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Ready to unlock your Property Investment game in 2025? Grab your FREE copy of our Buy-to-Let market guide today! https://bit.ly/buy-to-let-hotspots-guide-2025 —————————In this energizing episode, Nick Claydon sits down with entrepreneur and property investor Luke Turner, founder of T2Fit. Luke brings a unique perspective to the intersection of fitness and property, sharing how his background as a semi-professional footballer led him to build a thriving fitness business and how he leveraged that success to step into property investing. Key LearningsStart before you feel ready, action drives growth.Discipline beats motivation every time.Mentors and coaches fast-track your results.Curate your environment for inspiration and support.Better health habits lead to better business decisions.Timestamps[01:27] - Who is Luke Turner?[07:10] - Early property experiences.[16:27] - Property mindset and creativity.[25:21] - The link between health and entrepreneurship[35:04] - Fitness routines, apps, and tracking goals[50:00] - Wrap-up and how to connect with LukeThis Episode is Sponsored by: Visit thispropertylife.co.uk for more resources, networking events, and industry insights.Follow Luke Turner: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luketurner_official/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luketurnerofficial Company(Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/transform2fituk Company(LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/company/t2fit/ Company(X): https://twitter.com/transform2fituk Company(Website): https://t2fit.co.uk/ Follow This Property Life Podcast:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thispropertylife/# Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564457166712&locale=en_GB LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/this-property-life-podcast/about/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thispropertylife?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/propertylifepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Gina Tabasso delves into her background as a Lean Six Sigma industrial growth strategist, sharing her journey from advertising to becoming a notable figure in manufacturing and industrial distribution. Gina and Deb discuss the complexities of helping small and medium-sized businesses grow, Gina’s holistic approach to marketing and lead generation, and the importance of addressing root issues in a business before executing marketing strategies. Gina also introduces the Manufacturing Resource Group, a consortium aiming to provide comprehensive support to manufacturing companies. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for C-suite leaders looking to navigate challenges in the manufacturing and marketing sectors. Episode Highlights: 00:34 Meet Gina Tobasso: Founder of Barracuda B2B Marketing 04:09 The Origin of Barracuda B2B Marketing 13:41 The Manufacturing Resource Group 18:52 Holistic Approach to Marketing and Business Solutions Gina Tabasso, founder of Barracuda B2B Marketing, is a powerhouse growth strategist with massive manufacturing chops. With 30+ years in industrial marketing and business development, she’s worked for the Ohio Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), holds Lean Six Sigma Yellow and Green Belts (Black Belt coming in 2025), and has completed six Lean Six Sigma projects. A welding-certified expert, she’s managed leading trade publications and founded the Manufacturing Resource Group, a consortium dedicated to helping manufacturers thrive. Backed by Sandler Sales training and National Utilities Refund auditing, Gina applies a data-driven, process-oriented approach that sets her apart from every B2B agency out there. Connect with Gina:

When we build a career we have choices. One choice is to dig deep into a specific areas of expertise and become a total domain expert, and another is to have a broader reach with varied experiences. Is one better than the other? In today's episode my fabulous guest, Meg Thomson, is sharing her diverse journey with us having led projects at Apple, Samsung, BCG Digital Ventures, Coles Supermarkets, Polestar Electric Cars, and OVO Energy. We are talking today about:Going after a broad career - the floodlight (multiple sectors) versus the torchlight approach (subject matter expert in one sector)Thriving beyond your comfort zoneThe power of a clear vision to galvanise teams during crises Meg's Career Toolbelt analogy : how to expand your 'toolbelt' and look for new experiences and opportunities to broaden your skills and experiences throughout your careerSomething Meg said:"If I am not uncomfortable, I am not growing and I am not learning. I have chosen to become a a strategic operations and customer experience expert globally, but I am always learning a new sector, whether its management consulting, tech with Apple, electric cars or FMCG. The investment I have to put in early-on in a role is to learn the sector, as well as the pain points of the customer. I will ask lots of questions, be humble and acknowledge that I don't know everything and lean on others' expertise; it's a steep learning curve!" Links:  Find Meg on LinkedinWatch Rebecca's FREE Masterclass and learn how to back yourself at work and set yourself up for a senior leadership promotionAnother ep: Learn to Love What it Takes to Become a Senior LeaderGet Rebecca's free GUIDE:  The 7 Habits of Female Execs Who Get PromotedFind Rebecca at her websiteAbout Meg:Meg Thomson is a remarkable professional with a career that spans across continents and industries and is a domain expert in the area of Customer Experience. Meg has lived in South Africa, Australia and UK and has held influential leadership roles at iconic brands such as Apple, Samsung, BCG Digital Ventures, Coles Supermarkets, Polestar Electric Cars, and OVO Energy. Notably, she spearheaded the customer strategy at (COMPANY X) during the UK's worst energy crisis in 50 years, leading her team to win the Best Customer Experience in a Crisis award in 2023. About Rebecca:Rebecca Allen is an Executive Coach and Personal Brand expert who helps corporate women attain senior leadership positions. Her clients come from a range of industries and companies including Aquila Capital, Reserve Bank of Australia, Goldman Sachs, Ministry of Defence, KPMG, J.P. Morgan and Coca-Cola Amatil. Rebecca's favourite work day was recently: her client sent her a photo of a card her son had written her. In his note, he praised his mum for chasing her career goals down, getting promoted and putting her needs first. Rebecca loves that her work impacts not just the women she coaches, but their families too.

Marsha Mavunkel serves as Chair of the Immigration Group at Ryan Swanson Law, where she specializes in U.S. Immigration and Naturalization law. Go to www.thejasoncavnessexperience.com for the full episode and other episodes of The Jason Cavness Experience on your favorite platforms.  Sponsor CavnessHR delivers HR companies with 49 or fewer people with our HR platform and by providing you access to your own HRBP. www.CavnessHR.com Partners Message your customers - https://www.tawk.to/?pid=byo1znq Payroll - https://offers.everee.com/cavness-hr Sales CRM for small business - https://refer.close.com/100cqlbfcgg5 Health Insurance and Benefits - https://www.peoplekeep.com/refer Marsha's Bio Marsha Mavunkel serves as Chair of the Immigration Group at Ryan Swanson Law, where she specializes in U.S. Immigration and Naturalization law. With a focus on family and employment-based immigration, she assists both individuals and corporations through the entire immigration process and in I-9 compliance issues. Marsha's expertise encompasses various immigrant and nonimmigrant visa categories. She is dedicated to advocating for her clients' rights, drawing from her background as a first-generation American and daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and from her work within the immigration field as a researcher, visiting international professional, and as a pro bono attorney. Marsha is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and has previously served in varying roles on the Executive Committee and as the Chair of the AILA Washington Chapter.  We talked about the following and other items Career paths and recession impacts on new lawyers. Human rights work in San Jose, Costa Rica, and networking opportunities. Travel experiences and countries to visit. Balancing work and family life as a mother of twins, with a focus on Indian American culture and community. Immigration lawyer's career path and interests. Business and family immigration. Immigration policies and their impact under different administrations. Immigration laws and truthfulness. Immigration system backlogs and long wait times for visas. Immigration challenges and legal options. H1B visa lottery system with 85,000 available slots, high demand, and changes in the system to prevent H1B visa application process and requirements. H1B visa caps and the immigration process. Immigration laws and personal experiences with camping and parenting Personal journey to law school, cultural perspective, and advocacy.  Law school difficulty and suitability. Lawyer selection and referrals. Immigration law and consultations for clients.  Immigration law and career goals with a focus on building relationships and learning about different fields. Mentorship and career development in law. Immigration policies and experiences with helping clients navigate the system. Immigration policies and employment verification. Immigration law and compliance.  Marsha's Social Media  Marsha's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marsha-mavunkel-5163b545/ Company Website: https://ryanswansonlaw.com/ Company X: https://x.com/RyanSwansonLaw Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanswansonlaw/ Marsha's Advice My general goal is to keep doing what I'm doing to help support businesses and families, and provide that sort of insight and guidance into the immigration system that I think is hard to know. It's a maze of a system and sometimes even we have a tough time navigating it. Sometimes even we hit those roadblocks and we're like, best I can tell you to do is talk to your congressperson talk to an ombudsman at the agency.  But so much of it is a waiting game and I think that can be the most frustrating part for clients is they're just so sick of waiting for the bureaucracy.

In this episode, we chat with Jonathan Owen, CEO of Metals One, a LSE-listed junior mining company who are developing brownfield projects in Finland and Norway, aiming to identify and define battery metal resources to supply an expanding European market. These metals have the potential to become strategic sources of battery metals for the European domestic market. Jonathan is an enterprising, highly resourceful, and results-driven Senior Executive, with 25+ years' of experience in building businesses, transforming operations, and driving positive change within global mining and metals organisations. He shares the story of Metal One, news of the drilling programme, the macro view of the Nickel market, and recent news on the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act. KEY TAKEAWAYS Metals One is focused on developing brownfield projects in Finland and Norway to identify and define battery metal resources for the expanding European market. The EU's legislation aims to secure domestic supplies of critical minerals, offering opportunities for funding and permit fast-tracking for mining companies like Metals One. Nickel prices are expected to remain stable around $18,000 a ton, with growing demand for high-quality nickel sulfate driven by the increasing adoption of electric vehicles. While still in early stages, Metals One emphasises social engagement and transparency with local communities to ensure social license to operate. Metals One is gearing up for a busy period, with upcoming preliminary economic assessments, feasibility studies, and environmental baselining to progress their projects towards production by 2030. BEST MOMENTS "The UK has some of the finest mining consultancies based here and offering services globally."  "It's all rosy. It's been a tough year for all in the mining industry. But I'm sure it's going to turn a corner this year." "Social license to operate is number one. I think it's as important, if not more important, than the quality of your raw body." "It's hugely important. Social license to operate is number one. I think it's as important, if not more important, than the quality of your raw body." VALUABLE RESOURCES Mail:        rob@mining-international.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/ X:              https://twitter.com/MiningRobTyson YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DigDeepTheMiningPodcast  Web:        http://www.mining-international.org Web: https://metals-one.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonny-owen/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/metals-one-plc/ Company X: https://x.com/metals_one_PLC X: https://x.com/JonnyOwen_MET1 ABOUT THE HOST Rob Tyson is the Founder and Director of Mining International Ltd, a leading global recruitment and headhunting consultancy based in the UK specialising in all areas of mining across the globe from first-world to third-world countries from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. We source, headhunt, and discover new and top talent through a targeted approach and search methodology and have a proven track record in sourcing and positioning exceptional candidates into our clients' organisations in any mining discipline or level. Mining International provides a transparent, informative, and trusted consultancy service to our candidates and clients to help them develop their careers and business goals and objectives in this ever-changing marketplace. CONTACT METHOD rob@mining-international.org https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/ Podcast Description Rob Tyson is an established recruiter in the mining and quarrying sector and decided to produce the “Dig Deep” The Mining Podcast to provide valuable and informative content around the mining industry. He has a passion and desire to promote the industry and the podcast aims to offer the mining community an insight into people's experiences and careers covering any mining discipline, giving the listeners helpful advice and guidance on industry topics. 

Efrem Fesaha CEO & Founder Boon Boona Coffee Go to www.thejasoncavnessexperience.com for the full episode and other episodes of The Jason Cavness Experience on your favorite platforms. Sponsor CavnessHR delivers HR companies with 49 or fewer people with our HR platform and by providing you access to your own HRBP. www.CavnessHR.com Partners Message your customers - https://www.tawk.to/?pid=byo1znq Payroll - https://offers.everee.com/cavness-hr  Sales CRM for small business - https://refer.close.com/100cqlbfcgg5 Health Insurance and Benefits - https://www.peoplekeep.com/refer Efrem's Bio Efrem Fesaha, is a first generation Eritrean American, graduate of Washington State University with his B.A. Prior to establishing Boon Boona Coffee. Efrem worked 13 years in corporate finance for local companies such as Holland America, Nordstrom and Amazon. In 2011, Efrem returned from a three-month stay in his family's native country of Eritrea where he became inspired by the Cafe culture that existed in the capital Asmara and returned to Seattle with the desire to venture into coffee. Boon Boona Coffee now has four owner-operated cafes and 10 branded cafes in corporate offices in Western Washington, +70 grocery stores, e-commerce and wholesale. Efrem won the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Washington Small Business Person of the Year award for 2022 and most recently was named 2022 Pacific Northwest Small Business Person of the Year, selected among state winners from Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Recipient of the 2022 Urban League's Community Coalition and 2023 Tabor 100, Community Service Crystal Eagle Award.  We talked about the following and other items Eritrean culture, refugee experiences, and current events in Sudan and Ethiopia. The diversity and complexity of Africa as a continent, with mentions of safety concerns and cultural differences. The diversity of Africa, including languages, cultures, and histories.  Geography, culture, and religion in Eritrea. Immigration, cultural assimilation, and parental expectations. Entrepreneurship, time management, and immigration.  Immigration and the determination of migrants seeking a better life. Coffee culture in Eritrea and its history. Coffee consumption and import/export process from Africa to the US. Sourcing coffee from Africa, focusing on Ethiopia and Uganda. Coffee types, growth, and scarcity. Coffee preferences and names with a coffee shop owner.  Coffee roasting and freshness. Coffee tasting, travel experiences, and cultural foods. Travel experiences and self-care practices. Mental and physical wellness, entrepreneurship, and certifications. Entrepreneurship, resilience, and navigating challenges. Personal growth and progress without reaching a final goal. Hiring and training staff for a coffee business. Hiring and evaluating employees, with a focus on providing support and setting expectations for improvement. Partnering with corporations for coffee sales. Coffee pricing and quality, with a focus on fair trade and organic sourcing. Improving coffee shop experience through team feedback and community engagement. Coffee culture, customer service, and location selection. Starting a small business while pursuing an MBA program. Buying a second cafe during a pandemic. Designing a cafe with a friend who's an artist. Entrepreneurship, mentorship, and humility in the face of challenges. Navigating business restrictions during COVID-19 pandemic. Financial challenges and opportunities for a coffee shop during the pandemic.  Entrepreneurship challenges and advice for new entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship, business growth, and community engagement. East African community in Seattle, coffee ceremony, and business growth. Starting a coffee business, sourcing, community engagement, and quality. Coffee shipping, quality, and brewing methods. Coffee preferences and equipment maintenance. Coffee industry future, community engagement, and upcoming events. Efrem's Social Media  Efrem's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efrem-fesaha-1082a65b/ Company Website: https://www.boonboonacoffee.com/ Company X: https://twitter.com/BoonBoonaCoffee  Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boonboonacoffee/ Company TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@boonboonacoffee Efrem's Advice Do something good. Or do some good that benefits someone else. Just try doing something good in your community. It doesn't need to be anything elaborate, doesn't need to be anything crazy, wild or big.

Kelly Kirk Financial Literacy Enthusiast - Walter the Vault's Director of Content & Innovation Go to www.thejasoncavnessexperience.com for the full episode and other episodes of The Jason Cavness Experience on your favorite platforms.  Sponsor CavnessHR delivers HR companies with 49 or fewer people with our HR platform and by providing you access to your own HRBP. www.CavnessHR.com Partners Message your customers - https://www.tawk.to/?pid=byo1znq Payroll - https://offers.everee.com/cavness-hr Sales CRM for small business - https://refer.close.com/100cqlbfcgg5 Health Insurance and Benefits - https://www.peoplekeep.com/refer Kelly's Bio Kelly Kirk is an enthusiastic educator, entrepreneur, and content creator with a passion for financial literacy. With over a decade in international education, Kelly has honed her skills in making learning memorable, effective, and engaging. From founding a private acting school for international students in Shanghai to freelance acting with educational apps, Kelly's journey has been marked by creativity, leadership and innovation. Her experiences have shown her the power of immersive teaching methods, transforming textbooks into captivating experiences. Returning to the USA, Kelly's curiosity led her to explore finance and investing even more than ever before, resulting in making big moves on her own with impressive returns on investments like Netflix and Dogecoin - this allowed her to invest in "Walter the Vault" an iconic character to help families to learn about money. Over the past 3 years she's worked building out this business, paid in sweat labor, ownership and encouragement. She's 100% driven to share simplified financial literacy knowledge for families, believing that financial education should be a fundamental part of everyone's life from a young age. In addition to building out educational financial content, Kelly boldly advocates for retail investors, proudly holding positions in GameStop, AMC, and "the former" Bed Bath and Beyond. She sees these investments as incredible opportunities to challenge financial norms and empower individuals.  To be clear, Kelly is not a financial advisor, nothing she says is financial advice... she encourages you to do your own research and not consider any of this conversation anything more than speculation. It's similar to celebrity gossip, but business gossip that Kelly is invested in and excited about, chatting about. Don't read into it more than that. Do your own research. Kelly's passion for "Walter the Vault's" success qualified her as a finalist for "Rising Leader" among the 2023 Women in Toys, Wonder Women Awards. She is also currently studying for her EMBA at Quantic University (and really enjoying the experience!) Driven by her desire to create impactful content, Kelly is focused on leaving a lasting legacy of knowledge and empowerment.  We talked about the following and other items Education, parenting, and career experiences. China's education system and content creation. Teaching English in China, viral content creation, and dealing with rumors. Financial literacy, investing, and personal growth. Manipulating companies for profit through insider trading and consulting groups. Stock market manipulation and conspiracy theories. Personal finance, debt, and investing. Work-life balance, parenting, and screen time for children.  Public vs private schools, with personal experiences and criticisms. The effectiveness of college education and the influence of powerful individuals in shaping the system. Entrepreneurship, creativity, and content creation. Education system, improv, and comedy. Improving financial literacy for children through social media. Personal finance, investing, and cryptocurrency. Networking events, pitching, and social anxiety. Entrepreneurship, funding, and life in Seattle. Entrepreneurship, hosting events, and networking. Entrepreneurship, networking, and mentorship. Entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and business ideas.  Bed Bath & Beyond bankruptcy, conspiracy theories, and financial analysis. Financial crisis, debt relief, and misinformation. Economic and social issues, including immigration, education, and technology. Future tech, including the metaverse and mind-reading, with a focus on accountability and the balance between digital and real-life experiences. Financial literacy for kids and entrepreneurship.  Parenting, education, and bullying. Education, work ethic, and economic uncertainty. AI, automation, and its impact on society, jobs, and leadership.  Student loan debt and its impact on individuals and society. Kelly's Social Media  Kelly's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kkwtv/  Company Website: https://walterthevault.com/ Company X: https://twitter.com/walterthevault Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/walterthevault/ Company TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@walterthevault Kelly's Advice  I always say if you're gonna be late, be great. So if you're ever running late to anything, decide, okay, you know what? I'm late. Embrace it. So when I get there be awesome.

Get to the bottom of how policy is ushering along the energy transition. In part two of the series, Associate Professor Nicholas Rivers shares how energy policies are helping shape the actions taken to address climate change. From decarbonizing buildings and transportation to the hard-to-tackle parts of Canada's economy and its major industries. Plus policy's role in supporting distributed energy and resources. Dive back into the conversation in episode 139 of thinkenergy. Related links   ●       Listen to part one: https://thinkenergypodcast.com/episodes/energy-policy-deep-dive-with-nicholas-rivers-part-1/ ●       More about Nicholas Rivers: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/969 ●       uOttawa Institute of the Environment: https://www.uottawa.ca/research-innovation/environment ●       The Canadian Climate Institute: https://climateinstitute.ca/ ●       Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ ●       Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en    To subscribe using Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thinkenergy/id1465129405   To subscribe using Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7wFz7rdR8Gq3f2WOafjxpl   To subscribe on Libsyn: http://thinkenergy.libsyn.com/ --- Subscribe so you don't miss a video: https://www.youtube.com/user/hydroottawalimited   Follow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hydroottawa   Stay in the know on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HydroOttawa   Keep up with the posts on X: https://twitter.com/thinkenergypod   Transcrpit: Trevor Freeman  00:07 Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the frontlines of the energy transition. Join me Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com. Hi, everyone, welcome back. Okay, so this is part two of my conversation with Nicholas rivers about policy, and specifically how policy is and will in the future, shaping the different solutions and different actions that we can take to address climate change and to usher along the energy transition that has already started. As a refresher, Nicholas rivers is a Professor of Public Policy and International Affairs from the University of Ottawa. And his area of focus is really the sort of research into an evaluation of environmental policies. So this is a great conversation. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode with Nicolas, I really encourage you to do that it kind of lays the groundwork and really helps feed into this part of the conversation. On today's episode, we're going to talk about decarbonizing buildings, decarbonizing transportation, about some of those hard to tackle parts of our economy, kind of those major industries, as well as the role of policy and supporting distributed energy resources. So solar panels and batteries and things like that. So it's really a great conversation, start with the previous episode, if you haven't already. And then thanks for joining us here for this one. And happy listening. Okay, so we've talked about generation at the grid level, but let's talk about what we call distributed energy resources. And for our listeners, just a reminder, this is things like rooftop solar behind the meter storage, so having batteries at homes or businesses, which we are going to need a lot more of in the future. And we're going to see a lot more of on our grid in the future. What policy tools are out there that could help ramp up the implementation of these resources? Is it as simple as you know, incentives to lower the upfront cost?   Nicholas Rivers  02:21 Okay, good question. Maybe I'll just start out by giving some broader perspective about why we why we might want to go down the distributed energy route. So as you mentioned, a distributed energy resources are things like rooftop solar, right on the kind of residential building or a battery pack in the garage of your residential building. And this is a different approach than the way we normally approach the electricity sector, where our generation and storage infrastructure to the extent we have any is centralized, right. So in a centralized system, if it's solar, it would be a big utility scale solar project in a field somewhere, or now we're starting to see the ISO just approved a bunch of battery storage projects that are going to be you know, big centralized resources, really big batteries, or it could be pumped hydro, or you know, compressed air storage that that are not in someone's garage, they're, you know, these big sites that are that are well away from people's homes typically. So why would we want to change the paradigm and, and go towards this kind of decentralized type of approach where the where the resources are in people's homes or on people's homes? I'd say there was a couple of reasons we might want to go that route. One is that the distributed resources if they're in people's homes, well, they're close to the demand. Right? So if people you know, ultimately, the reason we have electricity generation is to meet people's and industries demands for electricity. And putting those resources right at the source of demand means that we don't need so many wires to connect the resources to the to the demand centers, and potentially that there's less congestion on the wires and, and less losses getting from the source of supply to the source of demand. So that's one reason. Another big reason I think, that will become more important in some areas of the world and more important as we scale up decarbonisation is land use, and then, you know, we got all these rooftops that are just sitting there. And putting solar panels on those, basically wasted surfaces is a way of conserving land as opposed to to putting new solar panels in a field that has other uses. So I see that as being a potentially really important reason why we might go down that decentralized route. It's important to say that land use constraints are not binding in Ontario today for for, especially for zero carbon resources, right? There's we're lucky in Ontario that we've got a fair amount of land per person. And we've also not got that many solar or wind or battery resources currently. And so the pressure that we're putting on our land from those types of centralized resources are pretty small. But certainly as we try to go further on that decarbonisation route, thinking about land constraints is going to be important. I would say that there is a downside to going the decentralized route. And that's that it's more costly. So generating electricity at a home, is storage of storing electricity at home is typically quite a bit more expensive than doing it at a utility scale, in a in a kind of centralized manner. And that's just because, you know, a solar panel cost what a solar panel costs. So you're getting, I think, the same basic solar panel, solar module, and a centralized system, compared to a decentralized system. But all the side costs, the cost of planning and installing, and all the racking that has to go for solar panels, same with batteries, is a lot more expensive, when it's done kind of on these boutique, individual roof projects, compared to what it's done in a centralized approach. And so what we're gonna do as we think about, you know, do we go down this more decentralized route or more centralized route? So we've got to think, are these land benefits and the benefits we get from having the resources close to the demand? Are they outweighing the extra cost that we're paying from, from going this more decentralized route?   Trevor Freeman  02:25 Yeah, so it's kind of an economies of scale question of obviously, investing in the infrastructure for a large scale solar installation gives you that, you know, more bang for your buck on a kilowatt hour basis, then each individual rooftop project, but I guess there's that aspect of, you know, customer control and customer preference of, you know, I like the idea of having my own power generated on my roof, it gives me some control, it gives me some redundancy. It also kind of protects and let me know what your thoughts on this it. It locks me into cost for energy, at least for a portion of my energy for the life of that equipment, rather than sort of being at the whim of rising utility costs over time. Is that a fair assessment?   Nicholas Rivers  07:15 Yeah, I think that's right. Solar panels and batteries, both have a free long lifetime. So once you've paid for them, you know, what you paid, and you're going to be able to amortize them over the length of the investment. Of course, that assumes that you're going to be living in the same house for the 20 or 30 years of the investment.   Trevor Freeman  07:31 Exactly. Yeah.   Nicholas Rivers  07:32 So I think there is still a risk there. But I do agree with you that it does put more control in individuals hands more, it gives people an ability to kind of choose their own destiny with respect to energy, it allows them to make a zero carbon investment that, you know, they maybe feel really strongly about, and that isn't being made on their behalf at the central level. So I think you're right that it does give more autonomy to households.   Trevor Freeman  07:58 Yeah. And the current way that we I guess, sort of funder incentivize, if you will, on rooftop solar, for example, is just through the rates, so you're offsetting your rates. And that is how you get your payback on your panels. I know you and I have chatted previously about the model in Australia. Can you tell us a little bit about how they've approached this?   Nicholas Rivers  08:20 Yeah. So, South Australia also uses this net metering approach. So basically, net metering means when you're consuming electricity, you can think of like an old analog meter, the meters running one direction. And then when you generate electricity, and return it to the grid, when you're not using as much as you're generating, the analog meter runs the opposite direction. Of course, these meters aren't analog anymore. They're digital, but they're allowing you to kind of reverse the meter at times when you're generating.   Trevor Freeman  08:50 Yep.   Nicholas Rivers  08:51 South Australia has been a real leader in getting solar on people's rooftops. Now, you might think, oh, it's super sunny in South Australia, and it is super sunny in South Australia. So it makes sense to have solar in people's rooftops. But there are lots of areas in the world that are super sunny, that have had not nearly the success that South Australia has had in putting solar on rooftops. And I would think one of the big reasons is, is program design. So they have designed a program that makes it really easy to access the program and access the incentives that are part of the program, and that lets household navigate it pretty seamlessly. So my understanding of the program is it's an incentive, which is the typical way we we kind of provide incentives for people to to undertake these novel technologies. It provides households with a you know, an upfront payment for for putting solar on the roofs. But I think that the real trick is that it's not provided to the household. And there's not an onerous application process that happens. It's provided to the to the companies that install solar panels on people's roofs and they pass through the incentive. Have to the household. So all of the paperwork and the planning is undertaken by the company. And the household, basically, just, as my understanding just says, Yeah, I want some solar panels on my roof. And, you know, tomorrow the solar panels are on the roof. And they don't have to go through the kind of extensive paperwork and the qualifying and the waiting for the, the incentive to be paid. It's all done upfront. And it's all done with a minimum of paperwork.   Trevor Freeman  10:23 Yeah, so from a homeowner perspective, in Canada versus in South Australia, South Australia is just seeking a much cheaper cost for solar, they don't have to jump through the hoops. That's all kind of done taken on by the government and by the the industry.   Nicholas Rivers  10:39 Yeah, and we do have incentives for solar here. In some provinces anyway, and there have been incentives federally, but they're there, they're more onerous to apply for. And they put the homeowner in the position of having to pay for the system upfront, and then waiting for the rebate. And it's a big outlay for homeowners and the rebate is uncertain, right? You can put the paperwork in. And of course, you think you're gonna get it back. But there's always that chance that something went wrong, and you didn't do it quite right. You don't get the rebate. Yeah, there's a risk there. So I think this this kind of upfront payments program that's processed by the company is as a real, you know, something we could learn from in Canada.   Trevor Freeman  11:16 Right. So that's potentially a key role. And this may be applies to other programs, as well of, of government have policies to take on that administrative burden take on that risk, if you will, away from the end user to make it seamless and streamlined for the end user and easier to do   Nicholas Rivers  11:33 People have better things to do than think about energy. And so I think that   Trevor Freeman  11:38 Or fill out paperwork,   Nicholas Rivers  11:39 yeah, fill out paperwork, and just, you know, they don't want to spend their time, you know, trying to figure out if the incentive is going to cover their net metering benefits they wants to be they want to be added be as easy as possible.   Trevor Freeman  11:52 Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, moving along, then to transportation. This is something of course, that Canadians will be pretty familiar with. We've seen a big move toward electrifying personal vehicles, there are more EVs out there today than ever before, you know, going back into even recent memory, it seemed like a rare thing to see an EV on the road. And now it's not at all, but there's still a long way to go. As much as we've got a lot more, we still are overwhelmingly using fossil fuels for our personal transportation. What kinds of approaches will help speed that transition up? We have a federal rebate when it comes to buying electric vehicle. Is that enough? Or are there other tools that we can use to speed up that transition?   Nicholas Rivers  12:36 Yeah, we're at about 11% of new cars that are sold are electric these days, and about one and a half percent of our fleet, because it takes our fleet a long time to turnover, right. So even if we get to 100% sales, we could still be waiting another 20 years before we get to 100% of our fleet be electric. So this is not going to be something that resolves itself really quickly. Because it does take a long time to turnover and longtime for car manufacturers to change the kind of vehicles they're making. I'm convinced we're on the transition, and that it is underway no matter what we do in this sector, that that these cars will be eventually be as cheap or cheaper than internal combustion engine cars, and will deliver the range that we want and the performance that we want. We're not there yet. So So what do we do in the meantime, I would say one of the things we should be doing as governments is fixing kind of the chicken and the egg problem of electric vehicles and governments are very active in this area. But the chicken and egg problem is who wants to build a charging station if there's no electric vehicles, and who wants to buy an electric vehicle if there's no charging stations. And so I think government has been playing an active role there, although arguably, it's still behind where we want it to be. People still experienced troubles with charging electric vehicles. And reliability of chargers is an issue. It turns out that the economics of operating a charging station don't look very good. And so perhaps there needs to be more of a public role in figuring out how to get these systems up and running more of the time. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like. But, but I do think the problem isn't going to solve itself entirely on its own, especially in more remote or Northern or rural areas. This probably along a lot of role for government support for charging. In terms of a policy approach. I really like the zero emission vehicle standard. This is just a standard that says okay, manufacturers, it's targeted. The manufacturer is not a retailer or not customers. And it says manufacturers you have to sell a certain proportion of the fleet you sell is zero by zero emission by this year and a bigger percentage by this year. And that's something that Quebec and BC and California and a number of other places have implemented zero emission vehicle standard, and the Canadian federal government has announced that it's going to go the same route.   Trevor Freeman  15:05 Gotcha.   Nicholas Rivers  15:06 And so what that says is, in 2026, in Canada, major vehicle manufacturers will have to sell 20% of their fleets as electric vehicles. Were at about 11% today. And that number will ramp up every year until it hits 100% by 2035. Now, again, I think this transition is happening anyway. So I think that that will help speed up the transition. But at it, it's not dramatically different from kind of what we expect, even without that kind of policy. And so I do think that's a that's a really nice policy, because it gives automakers a target, it gives them some certainty. And it helps to ensure that they make vehicles available to Canadians where they want them.   Trevor Freeman  15:48 Yeah, I think, I mean, we've all heard those stories of people that wanted to buy an electric vehicle on it wasn't ready, or the price point wasn't there. And I think by requiring more stock, requiring those targets to be hit, it's going to help move people along in the direction that a lot of people already want to go. And we're seeing that as those numbers tick up.   Nicholas Rivers  16:08 Yeah. Let me say a little bit more about this policy, because I think it's cool. It's one of those examples, which is a regulatory policy, which has a market based or carbon pricing kind of component to it. So it's regulatory, right? I just described that manufacturers have to hit, let's say, a 20% target in the year 2026. So the rule is, if you sell a lot of vehicles in Canada, 20% of them have to be electric by 2026. But then it's got this kind of hybrid component, not a hybrid car hybrid policy. So the it's kind of, it's got a carbon price kind of built in, which says, Hey, if you can't do it, well, you can trade with some other company that can. So maybe it's going to be gonna make up some names here, maybe it's going to be that company X says, oh, you know, we're really, you know, we really don't want to make the transition quite so quickly, we're going to sell internal combustion engine cars for a few more years. And Company Y says, Well, we're actually way ahead of that curve, it's going to be able to sell some of its credits, Company Y is going to sell some credits to Company X. And so Company X could keep doing what it's doing. But pay a penalty, that company y can get a benefit from being ahead of the curve.   Trevor Freeman  17:17 Gotcha. And to the consumer, the overall stock of options is still where the government wants it to be. There's still enough electric vehicles out there that we can purchase.   Nicholas Rivers  17:27 That's right. I think I mean, the the availability is less of a concern now than it was when supply chains were all snared up during the pandemic. I think if you went out and you had the money, and you were willing to, you wanted to go buy an electric car, you would get one relatively quickly today.   Trevor Freeman  17:42 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  17:43 That's, that's I think that was that's a legacy problem that fortunately, we don't have so much anymore.   Trevor Freeman  17:47 So I mean, that's personal transportation, we're also seeing a move to make public transportation more carbon free and more electric here in Ottawa, where I'm based where we're both based. We've seen our city make that transition to electric buses, we're bringing on you know, a portion of the fleet in the next couple of years is going to be electric buses, we've seen our new LRT system is at least partially electrified, what are some of the policies out there that are helping municipalities or operators and public transit systems make this shift from traditional fossil fuel systems?   Nicholas Rivers  18:27 Yeah, so this is a procurement policy. So it's government saying, we're going to create a new market for this technology that doesn't really exist yet. And help to drive drive technology along right. So this is something we talked about a little while ago. And I think that this will help, you know, these these vehicles, big vehicles with heavy duty cycles. There's certainly parallels in kind of goods transport. So having some of that kind of exposure to new deployment in the public sector, I think will help with decarbonizing goods transport later on. So this is one of the cases where governments kind of creating this niche role for each policy or niche, I guess, nice role for this technology to be deployed first. And it's accepting the higher cost of these policies of these technologies initially, and will help drive down the costs as they get some experience with these technologies. Okay, so what's it what's it doing in Ottawa? Ottawa has promised to not buy any more fossil fuel buses, it's gonna slowly transition its bus fleet to electric. And I guess that's a procurement policy. It's supported by funds from the federal government. So the Canadian infrastructure bank supports this policy. And so the way that it works is the federal government's pay the additional cost that the electric bus costs relative to a normal diesel bus, and the city just pays the same as it would for the normal diesel boss with the feds picking up the rest of the tab.   Trevor Freeman  19:58 Right   Nicholas Rivers  19:58 The city's original expense. response has been really positive, it's found that maintenance costs are lower that fuel costs are lower, and the performance is at least as good in the electric buses compared to the, to the diesel buses. So it's experiencing a cost savings. And at least in the initial reporting, this seems like a really positive experience.   Trevor Freeman  20:17 So it's essentially the policy there is helping buy down that initial upfront jumping costs. So that, you know, yeah, municipal budgets can remain the same.   Nicholas Rivers  20:26 Exactly.   Trevor Freeman  20:26 But we get that better technology, and we're moving forward on our emissions reduction.   Nicholas Rivers  20:30 Yeah. So this is really a federal and and city policy.   Trevor Freeman  20:33 Gotcha. Okay, so let's talk about buildings, which are a major source of emissions, especially here in Canada, primarily because we are a cold climate, and we have to heat those buildings, or else they wouldn't be comfortable. And traditionally, this has been done with fossil fuels, you know, we burn natural gas, to heat our buildings is a large majority of Canadians. That's how they heat their space. In Canada buildings account for over 100 million tons of GHG emissions a year. So this is definitely a sector that we need to see some transition in how we approach them. What is the role of policymakers to help us decarbonize our buildings? And I want to split this question into two pieces, the first being residential buildings. And then we'll talk about commercial and institutional after because I think they're they're kind of different cases here. So let's talk about residential first.   Nicholas Rivers  21:25 Okay, residential buildings, I think heard at some of this is going to apply to both residential and commercial but of residential buildings, you're totally right to say that the big source of emissions is natural gas. And we do have other fuel uses as well like oil and propane, but the the big one is gas. And I think a special challenge for residential buildings. And it applies to commercial buildings as well, but especially residential is that they last a really long time. And then, so it's not like cars where you know, after we have got all the new cars to be zero emission, you got to wait maybe 10 or 15, or maximum 20 years, and the entire fleet is zero emission. Because cars only last 15 or 20 years buildings last, we don't even know how long they last hundreds of years. 100 years.   Trevor Freeman  22:14 Yeah, exactly.   Nicholas Rivers  22:15 And so we don't just have to tackle new buildings and then wait for them to kind of percolate through in the same way as we do for light bulbs or cars or something, we have to figure out a way to decarbonize existing buildings. And this turns out to be difficult. But let me start by saying the first thing we should do is make sure that the new buildings that we're building are not producing carbon emissions, that's the easiest thing to do. Getting a tackling a building or decarbonizing building, once it's already built, and part of the building stock is relatively difficult compared to taking a new building and designing to be zero carbon from the outset. And my view is that the best thing we can do there is to not connect new homes to the natural gas network, or at least pass the full costs of the natural gas network onto these new homes as they're built so that homeowners can make and developers can make an informed decision about the most effective way to produce those new homes.   Trevor Freeman  23:13 Yeah, I think like even that concept is something we talk about, you know, when we're working with our customers on equipment choices, as well, as you know, the decision you're making today on, you know, let's say your boiler will last with you for the life and that equipment. And in the case of a boiler, let's say that's 25 years, but to your point, in the case of a home, deciding to start down that path of fossil fuels, that building is going to live with us for you know, who knows how long and we will then have to get off those fossil fuels later. So I think for that new construction piece, yeah, that makes a lot of sense of making sure we're making the right decisions today, because we know we have to electrify   Nicholas Rivers  23:50 Right. Yeah, we do not what we don't want to do is build a gas home. And then 10 years later say, oh, let's actually make this home an electric home.   Trevor Freeman  23:58 Yeah, totally.   Nicholas Rivers  23:59 Because now we've spent twice on on one thing. So if we know we're gonna go zero emission, then we should be building new homes as zero emission homes. And we'll save money doing it.   Trevor Freeman  24:08 Yeah, and we know how to do that today.   Nicholas Rivers  24:10 We know how to do it. The harder problem is existing homes. And that's, you know, most of the homes that are around today that are part of our housing stock today will still be part of our housing stock in 2050. So we don't get to do over. We've got to tackle these existing homes. And it's relatively difficult compared to other sectors. Because if you want to take an existing home and decarbonize it, you really have to do it on a home by home basis. You have to invite you know, an auditor in and figure out what's wrong with it, or the cheapest way to decarbonize that home is most effective way to decarbonize at home, maybe get some engineers to help figure out what the interventions look like maybe gotta consultant in to put some new windows or doors or insulation or air sealing into the home and so but I adds up to a lot, a lot of people being touching the home, it's not something where we can go to a factory typically and pull out an identical component that, you know, might get cheaper over time, and strap it to the home. So I think that's part of what makes this challenge difficult. Luckily, we do have some kind of economies of scale in homes when it comes to heating systems. And this is heat pumps that can be adapted to most homes as a replacement for a furnace, or even a boiler. And Heat pumps are a technology that I think people have heard a lot more about over the last couple of years, they're basically an air conditioner that can run in reverse. So we can move heat out of a house and also move heat into a house. And these are getting more common for a cold climate, like we're in. And getting cheaper and contractors are getting more experienced with them. And so I think that we will start seeing more penetration of heat pumps in residential sector. Having said that, it's not a it's not a slam dunk. Right now, heat pumps, in some cases are cost effective compared to gas. But they're right at the margin, right? So you don't save a whole bunch of money by switching a gas furnace to heat pump. In, for example, in Ontario. Now that'll change. If our carbon price keeps going up every year, eventually, it'll it'll become something where the carbon price makes heat pumps make easy financial sense that it becomes a more straightforward decision. But right now, they're kind of similar cost to operate compared to a natural gas furnace. And so we're not seeing a whole bunch of penetration of them in Ontario.   Trevor Freeman  26:50 Yeah, I mean, I think that even even just that fact that actually, coincidentally, the previous episode on this, we actually talked about heat pumps and went through a bit of a case study with with someone that installed one, but you're right, like right now, you're kind of comparable, and your energy costs, maybe you save a little bit of kind of depends on on the rest of your context as well. But that highlights the value of the role in policy of helping to drive down that upfront cost. And by helping get more of them out there. And letting as we've talked about already, in this conversation, letting the market forces drive down the cost of heat pumps, because we're going to be putting more of them out there in the manual manufacturing process, the supply chain process, that's all going to find those efficiencies so that putting that heat pump in becomes comparable on an upfront cost basis to a furnace, for example, which today it's not.   Nicholas Rivers  27:44 Yeah, I would say the other challenge is that the whole HVAC or heating ventilation air conditioning ecosystem is set up around natural gas furnaces and natural gas water heaters in Ontario. And so the contractors are used to it, people are used to it. And it's it makes it kind of when your furnace or your hot water heater fails, and you panic a little bit because it's the winter and you don't want to get cold the next day, the easiest thing to do is to call your company and get them to put in the same thing as you've already had it's safe, you know it works. And by doing that, you've locked yourself into another 20 or 25 years of heating with natural gas. And so I think one of the things is just kind of the human dimension of this problem that heat pumps remain kind of is unconventional technology. They work really well they've been demonstrated to work really well in Ontario, but it's not widely known. And certainly the supply chain isn't there in the same way as it is for furnaces, and the contractors are, I think less comfortable with installing them as they are for furnaces. And so people get guided towards furnaces at the time of furnace failure or water heater failure. And it's only like this kind of, I think if the people that really want heat pumps that end up going towards that route right now. Because you really have to you have to want them for that to be the outcome. It's not something that's going to happen on its own. And unfortunately, in this moment of panic, you don't get the time to kind of reflect on on what you might want over the next couple of decades.   Trevor Freeman  29:25 Yeah, totally. And I've I've thought about this a little anecdote on this show before my own experience with having a furnace die in January as I was starting my research into heat pumps and ended up being able to get a heat pump but not in the manner that I wanted, not the system that I really wanted. And, and yeah, I ended up because of that, having to do all the research myself and being someone that works in the energy space. That's, you know, that's what the reality was.   Nicholas Rivers  29:50 I would say the other thing is I heat pump provides both air conditioning and heating. And it turns out that heat pump is basically cost competitive with a new furnace, and a new air conditioner. So if you if you, if you take a new house, and you either decide to put in a furnace and an air conditioner or heat pump, it's a wash, you'll pay the same for both. But very rarely does a house have a furnace and an air conditioner fail at exactly the same moment. So that they're making this kind of apples to apples comparison of a system that can provide both heating and cooling with another system that could provide both heating and cooling. And so this is like this coordination problem that heat pumps provide. And so I think when we're thinking about public policy, we should be thinking about not this kind of rational decision maker that's weighing the pros and cons of these two systems. But really, the person who's in a panic because their furnace failed in the middle of the night. And we got to think about how to make the Low Carbon solution, the easy solution for that person.   Trevor Freeman  30:50 Yeah, 100%. I mean, this goes back to the, I guess, the intro of what will be part one of this conversation that I gave and talking about, you know, the policy piece is kind of that foundation, that bedrock upon which the technological solutions the societal solutions are built, and exactly what we talked about with solar. How can we use policy to make this an easy path, make it the easiest path so that when someone doesn't want to think about it, when their furnace dies in the middle of the winter. This is the logical and easy and the path that they're going to choose.   Nicholas Rivers  31:23 Yeah, I think in many cases, choices are problematic, right? I'm a believer that that's not that's not universally true that more choices are often better. But also that we can get paralyzed by choices. So having to choose between a heat pump and a furnace is difficult for most people. Most people don't want to spend your time thinking about that. And I think, eventually, I'm of the view that we want to take a regulatory approach that we don't want to just allow everyone to be kind of deliberating especially at a panic about this choice themselves. Probably eventually, when heat pumps become good enough universally, that we want to have that be the regulated solution.   Trevor Freeman  32:02 Yeah, gotcha. Especially when to your point. It is the it becomes that clear, best choice. It's the most efficient.   Nicholas Rivers  32:09 Exactly, yeah.   Trevor Freeman  32:10 And we're working towards that we're getting   Nicholas Rivers  32:12 we're not quite there yet. There are places where heat pumps are not as effective as furnaces. And so I think that's why we haven't seen regulation in this space yet. But I think that should be an end goal.   Trevor Freeman  32:23 Gotcha. Okay, so that was residential buildings. As I said, commercial and institutional are kind of a different beast altogether. These are bigger buildings systems are bigger and obviously, more expensive ownership structure can be complicated. You have owners of buildings and tenants, you have investment companies that are sort of investing in the building as an asset as a way to make money. Help us tackle this beast, what is the role of policy and helping commercial buildings decarbonize here in Canada?   Nicholas Rivers  32:56 Yeah, good question. Again, I wouldn't say this kind of tenant and owner issue also applies if the residential sector, right, so there are renters that want to have a more efficient building, and that don't have any power to make investments in their building. So similar dynamic there, I think. I won't talk about specific technologies in the commercial sector, although there are lots of places that are experimenting with innovative new heating and cooling technologies, again, heating and cooling as the big greenhouse gas source in the commercial building sector, like it isn't residential. But I will just say that, I think the the types of decisions that are made and the way that they're made, it is quite different in the commercial sector to the residential sector. In a bigger commercial building, there'll be a building manager that's responsible for making decisions about, about heating and cooling investments in that. In that building, there'll be lots of tools that they have access to building management software, that that kind of optimizes building energy use, and costs, and helps them to make these kinds of decisions. So whereas the residential consumer doesn't necessarily want to think about what their what types of investments they should make to maximize their comfort and minimize their energy costs. That's what this building manager in a building is paid to do. And so they are going to be really thinking about this, these decisions carefully, and they're not going to be you know, they are going to be highly engaged in these decisions about what what types of energy to be using in the building. And as a result, I would say that carbon pricing can be quite effective in this sector, that policies that shift the relative costs of heating with gas compared to heating with electricity. They're going to hit the bottom line in that building manager for that building manager really quickly and allow them to kind of pivot if there are technologies available that can help them reoptimize in response to these changing prices, I will say that it's important to think about designing rebates for that carbon price. So we don't end up digging, our commercial buildings say we've we've designed rebates for, for residential households and for big industry. But I do think that this kind of pricing tool can be effective, probably more effective in the commercial sector than it can be in the residential sector. Because because there are people whose job it is to pay attention to building energy costs.   Trevor Freeman  35:31 Yeah, and I mean, you talk about rebates, I think, if there's a way to direct those rebates or direct that reinvestment into the types of solutions that are going to help people double down on the savings, and reduce their carbon consumption, and you know, then the next time around, it's even better and even better, I think that's definitely impactful.   Nicholas Rivers  35:51 Right? Yeah. So combinations of incentives and a kind of carrots and sticks approach. I agree.   Trevor Freeman  35:57 I do want to mention, and partly this is a bit of a plug here on the hydro Ottawa side of, you know, one of the initiatives that the federal government's taken on in terms of deep retrofits for commercial buildings is something they call their deep retrofit accelerator initiative. It's a program that hydro Ottawa is a part of two builds, build support services for commercial customers to identify pathways to decarbonize. So this isn't, you know, going out and paying for boilers or electric boilers or things like that, but it's helping building owners create a plan to tackle these complex, these complex retrofits. And that's something that the federal government is investing in. So I mean, for our listeners in our area, definitely keep your eyes and ears open for more information coming on that because it's early days yet. Okay, so my last question for you, Nick. And just looking at the time, I know we've we've taken a lot of time here chatting, it's been great. But I do want to touch on quickly before we wrap up, kind of what might be one of the trickiest areas, which is this idea of kind of heavy industry resource heavy industry, things like you know, the manufacturing of steel and chemicals and cement. There's a lot of emissions associated with this. They have kind of pretty unique demands in terms of high heat, high temperatures, things that are easily achieved with burning fossil fuels, maybe not so easily achieved with an electric option. What are we doing in that sense? What is the government doing to try and help those industries pursue decarbonisation?   Nicholas Rivers  37:28 Yeah, so we've kind of I'm in the the climate world climate policy world. And we have called these sectors for a long time, in quotes, the hard to decarbonize sectors, so, so it's been something where it's the kind of prevailing idea has been, let's all work on the stuff that's relatively easy today, like buildings and electricity, and vehicles. And eventually we'll find solutions for these hard to decarbonize sectors. And these are decarbonize sectors are things like cement, and steel, like you pointed out are chemicals, for example of pulp and paper, these big industrial sources, and it's not just that they require a lot of heat, or a lot of energy. In many cases, it's that carbon is released as part of the process for producing these materials. So for example, when you produce cement, I'm not a chemist here, but my understanding is you take limestone and turn it into lime as part of the cement making process. And the chemical reaction releases co2. Same thing with the typical way for making steel. You're reducing iron ore, and the reduction process that takes place in a blast furnace takes the poles the I'm gonna get in trouble here. I don't quite know what the reaction is. It releases co2 from the iron ore reduction process, in concert with coal. So they do require a lot of heat, but they're also releasing co2, just as part of the kind of process of producing these materials. So no matter how efficient they get that co2 is still coming out. And so that's part of the reason they're referred to as these hard to decarbonize sectors, I would say, Well, let me say that the thought that we've had as a community thinking about how to transition the economy is that it should be possible to do a lot of this easy stuff, almost 100% Man company easy, almost in quotes, here. decarbonizing buildings will be talked about is not actually easy. It's hard. It's easy relative to these hard to decarbonize sectors. So if we can get the easy sectors more or less decarbonized. One approach to dealing with these hard to decarbonize sectors would be to use, carbon capture and storage. So it would be to take the co2 that's coming out of these fixed processes, and capture it before it goes into the atmosphere and try The sequester it permanently, let's say in a depleted oil and gas reservoir. So that's one approach, we're also seeing a lot of a lot of innovation in this sector, away from some of these fixed process emissions. And so I'll give you an example. In Ontario, the federal and provincial governments recently put big investments into some of the steel facilities in Ontario. And these are our biggest point sources of co2 emissions in the province. These steel facilities, they're especially scattered around Southern Ontario around Hamilton. And, and they use this reduction process to to turn iron ore into steel. And then the big investments the province and federal government have put in how they are transitioning some of these steel producing facilities from from electric RBO blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces. So it will take the coal out of the process basically. And the these, these facilities when they're up and running, will produce big savings and greenhouse gas emissions. By eliminating this kind of important source of co2. We're seeing lots of innovation in the cement sector as well. So using different materials, in as part of this, the cement production. We're seeing a big project, for example, underway in Edmonton, it's a big cement facility that will have a lot of efficiencies built into it. But we'll also have CCS carbon capture and storage, it will be adapted for carbon capture and storage so that the co2 that's produced from this facility won't be released from to the atmosphere, it will be it will be sequestered underground. So I would say the role for government and these nascent, I would say projects is a direct support role to help these industries demonstrate the viability of some of these alternate pathways for producing basic materials with less carbon. And what we're seeing is government supporting these through either direct subsidies, or tax credits. And in some cases, we're seeing when these projects are starting to be produced materials, we're seeing government potentially have a role in procurement saying we're gonna buy lower carbon cement for this new set of government buildings, we're not going to source it from usual suppliers, we're going to reach out and try to create a niche market for this new cement or this new steel. So I think that's the right role. We're not at the stage yet where we can mandate these kinds of innovative technologies, because we're really just at the demonstration phase. But I would say that over the last decade, we're moving from thinking of these sectors as hard to decarbonize, to thinking maybe, to, you know, possible to decarbonize, so it initially seemed like there wasn't really a pathway and we're starting to see some light in the tunnel. Now some potential pathway for decarbonizing these sectors.   Trevor Freeman  42:58 Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, similar to how we have most, if not all the answers we need. Now, for some of those other industries, we talked about personal transportation, buildings, etc. There may come a day when we look back and say, yeah, now we've got all the answers we need for the heavy industry. It's just a matter of deploying them. But we're not there yet.   Nicholas Rivers  43:18 Exactly. We're not there yet. You know, it may turn out that these are not the hard sectors. Right, that if these technologies come along, there's only I don't know exactly the number. But let's say on the order of a dozen cement factories in Canada. So if we can figure out the technology, rolling it out to a dozen factories, institutionally is maybe not as hard a problem as rolling out building retrofits to 15 million buildings. So So right now, this seems like the hard to decarbonize sector, but maybe we'll be surprised.   Trevor Freeman  43:47 And to your point, I mean, pretty good bang for buck, maybe when we talk about just the amount of emissions from single points from these from these industries.   Nicholas Rivers  43:56 Yeah, I think the steel sector numbers in Ontario, these two facilities are we're gonna see a 3 million tonne per year greenhouse gas reduction, well, from the investments that Ontario and the feds have made in and converting them to electric arc furnace.   Trevor Freeman  44:11 Great. Well, Nick, I think that's the list of questions I had for you. So thanks very much. I really appreciate the time and your thoughts on these matters. It was great to having this conversation with you. We do always end our conversations with a series of questions that I asked all of our guests. So as long as you're ready to go, I'll jump into those.   Nicholas Rivers  44:30 Let's do it.   Trevor Freeman  44:31 What is a book that you've read that you think everyone should read?   Nicholas Rivers  44:34 This year, I read fire weather by John Vaillant. I've read a number of his books in the past. I love the way he writes. He's a Canadian author. He writes both nonfiction and fiction. This is about the big fire that took place in Fort McMurray in 2016. And it's a nonfiction book, but it's gripping. He's such a good writer. And it's such an important thing for us to understand exactly what's happening again, this year we've seen Fort McMurray threatened just last week by wildfires. So I really recommend this book. It sounds dry. It's about forest fires, but it's not at all. It's really good.   Trevor Freeman  45:09 Yeah. Okay, great. That's a good one. Same question, but for a movie or for a show.   Nicholas Rivers  45:14 I am. I'm a pretty slow TV watcher. I don't get a ton of time. But I am watching Showgun right now and loving it. Don't tell me the end, because I'm not through. But it's excellent show.   Trevor Freeman  45:26 Yeah, so I haven't started it yet, because I read that book as a teenager and haven't read it since. So I'm rereading it right now. And then I'm gonna watch the show after   Nicholas Rivers  45:35 I didn't read it. So I'm my wish with fresh eyes.   Trevor Freeman  45:39 I remember liking it, but I can't remember kind of how it ends. So I'm as excited as you are to see the end of that. If someone was to offer you a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go?   Nicholas Rivers  45:52 Well, I am a little sensitive about flying long ways, just because of the nature of this conversation but my kids, I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. And they're super into comics and Nintendo and really want to go to Japan. So I would go to Japan for for a few weeks with them.   Trevor Freeman  46:13 Who is someone that you admire?   Nicholas Rivers  46:15 This was hard. I set out you gave me these questions a couple of days ago. And I sat out on the front porch and the first nice day we had in a while with my wife and my kids. And I was telling them about this. And I said I was stuck on the Who do I admire? And they said, You should admire us. So I admire my kids. They're really optimistic. They're super fun. They're loving life. And I think it's a great set of characteristics.   Trevor Freeman  46:41 Yeah, that mean, that is never a bad answer. That's a great answer, and good for them for self awareness to call you out. Finally, what is something that you are excited about when it comes to the energy sector or this transition that we're in what excites you about the future where we're going?   Nicholas Rivers  47:00 Well, let me give a two pronged answer here. I'll start by saying that I'm nervous.   Trevor Freeman  47:04 Yeah   Nicholas Rivers  47:04 I think the stakes are high. We're learning more and more as a society about, you know, what climate change looks like. And it's not pretty. And the I think the big thing that we have to keep in mind, and the thing that keeps me optimistic is that we still have a lot of role to play in determining where we ended up here. And, and we're seeing really dramatic changes in Technologies, and in people's engagement and policymakers engagement on on this file. So we've talked about how fast some of the technologies have moved over the last couple of decades or decade in particular, solar and vehicles and batteries and all these things. We're also seeing policy change really dramatically, right? It would have been inconceivable to say that we would have a high carbon price and a mandate for zero emission vehicles and phase out of coal fired power and potential clean electricity regulation and an oil gas cap, and all this stuff on the books 10 years ago, and and now we're there. So I feel like not only is technology changing quickly, but the policies are also changing quite quickly. And and it looks like they're all changing in the right direction.   Trevor Freeman  48:19 Yeah, I definitely can relate to that. As someone who's been in this industry, this sector for a little while, at least, it feels like there's momentum now it feels like the pace of change is finally starting to really pick up and not where we need it to be. There's lots of work to do, as you say, but yeah, maybe we're starting to see things move a little faster   Nicholas Rivers  48:42 Yeah, exactly. So there's certainly reason for optimism. That's that's kind of guarded optimism.   Trevor Freeman  48:47 Yeah, that's a that's a fair point to end on. I think that's a good space then. Nick rivers. Thanks very much. I really appreciate you coming on the show and chatting with us today. And I've really enjoyed our conversation.   Nicholas Rivers  48:59 Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it, too.   Trevor Freeman  49:00 All right. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The think energy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps us spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you. Whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or guests. You can always reach us at think energy at hydro ottawa.com  

Courts find social media company X can be held liable for hate speech published on its platform.

Courts find social media company X can be held liable for hate speech published on its platform.

