinking from the fire hose at your conference, so that's one of the highest compliments I could give you, is that you've hung around with really smart people. I hung around with you, and we talk on a semi-regular basis. But the course, the book, everything is amazing that you've created, and my advice is hang around with smart people, and good things happen. Glenn: Wow. You're the best, Chuck. And thanks for the plug, too. That was amazing. Well, thank you. And I'm grateful to you, and I'm grateful for our friendship, and I'm really grateful that you took some time to share your wisdom with the people on this podcast. So thank you very much, Chuck, and have a great day. Thank you. Chuck: Thank you. Glenn: Okay, bye bye. Closing: Thank you for listening to my 20-minute podcast on Insights of Successful Niches. My goal is to give you more financial freedom by helping you take your natural strengths to a target market of people you'd love to work with. You could find out more information by downloading my book for free for a limited time. The book's called “The McQueenie Method: Own Your Niche, Own Your Market” and you can download it at TheMcQueenieMethodbook.com. That's TheMcQueenieMethodbook.com. Imagine what it'd be like to spend two days with me in person to help you find your niche market. I will help you take your natural strengths and unique abilities to a target market of people you'd love to work with. You'll build a tribe of happy clients who become raving fans of your business. So, just go to TheMcQueenieMethod.com for upcoming dates. Thanks again and have a great day.

Panel Rob Napier (twitter github blog) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:38 - Rob Napier Introduction iOS 7 Programming Pushing the Limits by Rob Napier & Mugunth Kumar RNCryptor 01:30 - Apple and Security 04:21 - Security Concerns Passwords Personal Information 06:10 - Prevention SSL Verisign 09:50 - Generating Certificates Rob's Practical Security Talk, Slides and Sample Code from CocoaConf Rob Napier: Get Security and Privacy Right PBKDF2 13:05 - Initialization Vector AES Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) 16:06 - RNCryptor 17:34 - Formats OpenSSL HMAC AES Crypt 20:55 - Device Encryption 25:28 - Server Security and Storing Passwords Hashing Salting Shor's Algorithm 37:48 - Breaking Passwords Rainbow Table BitTorrent John the Ripper 41:47 - Keeping Passwords Safe 1Password LastPass Convenience and Security 47:35 - Obfuscation Picks Use Option as Meta Key in Mac OS X Terminal (Jaim) iTerm2 (Chuck) Duct Tape Marketing Revised & Updated: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch (Chuck) Security Now (Chuck) Reflections on Trusting Trust by Ken Thompson (Rob) Coursera: Cryptography I (Rob) Learn You a Haskell for Great Good: A Beginner's Guide by Miran Lipovača (Rob) Next Week AFNetworking with Kevin Harwood Transcript   CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 32 of iPhreaks. This week on our panel, we have Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake City. CHUCK: Jaim Zuber. JAIM: I'm still recovering from the Black Friday deals with the pawn shop. I waited in line for three hours to save $5 on an Xbox 360. Totally worth it. CHUCK: [Laughs] I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And we have a special guest this week and that's Rob Napier. ROB: That's right. I'm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. CHUCK: So do you wanna introduce yourself really quickly for people who don't know who you are? ROB: Sure. I'm an iOS and Mac developer. I was a Mac developer before iOS come around in the iPhone. I write the book iOS Pushing The Limits. And I do a lot of work in the security world, so I keep a security cryptography package called RNCrytor, for simplifying cryptography. CHUCK: Oh, nice. Isn't that just a bunch of fancy math? ROB: It is just a lot of fancy math. But it's easy to do it wrong. CHUCK: [Chuckles] That's for sure. ROB: [Chuckles] ANDREW: Isn't that computers? Just fancy math? ROB: It's so true. We need more math. CHUCK: “So easy to do it wrong.” Don't tell Adobe that. ROB: [Chuckles] CHUCK: So, speaking with security with iOS, it seems like Apple does a lot of things to provide you with security. I mean, they have sandboxing and all the other stuff that they do. Do we really need to worry about security when we are programming for the iPhone? ROB: Oh certainly, yeah. Apple has done a really great job -- I feel -- in iOS. While over the years, there have been various  problems; some of the earliest locks didn't really work well and early device encryption have trouble, but they've improved over the years. But iOS is really the first main stream operating system that came out with least privilege as the default, which was really brilliant, that they said day 1, “You are going to be locked in a  little sandbox and you can't do anything,” which made it very hard to write malware against the iPhone. But it still doesn't get us off the hook of managing user information carefully. While we may not get infected with the virus, we still have lots of ways that we could leak our customer information. CHUCK: What are some of those ways? If it's just a self-contained app and it doesn't talk to anything else, is that still a risk? ROB: That's true.

Panel Rob Napier (twitter github blog) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:38 - Rob Napier Introduction iOS 7 Programming Pushing the Limits by Rob Napier & Mugunth Kumar RNCryptor 01:30 - Apple and Security 04:21 - Security Concerns Passwords Personal Information 06:10 - Prevention SSL Verisign 09:50 - Generating Certificates Rob's Practical Security Talk, Slides and Sample Code from CocoaConf Rob Napier: Get Security and Privacy Right PBKDF2 13:05 - Initialization Vector AES Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) 16:06 - RNCryptor 17:34 - Formats OpenSSL HMAC AES Crypt 20:55 - Device Encryption 25:28 - Server Security and Storing Passwords Hashing Salting Shor’s Algorithm 37:48 - Breaking Passwords Rainbow Table BitTorrent John the Ripper 41:47 - Keeping Passwords Safe 1Password LastPass Convenience and Security 47:35 - Obfuscation Picks Use Option as Meta Key in Mac OS X Terminal (Jaim) iTerm2 (Chuck) Duct Tape Marketing Revised & Updated: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch (Chuck) Security Now (Chuck) Reflections on Trusting Trust by Ken Thompson (Rob) Coursera: Cryptography I (Rob) Learn You a Haskell for Great Good: A Beginner's Guide by Miran Lipovača (Rob) Next Week AFNetworking with Kevin Harwood Transcript   CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 32 of iPhreaks. This week on our panel, we have Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake City. CHUCK: Jaim Zuber. JAIM: I'm still recovering from the Black Friday deals with the pawn shop. I waited in line for three hours to save $5 on an Xbox 360. Totally worth it. CHUCK: [Laughs] I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And we have a special guest this week and that’s Rob Napier. ROB: That's right. I'm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. CHUCK: So do you wanna introduce yourself really quickly for people who don’t know who you are? ROB: Sure. I'm an iOS and Mac developer. I was a Mac developer before iOS come around in the iPhone. I write the book iOS Pushing The Limits. And I do a lot of work in the security world, so I keep a security cryptography package called RNCrytor, for simplifying cryptography. CHUCK: Oh, nice. Isn’t that just a bunch of fancy math? ROB: It is just a lot of fancy math. But it’s easy to do it wrong. CHUCK: [Chuckles] That’s for sure. ROB: [Chuckles] ANDREW: Isn’t that computers? Just fancy math? ROB: It’s so true. We need more math. CHUCK: “So easy to do it wrong.” Don’t tell Adobe that. ROB: [Chuckles] CHUCK: So, speaking with security with iOS, it seems like Apple does a lot of things to provide you with security. I mean, they have sandboxing and all the other stuff that they do. Do we really need to worry about security when we are programming for the iPhone? ROB: Oh certainly, yeah. Apple has done a really great job -- I feel -- in iOS. While over the years, there have been various  problems; some of the earliest locks didn’t really work well and early device encryption have trouble, but they’ve improved over the years. But iOS is really the first main stream operating system that came out with least privilege as the default, which was really brilliant, that they said day 1, “You are going to be locked in a  little sandbox and you can't do anything,” which made it very hard to write malware against the iPhone. But it still doesn’t get us off the hook of managing user information carefully. While we may not get infected with the virus, we still have lots of ways that we could leak our customer information. CHUCK: What are some of those ways? If it’s just a self-contained app and it doesn’t talk to anything else, is that still a risk? ROB: That's true.

Panel Matthew Morey (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:35 - Matthew Morey Introduction Buoy Explorer ChaiOne 01:23 - Making Core Data Perform 05:45 - Importing Data 08:23 - Batch Sizing 09:37 - Photo Blobs 13:25 - Persistence 16:43 - Query Performance String Comparison Order of Operations Hashing Tokens 22:24 - Concurrency Models Context Notifications Picks iPad Telepresence Robot (Ben) Mercurial SCM (Andrew) Florian Kugler: Backstage with Nested Managed Object Contexts (Andrew) Needle Doctor (Jaim) Grado Labs Black1 (Jaim) Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (Chuck) Audible (Chuck) High Performance Core Data (Matthew) Planet Money Podcast (Matthew) Core Data: Data Storage and Management for iOS, OS X, and iCloud by Marcus S. Zarra  (Matthew) Next Week Security with Rob Napier Transcript BEN: That's the problem is that when my kids see the mixer, they are like, “Oh, knobs and buttons! I'm going to push all of them.” CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 31 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel, we have Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Boy, that is one cranky Rottweiler. CHUCK: Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake City. CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hi from Houston. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and we have a special guest this week, and that is Matthew Morey. MATTHEW: Hello, also from Houston. CHUCK: So since you haven't been on the show before, do you wanna introduce yourself? MATTHEW: Sure. So I got a couple of degrees in semiconductors physics and electrical engineering and quickly did nothing with those degrees. Spent a couple of years working on embedded electronics and a lot of C programming. And iOS SDK came out and jumped it to that, and been doing my own apps, including Buoy Explorer, which is a marine conditions app for surfers and water sports enthusiasts, where I implemented core data improperly there. And also I do work for a company here in Houston called ChaiOne, where we do a lot of client work. CHUCK: Yeah, I've met those guys before. MATTHEW: My boss is a real stickler. CHUCK: Yeah, I've heard that a couple of times. We brought John today to talk about high performance core data. Are there tricks to making core data perform or does it just work, or what? MATTHEW: Well, you can check the check box in the templates and it will generally just work. The problem is that it is such a complex framework and it's just its so flexible and large. It's very easy to put yourself in a bind or do the wrong thing and then suddenly, you'll have performance issues. I spent a lot of time making those mistakes, and I finally got to the point where I just wanted to figure all that out and kind of wrap my head around it. And so I've been focusing on that a lot, in particular. JAIM: You mentioned in Buoy Explorer, you initially did it improperly. Do you wanna elaborate on what mistakes you made there? MATTHEW: Yeah, so a common pattern in apps is you have to import data; either user's data from the server or just general data, be it JSON, XML. On Buoy Explorer's case, I'm downloading a bunch of data from these Buoys that are on the ocean and I measure wind conditions. And this data is very dense, so there's readings every 15 minutes from hundreds and thousands of these buoys. So there's a lot amount of data. And the way that the data is structured, I can't really fetch that data in a network efficient way. Unfortunately, I have to grab large amounts of data at a time. And importing that data into the persistence layer or into core data takes time; the data has to be parsed, the relationships have to be made, and then it has to be saved.

