Podcasts about craig so

How do conversation skills make your podcast process more enjoyable? Even if we're lucky enough to “do what we love,” work tends to have tedious aspects we don't like. Craig Constantine is a passion podcaster who, through the creation of thousands of episodes and rigorous reflection, has built a workflow that simplifies every step of his method, from prep to publication. A consummate conversationalist, Craig's overarching goal is to use understanding and compassion to have exciting exchanges that inspire listeners to dive directly into meaningful dialogues. In this episode, he gets into the nitty-gritty of the personal process that led him to discover his devotion to podcasting. Let Craig's passion inspire you to: Understand the difference between compassion and empathy in conversation Consider why you might not want to bring your prepared questions into the conversation Approach AI tools to create the perfect research assistant Simplify your process to make it more fun in the long run Links worth mentioning from the episode: Listen to Episode 51, Honing Your Podcast Voice Through Second Language Learning with Stephanie Fuccio - https://www.organizedsound.ca/honing-your-podcast-voice-though-second-language-learning-with-stephanie-fuccio-episode-51/ Engage with Craig: Keep on top of what Craig is up to - https://craigconstantine.com/current-projects/ Learn more about Craig's podcasting mission - https://openandcurious.org/ Connect with Mary! Leave a voicemail with your feedback at https://www.speakpipe.com/VisibleVoice or email visiblevoicepodcast@gmail.com Get the full transcript of the episode at http://www.visiblevoicepodcast.com Read up on more secrets with the Visible Voice Insights Newsletter https://www.organizedsound.ca/newsletter To learn more or work with Mary, check out https://www.organizedsound.ca Link up on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/marychan-organizedsound/ Engage on Instagram @OrganizedSoundProductions https://www.instagram.com/organizedsoundproductions Show Credits: Podcast audio design, engineering, and edited by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions Podcast cover art by Emily Johnston of Artio Design Co. Show notes written by Shannon Kirk of Right Words Studio Post-production support by Kristalee Forre of Forre You VA Transcript with Audio Description: CRAIG: Oh, no pressure. But thank you so much for inviting me. You get the prize for, of all the people who ever asked me to be on their show, you're the one who worked the hardest. So thank you so much for that. > MARY: A lot of logisticals behind the scene, and, you know, personal schedules and stuff. CRAIG: You actually hunted me down. You asked me through a service that we're both on, and I totally ghosted you, like a lot of people. And then you went and found my website and found my contact form and emailed me, and I'm like, wow, all right, this person is motivated. Yes, I want to be on the show. MARY: Well, what you do is intentional practice of conversations, and I think that is so unique because a lot of people find podcasting as like, oh, I can talk, I'll just plug a microphone in and start talking. > But what is intentional conversation? Why is it so important to you? CRAIG: Well, it's important to me because I found myself having more and more really great conversations, and that's like a whole separate story. And the more that I learned how to shut up and listen, which took me longer than it should have, the more I shut up and listened, the more I enjoyed the conversations and the more other people seemed to enjoy them. And then the people lurking around it enjoyed them too.  So I started wondering, well, this isn't new. Humans have been doing this for a long time. And the more that I looked into it, now I have a books problem. You know, like, oh, here's a book from 150 years ago where somebody had all these things. And then I started having conversations that I was intentionally picking challenging guests. Not that the people were challenging, but, like, I have no knowledge about the topic we're going to have this conversation about, then, what would the skills be that I would need to have that be a good conversation when I'm totally floundering every second of the way?  And I'm like an autodidact nerdy self learner. So it works well for me to be like, whoa, that sucked. That was horrible. And then I, like, write down, why did suck? What was wrong with it? How could I make it better? So I'm always preaching, like, you know, take notes and reflect, um, on your conversations, reflect on your life in general, and figure out, could I try something different next time? Or maybe that just, it happened. The bird flew into my head. That, that went weird. MARY: So then what do you need then to have a conversation? Because, you know, you were saying, I stopped talking, so I listened. But when people think of dialogue, well, you gotta talk. So how do you define that art of conversation? CRAIG: That's a really hard question. That's two different questions. How do I define the art of conversation? I'm gonna ignore how I define it. That's hard. I would say that you actually, you don't really have to talk for it to be a good conversation. And a lot of times when I'm having conversations with people, they are already aware of my, my issues of, like, wanting to dig into the meta.  But even when I'm talking to people who don't know anything at all about me, they have an agenda and the real question is, when you're having a conversation with someone, is the other person aware of their own agenda? That's really, like, determines are we going to have a spectacular conversation. So Mary has ideas about where this conversation is supposed to go, ideas about what she wants the two of us to find here for the people who are listening. So that's like the biggest switch or choice. Like, when I'm having a conversation with someone, I'm, as best I can, always intentional about why I'm here, what I'm saying, why I'm saying, and I'm always curious, like, what is the other person thinking when they started talking? Were they just talking at me because they haven't seen me in a week, or are they really interested in something?  So that's like, the first thing is like, are both people on the same page about what does it mean to have a good conversation? Some people, they just talk. I'm not saying that's bad. It's just, you know, that's a deli conversation that's going to be a little more shallow maybe, or a little different. MARY: Yeah. What about then in the role of podcasting? That being intentional piece, do you then prep your questions and you have your set questions, or do you allow that conversation to unfold? Because, like you said, everyone's got an agenda. CRAIG: Yes. It depends on what you mean by you. So if you mean, does Craig? I generally don't write down my questions anymore in the very, very beginning, which would be like 2017. So I was kind of late to the party, but when I started, yes, I used to be intentional about, the show was all about movement, I would be intentional about, I'm going to talk to this person because I have this question or this story I want to know. And I would write down my questions, and I would imagine, like if I wasn't thinking story arc, but I was kind of imagining a story arc about, I want to start here and then I want to go here, and I want to end over there if I can.  So in the beginning, yes, I totally did that. And I got heavily involved in coaching podcasters. I've literally helped thousands of people as an assistant coach in courses. And that's a very good question for people to ask. So I say yes, in the beginning, write literally, preferably with a pencil, not like typing on your computer, because writing is different than typing.  MARY: Yeah,  CRAIG: Write your questions out in whatever your chicken scratch looks like. And then when you get to the recording, don't bring your notes. That's what I tell people, because the notes will distract you. I have a blank piece of paper on the table in front of me just in case I need to write something down. But when you go into those recordings as the host, all of that homework that you did, you're not going to forget it. It's going to be in the back of your head.  So I would say yes, I used to write things down, and I do recommend that that's a great place to start. And then eventually I can hold the questions in my head for weeks. I think about someone, you know, and I listened to one of your episodes as I was preparing for this, and I had, oh, that's interesting. And I see the kinds of things that Mary is attracted to, and I feel like I have enough things in my head that I could, I don't want to, but we could probably flip this around, and I could probably, you know, be the host if I had to, but I don't want to. > That's, if you ask Craig, how Craig does it, how does everybody else do it? I don't think people write their questions down based on what I hear, When I hear people. MARY: Certain shows, there are some shows where it's like, bam, bam, bam, question, question. There was, like, no follow up. And I feel like, yeah, that's not good either. CRAIG: Right. That's the other problem. That's the opposite of prepared. MARY: Yeah, exactly. So then if you don't write your questions, it feels a lot to me, too, about when I worked in radio, we called this show prep. You know, it's all about being prepared and kind of knowing, like you said, that agenda. But having the follow up questions are the sparks in that conversation. So do you then, have, like, a toolbox of ways to guide a conversation, or like,...  CRIAG: Oh yeah. MARY: …those. Oh yeah? Yeah. Okay, What is that?  CRAIG: So there's a whole bunch of them, and rather than try to rattle them off, but just kind of, like, paint kind of what they are. MARY: Yeah. CRAIG: I have these ideas in mind about, I have a visual, I live, like, 2 hours from Manhattan, so I've been there a bunch of times. And if you ever walk down Broadway is, like, the biggest street, you can walk the whole length of the place. I imagine that in conversations, I'm walking with someone.  So if I'm talking with someone and something strange happens, like, they ask me a question that I wasn't expecting, or they give me a strange answer, or they stopped, like, something weird happens. I'm imagining they, like, turned left into a side street. And my reaction needs to be not, wait, where are you going? Yeah, come back. My reaction needs to be, well, that's interesting. And follow, like, go with them. So I'm always trying to listen, air quoting is useless, you can't even see. I'm trying to listen not only to the words that they're saying, but the emotions that they're conveying. The emotions maybe they're trying to convey, which could be different, and try to imagine what is the experience that that person is having.  So I'm always yammering about my mission is about creating better conversation to spread understanding and compassion and empathy is close, but I think empathy is a thing that might come later after understanding and compassion. And I feel like that is what I'm trying to do, is I'm trying to deploy understanding and compassion as a tool.  So in a conversation, when something weird happens, I'm thinking, do I understand? Like, that's my first thought is, do I really understand what just happened here? Like, maybe I don't understand and I should ask a question about what just happened here. So I have, like, lots of nerdy tools that I can bring up, but they all fit in that toolbox of my first, you know, do I understand? And then, am I being compassionate? Is this person freaking out because Craig's too energetic for them? Like, that happens to people. I understand. MARY: You mentioned empathy, and I feel like empathy is very similar to compassion. CRAIG: Yes. MARY: So how do you differentiate that? CRAIG: The way that I think of it is that empathy is about the feeling and compassion is about, I don't want to say doing something about it, but imagining what could be done, either generally or that I should be doing. So, empathy, if you're empathic and you can't distance yourself from that, that's really hard. That's people who, like, if the elections go bad and then they have, like, a nervous breakdown, I'm like, well, okay, I mean, you're feeling for those other people, but you really need to be able to control that. You have to have boundaries. You have to be able to protect yourself physically and emotionally.  So, empathy, I think of as like, a feelers reaching out, sensitivity. And even I would say I'm pretty empathic. But even if you're really empathic, you really never know. You really can't say, I know what you're feeling, but that would be the goal, would be to feel outward. And then the compassion is, all right if I understand what's going on and I have some empathy for the person, the situation, or whatever we're talking about, then I might, if I'm a compassionate person, I might begin to imagine, is there something I could do about that? Could I help that person pick up whatever they dropped? Or could I donate money to this charity? Or could I help push this car out of a snowbank? That's the kind of thing that I do because I'm a large guy, you know.  But if you didn't have empathy for the person who was stuck in the snowbank, you'd just be like, sucks to be you. And you'd walk right by, you know? So that's why when I wrote my mission. That's why I wrote compassion rather than empathy, because I feel like empathy, I don't want to say it's easier, but I felt like I already had enough empathy and I wanted to work on the compassion part. So very, the mission is very specific to me, of course. MARY: What about then, if you're in a conversation with someone and you don't agree? CRAIG: That depends on why I'm in the conversation. So I don't do journalistic interviews, just because it's not my cup of tea. But I've listened to a lot of journalists talk about their process. And, yeah, if you're a journalist and you're supposed to be getting facts or truth or you're trying to, you know, uncover a particular story, if people say something you disagree with, you need to push back, and you can push back nicely. You can ask clarifying questions. You can, you know, throw in juxtapose. I thought it was X. You can make jokes. There are ways to reveal questions without actually asking questions, which then lets the two of us stand in one place and point at the question over yonder without it getting very antagonistic.  So there are things you can do to sort of direct, or in this case, redirect the conversation where you hope it would go. But that's not normally what I do because I'm not a journalist looking for something I don't have, like a target I'm aiming for, which kind of cuts both ways. Not having a target makes it harder because I think it would be easier if I knew where I was supposed to be going. So I don't often find myself in situations where, no, that's wrong, and I need to get you to tell me the other thing, so.  MARY: Yeah, it's just a matter of, okay, yes, you've said what you've said now. Oh, I'm going to ask you this question to, to redirect. CRAIG: Yeah, ask more questions. Ask different questions. You were asking for about tools earlier. I sometimes talk about people's salience, the word salience. Humans are spectacular at noticing salience. I always say I'm afraid of three kinds of snakes, little snakes, big snakes, and any stick that looks anything at all like a snake. So snake fear and, like, falling. These are wired in.  So there are other things, in conversations when you're listening to someone and you have an agenda and a story arc and a plan, and your brain suddenly goes, wait, what? And, like, it grabs these two things. The thing that you thought you were going to ask about and the thing that just lit you up, you have these two. Those things are related. I'm telling you, they are. That's what your brain just went, these are related. And you could just say, I wonder if these two things are related. You can just say that I do that and give people two, you know, like cheese and sneakers, and people will go, huh, that's a really good question. And then they'll think about it, and it's.  Conversations are just people sharing ideas. There's no rules about my ideas have to follow logically and clearly from the last. It can be whatever two people want to share. So I really feel like people, like I've said, I've seen a lot of people do this. A lot of people take courses and say, how do I do interviews? They really undervalue this magical, I don't want to say device, because your brain's not a computer, but, like, this magical power that you have about identifying the things that light you up. That already works. So that's probably what your podcast is about. If you have a day job as a journalist, then you got to work a little harder, because now you have to. You have to aim those tools at a specific. My producer said, I must do X. MARY: Yes. CRAIG: Just a little harder. MARY: Yeah. Like you were saying we're not computers, right? This. This isn't an AI interview. CRAIG: Whew, good. MARY: You know, we are humans. We have emotion. We have feelings in our bodies that will then guide us to. Okay, what is that curiosity piece? What is that follow up question? CRAIG: Why am I upset all of a sudden? MARY: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, like, go with that feeling in your body and make sure that, you say it out loud. CRAIG: Yeah. A lot of times, just naming the thing goes a long way toward helping both parties understand, because sometimes people say something and, you know, somebody's triggered, and if you're really good at hiding that, well, that's not helping anybody. I mean, maybe if you're really triggered, you're trying to leave the space. Okay. But if it's the kind of thing that can be discussed, people can't read minds. I used to make that error a lot. I'm like, the other person opposite me is fuming. And I don't know. MARY: Yep. You can still hear it in their voice, even though you can't see them fuming. Like in the podcasting world. CRAIG: Yeah. Audio is magical. MARY: Yeah. Is magical that way, for sure.  Let's move into a little bit with your podcasting journey. You have two active shows right now. Even one show is a lot, like, how. How do you manage all of this? CRAIG: Oh, I actually have. Well, if you want to count accurately, I have five active shows.  MARY: You have five active, oh geeze.  > CRAIG: Okay. All right. So how do I manage it? I have a pride problem. I love, you know, shiny things. I love to go after them.  So the very first show that I created, I did not set out to make a podcast. I didn't say, I want to become a podcaster. This is the thing I want to do. I was literally having cool conversations in movement spaces. I would be out, like, in London running and jumping and playing with people at an event or doing a thing, and then I'm the kind of person who just walks up to someone and says, whoever they are, oh, hey, and we start talking.  And then I turn around, there's people walking behind us because I'm talking to somebody semi-famous. And then they say, you should have recorded that. I would have listened to that. That's literally how I got into podcasting. Then I was like, well, I guess I should get some SM58 mics and a little interface. I just started basically pressing record on conversations that I was having. So I'm super lucky, super privileged that that happened to me.  So that's how I started into it in 2017. And I did, like, 40 episodes with no clue what I was doing. Just like, you know, like, I don't know, let's try this. I had a friend who knew how to edit. I'm like, hey Brian, and he's like, use this mic and get this interface. And, you know, like, people just giving me tips. And I went about, like, 35 or 40 episodes along. And then I took a course. And I took the course not, and it's. It was a sofa, I call it sofa to 5K. I had a podcast course, and I already knew all that. I had 40 episodes out. MARY: Yeah. CRAIG: But I wanted to completely tear it apart, and I did. I took it all apart, and I, like, changed the descriptions, and the course made me think about things differently. It was one of the greatest things I ever did. And I met a whole bunch of people who were passionate about podcasting. That was the third time they ran the course. I went back as an assistant coach for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, for the runnings of the course, till they stopped the course.  And along the way, I kept having more ideas. So the first show was, I was having conversations. People wanted to hear them. But the next show which came out, I was like, I wonder what would happen if you did a daily podcast. That was just me for 30 seconds reading a quote every day and didn't tell anybody. Just, like, stealth launched the thing. So I did 1,400 episodes of that show.  And then while that show was going on, I started a podcasting community, and I started interviewing the other podcasters in the community and working my way up with, like, who should I talk to after I did a show? And that show was all about podcasting.  So once I fell backwards into it and figured out how to do it, then it became this. Like, I imagine painters might just, oh, I got a paint. They run to the easel and they start painting. And, like, I do that with podcasting. I, like, I run to the microphone and I start making. Or I get people and I make a recording. So that's how I wound up with all these shows. It's really not any harder to have five shows. It's just, how many episodes are you doing? That's all that really matters. MARY: Yes. CRAIG: So, uh, you also, I haven't forgotten, you asked me, how do I do it? But if you want to follow up on that before I tell you how I do it. Or I can just tell you how I do it. MARY: Yeah, how do you do it? CRAIG: How do I do it? I'm a checklist and process nerd. So I have, for every one of the shows, I have a separate document that I maintain that tells me every detail. Like, this is the, you get an e nine minor guitar chord, goes here as the music bumper, and then the intro, and it has every step all the way through to emailing the guests at the end to say, thank you, your show is published. Here's the, you know, please share.  And if you do ten of those, then you'll be editing your list. And then the list gets a little more detailed. And eventually, all of the things that used to make me get stuck, I don't want to do the editing. I'm, I don't like editing. Oh, I don't want to do the show notes. All these things that I get stuck on. I just kept making it simpler. What's the simplest thing that could possibly work? And that's what I, and I broke it down to more and more steps until, when I look at the checklist, I have an episode that you go out sometime this week, and the next checkbox is so easy. I'm like, you know, I could totally do that, that I could do that.  And that's. That was how I broke it down, was to just make it simple enough that I could find a simple next step for whatever was going on. And then the checklist helped me remember. So if I'm not doing anything for three weeks. When I come back. Oh, right, here's where I was. Here's how I start, here's how I finish. MARY: What's an example of making it simpler? What does that mean? CRAIG: So we were talking about AI before. I use ChatGPT to write the episode notes. Shhh. I say that at the bottom, I wrote, written with, actually, it's written with help from ChatGPT. MARY: Yes. I was just going to say, I like that you have it written down. CRAIG: I'm a computer nerd, but I'm not an AI. Like to me, I was like everybody else, a what? How do you work this? I had no clue. But I have a checklist that helps me prompt the AI to give me what I want. So just like little nuances of sentences, like I'm resisting urge to open it up and read them, but it's like these really detailed, like, I want, say, I want one sentence to be the hook sentence for the thing that might be like 120 word paragraph that I've slowly fiddled with and kept in a document.  So now when I learn what the hook sense, that it's like copy, paste, and it actually says, write me five variations of a sentence and then it tells it what to do and then it writes me five sentences and I look at them and none of them are good enough. But somebody, once I forget where this comes from, somebody said, working with AI fixes the blank page problem, so you should totally use it for everything because it will do a terrible job and you will rush to fix it's work. And it gets me going every time.  So like, I rush and I'm like, no, no, you cannot use the word delve. No, no, no, edit the sentence, right? And then I edit my instructions and I say, you may not use the word delve. Put that in the instructions. So now when I have to write episode notes for like, say, a 15 minute conversation, I'm like, I can do that in 3 minutes. Watch this. > And I'm all done, you know, copy and paste and, and I have to edit, you know, like everybody has their personal writing style. I don't bother to try and make it do my style. I just edit the thing. I look at the paragraph and I go, hey, I don't like this part. Edit it. And then at the bottom I just write, written with help from ChatGPT.  I tell everybody who asks, like podcasters. It's like having the greatest research assistant. This person is tireless. They have infinite patience. No matter how many dumb questions I ask, they're just like, here's your answer. You can, like, just ghost them for two weeks, come back, they pick up right where you left off without a single. As long as you realize it's really more about, I think of it like the first stage on the rocket launch. Get me moving, get me off the ground here so I can get a feel for what this thing is supposed to be. And that's what I use it for. MARY: What about not AI? What can you make simpler? That has nothing to do with AI, because that's what everybody's talking about these days. CRAIG: I stopped editing my shows. How about that one? If you've listened to, so the one show is called Movers Mindset is 170 episodes. I think Podtalk is at 150 or something like that. And basically the last hundred plus maybe 150 episodes on those two shows that I've released. I don't edit the audio.  Now, full disclosure, I'm actually hard of hearing. I have hearing aids and crappy hearings. I'm a terrible audio editor to begin with, but I also can't afford to pay ninety cents a minute to edit all this stuff. So I went, well, what if I had a conversation that was so good, there wasn't anything that had to be cut out? How would you do that? Yes, and then work on that for 300 conversations. I've done about 500 recorded conversations for my shows, for other shows, not counting my guesting appearances. And every time I do them, I listen back and I'm like, why did I say that? Why didn't I shut up? > Because a lot of times the guest is about to say the great thing, and I'm still like, wait, you got to hear me. It's like, no, I'm the host. Shut up.  So I've looked at, like, exactly what percentage of myself, when I'm the host, do I want in the audio? The answer is 25%. I want one quarter Craig and three quarters of the guest. And I occasionally drop that into Otter, which will give you a percentage speaker rating. And I make sure I'm at the target number that I want. And if I'm over or under, then I think about that for my next conversation.  So, if you don't want to edit, could you just make the conversations better? Could you screen out people who are poor speakers unless you really need them? Like, there can be issues sometimes. I won't really want to guess because I want that representation. I really want this voice to be heard of. So I'm willing to live with thumbs and aahs and pauses. Just put it out raw you know, edit the levels, run the anti white noise background thing, 30 seconds. I mean, sometimes I'm, I have a 45 minutes conversation. It takes me five minutes to go from raw audio to mp3, final mix down, including the time it takes my Mac to make the mp3. It's, you know, because otherwise I wouldn't get it done if I didn't cut that corner.  And there are other ones, like, I stopped doing introductions in the guest. Like, I never, when I'm recording, I never ask the guest to tell me who they are. Tell us, no, that's a disaster. And I don't. I don't read that in anymore for a while. I would open the show by saying, oh, my guest today is. I skipped all that. I got tired of recording intros and outros because I actually don't think people listen to them. So I skip them. My show opens, and I say, Hello, I'm Craig Constantine. There's like a sentence or two of what the show is. And then I asked the guest the first question, and we just have a conversation. There are other things about, oh, I can only do so much social media. So I have a WordPress plugin. I hit a button, and it just posts the three platforms. And then I'm like, good enough. Yep. I'm not making short form. I figured out how to do YouTube auto load from RSS. Good enough. MARY: Done. Yes. CRAIG: Moving on. I just looked at every single thing on the list that was in my head, and I went, this is stressing me out. Write it down. And then when I looked at the list written down, I identified, I can't do this. This is too much. I want to have hundreds, thousands of great conversations, and I don't want to do all these pieces. So delete pieces until I only want to do the part between record and stop and anything else that I absolutely have to, to make the show go out. MARY: And I think that's the difference, too, between people who are podcasting as a passion, like you do, or those who are like, I need to generate income, so I have to do X, Y, and Z, right? So it's like talking about that agenda piece. You were, you were saying at the very beginning, it's like, what is your goal for your podcast? So what would you define as success, then, for your podcast? CRAIG: Oh. Sometimes people can read each other's minds. I was listening to some of your shows, and that's a question you ask often because it's super important. And I'm like, this would be the spot where we need to talk about what Craig thinks success is.  Success, in my opinion, for my shows is so for the two shows that have guests, if somebody listens to an episode and then they manage to email in real life, whatever, talk to the guest and they can skip over the parts that make conversations suck and go right to the good part. That's the definition of success for my show.  So one of the shows is all about parkour and has french names and all these things, and there's people who run and jump and play all over the world, and everybody's pretty famous that I'm talking to. If they, somebody runs into that person and says, hey. And just goes right to the part of the conversation where both of them are enjoying it. Not, my guest, who's semi famous is like, oh, another fan. But where the fan comes up and says something and that person goes, oh, yeah, I'd love to talk about that.  Like, that's my definition of success. People listen to the episodes that I did, and that enables them to have a better conversation with that person, even if it's just email or, you know, direct messaging or whatever. That may be a weird definition of success, but it turns out to be hard to do that. But it only means I have to have a certain kind of conversation. It doesn't mean that I have to advertise or, you know, kill myself in editing, I hope. > MARY: Yeah. CRAIG: That nobody listens. MARY: That's always the podcaster problem.  CRAIG: Yeah. MARY: Nobody's listening. CRAIG: Well, there's only one problem and lots of problems. MARY: So what are some other problems that you have with podcasting? CRAIG: Uh, I spend too much time on it. Spend too much time on it. It's like I have an embarrassment of riches. So I understand. I'm not claiming this is weird, but I understand why people say they're nervous about reaching out to guests. I do not have that problem. I'm a computer nerd. I have something like 600 guests. I'm not exaggerating in queues. And I wrote software that mails me weekday mornings that suggests, you know, you mailed this person three weeks ago and they never got back to you, so you probably should message them again. Like, I wrote software to keep track of all that, so that I can just turn the crank. I do the fun part, which is, new email, Hey, Bob, would you like to be on the show? Or like that kind of thing?  People mention a guest to me and I put it in a certain little config file, and I don't forget, two years later, it comes up. And then when I look at the notes, I know who recommended them. And maybe I, maybe they said, I'd really like to hear them talk about X. Like, I figured out a way to capture that stuff. You can do it with pieces of paper or excel spreadsheet, whatever you like.  I think a lot of the struggle with guest outreach is in it's just an infinite number of threads. Like, it's complex, and it's always going to be complex. Don't put your friends into customer relationship management software. That doesn't make it better. So I just figured out, well, what would this have to be for me to enjoy doing this?  So I have, the other problem is, if I turn that crank, if I start messaging people, I can do like five touches in a day in like ten minutes, because I just send an email, send a thing, go to whatever platform they're on. You do that for a few days, then people start showing up in your calendar. And like, that's the other side is make sure people can schedule themselves in using Calendly or something.  If I'm not careful, all of a sudden it takes about two to three weeks. Three weeks out, all of a sudden it's like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I have all these podcast recordings scheduled. And even if I say one show per day, I can still wind up with two or three on one day because I have multiple shows. > That's my problem. I removed all of the sticky points, and I really wasn't paying attention to that means it's all going to go really fast. So I have to like, woah, slow down and try to keep it under control. MARY: Wow, you definitely have a very unique challenge. > CRAIG: Nice choice of words that you're going to say, that's very special. MARY: Earlier you were talking about, you got a lot of advice. You give advice about podcasting. So what was one advice that you got that did, you know, good. You're like, you know what, this is an advice that's out in the podcasting space, don't follow it. CRAIG: Oh, well, it's, uh, a similar version of that. Question is, what's something I disagree with that everybody else would be mad at me, and that's that you have to publish on a schedule. That's the piece of advice that I patently, I started on that at one point, I had a show that was all over the map, and I actually had hired someone to work on my team. I said, job one, get me on a schedule, which meant get the guest work and all that stuff. And I got on a schedule and I published every week for like a year and a half. I have completely given up, I don't care about, I don't care about schedules. So I said, like, mary, when was my last episode put out? MARY: I'd have to look, I don't know. CRAIG: Right? I mean, even if you went and listened, it's okay if you didn't. I don't think Craig is that interesting. But, even if somebody goes and listens to one of my shows, thing they look at is not the publication date. They go to the chronological list. They want to listen to the most recent one. Maybe they scroll back and listen to the trailer, or maybe they search for a word.  So I think that the advice to get yourself on a schedule. Okay. If it's your first episode, yes. Get on a schedule for five or ten or something, seven. But have it in your mind that you're planning on getting off the schedule, or you're at least planning on slowing way down. Because weekly, if you're. If you're, like, a one man band, and if you're doing things by all by yourself, weekly is insane. MARY: Oh, yeah. CRAIG: Even if it's hostile, weekly is like the treadmill. So I, I think that's the advice that it's super useful if someone is literally starting out on the sofa to 5K journey of podcasting. Yes. You need to imagine how do I, because it teaches you to close the loop. If I start here and I got to do all these steps, and I got to be done by next week, because I got to do it all over again, and then you start to think, oh, can I do the guest outreach in parallel? So I was working multiple guests, could I work ahead? So I got one or two in the can I. It teaches you those things. But then once you learn those lessons, then let go of having to publish on a schedule is my advice that I think didn't serve me because I took the course and people said that, and I was at 40, and I was like, yeah, I already want to get off this. > MARY: Get off this, because it is a lot of work and a lot of pressure on yourself to make sure it goes out at a certain day and time. CRAIG: Yeah. And, like, your die hard listeners, I've had people talk about. We talk about feedback and hearing from your fans. I've had people come up to me at, like. Like, I bump into them in person, and they talk about the show, and I've had people say to me, I can't keep up. Like, sometimes they drop, like, three or four in one week, and people are like, what are you doing? I can't listen to all this. It's too much content. MARY: That is a lot! CRAIG: Well, it is, but from my side, it's not. And I just had. It was a 30, 40 minutes conversation. I had a blast. It was awesome. And then I blasted through the post production, right? Sometimes I'm done, and if I'm really flying, I can be done in 45 minutes. I hit stop. The guest hasn't even, like, finished with their. You know, and I'm like, I'm done. It's crazy. MARY: So wait, why not then? Wait. Like, okay, if you've got this back, not back log. Like, then why not schedule? CRAIG: Because then the next week, I did three more, and then the next week I did three. Was like, well, there's another scheduled to, you know, never. And I also. I felt bad sometimes. I don't know, there's something about it. Everybody says, you always love all of your children the most. And every one of them, when I'm done with them, I'm like, that's the best thing I've ever created that has to go out right now.  It's part of my drive to make and do and create. And I feel like when I hit stop, I'm doing a disservice. I'm sitting on something I shouldn't be sitting on. And I have had some weird situations where I had some that I sat on for, like, ten months because I get nervous about that. Like, why isn't this done, well, because I can't get a transcript from the thing. I got stuck on details.  So, I really just love. I don't know, I love the feeling of, wow, I had a great conversation, and now everybody else can hear it with as little time between those two statements as I can get. MARY: Okay then, I'm checking out the time. Like, I had scheduled a certain amount of time with you, but then it got me thinking, then, do you schedule, like, a certain amount of time, or do you just let this conversation go? Because, like, I think I can talk to you for hours, right? And I literally mean that, you know, people say that on shows, but, you know, there has to be an end. CRAIG: Oh, I guess this is like a whole nother show. Okay, so I will say, yeah, you got 60 seconds before the time you allotted. However, I do not have a hard stop. So you could, if you want to record a second shows worth of material, knock yourself out.  Here's what I will say. People often ask if they're. If they're good podcasters, it occurs to them to ask, how do I have a good ending to my conversation? How do I have a good ending to my show, if I have a host and guest situation, and I always say, well, the first thing you can do is cross off anything that you know that won't work.  So, if you want to have a good ending, do not stop when the show sucks. > Right? So the friction and this is good. You always want to feel this as a host when you're on your show. This is great. This is where we should stop when you feel that tension of, this is awesome because people are going to slap their headphones off and go, that was awesome. And they're going to be like, they're going to go talk to somebody about the show or they're going to share it or whatever.  I mean, maybe don't stop right in the middle of an idea. But that part where we all want to go, wow, that was great. Now what do I ask? Oh, wait, there's more, Mary, let's talk about that. Don't do that. Just go, that was awesome. Thanks so much, Mary. It was a pleasure talking to you today. And hit stop. Hit stop when you're going is great, and you'll be good. Then there are a couple other little tips. Conversations go in, I call them saccades, not cicadas, the insect. Saccades, is a reference to how you move your eyes when you're reading. I don't know if people talk about cicadas in conversation, but, um, I'm doing it. There's a saccade to conversation. It's follow the bouncing ball, and it's about 20 minutes per hop on a conversation. MARY: I've heard about that. Yeah, yeah. CRAIG: And you might need to do people going, what? You might need to do a few hundred conversations to get out your metrics and look at the things. And what happens is, if you just let that bouncing ball go, you can't really stop at 30 if you're in the middle of a bounce and you can't really stop at the 20 minutes because that's the sucky part in the middle where you need to have a follow up question to get us back to the >.  So that's another thing is to understand, like, as a host on your show, understand some of the dynamics of conversation. Have your, have your conceptual head only if you can manage it. Only half in the show, half out of the show, watching the clock, knowing what you wrote that you wanted to get to, that you haven't got to yet. So, you know, oh, I have to get this one more thing. The next bounce of the saccade is going to be this. If you can manage to stay out. That's hard. Then that lets you have some of that. You know, you can have your head. You like old gopher, you know, like you stand up, you look around a little bit. Okay, let's go back into the next 20 minutes. So that's the, those are the things that I think about when I'm trying to figure out where to stop.  Really. Just don't stretch. You get to the end and it's awesome, and somebody says something profound, just say, that was awesome. MARY: That was awesome, Craig. CRAIG: But I did it on purpose.  MARY: I know. CRAIG: But, like, it's tough to do that when you're ahead. When you're really as a host, if you're having an awesome conversation, you get completely lost. That's good tape. MARY: So, yeah, that is. But I always end my show with the same question, and I'm going to let you go. So my last question for you is, what are you excited about podcasting right now? CRAIG: I totally should have prepared for that because I heard that what am I excited about podcasting? Well, in case people couldn't tell, I'm not excited about anything. I'm really excited about more people are starting to want to talk to me about conversation, and that's great because that means that I'm either, well I'm going to say I'm not doing something offensive. At least it means that things aren't going badly pessimistic.  So I'm really excited about having the chance. It's been happening more often to have conversations like this, where the whole thing is very meta about conversation. So that's really kind of makes me want to start another show. > I'm going to do more of this, but I'm not going there. So that's what I'm going to say. I'm really excited about and getting back, I was mentioning before I was sick, so I'm, like, on a pause at the moment. So I'm excited to get back to having more conversations, but it's really. I feel like I'm getting more interest in talking about talking. MARY: Yeah, I think that's what we need, because it's that human connection that we're all craving, you know? CRAIG: Oh, yeah. MARY: So thank you so much for this human connection with me and for the conversation. > CRAIG: My distinct pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. MARY: Thanks so much, Craig. I love the enthusiasm in his voice and for the work that he does. And, you know, during the conversation, he mentioned saccades and following the bouncing ball. I love that he brought up how conversations cycle through around 20 minutes, and we talked about this before, actually, in a previous episode with Steph Fuccio in number 51, we talked about Honing Your Podcast Voice Through Second Language Learning, and Steph had done similar research as well. She mentioned that same phenomenon around 20 minutes for a conversation. So if you want to revisit that episode number 51, the link is in the show notes.  So after listening to this conversation, what advice would you take from Craig's podcasting journey for your own show? Now, like I said on the show in the beginning, his podcast is a passion project and his success is not going to be the same as your success. So we're not saying you need to follow what he is doing. Like the way how he doesn't schedule. Scheduling is important to some people because it provides them structure and to make sure they do things so that they go out. Craig's really great at finding out what works for him, so I hope this episode makes you think about what could potentially really work for you. It's his idea of making things simpler. That's what he found works for him. But what does that mean for you?  Send me a voice note with your feedback at VisibleVoicePodcast.com. you'll find the purple button that says send voicemail. From there, click on that, send me your feedback, and let me know what would be simpler for your podcasting workflow. Or as always, you can email me as well VisibleVoicePodcast@gmail.com.  On the next episode we're talking voice tips. How do we embrace our voice as a tool? We think of podcasting as an easy thing to do where you can plug in your microphone and just start talking, but it's not as easy as that. We'll explore more of your voice next time. > > >

This week we sit down with event organizer, Ben Brainard to discuss the Shasta Gravel Hugger. Founded in 2020, this March event in Northern California has proven to be a great season opener for many gravel cyclists. Episode Sponsor:  Hammerhead Karoo 2 Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the show. We welcome Ben Bernard, the founder of the Shasta gravel hugger event in Northern California taking place in March each year for the last four years. It's become a real great early season option. For those of you looking to test your metal in the early parts of the year and not able to go out to some of the Midwest gravel races, like the mid south. Ben has a real interesting approach to the race. He's got a great area to play with around Mount Shasta. If you've never been there before, it's a real amazing. Landmark. In the region, if you're driving, say from San Francisco up to Oregon, you pass through the town of Mount Shasta and then around on the north side of the mountain and the views are absolutely spectacular. I've got a number of friends from Marin county who love this event and have been up on a number of occasions. As Ben will describe the weather sometimes plays a factor in the event and really dramatically affects your choice of equipment for this early season race. Before we jump in i need to thank this week sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead caru to computer this ad read for my friends at hammerhead is very timely. As I literally just got in my inbox, my email for my latest. Software update. The hammerhead crew. Two's the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today. With industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities. That set us apart from other GPS options. So you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility. That keeps getting underscored every single time I get one of these software updates, because I know the team at hammerhead are a listening. And be working and pushing out responses. So I love that about the crew to the crew too. If you don't know, it's got a touch screen display that's intuitive and responsive and full color. So your navigation experience is more like a smartphone than that, of a typical GPS device. You can see your data more clearly than ever. While also withstanding rugged conditions since it's water and scratch resistance. I've talked about the hammerheads climber feature with predictive path technology before. It allows you to visualize and prepare for upcoming gradient changes in real time. With or without the root loaded. I love this when going to gravel events, because I'm someone who just, I like to know if I'm going to sit in and grind or whether I should try to power over something. Because it's a short climb. This is all available in real time on the crew too. That's why I trust it as my head unit this year and I will do so again, next year. Hammerhead has been previously named bicycling magazines, editor choice, award. In the GPS cycling category. So you don't need to take my word for it. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor strap with the purchase of a hammerhead crew to simply visit hammerhead.io right now. And use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout. Someone in the ridership mentioned to me that the way to get the e-commerce system work is go ahead and put the hammerhead crew two in your cart first. And then add the heart rate monitor, and that coupon code, the gravel ride. After the fact to make sure you don't run into any hiccups. And hopefully. You can get a new hammerhead to computer in front of you for your next year's riding endeavors. With all that said let's jump right into my conversation with ben [00:04:04] Craig: Ben. Welcome to the gravel ride podcast. Cast [00:04:07] Ben: Thanks for having me. It's, it's an honor. [00:04:09] Craig: I'm excited. I, you know, Shasta being not dramatically far away from my, from where I live and certainly a place that I've been before, ever since I started seeing the Shasta gravel hugger on the calendar. I've been excited to talk to you cuz it's a beautiful area and I wanna learn, learn more about the event. [00:04:27] Ben: Excellent. You got it. It is a beautiful area. I've just loved going, riding my bike down there, especially in the winter, as I've said before this time of year it is, it is perfect. We got great smooth roads and the weather is usually pretty stinking good except for on race day. Yeah. I wanna [00:04:43] Craig: step back and talk about that a little bit later. But before we get get into the race itself, why don't we just learn a little bit about yourself? How did you find your way into that region? How'd you find your way to gravel cycling? . [00:04:55] Ben: Yeah, I've been in the valley here for I guess about 22 years. The Rogue Valley that is, so I'm, I'm north of where the race is by about a 45 minute drive. You know, like most people work brought us here. And then I got immersed in, in work for several years and, and finally when that led up a little bit, Picked up my bike about, you know, from, from a young age I was riding bikes, but, but not racing bikes. And about 12 years ago I started racing and then slowly found my way into gravel and then yeah, eventually promotion. It's crazy. So, [00:05:34] Craig: so to set the context for our listeners, I've been up to Shasta, I've been north of Shasta. On my way to Bend, I think is what normally I go by Shasta and, and, and continue up that road. It's a pretty rural part of Northern California. So can you des just sort of describe the area and maybe paint a picture for, you know, what brings people there? What's the sort of the economic engine of the region, et cetera. [00:05:59] Ben: Yeah, I would say timber is what developed this area. And, and so, so that's the main thing. We've seen less and less timber. I. In this area, you know, the mills have kind of dwindled down to where there's, you know, one big one or something. And, and so I would say now this particular area is recreation is a big, a big thing. And then secondary would be tourism yeah, tourism. And, and I just slipped me, what was the, the other one I was gonna say. But but yeah, it's a beautiful area and it's a great place to visit. . Yeah, [00:06:33] Craig: certainly Mount Shasta. I guess I first became aware of it because of the mountain at Mount Shasta and the desire to climb it and go up. It, it's just sort of, it's an attainable, quote unquote mountaineering experience for a lot of people. And I know they've got, you know, a great outfitter right there in, in, in downtown Mount Shasta to help you get up the mountain. And that's where I first got exposed to it and mm-hmm. , it was clear. Obviously there's a lot of wilderness around that area. I stopped there once on my mountain bike on the way home from Ben to explore a little bit, but just kind of got the, the tip of the iceberg for what the terrain is around there. When you think about like where you live now and around Shasta itself, how would you describe the, the, the gravel biking terrain that. [00:07:18] Ben: Yeah. Oh man. We have so many gravel roads. So, you know, I live just over the border in Oregon in the rogue Valley. And our gravel roads are for the most part, very pristine, like very well developed gravel roads. The problem we have around here is they almost all go up the side of a mountain. And so, , they're great roads to ride in the summer, but in the wintertime, you're gonna, you're gonna bump into, into snow pretty early on and get turned around a lot of the time. And so that's what led me to, to going down into the Shasta area because I, I can ride these awesome gravel roads the strata Bianchi roads and, and, and stay below, let's say 3000 feet most of the time. And that way I, I can, I can stay outta the. Interesting. [00:08:06] Craig: Yeah, that it, it didn't dawn on me that actually Shasta would have better weather than where you are. [00:08:13] Ben: Yeah, it's, I would say it has a few more sunny days in this area. I mean, I could, I could have drizzle here, go up over the Siskiyou, pass in, into Siskiyou County and, and voila, it's a sunny day. It's, yeah, it's quite a bit about the weather in the wintertime, especially. . [00:08:30] Craig: Interesting. So you mentioned you sort of rediscovered the bicycle about a dozen years ago, and eventually during that path you started riding off road. Was that by virtue of the fact that there's just so many dirt roads around where you [00:08:42] Ben: were? Yeah, well, I, I would say that I found gravel and dirt roads from a good friend Tom Neland, who started putting on the honey badge Arise, which are, are are pretty fun event around here. A free event. And he's the one that introduced me to the gravel roads in the Mount Shasta area. So I had, I had an old Hardtail mountain bike that I used for commuting, and they had some, I don't know, two inch slicks on it or something like that. 26 er. And, and I went to one of his honey Badger rides, which they kind of focus. unique courses and, and gravel. And and that's how I found the gravel bike. And from there it was just riding cross bikes. And I actually been, I, geez, I guess three or four years that I've been racing gravel pretty seriously. I mean, as. as a primary source for, for my events that I attend. And, but I got my first gravel bike this last year. It's right here behind me. But most of the roads around here are so nice that a cross bike is absolutely fine. I mean, if you don't need to go beyond 30 fives [00:09:48] Craig: usually. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a, a quite a big leap between finding a love of riding gravel bikes and riding on dirt roads to creating an event. , what made you decide to take that leap? And remind me when the first Shaster gravel hugger event was? [00:10:06] Ben: The first event was in 2000, March of 2000. So, it's four years. This next year will be our fourth year of putting, no, [00:10:14] Craig: 2020, sorry. Yeah, 2020 was the first [00:10:16] Ben: one. Yeah. Yeah. 2020. