Defunct retailer of consumer electronics
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3 episodes with CompUSA
3 episodes with CompUSA
2 episodes with CompUSA
2 episodes with CompUSA
2 episodes with CompUSA
2 episodes with CompUSA
Reginald “Andre” Andre is the dynamic founder and CEO of ARK Solvers. A chance encounter at a CompUSA store sparked a series of events that eventually created ARK Solvers — now one of South Florida's fastest-growing IT and cybersecurity companies, serving small and midsize companies with a sharp focus on compliance and innovation. With nearly […]
SummaryIn this episode, Jack Clabby and Kayley Melton discuss their conversation with Reginald Andre, a cybersecurity expert and CEO of ARK Solvers. They explore themes of mentorship, the evolution of cybersecurity businesses, the impact of AI, team culture, and community engagement. Andre shares his journey from aspiring English teacher to successful entrepreneur, emphasizing the importance of mentorship and personal growth in the cybersecurity field. In this engaging conversation, the speakers delve into the importance of mentorship, innovative teaching methods, and the role of AI in personal and professional development. They share personal anecdotes about mentoring students and children, emphasizing hands-on learning and real-world applications. The discussion also touches on the fun and insightful lifestyle polygraph segment, where the guest answers quirky questions that reveal his personality and approach to challenges.TakeawaysAndre is a natural mentor who emphasizes actionable advice.The importance of building a fantasy board of directors.Reginald's journey from CompUSA to CEO of ARK Solvers.The shift from IT to cybersecurity in business.AI's growing role in cybersecurity and business efficiency.Hiring based on personality and cultural fit over technical skills.Encouraging a culture of learning from mistakes.The impact of community engagement on personal growth.The significance of mentorship in shaping careers.Raising awareness on critical social issues like human trafficking. Mentorship can significantly impact a student's career trajectory.Hands-on learning is more effective than traditional lectures.Building a resume starts with taking initiative in school activities.AI can serve as a valuable tool for decision-making and mentorship.Creating a community around learning can enhance educational experiences.Students should actively seek internships and opportunities before graduation.Innovative teaching methods can fill gaps in traditional education systems.Personal anecdotes can illustrate the effectiveness of mentorship.Engaging with technology early can lead to better career prospects.Networking and building relationships are crucial for professional growth.TitlesMentorship in Cybersecurity: Lessons from Reginald AndreThe Evolution of Cybersecurity: From IT to AIBuilding a Strong Team Culture in CybersecurityCommunity Engagement: Making a Difference Beyond BusinessSound Bites"Andre is such a natural mentor.""I built my fantasy board of directors.""I had to pivot my business.""AI is not going to take your job.""I always leave him with something.""He was actually building his resume.""Everything has to be hands-on.""I would do Too Fast Too Furious.""You'd be tasked with AI education."Chapters00:00 Introduction to Cybersecurity Mentorship01:56 The Journey of Reginald Andre05:58 From IT to Cybersecurity: A Business Evolution11:55 The Impact of AI on Cybersecurity17:52 Building a Strong Team Culture22:05 Community Engagement and Personal Growth27:39 Mentorship and Impact30:21 Innovative Teaching Approaches34:04 Lifestyle Polygraph: Fun and Insightful Questions
Lesley and Ben are thrilled to be once again joined by Rachel Collins, host of the upcoming grocery and shopping podcast, 10 Items or Less! Instead of our usual format covering single episodes of television, we're chatting about vintage commercials and the stories they're telling! We cover 21 commercials ranging across the decades from the 1960s to 2004. Electronics Boutique, Hollywood Video, Schlitterbaun Water Park, CompUSA, B Dalton Booksellers and mail order educational software learning opportunities. All this and a lot more on this very special episode of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben! On the Main Feed: We're posting a teaser of the first couple of commercials we covered for everyone subscribed to the show, wherever you get your podcasts! On Patreon: Patreon subscribers, you're in for a treat. At the $5/mo level, you get access to the whooole enchilada. An hour and forty minutes of 21 commercials with commentary and live reactions. Musical numbers, jingles, childhood memories, a lot of talk about malls, bookstores, personal computing, Tom Clancy and regional amusement parks! https://www.patreon.com/posts/swlab-special-108949274?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link On YouTube: We have a complete playlist of all of the commercials covered by Lesley, Ben and Rachel for your viewing pleasure. Many of these commercials have real wacky visual components. We included the audio in the episode, but some of these need to be seen to be believed. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLCNXaDo9tBqSnM6Wq2bE3WTyiQODHbZy
This week on The Free Cheese, we're preinstalled with every CompUSA purchase! We're here to guide the great frog king on his journey to match the colors of three or more balls at a time. Chasing combo chains and gap bonuses, we find out where Zuma Deluxe ranks on The List.
Joshua Toomey is joined by Matt Naas of the Roach Koach Podcast to discuss listener's random Rock Star encounters while Ro Kohli is on assignment at San Diego Comic-Con. First up the guys talk about the Knotfest Nu Metal Bracket Challenge update and the two albums remaining. Joshua and Matt dive into the encounters and give some personal stories of their own. Joshua tells the story of meeting Alice Cooper at Hot Topic and Matt talks about seeing Wes Borland buying a toothbrush. Stories of Axl Rose at the urinal, Rob Zombie in line at the grocery store and Duff McKagan at the airport. From Ashes to New stopping in a Wendy's, Chino Moreno at tobacco shop and some Vinnie Paul run ins. The Ultimate Warrior at CompUSA and his AMEX issues. Sitting next to Phil Anselmo on a plane when the listener was 16 brings up the question of who you would want to sit next to on a plane for hours. Toomey gives a review of the Tori Amos show that he recently attended. Tico Torres and David Bryan of Bon Jovi in your restaurant. Toomey and Chris Kirkpatrick trade hair secrets. Almost running over Zakk Wylde in Florida, almost knocking over Rob Zombie and John 5 at a P.F. Changs and Vanilla Ice at Burger King. Dog Fashion Disco at Wendys and Vinnie Paul at a Suncoast and some Taylor Swift stories. Chad Gray watching Monday Nitro and Jerry Only at a grocery store. Joey Belladonna at local band night, Sevendust at a Friendlys and Ozzy breaks the guy code. Mikey Doling had a crazy story with Bill Ward of Black Sabbath. Tony Hawk skating by himself, Dr. Dre at a track meet and 311 at a gas station. Matt meets George Clinton at a 7/11 and Toomey seeing Dave Williams of Drowning Pool on his birthday. ICP and Eminem stories to finish the talk.
Maulik Parikh, despite limited computer access in his childhood, earned a CS degree during a recession. In a challenging job market, he secured a B2B sales role at CompUSA before becoming a technology consultant at Accenture. Working with Fortune 500 companies, he learned valuable business lessons: prioritizing efficiency, leveraging technology, avoiding mistakes, planning for change management, and exuding confidence with clients. In the Era of AI, he advises preparing for automation's impact on roles and suggests utilizing abundant training resources like www.joinai.la to stay technologically relevant. With access to training at an all-time high, opportunities to upskill are plentiful.
Jim lost his voice this week, so Christina is joined by special co-host Coach James Bonds. Coach Bonds is a husband, father, and grandfather. He is the founder and CEO of WellDrivenLife.com an online environment for people to experience engaging, honest, and unbiased life-changing and motivational content. Using his past experience in senior management positions for companies like Sam's Club, Best Buy, PepBoys, and CompUSA and as a Dealer Partner with Mercedes Benz, BMW & Audi car dealers. Coach Bonds encourages people to adopt a lifestyle that leads to health and wellness in every area of life.
Jason Wolfe is the definition of a serial entrepreneur. He sold MyCoupons.com for roughly $23 million in 2000, shortly before the DotCom bubble burst. Jason rolled over his proceeds into successive wins with his companies Direct Response Technologies (acquired by Digital River for $22 million), Jambo Media (for $15 million) and Giftcards.com (by Blackhawk Network for $120 million). Pretty impressive. Even more so when you consider how he grew up. After growing up in the Milton Hershey School, an orphanage founded by Milton Hershey, Jason was living out of his car. He taught himself how to code by using books at the local library and CompUSA's 'Building the Perfect Web'. This led to building the first coupon website and launching his first internet business. From 1995 to 2000, Jason built the business, raising $500k in VC from Jupiter Media and garnering >$1 million in annual sales and 20 million page views per month. Today, he is building GiftYa, GiveInKind, and PerfectGift, which have the potential to be his biggest businesses yet. Jason's Challenge; Give more. Be Kind. Pull someone else up. Connect with Jason Wolfe Linkedin Website jason@wolfe.com Underwritten by Piper Creative Piper Creative makes creating podcasts, vlogs, and videos easy. How? Click here and Learn more. We work with Fortune 500s, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs. Follow Piper as we grow YouTube Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify
Euan Blackman is an immigrant from South Africa who has served as a public school Physics teacher for the last 19 years in Dallas, Highland Park, and Richardson ISD. Prior to following his passion for education, he had a lucrative career in the private sector for 12 years with AT&T and CompUSA. He lives in Richardson, Texas with his wife Laura, who is also a teacher. The last time Euan was a guest on Social Impact, we discussed Shiny Objects: The Big Business of School Bonds. This time we had a lively discussion around the mass exodus of local superintendents and why that is happening. He asked an important question about whether or not our children are learning what they should be learning. Under the “veneer of care” in Richardson ISD, many children fell through the cracks as a result of poor policies and progressive learning experiments through Dr. Jeannie Stone. Euan has taken a pragmatic approach to addressing some of the issues with Dr. Stone's replacement Tabitha Branum and is building a rapport with her to find solutions. The issues in RISD resemble those around the D/FW metroplex. Parents and taxpayers want our American kids to be educated, not pawns for UNESCO, the UN or the World Economic Forum global agenda.Euan advocates to put the “I” back in the ISD. He is a proponent of open government and adhering to TOMA (Texas Open Meetings Act) laws. As an alternative to progressive Texas teacher organizations, Euan recommends Innovative Teachers of Texas for representation and insurance options for conservative teachers. Look for Euan's debut with his new podcast on the OBBM Network called “Euan, Me, & The ISD.” Social Impact Podcast is brought to you by:OBBM Network Brands1st Safety Training, 214-808-9757Social Impact Podcast is on Spotify! Call 214-673-4018 to support the show or get exposure for your point of view.Subscribe to the OBBM Network Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Google Podcasts and more. OffBeat Business TV can be found on Youtube, Vimeo , Rumble , BitChute and wherever you enjoy great on-demand podcasts and TV.Support the show
remember CompUSA? also, first run in the Endorphin Pro 3, whether I'll test the Altra Outroad, and the stubborn long lasting battery of the Coros Vertix 2
We are privileged to have Sam Dreyer and Jon King from Microsoft to share the challenges and victories they experienced while joining the workforce after the military. Together, they have a combined 20+ years of service, along with their own incredible stories of mental health experiences.Join us for an episode of Learning how to nurture your network even after committing to a job Exploring the MSSA program and why veterans MUST take advantage of itReinforcing that a medical diagnosis doesn't define youHelp is always available. NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE (800)-273-8225MORE ABOUT OUR GUESTS SAM DREYER: Since his exit from the Army, Sam has worked in multiple information technology positions with CompUSA, IBM, Wipro Technologies, and has spent the last nine years with Microsoft. He currently works as a Senior Customer Success Account Manager. JON KING: Jon served in the United States Army as a rotary wing pilot and aviator. Like Sam, Jon currently works as a Customer Success Account Manager.
Dale Dowdie started out as a computer hacker and was the first black teen recruited to work for NASA. Dale Dowdie founded Intellitech Consulting Enterprises in 1993, the 3rd company he had started since his first company started while still in college. The goal of Intellitech is to provide intelligent technology solutions for business and educational institutions. Over the past 20 years, Intellitech has provided Software Development, Management/IT Consulting, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity and Consulting Services for organizations, banks and institutions including Liberty Mutual Insurance, Citizens Bank, TJX Companies, Staples and McCormick, to the Government of St. Lucia and Harvard University. Ken Granderson is Co-Founder of Blackfacts.com and is a native of Brooklyn NY. He is a former DJ that focused his attention on his true passion, technology! In 1992 he developed his software company Inner-City Software. His first product ended up in a PC Magazine editor's book available in CompUSA stores nationwide. Ken would go on to create different software that would benefit the black community. He partnered up with Dale Doedie and created Blackfacts. The rest is History! Ken and Dale are also responsible for the software that Saint Lucia runs its internet on! Blackfacts - Home --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mastermine-mrg/message
It's Monday and that means it's time for a new episode of YB's Collaboration Corner! If you desire to share your story with the world, want to advance in your career, create conversations and connections, and don't want to take years to do it then this is for you. This week join President of Sales Rob "YB" Youngblood for conversation & connection with JK Bridges, LDP, CTC, CHW; Corporate Technical Talent Acquisition and DEI with GovSpend.JK Bridges is a 20+ year Human Resource professional with recruiting and corporate trainingexpertise in the public sector, state government and in federal civilian contract recruiting, also. She's held titles as Corporate Tech Recruiter, Senior Recruiter, Recruiting Manager, Consultant, Area Trainer, District Trainer and Corporate Trainer in various industries such as CompUSA, the United States Air Force (civil service employee), GMAC, Microsoft, and the State of Texas just to name a few. She's now found with bi-weekly publishings on the various GovSpend social media platforms for her near famous Tuesday and Thursday Tips, Topic and Tea with JK where she shares a plethora of information to assist job seekers. Career highlights include (but not limited to):✅ Hailed as a DEI Champion during tenure at State of Texas and now at GovSpend✅ Fraud and Abuse Subject Matter Expert (SME) in AZ✅ Participated in state committee forums on Social Reform in AZ, NV and TXMs. Bridges is well respected within her industry and profession and is a sought after public speaker for her expert knowledge in tech recruiting and has spoken at numerous Boot Camps, Tech and Community Colleges as well as been featured on various radio and web broadcasts.Tune in for a new episode every Monday night at 7:30 pm (CST). www.selfpublishn30days.comYou can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel!https://youtu.be/U6vCEQzy5fADon't miss another episode… Subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher.If you have been thinking about how to publish a book but you're not sure how, Self Publish -N- 30 Days is the company for you! As the #1 Self Publishing Company in the world we are able to publish your book faster and with less stress than other services. We offer the same services as KDP Amazon but with a personalized approach. We know that to publish on Amazon, there are several steps that seem intimidating if you don't know what to do. At Self Publish -N- 30 Days our skilled team will walk you through the whole process of how to write a book step by step. Contact Us Today! This Is The Year For Your New Book!
We’re back again, did you miss us? In this episode, we discuss the wibbly-wobbly time of 2020/2021, unicode characters, catching mice, the difference between idioms and clichés, CompUSA, Gary buys an exorbitantly large TV and horrible kids YouTube. LingoJam (lingojam.com) FancyTextGenerator (lingojam.com) The Internet’s Best List of Clichés (prowritingaid.com) What is a cliché (Google) What … Continue reading "Episode 10010011: Thought-Terminating Clichés"
Going out to eat can be tough when you want to try someplace new. What about when you get kidnapped by the manager of the local computer store then YOU get arrested. The beat battle is on as always. ATribe Called Quest, Jay Z and more.