Elon Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman last Thursday. Musk, who helped found OpenAI in 2015, alleges in the suit that the company broke its founding agreement by prioritizing profit over the benefits to humanity. Meanwhile, Musk launched his own artificial intelligence startup last year called xAI, which also overlaps heavily with his social-media company X, sharing technology, data and financial backers. WSJ reporter Alexa Corse tells host Alex Ossola what the relationship between xAI and X means for Musk's AI ambitions and the future of both companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lance Bauerfeind, Head of Training & Simulations at Company-X, joins host Paul Spain as they discuss the Apple Vision Pro surprises and the evolving landscape of immersive realities. Plus they look at the latest in tech news, including: Foodstuff NZ's facial recognition trialsPhone bans in NZ schoolsRocket Labs' junk missionAir Canada chatbot messAI generated Fake IDsMultimodal AI glassesFor more on Apple Vision Pro: Tech Ethics, AI Advancements, and Vision Pro's potential

Episode 49 of the Engineering Success Podcast Don't miss a blog post or a podcast episode, subscribe to my newsletter on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.ENGRingSuccess.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support the on podcast on Spotify or on Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/ENGRingSuccess⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Top tier supporters - shout out each episode of the month for $10 monthly donation. Follow along on all social medias: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/ENGRingSuccess⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To submit your question, email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠daniel@ENGRingSuccess.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn Lunatics/Career Craziness ⁠1. This just happened to my colleague... (Fake Job Interview) ⁠2. Found one in the wild (70 Hour Work Week) ⁠⁠⁠Engineering College Q's ⁠3. Does it really matter what university you go to for engineering? ⁠4. How tf do y'all have any freetime? 5. How do I know if I should switch out of engineering? 6. Take your FE exam while you're still in school 7. Got kicked from program 4 years in. What do I do 8. Anyone else find calc 3 the more difficult of all the calc classes? Career Advice ⁠9. Leaving after 6 months ⁠10. What do I do after following up with employers on LinkedIn? ⁠11. I went to my university's career fair and two recruiters from different companies told me they'd like me to follow up with them and to re-send them my resume. Is this significant at all? 12. Why not Company X? 13. Co-worker only uses speaker phone and expects us to be quiet 14. Would you become an operator for higher pay? _____________ Subscribe on YouTube to watch short excerpts of podcast episodes addressing specific topics: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj86alc3a7_A_PibgYpkWFg⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Daniel is a Mechanical Engineering graduate of Trinity University's B.S. in Engineering Science and currently works in Commercial Management in the Engineering and Construction Consulting Industry. All views expressed on this podcast are his own and do not reflect the opinions or views of his employer. Music by Maxgotthetracks: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Pclog68AY1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/engineering-success/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/engineering-success/support

When I talk to students from the NATA PR SCHOOL or entrepreneurs, one of the topics we often discuss is how to make sure our emails are read and generate interest. How to capture the attention of the media and influencers through public relations, but also how to get the attention of consumers. Although this is our profession, this step, which is also the first of the six-step NATA model, is one of the most important steps we use every week. Step 1 of the NATA model is this famous question: Why would they talk about you? If you don't have our model, you can simply download it by clicking on the link at the bottom of this episode. Many brands and some of our clients frequently ask us this question. So I decided to explore this crucial step again in this podcast. One of our students who is in the process of writing his first press release also shared his sales email with me. Well, you can also use this question to create your first introductory email because, yes, public relations as we practice it is very similar to selling . I often say that we do "soft selling," a form of gentle sales. Our profession often involves suggesting our clients' products and services to journalists and influencers. We "sell" them the idea that their readers or fans will be interested in our clients' products/services. We must generate the desire to talk about our suggestions, in a way, create an emotion of desire in our interlocutors. The same goes when you approach potential customers who don't know you. You must: 1- Identify what their issues, problems, and irritations are. 2- Offer them your solution and make it desirable. For journalists and influencers, you must: 1- Identify what their readers/fans are looking for and like. 2- Offer them these ideas. When you answer the first step of our model: why would they talk about you? – the answer could resemble the headline of a newspaper article. For example: Company X launches a new product Y. Or Company X incorporates artificial intelligence into the development of its formulas. The latest developments and current trends will interest journalists and influencers. Your potential customers, on the other hand, are looking for solutions to their issues: lack of time, weight loss, their competitors are making a lot of noise, etc. The shorter and more aligned with what they are seeking your answers to these questions are, the more positive results you will achieve. The more answers and sales you will have. It's as simple as that. Humans seek solutions to their problems. Become the solution they are looking for. Let's say you are looking for ways to increase your sales, and the following questions obsess you: 1- How to increase your visibility? 2- How can you make yourself known? 3- You wonder how to get people talking about you in the press and on social media. And yes, we have the solutions for you at NATA PR agency and NATA PR SCHOOL. See, use the same questions and see what your answers are. Sometimes you need to experiment to generate reactions and capture your audience's interest! THE FREE NATA PR MODEL https://prschool.natapr.com/Le-Modele-NATA-PR Workshop/3-DAY Challenge https://prschool.natapr.com/defi-3-jours-082023-EN  GET FEATURED FOR FREE https://prschool.natapr.com/evergreen_en THE FREE NATA PR MODEL https://prschool.natapr.com/Le-Modele-NATA-PR SIGN UP TO OUR LISTS www.natapr.com INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/nata_pr_school/

The MacVoices Live! panel of Chuck Joiner, Web Bixby, David Ginsburg, Brian Flanigan-Arthurs, Jeff Gamet, Ben Roethig, Eric Bolden, Jim Rea, and Guy Serle before digging into a "right to repair” announcement from The White House that involves Apple. They also touch on social media Pebble's closure, X's message posting fee test, and the declining luxury tech accessories market. Then, the hack of 23andMe and the resulting disclosure of biometric data generates disagreement between the participants. (Part 2) This edition of MacVoices is brought to you by the MacVoices Dispatch, our weekly newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on any and all MacVoices-related information. Subscribe today and don't miss a thing. Show Notes: Chapters: 0:00:00 Speculation on Apple's Scary Fest event0:08:56 Concerns about Twitter's Charging Model0:11:04 Debating the Potential Impact of Charging on the Platform0:11:41 Elon Musk's Approach Contrasted with Isaacson's Book0:13:57 The Importance of Credit Card Information for Elon Musk0:14:46 Elon's Vision for Company X as an All-Encompassing Financial Thing0:16:35 Trust Issues and Apple's Potential to Fulfill Musk's Vision0:17:33 Company Shutting Down Due to Strong Headwinds0:19:09 Significant Sale and Limited Supplies0:20:35 Luxury Goods: Apple Watch Bands and Air Tags0:22:22 The Market for Luxury Device Cases and Accessories0:25:33 The Need for Next Generation Repair Options0:26:09 Consumer Rights vs. Negligence and Destruction0:29:02 Hackers Steal 23andMe User Records: Concerns about DNA Privacy0:30:56 Biometric Data: Potential Uses and Manipulation0:32:35 Concerns about the Profitability and Security of Biometric Data0:34:22 The Vulnerability of Biometric Data and its Potential Misuse Links: Twitter/X rival T2 rebrands as ‘Pebble,' saying the old name was never meant to be permanenthttps://techcrunch.com/2023/09/18/twitter-x-rival-t2-rebrands-as-pebble-saying-the-old-name-was-never-meant-to-be-permanent/ X begins charging new users $1 per year to send tweetshttps://www.engadget.com/x-is-starting-to-charge-new-users-1-per-year-to-send-tweets-000925191.html Apple Accessory Maker Pad & Quill Shutting Down, Offering 50% Off Sitewidehttps://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/24/pad-quill-shutting-down Apple set to announce next-level ‘right to repair' support nationwide, says White Househttps://9to5mac.com/2023/10/24/apple-next-level-right-to-repair-support-nationwide/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon Apple Backs Federal Right-to-Repair Law, Commits to National Repair Program For iPhones and Morehttps://cordcuttersnews.com/apple-backs-federal-right-to-repair-law-commits-to-national-repair-program-for-iphones-and-more Hacker leaks millions more 23andMe user records on cybercrime forumhttps://techcrunch.com/2023/10/18/hacker-leaks-millions-more-23andme-user-records-on-cybercrime-forum/ Guests: Web Bixby has been in the insurance business for 40 years and has been an Apple user for longer than that.You can catch up with him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Eric Bolden is into macOS, plants, sci-fi, food, and is a rural internet supporter. You can connect with him on Twitter, by email at embolden@mac.com, on Mastodon at @eabolden@techhub.social, and on his blog, Trending At Work. Brian Flanigan-Arthurs is an educator with a passion for providing results-driven, innovative learning strategies for all students, but particularly those who are at-risk. He is also a tech enthusiast who has a particular affinity for Apple since he first used the Apple IIGS as a student. You can contact Brian on twitter as @brian8944. He also recently opened a Mastodon account at @brian8944@mastodon.cloud. Jeff Gamet is a technology blogger, podcaster, author, and public speaker. Previously, he was The Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and the TextExpander Evangelist for Smile. He has presented at Macworld Expo, RSA Conference, several WordCamp events, along with many other conferences. You can find him on several podcasts such as The Mac Show, The Big Show, MacVoices, Mac OS Ken, This Week in iOS, and more. Jeff is easy to find on social media as @jgamet on Twitter and Instagram, jeffgamet on LinkedIn., @jgamet@mastodon.social on Mastodon, and on his YouTube Channel at YouTube.com/jgamet. David Ginsburg is the host of the weekly podcast In Touch With iOS where he discusses all things iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and related technologies. He is an IT professional supporting Mac, iOS and Windows users. Visit his YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/daveg65 and find and follow him on Twitter @daveg65 and on Mastodon at @daveg65@mastodon.cloud Jim Rea built his own computer from scratch in 1975, started programming in 1977, and has been an independent Mac developer continuously since 1984. He is the founder of ProVUE Development, and the author of Panorama X, ProVUE's ultra fast RAM based database software for the macOS platform. He's been a speaker at MacTech, MacWorld Expo and other industry conferences. Follow Jim at provue.com and via @provuejim@techhub.social on Mastodon. Ben Roethig has been in the Apple Ecosystem since the System 7 Days. He is the a former Associate Editor with Geek Beat, Co-Founder of The Tech Hangout and Deconstruct and currently shares his thoughts on RoethigTech. Contact him on  Twitter and Mastodon. Guy Serle, best known for being one of the co-hosts of the MyMac Podcast, sincerely apologizes for anything he has done or caused to have happened while in possession of dangerous podcasting equipment. He should know better but being a blonde from Florida means he's probably incapable of understanding the damage he has wrought. Guy is also the author of the novel, The Maltese Cube. You can follow his exploits on Twitter, catch him on Mac to the Future on Facebook, at @Macparrot@mastodon.social, and find everything at VertShark.com.   Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon     http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:     http://macvoices.com      Twitter:     http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner     http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:     https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:     http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:     http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:     http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:     https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:     https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes     Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss

The MacVoices Live! panel of Chuck Joiner, Web Bixby, David Ginsburg, Brian Flanigan-Arthurs, Jeff Gamet, Ben Roethig, Eric Bolden, Jim Rea, and Guy Serle before digging into a "right to repair” announcement from The White House that involves Apple. They also touch on social media Pebble's closure, X's message posting fee test, and the declining luxury tech accessories market. Then, the hack of 23andMe and the resulting disclosure of biometric data generates disagreement between the participants. (Part 2) This edition of MacVoices is brought to you by the MacVoices Dispatch, our weekly newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on any and all MacVoices-related information. Subscribe today and don't miss a thing. Show Notes: Chapters: 0:00:00 Speculation on Apple's Scary Fest event 0:08:56 Concerns about Twitter's Charging Model 0:11:04 Debating the Potential Impact of Charging on the Platform 0:11:41 Elon Musk's Approach Contrasted with Isaacson's Book 0:13:57 The Importance of Credit Card Information for Elon Musk 0:14:46 Elon's Vision for Company X as an All-Encompassing Financial Thing 0:16:35 Trust Issues and Apple's Potential to Fulfill Musk's Vision 0:17:33 Company Shutting Down Due to Strong Headwinds 0:19:09 Significant Sale and Limited Supplies 0:20:35 Luxury Goods: Apple Watch Bands and Air Tags 0:22:22 The Market for Luxury Device Cases and Accessories 0:25:33 The Need for Next Generation Repair Options 0:26:09 Consumer Rights vs. Negligence and Destruction 0:29:02 Hackers Steal 23andMe User Records: Concerns about DNA Privacy 0:30:56 Biometric Data: Potential Uses and Manipulation 0:32:35 Concerns about the Profitability and Security of Biometric Data 0:34:22 The Vulnerability of Biometric Data and its Potential Misuse Links: Twitter/X rival T2 rebrands as ‘Pebble,' saying the old name was never meant to be permanent https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/18/twitter-x-rival-t2-rebrands-as-pebble-saying-the-old-name-was-never-meant-to-be-permanent/ X begins charging new users $1 per year to send tweetshttps://www.engadget.com/x-is-starting-to-charge-new-users-1-per-year-to-send-tweets-000925191.html Apple Accessory Maker Pad & Quill Shutting Down, Offering 50% Off Sitewidehttps://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/24/pad-quill-shutting-down Apple set to announce next-level ‘right to repair' support nationwide, says White Househttps://9to5mac.com/2023/10/24/apple-next-level-right-to-repair-support-nationwide/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon Apple Backs Federal Right-to-Repair Law, Commits to National Repair Program For iPhones and Morehttps://cordcuttersnews.com/apple-backs-federal-right-to-repair-law-commits-to-national-repair-program-for-iphones-and-more Hacker leaks millions more 23andMe user records on cybercrime forum https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/18/hacker-leaks-millions-more-23andme-user-records-on-cybercrime-forum/ Guests: Web Bixby has been in the insurance business for 40 years and has been an Apple user for longer than that.You can catch up with him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Eric Bolden is into macOS, plants, sci-fi, food, and is a rural internet supporter. You can connect with him on Twitter, by email at embolden@mac.com, on Mastodon at @eabolden@techhub.social, and on his blog, Trending At Work. Brian Flanigan-Arthurs is an educator with a passion for providing results-driven, innovative learning strategies for all students, but particularly those who are at-risk. He is also a tech enthusiast who has a particular affinity for Apple since he first used the Apple IIGS as a student. You can contact Brian on twitter as @brian8944. He also recently opened a Mastodon account at @brian8944@mastodon.cloud. Jeff Gamet is a technology blogger, podcaster, author, and public speaker. Previously, he was The Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and the TextExpander Evangelist for Smile. He has presented at Macworld Expo, RSA Conference, several WordCamp events, along with many other conferences. You can find him on several podcasts such as The Mac Show, The Big Show, MacVoices, Mac OS Ken, This Week in iOS, and more. Jeff is easy to find on social media as @jgamet on Twitter and Instagram, jeffgamet on LinkedIn., @jgamet@mastodon.social on Mastodon, and on his YouTube Channel at YouTube.com/jgamet. David Ginsburg is the host of the weekly podcast In Touch With iOS where he discusses all things iOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and related technologies. He is an IT professional supporting Mac, iOS and Windows users. Visit his YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/daveg65 and find and follow him on Twitter @daveg65 and on Mastodon at @daveg65@mastodon.cloud Jim Rea built his own computer from scratch in 1975, started programming in 1977, and has been an independent Mac developer continuously since 1984. He is the founder of ProVUE Development, and the author of Panorama X, ProVUE's ultra fast RAM based database software for the macOS platform. He's been a speaker at MacTech, MacWorld Expo and other industry conferences. Follow Jim at provue.com and via @provuejim@techhub.social on Mastodon. Ben Roethig has been in the Apple Ecosystem since the System 7 Days. He is the a former Associate Editor with Geek Beat, Co-Founder of The Tech Hangout and Deconstruct and currently shares his thoughts on RoethigTech. Contact him on  Twitter and Mastodon. Guy Serle, best known for being one of the co-hosts of the MyMac Podcast, sincerely apologizes for anything he has done or caused to have happened while in possession of dangerous podcasting equipment. He should know better but being a blonde from Florida means he's probably incapable of understanding the damage he has wrought. Guy is also the author of the novel, The Maltese Cube. You can follow his exploits on Twitter, catch him on Mac to the Future on Facebook, at @Macparrot@mastodon.social, and find everything at VertShark.com.   Support:      Become a MacVoices Patron on Patreon      http://patreon.com/macvoices      Enjoy this episode? Make a one-time donation with PayPal Connect:      Web:      http://macvoices.com      Twitter:      http://www.twitter.com/chuckjoiner      http://www.twitter.com/macvoices      Mastodon:      https://mastodon.cloud/@chuckjoiner      Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/chuck.joiner      MacVoices Page on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/macvoices/      MacVoices Group on Facebook:      http://www.facebook.com/groups/macvoice      LinkedIn:      https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckjoiner/      Instagram:      https://www.instagram.com/chuckjoiner/ Subscribe:      Audio in iTunes      Video in iTunes      Subscribe manually via iTunes or any podcatcher:      Audio: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesrss      Video: http://www.macvoices.com/rss/macvoicesvideorss 00:00:00 Speculation on Apple's Scary Fest event 00:08:56 Concerns about Twitter's Charging Model 00:11:04 Debating the Potential Impact of Charging on the Platform 00:11:41 Elon Musk's Approach Contrasted with Isaacson's Book 00:13:57 The Importance of Credit Card Information for Elon Musk 00:14:46 Elon Musk's Ambition for an All-in-One Financial Platform 00:16:35 Trust Issues and Apple's Potential to Fulfill Musk's Vision 00:17:33 Company Shutting Down Due to Strong Headwinds 00:19:09 Significant Sale and Limited Supplies 00:20:34 Luxury Goods: Apple Watch Bands and Air Tags 00:22:21 The Market for Luxury Device Cases and Accessories 00:25:33 The Need for Next Generation Repair Options 00:26:09 Consumer Rights vs. Negligence and Destruction 00:29:02 Hackers Steal 23andMe User Records: Concerns about DNA Privacy 00:30:56 Biometric Data: Potential Uses and Manipulation 00:32:35 Concerns about the Profitability and Security of Biometric Data 00:34:22 The Vulnerability of Biometric Data and its Potential Misuse

Dmitry Kagansky, State CTO and Deputy Executive Director for the Georgia Technology Authority, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how he became the CTO for his home state and the nuances of working in the public sector. Dmitry describes his focus on security and reliability, and why they are both equally important when working with state government agencies. Corey and Dmitry describe AWS's infamous GovCloud, and Dmitry explains why he's employing a multi-cloud strategy but that it doesn't work for all government agencies. Dmitry also talks about how he's focusing on hiring and training for skills, and the collaborative approach he's taking to working with various state agencies.About DmitryMr. Kagansky joined GTA in 2021 from Amazon Web Services where he worked for over four years helping state agencies across the country in their cloud implementations and migrations.Prior to his time with AWS, he served as Executive Vice President of Development for Star2Star Communications, a cloud-based unified communications company. Previously, Mr. Kagansky was in many technical and leadership roles for different software vending companies. Most notably, he was Federal Chief Technology Officer for Quest Software, spending several years in Europe working with commercial and government customers.Mr. Kagansky holds a BBA in finance from Hofstra University and an MBA in management of information systems and operations management from the University of Georgia.Links Referenced: Twitter: https://twitter.com/dimikagi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimikagi/ GTA Website: https://gta.ga.gov TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: In the cloud, ideas turn into innovation at virtually limitless speed and scale. To secure innovation in the cloud, you need Runtime Insights to prioritize critical risks and stay ahead of unknown threats. What's Runtime Insights, you ask? Visit sysdig.com/screaming to learn more. That's S-Y-S-D-I-G.com/screaming.My thanks as well to Sysdig for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Technical debt is one of those fun things that everyone gets to deal with, on some level. Today's guest apparently gets to deal with 235 years of technical debt. Dmitry Kagansky is the CTO of the state of Georgia. Dmitry, thank you for joining me.Dmitry: Corey, thank you very much for having me.Corey: So, I want to just begin here because this has caused confusion in my life; I can only imagine how much it's caused for you folks. We're talking Georgia the US state, not Georgia, the sovereign country?Dmitry: Yep. Exactly.Corey: Excellent. It's always good to triple-check those things because otherwise, I feel like the shipping costs are going to skyrocket in one way or the other. So, you have been doing a lot of very interesting things in the course of your career. You're former AWS, for example, you come from commercial life working in industry, and now it's yeah, I'm going to go work in state government. How did this happen?Dmitry: Yeah, I've actually been working with governments for quite a long time, both here and abroad. So, way back when, I've been federal CTO for software companies, I've done other work. And then even with AWS, I was working with state and local governments for about four, four-and-a-half years. But came to Georgia when the opportunity presented itself, really to try and make a difference in my own home state. You mentioned technical debt at the beginning and it's one of the things I'm hoping that helped the state pay down and get rid of some of it.Corey: It's fun because governments obviously are not thought of historically as being the early adopters, bleeding edge when it comes to technical innovation. And from where I sit, for good reason. You don't want code that got written late last night and shoved into production to control things like municipal infrastructure, for example. That stuff matters. Unlike a lot of other walks of life, you don't usually get to choose your government, and, “Oh, I don't like this one so I'm going to go for option B.”I mean you get to do at the ballot box, but that takes significant amounts of time. So, people want above all else—I suspect—their state services from an IT perspective to be stable, first and foremost. Does that align with how you think about these things? I mean, security, obviously, is a factor in that as well, but how do you see, I guess, the primary mandate of what you do?Dmitry: Yeah. I mean, security is obviously up there, but just as important is that reliance on reliability, right? People take time off of work to get driver's licenses, right, they go to different government agencies to get work done in the middle of their workday, and we've got to have systems available to them. We can't have them show up and say, “Yeah, come back in an hour because some system is rebooting.” And that's one of the things that we're trying to fix and trying to have fewer of, right?There's always going to be things that happen, but we're trying to really cut down the impact. One of the biggest things that we're doing is obviously a move to the cloud, but also segmenting out all of our agency applications so that agencies manage them separately. Today, my organization, Georgia Technology Authority—you'll hear me say GTA—we run what we call NADC, the North Atlanta Data Center, a pretty large-scale data center, lots of different agencies, app servers all sitting there running. And then a lot of times, you know, an impact to one could have an impact to many. And so, with the cloud, we get some partitioning and some segmentation where even if there is an outage—a term you'll often hear used that we can cut down on the blast radius, right, that we can limit the impact so that we affect the fewest number of constituents.Corey: So, I have to ask this question, and I understand it's loaded and people are going to have opinions with a capital O on it, but since you work for the state of Georgia, are you using GovCloud over in AWS-land?Dmitry: So… [sigh] we do have some footprint in GovCloud, but I actually spent time, even before coming to GTA, trying to talk agencies out of using it. I think there's a big misconception, right? People say, “I'm government. They called it GovCloud. Surely I need to be there.”But back when I was with AWS, you know, I would point-blank tell people that really I know it's called GovCloud, but it's just a poorly named region. There are some federal requirements that it meets; it was built around the ITAR, which is International Traffic of Arms Regulations, but states aren't in that business, right? They are dealing with HIPAA data, with various criminal justice data, and other things, but all of those things can run just fine on the commercial side. And truthfully, it's cheaper and easier to run on the commercial side. And that's one of the concerns I have is that if the commercial regions meet those requirements, is there a reason to go into GovCloud, just because you get some extra certifications? So, I still spend time trying to talk agencies out of going to GovCloud. Ultimately, the agencies with their apps make the choice of where they go, but we have been pretty good about reducing the footprint in GovCloud unless it's absolutely necessary.Corey: Has this always been the case? Because my distant recollection around all of this has been that originally when GovCloud first came out, it was a lot harder to run a whole bunch of workloads in commercial regions. And it feels like the commercial regions have really stepped up as far as what compliance boxes they check. So, is one of those stories where five or ten years ago, whenever it GovCloud first came out, there were a bunch of reasons to use it that no longer apply?Dmitry: I actually can't go past I'll say, seven or eight years, but certainly within the last eight years, there's not been a reason for state and local governments to use it. At the federal level, that's a different discussion, but for most governments that I worked with and work with now, the commercial regions have been just fine. They've met the compliance requirements, controls, and everything that's in place without having to go to the GovCloud region.Corey: Something I noticed that was strange to me about the whole GovCloud approach when I was at the most recent public sector summit that AWS threw is whenever I was talking to folks from AWS about GovCloud and adopting it and launching new workloads and the rest, unlike in almost any other scenario, they seemed that their first response—almost a knee jerk reflex—was to pass that work off to one of their partners. Now, on the commercial side, AWS will do that when it makes sense, and each one becomes a bit of a judgment call, but it just seemed like every time someone's doing something with GovCloud, “Oh, talk to Company X or Company Y.” And it wasn't just one or two companies; there were a bunch of them. Why is that?Dmitry: I think a lot of that is because of the limitations within GovCloud, right? So, when you look at anything that AWS rolls out, it almost always rolls out into either us-east-1 or us-west-2, right, one of those two regions, and it goes out worldwide. And then it comes out in GovCloud months, sometimes even years later. And in fact, sometimes there are features that never show up in GovCloud. So, there's not parity there, and I think what happens is, it's these partners that know what limitations GovCloud has and what things are missing and GovCloud they still have to work around.Like, I remember when I started with AWS back in 2016, right, there had been a new console, you know, the new skin that everyone's now familiar with. But that old console, if you remember that, that was in GovCloud for years afterwards. I mean, it took them at least two more years to get GovCloud to even look like the current commercial console that you see. So, it's things like that where I think AWS themselves want to keep moving forward and having to do anything with kind of that legacy platform that doesn't have all the bells and whistles is why they say, “Go get a partner [unintelligible 00:08:06] those things that aren't there yet.”Corey: That's it makes a fair bit of sense. What I was always wondering how much of this was tied to technical challenges working within those, and building solutions that don't depend upon things. “Oh, wait, that one's not available in GovCloud,” versus a lack of ability to navigate the acquisition process for a lot of governments natively in the same way that a lot of their customers can.Dmitry: Yeah, I don't think that's the case because even to get a GovCloud account, you have to start off with a commercial account, right? So, you actually have to go through the same purchasing steps and then essentially, click an extra button or two.Corey: Oh, I've done that myself already. I have a shitposting account and a—not kidding—Ministry of Shitposting GovCloud account. But that's also me just kicking the tires on it. As I went through the process, it really felt like everything was built around a bunch of unstated assumption—because of course you've worked within GovCloud before and you know where these things are. And I kept tripping into a variety of different aspects of that. I'm wondering how much of that is just due to the fact that partners are almost always the ones guiding customers through that.Dmitry: Yeah. It is almost always that. There's very few people, even in the AWS world, right, if you look at all the employees they have there, it's small subset that work with that environment, and probably an even smaller subset of those that understand what it's really needed for. So, this is where if there's not good understanding, you're better off handing it off to a partner. But I don't think it is the purchasing side of things. It really is the regulatory things and just having someone else sign off on a piece of paper, above and beyond just AWS themselves.Corey: I am curious, since it seems that people love to talk about multi-cloud in a variety of different ways, but I find there's a reality that, ehh, basically, on a long enough timeline, everyone uses everything, versus the idea of, “Oh, we're going to build everything so we can seamlessly flow from one provider to another.” Are you folks all in on AWS? Are you using a bunch of different cloud providers for different workloads? How are you approaching a cloud strategy?Dmitry: So, when you say ‘you guys,' I'll say—as AWS will always say—“It depends.” So, GTA is multi-cloud. We support AWS, we support OCI, we support Azure, and we are working towards getting Google in as well, GCP. However, on the agency side, I am encouraging agencies to pick a cloud. And part of that is because you do have limited staff, they are all different, right?They'll do similar things, but if it's done in a different way and you don't have people that know those little tips and tricks, kind of how to navigate certain cloud vendors, it just makes things more difficult. So, I always look at it as kind of the car analogy, right? Most people are not multi-car, right? You go you buy a car—Toyota, Ford, whatever it is—and you're committed to that thing for the next 4 or 5, 10 years, however long you own it, right? You may not like where the cupholder is or you need to get used to something, you know, being somewhere else, but you do commit to it.And I think it's the same thing with cloud that, you know, do you have to be in one cloud for the rest of your life? No, but know that you're not going to hop from cloud to cloud. No one really does. No one says, “Every six months, I'm going to go move my application from one cloud to another.” It's a pretty big lift and no one really needs to do that. Just find the one that's most comfortable for you.Corey: I assume that you have certain preferences as far as different cloud providers go. But I've found even in corporate life that, “Well, I like this company better than the other,” is generally not the best basis for making sweeping decisions around this. What frameworks do you give various departments to consider where a given workload should live? Like, how do you advise them to think about this?Dmitry: You know, it's funny, we actually had a call with an agency recently that said, “You know, we don't know cloud. What do you guys think we should do?” And it was for a very small, I don't want to call it workload; it was really for some DNS work that they wanted to do. And really came down to, for that size and scale, right, we're looking at a few dollars, maybe a month, they picked it based on the console, right? They liked one console over another.Not going to get into which cloud they picked, but we wound up them giving them a demo of here's what this looks like in these various cloud providers. And they picked that just because they liked the buttons and the layout of one console over another. Now, having said that, for obviously larger workloads, things that are more important, there is criteria. And in many cases, it's also the vendors. Probably about 60 to 70% of the applications we run are all vendor-provided in some way, and the vendors will often dictate platforms that they'll support over others, right?So, that supportability is important to us. Just like you were saying, no one wants code rolled out overnight and surprise all the constituents one day. We take our vendor relations pretty seriously and we take our cue from them. If we're buying software from someone and they say, “Look, this is better in AWS,” or, “This is better in OCI,” for whatever reasons they have, will go in that direction more often than not.Corey: I made a crack at the beginning of the episode where the state was founded 235 years ago, as of this recording. So, how accurate is that? I have to imagine that back in those days, they didn't really have a whole lot of computers, except probably something from IBM. How much technical debt are you folks actually wrestling with?Dmitry: It's pretty heavy. One of the biggest things we have is, we ourselves, in our data center, still have a mainframe. That mainframe is used for a lot of important work. Most notably, a lot of healthcare benefits are really distributed through that system. So, you're talking about federal partnerships, you're talking about, you know, insurance companies, health care providers, all somehow having—Corey: You're talking about things that absolutely, positively cannot break.Dmitry: Yep, exactly. We can't have outages, we can't have blips, and they've got to be accurate. So, even that sort of migration, right, that's not something that we can do overnight. It's something we've been working on for well over a year, and right now we're targeting probably roughly another year or so to get that fully migrated out. And even there, we're doing what would be considered a traditional lift-and-shift. We're going to mainframe emulation, we're not going cloud-native, we're not going to do a whole bunch of refactoring out of the gate. It's just picking up what's working and running and just moving it to a new venue.Corey: Did they finally build an AWS/400 that you can run that out? I didn't realize they had a mainframe emulation offering these days.Dmitry: They do. There's actually several providers that do it. And there's other agencies in the state that have made this sort of move as well, so we're also not even looking to be innovators in that respect, right? We're not going to be first movers to try that out. We'll have another agency make that move first and now we're doing this with our Department of Human Services.But yeah, a lot of technical debt around that platform. When you look at just the cost of operating these platforms, that mainframe costs the state roughly $15 million a year. We think in the cloud, it's going to wind up costing us somewhere between 3 to 4 million. Even if it's 5 million, that's still considerable savings over what we're paying for today. So, it's worth making that move, but it's still very deliberate, very slow, with a lot of testing along the way. But yeah, you're talking about that workload has been in the state, I want to say, for over 20, 25 years.Corey: So, what's the reason to move it? Because not for nothing, but there's an old—the old saw, “Well, don't fix it if it ain't broke.” Well, what's broke about it?Dmitry: Well, there's a couple of things. First off, the real estate that it takes up as an issue. It is a large machine sitting on a floor of a data center that we've got to consolidate to. We actually have some real estate constraints and we've got to cut down our footprint by next year, contractually, right? We've agreed, we're going to move into a smaller space.The other part is the technical talent. While yes, it's not broke, things are working on it, there are fewer and fewer people that can manage it. What we've found was doing a complete refactor while doing a move anywhere, is really too risky, right? Rewriting everything with a bunch of Lambdas is kind of scary, as well as moving it into another venue. So, there are mainframe emulators out there that will run in the cloud. We've gotten one and we're making this move now. So, we're going to do that lift-and-shift in and then look to refactor it piecemeal.Corey: Specifics are always going to determine, but as a general point, I felt like I am the only voice in the room sometimes advocating in favor of lift-and-shift. Because people say, “Oh, it's terrible for reasons X, Y, and Z.” It's, “Yes, all of your options are terrible and for the common case, this is the one that I have the sneaking suspicion, based upon my lived experience, is going to be the least bad have all of those various options.” Was there a thought given to doing a refactor in flight?Dmitry: So… from the time I got here, no. But I could tell you just having worked with the state even before coming in as CTO, there were constant conversations about a refactor. And the problem is, no one actually has an appetite for it. Everyone talks about it, but then when you say, “Look, there's a risk to doing this,”—right, governments are about minimizing risk—when you say, “Look, there's a risk to rewriting and moving code at the same time and it's going to take years longer,” right, that refactoring every time, I've seen an estimate, it would be as small as three years, as large as seven or eight years, depending on who was doing the estimate. Whereas the lift-and-shift, we're hoping we can get it done in two years, but even if it's two-and-a-half, it's still less than any of the estimates we've seen for a refactor and less risky. So, we're going with that model and we'll tinker and optimize later. But we just need to get out of that mainframe so that we can have more modern technology and more modern support.Corey: It seems like the right approach. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frame that is quite as insulting as it might have come across. Like, “Did anyone consider other options just out of curi—” of course. Whenever you're making big changes, we're going to throw a dart at a whiteboard. It's not what appears to be Twitter's current product strategy we're talking about here. This is stuff that's very much measure twice, cut once.Dmitry: Yeah. Very much so. And you see that with just about everything we do here. I know, when the state, what now, three years ago, moved their tax system over to AWS, not only did they do two or three trial runs of just the data migration, we actually wound up doing six, right? You're talking about adding two months of testing just to make sure every time we did the data move, it was done correctly and all the data got moved over. I mean, government is very, very much about measure three, four times, cut once.Corey: Which is kind of the way you'd want it. One thing that I found curious whenever I've been talking to folks in the public sector space around things that they care about—and in years past, I periodically tried to, “Oh, should we look at doing some cost consulting for folks in this market?” And by and large, there have been a couple of exceptions, but—generally, in our experience with sovereign governments, more so than municipal or state ones—but saving money is not usually one of the top three things that governments care about when it comes to their AWS's state. Is cost something that's on your radar? And how do you conceptualize around this? And I should also disclose, this is not in any way, shape, or form intended to be a sales pitch.Dmitry: Yeah, no, cost actually, for GTA. Is a concern. But I think it's more around the way we're structured. I have worked with other governments where they say, “Look, we've already gotten an allotment of money. It costs whatever it costs and we're good with it.”With the way my organization is set up, though, we're not appropriated funds, meaning we're not given any tax dollars. We actually have to provide services to the agencies and they pay us for it. And so, my salary and everyone else's here, all the work that we do, is basically paid for by agencies and they do have a choice to leave. They could go find other providers. It doesn't have to be GTA always.So, cost is a consideration. But we're also finding that we can get those cost savings pretty easily with this move to the cloud because of the number of available tools that we now have available. We have—that data center I talked about, right? That data center is obviously locked down, secured, very limited access, you can't walk in, but that also prevents agencies from doing a lot of day-to-day work that now in the cloud, they can do on their own. And so, the savings are coming just from this move of not having to have as much locks away from the agency, but having more locks from the outside world as well, right? There's definitely scaling up in the number of tools that they have available to them to work around their applications that they didn't have before.Corey: It's, on some level, a capability story, I think, when it comes to cloud. But something I have heard from a number of folks is that even more so than in enterprises, budgets tend to be much more fixed things in the context of cloud in government. Often in enterprises, what you'll see is sprawl: someone leaves something running and oops, the bill wound up going up higher than we projected for this given period of time. When we start getting into the realm of government, that stops being a you broke budgeting policy and starts to resemble things that are called crimes. How do you wind up providing governance as a government around cloud usage to avoid, you know, someone going to prison over a Managed NAT Gateway?Dmitry: Yeah. So, we do have some pretty stringent monitoring. I know, even before the show, we talked about fact that we do have a separate security group. So, on that side of it, they are keeping an eye on what are people doing in the cloud. So, even though agencies now have more access to more tooling, they can do more, right, GTA hasn't stepped back from it and so, we're able to centrally manage things.We've put in a lot of controls. In fact, we're using Control Tower. We've got a lot of guardrails put in, even basic things like you can't run things outside of the US, right? We don't want you running things in the India region or anywhere in South America. Like, that's not even allowed, so we're able to block that off.And then we've got some pretty tight financial controls where we're watching the spend on a regular basis, agency by agency. Not enforcing any of it, obviously, agencies know what they're doing and it's their apps, but we do warn them of, “Hey, we're seeing this trend or that trend.” We've been at this now for about a year-and-a-half, and so agencies are starting to see that we provide more oversight and a lot less pressure, but at the same time, there's definitely a lot more collaboration assistance with one another.Corey: It really feels like the entire procurement model is shifted massively. As opposed to going out for a bunch of bids and doing all these other things, it's consumption-based. And that has been—I know for enterprises—a difficult pill for a lot of their procurement teams to wind up wrapping their heads around. I can only imagine what that must be like for things that are enshrined in law.Dmitry: Yeah, there's definitely been a shift, although it's not as big as you would think on that side because you do have cloud but then you also have managed services around cloud, right? So, you look at AWS, OCI, Azure, no one's out there putting a credit card down to open an environment anymore, you know, a tenant or an account. It is done through procurement rules. Like, we don't actually buy AWS directly from AWS; we go through a reseller, right, so there's some controls there as well from the procurement side. So, there's still a lot of oversight.But it is scary to some of our procurement people. Like, AWS Marketplace is a very, very scary place for them, right? The fact that you can go and—you can hire people at Marketplace, you could buy things with a single button-click. So, we've gone out of our way, in my agency, to go through and lock that down to make sure that before anyone clicks one of those purchase buttons, that we at least know about it, they've made the request, and we have to go in and unlock that button for that purchase. So, we've got to put in more controls in some cases. But in other cases, it has made things easier.Corey: As you look across the landscape of effectively, what you're doing is uprooting an awful lot of technical systems that have been in place for decades at this point. And we look at cloud and I'm not saying it's not stable—far from it—but it also feels a little strange to be, effectively, making a similar timespan of commitment—because functionally a lot of us are—when we look at these platforms. Was that something that had already been a pre-existing appetite for when you started the role or is that something that you've found that you've had to socialize in the last couple years?Dmitry: It's a little bit of both. It's been lumpy, agency by agency, I'll say. There are some agencies that are raring to go, they want to make some changes, do a lot of good, so to speak, by upgrading their infrastructure. There are others that will sit and say, “Hey, I've been doing this for 20, 30 years. It's been fine.” That whole, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” mindset.So, for them, there's definitely been, you know, a lot more friction to get them going in that direction. But what I'm also finding is the people with their hands on the keyboards, right, the ones that are doing the work, are excited by this. This is something new for them. In addition to actually going to cloud, the other thing we've been doing is providing a lot of different training options. And so, that's something that's perked people up and definitely made them much more excited to come into work.I know, down at the, you know, the operator level, the administrators, the managers, all of those folks, are pretty pleased with the moves we're making. You do get some of the folks in upper management in the agencies that do say, “Look, this is a risk.” We're saying, “Look, it's a risk not to do this.” Right? You've also got to think about staffing and what people are willing to work on. Things like the mainframe, you know, you're not going to be able to hire those people much longer. They're going to be fewer and far between. So, you have to retool. I do tell people that, you know, if you don't like change, IT is probably not the industry to be in, even in government. You probably want to go somewhere else, then.Corey: That is sort of the next topic I want to get into, where companies across the board are finding it challenging to locate and source talent to work in their environments. How has the process of recruiting cloud talent gone for you?Dmitry: It's difficult. Not going to sugarcoat that. It's, it's—Corey: [laugh]. I'm not sure anyone would say otherwise, no matter where you are. You can pay absolutely insane, top-of-market money and still have that exact same response. No one says, “Oh, it's super easy.” Everyone finds it hard. But please continue [laugh].Dmitry: Yeah, but it's also not a problem that we can even afford to throw money at, right? So, that's not something that we'd ever do. But what I have found is that there's actually a lot of people, really, that I'll say are tech adjacent, that are interested in making that move. And so, for us, having a mentoring and training program that bring people in and get them comfortable with it is probably more important than finding the talent exactly as it is, right? If you look at our job descriptions that we put out there, we do want things like cloud certs and certain experience, but we'll drop off things like certain college requirements. Say, “Look, do you really need a college degree if you know what you're doing in the cloud or if you know what you're doing with a database and you can prove that?”So, it's re-evaluating who we're bringing in. And in some cases, can we also train someone, right, bring someone in for a lower rate, but willing to learn and then give them the experience, knowing that they may not be here for 15, 20 years and that's okay. But we've got to retool that model to say, we expect some attrition, but they walk away with some valuable skills and while they're here, they learn those skills, right? So, that's the payoff for them.Corey: I think that there's a lot of folks exploring that where there are people who have the interest and the aptitude that are looking to transition in. So, much of the discussion points around filling the talent pipeline have come from a place of, oh, we're just going to talk to all the schools and make sure that they're teaching people the right way. And well, colleges aren't really aimed at being vocational institutions most of the time. And maybe you want people who can bring an understanding of various aspects of business, of workplace dynamics, et cetera, and even the organization themselves, you can transition them in. I've always been a big fan of helping people lateral from one part of an organization to another. It's nice to see that there's actual formal processes around that for you, folks.Dmitry: Yeah, we're trying to do that and we're also working across agencies, right, where we might pull someone in from another agency that's got that aptitude and willingness, especially if it's someone that already has government experience, right, they know how to work within the system that we have here, it certainly makes things easier. It's less of a learning curve for them on that side. We think, you know, in some cases, the technical skills, we can teach you those, but just operating in this environment is just as important to understand the soft side of it.Corey: No, I hear you. One thing that I've picked up from doing this show and talking to people in the different places that you all tend to come from, has been that everyone's working with really hard problems and there's a whole universe of various constraints that everyone's wrestling with. The biggest lie in our industry across the board that I'm coming to realize is any whiteboard architecture diagram. Full stop. The real world is messy.Nothing is ever quite like it looks like in that sterile environment where you're just designing and throwing things up there. The world is built on constraints and trade-offs. I'm glad to see that you're able to bring people into your organization. I think it gives an awful lot of folks hope when they despair about seeing what some of the job prospects are for folks in the tech industry, depending on what direction they want to go in.Dmitry: Yeah. I mean, I think we've got the same challenge as everyone else does, right? It is messy. The one thing that I think is also interesting is that we also have to have transparency but to some degree—and I'll shift; I know this wasn't meant to kind of go off into the security side of things, but I think one of the things that's most interesting is trying to balance a security mindset with that transparency, right?You have private corporations, other organizations that they do whatever they do, they're not going to talk about it, you don't need to know about it. In our case, I think we've got even more of a challenge because on the one hand, we do want to lock things down, make sure they're secure and we protect not just the data, but how we do things, right, some are mechanisms and methods. But same time, we've got a responsibility to be transparent to our constituents. They've got to be able to see what we're doing, what are we spending money on? And so, to me, that's also one of the biggest challenges we have is how do we make sure we balance that out, that we can provide people and even our vendors, right, a lot of times our vendors [will 00:30:40] say, “How are you doing something? We want to know so that we can help you better in some areas.” And it's really become a real challenge for us.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me about what you're doing. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Dmitry: I guess now it's no longer called Twitter, but really just about anywhere. Twitter, Instagram—I'm not a big Instagram user—LinkedIn, Dmitry Kagansky, there's not a whole lot of us out there; pretty easy to do a search. But also you'll see there's my contact info, I believe, on the GTA website, just gta.ga.gov.Corey: Excellent. We will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:31:20]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I really appreciate it.Dmitry: Thank you, Corey. I really appreciate it as well.Corey: Dmitry Kagansky, CTO for the state of Georgia. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, insulting comment telling me that I've got it all wrong and mainframes will in fact rise again.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Kelsey Hightower joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss his reflections on how the tech industry is progressing. Kelsey describes what he's been getting out of retirement so far, and reflects on what he learned throughout his high-profile career - including why feature sprawl is such a driving force behind the complexity of the cloud environment and the tactics he used to create demos that are engaging for the audience. Corey and Kelsey also discuss the importance of remaining authentic throughout your career, and what it means to truly have an authentic voice in tech. About KelseyKelsey Hightower is a former Distinguished Engineer at Google Cloud, the co-chair of KubeCon, the world's premier Kubernetes conference, and an open source enthusiast. He's also the co-author of Kubernetes Up & Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure. Recently, Kelsey announced his retirement after a 25-year career in tech.Links Referenced:Twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Do you wish there were cheat codes for database optimization? Well, there are – no seriously. If you're using Postgres or MySQL on Amazon Aurora or RDS, OtterTune uses AI to automatically optimize your knobs and indexes and queries and other bits and bobs in databases. OtterTune applies optimal settings and recommendations in the background or surfaces them to you and allows you to do it. The best part is that there's no cost to try it. Get a free, thirty-day trial to take it for a test drive. Go to ottertune dot com to learn more. That's O-T-T-E-R-T-U-N-E dot com.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. You know, there's a great story from the Bible or Torah—Old Testament, regardless—that I was always a big fan of where you wind up with the Israelites walking the desert for 40 years in order to figure out what comes next. And Moses led them but could never enter into what came next. Honestly, I feel like my entire life is sort of going to be that direction. Not the biblical aspects, but rather always wondering what's on the other side of a door that I can never cross, and that door is retirement. Today I'm having returning guest Kelsey Hightower, who is no longer at Google. In fact, is no longer working and has joined the ranks of the gloriously retired. Welcome back, and what's it like?Kelsey: I'm happy to be here. I think retirement is just like work in some ways: you have to learn how to do it. A lot of people have no practice in their adult life what to do with all of their time. We have small dabs in it, like, you get the weekend off, depending on what your work, but you never have enough time to kind of unwind and get into something else. So, I'm being honest with myself. It's going to be a learning curve, what to do with that much time.You're probably still going to do work, but it's going to be a different type of work than you're used to. And so, that's where I am. 30 days into this, I'm in that learning mode, I'm on-the-job training.Corey: What's harder than you expected?Kelsey: It's not the hard part because I think mentally I've been preparing for, like, the last ten years, being a minimalist, learning how to kind of live within my means, learn to appreciate things that are just not work-related or status symbols. And so, to me, it felt like a smooth transition because I started to value my time more than anything else, right? Just waking up the next day became valuable to me. Spending time in the moment, right, you go to these conferences, there's, like, 10,000 people, but you learn to value those one-on-one encounters, those one-off, kind of, let's just go grab lunch situations. So, to me, retirement just makes more room for that, right? I no longer have this calendar that is super full, so I think for me, it was a nice transition in terms of getting more of that valuable time back.Corey: It seems to me that you're in a similar position to the one that I find myself in where the job that you were doing and I still am is tied, more or less, to a sense of identity as opposed to a particular task or particular role that you fill. You were Kelsey Hightower. That was a complete sentence. People didn't necessarily need to hear the rest of what you were working on or what you were going to be talking about at a given conference or whatnot. So, it seemed, at least from the outside, that an awful lot of what you did was quite simply who you were. Do you feel that your sense of identity has changed?Kelsey: So, I think when you have that much influence, when you have that much reputation, the words you say travel further, they tend to come with a little bit more respect, and so when you're working with a team on new product, and you say, “Hey, I think we should change some things.” And when they hear those words coming from someone that they trust or has a name that is attached to reputation, you tend to be able to make a lot of impact with very few words. But what you also find is that no matter what you get involved in—configuration management, distributed systems, serverless, working with customers—it all is helped and aided by the reputation that you bring into that line of work. And so yes, who you are matters, but one thing that I think helped me, kind of greatly, people are paying attention maybe to the last eight years of my career: containers, Kubernetes, but my career stretches back to the converting COBOL into Python days; the dawn of DevOps, Puppet, Chef, and Ansible; the Golang appearance and every tool being rewritten from Ruby to Golang; the Docker era.And so, my identity has stayed with me throughout those transitions. And so, it was very easy for me to walk away from that thing because I've done it three or four times before in the past, so I know who I am. I've never had, like, a Twitter bio that said, “Company X. X person from company X.” I've learned long ago to just decouple who I am from my current employer because that is always subject to change.Corey: I was fortunate enough to not find myself in the public eye until I owned my own company. But I definitely remember times in my previous incarnations where I was, “Oh, today I'm working at this company,” and I believed—usually inaccurately—that this was it. This was where I really found my niche. And then surprise I'm not there anymore six months later for, either their decision, my decision, or mutual agreement. And I was always hesitant about hanging a shingle out that was tied too tightly to any one employer.Even now, I was little worried about doing it when I went independent, just because well, what if it doesn't work? Well, what if, on some level? I think that there's an authenticity that you can bring with you—and you certainly have—where, for a long time now, whenever you say something, I take it seriously, and a lot of people do. It's not that you're unassailably correct, but I've never known you to say something you did not authentically believe in. And that is an opinion that is very broadly shared in this industry. So, if nothing else, you definitely were a terrific object lesson in speaking the truth, as you saw it.Kelsey: I think what you describe is one way that, whether you're an engineer doing QA, working in the sales department, when you can be honest with the team you're working with, when you can be honest with the customers you're selling into when you can be honest with the community you're part of, that's where the authenticity gets built, right? Companies, sometimes on the surface, you believe that they just want you to walk the party line, you know, they give you the lines and you just read them verbatim and you're doing your part. To be honest, you can do that with the website. You can do that with a well-placed ad in the search queries.What people are actually looking for are real people with real experiences, sharing not just fact, but I think when you mix kind of fact and opinion, you get this level of authenticity that you can't get just by pure strategic marketing. And so, having that leverage, I remember back in the day, people used to say, “I'm going to do the right thing and if it gets me fired, then that's just the way it's going to be. I don't want to go around doing the wrong thing because I'm scared I'm going to lose my job.” You want to find yourself in that situation where doing the right thing, is also the best thing for the company, and that's very rare, so when I've either had that opportunity or I've tried to create that opportunity and move from there.Corey: It resonates and it shows. I have never had a lot of respect for people who effectively are saying one thing today and another thing the next week based upon which way they think that the winds are blowing. But there's also something to be said for being able and willing to publicly recant things you have said previously as technology evolves, as your perspective evolves and, in light of new information, I'm now going to change my perspective on something. I've done that already with multi-cloud, for example. I thought it was ridiculous when I heard about it. But there are also expressions of it that basically every company is using, including my own. And it's a nuanced area. Where I find it challenging is when you see a lot of these perspectives that people are espousing that just so happen to deeply align with where their paycheck comes from any given week. That doesn't ring quite as true to me.Kelsey: Yeah, most companies actually don't know how to deal with it either. And now there has been times at any number of companies where my authentic opinion that I put out there is against party line. And you get those emails from directors and VPs. Like, “Hey, I thought we all agree to think this way or to at least say this.” And that's where you have to kind of have that moment of clarity and say, “Listen, that is undeniably wrong. It's so wrong in fact that if you say this in public, whether a small setting or large setting, you are going to instantly lose credibility going forward for yourself. Forget the company for a moment. There's going to be a situation where you will no longer be effective in your job because all of your authenticity is now gone. And so, what I'm trying to do and tell you is don't do that. You're better off saying nothing.”But if you go out there, and you're telling what is obviously misinformation or isn't accurate, people are not dumb. They're going to see through it and you will be classified as a person not to listen to. And so, I think a lot of people struggle with that because they believe that enterprise's consensus should also be theirs.Corey: An argument that I made—we'll call it a prediction—four-and-a-half years ago, was that in five years, nobody would really care about Kubernetes. And people misunderstood that initially, and I've clarified since repeatedly that I'm not suggesting it's going away: “Oh, turns out that was just a ridiculous fever dream and we're all going back to running bare metal with our hands again,” but rather that it would slip below the surface-level of awareness. And I don't know that I got the timing quite right on that, I think it's going to depend on the company and the culture that you find yourself in. But increasingly, when there's an application to run, it's easy to ask someone just, “Oh, great. Where's the Kubernetes cluster live so we can throw this on there and just add it to the rest of the pile?”That is sort of what I was seeing. My intention with that was not purely just to be controversial, as much fun as that might be, but also to act as a bit of a warning, where I've known too many people who let their identities become inextricably tangled with the technology. But technologies rise and fall, and at some point—like, you talk about configuration management days; I learned to speak publicly as a traveling trainer for Puppet. I wrote part of SaltStack once upon a time. But it was clear that that was not the direction the industry was going, so it was time to find something else to focus on. And I fear for people who don't keep an awareness or their feet underneath them and pay attention to broader market trends.Kelsey: Yeah, I think whenever I was personally caught up in linking my identity to technology, like, “I'm a Rubyist,” right?“, I'm a Puppeteer,” and you wear those names proudly. But I remember just thinking to myself, like, “You have to take a step back. What's more important, you or the technology?” And at some point, I realized, like, it's me, that is more important, right? Like, my independent thinking on this, my independent experience with this is far more important than the success of this thing.But also, I think there's a component there. Like when you talked about Kubernetes, you know, maybe being less relevant in five years, there's two things there. One is the success of all infrastructure things equals irrelevancy. When flights don't crash, when bridges just work, you do not think about them. You just use them because they're so stable and they become very boring. That is the success criteria.Corey: Utilities. No one's wondering if the faucet's going to work when they turn it on in the morning.Kelsey: Yeah. So, you know, there's a couple of ways to look at your statement. One is, you believe Kubernetes is on the trajectory that it's going to stabilize itself and hit that success criteria, and then it will be irrelevant. Or there's another part of the irrelevancy where something else comes along and replaces that thing, right? I think Cloud Foundry and Mesos are two good examples of Kubernetes coming along and stealing all of the attention from that because those particular products never gained that mass adoption. Maybe they got to the stable part, but they never got to the mass adoption part. So, I think when it comes to infrastructure, it's going to be irrelevant. It's just what side of that [laugh] coin do you land on?Corey: It's similar to folks who used to have to work at a variety of different companies on very specific Linux kernel subsystems because everyone had to care because there were significant performance impacts. Time went on and now there's still a few of those people that very much need to care, but for the rest of us, it is below the level of things that we have to care about. For me, the signs of the unsustainability were, oh, you can run Kubernetes effectively in production? That's a minimum of a quarter-million dollars a year in comp or up in some cases. Not every company is going to be able to field a team of those people and still remain a going concern in business. Nor frankly, should they have to.Kelsey: I'm going to pull on that thread a little bit because it's about—we're hitting that ten-year mark of Kubernetes. So, when Kubernetes comes out, why were people drawn to it, right? Why did it even get the time of day to begin with? And I think Docker kind of opened Pandora's box there. This idea of Chef, Puppet, Ansible, ten thousand package managers, and honestly, that trajectory was going to continue forever and it was helping no one. It was literally people doing duplicate work depending on the operating system you're dealing with and we were wasting time copying bits to servers—literally—in a very glorified way.So, Docker comes along and gives us this nicer, better abstraction, but it has gaps. It has no orchestration. It's literally this thing where now we've unified the packaging situation, we've learned a lot from Red Hat, YUM, Debian, and the various package repo combinations out there and so we made this universal thing. Great. We also learned a little bit about orchestration through brute force, bash scripts, config management, you name it, and so we serialized that all into this thing we call Kubernetes.It's pretty simple on the surface, but it was probably never worthy of such fanfare, right? But I think a lot of people were relieved that now we finally commoditized this expertise that the Googles, the Facebooks of the world had, right, building these systems that can copy bits to other systems very fast. There you go. We've gotten that piece. But I think what the market actually wants is in the mobile space, if you want to ship software to 300 million people that you don't even know, you can do it with the app store.There's this appetite that the boring stuff should be easy. Let's Encrypt has made SSL certificates beyond easy. It's just so easy to do the right thing. And I think for this problem we call deployments—you know, shipping apps around—at some point we have to get to a point where that is just crazy easy. And it still isn't.So, I think some of the frustration people express ten years later, they're realizing that they're trying to recreate a Rube Goldberg machine with Kubernetes is the base element and we still haven't understood that this whole thing needs to simplify, not ten thousand new pieces so you can build your own adventure.Corey: It's the idea almost of what I'm seeing AWS go through, and to some extent, its large competitors. But building anything on top of AWS from scratch these days is still reminiscent of going to Home Depot—or any hardware store—and walking up and down the aisles and getting all the different components to piece together what you want. Sometimes just want to buy something from Target that's already assembled and you have to do all of that work. I'm not saying there isn't value to having a Home Depot down the street, but it's also not the panacea that solves for all use cases. An awful lot of customers just want to get the job done and I feel that if we cling too tightly to how things used to be, we lose it.Kelsey: I'm going to tell you, being in the cloud business for almost eight years, it's the customers that create this. Now, I'm not blaming the customer, but when you start dealing with thousands of customers with tons of money, you end up in a very different situation. You can have one customer willing to pay you a billion dollars a year and they will dictate things that apply to no one else. “We want this particular set of features that only we will use.” And for a billion bucks a year times ten years, it's probably worth from a business standpoint to add that feature.Now, do this times 500 customers, each major provider. What you end up with is a cloud console that is unbearable, right? Because they also want these things to be first-class citizens. There's always smaller companies trying to mimic larger peers in their segment that you just end up in that chaos machine of unbound features forever. I don't know how to stop it. Unless you really come out maybe more Apple style and you tell people, “This is the one and only true way to do things and if you don't like it, you have to go find an alternative.” The cloud business, I think, still deals with the, “If you have a large payment, we will build it.”Corey: I think that that is a perspective that is not appreciated until you've been in the position of watching how large enterprises really interact with each other. Because it's, “Well, what customer the world is asking for yet another way to run containers?” “Uh, this specific one and their constraints are valid.” Every time I think I've seen everything there is to see in the world of cloud, I just have to go talk to one more customer and I'm learning something new. It's inevitable.I just wish that there was a better way to explain some of this to newcomers, when they're looking at, “Oh, I'm going to learn how this cloud thing works. Oh, my stars, look at how many services there are.” And then they wind up getting lost with analysis paralysis, and every time they get started and ask someone for help, they're pushed in a completely different direction and you keep spinning your wheels getting told to start over time and time again when any of these things can be made to work. But getting there is often harder than it really should be.Kelsey: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize how far you can get with, like, three VMs, a load balancer, and Postgres. My guess is you can probably build pretty much any clone of any service we use today with at least 1 million customers. Most people never reached that level—I don't even want to say the word scale—but that blueprint is there and most people will probably be better served by that level of simplicity than trying to mimic the behaviors of large customers—or large companies—with these elaborate use cases. I don't think they understand the context there. A lot of that stuff is baggage. It's not [laugh] even, like, best-of-breed or great design. It's like happenstance from 20 years of trying to buy everything that's been sold to you.Corey: I agree with that idea wholeheartedly. I was surprising someone the other day when I said that if you were to give me a task of getting some random application up and running by tomorrow, I do a traditional three-tier architecture, some virtual machines, a load balancer, and a database service. And is that the way that all the cool kids are doing it today? Well, they're not talking about it, but mostly. But the point is, is that it's what I know, it's where my background is, and the thing you already know when you're trying to solve a new problem is incredibly helpful, rather than trying to learn everything along that new path that you're forging down. Is that architecture the best approach? No, but it's perfectly sufficient for an awful lot of stuff.Kelsey: Yeah. And so, I mean, look, I've benefited my whole career from people fantasizing about [laugh] infrastructure—Corey: [laugh].Kelsey: And the truth is that in 2023, this stuff is so powerful that you can do almost anything you want to do with the simplest architecture that's available to us. The three-tier architecture has actually gotten better over the years. I think people are forgotten: CPUs are faster, RAM is much bigger quantities, the networks are faster, right, these databases can store more data than ever. It's so good to learn the fundamentals, start there, and worst case, you have a sound architecture people can reason about, and then you can go jump into the deep end, once you learn how to swim.Corey: I think that people would be depressed to understand just how much the common case for the value that Kubernetes brings is, “Oh yeah, now we can lose a drive or a server and the application stays up.” It feels like it's a bit overkill for that one somewhat paltry use case, but that problem has been hounding companies for decades.Kelsey: Yeah, I think at some point, the whole ‘SSH is my only interface into these kinds of systems,' that's a little low level, that's a little bare bones, and there will probably be a feature now where we start to have this not Infrastructure as Code, not cloud where we put infrastructure behind APIs and you pay per use, but I think what Kubernetes hints at is a future where you have APIs that do something. Right now the APIs give you pieces so you can assemble things. In the future, the APIs will just do something, “Run this app. I need it to be available and here's my money budget, my security budget, and reliability budget.” And then that thing will say, “Okay, we know how to do that, and here's roughly what is going to cost.”And I think that's what people actually want because that's how requests actually come down from humans, right? We say, “We want this app or this game to be played by millions of people from Australia to New York.” And then for a person with experience, that means something. You kind of know what architecture you need for that, you know what pieces that need to go there. So, we're just moving into a realm where we're going to have APIs that do things all of a sudden.And so, Kubernetes is the warm-up to that era. And that's why I think that transition is a little rough because it leaks the pieces part, so where you can kind of build all the pieces that you want. But we know what's coming. Serverless also hints at this. But that's what people should be looking for: APIs that actually do something.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Panoptica.  Panoptica simplifies container deployment, monitoring, and security, protecting the entire application stack from build to runtime. Scalable across clusters and multi-cloud environments, Panoptica secures containers, serverless APIs, and Kubernetes with a unified view, reducing operational complexity and promoting collaboration by integrating with commonly used developer, SRE, and SecOps tools. Panoptica ensures compliance with regulatory mandates and CIS benchmarks for best practice conformity. Privacy teams can monitor API traffic and identify sensitive data, while identifying open-source components vulnerable to attacks that require patching. Proactively addressing security issues with Panoptica allows businesses to focus on mitigating critical risks and protecting their interests. Learn more about Panoptica today at panoptica.app.Corey: You started the show by talking about how your career began with translating COBOL into Python. I firmly believe someone starting their career today listening to this could absolutely find that by the time their career starts drawing to their own close, that Kubernetes is right in there as far as sounding like the deprecated thing that no one really talks about or thinks about anymore. And I hope so. I want the future to be brighter than the past. I want getting a business or getting software together in a way that helps people to not require the amount of, “First, spend six weeks at a boot camp,” or, “Learn how to write just enough code that you can wind up getting funding and then have it torn apart.”What's the drag-and-drop story? What's the describe the application to a robot and it builds it for you? I'm optimistic about the future of infrastructure, just because based upon its power to potentially make reliability and scale available to folks who have no idea of what's involved with that. That's kind of the point. That's the end game of having won this space.Kelsey: Well, you know what? Kubernetes is providing the metadata to make that possible, right? Like in the early days, people were writing one-off scripts or, you know, writing little for loops to get things in the right place. And then we get config management that kind of formalizes that, but it still had no metadata, right? You'd have things like Puppet report information.But in the world of, like, Kubernetes, or any cloud provider, now you get semantic meaning. “This app needs this volume with this much space with this much memory, I need three of these behind this load balancer with these protocols enabled.” There is now so much metadata about applications, their life cycles, and how they work that if you were to design a new system, you can actually use that data to craft a much better API that made a lot of this boilerplate the defaults. Oh, that's a web application. You do not need to specify all of this boilerplate. Now, we can give you much better nouns and verbs to describe what needs to happen.So, I think this is that transition as all the new people coming up, they're going to be dealing with semantic meaning to infrastructure, where we were dealing with, like, tribal knowledge and intuition, right? “Run this script, pipe it to this thing, and then this should happen. And if it doesn't, run the script again with this flag.” Versus, “Oh, here's the semantic meaning to a working system.” That's a game-changer.Corey: One other topic I wanted to ask you about—I've it's been on my list of things to bring up the next time I ran into you and then you went ahead and retired, making it harder to run into you. But a little while back, I was at a tech conference and someone gave a demo, and it didn't go as well as they had hoped. And a few of us were talking about it afterwards. We've all been speakers, we've all lived that life. Zero shade.But someone brought you up in particular—unprompted; your legend does precede you—and the phrase that they used was that Kelsey's demos were always picture-perfect. He was so lucky with how the demos worked out. And I just have to ask—because you don't strike me as someone who is not careful, particularly when all eyes are upon you—and real experts make things look easy, did you have demos periodically go wrong that the audience just didn't see going wrong along the way? Or did you just actually YOLO all of your demos and got super lucky every single time for the last eight years?Kelsey: There was a musician who said, “Hey, your demos are like jazz. You improvise the whole thing.” There's no script, there's no video. The way I look at the demo is, like, you got this instrument, the command prompt, and the web browser. You can do whatever you want with them.Now, I have working code. I wrote the code, I wrote the deployment scenarios, I delete it all and I put it all back. And so, I know how it's supposed to work from the ground up. And so, what that means is if anything goes wrong, I can improvise. I could go into fixing the code. I can go into doing a redeploy.And I'll give you one good example. The first time Kubernetes came out, there was this small meetup in San Francisco with just the core contributors, right? So, there is no community yet, there's no conference yet, just people hacking on Kubernetes. And so, we decided, we're going to have the first Kubernetes meetup. And everyone got, like, six, seven minutes, max. That's it. You got to move.And so, I was like, “Hey, I noticed that in the lineup, there is no ‘What is Kubernetes?' talk. We're just getting into these nuts and bolts and I don't think that's fair to the people that will be watching this for the first time.” And I said, “All right, Kelsey, you should give maybe an intro to what it is.” I was like, “You know what I'll do? I'm going to build a Kubernetes cluster from the ground up, starting with VMs on my laptop.”And I'm in it and I'm feeling confident. So, confidence is the part that makes it look good, right? Where you're confident in the commands you type. One thing I learned to do is just use your history, just hit the up arrow instead of trying to copy all these things out. So, you hit the up arrow, you find the right command and you talk through it and no one looks at what's happening. You're cycling through the history.Or you have multiple tabs where you know the next up arrow is the right history. So, you give yourself shortcuts. And so, I'm halfway through this demo. We got three minutes left, and it doesn't work. Like, VMware is doing something weird on my laptop and there's a guy calling me off stage, like, “Hey, that's it. Cut it now. You're done.”I'm like, “Oh, nope. Thou shalt not go out like this.” It's time to improvise. And so, I said, “Hey, who wants to see me finish this?” And now everyone is locked in. It's dead silent. And I blow the whole thing away. I bring up the VMs, I [pixie 00:28:20] boot, I installed the kubelet, I install Docker. And everyone's clapping. And it's up, it's going, and I say, “Now, if all of this works, we run this command and it should start running the app.” And I do kubectl apply-f and it comes up and the place goes crazy.And I had more to the demo. But you stop. You've gotten the point across, right? This is what Kubernetes is, here's how it works, and look how you do it from scratch. And I remember saying, “And that's the end of my presentation.” You need to know when to stop, you need to know when to pivot, and you need to have confidence that it's supposed to work, and if you've seen it work a couple of times, your confidence is unshaken.And when I walked off that stage, I remember someone from Red Hat was like—Clayton Coleman; that's his name—Clayton Coleman walked up to me and said, “You planned that. You planned it to fail just like that, so you can show people how to go from scratch all the way up. That was brilliant.” And I was like, “Sure. That's exactly what I did.”Corey: “Yeah, I meant to do that.” I like that approach. I found there's always things I have to plan for in demos. For example, I can never count on having solid WiFi from a conference hall. The show has to go on. It's, okay, the WiFi doesn't work. I've at one point had to give a talk where the projector just wasn't working to a bunch of students. So okay, close the laptop. We're turning this into a bunch of question-and-answer sessions, and it was one of the better talks I've ever given.But the alternative is getting stuck in how you think a talk absolutely needs to go. Now, keynotes are a little harder where everything has been scripted and choreographed and at that point, I've had multiple fallbacks for demos that I've had to switch between. And people never noticed I was doing it for that exact reason. But it takes work to look polished.Kelsey: I will tell you that the last Next keynote I gave was completely irresponsible. No dry runs, no rehearsals, no table reads, no speaker notes. And I think there were 30,000 people at that particular Next. And Diane Greene was still CEO, and I remember when marketing was like, “Yo, at least a backup recording.” I was like, “Nah, I don't have anything.”And that demo was extensive. I mean, I was building an app from scratch, starting with Postgres, adding the schema, building an app, deploying the app. And something went wrong halfway. And there's this joke that I came up with just to pass over the time, they gave me a new Chromebook to do the demo. And so, it's not mine, so none of the default settings were there, I was getting pop-ups all over the place.And I came up with this joke on the way to the conference. I was like, “You know what'd be cool? When I show off the serverless stuff, I would just copy the code from Stack Overflow. That'd be like a really cool joke to say this is what senior engineers do.” And I go to Stack Overflow and it's getting all of these pop-ups and my mouse couldn't highlight the text.So, I'm sitting there like a deer in headlights in front of all of these people and I'm looking down, and marketing is, like, “This is what… this is what we're talking about.” And so, I'm like, “Man do I have to end this thing here?” And I remember I kept trying, I kept trying, and came to me. Once the mouse finally got in there and I cleared up all the popups, I just came up with this joke. I said, “Good developers copy.” And I switched over to my terminal and I took the text from Stack Overflow and I said, “Great developers paste,” and the whole room start laughing.And I had them back. And we kept going and continued. And at the end, there was like this Google Assistant, and when it was finished, I said, “Thank you,” to the Google Assistant and it was talking back through the live system. And it said, “I got to admit, that was kind of dope.” So, I go to the back and Diane Greene walks back there—the CEO of Google Cloud—and she pats me on the shoulder. “Kelsey, that was dope.”But it was the thrill because I had as much thrill as the people watching it. So, in real-time, I was going through all these emotions. But I think people forget, the demo is supposed to convey something. The demo is supposed to tell some story. And I've seen people overdo their demos with way too much code, way too many commands, almost if they're trying to show off their expertise versus telling a story. And so, when I think about the demo, it has to complement the entire narrative. And so, sometimes you don't need as many commands, you don't need as much code. You can keep things simple and that gives you a lot more ins and outs in case something does go crazy.Corey: And I think the key takeaway here that so many people lose sight of is you have to know the material well enough that whatever happens, well, things don't always go the way I planned during the day, either, and talking through that is something that I think serves as a good example. It feels like a bit more of a challenge when you're trying to demo something that a company is trying to sell someone, “Oh, yeah, it didn't work. But that's okay.” But I'm still reminded by probably one of the best conference demo fails I've ever seen on video. One day, someone was attempting to do a talk that hit Amazon S3 and it didn't work.And the audience started shouting at him that yeah, S3 is down right now. Because that was the big day that S3 took a nap for four hours. It was one of those foundational things you'd should never stop to consider. Like, well, what if the internet doesn't work tomorrow when I'm doing my demo? That's a tough one to work around. But rough timing.Kelsey: [breathy sound]Corey: He nailed the rest of the talk, though. You keep going. That's the thing that people miss. They get stuck in the demo that isn't working, they expect the audience knows as much as they do about what's supposed to happen next. You're the one up there telling a story. People forget it's storytelling.Kelsey: Now, I will be remiss to say, I know that the demo gods have been on my side for, like, ten, maybe fifteen years solid. So, I retired from doing live demos. This is why I just don't do them anymore. I know I'm overdue as an understatement. But the thing I've learned though, is that what I found more impressive than the live demo is to be able to convey the same narratives through story alone. No slides. No demo. Nothing. But you can still make people feel where you would try to go with that live demo.And it's insanely hard, especially for technologies people have never seen before. But that's that new challenge that I kind of set up for myself. So, if you see me at a keynote and you've noticed why I've been choosing these fireside chats, it's mainly because I'm also trying to increase my ability to share narrative, technical concepts, but now in a new form. So, this new storytelling format through the fireside chat has been my substitute for the live demo, normally because I think sometimes, unless there's something really to show that people haven't seen before, the live demo isn't as powerful to me. Once the thing is kind of known… the live demo is kind of more of the same. So, I think they really work well when people literally have never seen the thing before, but outside of that, I think you can kind of move on to, like, real-life scenarios and narratives that help people understand the fundamentals and the philosophy behind the tech.Corey: An awful lot of tools and tech that we use on a day-to-day basis as well are thankfully optimized for the people using them and the ergonomics of going about your day. That is orthogonal, in my experience, to looking very impressive on stage. It's the rare company that can have a product that not only works well but also presents well. And that is something I don't tend to index on when I'm selecting a tool to do something with. So, it's always a question of how can I make this more visually entertaining? For while I got out of doing demos entirely, just because talking about things that have more staying power than a screenshot that is going to wind up being irrelevant the next week when they decide to redo the console for some service yet again.Kelsey: But you know what? That was my secret to doing software products and projects. When I was at CoreOS, we used to have these meetups we would used to do every two weeks or so. So, when we were building things like etcd, Fleet was a container management platform that came before Kubernetes, we would always run through them as a user, start install them, use them, and ask how does it feel? These command line flags, they don't feel right. This isn't a narrative you can present with the software alone.But once we could, then the meetups were that much more engaging. Like hey, have you ever tried to distribute configuration to, like, a thousand servers? It's insanely hard. Here's how you do with Puppet. But now I'm going to show you how you do with etcd. And then the narrative will kind of take care of itself because the tool was positioned behind what people would actually do with it versus what the tool could do by itself.Corey: I think that's the missing piece that most marketing doesn't seem to quite grasp is, they talk about the tool and how awesome it is, but that's why I love customer demos so much. They're showing us how they use a tool to solve a real-world problem. And honestly, from my snarky side of the world and the attendant perspective there, I can make an awful lot of fun about basically anything a company decides to show me, but put a customer on stage talking about how whatever they've built is solving a real-world problem for them, that's the point where I generally shut up and listen because I'm going to learn something about a real-world story. Because you don't generally get to tell customers to go on stage and just make up a story that makes us sound good, and have it come off with any sense of reality whatsoever. I haven't seen that one happen yet, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.Kelsey: I don't know how many founders or people building companies listen in to your podcast, but this is right now, I think the number one problem that especially venture-backed startups have. They tend to have great technology—maybe it's based off some open-source project—with tons of users who just know how that tool works, it's just an ingredient into what they're already trying to do. But that isn't going to ever be your entire customer base. Soon, you'll deal with customers who don't understand the thing you have and they need more than technology, right? They need a product.And most of these companies struggle painting that picture. Here's what you can do with it. Or here's what you can't do now, but you will be able to do if you were to use this. And since they are missing that, a lot of these companies, they produce a lot of code, they ship a lot of open-source stuff, they raise a lot of capital, and then it just goes away, it fades out over time because they can bring on no newcomers. The people who need help the most, they don't have a narrative for them, and so therefore, they're just hoping that the people who have all the skills in the world, the early adopters, but unfortunately, those people are tend to be the ones that don't actually pay. They just kind of do it themselves. It's the people who need the most help.Corey: How do we monetize the bleeding edge of adoption? In many cases you don't. They become your community if you don't hug them to death first.Kelsey: Exactly.Corey: Ugh. None of this is easy. I really want to thank you for taking the time to catch up and talk about how you seen the remains of a career well spent, and now you're going off into that glorious sunset. But I have a sneaking suspicion you'll still be around. Where should people go if they want to follow up on what you're up to these days?Kelsey: Right now I still use… I'm going to keep calling it Twitter.Corey: I agree.Kelsey: I kind of use that for my real-time interactions. And I'm still attending conferences, doing fireside chats, and just meeting people on those conference floors. But that's what where I'll be for now. So yeah, I'll still be around, but maybe not as deep. And I'll be spending more time just doing normal life stuff, maybe less building software.Corey: And we will, of course, put a link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to catch up and share your reflections on how the industry is progressing.Kelsey: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Corey.Corey: Kelsey Hightower, now gloriously retired. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment that you're going to type on stage as part of a conference talk, and then accidentally typo all over yourself while you're doing it.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