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. And it's grown steadily ever since. [00:10:21] Craig: and was the first one. Did you just sort of put it out there, Hey, come one, come all, or did you put a little organization, a lot of organization behind it? [00:10:30] Ben: Yeah. You know, in 2020 there were some, some big rides, obviously some big races, and, and I was drawn to those events and so I'm like, well, geez, we have these beautiful roads here. You know, we need an. In this region, they're, of which they're, you'd have to go to Bend to get a gravel race or, or, or, or the Grasshopper series in Northern California, which are still several hours south of here. And so, so yeah, I just decided that these, these roads kind of reminded me of the strata Bianca Roads, these beautiful white crush granite roads. , wanted to mimic the, the Strata Bianchi and the Peru Bay. That was the original plan, but we had a couple promoters around here and they like to put on events and, and, and like small little local events, and I wanted to try to make this more of a regional national type of event. And so I figured. Someone that had the passion for, and the vision for this particular type of a race probably should be at the helm. And so I decided, you know, the whole, I guess I'll do it myself kind of a thing. And, and it, it must take off. So it's great. And did you, was it [00:11:40] Craig: always sitting in early March as the time it was held? [00:11:44] Ben: Yeah. I originally had plans to, to call it strata something, you know, mimicking the strata Bianchi roads. But eventually I just didn't want the conflict with that particular race. And it's on the same exact day as strata Bianchi. And so we kind of, I wanted to put it early in the year because as we all know, as the summer goes on, the race counter gets more and more competi. This particular week is one week ahead of Midsouth. I did not want to try to go up against the Midsouth. If I'm trying to be a a national type race, then, then, then you wouldn't automatically go up against Midsouth. Yeah. And so I kind of placed it on the calendar right here for those two reasons originally. And, and then the third thing is when, when I was training riding turbos in, in the, in the winter. , I wanted to get out and do an early event. You know, like even if you're just, you know, doing some base work or something like that, you still kind of want to go out and test yourself and, and, and this is perfect. It, it, it fit into how it, it fit in exactly to a spot that I would want a race personally. Yeah. So, yeah. That's kind of, that [00:12:51] Craig: makes a lot of sense how either there, yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Like I know any Wouldbe race organizer at this point, there's gravel events throughout the. And to your point, like if you want to create an event that can occupy a little bit more of a national profile and kind of be a destination, that early season spot is one that's open and granted, not everybody's gonna have the wherewithal to go to Mid-South, but it certainly has the name and. The recognition and sponsors that is gonna draw a lot of athletes and not head going head-to-head with it, but also similarly for recreational athletes. Providing that early season goal and opportunity I think makes a ton of sense with that March date. As I've seen pictures over the years. , you have experienced some dramatic weather. Can you kind of describe kind of the, you know, just the many different personalities the course can have based on the weather conditions? [00:13:49] Ben: Yeah. Like I've said, this area has fantastic weather in the wintertime, but we have been, I don't blessed cursed. I don't know what, but we. all three years that we've had the race so far, we've had snow on course at some point, you know, and so year number one was probably the worst year if you ask me. It was cold, it was raining at the start, and then by the time we got to the highest point of the race, there was snow on the ground. So you dig back in the photos of, of that first race and, and it, and it was pretty sloppy and, and and. The next year we had snow overnight, but it was a beautiful sunny day and it just created these just in incredible pitchers. The course was good except for, you know, the infamous Jeep Trail, which which was just saturated actually, and so it, it, it didn't have a chance to dry out, but But these roads, for the most part, with the exception of this Jeep Road, east Louis Jeep Road, that seems to be pretty famous in this race. The roads hold up to all kinds of weather, so well the majority of 'em are gonna be just if you get some rain in the week ahead. They are faster than most pavement roads. So they're big, wide open county maintained gravel roads that are really smooth. Most of the. [00:15:07] Craig: Yeah, I was, when I was on the Shasta Gravel hugger website, I was looking at the tire recommendations as I often do for, for travel events. And you made mention like totally capable in a, in a dry ish road, gravel day 30 twos to 37. You're, you're, you're all good. Mm-hmm. . But if it's actually wet on the course, all of a sudden it's a different. [00:15:29] Ben: Yeah. We have, we've had road bikes do well, so Luke lamp party came up here and raced on a road bike with, he could stuff some 30 millimeters in there. And it was one of the years it was super wet. Could he have been higher than third place with, with a proper gravel bike? Possibly that particular year, but like last year, I would say that. He, he might have been able to win it on a, on a road bike. And that's the fun thing about this particular race, like we call it gravel and it, it, it attracts a lot of people, but it is almost half pavement. So. It is a real, I try to do the build up the sectors. And the reason we have sectors is because there's gravel sections. And then of course we have, you know, maybe, I think our longest one's like a 12 mile section of pavement. And, and so yeah, picking the right tires is, is huge. And, and if you can get away with running some 32 millimeter slicks, like I write it a lot. my cross bike with, with kind of a road ish wheel on 'em, and, and it does fine. So yeah, let's dig [00:16:34] Craig: into the courses that are available to riders now for the 2023 edition. What, what course options do you have? [00:16:41] Ben: Yeah, our big one is called the Full Hug and it's a hundred miles and it has about 4,500 feet of climbing in it. I wanna. And then we have the half hug. I kind of like the bro hug. It's like it's half, half that. It's, it's a hundred kilometers. It is just a, just I think 65 miles with about 4,000 feet of climbing. So it's, it's close. Most of the climbing's in the second half of the, of the race. And then brand new this year, we are adding a more social. Loop, which is gonna be 35 miles. And, and we have also added an e-bike, which is something that's brand new for me to include an e-bike option in, in, in the [00:17:21] Craig: race. So, interesting. And it sounds like, from what you were saying before in our tire discussion, from a technical perspective, no one should be too nervous about what they're gonna get into up there. [00:17:32] Ben: Yeah. I mean, we have one high speed descent. Might, would definitely make you wish you had some different tires on if you're, if you went small. But all aid, all ages, all levels. We'd be fine. Just, you know, you gotta be careful. People can recognize when, when it's getting dangerous and slow down, so, yeah. Yeah, for the most part, roads are [00:17:51] Craig: fantastic. And then are you providing aid stations out there on the course for the riders? [00:17:56] Ben: Yeah, so we have, last year we had two main aid stations and then a third. Third was just in an emergency aid station that wasn't quite stocked as much close to the end in case someone was crashing and boning or something like that. Most people didn't stop at that one, but yeah, fully supported. We encourage everyone to use our aid stations as opposed to try to seek outside help along along the way. You know, we try to discourage and make it fair enough for everybody if they don't have a, a dad to hand water bottles up in random spots. So we encourage everyone to, if they do want something special from, from a teammate or a family member, then do it in our, in our speed zones. [00:18:35] Craig: Yeah. When you think about how you're promoting the event and the types of athletes that you're trying to attract, Are you categorizing this as a full throttle race? You know, if there's a spectrum between like hardcore race and gravel ride, where are you trying to sit? And I realize that you could answer that differently for the 10% at the front of the race versus the rest of us. But I'd just be interested to kind of get your thought process on how you're, you're categorizing it. [00:19:01] Ben: Yeah, I mean, I would, I, I'd categorize it as a race, like, yeah, we're chip timed, we are keeping track of different age groups, so yeah, full on race. But it, it falls into the, the gravel theme of you know, the molet, you know, we have let the racers race and then if anyone wants to, you know, just go out there and knock off a, a big, long day, then. We'd love to have them too, so, so yeah. It's, yeah, it's, it's definitely a, a party for some and, and, But we always try to maintain that there's a race going on and we try to promote the race piece of it too. Because, you know, we're trying to attract these big professional racers to come, which will, you know, create excitement for the everyday person to come and see how they stack up against people. So it's been fun. [00:19:52] Craig: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And if I look back over the last few years, for whatever reason, whatever you've done, the timing, the location, the ethos you have managed to attract, Several or dozens of elite riders to come and chest their metal there in March. [00:20:08] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Originally, you know, it's an interesting story. So you're number two. So you're number one is, was the start of covid. So we're in March of 2000 2020, excuse me. And. And there's some grumbling about Covid of course. And then we pretty much shut down, right? And then there was hardly any races that year. And then the next year is like in the early spring it felt like, okay, things are starting to, to open up and, and a county like Siski I don't know. They, they would kind of, I just think they kind of poo-pooed the, the co covid thing in that area, the maj majority of people. And, and so they were welcoming of us trying to do something that year. And so year number two, we really quickly threw it together and And the funny story is that I noticed that Pete Stetner was, was liking some of my Instagram posts. And so I'm like, huh. So we shot Pete a quick message and he's like, yeah, I'm, I'm open that week and I'd love, love to come, kind of a thing. And, and . And so I would say he was the start of the, the professionals showing up to the race. And then we were able to leverage that Pete, you know, hey, Pete's coming and you know, we got Jacob Rath Raey come down from, from the Portland area. So we had a couple of pros in year number two. And then in year number two, the women's field was, was even probably more stacked top to bottom. There was, I think only 13 of the, the women's pros, but we had Clara Hansinger, we had Maude Farrell, and then of course Moe Wilson. That was, that was our, our, our, our podium with ma taking the wind. Mo second and Clara Haunting are third. So, so yeah, it, it's definitely. The interest of the, the regional pros. And then last year Adam, Rob, you know, he's coming all the way over from Quebec, but he just wanted one, an event and one that wasn't in, in snow and winter. And so he came out here and, and yeah, we got Brennan words coming up from, from the Marin County and, and, and had a great showdown last year with some really strong writers. Yeah. [00:22:13] Craig: Yeah. It's, it's been, it's been fun to watch the kind of growth, and I, I think you'll continue to see people get attracted to it. Again, it's just good part of the calendar. Mm-hmm. , clearly it's got enough ca like enough quality terrain and racers up there to make it a, a worthwhile early season test of your fitness. [00:22:32] Ben: Yeah, exactly. This next year though, the calendar has become quite a bit more competitive on my, my day because Belgian Waffle Wright has. That they are gonna be holding a, an event in Arizona on the same weekend. So the, so now the work is for me to try to, you know, attract these, these pros to come to my event over, over heading to Arizona, which, I mean, March in Arizona sounds pretty good to me but but yeah, [00:23:00] Craig: yeah, yeah. I think there's room for, you know, if you put on great events, , there's room for multiple events on the same day at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. , there's people looking for different things. I think you also mentioned over email some, some initiatives that you've put forth and maybe some changes in how you're kind of rolling people out during the day. Do you wanna talk about some of those 20, 23 initiatives? [00:23:21] Ben: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, there's. There's been some chatter amongst the, the female racers. Now a lot of them like to see how they stack up, up, up against the men, but there's also been a decent amount of chatter about how unsafe it is for them to try to be going out there and competing in these, these massive, this mass participation events that that have a ton of guys that they're trying to jockey with. And so this next year if as long as we get enough in the field to make it worthwhile, we are going to ship the women off 15, 15 minutes ahead of the men's race so that they don't have to go deal with that first sector and the chaos associated with that. They will, we'll also be able to give them a chance to, to kind of highlight the women and, and announce who's here and who's competing and, and, and give their sponsors a sh a shout out and. and then, then we send them off and then we can go about bringing the guys up 15 minutes later. And then, you know, I just ahead [00:24:21] Craig: a follow up question on that, Ben, when you, when you think about that first sector, is there elevation, is there technicality? What do you imagine happening during those first 15 minutes that allow the women to sort of have a sense of more autonomous racing for that portion? [00:24:37] Ben: Yeah, so the first sector is, is I, I wanna say it's about six miles. It's relatively flat. The first, the first quarter of a mile last year was in relatively loose gravel, and then it got pretty nice and smooth after that. So, so the first quarter of a mile it was, it was pretty chaotic. It was pretty dusty, and, and it was definitely, If you weren't in the preferred two lines, you know, you are out in some, some loose gravel and so, so yeah, I, it made for a hairy first couple of minutes of the race and, and the race ha at that point was already on. I, I think the original attack with with Adam and Br Brennan was right before they went onto that sector, so it was already full race mode. So yeah, it was extremely hectic. [00:25:26] Craig: Yeah, it's interesting. And before I ask this next question, I wanna state, I don't know the right answer to this mm-hmm. and I think. Over time, it's gonna evolve, and it may even be on an event by event basis, but as the women are, are set out 15 minutes ahead and granted it will give them a clean look at that first sector and the ability for some women to attack one another and perhaps to kind of stretch out the field. At some point the front end of the men's race is going to start interacting with those female athletes out front. And I don't know if you've gotten this feedback from the women. As the, as the elite men start to come through, obviously there's gonna be women who have fitness who attempt to glom onto some wheels and, and kind of get caught up in the momentum of the men's peloton. How do you kind of imagine that playing out? [00:26:16] Ben: That's a great question. And I think, I think it's one that I'm gonna look, I'm gonna probably look to a few of our, our professional ladies that are coming in to help guide me on that. So, so the big question is like, do we do. tell them like, Hey, don't jump on wheels. This you're in your own little race. Or, or like year number two, when we had wave starts they just were able to jump on whatever they wanted to. And, and so I, I don't know the answer to that question, but we as. By the time we roll off on race day, I hope to have a, a very clear explanation to all the racers about what we're, what we hope to see out there. [00:26:58] Craig: Yeah, I think that's a good, that's a good approach. I mean, obviously like the women should be leading this conversation about what makes sense, I suspect, but don't know that, you know, they will think it's fair game to grab wheels. Like it's, it's implausible that over a hundred mile day mm-hmm. . Racers are gonna work with racers. That's just sort of the nature of bike racing, right? So it's hard to imagine everybody's saying like, okay, we all agree cause it's just gonna be super hard to police. But I just think it's interesting and I, again, like I've, I've seen a number of races attempt this approach where they're giving a 15 minute head start. We've obviously seen the co-mingled starts. We've seen lots of different derivatives of this, and I do think that as a community, as we put these offers out there, it's just important to be open and say like, Hey, we don't know what the right solution is. But potentially after the year of 2023, at a bunch of these tests, if you will, going out and getting feedback from women, we'll arrive at something that makes sense, that still has that community feel, but elevates the safety, elevates the ability for the sport to high. Female athletes as much as oftentimes the ma male athletes get [00:28:15] Ben: highlighted. Exactly. That's been, that's definitely been my initiative for the, for the last several years is, is to try to, to, to give these ladies a, a chance, I mean, . We originally had ideas of doing a, a reverse discrimination prize purse because, you know, women's cycling has been so underfunded or, you know, the rewards or or prize money was, was so minuscule compared to, to the men's races that, that that we wanted to like highlight that as, as one of the things, we have a prize purse for the women only. but with permitting in California, that's not allowed. , you can't have discriminatory prize purses anymore, which is great for, for women across all the different events. But but yeah, we're trying to highlight these ladies and, and probably some of 'em have a harder time, you know, making the same kind of sponsorship money as, as a, a guy of similar skills. So, [00:29:07] Craig: yeah. Yeah, it's certainly an interesting problem and I think the important thing is, people are talking about it. And again, that the, the women who are involved are having the lion share of opinion and we can just use their opinions as guidance as it relates to the race in its entirety. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. And so, how large of a field do you typically see at the Shasta Gravel hogger hugger? [00:29:30] Ben: Yeah, so last year we had 400 people take the sign up for the race, and then we had about 335, I wanna say that actually went across our start line. So yeah, I mean that's kind of, that's kind of where we were last year. We, we have grown every single year that we've been in existence, so hopefully, you know, we can see something north of 500 this year. [00:29:52] Craig: And great. When, when we, I mean we've talked through what to exper, what to expect in terms of the course terrain and what type of equipment you'd like to see people ride at the end of the event. What does that experience look like if someone's making time to spend their weekend up with you at, in Shasta, what, what expectations should they have after the race? [00:30:12] Ben: Yeah, we definitely wanna try to bring the party to the after. After the race. So yeah, we have a burrito truck last year and most likely they'll be back again this year. So nice big burrito to finish off the day. Beer and and then of course, everyone telling their war stories, so. people hung, hung around until dark last year. And so yeah, there's a, there's a nice little after party. Last year we had a band the brothers Reid, and they absolutely killed it. But I found like most people weren't paying attention to the band. They were. Telling their war stories. And so probably not gonna bring a band back. We'll just be playing, you know, some good music in the background and, and let the racers chat about what they, what happened out there, . Nice. [00:30:56] Craig: And so give the listener a few benchmarks. So if you were coming from San Francisco, for example, how, how long does it take to get up to Shasta or if you're coming from somewhere in Oregon? [00:31:05] Ben: Yeah, I, I mean, you can get, I think it's about four hours from Portland down. And then similar from, from the Bay Area maybe a little bit less because there's 45 minutes, I guess to here. But so yeah, it's, it's, it's a pretty easy drive. I wouldn't suggest doing it before a 9:00 AM start, but you probably could from the Bay Area if you were got up nice and early. [00:31:28] Craig: Yeah, I was gonna ask that. Are people typically staying overnight in Shasta, the nights before? [00:31:32] Ben: Yeah. The, there's Yreka is the closest town with hotels. That's only about a 10 minute drive or probably even less than that. And there's plenty of hotel rooms there. A lot of people stay in weed and Mount Shasta, which Are also great places, but I wanna say 25 to 40 miles away. Okay. 25 to weed. So, so yeah, there's more like rental properties. If you're like doing a VRBO or Airbnb or something like that, there's more in the Mount Shasta area. That tends to be a little more of a, of a recreation type town. So, so there's, yeah, there's plenty of options. But the thing, one of the things that we've. Every year so far is in the parking lot. Next to the, the start finish line is, is plenty of room and we've allowed camping on site. So if you van camping, RV camping, if you can get your, if you can get your rig in there and, and not get stuck, then, then and then yeah, it's have at it free. Yeah. [00:32:29] Craig: For a hot second there. I just had in my mind, oh, it's in Mount Shas. The mountain of Shasta is obviously covers a vast area, and certainly, yeah, again, remembering my, my, my trips up to Oregon. Once you get past Shasta and Shasta, the town, and on the other side of the mountain, amazing, spectacular views of Mount Shasta through that valley. [00:32:51] Ben: Yeah, we we're kind of, we're, we're almost all north of Mount Shasta, so I mean, we, we go down and we touch weed, which would, I would kind of say is like the southern part of the Shasta Valley. And then Mount Shasta would be further south and more like on the side of the mountain. And so if you want the great views of the mountain, then the North, north Valley is where you want to be. And we. . Oh, just so many. Incredible. If the, if the mountain is out as they like to say, it's, it's absolutely stunning from many, many different spots on on the course. Some, some have even said it's distracting. It's, it's so, It's so beautiful. [00:33:32] Craig: So yeah. Yeah, I would agree. It's one of the like the beautiful things about driving through that valley, which often seems like a, it takes forever, but the nice thing is you've got that amazing mountain view the entire time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, I'm super glad to finally get you on the show, Ben, to talk about this event. I love the sounds of it. I love that area. Like I totally recommend it from a, a visual perspective and everything you've talked about, the writing makes me believe that it is a great early season event. [00:33:59] Ben: Yeah, I sure hope so. And, and hope to see this thing continue to grow through, through the next couple of years. So hope to make some nice announcements here soon about cool people that are attending. So people are starting to finalize their. Schedules for this next year and, and yeah, hope to make some announcements. Right [00:34:17] Craig: on. And I'll throw the gravel hugger.com link in the show notes so people know how to find you. But they can also just search Shasta gravel hugger and they'll get to the right location. [00:34:27] Ben: Absolutely. Super easy. Yep. And if you wanna find out a little bit about what the race is We have a race recap on YouTube. You can also just google Shasta gravel hugger on YouTube and, and there's a 20 minute recap of what happened last year and we hope to do something similar this next, next year to, to kind of give everyone a feel of what, how the race goes. So, [00:34:49] Craig: awesome. Thanks, man. [00:34:51] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel rod podcast. Big thanks to our sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead kuru. To computer. And huge thanks to ben for coming on i've been curious about the shasta gravel hugger for awhile and was happy to learn more about At The event. I'll put all the appropriate links in the show notes. So you can go find and check out that video on YouTube that Ben was mentioning. If you're interested in connecting with me or other riders in the area, please join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. It's a free online cycling community, open to anybody and filled with gravel cyclists from around the world. If you're interested in able to support the podcast. You can visit, buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Any contribution or support is greatly appreciated. Or if you have a moment, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. And really help with our discoverability. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels  

This week Randall and Craig open up the floor to questions from The Ridership. Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: In the Dirt 32 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. I'm going to be joined Really By my co-host randall jacobs for another episode of in the dirt [00:00:34] Craig: randall, how you doing today? [00:00:36] Randall: I'm doing well, Craig, good to see you, bud. [00:00:39] Craig: Yeah. Great to see you too. I mean, I've been looking forward this just a, a little bit of reprieve from everything else that's going on in life. It's just nice to connect with you and just purely have a half hour an hour conversation about bikes. [00:00:51] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. I know you've been going had a lot going on with your mom and so on. So, you know, definitely sending a lot of love and good vibes to you and your family going through some challenging times. [00:01:01] Craig: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, we it's the conversations we've had on the podcast and certainly within the ridership community, just about the value of this pursuit of gravel cycling and just kinda getting outta your head. I I've always loved it in that, like when you're on a, a gravel trail, particularly a technical gravel trail, like I ride you can't really think about anything else, but what's in front of you. And it's just so, so helpful for me to just sort of think about the bike and performance and riding. Rather than thinking about everything else going on all the time. [00:01:32] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, I can, I can relate. I've been processing some heavy things in my own life these days. And at the same time returning to the bike, I've been doing a lot more walking, hiking trail running lately as well as like canoeing and kayaking the canoes great with the kids. But there's. There's that flow state that you can get into on the bicycle that is, you know, people talk about runners high. I've never really had that. I don't think I can run long enough to get to that head space, but on the bicycle, there's just a place where everything is just in sync and the it's. I just feel very connected to everything, but not overwhelmed by it. If that makes sense. [00:02:13] Craig: yeah. You know, I was up in lake Tahoe last weekend and did a bunch of standup paddle boarding. I got some good recommendations from people on the ridership as to where I should explore to ride. And I had a bike, but honestly I just left it on the patio because I, it was just enjoying the lake so much. And to your point, like with standup paddle boarding, I found, you know, I just have to focus on the balance piece. So I, I, it sort. Took me to that same place. I just got in the rhythm of stroking on either side of the standup paddle board and, and being focused on the physicality of it. And, and the moment that I was experiencing, which, which I also really enjoyed. [00:02:49] Randall: Yeah, standup paddleboards are great. I actually like them. I use them occasionally standing up, but having them as like your own little floating island in the middle of a lake or a pond you know, you can have two adults. I've had, you know, another adult and a, a toddler on one. And so one adult is in the water swimming and the toddler is kind of jumping on and off and, and it's, it's just so much fun. Yeah, [00:03:12] Craig: but you've got, you've got something coming up. That's kind of probably forcing you a little bit to get back on the bike. Right. [00:03:17] Randall: Well, so, well, one I'm wanting to start coordinating more group rides. We've talked about this quite a bit and just life has gotten in the way you know, the logo launch and some things in, in my personal life and so on. So there's that the O positive festival. In Kingston, New York is coming up. That's the seventh through the 9th of October and community member, Joe conk in the ridership. He is the founder of that festival. And once again, we're gonna be coordinating a gravel ride. Together with a road ride and a a mural tour ride, which will be through the, the city of Kingston and is very family friendly. As part of that weekend, I believe it's gonna be on the eighth. So we'll be posting more information about that in the ridership and would love to have people come out and join. [00:04:00] Craig: That's super cool. I remember you talking about the festival last year and some of the riding that you've done with Joe up there. So that sounds awesome. So for anybody on the east coast, that's within range of that, we're able to travel, as Randall said, it'll definitely put some notes out there. Maybe we can talk about it again, more specifically when you lock down the details. [00:04:17] Randall: Yeah, we're, we're finalizing the route right now and we'll create a page for the event. So if you're interested in staying in touch, we'll definitely announce it here on the pod. I might even bring Joe on for a few minutes to share some more details, but the festival itself, it's, it's arts, it's music, it's community, it's great food and just a wonderful vibe right outside the Catskills and the riding out there is great. I've done quite a bit of riding out there with him and others. So if you're in that area, definitely come out and join us. We'd love to see you. The, the event is it'll be, the ride will be you know, we may ask like for a recommended donation, which doesn't have to be provided, and that goes towards the artist community in Kingston. And then, you know, there'll also be an option to get a wristband for the entire festival too. So. So, yeah. And if you wanna be participate in the conversation, definitely join the the Hudson valley channel in the ridership. That's where, where we'll be talking about this [00:05:07] Craig: Cool. I similarly am trying to get my act together. Cause I signed up to support the Marin county bike coalition and the NorCal NACA league for the eventual adventure revival ride. I think it started three, maybe four years ago. They did had one year that was virtual during the pandemic, but I missed last year cause it sold out. So I was sure to get on it this year. And it's a great route starting out of Fairfax, California. So super fun route , very technical it's only 60 miles, but it's got a decent amount of climbing, particularly up the aply named Randall trail. Off of highway one is a, is a grind at the end. And then you're coming across Fairfax BOS Ridge, but it's a lot of fun. And I believe I saw that Rebecca Rush is joining. [00:05:51] Randall: oh, great. [00:05:52] Craig: So that's gonna be cool. She's so nice. Former podcast guest couldn't have been more friendly when I've connected with her and subsequent times when I've ran into her, it's been awesome. So looking forward to seeing her again. [00:06:04] Randall: I got to meet her at a dinner hosted around sea Oder some years back. And yeah, she's, she's a rad woman. And a great rider. Very, very cool. Is it the same route as the original cause I did the original one some years back living in the bay. [00:06:18] Craig: Yeah, I don't, I don't think they've changed anything. I mean, I'll tell you after the 17th, but I I'm pretty sure it's the same route [00:06:24] Randall: Well, if anyone's considering doing this run higher volume tires and have a properly low gear, cuz you will want both and maybe a suspension stem. [00:06:34] Craig: and maybe a suspension for Randall. [00:06:36] Randall: Yeah. And maybe a suspension fork sacrilegious. But yeah. [00:06:39] Craig: No. Yeah, no, it's a great route and, and totally perfect recommendations Randall, cuz it's, it's, it's technical. It'll push your limits. I mean, I loved it. I just thought it was like one of those roots that favored adventure, like the name, the name is perfect, cuz you're just out there on the mountain. They're carving the route through rugged terrain, you know, basic fire roads and just this awesome part of the north side of Marin. [00:07:06] Randall: I mean, it's the location where mountain biking got ITSs start. And frankly, the gravel bikes that we ride are far superior mountain bikes than they were riding back in those days. So [00:07:14] Craig: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think I recently was at the, at the, the museum up in Fairfax, the mountain Mike museum, and looking at a clunker. And I was just [00:07:23] Randall: Mm-hmm [00:07:24] Craig: I can't even imagine with a kickback break, how they even survived going down Mount. [00:07:29] Randall: well, they had to rebuild those hubs pretty much. Every run is my understanding. So. [00:07:34] Craig: he hence the name repack downhill. [00:07:38] Randall: Yeah. I've ridden with a few of the, the OGs of the mountain biking scene and it, it wasn't the good old days. We definitely have it better now speak speaking of which we have a new bike to nerd about. [00:07:49] Craig: Yeah, not may not maybe a bike that I would take on adventure revival per se, but a very interesting bike for people to take a look at it. It's the BMC now, how do we decide that? It would say pronounce it [00:08:02] Randall: CAS say it with confidence. It's gotta be KIS, maybe [00:08:05] Craig: Kay. [00:08:06] Randall: Ks. Yeah. Something like that. [00:08:08] Craig: Super racey bike, actually, what I would've thought that BMC would've introduced to begin with kind of in the vein of the Cervelo ESP Sparrow, this bike looks, I mean, this bike could have been a road bike. When, when you see a picture of it. [00:08:23] Randall: It's stunning. I love they, there's some unique design elements on the top tube that are very BMC. I like how the, you know, the chains, the seat stays are perfectly paralleled with the down tube and it's just a very elegant bike. The, the paint schemes, particularly on that top end model are quite striking and definitely a gravel race bike. And in fact, I would say a dedicated gravel race bike, which is a little bit different than that as Sparrow. [00:08:48] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's seven dedicated 700 C. But it still manages a fairly tight change stay and fairly good tire clearance. I mean, 700 by 45 is nothing to sneeze. [00:09:00] Randall: Yeah, especially in such a, a, you know, a tight change stay. And it's, it's optimized for that. It has 80 milli BB drop, which is to say like the bottom bracket drop relative of relative to the axles. And that's quite a bit, so anyone running longer cranks is. Going to have say like a pedal strike issue. If they try to run smaller tires, which is why I say, like, it's not quite like the Aspero, the Aspero is much more of a one bike. Like you could use it as a dedicated road bike as well. And it would be great for that sounds like bikes like that or ours, or you know, the, the open up that I always call out. So this is. The the bottom bracket drop the fact that it's a, a longer top tube, so longer reach relative to the stack, just make it a bike that is very much optimized for bigger 700 seat tires, shorter stems. And all of this works really well. Well, offroad, but kind of takes away from its versatility as a, as a road bike which [00:09:56] Craig: I also, [00:09:57] Randall: for what it's designed for. [00:09:58] Craig: yeah, I mean, it's very intentional, right. I also saw that they speck like a fairly narrow handle bar on there with a wide flare. So like keeping again, keeping that body tight in that race, race position. Yeah. [00:10:12] Randall: Yeah. Which I, I'm not sure how much I like that. I think it makes a ton of sense on the road. But I, I feel like often, well, we'll, we'll see I think there's, I think there's a place for it. I would probably want if I was gonna go so narrow, I'd probably wanna do a compound flare in order to get even more flare in the drops without having the hoods super kicked out. Because that, you know, that that extra leverage in the drops is, is nice to have, and it's kind of, but, you know, interesting to see some some difference of perspective there, [00:10:43] Craig: Yeah, let me be clear. Like I would be terrified to ride. I think it was a 37 millimeter bar hood to hood. I would be terrified to ride that. I mean, that just seems really tight. I have heard of some of the pros kind of going super narrow and maybe on a, a non-technical course, like a S B T gravel, or if you live in a part of the country where it's, you know, you're just basically on dirt roads that might, that might work. But yeah, for me, I think I'd be terrifi. [00:11:10] Randall: I think that there's a, a place for this. And you, you see it on, on the road. You've seen some road pros go towards more narrow up top and it does improve arrow. And there a lot of gravel races are not that technical. And so that arrow benefit is meaningful. I just think that there's a little bit more evolution to happen in terms of one getting even more arrow on those narrower hoods. So maybe like something to support the forearm a little bit. So you can be grabbing the, the top of the, of the hoods, but, and, and have your your forearms perpendicular the ground at parallel the ground in your upper arm perpendicular. So you really get that arrow benefit, but then, you know, again, compound flare to get that, maintain that extra leverage in the drops when you need it. Nonetheless we're we're getting into deep handlebar nuance here. Let's let's back out and look at the rest of this machine. [00:11:56] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think it's, it is just sort of interesting as you pointed out, like this is for a very specific rider and it's pretty natural. Companies are gonna continue to evolve around speed and ultra performance for one side of the market, not the side of the market, that's gonna attract me per se, but as more and more dollars going into racing and more and more people are looking for super high performance, like it's natural that bike companies are gonna do this type of thing. [00:12:24] Randall: There's also an element of like, you know, the bike industry likes N plus one. And so this is distinct enough from a, a road bike where you would have your road bike and, and this bike and the type of person who has this bike probably has multiple bikes. I mean, it is a dedicated race bike so that, you know, it makes sense. [00:12:46] Craig: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You pointed out a few other interesting things about the design as well. [00:12:50] Randall: Yeah, so I like, I like how they did the inter I'm not a huge fan of integrated cabling through handlebars and stems. And I like how it seems that they kept the, the cabling external to the handlebar and then ran it underneath that new rock shop. That new shock stop stem. I think they're calling it some something different. They, they built it in using RedShift's suspension, stem tech. And so it stays external until it drops into the upper headset bear. So that could be a lot worse in terms of serviceability and adjustability and so on. The top end model is a one piece HBAR and stem that has fully internal routing looks stunning, looks really, really beautiful but an absolute nightmare to set up and service. And I wouldn't recommend going that route on any sort of bike period, because even a pro rider needs to be able to get their fit adjusted properly. [00:13:45] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you and I share the same opinion on like, on elements of bike design that make it constrained from modification, easy modification. So yeah, I'm I'm with you on that. It absolutely looks gorgeous, but knowing me, like, I think I'd be frustrated at the limitations of it. [00:14:03] Randall: yeah, yeah. But kudos to them on the keeping the, the cabling outside the bars on the Lower end models, which I say lower end, they start at six grand, which is another thing about this bike, which is on trend. Everything is so expensive. It's remarkable. How expensive bikes are these days? [00:14:19] Craig: Yeah, we gotta, we got a question about that in the, in the ridership, right? Just sort of, why are bikes so expensive and it's yeah, I don't know. You know, when you look at a $10,000 bike or $6,000 bike, it's just that's. I mean, that's a hell of a lot of money. Yeah. [00:14:33] Randall: I mean, there's, I think there's a few things that go into that. So this was we, we put out some, you know, we asked the, the ridership community for some questions in comments. So this was Matthew Kramer chiming in, you know, asking about why bikes have gotten so expensive. I think a, a big part of it. I mean, of course there's inflation, right? And one of the major drivers of inflation in recent years are COVID related supply chain constraints. Right. So it's harder to get, it's hard to get parts and it's hard to get complete bikes, which means there's, you know, Up until recently. And there was a flood of, of like stimulus money for example, into the market. So you had all these dollars chasing less available product. And so by companies focused on the higher end, I mean, we did the same thing. We, we, you know, we actually kind of regret having eliminated the mechanical model cuz but it was because we couldn't get parts and we went with all access, which is really great, but puts it at a, a more premium point. But. [00:15:27] Craig: you're layering. You're layering in increased fuel costs for transportation. There's a lot of things that have gone into it. [00:15:34] Randall: Yeah, that is a factor. But I, I don't think that that's a major driver for this. I think it's more well, honestly, a, a significant part of it is people are paying it. Right. And there's some R and D that goes in here, like the, you know, this, some of these bikes that you see coming out. On the really high end, you know, the volumes are not that great. And so that R and D has to be incorporated somewhere and with bike companies focusing on the higher end, cuz that's where the bigger margins and dollars are and riders having limited options in the more affordable end of the market, because that's not where bike companies are focusing. I mean, I think it's, it's kind of like the automotive industry right now where, you know, I bought, I bought a used Prius for like seven grand and I've put a bunch of miles into it and like, Like scrape the bumper and things like that. And I could probably sell it for 11 [00:16:24] Craig: Right. [00:16:25] Randall: like, you, you just see that in a number of different domains. And I think the B the, the bike space is no different. But you do get bikes are improving in incremental ways. But I, I, it has been a pretty radical shift towards the top of the market. It's is hard to find middle end products that is frankly, just as good in many ways. [00:16:45] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you hope over time. We know historically it does trickle down and there's, I mean, don't get us wrong. I, I think there's a lot of good entry level bikes out there. It's just getting your hands on one and finding one today is a challenge. [00:16:59] Randall: When supply chains go from 30 to 60 day lead times to, you know, at one point you know, there were like, you have very limited options for your levers and, and Dils and so on. Right. We have a duopoly in our industry, you know, and can't be is now, you know, they have a, a good product a competitive product in gravel now with their 13 speed stuff ECAR groups. But you know, that stuff was like one to two years. So when that's the case, you know, if you have a limited buy, where are you gonna focus? You're gonna focus on the higher end and that's that? I think that's part of it too. [00:17:32] Craig: Yeah, that makes sense. And I also remember you mentioning on an earlier podcast, just the amount of commitment level the component manufacturers are expecting from you. So, you know, in order to get a, a seat at the table, maybe you have to buy 50 of something, which as a small builder, you know, that could, that's a, that's a lot of dollars out of pocket. [00:17:50] Randall: Well, and the, the smaller builders generally are like, if you're a domestic builder and you're assembling domestically, it's a different supply. You're paying, you're paying more from say like STR for their domestic distributor versus the, you know, their Taiwan based distributor, just because they're manufacturing a lot of that stuff in Taiwan. But yeah, there were greater constraints. Sometimes you had to put a deposit up front and, you know, you put a deposit on something that is not going to, you're not gonna have for a year and you can't get that deposit back. So the, the risks associated with, you know, well, is something else new gonna come out or what's the market gonna look like in a year? So there's, there's all these you know, it, it really drives home, just re how remarkable it was prior to the pandemic that supply chains worked so well. I mean, truly it is a miracle of a whole lot of very complex decentralized coordination that, you know, any of this works at all. As a supply chain nerd, it's, it's something that, that is, is is not lost on me. And yeah, even the current circumstance, it's still pretty amazing what humans do. [00:18:52] Craig: Yeah. [00:18:53] Randall: All right. So where do we want to go from here? [00:18:55] Craig: Yeah. I mean, one thing I did did I thought was interesting that you pointed out about that BMC is that they do have an integrated suspension stem offering from that they've worked with, it sounds like Redshift on [00:19:05] Randall: Yep. [00:19:06] Craig: yeah. [00:19:07] Randall: I thought that was well executed. One downside I believe is that you can't flip the stem and with that beat bike being relatively long and, and on the lower side, like, you know, it's a race bike you know, it's, again, you have more constrained fitment options. I think the standard shock stop, then you can run in the up upward pointing direction. [00:19:28] Craig: Yeah, you can. I think what's interesting to point out there though. So if this in BMCs designer's mind, this is a flat out thoroughbred race, bike. To have that be an option suggests that designers are coming around to the fact that suspension and suppleness can, can be a performance benefit, like put putting, I mean, you and I have talked about that and obviously I'm sold on it, but it just struck me as like this incredibly arrow stretched out race bike is offering that they must have determined that this is gonna help people win races. [00:20:02] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Fatigue and control it's material. And they've also done a few things with the frame design, which you see on other bikes like the really the, the seat tube towards the bottom gets really narrow. It gets really thin. So it has a lot more flex built in you saw that with bikes, like, you know, the GT grade is, is kind of an extreme example of that, but compliance is, is a great thing. That's the reason why we have one of the reasons we have such wide rims now, too. And what's so great about, you know, high volume, supple tubus tires, you know, it, it all, it all improves speed as a system. [00:20:35] Craig: Yeah. I mentioned this when I had someone from BMC on talking about the S and the S LT. I have a, I have a hard tail BMC, 20 Niner mountain bike from back in the day, like at least a decade ago. And I remember getting on that bike, I came off of a, a similar Niner. Coming to that bike, the back end definitely had a supplement to it. It had that, that exact drop stay design that you're kind of talking about and it really worked. And I was super impressed. I remember when I got on that bike, it just felt so fast and I could control it so well. [00:21:10] Randall: Yeah, well, I had you know, you probably heard the conversation I had on the pod with Craig Cal talking about suspension on road bikes and whether or not you fully agree with that thesis. I think it's, I think it's fairly compelling. Definitely higher volume tires. Like I don't see, even, even in Marin, I would be running minimum 28 mill tub plus tires. Nice low pressures on wide rims. There's no reason to run narrower than that. And you see a lot of the new arrow wheel options for road being built to a width where you can actually get an arrow benefit with those tires, you know, adhering to the rule of one oh 5%, which we had talked about in the wheel episode. So, so yeah, all of these things are, are good developments. [00:21:53] Craig: Yeah. You know, speaking of good developments, I managed actually to hook up with Matt Harvey from Enduro Barings, they did a ride. Out of Fairfax, California, a few weeks back. And I, I joined probably 50 people up there, Yuri, Oswald and other podcast guests was on there. And I think a couple others, I, I think I counted four old podcast guests on that ride, which was great, but a hell of a lot of fun. You had some conversation, some great conversation with him about Enduro Barings, which I hope people will go back in reference. But I think there was a question or a comment about from the ridership about. [00:22:27] Randall: Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that we covered in that episode, which I had so much fun with Matt he's just has a wealth of knowledge about the bicycle industry. He's an engineer, an engineering mindset clearly cares a lot about what he does. And you know, talking about the merits or lack thereof of a lot of ceramic bearings and long story short, most ceramic bearings. Rubbish, the ones that are of those that are good, the majority of them require a lot more maintenance to stay. And the, and the benefit is pretty trivial. And then there's this XD 15 bearing that Enduro makes. And I'm sure, you know, others probably have some, some equivalent, but I haven't looked into it, but that I find really interesting. And this is an Aeros, you know, a, I think a French aerospace alloy used for steel alloy used for the races. And then they have these high, very high grade ceramic ball. And because of this particular steel, which is very expensive and they have to buy it they don't, they can't buy it in tube form. They have to, you know, buy it in sheets and, and take it from there, I believe. But because of the unique properties of this material You can get you can use ceramic bearings and if it gets any contamination, essentially the contamination gets like pulverized and kicked out as opposed to pitting and, and starting to, to damage the the metal, because in many cases, the ceramic bearings, that metal is a lot less hard than the bearing itself. And thus, as a consequence, it's the thing to give. We go into a lot more detail in that episode, but yeah, Hans, I'm gonna, I might butcher this. So, bear with me here. Lale I'm guessing L E L L E I L I D he, he brought up this article that James Wong, why admire immensely? He's at cycling tips now wrote about an Enduro bottom bracket with this XD 15 bearing set. And what James said was incredibly low friction feel phenomenal toughness. We did everything we could to kill it, but this thing is simply incredible. And like that is coming from someone like James Wong. It makes me really think, okay, this is something that we're gonna still do a little bit more investigation and Matt's gonna be sending us some data, but we'll probably, we're strongly considering this in incorporating these into a, a higher end version of our, the logos wheels in the. [00:24:36] Craig: Got it. Nice. Yeah. I mean, I had enough smart people tell me that that was the way to go and happy that I've got that in my bottom bracket of my, my unicorn. That I've started riding. [00:24:47] Randall: Oh, it's an XD 15. [00:24:49] Craig: Yeah, I believe so. [00:24:49] Randall: Oh, sweet. Yeah. Yeah. Genuine benefits that you don't have to spend a lot of time servicing. In fact, the service, it should essentially be zero service. That's pretty cool. [00:25:00] Craig: that's what I'm looking for. [00:25:02] Randall: Not cheap though. Not cheap. So everyone else, high quality steel bearings. [00:25:07] Craig: Yeah. And I think Hans was also leading the conversation around just kind of, like flared bars, flat pedals, different kinds of like, you know, We're just out there for enjoying the ride kind of features of a bike or ways in which you could set up a bike. [00:25:22] Randall: Yeah. I mean, I think flare borrows are de rigor. I. Would run flared bars on every drop bar bike, including a pure road performance bike, just with a, maybe a different philosophy on my road bike, I'd go super narrow and get the flares to have more control in the drops for aerodynamics. But flare is here to stay. You see levers being designed with a little bit of flare. So with flare in mind and you know, any sort of, you know, is there an arrow cost? I have no idea. I, I don't think so. As long as the lever is aligned with. The bar behind it, it should sit in its wake, but if, even if there was the control benefits more than outweigh it. [00:25:58] Craig: Yeah. I think that co that the arrow part might come into play on the trend towards super wide bars. And as the, as you know, I've played around with that, I mean, I've got, I think I've. A 48 on one of my bikes and my fitter kind of brought me back to a 44. I, I do miss kind of the offroad control the way to rip the bike around that I got out of the wider bars, but I'm, I'm fairly comfortable at 44 as well. So I, I think I just need to play around with the flare on the bar that I'm running right now. And then it will be the right, right mix for. [00:26:37] Randall: Well, we've talked about in the the, in the ridership that we're thinking about developing a bar that has a compound flare. So you can get, say like eight degrees on the hoods and then 16 to 20 in the drop. So you kind of get the best of both worlds in that you still get that. You know, that roady fit up top, but then the extra control the, the first bar to do this, I believe was the three T a GI. And, and I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right. We've talked about it on the pod [00:27:02] Craig: Yeah. And I think there was the other one that was like the Whis whiskey components has something similar [00:27:07] Randall: also does a compound. Yeah, I think compound flare makes a ton of sense for, for all of these bikes. [00:27:15] Craig: I wish it wasn't so costly. And you, you didn't have to sort of go all in to create a bar, like cuz you can't 3d print, something like this, right? [00:27:23] Randall: no, but it, it would be easy enough for somebody to create, say a, a high quality aluminum version. It's just another bending process plus testing regime to make sure that it, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't break on you. [00:27:38] Craig: yeah. I'm gonna keep exploring that. I'm I'm not sort of locked and loaded on my handlebar and stem right now. Still just wanted to make sure that the bike was fitting me correctly. And I feel like I've got enough inputs to figure out which way I wanna go with any one of the cockpit components. [00:27:55] Randall: Well, depending on your, what your timeframe is, I may have a prototype for you in time, so let's [00:28:00] Craig: All right. Many, many reasons why you're a good friend Randall and that's just one of 'em [00:28:04] Randall: you know, a guy, you know, a guy who can get you stuff. [00:28:07] Craig: yeah. [00:28:09] Randall: Tom SHEEO was asking about suspension seat posts. What's your take here? [00:28:14] Craig: I I'm a yes. So, I mean, I've been running on the thesis. I have a, a, a P N w coast dropper that has both a drop and a suspension, and I found that it's air tuned. So. Very tuneable very predictable. And I came to the conclusion, like anytime it moved, when my first inclination was like, oh crap, I'm losing performance. Anytime it moved, I wasn't in a fluid pedal stroke. Like I had hit something unexpectedly and it was just saving me. Similarly, although I think it's less active rock shock on the wireless. Their wireless dropper post does have what they call active ride. And I'm probably not tuned correctly on it right now. Cause I don't feel a lot of movement. The big difference between the two is on the PWC PMC. What am I saying here? Pacific PM. Yes. That one moves when you're fully extended. So it doesn't matter whether you're dropped or not. Like it it'll move. If the amount of pressure applied to it from your, your backside is, is forcing it to move. Whereas the rock shock post, it has to be lowered a little bit. So if you're in the full position, you're who locked out. It's only active when you're down a little [00:29:30] Randall: I wonder if that's a design constraint, because meaning something inherent in how they architected it as a dropper post, because from a product standpoint, that's exactly the opposite of what I would want. [00:29:41] Craig: I'm kind of with you and, and I, you know, in talking to rock shock, they did say some of their riders will actually set it up a little bit high so that they can basically constantly ride it with it on. [00:29:53] Randall: Yeah. I think that makes sense, especially adjustability. So to, to answer Tom's question, I think we both agree that suspension has its merits. I would definitely get a dropper first though. I like the best suspension you have is your arms and legs. And the, the float between your body and the bike. That's, that's my strong opinion. And from there you have pneumatic suspension from the tires you can do, you know, a slightly cushier saddle, like, you know, you can have some, some compliance in the frame. There's a whole bunch of things you do before you do a suspension seat, post primary amongst those being a dropper. [00:30:28] Craig: A hundred percent dropper. Number one, upgrade for gravel bikes, period. You'll never go. I don't know if I've ever met anybody who went back. Honestly, once they had a dropper. [00:30:37] Randall: Yeah, I mean, I occasionally talk to people, looking at our bikes who are like, oh, well, you know, can I swap in a rigid post? And I was like, well, if that's what you wanna do, get the, you know, the access wireless droppers are really expensive and they're heavy. But you could have a saddle on one of those and, and, you know, a standard post and swap it in, in and out with a single bolt. So that that's an option. [00:30:58] Craig: I've got that set up now. And I will tell, I will tell you, I will tell our friends in the community if I ever swap it. [00:31:05] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, [00:31:07] Craig: I don't think, I don't think I will, but [00:31:09] Randall: yeah. I can see on a city bike or like a burning man rig not having a dropper. That's that's about it. that's a whole, that's a whole separate conversation though. [00:31:18] Craig: I will argue with you on the city bike, but anyway, you still wanna drop her on the city bike? [00:31:22] Randall: Let's see. Luke Lopez and Larry Rose were commenting about non-competitive gravel setups, you know, alternative handlebars, flat pedals bags, and fun rides, and so on. Inspired by our friends over at pathless pedals who very much do a lot to create content around the non-competitive side of cycling. So what are your [00:31:41] Craig: Yeah. I mean, I think whether or not you set your bike up in a specific way to go out and have this non-competitive experience, or it's just a mindset. I think we're aligned in that gravel, gravel is for everyone. Right. And whatever your jam is going fast, going slow. Just getting out there is important. I mean, for me, I often change my clothing. [00:32:04] Randall: Mm-hmm [00:32:05] Craig: When I'm out there for just a fun ride, like, like I've got some, some, you know, great baggies that I can wear and different things. And it's definitely a different mindset rolling out the door. Not that I'm out there hammering on a general basis, but it's definitely a different mindset when I'm just out there to stop and smell the roses. [00:32:21] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I appreciate that mindset, but I still vastly prefer Lyra and, and being clipped in and, and, you know, and so on. [00:32:35] Craig: And I've got a, I've got a mountain bike. So like having a flat bar on a gravel bike, like I I've had that set up on an old cross bike. I loved it. Super fun, nimble, but for me, like if I'm gonna go flat bar right now, it's definitely gonna be more on a mountain bike than a, a traditional gravel bike setup. [00:32:52] Randall: But at the same time, you see, I can't recall if it was Luke, but you see folks with like an old Bridgestone mountain bike that they've converted into, you know, a flat bar or a drop bar, gravel bike. And it's, you know, they got a, you know, a handlebar bag on there and it's much more of like a let's go out and get lost and have an adventure, maybe do coffee outside or things like this party pace as you know, as Russ likes to say over. You know, PLP. [00:33:18] Craig: Yeah. If you've got a quiver by all means like, I, I love all bikes and I'm one who appreciates the nuances between them. So, you know, I just don't have a garage big enough for all these things. [00:33:28] Randall: yeah, yeah, no, I, I like I like the, I like being able in the middle of a ride to decide that I feel like throwing down a little bit. Sometimes I get that, that little jolt of energy less. Now that I'm 40, I suppose, but, but still [00:33:41] Craig: I I've seen you have those jolts Randall. I know it's there. [00:33:45] Randall: Let's see, what else? Oh, Matthew Kramer turned me on to something that I thought was really cool in the ridership, which was E 13. Now has a 12 speed, 9 45 cassette that is compatible with standard 12 speed chains. So you don't need that funky flat top chain. That's fair. Still, you know, pretty proprietary to Ram in order to run a tighter cluster. [00:34:07] Craig: So is that, is that 12 speed cassette from shrimp? Something you have to run on their product. [00:34:15] Randall: So the way that SW has set it up, they have migrated all their road. And then now they're dedicated gravel drive trains to this 12 speed flat top chain which is, you know, it, it has a slight benefit in terms of like, You, you get the same cross sectional area of the side plates with a thinner side plate so they can make the chain a little bit thinner. And that helps with the, the already very tight spacing of those cogs and like, but also makes it so that it's something proprietary. And so they've been expanding that I, I suspect that you'll see it on their mountain bike groups soon enough. And, you know, I really like to adopt, you know, proven open standards and non-pro proprietary stuff whenever possible. And the fact is that standard 12 speed works really well and nobody was making a tighter cluster for Eagle, like, you know, or for, for like, you know, a mullet set up where you have. A mountain bike rear derailer, but maybe you want a little bit tighter cluster a little bit tighter cassette for your road or your, your certain gravel applications. [00:35:17] Craig: when you talk about tighter cassette. I remember seeing this pop up and I was like 9 45. Okay. Why do I really care? Talk about the tighter cluster? Cause I think that's an important maybe nuance beyond just like, oh, you got a 45 and a nine. [00:35:30] Randall: Yeah. So the, the biggest knock that people have against one by drive trains is the jumps between cogs. Right. And yeah, I get it. A lot of this can be mitigated by proportional, crank length, and by having a proper bike fit. Because it allows you to spin at a wider range of cadences without, you know, while still maintaining a smooth pedal stroke. And I've, I've been fine with my setups. This 9 45 is it's the same as a, a 10 speed, 1138. Which is, you know, a, a larger road cassette from, from a few years ago. And it just adds a, a taller cog and a bigger cog you know, on that same cassette. And so you get, you know, jumps that I think are probably tight enough for the vast majority of roadies to say like, okay, well, if I had any concerns about jumps, now those are mitigated some. Want it to be like one tooth jumps between cogs and you know, okay. Go ride your road bike. That that's fine. But but yeah, I like, I like to see this. I was actually considering having us develop something if someone else didn't. So I'm glad to see this in the market, I think is a real gap for it. [00:36:35] Craig: Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder why, like SHA doesn't go to a nine cause you think like, I understand why smaller companies kind of pop up and they see an opportunity like this gap, but E thirteen's been doing this kind of thing for a while. [00:36:49] Randall: The nine tooth is so it it's gonna wear all else equal same material and everything it's gonna wear itself and the chain more quickly than a 10 tooth or an 11 tooth. Right. And so the, the entire philosophy of the drivetrain changes with a nine tooth in that. You know, I like to think of the nine tooth as an overdrive gear, plus the jump between the nine and the 11 is significant. Right? So if you're spending a lot of time at the top end of the range, you know, you might not love that, but for me, you pair it with a 42 chain ring and that 42 9. With a, you know, a, a 700 by 28 or 700 by 30 tire is the equivalent of, of a road bike with, you know, 51 11, which is to say, you have plenty of top end. You're not gonna spin out all the time on, on a high speed descent, but it's not all that often that I'm descending at those sorts of speeds. And so that jump from the 11 to the nine is not a problem for me on that end of the cassette. And so in turn, when you have that nine tooth that also informs the chain ring that you pair. Because you, you know, you kind of need to set your chain ring based on how you wanna calibrate that range that the cassette has. So yeah, I'm not surprised that Ram didn't go that didn't go that route. But I do think it makes a ton of sense and I love one by drive trains and I'm all about one bikes as well with one by drive trains. And so the nine two really facilitates that. [00:38:08] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Super interesting. And Eli Bingham who often chimes in, in the ridership about some real technical stuff and tends to explore a lot of components. He had a kind of note on this didn't. [00:38:18] Randall: Yeah. So, one thing you gotta make sure, because of, and again, this gets into like proprietary standards and so on. So like the free hub, the XD XDR free hub standard that this cassette is compatible with is a proprietary standard that you know, Sam made it. So any. It's really easy for a wheel company to create a wheel with a free hub that, that uses the, you know, XD XDR. But they patented every possible way. They could think of, of attaching a cassette to that so that only they could produce the cassettes. And so E 13 has a came up with a really clever solution, but it requires like a cinch bolt. That clamps around the free hub body. And if that comes loose, it can affect the shifting. So that's kind of like the one issue that these can have. I've never had that issue with E 13 cassettes and I've run them exclusively for several years now. But it's just something to keep in mind. I find that they shift shift really excellent and they're light and they hold up well, cause they're, you know, most of the cogs or steel. [00:39:11] Craig: Right. Yeah, right on. And then I think we should end with, I think, which, which was one of my favorite questions coming out of the ridership from our friend, Silas, pat love is the pursuit of a quiet bike without creeks, an achievable goal or a pipe dream. [00:39:27] Randall: , it depends on what you're starting with. Unfortunately. I think in general I mean, this should AF absolutely be the standard. It, there's no reason why things should be rattling around. And you know, there are ways to get around it. So there, you know, wireless shifting and so on helps. But also like in our case, we run full housing through the frame and then we put it in a, we put it in a foam sleeve and we do that with. Hydraulic hoses too. And every bite company should be doing that because rattles suck bottom bracket Creek, again, like any bottom bracket will Creek if it gets contaminated. But you know, having a bottom bracket set up that aligns and supports the bearings sufficiently. You know, should eliminate the vast majority of those creeks. Yeah, it, this, this should entirely be possible. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bikes that, mm let's just say that this sort of thing was an afterthought. So it may cost, it may cost some money and require some expertise to chase out the, you know, all those creeks. [00:40:25] Craig: I think that's gotta be the worst task as a bike mechanic to be tasked with is when someone comes in and says, my, my bike is creaking. Help me resolve it. [00:40:34] Randall: Yeah. And, and honestly my experience, it it's a special mechanic. Who's who's really good at. I've had bikes that you know, our, our bikes will have a Creek here and there. And we'll say like, you know, bring it to a mechanic, have them take a look and they can't chase it. And I've actually had an instance where I had the bike shipped to me personally, and I chased it, but I chased it in a way that like, you know, it's I'm trying to remember what it was. Oh, it wasn't even a Creek. It was just that. Axis rear derailer the hanger on the was ever so slightly misaligned. And then the axis derailer was harder. When it's miscalibrated it makes a lot of noise on the cassette and that was the noise. So we're like, they were looking at the bottom bracket, they were looking at the seat post. They were looking at the, the headset interface and, and so on. And unless you have that, like the time and that deductive mindset and some experience of like, what things sound like, it's really hard to, to chase. So if you have a mechanic, who's a good chaser. That that's that's someone who really knows their stuff and [00:41:39] Craig: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah, my, my go to, I mean, as a non methodical bad mechanic, definitely like I clean my bike when a Creek arrives and that usually, like, it's say 85% of the time solves the problem. And then if, if I need to go further, it's about. You know, greasing things, making sure, just kind of being a little more I inspect of, of what's going on. I I've generally been pretty lucky that I haven't had creeks that I weren't, that I wasn't clear on how to resolve. [00:42:10] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd like to end with a with something that I'm excited about, which is I haven't nailed it down yet, but I had pinged you about coming out west for a bit. And so once those dates are locked down you know, getting a big group ride in the bay area and potentially in a couple other parts of the us. Something I'm super excited about and to meet some of the riders that are in the forum and that are, are regular listeners and so on. So more on that as we approach. But that would probably be Denver, Boulder, maybe San Diego, and then definitely the bay area. [00:42:40] Craig: That's super exciting. I feel like, you know, before the pandemic we had kicked off some really amazing group rides and [00:42:47] Randall: I miss it. [00:42:48] Craig: you. Yeah. And you and I have been longing for, we've had a lot going on to not kind of be putting that out there ourselves personally, but I think it's, it's a great time to do that and hopefully we can get some knocked out by the end of the year and super excited to see you when you're in the bay area. [00:43:04] Randall: Likewise. It's been too long. [00:43:06] Craig: We're good to catch up. My friend, [00:43:08] Randall: Likewise. All right, my friend. [00:43:09] Craig: take, take care. [00:43:10] Randall: See it. [00:43:11] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt. From the gravel ride pod cast How's a bit of a postscript. I did attend the adventure revival ride up in Marine county, out of Fairfax this past weekend. Quite a lovely event, benefiting Nika. The course is amazing and difficult as I imagined and remembered from the last time I did it such a great route put together by the Marine county bike coalition. Super challenging on a gravel bike. I remember thinking about halfway through. Wow. I'm about halfway through feeling quite beat up. And I was riding my unicorn with a front suspension fork on it. I certainly saw a number of riders out there on mountain bikes, which would not have been a bad choice. Anyway, phenomenal event, definitely something to have on your radar, down the line. If you're interested in connecting with myself or Randall, please join the ridership. Simply visit www.theridership.com. That's a free online, global cycling community where you can connect and discuss gravel, cycling with athletes from all over the world. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. And remember, ratings and reviews are always hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels

In this episode, Craig has Randall back in the guest chair to explore wheel design and development along with the philosophy and design principles behind Lōgōs and its new Omnium wheel collection. From engagement systems and materials to profile design and assembly and everything in between, this episode will leave you with a broad understanding of the wheel landscape and equip you with the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision about your next set of wheels regardless of brand. Episode sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (use promo code: thegravelride for a free heart rate monitor) Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Logos Components [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. Today on the podcast. I'm welcoming Randall Jacobs to the show for an interview. You may very well know him for his efforts in the, in the dirt episodes, as my technical sidekick, as well as an increasing number of standalone interview episodes that he's handling on behalf of the podcast. I very much appreciate his technical orientation and his passion about the gravel cycling community. But today I wanted to get him on the show to talk about his new efforts with his company logos components. He's introducing three new wheels this month to the gravel cycling community. We wanted to do an episode obviously touching on the new company, but also as something that's standalone for anybody who's interested in upgrading their wheels or purchasing a wheel set for their gravel or mountain bike. I think there's a lot of nuance in the hubs, spokes, and rims that you can learn from this show that you can take across any decision you're making with any of the. RI and wheel manufacturers out there in the world. So with that, before we jump in, I need to thank this week's sponsor hammerhead and the hammerhead car two bicycle computer. The hammerhead car two is the most advanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leading mapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart from other GPS options, free global maps with points of interest included like cafes and campsite means you can explore with confidence and on the go flexibility, I've talked about how I've been appreciating the hammerhead and how increasingly I've taken the time. To customize each screen. My latest way of geeking out was with rival access componentry. You can actually track the number of shift. In any given ride, obviously not mission critical information, but I just thought it was kind of interesting because as you think about it, uh, you know, you do shift more or less depending on the ation of the terrain out there. I very much appreciate. Hammerheads biweekly software updates. I always look forward to it. Sometimes it's things that are like no brainers. Like they've been improving their points of interest along the way. And other times it's deep tech that, you know, I perhaps don't have a need for today, but I very much appreciate the fact that they update it constantly because it's just something that gives me confidence that I've always got the most up to date. Technology on my bicycle computer recently, I think I mentioned I've been doing some exploring in my hometown. I love and appreciate that return to home feature. I was out on a route, um, actually when I was traveling and I wasn't exactly sure how I was gonna get home and I was pretty beat and I just navigated to return to start. And it gave me the most bike appropriate route home, which was very much appreciated as I was cracking in the heavy Tucson heat. For a limited time, our listeners can get a free heart rate monitor with the purchase of a hammerhead Cari, simply visit hammerhead.io right now, and use the promo code, the gravel ride at checkout to get yours today. This is an exclusive limited time offer for a podcast listener. So don't forget to use the promo code, the gravel ride. Add that free heart rate monitor into your cart. And when you purchase the car two, you'll get that heart rate monitor for. Go to hammerhead.io, add both carts and the promo code, the gravel ride with that said, let's jump right into my conversation with Randall. [00:03:56] Craig: Randall welcome to the show. [00:03:58] Randall: Great to be back on Craig, been looking forward to this conversation. [00:04:01] Craig: I feel like I owed you a more specific welcome because unlike our, in the dirt episodes, this one's a little different, we're gonna go deeper. And I think it's important. Many people who listen to in the dirt are where you're my sidekick. You're someone who's got, you know, a little bit more technical knowledge about the bike industry and bike components, et cetera than I do. And we're just a good muse for each other on our journey in this sport. But in today's episode, we're gonna go a little deeper about you and your companies. [00:04:30] Randall: Yeah, it's a bit of, a bit of a throwback. It reminds me of I think it was June 2018 when I first came on the pod, which is when you and I first got acquainted as well in this friendship. That's blossom from that. So, it'll be fun to have another, another such conversation. [00:04:45] Craig: Yeah, it's super early days. And I remember, you know, part of that journey was me ending up selecting a thesis spike in part, because I just found you to be very thoughtful as a product designer. And I would love for the listener today who may be coming at it, having not listened to that original episode, to just understand a little bit more about your background in the bike industry and your philosophy around creating bicycles and componentry. [00:05:11] Randall: Sure. There's a deeper dive that we did in that aforementioned episode, but long on the short I've been riding, as many of us have been riding, since I was a kid really got serious into it. Around age 18, started racing was working in a bike shop here in the Boston area. Then later on, I got to pack fodder pro status on the cross country circuit for a couple of years, which was a lot of fun dirt bagging out of the back of my Honda element around the country. And from there did some supply chain work outside of the bike industry in China lived there for some years picked up Mandarin, [00:05:44] Craig: Hang on Randall. So how. Did, how did you get into supply chain? [00:05:49] Randall: So let's see. I was 21 and getting ready to finish college and decided to go and do a study abroad. I was at Zhongshan university in Guangzhou and met a man who became a good friend and a mentor who hired me to work for his trading and manufacturing company. It was a Chinese company Chinese own Chinese management. So I was the only non-Chinese on the team. And I was charged with first business development. But later on, got deep into product development, I was brought into all the, the key meetings with our big vendors and learned the ropes of how it works at that very deep level. And at the same time was picking up a lot of the. Not just the technical language and understanding of how things are made across a, a broad range of sectors, including, technologies that apply to bike. But then also the cultural elements of successfully architecting a supply chain. That was a pretty formative period for me. [00:06:46] Craig: I bet. Yeah, it's so huge. And one of those things that it's easy, if you've never got into the manufacturing world to, to not think about, but really understanding the culture and particularly in your case, understanding the language and developing a fluency of communication in the native tongue. It's just so immensely helpful in greasing the manufacturing wheels, so to speak. [00:07:06] Randall: Oh, absolutely. Frankly, none of what, the companies I've been involved with do, would be possible without, having learned the language and later did a graduate degree in us China relations. So learning, not just the culture from a firsthand perspective, but also a lot of the history, a lot of the philosophies reading some original texts, very slowly with the dictionary, but reading them nonetheless. It all makes a big difference when you're trying to build a, a deep trust based relationship with a party who has a very different background. [00:07:39] Craig: A hundred percent. Now, was the bike still part of your life during this period? Or had you shelved it, pursuing your professional vocation? [00:07:46] Randall: So I was riding a bit, not a ton but I was good friends with the owner of the biggest bike shop in Juhi a couple hours outside of Guang Jo, where I had lived when I first went to China was teaching English for a period. He's still a good friend. We've actually done some bike packing together. And it was, it was interesting. He was someone who, doesn't speak much English at all. So I've only ever spoken Mandarin with him. And this is saying in Chinese, it's like a duck talking to a chicken. And that was our relationship at first, but we are unified by this love of the bicycle. And over, over time, I, I, you know, obviously learned to communicate and we had a lot of shared experiences, so, [00:08:22] Craig: And then did you, did you find yourself drifting back with interest into the bicycle industry? Proper at some. [00:08:29] Randall: That kind of came later. I got to a point in my career where I graduated from grad school, going through a lot of, of life change, life transition, and. Was just thinking to myself, well, what, what is that kind of nexus of things that I'm good at that I'm knowledgeable about? That I care about that resonate with me in, in my lifestyle and that I can, I can get paid to do. And working in the bike industry made a lot of sense because I had the experiences as a racer. I had some relationships, obviously Mandarin was, very useful from a supply chain management standpoint. And also I ended up doing some market development stuff when I was at specialized, but mostly supply chain. And so it really, it's kind of the, the same way that my decision to go to China you know, was made it was okay. Well, you know, here are a bunch of different factors that I can weigh in order to, to make a decision. And ultimately, bike was like, okay, this makes sense I can do this and I can probably do it well, and I can, I can learn this. I can Excel at this. If I put my mind to it, [00:09:32] Craig: So you mentioned that you ended up at specialized bicycles out in Morgan hill. Can you just talk about what your role was there and some of the things you've learned, obviously you had supply chain experience. You had the experience over in China, but transitioning to a bicycle specific supply chain. What were some of the takeaways from that experience and, and maybe what were some of the projects of note that you worked. [00:09:54] Randall: Sure. So as you make clear, I wasn't there very long around a year some places are a good fit. Some places are not for each of us. But specialize in a lot of ways is, is arguably one of, if the not most innovative big brand also a marketing powerhouse and marketing is a substantial part of it, but there was a lot of very smart people in the room. And working for a company like specialized. We were a major account. So even though I was not an executive in the company I was working with the leadership of the factories that we were buying from on the projects that I was helping to manage. So that was, again, another one of these serendipitous experiences that made it, such that when I started my own thing, those relationships were already established in terms of projects. So the one that probably people know know most would be the diverge. And I was one of the team members on that. I shouldn't overstate my role. And it was an interesting project. I remember riding around on, prototypes of that bike. And just the concept of a gravel bike, making a ton of sense and being really excited about it. It didn't realize the vision the way that I would liked it to have. I think the biggest compromise I saw was there was a different tariff code for frames that can fit bigger than a 35 millimeter tire. So it was like 7% more expensive. And so we constrained the tire size to a maximum 35 millimeter in order to stay under the tariff, cuz otherwise it's a mountain bike and there was some protectionist policies around mountain bikes at some point. And then there are various other things that I did on my own bikes later on. I didn't have those constraints. [00:11:27] Craig: Yeah, that's so interesting. I, I remember in our earlier conversation back in, in June of 2018, when you first came on to talk about thesis and you talked about your history there, and I remember walking away from that conversation, just finding it, very interesting, the business decisions that get thrown on top of a product designer's vision that end up creating constraints, whether it's the time of year it has to launch or the, the tariffs that it may incur because it has larger than a 35 millimeter wheel tire size. It's super fascinating and interesting, and I can see why knowing you as well as I do that. You know, you don't want to be constrained by those criteria. You ultimately, your heart is in creating the best product. [00:12:10] Randall: Yeah. And there, of course there are constraints in what I do too. Right. I, I'm not gonna make a, like, I didn't make a $10,000 bicycle. I made a bicycle that did everything that I think a bicycle needs in order to, not. Really be dreaming about the $10,000 bicycle at night. Right. So, there's different constraints when you have to have a complete line and you have to have good, better, best, and you need to have a 3.2 to 3.5 X markup relatives cost a good sold in order for your business model to be viable because all these different things that when you are a small company with less overhead when you're mostly word of mouth and so on that, you can do things a little bit differently. [00:12:49] Craig: Yep. Yeah. So I'm gonna fast forward a bunch here, but at, at you decided to create a brand called thesis bicycle. And when did that come into the world? Was it 2018? [00:13:01] Randall: Early 2018. I flew over to Asia, did a whirlwind several week tour, three factories a day in mainland China in Taiwan to set up the supply chain, decide who we were gonna work with, build to build the materials, came back with a suitcase full of parts and built up a prototype. And then was actually you'll probably recall I had that, that raw black frame that I had a decal cutter that I cut decals for. And then I had all the parts and then I was loaning this bike out and asking people, would you buy it? And enough people said yes. And I said, okay, well here's the website. And enough people actually put their dollars down where it made sense to start a company around it. [00:13:38] Craig: And people keep saying yes to the thesis bike. I mean, it's, it's one of them that's in my quiver, in my garage that I, I still enjoy to this day. I mean, it's super well executed. And I think my opinion of the bike has been well documented. One of the thing along things along the way, you know, you decided it was gonna be a direct consumer brand. You sourced a bunch of components primarily to make sure that every rider could get the precise fit that they want. I know you're a big advocate of differing, the crank length size. For example, handlebars are an obvious one, but crank length is, I think is one that often gets overlooked and you get, you know, incredibly short riders still riding 1 72, 5 cranks. In addition to those components, you also developed a thesis wheel line. And I wanted to, to sort of talk about that a little bit, because obviously as we go into what's next, you have a history making wheels. So when you made that thesis wheels thesis wheel set, what, what were you going for at the time? And as you embark on this new brand, that will mention very shortly, we can talk about what your goals are for that. [00:14:45] Randall: Sure. Well, actually my, my wheel building history goes back a little bit further. I built my first wheels when I was 18 for myself not knowing anything. So, literally ordering parts outta QBP and I had some XT hubs and a magic rim and researched each component. And I built a set of wheels that held up. Later on it specialized, I was charged with revamping the access line, which I don't know if it's still this way, but at that time it was basically their non-real house brand for all their more entry to mid-level stuff. And was able to talk to the wheel engineers at that time and really learned a lot from them. I read a pretty well known book called the bicycle wheel by jobs Brandt amongst others and kind of learned a lot of the physics of wheels at that time. The cost structure around them. And then with thesis, those wheels I just kind of incorporated all the best practices in terms of component selection and engineering and so on. And in fact, if you look at what we did for thesis, you see a lot of that DNA in logos logos takes it a step further, but it's, a lot of the same principles. [00:15:49] Craig: Interesting. Yeah. So I think it's a great opportunity to introduce your new brand. Why don't you just give us a little bit of an overview of the brand and what it means to you? [00:15:59] Randall: Sure. So the brand is logos L O G O S, which is a bit of a play there. Right? Bike industries notorious for just slapping some logos on things and throwing a bunch of marketing at things. But logos is the concept of logos it's a Greek philosophical concept implying a reason or, or discourse, especially a reason to discourse. And even deeper than that, the underlying principle of order or knowledge that underpins reality. The idea for logos actually came from Sam Jackson, our head of brand who's been with us almost since the beginning. And it really deserves a lot of the credit for the brand identity and voice and a lot of the vision for the brand. I can't say enough how, how pleased I am with the work that he's done. But this idea of logos being, first principles based which very much aligns with thesis as well. There was a strong point of view again, itself built on first principles. And it ties into other concepts that are very much aligned with how I see the world is ties to Daoism and Zen that this word logos is imbued with. [00:17:01] Craig: That's exciting. And congratulations on the recent launch. I know you to be very meticulous and I know for the listener, you're passionate about sharing knowledge. So I think it's, it'll be great to just talk about what makes a great wheel. To begin with, because whether they're buying a logos wheel or some something else, the listener needs to know, how do they need to think about the wheels that are underneath? [00:17:28] Randall: Sure. The reality is that wheels arguably more than any other component in the bike industry. There's a, a huge number of brands. There's a ton of marketing, a lot of a lot of storytelling that may or may not be based in, in reality or in science. And so, of course what we do reflects my pH. Reflects our team's philosophy, but I think that a lot of these principles are fairly universal, so I'll try to keep it at a higher level. So, we look at it in terms of performance, strength, reliability, and serviceability. And we're calling the wheels we're launching with the Omni collection. And omnium has this concept of a high degree of versatility, right. Excelling at a wide variety of disciplines. So there are three different wheels a 700, a six 50 and a two nine. We'll talk about the specifics in a moment. But we can go into components. You wanna start with hubs. [00:18:17] Craig: Yeah, I think that makes sense. I mean, and, and I don't want your, your comments to be lost on the listener. I think wheels, God, I feel. Ever since I started in the sport of cycling wheels have always been regarded as like something that if you invest a little bit more in, you get a lot more out of it. So it's, it's interesting to think a lot of us, when we buy bikes from a bike shop, you're just gonna get the wheels that come to it. And it takes a while before you start to think about getting a replacement set of wheels or a second set of wheels. One of the interesting things I've always found about gravel cycling is a lot of us come into the sport thinking I'm gonna get two sets of wheels right off the bat. So I, I, I do think for, and I can speak for my personal experience. Like I've thought more about wheels than I ever have historically, in any other sector of the sport, primarily because when I got my first proper gravel bike, I was all in on getting two different wheel size. [00:19:12] Randall: Yeah, and in fact, one of our core thesis, if you will, when we started thesis, was that you could have one bike that does nearly everything. And two wheels recorded that. And we, we saw, I mean, we still see about a 50% adoption rate on two wheel set amongst our riders. And we encourage people before they, start looking at an entirely new bike. Well, consider two wheel sets as a way, as long as you have the tire clearance of a way of getting more utility outta the same bike, instead of having a road bike and a cross bike and a gravel bike and, and all these other bikes that if, if thoughtfully designed and thoughtfully curated from a spec standpoint can actually, serve all of those purposes really well. It's really an omnium bicycle. [00:19:54] Craig: Yeah. So for starting at the hub, I mean, for many of the uninitiated, the hub is a bit of a black box, right? As long as it's working and the bike is rolling forward. The bike you're buying off the shelf. You're not thinking too much about it, but what, what should people be thinking about with respect to hub? [00:20:13] Randall: Well, hubs are a major point of failure and there is a lot that goes into making a good hub and there are certain designs that are better than others in certain designs that have inherent trade offs. I mean, every design has inherent trade offs. Some of those trade offs are well, we'll, we'll talk about like, if you want reliability, you want strength to weight. You want something that's serviceable. You want something that performs well, well, there are certain designs that, really aren't necessarily amenable to that. And then other designs that are but they have other constraints. So, there are Paul based systems. These are systems that have spring loaded poles that press against an outer ring that has teeth in it to engage when they're turning. And this is a very common hub design you see them on the very entry level. You also see some higher end versions of them that are out there and that, tend to hold up better, but they all inherently have the same issue of if you have three Pauls, one of them doesn't engage properly. Or, or maybe there's a little bit of wear some contamination. Well then all the load is going to, potentially just one of those poles. And so instead of having three poles to spread that load over, now, you just have one and that's when they tend to, detonate, they tend to fall apart. And then additionally, a three Paul design doesn't have the same peak load strength, nevermind the, resiliency against MIS clocking or contamination of the next one, which I'll talk about, which is a ratchet system. So the most famous ratchet is the star ratchet. This was patented by Hugi in the nineties and then popularized by DT Swiss. Folks here will have heard of the DT three 50, which we used on our thesis wheels. And then the more expensive DT, two 40, which achieves a lighter weight by using higher end materials. But otherwise is, functionally identical. And the original design, which I would argue is, superior to, newer iterations has two ratchets that are independently sprung, such that when they are rotating, if one of them were to get jammed or misaligned, the other one can still adapt to fully interface with the one that's not perfectly aligned. So you get full engagement and it's very unlikely where you have a situation where all the teeth are not engaged. So you with me so far, [00:22:26] Craig: Yeah, I am. And I, and I'm having a little bit of a smile on my face, cuz I do remember the hige hub back in the, in the nineties. I may have actually had one and I remember it was the loudest hub of anybody I knew. Which I took a little bit of pride on, on my mountain bike, but it was, it was always regarded as something that was the design was, you can't say failure proof, but very, very reliable. [00:22:52] Randall: Well, and two things about that. One newer iterations are not as loud unless you have the 54 tooth versions. And then secondly, there's a very good chance that that hub is still on the road. James Huang over at cycling tips called hubs with this design, the world's most reliable hubs and they have a reputation for that for very good reasons. What we just discussed. They're very resilience against all the sorts of failure modes that you might see with other types of systems. Now, the patent for that expired a few years ago. And this was one of the reasons why we saw an opportunity to, start a company because on their higher end stuff. Companies like DT and others have migrated towards a single sprung mechanism. And there were some issues with that. They actually had a not a recall, but a a service bullet put out because, when you have only one side sprung, if that one sprung ratchet gets jammed or is not properly aligned with the fixed ratchet, with the fixed interface the teeth won't engage and you'll get wear, or, non-engagement. [00:23:53] Craig: is the decision to go that route a, a cost savings. [00:23:56] Randall: not cost savings. I think it's twofold. I think the primary driver honestly, is probably that you need to have something new and if your thing goes off patent, then, being able to point to something and say, this new thing is better is, useful. And there, there are some advantages to the what's called EXP system. I think they were able to shave a little bit of weight. They were able to push the, main bearing outboards, slightly to distribute, forces a, little bit better on the axle. But at the expense of this, gold standard reliability and part of it is tolerances. So you need to have much higher tolerances on a product like that , because you only have one ratchet that's moving. So if it ever gets jammed that fails versus with dual sprung, if one of them gets jammed as, we said, the other one can, slide to meet it. It's just something inherent about that design that, will always be true. And there's a bunch of different iterations of it. And if it's executed, well, it can, hold up. It can perform well over time. But one of the things that we believe in is if it ain't broke, don't fix it. There wasn't a problem with the dual sprung mechanism. And in fact it has some advantages. So that's, your single sprung mechanisms. And then the other one is spray clutches. So this is a hub like Onyx, you're familiar with them. [00:25:09] Craig: I'm not familiar with. [00:25:10] Randall: So without going into the details of how a spray clutch works the big advantage of a spray clutch is you get instant engagement. Now that instant engagement is something that a certain subset of like trials riders and some mountain bikers seem to swear by I think that for, at least from my perspective, the obsession with, instant engagement is a little bit overblown and there can be some downsides with kickback on certain suspension designs. Plus they tend to be heavier a little bit more draggy, a lot more complicated. There's a lot more parts in a, hub like that. But if you need something for that application, that's not a bad way to accomplish it. Now I've put the dual sprung star ratchet on this pedestal as is what I think is the best. Right. But these other ones have advantages, too. So instant engagement with the spray clutch. With a Paul based system. There's ways in which you can design that, where you can get effectively instant engagement as well. And so if instant engagement is really critical for you, well, with a star ratchet design, we use a 36 tooth star ratchet, which 36 tooth, 360 degrees of rotation divided by a 36 that's 10 degrees of engagement. We find that that's kind of the sweet spot, where you get, a high degree of strength and reliability and long term durability together. Engagement. That's plenty quick. But if you want instantaneous engagement, you're probably looking at Paul based or spray clutches, and then just accepting the compromises of, more complexity, less reliability, more weight, more drag. [00:26:38] Craig: Yeah, it's always interesting from a business perspective, when you, when you layer in that patented technology component of it, that was on lock until, as you said, I think it was last year that that patent expired and allowed other people to build in that way. Cuz until that point, if you were building a wheel and you wanted to, you know, do something similar or not pay those licensing fees, you had to go through these efforts to kind of design something new that inherent with everything is gonna have compromises and, and positive things and negative things about it. So it is interesting. It'll be interesting to see going forward if some of those companies that invested a lot in these other technologies. Actually just adopted a dual SPR floating star ratchet because it's off patent and they can do so. [00:27:20] Randall: I mean, there are a few others that are out there. Execution matters, tolerances matter. The quality of the material, the quality of the machining, the quality of the heat treatment process. So the design of it is only one part that goes into making a great hub. One of the other things that I wanna call out that I really like about this dual SPR star ratchet is because it's been out there so long and because it's so established, I mean, these have been used in Roal wheels and bond tracker wheels , N be used spec DT hubs with this design. There's tons of parts out there and they're serviceable without tools. So. some riders may already have parts that are compatible with our new hub set in their toolboxes because they already have, a set of DT three 50 S the, free hub mechanism, the end caps, the star ratchets and Springs. All of these parts are interchangeable. So, this gets into some of our philosophy of around open standards and this is effectively an open standard and arguably the best open standard. And, I would argue further the best standard period for hubs, for the vast majority of riders. [00:28:25] Craig: So we've gone nerd deep on the inside of this hub. And if you're interested, like, I think you, you have to either look at the hub on your bike or on the logos components website. They've got a, sort of a blown out diagram of the different components that, that are inside there. I do think it's interesting to, to have in your back pocket to understand, and maybe even think about what you're riding today, but there's other parts of the, the hub that we should probably talk about. So outside of that mechanism is the, the hub shell. So what do you, how are you building these hub shells? [00:28:56] Randall: Yeah. So, one of the big things with a hub shell is, well, one there's the material, and then there's two, how you process it. So, a lot of hubs use 60 61 which is a, pretty standard, still a high grade aluminum. But it's cheaper to buy cheaper to work with. So if you look in the specs of some of your components, these are numbers that you'll see, and this is just relating to the, formulation of the alloy. We use in our hub shell a material called 60 82 T six. And this is stronger and lighter, but also more expensive to purchase and to process. And that T six refers to the heat treatment process. You start with ability of this material. You cold forge it. So these like giant forging machines, to forge this form. And then you heat treat that, and then you put it on a lathe to machine out, all the circular parts on the internals and external of the hub. And then you use a multi-axis mill to mill out all the features and that's, the main differentiator, for example, between the, DT three 50 and the two 40. Is that material and the fact that because it's stronger, you can machine away more of it and still get the same strength. And because we're making them, in-house now we're able to use the, higher end material, but still put it into a product that is, in this case, a grant, [00:30:12] Craig: Got it. And then the final component of that, that hub is, is obviously the bearings and bearings get a lot of attention in the bike industry. Why don't you talk about your choices there and what, what should, what should riders be thinking about with respect to bearings? [00:30:25] Randall: honestly, any good brand name stainless steel bearing with good seals and so on is, is going to work well. I'm actually gonna take a step back from answering this one, because I'm going to have someone on the pod to go deep nerd on bearings in the future. We did look at ceramic and found that there's not really any advantage to ceramic for, the vast majority of riders who don't have sponsorship and a team mechanic because you get a, trivial performance benefit and that performance benefit turns into a deficit pretty quickly, cuz they wear so quickly for reasons that I'll, hold off until that, in-depth bearing interview. [00:31:00] Craig: That makes sense and funny, you know, on my, my bottom bracket from my recent build, I was sort of enamored by the notion of doing a ceramic bottom bracket. But in talking to the experts, I ended up with a stainless steel bearing bottom bracket as well, [00:31:13] Randall: Yeah. I, I made the mistake in my racing days of spending a lot of money on ceramic bearings and not having reviewed the science. And so tend to be a lot more disciplined these days. [00:31:23] Craig: better than my racing days, where people were spending money, replacing all of their steel bolts with titanium, bolts, and spending ungodly amounts of money to save a few grams here and there. [00:31:32] Randall: Well, I guess you pay more attention when you're buying many thousands of bearings than when you're buying one bicycle's worth [00:31:38] Craig: Yeah. [00:31:39] Randall: Yeah. [00:31:39] Craig: exactly well, it's it's coming out from the hub. We've got spokes and nipples to talk about and then really definitely wanna get into rims. Cause I think there's a lot of kind of takeaways that people need to revisit regarding rim technology that I want to get into. [00:31:52] Randall: Sure. Let's start with spokes. So we use pillar wing 20 spokes, which is a, bladed actually more of a diamond wing shape spoke. And we use these not because they're arrow though. That is a benefit, but because the same process that generates that aerodynamic shape is a cold forging process effectively. It's a cold rolling process that helps to orient the grain structure of the metal in the spoke to improve its elasticity and thus its fatigue life. That spoke also has some, complex strain relieving at both ends by the threads and by the head. And these are the areas where the, spoke tends to fail. And with a lightweight spoke, they wanna wind up. So if you're using a lightweight round spoke, as you're building it, you're gonna essentially twist the spoke. But if you have ablated spoke, you have something to grab onto and a reference point to be able to see, okay, this spoke is oriented straight. And any twisting in that spoke is, again, these are stresses that are going to result in increased fatigue and failure over the life of the spoke. So that's why we went with these ones and pillar, they make a great spoke out of the same, high end Swedish, sand Vic material. 3 0 2 plus is the particular wire that they start with, which is what a lot of the top end spoke start with. And it just makes for a spoke that's really lightweight really easy to build with, and that has outstanding durability, [00:33:17] Craig: and you're lacing those to brass nipples. Am I correct? [00:33:22] Randall: Exposed brass nipples. Yeah. We have essentially a zero tolerance policy towards aluminum nipples or hidden nipples. The reason being that well, first aluminum ones they tend to see split and fail. And for a wheel to perform at its best for a long period of time, there are some basic maintenance that needs to be done part of which is, checking the tension and truing it and retentioning as needed. We'll talk in a moment about how you can reduce the maintenance that's required, but with an aluminum nipple well, two things, one you tend to get oxidization that results in the nipple seizing in the interface with that stainless steel spoke. So now you have an oxidization process, a chemical process where it's making it. So it's sticking and yeah, you can put, spoke prep on there, so it doesn't stick. But eventually that oxidization is gonna take place. And then it's a much softer material than brass, so brass won't oxidize in the same way. And it's harder. So, why would you lose use aluminum then? Well, it's lighter. Well, how much lighter? Well, with a 24 spoke wheel. So 48 spokes, total 48 nipples. It's like 36 grams. So for 36 grams, you're gonna take a wheel that could last a really long time and you're gonna make it so that there's a good chance, especially if you ride in rain or any sort of wet conditions that the moment you try to true this, wheel or, retention the wheel you're gonna have to rebuild it from scratch with new spokes gets real expensive, real quick. [00:34:46] Craig: that makes sense. And I, I will make a point on exposed nipples. I'm definitely a big fan of that. The, the one, a couple wheels I've ever had that have broke. I've been fortunate not to break a lot of spokes in my life, but I did break one on a hidden nipple wheel. And it was the most frustrating experience in my life trying to fix that wheel. [00:35:03] Randall: Yeah, well, and, that's a, more extreme, but still common scenario. But again, being able to just tension the wheel, right? If I have a hidden nipple, I need to remove my tires. I might be wasting the sealant that's in there, cuz everything is too going tubeless. Now I have to remove the, valve stem and the rim tape. Right. And then I need to go in and, access the, back of the nipple from, from. And then when the wheel is all trued, well, then I gotta clean up the rim. So I have a nice clean surface and then I have to retape it. I gotta put the valve stems in. I need to put the tire back on and I need to put sealant in and then reinflate it. And so you're, it's harder to true there's no arrow benefit. This has been shown. The one tiny benefit is that you can have a slightly smaller spoke hole, but you can make up for that with just having a tiny bit more carbon reinforcement. And the added weight is on the order of single grams. [00:35:56] Craig: Yeah. [00:35:56] Randall: And so I'll add those single grams every day. [00:35:58] Craig: So now we're, now we're out to the rim. Let's talk about the rims. You, you mentioned op opening up that from a size perspective, you're doing 6 5700 C and a 20 Niner, but let's talk a little bit more specifically about the material you're using and what you're going for with these particular rims. [00:36:16] Randall: Well, I wanna start with something off the bat, before going into materials, which is be hooks. So this is another one of those things together with nipples that we take a strong stance on. We believe that any rim that is designed and marketed to be used with a road tubeless tire should have a bead. There's a trend in the industry towards going hook list for these rims and there's still tires that are blowing off of rims. And, I don't believe that having compatibility charts. So like our rims are only compatible with these tires is a good solution. [00:36:49] Craig: So to be spec, to be specific Randall, just so, just so the listener's clear. So you're saying on your 700 sea rim, which may take a higher pressure road size tire. So not talking about your 40 C gravel tires, but if someone's running a high pressure, 32 C tire, you think that Beed hooks are a safety require. [00:37:11] Randall: Absolutely. And in fact, we're not talking that higher pressure either. It's interesting. Up until recently the pressure charts would go up linearly with weight and then they would taper off and have the same weight for a bunch of higher weights. And it's because of concerns about blowoffs. If you have a system tires, rim, and rim tape that are all within tolerance, then a hopeless system can be safe, can secure the tire properly. The problem is. There are too many variables. There's the particular manufacturer. There's the production batch. You can't check every tire. You do check every rim. So the, tolerances there tend to be a lot more stable, but then let's say you have a tire that is within spec and a rim that's within spec. And even the tape is in spec, but then you have to replace the tape and you replace it with a slightly thicker or thinner tape, or you don't apply it properly or something like that. Now you have a blow off risk, right? So I think that relying on different manufacturers to stay within a very high tolerance for a part that has a very high consequence in the events that something goes wrong is just not a good approach. speeds have advantages. Up until recently they were a lot lighter and they were cheaper to manufacture because you had a lower scrap rate because the way that the hooks were formed you were machining or you were having an insert in there. So on fortunately we have what we're calling a high impact bead hook that adds a trivial amount of mass per rim. It's on the order of five grams and it's molded in. So you can have that high impact resistance. You can have the tire retention, you can have the weight more or less on par and the cost is slightly higher because of how it's produced. But we think that it's absolutely worth it. [00:38:55] Craig: Beyond these safety concerns? What am I experiencing differently when I'm installing a tire on a, a, a bead hook versus a hook list rim. [00:39:04] Randall: If it's designed properly, nothing because when you're installing the tire you have that, trough in the middle of the rim and on today's wider rims, that trough is generally pretty big and plenty deep. So you just drop the bead into there and then it pops out and sits on the bead seat, retained by a bead lock, which we also do on our rims. And then the hook is again, helping to prevent blow offs, which can be catastrophic. [00:39:29] Craig: Okay. Gotcha. Cause I'm, I'm sure I've, I've set up tires on both bead hooks and hook list and haven't really noticed the difference [00:39:36] Randall: yeah. Any difference that you would notice would be a consequence of something other than the hooks. [00:39:40] Craig: Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. So good. An interesting data point for people to research, particularly, and specifically on 700 C rims and high pressure tires. So taking that. At that point aside, let's talk about the rims. These are carbon rims. You're making what's the talk about the carbon rims in general. [00:40:02] Randall: sure. You have the carbon, you have the resin and then you have how it's processed, how it's formed. Right? So we're using Tory 700, 800 carbon, very common material throughout the bike industry. We're using high grade residents that again, very common throughout the industry on the higher end. We have access to the same materials as all the other brands and vice versa. So the magic is not there per se. There is some cool things you can do at resins. That's a whole nother conversation. But the processing is really a big difference. So we have a really high precision molding process where the rim comes out of the mold free of any imperfections in the surface such that there's no coatings required. So that's 20, 30 grams a rim easily of coatings just to deal with cosmetic imperfections that our rims come out without. And then you save it an additional little bit of weight as a result of this the precision of the process and the way in which it removes. As much excess resin as possible, cuz the resin is not what's giving the rims, their strength. It is the carbon. And then the resin is bonding the layers of carbon together to give it that structure. So any excess resin , you can remove and maintain the same strength. Right? So any excess resin is not contributing to the structural integrity of the structure. [00:41:19] Craig: Right, [00:41:20] Randall: So that's on the material side other things I mentioned Beadlock asymmetry. So this is another thing that we do across our line and we'll always do across our line. The, rim is basically it's kind of biased to one side. [00:41:31] Craig: Yep. [00:41:32] Randall: and what this does is your hubs are not symmetrical, right? So up front, you have a disc on one side, no disc on the other. In the back, you have a disc on one side and you have a much bigger, much wider cassette and free hub body on the other side. So by going with an asymmetrical rim, it helps to balance out the spoke angles and thus the spoke tensions, which means that you have a wheel that has higher average tension and total tension with the same number of spoke. And you have a reduction in the change intention with each revolution or each impact. And these two things together make a stronger wheel. That's more durable with the same number of spokes and the, the impact is actually quite, quite substantial. So we do that across the board and think that we can't see any reason with the exception of a wheel that is designed purely for arrow, and even then we would still do an asymmetric rim. [00:42:28] Craig: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we've gone into a lot of detail as to the component tree and the quality of what you guys are putting together, but at a certain point, these things need to get assembled. And I know historically like that, that is a challenge from a process perspective. It's like, how do you build these wheels up from these quality components? Because if they're not built well, you'll end up with a shit wheel. [00:42:50] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. So there's exactly right. There's the curation in manufacturing the, of the components and how they're put together is no less important. You can have the best components in the world. If they're not assembled properly, it's not gonna hold up. You're not gonna get the performance outta the box, nevermind over time. So this is basic things like, prepping the spokes. So you have a, material that helps to lubricate the interface between the threads and the N. And this is, something that's basic needs to be done. In our case, we have essentially hand laced machine built for a first pass. So a machine will go through and adjust and get the wheel round and true. And then we'll have a skilled person finished the wheel and this bring. It from round and true to where the tension around the wheel one is as high as it can be. And again, this results in a stronger wheel that also has less change in tension as it turns. But then also the spokes are as close intention to each other as possible. And this part is actually hard to achieve. It requires a lot of skill and it takes more time and money. And then how do you validate that while you machine check it? So you check the tension in every single spoke and then put it through the true and the roundest check again before going out the door. [00:44:02] Craig: Yeah, that makes sense. So I think we've, we've dug in pretty deep on wheel technology [00:44:06] Randall: Yeah. [00:44:07] Craig: a lot to think about I'm sure people are gonna be interested in, in these wheels. We've talked about, you know, all three, all three sizes are gonna have asymmetric rims. The 700 C is gonna have a, a high impact bead hook for the reasons you mentioned, the other two are gonna be hopeless. The one thing we haven't talked about. It's just been the, the width. And I, I have found that in other conversations with other wheel manufacturers, that that's an interesting area to talk about and just kind of nail home, you know, why we're seeing some of the gravel wheels go wider in the width of the rim than, you know, historically was part of, you know, road and road plus bikes. [00:44:49] Randall: Sure. I mean this is a trend across the board. And in fact, it's, it's been taken a little bit too far in some cases, there is a, Goldilock spot. [00:44:56] Craig: I think is great. Like, I, I, I mean, I think that's one of the great things about gravel is like we've been and component manufacturers, like they've been pushing the extremes to figure out where the sweet spot is. [00:45:07] Randall: To figure out what the sweet spot is, but then also to, meet what, what the market is telling them to make and not really sticking to first principles is like, oh, people have a perception that wider is better, so let's keep going wider. Right. Just like lighter is better. Let's keep shedding weight and then a year down the road let them worry about it. But in terms of widths, the sweet spot I would argue for a 700 sea wheel is 23 to 25 millimeters. Right. And you see a lot of wheels coming out in that range. Ours are 24. And again, with these bead hooks, and you can run down to a 28 millimeter tire with a 24 internal width. And it'll be secure and it'll be properly supported. And a 28 or a 30 will be aerodynamically. Well matched to that rim, which will have an external width of 32 in our case. Which by the way, we we'll talk about arrow in a second. And also being able to support the, the higher end of the range. So in the case of narrower tires, you want it to be aerodynamically matched on the case of bigger tires. You just want it to be wide enough to support that tire at low pressures, without tire squirm, and to give the tire a good shape, as opposed to a light bulb shape, that you're engaging the side knobs of the tire, maybe a little bit early and so on. And tire design has had to evolve together with rim with but as a system it's definitely an improvement in the sweet spot is really in this 23 to 25 millimeter internal range [00:46:34] Craig: Yeah. [00:46:34] Randall: for a 700 C rim. [00:46:36] Craig: I think that light bulb shape of the tire is kind of interesting. It was an interesting visual for me to initially get introdu juice to and how the wider rims have kind of, made that shape less pronounced. And you do get more performance out of the tire. I've found. [00:46:50] Randall: and this has enabled substantially or it's required with the lower pressures that tub bliss is allowing. So remember the original et RTO standards the European standards body for narrower rims came out at a time when everyone was running clinchers with tubes and you had to run higher pressures because otherwise you would pinch flat. Well, now you have tubeless tires, so you can push the limits of pressure. But once you drop below a certain pressure, if you're not properly supported by a wide rim, that thing's just gonna score 'em around. So that's what kind of force this issue. [00:47:25] Craig: Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. And I was, you know, when you mentioned your new efforts around logos components and you mentioned you were adding yet a third wheel size, I was actually a little bit surprised. So can you talk about adding the 29 ER, wheel into your lineup? [00:47:42] Randall: Sure before I do, I wanna close out one thought on the 700 CS because it's relevant, which is aerodynamics. And this kind of applies across the board, but especially seven hundreds. There's the rule of a hundred, 5%. And this rule essentially states that your rim has to be a hundred, 5%, the width of the seated tire, not what's stamped on the side, but the tire as it's actually measured on the rim when it's seated in order for there to be any significant aerodynamic benefit, which is to say, let's say you have a 50, 60 millimeter deep rim. And you're like, oh, it looks so air. It looks cool, but it's really narrow and you run a 28 mill tire and your rim is only 28 or 27 millimeter wide. Most of the air dynamic benefit you're losing because the airflow is becoming detached before it even gets to the rim. It's detaching as it goes around the tire. And this is even more so for gravel, fortunately we're seeing less of this, but arrow gravel rims is just marketing. In fact, if anything, it's just giving you more turbulence in a cross. So the rule of one oh 5% that's says physics and everything else is marketing. Unless you're adhering to that the two nine, so we built wheels with thesis specifically for our bikes. And when we did this program, we wanted to have a three wheel quiver that covers the, the full range of experiences. And so the two nine wheel it's built to a trail standard, it's a 31 internal versus the 24 of the 700 C is designed to take tires anywhere from 2.1, 2.2 on the smaller end, all the way to 2.6. And again, it's gonna be wide enough to support that range of tires at a wide range of pressures. It's light, but not super light. It's 1,565 grams which is on the heavier end of cross country in the intermediate lighter end of trail. But we wanted something that would just be bombproof it's light enough to race, but we'll hold up for all your training. And when you're underbid and you hit something sketchy, it's gonna gonna hold up as well. [00:49:43] Craig: Yeah. So they obviously there's some gravel bikes, like the cut through it that run a 29 or wheel, but just so I'm clear. So this is a, this is a proper, in addition to servicing that market, this is a proper mountain bike wheel. [00:49:55] Randall: Oh, yeah. So when you think about the types of gravel bikes that are using a two nine wheel, they're generally more expedition type bikes, otherwise you'd be better off on our 700 sea podge. So the Uday 29 is very much a wheel that if you were going and doing a, an expedition this is a great wheel to bring, because even though it's on the lighter side compared to some wheels in that segment, you have the asymmetry, the weight is being saved through materials and precision engineering and manufacturer rather than compromising on structural integrity. And one thing that's true about all these wheels by the way is each wheel set uses a single length of spoke, which we include a spare with it. So, if you ever did have an issue being able to change a spoke in the field is, about as simple as, it could be . [00:50:40] Craig: Gotcha. Super interesting. Well, we've, we've gone deep on wheels. I, I, there's a few more things I wanted to cover, but I think we're running a bit long on time. Is there anything else in, in parting? You know, this is a, a big week probably when you listeners hearing this a week behind us, but you've got logos components off the ground. We'll certainly put a link in the show notes. Is there anything else about the brand or the ethos that you wanted to share with the listener before we sign off for today? [00:51:08] Randall: The long and the short is, you have to have a reason for existing. And in our case, we saw an opportunity to make something that fit our perspective on what the ideal wheel would be, and to pull it off at a price point that is affordable to a much bigger audience and to provide some, education at the same time. So if you're curious about any of the concepts that, that we discussed here on the pod, I know we went pretty deep nerd here. Logos components.com hop in there. We've created some materials there to make it easy to get one's head around these things and, it applies to wheels more generally. The last thing is, I really want to thank all the stakeholders who helped to make this happen. This is particularly Sam Jackson, our head of brand, who I mentioned before, as well as Angela Chang, our head of operations. This is our vendors. This is various industry experts. Who've provided their 2 cents. This is the ridership community. Many of whom I assume are listening who contributed their thoughts when I first posted the idea for this project some months ago and got a lot of positive feedback. And in fact, quite a few presales. So can't thank you enough. And then Greg. The first conversation that we had was really the tipping point with thesis in terms of providing an opportunity for people to get to know us and to see our philosophy and how we approach things. And it's been immensely gratifying to be on this journey with you first as a guest and then now as someone who gets to do episodes, not just with you, but then explore ideas with guests that I bring on myself. So a lot of appreciation we would not be here if not for the support of those parties. And we feel excited about what the future holds. [00:52:46] Craig: Well, cool. I mean, best luck to you and the team. It's always great to see. I I've always enjoyed your philosophy around the transparency of what you're doing and your openness to have discussions with people. I think you've whether it's the thesis brand and I'm sure the logo brand, you have an openness for discussion with people who are considering the, the products and whether or not they choose your particular product. I think they'll understand your point of view and your commitment to providing and creating the product that you've arrived at in your mind. So kudos and congratulations. I look forward to continuing the journey with you. Obviously we'll have you back on the, for the listener, you'll be back on here for, into dared episodes in the future, and also doing deep technical dives around both bicycle componentry, but also the philosophies of community and, and general philosophy of what cycling brings to our collective lives. So good to talk to you as always Randall. I wasn't surprised that we went a little bit longer today, but hopefully the listener can give us a little a little bit of room there for enjoying our conversations together. [00:53:52] Randall: Yeah. And if anyone has any questions or comments please jump in the ridership in the logos channel or drop us an email. [00:53:59] Craig: Cool. Thanks Randall. [00:54:01] Randall: All right. Thanks Greg. [00:54:03] Craig Dalton: That's gonna do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. I hope you learned a little bit more about Randall's background and are excited to check out logo's components. I know you can learn a lot just simply from visiting the website. As I mentioned, they've got. Breakdown diagram of the hub, which I found very interesting. If you're curious about what a, a star ratchet looks like inside big thanks to our friends at hammerhead and the Caru two computer. Remember use the code, the gravel ride to get that free heart rate monitor with the purchase of your crew to computer. If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall to ask questions about this podcast or otherwise best way to do it is simply join the ridership. It's a free global cycling community. It's at www.theridership.com. You can interact with the two of us, but also more importantly, thousands of other athletes around the world to answer your questions and share your joy and share roots from around the world. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride where ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated until next time here's defining some dirt under your wheels.