The third and final part of our MacVoices Live! session with the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colorado, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson focuses on why Mark bought a new M1 iMac and what he is telling his clients who are in the market for a new Mac. We wrap up by taking questions from the group. (Part 3) Today's MacVoices is sponsored by Upstart. Fair and fast personal loans. Go to upstart.com/macvoices and find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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 third and final part of our MacVoices Live! session with the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colorado, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson focuses on why Mark bought a new M1 iMac and what he is telling his clients who are in the market for a new Mac. We wrap up by taking questions from the group. (Part 3) Today's MacVoices is sponsored by Upstart. Fair and fast personal loans. Go to upstart.com/macvoices and find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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 third and final part of our MacVoices Live! session with the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colorado, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson focuses on why Mark bought a new M1 iMac and what he is telling his clients who are in the market for a new Mac. We wrap up by taking questions from the group. (Part 3) Today's MacVoices is sponsored by Upstart. Fair and fast personal loans. Go to upstart.com/macvoices and find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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 second part of our visit to the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colorado, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson turns to a discussion of whether to buy high or low on the product scale, and the panel's experiences with Apple's AirTags. (Part 2) Today's MacVoices is sponsored by Upstart. Fair and fast personal loans. Go to upstart.com/macvoices and find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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 second part of our visit to the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colorado, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson turns to a discussion of whether to buy high or low on the product scale, and the panel's experiences with Apple's AirTags. (Part 2) Today's MacVoices is sponsored by Upstart. Fair and fast personal loans. Go to upstart.com/macvoices and find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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 second part of our visit to the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colorado, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson turns to a discussion of whether to buy high or low on the product scale, and the panel's experiences with Apple's AirTags. (Part 2) Today's MacVoices is sponsored by Upstart. Fair and fast personal loans. Go to upstart.com/macvoices and find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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
MacVoices Live! takes a virtual trip to the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colordo, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson to discuss what Apple gear to buy and what configurations are recommended. We start out sharing with what new Apple tech the panel has already invested in and what they are considering. (Part 1) Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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
MacVoices Live! takes a virtual trip to the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colordo, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson to discuss what Apple gear to buy and what configurations are recommended. We start out sharing with what new Apple tech the panel has already invested in and what they are considering. (Part 1) Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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
MacVoices Live! takes a virtual trip to the MacinTech Mac User Group in Colordo, with Jeff Gamet and Apple Consultant Mark Stevenson to discuss what Apple gear to buy and what configurations are recommended. We start out sharing with what new Apple tech the panel has already invested in and what they are considering. (Part 1) Show Notes: Guests: 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, and jeffgamet on LinkedIn. Mark Stevenson has been an active member of MacinTech, a Mac user group in the South Denver area, for many years. Since 2009 Mark has been an independent computer consultant in the Denver area, supporting small business and individuals. He was an Apple Solutions Consultant from 2001-2009 at CompUSA, and then Best Buy. Mark has a long and varied background in the IT industry, with experiences in the software, service bureau, contract programming, and insurance industries. He is a regular presenter at MacinTech meetings on a variety of current Apple related topics and/or products. Links: Plugable USB C Hub Multiport Adapter, 7-in-1 Hub USB C Adapter (2 Pack), Anker USB C to USB Adapter Amazon Basics Micro USB (Female) to USB-C (Male) Adapter - White, 4-Pack [4 Pack] Suripow for AirTag Case, Anti-Lost for AirTags Case Compatible with AirTag Keychain Key Ring ($7.99) 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 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
Hear about Rich's modern-day retelling of his Aladdin story! From his time as a street urchin to having children at such a young age and how things just don't work out, how you think they will. From washing dishes at a Huddle House and blowing his whole check at CompUSA on a World of Warcraft Battle Chest! Here that and more as Rob and Rich finish up letting you all know who they are!Rob & RichWongo's Barbell FacebookGreenh@t Solutions - Moore County Cyber CampHangover GangBest Rapper Ever by Tom MacDonald
School bonds are big business in Texas. School districts use taxpayer dollars to hire bond consulting firms to produce slick fliers and marketing materials informing residents of upcoming elections. In order to tug at the heartstrings of stakeholders and community members, the hook for a successful campaign must be established. That usually comes in the form of shiny objects such as indoor football fields or the promise of innovation through technology devices. Euan Blackman is an immigrant from South Africa who has served as a public school Physics teacher for the last 17 years in Dallas, Highland Park, and Richardson ISD. Prior to following his passion for education, he had a lucrative career in the private sector for 12 years with AT&T and CompUSA. His homestead is in Richardson, Texas.Euan and I became allies during our oppositions to the 2016 Richardson ISD bond. We were concerned about the academic decline of the district while spending and bloated administration jobs continued to increase. In 2018 we joined forces to oppose a tax ratification election (TRE) which would lead to the maximum rate of $1.17. That was later rolled back by the 86th legislature to slow local property tax growth. Euan and I were invited to speak on this subject at the True Texas Project in April Everyone wants a piece of the education pie. Donors of school bond PACs are typically those who stand to profit off their passage, such as construction companies, architecture firms, consultants and education technology companies. Since the recording of this episode, Richardson ISD passed a $750M bond which was pitched as a “no tax rate increase” election. They use deceptive semantics to confuse voters despite the new law requiring language on the ballot explicitly stating “THIS IS A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE.” While the rate may not go up, the rising property values result in increased taxes year-over-year. Those who oppose bond elections and exorbitant property taxes are often labeled as outliers or haters of children. Euan says it's quite the contrary. He would like to see more money spent in the classroom to benefit students and give teachers the resources to do their best. He is advocating for more transparency and accountability in district spending and more engagement from the taxpayers to follow the money. Social Impact Podcast is on Spotify! Call 214-673-4018 to support the show or get exposure for your business.To join the FREE DFW Local Business Learn The Constitution Classes, go to https://offbeatbusiness.com/the-show/#!calendar for date, time, and registration.Support the show (https://offbeatbusiness.com/sign-up/#join)
During the explosive growth of home electronics but before the rise of online shopping, brick-and-mortar stores were a mecca for GenX electronics nerds. In this episode, we look back at the origin, history, and ultimate demise of computer super-retailer, CompUSA! Patreon » patreon.com/genxgrownup Discord » GenXGrownUp.com/discord Facebook » fb.me/GenXGrownUp Twitter » GenXGrownUp.com/twitter Website » GenXGrownUp.com Podcast » GenXGrownUp.com/pod Merchandise » GenXGrownUp.com/merch Shop » genxgrownup.com/amazon Theme: “Grown Up” by Beefy » beefyness.com Apple » itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/genxgrownup-podcast/id1268365641 Google » play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Iuthetoh4i5abybbnn4em36icwi Pocket Casts » pca.st/8iuL Stitcher » www.stitcher.com/s?fid=146720&refid=stpr TuneIn » tunein.com/radio/GenXGrownUp-Podcast-p1020342/ Spotify » spoti.fi/2TB4LR7 iHeart » www.iheart.com/podcast… Amazon Music » amzn.to/33IKfEK Show Notes Check out great article by GXG Fourth Listener Karen! » theretronetwork.com/reply-to-a-fan-letter/ CompUSA History » www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/compusa-inc-history/ What Happened to CompUSA » dfarq.homeip.net/what-happened-to-compusa/ CompUSA to close all stores » www.cbsnews.com/news/compusa-to-close-all-stores/ Remembering another closing store » bit.ly/3yBYWru Email the show » podcast@genxgrownup.com Visit us on YouTube » GenXGrownUp.com/yt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
tabGeeks is back! Been a few months with our heads down working on building the tabGeeks Network and it is finally coming together in an epic way. We partnered with some of the top names in tech to bring you amazing content to help keep you informed on today's technology. More info at tabgeeks.com! Dana Chamorro is a powerhouse in IT, well known in several tech communities, and has had some amazing experiences in her journey through IT. And she's just getting started. From starting out at CompUSA, moving over to Apple, and becoming tech #4 at Slack, and managing the growth as they went going public, Dana has learned some incredible lessons along the way. Today she manages both IT and Workplace at Benchling and continues to be an amazing resource in the community. Continue the conversation and join our online experts community of IT professionals at www.tabgeeks.com You can also find me on Twitter @MrJNowlin and Dana @danajc Subscribe to our other amazing tabGeeks podcast discussing and analyzing Google Workspace updates at workspacerecap.com and stay tuned for other amazing tech content from the tabGeeks Network coming soon! Learn more at tabgeeks.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/tabgeeks/message
Website: apetech.me/social Voicemail: https://anchor.fm/apetech/message Email: letschat@apetech.me Hello, and welcome to another episode of Cyber Security For All podcast. A podcast all about cyber security from Apetech. I'm your host, Alex and today we are going to be talking about will my virus scanner keep me safe online? Before we jump into the episode, let me update you on a few things. Almost at 600 downloads! I really do think we can get to 750 before the end of the month! Please feel free to share my podcast with your friends and family so that they too can benefit from Cyber Security For All! If you want to leave a message, there is a voicemail URL in the episode description that you can use to get a hold of me. Also, apetech.me/social is where you can find me and everything else that I am working on. This podcast is just one of many different side hustles that I'm working on. Alright, enough updates, let's get into the episode. Will having a virus scanner on your computer keep you safe online? Based on a Google search I did, the resounding answer is YES! I find this very interesting and it's the reason why I wanted to create this episode today. While yes, a virus scanner will keep you safer online, I do not think it's the only thing you should be using to keep yourself safe online. I also do not agree with the first article that popped up in my search. They state that the best antivirus program on the market is going to offer you 100% protection from advanced cyber threats. I really do wish they would have not state this information. I remember growing up and getting the internet installed in my house for the first time. I was 10 years old and I remember going to a radioshack to purchase MSN. I had no idea what I was doing, but my parents had just bought me my first computer and the year was 1998. Within a month of owning that computer, and having an internet connection, my computer broke to the point where CompUSA (where I purchased my computer) took almost three months to fix it. I was 10 years old and didn't know what had happened. Back then, not a lot of people knew what could happen on the internet. Turns out a virus had wiped out my hard drive and rendered my computer useless. In 1998, this was easy enough to believe since it made sense. A simple virus scanner purchase later, and I was back in business. But now, in 2021, if your computer broke, would you blame a virus? Well that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you feel that someone you know could benefit from listening to this episode, please feel free to share it with them. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to my podcast and thanks for the support! I know I'm just getting started, but I'm excited to see where I take this podcast in the future. Thanks for being a part of this journey with me. See you on the next one! --- 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/apetech/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/apetech/support
We've covered Radioshack but there are a few other retail stores I'd like to cover as well. CompUSA, CircuitCity, and Fry's to name a few. Not only is there something to be learned from the move from brick and mortar electronic chains to Ecommerce but there's plenty to be learned about how to treat people and how people perceived computers and what we need and when, as well. You see, Fry's was one of the few places you could walk in, pick a CPU, find a compatible mother board, pick a sweet chassis to put it in, get a power supply, a video card, some memory, back then probably a network card, maybe some sweet fans, a cooling system for the CPU you were about to overclock, an SSD drive to boot a machine, a hard drive to store stuff, a DVD, a floppy just in case, pick up some velcro wrap to keep the cables at bay, get a TV, a cheap knockoff smart watch, a VR headset that would never work, maybe a safe since you already have a cart, a soundbar ‘cause you did just get a TV, some headphones for when you'll keep everyone else up with the sounder, a couple of resistors for that other project, a fixed frequency video card for that one SGI in the basement, a couple smart plugs, a solar backpack, and a CCNA book that you realize is actually 2 versions out of date when you go to take the test. Yup, that was a great trip. And ya' there's also a big bag of chips and a 32 ounce of some weird soda gonna' go in the front seat with me. Sweet. Now let's just toss the cheap flashlight we just bought into the glove box in case we ever break down and we're good to go home and figure out how to pay for all this junk on that new Fry's Credit Card we just opened. But that was then and this is now. Fry's announced it was closing all of its stores on February 24th, 2021. The week we're recording this episode. To quote the final their website: “After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry's Electronics, Inc. (“Fry's” or “Company”), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Company will implement the shut down through an orderly wind down process that it believes will be in the best interests of the Company, its creditors, and other stakeholders. The Company ceased regular operations and began the wind-down process on February 24, 2021. It is hoped that undertaking the wind-down through this orderly process will reduce costs, avoid additional liabilities, minimize the impact on our customers, vendors, landlords and associates, and maximize the value of the Company's assets for its creditors and other stakeholders.” Wow. Just wow. I used to live a couple of miles from a Fry's and it was a major part of furthering my understanding of arcane, bizarre, sometimes emergent, and definitely dingy areas of computing. And if those adjectives don't seem to have been included lovingly, they most certainly are. You see every trip to Fry's was strange. Donald Fry founded Fry's Food and Drug in 1954. The store rose to prominence in the 50s and 60s until his brother Charles Fry sold it off in 1972. As a part of Kroger it still exists today, with 22,000 employees. But this isn't the story of a supermarket chain. I guess I did initially think the two were linked because the logos look somewhat similar - but that's where their connection ends. Instead, let's cover what happened to the $14 million the family got from the sale of the chain. Charles Fry gave some to his sons John, Randy, and David. They added Kathryn Kolder and leased a location in Sunnyvale, California to open the first Fry's Electronics store in 1985. This was during the rise of the microcomputer. The computing industry had all these new players who were selling boards and printers and floppy drives. They put all this stuff in bins kinda' like you would in a grocery store and became a one-stop shop for the hobbyist and the professional alike. Unlike groceries, the parts didn't expire so they were able to still have things selling 5 or 10 years later, albeit a bit dusty. 1985 was the era when many bought integrated circuits, mother boards, and soldering irons and built their own computers. They saw the rise of the microprocessor, the 80286 and x86s. And as we moved into an era of predominantly x86 clones of the IBM PC, the buses and cards became standard. Provided a power supply had a molex connector it was probably good to light up most mother boards and hard drives. The IDE became the standard then later SATA. But parts were pretty interchangeable. Knowing groceries, they also sold those. Get some Oranges and a microprocessor. They stopped selling those but always sold snacks until the day they closed down. But services were always a thing at Fry's. Those who didn't want to spend hours putting spacers on a motherboard and puttin They also sold other electronics. Sometimes the selection seemed totally random. I bought my first MP3 player at a Fry's - the Diamond Rio. And funny LED lights for computer fans before that really became a thing. Screwdriver kits, thermal grease, RAM chips, unsoldered boards, weird little toys, train sets, coloring books, certification books for that MCSE test I took in 2002, and whatever else I could think of. The stores were kitchy. Some had walls painted like circuit boards. Some had alien motifs. Others were decorated like the old west. It's like whatever they could find weird stuff to adorn the joint. People were increasingly going online. In 1997 they bought Frys.com. To help people get online, they started selling Internet access in 2000. But by then there were so many vendors to help people get online that it wasn't going to be successful. People were increasingly shopping online so they bought Cyberian Outpost in 2001 and moved it to outpost.com - which later just pointed to Frys.com. The closing of a number of Radio Shack stores and Circuit City and CompUSA seemed to give them a shot in the arm for a bit. But you could buy computers at Gateway Country or through Dell. Building your own computer was becoming more and more a niche industry for gamers and others who needed specific builds. They grew to 34 stores at their height. Northern California stores in Campbell, Concord, Fremont, Roseville, Sacramento, San Jose, and that original Sunnyvale (now across the street from the old original Sunnyvale) and Southern California stores in Burbank, City of Industry, Fountain Valley, Manhattan Beach, Oxnard, San Diego, San Marcos, and the little one in Woodland Hills - it seemed like everyone in California knew to go to Fry's when you needed some doodad. In fact, they made the documentary about General Magic because they were constantly going back and forth to Fry's to get parts to build their device. But they did expand out of California with 8 stores in Texas, two in Airizona, one in Illinois, one in Indiana, one in Nevada, one in Oregon, and another in Washington. In some ways it looked as though they were about to have a chain that could rival the supermarket chain their dad helped build. But it wasn't meant to be. With the fall of Radio Shack, CompUSA, and Circuit City, I was always surprised Fry's stayed around. Tandy started a concept similar called Incredible Universe but that didn't last too long. But I loved them. The customer service wasn't great. The stores were always a little dirty. But I never left empty-handed. Even when I didn't find what I was looking for. Generations of computer enthusiasts bought everything from scanners to printers at Frys. They were sued over how they advertised, for sexual harassment, during divorce settlements, and over how they labeled equipment. They lost money in embezzlements, and as people increasingly turned to Amazon and other online vendors for the best price for that MSI motherboard or a screen for the iPhone - keeping such a massive inventory was putting them out of business. So in 2019 amidst rumors they were about to go out of business, they moved to stocking the stores via consignment. Not all vendors upstream could do that, leading to an increasingly strange selection and finding what you needed less and less. Then came COVID. They closed a few stores and between the last ditch effort of consignment and empty bins as hardware moved, they just couldn't do it any more. As with the flashier and less selection but more complete systems Circuit City and CompUSA before them, they finally closed their doors in 2021, after 36 years. And so we live in an era where many computers, tablets, and phones are no longer serviceable or have parts that can be swapped out. We live in an era where when we can service a device with those parts, we often go online to source them. And we live in an era where if we need instant gratification to replace components there are plenty of retail chains like Target or Walmart that sell components and move far more than Fry's so are more competitive on the price. We live in an era where we don't need to go into a retailer for software and books, both sold at high margins. There are stores on the Apple and Microsoft and Google platforms for that. And of course 2020 was a year that many retail chains had to close their doors in order to keep their employees safe, losing millions in revenue. All of that eventually became too much for other computer stores as each slowly eroded the business. And now it's become too much for Fry's. I will always remember the countless hours I strolled around the dingy store, palming this adapter and that cable and trying to figure out what components might fit together so I can get the equivalent of an AlienWare computer for half the cost. And I'll even fondly remember the usually sub-par customer service, because it forced me to learn more. And I'll always be thankful that they had crap sitting around for a decade because I always learned something new about the history of computers in their bins of arcane bits and bytes sitting around. And their closing reminds us, as the closings of former competitors and even other stores like Borders does, that an incredible opportunity lies ahead of us. These shifts in society also shift the supply chain. They used to get a 50% markup on software and a hefty markup on the books I wrote. Now I can publish software on the App Stores and pay less of my royalties to the retailers. Now I don't need a box and manual for software. Now books don't have to be printed and can even be self-published in those venues if I see fit to do so. And while Microsoft, Apple, and Google's “Services” revenue or revenue from Target once belonged to stores like Fry's, the opportunities have moved to linking and aggregating and adding machine learning and looking to fields that haven't yet been brought into a more digital age - or even to harkening back to simpler times and providing a more small town white glove approach to life. Just as the dot com crash created a field where companies like Netflix and Google could become early unicorns, so every other rise and fall creates new, uncharted green fields and blue oceans. Thank you for your contributions - both past and future.
Victor and Jani are back for the second season of the Foreign Devs podcast! The two discuss what's happened since season 1, how Victor ended up in the middle of a hurricane, creative marketing in today's world, Victor's promotion, mental health, project iterations, Adobe Flash, and take a trip down the first-internet-experience memory lane.
The theory that we have slipped into an alternate dimenions is the only explanation our Science Officer can come up with to explain this bizarro world of weird news, cadets. We've got court dates, bad actors, failing factories, social network revolts, idiots with self-driving cars, and the sure sign of a pocket universe ... computer store chains reappearing that died off centuries ago, kinda like Brigadoon! If you see any crewmembers with goatees or eyepatches when they normally don't sport them, notify the command deck immediately! https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/apple-cant-block-epic-from-updating-unreal-engine-fortnite-to-remain-banned https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/apple-applauds-court-for-denying-epic-games-request-to-restore-fortnite https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/28/apple-shuts-down-epic-games-developer-account https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/researcher-reveals-safari-data-leak-bug-after-apple-delays-patch-to-2021 https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/24/ios-ad-developer-kit-reportedly-steals-click-revenue-harvests-user-data https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/final-cut-pro-x-update-brings-8k-speed-social-media-crop-tools-better-proxy-workflow https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/apple-releases-imovie-update-on-ipad-iphone-and-mac https://www.macobserver.com/news/quarter-netflix-subscribers-also-have-apple-tv-plus/ https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/27/japan-display-to-reportedly-sell-lcd-factory-to-sharp https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/23/apple-maps-trials-updated-maps-for-uk-and-ireland https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/27/tiktoks-new-ceo-quits-ahead-of-us-ban https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/27/tiktok-could-be-sold-to-a-us-company-within-48-hours-report-claims https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/24/tiktok-files-legal-challenge-against-app-ban-executive-order https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/23/wechat-users-sue-white-house-to-fight-executive-order-banning-the-app https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/29/samsung-galaxy-z-fold-2-may-be-cheaper-than-original-at-launch https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-very-good-reason-why-hbo-max-and-peacock-arent-1844873657 https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/08/movie-watching-tesla-driver-charged-after-autopilot-hits-cop-car/ https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/24/unreleased-prototype-mac-mini-with-ipod-nano-dock-surfaces-in-photos https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/plugable-launches-affordable-usb-c-7-in-1-hub https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/29/apple-revives-ipod-music-quiz-as-siri-shortcut-in-ios-14 https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/25/compusa-brand-lurches-back-from-the-grave https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/08/28/an-iphone-makes-you-76-more-attractive-on-dating-apps
Smart home displays will soon support Zoom; review of the Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra; S20 series gets new features; Verizon bundles Disney, Hulu and ESPN; Apple bundles CBS and Showtime; a new CompUSA deals website; Instagram now lets you scroll forever and ever; Apple starts two new streaming radio stations; Netflix tests a shuffle button.Listeners ask about which Ring doorbell to get, if a basic MacBook Air is worth it, changing the default email program on an iPhone, getting a data signal in the middle of nowhere and what the best to-do app is.Follow Richhttps://twitter.com/richontechZoom on smart home displayshttp://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/19/2080745/0/en/Zoom-Expands-Zoom-For-Home-to-Popular-Smart-Displays.htmlNote20 Ultra reviewhttps://ktla.com/morning-news/technology/samsung-galaxy-note20-ultra-review-richontech/S20 updateshttps://www.samsungmobilepress.com/featurestories/the-galaxy-s20-gets-even-more-powerful-with-new-updateVerizon Disney bundlehttps://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-unlocks-more-value-customers-disney-hulu-and-espn-includedApple bundlehttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/08/apple-tv-plus-subscribers-get-cbs-all-access-and-showtime-bundle-at-a-great-value/CompUSA deals websitehttps://www.compusa.com/Instagram endless scrollinghttps://help.instagram.com/381638392275939Apple new radio stationshttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/08/apple-announces-apple-music-radio/Netflix shuffle buttonhttps://techcrunch.com/2020/08/18/netflix-test-puts-a-shuffle-play-button-right-on-your-home-screen/Default email app on iPhonehttps://9to5mac.com/2020/07/21/ios-14-heres-an-early-look-at-how-youll-be-able-to-change-default-apps/Best To Do apphttps://todo.microsoft.com/tasks/