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Get ready to strap in for a journey that hurtles through a universe of technology.  We'll take a detour into the realm of the unknown, dissecting the sudden loss of contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft. We'll examine the claims from former US officials about the government's alleged possession of alien vehicles that emerged during the UFO congress hearings. And if that's not enough, we'll also delve into the intriguing world of social media, discussing the rise and fall of Meta's new platform, Threads. We kick things into gear when we crack open the top tech news of the week, from a failed adventure to explore the Titanic to an audacious plan to colonize Venus. Our curiosity is piqued, as we turn our attention to the fascinating undersea world of cables and how they facilitate global communication, connecting us from continent to continent.To lighten the mood, we'll share our tech fails of the week and even indulge in a whiskey-tasting session. So, come along on this thrilling rollercoaster ride of technological marvels, astonishing revelations, and intriguing discussions. We promise you a mind-bending, horizon-expanding adventure in the realm of tech. Buckle up! It's TechTime with Nathan Mumm!Episode 164 Starts at 1:28This week on TechTime with Nathan Mumm®, Threads users down by more than a half, OceanGate Co-Founder Wants to Send 1,000 People to Venus, as Company X is all in a Twitter. "Huston, We Have a Problem," as NASA sends the wrong command. Next, We have our informative and funny segment, LETTER's Back, and we talk about cables and transcontinental cabling on our ocean floors.Join us on TechTime Radio with Nathan Mumm, the show that makes you go "Hummmm" Technology news of the week for July 30th – August 5th, 2023--- [Now on Today's Show]: Starts at 3:40--- [Top Stories in Technology]: Starts at 5:33Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says its new social media platform, Threads, has lost more than half its users. - https://tinyurl.com/4hypyssh Search for Voyager 2 After Nasa Accidentally Sends Wrong Command - https://tinyurl.com/33ek656n OceanGate Co-Founder Wants to Send 1,000 People to Venus — Now that sounds like a safe venture. https://tinyurl.com/55b65687MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials - https://tinyurl.com/nhaw6473 --- [Pick of the Day - Whiskey Tasting Reveal]: Starts at 23:15Woodford Reserve Master's Collection Batch Proof 124.7 (2023 Release) | 124.7 Proof | $140.00 --- [LETTERS]: Starts at 25:39Marc and Nathan share this week's informative emails that were received during the week. This includes scams, phishing emails, and all-out mistruths disguised as legitimate emails.--- [This Week in Technology]: Starts at 39:22August 5, 1858 - First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable Completed --- [Marc's Whiskey Mumble]: Starts at 41:27Marc Gregoire's review of this week's whiskey--- [Technology Fail of the Week]: Starts at 45:49This week's “Technology Fail” comes to us from X (Twitter) Elon Musk company.--- [Mike's Mesmerizing Moment brought to us by StoriCoffee®]: Starts at--- [Nathan Nugget]: Starts at 50:38Multimillion-dollar cables crisscrossing the bottom of the ocean have become vital connections in our online lives.--- [Pick of the Day Whiskey Review]: Starts at 53:23Woodford Reserve Master's Collection Batch Proof 124.7 (2023 Release) | 124.7 Proof | $140.00Marc: Thumbs UpNathan: Thumbs Up

Ever wonder how technology impinges on productivity? Is it boosting our output or just an illusion of efficiency? Join us as Nathan and Mike, dive straight into this paradox, and also ponder over Twitter's logo transition to an 'X'. With a shot of whiskey from our in-house connoisseur Marc, we navigate the digital maze and bring out the real implications of this change.What if you could prove your humanity to your computer? Intriguing, isn't it? The WorldID concept is just that and much more. We also find time to venture into the world of reality TV, discussing the unique premise of Netflix's new show, Zombieverse. As a special treat, we have Phil Hennessy on board for a fascinating chat about the fusion of human brain cells with AI—a talk that will surely make you question the potential of artificial intelligence.But the tech-talk doesn't stop there. We delve into the Dish Brain System with a Battlestar Galactica storyline. You'll also get to reflect on the historic Cape Canaveral launch.Tune in for a tech ride that's informative, thought-provoking, and entertaining at the same time.Episode 163 Starts at 1:28This week on TechTime with Nathan Mumm® Is technology making us more productive? How about scanning your eyeball for some Worldcoin cryptocurrency? Next, are you applying to work for Company X. This all sounds like a Marvel storyline, and yet it is happening now. Phil Hennessy is back on our Chat about Chat segment, and a reality show has contestants surviving a zombie apocalypse. So buckle up, tech enthusiasts, because here at TechTime, we believe that a shot of whiskey and humor makes the technology go down in the most delightful way!" Join us on TechTime Radio with Nathan Mumm, the show that makes you go "Hummmm" Technology news of the week for July 23rd - 29th, 2023.--- [Now on Today's Show]: Starts at 3:02--- [Top Stories in Technology]: Starts at 4:26Elon Musk: Twitter rebrands as X and kills off blue bird logo - https://tinyurl.com/2pyy4hzhIs technology making us more productive? - https://tinyurl.com/2mtmmhfb OpenAI's Sam Altman launches Worldcoin crypto project https://tinyurl.com/ysa5tyunNetflix's new reality show has contestants surviving a zombie apocalypse - https://tinyurl.com/46u222kr --- [Pick of the Day - Whiskey Tasting Reveal]: Starts at 23:29Ancient Ancient Age 10 Star | 90 Proof | $13.99 --- [Chat about Chat with Phil]: Starts at 26:19Today we welcome back Phil Hennessy in a monthly segment called "Chat about Chat with Phil" We have a plethora of exciting news to discuss an inside scoop into what Apple is doing with AI.--- [This Week in Technology]: Starts at 41:30July 24, 1950 - First Rocket Launch from Cape Canaveral--- [Marc's Whiskey Mumble]: Starts at 43:21--- [Technology Fail of the Week]: Starts at 47:30The City of Albuquerque spent thousands on failed technology--- [Mike's Mesmerizing Moment brought to us by StoriCoffee®]: Starts at 50:03--- [Nathan Nugget]: Starts at 52:56Microsoft has created a pizza-scented Xbox controller --- [Pick of the Day Whiskey Review]: Starts at 54:07Ancient Ancient Age 10 Star | 90 Proof | $13.99 Mike: Thumbs DownNathan: Thumbs Down

Description: This SHINE podcast interview is with my friend, colleague, and Chief People Officer Siminia Simion.  In this interview, Siminia and I speak about a few very important themes. First we speak about how we can increase our conscious “inner game” skills to be skillful in asking for what we desire and negotiate anything.  We talk about how we can embody skills of empathy and humility to be compassionate leaders during hiring and layoffs.  I use a powerful coaching framework to guide Siminia in how to ask for more in a future negotiation.  Lastly, we share important topics of what you can negotiate for in the initial interview and offer stages of a professional role. This inspiring episode will empower you to own your worth, identify and ask for the tangible and intangible needs you deserve.  Episode Links: Simina Simion Ask for More Book by Alexandra Carter How to Ask for a Raise SHINE Links: Thank you for listening. Want to build a high trust, innovative, and inclusive culture at work? Sign up for our newsletter and get the free handout and be alerted to more inspiring Shine episodes  Building Trust Free Gift Carley Links: LinkedIn Consultation Call with Carley Book Carley for Speaking Leading from Wholeness Learning & Developmen Carley's Book  Executive Coaching with Carley   Well Being Resources:  Inner Game Meditations Inner Game Leadership Assessment   Social:  LinkedIn  Instagram Website  Shine Podcast Page    Imperfect Shownotes Hi, welcome to the shine podcast. My name is Carley Hauck. I'm your host, this is the fifth season of the shine podcast. I started the shine podcast as a way of doing research for my book on conscious leadership in business. And you will find interviews with scientists, researchers and business leaders on the intersection of conscious inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices. My book debuted in 2021 Shine ignite your inner game of conscious leadership and was voted one of the best books to read in 2022. By mindful magazine, I facilitate two episodes a month of the shine podcast.    And before I tell you about the topic for today, please go over to Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast carrier and hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes. The focus of this season is on the essentials for wellbeing. And that encompasses the intersection of our personal well being the collective well being of our workplace, and how that fosters and nurtures the planet's well being they are all connected. I focus on well being this season, because I really want to crack the code and inspire folks to prioritize their individual well being and therefore that will transcend into the collective and the planet's well being.    And I have developed a inner game leadership assessment that I gave out to 100 different leaders last year. And the leadership assessment is based on the framework of the inner game, which is what we're cultivating on the inside to be conscious leaders. And it shows up on the outside when we cultivated the certain qualities. And two of the nine leadership competencies that were lowest from the sample of 100 leaders were psychological and physical well being. Therefore, that is why we are focusing on well being and if you're curious about where your strengths and gaps are, around the qualities to become a conscious leader, you can take the assessment and find out your score for free. I recently opened to the assessment tool to the public and the link will be in the show notes.    Now on to our episode. I am so excited to have this conversation about how to ask for more. And really wonderful practical tips for negotiation. Samina. Thank you so much for being here. Arlie thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you today. Well introduce yourself to all of these wonderful listeners.   So my name is Amina I, I am a mom, I'm a wife. I am a people leader in the tech world. And I'm also an immigrant. And I came to this country about 13 years ago with big dreams and a passion to add value. And here I am today hopefully being hopeful that I've learned a lot and I grew a lot as a person and as a leader.   Thank you and what country did you emigrate from?   I was born in Romania.   Mm hmm. Lovely. Well, we connected because of the people tech Partners Group that I have been kind of Yeah, just immersed in the last year so many incredible people leaders in that group. And then I also found out that you were good friends with an pal who is another shining light leader in my life. So I'm again just really happy that we've been able to foster this new connection and relationship and I am going to just tee up the podcast a bit so folks know what we're going to be talking about.    So Samina and I are going to speak about some of her inner game conscious leadership qualities that have supported her to be the incredible chief people officer that she is. And we're going to talk a little bit more about what has been challenging for her as a CPO, especially given the current economy and the future of work climate. And then we're going to run through a negotiation conversation, that will be me being the coach. It's one of the wonderful hats that I wear. And then really working through a framework that is going to be something that you can apply to yourself, or to support somebody else as they're trying to figure out their negotiation terms for a new role. Or frankly, it could even be how do you negotiate buying a new house or car or a conversation with your partner? I mean, it's all clickable.    And then we're going to talk about what kinds of things can we negotiate for with roles at the beginning and even you know, when the offer has been given? And specifically, what should female executives be asking for Samina is also going to share some tips. And then at the very end, I will record this coaching framework that Sumeet and I are going to roleplay together so it's packed, it's going to be so great. And let's go ahead and start. So the intersection of this podcast really talks about conscious leadership, high performing teams awareness practices, Samina, I know you're a bit familiar with the framework of conscious leadership that I've developed, there's nine different qualities. And you have read my book. So what leadership quality do you feel is your strongest and which one is an opportunity for growth?   Great question. And I feel that resilience is one of my strongest qualities. And probably the second after that is empathy. And the third is humility. But I'll talk about resilience a little bit more. Yeah, it started from, you know, early age, when I realized that I needed to be courageous in order to grow. And I took a few steps, including the one to relocate into a completely new country and start from scratch my career, my community, and realized very early on, that is not always a smooth sailing. And you're going to experience turbulences, and I'm a big fan of Brene, brown, and I like to, to share this point of view with folks that I'm coaching and folks that I work with, you're not going to experience growth, if you're afraid of embracing the suck. And in order to experience that growth, it's it's worth knowing when it's too early, to move away from a situation. I'm a big believer, especially as a female executive, that there are different rules around when executives are departing, departing a company and a role. Ideally, you're never running away, when it's hard. Ideally, you, you stick to it, and you try to solve the problems that you're seeing in front of you and continue to add your value in terms. In times of turbulence, I think that's one of my main qualities. And the thing that helped me experience the most growth in my career, you're probably seen by looking at my profile that I like staying for a long period of time, especially in tech that rarely, a lot of people are staying for five, six years, I've experienced that at least once and experienced a couple of three years Steens in you, especially at a startup, you see a lot of changes. And those are great opportunities to learn and understand how a business is evolving and how you are evolving as a leader.    So that I would say that that's probably my my, my main superpower. And the second one that I care deeply about as a people leader and as a leader, as an as a leader in general is empathy is really trying to understand how others are feeling and what is their perspective, to be able to craft programs, Paulus's interventions that make sense, and they don't feel disconnected from the reality. The third one that I think it's a non negotiable, it's humility. It's it's humbleness, and humility. Knowing that you can do it all you it really takes a village to build something exceptional.    And you need to have the strength and self awareness to realize that you cannot be good at everything. And it's okay and highly recommended to hire and build teams around you with people who have the qualities that you don't or they're passionate about the things that you might be passionate but you might not have the superpowers to do them really, really well.    And that's what I've no Based on how I conduct myself and how I how I like to continue my path as a leader, thank you. To summarize, even though you did it so well yourself, out of the nine different ones, you have listed resilience, which the way you're describing it. And the way that I actually talked about in the book is a growth mindset. You know, how is this challenge for me? How is it a gift, what am I going to learn from it, and then empathy and humility and humility to your point is really about asking for support, you know, acknowledging your vulnerability that you don't know everything, and then asking people to come in and join you and, and help delegate those things that you don't know, so that you empower other people to step in and create this incredible culture. Thank you.   What about one that is an opportunity for growth, right now, I've thought about this for quite some time, and an opportunity for growth is carving out time, for my well being, there is a tendency to constantly prove the world that you can do more faster, better, smarter, but what I've learned on my own by experiencing, you know, sometimes challenging times is that if you don't recharge your batteries, you're not gonna go too far, I have a tendency to jump all in. And I had a tendency to really want to see results immediately prove value, as soon as possible. But what I've learned through hard lessons is that you can't control it all.    And even if you dedicate yourself 150%, to something, there are so many variables at play, there is no guarantee that just by working hard and doing all the right things, and being always on something that's gonna be successful. As we evolve and grow as human beings, our identity is becoming a well rounded identity, you're not only the professional who works in tech, you're the man who you know, educates and takes care of other human being and how they're going to behave in this world, you're a partner to someone you are a daughter, into someone, a member of the community, there are so many opportunities to give back and add value, the way you see yourself and define yourself should not come only from one angle.    So with that in mind, while I will always want to excel in what I do, I'm also becoming more and more aware of the multiple roles that I'm assuming in this world and how I'm showing up in all of them. Because it has to be a balance, it has to be a work life integration, it has to be moments when you give more on one side, and when you give more on the other side, depending on what's happening in life. And that's what I'm trying to transition into and feel good about the fact that you're not always going to be your best self or on your best foot on on your top game, depending on what's happening in life. And that's okay.   I hear you are nourishing the well. So that you have what you need to then bring your best is a growth opportunity. And so that actually goes into the next question that I was going to ask that I know you and I have talked about, you know, off the record, which is one of the bigger challenges I think that people like yourself in your role have been navigating with the current economy and future of work is there have been a lot of layoffs. And so, being that you're a leader that leads from love that has a lot of empathy.    How have you navigated in your career, how to really send people off with care and compassion, because I've talked to lots of folks and leaders and people that have been the ones that have, you know, delivered it and have been on the receiving end, and it's typically not done with a lot of consciousness, but I know that you do it differently. So share a little more on that. How are you taking care of yourself and then being able to take care of these people in the most graceful kind way that you can under the circumstances, right?    Yeah, no, and I'll start with the beginning. As a leader, you always join the company thinking about how the company is going to grow, how to build the businesses gonna succeed, how the great people you have on board are going to grow in their careers and grow as as professionals and as human beings and Then something happens. And it, especially in the last few months, or in the last few years, if we think about the pandemic, where things are not going, according to the plan, no matter how hard everyone is trying, the economy is turbulent there are headwinds in the market. And sometimes you need to make very hard decisions.    And some of those hard decisions involve cutting people cutting jobs. And throughout my career, and I've been doing HR for more than 15 years internationally. In Europe, in the US, I work with companies based in in Asia, I found that no matter how much exposure to situations like this, you have as a people leader, if you lead from a point of love, and care and empathy, it's going to be very hard to not be emotionally impacted by something like this. I remember the first layoff that I had to do in the US it's happening, at least in my career, it happened more often after I relocated to the US, and I started to be a people leader. And I remember thinking about how these people have houses, they need to pay for the houses, they have children, they have family members, they need to take care of, they need to put food on the food on the table, they need to pay their bills, and I was thinking, wow, losing your job is one of the most dramatic, traumatic experiences someone can have.    And the fact that the company is not growing fast enough, or it doesn't optimize stores profitability fast enough, or it needs to look better on paper for whatever is going to happen next, it doesn't make the impact of these decisions, less stressful for the people on the receiving end. So as a people leader, I've always thought about if I would be in these people's shoes, and by the way it can happen at any point in anyone's careers, what would be my preference in how I would like to be treated? What will mean to me that I'm being laid off with respect, where I still keep at least some of my self esteem, that I've built throughout the years in my career, in what will help me land in the best possible way on my feet, right?    And I thought about it. And I talked to people that was questions, who were let go senior professionals, folks in the beginning of their careers. And I looked at the data on how much savings people have in the US if something like this happens. And the reality is that not a lot of people have a lot of savings to count on. And I really try to think about a couple of things, one, from an economical perspective, what is a decent package that's going to help people land on their feet, given that it takes between three to five months to find a job.    Yet, it seems like in Dec is around three months, even now with distributed market, because a lot of new jobs are being created. So that's one variable that went into the model. The second one was one, the economical terms are being approved. And there is some, you know, safety net for at least two or three months, and there is health insurance on the table as well. Because unfortunately, America is a country that does not offer that by default, and you have to pay for it. And it's quite expensive. Then I went into how do we communicate? How do we communicate with care with empathy? How do we make sure that everyone feels that they're still respected on their way out, even though we need to share some pretty terrible news?    How can we make sure we partner with the employees who are being terminated to equip them with the skills that they need to apply for unemployment to revamp their resumes to prep for the interview, it's really hard to have your confidence that after being laid off, and we're talking in this market about multiple rounds of layoffs, I have friends and people who are very close to me and my family who got laid off multiple times, once in COVID, one or two times now, that takes a toll on self esteem, how you're showing up in the world. Let's not even go to negotiating an offer you're hoping to get over all you can even think about asking for more optimizing for the best possible result. Totally.    I'm always thinking about one, give them the package that it's going to provide a softer landing, landing to make sure they have health insurance. Three, make sure you communicate with empathy and care for prep them for what they need to do ideally in the first week or month after a layoff make sure people are equipped on how to get their benefits back on employment, how to claim Cobra and then really help rebuild that confidence by looking at the resumes the LinkedIn profile, practicing interviewing, introduced introducing people of two companies looking for great talent so that everyone can, as quickly as possible get back on their feet. It's a traumatic experience. And if as leaders, we don't do it with a lot of care, it's going to backfire. And it's not going to help one the company is not going to help the brand is not going to help help the leaders attract new team members, when when the market gets better, is not going to help the society in general,   To bring myself into the mix of this, I started interviewing and applying for internal director and VP roles and learning and development in 2020. And it is now 2023, there were two offers and 2020. They were rescinded because of layoffs. So for me being that I'm still in it, still interviewing, still applying some of what I've experienced is that there are 1000 people to the one role that I'm applying for, I had a job tell me an employer rather tell me that they had 4000 plus 4000 people applied to the role that I applied for.    And so, you know, depending on your industry, because there's not a lot of learning and development people even though they are so we need to equip leaders with the right tools to lead the organization. But it, it's trying, so I, you know, I can definitely relate, and I think some of your tips are really helpful. So let's move into our negotiation conversation. Let's pretend that you are getting ready to have a conversation because you've been given an offer. And I'm going to wear the hat of coach and this is a framework that you can apply to any negotiation that you're having. But I'm just gonna tee it up. So Samina, it's so great to see you. I'm so excited for you that you have this new offer that you're considering. And tell me a little bit about the context, what is the offer? What do you feel excited about? And then we'll go from there.   I'm very excited about the offer that I just received, because it's for a company that solves hard problems. I see the signs of really healthy culture. It seems that a company is financially stable, especially in this market, and they have enough runway. And it feels like there is product market fit and the company can continue to grow.    If if they execute according to the plan. So that excites me quite a bit because that means we can create more jobs, we can really scale or what we're offering to the market here in the US, potentially internationally. It's really creating the foundation for building something that is intentional, and it can scale intentionally, and really create that force multiplier in delivering business results. So that's what excites me. I'm also excited about the terms of the offer.   Let me let me just paraphrase quickly what I heard you say. So I hear that you're very excited about this offer for a few reasons. One, it's a company that is solving hard problems. And I hear that that is really motivating for you you want to work for a purpose driven organization, I also hear that there is a healthy culture on the inside. So the leaders that are leading it are conscious, and you want to work with that type of leadership, and be able to really contribute. I also hear that they have a runway that allows them to be able to be secure, you know, financially stable in this economy in this market. And therefore you can scale intentionally did I miss anything you did not spot on.   And you were about to elaborate a little bit more something else you feel excited about tell me and I feel excited about the economics of the offer because I find them being fair. And I'm saying fair for a reason. I care deeply about fair. Of course I care about optimizing a really good offer and really good terms but as a people leader, I'm also keeping an eye on internal equity among peers, making sure that you know while is the right type of offer for the valid right I bring it also that doesn't, you know break the stability internally because that's that's another problem then that can be created and It's pretty painful to solve for once it's there.    So I'm looking at a lot of the things and while you know the monetary aspect is important, and don't get me wrong is very important. And life is expensive right now, there are other elements of an offer that make it an absolute no brainer.  What I'm hearing is there's tangible needs, and there's intangible needs that would make this a yes. Like an absolute Yes. So what do you need that's tangible? And what do you need? It's intangible.   I think from a tangible perspective, you need to make sure that you're fairly compensated, you're compensated at the market. And now here, hopefully, it's going to be an easier conversation in the next few years, because of the pay Transparency Act. Really good progress, really good momentum is not a black box anymore. When you start applying and interviewing with companies, you kind of know, you know, where they are, what are the bands, so you know, is it for me, or if it's, or it's not, for me, for example, if you're in California, and you interview for a leadership role, and they pay you 100k, you're probably going to say this is not for me, I cannot afford to leave here, right? So that that simplifies the conversation quite a bit.    Now, every company is different, every company has a different philosophy in terms of pay, some companies are going to pay your 50th percentile, others are going to pay your 75th percentile, others are going to be more aggressive on the variable, others on the on the base, it different flavors, right. But at the end of the day, if it's fair, if it's market for the role, how much funding they have, if they're a private company, how much ARR they have done all of that, you kind of know where you are, and what ballpark.    Now the non tangible things are very important when it comes to the new reality after COVID. What kind of life do we want to have as people and as professionals? What is more valuable to me? Or what is the environment that really works for my life? And how I want to craft my life? Am I an in person, type of professional or I'm a remote type of professional? Do I value to have flexibility? Or do I value routine and being in the office every single day? Because that's the environment that that I'm thriving in? And that's how I build connections, and there is no right or wrong answer. I don't believe in one size fits all, I don't believe that only remote is the way to go. And I also don't believe that only in office is the way to go. I think there are different situations, different businesses, and particularities that are helping leaders make the decision if it's in office, or if it's hybrid, or if it's remote, right. But a lot of candidates have preferences.    And they've done it both ways. And people feel strongly about it still did seems like the opportunities are not as many as they used to be for the remote roles. And a lot of the companies are starting to bring people back to in office five days a week or hybrid. But if you ask in your negotiation come conversation about remote like how would you ask that very openly?   What is the what is the culture at Company X? What is the expectation right now? Do we have what is the policy? Right?   Do we think the policy is gonna change if it's going to change? Is there a framework in which the leadership is going to make the decision for example, I remember when we started COVID, at one of my previous companies, and I told people and I promise, I'm not going to promise the model is not going to change, I can't promise that I don't know how the world is going to evolve. I don't know what's going to be needed from a business perspective. But what I can promise is that I'm not going to surprise people with two weeks notice that up starting two weeks from now, we're going to be back in the office.    And I promised all the invoices that we're going to give them and each other a six month heads up to be able to adjust and change our lives accordingly to either adjust to the new reality that we are trying to create or to vote with our feet and say, this is probably not the right fit for me and where I am in life today. Therefore, it's probably better for me to depart the business.   Yeah, totally. I'm going to ask you two more coaching questions. And I know that this is probably going to be something we'll continue to talk about and something that I'd love for you to even journal about. But we're getting clear on what are the tangible what are the intangible needs? And then I want to ask, what is your concern? What What concerns do you have about this role? And then lastly, like what would make this an absolute yes for you? Should I start with the concerns? Yeah, let's go there.   Ah, Mmm hmm. That's such an interesting question. It really depends on the company and the stage of the company. So it's really hard to, to answer it without having a clear example in front of me, right? Talking about hypothetical businesses. But the examples are mostly around the opportunity in front of you, as a leader in front of me as a leader, in what skills are needed to nail that stage of growth, or turbulences, or whatever is happening in the company, I would be very interested in what is the next stage of growth after the current one? And do I have the potential to grow and scale with the company because I have a clear idea in my mind that I'm open to be challenged by other leaders in the industry that executives are a great fit for a particular stage of growth.    And after that, it needs to, you know, a little bit of a self assessment needs to happen to really ask yourself, am I the right leader for the next stage of growth in this company or not? And that takes a lot of courage and self awareness, to be able to, and humility to be able to have that conversation with yourself. But every time I'm looking at an opportunity I'm looking at, can I get can I grow and scale with the business? What if they grow really fast? Why did they grow Not so fast, and they experienced a lot of turbulence is how much resilience? Do I need to show? And at what point and right like, How much am I willing to be in that turbulent time? How long is it going to be right? I think that goes back to the psychological and physical well being the balance of it all. What are you saying? Yes, yes, exactly.   Exactly. And that's a good, that's a good internal conversation to have with yourself as a candidate, to really run towards something and not to run away from something. Yeah, I'm a big believer in when someone starts a new role, when you're looking at the non tangibles, and obviously, the tangibles as well. At the end of the day, to feel really good about the opportunity and to know deep down inside your soul that you're running towards something. Because if you're running towards something, no matter how hard it is, no matter how many turbulences you're going to experience, no matter how good of a fit, you are for the next three stages of growth, and maybe you're great for one or two, and you need to fire yourself before stage three, because the company needs a different type of leadership, you're going to do it with a lot more passion, if you don't find those connections.    And at the end of the day, being passionate about something, it's probably one of the strongest predictors. I've seen in my in my entire career journey. Now what can break a decision or what will make a decision a no brainer in someone in my role in my shoes, or in your shoes, it comes back to the chemistry between the leadership team or between you and your manager. There are so many flavors of the ice cream at this level, especially when it comes to leadership roles in everybody. All a lot of people got to leadership roles, because they've done great work in their careers. They accomplished a lot. They worked hard, they worked hard. I don't think at this level, it comes a lot to do you have the skills to do it. It's about how you do it. How do you how do you invite the other partners to your table so that you can make progress together? Influence and collaborate? I hear?    Yeah, I think it comes down to that. And it comes down to that chemistry between the people working together. So it sounds like you're getting really clear on the tangible and the intangible. And then also what I'm hearing is, what would make this a total? Yes, is the chemistry of the other leaders. So they're dating. Both ways. And in order to be ready to marry someone, both sides need to do their due date a few years.   Yes, but both sides need to do their due diligence and to make sure that why the moral compass of the other party to how they operate best when they are best on or when they are not at best. And you know, what kind of master sometimes shows up if they're stressed or under resource or you know, all sorts of things that can happen in organizations. Probably that's the most important factor that I'm taking into into consideration when saying yes, and going to the altar with with a new company.   Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing all of that. So in the last couple of minutes and I'll I'll share this framework of some of these questions that I asked semina at the end. So you want to listen all the way to the end. So you get those questions you can actually ask yourself, or you can ask another person that is also negotiating something important in their life. But what are some tips that you might give to anyone listening but especially to female executives? What can they start to negotiate in the initial interview stages?  And what can they negotiate that you would recommend? You know, during the offer,  and the early interview stages, I would clarify the tangibles. I would make sure I get as much clarity as I as I can around those aspects in the late stage of an interview the offer stage, I think it's time the industry to normalize the fact that executives meaning VPs and above should have some protection in place, right. We've seen rounds and rounds of layoffs. We've seen consolidations, we've seen a lot of headwinds, and turbulence is happening in the market. And it's still not common to see severance clauses as part of the all of the executive contracts.   Well, I live in California. And I don't know if this applies to executives, but California is an at will state. So they can they can let you go for any reason, even if you didn't do anything wrong. So that doesn't create a lot of security in me as someone that really wants to get married. If you want to be a prenup, yes. And also, if you want to be the executive who's gonna mention the unmentionable in the room who's gonna have the crucial conversation? So it's gonna challenge the status quo. You can't really have those if you're thinking well, do I have money to put food on the table for my kids? Do I have money to pay my mortgage or my rent, when I'm thinking about getting married with someone meaning in this case, starting a new job as a leader, there is a lot of risk on both sides, right?    The companies want to get it right. You want your leadership team, ideally, to encompass your core values to model the right behaviors to really drive the business forward. As a leader, you want to make sure that you're not going to be micromanage, you're gonna be respected for your opinion, and the expertise that you're bringing to the table, you also want to be able to challenge the status quo nicely, you're gonna require psychological safety, it's not just a check in the box, that's one of the very first things that I assess, and you got to build at the beginning. Totally.   So when you want to have psychological safety, but also move the needle forward, challenge the status quo, I find it hard to be able to address it and addressable. When you're thinking about, well, do I have money to provide food for my family to pay for the house to take care of the kids are other people you need to take care of as a as a as a human being, when that variable is taken care of.    And you know that no matter what happens, you're going to have a little bit of a softer landing, because it takes about six months on average to find your net next executive gig, the psychological safety that that relationship, and that pre negotiated contract creates for VPS. And above. It really benefits really beneficial for both parties involved in this, of course, the company is going to protect itself in a similar way. You you know you're going to assess performance, you're going to have OKRs, you're going to measure it if people are not hitting the goals, obviously, you're going to make the hard choices, and you're going to let people go but a found that it's easier to build that psychological safety. If there is clarity around if this doesn't work out. What are what are both parties getting out.   Right? What's Yeah, totally. What is our agreement? What is our agreement, having those hard conversations up front are so important. So that's what I'm hearing is a really big takeaway. That's what you can start to have in the interview process, like you're assessing for that. You know, what happens when things get messy? is psychological safety a check in the box or not? Can we have these hard conversations and people still want to be kind and collaborate? And then what are our agreements when things get messy, you know, which isn't doubtedly going to happen because we can't control so that's kind of what I'm hearing. Go ahead.    There's there's one good example of this work is the negotiation phase before you decide if it's a yes or if it's a no, that's providing a lot of insight into how the future relationship is going to be. How can you work together to solve a challenge and you're coming from On slightly different angles here, you're trying to meet somewhere in between. And are you approaching this? How are you having those crucial conversations without breaking the relationship by a fair fairness is a key value for you.    Yeah. Samina this was so helpful. I imagine it's going to be helpful for so many people not only just talking about how do we support people in layoffs kindly, but also how do we negotiate in a way that is really empowering ourselves and making sure that we're setting ourselves up for success? Thank you so much. And if there's anything else you want to leave our listeners Feel free, we will be linking your contact in the show notes. And if there's anything else you want me to send out, please let me know or share it with folks right now.   The only message I have for for people listening to the podcast is knowing their value and not being afraid to ask for what is fair. And what's their worth. It's doesn't come natural, it doesn't come naturally for if you're a woman in tech, if you're a female executive, if you're a minority, but it's the absolute right thing to do. And there are mentors out there. And I love mentoring people on how to do it gracefully, and change some of the practices in the industry. So thank you so much for having me, I love this conversation. And I hope we can meet again and continue our chat.   I love it, we will. I am loving this conversation.    And as we prepare for this podcast interview to come to a close, I'm going to leave you with three things that will really help you to embody the confidence to ask for what you desire, and what you deserve. And if we don't ask for it, we have no opportunity to receive it to receive it. So I'm going to break this down into three parts.    One, I'm going to lead by example, and make a bold request so that I can receive what I desire and what I'm deserving. And hopefully that will be an inspiration to you.    Number two, I'm going to share the coaching framework that I used with Samina to help her discern what was her negotiating power and and what were her concerns and what did she really want. This is something you can journal about for yourself, or you can utilize it with others to help them in their negotiations. And this can be applied to anything that you're negotiating for.    And then number three, I'm going to share what you can actually negotiate for in the new opportunity and professional path that you are seeking. Alright, you ready? Here we go. So I have had the great privilege and opportunity to serve some wonderful companies, leaders and teams in my business in the last decade. LinkedIn, Pixar, Clif Bar, Asana, capital, one Bank of the West, and then tech adventhealth, I am so grateful. And since 2020, I have known I wanted to join in an internal capacity in directing learning leadership team and org development. And it's been a crazy couple of years in the job market and in the world at large. And I am having some incredible conversations with folks right now exploring the right opportunity. But at the end of the day, it's all about the right fit.    And you might be asking, Why do I want this, I want this because I know that this path is where I can create the most influence and have the deepest positive impact with the internal people in the company and therefore, what the company is actually doing in the world. And I'm here to influence business to be a force for good in the world. So if you're an executive search or in the C suite, or you're working for a company where you just think Carly needs to be here we need Carly we need her wisdom and her passion and her skills. Then reach out to me I would love to know your challenges so I can help you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or you know just ping my website there's there's lots of links in the show notes and how to get in touch. If you also are aware of a role that is coming up that hasn't been posted, and you think you know I could help in a full time or fractional capacity reach out. I would love to help and love to have that conversation.    Number two, let's go over the negotiate Shin coaching framework that I use with Samina. Now, these are things that you can ask yourself, you can journal about, or you can actually roleplay this with another person. So first you want to share the context, what is the role? Or what is the thing that you are negotiating for? And then if you're doing this with another person, you want to summarize what you heard them say, summarizing what you heard them say, not what you think you heard them say, right? This allows people to feel heard and to feel seen. And we all want that. And then after you summarize that, you also want to say, Did I miss anything? And that gives them an A chance to elaborate or clarify, then you want to actually follow up with another question and you ask them, What do you need? What are the tangible and intangible needs?    And it might even be helpful to ask them, what would this look like if you had these needs met? Right? Because then, then the person might even recognize that they didn't need that, or they want something different? And then you would ask them, What are your concerns and asking for more, this is where the fear might come in. Or they recognize that there are parts of this role or parts of this opportunity, that aren't quite aligned. And then you would ask them, okay, so now that you've gotten clear, what's the next step? And as a coach, you always want to hold that person accountable to the next step. So you might say, how do we check in about this next step? Right?    Okay. So that's the coaching framework. And again, this can be applied to yourself, or to someone in your life. And then the next thing that is really going to be helpful for you, if you're exploring a new role is to understand what you can negotiate for in the interview. Ultimately, your satisfaction hinges less on getting the negotiation right and more on getting the job, right. So you want to really understand for who are your teammates? Who's your boss? What's the work life balance look like? How is this going to be a full guest for you?    So here's some things that you can negotiate for. So you want to ask about the remote policy in this company. And you heard Samina and I talked about that, you want to ask about whether there's bonus pay and equity. You want to know if there's matching money. So for example, maybe you've worked in other roles where you are accustomed to a 12% match, what is the match in this iteration? You want to know what the vacation policy is? Is it three to four weeks? Can it be reevaluated after the first week of service? Do you have the option to do any side work? If that's a passion, like maybe you have a podcast that you want to have outside of this scope and responsibility? You might want to ask for that. If you need to be in an office or in the same time zone?    Do they offer relocation pay? If professional development is important to you probably is especially if you're listening to this podcast, then how do they support you in your personal and professional development? What is the stipend for that? Is there a certification that you want or a conference that you'd really love to go to every year? Ask for all of us upfront? What's the health insurance coverage? Ask about travel, if you have to travel for work, whether it's domestically or internationally. We all know travel takes a toll on the body, mind and soul. So perhaps there's a negotiation upfront where you can say if I'm traveling to a different timezone or internationally, Can I tag on a couple of days where I can actually enjoy the city before I have to rush right back? Right?    Find out if there are any partial clauses for times of separation, where it is not your fault for the reason that they're having to let people go as mean and I were talking about earlier in the interview. And then you might also want to ask if there might be a retention bonus after the first year. And one of the questions I also really love to ask is how will I know that I'm being successful in this role, and that's not necessarily negotiation, but it is in a certain sense of what is expected of me in the first month in the first 60 days, 90 days, like really getting clear on that with the hiring manager with the senior people leaders.    The other thing that's a negotiation, qualifier for me is how much sponsorship are you getting from the senior people leaders because that's going to allow you to actually have more influence and be more successful.    Okay, those are some of the things that I think will be really helpful for you in navigating, asking for more. So how are you going to ask for more whether it's at work, or it's at home?  If you enjoyed this episode, please give me a five star review, share it with friends, family or colleagues on LinkedIn. We're all in this together and sharing is caring. I have some incredible interviews coming on in the podcast in 2023. So make sure you subscribe. And thank you so much for tuning in.

Elon Musk says his company X will be 50% of total financial transactions

Tom Krazit, Editor in Chief at Runtime, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss what it's like being a journalist in tech. Corey and Tom discuss how important it is to find your voice as a media personality, and Tom explains why he feels one should never compromise their voice for sponsor approval. Tom reveals how he's covering tech news at his new publication, Runtime, and how he got his break in the tech journalism industry. Tom also talks about why he decided to build his own publication rather than seek out a corporate job, the value of digging deeper for stories, and why he feels it's so valuable to be able to articulate the issues engineers care about in simple terms. About TomTom Krazit has written and edited stories about the information technology industry for over 20 years. For the last ten years he has focused specifically on enterprise technology, including all three as-a-service models developed around infrastructure, platform, and enterprise software technologies, security, software development techniques and practices, as well as hardware and chips.Links Referenced: Runtime: https://www.runtime.news/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Chronosphere. When it costs more money and time to observe your environment than it does to build it, there's a problem. With Chronosphere, you can shape and transform observability data based on need, context and utility. Learn how to only store the useful data you need to see in order to reduce costs and improve performance at chronosphere.io/corey-quinn. That's chronosphere.io/corey-quinn. And my thanks to them for sponsor ing my ridiculous nonsense. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn, and people sometimes confuse me for a journalist. I am most assuredly not one of those. I'm just loud and have opinions and every once in a while I tell people things they didn't already know. That's not journalism. My guest today, however, is a journalist, Tom Krazit, is the Editor in Chief of the just launched Runtime. Tom, thank you for joining me.Tom: Thanks, Corey. It's a long-time listener, first-time guest.Corey: We've been talking for years now and I'm sort of embarrassed I haven't had you on the show before now. But the journalists has always felt, to me at least, like they're a step apart from the typical, you know, rank and file of those of us working in industry. You folks are different from us, and inviting you all just feels like a faux pas, even though it's very clearly not. Well, how did you get here, I guess is the short version. I know that you're at Runtime, now; you were at Protocol until its demise recently. Before that, when I first started tracking you, you were over at GeekWire. Where do you come from?Tom: [laugh]. Well, I've been doing this for 20 years, which is a long, long time, and it's amazing how much has changed in that time. I started off doing consumer stuff, I was covering Apple during the launch of the iPhone, I was covering Google as they sort of turned into the Borg. And then I joined GigaOm in 2012 and I joined them as an editor. And it became pretty clear that I needed to learn this enterprise stuff real fast because that was like the largest part of GigaOm's business at the time.And so, I kind of just threw myself into it and realized that I actually liked it, you know, which I think is [laugh] hard for some people to understand. But like, I've actually always found it really interesting how these large systems work, and how people build in a variety of ways based on their needs, and, you know, just the dramatic change that we've seen in this industry over the past ten years. So, you know, I've really been doing that ever since.Corey: There's a lot to be said for journalism in the space. And I know a lot of tech companies are starting to… well, that's starting. This is, I guess, a six-year-old phenomenon, at least. But a lot of these small companies were built, and well, we're just going to not talk to the press because we've had bad experiences doing that before, so we're just going to show instead of tell. And that works to a point, but then you hit a certain point of scale where you're a multi-trillion dollar company and, “We don't talk to the press,” no longer becomes tenable. With success comes increased scrutiny, and deservedly so. I feel that there's a certain lack of awareness of that fact in the tech industry versus other large industries that have come before.Tom: I think it's always important to remember how, like, new a lot of this really still is, you know, when compared to, like, other American industries and businesses. Like, tech as a discipline, you know, it's only really in the last ten years that it's been elevated to the extent of, like, sports, or, like, a top-tier news category. And so, I think a lot of people who make those decisions, you know, grew up in a different environment where, you know, you didn't really want to talk about what you were doing because you were worried about competitive things or you were just worried—you wanted to have a ground-up story. And like, yeah, the world is very different now. And I think that, you know, a lot of companies are starting to get that and starting to change the way they think about it.I mean, I also would argue that I think a lot of enterprise tech companies see better value in running ads alongside golf tournaments than actually talking to people about what they really do because I think a lot of them don't really want people to understand [laugh] what they do. They want them to think that they're, you know, the wizard behind the curtain, solving all your digital transformation needs and not actually get into the details of that.Corey: I used to think that I was, as an engineer, much smarter than any of the marketers who were doing these things that obviously make no sense. Like, why would you have a company's logo in an airport for an enterprise software ad, but no URL or way to go buy something? Aren't those people foolish? Yeah, it turns out no. People are not just-fell-off-the-turnip-truck level of sophistication.It's a brand awareness story where you wind up going in and pitching to the board of some big company someday and they already know who you are. That's the value of brand awareness, as I've learned the fun way because I accidentally became something of a marketer. I have this platform—Tom: [crosstalk 00:04:46], Corey—Corey: In the newsletters, but—Tom: Come one. You're totally a brand. You're a brand.Corey: Oh, absolutely. And breakfast cereal.Tom: [laugh].Corey: But I was surprised to realize that people not only cared about what I had to say but would pay me cash money in order to have their product mentioned in the thing that I do. And, “Can you give me money? Of course you can give me money.” But it was purely accidental along the way. So, I have to ask, given that you seem to be a fan of, you know, not starving to death, why would you start a media company in 2023?Tom: Uh, well I needed to do something, Corey. You know, like [laugh] [crosstalk 00:05:22]—Corey: You had a bright career in corporate communications if you want to go over to the dark side. Like, “I'm tired of talking to the audience about truth, I'd rather spin things now because I know how the story gets told.”Tom: I mean, that may come down the road for me at some point, but I wasn't quite ready for that just yet. I have really felt very strongly for a long time that this particular corner of the world needs better journalism. I just, I feel like a lot of what is served up to the people who have to make decisions about this incredibly complicated part of the world, you know, it's either really, really product-oriented, like, “So-and-so introduced the new thing today. It costs this much and it does these three things that they told us under embargo,” you know, or you get, like, real surface-level coverage from, like, the big financial business publications, you know, who understand the importance of things like cloud and things like enterprise software, but haven't really invested the time to understand the technological complexities behind it and how, you know, easy narratives don't necessarily, you know, play in this world.So, there's a middle ground there that I think we at Protocol Enterprise found pretty fertile. And, you know, I think that, for this, for Runtime, you know, I'm really just continuing to carry that work forward and to give people content they need to make decisions about using technology in their businesses that business people can understand without an engineering degree, but that engineers will take a look at it and they'll go, “You know what? He did that right. He did his homework, he got the details right.” And I think that's rare, unfortunately, and then that's a gap I hope to fill.Corey: Something that really struck me as being aligned with how I tend to view things is—to be clear, our timing is a little weird because to my understanding, the inaugural issue is going out later today after we record—Tom: That's correct.Corey: But that would have already happened and have landed in the industry by the time people listen to this. So, I'm really hoping, first off, that the first issue isn't horrifying to a point where, “Oh God, distance myself from it. What have I done?” But you've been in this industry enough that I doubt that's going to be how you play it. But I am curious to know how it winds up finding its voice over the coming weeks and months. Even when you've done this before, as you have I think that every publication starts to have a different area of focus, a different audience, and focus on different aspects of this, which is great because I don't want to see the same take from fifteen different journalist publications.Tom: Totally. I mean, you know, I think a lot of what Protocol Enterprise was, was my voice and, you know, how I thought about this industry and wanted to bring it forward. And so, I think that, you know, off the bat, a lot of what Runtime is will be similar to that. But to your point, I think everything changes. The market changes, what people want changes, I mean, like, look, just the last six months, the rise of all this generative AI discussion has dramatically changed a lot of what software—you know, how it's discussed and how it's thought about, and those are things that, you know, six months ago, we were talking about, maybe, here and there, but we certainly weren't talking about them to degree than we are now.So like, those changes will happen over the coming months. And you know, you just have to sort of keep up with them and make sure—my job is to make sure I am talking to the right people who can put those things into context for the people who need to understand them in order to make their own decisions. You know, I mean, I think we talk a lot about the top-tier decision makers, you know, of companies who need information, but I think there's, like, a whole other, I don't want to call them an underclass, but like, you know, there's a lot of other people within companies who advise those people and who genuinely need help trying to understand the pace and the degree to which things have changed and whether or not it's worth it for them to invest, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in some of these new technologies. So, you know, that's kind of the voice I want to bring forward is to represent the buyer, to represent the person who has to make sense of all this and decide whether or not, you know, the sparkly magic beans coming down from the cloud providers and others are really what it's cracked up to be.Corey: The thing that really throws me is that when I started talking to you and other journalists where you speak generally to a tech-savvy audience, but for whatever reason, that audience and you by extension are not as deeply involved in every nuance of the AWS ecosystem or the cloud computing ecosystem as I am. So, I can complain for five minutes straight to you about the Managed NAT Gateways and their pricing and then you'll finally say, “Yeah, I don't know what any of the words Managed, NAT, or Gateway mean in this context. Can you distill that down for me?” It's, “Oh, right. Talking about what I mean in a way that someone who isn't me with my experience can understand it.” I mean, that is such a foreign concept to so many engineers that speaking clearly about what they mean is now being called prompt engineering, instead of, “Describe what you want in plain English.”Tom: Yeah. I think that's a lot of what I hope to accomplish, actually, is to be able to talk to really smart engineers who are really driving this industry forward from their contributions and be able to articulate, like, what it is that they're concerned about, like, what it is that they think is exciting, and to put that into context for people who, you know, who don't know what a gateway is, let alone, like, any of [laugh] those other words you used. So, you know, like, I think there's a real opportunity to do that and that's the kind of thing I get excited about.Corey: I am curious, given that you are just launching at this point, and you have the express intention of being sponsor-supported, as opposed to a subscriber-driven model, which I've thought about a lot over the past, however many years you want to wind up describing I've been doing this. The problem that I've got here is that I have always found that whenever I'm doing something that aligns with making money and taking a sponsor message and putting it out to the world, how do I keep that from informing the coverage? And I've had to go a fair bit out of my way to avoid that. For example, this podcast is going to have ads inserted into it. I don't know what they are, I don't know who these companies are, and that only gets done after I've recorded this episode, so I'm not being restrained by, “Ohh, have to say something nice about Company X because they're sponsoring this episode.” It stays away.Conversely, if I want to criticize Company X, I don't feel that I can't do that because well, they are paying the bills around here. You're still in a very early stage where it is you, primarily. How are you avoiding that, I guess, sense of vendor capture?Tom: You have to be very intentional about it from day one. You have to make it clear when you're talking to sponsors from the business side where the lines are drawn. And you have to, I think from the editorial side, just be fearless and be willing to speak the truth. And if you get negative reaction from sponsors over something you've said, they were never going to be a good long-term partner for you anyway. And I've seen that over the years.Like, companies that get annoyed about coverage because they're sponsors are insecure companies. It's almost a tell, you know, like when you attempt to put pressure on editorial organizations because you're a sponsor and you don't like the way that they're covering something [laugh], it's a deep, deep tell about the state of your business and how you see it. So, like for me, those are almost like signals to use and then go deeper, you know? And then, you know, I do think that there are enough companies that feel strongly about wanting to support the kind of work that I do without impugning the way I think about it, or the way I write about it. Because I mean, like, there's just no other way to do what I do without pulling punches.And I think you would agree, you know, in terms of what you do, like, the voice that you have, the authenticity that you have, is your selling point. And if you compromise that, people know. It's pretty obvious when you are bending your coverage to suit your sponsors. And there's examples of it every day in enterprise tech coverage. And you know, I feel like my track record speaks for itself on that.Corey: I would agree. I don't like everything you write. That's kind of the point. I think that if you look at anyone who's been even moderately prolific and you like everything that they're writing, are they actually doing journalism or are they catering to your specific viewpoint? Now, that doesn't mean that well, I don't like this particular journalist. It's, well, “Oh, because you don't agree with what they say?” “No, because they're editorially sloppy, they take shortcuts, and they apparently peddle misinformation gleefully.”Yeah, I don't like a lot of that type of coverage. I've never seen that from you. And you've had takes I don't agree with, you've had articles that I thought were misleading at times, but I've never gotten the sense at all that they were written in bad faith. And when I run into that, it often makes me question my own biases as well, which is sort of a good thing.Tom: I mean, it's really tough because there are people out there in journalism and media who are operating in bad faith. Like, there's just no… there's no other way to dance around that. That is a fact of life in the 21st century. And I mean, all I can really do is do what I do every day and put it out there and, you know, let people judge it for what it is. And you know, like, I feel like, I have a pretty strong sense of what I will, you know, what I'll cover and how I'll cover it and where I'll go with it, and I think that that sort of governs, you know, every editorial decision that I've ever made. For me, there's just no other way to do it. And if I get to a point where I have to make those compromises in order to have a business, like, I'll just go do something else. I don't need this that much.Corey: When I was starting the Duckbill Group, one of the problems that I had was—it's hard to start a company for a variety of reasons, but one that is not particularly sympathetic is that everything is hard when you're just starting out. You don't know where any business is going to come from if it ever does. And at any point, I looked around, and I have an engineering skill set and I live in San Francisco, and I look around and say, it's Wednesday. I could have a job at a big tech company for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by Friday if I just go out and say yes. And it's resisting that siren call while building something myself that was really hard.You have that challenge as well, I'd have to imagine because there are always people that various companies are looking to build out their PR and corporate comms groups, and people who understand the industry and know how to tell a story, which you clearly qualify, are always in demand, regardless of the macroeconomic conditions. So, at any point, you have the sort of devil on your shoulder saying, it doesn't need to be this hard. There's an easier, more lucrative path instead of struggling to get something off the ground yourself. Do you find that that becomes a tempting thing that you want to give into, or is it, “Mmm, not today, Satan?”Tom: The latter. I mean, I've had offers from companies I respect and from people I would, you know, be happy to work with under other circumstances. But I mean, I sort of feel like I'm just wired this way. And then that's, like, what I enjoy getting out of bed every day to do, is this. And, you know, like, it's not to say that I couldn't find, long-term, some kind of role inside one of those types of companies that you just mentioned, but I'm not ready for that yet.And, you know, I think I'd bring more value to the industry this way than I would jump in on some pre-IPO rocket ship kind of thing right now. I will say that, like, a lot of this business is a young person's game, so like, that equation changes as you get older. I always tell everybody that, like, journalism over the last 20 years has been, like, one of the slowest-moving games of musical chairs that you'll ever play. And, you know, I've [laugh] been pretty lucky over the past number of years to keep getting a chair, you know, in every single one of those downturns. But, you know, I'm not naive enough to think that my luck would  run out one day either. But I mean, if I build my own business, hopefully, I can control that.Corey: There are a lot of tech publications out there and I'm curious as to what direction you plan to take Runtime in, given that it is just you, and you presumably, you know, sleep sometimes, it's probably not breaking news with the first take on absolutely everything, which just, frankly, sounds exhausting. One of the internal models we have here is the best take, not the first take. So, where does your coverage intend to start? Where does it intend to stop? And how fixed is that?Tom: Well, at the moment, you know, what we really want to do is tell the stories that the herd is not telling. And you know, we're making a very deliberate decision to avoid a lot of the embargoed product training—I —I don't know how many of your listeners actually know how the sausage is made, but like, so many PR departments and marketing departments in tech really like to tell news through these embargoed product announcement things. And they'll email you a couple days ahead of time and they'll say, “Hey, Tom, we've got a new thing coming up in our, whatever, cloud storage services area. You know, are you interested in learning more under embargo?” And then a lot of people just say, “Sure,” and take a briefing and write up a story.And like, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It is news and it is—if you think it's interesting enough to bring out to people, like, great. There's a lot of limitations to it, though, you know, in that you can't really get context around that story because you sort of by definition, if you agree to not tell anybody about this thing that the company told you, you can't go out and ask a third-party expert what they think about it. So, you know, I think that it's a way to control the narrative without really getting the proper story out there. And the hook is that you'll be first.And so, I think what we're trying to do is to step away from that and to really tell more impactful stories that take more time to put together. And I mean, I've been on all sides of the news business and when you get on the hamster wheel, you really don't have time to tell those stories because you're too busy trying to deal with the output you've already committed to. And so, like, one thing that Runtime will be doing right off the bat is taking the time to do those stories to interview the people who don't get talked to as much, who don't have twenty-five PR people on staff to blast the world about their accomplishments, you know, to really go out and find the stories that aren't being told, and to elevate the voices that aren't being heard, and to shine a light on some of the, you know, more complex technological things that others simply don't take the time to figure out.Corey: Well, do you have an intended publication schedule at this point or is it going to be when it makes sense? Because one of the things that drove me nuts that I would go back and change if I could is Last Week in AWS inherently has a timeliness to it and covers things over a certain timeframe as well. I don't get to take two weeks off and pre-write this stuff.Tom: Yeah. So the primary vehicle right now is an email newsletter for Runtime and that'll come out three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday mornings. You know, I'll also be publishing stories alongside those newsletters. That will be a little more ad hoc. You know, I'd like to have that line up with the newsletters, but you know, sometimes that's not, you know, a schedule you can really adhere to.But the newsletter is a three times a week operation at the moment and that, you know, is just basically based on—you know, at Protocol, we did five times a week with a staff of six. And that was a big effort. So, I decided that was probably not the best thing for me to tackle right off the bat here. So, one thing I really would like to do with Runtime is to get back to that place where there's a staff, there's beat reporters, there's people who can really take the time to dig into these different areas, you know, across cloud infrastructure, AI, or security, or software development, you know, like, who can really, really plunge themselves into that, and then we can bring a broad product to the market. You know, it'll take some time to get there, but that's the goal.Corey: How do you intend to measure success? I mean, there's obviously financial ways of doing it, but it's also one of those areas of, like, one of the things that drove me nuts is that I'll do something exhaustively researched that takes me forever to get out, and no one seems to notice or care. And then I'll just slap something off eleventh hour, and it goes around the internet three times. And I always find that intensely frustrating. How do you measure whether you've succeeded or whether you failed?Tom: Well, I mean, welcome to the internet, Corey. That's just how it works. I think I will be able to measure that, you know, by how sustainable of venture this is, and like, whether or not I can get back to that point where, you know, we can support a small team to do this because I, you know, I sort of feel that that's the best—that's really what this part of the world needs is that kind of broader coverage from subject matter experts who can really dive into things. I mean, I know a lot about a lot, but I can't spend all my time talking to security people to really understand what's happening in that market, and the same for any other, you know, one of these disciplines that we talk about. So, you know, if a year from now, I come on this show for the one-year anniversary of the launch, and we've got sustainable runway, we've got, you know, a few people on board, I'll be thrilled. That'll be great, you know?And like, one thing that I think will really be helpful, for me, at least in terms of determining how successful this is, is just how things travel, and not necessarily like traffic in terms of how things travel, I think that's an easy trap to fall into, but whether or not you know, the stuff that we write about is circulating in the right places and also showing up in the coverage that some of those broader business financial publications actually wind up doing. You know, if you can show that, like, the work you've been doing is influencing the conversation of some of these topics on a broader national and global scene, then for me, that'll be a home run.Corey: Taking a step back, what advice would you give someone who's toying with the idea of entering the media space in this era, whether that be starting their own publication or becoming a journalist through more traditional means? Because as you said, you've been doing this for 20 years; you've seen a lot of change. How would you get started today?Tom: It was a lot easier. It was smaller. It was just a much smaller industry when I first started doing this, and… there wasn't social media. The big challenge, I think, for a lot of people who are just starting now and trying to break through is just how many voices there are and, like, trying to get a foothold among a much, much bigger pond. Like, it was just a much [laugh] smaller pond when I started, and so you know, it was easier to stand out, I guess.I started in the trade magazine world; I started with IDG and I started—you know, which is a real, great bedrock system of knowledge for people to really get their footing in this industry on. And you know, you can count on many, many hands the number of people who started at IDG and have gone on to, you know, a very successful tech and media careers throughout. So, you know, for me, that was a big, that was a big thing. But that was a moment in time. And like, you know, the world now is so different.The only thing that has ever worked, though, is to just write, to just start, to just get out there and do what you're doing and develop a voice and find a way to get it to the people who you want to read it. And you know, if you keep at it, you can start to break through. And, like, it's a slog, I'm not going to pretend otherwise, but yeah, if it's a career you really want to do, the best way to do it is just to start. And the nice thing about the modern era, actually is, like, there's never been easier ways to get up and running. I mean you look at like things like Substack, or I'm using Ghost, you know, like, the tools are there in a way that they weren't 20 years ago when I started.Corey: Step one: learn how to build a web server is no longer your thing. No, I think that that's valuable. One of the things that I find at least is people are so focused on the nuts and bolts, the production quality. People reach out to me all the time and say, “What microphone should I get? What my audio setup should I use? What tools should I do for the rest of this?”And it's, realize that it doesn't matter how much you invest in production quality; if the content isn't interesting and the story you have to tell doesn't grip people, it doesn't matter. No one cares. You have to get their attention first and then, then you can scale up on the production quality. I think I'm on generation six or so of my current AV setup. But that happened as a result of basically, more or less recording into a string can when I first started doing this stuff. Focus on the important part of the story, the differentiated parts.Tom: The best piece of advice, I got when starting Runtime was just to start. Like, don't worry about building a perfect website, don't worry about, you know, getting everything all dialed in exactly the way you want it. Just get out there and do the work that you're doing. And it's also a weird time right now, obviously, with the [laugh] the demise of Twitter as a vehicle for a lot of this stuff. Like, I think a lot of journalists are really having to figure out what their new social media distribution strategies are and I don't think anybody's really settled on anything definitive just yet.So, that's going to be an interesting wrinkle over this year. And then I think, you know, there's also still a lot of concern about the broader economy, you know, advertising is always one of those things that can be the first to go when businesses start to look at the bottom line a little bit more closely. But those things always come around, you know, and when the economy does start to get a little bit better, I think, you know, we've seen a little bit more, maybe [unintelligible 00:26:28] of the market over the last couple of weeks, you know, with some of the earnings results that we've seen. So, you know, like, I mean, those are famous last words, obviously, but I think that looking forward into the second half of the year, people are starting to get a little more confident.Corey: I sure hope so. I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time. If people want to learn more, and—as they should—subscribe to see how Runtime plays out, where can they find you?Tom: runtime.news.Corey: Excellent. We'll, of course, put a link to that in the [show notes 00:26:54]. I'm really looking forward to getting the first issue in a few hours myself. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.Tom: Thanks, Corey.Corey: Tom Krazit, Editor in Chief at Runtime. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment telling us that your company's product is being dramatically misunderstood and to please issue a correction.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