Panel Matthew Morey (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:35 - Matthew Morey Introduction Buoy Explorer ChaiOne 01:23 - Making Core Data Perform 05:45 - Importing Data 08:23 - Batch Sizing 09:37 - Photo Blobs 13:25 - Persistence 16:43 - Query Performance String Comparison Order of Operations Hashing Tokens 22:24 - Concurrency Models Context Notifications Picks iPad Telepresence Robot (Ben) Mercurial SCM (Andrew) Florian Kugler: Backstage with Nested Managed Object Contexts (Andrew) Needle Doctor (Jaim) Grado Labs Black1 (Jaim) Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (Chuck) Audible (Chuck) High Performance Core Data (Matthew) Planet Money Podcast (Matthew) Core Data: Data Storage and Management for iOS, OS X, and iCloud by Marcus S. Zarra  (Matthew) Next Week Security with Rob Napier Transcript BEN: That’s the problem is that when my kids see the mixer, they are like, “Oh, knobs and buttons! I'm going to push all of them.” CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 31 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel, we have Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Boy, that is one cranky Rottweiler. CHUCK: Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake City. CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hi from Houston. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv and we have a special guest this week, and that is Matthew Morey. MATTHEW: Hello, also from Houston. CHUCK: So since you haven’t been on the show before, do you wanna introduce yourself? MATTHEW: Sure. So I got a couple of degrees in semiconductors physics and electrical engineering and quickly did nothing with those degrees. Spent a couple of years working on embedded electronics and a lot of C programming. And iOS SDK came out and jumped it to that, and been doing my own apps, including Buoy Explorer, which is a marine conditions app for surfers and water sports enthusiasts, where I implemented core data improperly there. And also I do work for a company here in Houston called ChaiOne, where we do a lot of client work. CHUCK: Yeah, I've met those guys before. MATTHEW: My boss is a real stickler. CHUCK: Yeah, I've heard that a couple of times. We brought John today to talk about high performance core data. Are there tricks to making core data perform or does it just work, or what? MATTHEW: Well, you can check the check box in the templates and it will generally just work. The problem is that it is such a complex framework and it’s just its so flexible and large. It’s very easy to put yourself in a bind or do the wrong thing and then suddenly, you'll have performance issues. I spent a lot of time making those mistakes, and I finally got to the point where I just wanted to figure all that out and kind of wrap my head around it. And so I've been focusing on that a lot, in particular. JAIM: You mentioned in Buoy Explorer, you initially did it improperly. Do you wanna elaborate on what mistakes you made there? MATTHEW: Yeah, so a common pattern in apps is you have to import data; either user’s data from the server or just general data, be it JSON, XML. On Buoy Explorer’s case, I'm downloading a bunch of data from these Buoys that are on the ocean and I measure wind conditions. And this data is very dense, so there's readings every 15 minutes from hundreds and thousands of these buoys. So there's a lot amount of data. And the way that the data is structured, I can't really fetch that data in a network efficient way. Unfortunately, I have to grab large amounts of data at a time. And importing that data into the persistence layer or into core data takes time; the data has to be parsed, the relationships have to be made, and then it has to be saved.

Panel Kevin Munc (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:27 - Custom Integration for iOS 02:58 - Jenkins CI 05:49 - Running Unit Tests from the Command Line 08:10 - Custom Integration (CI) 15:46 - Report Tools GCover Cobertura PlistBuddy 19:19 - Distribution TestFlight 21:50 - Continuous Deployment 24:47 - Travis CI 25:15 - Cloud Options for Setting up CI Hosted CI MacMiniColo TeamCity 27:22 - UI Automation 29:18 - XCUnit Specta Picks Host Xcode Server in a data center (Rod) NSScreencast (Rod) Intro to OCHamcrest (Jaim) Switch Your Control Key (Jaim) Gcovr User Guide (Jaim) Sketch (Kevin) Pixa (Kevin) Next Week Building Hardware for iPhones with Joel Stewart Transcript CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 29 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel, we have Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! CHUCK: Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We’ve got a special guest, and that is Kevin Munc. KEVIN: Hello from Memphis, Ohio. CHUCK: So we brought you on today to talk about continuous integration for iOS. Now, if I remember right, didn’t they add some kind of continuous integration thing to xcode? KEVIN: Yes. There is the bots now with the server, so you can avoid Jenkins if you want to. CHUCK: [Chuckles] KEVIN: It’s still got some limitations. And I think going through the pain with Jenkins ends up giving you more flexibility at this point in time, but it’s a really good sign that Apple is putting some effort and attention on quality and continuous integration. CHUCK: Right. But that's not what you were talking about; you're talking about people using Jenkins? KEVIN: Yeah, that’s where most of my experience is from. I've been doing continuous integration in other platforms for a long time; CruiseControl back in the day, and Jenkins for iOS stuff. JAIM: It’s pretty much the standard that people have been doing Jenkins for a while, would like to get into the bots, but they are not quite ready for primetime is what I'm hearing. Have you played enough around the bots to know that they are not quite ready? KEVIN: Somewhat. And I do sort of run into trouble at different points in time, just trying to know where the configuration options are, especially if I'm trying to back out… I’d like to do some blogging on it, do some speaking on it. So, I'm trying to get more familiar with it because that’s something that is in my wheelhouse here. But yeah, I'm definitely trying to go back and redo some things. And I run in to these issues that I didn’t run into the first time. And then trying to do things like… I usually in my continuous integration setup, there's the basic stuff where you does a build, do the tests, run and pass, and maybe some other stack analysis and reports. I usually try and add other things like have a ping to see if the APIs are healthy or not, and things like that. I haven’t figured out how to time that sort of thing into the new bot stuff. It seems it’s focused on the bare essentials at this point. And so, it’s kind of a lot to expect, I guess. ROD: Do you have to have a separate machine to use bots? KEVIN: No, I've been fiddling with it right on my laptop that I can do my normal development on. You need to get the server app from the app store, and I think you get promo code through the dev portal, so you know to buy it. And then I just run it locally. It has a lot of options on it and then at bottom is the xcode stuff. CHUCK: Nice. So let’s harp back over to Jenkins real quick. So you set up Jenkins on… do you have to run it on a Mac? Like a Mac Mini or something? Or can you run Jenkins on a Linux machine and still do the CI stuff? KEVIN: No. You have to have a Mac.

Panel Kevin Munc (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:27 - Custom Integration for iOS 02:58 - Jenkins CI 05:49 - Running Unit Tests from the Command Line 08:10 - Custom Integration (CI) 15:46 - Report Tools GCover Cobertura PlistBuddy 19:19 - Distribution TestFlight 21:50 - Continuous Deployment 24:47 - Travis CI 25:15 - Cloud Options for Setting up CI Hosted CI MacMiniColo TeamCity 27:22 - UI Automation 29:18 - XCUnit Specta Picks Host Xcode Server in a data center (Rod) NSScreencast (Rod) Intro to OCHamcrest (Jaim) Switch Your Control Key (Jaim) Gcovr User Guide (Jaim) Sketch (Kevin) Pixa (Kevin) Next Week Building Hardware for iPhones with Joel Stewart Transcript CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 29 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel, we have Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! CHUCK: Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We've got a special guest, and that is Kevin Munc. KEVIN: Hello from Memphis, Ohio. CHUCK: So we brought you on today to talk about continuous integration for iOS. Now, if I remember right, didn't they add some kind of continuous integration thing to xcode? KEVIN: Yes. There is the bots now with the server, so you can avoid Jenkins if you want to. CHUCK: [Chuckles] KEVIN: It's still got some limitations. And I think going through the pain with Jenkins ends up giving you more flexibility at this point in time, but it's a really good sign that Apple is putting some effort and attention on quality and continuous integration. CHUCK: Right. But that's not what you were talking about; you're talking about people using Jenkins? KEVIN: Yeah, that's where most of my experience is from. I've been doing continuous integration in other platforms for a long time; CruiseControl back in the day, and Jenkins for iOS stuff. JAIM: It's pretty much the standard that people have been doing Jenkins for a while, would like to get into the bots, but they are not quite ready for primetime is what I'm hearing. Have you played enough around the bots to know that they are not quite ready? KEVIN: Somewhat. And I do sort of run into trouble at different points in time, just trying to know where the configuration options are, especially if I'm trying to back out… I'd like to do some blogging on it, do some speaking on it. So, I'm trying to get more familiar with it because that's something that is in my wheelhouse here. But yeah, I'm definitely trying to go back and redo some things. And I run in to these issues that I didn't run into the first time. And then trying to do things like… I usually in my continuous integration setup, there's the basic stuff where you does a build, do the tests, run and pass, and maybe some other stack analysis and reports. I usually try and add other things like have a ping to see if the APIs are healthy or not, and things like that. I haven't figured out how to time that sort of thing into the new bot stuff. It seems it's focused on the bare essentials at this point. And so, it's kind of a lot to expect, I guess. ROD: Do you have to have a separate machine to use bots? KEVIN: No, I've been fiddling with it right on my laptop that I can do my normal development on. You need to get the server app from the app store, and I think you get promo code through the dev portal, so you know to buy it. And then I just run it locally. It has a lot of options on it and then at bottom is the xcode stuff. CHUCK: Nice. So let's harp back over to Jenkins real quick. So you set up Jenkins on… do you have to run it on a Mac? Like a Mac Mini or something? Or can you run Jenkins on a Linux machine and still do the CI stuff? KEVIN: No. You have to have a Mac.

Panel Patrick Burleson (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:27 - Going Rogue Video 00:42 - Patrick Burleson Introduction BitBQ MartianCraft Briefs 01:23 - Build Automation 02:10 - Continuous Integration Changes xcodebuild Ben: Running objective-c tests from the command line (with color) 07:51 - Testing xctool 10:29 - Automation on a development machine 11:04 - Things to Automate 14:14 - XCode 5 Build Automation 20:08 - Automation Bamboo Version Numbers agvtool cupertino (and friends) 29:50 - Certification 33:21 - Build Time Screenshot Lightning guard-xctool-test Picks iOS Background Fetch example (Andrew) sprint.ly (Andrew) ASCIIwwdc (Ben) Blues Junior™ III: Hot Rod (Ben) guitarjamzdotcom (Ben) iOS 7 by Tutorials (Ben) Pappy's Smokehouse (Pete) Go (Pete) Bombay By Boat - Moonlight (Pete) xcoder (Pete) xcodebuild-rb (Pete) Paulaner Oktoberfest Bier® (Jaim) Pitching Radar (Rod) Rich Hickey (Rod) ShareMouse (Chuck) Tweetbot (Chuck) Michael Vey (Chuck) Fogo de Chao (Patrick) Briefs (Patrick) Black Bar (Patrick) Test iOS Apps with UI Automation: Bug Hunting Made Easy by Jonathan Penn (Patrick) Bamboo (Patrick) Alfred App (Patrick) Next Week 64-Bit with Mike Ash Transcript CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 23 of the iPhreaks Show! This week on our panel, we have Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! CHUCK: Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello from a very warm conference room. CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. Before we get going, I want to briefly just remind you that I have put up the GoingRogueVideo.com, where I put up the video talking about how I went freelance. If you're interested in that, you can go check it out there. We also have a special guest, and that's Patrick Burleson. PATRICK: Hello from Dallas, Texas! CHUCK: Do you want to introduce yourself since you haven't been on the show before? PATRICK: Sure! My name is Patrick Burleson. I run BitBQ software, which is BitBQ.com. I also do quite a bit of consulting with MartianCraft, and also MartianCraft.com – they are the makers of the design application called Briefs. CHUCK: Cool! BEN: That was a previous pick of the show! CHUCK: Yup! PATRICK: Awesome! PETE: We should do an episode about Briefs. PATRICK: You should! I will probably get your wrap on the show. CHUCK: That'd be awesome. Then we could do one on boxers. BEN: Yup, quite a history. PATRICK: Yes, Briefs has a very long history. CHUCK: That'd be really interesting. We brought you on to talk about “Build Automation”. PATRICK: Yeah! Build Automation is something that I think everyone should probably definitely look into even if you're on a team or even a solo developer. That sounds crazy to some people why would a solo developer want to have a build automation…The way I look at it is, on my solo stuff, I want a computer doing as much of the work as I can make it to without me having to get in the way. Automating your build is one of those things where with a click of a button, I can update and ship a new version of any of my products or ship out a beta or whatever. It makes it very, very easy and also reduces the number of mistakes you can make. You don't have to do anything manually; there's a chance for a mistake. CHUCK: So it's just kind of like continuous integration? PATRICK: Yeah, it is a lot like continuous integration. You can use it 2 different ways.