This week Craig and Randall continue the discussion on the considerations for Craig's custom gravel frame build. We dig into the history of Reach and Stack, the meaning of BB drop and how different materials afford different options and considerations for construction. Episode sponsor: Therabody RecoveryAir JetBoots Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: In the Dirt #29 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel ride podcast. My name's Craig Dalton. I'm your host. And I'm going to be joined shortly by my cohost Randall Jacobs. In the, in the dirt episodes, Randall and I take an opportunity catch up on everything going on in gravel, cycling. Uh, Everything you need to know in between our long form interviews on the gravel ride podcast This week's broadcast is brought to you by thera body. You may remember thera body from the thera gun massage gun that really revolutionized recovery for gravel cyclists. But this week, we're here to talk to you about something completely next level. We're talking about their body's revolutionary new recovery air jet boots. If you're like me over the years, you've seen these pneumatic compression boots. Underneath pro cyclists after stages of the tour de france or big gravel events and i've always been curious what that experience would be like But every time I looked into them, they seemed not only expensive, but incredibly. Overbuilt, they're attached to sort of something that looked like a car battery. You had wires everywhere. It just seemed overly complicated. As you know, on the podcast, we've been talking about recovery quite a bit lately, and it's driven by my own personal need. I found as, as I get older as an athlete, I just can't recover as quickly. And I need to basically do everything I can to make sure my body's in tip top shape and able to get back out on the bike. So it was super curious when therapy body came out with the recovery air jet boots. It's quite a bit more affordable than the original pneumatic compression boots that were out on the market And in a form factor that can't be beat. Recovery, our jet boots of the world's most advanced pneumatic compression system ever created. For years runners and gravel, cyclists, and everyone who spends hours on their feet. Have had to suffer through leg pains and aches after a hard day. Clinically proven treatments like the compression boots per athletes have always been using, have always been out of reach. Recovery era is a groundbreaking pressure massage system for everybody. Anywhere. With their body's exclusive fast flush technology, recovery air flushes out metabolic waste more fully, and brings back fresh blood to your legs. Three times faster than the speed of competition. Faster cycles means faster recovery. So you don't have to wait for the legs to feel great. There are bodies. Recovery are jet boots are first of its kind. They're truly wireless for anywhere on the go recovery boosting circulation and radically reducing muscle soreness. And thanks to recovery are super intuitive, easy to use one touch controls. Recovering faster as .a breeze. I had a couple of recovery sessions with the jet boots already. And I'm trying to figure out what's the right way to describe it to the listener. You've got an individual boot on each leg that goes all the way up to your upper thigh. As the pneumatic air moves through each boot, you feel your leg kind of compressed tightly, like a nice massage. As it rolls through a process you can set through multiple time sessions, how long you want to be in the product, how long you have for recovery. But I got out of it after a 20 minute session and the legs felt good. So I'm looking forward to doing more punishing rides coming back and getting these jet boots on my body. To find out more, just visit thera body.com/the gravel ride. You can get thera body recovery air today starting at just $699. Or as low as $59 a month with a firm. Plus with recovery, our 60 day money back guarantee and free shipping. There's absolutely no risk to giving it a try at home. Again, that's their body.com/the gravel ride. Would that business out of the way, let's jump into this week's episode [00:03:46] Craig: Hey Randall, how you doing? [00:03:49] Randall: Well, a little bit under the weather here in Boston, but hopefully we'll be recovered before I head out your way in a couple of days. Are you? [00:03:57] Craig: to see you got to get over this cold. [00:03:59] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually hoping to see a lot of or at least a few of our listeners as well. We got Seattle coming up. [00:04:07] Craig: Yeah, that's a good place to start. Yeah, so we're, we're getting we're both of us are going to be at Seattle this year, which is exciting. I think we did sea Otter together two years ago. That's on, [00:04:16] Randall: Two or three years ago. Yeah. Whenever you know, and that, that, that innocent pre COVID era [00:04:23] Craig: That's [00:04:23] Randall: when I was still living in the bay area. [00:04:26] Craig: For the listener that may not be in the region or may not have heard of seawater. It's actually an event that's been going on in the Monterey bay peninsula area since 1991 mountain bike started out at because a mountain bike festival had added on road racing criteriums. They had a cyclocross race at one point observed trials. Like you name it. If it's done on two wheels, they've been doing it at the sea Otter classic for you. [00:04:53] Randall: it's also, become I believe the, the most important trade show in north America with the, you know, with the folding of the M oh, Interbike. Yeah. And in fact I've always felt that it was a much more enjoyable experience than Interbike because you have this kind of festival environment. So people are there. You have general audience general riders who were there to participate in the events and to, you know, meet up with each other and to walk around and see the booze and so much more you know, rider friendly and so on. So I'm excited to get out there. it's been a long time. [00:05:23] Craig: it's also really interesting to me to see the merging of all the different cycling cultures, because you've got a big downhill contingent and dual slalom contingent with their slam seats and 10 inch travel bikes and full face helmets. And then you've got like the Legion criterium squad rolling around doing the CRA you know, the circuit. [00:05:44] Randall: Yeah. and I, I'm not sure. I would imagine the, the UCI cross-country race is still going on there. That was the only time I ever lied up at a, at a UCI level race, which was a cool experience. So you get to see some of the international level pros. [00:05:58] Craig: Yep. Yeah. And it's it's right at the Laguna Saker Raceway. So it, some of the, I think a lot of the courses finish on the car racing, motorcycle racing track, which is kind of a cool. [00:06:09] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:10] Craig: Yeah. And this year they've added this is the kickoff of the lifetime grand Prix, which is a six or eight race series with a $250,000 prize. So I know a lot of professional athletes are sort of jazzed and keying in on this, and it's a, don't need to get into the series and I'll get someone from lifetime on to talk about it. If you haven't heard about it already. But what's interesting to me is they're doing mountain bike racing and gravel racing as part of the same series. So it's really, I, in my mind, ideally pushing athletes to have capabilities in both domains. [00:06:45] Randall: I mean, there does seem to be a very natural kind of merging of these two disciplines in that gravel bikes have gotten evermore capable. And cross-country bikes have actually gotten radically more capable to we've transitioned to down country. Cross country courses have gotten more technical. And so, you know, everything is kind of shifting a little bit. I certainly love the, the Mo the underbite mountain bike experience on the gravel bike. [00:07:07] Craig: they haven't made this rule, but I would kind of love it if they force the athletes to race one bike. So pick your poison, gravel bike on the CrossCountry courses, cross country bike on the gravel courses. You got to decide at the beginning of the season. [00:07:22] Randall: I mean, honestly, I remember I've done seawater twice and I remember one year they had the long course and on the long course, it was only one section that I recall. Even really requiring suspension. And so if I had had a gravel bike at the time, I probably would have crushed it. Everyone was riding flat bar, you know, suspended mountain bikes. And there was this one kind of breaking bump challengers section that I recall. And then the other year they had it such that it went through Laguna Saika like five or six times. They were trying to make it very spectator friendly. And in that case even more so, cause there's just, you know, you're spending so much time on the road that whatever time you lose on that, Slightly Chandra resection. You're more than making up for. [00:08:04] Craig: Yeah, that might've been my jam as well. Cause my Achilles heel was always climbing. I could never climb with the best of them. I'm a decent descender. So yeah, the gravel bike probably would have helped me stay closer to the front of those races. [00:08:16] Randall: so, and you're going to be doing the, the NV sponsored gravel ride on Saturday, right? [00:08:21] Craig: Yeah on Saturday. Yeah. So there's a couple for anybody in attendance. There's a few gravel like casual gravel rides, and there's also a gravel event on Sunday. So definitely bring your bike and enjoy some of that gravel. [00:08:36] Randall: So let's talk about the event that we're getting together. [00:08:39] Craig: Yeah. So we're excited. Yeah. We're going to get together the ridership community and the gravel ride podcast community and the thesis by community, along with our friends over at scratch. So scratch has got a booth and we'll get we'll. We're meeting up over there at 3:00 PM on Saturday, April 9th. [00:08:57] Randall: We'll probably be hanging out there for awhile. So if you can't get there right at three definitely stop by later the day, but we'll have some, some beverages, some music we'll have some special guests, a few athletes. The famed rice cake maker Allen Lim he was on the podcast before, [00:09:11] Craig: That's right. Dr. Alan Lamb, one of his threads of fame is rice cake cooker. [00:09:16] Randall: I think he also has been involved in training some, some elite athletes and he might've started scratch as well, but definitely rice cake makers probably is his biggest claim to fame there. And then we'll have a raffle and an exciting product line. Which I'll just leave it at that. At this point. Anyone who's in the ridership will probably know what I'm talking about here. Cause I've dropped a few hints there. But it'll be really excited to get the, do the first pre-launch reveal of this new line that we've been working on for some time. [00:09:42] Craig: Yeah, I'm excited for you to talk about that publicly as someone who's sort of been in the background, just hearing whispers of what you're doing, and then starting to hear more specifics from you directly. It's super exciting. And like, I appreciate how much you put into the space and how. I thought you put into these products that you bring to the world. [00:10:01] Randall: Thanks bud. Yeah. and I definitely feel grateful to have kind of the one, like the supportive a community. They provided an immense amount of very useful feedback in, in the development and validation process. And then also just really great team and business partners. And so on that we've been co-developing this with so more on this in future episodes. We'll do a one-on-one episode where we nerd out about how things are developed. But Yeah. come visit us at three o'clock on Saturday at the scratch labs with [00:10:29] Craig: Super excited to run into any listeners and ridership members out there really like it's I feel like it's been a long time coming for us to do a little get together and hopefully if trends continue, we can start doing some of the ridership group rides around the world. [00:10:44] Randall: Exactly. Yeah I'll be starting some in the new England area and I'm looking forward to flying out again to the bay area, to do a big event with you. Maybe sometime. [00:10:53] Craig: Yeah, that [00:10:53] Randall: Right around Mount mountain, where we used to ride together so much. [00:10:56] Craig: A hundred percent. So the last episode in the dirt, we were talking very specifically about a new custom bike project that I've been working on for the listener. Just to bring you up to speed. I got to fit in January and it's just started to highlight some of the things. Some of the challenges I've been having with my boss. In riding the bike, and this is not something new I've I sort of experienced this early on in my cycling career. And at one point I had a custom Brent Steelman road bike made for me. He's a pretty storied Northern California builder, probably best known for his cyclocross work. But anyway, I had the custom bike experience, but it was, it was kind of. At that time, the one thing that nagged me and I realize now that this is sort of not the right way to even be thinking about this particular problem, but every road bike I ever got in front of what's a 56, 56. So 56 CT of 56, top two. And the one thing that felt to me like it didn't fit well. Was that 56 top tube. So I said, Do whatever you want. I just want a 55 centimeter talked to, and it did solve the problem to a degree, but it wasn't really the solution to the problem, but it did feel amazing to get on that bike for the first time. [00:12:12] Randall: When you also kind of hearkening back to the days when, when we talked about, you know, seat tubes and top tubes as a primary you know, driver of, of frame fit, because they were always coming in at roughly the same angles versus nowadays they're coming in at all different sorts of angles with compact geos and so on. So, but the gist of like your bike was too long, you're, you're a pretty leggy guy. [00:12:34] Craig: So that's, that's really interesting. You say that. So was it not, not the fact that I'm a lucky guy and thanks for noticing that, but more about the sort of, are you saying the story of that geometry back in that era or where the tubes were coming in there just wasn't a lot of variability. So the concepts of stack and reach weren't necessarily in bike design for an Acular. [00:12:56] Randall: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So you'd generally the top tube would be, you know, relatively. And then, you know, at some point you started seeing more compact geos where that top tube is sloped and that had various various benefits in terms of stand over height and you know, potentially, you know, frame stiffness and so on. But it also meant that, you know, your seat tube and your top tube were not really particularly good proxies for how the bike would fit. And so we need a new proxy and that's where stacking reach came into play. [00:13:22] Craig: Okay. Yeah. And I mean, you can imagine like, obviously like with mountain bikes, having super slipping top tubes and all kinds of things like that, but stacking reach, like you had to come up with some sort of measurement that people could hang their hat on. [00:13:35] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So with the bike that, where we've designed for you now, I mean, you have, remind me you're just 5, 9, 5, 10. [00:13:44] Craig: Yeah. Just five, nine and a half. [00:13:46] Randall: Five nine and a half, and I'm five 11 and you and I run the same satellite and I run a pretty high and forward satellite too. And so you were on the medium our, our medium, I ride our, our large OB one. And one of the things that you, that, you know, I always noticed with you is you always had your, your stem. As high as possible and flipped upward and so on. And so this new build is going to really address, you know, first and foremost is stack issues. You've won a higher bar for some time. [00:14:13] Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that, that was the most sort of visceral. The thing I had after this fit. And it's something that was very, it was known to me and my body. Like I've, I've lost flexibility. I never had a ton of flexibility. And the fitter said, well, you've, you know, the position of your saddle height versus your bar height is that of a pro tour road cyclist. And I had this like, The eight millimeter drop or something, and he's like, we really want to get you more around four. So it was, it was interesting. And I encourage people to go back to episode 28, if you're interested. And I don't purport to believe that you care about my personal fit, but I'm trying to eat this out with Randall and both these two episodes, just to give the listener something to think about as they go forward in their cycling career, because there's, there's tons of things you can do around your existing bike to modify them. I came to some limitations because I'd already configured my thesis. I'd already cut the steer to buy the fork. I couldn't bring the bars up any further unless I had an obnoxious, jacked up stem. So I came to the conclusion. Hey, given this opportunity, why don't we, why don't I look at fabricating a bike specific to my needs? So we had episode 28, which is the last in the dirt episode, and we talked a little bit about bike geo calculator, and it was pretty easy. Like it's a great tool. And I saw lines where the new frame would be an and I looked at that, that stack height and the higher head tube, and I was like, great, this is going to fit. But then as we worked with the building, And got into CAD. There was all these things that have just taken a lot of time to muddle through. And part of it is fabricating with metal versus carbon. Part of it is like things that, all things aren't equal. You really have to think about what, what is your north star in the fit and work around that versus what is any particular tube length or dimension? [00:16:12] Randall: And then you have parts availability, right? So you want to achieve something, but the, you can't find a part that allows you to achieve it, even though it exists, it doesn't exist in the timeframe that you need it. [00:16:22] Craig: Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. So I mean, a couple of the areas we've been keying in on, I mentioned, I think in the last episode, like I had this desire to be able to accommodate as big attire as possible. But then when, when you talk about the practicality of welding, the rear end, all of a sudden, a bunch of things come into play because you can have a really long stay to accommodate that. But I didn't really want a really long stay. I've been pretty darn comfortable on my last two bikes with a 420 20 millimeter seat stay. And like the idea of going out to 4 45 or something like that, just didn't sit well with me. [00:17:01] Randall: Yeah. For 20 chains day and yeah, and it just makes it so that the, the front end doesn't want to come up as much. It, you know, it slows the handling. It's a longer wheel base. But you know, it's appropriate to go. It can be appropriate to go longer for more of a dirt focus machine versus a, a, a one bike that is also being asked to be a spirited road bike. That's kind of the direction that we went with this thing. [00:17:23] Craig: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Like there comes a decision point in any gravel cyclist's life when you're purchasing a new book. To just think about like, where do you fall on that spectrum? And when I look at the writing, when I look at what I was conceiving of with my thesis, it's like, I want something that's Zippy on the road and super capable off-road, but can kind of slot that ground between. But the reality is, you know, my writing is 95% off road. [00:17:52] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you already have a thesis that you're you've. So this isn't adding to your stable. [00:17:59] Craig: Exactly the thesis isn't going anywhere. So while this bike may, the new bike may rarely get road tires on it. The thesis will have both road. And I still think that thesis is an amazing, like race, bike, and it's been so good for me. It's so capable. I'm excited to have, I mean, it's just an absolute luxury to be able to have two bikes and like in the garage, [00:18:19] Randall: Yeah. but the, the added capability of this new machine is, is definitely going to be you know, meaningful like that extra tire clearance. So maybe we start there. So this tire clearance for like full tire clearance. So at least six millimeters all around for 60, 50 by two points. Front and rear, and you could probably squeeze something a little bit bigger upfront. We were fortunate in that we were able to find a fork that had the offset that we wanted specifically. We reached out to dry broom and over it open cycle and he had some U-turn forks kicking around. So that's a 50 mil offset and also a 3 95 axle, the crown. So just throwing numbers out there. What does this mean, Zack? So the CR offset is. Basically the distance from the axle from the, the line that goes through the steer tube. So it's going to be offset, you know, the axle is offset forward from that, and more offset is going to make the steering more responsive, but it's also going to increase your, your front center, the bottom bracket to the front axle to reduce risk of total. And that was, that was a concern, given that your you're wanting a shorter bike, that's fitting bigger 700 seat tires. [00:19:32] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And it also, so that does wheelbase come into play with those dimensions as well? The overall wheel base. [00:19:38] Randall: Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, the, the well, so with the offset, so we had the increased offset which. With the same head angle, as you increase offset, it's going to decrease trail and you know, the, the less trail you have, the snappier, the handling is that in turn allowed us to slack it out the head angle a little bit without radically slowing down the handling. So we went from a 72 degree head angle on your thesis, which is more of a, like an endurance road in a more kind of racy. Gravel front-end to a 71.2, which is still actually on the sportier side especially for this new class of gravel bikes that have seemingly gone towards, you know, even slacker even longer. And overall we got the, the front center up, you know, 18 millimeters. And so those. Taller 700 C tires that you might run are not going to be an, an issue for you in terms of tow overlap. You're also going with 2.5 millimeter shorter cranks, which helps as well. And that, that opened up another opportunity with the bottom bracket height. [00:20:42] Craig: Yeah. So before we get into BB height, you know, it was interesting. Really digging into the forks situation. Again, a lot of times you're bike. Well, all the time your bike comes with a fork and you don't really think about all these things, but once we were looking at, Hey, what fork partner can we bring into the mix? All of a sudden, a lot of variables came into play in terms of like the rake of the bike or the rank of the fork, like all of these different things. We started having to consider. And what was the effect on tau overlap? What was the effect on like what ties size tire are they designed on accommodating? So is it really like, I don't know, a sink of like a week to figure out a, what do we want? And B who actually manufacturers a fork that has those correct dementia. [00:21:29] Randall: And that we can get in a reasonable timeframe. [00:21:31] Craig: yeah. And then to, to further that, you know, everybody knows I'm suspension curious, I've got one bike in the garage right now with the front suspension fork on it, from my friends at RockShox. And I do imagine playing around with that, on this bike, but as we've spoken about previously, probably in an, in the dirt episode, and certainly when I dug into it with our friends at rock shock and Schramm, you know, if you put one of these suspension forks on the bike, it's going to bring the entire bike up because that 30 to 40 millimeters of travel has got to come from somewhere. So we had to think through, okay, if we have a 3 95 axle, the crown length of the rigid. What happens when that's four 20. [00:22:14] Randall: Yeah. Or 4 25 in the case of the RockShox fork. And then they have two different offsets. And what we came to is, well, You know, that 30 millimeter of difference means that your front end is going to come up. Right. And so to get the same exact position, you'd have to, you know, shift your saddle forward and you would have to, you know, adjust your stem height and so on. Or you could just make it so that you know, your, your position. In with the rigid fork is a little bit more aggressive. And then you're just, you know, allowing that, that slightly more you know, lean back position, slightly more upright position when you have the fork and in terms of the handling characteristics and so on, they actually change the position. Characteristics change in a way that is appropriate for a bike, with the added capability of a short travel suspension fork. And so it's, it's kind of, you know, not really a problem. And we ha we don't have a, an adjustable suspension, sorry. We don't have an adjustable geometry with that rigid fork, which is something I'm a big fan of, but we're getting adjustable geo with the swapping of the forks in your case. And we designed accordingly. [00:23:20] Craig: Yeah, it's super interesting. And going back to my conversation with Chris Mandel from SRE. He said the same thing. Like it was, it was really early on. They had literally just launched that FOC that fork. And I was able to spend some time on it before the launch. And he said, you know, I put this on a bike that wasn't specifically geo corrected, but I felt like it was okay. He's like I've spent months and months and months on this thing. And it just modified the geometry in a way that made sense for the new way that I was going to be riding the bike with a suspension for. [00:23:52] Randall: Yeah. And you know, you, it is useful if you're considering adding a suspension fork to your existing bike, to say, throw it, throw it in a tool like bike geo calc. So take your current geometry for your bike and put it into that, that tool and then set the settings so that the frame rotates when you change the axle, the crown and it'll tell you how the other parameters change and that can also inf not only inform you in terms of how. How the geo would change, but then also how the handling might change, which would help you decide, say what fork offset you want, because you know, RockShox offers two different offsets on those forks. [00:24:27] Craig: Yep. Yeah. And I'll have plenty of room on the steer tube, as well as the ability to flip my stem, to make adjustments accommodating that, to get the position. Right. And again, just make, make that, that Delta between 3 95 and 4 25. Feel the slider than it actually is. [00:24:48] Randall: Well, and it's, it's small enough where I do think that it's quite likely that you can get a slightly more aggressive, but still upright position with a rigid fork and then a slightly less aggressive, more upright position with the suspension fork that, you know, feels good in both of those different applications and feels appropriate for those. So I don't suspect that you're going it's. I don't think it's highly likely that you're going to need to move around much. And this actually gets into a conversation I'm looking forward to having with Lee McCormick at some point when we bring them on the podcast, which is, you know, talking about how, you know, we've talked about stack and reach and how these are really important measurements for determining fit. But it in turn in as a rider, like the big thing that matters is like the distance from your crank spindle to where your hand. And then you have an, you know, an anchor, so that high pot news between, you know, the, the stack figure to the grips and the reach figure to the grips, the high pot news is actually the, the, the pure number. And then the angle associated with that that high pot news. But that, that the length of that hypotony is actually shouldn't change from bike to bike. So whether it's a road bike or a mountain biker, so on, it should be consistent. And then it's the angle of that that. From bike to bike. And so if you think about, you know, the front end coming up well, that, that, that distance is staying the same. It's just the angle. That's increasing a little bit. [00:26:08] Craig: Right. Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, I love, I love most of my bikes are set up identically, so that basically, if I have my eyes closed, I know exactly where to fall and hit the bar. And it's so great that my like mountain bike and rode by can feel like that same position. [00:26:25] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. And even better, if you can get, say the same crank lengths on the bikes, the same, you know, pedal positioning, you know, stance in the, like on the bikes. [00:26:35] Craig: Yeah. I'm sure I'm a little bit a field from that, but this is the most bike geekery by the way that I've ever gone through. And it's, I mean, part of it's been driving me mad cause I really want to consummate this Ram and say the design's done. And I do think like if, if we're not at the finish line today, we're in the, we're in the final sprint, we've seen the and where we're coming to the finish line. Thank God. But a couple of other things I wanted to just quiz you on before we get to that point. So there was also the question about BB drop and it was another one that was like BB drop. I've never thought about that. Just allowed the frame of the production frame, builder to think about that. But now that we have to consider it and we could do whatever we wanted, let's talk about the movement on that. And what's the rationale and just, what's the takeaway for the listener at Ron BB drop. [00:27:28] Randall: Yeah. So Bebe, you can think of BB drop as you have the, the vertical distance between the height of the axles and the height of the bottom bracket. The center of the bottom bracket spindle. So the bottom bracket spindle is going to be below the two axles, right? And the greater the more below the two axles it is you know, ceteris paribus, the more stable the bike is going to be the more sitting into the bike. You're going to be. [00:27:54] Craig: to sort of visualize that if I'm, if I'm sort of the listener and I'm thinking about my bike, I've got my two axles on my wheels. And I'm thinking about how far below that axle line, the bottom bracket sits. [00:28:06] Randall: Exactly. Exactly. And So, with like old schools, cyclocross geometries, the bottom, the BB drop tended to be pretty high, you know, 65 versus a, you know, your thesis will be one to 73. And your OB one only accommodates up to a 700 by 40 tire, but it's really optimized around 700 by 30 and 60 50 by 47, which is like a 700 by 28. And so, you know, it's, there's, it's you get more stability, but there's greater risk of pedal strikes as you drop the baby. Now with your new bike, you know, we started with your, your thesis as like a starting point. Cause he really liked that geometry and we saw, well, you're going to be optimizing this bike for running with bigger and thus taller tires, a bigger radius from the center of the, the axle to the outside of the tire. And so you can you can drop the BB further and get that added stability without increasing risk of pedal strikes. And in fact we also went with a 2.5 millimeters shorter crank. And so you're actually going to have more clearance above the ground with those bigger tires, even though we dropped the BB down to improve stability. So you know, that that was kind of a very natural thing. And you see this trend in general on this newer slate of gravel bikes that are being optimized for higher volume 700 tires versus the more one bike type bikes like the thesis or the the Sabelo Sparrow. That are designed to be used effectively with road, you know, seven up to 700 by 30, which is, you know, a smaller radius [00:29:37] Craig: So, does it feel like you're sort of sitting more in the bike when you have more BB drop? [00:29:42] Randall: exactly. Versus on top of it. [00:29:44] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you were saying about cyclocross bikes having a 65 millimeter drop, presumably that's because they're doing a lot of things that require clearance, bunny hopping barriers and things like that. [00:29:57] Randall: Yeah. Concerns about, you know, pedal strikes, essentially as they're going over different obstacles though, even those bikes with the advent of gravel, you've seen those bottom brackets come down because there's no reason. I mean, I would argue there's no reason to have a dedicated cyclocross bike, unless you're, I mean, even if you're an elite cyclocross athlete, you can still ride on take this specialized crux as an example, that bike fits six 50 by 40. Right. So it's not constrained to the 700 by what, 33, that the UCI maxes out cyclocross tires for. So even that bike is, is, is really a gravel bike that, that people are, are using in that discipline. So it doesn't need a dedicated bike anymore. So those are the days of high bottom brackets is have thankfully gone away [00:30:45] Craig: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yep. Certainly no reason for the average athlete to own a dedicated cyclocross bike. If you've got a gravel bike in the closet, [00:30:53] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. [00:30:55] Craig: the other thing we had to consider was just cable routing as well. And again, this is like, Maybe on a carbon bike, you make a couple ports and you know how to seal them pretty easily. And if you use them, you use them. If you don't, you don't. But when you're talking about a metal bike, all of a sudden you you've got okay, either I'm going to externally route everything, which I don't like the look of, and that seems old school, or I'm going to actually have to drill and sort of weld holes into various parts of the frame. And that was again, Another consideration. Well, what, what am I going to do? Am I going to commit to wireless? Which is like a very viable option these days? Or am I going to get, you know, have four different ports drilled into this frame? And I opted to go the wireless route. [00:31:44] Randall: Yeah. And I think that that was a smart way to go. The, you know, especially if you're already going the, you already kind of, unless you're going to do external cabling, internal cabling on say like a steel or titanium bike. Is going to be such that, like, you're going to have some sharp angles going through the frame, especially, you know, where that down tube is meeting the bottom bracket shell, you know, you don't have these big, these big tubes and these big open spaces, like you can mold into a carbon frame. And so there's going to be sharp angles. There's going to be sharp surfaces that need to be machined. It's just harder to do. It's really hard to do good, clean mechanical routing internally through a metal frame, unless it's say something like a specialized, smart weld aluminum frame where they're hydro-forming those, those tubes to get a more carbon shape. [00:32:35] Craig: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And when you consider adding in, which was a necessity for me, a dropper post yet another whole, yet more routing. So yeah, I'm committing to going full wireless, including the dropper. On this bike. So I'll, I'll just have the rear brake cable routed through the frame and that's it. [00:32:54] Randall: Yeah. I think too, that's going to, I mean, given that this is your adventure bike it's just that much less to deal with as well when you're taking the bike apart to throw in your case to bring on a plane. So I think that wireless can make sense. Just bring an extra battery. [00:33:09] Craig: Yeah, a hundred percent. My my contact at SRAM, I went riding with him on Tam gosh, probably four or five months ago at this point. And his battery ran out, but he keeps a spare in his seat bag. [00:33:23] Randall: Yeah. And if you're going with a one by set up too, like you have those two coin cells, which are very lightweight and the leavers. So if one of them dies, he still got the other one. You could swap it over. [00:33:32] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. The cool thing about their RockShox C posts is that you can steal the battery pack from there and use it in your derailer if you need to, because they're all, they're all changeable not to, not to have [00:33:44] Randall: they have to make, well, then you have to make the difficult decision of like, do I care about gearing or the dropper post more? I guess it depends on the terrain. There are some cases where I would, I would sacrifice the derail, your battery to keep the dropper post going. [00:33:57] Craig: Yeah. who knows if I was at the top of Tam, you know, if I was riding up, switch the battery to have gears on the way up and then switch it to the dropper on the way to. [00:34:06] Randall: Yeah. [00:34:09] Craig: I love it. You just made me think about, I literally just packed my thesis in my post carry bag for an air flight tomorrow. And there's always a little bit of Jenga with the cables to kind of move everything around and get it in their bag. So well-designed and fortunately with my these medium thesis, I can just slam the seat. I don't even have to take the seed out and get it all in that bag. Hopefully continue to allude all airline fee. [00:34:36] Randall: Excellent. I'm [00:34:38] Craig: you for walking me. Yeah, no, I think we've covered a good deal about the frame between this episode and the last episode. And again, I hope this conversation gives you a little bit of inside baseball about how frames are designed. If. Looking to get accustomed frame done. It's important to have a builder who's willing to work with you. And in my case, just being someone who's just not in the weeds on all these minute dimensions and angles, just someone who's patient and will walk you through what needs to be done. I'm lucky to have both the builder and Randall to help me out. [00:35:13] Randall: Yeah, it's it definitely you know, the value of working with a good bow builder in, in significant part comes on the front end and really trying to dial exactly what you want and, And you know, having that output down the other end. So. [00:35:28] Craig: as I, as I think about your journey with thesis and the idea of designing, was it five frame sizes? [00:35:35] Randall: Well, so in our case, we went with we went with an open, we went with an open mold frame and then made modifications from there. So we use the existing tooling. So we were fortunate to be able to find a frame with, you know, the vast majority of the features we wanted and the exact geometry we wanted. And then we added the features and reinforcements from there. So with the next gen frame beginning development of this is this is a ways out that'll be a full ground up exercise. [00:36:03] Craig: Yeah. it's just, I imagine it's so challenging to sort of figure out the sizes. Obviously you're matching what the market trends are in terms of how the bikes are performing and what they're intended for, but just like the basics around stack and reach to try to find those sweet spots, to make sure with the limited amount of customability customizability, I E you know, you're stem lab. The your stack above the head tube making that fit as many people as possible. It's just seems to be a challenge. [00:36:35] Randall: Yeah, And it's, it's even more so with a material like carbon where you're, you know, essentially you're, you're creating these molds that are quite expensive. And then that's set in stone. If you want to evolve your metal, a tube to tube constructed frames, geometry over time. You know that that's it. You just change the jig and you change the mitering specifications and you're good to go. Carbon it's a whole new tool, so you better get it right out the gate. [00:37:01] Craig: so true. Well, thanks for all the time, my friend, this coming weekend, hopefully I know I'll be seeing you and hopefully we'll be seeing a bunch of listeners over there at at [00:37:11] Randall: sea Otter three o'clock on Saturday at the scratch labs booth. [00:37:15] Craig: Yeah, we'll see you there. [00:37:17] Randall: All right. Hope to see some folks there. [00:37:19] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of in the dirt, from the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for spending a little bit of your week with us. If you're going to be at CR definitely come find us at the scratch labs booth at 3:00 PM on Saturday. Huge. Thanks to thera body for sponsoring this episode, please visit thera body.com/the gravel ride for that special offer around the recovery air.Jet boots. If you have any feedback for Randall or myself, feel free to visit us at the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast, please head over to buy me a coffee.com/the gravel ride. Until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels

Sean: What would be some words that you would want to give to these business owners who are not only frustrated at the government, at some of their people, maybe at their business, but are also in a desperate and depressing situation right now? Craig: Yeah, it's a great question, and I'll take myself back to that situation in the global financial crisis. So I went 18 months where my lunch was a bread roll and salad that my wife made, it was probably worth less than $1. And I did that for 18 months, and during that time I made some decisions. So the key bit of advice here is, you are at a crossroads in your life where you are required to make some decisions. Are you going to continue to bang your head against the wall like this for however long? Or are you going to make a decision to make a change in your life? Craig: The decision might be "Ok, this is now I've made my decision that I'm going to move forward and what I need to do. There is a need to grow and evolve. I need to build my mindset. I need to build my skill set. I need to find an opportunity that will allow me to fulfill my true potential.” So low cost, low risk and limited potential opportunity which is what I've done in the Philippines. I used to run events in Makati for thousands and thousands of people would turn out when I would turn up in there. So budgetary wise a low-risk, low-cost opportunity, could be as much as two hundred dollars. And then you get a website and a product and a, you know, this something to help you work. Yes, some business tools, et cetera, that could be the thing. Craig: But the point is if you keep taking the same skills, the same mindset, the same attitude in the next ten years when the next pandemic comes along with the next global financial crisis comes along, and the next lockdowns, and the next whatever. If you haven't made the change today, you're going to be in the same position again back then. Craig: So the point is you need to make a decision. Life won't bless you if you don't bless yourself. I think it's good as 'if it is to be, it is up to me.' You know, the 10 two letter words that I heard in my grade 10. When I was leaving Grade 10, I left home from there and it was, the principal said. 'If it is to be, it is up to me. Now go and spread your wings and go and make something of your life. And from that point on, I've made something of my life. Craig: Your business might be salvageable. You might be passionate about it. I'm not saying you have to quit your business. It might be something temporary and then you can soar like an eagle, but you might if you're in that situation where you go, you know, even if everything opens up, this is a dying industry or I'm not passionate about it or I'm not making enough money out of it, or, you know, it doesn't give me the lifestyle that I want to leave. You know, they're the reasons that this injunction in life should lead you in a new direction. Craig: I feel that I'm leaving into a new direction myself, again get it to innovate and evolve and what I say to people, what I'm building now is going to make quantum leaps of speed this time. You know, I went up in exponential. Next time is going to be quantum leaps, for sure. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Sean: One of the things that asked the most, especially in my live events or on my AMA's online, is how do I ask mentors for their time? How do I ask them to mentor me? When you mentioned investing in meaningful relationships, it's kind of like the same approach, right? Where you go to a person, just hit them up. What are your thoughts on that? How do you do it? Yeah. Craig: Look, I'll share a quick story with your audience. It's probably the biggest lesson that changed my life. It's how I got my first mentor, and it happened through extreme gratitude and generosity. Now, what happened there? Like, a lot of people, do things with this "I'll do this for you if you do this for me," type of expectation and that can work. And I'm not against that. But what happened to me when I started off my business career, I was approached by a professional basketball team. They're on TV every week, and I said, Hey, would you be interested in sponsoring me? And again, business alchemy comes out of me. Then I said, Well, I don't really have the money to be a sponsor, but if you have a raffle, maybe I can give you 10-12 months' memberships, which were about fifteen hundred dollars each, and you can raffle and make fifteen thousand dollars. How would that go? And I would be extremely grateful.” Craig: So what happened there was the time went on a lady comes in. She was a player's wife and she goes, "Oh, thank you for the twelve months membership. I'm going to give you basketball tickets to watch my husband play this week." And I put the eight basketball tickets in my drawer. Now, a week goes by and a young family comes into my gym, they love the gym and they're all signing up.  Craig: And I just pull the basketball tickets out and I give it to the family now that I didn't know who they were or anything. But what happened was this guy was a really, really highly successful businessman and he comes back into my gym on Monday and he says, "Craig, that was extremely generous of you. We've got a corporate box at the football. You know, the where you get 50000 people into the games to network with like twelve guests. You can be my guest this way." Now, this guy is not only a dear friend of mine, but he took me under his wing as a twenty-two-year-old. He taught me how to invest in property. He taught me how to, which is where I made my most money now. He taught me how to navigate finance through the global financial crisis. He's helped me when I've invested in private companies. For the last 20 years, he's been a constant go-to person for me. Now, if I didn't use those basketball tickets, who's to say that he would have ever invited me to his corporate box the next day. Craig: The point is, sometimes to get your foot in the door, you nearly need to go over and above the call of duty to get in front of that person. And now last year, I interviewed people like Dr. John Demartini, Michael Lane, who's the founder of Success Resources, who's running events with Tony Robbins, the biggest business coach in the world Brad Childers with over a thousand franchises, you know, guys that were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Craig: Just one thing, too. Like, I read about this in my book as well, if you want to grow and evolve to be the best version of yourself, the thing that you need to do is continue to increase your human capital. And what I mean by that is to join groups with people that are doing something a bit better than you and they can help you rise up. But when you start rising up, one of the best things that you can do is reach down and help pull someone out.  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack

Craig Curelop is an author and the co-founder of The FI Team, a group that focuses on helping people attain financial independence through real estate investing. In 2017, Craig took a 50% pay cut to move to Denver to work with bigger Pockets and begin his house-hacking journey. Craig achieved financial independence in about 2 years, climbing over a mountain of student debt on the way. When it comes to house hacking Craig is the guy you want to learn from.  In this episode, we cover what house hacking is, how to do it, and what it takes -- Just enough to inspire to jump into this powerful investment strategy.    Check out Craig's book here: https://store.biggerpockets.com/products/the-house-hacking-strategy Craig is @thefiguy on Instagram and Tic-Tok --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum. And today with us I have with me Craig Curelop who is an author, real estate investor, former BiggerPockets employee, and Craig's gonna be talking to us today about House hacking, how he did it, how you can do it too. And all the benefits it's afforded him over time. So let's get into it.   Craig Curelop, thanks so much for taking the time and joining me today. Man, I really appreciate you hanging out.   Craig: Yeah. Thanks, Michael, so much for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here.   Michael: Awesome. So today, I want to talk to you about House hacking. And I think you are one of the best versed people in the subject. And so for anyone who doesn't know you your story, can you give us a little bit of background on who you are? And kind of what you've done with your house hacks?   Craig: Yeah, for sure. So let's see, we can go back to I guess, 2016 When I absolutely hated my job, right? So.   Michael: Like so many   Craig: Like, Yeah, I think if you're listening to this podcast, you probably hated your job. At some point. If you're on the track toward financial independence, you felt some sort of pain from your job, right? Well, I felt a ton of pain. And I was like, Okay, how the heck do I get out of this? And I kind of fell into the financial independence community. But really, I found real estate investing first. I found it through. I found the idea of passive income through Tim Ferriss book. And then I found the idea of real estate investing through a friend who then introduced me to bigger pockets. And then I went down the rabbit hole of bigger pockets.   Michael: It's such a deep rabbit hole,   Craig: Oh its…  and you can't climb back out of it. Right. Yeah. And so you know, for months and months, I would be like listening to webinars, watching the podcasts and reading the books and all that stuff, just educated myself. And then in 2017, is when I actually moved from Silicon Valley to Denver to work at bigger pockets, which was like a dream come true. But then also start my real estate investing career.   Michael: Okay, that's awesome. So you moved. Were you? Did you give up a California Silicon Valley salary to take a pay cut to move to Denver?   Craig: Yeah. So all in, you know, if you include like the 401k match and all that stuff, I was making about 115-$120,000 a year in Silicon Valley. I accepted a job at bigger pockets for $65,000 a year.   Michael: Wow.   Craig: Almost a half a pay cut.   Michael: Okay. And then so then bring us up to speed. So you're working at bigger pockets, you got introduced to real estate investing. What next?   Craig: Yeah, so 2017. You know, it took me two months, working on bigger pockets to then buy a property in Denver. The property I purchased was just a mile and a half from the office. So like and walkable. It was a duplex that was totally finished. Right. You hear a lot of people in real estate podcasts be like, Oh, you got to like find the sweat equity and find the thing that needs work. Buy rehab, no, like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, no in a house hack. That is not what you want to do. You want to buy something that's turnkey, so you can move in and get it rented, ASAP. Because otherwise you're going to be paying for rehab. You're not going to get tenants. And the whole name of the game of house hacking is exactly one year later. You want to take what you saved and buy your next house hack, right. And so if you're doing a rehab and not collecting rent, you're taking away from the next next down payment.   Michael: Okay,   Craig: So that was my strategy for kind of getting some of this relatively turnkey now. So it was a duplex top bottom, one bed, one bath each unit, I was determined to make this thing cashflow, and live for free. So I purchased it for 385,000 I lived in the bottom rented out the top my mortgage payment was $2,000 a month. I was getting 1750 For the top so I wasn't quite getting it.   Michael: Start digging in couch cushions.   Craig: Yeah, that's right i mean living in this is maybe some you know, tapped into some of the my experience in Silicon Valley. I put up a futon in the living room and slept behind this curtain in room divider like cardboard box room divider thing. Slept behind that for a year while Airbnbing out my bedroom. So now that property was making me I was making $1,100 a month from the Airbnb on average. So 2850 in total rent a month $2,000 mortgage so I was making like 850 over the mortgage after reserves maybe like 600 or so. And I was living for free. Right and so   Michael: Amazing.   Craig: Yeah, that was my you know, my first story and I wanted out I want to be financially dependent, so bad that I really would do anything for it. And as at the time I was a 24 year old single guy All day, like take advantage of your situations, right?   Michael: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, looking in hindsight in the rearview mirror, I mean, is there anything you would have done differently on that first one are you like now I pretty much nailed it. Because it sounds like a home run.   Craig: Yeah. So I bought I got lucky, right? I bought in a really good area that I didn't know was that good. And you know, that $385,000 property is probably worth close to 600,000. Now, it's not over that. So and that misses, you know, we're talking four years later, four and a half years later. So like massive increase, right. But I got lucky there. And so had I know, I know now, I probably would have done a rent by the room situation, which is kind of what I did going forward after that. So I would buy a house in the suburbs, right a five bed two bath a five bed three bath live in one bedroom actually have my own private space with like a bed and a window and a closet and   Michael: Not just a curtain and a futon?   Craig: Not just a curtain, a futon, yeah. Right. And then I rent out the other rooms, they actually cashflow better, then, than the duplex did. I slept in a better place. The only downside about these suburban places is you don't get the same appreciation. So in a way, I'm happy because I got really good appreciation on this place. But, you know, at that time, I was like, Oh, you don't bank on appreciation.   Michael: So right, right. Okay, so in the rent by the room? Are you doing short term or long term rentals by the room or both? Craig: So we do long term rentals, six to 12 month leases, typically. But you can take it on a case by case basis. And just because I do a super 12 month lease doesn't mean you have to. I know plenty of people that do months a month, some people do it furnished, kind of like you know, three to six month lease on furnish finder. There's a million ways to do it. So there's not one right way. But I just liked the idea of get somebody in don't worry about it for another year.   Michael: Yeah, totally. And are you managing all the leases and the tenants and the relationships and all that sort of thing? Or do you have a property manager handle it for you?   Craig: At the time that I purchased that property? You know, this is 2018 I purchased my first rent by the room, I did do it myself, but I have since moved to property management and I no longer do it.   Michael: Okay, even when you're living in those properties, use a property manager or is this now once you move out, now you outsource the property management.   Craig: No even when I live in there, now I do the property management, right. So that's the luxury of having more real estate and getting more passive income. Right. It's that toasts things you don't like to do you just outsource because they can do better than you and you won't be doing it. So   Michael: Yeah. Have you ever seen that show Silicon Valley speaking?   Craig: I have seen that show. Yeah, not the whole thing. But I've seen probably two or three seasons.   Michael: That's what I picture you like you're like the Erlik Bachman character having all these other roommates.   Craig: Take like 20% equity of the company.   Michael: Startup incubator.   Craig: Yeah not a bad idea.   Michael: Yeah. So good. So So getting back to that first one, did you buy it very traditionally with 20%? Down? Are you were using like an FHA loan? How did you get into it? Cuz I think that's the biggest hurdle for so many new investors is this downpayment piece.   Craig: Yeah. So when I was back in 2017, when I bought my first one, the only way to do it with an FHA loan, right, like, and that's not really true. It's just the only way that I knew how to do it. And the only way that was kind of popularized. Okay, so the only way to house hack that I knew of was you buy a duplex, triplex or quad, live in one unit rent out the others. That's why the single family wasn't really on my radar. So because of that, I had to do a 3.5% down FHA loan on that first one.   Michael: Okay. Awesome. And now, knowing what you know, now, I mean, what tools you find at your disposal and your tool belt to, to get into properties?   Craig: Yeah, so I recommend if you're going to do you know, depends on your market and whatnot, but in Denver, duplexes, and triplexes. And quads are really hard to cash flow. So I really like doing the single family homes on single family homes, you can do 5%, down conventional, and what the great thing about that is, is you can have pretty much as many conventional loans as you want. And the limit is like 10, but you know, it's not one with FHA loan is just one, right. So in order to get that FHA loan back, you'd have to refinance. And it's sometimes it's hard to refinance. Because if you put in 3.5%, down, you have to refinance, such that you can pull 25% out, loan to value have to be 75%. And so I was fortunate in that property and appreciate it like crazy. I have refinanced that one, I do have my FHA loan back in my pocket now, but again, right, like in 2017, I didn't know where we'd be in 2021.   Michael: Right, right. Okay. And so just taking a total step back, I'm realizing that many people might not even know what a house hack is, give us your definition of what a house hack is.   Craig: Yeah, so the house hack house hack is the idea that you purchase a one to four unit property with a low percent down, typically 0% to 5% down, you those if you have a zero to 5% down, you're required to live there for one year. So you move in you live there for one year, and while you're living there, you're renting out the other rooms or the other units, and that rent is covering your mortgage and you're either living for free or drastically reducing your living expense, while purchasing and owning property. And you can do this every single year systematically. So you build up a decent portfolio for yourself.   Michael: That's awesome. So Craig, do you think it's the best place to start? Or could you house hack even after you have a pretty sizable portfolio?   Craig: I mean, you can have a sec anytime, right? I think it is absolutely the best place to start. Because in frankly, it's really good. Because you really can't have a better return on your 20 or $30,000. Right? Because you're you're you're purchasing, I can purchase a $500,000 property for 30. Grand, right? Between if that appreciates just 10% $50,000. Right, that's 100% return right there, that doesn't include the cash flow, the loan pay down and all the tax benefits that you get so.   So we're seeing like, we help a lot of people get into housefax. And I've done quite a few myself, and every single one has 100% or more total return on investment.   Michael: That's so good.   Craig: If you've got right, like, it's not it, I think it can be for everybody. But like, if you're Elon Musk, or Bill Gates, like, do you think they care about putting $20,000 down? Right, like they can't be bothered, right? So there are people that you know, if your net worth is in, you know, 10s of millions of dollars, then like, you know, you probably don't care, and you're probably well off enough where you don't need to buy either $20,000 or $30,000, you'd probably rather, you know, spend 300,000 or $500,000 to put your money somewhere a little bit more efficiently.   Michael: Okay. Love it. Love it. So Craig, have you now purchased traditional rentals in the traditional sense, like just pure rentals without having ever lived there?   Craig: Yeah, yep. So I have six traditional rentals in North Carolina, and I've got one here in Denver, and then two plots of land, which we're building on one of them in Florida.   Michael: Oh, man, that's frickin exciting. And you became financially independent over the last couple years, right?   Craig: That's right. Yeah. 2019 is when I officially hit the financial independence mark, and I went from a negative net worth of $30,000. But when I bought my first property to financially free and like a little over two years,   Michael: That's incredible. And so house hacking, was that the main vehicle that you were using, or did you do something else to juice it?   Craig: Oh, there was a lot of house hacking was by far the biggest thing. Probably 70% of that was because of house hacking. But I had a big student loan obligation, I had a $90,000 student loan, student loans. I think the payment was 800 bucks or something like that.   Michael: Okay,   Craig: So I had to wipe that out. And I did that through I rented my car out onto Touro, which was about an extra $700 a month, I did some Airbnb arbitrage where I rented a place for my buddy, pay him month rent each month, put it on Airbnb, and I kept the difference.   