I had fun chatting with Aarthi and Sriram.We discuss what it takes to be successful in technology, what Sriram would say if Elon tapped him to be the next CEO of Twitter, why more married couples don't start businesses together, and how Aarthi hires and finds 10x engineers.Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan are the hosts of The Good Times Show. They have had leading roles in several technology companies from Meta to Twitter to Netflix and have been founders and investors. Sriram is currently a general partner at a16z crypto and Aarthi is an angel investor.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Timestamps(00:00:00) - Intro(00:01:19) - Married Couples Co-founding Businesses(00:09:53) - 10x Engineers(00:16:00) - 15 Minute Meetings(00:22:57) - a16z's Edge?(00:26:42) - Future of Twitter(00:30:58) - Is Big Tech Overstaffed?(00:38:37) - Next CEO of Twitter?(00:43:13) - Why Don't More Venture Capitalists Become Founders?(00:47:32) - Role of Boards(00:52:03) - Failing Upwards(00:56:00) - Underrated CEOs(01:02:18) - Founder Education(01:06:27) - What TV Show Would Sriram Make?(01:10:14) - Undervalued Founder ArchetypesTranscriptThis transcript was autogenerated and thus may contain errors.[00:00:00] Aarthi: it's refreshing to have Elon come in and say, we are gonna work really hard. We are gonna be really hardcore about how we build things.[00:00:05] Dwarkesh: Let's say Elon and says Tomorrow, Sriram, would you be down to be the [00:00:08] Sriram: CEO of Twitter Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I am married to someone. We [00:00:12] Aarthi: used to do overnights at Microsoft. Like we'd just sleep under our desk,, until the janitor would just , poke us out of there , I really need to vacuum your cubicle. Like, get out of here. There's such joy in , Finding those moments where you work hard and you're feeling really good about it. [00:00:25] Sriram: You'd be amazed at how many times Aarthi and I would have a conversation where be, oh, this algorithm thing.I remember designing it, and now we are on the other side We want to invest in something , where we think the team and the company is going to win and if they do win, there's huge value to be unlocked. [00:00:40] Dwarkesh: Okay. Today I have the, uh, good pleasure to have Arty and Sriram on the podcast and I'm really excited about this.So you guys have your own show, the Arty Andre Good Time show. Um, you guys have had some of the top people in tech and entertainment on Elon Musk, mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Yang, and you guys are both former founders. Advisors, investors, uh, general partner at Anderson Horowitz, and you're an angel investor and an advisor now.Um, so yeah, there's so much to talk about. Um, obviously there's also the, uh, recent news about your, uh, your involvement on, uh, twitter.com. Yeah, yeah. Let's get started. [00:01:19] Married Couples Starting Businesses[00:01:19] Dwarkesh: My first question, you guys are married, of course. People talk about getting a co-founder as finding a spouse, and I'm curious why it's not the case that given this relationship why more married people don't form tech startups.Is, does that already happen, [00:01:35] Aarthi: or, um, I actually am now starting to see a fair bit of it. Uhhuh, . Um, I, I do agree that wasn't a norm before. Um, I think, uh, I, I think I remember asking, uh, pg p the same thing when I went through yc, and I think he kind of pointed to him and Jessica like, you know, YC was their startup , and so, you know, there were even pride.There are a lot of husband and wife, uh, companies. Over the last like decade or so. So I'm definitely seeing that more mainstream. But yeah, you're right, it hasn't been the norm before. Yeah, the, the good time show is our project. It's [00:02:09] Sriram: our startup. Very, I mean, there are some good historical examples. Cisco, for example, uh, came from, uh, uh, husband, wife as a few other examples.I think, you know, on, on the, in, on the pro side, uh, you know, being co-founders, uh, you need trust. You need to really know each other. Uh, you, you go through a lot of like heavy emotional burdens together. And there's probably, and if you, you're for the spouse, hopefully you probably have a lot of chemistry and understanding, and that should help.On the con side, I think one is you, you're prob you know, you, you're gonna show up at work, you know, and startups are really hard, really intense. And you come home and both of you are gonna the exact same wavelength, the exact same time, going through the exact same highs and lows as opposed to two people, two different jobs have maybe differing highs and lows.So that's really hard. Uh, the second part of it is, uh, in a lot of. Work situations, it may just be more challenging where people are like, well, like, you know, person X said this person Y said this, what do I do? Uh, and if you need to fire somebody or you know, something weird happens corporate in a corporate manner, that may also be really hard.Uh, but having said that, you know, uh, [00:03:13] Aarthi: you know, yeah, no, I think both of those are like kind of overblown , like, you know, I think the reason why, um, you know, you're generally, they say you need to have you, it's good to have co-founders is so that you can kind of like write the emotional wave in a complimentary fashion.Uh, and you know, if one person's like really depressed about something, the other person can like pull them out of it and have a more rational viewpoint. I feel like in marriages it works even better. So I feel like to your first point, They know each other really well. You're, you're, you are going to bring your work to home.There is no separation between work and home as far as a startup is concerned. So why not do it together? Oh, [00:03:51] Sriram: well, I think there's one problem, uh, which is, uh, we are kind of unique because we've been together for over 21 years now, and we start for, we've been before, uh, let's not. Wow. There's gonna be some fact checking 19 on this video.99. Close enough. Close enough, right? Like close enough. He wishes he was 21. Oh, right, right, right. Gosh, feels like 21. We have do some, um, [00:04:15] Aarthi: editing on this video. No, no, no. I think 20 years of virtually knowing, 19 years of in-person. [00:04:20] Sriram: There we go. Right. Uh, fact check accurate. Um, ex experts agree. But, um, you know, but when you first met, we, we originally, even before we dating, we were like, Hey, we wanna do a company together.And we bonded over technology, like our first conversation on Yahoo Messenger talking about all these founders and how we wanted to be like them. And we actually then worked together pretty briefly when you were in Microsoft. Uh, before we actually started dating. We were on these sort of talent teams and we kind of met each of the word context.I think a lot of. You know, one is they have never worked together. Um, and so being in work situations, everything from how you run a meeting to how you disagree, uh, you know, uh, is just going to be different. And I think that's gonna be a learning curve for a lot of couples who be like, Hey, it's one thing to have a strong, stable relationship at home.It'll be a different thing to, you know, be in a meeting and you're disagreeing art's meetings very differently from I do. She obsesses over metrics. I'm like, ah, it's close enough. It's fine. , uh, it's close enough. It's fine. as e uh, here already. But, uh, so I do think there's a learning curve, a couples who is like, oh, working together is different than, you know, raising your family and being together.I mean, obviously gives you a strong foundation, but it's not the same thing. Have you guys [00:05:25] Dwarkesh: considered starting a company or a venture together at some point? [00:05:28] Aarthi: Yeah. Um, we've, uh, we've always wanted to do a project together. I don't know if it's a, a startup or a company or a venture. You have done a project together,Yeah, exactly. I think, uh, almost to today. Two years ago we started the Good Time Show, um, and we started at, uh, live Audio on Clubhouse. And, you know, we recently moved it onto video on YouTube. And, um, it's, it's been really fun because now I get to see like, it, it's neither of our full-time jobs, uh, but we spend enough, um, just cycles thinking through what we wanna do with it and what, uh, how to have good conversations and how to make it useful for our audience.So that's our [00:06:06] Sriram: project together. Yep. And we treat it like a, with the intellectual heft of a startup, which is, uh, we look at the metrics, uh, and we are like, oh, this is a good week. The metrics are up into the right and, you know, how do we, you know, what is working for our audience? You know, what do we do to get great guests?What do we do to [00:06:21] Aarthi: get, yeah, we just did our first, uh, in-person meetup, uh, for listeners of the podcast in Chennai. It was great. We had like over a hundred people who showed up. And it was also like, you know, typical startup style, like meet your customers and we could like go talk to these people in person and figure out like what do they like about it?Which episodes do they really enjoy? And it's one thing to see YouTube comments, it's another to like actually in person engage with people. So I think, you know, we started it purely accidentally. We didn't really expect it to be like the show that we are, we are in right now, but we really happy. It's, it's kind of turned out the way it has.[00:06:59] Sriram: Absolutely. And, and it also kind of helps me scratch an edge, which is, uh, you know, building something, you know, keeps you close to the ground. So being able to actually do the thing yourself as opposed to maybe tell someone else, telling you how to do the, so for example, it, it being video editing or audio or how thumbnails, thumbnails or, uh, just the mechanics of, you know, uh, how to build anything.So, uh, I, I dot think it's important. Roll up your sleeves metaphorically and get your hands dirty and know things. And this really helped us understand the world of creators and content. Uh, and it's fun and [00:07:31] Aarthi: go talk to other creators. Uh, like I think when we started out this thing on YouTube, I think I remember Shram just reached out to like so many creators being like, I wanna understand how it works for you.Like, what do you do? And these are people who like, who are so accomplished, who are so successful, and they do this for a living. And we clearly don. And so, uh, just to go learn from these experts. It's, it's kind of nice, like to be a student again and to just learn, uh, a new industry all over again and figure out how to actually be a creator on this platform.Well, you know [00:08:01] Dwarkesh: what's really interesting is both of you have been, uh, executives and led product in social media companies. Yeah. And so you are, you designed the products, these creators, their music, and now on the other end, you guys are building [00:08:12] Sriram: the, oh, I have a great phrase for it, right? Like, somebody, every once in a while somebody would be like, Hey, you know what, uh, you folks are on the leadership team of some of these companies.Why don't you have hundreds of millions of followers? Right? And I would go, Hey, look, it's not like every economist is a billionaire, , uh, uh, you know, it doesn't work that way. Uh, but during that is a parallel, which, which is, uh, you'd be amazed at how many times Aarthi and I would have a conversation where be, oh, this algorithm thing.I remember designing it, or I was in the meeting when this thing happened, and now we are on the other side, which is like, Hey, you might be the economist who told somebody to implement a fiscal policy. And now we are like, oh, okay, how do I actually go do this and create values and how? Anyway, how do we do exactly.Create an audience and go build something interesting. So there is definitely some irony to it, uh, where, uh, but I think hopefully it does give us some level of insight where, uh, we have seen, you know, enough of like what actually works on social media, which is how do you build a connection with your audience?Uh, how do you build, uh, content? How do you actually do it on a regular, uh, teams? I think [00:09:07] Aarthi: the biggest difference is we don't see the algorithm as a bra, as a black box. I think we kind of see it as like when the, with the metrics, we are able to, one, have empathy for the teams building this. And two, I think, uh, we kind of know there's no big magic bullet.Like I think a lot of this is about showing up, being really consistent, um, you know, being able to like put out some really interesting content that people actually want to, and you know, I think a lot of people forget about that part of it and kind of focus. If you did this one thing, your distribution goes up a lot and here's this like, other like secret hack and you know Sure.Like those are like really short term stuff, but really in the long term, the magic is to just like keep at it. Yeah. And, uh, put out really, really good content. [00:09:48] Sriram: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's good to hear. . [00:09:53] 10x Engineers[00:09:53] Dwarkesh: Um, so you've both, um, led teams that have, you know, dozens or even hundreds of people.Um, how easy is it for you to tell who the 10 X engineers are? Is it something that you as managers and executives can tell easily or [00:10:06] Sriram: no? Uh, absolutely. I think you can tell this very easily or repeat of time and it doesn't, I think a couple of ways. One is, uh, Uh, before, let's say before you work with someone, um, 10 x people just don't suddenly start becoming 10 x.They usually have a history of becoming 10 x, uh, of, you know, being really good at what they do. And you can, you know, the cliche line is you can sort of connect the dots. Uh, you start seeing achievements pile up and achievements could be anything. It could be a bunch of projects. It could be a bunch of GitHub code commits.It could be some amazing writing on ck, but whatever it is, like somebody just doesn't show up and become a 10 x person, they probably have a track record of already doing it. The second part of it is, I've seen this is multiple people, uh, who are not named so that they don't get hired from the companies actually want them to be in, or I can then hire them in the future is, uh, you know, they will make incredibly rapid progress very quickly.So, uh, I have a couple of examples and almost independently, I know it's independently, so I have a couple of. Um, and I actually, and name both, right? Like, so one is, uh, this guy named, uh, Vijay Raji, uh, who, uh, was probably one of Facebook's best engineers. He's now the CEO of a company called Stats. And, um, he was probably my first exposure to the real TenX engineer.And I remembered this because, uh, you know, at the time I was. Kind of in my twenties, I had just joined Facebook. I was working on ads, and he basically built a large part of Facebook's ad system over the weekend. And what he would do is he would just go, and then he con he [00:11:24] Aarthi: continued to do that with Facebook marketplace.Yeah. Like he's done this like over and over and over [00:11:28] Sriram: again. . Yeah. And, and it's not that, you know, there's one burst of genius. It's just this consistent stream of every day that's a code checkin stuff is working. New demo somebody, he sent out a new bill or something working. And so before like a week or two, you just like a, you know, you running against Usain Bolt and he's kind of running laps around you.He's so far ahead of everyone else and you're like, oh, this guy is definitely ahead. Uh, the second story I have is, uh, of, uh, John Carmack, uh, you know, who's legend and I never worked with him in, uh, directly with, you know, hopefully someday I can fix. But, uh, somebody told me a story about him. Which is, uh, that the person told me story was like, I never thought a individual could replace the output of a hundred percent team until I saw John.And there's a great story where, um, you know, and so John was the most senior level at Facebook and from a hr, you know, employment insecurity perspective for an individual contributor, and it at, at that level, at Facebook, uh, for folks who kind of work in these big tech companies, it is the most, the highest tier of accomplishment in getting a year in a performance review is something called xcs Expectations, or, sorry, redefines, right?Which basically means like, you have redefined what it means for somebody to perform in this level, right? Like, it's like somebody, you know, like somebody on a four minute mile, I'll be running a two minute mile or whatever, right? You're like, oh, and, and it is incredibly hard sometimes. You doing, and this guy John gets it three years in a row, right?And so there's this leadership team of all the, you know, the really most important people on Facebook. And they're like, well, we should really promote John, right? Like, because he's done this three years in a row, he's changing the industry. Three years in a row and then they realized, oh wait, there is no level to promote him to Nick be CEOWell, maybe I don't think he wanted to. And so, uh, the story I heard, and I dunno, it's true, but I like to believe it's true, is they invented a level which still now only John Carmack has gotten. Right. And, um, and I think, you know, it's his level of productivity, uh, his, uh, intellect, uh, and the consistency over time and mu and you know, if you talk to anybody, Facebook work with him, he's like, oh, he replaced hundred people, teams all by themselves and maybe was better than a hundred percent team just because he had a consistency of vision, clarity, and activity.So those are [00:13:32] Aarthi: the two stories I've also noticed. I think, uh, actually sheam, I think our first kind of exposure to 10 x engineer was actually Barry born, uh, from Microsoft. So Barry, um, uh, basically wrote pretty much all the emulation engines and emulation systems that we all use, uh, and uh, just prolific, uh, and I think in addition to what Fred had said with like qualities and tenets, Um, the, I've generally seen these folks to also be like low ego and kind of almost have this like responsibility to, um, mentor coach other people.Uh, and Barry kind of like took us under his wing and he would do these like Tuesday lunches with us, where we would just ask like, you know, we were like fresh out of college and we just ask these like really dumb questions on, you know, um, scaling things and how do you build stuff. And I was working on, uh, run times and loaders and compilers and stuff.And so he would just take the time to just answer our questions and just be there and be really like, nice about it. I remember when you moved to Redmond, he would just like spend a weekend just like, oh yeah. Driving you about and just doing things like that, but very low ego and within their teams and their art, they're just considered to be legends.Yes. Like, you know, everybody would be like, oh, Barry Bond. Yeah, of course. [00:14:47] Sriram: Yeah. It, I can't emphasize enough the consistency part of it. Um, you know, with Barry. Or I gotta briefly work with Dave Cutler, who's kind of the father of modern operating systems, uh, is every day you're on this email li list at the time, which would show you check-ins as they happen.They would have something every single day, um, every day, and it'll be tangible and meaty and you know, and you just get a sense that this person is not the same as everybody else. Um, by the, this couple of people I can actually point to who haven't worked with, uh, but I follow on YouTube or streaming. Uh, one is, uh, Andrea Ling who builds Serenity Os we had a great episode with him.Oh, the other is George Hart's, uh, geo Hart. And I urge people, if you haven't, I haven't worked with either of them, uh, but if I urge which to kinda watch their streams, right? Because, uh, you go like, well, how does the anti killing build a web browser on an operating system? Which he builds by himself in such a sharp period of time and he watches stream and he's not doing some magical new, you know, bit flipping sorting algorithm anybody has, nobody has seen before.He's just doing everything you would do, but. Five bits of speed. I, yep, exactly. [00:15:48] Dwarkesh: I I'm a big fan of the George Hot Streams and Yeah, that's exactly what, you know, it's like yeah, you, he's also curling requests and he is also, you know, you know, spinning up an experiment in a Jupyter Notebook, but yeah, just doing it [00:15:58] Aarthi: away way faster, way efficiently.Yeah. [00:16:00] 15 Minute Meetings[00:16:00] Dwarkesh: Yeah. That's really interesting. Um, so ar Arthur, I'm, you've gone through Y Combinator and famously they have that 15 minute interview Yes. Where they try to grok what your business is and what your potential is. Yeah, yeah. But just generally, it seems like in Silicon Valley you guys have, make a lot of decisions in terms of investing or other kinds of things.You, in very short calls, you know. Yeah. . Yeah. And how much can you really, what is it that you're learning in these 15 minute calls when you're deciding, should I invest in this person? What is their potential? What is happening in that 15 minutes? [00:16:31] Aarthi: Um, I can speak about YC from the other side, from like, uh, being a founder pitching, right.I think, yes, there is a 15 minute interview, but before that, there is a whole YC application process. And, uh, I think even for the, for YC as, uh, this bunch of the set of investors, I'm sure they're looking for specific signals, but for me as a founder, the application process was so useful, um, because it really makes you think about what you're building.Why are you building this? Are you the right person to be building this? Who are the other people you should be hiring? And so, I mean, there are like few questions or like, one of my favorite questions is, um, how have you hacked a non-computer system to your advantage? Yeah. . And it kind of really makes you think about, huh, and you kind of noticed that many good founders have that pattern of like hacking other systems to their advantage.Um, and so to me, I think more than the interview itself, the process of like filling out the application form, doing that little video, all of that gives you better, um, it gives you the, the entire scope of your company in your head because it's really hard when you have this idea and you're kind of like noodling about with it and talking to a few people.You don't really know if this is a thing. To just like crystallize the whole vision in your head. I think, uh, that's on point. Yes. Um, the 15 minute interview for me, honestly, it was like kind of controversial because, uh, I went in that morning, I did the whole, you know, I, I had basically stayed at the previous night, uh, building out this website and, uh, that morning I showed up and I had my laptop open.I'm like really eager to like tell them what you're building and I keep getting cut off and I realize much later that that's kind of my design. Yeah. And you just like cut off all the time. Be like, why would anybody use this? And you start to answer and be like, oh, but I, I don't agree with that. And there's just like, and it, it's like part of it is like, makes you upset, but part of it is also like, it makes you think how to compress all that information in a really short amount of time and tell them.Um, and so that interview happens, I feel really bummed out because I kind of had this website I wanted to show them. So while walking out the door, I remember just showing Gary, Dan, um, the website and he like kind of like. Scrolls it a little bit, and he is like, this is really beautifully done. And I was like, thank you.I've been wanting to show you this for 15 minutes. Um, and I, I mentioned it to Gary recently and he laughed about it. And then, uh, I didn't get selected in that timeframe. They gave me a call and they said, come back again in the evening and we are going to do round two because we are not sure. Yeah. And so the second interview there was PG and Jessica and they both were sitting there and they were just grueling me.It was a slightly longer interview and PG was like, I don't think this is gonna work. And I'm like, how can you say that? I think this market's really big. And I'm just like getting really upset because I've been waiting this whole day to like get to this point. And he's just being like cynical and negative.And then at some point he starts smiling at Jessica and I'm like, oh, okay. They're just like baiting me to figure it out. And so that was my process. And I, by the evening, I remember Shera was working at. I remember driving down from Mountain View to Facebook and Sheam took me to the Sweet Stop. Oh yeah.Which is like their, you know, Facebook has this like, fancy, uh, sweet store, like the ice cream store. I [00:19:37] Sriram: think they had a lot more perks over the years, but that was very fancy back then. [00:19:40] Aarthi: So I had like two scoops of ice cream in each hand in, and, uh, the phone rang and I was like, oh, hold onto this. And I grabbed it and I, and you know, I think it was Michael Sibu or I don't know who, but somebody called me and said, you're through.So that was kind of my process. So even though there was only 15 minutes, mine was actually much longer after. But even before the, the application process was like much more detailed. So it sounds [00:20:01] Dwarkesh: like the 15 minutes it's really there. Like, can they rattle you? Can they, can they [00:20:06] Aarthi: you and how do you react?Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I also think they look for how sex you can be in explaining what the problem is. They do talk to hundreds of companies. It is a lot. And so I think, can you compress a lot of it and convince, if you can convince these folks here in three months or four months time, how are you going to do demo day and convince a whole room full of investors?[00:20:27] Sriram: Yeah. Yeah. For, I think it's a bit different for us, uh, on the VC side, uh, because two things. One, number one is, uh, the day, you know, so much of it is having a prepared mind before you go into the meeting. And, for example, if you're meeting a. very early. Are we investing before having met every single other person who's working in this space, who has ideas in the space.So you generally know what's going on, you know, what the kind of technologies are or go to market approaches are. You've probably done a bunch of homework already. It's usually, uh, it does happen where you meet somebody totally cold and uh, you really want to invest, but most often you've probably done some homework at least in this space, if not the actual company.Um, and so when you're in the meeting, I think you're trying to judge a couple of things. And these are obviously kind of stolen from Christ Dixon and others. Um, one is their ability to kind of go walk you through their idea, ma. And so very simply, um, you know, the idea MAs is, uh, and I think say the biology of Christen came with this, the idea that, hey, um, uh, How you got to the idea for your company really matters because you went and explored all the data ends, all the possibilities.You're managing around for years and years, and you've kind of come to the actual solution. And the way you can tell whether somebody's gone through the idea Mac, is when you ask 'em questions and they tell you about like five different things they've tried, did not work. And it, it's really hard to fake it.I mean, we, you maybe fake it for like one or two questions, but if you talk about like how we tried X, Y, and Z and they have like an opinion what of the opinions, if they've thought about it, you're like, okay, this person really studied the idea, ma. And that's very powerful. Uh, the second part of it is, uh, you know, Alex sample.Uh, uh, one of my partner says this, Yes, some this thing called the Manifestation Framework, which sounds like a self-help book on Amazon, but it's not, uh, uh uh, you know, but what if is, is like, you know, so many, so much of early stage startup founders is about the ability to manifest things. Uh, manifest capital, manifest the first hire, uh, manifest, uh, the first BD partnership.And, um, usually, you know, if you can't, if you don't have a Cigna sign of doing that, it's really hard to then after raising money, go and close this amazing hotshot engineer or salesperson or close this big partnership. And so in the meeting, right? If you can't convince us, right? And these are people, our day job is to give you money, right?Like, if I spent a year without giving anybody money, I'll probably get fired. If you can't, uh, if you can't convince us to give you money, right? If you wanna find probably a hard time to close this amazing engineer and get that person to come over from Facebook or close this amazing partnership against a competitor.And so that's kind of a judge of that. So it is never about the actual 60 Minutes where you're like, we, we are making up of a large part of makeup of mind is. That one or two conversations, but there's so much which goes in before and after that. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of [00:22:57] What is a16z's edge?[00:22:57] Dwarkesh: venture capital, um, I, I'm curious, so interest and Horowitz, and I guess why Combinator too?Um, but I mean, any other person who's investing in startups, they were started at a time when there were much less capital in the space, and today of course, there's been so much more capital pour into space. So how do these firms, like how does A 16 C continue to have edge? What is this edge? How can I sustain it [00:23:20] Sriram: given the fact that so much more capital is entered into the space?We show up on podcasts like the Lunar Society, , and so if you are watching this and you have a startup idea, Uh, come to us, right? Uh, no. Come, come to the Lunar society. . Well, yes. I mean, maybe so Trust me, you go in pat, you're gonna have a find, uh, a Thk pat right there. Uh, actually I, you think I joked, but there's a bit of truth.But no, I've had [00:23:40] Dwarkesh: like lu this [00:23:40] Aarthi: suddenly became very different [00:23:43] Sriram: conversation. I have had people, this is a totally ludicrous [00:23:46] Dwarkesh: idea, but I've had people like, give me that idea. And it's like, it sounds crazy to me because like, I don't know what, it's, what a company's gonna be successful, right? So, but I hasn't [00:23:55] Aarthi: become an investor.[00:23:57] Sriram: I honestly don't know. But it is something like what you're talking about Lu Society Fund one coming up, right? You heard it here first? Uh, uh, well, I think first of all, you know, I think there's something about the firm, uh, um, in terms of how it's set up philosophically and how it's set up, uh, kind of organizationally, uh, and our approach philosoph.The firm is an optimist, uh, uh, more than anything else. At the core of it, we are optimist. We are optimist about the future. We are optimist about the impact of founders on their, on the liberty to kind of impact that future. Uh, we are optimist at heart, right? Like I, I tell people like, you can't work at a six and z if you're not an optimist.That's at the heart of everything that we do. Um, and very tied to that is the idea that, you know, um, software is eating the world. It is, it's true. 10 years ago when Mark wrote that, peace is as true now, and we just see more and more of it, right? Like every week, you know, look at the week we are recording this.You know, everyone's been talking about chat, G p T, and like all the industries that can get shaped by chat, G P T. So our, our feature, our, our idea is that software is gonna go more and more. So, one way to look at this is, yes, a lot more capitalists enter the world, but there should be a lot more, right?Like, because these companies are gonna go bigger. They're gonna have bigger impacts on, uh, human lives and, and the world at large. So that's, uh, you know, uh, one school of thought, the other school of thought, uh, which I think you were asking about, say valuations, uh, et cetera. Is, uh, you know, um, again, one of my other partners, Jeff Jordan, uh, uh, always likes to tell people like, we don't go discount shopping, right?Our, the way we think about it is we want to, when we're investing in a market, We want to really map out the market, right? Uh, so for example, I work on crypto, uh, and, uh, you know, we, you know, if, if you are building something interesting in crypto and we haven't seen you, we haven't talked to you, that's a fail, that's a mess, right?We ideally want to see every single interesting founder company idea. And a category can be very loose. Crypto is really big. We usually segmented something else. Or if you look at enterprise infrastructure, you can take them into like, you know, AI or different layers and so on. But once you map out a category, you want to know everything.You wanna know every interesting person, every interesting founder you wanna be abreast of every technology change, every go to market hack, every single thing. You wanna know everything, right? And then, uh, the idea is that, uh, we would love to invest in, you know, the what is hopefully becomes the market.Set category, uh, or you know, somebody who's maybe close to the, the market leader. And our belief is that these categories will grow and, you know, they will capture huge value. Um, and as a whole, software is still can used to be undervalued by, uh, a, you know, the world. So, um, we, so, which is why, again, going back to what Jeff would say, he's like, we are not in the business of oh, we are getting a great deal, right?We, we are like, we want to invest in something which, where we think the team and the company and their approach is going to win in this space, and we want to help them win. And we think if they do win, there's a huge value to be unlocked. Yeah, I see. I see. Um, [00:26:42] Future of Twitter[00:26:42] Dwarkesh: let's talk about Twitter. [00:26:44] Sriram: Uh, . I need a drink. I need a drink.[00:26:48] Dwarkesh: um, Tell me, what is the future of Twitter? What is the app gonna look like in five years? You've, um, I mean obviously you've been involved with the Musk Venture recently, but, um, you've, you've had a senior position there. You were an executive there before a few years ago, and you've also been an executive at, uh, you've both been at Meta.So what [00:27:06] Sriram: is the future of Twitter? It's gonna be entertaining. Uh, uh, what is it El say the most entertaining outcome is the most, [00:27:12] Aarthi: uh, uh, like, best outcome is the most, uh, most likely outcome is the most entertaining outcome. [00:27:16] Sriram: Exactly right. So I think it's gonna be the most entertaining outcome. Um, I, I mean, I, I, I think a few things, uh, first of all, uh, ideally care about Twitter.Yeah. Uh, and all of my involvement, uh, you know, over the years, uh, uh, professionally, you know, uh, has, it's kind of. A lagging indicator to the value I got from the service person. I have met hundreds of people, uh, through Twitter. Uh, hundreds of people have reached out to me. Thousands. Exactly. Uh, and you know, I met Mark Andresen through Twitter.Uh, I met like, you know, uh, people are not very good friends of mine. We met through Twitter. We met at Twitter, right. There we go. Right. Uh, just [00:27:50] Aarthi: like incredible outsized impact. Yeah. Um, and I think it's really hard to understate that because, uh, right now it's kind of easy to get lost in the whole, you know, Elon, the previous management bio, like all of that.Outside of all of that, I think the thing I like to care about is, uh, focus on is the product and the product experience. And I think even with the product experience that we have today, which hasn't like, dramatically changed from for years now, um, it's still offering such outsized value for. If you can actually innovate and build really good product on top, I think it can, it can just be really, really good for humanity overall.And I don't even mean this in like a cheesy way. I really think Twitter as a tool could be just really, really effective and enormously good for everyone. Oh yeah. [00:28:35] Sriram: Twitter is I think, sort of methodically upstream of everything that happens in culture in uh, so many different ways. Like, um, you know, there was this, okay, I kinda eli some of the details, uh, but like a few years ago I remember there was this, uh, sort of this somewhat salacious, controversial story which happened in entertainment and uh, and I wasn't paying attention to, except that something caught my eye, which was that, uh, every story had the same two tweets.And these are not tweets from any famous person. It was just some, like, some, um, you know, somebody had some followers, but not a lot of, a lot of followers. And I. Why is this being quoted in every single story? Because it's not from the, you know, the person who was actually in the story or themselves. And it turned out that, uh, what had happened was, uh, you know, somebody wrote in the street, it had gone viral, um, it started trending on Twitter, um, and a bunch of people saw it.They started writing news stories about it. And by that afternoon it was now, you know, gone from a meme to now reality. And like in a lot of people entertainment say, kind of go respond to that. And I've seen this again and again, again, right? Uh, sports, politics, culture, et cetera. So Twitter is memetically upstream of so much of life.Uh, you know, one of my friends had said like, Twitter is more important than the real world. Uh, which I don't, I don't know about that, but, uh, you know, I do think it's, um, it has huge sort of, uh, culture shaping value. Yeah. I thing I think about Twitter is so much of. The network is very Lindy. So one of the things I'm sure from now is like five years from now, you know, what does that mean?Well that, uh, is that something which has kind of stood the test of time to some extent? And, um, and, uh, well the Lindy effect generally means, I don't think it's using this context with ideas like things which, with withstood the test of time tend to also with some test of time in the future, right? Like, like if we talked to Naim is like, well, people have lifting heavy weights and doing red wine for 2000 years, so let's continue doing that.It's probably a good thing. Um, but, but, but that's Twitter today. What is the future of Twitter? Well, uh, well, I think so one is, I think that's gonna continue to be true, right? 10 years from now, five years from now, it's still gonna be the metic battleground. It's still gonna be the place where ideas are shared, et cetera.Um, you know, I'm very. Unabashedly a a big fan of what Elon, uh, as a person, as a founder and what he's doing at Twitter. And my hope is that, you know, he can kind of canoe that and, you know, he's, you know, and I can't actually predict what he's gonna go Bill, he's kind of talked about it. Maybe that means bringing in other product ideas.Uh, I think he's talked about payments. He's talked about like having like longer form video. Uh, who knows, right? But I do know, like five years from now, it is still gonna be the place of like active conversation where people fight, yell, discuss, and maybe sometimes altogether. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, the Twitter, [00:30:58] Is Big Tech Overstaffed?[00:30:58] Dwarkesh: um, conversation has raised a lot of, a lot of questions about how over or understaffed, uh, these big tech companies are, and in particular, um, how many people you can get rid of and the thing basically functions or how fragile are these code bases?And having worked at many of these big tech companies, how, how big is the bus factor, would you guess? Like what, what percentage of people could I fire at the random big tech [00:31:22] Sriram: company? Why? I think, uh, [00:31:23] Aarthi: yeah, I think. That's one way to look at it. I think the way I see it is there are a few factors that go into this, right?Like pre covid, post covid, like through covid everybody became remote, remote teams. As you scaled, it was kind of also hard to figure out what was really going on in different parts of the organization. And I think a lot of inefficiencies were overcome by just hiring more people. It's like, oh, you know what, like that team, yeah, that project's like lagging, let's just like add 10 more people.And that's kind of like it became the norm. Yeah. And I think a lot of these teams just got bigger and bigger and bigger. I think the other part of it was also, um, you lot of how performance ratings and culture of like, moving ahead in your career path. And a lot of these companies were dependent on how big your team was and uh, and so every six months or year long cycle or whatever is your performance review cycle, people would be like, this person instead of looking at what has this person shipped or what has like the impact that this person's got had, uh, the team's done.It became more of like, well this person's got a hundred percent arc or 200% arc and next year they're gonna have a 10% increase and that's gonna be like this much. And you know, that was the conversation. And so a lot of the success and promo cycles and all of those conversations were tied around like number of headcount that this person would get under them as such, which I think is like a terrible way to think about how you're moving up the ladder.Um, you should really, like, even at a big company, you should really be thinking about the impact that you've had and customers you've reached and all of that stuff. And I think at some point people kind of like lost that, uh, and pick the more simpler metric, which just headcount and it's easy. Yeah. And to just scale that kind of thing.So I think now with Elon doing this where he is like cutting costs, and I think Elon's doing this for different set of reasons. You know, Twitter's been losing money and I think it's like driving efficiency. Like this is like no different. Anybody else who like comes in, takes over a business and looks at it and says, wait, we are losing money every day.We have to do something about this. Like, it's not about like, you know, cutting fat for the sake of it or anything. It's like this, this business is not gonna be viable if we keep it going the way it is. Yeah. And just pure economics. And so when he came in and did that, I'm now seeing this, and I'm sure Sheam is too at like at eight 16 Z and like his companies, uh, but even outside, and I see this with like my angel investment portfolio of companies, um, and just founders I talk to where people are like, wait, Elon can do that with Twitter.I really need to do that with my company. And it's given them the permission to be more aggressive and to kind of get back into the basics of why are we building what we are building? These are our customers, this is our revenue. Why do we have these many employees? What do they all do? And not from a place of like being cynical, but from a place of.I want people to be efficient in doing what they do and how do we [00:34:06] Sriram: make that happen? Yeah. I, I stole this, I think somebody said this on Twitter and I officially, he said, Elon has shifted the overturn window of, uh, the playbook for running a company. Um, which is, I think if you look at Twitter, uh, you know, and by the way, I would say, you know, you know the sort of, the warning that shows up, which is don't try this at home before, which is like, so don't try some of these unless you're er and maybe try your own version of these.But, you know, number one is the idea that you, you can become better not through growth, but by cutting things. You can become better, by demanding more out of yourself and the people who work for you. Uh, you, you can become better by hiring a, you know, a higher bar, sitting a higher bar for the talent that you bring into the company and, uh, that you reach into the company.I think at the heart of it, by the way, uh, you know, it's one of the things I've kinda observed from Elon. His relentless focus on substance, which is every condition is gonna be like, you know, the, the meme about what have you gotten done this week is, it kinda makes sense to everything else, which is like, okay, what are we building?What is the thing? Who's the actual person doing the work? As opposed to the some manager two levels a about aggregating, you know, the reports and then telling you what's being done. There is a relentless focus on substance. And my theory is, by the way, I think maybe some of it comes from Iran's background in, uh, space and Tesla, where at the end of the day, you are bound by the physics of the real world, right?If you get something wrong, right, you can, the rockets won't take off or won't land. That'd be a kalo, right? Like what, what's a, the phrase that they use, uh, rapid unplanned disassembly is the word. Right? Which is like better than saying it went kaboom. Uh, but, you know, so the constraints are if, if, you know, if you get something wrong at a social media company, people can tell if you get something really wrong at space with the Tesla.People can tap, right? Like very dramatically so and so, and I think, so there was a relentless focus on substance, right? Uh, being correct, um, you know, what is actually being done. And I think that's external Twitter too. And I think a lot of other founders I've talked to, uh, uh, in, sometimes in private, I look at this and go, oh, there is no different playbook that they have always I instituted or they were used to when they were growing up.We saw this when we were growing up. They're definitely seen some other cultures around the world where we can now actually do this because we've seen somebody else do this. And they don't have to do the exact same thing, you know, Elon is doing. Uh, they don't have to, uh, but they can do their variations of demanding more of themselves, demanding more of the people that work for them.Um, focusing on substance, focusing on speed. Uh, I think our all core element. [00:36:24] Aarthi: I also think over the last few years, uh, this may be controversial, I don't know why it is, but it somehow is that you can no longer talk about hard work as like a recipe for success. And you know, like growing up for us. When people say that, or like our parents say that, we just like kind of roll our eyes and be like, yeah, sure.Like, we work hard, like we get it. Yeah. But I think over the last couple of years, it just became not cool to say that if you work hard, then you can, there is a shot at like finding success. And I think it's kind of refreshing almost, uh, to have Elon come in and say, we are gonna work really hard. We are gonna be really hardcore about how we build things.And it's, it's very simple. Like you have to put in the hours. There is no kind of shortcut to it. And I think it's, it's nice to bring it all tight, all back to the basics. And, uh, I like that, like, I like the fact that we are now talking about it again and it's, it's sad that now talking about working really hard or having beds in your office, we used to do that at MicrosoftYeah. Uh, is now like suddenly really controversial. And so, um, I'm, I'm all for this. Like, you know, it's not for everyone, but if you are that type of person who really enjoys working hard, really enjoys shipping things and building really good things, Then I think you might find a fit in this culture. And I think that's a good thing.Yeah. I, [00:37:39] Sriram: I think there's nothing remarkable that has been built without people just working really hard. It doesn't happen for years and years, but I think for strong, some short-term burst of some really passionate, motivated, smart people working some really, you know, and hard doesn't mean time. It can mean so many different dimensions, but I don't think anything great gets built without that.So, uh, yeah, it's interesting. We [00:37:59] Aarthi: used to like do overnights at Microsoft. Like we'd just like sleep under our desk, um, until the janitor would just like, poke us out of there like, I really need to vacuum your cubicle. Like, get out of here. And so we would just like find another bed or something and just like, go crash on some couch.But it was, those were like some of our fun days, like, and we look back at it and you're like, we sh we built a lot. I think at some point sh I think when I walked over to his cubicle, he was like looking at Windows Source code and we're like, we are looking at Windows source code. This is the best thing ever.I think, I think there's such joy in like, Finding those moments where you like work hard and you're feeling really good about it. [00:38:36] Sriram: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you [00:38:37] Next CEO of Twitter?[00:38:37] Dwarkesh: get working hard and bringing talent into the company, uh, let's say Elon and says Tomorrow, you know what, uh, Riam, I'm, uh, I've got these other three companies that I've gotta run and I need some help running this company.And he says, Sriram would you be down to be the next, [00:38:51] Sriram: uh, next CEO of Twitter Absolutely not. Absolutely not. But I am married to someone. No, uh uh, no, uh uh, you know, you know when, uh, I don't think I was, the answer is absolutely not. And you know this exactly. Fun story. Um, uh, I don't think it says in public before. So when you, when I was in the process, you know, talking to and nor words and, you know, it's, it's not like a, uh, it's not like a very linear process.It's kind of a relationship that kind of develops over time. And I met Mark Andreen, uh, multiple times over the years. They've been having this discussion of like, Hey, do you want to come do venture or do you want to, if you wanna do venture, do you wanna come do with us? And um, and, and one of the things Mark would always tell me is, uh, something like, we would love to have you, but you have to scratch the edge of being an operator first.Um, because there are a lot of, there are a lot of ways VCs fail, uh, operator at VCs fail. Um, and I can get, get into some of them if you're interested, but one of the common ways that they fail is they're like, oh, I really want to go back to, um, building companies. And, uh, and now thing is like antis more than most interest, like really respects entrepreneurship, fraud's the hard of what we do.But he will, like, you have to get that out of a system. You have to be like, okay, I'm done with that word. I want to now do this. Uh, before you know, uh, you want to come over, right? And if you say so, let's have this conversation, but if not, we will wait for you. Right. And a woman telling me this all the time, and at some point of time I decided, uh, that, uh, you know, I just love this modoc.Um, you know, there are many things kind of different about being an operator versus a BC uh, and you kind of actually kind of really train myself in what is actually a new profession. But one of the things is like, you know, you kind of have to be more of a coach and more open to like, working with very different kinds of people without having direct agency.And it's always a very different mode of operation, right? And you have to be like, well, I'm not the person doing the thing. I'm not the person getting the glory. I'm here to fund, obviously, but really help support coach be, uh, a lending hand, be a supporting shoulder, whatever the, uh, the metaphor is, or for somebody else doing the thing.And so you kind of have to have the shift in your brain. And I think sometimes when VCs don't work out, the few operator on VCs don't work out. There are few reasons. Uh, number one reason I would say is when an operator, and I, I hate the word operator by the way, right? It just means you have a regular job.Uh, you know, uh, and, uh, but the number one reason is like when you have a regular job, you know, you're an engineer, you're, you're a product manager, you're a marketer, whatever. , you get feedback every single day about how you're doing. If you're an engineer, you're checking in code or you know your manager, you hire a great person, whatever it is.When you're at Visa, you're not getting direct feedback, right? You know, maybe today what I'm doing now, recording this with you is the best thing ever because some amazing fund is gonna meet it and they're gonna come talk to me, or maybe it's a total waste of time and I should be talking some else. You do have no way of knowing.So you really have to think very differently about how you think about patients, how we think about spending your time, and you don't get the dopamine of like, oh, I'm getting this great reinforcement loop. Um, the second part of it is because of that lack of feedback loop, you often don't know how well you're doing.Also, you don't have that fantastic product demo or you're like, you know, if an engineer like, oh, I got this thing working, the builder is working, it's 10 x faster, or this thing actually works, whatever the thing is, you don't get that feedback loop, uh, because that next great company that, you know, the next Larry and Sergey or Brian Armstrong might walk in through your door or Zoom meeting tomorrow or maybe two years from now.So you don't really have a way to know. Um, so you kind of have to be, you have a focus on different ways to do, uh, get. Kind of figured out how well you're doing. The third part of it is, uh, you know, the, uh, the feedback loops are so long where, uh, you know, you, you can't test it. When I was a product manager, you would ship things, something you, if you don't like it, you kill it, you ship something else.At, at our firm in, you invest in somebody, you're working with them for a decade, if not longer, really for life in some ways. So you are making much more intense, but much less frequent decisions as opposed to when you're in a regular job, you're making very frequent, very common decisions, uh, every single day.So, uh, I get a lot of differences and I think, you know, sometimes, uh, you know, folks who, who are like a former CEO or former like VP product, uh, uh, I talk a lot of them sometimes who went from, came to BC and then went back and they either couldn't adapt or didn't like it, or didn't like the emotions of it.And I had to really convince myself that okay. Hopefully wouldn't fate those problems. I probably, maybe some other problems. And, uh, uh, so yes, the long way of saying no, , [00:43:13] Why Don't More Venture Capitalists Become Founders?[00:43:13] Dwarkesh: um, the desk partly answer another question I had, which was, you know, there is obviously this pipeline of people who are founders who become venture capitalists.And it's interesting to me. I would think that the other end or the converse of that would be just as common because if you're, if you're an angel investor or venture capitalist, you've seen all these companies, you've seen dozens of companies go through all these challenges and then you'd be like, oh, I, I understand.[00:43:36] Sriram: Wait, why do you think more VCs driven apart? You have some strong opinions of this . [00:43:40] Dwarkesh: Should more venture capitalists and investors become founders? I think [00:43:43] Aarthi: they should. I don't think they will. Ouch. I dunno, why not? Um, I think, uh, look, I think the world is better with more founders. More people should start companies, more people should be building things.I fundamentally think that's what needs to happen. Like our single biggest need is like, we just don't have enough founders. And we should just all be trying new things, building new projects, all of that. Um, I think for venture capital is, I think what happens, and this is just my take, I don't know if Farram agrees with it, but, um, I think they see so much from different companies.And if you're like really successful with what you do as a vc, you are probably seeing hundreds of companies operate. You're seeing how the sausage is being made in each one of them. Like an operating job. You kind of sort of like have this linear learning experience. You go from one job to the other.Here you kind of sort of see in parallel, like you're probably on like 50, 60 boards. Uh, and oftentimes when it comes to the investor as like an issue, it is usually a bad problem. Um, and you kind of see like you, you know, you kind of see how every company, what the challenges are, and every company probably has like, you know, the best companies we know, I've all had this like near death experience and they've come out of that.That's how the best founders are made. Um, you see all of that and I think at some point you kind of have this fear of like, I don't know. I just don't think I wanna like, bet everything into this one startup. One thing, I think it's very hard to have focus if you've honed your skillset to be much more breath first and go look at like a portfolio of companies being helpful to every one of them.And I see Sure. And do this every day where I, I have no idea how he does it, but key context, which is every 30 minutes. Yeah. And it's crazy. Like I would go completely and say, where if you told me board meeting this founder pitch, oh, sell this operating role for this portfolio company. Second board meeting, third, board meeting founder, pitch founder pitch founder pitch.And that's like, you know, all day, every day nonstop. Um, that's just like, you, you, I don't think you can like, kind of turn your mindset into being like, I'm gonna clear up my calendar and I'm just gonna like work on this one thing. Yeah. And it may be successful, it may not be, but I'm gonna give it my best shot.It's a very, very different psychology. I don't know. What do you [00:45:57] Sriram: think? Well, Well, one of my partners Triess to say like, I don't know what VCs do all day. The job is so easy, uh, uh, you know, they should start complaining. I mean, being a founder is really hard. Um, and I think, you know, there's a part of it where the VCs are like, oh, wait, I see how hard it is.And I'm like, I'm happy to support, but I don't know whether I can go through with it. So, because it's just really hard and which is kind of like why we have like, so much, uh, sort of respect and empathy, uh, for the whole thing, which is, I, [00:46:20] Aarthi: I do like a lot of VCs, the best VCs I know are people who've been operators in the past because they have a lot of empathy for what it takes to go operate.Um, and I've generally connected better with them because you're like, oh, okay, you're a builder. You've built these things, so, you know, kind of thing. Yeah. Um, but I do think a lot more VCs should become [00:46:38] Sriram: founders than, yeah. I, I think it's some of the couple of other things which happened, which is, uh, uh, like Arthur said, like sometimes, uh, you know, when we see you kind of, you see, you kind of start to pattern match, like on.And you sometimes you analyze and, and you kind of, your brain kind of becomes so focused on context switching. And I think when need a founder, you need to kind of just dedicate, you know, everything to just one idea. And it, it's not just bbc sometimes with academics also, where sometimes you are like a person who's supporting multiple different kinds of disciplines and context switching between like various speech students you support.Uh, but it's very different from being in the lab and working on one problem for like long, long years. Right. So, um, and I think it's kind of hard to then context switch back into just doing the exact, you know, just focus on one problem, one mission, day in and day out. So I think that's hard, uh, and uh, but you should be a founder.Yeah, I think, yeah, I think more people should try. [00:47:32] Role of Boards[00:47:32] Dwarkesh: . Speaking of being on boards, uh, what the FTX Saga has raised some questions about what is like the role of a board, even in a startup, uh, stage company, and you guys are on multiple boards, so I'm curious how you think about, there's a range of between micromanaging everything the CEO does to just rubber stamping everything the CEO does.Where, what is the responsibility of a board and a startup? [00:47:54] Aarthi: What, what, what are the, this is something I'm really curious about too. I'm [00:47:57] Sriram: just, well, I just wanna know on the FDX soccer, whether we are gonna beat the FTX episode in interviews in terms of view your podcast, right? Like, so if you folks are listening, right?Like let's get us to number one. So what you YouTube like can subscriber, they're already listening. [00:48:10] Aarthi: What do you mean? Get us [00:48:10] Sriram: to number one? Okay, then, then spread the word, right? Like, uh, don't [00:48:13] Aarthi: watch other episodes. It's kinda what you [00:48:15] Sriram: should, I mean, if there's [00:48:16] Dwarkesh: like some sort of scandal with a 16 Z, we could definitely be to fdx.[00:48:21] Sriram: Uh, uh, yeah, I think it's gonna, well, it's gonna be really hard to read that one. Uh, , uh, uh, for for sure. Uh, uh, oh my goodness. Um, uh, but no, [00:48:29] Aarthi: I'm, I'm genuinely curious about [00:48:31] Sriram: these two. Well, uh, it's a few things, you know, so the multiple schools of thought, I would say, you know, there's one school of thought, which is the, uh, uh, you know, which I don't think I totally subscribe to, but I think some of the other later stages, especially public market folks that I work with sometimes subscribe to, which is the only job of a, uh, board is to hire and fire the ceo.I don't think I really subscribe to that. I think because we deal with more, uh, early stage venture, um, and our job is like, uh, you know, like lot of the companies I work with are in a cdc c, b, you know, they have something working, but they have a lot long way to go. Um, and hopefully this journey, which goes on for many, many years, and I think the best way I thought about it is to, people would say like, you want to be.Wave form dampener, which is, uh, you know, for example, if the company's kind of like soaring, you want to kind of be like kind the check and balance of what? Like, hey, okay, what do we do to, uh, you know, um, uh, to make sure we are covering our bases or dotting the is dotting the, crossing The ts be very kind of like careful about it because the natural gravitational pool of the company is gonna take it like one direct.On the other hand, uh, if the company's not doing very well and everybody's beating us, beating up about it, you're, you know, your cust you're not able to close deals. The press is beating you up. You want to be the person who is supportive to the ceo, who's rallying, everybody helping, you know, convince management to stay, helping convince, close host, hire.So, um, there are a lot of things, other things that go into being a board member. Obviously there's a fiscal responsibility part of things, and, um, you know, um, because you kind of represent so many stakeholders. But I think at the heart of it, I kind of think about, uh, you know, how do I sort of help the founder, uh, the founder and kind of dampen the waveform.Um, the other Pinteresting part was actually the board meetings. Uh, Themselves do. Uh, and I do think like, you know, about once a year or, uh, so like that there's every kind of, there's, there's almost always a point every 18 months or so in a company's lifetime where you have like some very decisive, interesting moment, right?It could be good, it could be bad. And I think those moments can be, uh, really, really pivotal. So I think there's, there's huge value in showing up to board meetings, being really prepared, uh, uh, where you've done your homework, you, you know, you've kind of had all the conversations maybe beforehand. Um, and you're coming into add real value, like nothing kind of annoying me if somebody's just kind of showing up and, you know, they're kind of maybe cheering on the founder once or twice and they kind of go away.So I don't think you can make big difference, but, uh, you know, I think about, okay, how are we sort of like the waveform, the, you know, make sure the company, [00:50:58] Aarthi: but I guess the question then is like, should startups have better corporate governance compared to where we are today? Would that have avoided, like, say the FTX [00:51:08] Sriram: saga?No, I mean, it's, I mean, we, I guess there'll be a legal process and you'll find out right when the FTX case, nobody really knows, you know, like, I mean, like what level of, uh, who knew what, when, and what level of deceptions, you know, deception, uh, uh, you know, unfolded, right? So, uh, it, yeah. Maybe, but you know, it could have been, uh, it could have been very possible that, you know, uh, somebody, somebody just fakes or lies stuff, uh, lies to you in multiple ways.[00:51:36] Aarthi: To,

Transcript. Are Branding and Marketing the Same thing? Now the dictionary defines a brand as the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design. The definition of marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. From the looks of these dictionary definitions, I can understand why many may feel its the same. Personally I think not! I love the definition by Jay Abraham…. of Marketing He states ….it's the continuous education of your product and/or service to your desired audience through a desired channel. This is shared through media. Share through Visual Images, Video, Copy, or verbally. For branding, I love the definition of Marty Neumeier Branding is the gut feeling of a product, service, and/or company by an individual(s). This also too can be shared through media. But the key here is understanding is that branding is about belonging. Marketing is sharing the good news on how you're better is better and you that desired audience to enroll. Both can be used in combination. You can market your brand in order to share its promises that others will feel when they connect to your company. Your brand produces products and services that are marketed to the desired audience. I know it may sound like babble but the truth is that you can't have one without the other. What you want as a business owner is a forever brand. The reason why that they make your marketing much easier… Because the brand is the people. The people who are fans of Nike, Apple, or Amazon are great advocates of the brand who can share their stories which leads to opportunities for these respective businesses. Think about it if a friend shares with you a problem they had that you also experienced and believe you have the solution. Its only right as a friend to share your story (aka marketing) and how it made you feel (brand) to be serviced by Company X. Now would you look at that…..both branding and marketing work in perfect harmony. Wherever you stand on the position of their definitions. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jerome-patrick/support

This year, the Australian EtA and Search Fund community is looking forward to its first big event for the region. The EtA Forum (www.etaforum.com.au) will be held in Manly Beach in Sydney, on Friday 16th September. In today's episode of the next step, I speak to Scott Middleton, who is the founder and CEO of Terem. Terem is a technology based business that provides tech product development support for big to small businesses across Australia and New Zealand, all the way from strategy to product to engineering and everything in between. Scott and his team have recently developed a JV structure whereby they partner with businesses typically small to medium type businesses around building technology that supports the growth of those businesses. And as such, has come across the search model in the last six to 12 months and has been really engaged, so much so that he's become an excellent supporter of the community and will be sponsoring the EtA Forum this month. He'll also be speaking at the event, on a panel about the various forms of search and will be giving us a description of the JV model that he and his team are bringing to market that leverages some elements of the search model, partnering with searchers to buy great businesses. Scott has got a range of experience from building his own computer game years and years ago through working on technology projects with VCs startups, high growth businesses, all the way through to government organizations like the ATO. So he's got a wide range of experience. And in some parts of the conversation, I find it hard not to end up down all sorts of rabbit holes. So it was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it. www.etaforum.com.au Connect with Pete : https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteseligman/ Connect with Scott : https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmiddleton/ What we discussed: 03:15 Scott gives us an insight into his background and how he got where he is today. 05:07 Scott tells us about when he was a kid, how he built and sold a game that was sold globally. 08:59 Scott discusses his experience dealing with corporate culture, big business, the bureaucracy in approval structures & processes compared with the agility of the entrepreneurial spirit. 17:03 Scott tells us how he has found the search space so far and what things resonate most in relation to the search model and search community. 24:14 Pete asks Scott if he has started to see an increase in opportunity in relation to the JV model he is building. Quotes: I've been an engineer working on some large projects, and I kind of bring all that together. I've also lost a lot of money. I've probably lost about a million dollars of my own money on let's call it - they weren't a bad idea - though just poorly executed is how I would put it. I have to learn decisions the hard way. Because I'm playing with my own money, not someone else's. That's really my background and why Terem came about. I just saw a real need to help organizations build tech products better, and help their teams perform better. The exciting thing about those big organizations is that there's really big opportunities attached to them. We've launched products with Qantas, for example, that have moved the needle on their share price, and gone to millions of people in the first week. We can push boundaries more, which we think is kind of necessary to make things work and make decisions faster and learn faster. When I'm investing, I'm looking at the stock market saying I'm investing in Company X, who's listed, because I believe in what they're doing in their market, not because I want them to be a VC. The way that we've observed to do it is not so much through an innovation lab. An innovation lab in a business is going to make incremental change on the edges, where you get disruptive outcomes in small teams, isolated from the day to day, freedom to operate. Get them outside the building, let them run separately, don't put red tape around them, let them do what they're going to do for their specific purpose, and you'll get much better success. What I like about the search community is it just kind of vibes with my approach, which is that really methodical considered, take out your downside, give yourself options, build your cash flow.