What if you were given the ability to learn from one of the leading brand experts in the country? Pull up a seat because we get to do just that in our episode with Marty Neumeier! Marty is a world-renowned author and leading experts on how to build your business & brand strategy. He has worked with big-name companies such as Apple, Netscape, Symantec, Kraft Foods, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Riot Games, and Capital One to help advance their brands and cultures. Today he is sharing some of his tactics and wisdom with us in Episode 31 of Baby Got Backstory. This is one of the most informative and inspiring stories you will ever hear. What we're talking about Marty Neumeier's Story: From Grade School to College Graduate The Path from Young Career Man to Leading Branding Expert Teaching The Branding Theory Marty Neumeier's Story: From Grade School to College Graduate At the tender age of 7, Marty announced to his 2nd grade class that he wanted to be a “commercial artist”. Marty's mother had gone to art school, and taught him to draw at a young age. It was with this training that he became the school's artist. This love and skill for art and design led to a college education at Art Center in Los Angeles, CA. The Path from Young Career Man to Leading Branding Expert Early in his career, Marty wisely realized that you couldn't be a high end, successful graphic designer if you didn't have control over the words you use in your layouts. He learned copywriting to add to his list of esteemed skills so his designs would blend seamlessly with the graphics. As his career progressed, he also discovered that some of his projects were more successful than others, which led to the “branding” design. After he put his theories, skills, and expertise to work, his work took off! At the age of 40, Marty catapulted himself into a leading expert. Teaching The Branding Theory Marty is so confident in how his branding strategy works that he said you'd probably be better off taking a CBO (chief branding officer) position than starting your own company. You'd probably make more money! Your reputation can have value beyond the product you're producing. When you have a specialty that no one else has & its valuable to companies, and you can prove it, you have no competition really. This is the essence of building your branding strategy. Are you ready to take your brand to the next level, and learn from the best of the best? LINKS MENTIONED Level C Brand School Scramble by Marty Neumeier The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier Zag by Marty Neumeier Metaskills by Marty Neumeier Level C Branding School SPONSOR Wildstory TIMESTAMPS 9:13 - 9:25 (12 sec MN) Why is it that sometimes my work...it was accidentally on strategy. 11:48 - 12:38 (50 sec MN) The more I started working in this area....in order to be successful together. 16:24 - 17:13 (49 sec MN) It's hard to keep up with what's happening...some really interesting ways of looking at their work. 32:03 - 32:33 (30 sec MN) Branding is more about strategy...It really rises to a higher level in a company or business. 35:00 - 35:39 (39 sec MN) The stuff that makes customers loyal...That area of work is called branding. QUOTES Branding is a field that brings business people and creative people together. - MN A brand isn't a logo or a tagline, or even your product. A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. - Marc Gutman Branding deserves a spot right next to the CEO. That level of leadership has to be all about brand. - MN We're in a paradigm shift caused by the pandemic and collapse of the economy that's going to shake everything up. It's going to shake the snow globe & create a lot of opportunity for people that can embrace change and find a place in this new future whatever it looks like. It's going to be the future we've been trying to make happen, but we got stuck because of tradition. - MN Long term strategy is helping customers become who they want to become. And if you can do that, you'll be very valuable to your customers and they will stick with you beyond reason. - MN Most people don't know that branding is more than logos. It's much more than that. MN A company has to have a purpose beyond making money today if they want to succeed. - MN Podcast Transcript Marty Neumeier 0:02 Who's gonna work for a company that just wants to, you know, increase shareholder demands? It's just boring. It makes you want to take a take a shower. After you come back from work, there's nothing there for anybody. No, we live in a world of human beings. So we want to think that what we're doing has value to people real value and that we're leaving the world a better place because of what we're doing. Marc Gutman 0:30 podcasting, Boulder, Colorado. This is the baby got backstory podcast, we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like big backstories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory. How one of the world's most famous branding experts didn't even Start that part of his career until the ripe young age of 40. Now, if you like and enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over at iTunes. iTunes uses these as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on the apple charts. And ratings help us to build an audience which then helps us continue to produce the show. On today's episode, we are talking to one of my heroes, branding expert, Marty neumeier. Much of what I do every day, and aspire to do comes from the teachings of Marty. I have consumed his thoughts, his books, and his philosophies, and I consider him a living legend. Most people in marketing, not just branding on at least one of his distinctive white books with the big black type across the front. And for those of you who don't know Marty Neumeier. He's an author, designer and brand advisor whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of design to business. His series of Whiteboard books include zag, which was named one of the top hundred business books of all time in the design full company, a best selling guide to non stop innovation. His first book, the brand gap, and the one that I've come to love and many of my branding colleagues have come to love has been read by more than 23 million people since 2003. A sequel, the brand flip lays out a new process for building brands in the age of social media and customer dominance. And his latest book scramble is a business thriller about how to build a brand quickly with agile strategy. In 1996, Marty founded critique magazine, the first journal about design thinking, think about that he was one of the first to be talking about design thinking. He has worked with innovative companies such as Apple, Netscape, Symantec, Kraft Foods, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Riot Games, and Capital One to help advance their brands and cultures. Marty was gracious to drop in for a long interview on the baby gap backstory Podcast, where we discuss the importance of brand and branding, how branding ads and during value to a business and why those businesses that focus on brand will be successful on the other side of this pandemic. And those that don't are going to be in trouble. Our conversation ranges from Marty's early days of branding, The Beatles, Leonardo da Vinci ageism in the creative field, and what the future might look like for all of us. Marty says that branding is a field that brings business people and creative people together, and I couldn't agree more. And here is Marty Neumeier. This episode brought to you by wild story. Wait, isn't that your company it is. And without the generous support of wild story, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo or a tagline, or even your product. A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. Wild story helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve, so that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again, and this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out @ www.wildstory.com and we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show. Marty, you're an acclaimed author having written several books on the topic of branding books like the brand flip zag, and the brand gap, you are considered an expert on the topic of branding. And you're the director of CEO branding for liquid agency in Silicon Valley. And you also teach a five tier program on brand mastery through your own company level C. So we do have a sense and an idea of where the story is going. But what I really want to know is where did it start? Marty? Were you always into branding and branding? The idea of branding as a young kid? Marty Neumeier 5:34 I was not I didn't know that word existed, you know, but I did get into communications pretty early, at least in my head. I was seven years old when I announced to my second grade class that I wanted to be a commercial artist. And everyone said, Well, you know what, and the only reason I even knew that job title existed is because my mother went to art school. She had taught me how to draw. And I took to it pretty well and became known for that. And by the second grade, I was the artist for the school. So that has a huge effect. Huge pull for kids when they're, you know, they're told at a young age that they're special for something. And so, I think it was right then I said, You know what, that's what, that's what I am. And all I have to do is wait long enough to be one. Marc Gutman 6:28 At that time, what was a commercial artist? What does that even mean? Marty Neumeier 6:32 I think, you know, I thought it was like an illustrator. You know, someone who does illustrations for magazine covers and for anything signs, signage, trademarks, anything like that. I had no idea, you know, but I knew drawing was involved. And I could do that. So as soon as I was old enough, I got myself into art school at Art Center in Los Angeles. And that's that was my gonna be my track and somewhere Along the way, I just realized I think was probably 20 years old, maybe even a little younger, that you could not be a really successful high end graphic designer, if you didn't have control over the words that were that you used in your, you know, on your in your layouts and so forth. Because that you can't separate graphics and communication in the word part of communication. And I was having trouble finding copywriters to work with that I could work with as equal partners, you know, because the way copywriters worked in those days is they thought about the, the intent of the communication and they wrote some things and they handed it to you and you would kind of illustrate it or lay it out as an ad or article or you know, whatever it is, and that isn't really what I wanted to ask not the way I wanted to do it. So I wanted to you know what Work with copy people from a team together. And I, you know, I tried to make that work. But eventually I figured it was easier to learn how to do the copywriting part myself, I could go a lot faster, and there'd be no gap between the words and the pictures, they would be they would each contribute, contributed equally. And so that led me to the writing side of communication. And I just kept doing that and, you know, built a studio, doing all that kind of graphic design and some advertising, and reports, corporate identity, all the kinds of things that could make money for designers. And it wasn't until I don't know probably I was 40 or something like that, that I realized that there was a gap between what I thought good work was and what a company thought good work was and the gap. The reason for the gap is that they didn't know what I was trying to achieve or if it was any good at all. And I really didn't know what the business was trying to achieve. I just knew my little part of it. And sometimes I would, you know, get lucky and the company would prosper because of the work I did. And I always thought, Well, why, why is it that sometimes my work is really valuable to a company? And other times? It's not? Well, it happened that when it when it worked for the company, it was because it had it accidentally was on strategy. So I started just thinking about what is strategy and what is business? What's the difference between business strategy and design strategy? Can it can it all be one thing? And so that led me to the world of branding and starting with positioning those great books by trout and Reese, starting in 1970. They opened up a whole world for me talking about the the strategic intent of communication of advertising and marketing and so forth, which I didn't know existed. So you know, because designers what, what do we do? We, we look at the work that other designers have done through the ages. And we want to fit into that continuum. So we try to do this great, exciting, inspirational work, but not really, with with regard to what companies are trying to achieve. Of course, we think we are, but unless you're really intimate with what a company or a CEO is trying to do, you're guessing a bit. So I needed to look into that. So that was a lot of reading a lot of experimentation. And, you know, nothing's easy. It takes years and years to be good at something. So but I would say I was probably 40 by the time I really saw the problem. Marc Gutman 10:40 Right. So that's have so many questions. All right. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, I mean, just that one alone, like I think so often in our careers, you know, we think we either have to figure it all out really early or that by 40. We should have figured it all out. It's really interesting to me that it like what you're best known for at least how often Know you, and you've been a huge influence on my career didn't even really happen until you were 40. And beyond that, that just like blows my mind Marty Neumeier 11:09 and mostly beyond. And I think we're really started to become clear to me is when I was I was probably 50. At this point, I decided I would publish a magazine about the thinking behind graphic design was really the first journal about design thinking, focused on graphic design thinking. It was called critique magazine. And so critique was filled with interviews and articles about famous graphic designers and advertising people and the thought processes behind their work. And the more I started working in this area, I realized the less we actually knew about what we were doing, we really didn't know what we were doing. There's a lot of kind of mythology about What makes good design what makes good advertising, good marketing, but it wasn't there was no framework for it, there was no structure, you know, that would lead you to the solution that would really drive a business forward. And then I realized what what that framework is its branding. It's the kind of playing field that brings business people and creative people together, we can all agree that this is a game worth playing. But we have to know our parts, we have to play our roles, we have to take our positions on the field and know what we're doing and where we're headed, in order to be successful together. And so when I figured that out, I ice pretty much changed my whole orientation to my work and stop trying to help graphic designers understand business, which is what I was doing with the magazine. It's like, you know, pay attention to business because this is where you this is where you're going. work takes flight, you know from you, you really have to understand what you're doing for companies to be successful in this. Most designers didn't want to hear that they really happy just doing the work the way they wanted to do. But so I, I decided to turn the other way towards business people and say, Hey, business people, CEOs, marketing people, design can do tons of stuff for you have no idea how powerful it is, if you just knew how to harness it, so I created a business helping companies get their arms and heads around this whole idea of branding and design and creativity as a consultant, and that worked great and built a company on that and wrote the book, the brand gap to define the problem. The problem is the gap between design and business strategy. And so that became the really became a focus of my work ever since I kept writing books on the same subject because it, it's actually rich with opportunity. So that's what I've been doing. I've got eight books now all around this topic of, of the brand gap, and the role of creativity in business and the opportunity for business of utilizing design in a way that can, you know, really drive like off the charts results for the company. Marc Gutman 14:29 Yeah, and I don't want to harp on this too much. But I'm still so fascinated about how, and I do want to talk to you about your books and get into those because I'm a big student of those. But I'm just so fascinated that these books came so late to you and that this kind of second career came later. And the reason I'm so fascinated is it's really personal for me. I mean, we see in our industry, you know this this idea of ageism is like rampant, you know, especially in the creative field and design and branding. It's all about younger creatives and younger people in it. What's the younger generation doing? And? And yet the the the wisdom and the perspective is all coming for you after 40. And I mean, do you ever run into that today? Do you find that? You know, how do you maintain relevance? How do you stay relevant as you get older in the creative space, and you have all these younger people pushing on you? Marty Neumeier 15:20 Well, you know, I think what I've noticed is that whatever you ate, how will you know if you're already in business, if you're late, let's say solidly working in an industry. By the time you're 30, you're going to be equal in your ability to accomplish things as someone who's in their 70s I think he, you just bring something different to it. So if you're 30, you're going to bring an awareness of the latest stuff that's happening in culture, right? Because you're going to be like, that's what you're going to care about is that stuff that's all around you, everyday, all that stuff. You're going to be right there with it. And you can bring that knowledge to your work. Now. You may not have the wisdom of someone who's 60 or 70. But you've got that. And you've got energy and new ideas and very little baggage, right? So as you get older, you have to deal with, like what you are what you already know is your problem. You know, what you think is true and right and correct, you have to keep reinventing that for yourself. And that gets difficult because it's hard to keep up with what's happening now in culture and also do the things you really need to do, which is to learn from the past. I mean, that's where the wisdom comes from. It's like looking at the whole sweep of history going way back. Like, it's great to, you know, think about what the latest advertising agencies doing but also like check in on Aristotle, you know, he had some really amazing insights that you could learn from. Now, you know, someone who's 30 is probably not going to spend a lot of time thinking about Aristotle, but by the end of your career, be looking back at history. And trying to mind history for all its great wisdom and bringing that up today. And you also have a duty and an opportunity to teach younger people, some really interesting ways of looking at their work. And by the same token, younger people can bring that, that fresh world to you so that you're not totally out of touch with what's happening. But you get out of touch because you get ideas that have worked for you, and they keep working for you. So you don't want to have to work so hard to stay up with everything. But also you're spending time broadening your knowledge base, and that, you know, that just takes time away from staying in tune with what's on television or what's on what's on kwibi You know, this week, so everyone has advantages. That's why someone who's 30 can compete with someone who's 70 in vice versa, as you have different strengths. Marc Gutman 17:58 I love that. Thank you. So you start every book that you have at least the ones I've had, and I've read. So I don't say every book release, the ones I've read with an intro to that book that you're holding that is essentially an anti book. Right? You always you make these mentions that, hey, this is the fewest words possible. You make it a point to tell the reader that you've bought a short yet dense and informative book. Like why are short books so important to you? Like, why why do you always enjoy your book that way? Marty Neumeier 18:28 Well, if they are short, I do. It's for a reason. And the reason is, we're all very busy, you know, doing our jobs and it's hard to find the time to move into new new territory, a new area of understanding and keep working and you know, bring in the, in the money to pay the rent and all that. So, you know, why would I, like try to monopolize somebody's time I want them to get out and start using this immediately. But at the same time, I don't want to offer them a shallow sense of anything, I want everything to be as deep as possible. So to do that, you have to really work on compressing your information down to the simplest possible way to say it. So that it a communicates clearly and B sticks in your head. So that's, that's actually the work of, you know, copywriters, that's what they do, they figure out say something in the least amount of space. So that that skill that I've developed has served me well. And it has an author's just gonna use copywriting skills, and also design skills. So designers can make things visual, that maybe aren't typically visual to help people understand it and help it stick in your head. So there's those two skills together, especially when you use them in tandem. One on one equals three. So that's, that's the nice thing that I can bring to it. Other than that, it's just reading and learning and trying out things testing, doing research and all these things that I'm addicted to now at this time. Part of my life, I just love learning more and more about it. So I just take that information, and I use my design and writing skills to make a book that communicates clearly just goes right into your brain like a laser and, and sticks there because it's, you know, if I do it well enough, it's memorable. So but having said that, I've got a book that's not like that meta skills, which is 300 pages of much, it's deep material that stays deep, doesn't, it's not simplified, because it has to be that way. So I'll on that book that's about developing skills for the, for the century, especially after the pandemic, you know, we're going to have a lot of new opportunities, and it's going to require new skills. So there are five skills that I write about meta skills, which are skills that that can help you create or learn new skills, there's sort of a skill of skilling yourself. That makes any sense. So that book is different. And then I also wrote one called scramble that is not visual. It's, it's a thriller. So it's a business thriller that I use to explain the idea of Agile strategy. So this is for strategy, business strategy and brand strategy together. How do you create it? How do you do it fast and do it well enough in our fast moving world of business today, so that it's been an interesting process is to learn how to communicate business material in through story. And I think it's working well. So I'll probably do some more of those too. But the whiteboard books, the ones you're referring to, like the brand gap, the brain flip, zag, those are the you know, the highly visual quirky fun, condensed brand books. Marc Gutman 21:49 Yeah, thanks. Thanks for sharing that. How do you decide what what topics to write on? I mean, writing a book is no small feat. It's certainly a lot of dedication and time so has to be something that You know, is worth doing? How do you decide what you're going to write on? And what's worth your time? Marty Neumeier 22:05 And not I think it's being honest. I think it's, I write about stuff that bugs me. You know, when I think like, you know, people should really think about something in this way or not the way they're thinking about it, or the world really needs to change to embrace x. And typically, in the beginning, I don't even see what it is that I'm going to write about very clearly, it takes a while to kind of go, yeah, that's the problem. It's, you know, none of us really see this problem, but it's a real problem. And I can fix this, you know, I can, I can unleash people's creativity. So we all can fix this. And so, I mean, the brand gap started just out of frustration that, you know, I couldn't seem to get designers to care enough about business to know what they were doing within a business. I couldn't get business people to care enough about design so that they can manage it. Well. That that is really A last opportunity of like two bodies of knowledge that are very sophisticated, that can't work together and need to work together. So, you know, so the brand gap, and then and then when I was doing the brand gap, you know, talking about it and giving workshops people would say, yeah, these five disciplines that are in the brand gap, you know, differentiation, innovation, etc. That really makes sense. But the differentiation when where you have to be different than everybody else. That one is really counterintuitive to me. I'm not really sure I get that or I'm not on board for that. I just think you know, we need to do someone's making a lot of money in one area, you do what they do, and you will make money too. And that's not how it works. So I decided I have to drill down on differentiation. So zigzag became a drill down book, just this idea of positioning in positioning for difference making your company different, making it The only in its category so that you don't have to compete head to head with anybody and you your profit margins can be higher. And that takes, you know, a definite effort to do that. I mean, it doesn't come naturally to people we don't, we're not different, but naturally know people. Some people can't help be different than maybe that's an advantage. But a lot of people just want to be the same. They just want to fit in, they just want to be professionals. And that's actually not a very good kind of impulse for, for becoming great in your industry and for standing out and having a brand that's really valuable. You have to purposefully do something different than your competitors. So that needed a book, right. And so that succeeded really well. And then I started to realize, well, you know, even if you understand all this material, you as a company, you can't build a brand unless your company understands the whole concept of branding, they have to have all the processes in place to embrace and protect that brand. And that record that's going to require a culture change. You have to change the culture and to be to become innovative and to become brand focused and brand lead. So I wrote the design for company that introduced I think it was the first book about design thinking. So that's that's how I, I write these books. I have, like, a burr under my saddle. And I just have to, I get angry, angry enough to write a book. Marc Gutman 25:38 So interesting. And you were, you're like, right on the forefront of design thinking. I didn't realize that your book was potentially the first book I had always kind of attributed design thinking to this thing that I do invented. Where did design thinking come from, if not from there? Marty Neumeier 25:53 Well, God bless you. I mean, they have been so helpful to the design field by explaining All this stuff and paving the way for everybody else. at my office in Palo Alto, Palo Alto, when I started this, I was writing the brand gap. I was in a little like a warehouse, because I just shut down my other business. And it was full of all the junk from my last business. And I was there by myself, writing my book right across the street was at the IDEO headquarters. And so I got to know those guys and really become familiar with their, what they were doing. And they wrote a lot about this topic, too. So we're probably doing this at the same time. But I think my book was the first one to use design to actually describe the process of design thinking in its simplest, simplest way. IDEO followed with some very specific books about design thinking, and so did a lot of other people. But even before that, my magazine critique was about design thinking. So, you know, I'm not claiming credit for inventing design thinking but I would say it was in the Air probably as early as 1990 Marc Gutman 27:01 Wow, that's quite a bit of history. I love that. I love that. And so, you know, one thing I love about your story is is what I'm gathering and please correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth or summing up incorrectly is that you've tried a lot of different things. Like you haven't just said, Hey, I'm just gonna try this, you know, magazine and design thinking, I'm just going to be a designer, like, you've really given yourself the ability to try different things, see if they work, you know, in success for you. Also, it doesn't sound like it's a zero sum game. Like, I would suggest that critique magazine was a success. But at some point, you shut it down and then you know, you're doing something different. So, you know, can you talk a little bit about this like propensity to to try different things to sprout out, I mean, to sprout up to contract to kind of do it over and over again? Marty Neumeier 27:50 Well, you know, what I like about being a designer is the ability, the freedom that you have to invent, to innovate to, to experiment a little bit. And even when I was just, you know, in my 20s doing design, I always wanted to try different ways of communicating, you know, different ways of using graphics, words and pictures and combination, all that kind of stuff. I mean, it was just endless fun. trying all these things. I think all I did was the take that same impulse to be inventive and move it up to a higher level of like, Can I be inventive? With the concept of the work? Can I be inventive with the strategy behind it? Can I be inventive with my own career? You know, kind of do I have to do this all the time? Not that I didn't want to do it, but I just thought there's always something to explore. So maybe it's just a kind of curiosity and adventurousness that I developed early on. Then I was a big fan of The Beatles. This is back in when I was in high school, The Beatles came out. And up to that time, you know, music was great rock and roll was great. And I, you know, played a guitar and I listened very closely to music since I was probably 10 years old. And I loved all the newness, the novelty of, you know, the top 40 and all kinds of stuff. When the Beatles came out, it was something like at a much higher level of creativity to me, much more intellectual, but still fun and accessible. And what they would do is they would give you some music that you could accept, and then it'll start to really like, for its difference. And then just when you were comfortable with that, they'd come out with more music that was a little more different, like they were always exploring. So every step they took, was pulling you further into some area that you weren't expecting. And I just love that I just thought that's what I want my career to be. I want to be exploring every opportunity in this like, breaking the mold every time I can and so, but at the same time being a serious person So who's, you know, is making a living with it and, and is in demand by industry and all that. So, you know, you can, you could do crazy stuff every day of the week, and never really amount to anything in your life. So you don't want to do that. So you have to kind of stick with something. But I always wanted to be like trying something new pushing the ball forward down the field. And that's the joy of it for me. So I would say, kind of reinvented myself but every 10 years, like in a fairly serious way, but not in a way that would surprise anybody. It's just like, maybe just take a step to the left or to the right or the elite a little bit of a leap forward. Or it just means really, that you have to be willing to abandon what was working before to try something that might not work. But you know, that that's kind of a defining characteristic for me. So it's, you know, I love doing it, and I still love doing it. So that's why I'm when I look back, I could never have predicted I'd be teaching branding right now, to professionals. I just, you know, I wouldn't even know what it was. I just wanted to be a commercial artist, you know? So don't don't hold yourself back and say no, I'm an accountant. And I can't be anything but an accountant. You'd surprise yourself just, you know, imagine something else you might enjoy and take a few steps towards and see if you like that. And eventually you'll jump and do that. And that will be great until it's not and then you'll be ready to jump again. Marc Gutman 31:33 I mean, and so in that light, Do you consider yourself a brander? Or a marketer? Marty Neumeier 31:37 Oh, brander Yeah. To me marketing. It's way more tactical than branding. So marketing is really about how do I sell stuff now? How do I create revenues this quarter? Like it's, it's an ongoing challenge. It's like you're in a live sports event. You're you're playing on the field, and you've got to like Score score score. Branding is more about the strategy. It's a long term, it's a long game. And so it's more like having a sports career than a sports game, you know, for the company, it's, it's really thinking about how do we make money now and 20 years from now, to make sure that we've grown in the last 20 years we've grown, we've become more important, more solid, less vulnerable to the shifting winds, or that kind of stuff. So it's, it's really rises to a higher level in a in a company or in a business. I would say, I'm starting. This has taken me a long time to to believe this. But the more I study this and research it and test it, the more I think branding deserves a spot right next to the CEO at that level of leadership has to be all about brand. So think about someone who is variable successful at this Steve Jobs. CEO of Apple, you know was the world's maybe still is the world's most successful rich company out there. And he was his title was CEO, but he didn't really do the kinds of things that CEOs are known to do. He didn't really care that much about shareholders and taking care of them. He didn't look at spreadsheets and worry about finance. I mean, that was somebody else's job. His job was to make sure you had customers like rabid customers, rabidly loyal customers who would buy anything that he decided to put out, and he worked really hard at that was fanatical about it. And so that, you know, it's very rare for Steve Jobs to put out a product that just wasn't successful. He did it but you know, it happens. But he was very careful about being successful every time out making sure that the product they were producing and selling was the right product at the moment. And so what does that take? Well, it takes some sense of what your customers want, you have to think like a customer, you have to understand your customers really well. You have to take responsibility for their delight, right? So he had to create the products that he thought they would need, if they only knew they existed. He had to make sure that the products were unique, somewhat unique Anyway, you know, they didn't have to be the first but they had to be the best that they had in hand, put an apple look and feel that they were designed beautifully that they worked beautifully. Pet, they had the ethos of Apple, all that stuff. That's a lot of work. And it typically it takes one very strong willed person to make that happen. So that person needs to be pretty high up in a company, whether he's the CEO or she's the CEO, or this is what I would say is more practical is a CBO chief brand officer. There needs to be somebody response for that stuff, the stuff that makes customers loyal. That's that's the highest level work you can do in the company. The rest is mostly operations and bookkeeping. So you don't have a company without customers. Right? You can have customers without having a very good company, you don't last long. But you could do it, the customers are the main thing. And so we're to really designing is not your designing customers. And that is tricky work. And we're just now starting to understand how it's possible to make that happen. And that area of work is called branding. Marc Gutman 35:40 And so why do you think that we're not seeing that more often today? Why are we not seeing more people having CEOs and people sitting right next to the CEO and thinking more like Steve Jobs and less like, what we kind of see as a traditional CEO, which is, you know, hey, I gotta take care of shareholders and financial spreadsheets and whatnot? Marty Neumeier 36:00 I think it's that that tradition makes things, you know, keeps things from changing tradition. You know, we've been having, you know, businesses been going on for, for many centuries now really picked up in the 1500s. And that's really going well. And schools reflect the knowledge base that you need to be in business, and they are very slow to change. They should move slowly. And so it takes innovators to kind of break out of that. And until enough of them are successful, nobody's willing to follow. It's, it's just too important to to succeed. I mean, success is so important that people don't take risks, they're risk averse. And the bigger the company is, the less risky they tend to be. But then you see, you know, people like Steve Jobs, you