Panel Patrick Burleson (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Andrew Madsen (twitter github blog) Jaim Zuber (twitter Sharp Five Software) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:27 - Going Rogue Video 00:42 - Patrick Burleson Introduction BitBQ MartianCraft Briefs 01:23 - Build Automation 02:10 - Continuous Integration Changes xcodebuild Ben: Running objective-c tests from the command line (with color) 07:51 - Testing xctool 10:29 - Automation on a development machine 11:04 - Things to Automate 14:14 - XCode 5 Build Automation 20:08 - Automation Bamboo Version Numbers agvtool cupertino (and friends) 29:50 - Certification 33:21 - Build Time Screenshot Lightning guard-xctool-test Picks iOS Background Fetch example (Andrew) sprint.ly (Andrew) ASCIIwwdc (Ben) Blues Junior™ III: Hot Rod (Ben) guitarjamzdotcom (Ben) iOS 7 by Tutorials (Ben) Pappy's Smokehouse (Pete) Go (Pete) Bombay By Boat - Moonlight (Pete) xcoder (Pete) xcodebuild-rb (Pete) Paulaner Oktoberfest Bier® (Jaim) Pitching Radar (Rod) Rich Hickey (Rod) ShareMouse (Chuck) Tweetbot (Chuck) Michael Vey (Chuck) Fogo de Chao (Patrick) Briefs (Patrick) Black Bar (Patrick) Test iOS Apps with UI Automation: Bug Hunting Made Easy by Jonathan Penn (Patrick) Bamboo (Patrick) Alfred App (Patrick) Next Week 64-Bit with Mike Ash Transcript CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 23 of the iPhreaks Show! This week on our panel, we have Rod Schmidt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: Andrew Madsen. ANDREW: Hi from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Jaim Zuber. JAIM: Hello from Minneapolis! CHUCK: Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello from a very warm conference room. CHUCK: I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. Before we get going, I want to briefly just remind you that I have put up the GoingRogueVideo.com, where I put up the video talking about how I went freelance. If you’re interested in that, you can go check it out there. We also have a special guest, and that’s Patrick Burleson. PATRICK: Hello from Dallas, Texas! CHUCK: Do you want to introduce yourself since you haven’t been on the show before? PATRICK: Sure! My name is Patrick Burleson. I run BitBQ software, which is BitBQ.com. I also do quite a bit of consulting with MartianCraft, and also MartianCraft.com – they are the makers of the design application called Briefs. CHUCK: Cool! BEN: That was a previous pick of the show! CHUCK: Yup! PATRICK: Awesome! PETE: We should do an episode about Briefs. PATRICK: You should! I will probably get your wrap on the show. CHUCK: That’d be awesome. Then we could do one on boxers. BEN: Yup, quite a history. PATRICK: Yes, Briefs has a very long history. CHUCK: That’d be really interesting. We brought you on to talk about “Build Automation”. PATRICK: Yeah! Build Automation is something that I think everyone should probably definitely look into even if you’re on a team or even a solo developer. That sounds crazy to some people why would a solo developer want to have a build automation…The way I look at it is, on my solo stuff, I want a computer doing as much of the work as I can make it to without me having to get in the way. Automating your build is one of those things where with a click of a button, I can update and ship a new version of any of my products or ship out a beta or whatever. It makes it very, very easy and also reduces the number of mistakes you can make. You don’t have to do anything manually; there’s a chance for a mistake. CHUCK: So it’s just kind of like continuous integration? PATRICK: Yeah, it is a lot like continuous integration. You can use it 2 different ways.

Panel David J. Soler (twitter blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:04 - David J. Soler Introduction Relationship Marketing & Sales Podcast davidjsoler.com 01:54 - Building Relationships and Getting Referrals Trust, Likability, Credibility + Value (TLC+V) Handwritten, Personal Notes 13:39 - Trust Integrity Reputation Consistency 23:52 - Unconventional Marketing ‘Wow' Factor Before, During, and After Items of Value 30:11 - Referrals 32:10 - Meet Your Clients 34:31 - Appreciation and Encouragement 36:37 - Relationships Over Business Picks Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money by Rabbi Daniel Lappin (Curtis) Ladda Buttons (Curtis) Freelancing Rules of Thumb (Eric) Apple Developer: for WWDC Videos (Jeff) Mac Pro (Jeff) httpie (Reuven) Reversing PDF Documents (Reuven) Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing by Elisabeth Hendrickson (Chuck) The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (David) Next Week Freelancers Show: LinkedIn with Wayne Breitbarth Transcript DAVID: Are we live on the show? Are we broadcasting...or just setting up? CHUCK: I'm just doing some quick sound checks and then we'll get going... DAVID: Okay, great! CHUCK: Which is just me watching the volume meter while everybody talks. So, go ahead. REUVEN: Ohh! Is that what secretly happens? [laughter] REUVEN: And here I thought you're just trying to get us to be friendly. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 66 of The Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good morning! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner is trying to connect. I guess the wiring in Atlantic Ocean got cut; somebody wrong it over or something. I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's David J. Soler. DAVID: Hello everybody! Thanks for having me! CHUCK: No problem. Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? DAVID: Sure! My name is David J. Soler, I am the host of the Relationship Marketing and Sales Podcast. You can learn more about me at davidjsoler.com. I am here to share and answer new questions that I can that you guys want to ask! CHUCK: Awesome! Now, I know David because we're in the same Mastermind Group, so we talk twice a month and he has helped me with quite a bit of marketing stuff. The thing that really kind of got me excited about getting you on the call besides your podcast, which is awesome, you've had some great guests, too. I think my favorite is the one with David Siteman Garland. DAVID: Yeah, it was blast. He's just a real smart guy, online entrepreneur, and just lot of great helpful tips. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's been a blast to interview people like him. CHUCK: Yeah. Anyway, you did something that was a little bit kind of outside the box that got me thinking, so I thought we'd bring that on and have you talk to us a little bit about some of the, I guess, less conventional things that you do. What you did was you sent 'Thank You' cards out to everybody in our Mastermind Group. I have to say, I don't usually get Pay-Per-Mail unless it's Pay-Per-Mail that says, "You owe us money." [David chuckles] CHUCK: So, I thought that was interesting! I was just wondering, what other ideas or techniques or ways of coming up with things like that, that we could do in our freelancing businesses to kind of make a  connection? DAVID: Sure, definitely! Well, the thing about it and approach that I'm trying to take you say unconventional, really,

Panel David J. Soler (twitter blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:04 - David J. Soler Introduction Relationship Marketing & Sales Podcast davidjsoler.com 01:54 - Building Relationships and Getting Referrals Trust, Likability, Credibility + Value (TLC+V) Handwritten, Personal Notes 13:39 - Trust Integrity Reputation Consistency 23:52 - Unconventional Marketing ‘Wow’ Factor Before, During, and After Items of Value 30:11 - Referrals 32:10 - Meet Your Clients 34:31 - Appreciation and Encouragement 36:37 - Relationships Over Business Picks Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money by Rabbi Daniel Lappin (Curtis) Ladda Buttons (Curtis) Freelancing Rules of Thumb (Eric) Apple Developer: for WWDC Videos (Jeff) Mac Pro (Jeff) httpie (Reuven) Reversing PDF Documents (Reuven) Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing by Elisabeth Hendrickson (Chuck) The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (David) Next Week Freelancers Show: LinkedIn with Wayne Breitbarth Transcript DAVID: Are we live on the show? Are we broadcasting...or just setting up? CHUCK: I'm just doing some quick sound checks and then we'll get going... DAVID: Okay, great! CHUCK: Which is just me watching the volume meter while everybody talks. So, go ahead. REUVEN: Ohh! Is that what secretly happens? [laughter] REUVEN: And here I thought you're just trying to get us to be friendly. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 66 of The Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good morning! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner is trying to connect. I guess the wiring in Atlantic Ocean got cut; somebody wrong it over or something. I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's David J. Soler. DAVID: Hello everybody! Thanks for having me! CHUCK: No problem. Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? DAVID: Sure! My name is David J. Soler, I am the host of the Relationship Marketing and Sales Podcast. You can learn more about me at davidjsoler.com. I am here to share and answer new questions that I can that you guys want to ask! CHUCK: Awesome! Now, I know David because we're in the same Mastermind Group, so we talk twice a month and he has helped me with quite a bit of marketing stuff. The thing that really kind of got me excited about getting you on the call besides your podcast, which is awesome, you've had some great guests, too. I think my favorite is the one with David Siteman Garland. DAVID: Yeah, it was blast. He's just a real smart guy, online entrepreneur, and just lot of great helpful tips. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's been a blast to interview people like him. CHUCK: Yeah. Anyway, you did something that was a little bit kind of outside the box that got me thinking, so I thought we'd bring that on and have you talk to us a little bit about some of the, I guess, less conventional things that you do. What you did was you sent 'Thank You' cards out to everybody in our Mastermind Group. I have to say, I don't usually get Pay-Per-Mail unless it's Pay-Per-Mail that says, "You owe us money." [David chuckles] CHUCK: So, I thought that was interesting! I was just wondering, what other ideas or techniques or ways of coming up with things like that, that we could do in our freelancing businesses to kind of make a  connection? DAVID: Sure, definitely! Well, the thing about it and approach that I'm trying to take you say unconventional, really,

Panel Ben Lachman (twitter blog) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:30 - Ben Lachman Introduction Acacia Tree Software Nice Mohawk SousChef Ita 03:12 - Prototyping and Mockup Tools Adobe Photoshop Pen and Paper Forecast Interface Builder Balsamiq Mockingbird Keynote Kung-Fu Graffletopia: OmniGraffle Stencils Prototypes 15:25 - What makes a good prototype 18:04 - Building a good prototype Make a prototype; not a concept Start with pen and paper 19:39 - Issues that prototyping helps you identify Discoverability Features Visibility Features 20:11 - Solving issues and sharing prototypes with clients Usability Testing Screenshots Briefs 2 27:52 - Laying out your application Code Spikes 32:43 - Prototyping for Clients 35:29 - Building Prototypes in HTML Briefs 2 37:34 - Using iPads/etc. instead of pen and paper Paper SketchBook Pro 39:09 - Buttons Picks iPhone Stencil Kit (Ben) Play by Play: Neven Mrgan | PeepCode Screencasts (Ben) Skala Preview (Ben) Xscope (Ben) UI Stencils - iPhone Sketch Pad (Rod) Screen Time (Rod) iPhone Stamp for UI Sketching - The Russians Used a Pencil (Pete) POP - Prototyping on Paper (Pete) PocketCasts (Pete) Spaced (Pete) iOctocat (Chuck) ioctocat on GitHub (Chuck) Briefs 2 (Ben L) Coworking (Ben L) Paint Code (Ben L) Bow Truss (Ben L) Next Week Interface Builder Transcript PETE: I’m trying to decide who I would rather work for... [Chuck laughs] PETE: That mob would be more interesting, but probably a little bit more scary. [This show is sponsored by The Pragmatic Studio. The Pragmatic Studio has been teaching iOS development since November of 2008. They have a 4-day hands-on course where you'll learn all the tools, APIs, and techniques to build iOS Apps with confidence and understand how all the pieces work together. They have two courses coming up: the first one is in July, from the 22nd - 25th, in Western Virginia, and you can get early registration up through June 21st; you can also sign up for their August course, and that's August 26th - 29th in Denver, Colorado, and you can get early registration through July 26th. If you want a private course for teams of 5 developers or more, you can also sign up on their website at pragmaticstudio.com.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 8 of iPhreaks! This week on our panel, we have Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello! I'm so impressed with Charles Max Wood newest episode with or without any thinking, well done! CHUCK: I looked it up beforehand. [Pete chuckles] CHUCK: Rod Schimdt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from hot and humid Houston! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. And we have a special guest today, and that's Ben, is it Lachman? BEN L: Yes, it is! And hello from Athens, Ohio, which is also hot and humid! Probably not as hot as Houston.. CHUCK: So you want to introduce yourself really quickly? BEN L: Yeah! I've been around the Mac and iOS dev world for about 10 or 12 years at this point; actually, I guess that would be before the iOS dev world really was around. And I write software for a couple of companies of my own. One is "Acacia Tree Software", and the other is newer and I started with a business partner in Cleveland, Ohio named Bob Cantoni and it's called "Nice Mohawk". So yeah, we write some iOS software, some Mac software, and we do contract work as well. CHUCK: Awesome. I'm a little curious before we get into what we're going to talk about, how much iOS and Mac stuff do you write as products that you sell versus client stuff that you do for other people? BEN L: We've done a fairly good job, for like a two-man shop,