Rain gear. You may not need it, or it may save your hunt. You can spend fifty bucks or hundreds of dollars. Some pieces weigh a few ounces, while other pieces weigh a couple of pounds. Company X has proprietary technology with miraculous claims, while Company Y claims its membrane is better. So what do you do? How do you select rain gear? Well, it begins with understanding how rain gear works — and why, sometimes, it doesn't. To help us dig deeper than the marketing messages we, as consumers, see about rain gear, we turned to a technical textile expert, Marcel Geser of Development Never Stops. Marcel's work with DNS has won over 25 coveted ISPO awards, which are given to the most innovative products in the sports and outdoor space. He has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, including recent work with hunting apparel company Canis (https://canisathlete.com/). LEAVE US A MESSAGE: https://speakpipe.com/huntbackcountry Contact Us: podcast@exomtngear.com Podcast Episode Archive: https://exomtngear.com/podcast

➤ Elon Musk explains Tesla's lead, ridiculous demand, production constraints, and more in interview with Financial Times: https://youtu.be/VfyrQVhfGZc ➤ China Passenger Car Association reports April sales and production numbers ➤ Confusing reporting on the status of Giga Shanghai production ➤ Update on German EV incentives Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/teslapodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tesladailypodcast Tesla Referral: https://ts.la/robert47283 Executive producer Jeremy Cooke Executive producer Troy Cherasaro Executive producer Andre/Maria Kent Executive producer Jessie Chimni Executive producer Michael Pastrone Executive producer Richard Del Maestro Executive producer John Beans Music by Evan Schaeffer Disclosure: Rob Maurer is long TSLA stock & derivatives

About YoavYoav is a security veteran recognized on Microsoft Security Response Center's Most Valuable Research List (BlackHat 2019). Prior to joining Orca Security, he was a Unit 8200 researcher and team leader, a chief architect at Hyperwise Security, and a security architect at Check Point Software Technologies. Yoav enjoys hunting for Linux and Windows vulnerabilities in his spare time.Links Referenced: Orca Security: https://orca.security Twitter: https://twitter.com/yoavalon TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Vultr. Optimized cloud compute plans have landed at Vultr to deliver lightning fast processing power, courtesy of third gen AMD EPYC processors without the IO, or hardware limitations, of a traditional multi-tenant cloud server. Starting at just 28 bucks a month, users can deploy general purpose, CPU, memory, or storage optimized cloud instances in more than 20 locations across five continents. Without looking, I know that once again, Antarctica has gotten the short end of the stick. Launch your Vultr optimized compute instance in 60 seconds or less on your choice of included operating systems, or bring your own. It's time to ditch convoluted and unpredictable giant tech company billing practices, and say goodbye to noisy neighbors and egregious egress forever. Vultr delivers the power of the cloud with none of the bloat. "Screaming in the Cloud" listeners can try Vultr for free today with a $150 in credit when they visit getvultr.com/screaming. That's G E T V U L T R.com/screaming. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast.Corey: Finding skilled DevOps engineers is a pain in the neck! And if you need to deploy a secure and compliant application to AWS, forgettaboutit! But that's where DuploCloud can help. Their comprehensive no-code/low-code software platform guarantees a secure and compliant infrastructure in as little as two weeks, while automating the full DevSecOps lifestyle. Get started with DevOps-as-a-Service from DuploCloud so that your cloud configurations are done right the first time. Tell them I sent you and your first two months are free. To learn more visit: snark.cloud/duplocloud. Thats's snark.cloud/D-U-P-L-O-C-L-O-U-D. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Periodically, I would say that I enjoy dealing with cloud platform security issues, except I really don't. It's sort of forced upon me to deal with much like a dead dog is cast into their neighbor's yard for someone else to have to worry about. Well, invariably, it seems like it's my yard.And I'm only on the periphery of these things. Someone who's much more in the trenches in the wide world of cloud security is joining me today. Yoav Alon is the CTO at Orca Security. Yoav, thank you for taking the time to join me today and suffer the slings and arrows I'll no doubt be hurling your way.Yoav: Thank you, Corey, for having me. I've been a longtime listener, and it's an honor to be here.Corey: I still am periodically surprised that anyone listens to these things. Because it's unlike a newsletter where everyone will hit reply and give me a piece of their mind. People generally don't wind up sending me letters about things that they hear on the podcast, so whenever I talk to somebody listens to it as, “Oh. Oh, right, I did turn the microphone on. Awesome.” So, it's always just a little on the surreal side.But we're not here to talk necessarily about podcasting, or the modern version of an AM radio show. Let's start at the very beginning. What is Orca Security, and why would folks potentially care about what it is you do?Yoav: So, Orca Security is a cloud security company, and our vision is very simple. Given a customer's cloud environment, we want to detect all the risks in it and implement mechanisms to prevent it from occurring. And while it sounds trivial, before Orca, it wasn't really possible. You will have to install multiple tools and aggregate them and do a lot of manual work, and it was messy. And we wanted to change that, so we had, like, three guiding principles.We call it seamless, so I want to detect all the risks in your environment without friction, which is our speak for fighting with your peers. We also want to detect everything so you don't have to install, like, a tool for each issue: A tool for vulnerabilities, a tool for misconfigurations, and for sensitive data, IAM roles, and such. And we put a very high priority on context, which means telling you what's important, what's not. So, for example, S3 bucket open to the internet is important if it has sensitive data, not if it's a, I don't know, static website.Corey: Exactly. I have a few that I'd like to get screamed at in my AWS account, like, “This is an open S3 bucket and it's terrible.” I look at it the name is assets.lastweekinaws.com. Gee, I wonder if that's something that's designed to be a static hosted website.Increasingly, I've been slapping CloudFront in front of those things just to make the broken warning light go away. I feel like it's an underhanded way of driving CloudFront adoption some days, but not may not be the most charitable interpretation thereof. Orca has been top-of-mind for a lot of folks in the security community lately because let's be clear here, dealing with security problems in cloud providers from a vendor perspective is an increasingly crowded—and clouded—space. Just because there's so much—there's investment pouring into it, everyone has a slightly different take on the problem, and it becomes somewhat challenging to stand out from the pack. You didn't really stand out from the pack so much as leaped to the front of it and more or less have become the de facto name in a very short period of time, specifically—at least from my world—when you wound up having some very interesting announcements about vulnerabilities within AWS itself. You will almost certainly do a better job of relating the story, so please, what did you folks find?Yoav: So, back in September of 2021, two of my researchers, Yanir Tsarimi and Tzah Pahima, each one of them within a relatively short span of time from each other, found a vulnerability in AWS. Tzah found a vulnerability in CloudFormation which we named BreakingFormation and Yanir found a vulnerability in AWS Glue, which we named SuperGlue. We're not the best copywriters, but anyway—Corey: No naming things is hard. Ask any Amazonian.Yoav: Yes. [laugh]. So, I'll start with BreakingFormation which caught the eyes of many. It was an XXE SSRF, which is jargon to say that we were able to read files and execute HTTP requests and read potentially sensitive data from CloudFormation servers. This one was mitigated within 26 hours by AWS, so—Corey: That was mitigated globally.Yoav: Yes, globally, which I've never seen such quick turnaround anywhere. It was an amazing security feat to see.Corey: Particularly in light of the fact that AWS does a lot of things very right when it comes to, you know, designing cloud infrastructure. Imagine that, they've had 15 years of experience and basically built the idea of cloud, in some respects, at the scale that hyperscalers operate at. And one of their core tenets has always been that there's a hard separation between regions. There are remarkably few global services, and those are treated with the utmost of care and delicacy. To the point where when something like that breaks as an issue that spans more than one region, it is headline-making news in many cases.So it's, they almost never wind up deploying things to all regions at the same time. That can be irksome when we're talking about things like I want a feature that solves a problem that I have, and I have to wait months for it to hit a region that I have resources living within, but for security, stuff like this, I am surprised that going from, “This is the problem,” to, “It has been mitigated,” took place within 26 hours. I know it sounds like a long time to folks who are not deep in the space, but that is superhero speed.Yoav: A small correction, it's 26 hours for, like, the main regions. And it took three to four days to propagate to all regions. But still, it's speed of lighting in for security space.Corey: When this came out, I was speaking to a number of journalists on background about trying to wrap their head around this, and they said that, “Oh yeah, and security is always, like, the top priority for AWS, second only to uptime and reliability.” And… and I understand the perception, but I disagree with it in the sense of the nightmare scenario—that every time I mention to a security person watching the blood drain from their face is awesome—but the idea that take IAM, which as Werner said in his keynote, processes—was it 500 million or was it 500 billion requests a second, some ludicrous number—imagine fails open where everything suddenly becomes permitted. I have to imagine in that scenario, they would physically rip the power cables out of the data centers in order to stop things from going out. And that is the right move. Fortunately, I am extremely optimistic that will remain a hypothetical because that is nightmare fuel right there.But Amazon says that security is job zero. And my cynical interpretation is that well, it wasn't, but they forgot security, decided to bolt it on to the end, like everyone else does, and they just didn't want to renumber all their slides, so instead of making it point one, they just put another slide in front of it and called the job zero. I'm sure that isn't how it worked, but for those of us who procrastinate and building slide decks for talks, it has a certain resonance to it. That was one issue. The other seemed a little bit more pernicious focusing on Glue, which is their ETL-as-a-Service… service. One of them I suppose. Tell me more about it.Yoav: So, one of the things that we found when we found the BreakingFormation when we reported the vulnerability, it led us to do a quick Google search, which led us back to the Glue service. It had references to Glue, and we started looking around it. And what we were able to do with the vulnerability is given a specific feature in Glue, which we don't disclose at the moment, we were able to effectively take control over the account which hosts the Glue service in us-east-1. And having this control allowed us to essentially be able to impersonate the Glue service. So, every role in AWS that has a trust to the Glue service, we were able to effectively assume a role into it in any account in AWS. So, this was more critical a vulnerability in its effect.Corey: I think on some level, the game of security has changed because for a lot of us who basically don't have much in the way of sensitive data living in AWS—and let's be clear, I take confidentiality extremely seriously. Our clients on the consulting side view their AWS bills themselves as extremely confidential information that Amazon stuffs into a PDF and emails every month. But still. If there's going to be a leak, we absolutely do not want it to come from us, and that is something that we take extraordinarily seriously. But compared to other jobs I've had in the past, no one will die if that information gets out.It is not the sort of thing that is going to ruin people's lives, which is very often something that can happen in some data breaches. But in my world, one of the bad cases of a breach of someone getting access to my account is they could spin up a bunch of containers on the 17 different services that AWS offers that can run containers and mine cryptocurrency with it. And the damage to me then becomes a surprise bill. Okay, great. I can live with that.Something that's a lot scarier to a lot of companies with, you know, serious problems is, yep, fine, cost us money, whatever, but our access to our data is the one thing that is going to absolutely be the thing that cannot happen. So, from that perspective alone, something like Glue being able to do that is a lot more terrifying than subverting CloudFormation and being able to spin up additional resources or potentially take resources down. Is that how you folks see it too, or is—I'm sure there's nuance I'm missing.Yoav: So yeah, the access to data is top-of-mind for everyone. It's a bit scary to think about it. I have to mention, again, the quick turnaround time for AWS, which almost immediately issued a patch. It was a very fast one and they mitigated, again, the issue completely within days. About your comment about data.Data is king these days, there is nothing like data, and it has all the properties of everything that we care about. It's expensive to store, it's expensive to move, and it's very expensive if it leaks. So, I think a lot of people were more alarmed about the Glue vulnerability than the CloudFormation vulnerability. And they're right in doing so.Corey: I do want to call out that AWS did a lot of things right in this area. Their security posture is very clearly built around defense-in-depth. The fact that they were able to disclose—after some prodding—that they checked the CloudTrail logs for the service itself, dating back to the time the service launched, and verified that there had never been an exploit of this, that is phenomenal, as opposed to the usual milquetoast statements that companies have. We have no evidence of it, which can mean that we did the same thing and we looked through all the logs in it's great, but it can also mean that, “Oh, yeah, we probably should have logs, shouldn't we? But let's take a backlog item for that.” And that's just terrifying on some level.It becomes a clear example—a shining beacon for some of us in some cases—of doing things right from that perspective. There are other sides to it, though. As a customer, it was frustrating in the extreme to—and I mean, no offense by this—to learn about this from you rather than from the provider themselves. They wound up putting up a security notification many hours after your blog post went up, which I would also just like to point out—and we spoke about it at the time and it was a pure coincidence—but there was something that was just chef's-kiss perfect about you announcing this on Andy Jassy's birthday. That was just very well done.Yoav: So, we didn't know about Andy's birthday. And it was—Corey: Well, I see only one of us has a company calendar with notable executive birthdays splattered all over it.Yoav: Yes. And it was also published around the time that AWS CISO was announced, which was also a coincidence because the date was chosen a lot of time in advance. So, we genuinely didn't know.Corey: Communicating around these things is always challenging because on the one hand, I can absolutely understand the cloud providers' position on this. We had a vulnerability disclosed to us. We did our diligence and our research because we do an awful lot of things correctly and everyone is going to have vulnerabilities, let's be serious here. I'm not sitting here shaking my fist, angry at AWS's security model. It works, and I am very much a fan of what they do.And I can definitely understand then, going through all of that there was no customer impact, they've proven it. What value is there to them telling anyone about it, I get that. Conversely, you're a security company attempting to stand out in a very crowded market, and it is very clear that announcing things like this demonstrates a familiarity with cloud that goes beyond the common. I radically changed my position on how I thought about Orca based upon these discoveries. It went from, “Orca who,” other than the fact that you folks have sponsored various publications in the past—thanks for that—but okay, a security company. Great to, “Oh, that's Orca. We should absolutely talk to them about a thing that we're seeing.” It has been transformative for what I perceive to be your public reputation in the cloud security space.So, those two things are at odds: The cloud provider doesn't want to talk about anything and the security company absolutely wants to demonstrate a conversational fluency with what is going on in the world of cloud. And that feels like it's got to be a very delicate balancing act to wind up coming up with answers that satisfy all parties.Yoav: So, I just want to underline something. We don't do what we do in order to make a marketing stand. It's a byproduct of our work, but it's not the goal. For the Orca Security Research Pod, which it's the team at Orca which does this kind of research, our mission statement is to make cloud security better for everyone. Not just Orca customers; for everyone.And you get to hear about the more shiny things like big headline vulnerabilities, but we also have very sensible blog posts explaining how to do things, how to configure things and give you more in-depth understanding into security features that the cloud providers themselves provide, which are great, and advance the state of the cloud security. I would say that having a cloud vulnerability is sort of one of those things, which makes me happy to be a cloud customer. On the one side, we had a very big vulnerability with very big impact, and the ability to access a lot of customers' data is conceptually terrifying. The flip side is that everything was mitigated by the cloud providers in warp speed compared to everything else we've seen in all other elements of security. And you get to sleep better knowing that it happened—so no platform is infallible—but still the cloud provider do work for you, and you'll get a lot of added value from that.Corey: You've made a few points when this first came out, and I want to address them. The first is, when I reached out to you with a, “Wow, great work.” You effectively instantly came back with, “Oh, it wasn't me. It was members of my team.” So, let's start there. Who was it that found these things? I'm a huge believer giving people credit for the things that they do.The joy of being in a leadership position is if the company screws up, yeah, you take responsibility for that, whether the company does something great, yeah, you want to pass praise onto the people who actually—please don't take this the wrong way—did the work. And not that leadership is not work, it absolutely is, but it's a different kind of work.Yoav: So, I am a security researcher, and I am very mindful for the effort and skill it requires to find vulnerabilities and actually do a full circle on them. And the first thing I'll mention is Tzah Pahima, which found the BreakingFormation vulnerability and the vulnerability in CloudFormation, and Yanir Tsarimi, which found the AutoWarp vulnerability, which is the Azure vulnerability that we have not mentioned, and the Glue vulnerability, dubbed SuperGlue. Both of them are phenomenal researcher, world-class, and I'm very honored to work with them every day. It's one of my joys.Corey: Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service is flexible, full-featured and fully managed with built in access via key-value, SQL, and full-text search. Flexible JSON documents aligned to your applications and workloads. Build faster with blazing fast in-memory performance and automated replication and scaling while reducing cost. Capella has the best price performance of any fully managed document database. Visit couchbase.com/screaminginthecloud to try Capella today for free and be up and running in three minutes with no credit card required. Couchbase Capella: make your data sing.Corey: It's very clear that you have built an extraordinary team for people who are able to focus on vulnerability research. Which, on some level, is very interesting because you are not branded as it were as a vulnerability research company. This is not something that is your core competency; it's not a thing that you wind up selling directly that I'm aware of. You are selling a security platform offering. So, on the one hand, it makes perfect sense that you would have a division internally that works on this, but it's also very noteworthy, I think, that is not the core description of what it is that you do.It is a means by which you get to the outcome you deliver for customers, not the thing that you are selling directly to them. I just find that an interesting nuance.Yoav: Yes, it is. And I would elaborate and say that research informs the product, and the product informs research. And we get to have this fun dance where we learn new things by doing research. We [unintelligible 00:18:08] the product, and we use the customers to teach us things that we didn't know. So, it's one of those happy synergies.Corey: I want to also highlight a second thing that you have mentioned and been very, I guess, on message about since news of this stuff first broke. And because it's easy to look at this and sensationalize aspects of it, where, “See? The cloud providers security model is terrible. You shouldn't use them. Back to data centers we go.” Is basically the line taken by an awful lot of folks trying to sell data center things.That is not particularly helpful for the way that the world is going. And you've said, “Yeah, you should absolutely continue to be in cloud. Do not disrupt your cloud plan as a result.” And let's be clear, none of the rest of us are going to find and mitigate these things with anything near the rigor or rapidity that the cloud providers can and do demonstrate.Yoav: I totally agree. And I would say that the AWS security folks are doing a phenomenal job. I can name a few, but they're all great. And I think that the cloud is by far a much safer alternative than on-prem. I've never seen issues in my on-prem environment which were critical and fixed in such a high velocity and such a massive scale.And you always get the incremental improvements of someone really thinking about all the ins and outs of how to do security, how to do security in the cloud, how to make it faster, more reliable, without a business interruptions. It's just phenomenal to see and phenomenal to witness how far we've come in such a relatively short time as an industry.Corey: AWS in particular, has a reputation for being very good at security. I would argue that, from my perspective, Google is almost certainly slightly better at their security approach than AWS is, but to be clear, both of them are significantly further along the path than I am going to be. So great, fantastic. You also have found something interesting over in the world of Azure, and that honestly feels like a different class of vulnerability. To my understanding, the Azure vulnerability that you recently found was you could get credential material for other customers simply by asking for it on a random high port. Which is one of those—I'm almost positive I'm misunderstanding something here. I hope. Please?Yoav: I'm not sure you're misunderstanding. So, I would just emphasize that the vulnerability again, was found by Yanir Tsarimi. And what he found was, he used a service called Azure Automation which enables you essentially to run a Python script on various events and schedules. And he opened the python script and he tried different ports. And one of the high ports he found, essentially gave him his credentials. And he said, “Oh, wait. That's a really odd port for an HTTP server. Let's try, I don't know, a few ports on either way.” And he started getting credentials from other customers. Which was very surprising to us.Corey: That is understating it by a couple orders of magnitude. Yes, like, “Huh. That seems sub-optimal,” is sort of like the corporate messaging approved thing. At the time you discover that—I'm certain it was a three-minute-long blistering string of profanity in no fewer than four languages.Yoav: I said to him that this is, like, a dishonorable bug because he worked very little to find it. So it was, from start to finish, the entire research took less than two hours, which, in my mind, is not enough for this kind of vulnerability. You have to work a lot harder to get it. So.Corey: Yeah, exactly. My perception is that when there are security issues that I have stumbled over—for example, I gave a talk at re:Invent about it in the before times, one of them was an overly broad permission in a managed IAM policy for SageMaker. Okay, great. That was something that obviously was not good, but it also was more of a privilege escalation style of approach. It wasn't, “Oh, by the way, here's the keys to everything.”That is the type of vulnerability I have come to expect, by and large, from cloud providers. We're just going to give you access credentials for other customers is one of those areas that… it bugs me on a visceral level, not because I'm necessarily exposed personally, but because it more or less shores up so many of the arguments that I have spent the last eight years having with folks are like, “Oh, you can't go to cloud. Your data should live on your own stuff. It's more secure that way.” And we were finally it feels like starting to turn a cultural corner on these things.And then something like that happens, and it—almost have those naysayers become vindicated for it. And it's… it almost feels, on some level, and I don't mean to be overly unkind on this, but it's like, you are absolutely going to be in a better security position with the cloud providers. Except to Azure. And perhaps that is unfair, but it seems like Azure's level of security rigor is nowhere near that of the other two. Is that generally how you're seeing things?Yoav: I would say that they have seen more security issues than most other cloud providers. And they also have a very strong culture of report things to us, and we're very streamlined into patching those and giving credit where credit's due. And they give out bounties, which is an incentives for more research to happen on those platforms. So, I wouldn't say this categorically, but I would say that the optics are not very good. Generally, the cloud providers are much safer than on-prem because you only hear very seldom on security issues in the cloud.You hear literally every other day on issues happening to on-prem environments all over the place. And people just say they expect it to be this way. Most of the time, it's not even a headline. Like, “Company X affected with cryptocurrency or whatever.” It happens every single day, and multiple times a day, breaches which are massively bigger. And people who don't want to be in the cloud will find every reason not to be the cloud. Let us have fun.Corey: One of the interesting parts about this is that so many breaches that are on-prem are just never discovered because no one knows what the heck's running in an environment. And the breaches that we hear about are just the ones that someone had at least enough wherewithal to find out that, “Huh. That shouldn't be the way that it is. Let's dig deeper.” And that's a bad day for everyone. I mean, no one enjoys those conversations and those moments.And let's be clear, I am surprisingly optimistic about the future of Azure Security. It's like, “All right, you have a magic wand. What would you do to fix it?” It's, “Well, I'd probably, you know, hire Charlie Bell and get out of his way,” is not a bad answer as far as how these things go. But it takes time to reform a culture, to wind up building in security as a foundational principle. It's not something you can slap on after the fact.And perhaps this is unfair. But Microsoft has 30 years of history now of getting the world accustomed to oh, yeah, just periodically, terrible vulnerabilities are going to be discovered in your desktop software. And every once a month on Tuesdays, we're going to roll out a whole bunch of patches, and here you go. Make sure you turn on security updates, yadda, yadda, yadda. That doesn't fly in the cloud. It's like, “Oh, yeah, here's this month's list of security problems on your cloud provider.” That's one of those things that, like, the record-scratch, freeze-frame moment of wait, what are we doing here, exactly?Yoav: So, I would say that they also have a very long history of making those turnarounds. Bill Gates famously did his speech where security comes first, and they have done a very, very long journey and turn around the company from doing things a lot quicker and a lot safer. It doesn't mean they're perfect; everyone will have bugs, and Azure will have more people finding bugs into it in the near future, but security is a journey, and they've not started from zero. They're doing a lot of work. I would say it's going to take time.Corey: The last topic I want to explore a little bit is—and again, please don't take this as anyway being insulting or disparaging to your company, but I am actively annoyed that you exist. By which I mean that if I go into my AWS account, and I want to configure it to be secure. Great. It's not a matter of turning on the security service, it's turning on the dozen or so security services that then round up to something like GuardDuty that then, in turn, rounds up to something like Security Hub. And you look at not only the sheer number of these services and the level of complexity inherent to them, but then the bill comes in and you do some quick math and realize that getting breached would have been less expensive than what you're spending on all of these things.And somehow—the fact that it's complex, I understand; computers are like that. The fact that there is—[audio break 00:27:03] a great messaging story that's cohesive around this, I come to accept that because it's AWS; talking is not their strong suit. Basically declining to comment is. But the thing that galls me is that they are selling these services and not inexpensively either, so it almost feels, on some level like, shouldn't this on some of the built into the offerings that you folks are giving us?And don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you exist because bringing order to a lot of that chaos is incredibly important. But I can't shake the feeling that this should be a foundational part of any cloud offering. I'm guessing you might have a slightly different opinion than mine. I don't think you show up at the office every morning, “I hate that we exist.”Yoav: No. And I'll add a bit of context and nuance. So, for every other company than cloud providers, we expect them to be very good at most things, but not exceptional at everything. I'll give the Redshift example. Redshift is a pretty good offering, but Snowflake is a much better offering for a much wider range of—Corey: And there's a reason we're about to become Snowflake customers ourselves.Yoav: So, yeah. And there are a few other examples of that. A security company, a company that is focused solely on your security will be much better suited to help you, in a lot of cases more than the platform. And we work actively with AWS, Azure, and GCP requesting new features, helping us find places where we can shed more light and be more proactive. And we help to advance the conversation and make it a lot more actionable and improve from year to year. It's one of those collaborations. I think the cloud providers can do anything, but they can't do everything. And they do a very good job at security; it doesn't mean they're perfect.Corey: As you folks are doing an excellent job of demonstrating. Again, I'm glad you folks exist; I'm very glad that you are publishing the research that you are. It's doing a lot to bring a lot I guess a lot of the undue credit that I was giving AWS for years of, “No, no, it's not that they don't have vulnerabilities like everyone else does. It just that they don't ever talk about them.” And they're operationalizing of security response is phenomenal to watch.It's one of those things where I think you've succeeded and what you said earlier that you were looking to achieve, which is elevating the state of cloud security for everyone, not just Orca customers.Yoav: Thank you.Corey: Thank you. I really appreciate your taking the time out of your day to speak with me. If people want to learn more, where's the best place they can go to do that?Yoav: So, we have our website at orca.security. And you can reach me out on Twitter. My handle is at @yoavalon, which is @-Y-O-A-V-A-L-O-N.Corey: And we will of course put links to that in the [show notes 00:29:44]. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.Yoav: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Yoav Alon, Chief Technology Officer at Orca Security. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, or of course on YouTube, smash the like and subscribe buttons because that's what they do on that platform. Whereas if you've hated this podcast, please do the exact same thing, five-star review, smash the like and subscribe buttons on YouTube, but also leave an angry comment that includes a link that is both suspicious and frightening, and when we click on it, suddenly our phones will all begin mining cryptocurrency.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

“Try to resist labeling yourself, resist taking on any label because that hems you in. Suddenly, you think yourself as an X. And there's some internal pressure to believe everything that an X believes. And it makes you take sides just based on a label rather than reasoning your way through the issues.” ~ Chris Mayer, manager and co-founder, Woodlock House Family CapitalBonner Private Research is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TRANSCRIPTJoel Bowman:Well, welcome back to the Fatal Conceits podcast, a show about money, markets, mobs, and manias. If you're joining us for the first time or even if you're a regular listener, please do head over to our Substack at bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com. There, you'll be able to check out hundreds of irreverent essays on everything from lowly politics to high finance, and beyond. Plus, a bunch of research reports and, of course, many more episodes of the Fatal Conceits podcast just like this one. Not a few of which feature my guest today, a popular guest on the show, and a good friend of mine.Christopher Mayer is the portfolio manager and co-founder of the Woodlock House Family Capital fund. And he joins me today. Chris, good to see you, mate. How are you doing?Chris Mayer:Yo, good to be on with you, buddy. How you doing?Joel Bowman:Good, mate. Always good to have a brighten up my day with a chat with you, mate.Chris Mayer:There you go. Yeah. Same. Looking forward to it.Joel Bowman:Now, readers and, I guess, listeners now who have heard a few of our previous discussions know that one of the themes that we touch on with Chris as an increasingly rare omnivorous reader is we like to thumb through some of the spines on his bookshelf, see what's got his gray matter, taking and inspired. We've had, I think, maybe three or four of these discussions now. And we've set them up with a few different categories of book, whether it be philosophy, or travel, or fictional, or what have you.But you had a bit of a different idea today, Chris, and thanks to your recommendation. I've done a little bit of a two-day crash course on your selected author and has turned up some very, very interesting points. So maybe we can get right into Neil Postman and his seminal 1985 work. It's quite amazing to think that this was that long ago, titled Amusing Ourselves to Death with the very appropriate subtitle of Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. (Here's a link to the book.)Chris, you want to set the stage for us?Chris Mayer:Yeah. So I put this under the category of understanding media or understanding media culture. So if you want to have some framework to make sense of social media and TV news and all the stuff that goes on, this book will really make you think. Yeah. What I think about is this eerily prescient. So, yeah, you said it came out in 1985. It's hard to believe that ... Here's the copy. I'm going to read just the beginning because this sets up the whole book. There's a little part in the beginning where he compares the dystopian vision, Orwell, 1984, and Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.So it's just one little paragraph. I'm going to read it because this is when he says to himself what this book is about. So it says, "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to pacificity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we'd become a trivial culture preoccupied with the equivalent of nonsense." So he goes on to say here that this book is about the possibility that Huxley and not Orwell was right.I mean, already just in there, there's a lot you could already sense, which is we're bombarded with so much information that it almost makes everything trivial. I mean, you're bombarded with so much news and takes all the time. It's hard to make sense of all. So I would say, if I had to sum up the key thrust of this book and what one of the main things I learned about, and we could talk more about it, is Postman really makes you think more about the medium itself rather than focusing so much on what is being said.But he would say, for example, instead of the content of a tweet that gets passed around a lot, he would make you think about, "Oh, what does that medium of Twitter bring? What kind of conversations does it force us to have or encourage us to have?" I remember one example in the book he gives is, think about smoke signals. If you're only communicating by smoke signal, it limits the conversations you can have. You can't have a deep philosophical discussion over smoke signals. Yeah.And so if you think of every medium that way, you think of Twitter as a medium, it constrains you in a certain way. There's the obvious character limitation. But there's the whole thing about it, there's the likes, there's the retweets, there's followers. And what conversations do that force you to have? What messages that it'd force you to have? And so that's the thing about this book that really makes you think about.Joel Bowman:That's a really interesting and very germane points as Twitter and, of course, Elon Musk, and that whole potential takeover and the debate on whether or not one man should control this particular medium, and just the power of that medium and the power that it has accrued in just a very, very short amount of time.One of the points that I saw Postman make in an interview ... And this was in '95. So this was 10 years after the publication of this particular book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. So it was really, as you mentioned, I think the right word is eerily prescient because even the terminology that he's using, it almost looked like he had taken stock of the conversation today, and then transported himself back to '95 just to give us a bit of a warning about what was ahead.But he gave ... I remember he used this point about this technology, particularly communications technology, being this Faustian bargain, where it wasn't just this one-way cornucopia of benevolent gifting that we were the receivers of but we also had to give something in return for that. And a few of the points that he brought up, for example, was just basic social skills when we've got our head in a personalized computer and we're not building a community. How does the medium change the way that we interact with one another beyond just the way that we interact individually with information?And I think, to your point about Twitter, I mean, that's just such an obvious thing that we can point to and say, "Well, there's obvious echo chambers here, where people and whole communities are becoming just more and more fragmented and atomized.Chris Mayer:That's it, yeah.Joel Bowman:Do you think that that is somehow catalyzing the political divide that we see today, or?Chris Mayer:Yeah, definitely do. I mean, you think about people who can build their own little echo chambers now. You can tailor all your input so that you're only getting the stories that you want to hear. So it definitely is fragmenting that way. And I think also the point about new technologies and new mediums that he makes is that it's not like people tend to think, let's say, for example, when email came along and people tend to say, "Well, just another way to send a letter." But it wasn't, it's not that at all. It's a completely new thing. And it changes everything that went on before. Nobody writes letters anymore.When TV came along and people, in the beginning, they would have depreciated or downplay its potential, its influence, because for them, they just saw it as what they were familiar with as an extension to that rather than something that really was brand new and changed the game, even though they didn't fully understand it. They didn't fully understand what television would do to politics.And one of the interesting things, I don't know, I don't think it's in this book, I think it's in another book, Technopoly. He talks about the Lincoln-Douglas debates.Joel Bowman:Okay.Chris Mayer:And they would go on for eight hours. They'd go on for hours, right? They didn't have television. They were there. It was like an event, you'd sit and then have intermissions. And the other guy would talk and they have an hour and then you'd have an hour to respond or whatever it was. But we have TV now. What does TV do? Compresses it, makes an entertainment, we have commercials. And now we do these debates and they have two minutes to respond. It's ridiculous.Joel Bowman:Yeah, sound bites.Chris Mayer:What's your solution to the Middle East? You got two minutes.Joel Bowman:Be concise, make it snappy. And also, I think, to your point there about this participating in person in communal activities, Postman refers to it as the co-presence of communications, where you are literally ... I mean, you and I are talking over Skype here for just want of geographical closeness. But there is something radically different from, let's say, attending. We were at the theater down here just last week with my wife's dad who was visiting in town. And we took him along to a show. We saw Giselle.I mean, it's an incredibly different experience when you go to Teatro Colon down here. It's a packed house. People are there, they're clapping in unison. It's very, very different from we took my seven-year-old daughter along and she'd seen some performances on the television before. But this was just a whole another world. And so it makes me think, given just the past couple of years and how these kinds of rolling lockdowns and interruptions to global travel and just almost the wholesale cancellation of the public space, how that might have affected the way that we digest our information.Chris Mayer:And I don't think we really fully understand it yet. That's the other thing is even social media, it's been around a while now. But I don't know yet that we fully appreciate and understand it, what its impacts are and how it's changed things. It took decades before people really figured out TV and how to use it and what its effects were and, yeah, it may take some time. And it's creates a whole new concept. I mean, it was one of the part in the book I like where he talks about, there are many examples of this kind of thing. But he talks about how even the concept of news of the day, it didn't exist unless you had a medium that you could see what was going on in faraway places, and made me think that that's one of the other things about Twitter.Here's the line I like. He says the news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. And if one thinks about not just Twitter but any kind of social media or the internet generally is you can instantly see what's going on all the way across the world. And everyone right away have an opinion. I mean, it's like ... So even in Russia, Ukraine, how many times you see people that put little Ukraine flags on their Twitter page? Or how many people, they ... It becomes a show in itself.How much is this is really genuine and how much of it is just, "Look at me, I'm on what they call virtue signaling. Look at me, I'm on the right side." And you aren't doing crap for Russia, Ukraine, putting a little flag on your profile. You know, you want to do something to help out? There's lots of ways you can help. Rather than just, look at me pandering to the public opinion. So I don't know. Postman makes you ... When you read Postman, you can get pessimistic about this stuff.Joel Bowman:Right.Chris Mayer:He knows it too because he's always critiquing and he doesn't necessarily have solutions. He tries hard at the end of the book to have some solutions to this.Joel Bowman:One of the things that I liked, which seems to go a little bit begging nowadays when you've read how-to books or nonfiction type 12 steps to this or what have you. They're heavy on prescribed solutions but not necessarily on asking questions. And one of the things I think that Postman did, at least in one of the interviews that I saw, the interviewer tasked him with like, "Okay, well, you seem to diagnose a pretty good problem here, but what have you got?"And he came up with a series of questions and I thought it was very Socratic of him where he sat back and said, "Well, I think for a start, we need to be sensitive to the kinds of questions that these new technologies ask of us." For example, who benefits from this particular medium, this new medium of communication, for example? Is it the community? Is it society as a whole? Is it a small group of people who are, excuse me, who are the owners? What problem does this technology solve is another question that he had, and he used the example where he had just been to buy, this will date the interview a little bit, but a brand new Honda Accord when he bought it at 295 and he said the salesperson there at the car yard was upselling him to cruise control.Chris Mayer:I remember this interview, yeah.Joel Bowman:So what problem does cruise control address? And the salesman was like, "I've never had that asked to me before, but I guess the problem is just keeping your foot on the gas." Of course, Postman's response was, "Well, I've been driving for, whatever, 45 years used now and that hasn't presented itself as a problem thus far." So anyway, just the framework of asking questions-Chris Mayer:Yes, that's one of the very memorable bits. I remember that interview because I remember that exact example. And I often think about that. When I get a new technology, oh, what solutions does this solve exactly? What problem does it solve? And it's like you almost read the book because the way he ends Amusing Ourselves to Death is with a whole series of questions. Again, because he's ... But he says there's a good reason for that in the end.Chris Mayer:I like this line where he says, "To ask the question is to break the spell." So you get hypnotized by this new medium or new technologies. But if you just ask the question, immediately, you are less under that influence and at least you're thinking about different ways it's impacting yourself and what you can say, what other people are saying, why they're saying it, things like who benefits. There's a lot of questions you can ask. And it diffuses it a little, its influence. Same thing if you see a persuasive piece of advertising, you know what's going on.Joel Bowman:Right.Chris Mayer:If buying doesn't make you sell, I want you to buy something. Just knowing that helps break the spell a little bit, right? Not always because sometimes things are so subconsciously influential. You can't really do anything about it. I've noticed that at least with myself sometimes, too. Damn it, they planted this idea in your head. Almost like I want to not see certain advertising. So I don't even want to see it because it's like magic and it pushes little buttons in your subconscious. So, yeah, that's your best route of resistance is to ask the questions.Joel Bowman:Yeah, it's a so what do you think of the emperor's new clothes type of question.Chris Mayer:Yeah.Joel Bowman:Well, actually, now that you've mentioned it, he does look a little naked over there.Chris Mayer:Yeah, it is. Postman's books are really easy to read. And this book is like, is it 200 pages long, it's 160 pages. And all of his books are like that. They're short. They're like sub 200. And they're very easy to read, quotable, witty. And they're only dated by the examples, like you said. He'll make references of things going on in Nicaragua or President Reagan. But if you didn't have those examples, it's really applicable.And he is a really good translator for Marshall McLuhan because he was really influenced by McLuhan. And McLuhan stuff is much more difficult and harder to read. I mean, I have this one here at Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, which is a classic. I mean, this book came out, I think, in the '60s. But a lot of the ideas Postman has come out of McLuhan. And this book is big, fat book and a dense book. But if you wanted to go into where this stuff came from, you could go to McLuhan.And there's one part in here, for example, because Postman is big on this too, like I mentioned, he's big into the medium and thinking about, "Well, what its effects are," really what its purpose is, the old Greek word like teleology. It has an almost inbuilt purpose, even though you may not know it. And McLuhan has this one chapter, where he talks about how we're all asleep and we don't necessarily think about what we're saying. For example, he's responding to a general says that, "We're too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them."And Marshall McLuhan is saying, "That's ridiculous." And at first, I remember when I read that quote, I was like, "Makes sense to me," right? Technology, it's how people use it. And McLuhan is saying, "No, that's ridiculous." He goes, "Let me consider this. Suppose we were to say apple pie in itself is neither good or bad, it's the way it's used that determines its value. Or the smallpox virus isn't itself neither good or bad, it's the way it's used that determines its value. Or again, firearms are in themselves neither good or bad, it's the way they're used that determines its value. That is, if the slugs reached the right people, firearms are good.If TV too fires the right ammunition at the right people, it is good. I am not being perverse," he says. So I love that style because it makes you think, it makes you think about stuff. That's why it's such a great book.Thank you for reading Bonner Private Research. This post is public, so feel free to share it with sinners and saints alike...Joel Bowman:He goes all the way back to the agrarian revolution and the advent of the written word. And then all the way through to ... I guess Postman was probably influenced by his idea of the reading public, for example.Chris Mayer:Yeah. The trivium, McLuhan's big on that, the basic building blocks of knowledge. Yeah. And he was a big fan of James Joyce. And, yeah, the ancient Greeks. Yeah, he's challenging to read. But I think ... It took me two months to get to that book and I would just read a little bit every day. But lots of thoughtful stuff in there.Joel Bowman:That's interesting. It brings up another point as well. And as a card-carrying Joyce Head, who's about to head off to Dublin for the centennial balloons day celebration this June 16th. Yeah. Write me if you're going to be there and we'll grab a beer with the other freaks and geeks doing the balloon walk is this idea of attention span. And you mentioned this McLuhan's dense and rewarding book if you can put a couple of months into it. And obviously, Ulysses is notoriously a century on. And we're still unpacking all the different layers there.I'm wondering, to go back to Postman's questioning the nature of the medium itself as opposed to just the information that it's delivering, how you think these new mediums have affected both the individual and society in general's attention span. And how much we can pay attention to ... I mean, we have a look at these news cycles, they seem to just be getting increasingly shorter, where you need to, as you say, have an opinion on the history of Eastern European geopolitics. One week, you need to be a vaccinologist. The next week, you need to be a critical race theorist. The next week, you need to know all these things.I mean, how are these new mediums affecting our ability to be modern polymaths?Chris Mayer:Yes. Yeah, I agree. I mean, society in general, we become very impatient people with what we read. I mean, there's that little acronym people throw around, TLDR, too long, didn't read.Joel Bowman:Oh, right.Chris Mayer:And that's sad to me. People put that out. Yeah. And they put it out there like they're smart or being witty somehow but summarizing some longer argument in a soundbite. But, yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. A lot of the books in my library, you're not going to find the quick New York Times bestseller. A lot of these books, they take time to get through, but that's the rewarding part of it is to spend a couple of months with one book, an author, an idea and going through it.I mean, it seems like that's really becoming something that fewer and fewer people are interested in, right? I mean, like you say, it's a death of long-form journalism is another area where you see that. Everything has to be compressed and served up so somebody can get it in 30 seconds of lesson and be done.Joel Bowman:Yeah, even I think about this with regards to just the realm of fiction in general. Maybe have a different experience here but pretty much all ... And this seems to go very along that, this would be incredibly unpopular to say, but it seems to go very much along gender lines, where guys tend to read, older guys that I know, tend to read nonfiction and completely issued fiction have just zero patience for it, fall asleep at page three. And it seems to be only women, at least that I speak to, who have any patience for fiction and maybe that's just they have different types of patience or different types of tolerance levels, do you find that as well. It's kind of a weird observation.Chris Mayer:Yeah. I mean, one of the things I've observed too is that a lot of new books that come out, especially, I don't know, they're more topical or about investing and they're mostly nonfiction, they all tend to be around 200 pages. Almost like the publishers have drawn a line.Joel Bowman:This is the public's attention span!Chris Mayer:Yeah, it's 200 pages, substantial enough where you can still sell it as a book between 200 covers, but it's not going to put off anybody to show them this. Every once in a while, there are exceptions, right? And they become noteworthy in themselves. I remember when David Foster Wallace had Infinite Jest. Remember, that was a brick.Joel Bowman:Yeah.Chris Mayer:And David Graeber's Debt book was another big fat one that became a bestseller. So there are exceptions, but in general, a lot of these books are pretty thin.Joel Bowman:I wonder how many of those big classic tomes, if Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann rocked up with Buddenbrooks to the publisher with like-Chris Mayer:And then it comes in with Critique of Pure Reason, here you go.Joel Bowman:I'm sorry, you've got to ... Yeah, you're going to have to-Chris Mayer:We'll break that up in a series of 10.Joel Bowman:Yeah, yeah. How about we do a Netflix special and then people can binge it overnight? So do you-Chris Mayer:There's one thing you mentioned that I want to get to before I forget was you said about, you have to feel like you have an opinion about everything. In one week, you're a vaccinologist. And next week, you're an expert on recurring foreign pot. I mean, that's classic.But that reminded me of one of Postman's solutions. And it's not in any of the books we've discussed. There's another book called How to Watch the News or something like that. But in the end, he gives 10 things. And one of them is, try to reduce the number of opinions you have by a third. So it's just an interesting exercise to go through. Try it yourself just for a week. Try to ... Instead of when you see some story or some idea, try not to have an opinion about it and say, "I don't know."Joel Bowman:Yeah.Chris Mayer:It's interesting. It's almost a little liberating because every time you take an opinion, it's almost like you're staking some ground and making a commitment because then people are more reluctant to change their opinions. So if you try to withhold your opinion as long as possible and limit the number of opinions you have, it's interesting psychological effect, just trying it out.Joel Bowman:I could see how that could have a cascading effect as well in an increasingly bifurcated society, where if you voice a particular opinion on one issue, it almost hems you in with regards to a whole litany of other issues that might have absolutely nothing to do with the original issue at hand. I mean ... Chris Mayer:Absolutely.Joel Bowman:... things that are completely independent like, "Oh, you believe in global warming, okay, you have to wear masks during a pandemic outside playing golf." Just things that have nothing to do with one another, but we have to be Team Red or Team Blue.Chris Mayer:Yeah, exactly. What, do you believe in climate warming? Well, Trump was a good president. What do you mean? How are those two related?Joel Bowman:Right.Chris Mayer:Everything's politicized or whatever. That's another reason why they resist labels. That's another exercise is just resist labeling yourself, resist taking on any label because, again, that hems you in. Suddenly, you think yourself as a X. And there's some internal pressure to believe everything that an X believes or whatever. And it makes you take sides just based on a label rather than reasoning your way through the issues.Joel Bowman:So do you think that there's a takeaway or some applicable lesson to be drawn as an investor? I mean, in definitely multiple senses, if you're the one guy who's going to sit through and read the big dense tomes and not just skim the executive summary, does that give you an edge, or?Chris Mayer:Yeah, I think there's always an edge for the patient, who are willing to read the footnotes, as the old saying goes. But it's tough because if everyone else thinks the other way, in the short term, you can look pretty dumb. And you can look pretty dumb for a while. I mean, it could go on for months or you may not get validation for a year or several years.So it requires patience to go through that but also patience to then suffer when things aren't going your way for a while. I see it all the time. Some report will come out on some company and I'll know that it's sensationalist and not particularly true in certain areas, but it'll still not stock down from 10% or 15%. And then it may not recover for months until it cycles through. And for those of us who are professional investors and live on reported returns, it can be difficult. Well, just hang on, it's coming.Joel Bowman:Right. I guess it must happen the other way, too. Yeah, go on.Chris Mayer:Yeah. Otherwise helps too, I was talking about labels. I mean, people will label certain companies in certain ways because they want you to think about it in a certain way. But you get past the label. So for example, I don't know, let's take a random example, people that are being on Tesla will want you to think of Tesla as a technology company in some way or is a battery company, where people who are not so enamored with Tesla folks and say, "Well, no, it's a car company." And they look at it through that lens.And so you come through very different points of view, depending on what label you adapt. And that happens all the time as well.Joel Bowman:And I guess it must go the other way as well when something flashes across the news and new technology and something shoots to the moon. And you might be sitting there saying, "Actually, this thing, it doesn't have any earnings. It's got no growth. It's got no pathway to profitability." But you're watching a mania unfold.Chris Mayer:That's probably actually more common because I've been in volatile markets close to 30 years and I've seen that happen many times to me, where I'll be sitting and these companies will be flying and I won't be involved in any of them, but it takes time and then they unravel. So you see companies like Carvana didn't make any money but has a concept that got people excited and went to the moon. And now it's starting to finally come apart. There's a lot of other businesses like that that don't make any money. But they had a concept.And what I've seen people do, and particularly younger investors will do, I mean younger than me, they'll focus on things that I thought they'll talk about unit economics. So they'll say, I don't know, I don't want to use too many specific name companies, but let's say Company X, they sell something. And the unit economics of what they sell is really compelling. But the company overall is still not making any money because the operating expenses and everything below that line is high and it continues to grow. But they say, "Oh, when it scales." And then they do these projections based on unit economics.And what happens a lot is those businesses never get to that scale or they continue to grow, but the operating expenses continue to grow right along with it, and they never quite get there. And so I have this basic rule that I want companies to make a GAAP profit, a profit according to generally accepted accounting principles. And if you just have that filter alone, I know you would have avoided a lot of the trouble over the last six to nine months, where these companies have fallen 70%, 80%, 90%. Didn't make any money, but for a little while, they were darlings.Joel Bowman:Yeah, it's interesting. I spoke to our mutual friend, Mr. Eric Fry, last week. And I asked him if there was a couple of key takeaways that he could give to our listeners with regards to investing and when you're getting all this noise to talk again about the Postman idea of this saturation, this glut of information, how to cut through that noise in just a couple of basic starting filters that investors can use.And he said at the margin, you can cut out a lot of noise by just looking at earnings as a company outgrowing earnings. And he said, "It sounds almost facile, but it's ignored by a lot of people because they focus on crafty accounting." And Eric referred to it as accounting wizardry where, well, it's earnings but it's adjusted for this, or all these other adjustments that the accounting department makes that can hide a lot of a company's lack of earnings or lack of earnings growth.And then one of your favorite indicators, of course, was insider buying or selling. And at the margin, you're not going to be right all the time but those two things can help cut out a lot of the information or the glut of information that is maybe not as worthwhile as others would have one believe.Chris Mayer:Yeah, I would say overwhelmingly, for most investors probably, almost everyone is listening to us, just following the companies that make a profit. Just that filter alone. Now, we have to be fair, you're going to miss sometimes a great business. I mean, Amazon didn't report a GAAP profit for quite a while, right? So you're going to have to ... I wrote a blog post about this not too long ago, that every filter you create is going to have fish slipped through the net. I mean, that's the nature of it, you're not going to catch everything.But the idea of having a filter as an investor is to cut down on that universe because if you're looking globally, as I do, there's tens, thousands security. So you have to find some way to look at that world. And for me, yeah, profit. The other way to do it is inside ownership that cuts out a lot of stuff. I'm only investing in companies where there's a family or there's a CEO or somebody owns a decent slug of stock.The other thing that you always use is balance sheet, just looking at anything that's got a lot of debt out. So if you just sift by that, suddenly, the stuff that falls through is worth taking a look at, usually. And doesn't mean, of course, that there isn't some debt-fueled company that has no insider ownership that's going to be a 10 bagger. Of course, I'm going to miss that.Joel Bowman:Right.Chris Mayer:But that's the nature of filters.Joel Bowman:And I guess it imposes whether you're looking at information just in general from the media. It could be political information or entertainment information or whatever the news cycle is, or information that informs your investing. If you employ some of these tools, then it can impose a lot of self-discipline on you, when you're just focused on a smaller universe, as you say.Chris Mayer:It does. And then the other question, I take a very hard pragmatic approach when it comes to trying to sift through news and economic reports is I always ask myself, "Well, what would be the consequence of taking a belief here either way? Would it matter?"Joel Bowman:Taking a kind of agnostic approach from the outset, yeah.Chris Mayer:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a mix ... Should I spent a lot of time figuring out the Russia-Ukraine thing? What practical difference would it make to me to take one side or the other? Or just lots of political questions or that way. And it helps you conserve your mental energy and your focus.Chris Mayer:There's another saying I like, where it's ... I don't know who first said it, but it's you are what you pay attention to. So you think about that, you are what you pay attention to. So if you pay attention a lot of this trivial nonsense all the time, that's who you are, that's who you become. Do you want to be that? Feed your mind good stuff. Pay attention to things that have some consequence that matter.Joel Bowman:Yeah. I think virtue is the habits that we undertake every day.Chris Mayer:Yeah.Joel Bowman:And it can be a bit of a spiral. I mean, I think we've probably, all listeners included, been around people who are so caught up in the whirlwind of Postman's information glut and this rapidly constricting news cycle that it's pretty easy to get yourself overheated. I mean, just from like a mental health standpoint, it's pretty easy to get yourself overheated on things that, well, are you going to become an expert in this in the next day or weeks? Shouldn't you focus on things that are, that old Voltaire quote, of tending your own garden that we have other things to do.Chris Mayer:There's a lot of wisdom like that. Girth is about sweeping your own doorstep.Joel Bowman:Sweeping your own doorstep, yeah. There you go.Chris Mayer:Wise people. But it gets to the title of his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. So much of this is really entertainment. I mean, what we call news is entertainment. It's packaged that way. It's meant to elicit a reaction. And if you allow yourself, you're just letting them tug in control of you. So, yeah, I think that's a good message out of that.Joel Bowman:And so just changing tack slightly, what do you think of Twitter as a tool? I mean, we've talked about the drawbacks and the potential detrimental effects. I know a lot of people who see it as a tool to be able to cut through other information because they're able to focus on maybe a few investors that they like, and they follow, and it's kind of real-time.Chris Mayer:Yeah, I have a love and hate relationship with Twitter, really, because on the one hand, I've met some interesting people through Twitter. That has been valuable. There's been research that has been exchanged over Twitter. That's been valuable. I've got, I don't know, over 30,000 followers. So from a business perspective, it brings attention. I know at least a couple of investors have found me through Twitter. So it's not of no value, but then I am very mindful of the downside, too. So there are ways that I manage it. I'm only on it for certain times. So I'll go and try and tweak some things.I like to joke with my friends and say, "My Twitter account is a one-way feed." I put stuff out but I'm not going to engage anybody. Don't be offended if I don't see your tweet, I don't favorite you and retweet you. I don't do it for anybody. I don't pay favorite and tweet. I have lots of people I follow. It seems almost like a courtesy and they follow you. "Okay, I'll follow you." But I don't get into it that much because it's an enormous time sink otherwise.And you find yourself just ... I've had this early on when I was on Twitter, you're there for 45 minutes and then you're done. You're like, "Well, what did I do?" It's like junk food for the brain. What did I really get out of it? Yeah. So I tried to manage it. I limit myself.And the other things I've learned too, and this was earlier on, I used to talk much more about positions. But then I found that was a negative to do that because then people start to think of you as the guy for that position and then they want to come and ask you everything, every twist and turn. You got to be the guy who narrates it for people. And again, it may affect me in ways I don't really appreciate, forced me to dig in on a name that otherwise if all these people didn't know I owned it, they'd be gone or whatever.So I've limited that as well. I have discussed some names, times, but I don't give people the running commentary of what I'm doing or any of that anymore. So there are ways to manage it. Yeah.Joel Bowman:If they want the running commentary of what you're doing, they can follow your blog and I'll give you a plug, Chris, at woodlockhousefamilycapital.com for our listeners who want to find out more about your work.Chris Mayer:There you go. Thank you. You Google that and you'll find it. I write an occasional blog and then my Twitter which I do occasionally. The other annoying thing about Twitter is I keep getting these impostor accounts.Joel Bowman:Oh, really?Chris Mayer:It's crazy.Joel Bowman:Do you have the real Chris Mayer or something like that? What's your handle so people can avoid those?Chris Mayer:No, I tried Twitter. I tried to get verified a couple of times and they keep rejecting me. I think I'm just not quite famous enough or something.Joel Bowman:Oh, okay.Chris Mayer:But it's terrible because people will come up with a Twitter page, it looks exactly like mine. My handle is chriswmayer. They'll change it by some minor way. It'd be chrisi or they have two i's in or an x or something like that. But they make the page otherwise look exactly like mine and they tweet the same thing. And then they use it to sell some garbage.Most of the time, I've caught them pretty early and they don't have very many followers. But there was one that I just found, people were telling me about, has more followers than my real account. It's pretty embarrassing.Joel Bowman:Wow. Well, maybe you'll get the Fatal Conceits podcast bump and that will get you up to blue check status.Chris Mayer:There you go. That's it. I need that blue checkmark. I mean, there are other investors I know, they have blue checkmarks. And they're not particularly any more famous than I am. I mean, within investing, they're known, but they're not really that well known outside that world and they have blue checkmark. So I don't know what they did.Joel Bowman:Well, we'll probably have a whole other discussion on just the elitism that goes on within the new communication technology platforms. But one, you're talking about Twitter being a one-way relationship for you then and it reminded me of one quote of Postman's, which I wanted to get in. And this is another one of the questions that he routinely asks in order to frame the discussion you see. It's constantly going on in his own head. And it's as simple as, am I using this technology or is it using me? I think that cuts to the heart of the matter.Chris Mayer:I like that one. That's really good. That's really, really good.Joel Bowman:Right.Chris Mayer:Yeah. Yeah, the irony is I'll put that on Twitter.Joel Bowman:But in a one-way relationship.Chris Mayer:There you go.Joel Bowman:All right, Chris, that's probably a pretty good place to leave it for this one, mate. Thank you as always for sharing your insights. You've recommended so many good books to me over the years...Chris Mayer:Well, that's good. I'm glad you like Postman and, clearly, you've read quite a bit of stuff because you were spot on the whole time. Yeah.Joel Bowman:I'll put a link to a few of his books underneath because hopefully our listeners can get something out of them as well.Chris Mayer:And another one, Technopoly, I think it is. Those are the two that I would really recommend. Very good. And then after that, you can find your way to his other books as you're interested in different topics.[Ed. Note: Find these two books here…Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show BusinessTechnopoly: The Surrender of Culture to TechnologyJoel Bowman:Perfect. Chris Mayer, Woodlock House Family Capital fund, check it out. And chriswmayer, don't be taken in by the impostors on Twitter. And for our listeners, please head over to our Substack, which is at bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com, where you can find plenty more material, including conversations just like this one. That's all. Catch you next week.Thank you for reading Bonner Private Research. This post is public, so feel free to share it with media elites and talking heads alike... This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/subscribe

This week Adrian sits down with a highly requested guest,  Samuel Brooksworth, Founder and CEO of Africa's Fastest Growing Tech-led outsourcing organisation, Remoteli. They helps you build a global on-demand Remote workforce.The company has received attention from the likes of CNN and The Times  In this episode, we discuss things like:2021 Startups in Ghana event featuring Zuberi, Survey 54, Bezo Money and moreRemoteli's Popular company culture and onboardingStarting Remoteli and rapid team growth  Building your Avengers; The dream teamNew African Offices and moreSubscribe to watch on YouTube YouTube: youtube.com/thesoundofaccrapodcastMORE ABOUT SAMUELSamuel Brooksworth is a British-Ghanaian businessman and the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Remoteli.  Remoteli was founded in 2020 and is a tech led outsourcing business supporting organisations globally. With the company's headquarters in the U.K. and an office in Ghana, services include Business Assistance, Customer Service Support, Social Media Management, Business Development and Web/App Development.In 2016, Samuel was a candidate on BBC One's the Apprentice, going onto the show to seek investment for an AI led recruitment platform. After his time on the show, Samuel identified a knowledge gap that existed for many young entrepreneurs with regards to setting up businesses. In order to support these entrepreneurs, he then went on to found the organisation, Build and Master. Build and Master was a Startup Accelerator educating and mentoring entrepreneurs to grow and scale their businesses. Throughout its duration, Build and Master supported over 100 businesses in launching.Special thanks to Africa Global Radio for hosting us.RATE THIS PODCAST ON APPLE OR SPOTIFYSOCIAL MEDIAWebsite: https://thesoundofaccra.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoundofaccra/Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesoundofaccraFacebook: https://web.facebook.com/thesoundofaccraLinkedin: https://gh.linkedin.com/company/the-sound-of-accraLISTEN TO MORE EPISODEShttps://linktr.ee/thesoundofaccrapodIce Cream and Ting: Premium Ice Cream Exotic small-batch ice cream, inspired by the rich flavours of The African and Carribbean ContinentSupport the show (https://www.paypal.me/gofundad)

FOLLOW UP: GREG KELLY GIVEN SUSPENDED SENTENCEGreg Kelly, the former Nissan executive who was tricked into flying to Japan, has been found guilty on one of the charges brought against him. His sentence was suspended and he has flown back to the U.S. AS the Asian Times article, linked here, points out the ruling is “flawed”. FOLLOW UP: FELICITY ACE SINKS WITH VW GROUP CARS ONBOARDThe Felicity Ace, with it's cargo of VW Group cars, has sunk following the fire onboard. This follows work for a couple of weeks to rescue the ship following the removal of the crew. To find out more, click this Autocar link here. NEW CAR REGISTRATION FIGURES FEBRUARY 2022The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has released the February 2022 data on new car registrations. The figures are up on the pandemic market but still 25% below the before times. Electric, as well as hybrid and plug-in hybrid registrations rose dramatically. For more on this, click the SMMT article here. CAR INDUSTRY EFFECTED BY INVASION OF UKRAINEFollowing the invasion of Ukraine, by Russian forces, there have been knock on effects to the car industry. Ukraine produces a lot of the wiring looms for vehicles but also many brands have paused selling vehicles in Russia. To find out more, click this Autocar article link. STELLANTIS LATEST TO ANNOUNCE ALL EV LINE UP IN EUROPEIn this week's “Company X will go all electric by Y” announcement comes from Stellantis. 2026 is the year all their model launches will be all electric in Europe. For more, click the Autocar article here. FORD TO SPLIT EV BUSINESS FROM ICEFord is creating two companies, one focused purely on EVs and the other dealing with the ICE products. Ford Model E will look after the electric, software and connected car side of things, whilst Ford Blue will focus on ICE vehicle development, cost cutting, simplification and quality. Click this link here to learn more from the Autocar article. HONDA AND SONY PARTNERSHIP FOR EVSHonda and Sony are partnering to build electric vehicles. Honda is concentrating on the car side of things, whilst Sony deals with the software of the mobility platform. They plan on releasing their first models in 2025. For more on this story, click the Autocar article here. REGULATORS CAN BE SUED OVER EMISSION SOFTWAREEnvironmental groups have won the right to sue regulators over EU-approved emission software, which they feel amounts to defeat devices. Of particular interest is software that allows a temperature range, which some equate to a defeat device. To learn more, click the Automotive News Europe link here. VOLVO TESTING WIRELESS CHARGING TECHNOLOGYVolvo has announced that it is testing wireless charging with six Gothenburg XC40 Recharge taxis, over a three year period. Wireless charging is thought of as a huge step in making electric cars more viable and user friendly. More information can be found by clicking this Autocar link here. ——————————————————————————-If you like what we do, on this show, and think it is worth a £1.00, please consider supporting us via Patreon. Here is the link to that CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST——————————————————————————-NEW NEW CAR NEWSPolestar O2 - The Polestar O2 is a concept outlining the replacement for the Polestar 1, which is coming to the end of its production run. The UK base developed car will be, the company claim, fun to drive, whilst being a 2+2 coupe. There is much talk about the use of recycled and recyclable materials, as one would expect. Added to which a lot of attention has been paid to the aerodynamics, which even goes to the level of the rear lights being designed to reduce turbulence. For more information, click the EVO link here. Morgan Super 3 -Morgan has revealed the replacement for their 3 wheeler. Whilst at first glance it does not appear much different, Morgan has developed the car fresh, from the ground up. A 1.5 three-cylinder Ford engine replaces the previous version for a reduction in complexity and weight. The looks are very similar but have evolved, thanks to inspiration of the jet age, added to which is a brand new wheel design. Prices beginning at £43,165, but be careful there are around 200 options selectable! To learn more, click the EVO article here. Fisker Ocean -Fisker revealed its SUV, Ocean, to a European audience in Barcelona. The model is expected to take on the Audi Q4 E-tron and BMW i3. A claimed range of 350 miles, added to several modes that allow for open air driving as well as treats for the rear passengers, the Fisker makes a compelling case. Prices start at £48,900 and will be in the UK from the middle of 2023. More on this story can be found from this link to an Autocar article. LUNCHTIME READ: ICE ST MORITZ IS THE COOLEST (AND COLDEST) CONCOURS IN THE WORLDConcours events are the epitome of cool vehicles on display that we normally don't get to see as they are hidden away in pristine garages, but how do you top that? Well, you hold it at St Moritz, but not only that, you do so on the frozen lake at St Moritz. Click the link here to find out about this brilliant event, from Hagerty. LIST OF THE WEEK: 11 FORGOTTEN HOT HATCHBACKS OF THE 80'SThe List of the Week is a reminder to the older listeners, of cars we used to see on the road, in our youth, but are an increasingly rare sight. Antony Ingram has compiled a list of just 11 80s hot hatches that may have slipped from our minds. Of course more could be added but he only had space for 11. To run through the list and pick the one you would most like, click the Hagerty link here. AND FINALLY: KEI CARS ATTACK A CLASSIC TOUGEJapan has some amazing roads that are driven on, “enthusiastically', by drift cars and hot hatches. However, we are more into seeing souped up Keil cars take on these roads. Now we and you can, click here for the YouTube link to the Goodwood Road & Racing link.