know, hugely successful people are going so how do we do that? I mean, where do you where what's To go to to learn how to do that, well, Steve Jobs didn't go to any school, he figured it out. And I think we're still at that figuring out stage. But it's, you know, it's the reason I started level C with my partner and the, and the star is to bring this little part, which I think is gonna be a much bigger part of the business called branding up to a level of professionalism so that it's a thing, like people know that this is the work that we're doing. In fact, it could be the central work of any company is creating, and just the normal CEO skills are not gonna do that for you. Right. So, so who's gonna do it? Well, I think it's gonna, I think it's going to be a lot of business people getting into branding, but it's also going to be a lot of people who are creative, more creative, that really know how to communicate and do strategy to understand the social element of a business, getting in and taking A lot of responsibility. So that's what we're looking for. It's happening. It's not happening as fast as I thought it would considering how powerful it is. But um, you know, things take their they take as long as they take and but I think that's the direction we're going in, and there's no turning back. Marc Gutman 38:15 Well, thank you for sharing that. I mean, the thing I find like, and I'm sure you run into this all the time as well, like anytime I talk to a client, anytime we start branding, and I'm like, Hey, tell me who you want to be like, they're like, I want to be like Steve Jobs. I want to be like apple, but they don't want to do the things that make them wait. Marty Neumeier 38:35 Yeah, so yeah, they want the results without doing the work, sir. Yeah, but but that's, that's the job of consultants and writers, people like me, teachers to say, okay, there's actually a way to do this. You have to, this is what you need to know about it. A lot of things in your company or change to make this happen. You know, Apple is not that just wasn't one person. Apple is all bunch of people under one person's direction doing things in a way that no other company was doing. And so there are lots of companies out there experimenting with that now to apples just happens to be that one of the earliest and the most beautiful of them, you know, the most perfect of them, but it's, it's happening everywhere. So I just think it's frustrating for people like you probably because you can see where things need to move to. And they're not moving fast enough. But just think about all the people that don't have that vision yet. They haven't seen it. It's going to take a lot of time. And eventually though, I think you'll, you'll go to the university and you'll get a branding degree, you know, and it'll be really robust. It'll be great. And maybe you'll even have to take some art classes or other you know, creative classes to go along with that. And I think that'll be great. I think the world gods. This is my theory, okay. The world got split. up into two paths back in the Renaissance. In the exam, the renaissance of a really smart talented person was Leonardo da Vinci, because he would. He was artistic and creative, super creative. But it was also really scientific and logical at the same time he could do both of those things he made those two things work together as one. So it's a metaphor for having your left brain and right brain working together as one unit. And what I what I think happened was that that example his example, which we now know about, was unknown, because his notebooks never out. I mean, he meant to publish those notebooks but he was afraid to publishing because he didn't want to lose any. He didn't want to because his competitors are like up so he kept those notebooks very secret. Meaning to always meaning to publish them when he before he died and he never got around to it. And then he gave the the project to his assistant before he died. So you you get them published to him. And the assistant Francesco melty failed to do it. Also, he wasn't very good follow through either. And so those notebooks just got lost. They filtered out into various houses in Europe, and they were, he was basically unknown for 200 years, nobody knew. Nobody had that example of how you can use art and science equally, to make something that nice by itself. So art went one way became like what we know now is just kind of art for people's homes and museums and everything. And then then we got, you know, science went into manufacturing and all kinds of stuff like that, and never the twain shall meet. So, business has had, you know, 100 years of being mostly about science and logic and dollars and cents and just being very narrowly defined. And now we need that example of Leonardo da Vinci we need we need the creativity, the logic, the magic and the logic, working together to create a company that last that's really important, and we don't have that anymore. So we're trying to get it back. That's what's happening. So universities have the ability to, to post the art and the science programs back together so that they influence each other. And, and then that, in turn, will influence business management. And we'll see business that is businesses that are much more human focused, and that will be good for business that'll be good for capitalism. It's going to be good for society, good for everything. And at this point, it's up to the creative people to make that case. Because I don't think traditionally educated business people Know how to get that I think they want it, they want jobs, they don't know how to do it. If you know how to do it, then you should be in there pitching, you know, you've got to get in there and connect the dots for business people and and make all this possible. So that's what I did there. And I mean the fight, you know, to, to bring humanity back into the business, not just because I want it that way, but because it'll be successful that way. And I'm thinking, we're apparently we're in a paradigm shift right now, caused by the pandemic and the collapse of the economy. That's gonna shake everything up. It's gonna shake the snow globe, and create a lot of opportunity for people who can embrace change, and find a place in this new future what it's like, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be the future we've been trying to make happen, but we got stuck because of tradition. So, tradition is getting broken up right now, at least temporarily. And that's that's a chance to to get And do some new things, I think what'll happen, businesses will become more brand focused. So they'll try to delight customers more, they'll try to protect customers instead of just milking them for their cash, you know, which is not a very good long term strategy. long term strategy is helping customers become who they want to become. And if you can do that, you'll be very valuable to your customers, and they will stick with you beyond reason, though, though, they'll stick with you, even when you're not doing a good job if they trust you, because you're human helping them. It's very simple. But we just don't have the framework to understand that from a business standpoint. So, you know, I'm working on I got eight books on the subject, and I'm certainly finding a lot of CEOs that are interested in in adopting a more brand focused way of leadership. So I think it's going well, I just think you only have so many years in your career, and you could easily get frustrated that it's not moving fast enough, but it moves as fast as it moves. Marc Gutman 45:10 And such is life. I mean, I love your vision of what the snow globe may look like, on the other side of this, but, you know, what's hard about branding? Like, what, what just what doesn't the normal person see or What don't we now, like what's hard about this as a discipline? Marty Neumeier 45:27 Well, the first thing is that most people don't know that branding is more than logos. I mean, that's, that's, you know, the vast majority of the world thinks branding is about sticking logos on things or you know, colors and typefaces maybe, or maybe advertising or, you know, marketing. Branding is not it's much more than that. It's it's about giving customers something that makes them better people and in the largest sense, and, yes, that is that that demands To make products that they think are valuable, that are respectful of them and society and the environment, it means communicating the values of those products or services in a clear way that so they understand what it does for me, it requires that companies build themselves around their brand and have a purpose that's, that goes further than just wanting to make profit. I mean, you know, a company needs to have a purpose beyond making money. Today, if they want to succeed, if their only purpose is to grow to be a 5 million $5 billion company and sell it off to somebody else. They'll probably succeed at that, but they won't create anything of lasting value. They'll just their company will be absorbed by somebody else. may or may not do anything good with it. So you can do that. But if you want to create businesses that last and create that are satisfying to everybody You need to think about purpose, what's the purpose of this company beyond making money? What What do we want to do for the world? And so, I'm pretty cheered up about that, that actually, that message got through to people. There's very few instances anymore where you see that, you know, a statement on somebody's website that says the purpose of our company is to return or to, to increase shareholder returns, or something really bland. Having only to do with profitability, it's always got to be more than that, because who's gonna work for a company that just wants to, you know, increase shareholder dividends, it's just boring. It's, it's, it makes you want to take a take a shower. After you come back from work, it's like, you know, it's just, there's nothing there for anybody. No, we live in a world of human beings. So we want to think that what we're doing has value to people real value and then leaving the world a better place because of what we're doing. It's not easy to do but that's the That's the that's the goal, really great companies. So an apple service certainly that way, if you want to go back to them, Apple wants to improve everybody's minds, you know, I mean, they want to push evolution forward. So it's pretty big. And you can go to work and be happy about doing that kind of work. Google, for example, I don't trust them as much as I used to, but they had the right idea when they started out, which was, let's catalog all the world's information and make it easily accessible to everybody. Well, that's pretty cool. I mean, I certainly benefited from that. It's really helped me in writing my books and learning and all kinds of stuff is to get all this free information about the world. Oh, people are like getting in line to work for Google. I mean, in the stock valuation reacted appropriately to that, you know, it's super valuable. Amazon stock is doing really well. Amazon has a very narrow, missing permission. Which is to be the most customer centric company in the world. I think they've done that. They haven't been great, necessarily to their employees or to other businesses, they've kind of trampled. You know, the competitors. And I think they owe the world a lot after their success, and they need to pay back pay back for that. But you could see how having that lofty goal is what really drove them to such heights. So you need that. And so be careful what you wish for to whatever you decide you want to do for the world, you may be very successful. So you have to start them thinking about well, have we done any damage? And we how do we get a net positive out of our contribution to the world? Oh, Marc Gutman 49:49 I just want to think about that for a second. let that simmer, settle a little bit. Marty Neumeier 49:54 Yeah, so I mean, I've been talking a lot about sort of like ideas of branding and everything but it also is important at And surface level of branding, like what you say how you say it, you know, what are the messages? Like? What kind of words are they using? What is their poetry? And is there? Are they powerful words? Or are the images sticky to you? You know? Are they beautiful? Are they memorable, all these kinds of things that we typically think of as being in the realm of branding, they are still important, right? So important at every level. So I think for me, having come from advertising, marketing, design, and having been in the trenches, was really a good background for going into brand strategy and brand education because I know what it takes to do it. It's not easy. It's as hard as any kind of art form and takes as many brains and skills and all that kind of stuff and collaboration to do that as anything else. And I really think without that, you may have great strategy. You may have great intentions. But the rubber never meets the road because you don't do a very good job on the actual stuff that people see the, what we call the touch points. So all that the design of all those touch points, the places where customers come in contact with the brand, they have to be great. They have to be clear, beautiful, powerful, all those kinds of things. And you could spend your whole career just learning how to do some of those things. And that's fine. For me. I just felt like I did a lot of those things. And I was getting frustrated that maybe my work wasn't landing the way it should, in a business way. The business sense what connecting or it wasn't being appreciated for it in some cases, or maybe as being too appreciated for it because it really wasn't working. That's not very, that's not very satisfying thing. So I just felt the, for me the place I could go to do the good was is intact. This whole idea of branding, how can it get everyone on the same page so we can all work together to do something good for customers and the company and society. It's all it's all there and branding. I mean, you definitely can do it. And it's gonna take every ounce of effort that you have to be good at it, which I really love. I just love it to be challenging. Marc Gutman 52:23 Yeah, and you know, that that's a great segue into to this question for you in that we've spoken a lot about what companies can do around branding and benefit from branding. But what advice do you have for people like myself, brand strategist, agency owners, like what should we be looking to, in order to be you know that that next level, the leaders and branding and delivering the most value to our clients, which is obviously what we should be wanting to do, Marty Neumeier 52:51 but you can deliver value at different levels. So one is, um, you can be the person that does the design or the message creation. Four touch points, essentially, which is where I started. The important thing there is understanding where you fit in, like, what's, what's this branding thing that I'm contributing to what is what's expected of me? How do I know when I've been successful? How can I sell what I'm doing? Because I can prove that it's successful in in the right context that makes sense to businessperson. So there's that. And then then you might move on to move into brand strategy. And then you have to be the connector between all these touch points, the creation of these touch points and some business results. You have to be able to sell that and manage that. So how do you do that while you you read? So I do everything. I read about it. And then I try it out. You have to have a theory before you practice it. So practice is great. You can learn a lot from your own experience, but without a theory to test against. You really don't learn that much. So you need to have a theory. Like oh, maybe I try this and measure that result in See how it is I'll give you a concrete example because I'm getting a bit abstract here. So once upon a time, I will have a design firm and I was designing the retail packages for for business software. That's I decided that I could specialize in there and probably be the only one that knew enough about it to, to warrant being paid a lot of money for it, essentially. So if I could be the first one to really understand how to design the software package so that people in the store would pick it up and look at it and go, That's for me, I'm going to pay $200 for that, that product, just based on a package. So I thought if you could do that your work would be very valuable to a company. So that that's that's what I did is I just learned how to do that really, really, really well. While I was doing that, I understood that I started to realize when I talked with my clients that they I would, I would have to ask them questions like, okay, for this package that we're designing, I need you to tell me the one reason that people are gonna want to buy this product instead of the one right next to it that does the same similar thing. Why would they want to buy this word processing program instead of the word processing program right next door on the shelf? And they would say, Well, I don't know. Maybe they wouldn't know. I don't know why we have no, wait a minute, we have these features. This feature this feature this feature that I could say, well, you know, this other product has this feature, this feature this feature also, how does yours differ? Well, we have this other feature that you missed, we have that. Is that important? Well, no, that's not really important. Okay. So we have a problem. Your product is not different than the other one. And they will say, Oh, yeah, you're right. And I've been I would say, if you had something that would really differentiate you from the competition, then we could play that up. And we can make a big deal out of that one thing that you have that that other product doesn't have. So then they are saying, you want to come to the meeting where we're going to be talking about the next iteration of the software, because your views would be really interesting. And so I was learning strategy. And I started reading more about it, like, what is a business strategy? How does? How do you know when you're successful? How do you measure it, all those kinds of things. And soon I got to the point where the packages that we were designing, were selling the software so well, that could like increase sales, three to five times over the previous line just by changing the package. When companies found that out, then they realize they could they would pay a lot of money for that service. And I didn't need to be charging by the hour anymore. I could charge by the packets and I could charge anything along that really because no one else knew how to do this. That was the Huge, you know, a Tiffany for me that the price you charge for something doesn't isn't based on the hours you put into it. It's based on what it does, you know, because all my life I've been charging by the hour. So I started charging quite a bit of money for these software packages. And then it got to the point where because we went to the store and we tested these are prototypes in a store with actual customers, we got to know the salespeople in the store and the store owners and so forth is because we're there all the time testing prototypes on the shelf to see which one would be the best selling selling package. After a while when a software publisher would bring their product to a store like CompUSA which was a big deal at the time I guess there's been fries is another one who was maybe fries is still going I don't know. They go into the store with the product. say look, we have this new product and we Can you? Will you take it? Will you put it on the shelves? And I'll say, Well, you know, we don't bother demonstrating the product. We know it works. I mean, you guys know what you're doing. It's not our job to test your product. We'll assume that the product works. But your package is just not good enough. You know, it just it's not. Why do they have this opinion? Because they've been talking to us for years. And seeing what we knew to be a good package and being in on this conversation, until they knew enough about it to say, No, that's never gonna sell you got everything in the wrong place in their package. You just like it's a mess. We can't take a package like that. So go back and redo it. And we'll, we'll talk about it. And the publisher would say, well, we pay out. We paid $50,000 for this. I don't know what else we can do. And they write out our name and my phone number and give it to them and say, Look, talk to these guys. they'll fix you up and come back. So it wasn't, you know, long before we were charging $80,000 for a package for the same package, we would have charged $10,000 for years ago, but now we know more about it. And you know, we have a reputation for it, we have a brand, our brand is the people that do the software packages. And we got, you know, all the work came through us. So that, to me, was just eye opening, that, you know, that when your reputation could have a value, beyond the actual value of what you're producing. Just the reputation alone is worth money to your client or your customer. So that's what I would say is anybody in consulting can do the same thing when you have a specialty that no one else has, and it's valuable to companies and you can prove it. You have no competition really. And when you charge more for that service, it doesn't hurt your chances of making money. It actually probably enhances your chances. Because they cost a lot. If they think you're the best at something, you better cost a lot. So this is a, you know, a situation in which charging more money actually makes you seem more valuable. And that's where you want to be. And that's what Brandon can do. So once you know that and you have a sense of how to get there, what's stopping you, I mean, figure out what you're going to do that's really different than anybody else that's very valuable, and preferably in an area growing, where you can grow with it. And just do that. Just present yourself as a specialist in something and make sure that you are the best in that something on it, you can prove it. And you'll enjoy that because you'll get more you'll make more money, you'll have more options. You'll have more respectful clients, fewer competitors. And eventually if you get tired of doing that same thing over and over you reinvent your Marc Gutman 1:01:02 That's a great share. Thank you, Marty. I so appreciate it. So you're always reinventing yourself. what's what's next for Marty neumeier? Marty Neumeier 1:01:12 Well, I think what I'm doing what's next now it's pretty new this thing called level C. Level C is a boutique brand school that pops up anywhere in the world. It tends to be mostly popping up in Europe, in London, and also then in the US, several times a year. And professionals like you take classes that are just two day intensive workshops where you learn something specific about branding. So there's five levels, so you're learning five levels of branding, and it gives you enough material to probably keep you busy for a year or two, using all this stuff and making money from it, and so you're ready to go up to that next level. If you choose to do that. Some people won't just take the first master class and become a certified person. specialists and they'll just use that for five to 10 years you know, and do really well with it. Some will say though, I love that and I'm doing well but I want to drill down into strategy more become a strategist, also the money's better than being a strategist. So that may be one of the reasons they want to do it. So they take this next masterclass and they learn that and from there they can go to become a brand architect, which is working on complex three dimensional brands where you've got multiple brands that you're juggling and, and creating the architecture for it's called brand architecture tell all the brands fit together inside a company, how the portfolio is assembled, which is really valuable work. From there, we believe that a lot of people will want to become brand trainers. Because when you start to instruct people in your subject area, you learn a lot more than you learn. To get to that point, so you know, when you if you really want to learn something, teach it. That's the that's the saying. And I think that's very true for everybody I know so. So the fourth level of the level c brand program is being an instructor. And after you learn how to do that, and you've, you've taught some classes, semester classes, you're ready to teach that to a CEO or to a whole company, right? So we hope that people will go into the top of the brand master level, which will equip them along with their other skills that they've been learning the whole time to be CEOs to be grounded officer or somebody very high up in a company that has influence over the whole brand. So that's the top level and when they graduate from that they'll go have their hands full and go have a lot of work. We're starting to see lots of need for cheap, cheap brand. Are you talking about that before? Why is that Where there are a lot of Chief brand officer as well there are going to be in they're already starting to pop up these openings for for that position. Part of it is it's new so you have to sell yourself is that you have to say look I do is I work at the top of an organization to manage all the stuff that makes customers loyal. And then you your salary figure and hope you get a job and the salaries for this kind of work that we're seeing already even in this earlier. Our will take your breath away. I mean, I had no idea that that kind of pay that much to get people of that caliber, but they will I'm not gonna throw around figures because I'm not. I think that could be manipulative, but let's just say that they're there. They're breathtaking. You probably be better off taking one of these jobs than starting your own company. Let's put it that way. think you'd make more money. So that's exciting. And so you know, I've got I've got my hands full, we're creating these classes, one, one class per year, it's a lot of work to put together, a class takes about a year. So we've we're up to the second class now. Next year, we'll have level three, next year, level four, next year, low level five. And we're getting people that are taking all the just moving up through all the courses in the new people getting in all the time. So the result of this that I find really exciting and satisfying is that it's building a whole community of people that understand branding in a certain way, in a very clear, simple way. But with all d
Today we're going to talk about a company that doesn't get a ton of credit for bringing computing to homes across the world but should: Radio Shack. Radio Shack was founded by Theodore and Milton Deutschmann in 1921 in downtown Boston. The brothers were all about ham radio. A radio shack was a small structure on a ship that kept the radio equipment at the time. The name was derived from that slightly more generic term, given that one group of customers were radio officers outfitting ships. By 1939 they would print a catalog and ship equipment over mail as well. They again expanded operations in 1954 and would make their own equipment and sell it as well. But after too much expansion they ran into financial troubles and had to sell the company. When Charles Tandy bought the company for $300,000 in 1962, they had nine large retail stores. Tandy had done well selling leather goods and knew how to appeal to hobbyists. He slashed management and cut the amount of stock from 40,000 items to 2,500. The 80/20 rule is a great way to control costs. Given the smaller amount of stock, they were able to move to smaller stores. They also started to buy generic equipment and sell it under the Realistic brand, and started selling various types of consumer electronics. They used the locations that people bought electronics over the mail to plan new, small store openings. They gave ownership to store managers. And it worked. The growth was meteoric for the next 16 years. They had some great growth hacks. They did free tube testing. They gave a battery away for free to everyone that came in. They hired electronics enthusiasts. And people loved them. They bought Allied Radio in 1970.and continued to grow their manufacturing abilities. Tandy would pass away in 1978, leaving behind a legacy of a healthy company, primed for even more growth. Electronics continued to be more pervasive in the lives of Americans and the company continued its rapid growth, looking for opportunities to bring crazy new electronics products into people's homes. One was the TRS-80. Radio Shack had introduced the computer in 1977 using an operating system from Microsoft. It sold really well and they would sell more than 100k of them before 1980. Although after that the sales would slowly go down with competition from Apple and IBM, until they finally sold the business off in the early 90s. But they stayed in computing. They bought Grid Systems Corporation to bring laptops to the masses in 1988. They would buy Computer City in 1991 and the 200 locations would become the Radio Shack Computer Centers. They would then focus on IBM compatible computers under the Tandy brand name rather than the TRS line. Computers were on the rise and clearly part of the Radio Shack strategy. I know I'll never forget the Tandy Computer Whiz Kids that I'd come across throughout my adolescence. In the early 90s, Radio Shack was actually the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, building computers for a variety of vendors, including Digital Equipment Corporation and of course, themselves . Their expertise in acting as an OEM electronics factory turned out to be profitable in a number of ways. They also made cables, video tapes, even antennas. Primarily under the Tandy brand. This is also when they started selling IBM computers in Radio Shack stores. They also tried to launch their own big box retail stores. They sold the Radio Shack Computer Centers to a number of vendors, including CompUSA and Fry's, during their explosive growth, in 1998. They would move from selling IBM to selling Compaq in Radio Shacks at that point. Radio Shack hit its peak in 1999. It was operating in a number of countries and had basically licensed the name globally. This was a big year of change, though. This was around the time they sold the Tandy leather side of the business to The Leather Factory, which continues on. They also got rid of the Realistic brand and inked a deal to sell RCA equipment instead. They were restructuring. And it would continue on for a long time and rarely for the better. Radio Shack began a slow decline in the upcoming millenia. The move into adjacencies alienated the hobbyists, who had always been the core Radio Shack shopper. And Radio Shack tried to move into other markets, cluing other companies into what their market was worth. They had forgotten the lessons learned when Tandy took over the company and had more and more parts in the warehouses. More and more complex sales. More and more bigger stores. Again, the hobbyists were abandoning Radio Shack. By 2004 sales were down. The company started a high pressure plan and started hammering on the managers at the stores, constantly pushing them and by 2004 they rebelled with thousands of managers filing a class action suit. And it wasn't just internal employees. They were voted the worst overall customer experience amongst any retailer for 6 years in a row. Happy Cows make happy milk. And it wasn't just about store managers. They went through six CEOs from 2006 to 2016.And 2006 was a tough year to kick such things off. They had to close 500 stores that year. And the computer business was drying up. Dell, Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, and others were eating their lunch. By 2009, they would rebrand as just The Shack and started to focus on mobile devices. Hobbyists were confused and there was less equipment on the shelves, driving even more of them online and to other locations. Seeing profit somewhere, they started to sell subscriptions to other services, like Dish Network. They would kick off Amazon Locker services in 2012 but that wouldn't last but a year. They were looking for relevance. Radio Shack filed Chapter 11 in 2015 after nearly 3 years of straight losses. And big ones. That's when they were acquired by General Wireless Inc for just over 26 million dollars. The plan was to make money by selling mobile phones and mobile phone plans at Radio Shacks. They would go into a big deal with Sprint, who would take over leases to half the stores, which would become Sprint stores, and sell mobile devices through Sprint, along with cell plans of course! And there were law suits. From former debtors, leasers, and even people with gift cards. Only problem is, General Wireless couldn't capitalize on the Sprint partnership in quite the way they planned and they went bankrupt in 2017 as well! I don't envy Radio Shack CEO Steve Moroneso. Radio Shack was once the largest electronics chain in the world. But a variety of factors came into play. Big box retailers started to carry electronics. The Flavoradio was almost a perfect example of the rise and fall. They made it from the 70s, up until 2001 when they began their decline. It was unchanged throughout all of that growth. But after they got out of the radio business, things just… weren't right. With 500 stores, he has a storied history. A 100 plus year old company, one that grew through multiple waves of technology: from ham radios to CB radios to personal computers in the 70s and 80s to cell phones. But they never really found the next thing once the cell phone market for Radio Shack started to dry up. They went from the store of the tinkerer with employees who cared, to a brand kinda' without an identity. If that identity will succeed, they need the next wave. Unless it's too late. But we owe them our gratitude for helping the world by distributing many waves of technology. Just as I owe you dear listeners, for tuning in to yet another episode of the History of Computing Podcast.