Panel Ben Lachman (twitter blog) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:30 - Ben Lachman Introduction Acacia Tree Software Nice Mohawk SousChef Ita 03:12 - Prototyping and Mockup Tools Adobe Photoshop Pen and Paper Forecast Interface Builder Balsamiq Mockingbird Keynote Kung-Fu Graffletopia: OmniGraffle Stencils Prototypes 15:25 - What makes a good prototype 18:04 - Building a good prototype Make a prototype; not a concept Start with pen and paper 19:39 - Issues that prototyping helps you identify Discoverability Features Visibility Features 20:11 - Solving issues and sharing prototypes with clients Usability Testing Screenshots Briefs 2 27:52 - Laying out your application Code Spikes 32:43 - Prototyping for Clients 35:29 - Building Prototypes in HTML Briefs 2 37:34 - Using iPads/etc. instead of pen and paper Paper SketchBook Pro 39:09 - Buttons Picks iPhone Stencil Kit (Ben) Play by Play: Neven Mrgan | PeepCode Screencasts (Ben) Skala Preview (Ben) Xscope (Ben) UI Stencils - iPhone Sketch Pad (Rod) Screen Time (Rod) iPhone Stamp for UI Sketching - The Russians Used a Pencil (Pete) POP - Prototyping on Paper (Pete) PocketCasts (Pete) Spaced (Pete) iOctocat (Chuck) ioctocat on GitHub (Chuck) Briefs 2 (Ben L) Coworking (Ben L) Paint Code (Ben L) Bow Truss (Ben L) Next Week Interface Builder Transcript PETE: I'm trying to decide who I would rather work for... [Chuck laughs] PETE: That mob would be more interesting, but probably a little bit more scary. [This show is sponsored by The Pragmatic Studio. The Pragmatic Studio has been teaching iOS development since November of 2008. They have a 4-day hands-on course where you'll learn all the tools, APIs, and techniques to build iOS Apps with confidence and understand how all the pieces work together. They have two courses coming up: the first one is in July, from the 22nd - 25th, in Western Virginia, and you can get early registration up through June 21st; you can also sign up for their August course, and that's August 26th - 29th in Denver, Colorado, and you can get early registration through July 26th. If you want a private course for teams of 5 developers or more, you can also sign up on their website at pragmaticstudio.com.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 8 of iPhreaks! This week on our panel, we have Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello! I'm so impressed with Charles Max Wood newest episode with or without any thinking, well done! CHUCK: I looked it up beforehand. [Pete chuckles] CHUCK: Rod Schimdt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake! CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from hot and humid Houston! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. And we have a special guest today, and that's Ben, is it Lachman? BEN L: Yes, it is! And hello from Athens, Ohio, which is also hot and humid! Probably not as hot as Houston.. CHUCK: So you want to introduce yourself really quickly? BEN L: Yeah! I've been around the Mac and iOS dev world for about 10 or 12 years at this point; actually, I guess that would be before the iOS dev world really was around. And I write software for a couple of companies of my own. One is "Acacia Tree Software", and the other is newer and I started with a business partner in Cleveland, Ohio named Bob Cantoni and it's called "Nice Mohawk". So yeah, we write some iOS software, some Mac software, and we do contract work as well. CHUCK: Awesome. I'm a little curious before we get into what we're going to talk about, how much iOS and Mac stuff do you write as products that you sell versus client stuff that you do for other people? BEN L: We've done a fairly good job, for like a two-man shop,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:44 - Packing 03:15 - Traveling for clients vs conferences 06:38 - Packing cont’d & flying Rick Steves Packing Cube - 3 Set 08:05 - Lodging Staying w/ friends Airbnb Hotels 14:01 - Traveling w/ electronics New Trent iCarrier 12000mAh Dual USB Ports External Battery Pack TP-LINK TL-WR702N Wireless N150 Travel Router StrongVPN 19:51 - Getting through the airport & flying Alaska Airlines Mobile App TripIt Instapaper Dream Essentials Sweet Dreams Contoured Sleep Mask with Earplugs and Carry Pouch 27:15 - Staying off the beaten path 29:38 - Taking care of yourself while traveling 32:43 - Getting around Car rentals Public transportation 37:05 - Finding deals & saving $$$ KAYAK Bing Travel Fare Predictor Travelzoo 40:40 - Traveling within driving distance Picks StrongVPN (Eric) Funding your startup with a "one on / three off" setup (Eric) Lonely Planet (Ashe) Wikitravel (Ashe) Markdown Here (Ashe) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Mobile Companion with Rechargeable Battery (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Review (Chuck) DevChat.tv Indiegogo Campaign (Chuck) Next Week Giving Things Away For Free Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 61 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "Travelling for Work". This is something that I do frequently and suck at terribly, so I'm a little curious as to what suggestions you guys have for travelling. I think most of my angst comes from like packing and I always wind up forgetting stuff. [laughs] It's just the way it is. I just throw a whole bunch of stuff in the duffle bag, put on my computer stuff in my computer bag, and then curse the TSA in my head the whole way through the airport. ASHE: Ain't that's how a lot of us do it? [laughter] CHUCK: Yeah. So, I know you travel quite a bit, Ashe. ASHE: I do. I travel a lot for conferences. CHUCK: So, what's kind of the biggest thing that makes your life easier when you travel? ASHE: I have a separate bag that I use for travelling, and I actually have like a separate copy of everything that I use in my regular life that goes inside that bag. So like I have a toiletry bag, and my toothbrush, and hairbrush, and everything always stay in there. That way, I never have to remember to pack that stuff because the things that I always tend to forget are my hairbrush and my pajamas - every single time. I'm not entirely sure why, but those are the two things that I always forget. So I try to minimize the damage by trying to keep as much stuff in my like travelling bag as possible. CHUCK: That makes a lot of sense. There I admit that when I went down to New Media Expo -- my wife doesn't listen to the show, so I won't be in trouble -- but she hadn't on a laundry in like two weeks and I had no clean clothes, so I drove down to Las Vegas and I went and bought underwear and socks so I would have clean clothes to wear while I was down there. ASHE: Nice! [Chuck laughs] ASHE: I know a lot of people that when they travel internationally like they'll pack everything very tightly. And then when they're getting ready to leave, they actually throw out their underwear and their socks and I mean that's kind of cheap to replace, so they have room for souvenirs or whatever else they're bringing back. ERIC: Yeah, I've heard people that do that. Like what they'll do, is they'll travel to a place that's kind of cold then pick up a jacket there. And then if they leave,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:44 - Packing 03:15 - Traveling for clients vs conferences 06:38 - Packing cont'd & flying Rick Steves Packing Cube - 3 Set 08:05 - Lodging Staying w/ friends Airbnb Hotels 14:01 - Traveling w/ electronics New Trent iCarrier 12000mAh Dual USB Ports External Battery Pack TP-LINK TL-WR702N Wireless N150 Travel Router StrongVPN 19:51 - Getting through the airport & flying Alaska Airlines Mobile App TripIt Instapaper Dream Essentials Sweet Dreams Contoured Sleep Mask with Earplugs and Carry Pouch 27:15 - Staying off the beaten path 29:38 - Taking care of yourself while traveling 32:43 - Getting around Car rentals Public transportation 37:05 - Finding deals & saving $$$ KAYAK Bing Travel Fare Predictor Travelzoo 40:40 - Traveling within driving distance Picks StrongVPN (Eric) Funding your startup with a "one on / three off" setup (Eric) Lonely Planet (Ashe) Wikitravel (Ashe) Markdown Here (Ashe) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Mobile Companion with Rechargeable Battery (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Review (Chuck) DevChat.tv Indiegogo Campaign (Chuck) Next Week Giving Things Away For Free Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 61 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "Travelling for Work". This is something that I do frequently and suck at terribly, so I'm a little curious as to what suggestions you guys have for travelling. I think most of my angst comes from like packing and I always wind up forgetting stuff. [laughs] It's just the way it is. I just throw a whole bunch of stuff in the duffle bag, put on my computer stuff in my computer bag, and then curse the TSA in my head the whole way through the airport. ASHE: Ain't that's how a lot of us do it? [laughter] CHUCK: Yeah. So, I know you travel quite a bit, Ashe. ASHE: I do. I travel a lot for conferences. CHUCK: So, what's kind of the biggest thing that makes your life easier when you travel? ASHE: I have a separate bag that I use for travelling, and I actually have like a separate copy of everything that I use in my regular life that goes inside that bag. So like I have a toiletry bag, and my toothbrush, and hairbrush, and everything always stay in there. That way, I never have to remember to pack that stuff because the things that I always tend to forget are my hairbrush and my pajamas - every single time. I'm not entirely sure why, but those are the two things that I always forget. So I try to minimize the damage by trying to keep as much stuff in my like travelling bag as possible. CHUCK: That makes a lot of sense. There I admit that when I went down to New Media Expo -- my wife doesn't listen to the show, so I won't be in trouble -- but she hadn't on a laundry in like two weeks and I had no clean clothes, so I drove down to Las Vegas and I went and bought underwear and socks so I would have clean clothes to wear while I was down there. ASHE: Nice! [Chuck laughs] ASHE: I know a lot of people that when they travel internationally like they'll pack everything very tightly. And then when they're getting ready to leave, they actually throw out their underwear and their socks and I mean that's kind of cheap to replace, so they have room for souvenirs or whatever else they're bringing back. ERIC: Yeah, I've heard people that do that. Like what they'll do, is they'll travel to a place that's kind of cold then pick up a jacket there. And then if they leave,

Panel Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:58 - Project Management 02:46 - Project Management Software Pivotal Tracker Redmine Asana 05:26 - Communication and Clarification Discovery and Estimation 09:59 - Agile Methodology Workflow 15:28 - Billing Project Management Time Harvest 18:57 - Managing Internal Projects To-Do Lists Outsourcing Board of Advisors 25:46 - Managing Future Projects and Ideas Getting Things Done by David Allen 28:47 - Book Writing Workflows Picks National Geographic Found (Ashe) Will You Sponsor Me? - Elise Worthy (Ashe) MediaElement.js (Chuck) Hover (Chuck) Next Week Travel Transcript ASHE: Life's a little weird sometimes... [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 60 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We have a few people out at, I think it's MicroConf...I should just look it up so I know the name of the conference. Anyway, they are in Vegas and I think we might have one or two people at RailsConf, or it may just have stuff going on today. So, it's just the two of us! ASHE: Sounds good! [laughs] CHUCK: It feels like you're filling in for Eric! ASHE: Eric can never be replaced... CHUCK: [laughs] Only temporarily, huh? ASHE: Only temporarily. I'm just standing up for you, buddy! CHUCK: [laughs] Awesome. Alright, so this week, I was thinking that we could talk about "Managing Projects", both projects, kind of internal projects I guess, and for clients - client projects. I have to say this is something that I'm really not good at, so I'm hoping that you can impart some wisdom. ASHE: Oh, I'll do my best. I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I don't think that many of us come from a Project Management or like any kind of Management background, really. So, it's something that's very new that we don't necessarily have the skills for right off the bat. CHUCK: Yeah. But at the same time, if you've worked for a company on a team, using somebody managing the project, whether they were aware of it or not… ASHE: Yeah. I think that working at a couple of places is definitely given me an idea of what Project Management isn't, which might help to kind of stir in the direction of what Project Management should be. CHUCK: So, you're going to give us an 'anti-definition' then? ASHE: Yeah...I don't know. I've struggled a lot. I think that a lot of people have similar complaints about project management styles or like the kind of stereotype of what a Project Manager is; promising things too soon or promising things without actually running it by the developers. Or, trying to figure out what actual problems are in the project management process instead of just the tools that are involved, because I've seen that one a lot. Where, "Oh, something's not working! Let's just change the project management software that we're using because that must be the problem." [laughter] CHUCK: That's right. It's always the tools. ASHE: Yeah! So, that's definitely not the way that I would go. I'm kind of interested, what are you doing for project management right now for software? CHUCK: I've used, in software projects anyway, I've used Pivotal Tracker; really really like Pivotal Tracker. I've looked at Redmine, and I want to get to know it better mainly because I have people coming to me and asking me to customize it. And so, I wanted to get to know it a little bit better. But for the most part, that's what I'm using. And then for other projects, I've been using Asana lately, which was mentioned on the show by Farnoosh Brock, if you want to go back and look at that. So yeah, that's kind of what I've been doing.