As it had been a while since our last podcast we only felt it right to review 2 beers for this episode (really we just wanted an excuse) We also discuss a little about our buddies art collective and how Geoffrey acquired his signature sherpa jean jacket (aka the meth jacket)

Did you know your title could be limiting you in your job search? ...because it's limiting your thinking. We typically read a job description and then apply to the role. After a series of interviews, we land the job and begin working as the new (insert your title here) at Company X. But pretty soon you're not just doing things in that job description, you're also working on various tasks and projects throughout the business. Then you decide to leave or are let go and you're forced to put pen to paper and talk about all the things you did as (insert job title). All of a sudden you realize you weren't really a (insert job title)after all! But you better stick to the job description of what you were hired for or no one will want you. WRONG!!! In today's podcast, I talk about removing those job title blinders and embracing ALL of your talents and contribution to open doors to new opportunities faster. But you've gotta leave your job title at the door. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Join the Market Me waitlist at https://www.emilyhawkins4u.com/start-your-successful-job-search Subscribe to Emily's newsletter at https://www.emilyhawkins4u.com/subscribe Join Emily's Successful Job Seekers community at https://www.facebook.com/groups/645929416050420 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emilyhawkins4u/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilyhawkins4u/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/emilyhawkins4/ _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Listen to my weekly podcast on iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-leadershift-playbook/id1450579130 Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/emily-hawkins-689753816 Amazon https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/20900eca-89f3-42d1-88f0-795e6ca889b9/The-LeaderSHIFT-Playbook I look forward to watching you grow! Emily

Reddit rSlash Storytime r maliciouscompliance Scummy owner tries to make me pay for changes/upgrades after I move out, use the law to force her to return most of my deposit. Company X had inbound telemarketing workstations with a mandatory standard home screen layout. "Jake," a clever new guy, figured out how to make it better AND set up a database to reduce the time it took to lookup commercials. Jake shared his new layout and database. The call center's metrics had major improvements. Company X found out about it and told ME to lock down the workstations, despite my impassioned and persistent recommendations to use what Jake had created. They insisted. I complied. Call center metrics tanked (or went back to the proper normal, depending on whose point of view). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lately, we have all seen the headlines & heard the rhetoric:Company X pays No Income Taxes!Its bound to set anybody off on a tirade…And as politicians squabble as to how best address this issue, one has to wonder, is perception reality?In this episode of Financial Recon, I am joined by Professor Scott Dyreng of The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, who provides a fascinating explanation of how to interpret financial statements versus tax returns, and what really is going on with these corporations.Follow along Professor Scott Dyreng's research by visiting his website at: https://sites.google.com/site/scottdyreng/ Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Related Links and Guest Info can be found at https://www.augforums.com/episode54

Related Links and Guest Info can be found at https://www.augforums.com/episode53

Breaking into normal transmission today to bring you my Pitch for the Buy From The Bush x PayPalAu Big Break Competition.Thank you for listening! Skye xx

➤ Tesla schedules Q3 2021 earnings report ➤ Discussion on Elon Musk's comments during Tesla's annual shareholder meeting and how 4680 battery production may be ramping up ➤ Elon Musk mentions possible Solar Roof “campaign” ➤ Tesla gets set up for Giga Fest in Berlin ➤ Canaccord Genuity raises TSLA price target ➤ Elon Musk likes tweet about Company X conglomerate ➤ The Boring Co makes progress on new project ➤ JB Straubel interviewed by Jason Calacanis: https://youtu.be/aWR5-mo8f1g?t=1358 ➤ FSD Beta 10.2 set for release Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/teslapodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tesladailypodcast Tesla Referral: https://ts.la/robert47283 Plaid producer Who Why Executive producer Jeremy Cooke Executive producer Troy Cherasaro Executive producer Andre/Maria Kent Executive producer Jessie Chimni Executive producer Jeffrey Yu Executive producer Michael Pastrone Executive producer Richard Del Maestro Executive producer John Beans Music by Evan Schaeffer Disclosure: Rob Maurer is long TSLA stock & derivatives

Welcome to the Stationery Cafe Happy Hour, April from @penguinscreative and Kelly from @kellyloveletters get together to talk about the latest in the stationery community. This week, April revisits the return of Pilot's Kese Lame erasable shimmering ink! Kelly and April both share a new planner they acquired, and we admire the new collection by TRAVELER'S COMPANY with Taiwan Beer. Are you a Kelly or a April when it comes to advent calendars? Because Kelly had already swatched all the colors!

People get into the wrong roles for a number of reasons.Perhaps there was a reorganization and the company didn't want to lose them, so they were reallocated without consultation or training. Maybe they were promoted beyond their capability without a training plan. Or maybe they were hired to do a project that's now irrelevant and they've not been redeployed to produce meaningful results elsewhere. And then there's our all-time favorite, the Untouchables.Do you have Untouchables? Also, known as Sacred Cows? These are people who were hired because they are related to (or friends with) the CEO or other powerful team members. Even though their performance is sub-par, they get promoted or allowed to stay on for emotional reasons.[Shutterstock]Case Study: Company XCompany X was a tech consulting firm with a $37 million in annual revenue and approximately 270 employees, about two-thirds of whom were consultants. They were tracking at $137,000 in revenue per employee… ouch! The company was run by a married couple, John and Sarah, who initially contacted us about perfecting their sales process. They felt that their salespeople could be performing much better. What we found was a much bigger issue.Assess: What We FoundThe findings were grim: a fear-driven culture with 53% employee turnover each year. Company X did an exceptional job of technical training for new hires, only to see them leave for higher pay within a year.The two owners of the company had virtually opposite Meta Programs, and this was causing chaos. Sarah (Active, Toward, Options, Difference) would proactively start an initiative, rally the troops to move toward the new goal, then jump to the next option/project. John (Reflective, Away, Procedures, Sameness) would want to analyze before launching the new initiative, so he would kill it or block it, minimize exposure, and set up a procedure to handle the proposal through testing, no matter how much or little, the cost associated risk. The resulting chaos was confusing to the team and sending them deep into Critter State.The glaring gap in the consultant's training curriculum was in sales. Even though their role was heavily client-facing, the consultants weren't trained in the basic selling skills and had no incentive to do anything but fix technical problems. They also had no interaction with the sales team — which was sequestered in a different area of the building. The consultants were the right people in the right role — but with no support to perform their best.Harry, the new sales manager, had been with the firm for three months. Shortly after hiring Harry, the company had reorganized to close a failing business unit. Sarah and John had moved their niece, Toni, the VP of the failed unit, into a new role as the VP of sales and marketing — wait a sec! What? Did we read that right? Yep, the niece was given one of the most important roles in the firm after killing an entire business unit. Sounds like a sacred cow to me.There were three problems with this scenario:Harry (who now was sales manager) had no sales expertise — his entire background was in Internet marketing)Toni was an experienced sales manager but wasn't strategic and had no marketing expertiseThe two disliked each other — Toni was threatened by Harry and Harry thought Toni should have been fired for her lackluster leadership of the failed business unitTo make matters even more fun, Toni's boyfriend, Taylor, had been hired as director of client care. He had solid experience, but a perpetual mocking smirk when interacting with anyone but Toni.Act: What They DidThe first thing we had John and Sarah do was to create a clear and compelling mission, vision, and value statements. This would help everyone know why they were coming to work, and where they were going together, and how they agreed to behave. They posted these statements in the lobby, and the managers worked with smaller teams until everyone was on board.Next, we established Needle Movers together (first for the executive team and later for everyone) in line with the new mission, vision, and values, and radically increased accountability using weekly reporting and the Accountability Equation. We created a reporting process for the sales pipeline and marketing effectiveness metrics and set up an incentive plan for the consultants to source future sales.We also redefined the roles and responsibilities throughout sales and marketing to get the right people in the right roles. Some people were reallocated, and one or two were let go respectfully. Since the company had a history of high employee turnover it was key to minimize Critter State via thoughtful communication.John, Sarah, Toni, and Harry worked on their on key challenges. Toni got the tools to turn her department around. Harry was moved out of sales management and into the right role — marketing — where he is brilliant and a perpetual learner. He still reports to Toni, who now manages the sales team directly. Harry's initiatives have made Company X top of mind in their target market. Now that John and Sarah communicate more explicitly, they are no longer creating chaos, and Toni and Harry have developed a mutual respect for each other. Taylor had to be let go. He didn't want to uphold the company values and had burned too many bridges to be salvageable.ROI: What They GotAbout six months into the change process, things got pretty scary. The consultants became resistant and didn't want to work on internal projects for which they had no billable hours, and John and Sarah almost pulled the plug and reverted to chaos. Instead, they applied energy management tools, worked through their own resistance, recommitted, and held their team accountable to the direction they had chosen together. The results were not all immediate — patterns occasionally resurfaced and to be readdressed — but overall the results have been phenomenal. They zoomed through the $50 million inflection point and are preparing for $100 million. Their employee retention is now normal for their industry, and employee surveys show that engagement and satisfaction continue to improve. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Customer loyalty is so highly sought after that businesses are willing to pay customers through rewards programs. In theory, these programs keep customers coming back to a company so that they can build upon their rewards. However, the problem with rewards programs is that they really don't address why a customer is loyal to a brand or product. Loyal customers at Company X would make their purchases at Company X anyway. So rewarding these shoppers for making a purchase they would've already made doesn't do much to build true loyalty.

Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More! My guest today is Tommy Walker and he started Shopify Plus blog and after that, he became the Global Editor-in-Chief will QuickBooks. Now, he's a consultant and is sharing his knowledge that he gained over the past 15 years with other brands. Oh my God, Tommy. So happy to have you!   Tommy Walker: Thanks so much for having me, Pam. It's great to be on here.   Pam Didner: All right. Talk to us. Talk to us about your experience in Shopify. I mean, obviously it was a small mom and pop shop and to start with and you were employee number 14 and you got handed their blog post or whatever you want to call it. And became a content marketing machine. Can you share that experience with us in terms of the journey that you went through and, you know, the knowledge that you gain and the insight that you can share with our listeners.   Tommy Walker: For sure. Absolutely. So, um, I was employee number 14 at Shopify Plus, um, and when I had…   Pam Didner: OK. What are the differences between the two?   Tommy Walker: So that was a great, that's a great question. At the time, there really wasn't too much of a difference. Um, and we had to figure that out. The difference now is very clear. Uh, Shopify Plus is basically Shopify plus a whole bunch of other stuff, right? For enterprises and high growth startups, which is great. Shopify is a little bit more of the standard merchant, right. People who are looking to get into e-commerce and we were looking at the more experienced e-commerce side of the house. So, yeah. How did I get there? I was the editor in chief at a website called Conversion XL at the time and was recruited over into Shopify. Craig Miller their CMO at the time had asked, “Hey, would you be interested in running the Shopify plus blog?” And I said, “yeah, that's great.” So I got over there and I was asking people, “Hey, what is the difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus? And they were like, “well, from a feature set, there's not really a huge difference. We have, you know, dedicated customer service and a more customizable checkout.” And that was pretty much it. And I said, “well, what about from a voice and tone perspective?” And they were like, “Well, we don't really know.” And this was at the time I was running the blog, which was the most frequent publishing arm of the entire company. We were the putting most stuff out into the market.   Pam Didner: So how often do you guys publish at that time?   Tommy Walker: Uh, at the time we were publishing three times a week. So every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And the way that that calendar worked every Friday, we were publishing a new case study. I tried to leverage the size of the part of the company to our advantage because we had much more direct access to our customers. So we were able to kind of tell these stories and make these case studies every week, which was really great. It was a great part of the calendar.   Pam Didner: So how do you determine the editorial in general? What topics did you chose and also, do you actually have editorial meetings with your writers? How does that collaboration and communication go?   Tommy Walker: With the picking the subjects it was kind of a combination of a few different things. Obviously you look at the search side of things, but that wasn't really a huge concern of mine, to be honest with you. The main thing that I was looking at at the time, and I still kind of look at this depending on where I am, what I'm looking at is taking an observation as I'm going through my own e-commerce experience, as I'm like buying stuff and kind of realizing like, “Hey, what part of this process, where is the friction here? Where am I seeing opportunities that these particular sites can do be better?” Making note of that and continuing to go about that. As I'm looking at a broader calendar though, uh, I'm starting to look at the year, right? I come from an acting background. I was an actor for 10 years. A lot of what we had done there was about learning subtext and creating story structure and looking at all of these different things to make a good performance. And the way I look at this computer screen that you and I are talking on right now, it's not very different than TV screens or movie screens of the past. Right? All of this is performance to a certain extent. So when I was looking at structuring my content calendar, I would break the year up into a four-act structure, right. Where we can say we're all heading into the very end of the year, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, like that's the big, that's the biggest…   Pam Didner: That's a big deal for Shopify and how I build up that momentum to that specific month or that season.   Tommy Walker: Right. So that's kind of how I was looking at the calendar, was telling the story over the course of four quarters and then breaking that down by each month to basically say here is how we can make the perfect website all the way up until the end, and then really get that story, make it really pop.   Pam Didner: So do you followed that four act structure every single year? I mean, would the story kind of repeat itself or you are kind of talking about it from a different approach. Um, that is a story. Does the story, uh, , stall, you know, because it's exactly the same four acts?   Tommy Walker: Uh, it can, it can, but the way I think about it is you've got one year and you've got that first sort of origin story, if you will. Right. And this was what I was looking at when we were there, cause at the time Shopify Plus primarily for people who felt like they were outgrowing Shopify as a product. Right? So what we were looking at at that time was like, you know, if to use a video game reference, it's what happens when Mario gets the power up mushroom for the first time, right? The world is completely different. People are moving out of their garages to do shifts. Into 3PLs so third-party logistics. They are starting to bring on employees, all sorts of new things like that. So we're dealing with that. And then knowing that that stuff is going to get picked up by Google or have its own natural discovery process, the next year, we can start to look at that as more of the sequel, if you will. And then start thinking about it like that year over year.   Pam Didner: You're constantly going back to evaluate your past content? So it's not like you finish writing a blog post, you just like publish it, then you move on to the next one. You publish it and you move on to the next one. I think you constantly go back evaluating what has been published. And they either try to create a SQL or possibly, maybe I'm just like—maybe I'm putting words in your mouth--like go back and update and refresh it.   Tommy Walker: I'm, actually I'll give you an example. So, at the beginning of the month, we would write a piece that would say, you know, “how to build the perfect webpage.” Right. And we'd go, here's navigation, here's a hero image. Here's a, you know how to write a great headline, right? And we'd break down the entire page in that. The following week, we would follow that up “How to make the perfect navigation” and then just focus specifically on that.   Pam Didner: So very, very specific--I hate using the one narrow--but very specific topic. One very specific topic at a time, but it is a narrative it's very intentional in terms of what specific topic that you want to talk about. So how long did you plan your editorial? Did you plan that one quarter ahead or did you play in that whole year or how does that work?   Tommy Walker: So I would plan it for the whole year, right. At least the loose themes that we would want to do for the full year. So, you know, uh, first quarter is this, second quarter, is that so forth and so, on. And we always have to build in room for flexibility, but yeah, we would try to plan loosely the entire year and then kind of break it down quarter to quarter and then month to month and then eventually week to week.   Pam Didner: Yeah. So you do actually have something at a very high level, but like you said, very loosely, but you have some ideas and then every single quarter, every single month you hone into that. So how often do you change that news structure of your annual. editorial narrative? I mean, did you set it up and then you kind of just follow that or do you change it like in the middle of the year and then completely, sometimes you have to restructure it due to the new product launches or new features that's being added, you know, Shopify went IPO, I don't know, you know, something big things happened. So what is, how do you make that balance?   Tommy Walker: So the way that I try to think about it and the try the way I think about it now, even now that I'm not at Shopify is that yeah. You have to anticipate that product marketing is going to come up with something that they want and they're going to want it two weeks before they, it comes out and yeah, yeah,   Pam Didner: Yeah, all the time it was like, “oh, are we going to have a product launch? You know, but this has got to be a secret.” You will not know that product launch until like two days before.   Tommy Walker: “Can we have a blog post?” (laughs) So, so knowing that that's gonna happen, try to have, you know, when I build out my freelance team have somebody that can write quickly. And have somebody who's really good at that. Um, but to answer the question yeah it's, it's about building in knowing that things are going to go sideways or, you know, things are going to change in the industry or things like that. There are always going to be constants, but then you have to also think about where that flexibility needs to be. So not always so rigid, but you try your best to stay on topic, um, and hit those points that you already know are gonna come up.   Pam Didner: Got it. So how big is your freelance team if you will?   Tommy Walker: Sure. So I always had to 2-10 people and the reason for that is, uh, I wanted to plan my calendar out. I always want to have at least a month worth of articles in the hopper, just in case product marketing comes up or there's a drought and somebody gets sick or any of that. Right. So I always have at least one week planned out and I want to have at least two people for each rotating week. So the more people you have, obviously the, the better you can go about it.   Pam Didner: Does that mean you need a huge amount of money to budget this?   Tommy Walker: Fortunately at Shopify, I wasn't restricted by budget. (Pam laughs)   Pam Didner: Aha! (laughs)   Tommy Walker: It's just, yeah. Uh, you know, throwing dollar bills out there. Um, but at QuickBooks I had a very strict budget that I had to follow. Um, and fortunately I had to, I got to make my own budget. So I would get to break it down by technology and authors and promotion and all of that. And, and yeah, I mean, that's something I consult on now too, is how you make that budgeting work and have the right amount of people. And the way that I like to think about this is the more money you're willing to spend--and this is going to be true across the board, right--but the more money you're willing to spend, the less time you're going to have to spend in revision. However, if you have the right deputy editor, which I've always had included with this stuff, they're going to have a more consistent salary and they'll be able to do some of those more consistent edits so you can balance it out. And you'll always have your lead writer. And this happens with a lot of editorial staff on, you know, newspapers and magazines. You have your lead author, and then you have other people that you work with that might need a little bit more massaging. But the idea is if you really get solid with the edit, you can help those people who need more, attention need a little bit more love to bring them up to a certain point where your not having to spend so much time in editorial. And what's always been important to me is making it so they become more valuable out to the rest of the market. Right. So I might not have to pay them as much, they're getting paid more, but there's a lot other places. But there's still loyalty internally because that relationship between author and editor is, I believe like it's, it's a very close bond and it has to be respected because as an editor, you're the first person that sees any of this work. Right.   Pam Didner: So Tommy, did you do any other formats of content, such as a case study or podcast or a video?   Tommy Walker: Yeah. Um, so we did case studies. We did the case study every week. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a second, um, how we approach that, but we definitely did a lot of video, too.   Pam Didner: You do write a video script yourself, or you have someone else to do?   Tommy Walker: I was more in the creative development side of the script. If that makes sense more concepting. Now, because a lot of the, the video stuff we did was more live capturing--like it was more. With the merchant. There wasn't a lot of scripting that had to happen, but I did have to work with the people over in the agencies that I was working. To pull out certain narratives that we wanted to kind of talk about. So yeah.   Pam Didner: What are some of the key objectives? What are some of the key messages that needs to come out and also is the closing? I think that very important, any kind of the video, or even podcasts from my perspective tend to be the opening and closing.   Tommy Walker: Yeah. And like, what do we want to get for B roll? And, you know, let's like that type of thing where what's the, what's the background that's going on here? And with our case study, case studies were really important to me, especially in those early days, because we had access to customers, which as I started working for larger companies realized there are way more layers between you and the customer.   Pam Didner: Oh yes.   Tommy Walker: There was a whole team that I had to go through, uh, at, at one of the other positions to gain access to customers. It was a crazy process.   Pam Didner: I am not surprised. (both laugh) Been there, done it, seen it. Yeah, all of it!   Tommy Walker: Yeah, but fortunately, because Shopify Plus at the time was so small, we had direct access to our customers. And one of the things I noticed when I was doing my market research, before we, before we even wrote a single line of text was a lot of the competitors out there--and this isn't just in this space, this is any company really--it was always this problem solution. Results right. Company X works with company Y and see Z results. And that has its place. But at the time we were trying to differentiate. So what I was always looking at, and I, and I worked with this excellent author, Nick Winkler, give him a shout out. He was an Emmy award winner, which was great. He was able to pull out these really excellent stories from people. But what we did is instead of looking at problem solution results, I said what led to the problem? Obviously we know that you're a customer because we're doing a case study here and we know that you're going to have some amazing results because we have a bias, right? We're only going to show you the excellent results. But what led to the problem and what we found when we started to dig into some of these more personal stories, I wanted to treat them more like Rolling Stone interviews. So we would find out from one of my favorite cases was the problem was, was that the guy's server room was on fire and that meant he needed to go to a cloud-based solution and because he went to the cloud-based solution, didn't have to worry about server rooms catching on fire. (Pam laughs) Cool. But what was interesting about this guy's story is how he found out his server room was on fire. So he was at his bachelor party and it was about three o'clock in the morning, which already gives you the sort of frame of mind that somebody at a bachelor party at three o'clock in the morning would be in, when they find out that their server room is on fire. Right. So there's like there, that adds a little bit of extra color. There adds some context.   Pam Didner: Yeah. It does add a little drama to it and the peak people's interest.   Tommy Walker: Yeah. Right. And like, in some of the other stories, they got really emotional because we wanted to learn their origins, right? What led them to become this entrepreneur? And we wanted to speak to that entrepreneurial spark. So there are some people who were bullied their entire life and their business was almost a direct response to being bold. Some of these came from visits across the world and seeing completely different cultures and bad situations, and then finding ways to really help in that area. So there was some really excellent stories that came out of this and they're very human stories. And at the end of the day, like that's what we, as people really want to see is that the companies that we work with are invested in the humanity of, of you, right? We want to know that you care about what's going on in my life, not to like a creepy extent, but we want to know that the product that we're putting out there is going to help in some aspects, some real aspect and not just be another number. Right.   Pam Didner: Speaking of number. I mean, all those are great content. How did you measure success?   Tommy Walker: That was very difficult at the time.   Pam Didner: Yeah, as a B2B marketer or being in the enterprise for a long period of time, we always want to quantify the marketing success. And sometimes it's very, very hard, especially your marketing campaigns or marketing tactic is a focus on top of the funnel, because you are building that brain awareness. You try to build that emotional connection, but it's very hard to quantify that. So how do you suggest for the brands would like to do something similar to quantify the success? Because ultimately they need to have a Come to Jesus meeting with the VP of marketing, VP of sales, even the, a CEO.   Tommy Walker: Um, so it's been different depending on the company that I've worked. Shopify was a very different situation because it was just getting off the ground. There wasn't a ton for attribution modeling in place. We weren't able to look at that. So the metrics that I was really looking at at the time, because I did have access to this was returned visitors. Right. Um, and return visitors have always been sort of my true north metric that I, I try to look at because in a B2B context specifically, the more return visitors you have, the more return visits you have. That corresponds really well with the consideration area. Right. I want people to spend a lot more time with me. New visitors are cool. I love new visitors, but return visitors that's really where it's at. I want to know that I'm retaining people. So that was part of it at Shopify Plus moving over to QuickBooks, I got to work with this really excellent data scientist who helped model a number of different things. Like how many visits does it take for a person to actually convert to a customer? Right.   Pam Didner: What is the magic number, according to QuickBooks?   Tommy Walker: Um, that's proprietary.   Pam Didner: Can you give me a range?   Tommy Walker: I will tell you this, when we were able to double the amounts of, uh, return visits we had from individuals within a 90 day period, we were able to half the time it took to make a sale. That's about as much as I can say, uh, when it came to that, but it's a decent amount of visits, right. You know, maybe anywhere between 15 to 30. We'll kind of give, we'll kind of give that sort of a range.   Pam Didner: You were like, okay, I'm going to give you a very wide range. Why don't you guys just do a test yourself? And I agree (both laugh).   Tommy Walker: Yeah, 1 and 100. Um, no, it was really between 15 and 30 is what we would find it, especially in the 90-day period. And what we found was that, when you can increase the amount of return visits for a single user, um, and increase the amount of page views per session, then you're able to reduce that time to sale, um, really in half, which is incredible. And it makes total sense when you look at it beyond the numbers perspective, right? If I'm going to spend more time with you, that's time that I'm not spending with somebody else. And that makes me far more likely to like your stuff and trust you.   Pam Didner: Yeah. The next question I have is in terms of the content that you created over a period of time, do you go back and repurpose some of the content or do you reuse some of the content? Can you share some of the examples with us?   Tommy Walker: Sure. So, um, I didn't mention this earlier, but when we did at, uh, one of the different formats that we had explored when I was at Shopify Plus where a series of industry reports. Right.   Pam Didner: So you guys do primary research?   Tommy Walker: We would compile research from other outside sources.   Pam Didner: Ah, I see. So is the base, uh, it's a, is the industry report that you compile based on the secondary resources that you have?   Tommy Walker: Okay. Right. And what we did with these, because Shopify plus was not going to compete on features. Purposefully, we're not going to compete on features primarily because we couldn't, but we also decided that. We weren't going to, I had said we're going to compete on knowledge, right? So we would do these industry reports, which is a strategy they still use today, which makes me very happy with this. What would happen is we'd have all of that data and information, and then we could repurpose some of that into a blog post, you know, bring some of that stuff in. But the other thing that we would do is we would merchandise, if you will. We'd create trailers for the industry reports. So you have video going into that and now you're repurposing it over into a blog post. And then with the trailer, you can have these little gifts that come out of it. So there are a number of different ways that you can splice up this information. And with the industry reports themselves, there were, I think some of them had over a hundred pages worth of just pure information. And they were like—   Pam Didner: How long did it take to create the industry report?   Tommy Walker: Forever! Uh, several months, several months,   Pam Didner: I would not be surprised.   Tommy Walker: No. And we were projecting out for the next five years.   Pam Didner: So the industry information. You gather, you projected the trends for the next five years?   Tommy Walker: Correct. Yeah. And that was the depth that we were going into. And we were able to take our own internal knowledge, even though we weren't publishing that at the time and sort of apply that to what was going on here in, and really say that we were at the ground level on some of this stuff and bring in, you know, merchant quotes and stuff like that. And then we were able to repurpose a lot of that into other forms of content.   Pam Didner: Definitely. But that requires a lot of planning and intentional effort. I want people to understand that repurposing a piece of content, it's not very simple, like, oh, okay. You pull, uh, several paragraphs from one white paper and you write a blog post. It's a very intentional effort. As of you creating a, not a piece of content, even though you are using existing content that you have.   Tommy Walker: Right. And the way to think about it really is making it modular. Right. Like when you're thinking about the big piece, what are the smaller things that you can create that are modular and put that out there? Something I learned years ago is create soundbites within your content, right? Like in this is, this is totally different, but like, what are, what are some tweetables that you can put out there? And it's the same thing as like PR and you know, all of that is you get the, you put the little soundbites out there. What's the news going to pick up on? And when you're able to put that stuff in, then it becomes infinitely more shareable, but it's also, you can use it to repurpose in a number of different areas, especially if you're planning that ahead of time. Pam Didner: Being a content marketer myself, where a good period of time, especially in enterprise, it's a lot of work. And I think from editorial planning down to the content creation, or even once you create content, you have to repurpose the content is there's a lot of coordination that needs to happen within the company. And if you have a one lesson for enterprise marketers that actually trying to manage the content, what is that one lesson that you want to share?   Tommy Walker: Ooh, that's a good question. Um, Content marketing is not a solo sports. It is very much a team sport and it's not just on the content team. So if you need to work with other parts of the company to get what you need done, try to understand their working cadence and how it is that you can fit into their day, so you're not bashing heads when it comes to getting stuff created.   Pam Didner: I hear you. I hear try to understand how they work and their process and work with that.   Tommy Walker: Exactly.   Pam Didner: Very good. Hey, before I end our podcast, I would like to ask you to answer one silly question and you can pick one out of two. Number one: What is the most useless talent that you possess? The second one is, did you have a ridiculous goal in your life?   Tommy Walker: (laughs) Um, yeah, the, the most useless I have a few use those talents. Um, the, the most useless talent I would say that I have is an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel movies and movies in general, coming from the filmmaking background.   Pam Didner: What about, uh, DC? You are more into the Marvel universe. Okay.   Tommy Walker: The Marvel Universe. Um, but movies in general, that's just from my acting background. So, um, my wife hates watching movies with me sometimes because I'm like, did you know?   Pam Didner: And you're like, shut up. Can I just enjoy the movie? Don't tell me!   Tommy Walker: She, she wonders how I enjoy the movie. I'm like, “this is exactly how I enjoy the movie!”   Pam Didner: Thank you so much, Tommy. So happy to have you on my show and you share a lot of insight with us and I enjoy our conversation.

Welcome to a special two-part series of Lochhead on Marketing, where I answer two of the most important questions in my life and career. Are you curious as to what those questions are? Stay tuned to find out. My Favorite Question to Ask You need a bit of back story for the first question. In 2006, I was the head of marketing for a software company called Mercury Interactive. By June of that year, we sold the company for Hewlett-Packard for 4.5 billion dollars, which was a sizeable amount back then. So as part of the transition to HP, our team met with the team in charge of marketing for the announcement of the acquisition. The marketing strategy was being handled by a famous ad agency; one you'd probably recognize if I describe one of their projects. After we made our introductions, the head of HP marketing asked me if I had any questions before they start with the presentation. So I asked them a question: “Do you think what you are about to show us is legendary work?” That question made them pause for a bit, and the head of said ad agency looked at the head of HP marketing and said, “Can we have two more days?” Good on them for realizing that they could do better, but it would've been better if they gave it their 100% in the first place. Setting the Bar High So one of my favorite questions to ask at the beginning of any meeting where somebody is about to show you something. On this case, it was ad creative, but it could be anything. It could be a product prototype, a marketing plan, or a category design. It could even be the justification for why we should buy Company X. Whatever the thing is that they're about to present, my favorite question to ask before that is, do you think this work? That is to say, the work they're about to show is legendary. What I learned over time is if you want to set a high bar for excellence in your organization, it's interesting to find out where other people's bar for excellence is. Because if they don't bother to show you their best or legendary self, then why would you want to see it? Now, it's a different situation when you have something that is a work in progress, and need help in making it legendary. In which case, I ask this question instead: “Do you think we're off to a legendary start?” Though if you are presenting something that you think is final or close to the final work, you'll always get the same question from me: “Do you think this is legendary work?” If you want to learn more about my two legendary questions, listen to this episode and check out part two coming soon! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.

Tyler and Jessie have the most wholesome and delightful conversation with Kim Sherman of SpectreVision and Company X! Kim is a producer and director, known for YOU’RE NEXT (2011), V/H/S (2012), SUN DON’T SHINE (2012), A TEACHER (2013), ARCHENEMY (2020) and NO MAN OF GOD (2021). Find more about Kim Sherman below! Kim Sherman IMDb: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm2980861/Kim Sherman Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/kimbototronKim Sherman: https://www.instagram.com/kimbototron/https://www.thisiscompanyx.comFind us! Email: hollywoodisdeadpodcast@gmail.comHollywood is Dead Instagram: https://instagram.com/officialhollywoodisdead?igshid=17g2y3ku3g7f1Hollywood is Dead Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/Hwoodisdead_podArchetype Pictures Website: https://archetypepics.comArchetype Pictures Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/Archetype_PicsArchetype Pictures Instagram: https://instagram.com/archetypepictures?igshid=12crqkj1t83rl

When it comes to income verification for a mortgage a recent paystub and an employment letter will typically do the trick, even if you're a new hire and just have one full pay cycle under your belt. However, things could get a little dicey if you are currently in a period of probation with your new employer. The most common workaround for an applicant who is in the midst of a probationary period is to coordinate the completion date of your purchase with the expiry date of the probationary period. A lender will proceed with the approval and condition for an updated employment letter and/or recent paystub to verify that the probationary period is no longer in effect. Lender guidelines generally dictate that probationary periods must pass (in their entirety) prior to the completion of the mortgage. But in many instances a lender will overlook a probationary period provided that a good case can be made. Here are some real life exceptions I've been granted on several files over the years:PROBATIONARY PERIOD WAIVED when applicant has left one employer for another, but maintained the same job type. For example, say you worked with Company X for a couple of years as a Software Engineer, then left for Company Y in the same role (Software Engineer). Most lenders will overlook the probationary period in cases like this.PROBATIONARY PERIOD WAIVED when a previously self employed applicant switches over to become a full time employee. As long as the applicant switched over to an employer that is directly related to the work they were doing when they were self employed, lenders will generally overlook the probationary period. For example, an engineer that independently contracted their services out to a firm (self employed), but then transformed over to them (or another industry related firm) into a full time employee.PROBATIONARY PERIOD WAIVED if you are a teacher that transfers from one education board/jurisdiction to another. Registered Nurses would also fall into this category.Probationary Periods are not the end of the worldI wish I could say this about all other mortgage qualification guidelines, but lenders are generally flexible when it comes to probationary periods. So, as long as your new employment is supported with reasonable tenure from a prior and related employment stint, you should (at the very least) be eligible for strong consideration to have a lender overlook or waive the probationary period condition of your income verification.Contact Marko, he's a Mortgage Broker!604-800-9593 direct Vancouver403-606-3751 direct Calgarymarkogelo.comFacebook@markogelo (Twitter)MarkoMusic (SoundCloud Account)...all podcast music tracks are performed and produced by Marko See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Episode 59 The C-Suite folks at Company X have graciously asked for your input as to who should be appointed as your new boss. Silently, you believe that you're the obvious choice, but you must temporarily table that thought. The C-Suite folks present you with a spider graph of three anonymous individuals (Orange, Green, and Blue are their only identifiers) from outside of the company. Graphed together are the characteristics/trait ratings of each person rated on a scale from 1 (lowest rated) to 10 (highest rated). Which boss would you like to work for, and most importantly, can you give a reasoned explanation as to why you chose Orange, Green, or Blue? Maybe your profession requires a leader with a certain set of traits and skills? Maybe you value empathy and likability, but why? Season One: Foundations of Leadosophy Leadosophy is the fusion of leadership and philosophy. We use philosophical thought to deepen our understanding of leadership together.

You’ve seen bits and pieces of the SolarWinds story in the news, but what actually happened (to the best of our knowledge) and what can CISOs learn from it?  On this episode of Cyber Security Inside, Tom and Camille invite Dr. Eric Cole, CEO and founder of Secure Anchor Consulting, onto the show to talk about the SolarWinds hack.    Plus, during Fun Facts: •  What’s an early sign of Alzheimer’s or dementia? •  What did people believe would kill you in 1954?  •  Why was a donkey-less game named Donkey Kong?   Tune in to find out. This is one you can’t miss!   Here are some key take-aways: •  Large-scale data breaches all share one commonality: a lack of awareness about unprotected data. •  When it comes to asset inventory and patching configuration management, automation is key. Businesses can’t rely solely on humans to get the job done. There’s technology available that can recognize when a new asset appears, so businesses only have to respond when there’s a problem. They don’t have to be looking 24/7.  •  The SolarWinds attack was a two component attack. First was the attack against SolarWinds to modify their source code for their Orion product. Second, was the distribution of a malicious update to all of their clients (which then created a back door). •  Unlike attacks in the past where a specific company is targeted, with the SolarWinds attack, it’s more likely that a list of companies was compiled. From there, the hackers looked for common denominators between those companies in search of a way in. •  There wasn’t a single point of failure with the SolarWinds attack. Source code shouldn’t have been directly accessible on Internet facing systems; checks and validations should have been done before sending out updates; and checking and testing should have been done in-house. •  If you have servers or software from a third-party vendor, that needs to be isolated on a separate segment and going through a firewall. •  Businesses should always be watching outbound traffic for anomalies.  •  The SolarWinds hackers knew that it’s not uncommon for vendors to push out patches for software. So, they made their malicious code look like a patch update. •  Not all SolarWinds customers were affected. With this attack, you had to be running a specific version of SolarWinds in order to be affected.  •  These types of attacks aren’t typically spotted by security departments. They are usually caught as a result of performance issues with IT equipment. The reason is the attackers are clever enough to fly under the radar with security, but they don’t understand the thresholds of the hardware. •  Even if you’re not a customer of SolarWinds, you need to work with your suppliers to ensure that they weren’t attacked through SolarWinds.  •  What else do you need to do now? Design as if you were compromised and it will happen again.    Some interesting quotes from today’s episode:   “When you're looking at any of the large-scale data breaches over the last five years, anytime you're seeing more than 50 million records compromised, it's pretty much the same exact playbook. There is a server visible from the Internet that the organization isn't aware of. It's missing a patch. It contains critical data. And that data is not properly encrypted or protected.”   “The real big problem is companies don't have a hundred percent asset inventory and therefore they don't know what's out there and they can't patch it, protect it, or secure their data.”   “Anything that's based on a human is eventually going to fail. But computers are systematic and can be programmed.”   “In the past, if I wanted to target Company X, I break into company X. If I want to break into Company Y, I target them individually. But in this case, they went in and said, ‘Okay, we want to break into all these companies. How do we go after it?’”  “I will tell you how I would have done this attack when I was on the offensive side. I would have put together a list of the companies and government entities that I wanted to break into. I would then start looking at what is the common denominator?”   “They got access to one of those computers. They used that computer to set up what we call a pivot point. They did lateral movement into the network and ultimately found the source code computers. Then from there, they were able to upload malicious code into that source code…They then push that update out to all of the clients. And then all of those systems got infected, installed malware, and then set up outbound command and control channels to communicate with the adversary.”   “Now whether they broke into other vendors is yet to be seen. Remember, most organizations don't detect attacks for two to three years.”   “What they were going after on the source code is the ability to take control of the client computers that ran the SolarWinds software. So essentially what they wanted to do is have a command and control piece of code that, once it was installed on the system, would then be able to take control, make outbound connections, and give somebody access to those networks.”   “I believe they had a long list and they had specific reasons and goals for each of those. Because the malicious code that got distributed with the SolarWinds software, it didn't specifically gather data, exfiltrate data, or delete data. What it did is create access paths for the adversary. So all we know is that the adversary wanted to gain access to this list of networks.”   “That's the interesting thing with not only SolarWinds, but most of these other attacks that we've seen over the last three years. It's typically the IT department that catches it. It's not the security department.”   “At some point they make the false conclusion, ‘Oh, no one's going to catch us. We've been doing it for two years.’ And then they start cranking it up and they inadvertently go in and overload the computer systems. Because these attackers know how to bypass the security equipment, but they don't know the thresholds of the IT equipment.”    “It's often ‘Let's get access and maintain the access to see what we can do, so we can use it at a later point in time.’ Sometimes it's the cell access. Sometimes it's to ransom it back to the company. Sometimes it's to sell to a third party. But the name of the game now is whoever has access wins the game. And that definitely looks like what they were after with the SolarWinds attack.”   “The best bet is to assume that you were compromised and use this as a lesson learned. It will happen to you. You have software vendors, you have components. SolarWinds was not the first and they won't be the last. So you need to go in and assume that you were compromised. Be proactive. And then whatever you would have done to respond to an actual compromise, those are the things you need to put in place today.”

➤ TSLA stock at all-time high close, briefly crosses $900 per share ➤ Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi discloses purchase of TSLA call options ➤ Biden administration reportedly seeks to declare climate as a matter of national security, proposes converting federal government vehicle fleet to electric (https://d2d.gsa.gov/report/federal-fleet-open-data-visualization) ➤ Baird ups TSLA price target, discusses “Company X” holding company ➤ Musk tweets about autonomy, pokes back at Waymo ➤ Sandy Munro offers observations on a different 2021 Model 3 ➤ New photo of Model Y rear underbody casting ➤ Model S spotted testing Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/teslapodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tesladailypodcast Tesla Referral: https://ts.la/robert47283 Plaid producer Who Why Plaid producer Ice Lakes Investments Ludicrous producer Fred Hassen Executive producer Jeremy Cooke Executive producer Troy Cherasaro Executive producer Bradford Ferguson Executive producer Andre/Maria Kent Executive producer Jeff Sheets Executive producer Jessie Chimni Executive producer Richard Del Maestro Music by Evan Schaeffer Disclosure: Rob Maurer is long TSLA stock & derivatives

1. DEAD AIR, By Louis Valentine Radio DJ, Peter Saints, is a host of a radio show dedicated to the exploration of paranormal activity from the stories sent in by listeners over the radio. Beginning with questions Peter allows the listener to slowly delve deeper into their story. Sometimes a weak story, sometimes terrifyingly real, Peter finds these gems of a story at the late night hours between 12:00am to 04:00am, ending the night by opening the lines to dead air, and seeing if any dead person seeks to communicate; something often linked to a guest who comes on at the late hour to talk to a dead relative. Peter isn't a ​psychic ​but is obsessed with learning about personal accounts, not knowing if the next night on the radio might be the most important of his life or the quietest. Featuring Francesca Hayman as Peter Saints, the radio host, and Izzy Ward as Uada, his haunted guest.

In this episode, Ryan discusses how x.com came to be. He talks a little about Neuralink and investing, and Elon's vision for the future of being a multi-planetary species. Neura Pod is a series covering topics related to Neuralink, Inc. Topics such as brain-machine interfaces, brain injuries, and artificial intelligence will be explored. Host Ryan Tanaka synthesizes information, shares opinions, and conducts interviews to easily learn about Neuralink and it's future. Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company are going to have to get used to their newest sibling. Neuralink is going to change how humans think, act, learn, and share information. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/neura-pod/support

Application form to apply & try and get in my Private Stock Group/Financial Fortress http://scaleyourstockportfolio.com/Well Guys im back from a well deserved break. Spent some time with my family and while I was not making youtube content, I saw this video that caught my attention. It was a video that talked about a certain company that would affect Tesla. So I did more research and it was something that really interested me. So I will tell you about what that video was about and how it will affect tesla and elon musk. Hope you enjoy this video about some potential huge news for Tesla. I will tell you exactly what is going on and what my thoughts are about this news surrounding tesla. Leave me a comment with what you think about these potential moves for tesla. Do you agree with the potential move or are you yelling at Elon Musk to back off? Would love to hear from you guys! Also let me know if there is a stock to buy now or a stock to watch now. Want to join my free STOCKHUB discord chat? Here is the link https://discord.gg/SVWd2qq This is where you can chat for free with other investors in the stock market about stocks or things going on in the market. Enjoy!Here are all the stocks I own right now.https://jeremystockportfolio.com/currentHow To Make Your First $100,000 in the Stock Market https://yourfinancialfortress.com/100k-videoHow we grew from $0-$800,000+ in 3 years in a brand new stock account https://0to800kcasestudy.com/8-to-800k *My Instagram is : FinancialEducationJeremyFinancial Education 2Jeremy Lefebvre Production LMK if you know any stocks to buy now or stocks to watch!

I discuss the pros and cons of X, a holding company for Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Boring Company.

The Elon Musk super company may be in the works... Get $5 off and zero delivery fees on your first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter code LEWLATER!

➤ Elon Musk says merging Tesla, SpaceX, and companies like Neuralink and The Boring Company into one parent company called “X” could be a good idea ➤ Important update on solar power in the United States Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/teslapodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tesladailypodcast Tesla Referral: https://ts.la/robert47283 0:00 TSLA update 2:29 Company X analysis 13:59 Solar power update Plaid producer Who Why Plaid producer Ice Lakes Investments Ludicrous producer Fred Hassen Executive producer Rish Singh Executive producer Jeremy Cooke Executive producer Troy Cherasaro Executive producer Bradford Ferguson Executive producer Andre/Maria Kent Executive producer Jeff Sheets Executive producer Jessie Chimni Music by Evan Schaeffer Disclosure: Rob Maurer is long TSLA stock & derivatives

We debate GQ's Most Stylish Man of the Year, discuss the newest Kawhi New Balance colorway, Carpet Company's new Nike Dunk, 2021 Food trends, Kith and Dipset to hyping up the New York Knicks, Kyrie burns sage at TD Garden, and Kanye Corner

Troisième et dernière partie de l'entretien vérité sur la vie et la carrière de Pit Baccardi. L'épisode a été publié en vidéo sur Youtube le 15 Septembre 2018, cliquez ici pour le voir. Ce n'est pas une interview, c'est une conversation. #TchinPitBaccardi

Today on the RRSS - we talk about all the things going on around the inter webs and new. We also discuss the company that wants to move into automation and quickly. Mature Audience Only - :)

Today on the RRSS - we talk about all the things going on around the inter webs and new. We also discuss the company that wants to move into automation and quickly. Mature Audience Only - :)