Welcome back to Memory Protection! This month we get lost in Apple's web of mergers and acquisitions as we close on the miWillenium. We get to a point where we don't know how to end the show, similar to the point in these show notes, I just don't know how to stop... ==== Follow Up: Was the iMac upgraded between launch and iMac DV? Yes - the life-savers colors were release in early 1999 Hot Cocoa: Apple gets into the spooky spirit Matt’s Quicktime Corner: Phil Schiller gives the keynote speech for the new QuickTime Live! Conference Steve Jobs To Deliver Webcast Speech As Pixar CEO, QT Not To Be Used Apple adds 6 new Quicktime TV channels to “The Drawer” Use of QuickTime is declining iMac Alarm Clock Another one! American Girl Performa Apple, ever vigilant about protecting its intellectual property announces an injunction against Future Power & Daewoo from selling it’s iMac ripoff, the E-Power computer. Microsoft and RadioShack team up to “acquire new customers” Federal judge rules that Microsoft has monopoly powers Apple is hoping for a dope xmas season Between The Apple Store and other mail order sources on one side and CompUSA and Sears on the other, the days of the independent dealer appear numbered. One of the first people convicted for copyright infringement for MP3 distribution Interesting article on what Apple looks like after Steve Jobs is gone, again Will ‘i’ stay or go? (Search for “stay or go”) Site vision - cool web site article by Jason Snell Y2K Prep (Search “end of the world”) Topics: Apple's Upcoming Acquisition Of Chip Maker Could Hint At Future Products Bob Mansfield ARM holdings Apple was one of original founding members of the company, but sold off their shares in Feb 1999! Complete list of of mergers & acquisitions by Apple Recommendations: Josh: Movie: Pokémon the First Movie. A boldly named film Roger Ebert’s review Music: Willenium Matt: Movie: American Movie Music: Beck - Midnite Vultures Connect with us elsewhere on the internet! Twitter Website Email
(EP029) ¿Como funcionaba la venta y distribución de aparatos electrónicos antes de que llegaran las mega-tiendas? En Puerto Rico existió una gran industria independiente de venta y distribución de equipo electrónico antes que cadenas como Walmart, BestBuy, CompUSA y hasta el mismo Amazon existieran. En este episodio hablamos con Fernando Gallardo Bustillos quien fue figura […]
This episode begins with a short introduction including announcements about a live podcast recording at Rogue on May 17th with Michael Wardian and Charlie Engle. We will do a run at 6 pm and then Q&A with Michael and Charlie at 6:45/7:00 pm. You can find event details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/300818644149908/ Then at 7:15 into the episode, the audio begins from my live (with audience) recording with Chris Lear. We talk about the story behind the book Running with the Buffaloes and about how he dropped everything to pursue this idea. We talk about his methods to capture the story and how he made ends meet with his job at CompUSA while finishing the manuscript. Then, we talk about the story itself and what he learned from Adam Goucher, Mark Wetmore, and the team. Plus, we dig into his second book Sub 4:00 about Alan Webb in his first and only season at the University of Michigan and then find out where Chris is now.
My guest today is Kristin Currier Ludlow, a Digital Designer with over 20 years of helping people shop better online and in stores.In my experience, retail is one of the toughest industries to advocate for and create UX change, but as you'll hear, it's a challenge Kristin has risen to — and overcome.Kristin believes that everything in retail — and life — is user experience. Whether you're resetting a store or an building an online shopping cart, it's the same thing. And as you'll hear, she's applied that belief to every task she's ever tackled. From companies like Office Depot, Home Depot, CompUSA and Levenger to her current gig with a small UX team at City Furniture, Kristin has carried the DIY spirit and positive, can-do attitude of punk rock into everything she does. That being something we share, this was an absolutely inspiring conversation for me.Twitter:@kristincurrierFacebook:Kristin Joy Currier LudlowLinkedIn:Kristin (Currier) Ludlow, UXCInstagram:kristincurrierWebsites:http://source-studio.comhttp://kristincurrier.com/If you enjoyed this episode, please check out our good friend and sponsor, Stache Studio — a streetwear clothing brand focusing on quality products with a positive message, inspired by the resilience to turn a negative situation into a positive outcome. The Stache mantra is that even in the darkest times, there is a light revealing prosperity; find your light and let it guide you through the darkness. Visit https://www.stache.studio/ to check out their incredibly well-designed products and learn more!
Guest - Scott Sanborn - Camera Operator - Sinking the podcast in the first 3 seconds with a bad Owen Wilson impression - Behind Enemy Lines first times - Pre 9/11 America - Donald PetrieCast - Owen Wilson selected filmography talk, nose conspiracy theories - Jon VoightCast - no color allowed in Eastern Europe - we would all do a dumb comedy to buy a Tesla - Johnny DeppCast - Cloud Computing killed all our computer Macguffins - Nico from GTA, dual wielding hand guns - remember rated R movies? - Pleasantville is surprisingly NSFW - movies have stolen ski and hockey masks - deep Creedtalk, the good stuff you came here for - Creed albums showing up in your CD book all by themselves - Deconstructing the avalanche of symbolism in Creed music videos - we work the WWF/WWE into another episode - Scott Stapp, are you ok? shoot us an email - Richard’s The Chronicles of Narina soapbox - bands sneaking in just enough Christianity - Dude everyone got a Dell, CompUSA, old school computer talk - Me, You and the Scoo talk - Richard’s Nickleback soapbox - Creed: skip the music, watch the videos
In California, the senator that authored the gold standard of net neutrality laws has delayed the implementation of that law after agreeing with the FCC to wait for judicial review. In random news, CompUSA is back online after 11 years as the site is now a bargain affiliate based site for discounts products and tech gadgets. Google is now handing over some more privacy controls to users with the ability to clear their entire search history from their servers. Finally, IBM is set to acquire Red Hat by end of 2019 in an attempt to compete in the cloud services industry and provide more offerings to their clients.
Our guest is Matt Dusig, Co-founder and Managing Director at InnovateMR. InnovateMR is a panel provider which has created the Pegasus Sample Access Platform, allowing users to employ a DIY sampling solution. Prior to starting InnovateMR, Matt has founded and harvested 3 other companies and invested in many others. In this interview, Matt covers building successful partnerships and teams in entrepreneurship, how he determines investment opportunities that works for him, and the what InnovateMR offers: quality, price, and trusted expertise. In hearing about his background, we learned particularly about staying ahead of the curve in technology and market research. FIND MATT ONLINE: http://www.innovatemr.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattdusig/ Twitter: @mattdeuce FIND US ONLINE: www.happymr.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/happymrxp Twitter: @happymrxp Instagram: @happymrxp LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch/ Hi, everyone, I'm Jamin Brazil and you're listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast, today my guest is Matt Dusig, co-founder and managing director at Innovate MR, Innovate MR is a panel provider who has created the Pegasus Sample Access Platform which allows users to employ a DIY sampling solution. Prior to starting innovate MR, Matt has founded and harvested three other companies and has invested in many others. Matt, thanks very much for joining us today. [00:00:28] Thanks, Jamin, excited to be here. [00:00:30] So what did you parents do and how did that affect your early career? [00:00:34] Yeah, that’s a great question, so my dad has always been an entrepreneur all through growing up. He owned various businesses, and I think what I learned from him was mostly from being scrappy, when you’re running your own company you know it’s do or die, you have to be creative, there’s no safety net, and he was just, and is, he’s still alive, is just a super creative person, always looking for solutions to problems, which my wife might tell me I shouldn’t be solving all of her problems, but that’s a whole different story. And I just think that that was a key motivator that he started businesses, and that it was possible to do it, that was what I was going to do also. [00:01:18] That’s interesting so you knew you were an entrepreneur very early on in your career? [00:01:23] Yeah, I had, in college I had a side business doing graphic design for just companies and clients, and that was how I made extra money. [00:01:34] You have a co-founder who has been with you, gosh, since your early days, right, that’s Greg? [00:01:41] Yeah. [00:01:42] Four companies together. I mean, that’s insane. [00:01:48] It’s actually five, it depends on how you’re counting. [00:01:50] I’m apparently not counting well enough. [00:01:50] There have been some failures in between. [00:01:53] Wait, say that again? [00:01:54] I said we’ve had some failures in between that we don’t always talk about but there have been five companies and in fact if you go all the way back to college there was a sixth company. So Greg and I, our relationship goes back to being six or seven years old. Our families were friends growing up, on the block, and so we’ve known each other our whole lives. My sister, his brother were friends, and then when he joined the fraternity I was in in college, we became best friends again and then college roommates, and it was in college that we actually started one of our first businesses. [00:02:31] What year was that? [00:02:33] Now you want me to age myself, OK. [00:02:37] Well, yeah, I do want you to age yourself. [00:02:39] That was 1989 that we became roommates together. In order to launch the business, we had to promote it, and in promoting it we went down to CompUSA or Circuit City, one of those stores, it had a 30 day return policy and we bought a fax machine, and we used that fax machine to send out promotions to different clients that w...
I met Kristen Dingman now lives northeast of Seattle in the small town of Arlington, WA. I met Kristen back in the mid-90s when we opened CompUSA store 667 in Boise, ID. She had the unenviable task of keeping the front-end employees in line. Eventually our careers moved on, we lost touch, we reconnected on Facebook as you eventually do with all sorts of former colleagues. Then last summer, I had my stroke. And Kristen reached out to me to offer her support because she had had her own stroke the year before. And while our strokes are different, as all strokes are, there is a lot in common in our stories. Kristen's story is one of sleep apnea, high blood pressure, smoking cessation, anxiety, PTSD, a supportive husband (David), and a family that knows when to insist on medical assistance. One thing that we touch on here which does not get talked about enough is that the FAST signs of stroke (face, arms, speech, and time to call 911) indicate that someone is having a stroke, but the lack of these signs does not mean someone isn't having a stroke. Kristen's stroke did not have these classic signs. It was characterized by intense headache, disorientation, inability to concentrate, vision field cuts, and a spiking blood pressure. Sleep Apnea Sleep Apnea is a condition where folks stop breathing throughout the night. After my stroke, I was sent for a sleep study where they attached all sorts of electrodes to my head and watched while I slept over night. Sleep apnea is diagnosed if you stop breathing 5 times an hour. It's severe at 30 times an hour. My score? 59 times an hour. That means every minute of the night I stopped breathing and my brain woke up a bit to start breathing again. I've likely been sleep deprived for decades. Kristen's score was even more severe. Today, I sleep with a CPAP machine. Basically, a silicon hose wraps around my face under my nose and attaches to a hose on my head. It blows air directly into my nose to keep my airway open while I sleep. I get much more restful sleep now and don't wake up nearly as groggy as I used to. And I don't snore anymore. That means my girlfriend sleeps better, too. Untreated sleep apnea leads to stroke, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and general exhaustion. And many of those conditions also lead to stroke. It's a big deal and getting it dealt with can change multiple people's lives. Hack of the Week Here are 5 tips to adapting to your first CPAP/BiPAP machine: If you take the mask off while sleeping, put it back on as soon as you realize it's off. Use it while you're awake to help your body get used to it. Put socks on your hands to make it harder to take off while you sleep. Put medical tape on the mask to adhere it to your face so you can't take it off in your sleep. If it's not working, talk to your doctor about a different style of mask. The can right a prescription for a refit and insurance will usually pay for it. Where do we go from here? What does Kristen's story make you think about? Let us know in the comments below. Do you or your partner snore? Do you have trouble feeling rested? Do you always have super vivid dreams? Tell your doctor and see if a sleep study makes sense. If you'd like to reach out to Kristen, you can email her here. Share this episode with a friend, colleague, or relative by sending them this link: http://stroklecast.com/kristen Don't get best...get better.
Today we’re joined by Mike Taber, founder of Bluetick.io and co-host of the podcast “Startups for the Rest of Us.” We talk to Mike today about some of his background, his start in entrepreneurship, and how he almost founded CompUSA. We also discuss the importance of choosing the right market, “product-founder fit,” and all the […]
Saddened by the recent announcement that Toys R Us will be shutting its doors forever, Christie and Nicole have decided to take this opportunity to honor the stores and brands of yesteryear that have succumbed to similar unfortunate fates. In loving memory of: Toys R Us Babies R Us Kids R Us KB Toys FAO Schwartz Noodle Kidoodle Discovery Zone Zany Brainy Warner Brothers Store Caldor Bradly’s Aimes Gadzooks Limited Too The Limited Delias Contempo Casuals Rheul Mars Walbaums A&P Genaurdis Borders B. Dalton The Wiz PC Richards CompUSA HH Gregg Circuit City The Sharper Image City Sports Ritz Camera Linens N’ Things Chi Chi’s Bennigan’s Kenny Roger’s The Sizzler Bob Barker as the Host of The Price is Right Additionally, this episode is also dedicated to all the parents that spent their Friday or Saturday nights during the 90’s in a mall with your daughters. Your sacrifices have not gone unnoticed. Be sure to like us on Facebook so that you stay up to date with everything and anything Underwhelmed Podcast related- https://www.facebook.com/underwhelmedpodcast/. Christie can be found on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/realchristiewheeler and Nicole can be found at https://www.instagram.com/realnicolekokinos. The official Underwhelmed Podcast Instagram page is- https://www.instagram.com/underwhelmedpodcast. Christie also misses the time when Chris Gunnels was her friend and even thought about emailing us. You’re our friend now, so be sure to email us at info@underwhelmedpodcast.com with your questions and suggestions!
Is your company bottled up with a small identity - one tied to a specific geographic market, or a single product line you've outgrown? Is your current market or industry in a state of decline? It might be time to reposition your brand to reflect great capabilities, or expanded services, or an entirely new direction. In this episode, you'll discover how to avoid the mistakes of Polaroid, Blockbuster, and CompUSA, and to proactively identify and redirect your brand based on your unique skill sets. In essence, you'll look at how to redeploy your skills to make more money and live your brand more congruently. What's more, you'll learn when it's time to simply reposition through messaging or when it's time to reposition and rebrand your entire identity. By repositioning your brand, you can not only boost your bottom line, you could very well avoid a catastrophic business failure due to product identified branding. Learn to brand the bright way on this edition of Brilliant Branding!