Panel Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 00:58 - Project Management 02:46 - Project Management Software Pivotal Tracker Redmine Asana 05:26 - Communication and Clarification Discovery and Estimation 09:59 - Agile Methodology Workflow 15:28 - Billing Project Management Time Harvest 18:57 - Managing Internal Projects To-Do Lists Outsourcing Board of Advisors 25:46 - Managing Future Projects and Ideas Getting Things Done by David Allen 28:47 - Book Writing Workflows Picks National Geographic Found (Ashe) Will You Sponsor Me? - Elise Worthy (Ashe) MediaElement.js (Chuck) Hover (Chuck) Next Week Travel Transcript ASHE: Life's a little weird sometimes... [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 60 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We have a few people out at, I think it's MicroConf...I should just look it up so I know the name of the conference. Anyway, they are in Vegas and I think we might have one or two people at RailsConf, or it may just have stuff going on today. So, it's just the two of us! ASHE: Sounds good! [laughs] CHUCK: It feels like you're filling in for Eric! ASHE: Eric can never be replaced... CHUCK: [laughs] Only temporarily, huh? ASHE: Only temporarily. I'm just standing up for you, buddy! CHUCK: [laughs] Awesome. Alright, so this week, I was thinking that we could talk about "Managing Projects", both projects, kind of internal projects I guess, and for clients - client projects. I have to say this is something that I'm really not good at, so I'm hoping that you can impart some wisdom. ASHE: Oh, I'll do my best. I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I don't think that many of us come from a Project Management or like any kind of Management background, really. So, it's something that's very new that we don't necessarily have the skills for right off the bat. CHUCK: Yeah. But at the same time, if you've worked for a company on a team, using somebody managing the project, whether they were aware of it or not… ASHE: Yeah. I think that working at a couple of places is definitely given me an idea of what Project Management isn't, which might help to kind of stir in the direction of what Project Management should be. CHUCK: So, you're going to give us an 'anti-definition' then? ASHE: Yeah...I don't know. I've struggled a lot. I think that a lot of people have similar complaints about project management styles or like the kind of stereotype of what a Project Manager is; promising things too soon or promising things without actually running it by the developers. Or, trying to figure out what actual problems are in the project management process instead of just the tools that are involved, because I've seen that one a lot. Where, "Oh, something's not working! Let's just change the project management software that we're using because that must be the problem." [laughter] CHUCK: That's right. It's always the tools. ASHE: Yeah! So, that's definitely not the way that I would go. I'm kind of interested, what are you doing for project management right now for software? CHUCK: I've used, in software projects anyway, I've used Pivotal Tracker; really really like Pivotal Tracker. I've looked at Redmine, and I want to get to know it better mainly because I have people coming to me and asking me to customize it. And so, I wanted to get to know it a little bit better. But for the most part, that's what I'm using. And then for other projects, I've been using Asana lately, which was mentioned on the show by Farnoosh Brock, if you want to go back and look at that. So yeah, that's kind of what I've been doing.

Panel Josh Abernathy (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:25 - Josh Abernathy Introduction GitHub GitHub for Mac GitHub Issues App GitHub Jobs App Lua Corona SDK 03:48 - Differences between writing an app for Mac and writing an app for iOS AppKit UIKit Chameleon twui 05:37 - Model View Controller Model View ViewModel Knockout.js 013 JSJ Knockout.js with Steven Sanderson (JavaScript Jabber) 11:51 - Testing specta expecta OCMock 15:04 - NSTableView Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) by Aaron Hillegass 17:28 - iOS vs Mac The Rude Awakening for iOS Devs: Josh Abernathy 22:05 - Memory Management 002 iPhreaks Show - Memory Management Garbage Collection ARC 24:32 - Binding 27:23 - Fixing AppKit 32:09 - APIs 33:18 - App Store Sandboxing 36:34 - Resources Cocoa Controls Tweetbot Twitter Mac App The Hit List Things Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) by Aaron Hillegass 40:47 - Sharing Code Xamarin cheddar-mac cheddar-ios ReactiveCocoa Picks MOO (Ben) Kaleidoscope (Ben) Briefs (Ben) clojurem (Rod) Oblivion Soundtrack (Rod) CloudApp (Pete) MindNode (Pete) LimeChat: IRC Client for Mac (Pete) People are not resources - The Philosophical Developer (Pete) Downton Abbey (Chuck) Downton Abbey at 54 Below - Season 4, Episode 1 Sneak Peek (Chuck) GitHub (Chuck) Daring Fireball Linked List: Using Quartz Composer to Recreate Facebook Home (Josh) Next Week Xcode Transcript BEN: Have you seen that app "Little Inferno" by the guys who created World of Goo? PETE: Mm-mm BEN: It's a great game. It's on MacHeist right now; I think that's still going on. So if you -- CHUCK: Oh, I saw that! BEN: Anyway, so my son is 3 and he's really adept at using the iPad, but he's never really used the computer before so like the whole mouse thing is totally foreign to him. But, he was watching me play this game and he gave it a shot. He's actually learning the click and drag stuff, which is pretty awesome. PETE: Awesome. BEN: I guess the downside is just learning to burn things... [laughter] CHUCK: Nice! BEN: It's just kind of the point of the game. So...I don't know [laughs]. PETE: Yeah. It's a tradeoff, right? BEN: Yes. PETE: Dragging, clicking, burning... CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 4 of iPhreaks! This week on our show we have, Rod Schimdt. ROD: Hello, hello! CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello from [inaudible], San Francisco! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we have a special guest, and that is Josh Abernathy. Did I say that right? JOSH: Yeah! Yeah, you said it right. CHUCK: If that's more than 2 syllables, I'm going to screw it up. JOSH: [laughs] People always get turn off because it's long, but it's just like it looks. CHUCK: Oh, I see. So, do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? JOSH: Yeah! I'm Josh Abernathy. I work at GitHub on the GitHub for Mac App, and various other side things. And yeah, I've been doing Mac and iOS stuff for quite a while now. So hopefully, I'll have something interesting to say about the topic. CHUCK: So is there a GitHub app for iOS? JOSH: We have a couple different iOS Apps. There's an Issues App and there's a Jobs App, neither of them are particularly well-maintained at the moment. So, we kind of try to pretend we don't have any iOS Apps. CHUCK: I see. PETE: I actually tried to use the Issues App the other day... [Josh laughs] PETE: And then I went and look...Is it open source? Is it available kind of the code -- JOSH: No...

Panel Josh Abernathy (twitter github blog) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:25 - Josh Abernathy Introduction GitHub GitHub for Mac GitHub Issues App GitHub Jobs App Lua Corona SDK 03:48 - Differences between writing an app for Mac and writing an app for iOS AppKit UIKit Chameleon twui 05:37 - Model View Controller Model View ViewModel Knockout.js 013 JSJ Knockout.js with Steven Sanderson (JavaScript Jabber) 11:51 - Testing specta expecta OCMock 15:04 - NSTableView Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) by Aaron Hillegass 17:28 - iOS vs Mac The Rude Awakening for iOS Devs: Josh Abernathy 22:05 - Memory Management 002 iPhreaks Show - Memory Management Garbage Collection ARC 24:32 - Binding 27:23 - Fixing AppKit 32:09 - APIs 33:18 - App Store Sandboxing 36:34 - Resources Cocoa Controls Tweetbot Twitter Mac App The Hit List Things Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (4th Edition) by Aaron Hillegass 40:47 - Sharing Code Xamarin cheddar-mac cheddar-ios ReactiveCocoa Picks MOO (Ben) Kaleidoscope (Ben) Briefs (Ben) clojurem (Rod) Oblivion Soundtrack (Rod) CloudApp (Pete) MindNode (Pete) LimeChat: IRC Client for Mac (Pete) People are not resources - The Philosophical Developer (Pete) Downton Abbey (Chuck) Downton Abbey at 54 Below - Season 4, Episode 1 Sneak Peek (Chuck) GitHub (Chuck) Daring Fireball Linked List: Using Quartz Composer to Recreate Facebook Home (Josh) Next Week Xcode Transcript BEN: Have you seen that app "Little Inferno" by the guys who created World of Goo? PETE: Mm-mm BEN: It's a great game. It's on MacHeist right now; I think that's still going on. So if you -- CHUCK: Oh, I saw that! BEN: Anyway, so my son is 3 and he's really adept at using the iPad, but he's never really used the computer before so like the whole mouse thing is totally foreign to him. But, he was watching me play this game and he gave it a shot. He's actually learning the click and drag stuff, which is pretty awesome. PETE: Awesome. BEN: I guess the downside is just learning to burn things... [laughter] CHUCK: Nice! BEN: It's just kind of the point of the game. So...I don't know [laughs]. PETE: Yeah. It's a tradeoff, right? BEN: Yes. PETE: Dragging, clicking, burning... CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 4 of iPhreaks! This week on our show we have, Rod Schimdt. ROD: Hello, hello! CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello from [inaudible], San Francisco! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we have a special guest, and that is Josh Abernathy. Did I say that right? JOSH: Yeah! Yeah, you said it right. CHUCK: If that's more than 2 syllables, I'm going to screw it up. JOSH: [laughs] People always get turn off because it's long, but it's just like it looks. CHUCK: Oh, I see. So, do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? JOSH: Yeah! I'm Josh Abernathy. I work at GitHub on the GitHub for Mac App, and various other side things. And yeah, I've been doing Mac and iOS stuff for quite a while now. So hopefully, I'll have something interesting to say about the topic. CHUCK: So is there a GitHub app for iOS? JOSH: We have a couple different iOS Apps. There's an Issues App and there's a Jobs App, neither of them are particularly well-maintained at the moment. So, we kind of try to pretend we don't have any iOS Apps. CHUCK: I see. PETE: I actually tried to use the Issues App the other day... [Josh laughs] PETE: And then I went and look...Is it open source? Is it available kind of the code -- JOSH: No...

Panel Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 03:00 - Why don’t people test in iOS? 06:12 - Testing Definitions and the Mechanics of Testing Instruments User Guide TestPyramid 13:00 - Why do we test our code? Why is it worth it? Feedback Communication 19:28 - Practicing TDD (Test-driven development) UI View Controllers 25:33 - Unit Testing is hard 28:01 - Tools Send Testing Kit aka OCUnit Application and Logic Tests Running objective-c tests from the command line (with color) (Ben’s Script based on Eloy Durán’s) Continuous Integration Code Coverage Git Hooks gh-unit Kiwi Cedar RubyMotion Writing Tests for RubyMotion Apps Bacon 42:00 - Frank Selenium Zucchini appium bwoken KIF Calabash Jenkins Writing iOS acceptance tests using Kiwi: Pete Hodgson PublicAutomation Picks TextExpander (Ben) Alfred (Ben) Jenkins (Ben) Oban Scotch (Ben) NSScreencast: Automated Testing with Kiwi (Pete) Rock Climbing (Pete) Scarlett Red (Pete) Test-Driven iOS Development by Graham J. Lee (Rod) 42 (Rod) Test iOS Apps with UI Automation: Bug Hunting Made Easy by Jonathan Penn (Pete) Backbone.js (Chuck) LaunchBar (Chuck) Next Week iOS/Mac & differences with Josh Abernathy Transcript PETE: So what are we talking about this Tuesday morning? CHUCK: I'm not sure, but I think we should write a test for it first. CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 3 of iPhreaks! This week on our panel we have, Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello from Butte Lake! [Ben laughs] CHUCK: Ben Scheirman...Butte Lake... BEN: Very well done. Very well done. [Ben laughs] CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: We also have, Rod Schimdt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake City! CHUCK: Sorry, Rod. I was looking at Pete's picture and I was like "No, I already said Pete". [laughter] BEN: Yeah, for those who didn't get the joke we were looking at the transcription from last episode, or from episode 1. And -- CHUCK: Did that get fixed? PETE: It got fixed, yeah. BEN: Okay. So originally, Pete said he's from Berkeley and it came through as Butte Lake, which I thought was hilarious. PETE: I was pretty -- I was looking for the transcript -- it's pretty hilarious how much my accent has closed issues. For whatever personal machine is doing that transcription is definitely challenged by my accent. CHUCK: We're really sorry to the transcriptionist. PETE: Yeah. [laughter] CHUCK: We will pick our panelist more carefully next time. PETE: Oh! It's my fault, huh? [laughter] CHUCK: Anyway...And you can tell I had to ask if it got fixed because I just asked Mandy to do it and assume it's done. PETE: Yeah. No, she fixed it. She fixed it very very quickly. CHUCK: Yeah. PETE: And I'm used to that. I'm living in a [inaudible] when you found out like you have automated voice systems. They often don't work with British accent so I have to put on like a stupid American accent when I'm...operator! [laughter] PETE: Reservations. [laughter] CHUCK: It's funny, too, because a lot of times on those automated systems, they have somebody with a British accent or a fake British accent like speaking. BEN: Yeah. PETE: Yeah. But they didn't understand British. Siri didn't understand British for a very long time because you couldn't get like, if you lived in the US, you couldn't get American, so you couldn't get British Siri to work with like American information. So if I wanted to actually know about anything about America like where I live, I'd have to use the American version Siri, but she couldn't understand my pronunciation. [Ben laughs] CHUCK: So is the British Siri more polite?