In this episode of Business Matters, Roxanne Sexton with the Bean Team discusses the Paycheck Protection Program and more specifically, how to maximize the loan forgiveness provisions of the PPP. We outline and then discuss the 4 categories provided by the PPP to determine the amount of loan that will be forgiven. Of course, all of this is based on the guidelines issued through the time of the recording.   PAYCHECK PROTECTION PROGRAM LOANS Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)The Small Business Administration (SBA), in consultation with the Department of the Treasury, intends to provide timely additional guidance to address borrower and lender questions concerning the implementation of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), established by section 1102 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act or the Act). This document will be updated on a regular basis.Borrowers and lenders may rely on the guidance provided in this document as SBA’s interpretation of the CARES Act and of the Paycheck Protection Program Interim Final Rules (“PPP Interim Final Rules”) (link). The U.S. government will not challenge lender PPP actions that conform to this guidance,1 and to the PPP Interim Final Rules and any subsequent rulemaking in effect at the time.Question: Paragraph 3.b.iii of the PPP Interim Final Rule states that lenders must “[c]onfirm the dollar amount of average monthly payroll costs for the preceding calendar year by reviewing the payroll documentation submitted with the borrower’s application.” Does that require the lender to replicate every borrower’s calculations? Answer: No. Providing an accurate calculation of payroll costs is the responsibility of the borrower, and the borrower attests to the accuracy of those calculations on the Borrower Application Form. Lenders are expected to perform a good faith review, in a reasonable time, of the borrower’s calculations and supporting documents concerning average monthly payroll cost. For example, minimal review of calculations based on a payroll report by a recognized third-party payroll processor would be reasonable. In addition, as the PPP Interim Final Rule indicates, lenders may rely on borrower representations, including with respect to amounts required to be excluded from payroll costs.If the lender identifies errors in the borrower’s calculation or material lack of substantiation in the borrower’s supporting documents, the lender should work with the borrower to remedy the issue.2 Question: Are small business concerns (as defined in section 3 of the Small Business Act, 15 U.S.C. 632) required to have 500 or fewer employees to be eligible borrowers in the PPP? Answer: No. Small business concerns can be eligible borrowers even if they have more than 500 employees, as long as they satisfy the existing statutory and regulatory definition of a “small business concern” under section 3 of the Small Business Act, 15 U.S.C. 632. A business can qualify if it meets the SBA employee-based or revenue-As of May 3, 2020based size standard corresponding to its primary industry. Go to www.sba.gov/size for the industry size standards.Additionally, a business can qualify for the Paycheck Protection Program as a small business concern if it met both tests in SBA’s “alternative size standard” as of March 27, 2020: (1) maximum tangible net worth of the business is not more than $15 million; and (2) the average net income after Federal income taxes (excluding any carry-over losses) of the business for the two full fiscal years before the date of the application is not more than $5 million.A business that qualifies as a small business concern under section 3 of the Small Business Act, 15 U.S.C. 632, may truthfully attest to its eligibility for PPP loans on the Borrower Application Form, unless otherwise ineligible.Question: Does my business have to qualify as a small business concern (as defined in section 3 of the Small Business Act, 15 U.S.C. 632) in order to participate in the PPP? Answer: No. In addition to small business concerns, a business is eligible for a PPP loan if the business has 500 or fewer employees whose principal place of residence is in the United States, or the business meets the SBA employee-based size standards for the industry in which it operates (if applicable). Similarly, PPP loans are also available for qualifying tax-exempt nonprofit organizations described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), tax-exempt veterans organization described in section 501(c)(19) of the IRC, and Tribal business concerns described in section 31(b)(2)(C) of the Small Business Act that have 500 or fewer employees whose principal place of residence is in the United States, or meet the SBA employee-based size standards for the industry in which they operate.Question: Are lenders required to make an independent determination regarding applicability of affiliation rules under 13 C.F.R. 121.301(f) to borrowers? Answer: No. It is the responsibility of the borrower to determine which entities (if any) are its affiliates and determine the employee headcount of the borrower and its affiliates. Lenders are permitted to rely on borrowers’ certifications.Question: Are borrowers required to apply SBA’s affiliation rules under 13 C.F.R. 121.301(f)? Answer: Yes. Borrowers must apply the affiliation rules set forth in SBA’s Interim Final Rule on Affiliation. A borrower must certify on the Borrower Application Form that the borrower is eligible to receive a PPP loan, and that certification means that the borrower is a small business concern as defined in section 3 of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 632), meets the applicable SBA employee-based or revenue-based size standard, or meets the tests in SBA’s alternative size standard, after applying the affiliation rules, if applicable. SBA’s existing affiliation exclusions apply to the PPP, including, for example the exclusions under 13 CFR 121.103(b)(2).As of May 3, 2020Question: The affiliation rule based on ownership (13 C.F.R. 121.301(f)(1)) states that SBA will deem a minority shareholder in a business to control the business if the shareholder has the right to prevent a quorum or otherwise block action by the board of directors or shareholders. If a minority shareholder irrevocably gives up those rights, is it still considered to be an affiliate of the business? Answer: No. If a minority shareholder in a business irrevocably waives or relinquishes any existing rights specified in 13 C.F.R. 121.301(f)(1), the minority shareholder would no longer be an affiliate of the business (assuming no other relationship that triggers the affiliation rules).Question: The CARES Act excludes from the definition of payroll costs any employee compensation in excess of an annual salary of $100,000. Does that exclusion apply to all employee benefits of monetary value? Answer: No. The exclusion of compensation in excess of $100,000 annually applies only to cash compensation, not to non-cash benefits, including:employer contributions to defined-benefit or defined-contribution retirement plans;payment for the provision of employee benefits consisting of group health care coverage, including insurance premiums; andpayment of state and local taxes assessed on compensation of employees. Question: Do PPP loans cover paid sick leave? Answer: Yes. PPP loans covers payroll costs, including costs for employee vacation, parental, family, medical, and sick leave. However, the CARES Act excludes qualified sick and family leave wages for which a credit is allowed under sections 7001 and 7003 of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (Public Law 116–127). Learn more about the Paid Sick Leave Refundable Credit here.Question: My small business is a seasonal business whose activity increases from April to June. Considering activity from that period would be a more accurate reflection of my business’s operations. However, my small business was not fully ramped up on February 15, 2020. Am I still eligible? Answer: In evaluating a borrower’s eligibility, a lender may consider whether a seasonal borrower was in operation on February 15, 2020 or for an 8-week period between February 15, 2019 and June 30, 2019.Question: What if an eligible borrower contracts with a third-party payer such as a payroll provider or a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) to process payroll and report payroll taxes? Answer: SBA recognizes that eligible borrowers that use PEOs or similar payroll providers are required under some state registration laws to report wage and other data onAs of May 3, 2020the Employer Identification Number (EIN) of the PEO or other payroll provider. In these cases, payroll documentation provided by the payroll provider that indicates the amount of wages and payroll taxes reported to the IRS by the payroll provider for the borrower’s employees will be considered acceptable PPP loan payroll documentation. Relevant information from a Schedule R (Form 941), Allocation Schedule for Aggregate Form 941 Filers, attached to the PEO’s or other payroll provider’s Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Federal Tax Return, should be used if it is available; otherwise, the eligible borrower should obtain a statement from the payroll provider documenting the amount of wages and payroll taxes. In addition, employees of the eligible borrower will not be considered employees of the eligible borrower’s payroll provider or PEO.Question: May lenders accept signatures from a single individual who is authorized to sign on behalf of the borrower? Answer: Yes. However, the borrower should bear in mind that, as the Borrower Application Form indicates, only an authorized representative of the business seeking a loan may sign on behalf of the business. An individual’s signature as an “Authorized Representative of Applicant” is a representation to the lender and to the U.S. government that the signer is authorized to make the certifications, including with respect to the applicant and each owner of 20% or more of the applicant’s equity, contained in the Borrower Application Form. Lenders may rely on that representation and accept a single individual’s signature on that basis.Question: I need to request a loan to support my small business operations in light of current economic uncertainty. However, I pleaded guilty to a felony crime a very long time ago. Am I still eligible for the PPP? Answer: Yes. Businesses are only ineligible if an owner of 20 percent or more of the equity of the applicant is presently incarcerated, on probation, on parole; subject to an indictment, criminal information, arraignment, or other means by which formal criminal charges are brought in any jurisdiction; or, within the last five years, for any felony, has been convicted; pleaded guilty; pleaded nolo contendere; been placed on pretrial diversion; or been placed on any form of parole or probation (including probation before judgment).Question: Are lenders permitted to use their own online portals and an electronic form that they create to collect the same information and certifications as in the Borrower Application Form, in order to complete implementation of their online portals? Answer: Yes. Lenders may use their own online systems and a form they establish that asks for the same information (using the same language) as the Borrower Application Form. Lenders are still required to send the data to SBA using SBA’s interface.Question: What time period should borrowers use to determine their number of employees and payroll costs to calculate their maximum loan amounts? As of May 3, 2020Answer: In general, borrowers can calculate their aggregate payroll costs using data either from the previous 12 months or from calendar year 2019. For seasonal businesses, the applicant may use average monthly payroll for the period between February 15, 2019, or March 1, 2019, and June 30, 2019. An applicant that was not in business from February 15, 2019 to June 30, 2019 may use the average monthly payroll costs for the period January 1, 2020 through February 29, 2020.Borrowers may use their average employment over the same time periods to determine their number of employees, for the purposes of applying an employee-based size standard. Alternatively, borrowers may elect to use SBA’s usual calculation: the average number of employees per pay period in the 12 completed calendar months prior to the date of the loan application (or the average number of employees for each of the pay periods that the business has been operational, if it has not been operational for 12 months).Question: Should payments that an eligible borrower made to an independent contractor or sole proprietor be included in calculations of the eligible borrower’s payroll costs? Answer: No. Any amounts that an eligible borrower has paid to an independent contractor or sole proprietor should be excluded from the eligible business’s payroll costs. However, an independent contractor or sole proprietor will itself be eligible for a loan under the PPP, if it satisfies the applicable requirements.Question: How should a borrower account for federal taxes when determining its payroll costs for purposes of the maximum loan amount, allowable uses of a PPP loan, and the amount of a loan that may be forgiven? Answer: Under the Act, payroll costs are calculated on a gross basis without regard to (i.e., not including subtractions or additions based on) federal taxes imposed or withheld, such as the employee’s and employer’s share of Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and income taxes required to be withheld from employees. As a result, payroll costs are not reduced by taxes imposed on an employee and required to be withheld by the employer, but payroll costs do not include the employer’s share of payroll tax. For example, an employee who earned $4,000 per month in gross wages, from which $500 in federal taxes was withheld, would count as $4,000 in payroll costs. The employee would receive $3,500, and $500 would be paid to the federal government. However, the employer-side federal payroll taxes imposed on the $4,000 in wages are excluded from payroll costs under the statute.33 The definition of “payroll costs” in the CARES Act, 15 U.S.C. 636(a)(36)(A)(viii), excludes “taxes imposed or withheld under chapters 21, 22, or 24 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 during the covered period,” defined as February 15, 2020, to June 30, 2020. As described above, the SBA interprets this statutory exclusion to mean that payroll costs are calculated on a gross basis, without subtracting federal taxes that are imposed on the employee or withheld from employee wages. Unlike employer-side payroll taxes, such employee-side taxes are ordinarily expressed as a reduction in employee take-home pay; their exclusion from the definition of payroll costs means payroll costs should not be reduced based on taxes imposed on the employee or withheld from employee wages. This interpretation is consistent with the text of the statute and advances the legislative purpose of ensuring workersAs of May 3, 2020remain paid and employed. Further, because the reference period for determining a borrower’s maximum loan amount will largely or entirely precede the period from February 15, 2020, to June 30, 2020, and the period during which borrowers will be subject to the restrictions on allowable uses of the loans may extend beyond that period, for purposes of the determination of allowable uses of loans and the amount of loan forgiveness, this statutory exclusion will apply with respect to such taxes imposed or withheld at any time, not only during such period.4 Questions 2 – 18 published April 6, 2020.5 Questions 19 – 20 published April 8, 2020.Question: I filed or approved a loan application based on the version of the PPP Interim Final Rule published on April 2, 2020. Do I need to take any action based on the updated guidance in these FAQs? Answer: No. Borrowers and lenders may rely on the laws, rules, and guidance available at the time of the relevant application. However, borrowers whose previously submitted loan applications have not yet been processed may revise their applications based on clarifications reflected in these FAQs.Question: Are PPP loans for existing customers considered new accounts for FinCEN Rule CDD purposes? Are lenders required to collect, certify, or verify beneficial ownership information in accordance with the rule requirements for existing customers? Answer: If the PPP loan is being made to an existing customer and the necessary information was previously verified, you do not need to re-verify the information. Furthermore, if federally insured depository institutions and federally insured credit unions eligible to participate in the PPP program have not yet collected beneficial ownership information on existing customers, such institutions do not need to collect and verify beneficial ownership information for those customers applying for new PPP loans, unless otherwise indicated by the lender’s risk-based approach to BSA compliance.4Question: Do lenders have to use a promissory note provided by SBA or may they use their own? Answer: Lenders may use their own promissory note or an SBA form of promissory note.Question: The amount of forgiveness of a PPP loan depends on the borrower’s payroll costs over an eight-week period; when does that eight-week period begin? Answer: The eight-week period begins on the date the lender makes the first disbursement of the PPP loan to the borrower. The lender must make the first disbursement of the loan no later than ten calendar days from the date of loan approval.5Question: Do lenders need a separate SBA Authorization document to issue PPP loans? Answer: No. A lender does not need a separate SBA Authorization for SBA to guarantee a PPP loan. However, lenders must have executed SBA Form 2484 (theAs of May 3, 2020to issue PPP loans and receive a loan number for each originated PPP loan. Lenders may include in their promissory notes for PPP loans any terms and conditions, including relating to amortization and disclosure, that are not inconsistent with Sections 1102 and 1106 of the CARES Act, the PPP Interim Final Rules and guidance, and SBA Form 2484.As of May 3, 2020Lender Application Form for the Paycheck Protection Program)6to issue PPP loans and receive a loan number for eachoriginated PPP loan. Lendersmay include in theirpromissory notes for PPP loans any terms and conditions, including relating to amortization and disclosure, that arenot inconsistent with Sections 1102 and 1106 of theCARES Act, the PPP Interim Final Rulesand guidance, and SBA Form 2484.22.Question: I am a non-bank lender that meets allapplicable criteria of the PPP InterimFinal Rule. Will I be automatically enrolledas a PPP lender? What criteria will SBAand theTreasuryDepartmentuse to assess whetherto approvemy application to participate as a PPP lender? Answer:We encourage lenders that arenot currently7(a) lenders to apply in order to increase the scope of PPP lending optionsand the speed with which PPP loanscan be disbursedtohelp small businesses across America.We recognize that financialtechnology solutionscan promote efficiency and financial inclusionin implementingthePPP. Applicants should submit SBA Form 3507 and the relevant attachments to NFRLApplicationForPPP@sba.gov.Submission of theSBA Form3507does notresult in automatic enrollmentin the PPP.SBA and the Treasury Department willevaluate each application from anon-bank or non-insured depository institution lenderand determine whetherthe applicant has the necessary qualifications to process, close,disburse, andservice PPP loans made with SBA’sguarantee. SBAmay requestadditionalinformation from the applicant beforemaking a determination.23.Question: How do the $10 million cap and affiliationruleswork for franchises? Answer:If a franchise brand islisted on the SBA Franchise Directory,each of itsfranchiseesthat meets the applicable size standardcan apply for a PPP loan. (Thefranchisor does not apply on behalf of its franchisees.)The $10 million cap on PPP loansis a limit perfranchisee entity,and each franchisee is limited to one PPP loan.Franchise brands that have been denied listing on the Directory because of affiliation between franchisor andfranchisee may request listing toreceive PPP loans.SBA willnot apply affiliation rules to afranchise brand requesting listing on the Directory to participatein the PPP, but SBA will confirm that the brandis otherwiseeligible for listing on the Directory.24.Question: How do the $10 million cap and affiliationruleswork for hotels and restaurants (and any business assigned a North American Industry Classification System(NAICS)code beginning with 72)? Answer:Under the CARES Act,any singlebusinessentitythat is assigned a NAICScode beginning with 72 (includinghotels andrestaurants) andthat employs not more than 500employees perphysicallocationiseligible to receive a PPPloan.6Thisrequirementissatisfiedbyalenderwhenthelendercompletesthe processofsubmitting aloan through the E-Transystem;notransmissionorretentionofaphysical copy of Form2484isrequired.As of May 3, 2020In addition, SBA’s affiliation rules (13 CFR 121.103 and 13 CFR 121.301) do not apply to any business entity that is assigned a NAICS code beginning with 72 and that employs not more than a total of 500 employees. As a result, if each hotel or restaurant location owned by a parent business is a separate legal business entity, each hotel or restaurant location that employs not more than 500 employees is permitted to apply for a separate PPP loan provided it uses its unique EIN.The $10 million maximum loan amount limitation applies to each eligible business entity, because individual business entities cannot apply for more than one loan. The following examples illustrate how these principles apply.Example 1. Company X directly owns multiple restaurants and has no affiliates.Company X may apply for a PPP loan if it employs 500 or fewer employees per location (including at its headquarters), even if the total number of employees employed across all locations is over 500. Example 2. Company X wholly owns Company Y and Company Z (as a result, Companies X, Y, and Z are all affiliates of one another). Company Y and Company Z each own a single restaurant with 500 or fewer employees.Company Y and Company Z can each apply for a separate PPP loan, because each has 500 or fewer employees. The affiliation rules do not apply, because Company Y and Company Z each has 500 or fewer employees and is in the food services business (with a NAICS code beginning with 72). Example 3. Company X wholly owns Company Y and Company Z (as a result, Companies X, Y, and Z are all affiliates of one another). Company Y owns a restaurant with 400 employees. Company Z is a construction company with 400 employees.Company Y is eligible for a PPP loan because it has 500 or fewer employees. The affiliation rules do not apply to Company Y, because it has 500 or fewer employees and is in the food services business (with a NAICS code beginning with 72).The waiver of the affiliation rules does not apply to Company Z, because Company Z is in the construction industry. Under SBA’s affiliation rules, 13 CFR 121.301(f)(1) and (3), Company Y and Company Z are affiliates of one another because they are under the common control of Company X, which wholly owns both companies. This means that the size of Company Z is determined by adding its employees to those of Companies X and Y. Therefore, Company Z is deemed to have more than 500 employees, together with its affiliates. However, Company Z may be eligible to receive a PPP loan as a small business concern if it, together with Companies X and Y, meets SBA’s other applicable size standards,” as explained in FAQ #2. Question: Does the information lenders are required to collect from PPP applicants regarding every owner who has a 20% or greater ownership stake in the applicant business (i.e., owner name, title, ownership %, TIN, and address) satisfy a lender’s obligation to collect beneficial ownership information (which has a 25% ownership threshold) under the Bank Secrecy Act? As of May 3, 2020Answer: For lenders with existing customers: With respect to collecting beneficial ownership information for owners holding a 20% or greater ownership interest, if the PPP loan is being made to an existing customer and the lender previously verified the necessary information, the lender does not need to re-verify the information. Furthermore, if federally insured depository institutions and federally insured credit unions eligible to participate in the PPP program have not yet collected such beneficial ownership information on existing customers, such institutions do not need to collect and verify beneficial ownership information for those customers applying for new PPP loans, unless otherwise indicated by the lender’s risk-based approach to Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance.For lenders with new customers: For new customers, the lender’s collection of the following information from all natural persons with a 20% or greater ownership stake in the applicant business will be deemed to satisfy applicable BSA requirements and FinCEN regulations governing the collection of beneficial ownership information: owner name, title, ownership %, TIN, address, and date of birth. If any ownership interest of 20% or greater in the applicant business belongs to a business or other legal entity, lenders will need to collect appropriate beneficial ownership information for that entity. If you have questions about requirements related to beneficial ownership, go to https://www.fincen.gov/resources/statutes-and-regulations/cdd-final-rule. Decisions regarding further verification of beneficial ownership information collected from new customers should be made pursuant to the lender’s risk-based approach to BSA compliance.77 Questions 21 – 25 published April 13, 2020.Question: SBA regulations require approval by SBA’s Standards of Conduct Committee (SCC) for SBA Assistance, other than disaster assistance, to an entity, if its sole proprietor, partner, officer, director, or stockholder with a 10 percent or more interest is: a current SBA employee; a Member of Congress; an appointed official or employee of the legislative or judicial branch; a member or employee of an SBA Advisory Council or SCORE volunteer; or a household member of any of the preceding individuals. Do these entities need the approval of the SCC in order to be eligible for a PPP loan? Answer: The SCC has authorized a blanket approval for PPP loans to such entities so that further action by the SCC is not necessary in the PPP program.Question: SBA regulations require a written statement of no objection by the pertinent Department or military service before it provides any SBA Assistance, other than disaster loans, to an entity, if its sole proprietor, partner, officer, director, or stockholder with a 10 percent or more interest, or if a household member of any of the preceding individuals, is an employee of another Government Department or Agency having a grade of at least GS-13 or its equivalent. Does this requirement apply to PPP loans? As of May 3, 2020Answer: No. The SCC has determined that a written statement of no objection is not required from another Government Department or Agency for PPP loans.Question: Is a lender permitted to submit a PPP loan application to SBA through E-Tran before the lender has fulfilled its responsibility to review the required borrower documentation and calculation of payroll costs? Answer: No. Before a lender submits a PPP loan through E-Tran, the lender must have collected the information and certifications contained in the Borrower Application Form and the lender must have fulfilled its obligations set forth in paragraphs 3.b.(i)-(iii) of the PPP Interim Final Rule. Please refer to the Interim Final Rule and FAQ #1 for more information on the lender’s responsibility regarding confirmation of payroll costs.Lenders who did not understand that these steps are required before submission to E-Tran need not withdraw applications submitted to E-Tran before April 14, 2020, but must fulfill lender responsibilities with respect to those applications as soon as practicable and no later than loan closing.88 Questions 26 – 28 published April 14, 2020.9 Question 29 published April 15, 2020.10 Question 30 published April 17, 2020.Question: Can lenders use scanned copies of documents or E-signatures or E-consents permitted by the E-sign Act? Answer: Yes. All PPP lenders may accept scanned copies of signed loan applications and documents containing the information and certifications required by SBA Form 2483 and the promissory note used for the PPP loan. Additionally, lenders may also accept any form of E-consent or E-signature that complies with the requirements of the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (P.L. 106-229).If electronic signatures are not feasible, when obtaining a wet ink signature without in-person contact, lenders should take appropriate steps to ensure the proper party has executed the document.This guidance does not supersede signature requirements imposed by other applicable law, including by the lender’s primary federal regulator.9Question: Can a lender sell a PPP loan into the secondary market? Answer: Yes. A PPP loan may be sold into the secondary market at any time after the loan is fully disbursed. A secondary market sale of a PPP loan does not require SBA approval. A PPP loan sold into the secondary market is 100% SBA guaranteed. A PPP loan may be sold on the secondary market at a premium or a discount to par value.10As of May 3, 2020Question: Do businesses owned by large companies with adequate sources of liquidity to support the business’s ongoing operations qualify for a PPP loan? Answer: In addition to reviewing applicable affiliation rules to determine eligibility, all borrowers must assess their economic need for a PPP loan under the standard established by the CARES Act and the PPP regulations at the time of the loan application. Although the CARES Act suspends the ordinary requirement that borrowers must be unable to obtain credit elsewhere (as defined in section 3(h) of the Small Business Act), borrowers still must certify in good faith that their PPP loan request is necessary. Specifically, before submitting a PPP application, all borrowers should review carefully the required certification that “[c]urrent economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant.” Borrowers must make this certification in good faith, taking into account their current business activity and their ability to access other sources of liquidity sufficient to support their ongoing operations in a manner that is not significantly detrimental to the business. For example, it is unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets will be able to make the required certification in good faith, and such a company should be prepared to demonstrate to SBA, upon request, the basis for its certification.Lenders may rely on a borrower’s certification regarding the necessity of the loan request. Any borrower that applied for a PPP loan prior to the issuance of this guidance and repays the loan in full by May 7, 2020 will be deemed by SBA to have made the required certification in good faith.1111 Question 31 published April 23, 2020.Question: Does the cost of a housing stipend or allowance provided to an employee as part of compensation count toward payroll costs? Answer: Yes. Payroll costs includes all cash compensation paid to employees, subject to the $100,000 annual compensation per employee limitation.Question: Is there existing guidance to help PPP applicants and lenders determine whether an individual employee’s principal place of residence is in the United States? Answer: PPP applicants and lenders may consider IRS regulations (26 CFR § 1.121-1(b)(2)) when determining whether an individual employee’s principal place of residence is in the United States.Question: Are agricultural producers, farmers, and ranchers eligible for PPP loans? Answer: Yes. Agricultural producers, farmers, and ranchers are eligible for PPP loans if: (i) the business has 500 or fewer employees, or (ii) the business fits within the revenue-based sized standard, which is average annual receipts of $1 million.Additionally, agricultural producers, farmers, and ranchers can qualify for PPP loans as a small business concern if their business meets SBA’s “alternative size standard.” TheAs of May 3, 2020“alternative size standard” is currently: (1) maximum net worth of the business is not more than $15 million, and (2) the average net income after Federal income taxes (excluding any carry-over losses) of the business for the two full fiscal years before the date of the application is not more than $5 million.For all of these criteria, the applicant must include its affiliates in its calculations. Link to Applicable Affiliation Rules for the PPP.Question: Are agricultural and other forms of cooperatives eligible to receive PPP loans? Answer: As long as other PPP eligibility requirements are met, small agricultural cooperatives and other cooperatives may receive PPP loans.1212 Questions 32 – 35 published April 24, 2020.13 Questions 36 published April 26, 2020.14 Question 37 published April 28, 2020.Question: To determine borrower eligibility under the 500-employee or other applicable threshold established by the CARES Act, must a borrower count all employees or only full-time equivalent employees? Answer: For purposes of loan eligibility, the CARES Act defines the term employee to include “individuals employed on a full-time, part-time, or other basis.” A borrower must therefore calculate the total number of employees, including part-time employees, when determining their employee headcount for purposes of the eligibility threshold. For example, if a borrower has 200 full-time employees and 50 part-time employees each working 10 hours per week, the borrower has a total of 250 employees.By contrast, for purposes of loan forgiveness, the CARES Act uses the standard of “full-time equivalent employees” to determine the extent to which the loan forgiveness amount will be reduced in the event of workforce reductions.13Question: Do businesses owned by private companies with adequate sources of liquidity to support the business’s ongoing operations qualify for a PPP loan? Answer: See response to FAQ #31.14Question: Section 1102 of the CARES Act provides that PPP loans are available only to applicants that were “in operation on February 15, 2020.” Is a business that was in operation on February 15, 2020 but had a change in ownership after February 15, 2020 eligible for a PPP loan? Answer: Yes. As long as the business was in operation on February 15, 2020, if it meets the other eligibility criteria, the business is eligible to apply for a PPP loan regardless of the change in ownership. In addition, where there is a change in ownership effectuated through a purchase of substantially all assets of a business that was in operation onAs of May 3, 2020February 15, the business acquiring the assets will be eligible to apply for a PPP loan even if the change in ownership results in the assignment of a new tax ID number and even if the acquiring business was not in operation until after February 15, 2020. If the acquiring business has maintained the operations of the pre-sale business, the acquiring business may rely on the historic payroll costs and headcount of the pre-sale business for the purposes of its PPP application, except where the pre-sale business had applied for and received a PPP loan. The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary, has determined that the requirement that a business “was in operation on February 15, 2020” should be applied based on the economic realities of the business’s operations.Question: Will SBA review individual PPP loan files? Answer: Yes. In FAQ #31, SBA reminded all borrowers of an important certification required to obtain a PPP loan. To further ensure PPP loans are limited to eligible borrowers in need, the SBA has decided, in consultation with the Department of the Treasury, that it will review all loans in excess of $2 million, in addition to other loans as appropriate, following the lender’s submission of the borrower’s loan forgiveness application. Additional guidance implementing this procedure will be forthcoming.The outcome of SBA’s review of loan files will not affect SBA’s guarantee of any loan for which the lender complied with the lender obligations set forth in paragraphs III.3.b(i)-(iii) of the Paycheck Protection Program Rule (April 2, 2020) and further explained in FAQ #1.1515 Questions 38 – 39 published April 29, 2020.Question: Will a borrower’s PPP loan forgiveness amount (pursuant to section 1106 of the CARES Act and SBA’s implementing rules and guidance) be reduced if the borrower laid off an employee, offered to rehire the same employee, but the employee declined the offer? Answer: No. As an exercise of the Administrator’s and the Secretary’s authority under Section 1106(d)(6) of the CARES Act to prescribe regulations granting de minimis exemptions from the Act’s limits on loan forgiveness, SBA and Treasury intend to issue an interim final rule excluding laid-off employees whom the borrower offered to rehire (for the same salary/wages and same number of hours) from the CARES Act’s loan forgiveness reduction calculation. The interim final rule will specify that, to qualify for this exception, the borrower must have made a good faith, written offer of rehire, and the employee’s rejection of that offer must be documented by the borrower. Employees and employers should be aware that employees who reject offers of re-employment may forfeit eligibility for continued unemployment compensation.Question: Can a seasonal employer that elects to use a 12-week period between May 1, 2019 and September 15, 2019 to calculate its maximum PPP loan amount under the interim final rule issued by Treasury on April 27, 2020, make all the required certifications on the Borrower Application Form? As of May 3, 2020Answer: Yes. The Borrower Application Form requires applicants to certify that “The Applicant is eligible to receive a loan under the rules in effect at the time this application is submitted that have been issued by the Small Business Administration (SBA) implementing the Paycheck Protection Program.” On April 27, 2020, Treasury issued an interim final rule allowing seasonal borrowers to use an alternative base period for purposes of calculating the loan amount for which they are eligible under the PPP. An applicant that is otherwise in compliance with applicable SBA requirements, and that complies with Treasury’s interim final rule on seasonal workers, will be deemed eligible for a PPP loan under SBA rules. Instead of following the instructions on page 3 of the Borrower Application Form for the time period for calculating average monthly payroll for seasonal businesses, an applicant may elect to use the time period in Treasury’s interim final rule on seasonal workers.Question: Do nonprofit hospitals exempt from taxation under section 115 of the Internal Revenue Code qualify as “nonprofit organizations” under section 1102 of the CARES Act? Answer: Section 1102 of the CARES Act defines the term “nonprofit organization” as “an organization that is described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and that is exempt from taxation under section 501(a) of such Code.” The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, understands that nonprofit hospitals exempt from taxation under section 115 of the Internal Revenue Code are unique in that many such hospitals may meet the description set forth in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code to qualify for tax exemption under section 501(a), but have not sought to be recognized by the IRS as such because they are otherwise fully tax-exempt under a different provision of the Internal Revenue Code.Accordingly, the Administrator will treat a nonprofit hospital exempt from taxation under section 115 of the Internal Revenue Code as meeting the definition of “nonprofit organization” under section 1102 of the CARES Act if the hospital reasonably determines, in a written record maintained by the hospital, that it is an organization described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is therefore within a category of organization that is exempt from taxation under section 501(a).16 The hospital’s certification of eligibility on the Borrower Application Form cannot be made without this determination. This approach helps accomplish the statutory purpose of ensuring that a broad range of borrowers, including entities that are helping to lead the medical response to the ongoing pandemic, can benefit from the loans provided under the PPP.16 This determination need not account for the ancillary conditions set forth in section 501(r) of the Internal Revenue Code and elsewhere associated with securing the tax exemption under that section. Section 501(r) states that a hospital organization shall not be treated as described in section 501(c)(3) unless it meets certain community health and other requirements. However, section 1102 of the CARES Act defines the term “nonprofit organization” solely by reference to section 501(c)(3), and section 501(r) does not amend section 501(c)(3). Therefore, for purposes of the PPP, the requirements of section 501(r) do not apply to the determination of whether an organization is “described in section 501(c)(3).”As of May 3, 2020This guidance is solely for purposes of qualification as a “nonprofit organization” under section 1102 of the CARES Act and related purposes of the CARES Act, and does not have any consequences for federal tax law purposes. Nonprofit hospitals should also review all other applicable eligibility criteria, including the Interim Final Rules on Promissory Notes, Authorizations, Affiliation, and Eligibility (April 28, 2020) regarding an important limitation on ownership by state or local governments. 85 FR 23450, 23451.17  

Your goal is to work for “Company X.” Everyone knows it. You've dreamt about working for his company forever! You read about them in the news, you know what their stock price is, and you know everything about them. There's one thing in between you and your dream company; getting an interview. You need to secure an interview before you even THINK about working there! The thought of not being invited for an interview frightens you. You love “Company X.” You'd do anything to have the opportunity to work there. All you need to do is get this interview! But how? Read on... or listen :) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/austinschlessinger/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/austinschlessinger/support

Eliminate Your Competitors & Charge Higher I believe this is something that many entrepreneurs and business owners aim to do - eliminate your competitors and charge higher. While you may think it's easier said than done, I actually found a strategy that allowed me to do just that. My name is Wilson Komala. I own an agency that earns six-figures but it didn't always start out this way. This is my story. Just like any other business, I encountered a struggle in sales and had to participate in many price wars, much to my hesitation. I didn't know what price to quote and people started negotiating, putting my business and my services down in the process. It's always the same few questions that they like to ask. "What portfolio do you even have?" "Is this guaranteed to give me results?" "I know of Company X, who is willing to charge me half the price. Why is your package so expensive?" Even if you're confident that you can deliver and have a great portfolio, people still like to ask these questions. I'm pretty sure you have gone through something similar. Even after they have signed the contract with you, they'll still make passing remarks and tell you that you're expensive. I went online to research on the big guys in the industry - Pico, Vayner media, WPP, etc, and something I picked up from Gary Vaynerchuk is that he puts out content through his personal social media. This was extremely interesting to me. I think he doesn't even have a company YouTube account. There and then, I asked myself. Why am i still posting content on my brand account, if sharing it on my personal account has a 150% increase in post reach? I decided to implement it and amazingly, I could really tell the difference. I did two types of personal branding Offline I put myself out there and did a lot of seminar workshops around the region. Most of these were pro bono or could only cover my travelling costs. After one to two years, I got invited to secondary schools and universities in Singapore to share my entrepreneurial journey. I was also involved in KOTRA, a South Korea and Switzerland funded incubator program. When I started trying to charge higher when I held seminars or workshops, no one negotiated the price with me anymore. There was very little discussion, because my portfolio speaks for itself. They did not compare me to others because I set myself apart when I put myself out there and made a name for myself. Online I curated content and shared value online as well, to build up my personal brand. I did everything from podcasts, blogs, videos and even short form content on social media. The organic content marketing was great and really attracted the kind of audience that truly needed the value I put out. I did most of these for free. Why, you ask? I did it to establish my expert status in the field. Experts aren't afraid that people will steal their content and teach it. They freely give it out and usually people always come back to me to inquire more and learn more. Then, they refer their friends to me. It has become a sustainable and automated system, and it is all because of personal branding. Kim Kardashian sells out everything she puts out, because it's got her name on it. Don't let your business speak for you. You have to speak for your business, and the business will come. Listen in to learn more! Instagram: @wilsonkomala hello@kingsmaker.co Also, get your FREE copy of ContentBox (100+Social Media Content Ideas) by joining our group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kingsmaker

I am a realist; and I know that it is not easy to always do the right thing when it comes to your money. So today I'm just asking you to stop doing the stupid stuff! You know what you are doing to waste money; especially if you took my advice in podcast# 16! There are many things that people do that waste money; things like: bank overdraft fees Buying a lot of lottery tickets (it only takes one to win) Buying furniture and appliances at Rent-to-Own places Over paying for depreciating assets Just to name a few. So how do you stop doing money wasting stuff? We will talk about it after our financial definition of the week. This week The letter “P” is for PE Ratio: PE ratio - The price to earnings ratio is a way of gauging whether a company's share price is cheap or expensive compared to similar companies in the same sector. You get the PE by dividing the share price by the earnings per share (EPS) figure. For example, Company X with an EPS of 5p and a share price of 250p would have a PE of 50. Investors are prepared to pay more for shares whose earnings they think are going to rise strongly, so demand pushes the share price up. But if the EPS doesn't rise proportionately, the company's PE will rise. So if Company X's share price rose to 400p, but its EPS remained at 5p, the PE would rocket to 80. A high PE can indicate a high-growth company, but it can also indicate that the company's earnings have taken a sudden, maybe temporary hit. Generally the PE ratio is seen as a kind of barometer of confidence in a company's prospects. Now that you are properly motivated to stop wasting money, so you can invest in low PE stocks; lets carry-on. Ok, pull out those 30 day dairy of expenses we talked about in podcast# 16. -highlight all the unnecessary spending. -Then underline the wasteful spending; this will be things you spent money on that did not add value to your life in some real way. -Ask yourself why you have these expenses, and what else you could have done with these funds. -Do the math. Multiply this amount by 12 to determine how much money you could have saved in your debt reduction, cash reserves or investment account; if you would have but the money there instead of this wasteful and unnecessary spending. It's not rocket science. Like I say on page 56 of my book “A Fool and his money” “Ignorance is bliss and costly as a mother stinker! Sooner or later people got to want to stop paying $5 for $1 worth of stuff!” Well there you have it! The bottom line is nothing will change in your life or your finances, until you are ready to commit to the change. The world you want to live in starts with you! Until next time; keep building wealth! LICENSE CERTIFICATE: Envato Elements Item ================================================= This license certificate documents a license to use the item listed below on a non-exclusive, commercial, worldwide and revokable basis, for one Single Use for this Registered Project. Item Title: Upbeat Hip Hop Vlog Item URL: https://elements.envato.com/upbeat-hip-hop-vlog-9LJB2VR Item ID: 9LJB2VR Author Username: MarbleSpace Licensee: Rico Ransom Registered Project Name: MARSHALL LETTER 17 License Date: December 6th, 2019 Item License Code: P8DU23VEX5 The license you hold for this item is only valid if you complete your End Product while your subscription is active. Then the license continues for the life of the End Product (even if your subscription ends). For any queries related to this document or license please contact Envato Support via https://help.elements.envato.com/hc/en-us/requests/new Envato Elements Pty Ltd (ABN 87 613 824 258) PO Box 16122, Collins St West, VIC 8007, Australia ==== THIS IS NOT A TAX RECEIPT OR INVOICE ====

Konrad Bergström and X Shore have set out to change the boating industry, one electric motor at a time.  Timing is everything for Konrad Bergström. So when he first got the idea for X Shore in 1996, he trademarked the name immediately, but didn’t launch the company he had in mind just yet. It wasn’t the right time. Bergström wanted to build safer boats, but he realized that the boating world was lagging behind the automobile industry when it came to details and design. Instead of forcing his dream, he chose to wait. Over a decade later, inspiration to launch his boat company struck once again, but this time the dream had become bigger. With the world beginning to fully embrace electric vehicles, he wanted to build and sell a sleek, top-of-the-line, 100% electric marine craft. “This makes actually more sense on the water,” Bergström says. “Because it’s an open area where you are getting fumes, and you are getting noise disturbance, and it’s actually taking more energy to drive in the water.” Twenty years later, in 2016, X Shore developed its first working prototype. Today, Bergström and his team are ready to change the world’s view on how boats are powered. Not only do they hope to reduce pollution and the impact on wildlife with their electric engines, but they also hope to improve the overall boating experience for the consumer. But long before Bergström would design his first boat, he started with headphones. One Journey Ends, Another Begins If you ask Bergström, he’ll say that he’s never experienced what a real job is like. He’s just experienced different ideas. From an early age, Bergström has had an entrepreneurial spirit and a knack for creativity. At just 16, he moved to New Zealand, launching a distribution company for windsurfing gear called Thule Roofracks, among other projects. However, his greatest achievement was founding Zound Industries in 2008, where he served as its president until April of 2019. While at the skateboarding fashion company WeSC, Bergström helped the brand to create a line of fashionable headphones. Wanting to take the concept one step further, Bergström founded Zound and turned it into an electronics giant, specializing in headphones and speakers. The company created many popular headphone brands such as Urbanears, and held licensing deals with audio behemoths like Marshall. During his 10 years as president of the company, they would go on to sell over 20 million products in 135 countries. Despite the strong sales, Zound and Bergström parted ways over differences on the direction of the company. “I always think that things happen for a reason,” Bergström says. “So I have moved on and I wish them all the luck. And I did build a fantastic company, so that’s never gonna go away, even if I don’t have any ownership anymore.” The separation from Zound allowed Bergström to give all of his attention to X Shore, which had gained new life in 2012 after Bergström saw the rise of Tesla and its technological advances. With the electric revolution for automobiles well underway, he felt that concept of the electric boat would also take off. “We started the electric product in 2012, and basically, I thought it was going to be easy,” Bergström says. “Looking at the internet at some lithium batteries and some engine, like, how hard can it be?” Very hard, as it turned out. Over the next four years, the team would work on the concept before completing their first working prototype in 2016. And although it took years longer than he anticipated, Bergström was glad that they went through the growing pains. “That one, by the way, looked like crap,” Bergstorm says about the initial prototype. “Sometimes, an idea on paper is very far from getting it industrialized. So it takes time, especially with such a big product, to go through all the details and find solutions that economical, so you can have the margins and survive as a company.” Let the Other Guy Build the Tech Bergström and X Shore don’t want to recreate the wheel. Rather, they just want to right the ship. With Tesla and other companies openly releasing their electric technology, Bergström didn’t feel the need to develop his own tech for boats. Sure, he’d have to develop some things on his own, but for the most part, why not use what’s already out there, he figured. “X Shore, of course, has some of its own technology,” Bergström says. “But basically, we are piggybacking on the automotive industry.” With armies of engineers grinding away on this type of technology, which is changing all the time, it made more sense to have others advance the technology and for X Shore to translate it into a marine environment. Not to mention, this approach helped their bottom line. “Instead of having like 100% of the development cost, say that we are paying like 3%,” Bergström says. “But it’s still a lot of money. … We have the first mover advantage of building a new segment, but we are not driving the technology.” The approach has also allowed X Shore to keep its staff smaller, which includes not having an in-house engineering team. That’s basically unheard of for an innovative company such as this. X Shore has partnered with automotive giants such as BMW and Rolls Royce to help find the best solutions for maximizing speed and driving range. Despite not having an engineering team in house, it doesn’t mean that X Shore is done innovating. They still have a lot of work to do in order to become a leader in the marine industry. “We spent around 50,000 engineering hours so far,” Bergström says. “And I think that we are going to have to spend another 50,000, so it’s a total of 100,000 engineering hours.” Next Up Bergström is excited to start selling boats and shipping them, starting sometime next year. More importantly, he’s ready to bring more awareness to X Shore, which includes unveiling the third generation of its product in January. When he first started to openly share the idea of an electric boat, the reception wasn’t warm. Now he feels, the timing is finally right. Proof lies in the company’s recent investment campaign, which raised €1.5 million. “With a product like this, I needed the car electric revolution to go first,” Bergström says. “When I talked to people in 2012 and said that I’m going to do an electric boat, they are like, you are crazy. But now when we are at the tradeshow, everybody is like, oh that makes sense why didn’t anyone do it earlier.” Even if people are still skeptical about the concept, however, all they’ll need to do to become convinced is take a ride. “Once you experience the power of silence, you never go back,” Bergström says. “It’s truly amazing. Tips for Inspiring Creativity Konrad Bergström has built a career around opportunity and creativity. A founder of multiple businesses, he’s always kept his eyes open for new concepts and has kept his ideas free flowing. Since 1980, he’s created businesses that ranged from snowboarding contests to stereo headphones. Bergström now is onto his next adventure, X Shore, where he hopes to change the world of boating by making it greener and quieter. If you’re in a creative funk, here are three tips from Bergström for inspiring creativity: Be Patient Bergström initially wanted to start the boat company in 1996, so much so, that he trademarked the name X Shore before actually creating the company. Unsure of the direction he wanted to take, he waited until 2012, when after witnessing Tesla’s new technology with electric cars, he was inspired. It only was then that he knew wanted to build boats that were fully powered by batteries. If at first you don’t find the right concept you feel comfortable with, especially when it comes to creating a business, be patient. Pursue other interests, and along the way, you may get the inspiration you were looking for in the beginning. Even if it takes 16 years. But Also Be Persistent “It took me a long time on different things,” Bergström says, “But sometimes, time is what you need because when you can think things over and over again, it does make you come to better conclusions, especially when you work in design.“ X Shore launched its first working prototype in 2016, nearly four years after officially moving forward on building an electric boat. However, just as Bergström was patient in coming up with the initial concept for the company, he was also very persistent when it came to the design and functionality of the boat. He wanted everything to be just right before releasing it to market. Look Around You Bergström was raised in a home of creative individuals. His mother was a theater director, his father was an engineer, his grandmother exposed him to nature, and his grandfather was an innovator in medicine with over 200 patents. Wherever he looked, he saw a creative role model. However, according to Bergström, you can be inspired anytime and anywhere. You don’t have to be from a family full of creative individuals. It’s more about exposing yourself to different environments, people, and settings. You just have to “change rootings” as Bergström puts it. You can draw inspiration from playing with children, products you’re buying, or even the food that you’re eating. “You just have to open your senses to make the right choices when it comes to creativity,” Bergström says. Interview by Nathan Chan, feature article reprinted from Foundr Magazine, by Nick Allen Key Takeaways The series of unconventional jobs Bergström held from a young age Why Bergström trademarked the name X Shore in 1996 but didn’t launch it for two decades How Zound Industries took over Bergström’s life for 10 years, and what ultimately led him to walk away from the company Why Bergström decided to let the electric car revolution play out first The growing pains that came with creating a working prototype for electric boats How X Shore piggybacks on the automotive industry Bergström’s plans to start selling and shipping X Shore boats in 2020

The #AI Eye: NVIDIA (Nasdaq: $NVDA) Premiers Video Games with Real-Time Ray Tracing and Jumio Partners with NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) Company X-Sight Marketplace

The #AI Eye: NVIDIA (Nasdaq: $NVDA) Premiers Video Games with Real-Time Ray Tracing and Jumio Partners with NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) Company X-Sight Marketplace

The #AI Eye: NVIDIA (Nasdaq: $NVDA) Premiers Video Games with Real-Time Ray Tracing and Jumio Partners with NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) Company X-Sight Marketplace

The #AI Eye: NVIDIA (Nasdaq: $NVDA) Premiers Video Games with Real-Time Ray Tracing and Jumio Partners with NICE (Nasdaq: NICE) Company X-Sight Marketplace

How do you define "great"? More importantly: do you and your bandmates share that definition? If not, is there someone in your band to whom you all defer on that topic? How do you make sure your band comes across "great" all the time? Paul and Dave think there's another word that helps this: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And that comes in a lot of forms. Hear your two favorite weekend warriors talk about on-stage respect, in terms of both how to share frustrations as well as how to approach the substances-on-stage issue. Dress code comes up, as it always will because, after all, music is a visual art. Or is it? Listen to find out more! Chapters/Timestamps: 00:00:00 Gig Gab 219 - July 15, 2019 00:00:44 Intro: Lots-o-Gigs! The Cocktail Monkeys out of San Francisco 00:04:57 Intro: Multi-band gigs and song lists 00:07:01 R.E.S.P.E.C.T. spells a happy band 00:07:20 On-stage Frustration “That tone doesn’t work for me” The Bowling For Soup Lesson 00:17:05 Know your vibe 00:18:53 When to talk about substance issues 00:31:50 What if someone from Company X is in the audience? 00:32:48 Dave’s Dress Rant! 00:36:17 Are you a mess? 00:37:10 The definition of “Great” 00:44:40 The Phish “laid back” attitude 00:47:29 Live Music is a Visual Art 00:50:43 Ringo Sat in with Paul McCartney! Drummer’s Resource with Greg Bissonette 00:53:42 GG 219 Outtro

This episode is brought to you by Hiretual. First up in the news…. According to the Wall Street Journal Facebook agreed to overhaul its lucrative targeted advertising system to settle accusations that landlords, lenders and employers use the platform to discriminate. The far-reaching settlement compels Facebook to withhold a wide array of detailed demographic information — including Zip codes, gender and age — from advertisers when they market housing, credit and job opportunities.   Facebook said the new platform will also prevent advertisers from discriminating based on sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, and other characteristics covered by state and local civil rights laws. Upwork, the largest freelancing website, recently announced Upwork Plus, its first packaged service offering tailored for small businesses. To help growing businesses connect with and secure top-tier freelance talent, Upwork Plus features on-demand support, greater visibility for job posts, dedicated dashboards for collaboration, and access to an exclusive community board devoted to Upwork Plus customers. Feature include On-Demand Support from Account ManagersPlus provides clients with access to 24/7 customer support and additional on-demand support from account managers to help users post their first job or scale their hiring. Customers can also opt-in for talent specialist services that can assist in sourcing and highlighting top freelancers. Greater Visibility through Promoted Job Posts and Client BadgeUpwork Plus customers will receive a monthly Featured Job, which flags a post as a top job in search results and includes the post in a digest that is sent to Top Rated freelancers. Plus clients will also receive a client badge on the freelancer’s search results page to help attract talent. Collaboration Across an OrganizationWith a dedicated dashboard, Plus customers can track program efforts across an organization all in one place. It also enables customers to invite colleagues onto a shared account and access collaboration and project status tracking tools. Plus Community BoardPlus customers will also have access to an exclusive community board with guides and resources to help them find success with Upwork. Learning tools and forums will allow new clients to ask questions and share tips with other customers. https://recruitingheadlines.com/upwork-debuts-new-solution-to-help-small-businesses-attract-freelancers/ NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 — Fetcher, the outbound recruiting platform that combines AI with human expertise to recruit top talent for high-growth companies, is excited to announce its latest round of funding as well as several key executive hires. In late 2018, Fetcher raised $5.4MM in an oversubscribed seed round led by Accomplice and Slow Ventures, with full participation by existing investors, Picus and Revel Partners, as well as angel investors which include Paul English(founder of Kayak), Amol Sarva (founder of Knotel) and James Joaquin (co-founder of Obvious Ventures). They’ve also brought into the organization several industry leaders to help scale their business. “With our latest round of funding, we were able to hire several outstanding executives and industry luminaries to lead our Sales, Customer Success and Operations teams,” says co-founder and CEO, Andres Blank.  “We’re also focused on using our funding to scale our Data Science and Engineering teams to ensure amazing product innovations for our customers.” Fetcher reimagines recruiting by utilizing AI to automate the recruiting process for large and small companies alike. There are currently 7MM open jobs in the US and Fetcher’s success rate in recruiting  top-tier, diverse candidates for those openings is garnering the attention of high-growth organizations like Peloton, Paperless Post, Equinox, AppNexus, Bridgestone and DigitalOcean, which rely on Fetcher to help grow their teams. https://recruitingheadlines.com/outbound-recruiting-platform-fetcher-raises-5-4-million/ MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and SEATTLE, March 20, 2019 — SOURCECON — Hiretual, the leading provider of AI-powered enterprise software for passive candidate sourcing and recruiting, today announced the launch of Intelligent Talent Pipeline™, a consolidated  talent pipeline for the enterprise – a market first. Hiretual’s Intelligent Talent Pipeline consolidates and fuses all talent pools – combining data from a company’s internal systems with passive candidate sourcing data from the open web – to automatically deliver the best fit candidates to a company’s hiring pipeline. “Talent acquisition to date has been very transactional, with candidates going from job posting to hire. The Hiretual Intelligent Talent Pipeline creates an intelligent, closed loop system that continuously learns and gets better, constantly rediscovers, and actively integrates with all other enterprise functions within HR,” said Steven Jiang, CEO and co-founder of Hiretual. “The launch of Intelligent Talent Pipeline delivers the ‘Holy Grail’ in recruiting technology for HR teams, transforming talent acquisition from data-driven to intelligence-driven.” How Intelligent Talent Pipeline works Company X posts a job they want to fill on their career site via their ATS (i.e. Taleo, Jobvite, ADP, Workday, etc.), which posts the job to places like LinkedIn, Indeed and Monster. Company X is then awash in applications – even more so if they are a well-known brand. Many of these applicants are high quality, but unfortunately not currently qualified for the position. Hiretual’s AI-matching engine automatically screens the incoming stream of applicants in real-time, and delivers the best fitting applicants for the role to Company X’s ATS (Applicant Tracking System) – while automatically screening out and delivering applicants who are not qualified for the current role to a passive talent pool. This automation saves significant time and increases the quality of the applicant pipeline in Company X’s ATS by ten-fold. AUSTIN, Texas—Indeed, the world’s #1 job site, announced today that job seekers can now proactively take skills-based assessments and add the results directly to their Indeed Resume. This new feature helps job seekers stand out by highlighting their qualifications to employers, allowing hiring managers to more easily identify candidates who have the right skills for their open roles. “Assessments allow job seekers to show employers they have the skills a job requires in a way that their work history or educational background may not,” said Raj Mukherjee, SVP of Product at Indeed. “We believe this is an important step to providing a more holistic view of a job seeker’s capabilities and to help to reduce bias in hiring and to focus on what matters most – skills.” Resumes alone do not offer the full breadth of a candidate’s capabilities. Assessments help employers find and evaluate candidates based on their skills and abilities while also giving job seekers a way to demonstrate their qualifications when applying for jobs. https://recruitingheadlines.com/indeed-adds-assessment-results-to-online-resumes/ HiringSolved will be launching and showcasing the public beta release of the highly anticipated PROPHET II sourcing tool to sourcers and recruiters at SourceCon in Seattle. PROPHET II is an exciting update to the original PROPHET, combining millions of records and billions of data points with HiringSolved’s award-winning AI-based search, matching and collaboration features to make it easier for recruiters to find talent from the open web. PROPHET II features include: Open Web Data: Instantly search across millions of people with billions of data points including social data, contact information, web sites and more. Predictive search: Automatic title and skill expansion with autocomplete search suggestions. Resume match: Users can upload a resume and PROPHET II will automatically build a list of potential candidates with qualifications similar to that resume. This instant matching feature uses HiringSolved’s advanced candidate-to-candidate matching models to perform a pattern based search with no other user input. RAI: Access to HiringSolved’s Recruiter AI, the powerful voice assistant that can be used to conduct searches and boost diversity. HiringSolved’s Diversity Search technology: Diversity of people leads to diversity of ideas, which fosters innovation, creativity, and success. PROPHET II provides insights into the diversity of a current search result or candidate list, helping organizations find the best and most diverse talent with advanced automation. https://recruitingheadlines.com/hiringsolved-set-to-release-prophet-ii-sourcing-tool/

ITW:S1E25 - Canadian Cannabis advocate, award winning CEO and now President of Company X out of Switzerland, Clint Younge joins Ben, Bubba and Efrem to share his fascinating story about he got into the weeds.  Find Clint on Instagram @clintyounge

Chinese tech company caught lying, again.  Listen in as I describe how they misrepresented their product and what the US did about it. Announcements from Apple.  Yea - I was a bit underwhelmed.  I will discuss why I think that the announcement unveiled just incremental improvements. Do you use Cloud products in your business?  I will explain why you must not just trust that they all know what they are doing and what you need to do to protect the information they store for you. Help me, Help you!  I want to know what information you need to increase your security and protect your business. It's going to be free to Freeze your Credit! I will tell you about the bill President Trump signed to prevent these Credit Reporting Agencies from charging for this service. Craig is putting up a new insider site (Yes, it is free, but you have to sign up)  On it will have all his special reports that he puts out and you will be the first to get them. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 09/15/2018 New Announcements from Apple. Huawei Lies, Again, Free Credit Freezes. Don't Trust the Cloud to be Secure.  Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Good Morning, everybody. It is time for another session. here Tech Talk with Craig Peterson. You know, I was looking on my Amazon Echo for my radio show and I was able to find it. I found the podcast and then the next day I couldn't, I don't know what's going on out there. But, hey if you are listening to my podcasts, please let me know. Let me know what you think! I'd absolutely love to know because I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to put more time into these radio shows. Maybe, we'll go back to an hour. We'll see how things end up going here on these same stations. But, anyhow, today we are going to talk about a couple of things. First of all a cyber attack. We'll kind of run through the anatomy of a cyber attack. Would your company handle it better, than maybe what happened here? We have a real live company we'll be talking about. We're also going to be talking about Black Hat and DEFCON these are Cybersecurity experts. They've got some great tips on how to protect yourself. Freezing and unfreezing credit. You know that was a huge problem when we had a massive massive breach of all of our personal information over at Equifax. That breach about a year ago now. So, should we be able to do it for free and a whole lot more. By the way, if you are a company and you're using Amazon to do processing or store data. We've got a massive leak to tell you about. Oh, I got to mention Huawei again, because somehow they seem to be making it to the news almost every week. So, here we go. You're listening to Craig Peterson.  [00:01:44] Ok. So, first up let's talk about Huawei, this is a company that has been hammered and nailed and nailed and hammered and hammered and hailed by the government, recently. In fact, they complained a lot about it, bitterly, for a good reason, I think. Although, you know, if I was in their position I'd complain too. Don't get me wrong. They should have been hammered by the government with what they apparently were doing. The allegations are that while Huawei was actually sharing their data their information with the Chinese People's Liberation Army government officials. So, they were sharing all of this stuff about locations of troops, conversations and e-mails and everything, which is just a terrible thing. And so we, of course, advise people don't use Huawei. That the company, by the way, is spelled H U A W E I. So I've heard it pronounced all kinds of different ways but the correct pronunciation is a WAH WEI. Well. You're going to love this one. They got caught again, Huawei. This time they were caught and this isn't the first time they've been caught doing this. You know, this week Apple, of course, had their big announcement and they announced some new phones with some really, if you ask me, incremental features, nothing terribly exciting, nothing that's going to make me want to run out and buy one of these phones. [00:03:17] If you are almost a professional gamer using your iPhone, if you're using it for all kinds of video games and maybe virtual reality and enhanced reality and all these different things, well then maybe you want to go and get one. Other than that, I'm not so excited about it. They have introduced, Apple did back and the iPhone 7 days for the plus phones a whole new camera subsystem that included a very, very cool chip that was just dedicated to figuring out pictures and Apple calls it machine learning. And, I think they're overblowing that term. I certainly wouldn't classify it as machine learning and, in fact, they got caught, Apple. I was sitting there watching them, at least, part of the presentation this week and they were just out and out and lying about stuff. Lying. For instance, the new camera allows you to change your depth of field, after you've taken the picture which is a phenomenal feature, in other words, you can change the background and how In Focus are out of focus it is. And they lied about it. They said this is the first camera ever to do this and I'm sitting there saying wait a minute I've got a camera that's four years old. It's called a light field camera.  [00:04:35] And I've been taking pictures like that for years and years where after the fact I can go in and I can change the depth of field. I can put everything in focus or certain things out of focus. I can even move the focus point around afterwards, which is more than it looks like this new iPhone can do. So, you guys quit your misrepresentation, and they did a couple of other things too that they said they were the first, and they just weren't. I'm starting to wonder about Apple now in so many ways. So anyhow, one of the things that they announced the big deal there was this new lens system that they have on the new iPhone and the new intelligence, machine learning which, again is not machine learning. They're using a very, very fast little chip in order to figure out things like where is a person's face where their eyes are, get rid of the red eye, automatically, let's do all these different things. And that's really cool. I love it. OK, don't get me wrong about that. If you want a phone that has a great camera then, wow. I don't think you're going to go wrong with this new iPhone and the camera that's built into it. Huawei, however, was caught again, using a professional DSLR to take the pictures. And this is kind of cool, because the woman who was in these pictures, the actress who was supposed, you know,  taking candid pictures, her boyfriend was there with his arms stretched out and taking a snap, snap.  [00:06:13] There you go. And it showed our little box around her face as the cameras recognizing her face and is focusing on it. Well, this actress's social media posts revealed what was really going on. She posted a picture, that showed her sitting there with the other actor. So, the guy has his arm extended with nothing in his hand, right because he's supposed to be holding this Huawei camera, nothing in his hand. She's sitting there next to him posing like she's supposed to be, posing and in front of them, is a guy with a professional camera. The whole idea behind the ad campaign is look at how great our Huawei camera's are and we can't make the background blurred just like Apple, would kind of basically, right. And, in fact, it wasn't. It was a professional camera, he had set the depth of field. You know you adjust the aperture, you make sure the lights right, you do all of that sort of stuff. They were lying, Huawei out and out lying. [00:07:13] Faking the picture, at least Apple isn't faking the pictures that they're showing us, including they showed us a picture that was on the cover of Time magazine taken with an iPhone, a beautiful picture. They had just done some amazing things. Now this is not the first time while way's been caught faking a smartphone photo I'm sure it will be the last because they did it before and what was the reason that they gave. What did we always say? It wasn't, Yeah, Yeah, Faked it. They're not admit that, right. So, what Huawei says, this Chinese firm, is ah, we were just showing the type of picture you might want to take with the selfies on our Huawei smartphone, Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I'm sure that you weren't trying to convince people that your camera is as good as a three to four thousand dollar DSLR camera body. Yeah, that's not what you doing. Yeah. Well, you know I've been complaining about Equifax and we've been producing a dark Web reports where we go when we do searches and stuff for people's information. And we've been doing that for about six months now. We offered it to people right after the Equifax breach and we're thinking about maybe doing something like that for businesses, which would be really nice, right. Wouldn't it be nice to know if your business data, Has been stolen, right?  [00:08:48] Wouldn't it. Wouldn't that be nice. I would think it would be nice. So, we may do that in the future. Keep an eye out. We've got a few things going on. And by the way make sure you check your e-mail from this morning because not only are all the articles from today in there, but I'm going to be sending out some e-mails. I really want your feedback. And you know the only way that I know what you want to is, via that feedback you can go way back in my history and I back in the 70s mid 70s was the first time I designed a computer. Actually, it was right around 1972 or three. And I designed and implemented a computer. I made a little computer that would play a simplified game of chess back there in 73 and then I went on to run data centers and be one of the first people on the internet quite literally helping to develop the protocols and implement them for them for a lot of companies. In fact, some of my code I wrote is probably still in use today. I know Apple used to use some of the code I wrote, as did Microsoft, in fact, I helped to develop the Microsoft operating system NT and I wrote to a lot of the audio subsystem and also some of the network subsystem for that.  [00:10:03] But, I've been very involved in the Internet, since the early 1980s and I've been well known for working with big companies and helping them to do large implementations. Frankly since about the early 90s, My business has all been about the networks that are necessary, the machines, the data centers and even the software necessary to run a big Internet installation. All right. I was well-known for developing Big Yellow. Do you remember that? Remember Superpages? Actually Superpages is still around, although I'm sure they've completely rewritten it by now. So, that's where I've been well-known for. And then more recently since I was attacked in 93 and fell victim to hackers back in 1993 and it's a while ago now, Wow. Twenty five years ago. Since then I've also been known for security because I started studying security very closely. Electronic security physical security up to the point where today I am providing webinars for the FBI Infragard program. So, I'm trying to disseminate this information. Like I've been trying to do on this radio show for a very long time. So I've been known for a lot of things over the years, and it's kind of changed as the marketplace has changed and as people's demands have changed. So, what I'm looking to find out from you guys is what else can I do for you? I've done all of this for big companies. [00:11:36] I've done it for small firms, as small as you know typically about 20 employees. But I've done it for smaller, as well, right now I'm working with some accounting agencies that just have a handful of employees, including one that's just mainly the accountant and his assistant. But, what can I do for you? You think about all the stuff that you know you're dealing with everyday when it comes to security you can't sleep you lose sleep at night over your business and you're concerned about losing it all. You're worried about what's going to happen if I get Ransomware? And, that's why I've got this great article about ransomware up on my site that came from ZDNet and I think you might want to have a look at that up at Craig Petterson dot com. But, what is it that I can do for you, Next? We talk about things every week. What is it that interests you? What can I do, that's going to help you? Should I put together some mini classes? Some courses? What sort of thing is going to help you when it comes to computers and security. And you know I might even go a little wider than that because I talked for, a few years ago about developing another brand that we get information out on. And I was calling business edge back at the time and the idea behind business Edge was again like my customers demand. Where they wanted to know, how can I use iPad's properly? [00:13:09] How can I increase the efficiency of my employees? How can I tighten the communications channels with my vendors? with my suppliers? How can I make all of this stuff work. It's a, you know it's a problem, it's a real problem for businesses. So, if that's something that interests you, let me know. You know I've been doing this for a very, very long time and I've been helping a lot of people. Now I want to help the small businesses out there. Small businesses are the ones that are constantly being attacked. Small businesses are the ones that don't have the resources to be able to deal with this. So, if you're involved with a small business, send me an email. Just me at Craig Peterson dot com or you can text me as well straight to my phone 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. We'll give those out again a little later. What can I do to help you? What can I help you with on this radio show, that's going to take you to that next level? What's going to help you to be able to sleep at night? What's going to help stop those arguments with your spouse, over the business and all the time you've been putting in? Then heaven forbid you get hacked and your data is stolen and now you're hung out to dry.  [00:14:25] Right. Because it's out there. What are you going to do about it? What can I do to help you? So, let me know I'm going to be sending out an e-mail with a brief little poll in there. You're not going to take it 20 seconds. But I'm going to list some topics that people who listen to the radio show, people who listen to the podcast, have asked me about. So, that you can just kind of click which one you think might be best and then another question that just kind of a qualification would you prefer a short course that's just straight to the point where you know hey Craig I know you know a ton about this way more than I do, I don't want the background, I just want the steps. What should I do? Is that what you're looking for? Is that what you're looking for on the radio show? Or are you looking for more of course, You know I have to understand this little bit more. I know in my life I've had many times I've hired people and, of course, hundreds. But when I'm hiring those people I've found I've had in the back of my mind I don't know enough really to evaluate this person. I don't know enough about sales that was kind of the first thing and so I learned about sales I really studied up on sales before I could really confidently hire a salesperson because in my estimation I've been I've been screwed before, right where people came in and they sold me a bill of goods and then they didn't deliver.  [00:15:50] Same thing with marketing. And I have been a student of security. I told you that already now a serious student for over 25 years. So, it's a very, very big deal. And I want to your opinion. Where do you want to fall on that line? And I've had these free webinars before, I'm planning on doing more. In fact it's my 25th anniversary I'm going to do a 25th anniversary series here, coming up probably in October. Twenty five years since I got hacked the first time I mean hacked not just a virus, I mean hacked. So. What? What can I do for you? So, keep an eye out for that. Let me know what you think and what's going to be beneficial to you? That's really, you know the most important thing. and you can always just e-mail me at Craig Peterson dot com. That's of course P E T E R S O N dot com. So, on Peterson dot com or text me if you have your smartphone handy. Just 8 5 5 3 8 5 55. Fifty three. All right. Next up  [00:17:02] A little rockabilly, I guess you might call that, music. I love this we've had the same bumps now for over a decade here on the radio show.  [00:17:08] But, oh well. We've got some new ones coming and I'm already using a new one at the beginning of the show. If you were a victim of the Equifax hack, you know what a pain it was. Because this Equifax data breach that was over a year ago required you to start doing more serious credit monitoring. And Equifax themselves wanted to charge you for the credit monitoring. They still do. And they said, Do you remember this if you went to their Web site and said Yeah I want to know if I've been hacked and they say you've been hacked and they said hey we'll give you free credit monitoring. But, in order to get the free credit monitoring from Equifax you had to agree to not sue them. To not be part of a class action suit. 145 million people's personal information was stolen from them and they wanted to charge you to keep an eye out in case somebody out there stole your identity you know stole the money from your bank account, right. Nothing big, right, no big deal, no big deal. Well, credit freezes can be important if you know your data has just been stolen. And that's one of the things that I tell the people that were doing the dark web searches for, right. If there is a change and we'll tell you if there's been a change if there has been a change in your data out there on the dark web. Now's the time to look at a credit freeze, an important thing. So, it's become harder for identity thieves to apply for loans or lines of credit.  [00:18:44] If you have put in place, a credit freeze. Well now, the Trump administration has put something into effect it's called the Economic Growth regulatory relief and consumer protection act. It does many things, but starting September 21st consumers can freeze and unfreeze their credit without paying a fee. Isn't that amazing. So, this is going to be really, really good. Only about 2 to 3 percent of Americans had a credit freeze in place at the time of the Equifax hack. Now, remember they stole pretty much all of the information about every person of, you know, adult age who had credit, they stole it. But just about everyone in the U.S. you know it's like almost 100 percent of the population of the adult population. And after the theft occurred it was estimated that maybe 10 percent may be as much as 20 percent of American consumers actually put a credit freeze in place. So, removing these financial barriers which cost about five to 10 bucks every time you put a freeze in place or an unfreeze in place it was five to ten bucks maybe now that they have to give it to you for free. Consumers will start doing that. I think it's important. I'm really glad that some of the crazy restrictions that were put in place back in 2008, are being removed as well. Again, I think mobility for consumers is important. Transparency is important. And hopefully we'll end up with more of that, as we go forward.  [00:20:33] Now this next thing, this is kind of interesting if you're a business person.  [00:20:41] Now, you know as a business person a lot of services are moving to the cloud and it shocks and amazes me how many times you go into a business and they're using a cloud service they don't realize there's a cloud service, right. So, they've had accounting software from company X forever and now Company X instead of going to a local server you go to a web browser in order to be able to get the data from Company X. Well, that is a cloud service now. Now, Company X is probably not really good at running a data center. So, what is Company X do in most of the cases Company X goes to Amazon. Now, there's other options it might go to Microsoft and Azur there. IBM has called services a lot of different places have called services that are out there and you know that's all well and good but is saving them money really worth it.  [00:21:42] And here's why. Here's the problem I'm seeing. We go into a business and the first thing we typically do is what we call RI report. This is a risk intelligence report. So, we'll go ahead and we'll scan all of their computers for data that if it were stolen would cause them to get fined or even face criminal prosecution. That's a big deal right. It's a very big deal and now we have different types of risk intelligence reports will do this for HIPAA. We'll do it for accounting. We have them available and we just ran some for GDPR which is the new European standards. So, we have all of these different types of risk intelligence reports because you need to know what data is on your machines that might be at risk. So, we just did one this week for a company and it's an accounting firm. Now we found a few things that you might expect in accounting firms like Bank account information and other things. We found credit card numbers, we found personally identifiable information on their computers but they were using a cloud service and they were saying hey listen no, no, no, wait a minute we're using the cloud service. We don't have a server on site anymore running their database.  [00:23:05] We don't have a server on site anymore where we're holding on to this client information. It's up in the cloud. It's now the responsibility of that cloud service vendor. Let me straighten out a few things in everybody's mind here. First of all it is not their responsibility, unless you have an explicit agreement with them that passes the liability onto them. And I've got to tell you most people don't have them, if you want a copy of an agreement like that. Let me know, I'd be glad to send you one we have them. But any of your service providers, whether they be a managed services company taking care of your computers or break-fix shop or in this case a cloud service provider, you need to have these business contracts in place that helps make them liable. But that's not where the problem was this week. The problem was we found that their Web browsers were using caches, which is true for almost everybody out there. So, when you go to a Web page have you noticed the second time you go to the Web page it loads that much faster? Have you noticed that with some of these web pages it loads a lot faster and in some web pages it's almost instantaneous. Well, a lot of that is because of the cache your browser cache. [00:24:32] So, in the browser cache at these businesses who were using cloud services we found personally identifiable information the caches were not being wiped. So, even though they thought they didn't have the data there, it was on their local computers. They did not have the proper agreements in place with their cloud services provider and they got nailed. In fact, just this week a company left terabytes of data exposed on Amazon. They were providing a cloud service and they had no idea what they were doing. They didn't know enough. They had no idea they had terabytes of clients personal information available online. So bottom line be careful, if you have questions if you like a copy of the contract, let me know. Be glad to just send it to you and then you can take it to your attorney and get it all worked out so that all the details are correct and let me know what can I help you with? Send me an email. I've been doing this for years.  [00:25:39] Decades literally. What should I do? What's your my next product to be? What should I buy next coaching call be on? What are you interested in/ E-mail me at Craig Peterson dot com with any comments, any questions or just text me directly. 8 5 5 3 8 5 55 53. All right. Take care. Have a great week ahead. And we will be talking with you. And next week it's going to be a best of. But you know these shows are all great. What can I say? Take care, bye-bye  --- Related articles: Are You Using A “Cloud Service” For Your Business? Huawei Has Been Fined $1.2B By The US Black Hat And Defcon Cybersecurity Experts Share Tips On How To Protect Yourself It Will Soon Be Free To Freeze (And Unfreeze) Your US Credit Report  New Ransomware Arrives With A Hidden Feature That Hints At More Sophisticated Attacks To Come How To Protect Yourself Against A Sim Swap Attack CYBER-ATTACK! Would Your Firm Handle It Better Than This? --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