EP113 - NRF Preview http://jasonandscot.com Episode 113 is preview of the NRF Big Show 2018. Recap of CES 2018 Preview of NRF Big Show 2018 Retail News Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. 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. Episode 113 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, January 15th, 2018. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 113 being recorded on Sunday January 14th 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason this is one of those are very rare times over the course of the Year where we are actually not only in the same town but in the same room at the same time. Jason: [0:53] I know it's awesome we make eye contact while we're talking this is very weird for me. Scot: [0:58] Yeah it's very weird I'm usually just staring deeply into the the computer. Jason: [1:02] I'm staring deeply into a photo of you I have over my computer. Scot: [1:05] Are there candles. Jason: [1:07] We don't need to get in any more specific. Scot: [1:08] Call Sue. Jason: [1:12] Why are we here Together Scott. Scot: [1:13] We are here at Big Beautiful New York City for NRS Big Show. It's that time of year again where were you here making the Trek down to the Javits Center no snow on the ground this year I think that's the thing the last three in RFC I've been trudging through snow but this one's pretty dry. Jason: [1:30] There's no snow yet but the mean in RF weather tradition is the blizzard that comes in during the show and makes it impossible to go home after the show and if I'm if I'm remembering correctly there is it forecast for snow during the show so we'll have to see. Scot: [1:45] We may be doing a lot of podcast from the the podcast you here in New York. Jason: [1:49] Exactly are our misery could be our listeners benefit. Scot: [1:53] And what's up we definitely want to do a little preview of some of the things that were already hearing about it in RF but you are fresh out of Vegas where you were at CES I want to hear all about your CS6 transfer. Exciting things I saw the Tweet about but I'm sure there's more color you can share. Jason: [2:10] Yeah so there's an annual tradition for me is you know you celebrate New Years and then you'll get on a plane and fly to Las Vegas with, 180000 of your closest friends to see the latest, new Innovations in electronics and then you go straight from there to New York for the blizzard and the big interrupt retail shop and I go to CES, almost every year I think this is my 32nd 2-year CES largely to see, new trends that might affect our our clients on our Industries. Scot: [2:48] Now that he's become Dex and CS remember and you probably go if we're talking 32 years they used to be separate shows then it kind of merged and now you can hardly see a computer anywhere at at CVS. Jason: [3:01] Yeah so they were competing shows context was in November CES is in January they both briefly also tried to have second shows in Chicago at another time of year was that that wasn't very successful, condex went out of business some of those exhibitors then moved over to CES and over history at various times they've been industries that. UCS is an important part of their business and then moved on so I can the video games used to all exhibit at CES they outgrew it and launch their own show which is he three computers are not a, super robust part of the Consumer Electronics ecosystem at the moment they're pretty flat. Although there is a big push people are feeling like the Esports and the high-end gaming is. Starting to drive a meaningful niche of these high-performance laptop sales. Scot: [3:53] One category that is CS now is Auto City Autos used to be kind of at their show which is called a Syma and then another part of SEMA Ace. Jason: [4:03] Cosima is the auto parts show that's in Las Vegas there there's a course of the Detroit Auto Show is going on right now in Detroit which is where all the. Karma you typically see car manufacturers in Detroit launching their new Mustangs and those are two things and you'd get the like. Tire guys in the the oil filter guys and all that at SEMA and for many years one of the big pieces of the consumer electronic show was the aftermarket. Car audio industry which is of course almost completely dead. Scot: [4:34] Yeah and then we had GPS is for a while they were big now actually Autumn acres are there in a pretty big way right. Jason: [4:40] Exactly so they have taken over the hall that used to have the car stereo equipment in it and they're largely showing car tech in so you know they're they're typically not launching their new vehicles. It in Las Vegas they're typically showing the new in-dash platform their new automation things the new wireless Services they're offering and what's what's a little funny is you you go to all the car boots and you. You might say you'll see some cars but you see a lot more like. Check components from the cars and then you go to all the other Halls where you see the the major ingredient tech companies like Bosch and Intel and Qualcomm that make alot of the parts in the car. And they are of course have fancy complete cars and they're both so you go to the tech show to see the cars in the car show to see the tech. Scot: [5:31] So what's new in cars is it is there still a big battle for the Smart Car platform already moved on to self driving cuz I know Intel's bigger than that what were some of the big things and Auto. Jason: [5:41] Dazzled by far the big Trend in the the car boots this year is Automation and particular the self-driving Vehicles they have this system. This ranking system from. Animated level 1 through 5 so I go level 1 car has tools that help you drive better like a flashing light that tells you that the car in front of you stops and two can kind of assist you and certain things. Like like a break for you when there's a car in front of you three can let you have your hands off the wheel for tonight you have your eyes off the wheel in five doesn't have a wheel, inside there a lot of now level 3 cars being shown at the at the show and a lot of the, the tech Innovation was around like these these autonomous vehicles and then to a lesser extent. Electric vehicles in new charging Technologies and things like that Qualcomm has a thing called Halo which is wireless charging for your car so you have a plate in your garage and you. You just parked the car over the plate and it charges it overnight free. Scot: [6:51] This may seem Irrelevant for retail but I saw on CNBC Ford, you announced they're very excited about driverless cars but they really kind of they don't believe that they'll be kind of a fleet kind of a thing like an Uber there really more into package delivery so I think that it's going to last mile. Absolution. That was kind of interesting that the others there's a major auto manufacturer that really thinks it's going to be really more for delivery and he specifically talked about new from stores to do consumers. Actually competing with FedEx Amazon ups and all those kind of folks. Jason: [7:26] Yeah yeah I mean there's another time we can talk about from that the show is Robotics and so it's kind of a combination of Robotics and automation there's a lot of interesting potential, new helping that last mile but the Ford booth at CES is kind of interesting they really focused on. Their vision for what a city looks like in a world in which most of the vehicles are autonomous and so one of the big questions that they they were trying to answer in their Booth is. How do pedestrians interact with autonomous vehicles right like to, often when you're crossing a busy street and there's a crosswalk you may go out of your way to make eye contact with a driver before you just make a leap of faith in Jump front of the vehicle so what do passengers expect to do. When an autonomous car is coming up to a crosswalk or those kinds of things, in one of the things that they did to study this is they really did this big research study on future cities but they actually invented a costume that looks like a car seat. And so they say they dress the guy up to make him look like the empty seat of the car and sat him down in the car so it was a fake autonomous vehicle. I'm just thinking that that's a funny job to go home and tell your parents you just got is your portraying a car seat. Scot: [8:41] Or when you have time to go to Starbucks I must look really weird it's like here comes a Walkin car seat. Jason: [8:45] Exactly so they videotaped all these consumer reactions and they have this notion around like we'll probably have to have some Universal standards for like a lighting system in the car that you know as pedestrians know that they're being seen or those kinds of things. Scot: [8:59] When ironic when is the new there's a Netflix series that started in the BBC and then got picked up but it's called Black Mirror and in this they just released season 4 I don't know if you watch it or not I think you're behind on everything. Jason: [9:12] I am kind of on most of the stuff you give me Groupon so that's that's next on my list. Scot: [9:17] No spoilers but one of the episodes it has this kind of plot device where there is a driverless vehicle that delivers pizzas and it kind of. Knock some of this guy and it's not really part of the whole thing but the looking shape of it was really interesting like you just wanted to know a lot of time thinking about how this look and then I saw that CS. Pizza Hut or. Jason: [9:37] Toyota and Pizza Hut add a had a partnership for an autonomous pizza deliver. Scot: [9:40] And it was just like it was exactly like the thing on dark mirror so I was really really very strange and then I saw an article about it and there was no coordination or anything it was just. Jason: [9:51] I wonder who inspired who think they're cleaning independent invention and then. Scot: [9:57] It's kind of has to be because well if the show had known about pizza thing it could have been but the shows literally been out for like that came out December. Like 30th or something so there's no way they could have designed a prototype that fast but it's kind of really Tales from the future kind of a thing to happen there. Okay so that's Autos then as I was sitting watching remotely and not fighting for calves with a hundred and eighty thousand other people I saw, a lot of Twitter traffic in stories were around the the home automation and then also kind of the battle of the smart speakers and intelligent thing so so last year report from cs1, this year it looks like Google is really stepping it up don't give us an update on what you saw there. Jason: [10:41] Jump to that last year we didn't necessarily expect partsmart, speakers to be a big part of CES but you went to the show and Amazon with embedded in like over 400 devices at the show and you know I seem to be ubiquitous in Amazon didn't have a, their own presents at the show yet they were getting on the bus, a big part of why I say yes existed to generate PR to drive future sales and so most people declare the Amazon the winter that show they didn't take a booth and yet they had this great, present so this year we are all curious to see if they would. Double down on that or if any of their competitors would make up any ground and it really clearly has emerged a two-horse race with Amazon and Google so this was probably the death knell for Cortana Cortana was the first born, on the PC is part of the Windows operating system and even all the Windows laptop manufacturers are now shipping laptops that are Alexa enabled, not Cortana enabled. Scot: [11:40] No it's a Samsung when I can't remember its name. Jason: [11:42] Bixby in Samsung is definitely has an interesting strategy overall theme of the show is. The traditional product you expect to see the show we're not very improved from last year it was a very irritable year and what the exhibitors were more focused on was. The platform of how all these products work together rather than their individual features so. LG and Samsung and I'll have Smart refrigerator smart washer smart kitchen is all these different tools and instead of showing you how much better the refrigerator is this year than last year there were more focused on how much better to the house works when all these, devices talk together so that. Scot: [12:21] That's a lot of mocked-up houses in this kind of thing. Jason: [12:24] Yeah I like vignettes and in these use cases like a you just bake lasagna in your Smart Oven your dishwasher knows you just. Bake the pan and so it's setting the dishwasher to the the pan scrubbing mode rather than the echo mode because it's got to get the the big done she's off the pan. Scot: [12:43] Does anyone have a nest camera for looking in my refrigerator so when I'm at work and I can't remember if I have milk or not. Jason: [12:48] Yeah it that's one of the most popular features in a smart refrigerators are these these webcam. Scot: [12:53] The ones on the outside where I can see inside isn't it I need like seeing. Jason: [12:56] Inside so that when you're at work you can at the store you can see if you need eggs or milk or those kinds of things. Scot: [13:02] The fair when I saw her was at sokoler came out with a pretty much any any kind of Plumbing fixture in your house can now be Alexa enabled so. They had the suitcase for the guys holding a baby with both hands. And he says Alexa turn on the sink and then he like takes a hand and he liked holds bottle and put it under and it's kind of like why can't you just take his hand in like turn on the sink and then they have a toilet did you did you get to check out the toy. Jason: [13:27] I did I did not actually test the toilet but I did observe the the Alexa enabled toilet and yeah that was in bed and everything it's not clear. That you want or would benefit from voice embedded in all these products and the what was interesting about the whole voice battle. This year was you know the Google had a much bigger presence than last year they both took a very big boost themselves which will come back to you in a second Amazon actually stepped out the size of their boots so they actually had. Immodest Alexa Echo System booth. Last year they had the treasure truck so they should have had the treasure truck and these examples of all the third-party products that work on the Alexa Echo System Google built this big Booth with they want some new hardware at the show so they have. Through Partners they're making what I would call Echo work type product to a Google home product with the screen. In a very familiar form factor that people that. I have that the echo look and today he wants to Booth to demonstrate all those things unfortunately that the booth is super extravagant and was designed for big parts of it to be outdoors. And for the first time in a hundred 15 days it rained in Las Vegas and so literally the the Google Booth was rained out on the first day which I imagine is a multimillion-dollar mistake. Scot: [14:48] I saw I had a slide did you get a chance to sit down the side. Jason: [14:51] It it did I did not get a chance to sit down inside their Booth was so crowded that they literally had like wait time management for all the various things so you are. It's 15 minutes to go to the roof and go down the slide and I just didn't have the time. Scot: [15:08] Yeah I did back on the color thing I heard that the deluxe integration with the toilet was kind of crappy. Jason: [15:15] I'll add the drum roll and post no no I won't listen. It's ok Google like did everything presents they were embedded in in more products but what they really did as they spent a fortune on Advertising so, so Google bought all the outdoor ads they had as on a ton of the taxis they wrap the Las Vegas Metro in in Google sign in. Scot: [15:38] Stairs I was under the stairs. Jason: [15:40] Yeah they I don't specifically remember some. Scot: [15:42] Escalators are like an escalator. Jason: [15:43] Yeah so they they spent a lot of money on outdoor advertising which is ironic I guess given that they're primarily an advertising platform. Scot: [15:50] Should ask him how they measured the ethics. Jason: [15:52] Yeah I don't think there is one. They definitely got more mindshare as a result of spending all that money and it certainly shows that there Devin Ernest interest in winning the space it feels like. They're still pretty far behind from an integration standpoint there certainly far behind from a skills perspective as well as we've talked about. But it's really emerging as a two-horse race and lots of retailers have a vested interest in Amazon not owning. The the home automation voice space and so you know there's a lot of people that that you know I'm rooting for Google because they're the. Potential foil to Amazon. Scot: [16:34] The Google Talk anything about the business model and how ads are in a work and they're just kind of like charging in and we'll figure it out later. Jason: [16:42] Yeah they really didn't like obviously wasn't they didn't talk a lot about it but there was a big announcement to me last quarter when both Target and Walmart and some other retailers started sharing first-party data with Google so that. If you if you're in the Google echo system in your shop at Walmart and you say order more peanut butter Google has access to your peanut butter purchase history from Walmart's to fulfill their. The the most likely peanut butter better you'd want right in that was historically abused competitive Advantage for Amazon is there artificial intelligence system had all this historical data on consumer purchases and since Google doesn't sell anything. They're pretty disadvantaged in. Scot: [17:21] Just Walmart and Target both share their data with Google and you say or did you just say order more peanut butter will Google know a Jason buys the most. Jeff from Walmart and allergic from Walmart like what use that to discern between retailers. Jason: [17:37] Yeah although it's it's the last that it's deciding like you opt-in so in the Google home Echo System you say I want my fulfillment partner to be Walmart and then that. That Ops you into Walmart sharing your data with Google. And then you're likely to get Jeff if you primarily order Jeff there that is an advertising opportunity so when you're a freaking purchaser of Jeff. They're likely going to sell you the Jeff you frequently purchased but if you say order peanut butter and your not a frequent purchaser of Jeff they need to. Suggest something to you and they typically pick one brand historically that's been this Amazon Choice program on the Amazon platform so they Amazon Choice products, usually ends up being the recommended product in in the Alexa Echo System but we're seeing some strong indications that Amazon is actually selling. The that. First recommended spot for new purchasers to a lot of Brands and so that it's sort of ironic like we've always talked about Google is primarily in a driven business, doesn't have a way to monetize voice Amazon obviously makes money selling stuff and so if voice makes you buy more stuff Amazon food, monetize much better than Google and then irony of ironies it appears that. Amazon is ahead of Google in terms of figuring out good advertising models for voice or at least acceptable ones. Scot: [19:03] Yeah okay a couple more serious than what was the worst or the wackiest thing you saw. Jason: [19:09] Yeah every year there's some goofy products there's that you know the. Bluetooth for car something like that something that jumped out of me is completely wacky there's a ton of new smart Health Tech and particularly a ton of sleep Tech in some of that seems. Somewhat silly right so, aromatherapy and video systems you know help you get 4 hours of sleep in a 20-minute power nap for example so there's a lot of that and then one product we thought there was kind of interesting I think you could both be the wackiest product or the biggest commercial hit. Is this the 3D printing for presumably young girls finger nails so you can. Scot: [19:50] Does chocolate last year too in my room. Jason: [19:52] There their they're definitely in some 3D chocolate printer. Scot: [19:55] I thought you're going to say chocolate. Jason: [19:56] For a while yeah but to me that would not be silly at all. Scot: [19:58] You need to light a printer. Jason: [20:05] Well it's. Scot: [20:07] Did you see that Samsung wall around what there's a lot of Buzz around the Samsung. Jason: [20:10] Yeah so every year there's a big competition around what's the newest most amazing television that could be invented and a lot of these two televisions are ones that never get commercial adoption there there. You know concept televisions that they they build very similar to a concept car. And so they keep getting bigger and bigger or thinner and thinner LG at a television that you would like an 88 inch 8K television that you would literally roll up. Scot: [20:38] I saw that it comes in like a little tube and it kind of rolls up so it could be a very small footprint. Jason: [20:42] Exactly and there is this actual practical problem that a lot of people struggle to self install TVs on the wall so there's a lot of TVs that are damaged shortly after their bought when they fall off the wall and these these you know. LG TVs that are now like 6mm thin like they're literally mounted to the wall with tape so that that is kind of cool and interesting the Samsung. Wall TV is just impressive for its high resolution and enormousness they didn't give us a spec for exactly how many inches it is but it's well over 200 in I'm so that was just a. A very cool piece of glass. There you know there are a couple of the new car manufacturers can't afford to go to Detroit Auto Show that they watched new cars from. Companies that don't have a history in the outer space tender launch at CES and so there's this new electric autonomous vehicle called the Bryant which is science. Which you know it may or may not ever see the light of day but the concept car looked very cool and it had a what they call a pillar to pillar. Digital screen so the the entire Dash it a 4-foot wide Ash is all one big big Monitor and if I own this vehicle I would spend most of my time just sitting in the garage gaming because it's so it would be the best green I own. Scot: [22:00] Okay let's what let's bring it back to retail what was the the most interesting Commerce stuff for our kind of give us a tour of who who was talking Commerce. Jason: [22:14] Yeah so it really isn't a retail show I'm a bunch of retail people go to the show because all the manufacturers are building displays to introduce their products to. Two people at the show very similar to have a retail would merchandise the products in the store so out of the merchandising team for retailers go to look and see how LG and Samsung and Sony are presenting their new products, addition of the show Ali Baba had a big boost that a booth last year, they went even bigger this year but what's interesting it really didn't focus on e-commerce or their Marketplace at all it really focused on. Actual Alibaba branded products that Ali Baba's inventing so they have a smart speaker for example and it was really promoting a lot of there. Services many of which will feel very Amazon alike. To westerners so they have a equivalent to AWS into a big part of the booth was committed to their services they have a meeting chat. Telepresence so I can go to meeting or Zoom or a blue jean depending on what region of the country you're in and those. You know they're there demonstrating those things in the booth they did have a baba has an interest that used to own ant Financial which is all the payment stuff. I'm so they had. Ali pay and pay with a smile so that this voice recognition that pay face recognition that pays when you smile that lockers Dropbox Whoppers that you unlock with your face and things like that. Scot: [23:47] I saw you were in a cabin you can actually pay with Ally pay in your. Jason: [23:49] Most of the Las Vegas cabs take Ali pay and you correctly guessed wise cuz there's a huge amount of Chinese tourism in Las Vegas. I lied to you and said I paid with all you pay like you have to have a Chinese bank account to get a wepay account so it turns out to be non-trivial to get one I tried. Scot: [24:05] I figured figured if you don't have Apple pay there's no you have. Jason: [24:08] I do have Apple pay and if anyone doesn't believe me you like send some cash to Jason Goldberg on Apple pay right now and see if it goes through. The battle is the Chinese search engine that's sort of the Chinese equivalent of Google and they had a big boost they had never been there before they also are getting in there. The Consumer Electronics space with some smart speakers and some some other products they have their own device operating system that they're pushing. I'm there was a retail Tech Pavilion at CES but it was. Yeah I think that retail Tech vendors were all getting ready for this weekend in a rest of the the vendors at CES were you know probably not the Marquee. Vendors there's a kind of typical digital signage vendors that we see everywhere like perched that was in the retail Tech Pavilion. And then in the emerging technology section there are a lot of vendors using computer vision for retail applications so a bunch of these Tech guys that don't know retail really well. Are envisioning that every retailer is going to want to face recognition to track every customer and recognize every customer when they go in so that's a super comment. Use case that these Israeli security companies set up set up boosted to pichai unless convinced that retailers want that. But then what what makes perfect sense that there's a lot of is. Companies with expertise in computer vision using that computer vision to create a Amazon go experience for self checkout or for inventory management so they were a bunch of. Companies talking about that one in particular that got some good Buzz is called a ipoly and they they were demonstrating some. [25:47] Some pretty sophisticated use cases of just using cameras of there being Shoppers to the kid very clearly differentiate which product of Chopper and picked up off a shelf. Scot: [25:56] So they were like sad mock-ups of stores with ever showing this technology. Jason: [26:01] Yeah they would claim that we have a complete amazongo equivalent solution and really like. They have sophisticated computer vision technology that identify what the Shoppers doing but you know there's a bunch of other pieces that are required for go I. [26:20] That I'm not sure of the startup companies have invested in solving for a retailer. Scot: [26:26] So while ago it may even last year there's that there's a really big company in China xiaomi that they were going to launch phones here and I think they've got a whole family of gadgets now that seems to disappear were they there. Jason: [26:39] I didn't see them now this CS is not a huge phone show because in February is a huge is the worldwide phone show in Barcelona the Mobile World Congress, you're right there are some Chinese manufacturers that tried to penetrate the US market and maybe the interesting one and I, I never know how to pronounce their name properly is a Chinese company so I'm not going to try on the podcast, is there a big Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer that makes a lot of Premium smartphones in China and they were making a big splash that they were going to, enter the US market and they actually cut a deal with AT&T to sell their phones, in all the AT&T stores until right before CES that was the big announcement and they had a huge booth at CES well. The US government claims that there you know owned by the Chinese government and that their technology isn't secure, and that apparently they the government rattle their saber enough to AT&T backed out on this. The steel in Ogden not to sell this Chinese Hardware. You know if you if you go super nefarious that the Chinese government could somehow have access to these these camera phones and speakers and all these. A consumer stands in the US. Scot: [27:59] Alright last CS topic anything exciting on the in the world of drones and then they are VR. Jason: [28:06] So there is a ton of drones I would say it was a slow year and evolution DJI really dominates the consumer drone space they wants one last year around Siesta became super popular the mavic pro, they've since launched a smaller one in so what you mostly sides he has his everyone else knocking off the. The mavic pro this year so there was a lot of that what was new at CES this year was it was definitely the first year when the robots were very ubiquitous there robots in. All