Michael: So good.   Craig: Yeah, that was probably like, maybe 10 or $15,000. Over the course of a year, we ended up getting shut down because the condo didn't allow Airbnbs. But it was good while it lastes. And then also, I got I asked my job, this is probably the biggest kind of lump sum things that I got. Is that a bigger pockets? I went and I asked my boss, hey, is there anything that I can do outside of my current scope of work, that would drive revenue and drive the business forward that I could also be paid for? Right? So basically asking for a bonus, but not just asking for it? Because I deserve it, but actually earning? Right? Like, how can I provide value to the company and then the company can be they give me a fraction of the value that I provided back? So it's a win win? And so that was another thing that I did. And I think I did that twice? For a total of, like, $45,000.   Michael: Nice. And just out of curiosity, I do. What did they say? Were they like, why would you ask that? I mean, How was that received? Because that's not a question that I hear people going and asking their bosses on any kind of regularity.   Craig: Yeah. So you know, we work bigger pockets is a was was a pretty small company at the time. And they were all about the hustle and all that right. And so I just figured, hey, it didn't hurt to ask, right? How do you be creative. And there was this project that was on the back burner for a while, but it kept wanting to get out of it kept wanting to get it out. They kept wanting to get it out. But like no one was the person to do it. And I was just asked, Hey, can I like, Can I do it? And can I get paid for it? And so what we did was the landlord forums. So we've I basically got in contact with a lawyer and every single state asked him to review our landlord forms, put them up on the BiggerPockets site for them to sell or include as part of the pro membership. And so because of because of that, they were like, yeah, we'll pay you $500 per state. So quick math, that's 25 grand. Right? And I'm like, like, Heck yeah, we'll do that.   Michael: That's incredible. So you were just hustling your your butt off for two, two and a half years and investing the whole time.   Craig: Oh, Yeah, I mean, I was saving mostly right, because I was, I was saving just everything I made from my house hacks. Everything I made from my job, I was very, very frugal, even at 40, and then those lump sum kind of bonuses and all that I would use to pay down my student loans. And you could argue that wasn't the most efficient use of my money. But my student loans were actually kind of expensive. They were like, 6%. But again, House hacks, or, you know, they never gotten in my way of house hacking. So as long as they're not in my way of house hacking, they're doing me good. And I just wanted to see that payment get removed, because like, once, once that debt is released, is just, you know, everything takes off.   Michael: You're off to the races. Yeah. So that's such I mean, such a great question. And a question that I get regularly as part of the Tech Academy is like, Hey, I've got these other debts here. And I also want to invest, where do I spend my money? First? What are your thoughts there?   Craig: Yeah, I think I think a house hack is always the number one thing that you should do. Right? And it also depends on the returns that you're expecting. So if you're expecting returns that are like 5-6-7 percent, and your loans are like 5-6-7 percent, you might as well pay off your loans, because you're paying it off with no risk. Whereas your 6% 7% is a risky six to 7%.   So yeah, there's no, there's no right or wrong way. Like I people. People have told me oh, you should have paid like you should pay off your all your debt first, before you start investing? It's like, well, no, because a house hack will make me 100%. And my student loans are at 6%. Right? That's a massive difference. I paid off my student loans in like 15 months, you know, like, I would never have been able to do that. If I was still saving to pay down my student loans. I still am paying them off today. Yeah, right.   Michael: So it's so good. It's so good. I've heard the response, a rebuttal to when suggested house hacking. Oh, but my won't cover my full payment, or I'm still gonna be paying 2500 bucks a month, whatever my mortgage? I mean, what do you say to people that have that response? Like, oh, if I don't live for free, it's it's a loss, or I didn't do it, right.   Craig: You do not need to live for free to have a successful house hack, especially if you're in a more expensive market, it's really hard to make it live to live for free. I know, I know, people that are house hacking in the Bay Area in LA in Chicago, like, more expensive places, for sure. Yeah. And they're not covering their mortgage, but maybe they're paying $1,000 a month to live in a place that would typically cost him two or $3,000 a month. So that's $1,000 in savings right there. And that's massive. So and not to mention that you're still going to get if you're in one of those big cities. You know, those cities tend to appreciate a lot faster than if you're in Podunk. Somewhere. Right. So yeah, I just think that, you know, those, get the getting that appreciation makes you very makes you very rich.   Michael: Yeah, yeah, I know one more. I'm actually about to close on my first Beriah house hack here in a couple weeks.   Craig: There you go.   Michael: Yeah, I'll we'll circle back in a couple of months. And I'll tell you how it's gone. Yeah, please do pretty soon. And so now I'm just curious. We always joke on these podcasts. They can be so self serving in going the short term rental route for the because basically it's a it's a full three two with an upstairs unit with a full adu short term rental, mid term rental or long term rental. What are your thoughts there for the house act?   Craig: Obviously depends on like where you are stuff. You're buying your place in San Francisco.   Michael: In Petaluma, so the North Bay,   Craig: Okay, okay. Yeah, I mean, if there's a good Airbnb market, and there's not rules and regulations, I would say, Airbnb will probably make you the most money. However, you know, you have a little bit more volatility, right, with summers are probably really good winters, maybe stink. You know, if there's a pandemic that hits then you're kind of screwed, right. Like, there's more, there's more risks with short term, medium term. Usually, it's like traveling nurses, they're always going to be Yeah, furnish finder. So those are good usually can charge a little bit more than on a long term. And then on a long term, obviously, everyone knows what that is so. I would say like, you should have plan A, plan B, plan C, right? So if you're gonna maybe your Airbnb in it for a couple years, while your nest egg is small to get a larger return on your investment, but then you maybe decide that you don't want to live and die by Airbnb reviews, you don't want to manage it, or you don't even want to manage a manager that's managing it. And then you're so you decide, you know, I'm going to switch it to a long term rental, and make it easy and a little bit more passive.   So yeah, whatever floats your boat. Because,   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense. Cool, man. So now, it's so fun. We're jumping all over the place. But this is great. So turn the clock to yours, you become financially independent. I mean, you've reached the pinnacle of what so many of our listeners are trying to achieve. So what did you do? I mean, I don't see you on a beach with a Muy Thai in your hand right now. So what have you been spending your time doing over the last couple of years?   Craig: You know, I actually once I became financially independent, is when I quit my job, right? Because now I've got that buffer. a safety net. And I went in and basically started helping other people achieve financial independence through real estate investing through being a real estate agent. And so for the first year, right in 2020, I was basically just doing it all myself, I think I did, I did almost 100 deals myself that year. And I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off   Michael: That's like one every three days.   Craig: Yeah, it was nuts. It was nuts, for sure. And I was like, Okay, I'm either going to quit this, or build a team. And so we decided to build a team of investor friendly realtors in so that are all house hackers that are all investors. So we can talk topic and walk the walk, we got the vendors, we got the contractors, we're literally like a turnkey agent service, where wherever you need we guy. And we have, we're also building a really cool community of people here in Denver, of house hackers. So like, can surround like, we can all build each other up. And you know, we can all love each other. And someday, when we're all finally dependent, we can hang out with each other because no one's hanging out with a bunch of old people when you're in your 30s. Right.   Michael: I think that's the biggest problem. becoming financially independent young is like none of your friends, you don't have any homies to go play with.   Craig: you'll make friends that are financially independent, if you're in the community, if you're, if you're like achieving this financial independence, and you don't have a friend group that's doing it, then you got to find that friend group in your city, because I guarantee you it's in every city, you just got to find the people that are doing it. And then you'll find that you kind of transition away from your friends not pursuing it and hang out a little bit more with your friends that are.   Michael: That makes total sense. So now that you're an agent, I mean, how should people approach finding a house hacking friendly agent, if they're interested in doing this for themselves? Because not every real estate agent, as you know, are created equal?   Craig: Oh, for sure. They're hard. They're hard to find, right? Like you can reach out to me, honestly, we have a massive network of real estate agents all around the country that are investor friendly. So @thefiguy, you can just shoot me a message and we'll coordinate.   Michael: Awesome.   Craig: Or, you know, I think if you go on to bigger pockets and shoot out a message in the forums, that's a good place. BiggerPockets has an agent, kind of finder as well, it's pretty good. But those guys, the only my only shtick with that is you just got to make sure you've got them, right, because I'm not sure that I think BiggerPockets is vetting them, but we don't know how well they're vetting them. And so it's always so don't blame BiggerPockets if you find an agent through their site, and they suck, right, like it's still on you to vet them. And there's a handful of questions that can be asked and all that kind of stuff.   Michael: Awesome. Awesome. And I love it. I love it. So you're working as an agent, you got a full team, what's next for you?   Craig: Yeah, so we're continuing to grow the team. So we just expanded into Colorado Springs. So now we're kind of covering all the Front Range in Colorado, and we're looking to kind of just keep expanding kind of throughout the country. So, you know, we don't know where we're going next. But we're planning to, you know, hopefully hit all 50 states, and just help. You know, our whole goal is help people achieve financial independence through real estate investing. Our big hairy audacious goal is to reduce the US retirement age to 55.   Michael: So Killer.   Craig: Yeah, so if we can get enough people to start house hacking, or even just start seeking financial independence, even if it's not the real estate, you know, I think that number could easily be put downward cuz I think it's going up now. I think it's like, 67. I heard it's like, they're pushing it up. So   Michael: Yeah, I think the age that you can collect social security keeps getting pushed up. That's crazy.   Craig: Yeah, let's let's have a bunch of young, financially free retired people. So we can actually like love it, do something and change the world with our newfound energy.   Michael: With the with the time and money that we have.   Craig: Yeah, absolutely.   Michael: Yeah. That's so good. Craig, you also wrote a book, which is so humbly not mentioning, what's it called? And what can people expect to find in it if they pick it up?   Craig: Yeah, so the book is called the house hacking strategy. It's published through bigger pockets. And basically it is your how to guide in the house hack. Basically walk you step by step through the entire house hack process, whether it's finding a deal, getting the loan, analyze the deal, getting your tenants you know asking those questions like What questions did you ask your lender? What questions did you ask your realtor? Just you can reiterate your playbook for a house hack so yeah, I think I definitely poured my heart and soul into it. And yeah, it's been it's been doing well   Michael: That's great and that's available on Amazon on bigger pockets where can people find it?   Craig: Yeah, you can find it you can go to bigger pockets calm slash house hack that there you can find the book as well as other bonus material that's only sold on bigger pockets. I think I give you like the house hacking calculator. Some leases like some rent by the room type leases a couple other things and then all your purchase purchases on Amazon. It's cheaper, but you don't get all that all the sweet stuff. So   Michael: Okay. Right on. So yeah, definitely. All you listeners go check that I've read it. It's a great book. I think you really We're going to enjoy it. So Greg, I'm curious, where have you seen people go wrong with House hacking? Because I mean, it sounds great. In theory, it sounds like you can't lose. But like with every investment, there's got to be some risks and downsides. So where have you seen people get tripped up?   Craig: Honestly, like, I've never met a person that's bought a house hack that regrets it. However, I'm totally serious. Like, I, I've literally never seen it, but where I see people potentially tripping up, and they're not that they trip up, it's just that they don't make it as efficient as possible, is the kind of slack I'm trying to get tenants in. Right. And so I decided, like, once you go under, once you get past the appraisal process, like the thing is probably going to close. So get right, get, you know, get your listing up, start creating it, like the minute you close. Start, try and start trying to find tenants. And, you know, post, get your listing posted, and then go into your Facebook groups that reach out to people and ask around, hey, does anybody know anybody looking for a room? And, you know, if you're proactive and get it done, I see people renting out five, six rooms in two or three weeks. So   Michael: Holy crap,   Craig: Yeah if you're proactive on it, right? But if you're not and you think they're just gonna, everyone's gonna come to you in only three or four months. So   Michael: Yeah, yeah. And so aside from Airbnb furnish finder, maybe Facebook, where are you seeing people post their listing that gets a lot of traction? Are those really the main sites?   Craig: Those are those are big ones. Facebook marketplace is really big. You know, if you're going to rent by the room, there's roomies and Roomster, which are really good. If you're gonna do your traditional kind of rental, like if you're doing a duplex, you want to rent out a four unit. You know, Zillow, Trulia, hot pads, all those typical, typical sites. Yeah,   Michael: That's awesome. And in terms of screening tenants, I mean, I've used I live with roommates for forever. And I'm very comfortable having that conversation on how to screen a roommate. But how do you screen a tenant a potential tenant?   Craig: Yeah, so the first thing you want to do is, is basically like, so someone says they're interested, right? You put all your criteria in the listing, right? So if it's, Hey out, you know, you need a 700 credit score, clean background, clean credit, whatever, like, you got to put all your criteria listed in the in the listing, okay, hopefully, that screens people, but some people are stupid, and they just, they just request it anyway. Or they don't read it. Yeah. And so usually, if someone, if I'm getting a lot of feedback, like, hey, I want to come see they want to come see it, I want to come see it. I hold like an open house type thing.   So that way, you know, people stands you up, they're not wasting your time, right? It's like, hey, on Thursday, from five to 7pm, I'm going to be at the house, come by and see, please, and I sit there, and I just like my computer, whatever. And as they come in, I show em the house. And honestly, I've only ever once I feel this a million times, only one time have I ever had two people show up at once. So some sort of serendipity there. I don't know, maybe I'm just lucky. But and even if they do show up to people at once, it's kind of nice, because then it shows like this in competition, like whoever it was quick,   Michael: I got a rush.   Craig: Yeah. And so you know, just by seeing them in person and talking to them and showing them the house in that five or 10 minutes, you get a pretty good idea of whether you want to live with this person or not. So if they seem cool, you say, hey, like, Yeah, I'll send you an application, fill out the application. We'll go from there. And then on that application, you know, they got to do a background check, a credit check, pay stubs, land, land, past landlord, recommend, references, employer reference, all these things. And like, make sure that they meet your criteria. And if they meet your criteria, you let them in, if they don't see ya.   Michael: Love it. Love it. Man, crack. This has been so awesome. Any final tips for folks, as we're getting you out of here?   Craig: he whole point of house hacking is to get started and get started soon. Time is your biggest enemy on House hacking. So don't go and try to look for like the best you with the best value add or whatever it is right? Just like look what's on the market right now. And try to figure out what is the best deal that's on the market right now? And try to go after it. Because again, right? Like, if you wait six months and find a good deal, right? That means you can't buy your second property for a year in six months. So you're losing out on six months of appreciation, six months of cash flow six months of tax benefits, and that that compounds every year, right? So then it's like, Okay, the next one, you can apply to yours in six months. And if you like, you know, I did this analysis one time where it's like, what if someone bought an okay deal every year for 10 years, versus someone bought an amazing deal every 18 months. The person who bought one deal a year for 10 years, ends up being like a million dollars richer than the person who just buys one every 18 months, because they've got 10 properties versus like five or six.   Michael: Yeah, that's so nuts. That's so nuts. Man. Real estate is this insane vehicle when you start really getting into the weeds and running models like that. That's incredible.   Craig: That's true.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Craig, if people want to learn more about you, where can they reach out? Learn about you ask you questions. Have people get in touch?   Craig: Yeah, so we have a podcast it's called investor fi. We have you know, I think a similar audience so definitely feel free to check that out as well as the fire guy on Instagram and tick tock so feel free to hit me up on Instagram Tik Tok   Michael: Right on thanks again Craig for hanging out appreciate you Take care man talk to you soon.   Craig: See you Michael thanks for having me on.   Michael: Alrighty everyone that was our show a big thank you to Craig for coming on and hanging out with me. I had a lot of fun. I always joke I get to selfishly ask all these professionals and experts questions that I've had on my mind. Hopefully you got a lot out of it and are thinking about now house hacking because I think it's a pretty kick butt way to get started or to help boost your real estate investing career. As always check us out wherever you listen to your podcast, give us a rating or review. We look forward to seeing the next one and Happy investing    

This week we tackle our first Q & A episode from The Ridership Community. Randall and Craig tackle your questions in part 1 of 2 fun filled episodes. The Ridership Support the Podcast Book your free Thesis Bike Consult Automated transcription (Please excuses the errors): Episode 24 [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello and welcome to in the dirt from the gravel. The ride podcast. I'm your host, Craig Dalton. And i'll be joined shortly by my co-host rental jacobs In this week's episode, we're tackling our first Q and a episode.  [00:00:14] We've mentioned the ridership community on a number of occasions on this podcast. It's a community that's full of vibrant questions all the time. So we thought we'd put out an ask to say, what are the things you want to learn about what should Randall an IB discussing? And we were overwhelmed by. By the number of questions we received.  [00:00:34] So much. So in fact that we're going to break this episode down into two parts. So today we'll focus on part one. And in the coming weeks we're released part two. [00:00:44] Before we jump into this week's episode, I'd like to thank this week. Sponsor Thesis bikes. As you know, Randall Jacob's my co-host in these, in the dirt episodes is the founder of Thesis bikes. Which you might not know is it's the bicycle I've been riding for the last let's say year and a half.  [00:01:01] Over the course of this podcast, I've had the opportunity to ride many bicycles and I keep coming back to my Thesis. As my number one bike in the garage, it really does deliver on the promise of a bike that can do anything. As many of, you know, I operate with two wheel sets in the garage. So I've got a 700 C wheel set with road tires on, and my go-to six 50 B wheel set for all my off-road adventures.  [00:01:26] In the many, many hours of conversation I've had with Randall, I've really come to appreciate how thoughtful he was in designing this bike and everything that goes in the Thesis community. Randall and the team are available for personal consults, which I highly recommend you take advantage of. If you're interested in learning more about the brand and figuring out how to get the right fit for your Thesis bicycle.  [00:01:49] In a shocking statement. I can actually express that Thesis has bikes in stock. It's something we haven't been able to say about a lot of bike brands these days during the pandemic. It's October as we're releasing this episode and they have bikes available for November delivery with the SRAM access builds. They also have frame sets available.  [00:02:10] So I encourage you to head on over to Thesis.bike, to check out more about the brand, the story. Cory and the product and book one of those free consultations with a member of the Thesis team. With that said, let's dive right into this. Week's. Q and a episode [00:02:25] Craig: Randall, how are you today? [00:02:26] Randall: I am doing well, Craig, how are you my friend?  [00:02:30] Craig: I am doing good. I'm particularly excited for this episode because it essentially came entirely from the Ridership community. We're doing our first ever Q&A episode.  [00:02:42] Randall: Yeah, people have a lot of trust in us, maybe too much in terms of our knowledge here. So we'll try not to get over our heads in terms of uh what we claim to know, but a lot of good questions here and hopefully we can answer most of them.  [00:02:54] Craig: Yeah, I think that's been one of the cool things about the ridership is I see these questions going on all the time and I quite regularly. See them answered by people Smarter than you and I in a specific area of the sport. They have particular knowledge about a specific region. So it's really cool to see those happening in real time, every day for the members of that community. [00:03:17] Randall: Yeah, everything from fit related questions where we have some experts in there. Professional fitters like Patrick Carey, who I just did the episode with just before this one, I was in there answering questions, but then also if you've got a question about tires, nobody's going to have ridden all of them, but somehow every one has been written by someone in the forum there. And it's one of our most popular topics.  [00:03:38] Craig: Yeah. And I've seen some really detailed, help transpire between members as well, just like random disc bait break problems or compatibility problems. And I'm always shocked when someone raises their hand digitally and start to answering a question saying, no, I experienced that exact same weird problem in combination of things. [00:03:57] Randall: Yeah, it really fits into the spirit of The Ridership in which embodied in that word was this idea of fellowship, like writers, helping writers. So it's been super cool to see that community develop organically. And so thank you all members who are listening, and to those who aren't in there yet, we hope you'll join us.  [00:04:15] Craig: Yeah. just head over to www.theridership.com and you can get right in and start interacting as much, or as little as you want. I think the uniqueness of the platform is it is designed inherently to be asynchronous. So you can put a question in there give it a little time to marinate and a couple of days later Get lots of answers. [00:04:35] This is pretty cool.  [00:04:36] Randall: And in addition to that, there's also rides being coordinated. So myself and another writer here in the new England area or leading a ride. And we have about 10 or 15 people who chimed in wanting to join. And we've seen quite a bit of that in the bay area as well. So that's another use case for this in addition to sharing routes and general bicycle nerdery.  [00:04:54] Craig: Yeah, it's super cool. [00:04:55] So this episode, we're clearly going to jump around a bunch. We've tried to organize the questions, so there's, there's some pairing around them, but these are questions that all came in from subset of individuals. So They are what they are and we wanted to jump on them. So with that, let's let's dive right in. Okay.  [00:05:12] Randall: All right, let's do it.  [00:05:14] Craig: Cool. So the first question comes from Keith P E. And he says, every time I go out for a gravel ride, I think why is this roadie where I'm like Rhonda trails when there's no podium to win or anybody watching. What is this obsession with wearing skin tight clothing in a sport that resides in the dirt.  [00:05:31] Randall: I don't know about you, but I'm just showing off.  [00:05:34] Craig: Your physique.  [00:05:35] Randall: My, my Adonis like physique, sure. It's just more comfortable for me. And I like to go pretty hard and I'm sweating a lot. And if I had baggier gear on, I would tend to have, potential issues with chafing and the like so for intensity I definitely find that the Lycra is a lot more comfortable.  [00:05:54] Craig: Yeah, I'm sorta with you. Like I do I desire to be that guy in baggy shorts and a t-shirt, but every time it comes down to it, I'm grabbing the Lycra. I think for me, there's a couple of performance things, definitely on the lower body. I appreciate the Lycra just cause I don't get any binding and less potential for chafing. So I'm like, I'm all about a big short for riding, unless it's a super, super casual outing for me.  [00:06:21] And then up top. I think it comes down to, I do having the pockets in the Jersey. So that sort of makes me tend towards wearing a Jersey, even if it's just solely to carry my phone in my pocket.  [00:06:34] Randall: And if you really want to be pro show up to an elite race and like a led Zeppelin t-shirt and some cutoff jorts, and hairy legs and just rip everyone's legs off that would be super impressive. But for the rest of us,  [00:06:45] If you ha, if you have those sorts of legs,  [00:06:47] Yeah, it would be very impressed. Send pictures in to the ridership. If you actually do that .  [00:06:50] Craig: Yeah. So you'll see me. You'll see me. Rock a t-shirt you. As a performance t-shirt instead of a cycling Jersey on occasion. And I just jam stuff into bags, but yeah, nine times out of 10, unfortunately I'm that Lycra. Reclad. Gravel cyclists. [00:07:06] Randall: MAMIL, I think right.  [00:07:08] Middle aged man in Lycra.  [00:07:11] I'm right behind in the age category.  [00:07:13] Craig: Second question comes from Tom Schiele. And forgive me if I mispronounced your last name, he'd love to get our insights into winter riding, especially tips for those of us in new England who go out on cold dark mornings.  [00:07:29] I'm going to, I'm going to go out on a limb here and Randall and say, it's probably not the guy. [00:07:32] from California that should be offering this advice.  [00:07:34] Randall: Let's have you go first for that reason.  [00:07:38] Craig: Look. I mean you, new Englanders will throw hay bales at me and make fun of me, but I do find it cold here. And it's all about layers.  [00:07:48] Randall: Okay. [00:07:48] Carry  [00:07:48] Craig: all about layers.  [00:07:49] Actually, in fact, I just got some great gear from gore and I was Scratching my head because it's really designed for way cooler Temperatures. [00:07:58] than I have available to me. So a fleece lined tight is something that's just outside of the weather that I'm going to experience as much as I'll complain about it being cold. But I do appreciate a thermal Jersey for the Dawn patrol rides and things like that.  [00:08:12] But for me, it's always come down to layering. And as someone who's Been around. [00:08:16] the sport for a while, what I really do like about my wardrobe today is I think I have a really good understanding about what to layer on for what temperature And having been in the sport long enough. I've just acquired a lot of clothing along the way. So I even go down to having.  [00:08:32] Like a thicker vest. Than just a standard thin, vast, and they're very nuanced and it's only because of, I had decades worth of clothing kicking around that I've really started to understand and embrace how each garment is for a particular degree temperature. And the layers will get me to a certain point.  [00:08:51] Randall: Yeah. I'm a hundred percent with you on layers. I like to go like Jersey and then maybe a base layer or older Jersey underneath add to that thermal sleeves a vest that has a wind breaking layer on the front. A balaklava. Is also a great thing to have when the weather gets a bit colder, one to keep your head warm and your ears warm, and to keep the wind off your face, but then also you can breathe through it. So you're preheating the air and when it gets bitingly cold, which I don't know, you may not have experienced this, but I've definitely written around the Boston area and five degree temperatures and you got, ice crystals forming on the front of it, but at least you're getting a little bit of that preheating first.  [00:09:29] Definitely wants some wind breaking booties. Wind breaking layers on the front of the body. Generally when it gets really cold. If you must, you could do like heat packs on the backs of your hands. So over your arteries, delivering blood. If you're in real extreme conditions,  [00:09:44] Let's see, Tom also mentioned riding cold dark mornings, which means low pressures for grip. And then also lots of lots of lights, lots of reflectivity. You definitely don't want to be caught out and that's a good general rule, but especially riding in dark conditions when people might be tired.  [00:10:00] And then what else?  [00:10:02] Craig: Going to add the other big thing that I really enjoy is a thermal cap with the little flaps over the years, I find that really just, keeps the heat in there.  [00:10:11] Randall: Yeah, that's a nice intermediate solution before it's too cold to expose your face.  [00:10:16] Going that route. Other things pit stops with hand dryers. So I knew where all the Dunkin donuts were along my routes. I could just go in there on a really cool day and just dry off and heat up. People around here sometimes like in embrocation, gives you like a Burnie tingling sensation on the skin.  [00:10:30] Vaseline. It's actually a big one. It helps with insulation on exposed skin and helps it from getting dried and raw and so on. So I'll put Vaseline on my face and that actually makes a big difference in keeping me warm. And I don't find that it has any negative effects on my skin, my pores and things like that.  [00:10:48] I'm trying to think. Did we miss anything? Oh, tape the vent holes on your shoes. That's a big one. 'cause even with booties sometimes the holes will still, oftentimes the holes will still be exposed. And so close that up. Otherwise you just going to get air flow into the shoe and you'll know exactly where it's coming from. Once you get on the road.  [00:11:08] Craig: Yeah. And I remember. When all hell broke loose. I would even stick my foot in a plastic bag and then put it in the shoe.  [00:11:16] To get a little extra warmth. I don't necessarily recommend that. And I do know and aware em, aware that, you can get like Russ socks now in different kind of obviously wool is a great material to have underneath your shoe. It, yeah. [00:11:28] Randall: I love wool and I'll take like old wool sweaters and stuff and cut the sleeves and then put it in the dryer to shrink. So it's tight against the body and that'll be a base layer. Cause it's just great for loft and for wicking. So if you're trying to be cheap, that can be a way to go about it.  [00:11:43] Craig: I'm Now like off in my head, imagining sleeveless Randall in a tight fitting wool sweater. And it's more reading burning man then cycling performance.  [00:11:54] Randall: with the jorts, I might show up at a race near you.  [00:11:56] Craig: Our next couple of questions are from Alan Collins and the first one's around everyday carry. What do you always carry with you on every ride tools, parts, spares, pumps, hydration, snacks, gels, et cetera. Are you traveling light or packing an RV?  [00:12:14] Randall: So I'm now back in new England, so I'm often relatively near civilization, so I'm not as comprehensive as I would be say, like riding in Marine where I might be a good five, six mile walk over some mountains to get to anywhere. But critical things. I bring plugs like tire plugs. In my case, dynaplugs bacon strips, same deal.  [00:12:36] Spare tube. A tool that has all the critical things I need. If you're one of our riders, make sure you got a six mil on your tool because that's what you need for your through axles. What else? If there's any risk whatsoever. Me getting caught out in the dark. I'll have lights front and rear might as well.  [00:12:54] I'm trying to think of anything else that I always bring along. That's the key stuff. How about you?  [00:12:59] Craig: Yeah, I'm a mid-weight packer. Like I've really embraced that quarter frame bag. So I just tend to be ready for most eventualities that I expect. And obviously I gear up depending on the amount of hours I plan on being out. I tend to bring one nutritional item per hour that I'm going to be out. Obviously if I'm going out for an hour, I tend to be forgetful about hydration and nutrition. I don't really think too much about it.  [00:13:26] But I do think about it in terms of the number of hours I'm going to be out and then building Certainly my nutrition and hydration on top of that.  [00:13:33] my basic everyday carry same with you. I just want to make sure I can handle. [00:13:37] the most likely kind of repair scenarios out there on the trail. And I don't go overboard with it. There's probably many more things I would bring on a bike packing trip than I do on a five-hour ride.  [00:13:50] Randall: Yeah.  [00:13:51] And one thing I forgot to mention.  [00:13:53] Yeah, we did the everyday carry in the dirt episode nine. So listen there. That's where we go. Deep nerd on all the things. If you want a comprehensive list of what you might bring. The other thing, I don't know if I mentioned a pump. Duh. So I forgot that one there.  [00:14:06] Craig: Pump and CO2 for sure. [00:14:07] Randall: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:14:08] But otherwise it really depends on the ride. These days, I'm doing mostly like hour and a half, two hour higher intensity rides actually oftentimes even shorter, lower intensity rides. So I don't need to bring as much. But I'll where you are, you have micro-climates all over the place on Mount Tam.  [00:14:23] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. So. I'm always rocking like a full spare jacket in there, unless I'm going out mid day, which is rare these days. I just figure if I'm going downhill, I might as well be warm and it just makes it more pleasant. So that's why, again, like I have that quarter frame bag and I just jam it full of stuff.  [00:14:40] After our everyday carry episode, I did get a magic link. Cause it's it's nothing like this. Obviously no weight. And I just threw it in there. [00:14:48] Fortunately, I haven't had to use it, but it's there. If I ever did need it. [00:14:51] Randall: Oh, you don't have the technique for breaking the chain and being able to piece it back together without the magic link.  [00:14:57] Craig: I'm fairly skilled at that, But I don't have a chain breaker that I bring with me.  [00:15:01] Randall: Got it. Okay.  [00:15:02] Craig: Yeah.  [00:15:04] Alan's next question was, do you have any tips for prepping a gravel bike for competition in road, gravel mix or cyclocross?  [00:15:11] Randall: Don't do it the night before.  [00:15:14] Craig: Yeah. I I think there's a couple of different ways to go with this question, right? Obviously if you're a cross specialist, there's going to be lots of things you're going to do. For me, if I got the courage to raise cross again, I would just show up with what I got and I wouldn't really mess with it too much.  [00:15:29] Randall: Yeah, I would do basic checks. A couple of weeks out, I would just be making sure that I don't have anything that's about to fail because especially now parts are a challenge to find in many cases, even brake pads. And in fact, if you don't already have a set, get some extra brake pads, just have them around just in case.  [00:15:47] But otherwise checking chain lengthen and the lubrication making sure the sealant and the tires. I'm having all my gear and kit and nutritional stuff laid out, making sure the brake pads have have enough life in them. This sort of thing would be the basics. And I would do this several days in advance and I would make sure to get a ride in before I actually did the race, just to make sure that I didn't mess up anything that's going to bite me later. Like the worst thing you can do is be working on your bike the night before, or the morning of, and then, potentially miss something or break something or have to replace something.  [00:16:18] Craig: Yeah, I forget who I was listening to. It might've even been kate Courtney or perhaps a professional female gravel rider who was saying they arrived at actually the Sarah Sturm. Sorry. She arrived at the start line of an event and realized that her brake pads were totally thrashed. And her mechanic slash partner said. [00:16:39] I'm going to change them right now. And that would stress me the heck out.  [00:16:43] But he did add new successful. She's Thank God. because I never would have been able to stop on the way downhill. I was swapping bikes from one, the one I had written the other day and just didn't think about it.  [00:16:54] Randall: All right, everyone you've been warned.  [00:16:57] What have we got  [00:16:58] Craig: reminds me, I need to get an order in for some brake pads, because I'm definitely reaching the end of the life of the current ones.  [00:17:06] All right. So the next couple of questions are from Ivo Hackman, and he's asking thoughts on red bull entering gravel with a race in Texas. I don't know if you caught this Randall, but it was calling strict Lynn and pacing pace and McKell then. I have bonded together and are doing a race out of Marfa, Texas that red bull is sponsoring, which is, I a natural because both of those athletes are red bull sponsored.  [00:17:31] Randall: So I'm assuming like extreme gravel jumps, flips things like this. It's just the evolution of the sport.  [00:17:38] Craig: Exactly. I think, both those two guys are so grounded in the culture of gravel racing And in my opinion have been good stewards of conversation as we bring these mass star gravel events forward. I think it's great. I think the bigger question probably within this question is about is red bull coming in as an, as a quote unquote, an Advertiser and sponsor of the event. Is that somehow changing the Experience, is it becoming more corporate? Is it something other than the community wants to see? Again, with those two people involved. I think it's a positive thing.  [00:18:12] Randall: Yeah, I don't see it as a problem, even if it's not not any, my personal thing, for me, I love the really local. Really community oriented events that are much more like mullet rides and yeah, this is a little bit of a competition going on upfront, but it's not a huge deal.  [00:18:27] And, we definitely do see more of a professionalization of gravel. There's a space for everyone and there's a space for different types of events. So I don't see them displacing the events that are even more kind of grassrootsy. So yeah, I don't have a problem with it, especially if they end up doing flips.  [00:18:45] Red bull.  [00:18:47] Craig: The next question from Ivo is how to transition from weekend warrior to competitive rider.  [00:18:54] I feel like I'm better suited to answer the reverse question, to move from a competitive rider to weekend warrior. That one is easy.  [00:19:02] Randall: Yeah. Let's see. Step one. Have a kid.  [00:19:06] Craig: Yeah.  [00:19:07] Randall: That'll That'll take care of that in a hurry.  [00:19:09] Craig: Yeah. For me, this trend, it's all about structure.  [00:19:13] Like I, and I don't have any or much in My writing anymore, but I recognize in listening to coaches and Talking to them, it really is all about structure. And Even if that structure just means. You have one specific interval training session a week, and then your long endurance rides on the weekend to me, by my likes, I think you'll see a lot of progression. And as you progress, I think then you start to see the potential for coaching, more multi-day structured program in your week, If you're willing to go down that route. But to me, from what I've seen first stop is intervals.  [00:19:50] Randall: Yeah. Structure. Intervals is. Is one. And then within the context of a period iodized training program, Which is to say you do different types of training at different times during the season, based on the amount of training time you have available and the events that you're preparing for, because there's no sense in doing a lot of intensity several months out from a race and then, be firing on all cylinders, say, three months out and then just be totally kicked by the time your van comes around, you have that build, you do base training, and then you're doing more tempo. And then towards the events, your hours are going down and your intensity is going up and you're really trying to peak for that specific event.  [00:20:33] The book that was one of the Bibles when I was racing some time ago was Joe Freels I think it was called like the training and racing Bible or the mountain bikers, Bible or something. A book like that would be a good starting point. And then if you have the budget working with the coach, especially early on to really just accelerate your learning and to get someone to bounce ideas off of, and to use them as a way of learning your body. And that last part I would add at the very least heart rate monitor, learn how your body responds to stress, but then a power meter as well It's just a tremendously helpful tool and they're cheap. Now you need a four I power meter bonded onto a lot of cranks for 300 bucks. So there's really no reason not to make that investment if you're spending all this time to train and to, go to events, 300 bucks is pretty low lying fruit.  [00:21:25] Craig: Yeah, it is a great source of truth. Having a power meter. [00:21:29] For sure.  [00:21:29] Randall: yeah. One last thing would be a bike fit, actually if you haven't done it already, I think everyone should invest in a bike fit if you're doing any reasonable amount of riding, but if you're gonna be racing and training and trying to squeeze out every last bit and not get injured go get yourself a bike fit.  [00:21:44] Craig: Next question, moving on to what we've deemed at components category. JC Levesque probably pronounced that wrong. Sorry jC, appreciate the question he's asking. What about handlebars? There's a move towards wider flared bars and gravel and a few odd ones out there. There's the kitchen sink candle bar from our friends at red shift. The coefficient bar. From our friend, Rick Sutton. Obviously he's mentioned the canyon hover bar, although that isn't an add on it's integrated into that bike.  [00:22:14] But he asked him maybe worth going over the different expectations are for drop bar bikes that is tackling. Gravel versus pavement versus term.  [00:22:22] Randall: Sure you want to. Take a stab at this first.  [00:22:26] Craig: So for me, I think we're going to continue to see more and more riders explore Wider and flared bars. Like when I jumped on that trend and went out to a 48 millimeter with a 20 degree flare, I immediately felt more comfortable. My orientation as a gravel cyclist is towards rougher terrain, More like pure off roady kind of stuff. So I really appreciate. Appreciated that with.  [00:22:52] It is a pretty easy component to you forget about when you get a bike, right? So many things are going through your mind when you're buying a bike. The handlebars just the handlebar it comes with. If you're working with a good shop from a good direct manufacturer, they're going to ask you appropriate questions about what width you should get. But I do think there's going to be this continued trend towards exploring these different types of bars as the gravel market continues to see people ride these bikes in different ways.  [00:23:21] Randall: Yeah, I generally agree. And I think it's a good thing. I'm not sold on the extremes of flare. I just don't see it as necessary. There's not so much torque being delivered through the steering column when I'm riding, even on technical terrain that I'm finding myself needing more control. With a dropper post of course that's the big caveat, right? Cause that's lightening up the front wheel taking, mass off of that front wheel, putting it on the back, allowing the body to access suspension more. So that helps a lot in reducing the need for leverage. We do a 10 degree flare and I find that for me, that's the max I can do with a traditional flare and I was still having my hands in a comfortable position. And I actually find that flair is helpful in terms of my risk comfort in hand comfort.  [00:24:06] And you see this as a trend, actually on road bars to, four to six degrees of flare on road bars starting to happen. You also see a trend towards leavers coming standard with a bit of kick out a bit of flair at the lever itself which goes along with these trends. The thing that I'm actually really interested in is bars like the 3T Aero Ghiaia. I think that's how it's pronounced.  [00:24:26] This bar has a pretty compound bend. So it's relatively standard on the hoods, but then flares out below the hoods and gives you that extra leverage while at the same time giving you more of a roadie position on top. And I really like. Sticking with this one bike trend and making, keeping these bikes as versatile as possible, just because they can be. And in the case of that bar, it's also that arrow profile, I don't think is super important. Frankly, people overblow the value of arrow and we can talk about that. But, it's certainly not a problem. And that arrow profile probably gives it some more vertical flex.  [00:25:02] And I think that's actually a great way to get some additional compliance on gravel bikes is to have some flare in the wings of the bar.  [00:25:10] Craig: Yeah, I think you're right. I think people are going to continue to explore that. It's a market that I think is tricky for manufacturers to play in because people are so entrenched with what they know and have, and exploring some of these new trends can often be costly. It might be $100 to $300 to get a handlebar and try it out. [00:25:31] Randall: Yeah. For. $400 plus in some cases you can spend a lot of money on a carbon bar.  [00:25:36] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. A related question comes from east bay grants. Just question on Aero bars and gravel.  [00:25:42] Randall: Yeah. Pretty trivial gains. All in all. If you're going to be spending money on, even just on arrow, get an Aero helmet. I think that would be a bigger impact. Then arrow, handlebars. These are just very marginal gains and I wouldn't at all compromise ergonomics or control in order to go arrow. So if you're already getting a new bar and there's an arrow version and a non arrow version that you like. And there aren't any other compromises sure. Go with the arrow version, but I don't think that this is where your low lying fruit is.  [00:26:17] Craig: Yeah. I was reading it as arrow bar extensions on the handlebar and my perspective is it just depends on what you're doing at the end of the day. If you're hauling across the Plains for 200 miles, I understand having a variety of hand and body positions is required and useful, and I'm all for it. If you're ripping around Marin I think you're going to find that you never.  [00:26:39] You never set your arms in a gravel bar if you're actually in the dirt, but that's just where I live.  [00:26:44] Randall: Without, now that you've reframed the question. Yeah, they definitely has their place. And in addition to offering another hand position that's particularly useful if you're just bombing down a really straight road and into a headwind it can be a real aerodynamic advantage there. It also gives you another place to secure gear too. So if you're doing extended bike packing tour. It has that added benefit. There's a place for it, for sure.  [00:27:08] Craig: Yeah. Next question comes from our friend, Tom boss from Marine county bike coalition. He was out riding and he mentioned that he was thinking about how things get named in the cycling world. And how his gravel bike. If he thinks of as an adventure bike effectively, the way he rides it. And then he had a funny note is just about why clipless pedals are called clipless when there's actually no clip.  [00:27:32] Randall: Yeah.  [00:27:33] Craig: Actually. Yeah. So anyway. I think this is something you've been on about the naming convention in cycling, just about these bikes being adventure, bikes, more than anything else. [00:27:42] Randall: Yeah, it's really like adventure is what we're doing with it. Gravel is one type of surface that we're riding. And I like the idea, granted not only a subset of bikes fall into this category, but we call our bike a onebike. And I think bikes like the the allied echo, the servo, a Sparrow, and a few others fall into this category of being, an endurance road or even in the case of the echo,  [00:28:07] borderline, crit type geometry that you can achieve. While at the same time being very capable for adventure riding. And for that type of bike, you could call it a one bike, but then otherwise, what is being called a gravel bike on the more off-road technical end of the spectrum. I think it's an adventure bike.  [00:28:23] And in fact even if it doesn't has have bosses and other accommodations for bags and bike packing. A lot of these bags and so on, or you can strap on or mountain other ways. So you could go and do some adventuring with it.  [00:28:36] Craig: Yeah, I think they, these names. Of category starts to take hold at the grassroots level and then manufacturers just get behind them. And certainly in the early days of the quote unquote gravel market, It was just easy to call it gravel as opposed to road or mountain.  [00:28:54] Presently, obviously we can acknowledge there's so many, there's so many nuances there and there's this spectrum of what gravel means. So yeah, they are adventure, bikes, plain and simple. But I guess I understand where gravel came from.  [00:29:06] Randall: What's good though, is we have another category, right? So we can get you to buy an adventure bike and a gravel bike and endurance road bike, and a crit bike and a cyclocross bike. And even if all these bikes could be the same bikes. Let's not tell anyone because that gets them to buy more bikes. I think that's the marketing perspective on some of the naming conventions.  [00:29:26] Craig: Next up comes a series of questions from Kim ponders. And we should give a shout out to Kim because she's the one who really set this off. She actually recommended and suggested in the ridership forum that, Hey, why don't you guys do a Q and a episode? And I immediately thought that great idea, Kim, I'm all about it. [00:29:44] Randall: Yeah. Thanks, Kim.  [00:29:46] Craig: So our first question is what should I do not do to avoid damaging a carbon frame?  [00:29:52] Randall: So I'll jump in on this one. Carbon is strong intention, but not in compression, so never clamp it in a stand or sit on the top tube, use a torque wrench, always. And avoid extreme heat sources like car exhausts, which generally isn't a problem with frames because they don't end up in the main stream of the exhaust, but is definitely a problem with carbon rims.  [00:30:13] We've seen a number of molten rims. And it's usually they fail at the spoke holes first. Cause there's just so much tension on those spokes that as soon as the resin starts to transition. Into more of a liquid glass it immediately starts to crack at the rims that'd be my main guidance for carbon generally.  [00:30:32] Craig: And as we've talked about it a little bit before on the podcast, I think as a frame designer, You're layering in carbon, in greater, greater levels of material in more sensitive areas.  [00:30:44] But you are. Yeah. [00:30:45] So like your, your down tube and by your bottom bracket. They can take a ding from a rock and they're going to survive. [00:30:52] Randall: Generally. Yes. So if you're kicking up a lot of rocks, adding a layer of thicker film is definitely a good idea. We put a very thin film on ours. It's mostly to protect the paint. And then film on the insides of the fork plates seat stays and chain stays where the tire passes through.  [00:31:08] I can save you a lot of grief. If you end up with mud caked on your tires. Cause that'll just grind right through the paint and potentially to layers of carbon. So we do that stock for that reason. And it's a good idea. If you don't already have it, get yourself some 3m protective film.  [00:31:22] Craig: Yeah, and for me, I actually run it's essentially a sort of protective sticker layer from a company called the all mountain style and they just, in my opinion, do great visual designs. And check them out because personally, I love when you look underneath my, down to that, you see this. Digital cammo kind of thing on my nice pink bike.  [00:31:43] Randall: Yeah, it's rad. It's definitely a way to pretty things up.  [00:31:47] Craig: Next question from Kim is their basic regular maintenance checklists that I should be aware of. You things I should check every ride every month, every season, every year.  [00:31:57] Randall: Yeah. When you got.  [00:31:59] Craig: I think there's a lot there, obviously, we've talked about the importance of making sure your chain is lubed your tire pressure. Those are the things I check every single ride. Be aware of how your brakes are changing and performance. So keep an mental eye on.  [00:32:14] Your brake pads and how they're wearing, I'm not going around tightening bolts at all. Unless I've removed something, I'm not really messing with Any of that. I do find my Thesis to be pretty much ready to go. As long as I'm paying attention to the tire and the chain lube. [00:32:31] Randall: Yeah. Yeah, that's that's about right. I would add to that, check the chain length every so often. And there's a question in here about how to do that. Get one of these go-no-go gauges. I've got the the park tools, CC three.  [00:32:44] There's a bunch of good ones out there. And if it has multiple settings to check, go with the most conservative one. Swap your chains early and often, because it will save you a lot of money on your expensive cogs and cassettes.  [00:32:58] And it'll just make everything perform better. And then every so often, if you feel any looseness in your headset, that's a common thing that will come up over time, potentially just, just check that every so often. If you feel any looseness, you want to tighten it up early. So it doesn't start to wear down the cups or things like that.  [00:33:14] Craig: Yeah. And if you can afford it and you don't have the skills in your own garage, definitely bring it in for an annual tune-up. I think the bikes are going to come back working great and you've got some professionalize on them. [00:33:26] Randall: Yeah.  [00:33:26] Craig: Next question. Kim asked was what's the best way to pack a bike for air travel.  [00:33:31] Randall: So if you try to be. The cheapest option for the packaging. Cardboard box. And if you're not doing it frequently, that's a good way to go.  [00:33:41] Craig: Yeah, agreed. There's a reason why every bike manufacturer in The world is shipping with a cardboard box. As long as you protect the bike. Inside the box with some bubble wrap or some additional cardboard, they generally arrive where they need to go intact and safe. And I've had multiple occasions where I've used the cardboard box on an outbound trip and the box is Perfectly intact for the return trip. [00:34:05] Randall: And we should say specifically. Carbo box that a bike would have come in. Cause generally this'll be a five layer corrugated box. It'll be a thicker material. And if you need to reinforce it with some tape, At the corners and so on. And if you get, if it gets a hole in it, patch up the hole, but you can go pretty far with the cardboard box.  [00:34:24] I have a post carry transfer case, which I love, it's a bit more involved. I got to pull the fork and it takes me usually about 15 minutes or so. 20 minutes to pack it up, and to squeeze some gear in between the wheels and the frame and things like that.  [00:34:38] But I generally get past any sort of oversize baggage fees and I have the bigger of the two bags too. So oftentimes I don't even get asked what it is and if I get asked, it's oh yeah, it's a sports gear. Massage table. Yeah, whatever.  [00:34:50] Craig: That's the key for me that post carry bag or or, okay. This is another company that makes one of these bags where as you said, you've got to do a little bit more disassembly, whereas typically it might've been take the handle Bazaar off the pedals and your wheels, and you can get into a cardboard box. Would these particular smaller bags, you do need to pull the fork, which seems incredibly intimidating. When you first talk about it, but in practice, it's actually not. [00:35:15] Randall: It's not too bad. Probably the biggest issue is if you have a bike with integrated cabling, Then it can be a real nightmare. And in fact I might even go as far as to say, if you don't know what you're doing, don't mess with it. A bike with external cabling, or at least partially external, like our bike, you just have to be careful not to kink the hoses. That's the big, probably the biggest city issue, kinking the hoses, or bending the housings and cables in a way that affects the breaking or the shifting.  [00:35:44] Craig: Yeah. Yeah. If you've, if your cables are particularly tight, It then becomes a problem. I think my routing is just on the edge. I do feel like I'm putting a little bit of stress. On the cables when I'm disassembling in that bag, but so far so good. [00:35:58] Randall: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:35:59] And then of course you have the full sized bags where if you don't care about paying the airline fees, then get one of these was it Evoque I think makes a really nice one that has good protection there's a bunch of companies that make good ones where you just  [00:36:11] Craig: Yeah, I've.  [00:36:12] Randall: the front wheel and throw it in.  [00:36:14] Craig: I've got a Tulay one that is like bomber. It's got like a through axle slots, but one it's hard as hell to move it around. And two, I got dinged on both weight and access size on my trip to Africa. It's out. I was pretty ticked. [00:36:31] Randall: Yeah. And then the other thing is on the other end can you get it into the trunk of a cab. And so that's actually another advantage of bags like the post transfer case in the oral case ones is you can. I think I know the post one has backpack straps, and then you can fit it in the boot of pretty much any vehicle.  [00:36:49] Craig: Yeah, totally under emphasized attribute and benefit of those types of bags. Totally agree. [00:36:54] Like you can get into a sedan. With a, a Prius, Uber Lyft driver and make it in. No problem. [00:37:00] Randall: Oh, yeah.  [00:37:01]  [00:37:01] Craig Dalton: Pardon the segue that's going to do it for part one of our Q and a episode. I thought that was a great time to break and we'll jump into another half hour of questions and answers in our next episode of, in the dirt, which we'll release in the coming weeks. As always, if you're interested in communicating with myself or Randall,  [00:37:20] Please join the ridership www.theridership.com. If you're able to support the podcast, your contributions are greatly appreciated. You can visit, www.buymeacoffee.com/thegravelride to contribute in any way you can to support the financial wellbeing of the podcast. If you're unable to support in that way, ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated.  [00:37:46] On any of your favorite podcast platforms. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels. 