Panel Pete Hodgson (twitter github blog) Ben Scheirman (twitter github blog NSSreencast) Rod Schmidt (twitter github infiniteNIL) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 03:00 - Why don't people test in iOS? 06:12 - Testing Definitions and the Mechanics of Testing Instruments User Guide TestPyramid 13:00 - Why do we test our code? Why is it worth it? Feedback Communication 19:28 - Practicing TDD (Test-driven development) UI View Controllers 25:33 - Unit Testing is hard 28:01 - Tools Send Testing Kit aka OCUnit Application and Logic Tests Running objective-c tests from the command line (with color) (Ben's Script based on Eloy Durán's) Continuous Integration Code Coverage Git Hooks gh-unit Kiwi Cedar RubyMotion Writing Tests for RubyMotion Apps Bacon 42:00 - Frank Selenium Zucchini appium bwoken KIF Calabash Jenkins Writing iOS acceptance tests using Kiwi: Pete Hodgson PublicAutomation Picks TextExpander (Ben) Alfred (Ben) Jenkins (Ben) Oban Scotch (Ben) NSScreencast: Automated Testing with Kiwi (Pete) Rock Climbing (Pete) Scarlett Red (Pete) Test-Driven iOS Development by Graham J. Lee (Rod) 42 (Rod) Test iOS Apps with UI Automation: Bug Hunting Made Easy by Jonathan Penn (Pete) Backbone.js (Chuck) LaunchBar (Chuck) Next Week iOS/Mac & differences with Josh Abernathy Transcript PETE: So what are we talking about this Tuesday morning? CHUCK: I'm not sure, but I think we should write a test for it first. CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 3 of iPhreaks! This week on our panel we have, Pete Hodgson. PETE: Hello from Butte Lake! [Ben laughs] CHUCK: Ben Scheirman...Butte Lake... BEN: Very well done. Very well done. [Ben laughs] CHUCK: Ben Scheirman. BEN: Hello from Houston! CHUCK: We also have, Rod Schimdt. ROD: Hello from Salt Lake City! CHUCK: Sorry, Rod. I was looking at Pete's picture and I was like "No, I already said Pete". [laughter] BEN: Yeah, for those who didn't get the joke we were looking at the transcription from last episode, or from episode 1. And -- CHUCK: Did that get fixed? PETE: It got fixed, yeah. BEN: Okay. So originally, Pete said he's from Berkeley and it came through as Butte Lake, which I thought was hilarious. PETE: I was pretty -- I was looking for the transcript -- it's pretty hilarious how much my accent has closed issues. For whatever personal machine is doing that transcription is definitely challenged by my accent. CHUCK: We're really sorry to the transcriptionist. PETE: Yeah. [laughter] CHUCK: We will pick our panelist more carefully next time. PETE: Oh! It's my fault, huh? [laughter] CHUCK: Anyway...And you can tell I had to ask if it got fixed because I just asked Mandy to do it and assume it's done. PETE: Yeah. No, she fixed it. She fixed it very very quickly. CHUCK: Yeah. PETE: And I'm used to that. I'm living in a [inaudible] when you found out like you have automated voice systems. They often don't work with British accent so I have to put on like a stupid American accent when I'm...operator! [laughter] PETE: Reservations. [laughter] CHUCK: It's funny, too, because a lot of times on those automated systems, they have somebody with a British accent or a fake British accent like speaking. BEN: Yeah. PETE: Yeah. But they didn't understand British. Siri didn't understand British for a very long time because you couldn't get like, if you lived in the US, you couldn't get American, so you couldn't get British Siri to work with like American information. So if I wanted to actually know about anything about America like where I live, I'd have to use the American version Siri, but she couldn't understand my pronunciation. [Ben laughs] CHUCK: So is the British Siri more polite?

Panel AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Joe Eames (twitter github blog) Merrick Christensen (twitter github) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:29 - Merrick Christensen is a new regular panel member CascadiaJS 2012 JavaScript Modules: AMD, Require.js & Other Wins: Merrick Christensen 03:58 - DOM Rendering and Manipulating Backbone.js Ext.js 06:49 - Differences Load times Ease of use backbone.syphon 09:49 - The Ext.js approach vs the Backbone.js approach 15:51 - Templating engines dust.js handlebars.js mustache.js hogan.js underscore jquery 16:46 - handlebars.js vs mustache.js 18:08 - Templating engines (cont’d) Mold.js Ember.js Metamorph.js Knockout.js Pure.js Plates.js 26:34 - Difference between the click handler and the delegate function 31:49 - Template engines and string generations 33:01 - Writing templates and learning APIs 35:03 - Ext.js issues 39:32 - Dojo Picks Aldo (AJ) On Being A Senior Engineer (Jamison) Joshua James: From the Top of Willamette Mountain (Merrick) sparks.js (Merrick) grunt.js (Merrick) knit-js (Merrick) Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer by Brian Marick (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Skyfall (Joe) LEGO Lord of the Rings (Joe) Global Day of Coderetreat 2012 (Joe) Transcript JOE: If AJ talks on JavaScript Jabber, does anybody hear it? CHUCK: [laughs] AJ: Not if I don’t have my function key pressed down. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 36 of the JavaScript Jabber Show! This week on our panel, we have AJ O'Neal. AJ: Yo, yo, comin' at you from the cowboy sphere of Orem, Utah. CHUCK: We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: I'm coming at you from bathrobe sphere of Orem, Utah. It’s much more comfortable than a cowboy sphere. CHUCK: We have Joe Eames. JOE: Comin’ at you from a cluttered office. CHUCK: And Merrick Christensen. MERRICK: Hey guys! CHUCK: So, Merrick is new. Merrick, do you wanna introduce yourself real quick? MERRICK: Sure. My name is Merrick Christensen. I've been developing JavaScript for a number of years -- big fan of it. You can find me on twitter and GitHub and all that kind of stuff. JOE: Did you just recently speak at any conferences? MERRICK: Yeah actually. [laughter] I just spoke at CascadiaJS on require.js. And actually, what's really cool is they just barely put the videos for that up today and I was so stoked at how high quality. So to the CascadiaJS team, you guys  did an excellent job. JOE: Are the videos free? MERRICK: Oh yeah. All free up on YouTube. And there’s some cool stuff -- there's stuff on like robots -- it was an amazing conference. The organizers just did an amazing job. CHUCK: Sounds like fun. Was that up in the North West somewhere? MERRICK: Yeah it was actually in Seattle. CHUCK: Nice. MERRICK: Yeah it was beautiful. JAMISON: I heard that as one of the after party things, they took everybody up to see the James Bond movie? MERRICK: They did yeah.

Panel AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Joe Eames (twitter github blog) Merrick Christensen (twitter github) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:29 - Merrick Christensen is a new regular panel member CascadiaJS 2012 JavaScript Modules: AMD, Require.js & Other Wins: Merrick Christensen 03:58 - DOM Rendering and Manipulating Backbone.js Ext.js 06:49 - Differences Load times Ease of use backbone.syphon 09:49 - The Ext.js approach vs the Backbone.js approach 15:51 - Templating engines dust.js handlebars.js mustache.js hogan.js underscore jquery 16:46 - handlebars.js vs mustache.js 18:08 - Templating engines (cont’d) Mold.js Ember.js Metamorph.js Knockout.js Pure.js Plates.js 26:34 - Difference between the click handler and the delegate function 31:49 - Template engines and string generations 33:01 - Writing templates and learning APIs 35:03 - Ext.js issues 39:32 - Dojo Picks Aldo (AJ) On Being A Senior Engineer (Jamison) Joshua James: From the Top of Willamette Mountain (Merrick) sparks.js (Merrick) grunt.js (Merrick) knit-js (Merrick) Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer by Brian Marick (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Skyfall (Joe) LEGO Lord of the Rings (Joe) Global Day of Coderetreat 2012 (Joe) Transcript JOE: If AJ talks on JavaScript Jabber, does anybody hear it? CHUCK: [laughs] AJ: Not if I don’t have my function key pressed down. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 36 of the JavaScript Jabber Show! This week on our panel, we have AJ O'Neal. AJ: Yo, yo, comin' at you from the cowboy sphere of Orem, Utah. CHUCK: We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: I'm coming at you from bathrobe sphere of Orem, Utah. It’s much more comfortable than a cowboy sphere. CHUCK: We have Joe Eames. JOE: Comin’ at you from a cluttered office. CHUCK: And Merrick Christensen. MERRICK: Hey guys! CHUCK: So, Merrick is new. Merrick, do you wanna introduce yourself real quick? MERRICK: Sure. My name is Merrick Christensen. I've been developing JavaScript for a number of years -- big fan of it. You can find me on twitter and GitHub and all that kind of stuff. JOE: Did you just recently speak at any conferences? MERRICK: Yeah actually. [laughter] I just spoke at CascadiaJS on require.js. And actually, what's really cool is they just barely put the videos for that up today and I was so stoked at how high quality. So to the CascadiaJS team, you guys  did an excellent job. JOE: Are the videos free? MERRICK: Oh yeah. All free up on YouTube. And there’s some cool stuff -- there's stuff on like robots -- it was an amazing conference. The organizers just did an amazing job. CHUCK: Sounds like fun. Was that up in the North West somewhere? MERRICK: Yeah it was actually in Seattle. CHUCK: Nice. MERRICK: Yeah it was beautiful. JAMISON: I heard that as one of the after party things, they took everybody up to see the James Bond movie? MERRICK: They did yeah.