the big boots and then he really range the Spectrum from some that are like practical and have achieved some consumer 6s like like tomorrow vacuum cleaner. Rumah type stuff to some very absurd robot so there are a lot of LG was showing shopping robots that. Drive to shopping cart to follow you around the store so you don't have to push the cart there a bunch of robots that drag your suitcase through the airport for you so you don't have to do that it was like a $35,000 robot that folds your clothes when they come out of the. Scot: [29:06] Oh I saw that was exciting. Jason: [29:08] So maybe that is an application in a retailer folding clothes at the Gap or something like that but I'm not sure a lot of consumers are just like folding up to. Scot: [29:17] To draw a crowd to come see the the folding robot I saw a CS but a Boeing a released a prototype type of a drone that can carry 500 lb. I'm it was interesting it's not a military application I think they've taken the military stuff in Skillet down but the article suitably talked about it being an interesting way you could like load balance between fulfillment centers with that kind of weight load that's kind of interesting you know. Here's a corner of stuff I don't need in Ohio have the Drone carry it to I don't know how far this thing can go but to to another fulfillment center. Jason: [29:49] They're definitely scaling up the Drone technology so they were at least two passenger drones are three passenger jet drones at the at the show so these are like autonomous vehicles that take, passengers in that notion is that that could be a sky taxi in some cases there's an all electric one that Intel is partnering in we were kind of joking about. Yeah probably not perfect timing to have. Autonomous drone with no pilot in it that carries passenger that's being powered by this Intel chip the now is vulnerable to the Meltdown, I'm back I'm not sure I'd want to be directly under that that that drone but they definitely had some big capacities I think even the Bell the big helicopter manufacturer was there with. With some ground so definitely possible and then a lot of the robots are good at moving that stuff around in the last mile to so Hyundai had a bunch of industrial robots obviously the Kiva is. A robot that than Amazon now owns and you joked about the military uses but I will say just superficially a bunch of these drones did look like they. We're just disarmed right before. Scot: [30:56] Yeah it kind of freaks me out the speaking of Black Mirror episode recommend for listeners. All the episodes are independent so you can just like skip around watch the one called heavy metal that when they gave me some good night nurses pretty, okay that's a cool thanks for that CS review that's awesome let's do it quick in RF preview so, I think the thing we're really excited about it is there's a Apple event that we got invited to and that's me tomorrow and. It's we don't know anything about it we just know your typical Apple format limitation has we have something that says we have something in store for you there's a picture of a bag, so seems like apple is doing something around retail technology what you have any speculation what's going on. Jason: [31:43] Yeah I don't have any real insight I am in the dark as much as you it it definitely seems like apple is poised to launch some retail product or service. They never have a booth at CES they want to see us this year but they have a big meeting space it's heavily apple-branded at interrupt this year which I found interesting and so you can buy in that with, ass getting invited to this secret event that they they wouldn't tell us the nature of. I might like the most likely thing is that they're watching some new thing in the payments ecosystem so maybe like the next version of Apple pay or a POS or a you know everything the Apple OS 4. You know commercial retail tack like you know tablet enable meant that kind of stuff. Scot: [32:31] A lot of retailers use the tablet as a retailing thing so maybe it's just more around that or maybe it's just a set of back that's practices doesn't feel like they would do an event and a meeting room for just like hey here's how people are using our technology seems like there must be more. Jason: [32:44] No eyes I think they're going to want something that's apple-branded that that is targeted at the retail industry so I could be super fun we don't don't that many surprises from Apple these days. Scot: [32:54] I know it's over here and if it's if it's Earth shattering we will put out a quick podcast just to kind of lay down our thoughts after we see whatever the amazing thing is I just hope Tim Cook there I've been dying for attempt. I need a good Tim Cook an emoji selfie and be good to do unicorn or I don't know. Jason: [33:15] You said one of the products I bought at CES this year is a 360 camera and so I feel like. Scot: [33:22] 360 song. Jason: [33:23] 360 selfie. Scot: [33:24] Nice. Nothing that we're excited about is we have Casey from Deloitte on the show so we will be putting out. I left some new research that we're going to be talking to Casey for the first time here on the show we have our digital council meeting so that's good. I saw they have a speaker I did not read the details did you. Jason: [33:47] Yeah I think it is a friend of yours we from Alibaba. Scot: [33:51] Oh yeah I do remember now awesome so we'll get to hear all about singles day so that'll be good and how much better it is then Cyber Monday let's see anything else around interested we want to talk about. Jason: [34:04] So there are a number of, interesting private events that are great networking opportunities and you know hopefully we'll we'll get some people inebriated and get them to inappropriately share with us on the podcast for those of you that don't know Scott and I super well, we are not the guys that get invited to all the private, parties in our in our youth so this is this this weird once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where we get the invites to the the cool parties. Scot: [34:33] Yeah yeah the Geeks shall inherit the earth. Well we have so that's it on shows let's bang out a little bit of Commerce retail news from this last week so it wouldn't be a Jason Scott showed without. [34:58] Not a ton of Amazon news this week despite the lightest Amazon news for a while. And I'm ending this cuz the company is in a quiet. So I will your public company there's this kind of. Of time where you know how your results were and you can't really say much about them and, I'm excited cuz they did announce when they are going to release. The fourth quarter earnings and that will be on February 1st so we will do a special version of the show where we will cover those will cover will put it down the night of the first and then we'll hopefully get it out on the 2nd if her audio team can, jump on that we've been talking a while about all the rumors around Amazon going into the drug business drug stores, I am now there's a loud drum beat about beauty so I don't know exactly what is King it run off of that but, you know it's pretty clear in the retail World Alton's for doing really well so I think Amazon is kind of turning their guns that way so it'll be interesting to see how that's going. And when I've been dying to ask you about Jason is Kohl's there is this kind of news item that Kohl's is really wanting to work closely with grocers that didn't make a lot of sense to me cuz I'm thinking all right, blue jeans and broccoli what's what's the connection film. Jason: [36:15] That one of you eat a lot of broccoli you can buy small are better-looking bridging. Scot: [36:19] Duncan's are in celery when you tell her you you actually. Jason: [36:22] Net positive or negative calorie intake I guess I think that's not true and. Scot: [36:29] Dang it. Jason: [36:31] Yeah sorry to be the one to. Scot: [36:32] All that celery. Jason: [36:33] Exactly so I think what's Happening Here. Is no retailers have a particular footprint and they buy all the real estate around that footprint so you know what Kohl's store I don't know the exact size but I think they're probably like 60 or 70 thousand square foot store. The something in that range and you don't that's based on a certain merchandising assortment in that's in that store, so overtime categories that you were storkland carry become less successful and you move out of categories or you add new categories and there are times when retailers find that they have more square footage than they can. Profitably manage and so a common play particularly when you're not performing as well as you'd like is how can I downsize by handing some of the the rent responsibility to us too. Subway Surf right so, that the example as you like uses Best Buy like you know they used to sell CDs and video games and music and then of the store that's that's all digital delivered but they can't just shrink their leases in their store, I'm so that they rent space to a lot of their manufacturers Samsung Microsoft. I'm we'll all have shopping shops and so I think Kohl's is in a situation where they had excess base for what they think is their Optimum inventory and so you go looking and say. Who can I profitably Reese this pace to and ideally it should be someone that's going to bring extra traffic to my store that might buy stuff. So in the old days that was always the coffee shop you went looking into to add a Starbucks. [38:09] Because of Cole's real estate proximity there in strip malls that could be convenient places to grocery shop and so it sounds like they've just come up with this notion that. Man is if there is someone only wants to expand in our footprint Subway some of our space people shopping grocery much more frequent so it could be a great traffic driver to the stores and they could benefit from that so well. To see if that idea plays out and if they're able to get some some folks to take them up on that but I think that's what's going on. Scot: [38:40] Yeah and that was Ron Johnson's vision of retail right it would be this kind of we had Omar Asad the analyst on and I forget what he called it but it's kind of like you know a bizarre. Jason: [38:51] Yeah we often called a retail bizarre and it's actually the common, merchandising way in a lot of places in the world sew-in in the USA department store owns all the space and they decide what brands are in it and they they merchandise the brands in Europe most of the department stores are. Simply landlords that rent individual shelves in the store to individual brands. Scot: [39:13] Boots. Jason: [39:16] Just another other news that there's a e-commerce your player that focuses on the club. Experiences in those large format box that we've had on the show. The there are rumors that they are a potential acquisition Target and I think a Consortium of grocery stores was mentioned as a potential buyer like Kroger. Scot: [39:39] Yeah the number that stuck out to me was 500 million so fingers crossed for a friend's at box on that one. Jason: [39:44] And that is that that's close to their last round right so that would mean the the early folks will do really well and the the last investors probably won't do so well that if that ends up being the number and it happens. Scot: [39:57] Sometimes it works tops for that cuz the last investors get these really nice preference tax. Jason: [40:03] Gotcha cool see you that's why I have you here to make sure that my. My Angel Investing is fruitful one near and dear to my heart Circuit City is relaunching. So folks some of you young ones on the shelf that is that was a specialty retailer that that kind of grew up and competed with Best Buy they went bankrupt, a number of years ago I want to say formally like 2008, the the brand changed hands in bankruptcy court a few times so they're actually was this company in Florida TigerDirect that bought the the brand and they launched relaunch the Circuit City website for a few years. Scot: [40:49] And at CompUSA. Jason: [40:50] Yeah they wait about CompUSA they. If I'm remembering there's some drama there too I think they're there was some like weird finances and the owner and some. There could be some some interesting backstory their bets of the brand changed hands again and you know frankly when I heard that someone bought the the brand out of bankruptcy unlike someone else's like. Trying to Leverage The Nostalgia and they're going to watch another. Another you know reskinned website and it's actually more than that like that they have a new ownership that there intending to open retail stores. And so this would both be a website and some number of new stores it's it's interesting cuz I'm not sure you would look at the Consumer Electronics base and say what we really need in consumer electronics is. Is more stores and another brand to buy that place but you know we'll have to see what their unique value proposition is they bring to the table. Scot: [41:47] That one you talked about called. Yeah yeah, some Vision like a cool like a smaller footprint showroom thing cuz I use gadgets you want to touch him and feel him and you know her shoes for four people to care about shoes. Best Buy refills at 4 meal at times I'll go look at stuff and then order it on to another retailer. Jason: [42:14] And I I would say you like one of the weather problems with all the trees retail consolidation there used to be this phone to see you could be a geek, and walk into the store and you discover something new every single time you walked in that store that you didn't know exist that you wanted and one of the things that all the digital transparency is created and like all the consolidation of the stores is created you know really, you working on Apple Store and you never see something. You didn't know was available before you walked in the store and you know how I feel like that's going to happen to be the case it at even Best Buy now is well and so it would be interesting to see if there. You know that they're going to provide that sort of fun jolt of discovery. Scot: [42:53] Yeah kind of on the opposite side of the spectrum my wife was shocked she showed me this the other day, she likes this designer named Ella moss and they have some kind of annual sale and she went to the website to check out the annual sale, and announced they're closing their website and it said say goodbye to lmr.com but say hello to us in our stores and they just pointing people to Nordstrom in a variety of other stores where their items are found so I thought that was. Certainly opposite trend of what we've seen out there but they must have. Musta Had A Good Reason baby was too expensive to run the website maybe maybe they get pressure from their Channel partners that kind of said we don't like you offering this track. I don't know what it is just have a really interesting use kids haven't seen. Happen. Jason: [43:38] It's bugging the trend I suspect there is some serious distressed underlines for that but I applaud them putting Silver Lining trying to put it out there favorably. Scot: [43:51] Last topic one hit on we're about 14 days into January so we have about half of the Retailer's the brick and mortar guys, I report monthly same for sale so we're getting up kind of a, early read on holiday and then once we have that Amazon report in early February and then kind of by mid February we should have a pretty good read on how how they came in but did you notice any of the or some interesting holiday things you saw that have come out so far. Jason: [44:18] That's what's interesting like obviously overall it was a very good holiday like probably the best one since, 2010 2011 the most most, retailers like you know either announced that they performed at that sort of average growth or even outperform the industry and there are a few outliers that we saw. Be significantly down and so you know it's about a rising tide raises all boats when you're the boat that sinking in that Rising tide, that's a particularly you know owner assign so we seventies Sears did not benefit from the, renewed spending they were down significantly I think like 16% and I think it announced another round of store closures I mentioned on the I did mention but in the store predictions bet, certainly feels like a year of major retailer. Go away and I think Sears would be unfortunately a good candidate for that. Scot: [45:15] Yeah when it's surprise out of folks this is kind of one of those bury the lede so Walmart had a positive news that they are, because of the the tax act that was passed the raising the minimum wage for employees to $11 an hour I think it was and several other people did this there was only one that's on retail the same time that kind of tucked in they are the closing $0.60 stores, I'm really bummed because the Sam's near my office where we actually got our office enough snacks and stuff is going to close so that's going to be inconvenient and then. I saw a Wall Street analyst kind of did this analysis and the 60 Sam's stores that are closing they are some number of miles from a Costco store so ones are keeping open don't seem to have much competition but the ones, they're closing you know the list the target clickbait title of this was like Costco's crushing Sam's so they went to an analysis so I thought that was. Pretty interesting that you know Walmart's not used to losing so if they are losing to Costco that that's pretty fascinating. Jason: [46:21] Yeah for sure and it I mean. I think Sam's Club stores can do very well but but Costco is almost a unicorn in their retail performance I mean Walmart the largest retailer in the US they have like over 4,000 stores in the US, Costco to the second largest retailer in the US they have like 200 stores. Did that yesterday they really have that model down like and I'm not sure that the average Costco I mean it has ever underperform the average Sam's Club store which doesn't mean Sam's doesn't do well but. But your point like they're probably not doing well in the the head-to-head battles. Scot: [46:59] I don't know enough about the cause for maybe we can have a an analyst on. Kind of Enlighten us on that cuz I wonder how cuz there's BJ's as well right. I think I've seen the same for sales for BJ's are doing pretty well so. I believe in this report said Sam's same-store sales are doing well but it must be kind of A Tale of Two Cities the ones that could be with Costco or doing poorly in the ones that aren't are doing well for them to close these it would close them if they're doing awesome. Jason: [47:23] Yeah but I do think it's part of this way speaker thing we're over stored in the u.s. populations are moving so you open the store. And you know it to cater to a Suburban population and then those folks move in the suburbs back to the city centers and where your store should be should be different so it's it, clothing stores is not on is often a sign of a healthy retailer and I think Walmart's the perfect example like, diprimas clicking on all cylinders checking all the boxes and so it's you know it's it's unpleasant for those employees but it's probably a good time for investors to see someone having a good financial performance and still. Being willing Nicole that hurt and kind of move away from some of the most profitable pieces of the Enterprise, I think another one that. We it was interesting that she was Target in one of the stats we saw their this is been progressively bigger stat. We seen every year but Target is not saying it's 70% of all their online orders are being the film in some way from the store so we talked about this for a long time it's when the best ways are brick-and-mortar retailers can compete with Amazon is, you should from that store you get to ship USPS and get it there in one day for much cheaper rate than you pay UPS or FedEx from. Scot: [48:39] Yeah I think target actually exceeded expectations and raised so that's good at the stocks been doing well. I'm in that same vein we mentioned earlier around that grocery store topic but Kohl's they came out with 7% same-store sales for holiday and is reminder to listeners we had Kevin Manziel on the show year ago now is it wasn't so it must be. Jason: [48:59] What was the shop talk. Scot: [49:00] Shop talk so about 8 months ago and he was talking about their strategy and it looks like it played out pretty well and he's announced his resigning and handing over the reins to a new CEO and. She will start I think in July August time frame so always good to have a really nice hand over there when things are going well. Jason: [49:19] Absolutely I think another one that sort of was not rising in a, in a rising tide is unfortunately Macy so I think they were down in the like two and a half percent and they've announced another big round of store closures so I think they're closing like another hundred stores. Scot: [49:38] In the last one I saw it is Lululemon they were up 13% this interesting cuz everyone is is gunning for these guys to everyone has come out with their own athleisure line, babe copied everything Lululemon's doing and they cannot seem to slow these guys down there they're so. The brand has an affinity with folks especially Millennial females they have that experience with yoga classes in the store and none of the other athletes are guys are really able to keep up with them, and I think this is I'm not an expert on Nike and Under Armour but they're both under pressure, things that Turtle Dave Dave kind of gone all in on some of this athleisure stuff specifically around yoga thinking they could take okasa market share from Lululemon but Lululemon's hanging in there. Interesting example of a david-and-goliath where where David is winning. Jason: [50:30] Exactly and in some ways maybe starting to look more like glass. Yeah so it's going to be an interesting one to watch people have been kind of predicting the end of this athleisure trend for a long time. Never seems to come so it'll be interesting to see whether. Whether you know it is a cycle that gets broken and and is athleisure Trend ever doesn't it'll be super interesting and see if Lululemon can leverage all that. Great customer intimacy they have to pick up on the next train or whether they're there at least you're only, it's got one of my New Year's resolution was to do a little shorter shows and so it is happen again we've used up all our a lot of time we certainly are grateful for her listeners taking the time to listen to the show, if you enjoyed it we really appreciate a 5-star review on iTunes I mention that we're going to be visiting Apple this weekend they could they could be very angry with us so we need to get lots of review so they, saying they're good racist and if you want to have any conversation about any of the topics on today shows we'd love to hear from you on Facebook. Scot: [51:35] Yep thanks I wanted to join us. Jason: [51:37] Until next time happy commercing.
David Bayer is an entrepreneur, speaker, writer, seminar leader and certified personal development coach. David is the Creator of The Powerful Living Experience and The Higher Power System. David also serves as CEO of ChamberofCommerce.com, the leading online business directory and blog for small businesses. After graduating from Columbia University (’98) David launched his first start-up, PopWall.com, at the age of 22, and quickly established himself as an early online expert. In 2000 David left his first company to join Ducati Motorcycles as the Executive responsible for developing the luxury brand’s online business. In 2 years Ducati.com sold the first motorcycle online, generated $70MM in online revenue, and was the 7th highest grossing E-commerce site in Europe. Upon returning to the states David raised several rounds of venture capital investment for DataBanq, an online lead generation company focused on local search. In 2009 DataBanq acquired the rights to ChamberofCommerce.com where David serves as CEO. ChamberofCommerce.com works with more than 100,000 local business owners and entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses. Throughout his career David has worked with a variety of clients including FedEx, Washington Mutual, MBNA, Office Depot, Tiger Direct, Best Buy, CompUSA, Vistaprint, iContact and Salesforce.com to name a few. In 2014 David launched the Powerful Living Experience, a program that transforms the lives of individuals and organizations through David’s unique processes and beliefs-based methodologies. David is currently focused on making the Powerful Living Experience and the Higher Power System available through online programs, private workshops, his books and blog, speaking engagements and the Powerful Living Experience Live Event once a year. Get David's e-Book at: https://mindhackprogram.com/mantalks For full show notes visit: http://mantalks.com/david-bayer/ For more information about ManTalks or to join a ManTalks Mastermind: Click Here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher Radio | Android For more episodes visit us at ManTalks.com Facebook | Instagram | Twitter Did you enjoy the podcast?If so please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. It helps our podcast get into the ears of new listeners, which expands the ManTalks Community! Thank You to the Team:Editing & Mixing by: Aaron Johnson
Our first ever Duet episode! Jed and James grab the mics in this exclusive one on one pod session! We range our topics from exciting new job changes, memories of CompUSA, the heartiness of Dynex brand and the 90’s toys that rocked our world.
Hace 15 años Jorge y yo trabajábamos en CompUSA. En ese tiempo Jorge creció su compañía de consultoría, la vendió a uno de los players más importantes en el caribe, y se relocalizó a Miami y luego a Silicon Valley. Hoy en día como co-fundador de Hyp3r, ayuda a marcas globales a reconocer, analizar e interactuar con sus clientes por medio de data geosocial. Subscríbete a el podcast en iTunes y en otras plataformas de podcasts.
Hace 15 años Jorge y yo trabajábamos en CompUSA. En ese tiempo Jorge creció su compañía de consultoría, la vendió a uno de los players más importantes en el caribe, y se relocalizó a Miami y luego a Silicon Valley. Hoy en día como co-fundador de Hyp3r, ayuda a marcas globales a reconocer, analizar e interactuar con sus clientes por medio de data geosocial. Subscríbete a el podcast en iTunes y en otras plataformas de podcasts.
10 years ago David Malmborg and Paxton Gray worked together at CompUSA. David was a hot shot salesman and Paxton was famous for catching a couple of hard drive thieves. Believe it or not, it's only gone uphill from there. You'll want to listen to this episode. ----------------- FOLLOW US! ⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇⬇ iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/below…d1059107933?mt=2 Twitter: twitter.com/belowthefoldio Email us: inbound@belowthefold.io
Selling in a Skirt with Judy Hoberman with her guest Jennifer Martin & Janelle Alex Jennifer Martin's work as a Zest Business Consultant, an EMyth Certified Business Coach, and Professional Speaker draws on her 25+ years of business experience helping organizations large and small make millions of dollars. She's had solid history of success working with large companies in many different industries (Clear Channel Communications, Union Pacific Railroad, 7-Eleven Stores, CompUSA, etc.) as well as solopreneurs and small to medium sized businesses. She has owned and operated several businesses including a retail store, a restaurant and catering business, a publishing company, and a real estate investment and property management firm. So in addition to her big business experience, she knows first hand the joys, challenges, and stresses of operating a small business. Janelle has had a deep devotion to empower women most of her life. In her early entrepreneurial years, she supported, taught and guided young women/girls toward becoming strong, powerful, compassionate, playful and confident women through dance. She also inspired the handful of young men that she taught too. In fact, in the mid-1990s Janelle was listed in the Who's Who of Women's Small Business Owners. She is adamant that both our women and men need to be empowered and educated to support one another, their global brothers and sisters, animals, nature and the planet. Yet, believe it or not she was terribly shy as a child. She first began taking dance lessons at just 3-years-old and that certainly helped increase her confidence. But, it wasn't until the year that she became an assistant dance/tumbling teacher and earned a spot on the cheerleading squad in school that she began to come out of her fear of public speaking. She was just 13-years-old.