About CraigCraig McLuckie is a VP of R&D at VMware in the Modern Applications Business Unit.  He joined VMware through the Heptio acquisition where he was CEO and co-founder. Heptio was a startup that supported the enterprise adoption of open source technologies like Kubernetes.  He previously worked at Google where he co-founded the Kubernetes project, was responsible for the formation of CNCF, and was the original product lead for Google Compute Engine.Links: VMware: https://www.vmware.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/cmcluck LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmcluckie/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part my Cribl Logstream. Cirbl Logstream is an observability pipeline that lets you collect, reduce, transform, and route machine data from anywhere, to anywhere. Simple right? As a nice bonus it not only helps you improve visibility into what the hell is going on, but also helps you save money almost by accident. Kind of like not putting a whole bunch of vowels and other letters that would be easier to spell in a company name. To learn more visit: cribl.ioCorey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is Craig McLuckie, who's a VP of R&D at VMware, specifically in their modern applications business unit. Craig, thanks for joining me. VP of R&D sounds almost like it's what's sponsoring a Sesame Street episode. What do you do exactly?Craig: Hey, Corey, it's great to be on with you. So, I'm obviously working within the VMware company, and my charter is really looking at modern applications. So, the modern application platform business unit is really grounded in the work that we're doing to make technologies like Kubernetes and containers, and a lot of developer-centric technologies like Spring, more accessible to developers to make sure that as developers are using those technologies, they shine through on the VMware infrastructure technologies that we are working on.Corey: Before we get into, I guess, the depths of what you're focusing on these days, let's look a little bit backwards into the past. Once upon a time, in the dawn of the modern cloud era—I guess we'll call it—you were the original product lead for Google Compute Engine or GCE. How did you get there? That seems like a very strange thing to be—something that, “Well, what am I going to build? Well, that's right; basically a VM service for a giant company that is just starting down the cloud path,” back when that was not an obvious thing for a company to do.Craig: Yeah, I mean, it was as much luck and serendipity as anything else, if I'm going to be completely honest. I spent a lot of time working at Microsoft, building enterprise technology, and one of the things I was extremely excited about was, obviously, the emergence of cloud. I saw this as being a fascinating disrupter. And I was also highly motivated at a personal level to just make IT simpler and more accessible. I spent a fair amount of time building systems within Microsoft, and then even a very small amount of time running systems within a hedge fund.So, I got, kind of, both of those perspectives. And I just saw this cloud thing as being an extraordinarily exciting way to drive out the cost of operations, to enable organizations to just focus on what really mattered to them which was getting those production systems deployed, getting them updated and maintained, and just having to worry a little bit less about infrastructure. And so when that opportunity arose, I jumped with both feet. Google obviously had a reputation as a company that was born in the cloud, it had a reputation of being extraordinarily strong from a technical perspective, so having a chance to bridge the gap between enterprise technology and that cloud was very exciting to me.Corey: This was back in an era when, in my own technical evolution, I was basically tired of working with Puppet as much as I had been, and I was one of the very early developers behind SaltStack, once upon a time—which since then you folks have purchased, which shows that someone didn't do their due diligence because something like 41 lines of code in the current release version is still assigned to me as per git-blame. So, you know, nothing is perfect. And right around then, then I started hearing about this thing that was at one point leveraging SaltStack, kind of, called Kubernetes, which, “I can't even pronounce that, so I'm just going to ignore it. Surely, this is never going to be something that I'm going to have to hear about once this fad passes.” It turns out that the world moved on a little bit differently.And you were also one of the co-founders of the Kubernetes project, which means that it seems like we have been passing each other in weird ways for the past decade or so. So, you're working on GCE, and then one day you want to, what, sitting up and deciding, “I know, we're going to build a container orchestration system because I want to have something that's going to take me 20 minutes to explain to someone who's never heard of these concepts before.” How did this come to be?Craig: It's really interesting, and a lot of it was driven by necessity, driven by a view that to make a technology like Google Compute Engine successful, we needed to go a little bit further. When you look at a technology like Google Compute Engine, we'd built something that was fabulous and Google's infrastructure is world-class, but there's so much more to building a successful cloud business than just having a great infrastructure technology. There's obviously everything that goes with that in terms of being able to meet enterprises where they are and all the—Corey: Oh, yeah. And everything at Google is designed for Google scale. It's, “We built this thing and we can use it to stand up something that is world-scale and get 10 million customers on the first day that it launches.” And, “That's great. I'm trying to get a Hello World page up and maybe, if I shoot for the moon, it can also run WordPress.” There's a very different scale of problem.Craig: It's just a very different thing. When you look at what an organization needs to use a technology, it's nice that you can take that, sort of, science-fiction data center and carve it up into smaller pieces and offer it as a virtual machine to someone. But you also need to look at the ISV ecosystem, the people that are building the software, making sure that it's qualified. You need to make sure that you have the ability to engage with the enterprise customer and support them through a variety of different functions. And so, as we were looking at what it would take to really succeed, it became clear that we needed a little more; we needed to, kind of, go a little bit further.And around that time, Docker was really coming into its full. You know, Docker solved some of the problems that organizations had always struggled with. Virtual machine is great, but it's difficult to think about. And inside Google, containers we're a thing.Corey: Oh, containers have a long and storied history in different areas. From my perspective, Docker solves the problem of, “Well, it works on my machine,” because before something like Docker, the only answer was, “Well, backup your email because your laptop's about to be in production.”Craig: [laugh]. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, I think when I look at what Docker did, and it was this moment of clarity because a lot of us had been talking about this and thinking about it. I remember turning to Joe while we were building Compute Engine and basically said, “Whoever solves the packaging the way that Google did internally, and makes that accessible to the world is ultimately going to walk away with a game.” And I think Docker put lightning in a bottle.They really just focused on making some of these technologies that underpinned the hyperscalers, that underpinned the way that, like, a Google, or a Facebook, or a Twitter tended to operate, just accessible to developers. And they solved one very specific thing which was that packaging problem. You could take a piece of software and you could now package it up and deploy it as an immutable thing. So, in some ways, back to your own origins with SaltStack and some of the technologies you've worked on, it really was an epoch of DevOps; let's give developers tools so that they can code something up that renders a production system. And now with Docker, you're able to shift that all left. So, what you produced was the actual deployable artifact, but that obviously wasn't enough by itself.Corey: No, there needed to be something else. And according to your biography, not only it says here that, I quote, “You were responsible for the formation of the CNCF, or Cloud Native Computing Foundation,” and I'm trying to understand is that something that you're taking credit for or being blamed for? It really seems like it could go either way, given the very careful wording there.Craig: [laugh]. Yeah, it could go either way. It certainly got away from us a little bit in terms of just the scope and scale of what was going on. But the whole thesis behind Kubernetes, if you just step back a little bit, was we didn't need to own it; Google didn't need to own it. We just needed to move the innovation boundary forwards into an area that we had some very strong advantages.And if you look at the way that Google runs, it kind of felt like when people were working with Docker, and you had technologies like Mesos and all these other things, they were trying to put together a puzzle, and we already had the puzzle box in front of us because we saw how that technology worked. So, we didn't need to control it, we just needed people to embrace it, and we were confident that we could run it better. But for people to embrace it, it couldn't be seen as just a Google thing. It had to be a Google thing, and a Red Hat thing, and an Amazon thing, and a Microsoft thing, and something that was really owned by the community. So, the inspiration behind CNCF was to really put the technology forwards to build a collaborative community around it and to enable and foster this disruption.Corey: At some point after Kubernetes was established, and it was no longer an internal Google project but something that was handed over to a foundation, something new started to become fairly clear in the larger ecosystem. And it's sort of a microcosm of my observation that the things that startups are doing today are what enterprises are going to be doing five years from now. Every enterprise likes to imagine itself a startup; the inverse is not particularly commonly heard. You left Google to go found Heptio, where you were focusing on enterprise adoption of open-source technologies, specifically Kubernetes, but it also felt like it was more of a cultural shift in many respects, which is odd because there aren't that many startups, at least in that era, that were focused on bringing startup technologies to the enterprise, and sneaking in—or at least that's how it felt—the idea of culture change as well.Craig: You know, it's really interesting. Every enterprise has to innovate, and people tend to look at startups as being a source of innovation or a source of incubation. What we were trying to do with Heptio was to go the other way a little bit, which was, when you look at what West Coast tech companies were doing, and you look at a technology like Kubernetes—or any new technology: Kubernetes, or KNative, or there's some of these new observability capabilities that are starting to emerge in this ecosystem—there's this sort of trickle-across effect, where it's starts with the West Coast tech companies that build something, and then it trickles across to a lot of the progressive forward-leaning enterprise organizations that have the scale to consume those technologies. And then over time, it becomes mainstream. And when I looked at a technology like Kubernetes, and certainly through the lens of a company like Google, there was an opportunity to step back a little bit and think about, well, Google's really this West Coast tech company, and it's producing this technology, and it's working to make that more enterprise-centric, but how about going the other way?How about meeting enterprise organizations where they are—enterprise organizations that aspire to adopt some of these practices—and build a startup that's really about just walking the journey with customers, advocating for their needs, through the lens of these open-source communities, making these open-source technologies more accessible. And that was really the thesis around what we were doing with Heptio. And we worked very hard to do exactly as you said which is, it's not just about the tech, it's about how you use it, it's about how you operate it, how you set yourself up to manage it. And that was really the core thesis around what we were pursuing there. And it worked out quite well.Corey: Sitting here in 2021, if I were going to build something from scratch, I would almost certainly not use Kubernetes to do it. I'd probably pick a bunch of serverless primitives and go from there, but what I respect and admire about the Kubernetes approach is companies can't generally do that with existing workloads; you have to meet them where they are, as you said. ‘Legacy' is a condescending engineering phrase for ‘it makes money.' It's, “Oh, what does that piece of crap do?” “Oh, about $4 billion a year.” So yeah, we're going to be a little delicate with what it does.Craig: I love that observation. I always prefer the word ‘heritage' over the word legacy. You got to—Corey: Yeah.Craig: —have a little respect. This is the stuff that's running the world. This is the stuff that every transaction is flowing through.And it's funny, when you start looking at it, often you follow the train along and eventually you'll find a mainframe somewhere, right? It is definitely something that we need to be a little bit more thoughtful about.Corey: Right. And as cloud continues to eat the world well, as of the time of this recording, there is no AWS/400, so there is no direct mainframe option in most cloud providers, so there has to be a migration path; there has to be a path forward, that doesn't include, “Oh, and by the way, take 18 months to rewrite everything that you've built.” And containers, particularly with an orchestration model, solve that problem in a way that serverless primitives, frankly, don't.Craig: I agree with you. And it's really interesting to me as I work with enterprise organizations. I look at that modernization path as a journey. Cloud isn't just a destination: there's a lot of different permutations and steps that need to be taken. And every one of those has a return on investment.If you're an enterprise organization, you don't modernize for modernization's sake, you don't embrace cloud for cloud's sake. You have a specific outcome in mind, “Hey, I want to drive down this cost,” or, “Hey, I want to accelerate my innovation here,” “Hey, I want to be able to set my teams up to scale better this way.” And so a lot of these technologies, whether it's Kubernetes, or even serverless is becoming increasingly important, is a capability that enables a business outcome at the end of the day. And when I think about something like Kubernetes, it really has, in a way, emerged as a Goldilocks abstraction. It's low enough level that you can run pretty much anything, it's high enough level that it hides away the specifics of the environment that you want to deploy it into. And ultimately, it renders up what I think is economies of scope for an organization. I don't know if that makes sense. Like, you have these economies of scale and economies of scope.Corey: Given how down I am on Kubernetes across the board and—at least, as it's presented—and don't take that personally; I'm down on most modern technologies. I'm the person that said the cloud was a passing fad, that virtualization was only going to see limited uptake, that containers were never going to eat the world. And I finally decided to skip ahead of the Kubernetes thing for a minute and now I'm actually going to be positive about serverless. Given how wrong I am on these things, that almost certainly dooms it. But great, I was down on Kubernetes for a long time because I kept seeing these enterprises and other companies talking about their Kubernetes strategy.It always felt like Kubernetes was a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. And I want to be clear, I'm not talking about vendors here because if you are a software provider to a bunch of companies and providing Kubernetes is part and parcel of what you do, yeah, you need a Kubernetes strategy. But the blue-chip manufacturing company that is modernizing its entire IT estate, doesn't need a Kubernetes strategy as such. Am I completely off base with that assessment?Craig: No, I think you're pointing at something which I feel as well. I mean, I'll be honest, I've been talking about [laugh] Kubernetes since day one, and I'm kind of tired of talking about Kubernetes. It should just be something that's there; you shouldn't have to worry about it, you shouldn't have to worry about operationalizing it. It's just an infrastructure abstraction. It's not in and of itself an end, it's simply a means to an end, which is being able to start looking at the destination you're deploying your software into as being more favorable for building distributed systems, not having to worry about the mechanics of what happens if a single node fails? What happens if I have to scale this thing? What happens if I have to update this thing?So, it's really not intended—and it never was intended—to be an end unto itself. It was really just intended to raise the waterline and provide an environment into which distributed applications can be deployed that felt entirely consistent, whether you're building those on-premises, in the public cloud, and increasingly out to the edge.Corey: I wound up making a tweet, couple years back, specifically in 2019, that the nuclear hot take: “Nobody will care about Kubernetes in five years.” And I stand by it, but I also think that's been wildly misinterpreted because I am not suggesting in any way that it's going to go away and no one is going to use it anymore. But I think it's going to matter in the same way as the operating system is starting to, the way that the Linux virtual memory management subsystem does now. Yes, a few people in specific places absolutely care a lot about those things, but most companies don't because they don't have to. It's just the way things are. It's almost an operating system for the data center, or the cloud environment, for lack of a better term. But is that assessment accurate? And if you don't wildly disagree with it, what do you think of the timeline?Craig: I think the assessment is accurate. The way I always think about this is you want to present your engineers, your developers, the people that are actually taking a business problem and solving it with code, you want to deliver to them the highest possible abstraction. The less they have to worry about the infrastructure, the less they have to worry about setting up their environment, the less they have to worry about the DevOps or DevSecOps pipeline, the better off they're going to be. And so if we as an industry do our job right, Kubernetes is just the water in which IT swims. You know, like the fish doesn't see the water; it's just there.We shouldn't be pushing the complexity of the system—because it is a fancy and complex system—directly to developers. They shouldn't necessarily have to think like, “Oh, I need to understand all of the XYZ is about how this thing works to be able to build a system.” There will be some engineers that benefit from it, but there are going to be other engineers that don't. The one thing that I think is going to—you know, is a potential change on what you said is, we're going to see people starting to program Kubernetes more directly, whether they know it or not. I don't know if that makes sense, but things like the ability for Kubernetes to offer up a way for organizations to describe the desired state of something and then using some of the patterns of Kubernetes to make the world into that shape is going to be quite pervasive, and I'm really seeing signs that we're seeing it.So yes, most developers are going to be working with higher abstractions. Yes, technologies like Knative and all of the work that we at VMware are doing within the ecosystem will render those higher abstractions to developers. But there's going to be some really interesting opportunities to take what made Kubernetes great beyond just, “Hey, I can put a Docker container down on a virtual machine,” and start to think about reconciler-driven IT: being able to describe what you want to have happen in the world, and then having a really smart system that just makes the world into that shape.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Oracle HeatWave is a new high-performance accelerator for the Oracle MySQL Database Service. Although I insist on calling it “my squirrel.” While MySQL has long been the worlds most popular open source database, shifting from transacting to analytics required way too much overhead and, ya know, work. With HeatWave you can run your OLTP and OLAP, don't ask me to ever say those acronyms again, workloads directly from your MySQL database and eliminate the time consuming data movement and integration work, while also performing 1100X faster than Amazon Aurora, and 2.5X faster than Amazon Redshift, at a third of the cost. My thanks again to Oracle Cloud for sponsoring this ridiculous nonsense. Corey: So, you went from driving Kubernetes adoption into the enterprise as the founder and CEO of Heptio, to effectively, acquired by one of the most enterprise-y of enterprise companies, in some respects, VMware, and your world changed. So, I understand what Heptio does because, to my mind, a big company is one that is 200 people. VMware has slightly more than that at last count, and I sort of lose track of all the threads of the different things that VMware does and how it operates. I could understand what Heptio does. What I don't understand is what, I guess, your corner of VMware does. Modern applications means an awful lot of things to an awful lot of people. I prefer to speak it with a condescending accent when making fun of those legacy things that make money—not a popular take, but it's there—how do you define what you do now?Craig: So, for me, when you talk about modern application platform, you can look at it one of two ways. You can say it's a platform for modern applications, and when people have modern applications, they have a whole variety of different ideas in the head: okay, well, it's microservices-based, or it's API-fronted, it's event-driven, it's supporting stream-based processing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's all kinds of fun, cool, hip new patterns that are happening in the segment. The other way you could look at it is it's a modern platform for applications of any kind. So, it's really about how do we make sense of going from where you are today to where you need to be in the future?How do we position the set of tools that you can use, as they make sense, as your organization evolves, as your organization changes? And so I tend to look at my role as being bringing these capabilities to our existing product line, which is, obviously, the vSphere product line, and it's almost a hyperscale unto itself, but it's really about that private cloud experience historically, and making those capabilities accessible in that environment. But there's another part to this as well, which is, it's not just about running technologies on vSphere. It's also about how can we make a lot of different public clouds look and feel consistent without hiding the things that they are particularly great at. So, every public cloud has its own set of capabilities, its own price-performance profile, its own service ecosystem, and richness around that.So, what can we do to make it so that as you're thinking about your journey from taking an existing system, one of those heritage systems, and thinking through the evolution of that system to meet your business requirements, to be able to evolve quickly, to be able to go through that digital transformation journey, and package it up and deliver the right tools at the right time in the right environment, so that we can walk the journey with our customers?Corey: Does this tie into Tanzu, or is that a different VMware initiative slash division? And my apologies on that one, just because it's difficult for me to wrap my head around where Tanzu starts and stops. If I'm being frank.Craig: So, [unintelligible 00:21:49] is the heart of Tanzu. So Tanzu, in a way, is a new branch, a new direction for VMware. It's about bringing this richness of capabilities to developers running in any cloud environment. It's an amalgamation of a lot of great technologies that people aren't even aware of that VMware has been building, or that VMware has gained through acquisition, certainly Heptio and the ability to bring Kubernetes to an enterprise organization is part of that. But we're also responsible for things like Spring.Spring is a critical anchor for Java developers. If you look at the Spring community, we participate in one and a half million new application starts a month. And you wouldn't necessarily associate VMware with that, but we're absolutely driving critical innovation in that space. Things, like full-stack observability, being able to not only deploy these container-packaged applications, but being able to actually deal with the day two operations, and how to deal with the APM considerations, et cetera. So, Tanzu is an all-in push from VMware to bring the technologies like Kubernetes and everything that exists above Kubernetes to our customers, but also to new customers in the public cloud that are really looking for consistency across those environments.Corey: When I look at what you've been doing for the past decade or so, it really tells a story of transitions, where you went from product lead on GCE, to working on Kubernetes. You took Kubernetes from an internal Google reimagining of Borg into an open-source project that has been given over to the CNCF. You went from running Heptio, which was a startup, to working at one of the least startup-y-like companies, by some measures, in the world.s you seem to have gone from transiting from one thing to almost its exact opposite, repeatedly, throughout your career. What's up with that theme?Craig: I think if you look back on the transitions and those key steps, the one thing that I've consistently held in my head, and I think my personal motivation was really grounded in this view that IT is too hard, right? IT is just too challenging. So, the transition from Microsoft, where I was responsible building package software, to Google, which was about cloud, was really marking that transition of, “Hey, we just need to do better for the enterprise organization.” The transition from focusing on a virtual machine-based system, which was the state of the art at the time to unlocking these modern orchestrated container-based system was in service of that need, which was, “Hey, you know, if you can start to just treat a number of virtual machines as a destination that has a distributed operating system on top of it, we're going to be better off.” The need to transition to a community-centric outcome because while Google is amazing in so many ways, being able to benefit from the perspective that traditional enterprise organizations brought to the table was significant to transitioning into a startup where we were really serving enterprise organizations and providing that interface back into the community to ultimately joining VMware because at the end of the day, there's a lot of work to be done here.And when you're selling a startup, it's—you're either selling out or you're buying in, and I'm not big on the idea of selling out. In this case, having access to the breadth of VMware, having access to the place where most of the customers are really cared about were living, and all of those heritage systems that are just running the world's business. So, for me, it's really been about walking that journey on behalf of that individual that's just trying to make ends meet; just trying to make sure that their IT systems stay lit; that are trying to make sure that the debt that they're creating today in the IT environment isn't payday loan debt, it's more like a mortgage. I can get into an environment that's going to serve me and my family well. And so, each of those transitions has really just been marked by need.And I tend to look at the needs of that enterprise organization that's walking this journey as being an anchor for me. And I'm pleased with every transition I've made. Like, at every point we've—sort of, Joe and myself, who's been on this journey for a while, have been able to better serve that individual.Corey: Now, I know that it's always challenging to talk about the future, but do you think you're done with those radical transitions, as you continue to look forward to what's coming? I mean, it's impossible to predict the future, but you're clearly where you are for a reason, and I'm assuming part of that reason is because you see an opportunity; you see a transformation that is currently unfolding. What does that look like from where you sit?Craig: Well, I mean, my work in VMware [laugh] is very far from done. There's just an amazing amount of continued opportunity to deliver value not only to those existing customers where they're running on-prem but to make the public cloud more intrinsically accessible and to increasingly solve the problems as more computational resources fanning back out to the edge. So, I'm extremely excited about the opportunity ahead of us from the VMware perspective. I think we have some incredible advantages because, at the end of the day, we're both a neutral party—you know, we're not a hyperscaler. We're not here to compete with the hyperscalers on the economies of scale that they render.But we're also working to make sure that as the hyperscalers are offering up these new services and everything else, that we can help the enterprise organization make best use of that. We can help them make best use of that infrastructure environment, we can help them navigate the complexities of things like concentration risk, or being able to manage through the luck and potential that some of these things represent. So, I don't want to see the world collapse back into the mainframe era. I think that's the thing that really motivates me, I think, the transition from mainframe to client-server, the work that Wintel did—the Windows-Intel consortium—to unlock that ecosystem just created massive efficiencies and massive benefits from everyone. And I do feel like with the combination of technologies like Kubernetes and everything that's happening on top of that, and the opportunity that an organization like VMware has to be a neutral party, to really bridge the gap between enterprises and those technologies, we're in a situation where we can create just tremendous value in the world: making it so that modernization is a journey rather than a destination, helping customers modernize at a pace that's reasonable to them, and ultimately serving both the cloud providers in terms of bringing some critical workloads to the cloud, but also serving customers so that as they live with the harsh realities of a multi-cloud universe where I don't know one enterprise organization that's just all-in on one cloud, we can provide some really useful capabilities and technologies to make them feel more consistent, more familiar, without hiding what's great about each of them.Corey: Craig, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today about where you sit, how you see the world, where you've been, and little bits of where we're going. If people want to learn more, where can they find you?Craig: Well, I'm on Twitter, @cmcluck, and obviously, on LinkedIn. And we'll continue to invite folks to attend a lot of our events, whether that's the Spring conferences that VMware sponsors, or VMWorld. And I'm really excited to have an opportunity to talk more about what we're doing and some of the great things we're up to.Corey: I will certainly be following up as the year continues to unfold. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.Craig: Thank you so much for your time as well.Corey: Craig McLuckie, Vice President of R&D at VMware in their modern applications business unit. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with a comment that I won't bother to read before designating it legacy or heritage.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need the Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

We're often told not to care too much about what other people think of us. However, understanding how others perceive us can play to our advantage. Sometimes we fail to see our own mistakes or flaws, and to overcome this, we need to develop self-awareness by looking at ourselves from a different perspective. Once we realise our flaws, we can do better and achieve high performance. Craig Harper joins us in this episode to discuss how self-awareness can lead to high performance. He also explains the importance of external awareness or the ability to understand how others perceive us. We also talk about events that changed our life perspectives and how to live aligned with our values. If you want to increase your self-awareness and achieve high performance, then this episode is for you.   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program optimising fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance for your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join our free live webinar on epigenetics.   Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset to head injuries, to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover what external self-awareness is and how it can help you achieve high performance. Find out why motivation alone doesn't work. Learn how to live in alignment for a healthy and meaningful life.   Resources The You Project Podcast with Craig Harper The You Project #360: Embracing the Suck with Lisa Tamati Check out Craig's books. Connect with Craig: Website | Instagram | Linkedin BrainPark   Episode Highlights [03:44] About Craig Craig used to be the fattest kid in school until he decided to lose weight at 14 years old. Curious about fitness and nutrition, he started working in gyms.  Craig eventually set up his first personal training centre in Australia. At 36 years old, Craig went to university to study Exercise Science. Realising the importance of understanding human behaviour, he's now taking a PhD in neuropsychology. [08:58] External Self-Awareness Being self-aware means understanding how other people perceive, process and experience you. You can make better connections when you know what it's like for people to be around you. Going into a situation assuming others have the same mindset can create problems. Acknowledging your lack of awareness is the first step in overcoming it.  [15:20] On High Performance High performance answers the question of how you can do better.  It applies to all aspects of life.  For Craig, high performance means getting the most out of your potential, resources and time. Listen to the full episode to get a rundown of the principles you need to achieve high performance. [16:14] Recognising Your Programming Humans have the power to recognise and change how they see the world. Because we do the same things daily, we fall into living unconsciously.  When our approach doesn't give us the results we want, it might be time to try something different. It may be not easy, but going out of our comfort zones makes us stronger.  [28:43] Working Around Genetic Predispositions What you're born with doesn't change the fact that your choices have power. Focus on things you can control and own the situation at hand. Be careful that self-awareness doesn't become self-deprecation. From there, focus on how you can attain high performance.  [33:42] Reflecting on Your Relationships Despite his nutrition expertise, Craig faces a constant battle to make good food choices.  Reflect on your relationship with food. Is it good or bad? Healthy or unhealthy? You can apply this to other aspects of your life as well. Doing this opens the door to self-management and self-awareness.  [37:51] Where People Get Their Sense of Self We learn that self-esteem, self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. Craig's theory is that it's an inside-out process.  The external and observable things don't matter as much as the things happening internally. Listen to the full episode to find out how two experiences in Craig's life put his life into perspective. [1:00:38] Motivation Alone Doesn't Work A lot of people rely on their current state of motivation to get things done.  What's important is how willing you are to put in the work despite the inconvenience and discomfort. [1:02:25] Live in Alignment Ask yourself if you're willing to put in the work to achieve your goals.  You can live in alignment with your values by following an operating system based on them.  Listen to the full episode to know the questions you need to ask yourself to create this operating system.   7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with. And this is not self-loathing; this is me just going, "Okay, so how do I do better?" And this for me is the process of high performance’. ‘Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective’. ‘Real awareness and consciousness is to first be aware of your lack of awareness’. ‘The only person that can ever really get in my way is me, you know. But also, I'm the solution to me’. ‘So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process. My theory is that it is the other way around—it is an inside out journey’. ‘Of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business... or whatever. That's not bad, but it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are’. ‘I don't care what you get done when you're motivated; I care what you get done when you're not motivated because everyone's a champion when they're in the zone’.   About Craig Craig Harper is one of Australia's leading presenters, writers and educators in health, high performance, resilience, self-management, leadership, corporate change, communication, stress management, addiction and personal transformation.  Craig has been an integral part of the Australian health and fitness industry since 1982. He has worked as an Exercise Scientist, Corporate Speaker, Consultant, University Lecturer, AFL Conditioning Coach, Radio Host, TV Presenter, Writer and successful Business Owner. In 1990, Craig established Harper's Personal Training, which evolved into one of the most successful businesses of its kind.  Craig currently hosts a successful Podcast called 'The You Project'. He is also partnering with the Neuroscience Team at Monash University, where he's completing a neuropsychology PhD. There, he studies the spectrum of human thinking and behaviour.  Craig speaks on various radio stations around Australia weekly. He also hosted his weekly show on Melbourne radio called 'the Science of Sport' for a decade. Craig currently fills an on-air role as a presenter on a lifestyle show called 'Get a Life', airing on Foxtel.  As an Exercise Scientist, Craig has worked with many professional athletes and teams. While still working with groups and individuals regularly, Craig delivers more than one hundred corporate presentations annually. Want to know more about Craig and his work? Check out his website, or follow him on Instagram and Linkedin!   Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so that they can develop their self-awareness and achieve high performance. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Well, hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. This week I have Craig Harper to guest. Now, Craig is a very well-known media personality, exercise scientist, crazy fitness guru, owns some of the biggest personal training gyms in Australia, has a huge track record as a corporate speaker, motivational speaker, worked with Olympians, worked with all sorts of athletes across a number of different sports. And he's absolutely hilarious. I really enjoyed this interview, I was on Craig's show a couple of weeks ago, The You Project, you can go and check that one out as well. A great podcast. And today we sort of did a deep dive into everything around self-awareness and understanding your potential and realising your potential. And just it was a really interesting conversation with a very interesting man. He's doing a PhD in understanding the experience that people have when they meet you. So, understanding how people see you. So it's a really interesting conversation. So, I hope you enjoy that.  Before we go over to the show, please give us a rating and review. We really appreciate any ratings and reviews that you give us. It's really hugely helpful for the show. It is a labour of love. We are about to if we haven't already, by the time this podcast goes live, developing a way that you guys can get involved as audience members of Pushing The Limits if you want to support the show. So stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, if you need help with your running or you need help with your health, then please reach out to us. You can reach us at lisatamati.com. You can check out our programmes on lisatamati.com. We have our epigenetics programme and our running programmes where we do customised run training systems, video analysis, working out a plan customised fully for you and you get a consult with me. We also do health optimisation, coaching. So if you are needing help with a really difficult health journey, then please reach out to us as well. Right, over to the show with Craig Harper.  Lisa Tamati: Well, welcome back everybody to Pushing The Limits. Today I have an hilarious, amazing, crazy, awesome guest for you, Craig Harper. Who doesn't know Craig Harper? If you're in Australia, you definitely know who the heck Craig Harper is. If you're in New Zealand, you probably know who Craig Harper is. And if you don't, you're about to find out. Welcome to the show! Craig, how are you doing? Craig Harper: Now I feel like I've got to live up to some kind of bloody pressure, some expectation. Nobody knows me in New Zealand. Let's start, you do and your mum. That's about it. Lisa: Me and mum, you left quite an impression on my mum. Craig: And my family, and relatives, and a few randoms over here, know who I am. But thank you, Lisa, for having me on. I'm really glad to be here. Lisa: It's awesome. Now, this is gonna be a bit of a hilarious show because Craig is a bit of a character. I was on Craig's show in Australia, The You Project and it was one of the most fun podcast interviews I've had. I mean, I love getting into the science and deep with stuff, but it was really fun to just slip my hair down so to speak and rant and rave a little bit in here, but it’s fun, so today there'll be no doubt a bit of it. Craig, can you tell the ones who don't know about you? You're in Melbourne or just outside Melbourne in Hampton, Victoria in Australia. Can you tell us a little bit of your background, your crazy amazing career that you have had? Craig: Sure. So I'll start with, well, maybe I'll go a little bit before my career because what happened before was a bit of a catalyst. So I had a pretty good childhood, all that stuff. I won't bore the listeners. But one of the things that was part of my growing up was being a fat kid, the fattest kid in my school. So that became a bit of a catalyst for me to explore getting in shape and all that stuff. So when I was 14, I lost a whole lot of weight. I was 90 something kilos, I went down to about 60 and I started training.  Lisa: Wow. Craig: I started running and I started doing bodyweight stuff I lost about—I literally lost a third of my body weight in 15 weeks. And it wasn't like I had a horrible childhood, it was fine. But I was called jumbo all through school. That was my name so the kids called me that, parents, teachers all that but believe it or not, it wasn't really hostile, or horrible, it was I don't know it's because I was this big, fat, pretty happy kid, right? But anyway, so, I got in shape, and that led me into a lot of curiosity, and exploration, and investigation in fitness and nutrition. And so I started working in gyms when I was 18 and had no idea what I was doing. The qualifications and the barriers to entry then were very low. So, I started working in gyms, Lisa, when I was 18, which was 1982. I'm 57 and I ended up in 1989, I think, I set up the first Personal Training Center in Australia.  Lisa: Wow. Craig: So, lots of other things around that. But I owned PT studios for 25 years at the biggest centre in the southern hemisphere in Brighton a few kilometres from where I'm sitting now, which was 10,000 square feet. It was bigger than lots of commercial gyms. But it was just a PT centre. Worked with elite athletes, work with the AFL over here Australian Football League with St Kilda footy club, Melbourne Vixens in the national and the Trans-Tasman League, it was then Netball League, Melbourne Phoenix, Nissan motorsport, a bunch of Olympians, blokes in prison, corporates, people with disability, normal people, abnormal people. I put me in the abnormal category.  Lisa: Yeah, definitely. Craig: And later on when—I didn't go to uni until I was 36 for the first time.  Lisa: Wow.  Craig: Did a degree in exercise science. It was hilarious because I'd already been working with elite people as a conditioning coach and a strength coach. And yeah, lots of stuff. I did radio over here for about 20 years. I started my podcast a few years ago, I did television for a few years, three years on national telly. I wrote for the Herald Sun, which is the main paper in Melbourne for a while. Lots of magazines, I've written a bunch of books. I've written seven, I've written nine books, I think seven or eight of them are published. I'm looking at the books on my table, I should probably know that number. Lisa: Can’t even remember, there's so many. Craig: And, like, but really the thing that I guess where we might go today, but for me was, I realised by the time I was about 19 or 20 working in gyms, I realised that how much I knew about bodies wasn't nearly as important as how much I understood human beings. And so while my understanding of anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and movement and energy systems, and progressive overload, and adaptation and recovery, and all of those things wasn't great, to be honest, like I was 20.  Lisa: Yup. Craig: But it was all right. And it improved over time. But what really mattered was how well I understood human behaviour. Because as you and I know, we can give someone a programme and direction and education and encouragement and support and resources, and not knowledge and awareness. But that doesn't mean they're going to go and do the work. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to create the result. And it definitely doesn't mean they're going to explore their talent or their potential. And so yeah, it's been from when I was 18...  Lisa: So you've gone in it? Craig: Yeah, from when I was 18 till now, it's just been lots of different roles and lots of different places. And I guess the other main bit before I shut up was I realised when I was about 20, that I didn't like having a boss much. And not that...  Lisa: We got that in common.  Craig: In my back, my boss was a good dude. But I thought I don't want to be, like, I could do this for me. I don't need to do this for you. And so the last time I had a boss was 32 years ago. So I've been working for myself since I was 25. Lisa: Wow, that's freaking awesome. And what an amazing career and so many books, and I know that you're actually doing a PhD at the moment. So what's your PhD? And why did you choose this sort of a subject for your PhD? Craig: Yeah, so my PhD is in neuropsychology/neuroscience. So, I'm at Monash over here, we have a facility called Bryan Park, which is cool. There's lots of cool stuff there. That's where I'm based. And my research is in a thing called external self-awareness, which is understanding the ‘you’ experience for others. So in other words, it's your ability to be able to understand how other people perceive and process and experience ‘you'.  Lisa: Wow, that is a fascinating subject.  Craig: Which is, very little research on it. So I'm, I've created a scale, which is to measure this component of psychology or communication or awareness. And so I'm doing—I'm putting that through the grill at the moment, getting that validated. I’m doing two studies. The first study is being run kind of soon. But yeah, the whole research is around this thing of ‘What's it like being around me and do I know what it's like being around me'? Not from an insecurity point of view, but from an awareness point of view because when I understand, for example, the Craig experience for Lisa or for an audience or in front of all for the person I'm coaching, or the athlete I'm working with, or the drug addict, the person with addictive issues that I'm sitting with, then if I understand what it's like being around me, I can create greater and deeper connection. But one of the mistakes that a lot of leaders, and coaches, and managers, and people in positions of authority make is that they assume that people just understand what they're saying. Or they assume that people think like them. When in reality, the only person who thinks exactly like me in the world is me.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And the only person who thinks like Lisa Tamati exactly all the time, 24/7 is Lisa, right?  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So when I go into a conversation, or a situation, or a process, or a negotiation, or an encounter with somebody, and I assume that they think like me or understand like me, or that my intention is their experience, which is rarely the case, I'm more likely to create problems and solutions.  Lisa: Yeah. And you're not going to hit the nail on the head and actually get the results for where that person that you are wanting to get.  Craig: Yeah, and that is... Lisa: This is a real powerful thing because you know what I mean, just maybe as you were talking there, I was like, ‘Well, how do people perceive me?', that's an interesting thought because you just sort of go through your daily interactions with people, and you think you're a compassionate, empathetic person who gets everything in, you’re sort of picking up on different cues and so on. But then to actually think how is that person experiencing me, and I like, as a coach, as I develop as a coach, I've had problems when I'm doing one on one, and that I'm overwhelming people sometimes because I'm so passionate and so full of information. And I've had to, and I'm still learning to fit that to the person that I'm talking to. And because, for me, it's like, I've got so much information, I want to fix you and help you. And I was like, ‘Woohoo', and the person was like, ‘Heh'. Craig: So you and I connect because we're kind of similar, right? And I love that, I love your craziness and your energy, and you're full-onness. But you and I, unless we are aware around some people, we will scare the fuck out of them.  Lisa: Yup. Craig: So, that's why it's important that people like—all of us really not just you and I, but that we have an awareness of what is the leisure experience for this because like, let's say, for example, you've got five athletes, and you want to inspire them and get them in the zone, motivate them, and they're all in front of you. And so you give all of them in the same moment. And let's say they're five similar athletes in a similar, if not the same sport with a similar goal—doesn't matter—but the reality is they are five different human beings, right? They've got five different belief systems and backgrounds and sets of values and prejudices and like and emotional states, and so you're not talking to the same person. But when you deliver the same message to five different humans, and you expect the same connection? We're not thinking it through.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So and of course, you can't create optimal connection with everyone all the time. But this is just part of the, ‘What's it like? What's their experience of me like?' And again, it's not about ‘Oh, I'm insecure, and I want them to like me'. No, it's about, ‘I need to understand how they perceive and process me so that I can create connection'. And look, the other really interesting thing about psychology and the human experience, and metacognition, thinking about thinking more broadly, is that all of us think we're open-minded and objective, but none of us are. Nobody is totally objective or open-minded because the human experience is subjective.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: So, even me who understands this and is doing a PhD in it and teaches it. Well, people go back and you objective and I go, ‘No, I wish I was in it. I'd like to say I am because it sounds fucking great, but I'm not'. And the reason that I'm not is because wherever I go, my ego, my issues, my beliefs, my values, my limitations, my biases, go with me.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And they are the window through which I view and process the world, right?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: So, our ego wants us to say, ‘Of course, I'm objective. Of course, I'm open-minded'. But the truth is, and with some things, we will be more objective and open-minded because we don't really have a pre-existing idea about it. But on a global or a broad level, our stuff goes with us everywhere, and the beginning of, without getting too deep or philosophical, but awareness—real awareness and consciousness—is to first be aware of your lack of awareness. Lisa: Love it. That is amazing. Yeah. Craig: You can't overcome the thing you won't acknowledge, or you can't get good at the thing you won't do. Right? And so I have to go, 'Firstly, I'm flawed. Firstly, I've got as many issues as anyone that I work with.’ And this is not self-loathing, this is me just going, ‘Okay, so how do I do better?' And this for me, this is the process of performance, high performance, whether it's at sport, at life, at recovery, at relationships, at connection—doesn't matter—high performance is high performance. For me, high performance means getting the most out of you and your potential and your resources and your time.  Lisa: Yup. Craig: And so the principles that work with becoming an elite athlete, most of those principles work with building a great business.  Lisa: Yep, they grow further. Craig: Which is why physicians follow through, get uncomfortable, do the work, show up, don't give up, ask great questions, persevere, roll up your sleeves, pay attention to your results, improvise, adapt, overcome. Like, this is not new stuff.  Lisa: Know that it rolls off your tongue pretty damn well because you've been in this space for a long time. And a lot of us like to go into that whole, our bias and yell at the future that we see the world through the lens, which we look through. We're not aware like, we love the programming. And this is what I had done a lot of work on for myself, the programming that I got as a kid, that I downloaded into my subconscious is running the ship, basically, and I can, as an educated, hopefully, wiser woman now, go ‘Hang on a minute, that little voice that just popped up in my head and told me, ‘I'm not good enough to do that', is not me talking. That's the programme. That's the programme I downloaded when I was, I don't know, seven or eight or something. And it's a product of that conditioning.’ And I can actually go in, and then it's that to change that story. Because that, and I think a lot of us are just running on automatic, we're still playing.  I'll give you an example. So when my mum was a kid, she was up on stage and doing a speech at school when she froze, right? And she got laughed off the stage. And kids can be nasty. And so forever in a day, she was like, ‘I will not ever speak in public again'. Because she'd had this experience as a what, a seven or eight-year-old. And she was telling me the story as a 40-something, 50-something year-old. 'No, I'm not ever getting up in a public space because', and I'm like, 'But that's just—you are not that seven or eight year old now. And you can have a choice to make that changes', and she couldn't make that change until she had the aneurysm. And then she forgot all those memories, some of those memories were gone, and that inhibition was gone. And now she'll get up and talk on stage in front of like 500 doctors. Craig: That's amazing. I love it. And what you just articulated beautifully. The core of a lot of what I do, which is recognising your programming and where does my stories, or my stories finish? And where do I start?  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: So, you think about it, from everyone listening to this from when we could reason anything, or process any data around us or understand anything from when we—I don't know, two, three months, really probably earlier but until listening to this podcast right now, all of us have been trained, and taught, and told, and programmed, and conditioned. And then, now here we are. And it's being aware of that and me to everyone is like, ‘Well, my beliefs', like think about when did you choose your beliefs?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Pretty much never. They’re just there, and they’re there as a byproduct of your journey. Now that's okay, that's not bad or good. That's normal. Well, the next question is, are all of your beliefs, do they serve you? Well, the answer is no. Do any of them sabotage you? Well, a shitload! Okay, so let's put them under the microscope. So you know that word that I used before metacognition is, in a nutshell, thinking about thinking where and this is where we go, hang on. Let's just step out of the groundhog-dayness of our existence which you also spoke of, like, and let's go hang on. Because what we do, on a level we live consciously that is I've got to think about where I'm driving, and I've got to figure out what I'm giving the kids for dinner or what I'm getting, what time I'm training or, but really, on a real fundamental macro level. We live largely unconsciously...  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: ...because we kind of do the same shit the same way...  Lisa: Everyday. Craig: ...same conversations, even you and I know. Like, I've been training in the gym since I was 14, that's 43 years, I watch people go to the gym who always do the same fucking workout.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Same rep, the same set, same treadmill, same speed, same inclines, same boxing, same everything, same intensity, same workload, same machines. And then they say, why isn't my body changing? Well because it doesn't need to.  Lisa: No. Given the status quo, you don’t. Craig: Because you're stimulating it the same way.  Lisa: I was working in that for years. Craig: And we can expand that to life. Whereas we, kind of, I was talking to a lady yesterday about this, and she was telling me about a conversation she has with her son who's got some issues, who's 17. And I will be really honest, ‘How many times have you had a version of that conversation with him?’ She goes, ‘1,000'.  Lisa: Wow.  Craig: I go, ‘And how's that going?’ Now, that might be an exaggeration. But the bottom line is, but nonetheless, despite the fact that it didn't work the first 999 times, she's doing it again.  Lisa: She’ll keep doing it.  Craig: So it's about, and again, it's not about beating ourselves up, it's about gamble, whatever I'm doing, whether or not it's with this relationship, or this training programme, or this habit, or behaviour, or this business, whatever I'm doing isn't working. So let's have a new conversation or no conversation, or let's try a different protocol, or let's change the way I sleep.  Lisa: Isn't that like the circuitry in the brain, when you do something for the first time that’s really hard. Because you're creating a new connection in the brain. And therefore, we go into these old routines and habits, even though we don't want to be doing them anymore, but the groove and the brain is so well-worn, that path is so—those synapses of connected or whatever they do in there, and that path is so well-worn, that it's the path of least resistance for our lazy brains, and our subconscious to do what it does all the time. So, when you're driving a car home, and you can have a conversation and be singing a song, and thinking about what you're cooking for dinner, and then you get to halfway into town, and you realise, ‘Hell, I can't even remember driving there', but you were doing it, and you were doing it safely. Because it was all on that subconscious, automated level. When you were first driving the car, it was a mission. And it was like, ‘Oh my god, I got to change the gears and steer and keep an eye on,' and it was all like overwhelmed, but then it got easier and easier and easier. And then with our rituals and habits that we develop, we make these well-worn grooves, don't we? And then we just follow the same old, same old even though it's not getting the results that we want. And when we try and step out of our comfort zone and start doing a new habit and developing a new way, there's a lot of resistance in the brain for the first few weeks, isn't there? Until you get that groove going. And then it gets easier and easier and easier once you've done it 100 times. Is that what you're sort of saying here? Craig: Yeah. I mean, that's perfect. I mean, you nailed it. Look, the thing is that everything that we do for the first time, for most of us, nearly everything, unless we've done something very similar before, but it's hard.  Lisa: Very. Craig: So I always say everyone starts as a white belt. In the dojo, you start as a white belt.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: When as an ultramarathon, if I went, Lisa, which I wouldn't, but if I went, ‘I'm gonna run an ultramarathon'. Well, if I started training today, metaphorically, today, I'm a white belt.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I'm a black belt at other stuff.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: I'm a green belt. I'm a yellow belt. Depends what I'm doing. Depends what—I'm not bad at talking to audiences that's... I should be pretty good at it. I've done it a million times. But take me to yoga, and I'll hide in the corner because I'm as flexible as a fucking ceramic tile. I’m a white belt. Right? I bet, put me in the gym lifting weights, I go okay, right? And so, again, this is all just about awareness, and development, and ownership. And, but the thing too, is that you're right, everything is very—we do create not only neural grooves, patterns, but also behavioural, and emotional, and cognitive grooves too, where we’re very comfortable in this space. And one of the challenges for us, it's like, it's a dichotomy. Because if everyone listening to this could somehow be involved and put up a show of hands, and we said, ‘All right, everyone. How many of you want to change something about your life or your outcomes or your situation or your body? Or your operating system or your current life experience?’ Nearly everyone's going to put up their hand.  Lisa: Yes. Craig: For something, right? Something. Then if you said, all right, ‘Now, at the same time, be brutally honest with yourself, how many of you like being comfortable?’, everyone's gonna put up their hand. So the problem is, on the one hand, we say I want to be strong, and resilient, and amazing, and produce great results, and do great shit, and grow, and develop my potential and fucking kill it, and but I don't want to get uncomfortable. Well, good luck, princess, that isn't working. It doesn't work. Lisa: The world’s a bitch really, isn't it? I mean, like it is the way it works. You need resistance. Craig: How can you get strong without working against resistance?  Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Craig: Yes. Lisa: This is just the… in my boxing gym, there was a saying on the wall, ‘Strength comes from struggle', and it's just like, ‘Oh damn, that's so right'. Like it's not what we always want. And I wish sometimes that the world was made another way. But we constantly need to be pushing up against what hurts, what is uncomfortable, it's painful just from a biology point of view being in the thermonuclear range, being nice and comfortably warm and cozy is really bad for us. And for you in that all the time, we need to go into an ice bath or cold water or go surfing or something and get cold, we need to be hot, go into a sauna. And when you do these things outside of those comfort zones, we need to lift weights in order to build stronger muscles, we need to do fasting in order to have autophagy, we need—all of these things are those stuff that is outside of pleasant. And you better get used to that idea. It's not because I want to be, like, masochistic in my approach to life. But it's just the way that the world works. If you sit on your ass being comfortable eating chips all day watching Netflix, you're not going to get the results that you're looking for. Craig: That's right. And also there's this—because we only live in the moment. And because we are, and I'm generalising, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners are not what I'm about to describe. But because many of us are very instant gratification based.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Right? It's like, the story is I'll eat this, I'll do this, I'll avoid that. But I'll start tomorrow, or I'll start Monday, or I'll start January 1. And that goes on for 15 years, right?  Lisa: Yep. We’ve all done it. Craig: And now I've backed myself into an emotional, and a psychological, and physiological corner that's hard to get out of because now, I'm 49. And my body's kind of fucked. And I've got high blood pressure. And I've got all these issues because I've been avoiding, and denying, and delaying, and lying to myself for a long time. Again, this is not everyone, so please don't get offended.  Lisa: And It's not a judgment. It's just the way it goes. Craig: No, because, I mean, this is what happens. Like, we live in this world where you can't say the truth.