Panel AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Joe Eames (twitter github blog) Merrick Christensen (twitter github) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:29 - Merrick Christensen is a new regular panel member CascadiaJS 2012 JavaScript Modules: AMD, Require.js & Other Wins: Merrick Christensen 03:58 - DOM Rendering and Manipulating Backbone.js Ext.js 06:49 - Differences Load times Ease of use backbone.syphon 09:49 - The Ext.js approach vs the Backbone.js approach 15:51 - Templating engines dust.js handlebars.js mustache.js hogan.js underscore jquery 16:46 - handlebars.js vs mustache.js 18:08 - Templating engines (cont’d) Mold.js Ember.js Metamorph.js Knockout.js Pure.js Plates.js 26:34 - Difference between the click handler and the delegate function 31:49 - Template engines and string generations 33:01 - Writing templates and learning APIs 35:03 - Ext.js issues 39:32 - Dojo Picks Aldo (AJ) On Being A Senior Engineer (Jamison) Joshua James: From the Top of Willamette Mountain (Merrick) sparks.js (Merrick) grunt.js (Merrick) knit-js (Merrick) Functional Programming for the Object-Oriented Programmer by Brian Marick (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Skyfall (Joe) LEGO Lord of the Rings (Joe) Global Day of Coderetreat 2012 (Joe) Transcript JOE: If AJ talks on JavaScript Jabber, does anybody hear it? CHUCK: [laughs] AJ: Not if I don’t have my function key pressed down. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 36 of the JavaScript Jabber Show! This week on our panel, we have AJ O'Neal. AJ: Yo, yo, comin' at you from the cowboy sphere of Orem, Utah. CHUCK: We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: I'm coming at you from bathrobe sphere of Orem, Utah. It’s much more comfortable than a cowboy sphere. CHUCK: We have Joe Eames. JOE: Comin’ at you from a cluttered office. CHUCK: And Merrick Christensen. MERRICK: Hey guys! CHUCK: So, Merrick is new. Merrick, do you wanna introduce yourself real quick? MERRICK: Sure. My name is Merrick Christensen. I've been developing JavaScript for a number of years -- big fan of it. You can find me on twitter and GitHub and all that kind of stuff. JOE: Did you just recently speak at any conferences? MERRICK: Yeah actually. [laughter] I just spoke at CascadiaJS on require.js. And actually, what's really cool is they just barely put the videos for that up today and I was so stoked at how high quality. So to the CascadiaJS team, you guys  did an excellent job. JOE: Are the videos free? MERRICK: Oh yeah. All free up on YouTube. And there’s some cool stuff -- there's stuff on like robots -- it was an amazing conference. The organizers just did an amazing job. CHUCK: Sounds like fun. Was that up in the North West somewhere? MERRICK: Yeah it was actually in Seattle. CHUCK: Nice. MERRICK: Yeah it was beautiful. JAMISON: I heard that as one of the after party things, they took everybody up to see the James Bond movie? MERRICK: They did yeah.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Dicussion 02:50 - Overcoming Isolation Working from coffeehouses Lunch dates 06:25 - Recruiting others with similar interests 07:40 - Talk on Twitter 07:46 - Evan's Apprentice 09:46 - Pairing Remote vs Physical 11:19 - Personality Types 12:13 - Coworking Spaces Creative Work Busy Work 14:51 - Walking and Driving 15:33 - Meetups and User Groups 17:53 - Commiserating and Ranting 19:08 - Attending Conferences 23:26 - Working Onsite for Clients Picks Strong VPN (Eric) Cloak (Evan) OS X Server (Evan) The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming by Dave Thomas (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: What's the background noise that... Is there any? CHUCK: I hear people talking. It's OK. EVAN: OK. Why can't I crank my volume up louder than this? What the hell? Oh, well that might be why. Now say something. CHUCK: Something. EVAN: Good! You did exactly what you were told to do. Thank you. ERIC: Right. EVAN: Right. Actually that should have been my response, “Right!” CHUCK: So what we are talking about… last week we were talking about-- EVAN: [inaudible] CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. Talking about “right”? CHUCK: We were thinking about… talking about— EVAN: [laughs] We were thinking about talking about— CHUCK: OK! ERIC: I think Chuck is stuck on a loop. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition - Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you'll get 50% off when it's released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 37 of The Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I love my brown pants. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Combating Isolation and Loneliness -- since we work from home and stuff. So I have to say, I'm a little bit punch-drunk because I've been pulling insane hours for my client. EVAN: So you are rich now? CHUCK: Uhh… EVAN: [inaudible] Oops, we can leave the singing out of the transcript please. Thank you. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah not yet. They haven't paid me for all my work I guess. ERIC: --- on paper. EVAN: The only one who is punch-drunk today. CHUCK: Wow. EVAN: Real drunk might be better. CHUCK: Real drunk? EVAN: --- actually be topical. Oh wait -- sorry, folks this is what happens to you when you have too much isolation. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. So, any who, so we all work from home -- mostly generally. EVAN: And coffeehouses. CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. CHUCK: So, what do you do to combat that? How do you overcome the working in a room by yourself all day-- EVAN: I thought you were going to say “overcompensate” instead of overcome because somehow that seems more appropriate right now. [laughter] Second, you record a lot of podcasts like Chuck. I had to get that one out there. Third, you start recording more podcasts like me. [chuckles] OK. Seriously, so you go out to a coffeehouse which is where I am -- which is why if you hear background noise, well,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Dicussion 02:50 - Overcoming Isolation Working from coffeehouses Lunch dates 06:25 - Recruiting others with similar interests 07:40 - Talk on Twitter 07:46 - Evan’s Apprentice 09:46 - Pairing Remote vs Physical 11:19 - Personality Types 12:13 - Coworking Spaces Creative Work Busy Work 14:51 - Walking and Driving 15:33 - Meetups and User Groups 17:53 - Commiserating and Ranting 19:08 - Attending Conferences 23:26 - Working Onsite for Clients Picks Strong VPN (Eric) Cloak (Evan) OS X Server (Evan) The Ruby Object Model and Metaprogramming by Dave Thomas (Chuck) New Media Expo 2013 (Discount code Wood20) (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: What's the background noise that... Is there any? CHUCK: I hear people talking. It’s OK. EVAN: OK. Why can’t I crank my volume up louder than this? What the hell? Oh, well that might be why. Now say something. CHUCK: Something. EVAN: Good! You did exactly what you were told to do. Thank you. ERIC: Right. EVAN: Right. Actually that should have been my response, “Right!” CHUCK: So what we are talking about… last week we were talking about-- EVAN: [inaudible] CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. Talking about “right”? CHUCK: We were thinking about… talking about— EVAN: [laughs] We were thinking about talking about— CHUCK: OK! ERIC: I think Chuck is stuck on a loop. [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition - Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 37 of The Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Evan Light. EVAN: I love my brown pants. CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about Combating Isolation and Loneliness -- since we work from home and stuff. So I have to say, I'm a little bit punch-drunk because I've been pulling insane hours for my client. EVAN: So you are rich now? CHUCK: Uhh… EVAN: [inaudible] Oops, we can leave the singing out of the transcript please. Thank you. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah not yet. They haven’t paid me for all my work I guess. ERIC: --- on paper. EVAN: The only one who is punch-drunk today. CHUCK: Wow. EVAN: Real drunk might be better. CHUCK: Real drunk? EVAN: --- actually be topical. Oh wait -- sorry, folks this is what happens to you when you have too much isolation. CHUCK: [laughs] Yeah. So, any who, so we all work from home -- mostly generally. EVAN: And coffeehouses. CHUCK: Right. EVAN: Right. CHUCK: So, what do you do to combat that? How do you overcome the working in a room by yourself all day-- EVAN: I thought you were going to say “overcompensate” instead of overcome because somehow that seems more appropriate right now. [laughter] Second, you record a lot of podcasts like Chuck. I had to get that one out there. Third, you start recording more podcasts like me. [chuckles] OK. Seriously, so you go out to a coffeehouse which is where I am -- which is why if you hear background noise, well,

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

Panel Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Tim Caswell (twitter github howtonode.org) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 01:15 - node-webkit Similar to PhoneGap Chrome native apps Chromium 05:31 - Event loops and the browsers 06:53 - Example apps Light Table app.js 07:42 - node-webkit vs app.js 10:00 - Chrome Chrome Apps: JavaScript Desktop Development 17:44 - Security implications 25:11 - Testing node-webkit applications 27:19 - Getting a web app into a native app 31:33 - Creating Your First AppJS App with Custom Chrome Chromeless Browser Chromeless replacement Picks How mismanagement, incompetence and pride killed THQ's Kaos Studios (Jamison) The Insufficiency of Good Design by Sarah Mei (Jamison) app.js (Tim) node-webkit (Tim) Macaroni Grill’s Butternut Asiago Tortellaci (AJ) JCPenney (AJ) Mac OS Stickies (Chuck) Fieldrunners (Chuck) Node Knockout Transcript AJ: Let’s talk about boring stuff. What did you eat for breakfast? TIM: I had donuts. AJ: That sounds nutritious and delicious. [This episode is sponsored by ComponentOne, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to wijmo.com and check them out.] [This episode is sponsored by Gaslight Software. They are putting on a Mastering Backbone training in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center, December 3rd through 5th of this year. This three day intensive course will forever change the way you develop the front-end of your web applications. For too long, many web developers have approached front-end as drudgery. No more! We’ll help you build the skills to write front-end code you can love every bit as much as your server-side code.] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 35 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi guys! CHUCK: Tim Caswell. TIM: Hello! CHUCK: And AJ O’Neal. And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week, we are going to be talking about ‘Node-webkit’. It seems like Tim is the most familiar with it, so why don’t you jump in and tell us a little bit about it? TIM: All right. Basically the idea is to make desktop apps using Node and then having HTML as your display layer for your widgets. And I start a project doing this several years ago from Topcube, but I failed miserably because I'm not that good of a C engineer. And since then, a few projects have taken up the idea. Node-webkit is one done by Intel and the main engineer there is Roger Wang. So on Roger Wang’s GitHub there is node-webkit. And the other popular one is called ‘app.js’ and I think there is a couple others as well. And some other people have taken over my Topcube project and they use it for some maps app. And all these projects had the basic idea of you have a desktop native app that has Node and node-webkit inside of it. CHUCK: So, is it kind of like PhoneGap or some of these other things for mobile? TIM: Yeah. It’s similar to PhoneGap in that, you get more privileges than a browser would have in a more native experience. Instead of just the PhoneGap extensions, you get all of Node -- you get the full Node environment -- which means you can use all that existing libraries and ecosystem. JAMISON: So how does this compare to the Chrome native apps thing? Because I know that they are more --- already have some like JS APIs that let you touch stuff on the server or things like that. Is this just – it’s not sandbox at all? TIM: Yeah. I mean, this is a native app. It’s not in your browser at all. It bundles its own webkit. JAMISON: Oooh. TIM: It’s more like -- what was that flash thing they had years ago? AJ: ‘Adobe Air’? TIM: Air yeah. It’s like Adobe Air that doesn’t suck.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 02:02 - Picking topics Passion Frustration Driven Development: Evan’s WindyCityRails Talk 2012 Listener questions/interest Lynchpin by Seth Godin “Doing what you love and sharing with other people” 07:08 - Speaking at User Groups vs Conferences Practice runs Keydown 09:46 - Twitter inquiries 10:16 - Topic proposals Marketing Abstracts 13:28 - Marketing to conference owners/marketing to the audience Making memorable talks 16:32 - How speakers are chosen Individual merit/”Hero Worship” Keynotes by invitation Past experience 20:56 - Preparing for a talk Practice Keynote / Keydown 25:04 - Writing a book/writing a presentation Flexibility Stream of consciousness writing Markdown Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds 31:37 - Code in slides Syntax highlighting Wrapping lines Screen resolution Geekfest 35:18 - Practice, practice, practice Time your presentation Possibly leave time for Q&A Skipping slides Real-time edits 39:29 - Talking about something/convincing people to try something Avoid library talks Try to get people to shift perspectives 41:56 - Don’t change topics at the last minute 45:58 - Communication between conference organizers 49:32 - Giving talks, getting leads and referrals, and being recognized as “an expert” Picks Pilot G2 Retractable Gel Ink Color Rolling Ball Pens (Eric) Keydown (Evan) Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer (Chuck) QR codes (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. [sniffs] [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition: Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you’ll get 50% off when it’s released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 36 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: I'm back! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And this week we are going to be talking about “Preparing for and Speaking at Conferences”. EVAN: Conferences. CHUCK: And I'm kind of inclined to also talk about speaking at users groups. EVAN: Yeah you should. We should. Actually we should let you do all the talking about users groups. CHUCK: Why is that? EVAN: Because I just said ‘you’ first instead of ‘we’. CHUCK: [laughs] What did I do to you? EVAN: [chuckles] Right. CHUCK: So let’s start talking. So Evan, I think you spoken at more conferences than either Eric or I have. EVAN: Or just spoken more, as in ‘talk a lot’. Yeah, especially I’ve done quite a bit this year too. So I remember in the user voice, the person who suggested this topic started with “How do you pick your topics”, and I think it’s pretty much how do you pick your topics and how do you present and how you get accepted. Picking my topics for me is one of two things -- or actually no, it was really one thing – at the end of it, it’s always, it’s something important to me that I wanna share. That I feel strongly about and I wanna share.