Take Action Get Profits with Michele Scism and her guest Belanie Dishong & Jennifer Martin Belanie Dishong - For over 17 years, Belanie Dishong has led thousands of individuals in experiential effectiveness workshops and courses resulting in greater performance, finding and living purpose. It has become Belanie's life work to help others achieve extraordinary things. Belanie is an entrepreneur, international public speaker, and an author who is a proven expert in training techniques that promote breakthroughs and accomplish sustainable life changes. Her amazing ability to connect people's mind with their heart breaks through the barriers that inhibit living ones greatness. Belanie is known for her unique intuition and she impacts the lives of people of all ages, cultures, beliefs and backgrounds by helping them to improve the quality of their lives. She is also recognized for her work in restoring families, relationships, and personal effectiveness. Jennifer Martin's work as a Zest Business Consultant, an EMyth Certified Business Coach, and Professional Speaker draws on her 25+ years of business experience helping organizations large and small make millions of dollars. She's had solid history of success working with large companies in many different industries (Clear Channel Communications, Union Pacific Railroad, 7-Eleven Stores, CompUSA, etc.) as well as solopreneurs and small to medium sized businesses. She has owned and operated several businesses including a retail store, a restaurant and catering business, a publishing company, and a real estate investment and property management firm.
This week on the show, Dan and Joe talk about what they think Sony might be doing this coming Wednesday in New York. Other topics include Destiny, who to kill in a space station, speaking Russian, lucid dreams, phantom limbs, and controllers. Drop out of college today, it's tough! This week's music in order of appearance: Regina Spektor - Old Jacket Polaris - Hey Sandy
Audio File: Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Caterina Fake Co-founder, Hunch and Flickr Date: November 16, 2009 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Caterina Fake [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I am the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. This interview series is a series of discussions with women who have started IT companies, who have really wonderful advice to share with everybody who is interested in becoming an entrepreneur. With me is Lee Kennedy who, herself, is a serial entrepreneur, and as of late, of Bolder Search. Also an NCWIT Board Member. Welcome, Lee. Lee Kennedy: Thanks, Lucy. It's great to be here. Lucy: And also Larry Nelson. W3W3.com. Tell us a little bit about w3w3. Larry Nelson: We are an Internet talk radio show and we've been doing it for over ten years now. We archive everything. You can go back and listen any time. One series here that we've enjoyed so much is the NCWIT series. Lucy: Well, thank you. We are getting a lot of notice lately as well from a couple of people who write books on entrepreneurs from the National Academy of Engineering that wants to feature some of these interviews so we are pretty excited about the series. And today, we are going to have another great interview with Catarina Fake who is the co-founder of Hunch. And Hunch is -- and we are going to ask a little bit more about this in just a minute but for my preparation for this interview, Hunch is -- a collective intelligence decision making system and it uses decision trees to make decisions based on user's interests. And it was just recently launched, Catarina, in June of this year? Catarina Fake: End of this year, that's right. Lucy: What great name, Hunch, that is wonderful. But before that Catarina was the co-founder of Flickr and I'm sure all of our listeners know about Flickr and Flickr was one of those companies that open many people's eyes to the power of Web 2.0 and really taking together those features such as social networking and community. And things that people wanted to share like photos and other things. So it is a wonderful company. Catarina has won many awards and, in 2006, she was named Time 100 Time Magazine's List of World's 100 Most Influential People. That is very awesome. We are happy to have you here, Catarina. Catarina: Thanks for having me. Lucy: And now, tell us exactly what is collective intelligence? Catarina: So, collective intelligence is when a lot of people get together. Not necessarily even people that know each other and create something. So a really great example of that would be Wikipedia. Wikipedia is as the people know that encyclopedia of thousands of thousands of subject where you can find out biography of the Queen of Netherlands or you can find information about biology or just pretty much any topic under the sun that will be in any encyclopedia anywhere. I would also say that Flickr, which is a photo sharing site, is also a kind of collective knowledge system and that there are millions of people I think it just announced that Flickr hit four billion photos. That is four billion photos out there. A large percentage of which are shared publicly among people. And it has become that vast, infinite national geographic that is constantly being updated with things from around the world and all manner of photograph. And so, it itself has become a kind of collective knowledge system. So I think what distinguishes the collective knowledge system, some other kind of social software is that there are a lot of people contributing to it. You can contribute very small amounts of information like for example you can just correct the spelling mistake on Wikipedia. Or you could contribute one photo or leave one comment on Flickr. The system gets better on the more people that you get. Lucy: Well, so those kind of sites then I guess with all those knowledge will lead directly into decision making and how you are going to use algorithms. Is that what part is Hunch is doing? Catarina: Yes, Hunch is another knowledge collective system. It is a new kind of system and it is design very differently from Wikipedia and Flickr in that what people are creating are decision trees. So the way that Hunch work is it ask you to leave a question and give you an answer. And you don't have to do anything. You don't even have to type anything. You just arrive at the topic. So let's say you are trying to figure out what college you should go to. The system will then ask you a series of question such as what do you want to major in? Are you interested in the college that has fraternities or sororities or not? Do you want a large, state college? You want a private college? Would you prefer a larger college that is based on the city? Those kinds of things. It is basically replicating an expert system so you would probably in real life, if you are looking for somewhere to go to college, you would talk to a guidance counselor who would ask you probably the same series of questions. And what Hunch does at the end, it gives you a hunch. It consist of lots of best colleges that apply to the criteria that you have given it. And so this applies to anything. This could apply to a rock bank. New York time best sellers. Should I retire to Florida? What kind of girls should I buy? Pretty much any question that is decision. And when the system works is that people are contributing the topic until somebody has a lot of knowledge about say, yoga classes in Minneapolis. We make a topic that say yoga class in Minneapolis. What are you looking for? What kind of yoga are you doing, etc., and all of this information. And so it is a way for people to get together and help each other with decisions that they are making. Now we are going to do things that I think that I found is directly in my work in the Internet is that I am a big believer that the Internet really flourish because of people's willingness to contribute to help other people. You see this all over the Internet and kind of the background with the Internet is really people uploading pictures of their cat. Started out, people uploading pictures of their cat. People writing little essay. People blogging. People adding information in the Internet. I mean this is really what the Internet is comprised of. And Aaron Key once said the Internet is comprised of words and enthusiasm and I think this is generally true, I think that if I go to the trouble of researching for example what is a good wedding photographer in Boston and I saw a whole bunch of wedding photographer and this person specializes in black and white. This person is formal shot. This person is candid and such and such. If I create a Hunch topic then everybody else can benefit the research that I've done and people can add oh, I actually know a really good wedding photographer that hasn't been mentioned here. Another people can add another question and all that kind of thing. Collaboratively, people can add topic. Lucy: That is pretty interesting and I can see a way to get more girls into computer science. We put something up on Hunch and anytime the girls said, I want to pick a major, it comes back computer science. "I realized that is not..." Catarina: Here's the thing about Hunch. Teach hunch about you. So it is a series of questions that ask you everything under the sun. How do you spend your weekend? Do you live in the city or do you live in the country? Have you ever written a poem that wasn't for school Do you believe that alien abductions are real or fake? Would you rather spoon or be spooned? And all these kinds of questions that teach Hunch about you and it will learn. It will learn gradually over time what you are like that you prefer this kind of music or that you are more likely to go out and party on weekend. More likely to stay home and watch a movie with your family. So what is does it tailors its answers specifically to each user. It doesn't give anybody the same answer. It gives everybody different answers based on how the taught Hunch about themselves. Lucy: And so Catarina, how did you first get into technology? Catarina: I think I had the benefit of having a dad who got us a little PRS 80 computer when we were really little kids. He had a curiosity about technology and he himself is never a programmer or even honestly, he never himself got that much about computers but he was always exposing us to new technology and things like that. He got us little computer which we used and I think nothing really happened with me and computing at all during my youth until I got into college. And then this is actually in the pre-Internet days in the early '90s. In the pre-web days. The Internet was nascent, but had not flourished into the web which made it much more usable for everybody. And so, I went to Vassar College and Vassar had a great, for the time, and since I haven't been back to campus lately, I'm not sure how the computer systems are, but in 1990 when I was there, it had a phenomenal computer system. We had data ports in all of our rooms and we could get on to the Internet from wherever we are. So as a result to that, I just taught myself how to use command line stuff which is all that you could do in those days, and was largely self taught. The thing that I loved about the Internet was that it was a means of communication. It was a way of connecting people. My sister was on the Stanford system out in San Francisco, I was on the east coast in New York. We were able to email each other and this was a revelation to me. You could actually, using IRC chat, have conversations with Dante scholars in Aarhus, Denmark, that you could discuss you paper with that you were writing in college. So that's how I started getting into it. What happened was I graduated from college. I had all of these odd jobs where I did interstitials on Seinfeld on the film crew. I worked in a dive shop in Arkansas. [laughter] I basically had this very peripatetic post college career. And then I was on my way to go backpacking in Nepal, when I decided to stop in and visit my sister who was living in San Francisco. What happened was, my backpacking trip got delayed, and delayed. Pretty soon it was avalanche season and we couldn't go on the trip anymore. So I ended up staying in my sister's spare bedroom for months. She is a very kind and generous older sister and has always been lovely to me. But after six months she said, "You know, maybe you should get a job." [laughter] This is 1994, and the most interesting thing that was going on in those days was the web. And the web was just starting out and was just starting to flourish. A friend of mine worked at one of the first web design shops and he sat down one weekend and taught me the basics of HTML. There were no books around at the time so I taught it to myself by doing View Source as you used to be able to do in those days. I started doing it free lance and then I got a job at one of the first web design shops here in San Francisco. Then took it from there. Lucy: Wow. That is amazing. So you have really just led us into our next question which was, it's clear how you got into technology and really got interested, but what made you want to become an entrepreneur? Caterina: It's interesting I think that entrepreneurialism is something of a personality type. It is very common that people who are entrepreneurs are the kind of people who spend nights and weekends just building stuff. Tinkerers, packers, creators, inventors, or however you want to describe them. People who see the possibility of technology. Or even non-technology entrepreneurs. They're building furniture in their spare time. They are doing electronics, making robotics, those kinds of things. It really is a career that appeals to people who are restlessly inventive, who are curious. Other qualities that entrepreneurs seem to share are that they're very determined, they have a vision they want to make real, they see possibilities in things. I think I had a lot of these characteristics and a lot of these traits that just became very natural career path for me. I have only worked at a large company after my company Flickr was acquired by Yahoo that was the first time I worked at a really large company. It is, I think, a kind of temperament. A choice and a path. Lucy: So what I am hearing is, you really love the tinkering, the building of something, the... Caterina: Creativity of it. Lucy: The creativity. Caterina: Creativity. In some ways you also have to have an appetite for risk. Lucy: Definitely. Caterina: In some ways I think you have to have the ability to take big risks and be fully responsible and be the kind of person where the buck stops with you. Because there is really some white knuckled periods of entrepreneurialism that you have to get through. There is nobody that's going to help you. There is no organization to support you. Often there is not enough money. Often there is a lot of doubt as to whether or not you can pull it off. So I think you also have to have this kind of appetite for risk that is different from people who take on a, I hate to call it a normal career, but a regular job for an employer. That's even the case with people who join startups. Not necessarily even people who found startups, people who joined startups have to have a certain ability to handle uncertainty and risk because it is an uncertain enterprise. It is not like going to work for a government job or the Bank of America or something like that. There are many people who would argue that entrepreneurialism and startups and small companies are actually not nearly as risky as working at big companies. Because there are often big rounds of layoffs and your jobs can be eliminated, some kind of large bureaucratic regime change and all of those kinds of things. So there are risks on both sides. People who work at big companies are not necessarily as secure or protected. I think one time companies in America were much more secure. So I think it is a different kind of thing. Larry: Right. With all the people that you worked with over the years, if you were to pick out one person who was probably your most important role model or a mentor for you, who would that be? Caterina: One of the investors in Flickr is Esther Dyson. I don't know if any of you are familiar with Ester or her works. She is very well known. She has been working in technology for, gosh, I am not even sure, 20 years, 30 years, a very long time and is highly respected and is very much a mentor to me. It is very inspiring to see women who are working in technology and have been working in technology prior to the web. She started a conference called PC Forum which was a huge conference. It is pretty much the conference. I think PC actually stood for personal computer and they stated it stood for personal computer, or something prior to that. But that shows you how far back the conference went. It wasn't really tremendous thing when Esther invested in Flickr. It was a big milestone for us. I think that we had built something that somebody of her stature was interested in investing in. So I have to say that she is somebody who I very much respect and admire. Lucy: I can see it. Esther Dyson investing in your company is a big deal. Caterina: It is a big deal. It is a big deal. Here is the funny story. OK, so this is probably good little anecdote to show how persistent that you need to be. So she ran this conference. We are the six-person company in Vancouver that nobody has heard about. We've got a website and a dream. So Esther Dyson who is a very famous woman who runs a very, very big conference, we really wanted to go to this conference. Because we knew there are a lot of venture capitalists there and we needed people to invest in our company. We needed to show people in technology our website. So we wrote to her and we had no money, we were broke. We said we would love to present at PC Forum and we don't have any money to pay. It was $5,000 a ticket or something like that. And there was just no way that we could afford to go to this conference. As a fact nobody was going to invite us because we are nobodies up in Vancouver. So she wrote back and said, no, I am sorry that we can't do that. So then the following year we decided to try it again. So we write another letter and we say, listen, OK we are still here and we'd still like to come to the conference and we now have this new product called Flickr, which we would love to present. And we wrote to her and we wrote to some of her staff. We received an email from Esther which said no, I am sorry we are all full, or no I am sorry we can't accept your proposal. And I'd say about a half an hour later we received another email from one of her staff that said, oh actually, we'd be interested in having you present at the conference. So they contradicted each other. Of course, we only responded to the one that had the affirmative interest. So we say we'd be delighted to accept your invitation to present at the conference. And so, Esther who happens to sit on a board at a company in Vancouver said, "OK I'm going to find out who these persistent people are up in Canada." And so she scheduled a breakfast with us because she was in town for a board meeting so they ate with us. And it was at that meeting that we presented our website Flickr to her. And she agreed to invest in it. And we were just regular folks completely out of the blue and had managed to get this meeting with Esther. And so, I think that persistence paid off. And if you don't want to ever present something that's not good to people. But, if you feel as if you've got a worthy product and that's worthy or their attention you should definitely apply for, you know every conference presentation that you can. Lucy: That's a great story. It's always good to hear those happy endings. The next question isn't about happy endings maybe, but it centers around the toughest thing you've ever had to do in your career. Caterina: Interestingly, Flickr was the result of our company dying so it's not. I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with the story of how Flickr started but we had started our company to build a massive multiplayer game. It was an online game it was web based. And it was played in the browser. It was called game never ending. And we had tried to raise money for this game. And it was 2002 and the boom had just busted as everybody recalls. And there was no money around and the other thing too is that we were trying to build something that nobody had ever really seen before. And this it seems strange because there are so many people that are playing these things in their browsers now that never existed in 2002. So people didn't really get what we were doing. Is this something you can buy at CompUSA or at your local Wal-Mart or what is this. Is it like online solitaire. And so nobody knew what we were doing and we didn't have any investors. And we had rapidly run out of money building this game. And we were just about to collapse basically. The company was just about to disintegrate. I hadn't been paid for a year. Nobody on the team had gotten paid for six months, three months to six months. There was one guy on the team who had three kids. He was the only guy who was getting paid. And getting up every morning and knowing that your responsible for the paychecks for all of these people. And your company is going under and you haven't been able to find investments and this thing that you love is just about to die. This baby that you created is just about to meet it's sorry end. It's a really horrifying thing. And you like awake and wonder how the hell this is all going to turn out. And I've seen so many startups get to this point, run out of money and die. And it's never, its never a happy thing. But, that said, I would say that going through that is one of the most you know, growth oriented experience of your life. And we managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Because what happened was, we had about three months worth of money left that we could keep going. And so we had this idea for this photo sharing thing. And decided that gosh we don't have enough time to build this game, we'll build this little photo sharing site that we came up with the idea for. Because in three months were never going to be able to complete this game. And then another thing that we had fortunately done is applied to the Canadian government for a grant two years before, which we had completely forgotten about. And it was December 23rd when we got a letter from them saying that they were giving us this grant. I think that it was for like $150,000, but $50,000 production budget and then a $50,000 marketing budget and I don't remember we really only ended up collecting a fraction of that, about $50,000 at the time. It was just able to keep us afloat long enough for us to build this new thing which we christened Flickr. So it was very much a Phoenix from the ashes. We were able to pull something out of it. It was one of the stories that ended happily. I think that even when companies go under, what I was about to say before was, even when your company goes under, people look back on their experience starting a company as one of the best experiences that they have had even if it fails; that they learned so much; that they really pushed themselves; they extended themselves to the very limits of their abilities and that feeling is irreplaceable. To succeed or fail, that is a very powerful experience for people. Larry: So you are talking about Flickr, you are talking about your new venture, Hunch. With all these things you have been through, how do you bring balance both into your personal and your professional lives? Caterina: It's interesting. I think that there is a lot of people who talked about this idea of balance being very important and I completely agree. And one of the things that I found is that the first time around you're not as seasoned or practiced, and I wrote a blog post about this recently on my blog at caterina.net. But the first time around we spent a lot of time worrying about things that we didn't need to worry about and basically flipping out about things that didn't need to flip out about -- doing things that were really not important. And I think the second time around I managed to figure out along the way what is worthwhile. Maybe staying at the office around the clock isn't as productive as working really, really hard, for eight or nine hours and then going home at the end of the day and actually having dinner with people. Because you need to sustain yourself over time and I do think that we do end up burning out if you don't pace yourself. You need to pace yourself. I think that you can do, it is very important to be able to pull those work crunch, we are going to get something at the door and we are going to work really hard in anticipation of a launch or that kind of thing. But that as a continual daily thing is probably not advisable. Lucy: Amen. Lee: Yup. It's the toughest thing there is, is balancing that personal and professional. So Caterina, you have achieved so much taking Flickr from nearly in the ashes to a phenomenal success, and now launching Hunch. So tell us what you see down the road with your career in technology? Caterina: I see, hopefully down the road Hunch is wildly successful and we have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users. I am just really committed to making Hunch the best site that it can be. I think one of the things that I really love to do is build websites and build interactive communities and build things that people use. I think that so long as I am able to keep doing what I love, which is making things and building things and thinking about things and having new ideas. That is not much different from what I am doing. So if you are talking about progression of the career, do I want to take a job as CEO of some massive technology company, I don't think you'll ever see me doing that. I think probably I will continue to be self-employed and an entrepreneur for the rest of my life. Larry: Sounds great. Lucy: I was going to say your passion for this, it just comes oozing out through your voice. It is clearly something that you love to do and that you love entrepreneurship and I think we are all lucky that you are out there inventing all these great sites. Lee: And you have given such great answers to the questions, I am sure everybody is going to love hearing this. Larry: Yes. You Betcha. Lucy: So thanks very much for your time. I wanted to remind folks you can find these interviews at www.w3w3.com and also at the NC website, www.ncwit.org and as well as the Pearson Prentice Hall. Lee: Thanks, Caterina. Lucy: So thank you so much Caterina. Caterina: Thank you guys so much. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Caterina FakeInterview Summary: The creation of Flickr, says Caterina Fake, was "very much a phoenix from the ashes...a story that ended happily." Release Date: November 16, 2009Interview Subject: Caterina FakeInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 27:43
December 13th, 2007 - It's been a slow news week, and it shows... We soldier on and maintain to entertain. The whole crew is here, Pete, Kevin, Jeff, and Chris. Although, Pete and Chris appear to be napping for half of the show. We cover the latest in copy protection lawsuits and crazy Representatives, AMD's struggle to keep their head above the water, CompUSA dies and no one sheds a tear, more crazyness from Microsoft, and more. Also, male camel toe (I've said too much...) You can provide feedback to the show by calling 206-888-2728. - Show Notes - News Stories: RIAA: Those CD rips of yours are still "unauthorized" Congressman Hollywood: It's time to revisit the DMCA CompUSA closes shop AMD's Barcelona, Phenom suffer early setbacks Judge: eBay can use "Buy It Now," still owes $30 million PlayForSure becomes "Certified for Windows Vista" 63 percent of US population now plays video games, says report GAO blasts government "planning" for digital TV transition Opera tries to force IE into W3C compliance with EU complaint Forecasting 2008: AMD Apologist Analyst Day Weekly Picks: Pete: Call of Duty 4 Jeff: AK-47 Chris: Total Annihilation Kevin: 56 Geeks Poster Direct MP3 Download iTunes Subscription RSS Feed
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