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And I'm not talking about being insensitive or moral judgments on people. But the thing is, it's like, when I talk about being fat, I talk about myself because then no one could get injured, insulted...  Lisa: Insulted, yup. Craig: ...or offended, right. So when I was fat, I wasn't thick-set, or full-figured or voluptuous or stocky? I was fucking fat. Right?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And, but I was fat because of my choices and behaviours.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Now, there are lots of variables around that.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: But at some stage, we have to say, and again, there are people with genetics that make stuff difficult...  Lisa: Absolutely. Craig: ...for medical conditions and all that we fully acknowledge that, but at some stage, we need to go, ‘Alright, well, I'm making decisions and doing things which are actually destroying me'.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: ‘They're actually hurting me'. And this is just about ownership and awareness and my, like, the biggest challenge in my life is me, the biggest problem in my life is me. Like, the only person that can ever really get in my way is me. But also, I'm the solution to me. Lisa: I think it's a willingness to work on it. And like, I've looked into addictions and things quite a lot too, because I know that I have an addictive personality trait. I have genetics that are predisposed to that, and I do everything obsessively. So whether that's running for like a billion kilometres, or whether that's running five companies, or whether that's whatever I'm doing, I'm doing like an extreme version of that because it's just, like, I have that type of personality and it is genetics. And I find that that's one of the study of genetics for me, it's so interesting, there's a lot of predisposition in there. However, that does not negate the fact that I can still make choices, and I can turn the ship around. And I need to be aware of those predispositions, just like mum's got some predispositions towards cardiovascular disease and putting on weight very easily. That's just a fact of life for her, and it's not pleasant. And compared to other genetic types, it's a bit of a disadvantage. However, it is a fact. And therefore, she can still make the right choices for her body.  And this is why I like working in the genetic space is really, really powerful because then I can say, well, it's not my fault that my genes are like this, but they are what they are, and we can remove some of the judgment on ourselves because I think when we—if we're judging ourselves all the time, that's not helpful either, because that stuff we’re like, ‘Oh, well, I'm just useless. And then I'm never gonna do anything,’ rather than empowering and say, ‘Well, it is what it is, the genes that I've been given are these, the environment that I've exposed to is this, the advertising and all that sort of stuff that's coming at us with McDonald's on every street corner and all of that sort of stuff, I can't influence there. What I can influence is I can educate myself and I can start to make better choices from my particular body and start taking ownership of that process and not just going, well, it's not my fault that I'm bigger boned.’ You may be bigger-boned or bigger, have genetics that are all about conservation. Then you need to be doubly careful. And put in the education, and the time, and the work, and I think it's about taking ownership and not judging yourself by getting on with the job. Like I know, like, I know my own personal and—what did you say to me the first time I met you? Something that was real self-aware anyway, without self-deprecating, and it was self-aware? I can't remember what it was that you said, it is a man who knows his own weakness and is working on it. And I think that's really key. Like, I know what I'm shit at and... Craig: And that’s not self-loathing, that's self-awareness. And here's the thing, we're all about learning and growing. And I love my life, and I'm aware that I've got some skills and gifts. I'm also aware that I've got lots of flaws and shit I need to work on. And for some people, that's part of just the journey for other people, they are in a bit of a groundhog day. I always say if you're in a bit of a groundhog day, but you're happy then stay there. Because don't change because this is how I—don't be like me, for God's sake be like you. But if being like you, if your normal operating system equals anxiety, and sleeplessness and a bit of depression, and a bit of disconnection, and I'm not talking purely about mental health, I'm just talking about that state that we all get in, which is a bit like, ‘Fuck, I don't love my life, this wasn't where I thought I would be.’  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Then maybe start to work consciously on and acknowledge, there's some things that you can't change, some you can, and literally what you were talking about a minute ago, which is literally, ‘Okay, so there's what I've got, which is I've got these genetics, I've got 24 hours in a day. I'm 57. I've got this, these are the things I have, then there's what I do with it all.’ So I'm an endomorph. I walk past a doughnut, my ass gets bigger. That's my body type, right? So I need to go, ‘Alright, well with these, or with this disposition, how do I manage optimally with 24 hours in a day without them using the least?’  Lisa: You’ve done a lot by the little sea, Craig. Craig: How do I manage my 24 hours optimally?  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: How do I? It's like, I eat two meals a day. I don't recommend anyone else does that.  Lisa: For even the most, it’s great. Craig: But for me, I don't… Lisa: For an endomorph, that’s great. Craig: I’m an 85-kilo dude with a bit of muscle. I don't need much food. Like, I would love to eat all the fucking food because I love food. What happens when I eat what I want versus what I need is I get fat. So I differentiate between: what does my body need to be lean, strong, functional, healthy versus what does Craig the fucking ex-fat kid want to inhale?  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Because, and the other thing too. And this is probably a bit irrelevant. Maybe relevant, though, for a lot of people. Like I would say, of the people that I've worked with closer over the years, which is thousands and thousands.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: I would say most people, including me, have a relationship with food that’s somewhere on the scale between a little bit disordered and an eating disorder, right?  Lisa: Yup. Craig: And a little bit not always...  Lisa: I’ll cook my end up then. It’s always an issue. Craig: At the other end of the scale, I'm a fucking lunatic around food, right? Now, you're educated, I'm educated, but I tell people all the time. So if I was an addict, and by the way, I've never drank, never smoked, never done drugs. But if I have started drugs or alcohol, I would have probably...  Lisa: Done it well. Craig: ...a drunk and used for Australia, right? I probably would have been a champion because I'm like you. I'm addictive. Now my addiction is food. So you know people think, ‘But you're educated. But you're this, you're that.’ It doesn't matter. Like, I need to manage myself. Lisa: Still won’t hit pie. Craig: Yeah, I need to manage myself around food. Lisa: Yeah, daily.  Craig: Because if I open the cheesecake door, get out of the fucking way. Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Right?  Lisa: I hear you.  Craig: If I open certain doors that derails me, so I need to know. And this is the same with everybody. And it's like, we all have a relationship with food. Okay. Is yours good or bad? healthy or unhealthy? Don't overthink it, just be real. We all have a relationship with our body. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with exercise, activity movement. How’s that going? We all have a relationship with money. We all have a relationship with our ego. It's like, this is opening the door on self-awareness and self-management law to a new level. Lisa: Yeah, love it. Yeah, and this is going to be a fascinating PhD. I really—I can't wait to find out more about it. And I think just having that self-awareness, like I will freely say like, I've struggled with my body image, and who I am, and am I acceptable, and I was always trying to be the skinny little modern girl when I was young, and gymnast, and as a kid, and so struggled immensely with body image issues. And people will look at me now and they go, ‘Oh, whatever, you're lean and you're fit obviously and you don't ever—you wouldn't understand.’ Oh, you have no idea how much I understand. And there's still a constant daily battle: even though I'm educated, even though I know exactly what I should be and shouldn't be doing, I don't always succeed against my —that in a sort of drive that sometimes when you get out of balance, and this is why for me like keeping myself, when I say imbalance, I mean like keeping my neurotransmitters under wraps like in a nice, ordered fashion because I have a tendency to dopamine and adrenaline being my dominant hormones, right?  So I'm just like, go, go, go! Do your absolute blow, take a jump and risk, don't think about it, do go and then burn out, crash bang! And so I need to, I need to have constant movement, I need to do the meditation thing regularly. Like before this podcast, I took five minutes to get my brain back into this space because I wanted to do a good interview. And I wasn't going to do that in this stressed-out body, I'd been doing too much admin work for 10 hours. So, I know how to manage those things. And it's the management on an everyday basis that I think and having those tools in your toolkit so that you know how to pull it up, I can feel my adrenaline going, I can feel the anger rising, I better go for a sprint out to the letterbox and back. Whatever it takes. Does it resonate with you? Craig: Yeah, 100%. What's interesting is I've been around—I worked, one of the things I didn't mention, I worked at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for three years just as their kind of, what’s my title? Buddy health something, manager something, but I would only work there one day a week with them, but work with lots of addicts and alcoholics, and also athletes and all those things. But the thing is, especially with athletes, athletes tend to get their sense of self and their identity from their performances.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And not all, but a lot, and which is why I've known many athletes who got retired earlier than I thought. Lisa: Broke down. Craig: And well, they went into straightaway, most of them a depression or form of depression. And so this is a really interesting thing to just talk about briefly is—from a happiness and a wellness and a cognitive function, and a mental health, emotional health point of view, is to think about where you get your identity and sense of self from. Now, one of the challenges for us is, we live in a culture which is very much externally focused.  Lisa: Totally. Craig: So who you are, Lisa, who you are is what you have, and what you own, and what you wear, and what you look like, and what people think of you, and your brand, and your performance, and your outcome. All things, your shit. And I grew up in that because I was an insecure, fucking fat kid who became an insecure, muscle-y bloke. And then I woke up one day, I was 30. And I was huge, and I had muscles on my eyelids and veins everywhere. And all I was was just a bigger, more insecure version of what I used to be. Because I was still a fuckwit just in a bigger body, right? Because I wasn't dealing with the issues. Because my problem wasn't my biceps or deltoids and being my problem is, I'm mentally and emotionally bankrupt, and perhaps spiritually depending on your belief system. And so, we get taught from an early age that who you are essentially is about all things external. So we get taught directly or indirectly that self-esteem and self-worth and identity is an outside-in process.  My theory is that it is the other way around. It is an inside-out journey. It is, it's differentiating between who I am and my stuff, and recognising that everything that I have and own, and earn, and do, and my profile, and my podcast, and my results, and my brand, and my house, and my biceps, and all those physical, external observable things don't matter nearly as much from a mental and emotional health point of view as what is happening internally.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: So, and I'll shut up after this.  Lisa: No, that’s brilliant. Craig: But this is cool not because I'm sharing it, just this idea is cool, is that is the duality of the human experience. And what that means is that we live in two worlds. So where we do life is in this physical external place of situation, circumstance, environment, traffic lights, other humans, government, COVID, weather, runners, running, sport, all that external stuff, which is not bad. It's awesome, but that's where we do life. But where we do our living, where we do living is that inner space of feelings and ideas and creativity and passion and fear, and depression and anxiety and hope and joy, and overthinking and self doubt and self-loathing, and excitement and creativity. Lisa: Wow. Craig: It's trying to understand—because you and I know, at least a few people, maybe many who from the outside looking in their life is fucking amazing. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Craig: It's the Hollywood life.  Lisa: It’s so nearly like that. Craig: It's a life on the outside of shiny.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: But I've coached many of those people, trained them, worked with them, set with them. And not all, of course, some are great. But there are many people who from the outside looking in, you would go, they're really successful. That would be the label that we use in our culture.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Why are they successful? Oh, look at all of their stuff.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: All of that stuff. Those outcomes, that house and that equals that money, that equals success. But when you sit in, you talk to that person, you go, ‘Oh, this successful person doesn't sleep much, this person needs to medicate to sleep, and also for anxiety, and also for depression. And also they hate themselves, and also they feel disconnected, and also they're lonely.’ And, or if not all of that, some of that, if not all the time, some of the time, and you got all the outside and the inside don’t match.  Lisa: Don’t unlatch. Yeah.  Craig: And so it's going. And by the way, of course, there's nothing wrong with building a great business and writing five books and being an awesome runner, or whatever, building an empire. That's not bad. But it's not healthy when that's the totality of who we are. Lisa: Yeah, and spending time on the inside, and being okay with who you are. Because I often ask myself this question. What if it was all taken away from me again and I've lost—I went through my 30s, lost everything, hit start back from scratch. We've been there, done that. I've had to go through the wringer a couple of times. If everything was taken off me, my house, my achievements, my business, which could happen tomorrow, who am I? And would I be able to get back up again? And I reckon I would, because I've got tools to rebuild. And I know that resilience is the most important thing.  Craig: Yeah.  Lisa: The question I ask myself sometimes, so, is it whether, like, I lost my father this year, last year, sorry, six months ago, so that knocked the crap out of me...  Craig: 100%. Lisa: ...out of my resilience because that was like, up until that point, it didn't matter. If I lost my job, my car, my career, and anything else, but my family were safe, and they were all alive, then that's all I needed. And then when the chief gets taken out, the cornerstone who'd been a rock, my mum was too, but that was a cornerstone, then it didn't, it was a bit of an existential bloody crisis for me because I was like, ‘And now, life is never going to be the same again.’ And that resilience, I really had to dig deep to stand back up again. And I think, so grief is one of those things. So I asked myself constantly, and one of the reasons I drive myself so hard is to protect my family, and to look after them, make sure I don't miss anything. And this one of the things I study so hard for. Just sharing a personal story there to sort of get people to understand, ‘If you lost everything, could you get back up? What would it take to break you?’ That nearly broke me, to be brutally honest. Craig: Well, I say to people who are in a bit of a—and thanks for sharing that, and sorry about your dad. God bless him.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Like, I say to people, ‘Okay, let's forget all the fucking KPIs and the deck and success mantras and all right, that's good.’ I can stand in front of people and motivate, and inspire, and make them laugh, and tell stories. And that's all good. But I go, ‘I've got three words for you one question three words. And the three words and the one question are, what really matters?’ Now, what really matters is not your fucking tally. It's not your bank balance. It's not your biceps. It's not your hair colour. It's not your fucking lippy, or it's in my case, it's not your abs or and none of those things of themselves are bad. But I've been really lucky that I've worked with people who are in a really bad way, people in prison who got themselves there, of course, but then probably more impact for me was people with really bad injuries.  Lisa: That’s amazing. Craig: I work with a bloke at the moment, a mate of mine who got blown up in an accident. I trained him three days a week, and he was literally given zero chance of living like, or having any function similar to your mum.  Lisa: Wow.  Craig: And he started. He was in, like your mum, he was in a coma. I started, they said he'd be a quadriplegic. If he—firstly, they said he wouldn't live, and he lived in our luck out, mesmerised how that happened.  Lisa: Yeah. Craig: Got through the operations, he got blown up by gas bottles, which were in the back of his unit while he was driving.  Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: That blew the car apart, that blew the roof off, they shattered windows for 800 meters in the houses. And he was given zero chance of living. And he was in a coma for a long time. And I'll go in and talk to him. And when he obviously was not awakened, all the stuff that you did, and I just say to him, that I don't know, like, that'd be gone. I don't know. Like, I don’t be guessing. I don't know, I might just get well enough to get out of here. And I'll start training him. I started training him in a wheelchair, with a broomstick. And so and the broomstick literally weighed, I don't know, maybe 100 grams. And so I would put the broomstick in his hands. And I would pull his hands away. So his arm’s away from his body.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And I'd say now try and pull that towards you.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And that's where we started.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: With a 100-gram broomstick.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Now it's three and a bit years later, I've trained him for three and a bit years.  Lisa: Wow. Craig: He is now walking with sticks. He drives himself to the gym. His brain function is fucking amazing.  Lisa: Oh my god. Craig: He’s still in constant pain. And he's got a lot of issues. But the bottom line is the dude who they went, you will never ever walk, you will never talk.  Lisa: You’ll never survive. Craig: They'll never be any—you'll never have any function, right?  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So my two big perspective givers. That's one and the other one is—so...  Lisa: What a dude. Craig: What’s that? Lisa: What a legend. Craig: Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. So about 14 months ago, I was at the gym and I was training with my training partner, who's like me and he’s all buffed. He's in good shape. He’s fit. He doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, him and I are very similar. Anyway, one of the stupid things that he does is he takes I don't want to get in trouble. But he takes pre-workout, doesn't do drug. Don't do anything. I don't know. But anyway, he took a pre-workout. We're training and he's doing a set of chins. And he did 30 chins, Lisa, and he held his breath for the whole time because that's what he does. He thinks he gets more reps when he holds his breath. By the way, folks, not a great plan. Holds his breath for 30 reps. Lisa: He’s training his chemoreceptors. This for sure. Craig: Yeah, comes down, falls on his face on the floor. And I think he's having a seizure.  Lisa: Oh. Craig: And it had an instant cardiac arrest.  Lisa: Oh my god.  Craig: So, not a heart attack, a cardiac arrest. So, his heart stopped. So it took me kind of 20 seconds to realise it was that, and not... And there was—I won't describe what was going on with him.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: But as you can imagine, turning all kinds of colours... Lisa: Yep.  Craig: ...stuff coming out of his mouth. It was messy, right?  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: So, he was dead for 17 minutes.  Lisa: Oh, my God.  Craig: I worked on him for 10 until the ambos got there or the paramedics and God bless him. fricking amazing. But what's interesting is in that, firstly, that 17 minutes could have been 17 days. That's how clearly I remember those minutes.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And I'm on the floor, kneeling down next to one of my best friends in the world.  Lisa: Yep.  Craig: And I'm doing compressions and breathing, and I'm trying to save his life.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And it's funny how in that moment, everything comes, without even trying, to everything comes screamingly into perspective about, ‘What is bullshit?’ Lisa: Yes.  Craig: What matters?  Lisa: Yes.  Craig: What fucking doesn't matter?  Lisa: Yes.  Craig: What I waste energy and attention on. And literally those seven, eight minutes. I mean, I think I had pretty good awareness but they really changed me.  Lisa: Yeah. I hear you. Craig: Nothing matters except the people I love.  Lisa: Exactly. Craig: I'll figure the rest out.  Lisa: Yep. It's an amazing story. Did he survive? Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's five-to-two here in Melbourne.  Lisa: And he's waiting for you?  Craig: We're training at five. Lisa: Brilliant. Say hi for me. Craig: He’s still an idiot.  Lisa: He’s awesome, he's lucky he got you.  Craig: He’s still an idiot, but at least he prays when he chins. Lisa: Yeah, but like just the experience I went through with my dad. And I haven't done a whole podcast on it, and I tend to, because the two weeks fighting for his life in the hospital and fighting up against a system that wouldn't let me do intravenous vitamin C in that case that I was trying to because he had sepsis, and fighting with every ounce of my body and every ounce of my will, and in knowing that, and for those—it was 15 days that we were there, and they all blend into one because there was hardly any sleep happening in that time, a couple hours here and there and I'd fall over. But they changed me forever, in the fact that because I'm a fixer, I like to fix things and people. And when we're in the fight, I’m the best person you want in your corner of the ring. If we're in a fight for your life, or not as an, like, I'm a paramedic, but if you want someone to fight for you, then I’m the biggest person to have in your corner. But when we lost that battle, man, I was broken. And to actually not to come out the other side and to have that win and to get him back and to save his life, especially knowing I had something that could have saved his life had I been able to give it to him from day one. And you said that about your friend who got blown up and you said, ‘Just get out of here, mate, no, take it from there.’ And that's what I was saying to my dad. And as he had, ‘You just get yourself—you just hang in there, dad, because I will do what I can do here, and I've got all my mates and my doctors and my scientists all lined up ready to go. As soon as I get you the hell out of this place, I will do whatever it takes to get you back.’ But I could not do anything in a critical care situation because I had no control over him, his body, what went into him. And it was a—he was on a ventilator and so on. And so that was out of my control, you know? And that's fricking devastating.  Craig: Yeah.  Lisa: To know that and to feel that. Craig: How did that change you? Like, how did that change you in terms of... Lisa: It's still an evolving process I think, Craig, and there's a burning desire in me to get that changed in our ICU for starters, to get recognition for intravenous vitamin C, which I've done like a five-part series on my podcast for status, but I'm working on other ideas and projects for that because we're talking thousands and thousands of doctors and scientists who have the proof that this helps with things like sepsis, like ADS, like pneumonia, and it's just being ignored. And it's, we’re just 20 years behind this is one of the reasons I do what I do, is because I know that the information, like going through that journey with my mum too, the information that latest in clinical studies, all of what the scientists are doing now and what's actually happening in clinical practice are just worlds apart. And with like a 20-year delay in from there to there, and the scientists are saying this, and the doctors at the cutting edge are saying this. And so things have to change. So that's changed me in a perspective because I've never been a political person. I don't want to really get—I love being in the positive world of change, and it's, do things. But I do feel myself going into this activism space in a little way because I need to get some changes happening and some systematic things and you know you're up against the big fight.  Craig: Yeah.  Lisa: This is a big base to take on. But I'll do what I can in my corner of the world, at least but it has changed. And all that matters to me now is my family and my friends, and then from a legacy perspective, is impacting the world massively with what I do know and the connections that I do have and bringing information like we've been hearing today and these very personal real stories to people's ears because it changes the way people have their own conversations and hence start to think. Craig: Well, I think also, and thanks for sharing that. That's it. Somebody's got to step up, and you're stepping up and quite often the things that we need to do to live our values are not the things we want to do.  Lisa: No, scary.  Craig: Like, Fuck this. Yeah, I'd rather watch Netflix too. But that's not what I'm about. So it's good that you recognise that and you step into that, but I think what's encouraging about this conversation for everyone is that neither of us, well, I was gonna say, particularly special, you're quite special with what you do. But even with what you do, as an elite athlete, really, you've just put in an inordinate amount of work. Like, you've done all of the things required to become elite and to become an exception, but in many other ways, like with me, you've got issues and bullshit and flaws. And that's why I think—I'm not saying this is a great podcast by any means that or this is great conversation because that's very fucking self-indulgent. But what I mean is, I think people connect with podcasts, conversations that are just that.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Where it's not like two people who are... Lisa: Scripted.  Craig: ...just shooting off like experts. It's like, yeah, we're both figuring it out, too.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: And by the way, I'm a dickhead too. By the way, I don't know, I've got a lot of shit wrong. Don't worry about that. It's like, I'm just having my best guess. And I always say, even as a coach, I've never changed anyone. All I've done is influenced people, but I've never done the work for them. They've always done the work. So, everyone that I've coached that succeeded, it's because they did the work. Like I didn't run the race. I didn't lift the weight. I didn't play the sport. I didn't go to the Olympics. I didn't walk out onto the arena. I didn't do anything. I'm just the guy going, ‘Fuck, come on, you can do it.’ And like, here’s a plan and here’s—it's like, I'm just the theory guy. I don't put it into—the only life that I put it into practice in is my own. Lisa: Yeah. And that's powerful. And as a role model, too. I mean the shape that you're in and the stuff that you do, and you walk the talk, and those are the people that I want to listen to. And those are the people I want to learn from. Craig: Well, my dad, my dad used to say to me, a couple of it, my dad's like a cranky philosopher. But he used to say to me a couple of things. This is irrelevant. The first one but it's, ‘You can't go to university and get a personality', right. Which is funny because my dad's like, ‘And university, it's overrated'. I agree, dad.  Lisa: Yeah.  Craig: Second thing.  Lisa: For most things. Craig: Second thing. He used to say, ‘I wouldn't trust accountants or financial planners who weren't rich'. Lisa: Or trainers who are overweight. Craig: It's like, I remember him saying to me, like a friend of his disrespect Toyota, but not a friend, but a dude he knew. He was a financial planner or an accountant. And he used to drive this old beaten up Corolla, and my dad's like, ‘Why would I listen to him?’ Like, look what he drives, like, if he knew anything about making money or maximising whatever.  Lisa:

Kimo Seymour (Life Time) and LeLan Dains (UNBOUND GRAVEL) take a look back at 2020 and forward to the 2021 gravel event season including UNBOUND GRAVEL. We take a close look at the COVID protocols the team has put in place to ensure a safe event. UNBOUND GRAVEL Instagram  UNBOUND GRAVEL Covid Safety  Support the Podcast Join The Ridership Episode Transcription: Craig: Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Kimo: Thanks for having us. LeLan: Yeah, thanks for having us, Craig. Craig: Yeah. So it'd be a good place start off since I've got two of you on the line today. Why don't we start off with Kimo, and then go on to LeLan? And just talk about your respective roles at Life Time. And maybe Kimo, prior to that, you could just tell the listener about Life Time in general. Kimo: Okay. So Life Time may be more nationally known as a leading health club company around the country. We operate 154 what I'll call destination health clubs around the country, and very nice, I'd consider pretty high end type health clubs, very family oriented company in 30 plus states. So Life Time's been around 20, I think we're coming up on 28, 29 years now. I'm fortunate enough to get to work on the events and partnership side of the business, so partnerships meaning most people think of it as sponsorships. We call them partnerships because it's an opportunity for us to share our partners with our audiences, and that happens to live both in events, which are outside of the walls of our clubs, as well as our members, which a couple million members, which attend our clubs. Craig: So how did Life Time start to see exterior events, events outside the club, as being an opportunity for a health club? Kimo: It's a great, great question. I think it was prior to my involvement. I've been with the company a little over nine years now. And my understanding was the idea was we kind of positioned ourselves as what we call a healthy way of life company. And I think the thought at the time, and continues to be our thought process that clubs and these destinations are an important component of a healthy way of life, but not necessarily the only component of a healthy way of life. To live healthy, you have to eat healthy. You have to have activity every single day. And clubs are an important component of that, but we also saw that to keep people in the ecosystem, it's important to engage them beyond the walls of the clubs, and events were an opportunity like that. Kimo: On top of it, events were a great brand. We found out that, gosh, you get a lot of really good exposure for your brand if you go create great experiences outside your clubs, a lot of media exposure. A lot of people start to learn about your ecosystem through these events, and so I think it was a combination of extending that lifestyle beyond the walls of the clubs, but also it was a marketing idea. It was a way to extend the brand, if you will. Craig: And were those first events things that Life Time conceived of themselves and created? Or did it start with sponsorships or partnerships? Kimo: To my understanding, I think there were a few sponsorships early on. But our CEO is, I'll say very protective of the brand. And the idea that we would put our brand on somebody else's experience and not control what that experience is like, he didn't like that idea. He liked the idea that we want to deliver a premium experience in everything that we do, therefore, we probably need to really do that effectively, we need to control that experience. So we get asked frequently if we would like to sponsor other events. We've chosen typically not to do that. We've found more success where we can kind of control and really engage with the consumer with our brand, that putting our name on somebody else's event hasn't been as effective for us. Craig: I remember the first time Life Time got on my radar was from the Leadville 100. And I think it was the year after I did it, the acquisition was announced, and it was really interesting because I know how much the founders of that event, how much passion and love they had for it, so it was very kind of curious when this outside entity came in and acquired that event. And then it was very heartening to see how much involvement the founding team has and still has in it, and how the character of the event didn't change. Kimo: Yeah. That's a great example of one where I think Life Time sponsored it for two or three years prior to the acquisition. I was actually, I came on shortly after that acquisition really, and that was my first job, was to make sure that we didn't "screw it up." And first and foremost to me, I thought it's really important to keep those founders because they're the ones that keep us engaged with the community. And they're the ones that know how to make sure that thing continues with the heart and soul that it had developed over the 25 years previous to our involvement, so yeah, I think that's an example of one where I like to think we've done an okay job of continuing that. And hearing you say that we've continued that experience, and like you say, the heart and soul of it is still there. And I think that's thanks to Ken and Merilee. And now Cole, who's Ken's son, has moved over to start helping us as Ken and Merilee reach a point of potentially retiring. We've got to have some of that continuity there in the Leadville community. Craig: Yeah. And obviously with mountain bike events and gravel events, any mountain event in these small communities, it's just so critical that you have the local team involved, because as you said, it's sort of the heart and soul of the event, and no one wants to lose that. Kimo: Right. Craig: LeLan, maybe that's a good time for you to introduce yourself as part of the team at the event formerly known as DK, now known as Unbound, which we'll get into later. Why don't you introduce yourself and what you do in the family? LeLan: Yeah. Well, I was one of those former owners of DK Promotions at the time. And we'd built up this DK event. And it was just a little over two years ago now that Life Time acquired us. Member of our team were getting on in the years, and we knew that there needed to be a strategy for a succession, if you will. And Kimo was one of the first people saying, "Hey, we want to make sure that you are part of this." In fact, I think it was we don't want to acquire this without you staying on board and helping us run it. So I now work for Life Time as the event director for the Unbound family of events, so that's our training camps in the spring, Unbound of course, first weekend after Memorial Day, our summertime lunar ride, and then that also led into the creation of Big Sugar down in Arkansas, which I help oversee. Craig: Yeah. That brings me back to a year ago in 2019. I had visited the Big Sugar preview ride in Bentonville, which was awesome in October. Life Time had announced its acquisition of Crusher in the Tushar. There was all these big things, and I think as one member of the community, I was so looking forward to 2020. I thought we had so many amazing things planned. I think you guys share that with me. At a strategic level, once COVID came into our lives in February, March, I think it really started kicking up. Obviously, Bobby Wintle's event, The Mid South, was probably the biggest event on the calendar that actually just managed to kick off. How did you guys see that and start thinking about it? It must've been incredibly challenging. LeLan: Yeah. I mean, there was so much unknown for everyone as we came into the start of 2020. Initially, to be honest, I personally didn't think it would affect our event, which was end of May, would've been end of May this year. And so you're there in January, February, and we're thinking, "Okay. If we all play by the rules and we kind of isolate ourselves for a few weeks, this ought to just go away," and boy, were we wrong. I was certainly wrong in that assumption. And so it didn't take long to go from, "Yeah, we're still having event this year," to, "We need to pick a postponement date." Then you get into the summer and you're like, "We're not having anything this year. And so it was, definitely didn't see that coming, for sure. Craig: Kimo, from a corporate level, obviously when this started coming down, it affected all of your events. What was that like on your end? And how did you kind of react corporately to the situation? Kimo: Well, yeah, at the corporate level obviously there was a lot of focus on the fact that we had to close down 154 clubs across the country. And boy, what a huge impact on our business. I'll say we're ... I preach this to our team a lot, I'm just incredibly thankful that in a time like this, we have a big company like Life Time behind us. There's a lot of people out there say, "Life Time, this big corporate giant coming in and gobbling up events and these things." And I think, "Well, these are the times where it's a pretty solid benefit to have that bigger company behind us." And I really feel for a lot of the smaller event producers that aren't getting any support from the government, kind of like restaurants. Right? I don't know how they're surviving. And I just feel terrible for them. You know? Kimo: And we're so fortunate that we were able to, I mean, obviously we canceled. I think we did two events in the beginning of the year. We've canceled the rest of our events for the year. Obviously, hard when you cancel 30 plus events, that's a big, big impact both to our business and to our parent company. So the irony was it didn't happen overnight. Right? This, as LeLan said, this thing evolved. Even in March, we thought, "We still got a chance. By beginning of June, we should be good. We'll come back out of this thing." Little did we know. We're talking about next June now. You know? And when we'll be able to get events back on next year, not this year. I think the hardest, the toughest decisions for me, nobody was going to fault us for canceling an event. People would fault us if we tried to put on an event. Right? Kimo: You'd have probably 50% of the people would be the ones bashing you for it, and 50% would be applauding you for it. We couldn't take that ... We couldn't risk exposing people like that, so the decision was not difficult to cancel. The hardest decision for me was what to do with the team, with the company. We furloughed close to 38,000 team members across the company. And unfortunately, some of those, we still haven't been able to bring back because of this. So we've been fairly fortunate in our business. We did lose a few people along the way, but we've been able to bring a number of people back, and those are probably the hardest decisions that we've had to make this year. Craig: Yeah. I can only imagine. I felt like at the time, there was a lot of sort of woe is me from individual riders who were seeing the one event they were aspiring to do for the year get canceled. But at the end of the day, like you said, whether you're a larger corporation or a small event producer, this hit hard. And being able to rebound back and be someone we can count on to create events in 2021 is super important. And I hope we didn't lose any events in all this, but I think inevitably we may have. Kimo: I think so. I think that's yet to be seen, Craig. I think unfortunately, there will be some of the smaller, maybe some of the bigger ones too, that just don't make it through because that's tough to go a year without your ... You got your operating expense that you kind of have to live with throughout the year. And then you've got all your revenue comes from a single day event, typically. Craig: Totally. Kimo: It's tough. Craig: And it's not like events are these huge revenue making machines, by any means, so the margins are quite small. And if you're required to give refunds to people, et cetera, there's a lot to it. On a brighter side, you gave a lot of riders the opportunity to donate their registration fees to charities, which I thought was a great way to kind of turn the tide on this. Do you want to talk about some of the success you had with that program? Kimo: Yeah. Really good question. We did. We selectively chose a number of events and gave people the option to donate to a variety of charities. In most situations, in most markets where we do events, we also through our Life Time Foundation, we support and are implementing school, kind of an improved school lunch program across the country, and doing what we call eliminating the harmful seven. And there's seven ingredients that we believe just children shouldn't be exposed to in school lunches. And so we've now extended that. We're impacting about two and a half million kids across the country through the Life Time Foundation. And those communities, our athletes are starting to recognize that it's pretty neat what we're able to do in those communities where we host events. And so Emporia, where LeLan lives, is a good example. We've entered into an agreement with the Emporia School District. And a number of our athletes for what was DK, now to be Unbound, chose to donate their entries. We gave them the ... We guaranteed people the opportunity to get back in this next year, but they donated this year's entry fee to support the lunch program in that school district. Kimo: And it evolved from not just eliminating the harmful seven in these school lunch programs, but it actually evolved into a COVID relief type lunch program in a lot of our school districts around the country that turned into not only a COVID lunch relief, but many, many districts, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where there were really high unemployment rates and families that were really impacted. Leadville's a perfect example. I think in total we raised almost a quarter million dollars for that school district to support their COVID relief program throughout the summer and kept feeding not only kids, but their families, where they just didn't have access because they were unemployed. So really grateful for our athletes that jumped in to help out, and it was pretty impressive. Craig: Yeah. It's a great result, considering how much corporate level trauma, with all the employees you had to furlough, and all these sort of negative things going on, to at least be able to put something positive back into the world. Kimo: Yeah, I think so. We're really fortunate and appreciative of everybody that stepped up to help. Craig: So LeLan, I know last year, DK pivoted to a virtual event. And then there was also a virtual event for Big Sugar. I don't want to drill too much into the details of the virtual event. But is there anything that you guys learned running virtual events that might be useful going forward? LeLan: Yeah. I think the biggest lesson was learning that virtual events can be really good and really useful for a lot of people. Take our camp, for example. We had a virtual training camp, and that reached over 1000 people. And it really opened our eyes to the fact that our in person events can be rather limiting when you really think about it. DK, when it was owned by us had been a lottery long before Life Time acquired us because the demand was so high. We can only fit so many people in Emporia. Well, through the, I guess, forced use of virtual events this year, we realized that on top of taking people here in town, we potentially can create meaningful opportunities to engage with people that aren't able, either aren't able to travel to Emporia, or weren't selected to come to Emporia. And so it is certainly our hope that moving forward that we can use virtual activities to continue to engage people beyond those that can come here to Emporia. And so that was definitely an aspect that was exciting to me. LeLan: We had, like I say, I refer to our virtual training camp, what a great success that was. And in fact, we were able to add content that we wouldn't normally have in our in person training camp. We were able to engage more sponsors that don't always travel to town to be with the in person athletes. And we just had all kinds of information and great activations and great input from a lot of people to make that happen. And I think we only charged something like $10 to join that virtual training camp, and so the value return was immense. And I believe those profits were donated to either the Life Time Foundation, maybe a combination of organizations, so that was definitely in my opinion a huge success. Craig: Yeah. I think that was definitely one of those interesting silver linings to 2020, was just that we fleshed out a number of different virtual formats, and some of them are going to stick and some of them aren't. But at the end of the day, I just think it was a way to bind the community together in a time where we desperately wanted community, but we couldn't safely come together. LeLan: Our goal has certainly been to invite and welcome in as many people from the gravel community as we could. And as we've alluded, because of the use of our lottery, because the demand was so high, we couldn't capture all those people. So this will definitely give us an opportunity to engage. Will it be the same as riding hundreds of miles in the Flint Hills? No, not quite. But again, I think we can create a value in that experience that is appropriate and still makes the end user feel like they were a part of something pretty special. Craig: Yeah. I think one of the offshoots of that was a lot of great routes got created and shared across the community, which was really cool. I've benefited from going to different towns and riding routes that someone posted in their virtual DK race. The other big thing obviously in 2020 was DK rebranding to Unbound. For either of you, would you like to talk a little bit about that process and how you arrived at the name Unbound and what it means to you? Kimo: Want to take that one, LeLan? LeLan: Well, sure. Yeah. Well, it was a process indeed. As you can imagine, DK had positioned itself as the world's premier gravel event. And it was going on 15 years in 2020. This would've been the 15th running. And so imagine renaming your 15 year old child or something like that. It was a tall order. But we did, I really liked the process that our marketing team implemented. They pulled together a great committee of people, or group of people, if you will. And that included community members from right here in Emporia, key members from the Life Time team, couple professional athletes that were well involved with DK sponsors. So it was a very eclectic group of people from ... And not everyone was necessarily a hardcore cyclist. They just had an interest or a stake in the event in some way. And we invited them into the process, and it was just pages upon pages of words and phrases and names that we liked. And you start the process of scratching names out. LeLan: And Unbound was one that always just kind of was there. And we would always kind of pursue something else, and it wouldn't work for a number of reasons. And Unbound was there. And I really started to think about what that word signifies, what it means. It became very clear to me personally, a lot of people on the committee, that Unbound does represent the spirit of not only this event, but in gravel in general. The whole purpose of gravel was to get out there with nothing but a paper map and a cue sheet, and your own legs and whatever supplies you could carry, and to really be free out there and explore uninhibited. And that's what Unbound refers to really. And so we found it to be a name that was very applicable and captured the spirit in a lot of ways. Craig: Yeah. I think the end result was great, and I like the name, personally. LeLan: Well, good. Many people do. If you go onto social media, you might think otherwise, but the critics, as they tend to be, are really few in number. And there were some people obviously who didn't want the name to change at all. And we understand that, and so they likely weren't going to like anything that we produced, and that's okay. We understand there's a lot of emotion wrapped up into it. But when we were floating this around, it was clear to us that partners, industry partners in particular, really liked the name, and that really helped us solidify that selection. Craig: Nice. Well, let's get practical now. I really want to have a conversation for our listeners and the community at large about how events can be run safely in 2021. Unbound is scheduled for June 5th, 2021 at this point. And I know from talking to you, LeLan, you guys have fleshed out a lot of precautions. Can you talk through what Unbound is going to look like and how it may differ? And this again, for the listener, this is assuming we're still in the really tricky state of the pandemic, as we are now. LeLan: Yeah. And I warn everyone going into everything that I'd love to share here that this is a largely hypothetical. Here we sit in December, and as a production team, we desperately need to have ... We want some answers and we need to get started on our prep and planning, but those answers just don't exist. I go and I talk to my public health officials and city officials here, and they say, "LeLan, what do you want me to tell you? That's six months away. I can't tell you what next week is going to look like, let alone June." But the positive is that most everyone, everyone I've spoken with is optimistic that a bike ride can take place in June here in Emporia. And that's really reassuring to us. LeLan: And what that means is everything else might look pretty different. And there's obviously going to be a lot of safety stuff that I want to share. But at the end of the day, we think that a bike ride can take place. And that can happen because we can spread out the start line a little bit. And we're talking about hundreds of miles of Flint Hills, open air. There's really few better opportunities for us to have an even than out in the Flint Hills riding our bikes. And so I think that really lends a lot of positivity to something will take place. LeLan: But when you look at the other facets of the event, we really believe that we can make some alterations that still give the participants, our athletes, a great experience. So you take a look at our riders meeting. Okay, it has been a phenomenal gift to be able to gather in the Granada Theater and have those riders meetings. And the energy in that room is eclectic. Probably not going to happen in '21. We'll probably live stream that, and we'll still be able to disseminate the information. We just won't be able to gather in the theater. Packet pickup, we're really going to have to reduce the numbers and control the flow, so we'll probably do things like only the rider will be allowed to go in and sign in for themselves. As much as we love for the family to be a part of that experience, we just, there's not a ... We can't risk having the extra bodies in there. LeLan: Naturally, social distancing and mask usage, assuming that is still in use, will be followed wherever applicable. That's kind of a given. But just controlling the flow a little bit, reducing the numbers in any of our indoor facilities, those types of things. Our Finish Festival is going to probably be the biggest difficulty because if anyone's ever been to our finish line, it is thousands of people. I've heard as many as 10,000, some estimates have been. And they're milling around within a few block radius, and they've got a beer in their hand and a taco or pulled pork sandwich in the other. And you obviously can't have a mask when you're doing that. So that's an area where we're going to really have to scrutinize what we're able to do, what's prudent to do. But again, I go back to our worst case scenario. It may just be a finish line. There might not be quite the fanfare in years past. LeLan: But I don't think most of our athletes will be too upset about that. Is it great to have the crowd there? Absolutely. But if it means being able to have a ride, and that's a part we might have to give on a little, then it's something we're certainly willing to concede on here. But that's an area where we have a little bit of time to figure out what this thing might be looking like come springtime. It's an area that we'll have all the scenarios from A to Z try to figured out. And by the time we get to March, April, we'll know where in that line where we might have to be in terms of execution. Craig: Yeah. I think I heard Michael Marx from BWR say that putting on an event is twice the effort in the current situation that it has been previously. LeLan: Twice is being generous. I mean, we've got multiple plans and schemes and angles. And we want to be prepared for just about any scenario. And we feel pretty prepared as of today. Craig: Yeah. It's comforting that you guys have posted your COVID guidelines already on the website. I really like to see that. Kimo: Yeah. Craig, I think there's even maybe a bigger picture question that's still yet to be answered. It's something we don't know. And it probably extends beyond just our little industry. But in general, is there going to be ... We're starting to think about it. Will there be some period of time where it may just be required for certain activities, for certain businesses that you show up with a negative COVID test and/or proof of a vaccination? And I don't know that we're going to lead in that area nationwide, but I think there may be scenarios, and there's always a lot of talk about that, that some industries may just, they may go to that for some period of time. Kimo: If you're going to get on an airplane, countries and states are doing that now. To get into Hawaii, you have to show that you got a negative test from the last 72 hours. And I think we're going to see that evolve, and we'll probably see more of that over the next, I would imagine, 12 months. And so we're prepared. We're preparing for that scenario that we have to think about across all of our events. Potentially, it could be that you have to ... We end up having to be ... A municipality or local jurisdiction might require us to check that every single person that's coming has had a vaccine or has had a negative test in the last 48 hours or whatever it is. Craig: Yeah. It's sort of mind boggling to play out. I mean, do you have two finish lines for some people who have been vaccinated and some people who haven't? It's incredible. Kimo: It is. Craig: But I think any way you slice it, 2021's going to be a little bit topsy turvy. I think you do have the benefit, as you said, LeLan, of being a June event gives us a little bit of time to kind of see how things are playing out. There's a couple other big events on the gravel calendar that will have gone off, and hopefully gone off without a hitch so we can learn some lessons. LeLan: Even right here locally, not everyone ... If you've been to Emporia, you've probably learned this, but this is a big disc golf town as well. In fact, in April, Dynamic Discs, which is located here, hosts the world's largest disc golf tournament. So we'll also get to take some clues from them right here at home how that is operated and how it goes off. And so we do have that good fortune of being right in the middle of the calendar year. And so we'll get to learn from others on best practices as well. Craig: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's critical that throughout the gravel cycling community, if a rider's intending on attending an event, that they really take a high level of personal responsibility for their attendance. And whether that is in representing a negative test, or just showing up and following the rules, I think that's where we're going to fall down because I know all the event producers I've been speaking to, they know how important it is for them to set the right stage. But if the riders themselves don't take the responsibility, that's where the challenges are going to come. LeLan: Yeah. If you think about it, we utilize the help of a few hundred volunteers. It's an extraordinary number, but that's to manage thousands of people, not just riders, but their support crews and spectators. And so we can't have eyes everywhere all the time, so when we make a statement like, "We need you to wear a buff or face covering on the start line," we need your participation in that because it's very difficult to go row by row, person by person, and enforce something like that. It's simply our expectation that you're coming here with the goodwill and a desire to participate the way we need you to. Craig: Yeah. And I think obviously the other big thing is just responsibility during the travel to Emporia. Being a small community and drawing athletes from all over the world, that's huge. You could be coming from a territory that does not have precautions in place and bringing it to a community that does. LeLan: Yeah. I think most people recognize that even in larger communities, our larger cities, the healthcare system is overwhelmed. But then you look at a place like Emporia, which has 20 hospital beds, we just can't facilitate a big outbreak, so it could be very detrimental. Craig: With the precautions stated behind us, how excited are you to get the community back together this year? LeLan: Well, nothing would please me more. It's been an interesting year, where to Kimo's point, I've been grateful throughout the entire year to have employment, to continually be working towards the next objectives. But it's just felt weird. What have we been working towards? What have we accomplished this year? While I know we've accomplished things, it's been hard to recognize and see those things when you don't have those tangible events to execute. So nothing would please me more to get back to, I'll state it again, to just have a bike ride. I really think if we just view it as that, I think we can accomplish that much and get back to really what all this is really about, which is riding our bikes in beautiful locations and coming together as community in whatever capacity we're able. Craig: Yeah. And I know you're both cyclists yourselves, so you both personally must be missing the normalcy of group rides. Kimo: I'd say a little bit. Yeah. Definitely. I miss, whether I'm in our events, whether I'm riding, or just there to pick up trash, or whatever I do around the events. I miss it. I miss seeing that. There's nothing more. I mean, I'm telling you, if you stand at the finish line of Unbound, or Leadville, or any of these events, and if you don't shed a tear at some point, you must not have a heart. I mean, it is unbelievable the power that these events have to change people's lives and to have lasting impressions on the riders and their families, I mean kids seeing their parents do that. The example that people are setting for the next generation and all these things, it's really powerful and impactful. And it's all gone right now. That made me more anxious to see that than to necessarily cross the finish line myself, or get out on a group ride. Yeah, that's the part that's hard. It's a bummer that we've lost that for a year. Craig: Yeah. I mean, there's absolute magic in the last person to cross the finish line. You see the pros come across very quickly and are very able to have conversations and go on their business, sign some autographs. But that last person who turned themselves inside out, and maybe this is something they've never done before, I mean, it definitely gives me goosebumps even talking about seeing those athletes come across the line. LeLan: Oh, absolutely. As you well know, we are there, Unbound finish line is open until 3:00 AM Sunday morning. We're standing there until the very last come home. Craig: Amazing. Well, there's absolutely a reason why Unbound is on a lot of gravel athletes' bucket list of events to attend, for sure. So Kimo, for Life Time, you've got a suite of gravel events throughout the year. Have all the dates been set for the big events at this point? Kimo: They are all set, yeah. So all the big ones, we've kind of put them back on their traditional dates. At this point, we're contemplating whether or not something in the spring might have to get moved to the fall, things like that. As far as the gravel events right now though, it looks like we've got everything kind of where it traditionally has been in the past. Craig: Okay, because Crusher was later in the summer, I believe. And then Big Sugar obviously is at the end of the year. Right? Kimo: Right. Right. We've still got Crusher in the middle of July. And then, yes, Big Sugar for late October. Craig: Okay. And have you set the stage for when event registration for those later events will be available? Kimo: We have, actually. And I don't have the dates in front of me. LeLan, you probably know better than I do. LeLan: You'll have to fact check me on Crusher. It's either mid January or early February. Big Sugar, we have not made that announcement, but look for a springtime opening for that registration. Craig: Okay. For both of those events, I imagine there's a lot of deferred athletes that are potentially given the first slots. LeLan: You are correct, yeah. But I'm glad you bring that up because even with Unbound, there were many people who donated their entries, or asked for a refund. A lot have deferred. But I do want to mention to the listeners that there will be a lottery registration for Unbound. There will be new spots available for athletes. And that opens up January 15th. So definitely be, if you're wanting in this year, there's still opportunity. Craig: Awesome. That's super exciting to hear. I just sort of assumed that it was already locked up. LeLan: Yeah. And that's why I'm glad you brought it up because I imagine most people are feeling that way. And I don't think we've made big to do about that. This is one of the first times we've been able to get on air with anyone and talk about our registration will be opening. So definitely put your names in the hat. Craig: And then for registered athletes, is there a deferment or refund policy that you guys have already crystallized? LeLan: Yeah. Another great question, I'm glad we're hitting on that because in years past, we've taken a pretty hard no refunds. And even before Life Time had acquired us, we had moved to a no transfer policy, which we used to allow transfers. But this has definitely made us realize that this was something that's obviously out of everyone's control, but we did want to recreate a deferral and a refund policy that would be more generous and maybe a little more fair to everyone. So folks, and I'll kind of rattle some of this off, but you can visit unboundgravel.com, look at our COVID-19 guidelines. And you'll see our little Q and A, which includes the deferral refund policy. But from 90 days out or more, there's a 70% refund available to the riders if we need to cancel the event because of COVID. Then it goes down to 50%. And then within the last couple months, a 40% refund. LeLan: Now I will say this, obviously it'd be our goal to try to postpone. Because we do take place in June, there is a chance like we had tried in 2020 to maybe try further down the road in the year. But if it all comes down to cancellation, then we do have a policy in place for a refund. It's a little more generous than in years past, and an outright deferral at no cost as well if a person wants to try again the next year. Now that's there, but we're not going to need it. Right? Knocking on wood, and it's not going to be an issue. We're going to be able to ride, let's hope. Craig: Yeah. Let's just keep all our thoughts intending that way. I'm definitely struggling a little bit as I'm sitting in Los Angeles County and they've just entered another strict lockdown period. As I'm looking online to register for events, it's hard to get my head around it. LeLan: That's the struggle we find ourselves in now is it's hard to take the blinders and put them on. We need the blinders on right now. We don't want to see what's happening today. And we need to think about what we hope things are looking like next year. Craig: Yeah. That's absolutely right. I mean, I think we're all optimistic about where things are going. It may not go as fast as we'd like to go, but I think things are finally starting to head in the right direction in terms of potential vaccine, et cetera. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate you talking about what's been going on at Life Time and about Unbound and the other events you've got on the calendar for this coming year. I'm excited, and again, optimistic that I may be able to see you both in person again. LeLan: Definitely. Kimo: Oh, we will. We'll see you, Craig. We'll be there. Craig: Great. Thanks, guys. Kimo: Thanks for having us. Craig: Take care. Happy holidays.    