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Intro to CoffeeScript) Discussion 02:02 - Picking topics Passion Frustration Driven Development: Evan's WindyCityRails Talk 2012 Listener questions/interest Lynchpin by Seth Godin “Doing what you love and sharing with other people” 07:08 - Speaking at User Groups vs Conferences Practice runs Keydown 09:46 - Twitter inquiries 10:16 - Topic proposals Marketing Abstracts 13:28 - Marketing to conference owners/marketing to the audience Making memorable talks 16:32 - How speakers are chosen Individual merit/”Hero Worship” Keynotes by invitation Past experience 20:56 - Preparing for a talk Practice Keynote / Keydown 25:04 - Writing a book/writing a presentation Flexibility Stream of consciousness writing Markdown Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds 31:37 - Code in slides Syntax highlighting Wrapping lines Screen resolution Geekfest 35:18 - Practice, practice, practice Time your presentation Possibly leave time for Q&A Skipping slides Real-time edits 39:29 - Talking about something/convincing people to try something Avoid library talks Try to get people to shift perspectives 41:56 - Don't change topics at the last minute 45:58 - Communication between conference organizers 49:32 - Giving talks, getting leads and referrals, and being recognized as “an expert” Picks Pilot G2 Retractable Gel Ink Color Rolling Ball Pens (Eric) Keydown (Evan) Kensington 33374 Wireless Presenter with Laser Pointer (Chuck) QR codes (Chuck) Transcript EVAN: Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. [sniffs] [Are you a busy Ruby developer who wants to take their freelance business to the next level? Interested in working smarter not harder? Then check out the upcoming book “Next Level Freelancing: Developer Edition: Practical Steps to Work Less, Travel and Make More Money”. It includes interviews and case studies with successful freelancers, who have made a killing by expanding their consultancy, develop passive income through informational products, build successful SaaS products, and become rockstar consultants making a minimum of $200/hour. There are all kinds of practical steps on getting started and if you sign up now, you'll get 50% off when it's released. You can find it at nextlevelfreelancing.com] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 36 of the Ruby Freelancer Show! This week on our panel, we have Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: We also have Evan Light. EVAN: I'm back! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. And this week we are going to be talking about “Preparing for and Speaking at Conferences”. EVAN: Conferences. CHUCK: And I'm kind of inclined to also talk about speaking at users groups. EVAN: Yeah you should. We should. Actually we should let you do all the talking about users groups. CHUCK: Why is that? EVAN: Because I just said ‘you' first instead of ‘we'. CHUCK: [laughs] What did I do to you? EVAN: [chuckles] Right. CHUCK: So let's start talking. So Evan, I think you spoken at more conferences than either Eric or I have. EVAN: Or just spoken more, as in ‘talk a lot'. Yeah, especially I've done quite a bit this year too. So I remember in the user voice, the person who suggested this topic started with “How do you pick your topics”, and I think it's pretty much how do you pick your topics and how do you present and how you get accepted. Picking my topics for me is one of two things -- or actually no, it was really one thing – at the end of it, it's always, it's something important to me that I wanna share. That I feel strongly about and I wanna share.

Panel Joe Eames (twitter github blog) AJ O'Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Discussion Greenfield - Brand New Project Brownfield - Older Applications, Legacy Code Poopfield - PHP Development Dealing With Legacy Code Use Tests Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers Risk When is the big rewrite the correct answer? Picks Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (AJ) Roll Up Crepes (AJ) Calepin (AJ) Bernie (Jamison) Dota 2 (Jamison) Derrick Storm Novels - A Brewing Storm, A Bloody Storm, A Raging Storm (Joe) Castle (Joe) X-Wing Mineatures (Joe) PEX For Fun (Joe) MLG Championship - Starcraft Duel (Joe) VESA 75 to 100 Adapter (Chuck) LG Tone Bluetooth Headphones (Chuck) Transcript JOE: Listen baby, it won’t get weird. JAMISON: [Chuckles] AJ: That sounds... weird. JAMISON: [Chuckles] Too Late. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [This episode is sponsored by Harvest. I use Harvest to track time, track subcontractor’s time and invoice clients. Their time tracking is really simple and easy to use. Invoicing includes a ‘pay now’ function by credit card and PayPal. And you can sign up at getharvest.com. Use the code RF to get 50% off your first month.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 28 of the JavaScript Jabber show. This week on our panel, we have AJ O’Neil. AJ: Yo, yo, yo comin’ at you live from the second story of an office base in Orem, Utah. CHUCK:  We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi, I’m Jamison Dance and I am super excited, because today iTV just announced that we are doing the Nintendo TV thing; and I haven’t been able to talk about it for, like, six months, so it’s a good day. CHUCK: Cool. We also have Joe Eames. JOE: Comin at you semi live from American Fork, Utah. CHUCK: And I am Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. Tim is not with us this week because he is in China. I thought I’d point that out, because I think it’s cool. Anyway, this week we are going to be talking about Greenfield versus Brownfield projects. It was kind of funny when we were getting ready to do this, some of the panels were like, Green/Brown? JAMISON: Yeah, I have to pull Josh Susser and ask for a definition. CHUCK: So, as far as I understand it, there are some new --- to this, depending to who you talk to, but mostly, Greenfield is a brand new project with few or no decisions made and no code written for it yet. And Brownfield projects are effectively older applications usually associated with legacy code. You know, so it’s an application that already has code written toward it. Typically, it is out there in the world doing whatever it is supposed to do. JAMISON: Now, I want to put this question delicately. Are there any fecal connotations to the color ‘brown’ in Brownfield? CHUCK: Only if it’s PHP. JOE: [Chuckles]. Then it’s Poopfield Development? CHUCK: [Chuckles]. Okay, we are not gonna go down that tangent. [Laughter] AJ: Because, I mean honestly, when Mormons make jokes about crap, it never sounds good anyway. CHUCK: Yeah. So anyway, how many of you guys have actually worked on a real Greenfield project? Like been there from day one, that you have it just built yourself. JAMISON: I guess it depends on your definition. Maybe. So we have lots of services at ITV, so I've been part of spinning up completely new services that didn’t exist. We had other sort of similar things already, so some of the decisions were already made for, so we kind of had a style established. But it was still like a separate project. AJ: Do you forget us so soon, Jamison? JAMISON: [Chuckles]. AJ: You don’t remember ever working here or getting started… JAMISON: I do. I don’t remember Greenfield stuff; I remember new features, I mean,

Panel Joe Eames (twitter github blog) AJ O'Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Discussion Greenfield - Brand New Project Brownfield - Older Applications, Legacy Code Poopfield - PHP Development Dealing With Legacy Code Use Tests Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers Risk When is the big rewrite the correct answer? Picks Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (AJ) Roll Up Crepes (AJ) Calepin (AJ) Bernie (Jamison) Dota 2 (Jamison) Derrick Storm Novels - A Brewing Storm, A Bloody Storm, A Raging Storm (Joe) Castle (Joe) X-Wing Mineatures (Joe) PEX For Fun (Joe) MLG Championship - Starcraft Duel (Joe) VESA 75 to 100 Adapter (Chuck) LG Tone Bluetooth Headphones (Chuck) Transcript JOE: Listen baby, it won’t get weird. JAMISON: [Chuckles] AJ: That sounds... weird. JAMISON: [Chuckles] Too Late. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [This episode is sponsored by Harvest. I use Harvest to track time, track subcontractor’s time and invoice clients. Their time tracking is really simple and easy to use. Invoicing includes a ‘pay now’ function by credit card and PayPal. And you can sign up at getharvest.com. Use the code RF to get 50% off your first month.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 28 of the JavaScript Jabber show. This week on our panel, we have AJ O’Neil. AJ: Yo, yo, yo comin’ at you live from the second story of an office base in Orem, Utah. CHUCK:  We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi, I’m Jamison Dance and I am super excited, because today iTV just announced that we are doing the Nintendo TV thing; and I haven’t been able to talk about it for, like, six months, so it’s a good day. CHUCK: Cool. We also have Joe Eames. JOE: Comin at you semi live from American Fork, Utah. CHUCK: And I am Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. Tim is not with us this week because he is in China. I thought I’d point that out, because I think it’s cool. Anyway, this week we are going to be talking about Greenfield versus Brownfield projects. It was kind of funny when we were getting ready to do this, some of the panels were like, Green/Brown? JAMISON: Yeah, I have to pull Josh Susser and ask for a definition. CHUCK: So, as far as I understand it, there are some new --- to this, depending to who you talk to, but mostly, Greenfield is a brand new project with few or no decisions made and no code written for it yet. And Brownfield projects are effectively older applications usually associated with legacy code. You know, so it’s an application that already has code written toward it. Typically, it is out there in the world doing whatever it is supposed to do. JAMISON: Now, I want to put this question delicately. Are there any fecal connotations to the color ‘brown’ in Brownfield? CHUCK: Only if it’s PHP. JOE: [Chuckles]. Then it’s Poopfield Development? CHUCK: [Chuckles]. Okay, we are not gonna go down that tangent. [Laughter] AJ: Because, I mean honestly, when Mormons make jokes about crap, it never sounds good anyway. CHUCK: Yeah. So anyway, how many of you guys have actually worked on a real Greenfield project? Like been there from day one, that you have it just built yourself. JAMISON: I guess it depends on your definition. Maybe. So we have lots of services at ITV, so I've been part of spinning up completely new services that didn’t exist. We had other sort of similar things already, so some of the decisions were already made for, so we kind of had a style established. But it was still like a separate project. AJ: Do you forget us so soon, Jamison? JAMISON: [Chuckles]. AJ: You don’t remember ever working here or getting started… JAMISON: I do. I don’t remember Greenfield stuff; I remember new features, I mean,

Panel Joe Eames (twitter github blog) AJ O'Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Discussion Greenfield - Brand New Project Brownfield - Older Applications, Legacy Code Poopfield - PHP Development Dealing With Legacy Code Use Tests Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers Risk When is the big rewrite the correct answer? Picks Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (AJ) Roll Up Crepes (AJ) Calepin (AJ) Bernie (Jamison) Dota 2 (Jamison) Derrick Storm Novels - A Brewing Storm, A Bloody Storm, A Raging Storm (Joe) Castle (Joe) X-Wing Mineatures (Joe) PEX For Fun (Joe) MLG Championship - Starcraft Duel (Joe) VESA 75 to 100 Adapter (Chuck) LG Tone Bluetooth Headphones (Chuck) Transcript JOE: Listen baby, it won’t get weird. JAMISON: [Chuckles] AJ: That sounds... weird. JAMISON: [Chuckles] Too Late. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [This episode is sponsored by Harvest. I use Harvest to track time, track subcontractor’s time and invoice clients. Their time tracking is really simple and easy to use. Invoicing includes a ‘pay now’ function by credit card and PayPal. And you can sign up at getharvest.com. Use the code RF to get 50% off your first month.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 28 of the JavaScript Jabber show. This week on our panel, we have AJ O’Neil. AJ: Yo, yo, yo comin’ at you live from the second story of an office base in Orem, Utah. CHUCK:  We also have Jamison Dance. JAMISON: Hi, I’m Jamison Dance and I am super excited, because today iTV just announced that we are doing the Nintendo TV thing; and I haven’t been able to talk about it for, like, six months, so it’s a good day. CHUCK: Cool. We also have Joe Eames. JOE: Comin at you semi live from American Fork, Utah. CHUCK: And I am Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. Tim is not with us this week because he is in China. I thought I’d point that out, because I think it’s cool. Anyway, this week we are going to be talking about Greenfield versus Brownfield projects. It was kind of funny when we were getting ready to do this, some of the panels were like, Green/Brown? JAMISON: Yeah, I have to pull Josh Susser and ask for a definition. CHUCK: So, as far as I understand it, there are some new --- to this, depending to who you talk to, but mostly, Greenfield is a brand new project with few or no decisions made and no code written for it yet. And Brownfield projects are effectively older applications usually associated with legacy code. You know, so it’s an application that already has code written toward it. Typically, it is out there in the world doing whatever it is supposed to do. JAMISON: Now, I want to put this question delicately. Are there any fecal connotations to the color ‘brown’ in Brownfield? CHUCK: Only if it’s PHP. JOE: [Chuckles]. Then it’s Poopfield Development? CHUCK: [Chuckles]. Okay, we are not gonna go down that tangent. [Laughter] AJ: Because, I mean honestly, when Mormons make jokes about crap, it never sounds good anyway. CHUCK: Yeah. So anyway, how many of you guys have actually worked on a real Greenfield project? Like been there from day one, that you have it just built yourself. JAMISON: I guess it depends on your definition. Maybe. So we have lots of services at ITV, so I've been part of spinning up completely new services that didn’t exist. We had other sort of similar things already, so some of the decisions were already made for, so we kind of had a style established. But it was still like a separate project. AJ: Do you forget us so soon, Jamison? JAMISON: [Chuckles]. AJ: You don’t remember ever working here or getting started… JAMISON: I do. I don’t remember Greenfield stuff; I remember new features, I mean,