EP129 - Amazon Q1 Earnings Hot Take This episode is a hot take of the Amazon Q1 2018 earnings Amazon Q1 Earnings Highlights $51b, which is a 43% y/y increase - 39% constant currency,  27% ex- Whole Foods NA was up 46% y/y which drove $1.1b in profits (26% ex WFM) Intl was up 21% constant currency and lost $622m  AWS had a material acceleration up 48% y/y constant currency and profits were $1.4b Amazon Prime fee increasing to $119 (20% increase) Marketplace  52% 3P by Unit sales 3P Growing at 60% (constant currency) JMP GMV analysis-> 1P - $31b / 3P - $69b = $101B GMV Wingo GMV estimate -> 1p - $37b/ 3p - $66b = $103b GMV   Amazon Ads - $2B quarter 132% y/y growth (72% y/y growth before accounting change vs. 60% last quarter) Increasing possible Amazon becomes first $1 trillion dollar company Bezos Annual Letter 100M Paid Prime Members (likely 60M in N.A vs. 124M Households) Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 129 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Monday, April 30th 2018. Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. http://jasonandscot.com New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 129 being recorded on Monday April 30th 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot:  [0:39] Jason and welcome back Jason and Scott show listeners. [0:45] Will Fox tonight we want to focus on some Amazon news because there's been a lot of really big amazon news that his hit the wire in the last week or so and we've been. Bisley publishing are shoptalk interviews and wanted to interrupt the flow of those coming out so you get something a little more timely here and so that you know how to, did Justice Amazon news and think about what it means for your business Jason wants to kick it off. Jason:  [1:12] Yeah so two big events that we're going to talk about tonight early last week, Jeff Bezos released his annual shareholder letter and as we talked about several times on the show this something that he publishes every year he publishes one for the current year and he republish is the first one he wrote which is. 97 if I'm remembering right is that. Scot:  [1:34] That is correct. Jason:  [1:35] Ding ding and highly recommend you read the 97 one if you haven't, what will you talk about that a little bit later but then later in the week Amazon did their earnings announcement and tons of interesting things from both events so that's what we want to talk about tonight. Scot:  [1:57] Yes we're going to jump into the earnings let's look at the high-level and then we can kind of dig in so one thing that's kind of interesting is there's a new accounting standard coming out I know you're excited about this Jason. Jason:  [2:10] Oh my god I've been like my family have been on pins and needles for months waiting for this. Scot:  [2:14] It's a sit-down folks it's a it's a big one buckle up and so the. I know this because I am involved to the public company but the there's a group called The General accounting standard thingy Gap, and they have come out with a new way of recognizing Revenue that's called accounting standard 606 and this is. I'm packing all kinds of businesses one example of how it's impacted Amazon is. Amazon used to take Prime subscriptions and waited heavily towards the fourth quarter because that's when I got a lot of sign ups in this standard says you can't do that you have to allocate it, equally amongst quarters you can't do weighted averaging and things like that so it causes a little chaos and in the world of looking at these kind of results because you said we have apples and oranges so tonight on the show we will. [3:06] Do our best kind of straighten that out whenever it comes up but it's interesting just for folks to be aware of cuz you'll start to see some really weird numbers coming out and if you see the 606 that's a clue that just the rules are changing under underneath it's not the company doing some kind of weird shenanigans. So that being said. Best way to come to give us a $30,000 summary of Amazon's first quarter is it was a blowout quarter so not only did Amazon exceed pretty much every Wall Street expectation and its own kind of guidance but I watch even more closely is, the growth rates and pretty much every growth rate we track here at Jason Scott show is accelerated, which is pretty impressive so they had a very strong fourth quarter so to accelerate year-over-year coming off of 4th quarter. It's just pretty impressive it just shows they've they've kept a lot of momentum I'm also you know we haven't had prime day it's just kind of a few one kind of a normal. A kind of boring quarter to be honest with you in the world of e-commerce usually it's a breather quarter but Amazon you know it doesn't take breathers they just soaked up a bunch of Cher. So [4:13] The Lucy so we're going to talk about the marketplace briefly at but then when things you want to spend a little bit of time on is the ad business ever going to jump into that and worked at the show then we have in the past. Jason wants you kick ass off with the overall results and then we'll will dig into the marketplace. Jason:  [4:33] Yeah first thing that caught my attention was shortly after their announcement I saw like a Jim Cramer segment and he called this quarter for Amazon like the greatest quarterback company ever did you. Scot:  [4:47] I did that saw that yeah. Jason:  [4:49] He may be slightly front of hyperbole but that seems like kind of a big deal. Scot:  [4:53] He is prone to hyperbole my favorite is when he famously wrote on his knuckles Duke 600. Got turns out he was right but yeah so which is Facebook Amazon Netflix Google so he watches these stocks all pretty close. Jason:  [5:12] For sure for sure answer the first time we want to talk about is the growth and before I make the big reveal let's remind listeners like what kind of growth numbers are impressive so, in most cases you hear folks talk about the typical annual growth rate for e-commerce is around 15%, inter put that in perspective. [5:37] Good a brick-and-mortar retail growth right now is maybe 4% averages like 1% so 15%. Is much faster growth. Then retail is a whole already which is kind of impressive but the 15% number actually has some controversy that comes with it so. Most of the folks that site these 15% numbers in. They vary slightly so do you know if depending on whether you're getting in an RF number or a comscore number or a drug number from the US Department of Commerce 15 could be 17 or 16 in a lot of that has to do with. Their definition of retail exactly what categories are are in or not in their number. [6:22] But most of those companies based their estimates on Raw data from the US Department of Commerce and the 10 all come in with North American grow that right around 15% and so when we look at a company crossword kind of comparing it to that 15% number, I will say that most of the companies we tracked are growing substantially faster than that 15% in it. [6:46] Kind of throws that 15% in doubt you know it's so for example Amazon alone is. Right around 50% of all e-commerce you know arguably a bigger percentage of the growth some of the other big retailers Walmart and Target. Best Buy you know if all of those huge companies are growing at north of 15% it's it's actually hard to figure out how you land at 15%. In there there are some Economist that you know fine fall in the Department of Commerce is methodology for tracking e-commerce a also. I'll just throw that out there for your consideration but that being said. Amazon q1 number was 51 billion in Revenue which is a 43% year-over-year increased so. What you dramatically above that 15% if you take out currency fluctuation that's 39% it at the constant currency if you take out the Whole Foods acquisition they grew at 27%. In that the thing I like to remind people is usually we talk about. The biggest players in the industry and then we talked about the fastest growers in the industry so usually you're talking about you know. Company X maybe it's Walmart you know what they say the hugest percentage of the, the retail market and then you're talking about Warby Parker is the fastest growing or so it's it's extremely rare and you know frankly scary. [8:22] When we talked about Amazon in in eCommerce and we talked about them has both the the dramatic market leader and. One of the very fastest Growers. [8:35] So one thing I always like to remind people like whenever you see these kind of numbers you always get someone in the room pointing out that hey that's great but like, you know it's easy to grow when you're not profitable in your you're sort of buying buying market share and you know so there's this common diatribe that that. Amazon is funded by eight of us and now maybe the ads and that the the core retail part of their business isn't profitable. And I would really encourage people to sort of update their they're thinking on that there's unit significant evidence that most parts of the the retail business and mature markets. Are profitable their operating income this year this quarter increased 92% to 1.9 billion in the first quarter so if you back in the math. The. The bulk of that that growth came from the business in AWS so it is fair to make the argument that, those are the the fastest growing businesses in contributing the most to the revenue but you know remember the Jeff Bezos, always talks about revenue and profitability not being the the the, key success criteria and the fact that free cash flow is really wet at Amazon's trying to optimize for free cash flow bassist the the retail businesses is like the majority contributor to their revenue. Scot:  [10:06] Yeah that's a good point. And the reason free cash flow is more miserable is because it's cash right and you pay stockholders back in cash not operating income operating income is an accounting. Space thing that, importing a lot different businesses but it's really hard and Amazon's business for it to matter because you have all these rules that spread Revenue out even though you got the cash and then they also spread out cappex to appreciate it so, I really kind of distorts what's going on so FCF is a better way to look at Amazon and how they're in the business so it's when you look at that free cash flow came in at 7.2 billion best down from 10.1 a year ago, but it's not down because when operating reason it's because. What you have is you have total free cash flow you subtract out Capital Investments and then you're left with kind of net free cash flow 7.2 this year q1 is down from the 10.1 last year. But if you take out the Investments they're making and quote-unquote your property and Equipment purchases and I'll talk about that in a second the gross. Freak Ashley was 18 billion and then they've invested. 10.9 billion and capex this quarter so we kind of say yourself you you made this point earlier you know if they're so big and they continue to grow how do they do that they are still investing at a just tremendous clicking other taking about. No more than half of that free cash flow and investing it back into growth and that's that's pretty crazy no not many businesses I'm not an expert on Walmart but I think they. [11:41] They're probably dusting I would imagine 10 to 15% into growth and hear Amazon's ingesting like 50% of free cash flow into into growth and you know where that and it's out what is that it's a lie. Buying rights for movies and things for the streaming that's a small part of it the two biggest chunks are going to be equipment for the cloud computing and fulfillment centers you know they they continue to build fulfillment centers that just on Norma's clip they're building out. Prime facility in CVG you know so just amazing amount of investment in infrastructure they're making to keep this business growing at the pace it's growing up. [12:20] A year ago that that same kind of investiture. What's 7.4 billion say ramp that investment up from 7.4 billion to 211 billion a year of a year so that. [12:32] Pretty sad when on capex that's why I went down your weird but it's because I think they're increasingly bullish that they can grow this business for the foreseeable future at least 2 x this rate of e-commerce which is which is. [12:42] Pretty crazy yes I'm point you do run out of. Performance tuners to build a I would imagine they continue to invest in the. Like the same day infrastructure with the planes and whatnot. Jason:  [12:56] Yeah and again all those Investments are out of long-term competitive Advantage it's a moat against everybody else. Scot:  [13:01] Yeah and at some point when they stop doing those Investments That free cash phone number in a right now if they weren't doing this investment would be 18 billion which would be. A lot of cash but if you keep going 30% you know that that number you know could conceivably get up into 30 40 50 billion dollars in free cash flow and that's why. That's how Wall Street salary this thing. Because if you look at kind of though you know the the single-digit billions that they're making an operating profit you're like wow why is this thing worth. Nearly a trillion dollars it's a free cash flow and that's what Wall Street you know it is watching and when you can see a packed free cash flow being like that it it's it makes sense to invest at the pace that while she does. Jason:  [13:45] Yeah and oh by the way they also drop 22.6 billion and 100 which is way more than any other company like way more than any tech company invest in R&D. Scot:  [13:56] Take us on into the sum of the Interior results. Jason:  [14:00] Yeah so is it a reminder like the break their revenue down into these three big lines of business that are you no material to there, their revenue so the first is North America so North America was up 46% year-over-year so that drove 1.1 billion and Prophets, without Whole Foods that's 26% year-over-year growth so pretty healthy in North America which is. Their most mature Market International was up 21% based on constant currency and they lost about 622 million on that. So you know a couple of things to know if they're that lost was actually. Much smaller than most of the analyst were forecasting for international a lot of the international markets. Are much newer in Amazon is investing to win those markets you know some of those markets India in particular is you no potentially. The biggest prize out there either India or China but India's largest perceived as like the the biggest potential consumer Market that that you know doesn't have a dominant player that already has it locked up. Like Amazon does North America or like Alibaba does China in so it it really is like the the biggest battle out there and you you wouldn't expect to be turning a profit in those kind of you know early. Investment markets at this point so the fact that that on their whole International portfolio they only lost 622 is actually. [15:35] A substantial piece of good news for Amazon. [15:39] And then the 3rd big chunk for them is AWS Amazon web services. That also had phenomenal growth That Grew at 48% based on your VR constant currency and prophets were like 1.4 billion. So you don't amazon-web-services once again 48% when you're already like the dominant market leader is super impressive. I think in the the shareholder letter Jeff Bezos talked a little bit about how. You know that Amazon really had this sort of 6-year Head Start before they had I think we called the like-minded. Competitors enter the market and so they they got this like 6 year old Vantage over everyone that they've really you know continue to keep their foot on the gas and just kind of you know take that early lead they were given and there. They're using that to keep building it and and you know so far they they haven't run out of growth opportunity there which is pretty scary and amazing. [16:47] So Saturday a business which we like to talk about a lot is there add business in it isn't yet big enough that it gets its own segment so the ads are kind of blended into those. Three buckets so there are at least they're in a 2/3 buckets in the North American International numbers. And what we'll talk a little bit more about them later but then the. The other shoes piece of news which I think it's most of the consumer a buzz this week, is that Amazon also announced a substantial increase in the price of a Prime Membership so they jacked up Prime 219 bucks a year, which is like a 20% increase for consumers. Scot:  [17:34] Yeah he had that goes into effect May 11th so if you're not a Prime member this is your chance to get it at a discount and it's it's it's interesting they're doing it now you got to presume Prime day will be sometime in early June so I think they're kind of ramping into Prime day I think they know they did have a lot of data that shows that's a big sign up time so there, third there some method to the madness on that date are you going to cancel your Prime Membership Jason. Jason:  [17:58] I am not potentially my wife and I which each one of them, for those not in the know One Prime Membership not only covers the whole household you can actually share it with five family members, and so someone silly that my spouse and I each have a Prime member but membership but you know those were these valuable assets that we both brought into the marriage and we're both love to let go of our, old old Prime memberships at work white and financially irresponsible. Scot:  [18:31] I look forward to hearing who's a subscribe and save as to be recreated. Jason:  [18:35] Yeah I as with most things I think it's pretty clear that my wife is going to win that. Scot:  [18:41] Cool let's see let's do a quick review of marketplaces so long time listener still remember that Amazon does not disclose the size of the marketplace from a GMP perspective but they do disclose one metric which is the mix between and it's a unit mix between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. so that came in at a new high of 52% to 52% of the units sold on Amazon or third-party and. [19:07] We probably said this a thousand times so I'll just run through it very quickly so Amazon's revenue for the quarter is 51 billion and the third party is counted the other. 30 greatest between 10 and 15% I use 10% to make the math easy so really when you when you. When you back into it what you find is there's a huge hidden amount of sales happening at Amazon because they only can count 10% of those sales for the third party Marketplace so the ends up that about, 67 billion of that 50 billion is revenue from the third party Marketplace multiply that by 10, her actual number so this is. I used to be the only one that would pontificate on this so when I run it to my calculator I end up with the quarter at a hundred. The first party stuff has a lower aov because most of the digital. Apps books and those kinds of things are are in first party and they have a lower aov so it it kind of. Excuse the third party tends to be higher average order value so it's. Unit wise is 52% but volume-wise were looking at almost like 66% or 64%. Third party 40% first party so that people are kind of. [20:37] Picking a part of those clues in and then figuring out so they tell you. Seller Services Revenue in inside of their is FBA fees as well as third-party fees so if you make some educated guesses you can do something so one of the one of the Alice JMP, baseball schiano's pick this out there all around the same range they came in at 1 p.m. 31 billion third party at 70 billion so a total of 101 the right in the ballpark of where it where I've been guessing which is good so. The punchline of this is Amazon feels like a 200 billion dollar pastry Taylor but there really a 400 billion dollar pastry Taylor so just in this quarter. Yeah it feels like 50 billion which is the top line but there's another 50 or 60 billion have a hidden under the mass of the ice, which is this Marketplace in we always encourage people you and I are on a Jihad to tell all the retailers about this so that they don't underestimate the the impact of Amazon I just just reading an internet retailer. They're kind of doing that they missed it at this time and that all this is frustrating what other little nugget on the marketplace side Amazon is really pushing this new functionality called Amazon Global selling they were talking a lot about it at. [21:50] Shoptalk for example this is what allows small or businesses anywhere in the globe to search Lee use Amazon Fulfillment Network and load balance globally so you could be a seller in the UK. And have a practice doing well and if you allow Amazon they will load balance it. Across Europe into China and Japan that even in the United States so they had interesting stat that. The first time I saw where they said in 2017 Global sellers sales grew more than 50%. Exodus this kind of cohort of people doing Global selling their sales grew more than 50%, and now it represents more than 25% of third-party sales on Amazon so strong to be a pretty material part as this kind of cross-border trade functionality that Amazon has now. We know at Shell visor one of the red hot pass for this is China manufacturers over to the US and then to Europe in other markets. So so Amazon is kind of got rid of all the middle men in the import world so you have these factories directly shipping product into fpa's across the globe, and that product is getting sold on Amazon so it's kind of the wish model, put on steroids and that is a huge kind of growth area but it also frustrates a lot of the sellers on Amazon because you know they're up against I'm selling a brand in microscope, and there's a Chinese manufacturer signed exact same thing out of the same Factory without a brand for half price so that it does cause a lot of lot of angst out there in the world with this this program. Jason:  [23:25] Yeah and I think it's, Rite Aid the program works crazy well I get super hard to move goods from country to Country in Legally sell them and customs and Tara sent by, it used to be that that there was a huge competitive advantage to this like relatively small pool of people that have the expertise to navigate all those systems and Amazon really takes all the complexity out of that like kids in their dorm room can now do cross-border trade which, you know what uniform was not possible and so is as more people adopt this system like, the fact that it kind of raises all tides in it it it also makes you know counterfeit product and and all those things sort of more ubiquitous we available it is a growing concern. Scot:  [24:14] Yeah. I don't think that people underestimate it's just like just kind of Fino translation so because Amazon has this a sand catalog if they take a certain widget, and translate it you know it gets translated into for five languages the next person to come sell that widget doesn't have to do the translation for just kind of say, yeah yes that's the same Mason and they get the automatic translation that's been done they get to ride on that investment so, if you're doing your website or something like that you don't get that benefit you going to translate it over and over and over again for every SKU where's Amazon gets this really nice kind of I reuse out of their catalog which is another huge benefit of this program. Jason:  [24:52] Yeah you know one thing I've never asked you know Diddy translate like the reviews or the reviews country-by-country. Scot:  [24:59] Country by country. Jason:  [25:01] Okay so they still have to build up the start of social proof in each welcome Market. [25:06] Anything else we want to talk about in the marketplaces this week. Scot:  [25:12] Dallas jumping to ads. Jason:  [25:14] Yeah so you know they have this Revenue line they call other services which we think is mostly their ad business you know what else is in other services anything meaningful Scott. Scot:  [25:27] The do some of the do a branded credit card and they do some other, they do on-site advertising so that ever tizing were talking about is a mg and a mess that tends to be 95 to 90% of the Intensive purposes it's the advertising business which is the new helping sellers promote their products. Jason:  [25:49] Got it yep and said that whole pool guy grew a hundred 32% year-over-year to 2 billion dollars for the quarter so I think that is one of the this is one of those categories that was affected by the 606 Gap. Reporting is that true. Scot:  [26:05] Yeah if you if you met that out in group a paltry 72%. Jason:  [26:09] Well then I don't know why we're even wasting their talking about it. So like this is more than one of these classic models where you know Google and Facebook are the dominant digital advertising platforms that have the bulk of the revenue and, you know Amazon it at a much more base is there for able to grow much more quickly. But 72% is is still a red-hot growth and I think they worked that's up from 60% growth last quarter so I. The pace of growth is accelerating. [26:42] And you know as a reminder for somebody games on the one of the reasons ad revenue is super exciting is. It's highly profitable like you. Much more so than been selling physical Goods you know to the extent that it successful. It's an ear recurring Revenue stream and so it's almost like a more valuable dollar of Revenue than some of Amazon's other sources of. Of Revenue in the Amazon is really quickly and merging. As kind of the the third digital advertising platform and so you know you seen a lot of buzz in the trades about it. You know when people try to analyze that number they get to a couple different places like I think I've seen some estimates in the like 5 to 6 billion dollars a year. I seen some people estimating 8 or 9 billion dollars a year for 2018 I have a feeling some of that has to do with. Whether they're looking at the old accounting of the new accounting there is some seasonality that advertising for a for a lot of these products. [27:52] The I think there is an anise out there that kind of try to forecast this Revenue out to 2023 and they got 236 billion. So that put you in the order of magnitude of Google and Facebook although you know presumably those will both be a lot bigger by. By 2023 than they are today but today Facebook said about, like just under a 50 billion dollar run rate so like 48 billion dollars so they Amazon's really able to get there that's a meaningful third competitor and that's a pretty nice, like ancillary Revenue stream for Amazon on top of all the other well-established businesses that they have. Scot:  [28:29] Yeah and we will talk about this we've been pounding this drum for probably 2 years that you know a lot of folks think this will be the third leg so that retail being one actually, marketplaces I would call the second and then AWS the 3rd and then adds the 4th you have billion dollars and then you and I have talked about, a voice like Alexa being number 5 so so I think there's kind of five legs to the store which is just not fair that you only need three but anyway that's the life of the Amazon. Jason:  [28:56] It's a very stable stool. Scot:  [28:57] It is a very stable stool and you know I said I think. It's going to be really interesting so Facebook's had some stumbles here you know, Google has some headwinds in certain areas in fact Google had a really nice quarter and they're shocked and removed much and I think a lot of it is people are starting to think when does this you know, so if Amazon is growing this business at cause 72%, when is the start to eat into Facebook and Google and it's long been an industry metric that something like 25% of Google's revenue comes from product-based terms which makes sense cuz they're you know if you kind of think about the verticals at Google you have time for a retail vertical I finance vertical Auto those kinds of things, the feels like it would be a pretty big one Facebook also and I either Superior amount of product that's advertised on Facebook we had them on the show several times talk about all the great offering they have there so it's going to be really nice to see is this wraps up. Do yo at some point there's got to be some share that gets taken and, maybe maybe the lines cross faster than we think there are if maybe if Amazon on its path that 36 billion maybe Facebook doesn't keep growing it kind of the pace it is because there's going to be some loss of share somewhere in there, I am when we at Chalmers are we talked to Brands specifically they are moving big dollars to this in a lot of it comes from your Prime. More you got more data than I do on this but a lot of it's coming out of old school media but it's coming out of Google budget some things that because they're just feeling like this is actually more miserable than the Google stuff because if you're a brand is hard to go buy Google ads because you usually have to find a retailer to do it and it's really complicated you have to trust their data and it gets really. [30:44] Really murky but if your brand you get really good data back from Amazon on exactly what's going on so so to the Brand's it feels like one of those measurable things are doing, hi the last point we we had, Jamie from Darrell on and remember he was talking about how they can actually measure offline impact of Amazon advertising because so many people are starting their product searches Amazon they saw. Stop sales at like Walmart and Costco go up when they did a very kind of isolated programming Amazon so this is a pretty interesting area of Amazon and we're keeping a close eye on it and courage to run to, to watch this because and if you haven't experimented in your business this is where I be. Putting a lot of effort heading into holiday at 18 because I think it's going to be a really big opportunity. Jason:  [31:29] Yeah for sure to so one thing I don't you mention Jamie just a piece of side news Jimmy is actually left her out and he's now running e-commerce for Keurig which is a, interesting to report having a back on the show to talk about his experience there in the near future. [31:46] In your two interesting things about advertising the. At the moment the reason that you probably don't feel like Amazon's growth coming out of Google and Facebook is because it, it is like all digital advertising is growing very rapidly as it's coming out of the traditional sort of dead tree media right so so print in intellivision and if you think about, the the traditional base advertising, your most advertising comes from Brands not retailers and they start they do two kinds of advertising like they do advertising to build awareness for the brand so they'll buy a Super Bowl at the by ad in a magazine that just says you know Mercedes-Benz cars are great or you know Bounty towels are the quicker picker-upper or whatever whatever the case may be, and the success criteria for those ads are just how many people saw. [32:41] Or maybe they'll do some study to say how many people remember our brand as a result of seeing that at rights of the the the. The outcomes of those ads are that the ad reached a person and that maybe the person remembered it. And then brands do this other kind of advertising with a partner with a retailer and what they called trade advertising and most of that advertising is like. Ads in the paper for their products you know what we call store circulars. Or even a lot of the advertising in the store the the point-of-purchase advertising is funded by manufacturers. So when you think about digital the. A lot of the Google advertising is replacing that brand awareness advertising I'm in it has the same kind of success criteria like how big was the audience that's on my Google ad, one of the things that super you know interesting and appealing about the Amazon ads are that you your success criteria is, how much good you sold rights are you you do get much lower on the funnel as people start to lose confidence in these advertising Vehicles the safe place to be is the advertising Vehicles where you can actually measure a true Roi. And so Amazon actually has a big competitive advantage over Google and Facebook and being able to quantify the value of the ads which is super interesting. But the other interesting thing is Amazon can actually draw ad Revenue. [34:12] From both of those old school models right so Amazon can get ads from the CMO at Procter & Gamble that used to buy a Super Bowl ad, an Amazon can credibly make the argument that you'll get more eyeballs on our platform then you will on the Super Bowl, but they can also get ad revenue from those trade teams that were you know historically buying store circulars in it and advertising in store at Walmart and instead get them to advertise next to the products, an Amazon and so systemically those are two big advantages over the other big digital platforms it in the long run make Amazon a real scary competitor to Amazon Facebook and Google. Scot:  [34:51] Absolutely and there's a fair amount of add load on the site. But you know if there's an auction underneath there so there's a fair amount of room to run so Google for example has had you have near the same ad load the tweet that but you know call it around the same ad load and and they continue to grow the last 10 years so so just within the current system, but but Amazon hasn't even there kind of version 1 L on a lot of their tools and they haven't even really started with video so one of the smartest Acquisitions I think Amazon did a lot of people don't pay attention to his twitch so you see all these people now that are making, there's this guy ninja he makes like $500 a month streaming fortnite and other games, well that uses switch for that and you can imagine that's a pretty interesting audience for people to monetize so there's. This really interesting things that they can do and they're also doing the Thursday night NFL so you could even say. Musterbrand let's run in NFL ad and I can sell you exact exactly how much tide you sold this ad versus just eyeballs. Jason:  [35:54] For sure which is very powerful I think that NFL deal maybe one of the main reasons they're able to get away with a hundred twenty bucks. Scot:  [36:01] Yeah absolutely. Cool last little piece on the quarterly earnings everyone Wall Street is very much a what have you done for me lately things are like good job great quarter what's coming next work so it's Amazon's practice to provide for guidance and they released their Q2 guidance, and it's going to come in at a growth rate between 34 and 42% which is 38% of the midpoint this the succeeded what all Wall Street was thinking there so, I am kind of classic Wall Street parlance it was a beat so the current quarter. [36:35] Expectations and then they race was being raised which is kind of what you want and it was a it wasn't kind of a wallet and a huge jump up kind of thing, so correspondingly you saw the stock really take a nice move and then most analysts have raised their price targets up into the socks kind of in the 1500 right now most people have raised the stock up to the highest I saw this 20/20 which was actually a, a phone number where that is that's right when they get to $20 so Scott debit over at stifel raised it up to 2020 kind of saying, county is Chester this will be the first trying dollar stock, I'm to the point we we pretty regularly about once a quarter when we do these shows we talk about this race to a trillion dollars so when you. Public companies you have a market cap and that's essentially taking the number of shares outstanding of multiplying it by the share price niggachu a market cap, use Yahoo finance or something it's already calculated for either so last time we visited this Jason Amazon was kind of going back and forth. What's number 3 and 4 with Microsoft so today if we look at this the number for company is Microsoft at a 718 billion dollar market cap. [37:47] Number three is Google at 7:06 and Amazon is now number two so this move they've had up in the stock from about a thousand to 1500 over the last. 8 months. It's beautiful up to the number to market cap company is 760 billion which is only about in a 340 billion shy of a trillion and 10% away from the lead the lead right now Apple + 838 billion. Apple is announcing tomorrow Tuesday or Wednesday there's a lot of concern around Apple there, you know we talked about the the new speaker they have you were not a huge fan of that one and, that has been kind of dud the iPhone x hasn't been blowing off shelves and they have a China problem so there could be. Because you have this kind of combination of looks like Amazon how to blow out there's a lot of concerned about Apple watch can see how they come out. But but anyway long-term if we can't think about this leading up number 5. Is Facebook at 497 think I should drop pretty considerably since this whole Russian interference thing is going to come up and in Autumn so. The the number for listeners to keep in mind is when Amazon gets to 1700 they should be in the lead and then when they get to just around that 20/20 number, they should hit a trillion dollars so it weave, I've been calling that they would be the first to get to Troy and for a couple years and it seems like that was a long shot and it's increasingly looking like it's theirs to lose so we'll see. Jason:  [39:23] How much will you personally make it they do that. Scot:  [39:26] No, Jason:  [39:31] So we mentioned in the outset that Jeff also released his annual shareholder letter so you know there's a bunch of interesting facts in that way every year but this is one huge Marquee fact that caught everyone's attention and was at, some of the big reveal and that fact is the Jeff Bezos does not know how to do a handstand. Scot:  [39:56] They're so yeah so kind of a painful personal admission. Jason:  [40:01] Yep. So he told a little personal story that involve the fact that he's going to do a handstand and after he got through that he mention that oh by the way we have a hundred million paid Prime members. Scot:  [40:12] This is a surprise cuz they've been very private about this for since Inception so I think everyone was caught off guard when they're reading the letter to see that and it caused quite a frenzy. Jason:  [40:24] Yeah I feel friend the show Jason Del Rey like predicted back in in like 2015 that he thought this was going to be the big year that Amazon Finally Revealed their prime number and so he was was only off by 3 years which is. Better than some people but so that we were talking a little bit before the show that number. [40:45] It requires a little bit of context but it certainly was in the range of a lot of the estimates, the verse folks have been making right like I mean certain order magnitude would you you call that like soda in The Sweet Spot of those estimates. Scot:  [41:01] Yeah there's so the washer guys were kind of clustered right around this hundred million number and so couple, couple things so she act all these parts would but these guys a very closely so that person why they said over so that gives us some pretty big range you know something somewhere over, I got a hundred million and one up to Infinity so there's there's a big range there but I think we can assume, you know I doubt it would be more than 110 so I think I would guess it's between 100 and 110 I don't think they would. Jason:  [41:30] He would have said over a hundred ten million if it was over a hundred ten. Scot:  [41:33] Maybe but then they're very catty to so for all I know it could be like a hundred fifty so it's really hard to guess what you guys. But that being said so if you take that hundred million and it's paid so just remind folks do see a couple free entries into Prime and if she'll does off when used to be Amazon mom's now, if wrap that up in the family program Jason was talking about we can have multiple people on a Prime account and then so it's kind of more of a household thing and then number to used to have free for students, this is largely to get their textbook business which is quite lucrative, I'm in Amazon now doing it does that to give 6 months free for students that's a very long extended trial program and then four-year discounted until they graduate. So All those programs up now pretty much converted to two paid so the only free Prime out there are people that are either in their 30-day trial or their 6-month trial with their students so it's a largely survey people and they say their Prime I think, but she can be paid maybe plus or minus 10% but but pretty small. There is a global number so most Wall Street people had, weed when you take Amazon and you want to take their Global number and parse it I usually go 6040 so 60 us 40 International which is kind of how there, their GMP goes so some example that add number at 2 billion is probably 60% us 40% International now ads are probably less developed International so I made fudge that look at 7030 or 8020 but I do think for her prime, pretty mature and all the markets so I would say that hundred mine is going to be 60 us. Jason:  [43:07] Although there are a bunch of Prime benefits that are exclusive to North America still right like grocery a lot of the digital video content. Scot:  [43:18] Video ethics National now. Jason:  [43:21] Okay the the like the prime the grocery delivery from Whole Foods is certainly unique to the US. [43:34] Okay so I'll give it to you so 60. Scot:  [43:39] But in the UK you get same-day so it's kind of. Jason:  [43:43] Yeah but that's a tiny little island that's cheating. Scot:  [43:45] There's a pretty big part of your 2. Jason:  [43:51] Oh they're not part of your anymore he didn't get the memo. Scot:  [43:54] It hasn't happened yet we're working Liam. The the one outlier is there's this company called cirp in a few what it is like consumer information research protocol and they had Amazon it 99 in the US so I think they kind of are off a bit now. you guys find out to do surveys of really small numbers in the extrapolating so they like survey 10 people in 9/2 Prime and I like well certainly 90 million people in the US have, it's not that bad but I think that's the little bit off so. You know the way to think about this I always see this like 60-70 80% of us households have Prime if you take this number and we see it 60 million there's a hundred twenty six million households in the US so this puts a right at 50%, I'm so 50% of households in the US have Prime that that feels right to me and then I think if you know if you parse that and look at demographics. Yeah if for household this is the way the Census Bureau defines it for household incomes over a hundred and twenty K you're going to look at like 80 90% penetration then as you go lower it's going to get off. Yeah down at the sub 50k it's going to be 20 30% of us households so so at that all fuels and checks out to me. Jason:  [45:08] Yeah two things are interesting to me so you crank up Prime membership to a hundred twenty bucks a year you have a hundred million page users you, start the every year with 12 billion in Revenue before you sell I think. Which is a pretty nice asset versus every other retailer on the planet that starts in zero every year with one exception which is our friends at Costco. Scot:  [45:36] Give me. Jason:  [45:40] And so I always like to compare Prime Membership with Costco so Costco has 90 million paid members in Costco is almost exclusively and I think is exclusively North America so not so there still, significantly ahead of Amazon which is interesting and just a reminder on on Costco's model, what is an oversimplification but Costco almost drives to break even on all their sales and essentially make. There their annual profit be that that Costco membership fee that they earn every year. [46:26] Inside like pretty interesting you know Costco membership is less expensive than a Prime Membership but like it's Costco members tend to skew older than Amazon members at the moment so it's kind of interesting you, you would certainly think that if you're looking for with a cap is on Prime members it's certainly not the 60 million there at now it's at least the 90 million and since Amazon has a much broader demographic than Costco. In North America. You know you can imagine it's even north of that so you know maybe one day after Amazon passes that that trillion-dollar Mark you you know we could see them. I'm in that 90 or hundred million just in North America. Scot:  [47:07] Yeah I've seen analysts do a bunch of surveys on this and there's a pretty high enough it's almost like 85% overlap of Costco and Prime members is pretty high. Jason:  [47:18] Yeah for sure and then the other interesting thing to me about crime is there was also some news it was alluded to in the shareholder letter, but the Whole Foods is actually in the process of turning off all of their existing Affinity programs and it's a pretty clear that they're going to be replacing. The the Whole Foods Affinity programs with Prime in those Whole Food stores and that's going to be. What a real interesting set of new experiences and you know another lucrative reason that that people might. [47:58] Become Prime members or at the very least retain their Prime Membership. [48:05] And with that it is happening again we've used up all our a lot of time we tried to be a little more concise for this deep. But if you have questions or you feel like Scott or more likely I got something horribly wrong we love to hear your point of view on our Facebook page so jump on over there and leave us a comment and we'll try to respond as quickly as possible. You're always welcome to reach out to us on Twitter and if you found this show useful or valuable we would certainly appreciate it if you'd spend 30 seconds and jump over to iTunes and leave us that 5-star review. Scot:  [48:42] Thanks for this five stars everyone and thanks for joining us this week. Jason:  [48:46] Until next time happy commercing.

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Do you want to embrace technology and provide your customers a better experience? Shep Hyken interviews Anthony Goonetilleke, the President of the Amdocs Product Business Group. First Up: Shep Hyken’s opening comments focus on how companies are currently incorporating artificial intelligence into their customer experience. For example, 1-800 Flowers uses GWIN, which is powered by IBM’s AI system known as Watson, to help you pick out gifts. GWIN asks you questions, you give “her” answers, and then “she” makes recommendations to you based on the answers you give. Shep says that if you are not onboard with artificial intelligence, don’t understand it, and are not at least considering AI for your business, then you may find yourself playing catch up with your competition. You want to be ahead of the game. Featured Interview: Shep begins his interview with Anthony Goonetilleke by asking if we have reached the point of HAL, the computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey? Should we be nervous or scared of that type of technology? Anthony Goonetilleke says rather than being intimidated by new technology, we need to reach the customer where they are. For too long, we have thought that if you need to interface with Company X, you should be required to use the customer service application from Company X. But Millennials and Generation Z want more convenient service on the technologies that they prefer. If they are on Twitter, they want to tweet something out. If they are on Facebook, they will want to message or post on there. When you talk about the customer experience, you can incorporate a layer of intelligence and then start adding these various channels on top. It is important to note that we don’t even know what channels will be available two years from now. But once you have the proper framework built to provide a customer experience system, adding these unique channels when they become available, should be just like adding an a la carte menu. Artificial intelligence should interact with you as though you are communicating with another human. This is because AI can know who you are, your story, and has the ability to contextually learn what’s going on. For example, if all you need to do is change your billing address, rather than calling and waiting on hold for 10 minutes to talk to a person, using AI can get you through this basic customer service interaction in a matter of seconds. Top Takeaways: • Artificial Intelligence tools are available today. What we are in the process of doing is stitching them together in the right way, to make the process seem more human. • A lot of developmental work is also being done within artificial intelligence trying to analyze customer sentiments and conversations. A frustrated customer is a great precursor to churn. The faster you can determine the frustration the better the experience will be for the customer. • Artificial intelligence won’t take jobs away from people. Artificial intelligence won’t replace humans, but it will replace many basic tasks that humans don’t want to do. About: Anthony Goonetilleke is the Group President - Chief Technologist and Head of Product at Amdocs. Amdocs is a leading software & services provider to the world’s most successful communications and media companies, enabling their digital and network transformation through innovative solutions, delivery expertise and intelligent operations. Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time. Today we'll be talking to members of the Cerius team who are experts in either hiring or placing executives in full-time, part-time or on a consulting basis. So let's meet the Cerius team. First we have Kristen McAlister, President of Cerius, next is Matt Saur, Chief People Officer, and then we have Maria Hillman and Kim Person, both Vice-Presidents of Client Solutions. Let's get right to the questions, shall we? Let’s do a rapid fire session here and each of you give me one answer to each of the next 3 questions. Things to avoid when hiring an executive. Maria, let’s start with you. Maria:                   Anyone that uses the word “I” too much and not “we”, meaning they’re not a team player. Pam:                      Excellent. Matt? Matt:                     Don’t hire somebody in my image. Pam:                      Ah yes. Kristen? Kristen:                I would like to be careful from recycling within your industry. You may have an expert in your industry but they’re just going to recycle ideas and other concepts that are within it and not bring a great outside innovative perspective. Pam:                      Great. Great answer. Kim? Kim:                       Hiring an executive that cannot talk about his or her accomplishments. Pam:                      Alright. Next one. Things to ask an executive that you want to hire? Maria? Maria:                   I would ask them, what would you do in the first 30 days on your job. Pam:                      Ok. Matt? Matt:                     What were you brought in to do on your last assignment, and what did you accomplish? Pam:                      Right. Thanks Matt. Kristen? Kristen:                Ask them about the results from their last couple of assignments or positions. Some one can’t come up top of their head. What type of numbers, what type of impact that they’ve had? Especially using numbers other than, I just increased morale. They weren’t measuring it then, and they’re not going to measure it for you. Pam:                      So you want specifics. Correct? Kristen:                I want specifics. Better have it all on the top of your head because if you don’t have it from your past, how are you going to measure it and monitor it for me, and get me results. Pam:                      Exactly. Kim? Kim:                       I’m just going to reiterate. You’ve got to talk to executives what can you do for the company, not what you can do for the executive. Pam:                      Oh perfect one. Thanks Kim. Alright next one. Company X needs to diversify its revenue stream. What type of an executive should they be looking for? Expertise, duration of contract, etc. Maria:                   I would think expertise would be a marketing person or an innovation officer, and 3-6 months. And somebody from, that has some industry experience but that also has other verticals that you may be looking at. Pam:                      Right. Thanks Maria. Matt? Matt:                     I don’t know that I could add any more than what Maria said. I agree completely. To me it’s sales marketing, it’s experience. It’s having experience and multiple, looking at multiple organizations and being able to look at where they’ve been, where they need to go and how to get them from here to there. So still the marketing will be the obvious but I do think that there are other disciplines that could also get, make that happen. Pam:                      Great, thanks Matt. Kristen? Kristen:                Let’s start off with a very specific strategic product individual. Someone who knows how to productize, because optimally you’re not just looking at the revenue streams not just within the industry. It’s what is the product, how I describe the product and is it marketable within that. And a great marketing product person will know that and be able to carry out the messaging, so that not just the market gets it but your team as well. And then one great news about management consultant is that from that point is they diversify more within other industries. An Industry is vertical specific to executive, so we already have the contact say they know how to do it and they’ve done it many times. Pam:                      Great, thanks Kristen. Kim? Anymore to add? Kim:                       Really no. I just, I agree with everyone but also agree with Kristen that if you can productize, you’ve got to have someone that understands other verticals and other applicability’s for the product. Pam:                      Great. Thanks Kim. Alright before we wrap up here today, let me ask one last question to all the panelists. What last minute advice would you give business owners for thinking of hiring a temporary, part-time or contract executive? Kristen, why don’t we start with you? Kristen:                Telling them what I needed done. I’d want to know that they’re done it at least 3-5 times in other companies. I talk to those companies, I talk to the co-workers because I know that they’ve had used that expertise in those situations. Pam:                      You like the experience that they bring? Kristen:                Yeah, I want to know that they’ve got the expertise that I need and they’ve got proven results on it. Not just they’re a great person to work with and they’ve accomplished so much. Have they accomplished what I need done? Pam:                      So you don’t want somebody that just have an MBA and right out of college. Correct? Kristen:                Not just right out of college. There’s some incredible executives out there that have accomplished a lot of things. They just haven’t actually done and they have light team for balance. They haven’t actually done and been involved in my types of situation. It needs to be specific. Pam:                      Great. Anyone else have anything to add? Matt:                     I would add it. Our interims have both depth and breadth of experience in their specific discipline. The other thing that they have is that they come with usually 20-plus years of experience in a larger organizations or in large consulting firms. So what they bring to a CEO is that they bring that expertise, that is far-reaching under than just what that CEO is looking for us to come in and help them with. They can come in and provide advice on their whole organization, not just on the specific discipline that that CEO is looking for. Pam:                      Great, thanks Matt. So thank you all for being here today and sharing your expertise on things CEO’s need to know when hiring part-time, temporary and contract executives. Next month tune in for our podcast on the advantages of boards and advisory boards, especially the companies today. Should be a great topic and one you won’t want to miss. See you then.  

We all need and use money nearly every day of our lives but do you know where it comes from? Today the guys cover payment history, the creation of money and how it affects our economy.  The IOU Economy  You can’t talk about the creation of money without first talking debt. As most of us might think, money was created to make paying for things easier, but that is not the case according to the book Debt by David Graber. The exchanging of goods was always based on debts from the beginning. Let’s say a caveman needed some berries. He wouldn’t go to his neighbor with two goats and try and trade for five bags of berries. Instead, they would give two goats expecting the other person to repay them at a later time. Their economy was not quantified by money but debts to each other. Think about it as using ious like a currency. The use of money came about during war, and new empires were being created. There needed to be a way for soldiers to buy the things they needed in other lands without owing a debt. A Brief History Of  The U.S. Monetary System In the United States, dollars used to be backed by some amount of silver or gold, but now money is not supported by anything except faith. Let’s start with the Panic of 1907, a financial crisis that took place when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50%. In the course of the three-week period market collapsed, stock prices tanked, and there was a massive run on the banks. The Treasury provided over $30 million in aid to the situation, and with the help of J.P. Morgan and others worked to channel money from healthy banks to weaker ones bring confidence back to the financial market. The aftermath of the Panic prompted the created of the Owen-Glass Federal Reserve Act in 1913. You guessed it; the Federal Reserve System was created. The Fed is NOT government owned but a federally sponsored banking cartel. It’s stock is held by member banks, and it’s licensed to lend money into existence. At this point, we were still backing out money with gold, but one disadvantage of a gold standard is that the size and health of a country’s economy are dependent upon its supply of gold, not the resourcefulness of its people and businesses. So, in 1933 Roosevelt takes US citizens off the gold supply. The Fed seizes all the gold, and exchanges are for 11 billion dollars in currency out of thin air. Yes, it’s like magic. After the wars, U.S. keeps increasing dollars to gold ounce ratio until Nixon closes the gold window in 1971, which removes the monetary system’s last physical limit. All global money is unbacked. Now nothing requires U.S. Dollar to remain the reserve currency, and anything does not back it. How Money Is Created It is pretty simple. The Fed creates money out of thin air in exchanged for government debt (bonds and notes). Let’s say Company X is asking the Fed for ten million dollars. All the Fed has to do is add a booking entry and POOF! A check is written out to the company, and the Fed get a bond. Only 3% of our currency is paper money and coins. The rest is all just bookkeeping. The U.S uses this debt-based money system so when money (debt) is created interest needs to be paid. To pay this interest, the money supply has to keep being expanding to perpetuate the modern banking system. At a minimum, each year, enough new money must be loaned into existence to cover the interest payments on the previous years. Each and every year, it must grow by some percentage. By design, it’s exponential, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you struggling with balancing too many social media platforms? What about monetizing your site to its fullest extent - so there's a chance to earn something from every single visitor? Jennie Brandon, our very first guest from the UK walks us through loads of great tips on how to use the IF app to leverage our presence on social media. She then goes beyond a handy app to teach us all the ways we can make sure our site is ready for an international audience. (The stats she shares are staggering, so you definitely don't want to ignore this huge demographic who could fall in love with your content!) On the Podcast 01:26 - Jennie's Two Blogs03:29 - How Learning Creates Opportunity06:57 - What is the "IF" App?11:30 - Build Leverage Across Social Media Platforms14:38 - How to Start Using IFTTT20:37 - How to Monetize your Site for International Customers28:52 - Why your Amazon Affiliate Links Aren't Making you Money35:25 - How to be Inclusive of an International Audience47:10 - Jennie's Hilarious Mom Moment Press Play on the Podcast Player Below to Hear Great Tips from our Favorite Brit, Jennie Brandon Jennie’s Two Blogs Jennie lives in Cambridge with her husband of 10 years and two small children Sophie and Joe. She has two blogs, The Errant Sock, and Laundry in the Temple. Laundry in the Temple is where Jennie shares how she teaches her children about her faith and The Errant Sock is a lifestyle blog with parenting hacks, books, and lots of recipes. All of Jennie's friends call her the “slow cooker whisperer” so she shares plenty of tips to help out other mums! Running two blogs and being a mum of 2 means that Jennie has limited time to invest in social media and sharing her content. How Learning Creates Opportunity When Jennie first reached out to us it was to share a story of how the Brilliant Business Moms podcast had helped her business and landed her a new job. Years ago, Jennie created her first blog where she focused on slow cooker recipes. Later when she tried to get back into blogging as a way of bringing in more income, she found that the blogging world was very different. In order to get caught up quickly she began listening to the podcast and it was Episode 53, Everything Twitter with Kelli Miller, that made the biggest impact on Jennie's blog and life. Jennie had never been very comfortable with Twitter before listening to the episode, but by the end of the podcast, she felt ready to give it another try. Jennie dug into Twitter and got 600% more views to her blogs by focusing on the platform! While Jennie still works on growing her blogs, she knew that she needed to take on a traditional job for now to make ends meet for her family. The podcast helped her with that goal too! A local pastor approached Jennie with a job opportunity, and it was her social media knowledge and web design expertise that set her apart from the other candidates! Jennie's new job lets her use her new skills in social media and website development, and it fits around her schedule and life as mum. What a great example of how learning creates opportunity! What is the “IF” App? IFTTT (If This, Then That - now called the IF App) is an app that allows you to connect other apps and websites to each other for completing an array of different tasks. Each app, program, or website you can connect is called a channel, and you can create "recipes" between the channels.The title really explains it all: If you do something on one channel, then something else will automatically happen on another channel. There are hundreds of suggested recipes to help you get started, but almost any way of connecting two apps that you can imagine can be created to make your business and personal life more convenient. The IF app currently has over 250 different channel options, which include Ebay, Etsy, Twitter, Evernote, Fitbit, Spotify, Feedly, Youtube, Trello, Reddit, and they just recently added Pinterest!   Here are a few examples of how the app works: Jennie has set up the IF app so that IF she takes a photo on her android phone, that photo is automatically saved to her Google drive. If she tweets something, that tweet is automatically saved to Evernote. If you leave the office, you could even set up a recipe to turn on your heat if you have a smart heater! There are so many possibilities! Our heads were spinning when we heard that Pinterest was just recently added: You could automatically pin items that you just added to your etsy store, Pin instagram photos to a board, or Tweet every time you add a pin. Build Leverage Across Social Media Platforms In running two blogs Jennie really didn’t have time to devote to social media. She also didn’t have time to be creating new content every single day. Jennie uses the IF App as a way of sharing the content of bloggers that she trusts (as well as her own content) to various social media platforms on a regular basis. This happens automatically without the time and effort it would take to go in and manually schedule content. The IF App lets Jennie have a constant stream of valuable content across all of her feeds in a fraction of the time. In this way, her account always looks active and can engage with her followers. She never loses momentum due to a busy week at home. Below are some recipes that Jennie uses: If she posts to Facebook, that same posts is shared on Twitter. (and vice versa) If Jennie posts to The Errant Sock, that post is shared on the Laundry in the Temple’s feeds. While TwitterFeed lets Jennie automatically share great content from her favorite bloggers, now with the IF App, those posts will automatically be shared on her Facebook page as well. Overall, even when Jennie is crazy busy at home and has zero time to post on her blog or social media, she still looks perfectly active and keeps her sites top of mind for her followers by automatically curating great content for them. For Bloggers who Work with Brands:If a blogger sends out a tweet for Company X, they can auto-save those tweets (or any posts for that matter) to a spreadsheet. In this way, a blogger working on a large campaign with a brand can show them all the content they produced all in one place without having to hunt for it and manually collect it. In addition, if they work with the same brand every year, they'll have plenty of great content ideas ready to go in their spreadsheet. There are thousands of possible recipe combinations you can use with the IF App, so be creative and don’t be afraid to play around. They also offer many suggestions for inspiration. And the app is just as useful for your personal life as it is for your business. How to Start Using IFTTT Jennie gave us some great tips and an outline of how to get started with IFTTT and make it work best for you and your business! Make a list of which social media platforms you are currently using. Prioritize the networks where your target audience hangs out most and where you enjoy connecting with them. Pull out a pen and paper and create an actual visual map of how you want your content to be shared. Which way do you want the information to go? This will help you make sure that you are creating a complete loop and using the channels to their best ability. Look at the IF App website and the suggested recipes. What are other bloggers using the app for? Think about what content from others you want to share. Where will that information be coming from? Consider the entire flow of your content and the content of others and how that all works together to build and reflect your brand. Start creating recipes! This is a very quick process and in less than 10 minutes Jennie created 8 recipes that form the basis of her IF App and social media strategy. The Downsides to the IF App: Graphics. When you share graphics keep in mind that each platform shares photos in a different size so some of your photos may appear awkward on certain networks. Characters. The IF App does not count characters so make sure you know about what 140 characters looks like so your shares through to Twitter won't all be truncated. Hashtags. When you share a Twitter post to Facebook it will also copy over your hashtags, this may not be an issue for your particular situation but take this into account. Content Repetition. All of the content that you are sharing will be the same across all channels. Again, for Jennie and many bloggers this may not matter but keep this in mind. For most of us, our readers aren't following us or interacting with us on every single channel, so it's not generally an issue, but you'll have to keep your particular audience in mind. Bonus: The IF App does shorten your links for you. How to Monetize Internationally Based on the staggering numbers Jennie shared, it may be in your best interest to consider your international readers and to work to serve them better. The population in the US is 320 million people. The population of other countries with a similar potential audience (UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, & South Africa) is 190 million people. So these other readers in English-speaking countries with a similar culture could add 60% more potential readers to your site. With a few tweaks to your content, your site, and the products you offer, you can monetize their visits to your website. Monetization Ideas for an International Audience: Google Advertising. Since Google display ads are contextual and based on where someone has already visited online, you can easily monetize any visitor's experience on your site. For example, Jennie may visit a UK store to shop for coats. Then, she visits a US-based blog. That same coat will follow her there via a sidebar ad. If she clicks on that ad, the US website gets the commission for that click, even though both Jennie and the store are in the UK. Printables, E-books, and Downloadable Content. Jennie loves buying digital resources from brands she likes since she won't have to worry about shipping prices and she can begin using the product right away. Online Courses. Jennie took a great blogging course from a US blogger. When the courses are self-paced with no set times attached, they work perfectly. Recorded webinars. Webinars can be tricky with the time difference, but a recorded webinar is a great fit for Jennie. (We recently heard Amy Porterfield mention adding recorded webinars to her launch sequence because she had so many international customers requesting this.) Membership sites. Jennie can interact in the forums on her time and consume the content on her time. Services. There's no reason why a blog designer, marketing consultant, or other service-based business owners couldn't work with clients overseas. They could greatly expand their customer base if they started targeting these audiences - and they might face less competition too! Affiliate Marketing. If you're marketing an internationally-available product, or a digital product, program, or course, you can market to everyone! Jennie has bought an Ultimate Bundle before through an American Blogger. Selling on Etsy. Etsy makes things easy by automatically doing all the currency exchange and tax calculations for international sellers and buyers. Hopefully this gets you thinking about all the ways you can monetize your site to a wider audience. We all know digital products can be great for business, but if you've delayed creating them thus far, maybe knowing you could attract 60% more potential customers will be just the thing to get you started! Why Your Amazon Affiliate Links Aren’t Making You Money Did you know that if someone from the UK clicks on an Amazon affiliate link from your website you do not get a commission? Shoppers in the UK cannot order from Amazon.com; they have to order through AmazonUK. But there is a way to fix this and ensure you're earning a commission from your international readers. Sign up for each country's affiliate program through Amazon. Get more information from Amazon right here. Install the Amazon Link Engine Plugin on your Wordpress site. This plugin ensures that each visitor is sent to the relevant Amazon site for them. Create an account with Genius links. This program ensures that you are getting paid from those other countries’ links. The program is free up to 1,000 clicks/month then $10 per every 10,000 clicks after that. Build your affiliate link just as you did before, and the intelligent link will send each visitor to the correct Amazon site. Note: Amazon says that if over 10% of your traffic is from other Amazon countries, this process should be worth it for you - particularly if you get a large volume of traffic to your site, or you already do well by being an Amazon affiliate. How to Be Inclusive of an International Audience One of the best parts of having our first podcast guest from the UK is that Jennie was happy to share many ways that US bloggers and business owners can be more inclusive of international readers. Below are some simple ideas to cross different cultures with your brand. Be more inclusive in your language. For example, instead of saying “since next week is Thanksgiving” you could say “here in the US, we have Thanksgiving”. Show awareness that things happen at different times overseas. For example, in the UK back to school time is later in the year and summer vacation doesn’t start until late July. Not all trends go at the same speed in all countries. In the UK, online shopping has been a normal part of life for many years. Since they are a small country their postal service is very efficient and it is convenient to shop online and has been for over a decade! Don't use brand names, but describe the products as other countries often have different brands. For example, in a recipe instead of saying “can of Rotel”, say “can of diced tomatoes with chilies”. In the UK, Scotch tape is actually referred to as cello tape. Don't say "a package" or some other generic term. Use specific measurements to an international audience can still follow the recipe accurately. Jennie sent over some other notes and thoughts, and I really liked what she had to say here to sum things up: Be aware that we may have some different challenges and concerns. e.g. Brits have less disposable income and live in smaller houses because land is very precious here. We drive less because fuel is very expensive and driving is more stressful. Over half of us don't have a dryer for laundry, often because we don't have the space. We're also increasingly environmentally friendly and a post that suggests waste may hit a nerve. But please don't feel sorry for us! We wonder how you manage without universal healthcare, how you cope with tornadoes and blizzards, how you manage with so little annual leave (we typically get at least 4 weeks, not 2 plus 8 national holidays) and how you can consider anything over 2 hours not being a really long drive! (That last line really made me chuckle as Holden and I used to drive from South Carolina to Pittsburgh for an 11-hour day, and I didn't think that was "too long of a drive" :) It's so fun learning about other cultures! Jennie with her adorable family. Jennie's Hilarious Mum Moment Jennie's daughter Sophie's spirit of determination is so adorable in this story! You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear all about it! Find Jennie Online LaundryintheTemple.comTheErrantSock.com