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. I was on with Steve Fornier this morning who was sitting in for Jim Polito. We discussed what the James Dyson Foundation is providing to families to interest their kids in Engineering and what the Business world will look like post-COVID. So, here we go with Steve Fornier For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig So what we did is we took the opportunity with her to say, Okay, well, let's do it. Let's make here's a recipe with feeds four people. So now we need to feed six people. So at the age of about five or six, she was doing fractions in her head. Hey, we went through a few more tips this morning. And Mr. Jim Polito is out. So Steve Fornier is sitting in for him. And I managed to work murder Hornets into this morning's interview, so here we go. Steve Welcome back to the Jim Polito show. It is Steve Fornier here in Springfield in for Jim this morning. And again, I a guy that I think is just such a valuable resource at a time like this. Craig Peterson joins us, our tech talk guru Craig. Good morning. How are you doing, sir? Craig Good morning, doing well. Steve First of all, Craig, I want to say thank you for your contributions, and I know that you also gave our radio stations a bunch of tech talk tips that we can use that we can run here on the stations. And I think that's so valuable. So I want to say thank you for providing us with that stuff. Craig Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, it took a long time. Those little features are about a minute and a half to two minutes long talking about the tech stuff. Steve How do you boil it down to just something that's just a minute or two long? That's my entire job, Craig is spitting 40 seconds worth of stuff into a 30-second spot. So I hear you that. Craig Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day, which I think is so important. And you have some cool resources for parents to help the kids out. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Craig Yeah, this one is just totally cool. I don't know if you know, but my wife and I have eight kids, and we homeschooled them. Steve Your baseball team. Craig Yeah, yeah, right. Oh, you know from Canada, so it's closer to a hockey team. But anyway, the whole time up to college in fact, now they've gone on to get advanced degrees. But what you have to do with your kids is look at their interests. We had a young daughter, I think she was about five or six years old, and she loved to cook she loves to bake. And so what we did is we took the opportunity with her to say, Okay, well, let's do it. Let's make here's a recipe with seeds for people. So now we need to feed six people. So at the age of about five or six, she was doing fractions in her head. She was multiplying fractions dividing fractions because she loved to cook—somebody like you, Steve, who loves sports. If you have a little boy or girl that's interested in baseball, teach them how to figure out the statistics. And which stats are better? Is it better to bat a 300 or 400? And what does that mean? You take those opportunities, and that's what Dyson has come up with James Dyson's foundation. He is the guy that makes those vacuum cleaners that are kind of cool some high tech fans and other things. His foundation has put together this list of about two dozen different challenges for kids. And the idea behind it is to get them interested and expose them to engineering concepts. You know, they have some simple things like can you skewer a balloon that's inflated without poping it? How about taking a nail electroplating it? How can you cover it in copper? Well, how would you do that? And then a classic I remember when I was a little kid is plugging a clock into a potato making a potato battery. So all of these things are designed as challenges specifically for kids. They're ideal in the home or the classroom. And the whole idea is to get kids excited about engineering. Steve Yeah, into just give them something to do right to let them put down the fortnight controller and, and be productive. You know, while we're all sitting around. Craig Yeah, I think that might be a difficult one for some people because so many of these video games are very, very addicting, and the whole science behind them is fascinating. But this is great. So I'm going to we'll get them outside. They'll get them in the kitchen. They'll get them doing some things. So just search online right now you'll be able to find it. It's the James Dyson Foundation spelled D Y S O N. Steve By the way, I learned Craig thanks to Final Jeopardy earlier this week. Maybe that Dyson also invented the wheelbarrow. So how about that? What is who is Dyson? Cool there? We're talking with Greg Peterson, and I do have sort of an off the radar question. I wanted to fire at you towards the end. So stay on alert for that, Greg, but can you tell us a little bit about telecommuting. Post COVID-19, it's going to be a little different. How can you tell us out? Craig Yeah, we're seeing some fascinating numbers starting to come out right now most businesses have got some sort of telecommuting in place now. Many of them have been looking at how do I secure it now? How do I make it more efficient, make it faster for people? What we're starting to see from these C-levels and the executive offices, who are trying to figure out what's it going to look like, is that they are serious about moving out of the big cities. So I think you're going to see a lot of the businesses moving from a Boston, for instance. Closer to Western or Springfield, smaller cities, and even smaller towns, some of these corporate buildings in Chicago are already emptying. We've seen the same thing in Detroit for many years. So post COVID-19, we're going to see that many of their employees have ten times more than pre-COVID-19. Ten times more employees about 40% or maybe more will be working from home on a long term basis. Steve Whether or not they want to. I mean, like yes, some people don't want to be stuck in the house all day with their family and some businesses. Craig Some businesses still have their people getting together? What I'm thinking is that we are going to see more people working from home, but it's not going to be five days a week. They may be working from home four days a week or three days a week and going into the office once or twice, but that's going to happen. It is going to have a devastating impact on real estate, the business real estate out there, frankly. But we're going to see just a dramatic a giant increase from January and people working from home on Craigslist, anything. Steve Like I don't know how to say this is the impact that COVID-19 is having in the big cities? Is that a part of it too, because it just seems like, you know, the cities that are being hit the hardest. New York City, Boston, you know, major metropolitan cities, is that a part of it too, just keeping your employees safe, and, you know, understanding the threat that there isn't a big city. Craig So that's a massive part of it. Most of the major corporations are not planning any sort of travel even until the probably next year 2021. And when you're looking at the big cities, it is a considerable risk. You know, as a business, we can't afford to lose some of our best talents, and when Many companies have been placed strategies that say hey listen, you guys cannot be on the same airplane traveling somewhere you cannot be in this location together. And because of what we've seen with COVID-19, there are a lot of businesses that are being Steve all just a whole lot more cautious about having people in one place. I talk to business people who are saying that for them in reality. It has been a big wake up call because having everyone in the office but spreading these germs, even for the flu for instance, but when you've got something like this virus we have today where we don't know what's going to happen, having them all in one office and sharing it the big problem. I have a client who is an HVAC contractor, and they are starting to install air handling units that have ultraviolet light inside of them. They have heavy HEPA filters that put into them all in an effort for businesses to be able to keep the offices safe so that they are not spreading disease in the office. It's going to be a whole new world. Steve Yeah, sure is. We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru and Craig, I do have a question sort of out of the left-field that I think you can help with solve security questions. It is today's world from the eyes of a hacker, these security questions, just don't cut it for me, like, what is your dad's but what is your mom's maiden name? Like? I feel like that's very easy to find on the internet. If you're a hacker, what you know what street did you grow up on? Well, we can figure that out pretty easily on the Yellow Pages calm. Um, I'm to the point now where it's I'm answering questions like, you know, what's your dog's name and I'm answering like purple because I Hope they will get it. Is that the best approach to just sort of lie on all these questions? Craig Yeah, it is, you know, in this day and age of murder Hornets, we have to be extra cautious. But yeah, what I've done for the last 30-40 years. I got my first job ever. I wrote some computer software used for magazine distribution stuff. I came to realize that hey, they are tracking us. So always since then, I have been making up the answers to all of those questions, just wholly random words. And I have been using one password, which is a password manager, to a great one. It's the one I recommend to everybody. There are other password managers out there, but it'll generate passwords for you. It'll store notes securely, etc. So you're doing the right thing, Steve, every website that I go to, that's asking those security Questions. I have it either one password randomly pick words for me, or I just make up something that's completely nonsensical. And sometimes, when you get on with the tech support or PII or help desk people, and they ask one of those questions, they chuckle. They ask, what's that? What's that all about? Now, there is a line. You cannot erase the lease not supposed to lie on certain types of applications. So if it's financial information, if it's government-related stuff, you can undoubtedly make top answers to those recovery questions. But you can't just totally lie about who you are. But I have dozens and dozens of identities, Steve that I use on just random websites. They don't need to know who I am. So I only use some made-up identity, and sometimes I'm a guy, sometimes I'm female, you know, different ages, everything else because they don't need to know that. I don't want the hacker To be able to examine my life on LinkedIn or my website or Facebook and come up with the answers. Steve Yeah, no, that that was my thought is how simple it is. Especially if you have if you're not like a private thing, if you don't have a personal Twitter or a private Facebook, you know, you're opening yourself up to getting that information, the hackers getting that information, and then then you know, they're in. So very interesting. I appreciate that. I have been fighting that battle with the security question thing now. Craig Well, that's not right. Now that's a $15 billion industry, sending out those phishing emails and trying to figure out what someone's information is and using that to do spearfishing. It's all part of business email compromise, which the FBI says I'm more than $15 billion industry right now. Steve Wow. That's crazy. Craig, this is excellent stuff, folks. And if you want more from Craig, you can do that. We'll go with the name, Jim, for consistency, but you can do text, the name Jim, to this number. Craig to 855 385 5553. So let's just text and Jim to 855 385 5553. Steve And as always good stuff, Craig, if you want more information on those different activities for the kids, again, you will find it at Dyson is the name of the company. Likewise, if you get in touch with Craig, he's more than willing to help out. And like I said, Craig, we appreciate you, especially this time. It's valuable stuff. And we understand it. So thanks again. Craig All right, take care. Bye-Bye, guys. Steve Thank you. Thank you. There goes everybody, Craig Peterson. And great stuff. Craig I've been sort of mulling over the security question thing for a while that just like what street did you grow up on? That's specific information to come up with if you're a hacker, it's just to me it just seems way too easy. So yeah, what street did you grow up on honeysuckle? It's not honeysuckle, but that's what I'm, you know, whatever. You're right. Just make sure you write them all down somewhere. And then I'll use the one password it can have secure notes. Don't forget it. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for reaching out to me yesterday. Text Me Me at Craig Peterson dot com. I appreciate that. I got a couple of excellent comments. I think I might be onto something here through something that's going to help you guys out. So anyhow, have a great day. I expect I'll be back tomorrow if I have a decent interview on WGAN as well. Bye-bye Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Good morning everybody! I was on with Matt and Marty (who was sitting in for Ken.) We had a good discussion about election technology and what different states are doing to assure that they are secure.  We also talked about the FBI and Homeland Security about Passwords and Passphrases and security.  Here we go These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig If the Secretaries of State get hacked, I'm not sure we can feel comfortable. Would they even know that hacking occurred? If they did, it would be much after the fact. Craig So well, this morning, I was talking on WGAN in their affiliates about some of the voting technology, you know, Super Tuesday is coming up. I compared some of the election technology in different states. What's good. What's bad. We talked about the new FBI press release that came out, that is I hope going to have a significant impact on security. It is fascinating stuff. So here we go. Craig By the way, I talked a little bit about our tutorials and coming up. Yeah, man, You won't believe the work that went into these all for you. It is part of my give back. I am not trying to sell you, upsell you, or anything else with these. Anyways, here we go with this morning on Ken and Matt more. Joe things technology.t tech guru Craig Peterson is on right now on the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. Matt Alright, we're back ladies gentlemen it is 738 on the WGAN morning news with Ken and also Matt. There is no Ken today. There is a Marty Groman he is over there. He is still wearing the Mardi Gras beads. Marty I am, Yeah, the party's just wearing off now. How many Mardi Gras jokes Do you get to do? Is it a party for me? Matt You know, I should have a whole roster of them. Marty But you don't work out times in the early 90s. Back in the good old days. The real Mardi Gras. Yeah, way down there. The crew of Baucus indeed. Matt Well, I don't know if Craig Peterson's ever been to Mardi Gras, but he joins us now to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, How are you this week? Craig Hey, I'm doing well. Yeah, there's a lot of party stuff. A Marty McFly, Cartoon Network has one of their top shows right now as Marty character in it to see. So yeah, he's getting around. Marty Everyone's getting on the bandwagon. Matt I don't know how to segue. So we're going to go ahead and just move into the attack already. Well, we do have an election coming up. Craig Peterson. Of course, in South Carolina, we've already seen a few primaries as well. And they've all gone smoothly with no trouble as we all know. There is an evolving question, though, that every time we have an election, we sort of debate and talk about and ask ourselves a very similar question? How can we make sure that these things are on the up and up? How do we make sure that our voting is secure? How do we make sure that it is all done correctly, and that nobody hacking and changing votes and manipulating things? On a more fundamental level? How do we protect our elections in technology? Craig Yeah, real big question a big problem. There are a few states have and, in fact, quite a few now that are using these election machines that we've grown to know and love, where we have a piece of paper effectively. And you fill in those little ovals there using the pencil or felt tip pen, right. You guys are familiar with those, right? Because you voted, right. Yeah. Those are right now, anyway, the best type of technology used for voting. There are other states and go all the way on the other side, and use these touchscreen voting machines that are running Windows XP. Now Windows XP hasn't been supported for many, many, many years, and they are connecting them to networks. When you vote, you just you touch the screen saying you're voting for so and so but some of these machines, they've got configured steal tickets. So you say, I'm voting Republican, or I'm voting Democrat. Or maybe you have Libertarian in that in a state right. People have repeatedly complained that the machines are improperly registering their votes. They'll say I'm voting for President Trump but somehow was recorded for Bernie Sanders. Right? That's, that's kind of the nightmare scenario. We don't want to see this Fall. If you vote and your votes not counted or correctly counted. When these things hit the news, and there is no audit trail like in some of these states, all you have is this computer that identifies that you voted for Bernie Sanders, even though you meant to vote for Donald J. Trump. They hit the news, all of a sudden everyone's all worried that somehow maybe my vote didn't count. Maybe there's cheating going on. Both of these could be true when using some of these types of technology. So there is a $10 million contract that has been awarded, it was awarded last year to come up with a secure voting machine. It looks like it's going to be more of a secure method of voting. There are so many ways that voting can be hacked. I just mentioned the machines themselves. If they are connected to a network ever, there is a potential for hacking. Optical Scanning machines used in New Hampshire are never connected to networks. They're loaded up, they put a little, basically a thumb drive into them, and they dump what the load is all about. But ultimately, there are multiple places that it could be hacked and could be hacked at the Secretary of State's office, where they're compiling all the votes from all of these machines throughout the state. It could be hacked again at the Secretary of State's office but on the website, where they post results, and where the federal government goes to get the results from the Secretaries of State. There's nothing fancy about how the votes are collected nationally. So your question going right back to it, Matt, have Can we trust the election? How can we trust the vote? Right now, I'd say here in Maine we are in pretty good shape. In the majority of states are in pretty good shape. There was a lot of money. I can't remember the numbers, exact number but a lot of money that was set aside and given to states to upgrade their voting machines. The temptation is always as we talked to with Ken here about this a couple of weeks ago. Should we buy the Betamax right or buy the newest, greatest latest, and coolest technology? We see right now from the FBI and Homeland Security reports, generally speaking at this point, it doesn't look like there will be a lot of problems this year. There was disclosed some significant issues in few states in the 2016 election with problems with hacking attempt, explicitly directed at the Secretaries of States in several different countries. Those Secretaries of State have been informed about it, those of them that come out recently. Ultimately, I guess we won't know how good it is until sometime after the fact. That part of it doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy, is that the average time to figure out a hack occurred is your business is around six months. If the Secretaries of State get hacked, I'm not sure we can feel comfortable, would even know that they've been hacked. If they did, it wouldn't be much after the fact. So just let's stick with the old fashioned way for now, because it's the best way, the brand new way, by the way, that $10 million award. It looks like they are leaning towards a paper solution as well. So it's an electronic voting machine. And you touch the screen so that you vote for people you want. It spits out a piece of paper with your votes on it, you then take that piece of paper with your votes on it, and you give it to ever to whoever is, is running that little local election, they run it through a scanning machine. That is not much different from what we're doing today. And that's, that's a suggestion as to what the most secure type of voting will be. Marty Craig, it's, it's Marty. So yeah, it fills in the Oval for you then. But let me ask you if I may change topics on you a little bit. These trackers kind of drive me bonkers, right. When I when I visit, you know, the onion dot com or something the banner ads seem like they take forever to load. I added the DuckDuckGo extension to Google Chrome, and it cut that right off. I mean, what is your take was was that a good idea? A bad or bad idea? Craig Well, we've just had over 500 extensions removed from the Chrome extensions store, store, even though they're free, right, you have to pay for them. And as a general rule, I advise against using those extensions. In about two weeks, Marty, I'm going to have some training that I'm going to be releasing that's free. I'm not trying to upsell you or trying to sell you anything about some of these extensions that are going to keep your information safe. Now DuckDuckGo is well known as one of the best guys out there when it comes to blocking your tracking. Some of the others that I'm going to be covering in training include Ghostery, and you should be using HTTPS anywhere, which does something a little bit different. pundants amazing. You block origin and others. I'm going to go through those a couple of hours worth of training that I'll be releasing here in a couple of weeks, but Marty, I think you're right, use DuckDuckGo for your search engine. And there are more and more these extensions that are trying to keep your privacy. And I haven't looked at goes. But as a rule, those guys have been great and make sites load faster. Over to you. Marty That's what it does. Craig Ultimately, you know, all of these different extensions that I just mentioned in there, we're going to be doing this training on all of them will make it load faster. And you take a site like forbes.com that just has a crazy number of trackers on it. And the ads that you mentioned, like the ads, loading, and taking time, it makes Forbes go from about it took four minutes for me the other day to completely load everything on Forbes homepage. It was that bad. Then when I turned on these blocker extensions, it went from four minutes down to five seconds. So they're not only tracking us, but they're making our lives miserable. Trying defined to stuff we're looking for on the page. Right, Marty kids are there cluttered with all this junk too, right? Marty Yeah, it's awful. I frankly, I don't miss it. But it does make it all a little bit cleaner. But back over to Matt, I think you had a question. Sure. Matt I got one more quick one for you before we let you go, Craig. The password that I am going to be required to change in like, I think, a couple of days here at the radio station is among the 8000 different passwords that I have to change all the time. And there are no new recommendations. I understand it from the FBI that we are using passphrases instead of complex passwords. So like instead of d3, 724 dashes, but you know, period, whatever, some crazy combination of letters, whatever we should be using passphrases Why don't you explain that a little bit. Craig Yeah, well, get this quick. I'm going to go into this more on my show on Saturday at 1 pm So you can tune in there. And it's a two-hour show, and we go into quite a bit of depth on some of these things. But I'm glad you brought it up because this is one of the essential pieces of advice in the security world in the last five years. About five years ago, a study came out saying that rather than those types of complicated passwords that you just mentioned is not practical based on today's technology. Here's the bottom line recommendation from the FBI and from the research that's been out there, use a string for random words together, and just put a dash in between each of the terms, or space, whatever you'd like. A passphrase is something that might make sense to you, something that might not make sense at all, but something you can remember, and that's the essential part. Now, if your business, like for instance, Matt, your business might require some more company passwords, you might want to share this article with them. So you still might have to have those crazy ones or numbers, letters, uppercase, lowercase, special symbols, etc. But in reality, those are not the best passwords nowadays, make sure it's at least 15 characters long. Throw a few non-related words. For instance, making America great again would be a lousy password. Marty I thought I was going to use I can't drive 65. So there you go. That's probably not one to use now that you mentioned on the air Marty, that's true. Craig Yeah. But those types of passwords are the best. Matt All right, well, Craig Peterson He is our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening. Excuse me in the world of technology. Craig one more time promo for the show, when is it? What time where can you listen to it? What are you going to be talking about? Give me that one more time before you go and then, and then we'll say thanks. Craig Okay. I'm not the automaton that Marty is when you ask that question. The show this Saturday, every Saturday from one till three, I talked about the latest in technology with an emphasis on security. We're going to be talking about some of the cloud services that businesses are using thinking that somehow they're safer, right? But how to make it safer. We'll talk a little bit more about the passwords. Ransomware is on the rise right now. Apple Macintoshes. It turns out there's more malware out there and get a few more things as well. But this weekend shows Saturday at one we're kind of focusing on cloud software. Matt All right, his name is Craig Peterson. He is our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Today was no exception to that, Craig, thank you very much. And we will talk to you again next week, sir. Craig Gentlemen, take care. Bye-Bye. All right. Appreciate it, Craig. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We had a good discussion about The Iowa Caucus app fiasco, Business Email Compromise, and Deep Fakes what it is, who is at risk and what we can do about it. I went into detail about Passwords and Password Managers and even two-factor authentication and why you need to use them. So here we go with Ken and Matt. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig The problem we see this daily when I get notices from the FBI. It all boils down to personal hygiene, just keeping your data reasonably safe on your part. Craig Hi, everybody, Craig Peterson here. It is Wednesday morning, and that means I was, of course, on with Ken and Matt. We had quite a little discussion because I had provided them with eight different articles. All of them were about major security problems this week. That's why we got into precisely what you can do to get yourself to the 95 percentile when it comes to keeping your account safe online. So here we go with Ken and Matt. Ken It's time to talk to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us now. As always, at this time, to talk about what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, How are you this morning? Craig Hi gentlemen, good morning. How about those Iowa caucuses? Did they try out the app beforehand? Ken Of course, that is an app that I think Hillary controlled. Craig Yes, the rumors are flying because in fact and ex-staffers of Hillary Clinton, Matt yes, yes. Craig So um, you have, I mean, story after story after story about this thing about Pegasus, and then you have this travel act coming online in the gap. Microsoft Excel security alert. Matt, Should we just stop using computers completely? Craig Oh, man. Well, good. You know it. I have thought about this a lot. What do we do? I think we've got an enormous problem. Here because it's almost like overload, right? Where every week there's new, there are new hits on us. Got Evil Corp. I don't know, did you watch it? Where's it called with Malik Mr. Robot? With one Malik, right or Yeah, that's the guy's name, an actor. Ken Anyways, or do you know? Matt What is it? Rami Malik's Craig Rami. Oh, Robbie, man, I thought the first name was Malik. Oh, yeah. Rami Oh, yes, yes. Joe, he's in this. He's a hacker right. He's all in his head. Weird things are happening, but he's battling Evil Corp., And there's an evil corporation in the news. And it's using Microsoft Excel to deliver this payload this nasty thing. So what are people supposed to do can and it's, are we getting burned out? Just like Nancy Pelosi rips up the speech and you just roll your eyes because it's yet another partisan thing. It is, however, another week with more hacks. But what I think it boils down to isn't just not using computers first of all use them safely. You know the stuff I would say your mother told you, but of course, she did. Because this is this has been many years in the coming. But the stuff you know, to use different passwords on different websites. Use a password manager like one password or LastPass the necessary things, and it's like you don't want to get coronavirus while swash your hands and don't cut your face and conference knees into your elbow. Basic stuff, and you know what the problem can we see real, and I see this every day I'm getting notices from the FBI, but it all boils down to personal Hi Jean, just keeping your data reasonably safe on your part. You know, use a few different email addresses. Don't always use the same learn, have a Google address, but have a couple of others as well. Don't use your business computer for personal things. Don't think of VPN is going to save you because of VPN does minimal things and can make your business network even less safe. Yes, I said it less reliable using the VPN. And what we see this week too, is a vast right. You know, my opinion about antivirus software? Yeah, it is zero percent effective against modern attacks zero percent. And a vast came out this week. And it turns out, and they were selling arrows. Everything you were doing online everything to the highest bidder millions of dollars, so you searched on Google thoroughly, Avast sold it to whoever wanted to pay for it. You went to a porn site Avast told them, anybody, who pays for it all about it. You did anything on your web browser, anything on your computer because remember your antivirus software has access to everything on your computer, have vastly sold that information. So I've said forever. And Matt, I heard you chime in there. But how many times have you even said we are the product when it comes to sites like Facebook? Correct? Ken Yes. Anytime is the answer to your question. Craig Yeah, exactly. And what we're talking about here is free VPN. And free. Free websites aren't free Avast. Where's anti-malware software is not free. So This is stuff I, you know, can I think we've mentioned a million times, and I keep, I hate to flog a dead horse, right. Matt We like horses. Craig But we just have to be more careful. And I bring these things up every week to try and just try and drive the point home. We got to be more cautious because now we're seeing warnings coming out again from the FBI about these deep fakes, which we've talked about before. And I don't remember I know I had this in my stack of stuff last year, last quarter last year. Still, there was a company that had been bought by a German company. The CFO got a call from his boss over in the German company, telling him to wire funds over to the German company, right? He provided him all the information. He'd met this guy in Germany before he talked to him on the phone. He got the instructions, and he did it. It is a form of deep fakes that get used in these business scams. Where it sounds like the CEO. It is not just an email that comes from the CEO's hacked mailbox. It sounds like the CEO in the video, and now we see where it looks like it too. They can't do that live yet, but it's coming. So everybody listening takes a few of just a few minutes a day and start going in changing your account password just the simplest thing you can do it are either you guys using password managers right now. Matt Frankly, No, I'm not. Ken I don't know I like to discount all the advice given to me by Craig Peterson. I have not really no. Okay, right now, go online, sorry, something comes up on my computer say do you want me to save this password? I suppose that's not a password manager, right? You're right, man, because it's your browser giving your password to Google. I trust them. Craig Go to one password dot com right now. The digit one password.com. Check it out. I want you to do this. What does it do? What it does is it ties into your browser, so it can fill out the form for you when that browser is asking you to log in. It provides the latest newest technology that's coming out that's replacing passwords slowly but surely. And it will generate passwords for you to share passwords, multi-word passwords, so one password calm now what I love about it is it works for me. It works for my family, and it works for my business, so it has multiple vaults that you can share. Because here's your next problem. What do I do? In the past, my problem was remembering the password, and once I remember it, then it changes. Craig Yes, you remember one password, and that's the one password. Now you can I have before you go any further corrections? Ken Can I ask one question, though, using a service like that the one password, if you will, what is protecting those institutions from hacking and all of your passwords getting stolen? I mean, how does that not occur at some point when some enterprise with hacker decides that they'd like to have your access to everything you own? Craig Well, one password does not keep any of your passwords unencrypted. And it uses a high level like Pentagon plus level security for all your passwords, so they never leave your computer in what's called cleartext. So there is no way for one password to get Adam last passes the other one to look at Last pass, they have a cheaper version. That's quite good as well. But hopefully, that answers your question. They never get your passwords. They're only on your local computer. You can share them between all of your computers using like iCloud or Dropbox or many other things. But they are always heavily encrypted, which is phenomenal. It is one of the simplest and best things you can do. Because having a complex password that's different on every site number by complex, I don't mean upper-lower digits, special characters, or anything I mean like a 20-30 character long password which LastPass will generate for you so well one password. Having a password like that makes it almost impossible for the bad guys to break into your town. They're not even going to bother while they might be Try, right, but it'll take some more than 100 years to crack your passwords. And they're only stored in your machine, and encrypted, it is easy to use. And with your MacBook Pro that you have can, you can use one password. And when you go to a website, you can say, Okay, give me give him to give that site my login to one password. And with your MacBook Pro, it'll do the fingerprint if you wanted to, instead of you having to type in your one password. There are some helpful integrations, and it's going to work on your smartphones. It's available for Android and Windows as well as Macs and iOS. But guys, you know, this is something you have to do. So I'm going to next week. I'm going to ask you whether or not you had it, and you got it done. Matt So what's the name of this thing again? Craig The one I like best is one password is just the digit one password pa ss w or d dot com Ken Come on, you don't use that one point, to be honest with you. Craig The other one, I like his last pass, you'll find it lastpass.com. But I prefer one password personally. So get it done to change one or two passwords. The way I started doing this years ago when I started using password managers as to when I went to a site to type in my password, I type it in, and I'd immediately go into one password and create a new password for that site. And then, once you've done that, start using two-factor authentication. And one password has that built-in as well. Where it generates a code. Have you seen these little things before where every 30 seconds the code changes, you know? So it'll let you do that, if you o do those two things, you're almost wholly guaranteed never get hacked. It's that simple. Two-factor authentication, one password with a different password for Every site and I only have to remember one password. Ken Yes, exactly. Okay, peace. Matt So Well, I think I'd add that one, check. Ken Anyway, that is your update, ladies gentlemen from Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us every Wednesday at this time to go over what's happening in the world of technology. We appreciate it. As always, Craig and we will talk to you again next week. Craig Gentlemen, take care. Bye-bye. Matt Excellent. All right. Well, why don't we go back into the newsroom? Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt. We talked about StarTrek and then we got into Tech and what is going on with our Cable Modems.  Then we discussed the big vulnerability with Firefox and why you must update it NOW! Also Smishing. So here we go with Ken and Matt. Microsoft is out with some Critical updates that must be applied.    These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: One of the most significant vulnerabilities in Windows ever was disposed at noon yesterday by the NSA. Craig Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. I had a great little chat this morning with Ken and Matt about some of the things that are affecting us right now security-wise, including your cable modem, it is probably vulnerable. I gave some tips on what to do as I always try to do. We had a little bit of fun teasing each other about William Shatner. So here we go. Ken All right, we're back at 738 on the WGAN morning news with Ken and Matt. Happy Wednesday to you and Wednesdays at 738 means Craig Peterson joins us now, Craig. Craig Peterson Hey, good morning. Why would you guys insult my favorite over actor this morning? Matt Vince Vaughn Ken Are you referring to are you must be referring to Shattner Craig Yeah, I call him Bill. Yeah. Matt I'm sorry, but I believe the mystic name took us here because I have, for one, complimented his acting in the Wrath of Khan. I did not, yes I did in Star Trek Five. Although I mean, I liked Return Home. That's the fourth one with a little nuclear Wessels. Craig I don't know if you guys know it, but in upstate New York, a guy who is an Elvis impersonator, I forget his name. He bought all of these old Desi-Lu sets, and he rebuilt all the original sets from Star Trek, the whole thing. They examined the footage to see what they looked like, as some of the sets were destroyed or lost. But the entire thing is there, and I went on a tour. I've been there twice. They have these guided tours of the sets, and they talk about things, but it is the entire set. They reuse Kirk's tricorders for this, that and the other thing. There is cork running up and down the hallways. Now when I look at that original series, I tend to notice things like they run some of the footage backward, and that is because the entire enterprise, you know, where he's running between decks and up and down is maybe 50-75 feet long. There's one core door. And so you'll see, the names on some of the doorways are backward because they reversed it to make it look like he was running in a circle around the deck. Ken That is a great deal of detail that you're paying attention to Craig. Craig It is Yeah. I did notice that I watched Star Trek six a little while ago, and they used the warp core from Star Trek The Next Generation. Matt Anyway. While this is quite interesting, you are here to talk about tech topics, not Star Trek topics. So well kind of Craig So well kind of a lot of techs. I mean, let's face it Star Trek introduced a lot of tech issues. For example, the Motorola flip phone, right Matt from Motorola. Exactly right. Directly inspired. Yes. Dave. That's how we got came from going to the moon. So let's talk about technology, shall we? Many people use Firefox today. Now be worried about using Firefox? Craig You know, we've got a few major government warnings out right now. The biggest one is Microsoft Windows. Huge, huge, huge, one of the most significant vulnerabilities in Windows ever was disclosed at noon yesterday by the NSA. And so trick number one, although there's no evidence it's being used in the wild right now. What Microsoft There is a specific type of encryption that you can use in Windows. If you present Windows as an application saying, here's a file encrypted for me or decrypted for me, there is no validation at all of the key involved, it is a huge security problem. Now, why not something massive here, the difference between the Trump administration and prior administrations, and that is that previously, the NSA would find out about this and use it against people. They would use it against foreign governments, etc., who are using Windows and they'd say, Isn't this great? We have a way into computers, or we have a way to break encryption or to do whatever we want to make significant differences. Now, the NSA is telling us about some of these substantial security vulnerabilities. So tip one this morning patch Windows early and often patch it right now. Number two, we've also got the government warning. And this is Homeland Security about Firefox. Firefox is one of my favorite browsers. It is one of these privacy browsers made by Mozilla. It's very, very good, mainly if you are a Facebook user, because it has some special lockdown features and when it comes to Facebook. Still, Firefox also has critical security warning out, so make sure that gets updated with Firefox. All you have to do is exit Firefox started up again. And it will go ahead and patch itself all automatically but a vast and critical security warning for Firefox. Matt All right, we're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us for our tech update on what's happening in tech around the world. Now, Craig, I must admit, I've never heard of the word smishing. Could you educate me a little bit about it? Exactly what are some examples of this that people should understand? I guess as they continue to run around paranoid about all things in the world coming to get them. Craig It's like Australia, right? Everything's trying to kill you. Exactly. The Outback. Exactly. So here's what submission is you you've known what fishing is P-H-I-S-h-I-N-G where bad guys are trying to trick you into doing something. Some of the earliest examples of phishing is the Nigerian scams, where a poor Nigerian prince needed your help? Well, they have continued to evolve. And smishing is fishing on mobile devices when we're talking about texting messages. SMS messages, that's where it gets the name smishing. Right now, we're seeing an increase in messages being sent that looked like they are from a bank. In particular, right now, the US Bank is the biggest at a smishing message. I don't even know I should have looked this up if there is a bank called US Bank, but they're they come through is urgent messages. They pretend they are your bank or Amex or Visa or MasterCard. And they have a link that you can, and you can click on. So, for example, American Express dash message.com, which is not a legitimate domain. What will happen is once you get reported, and you can report almost anything to their email addresses. It is typically abuse at American Express, for instance, or abuse at the bank name. You can notify them once reported and the banks, etc. Find out about them. These sites like American Express dash message dot com get shut down. But be very careful nowadays, you unless the text is coming from me, click on mine, right. But unless a text is from someone you really know and trust, be careful, because they are sending out the text messages and you want to pry this is from your bank. And we're going to see a lot of this more and more. The new head of the FCC has been working very closely with the various telephone companies to try and put an end to this. However, because of the design of the systems, and that is without security in mind, it's going to take a while before they're ever going to be able to stop all of this. was speaking to Craig Pixar Ken We are speaking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us every Wednesday, 738. You can also catch him on WGAN on Saturday at 1 pm. What is this thing about cable modems and the attacks on them? I would think not true. One would be right. I would think so. Matt You would, right because of those cable modems? Craig Yeah, that's what I was. Yeah, it's a cable company, you might have the phone company depending on where you live providing your internet. And what's been happening historically, initially, we had cable modems, and we just hooked the cable modem up directly to a little switcher or a hub in our house right and used the internet from there. And then they got fancier, and the cable modem started having built into them little firewalls. They did this actually for the benefit of the cable companies because we're we are still running out of internet addresses. So they did a little trick called Nadeem gets kind of complicated, but right now, there are over 200 million affected modems over in Europe alone. There are estimated to be at least that many here in the United States. Here's the big problem. If you're using these cable modem firewalls in your homes, a lot of them are not up to date. Some of the ones that you bought yourself and those supplied by cable companies with names like Sagemcom, Netgear, Technicolor, and Compal models shipping to broadband subscribers, those are just some of the infected ones. We've got to be careful with all our equipment, just like we mentioned this morning, right already, we've got the NSA warning us about Windows and Firefox. It has issues our cable modems do too. So if you own your end device there, make sure it stays patched up. It's up to date. Don't buy the $80 router firewalls, and you have to spend at least 200 nowadays, to get a router firewall cable modem for your home. That is going to auto-update. However, we have pay attention to this as they are gaining direct access to our security cameras, our computers, all of our Internet of Things devices, in our homes, in our small businesses. So my general advice is to go and buy a suitable cable modem yourself put it in. And when I say I didn't have a modem, my main one that is has a built-in firewall and is going to update it shelf automatically for at least a few years. So that means get them from some of the more prominent manufacturers that are out there. And if you're interested, you can just email me at Craig Peterson calm. I'll send you a little list of the current ones out there that I've been recommending people just drop an email to me at Craig Peterson calm. Be glad to let you know. Matt All right, ladies, gentlemen, that is Craig Peterson. He's our tech guru. He joins us at this time every single Wednesday, and this Wednesday is, of course. I appreciate it as always, Craig, and we'll talk again next week. Craig Gentlemen, take care. Bye. Thanks a lot. All right. Craig 12:05 Hey everybody, I'm going to be sending out an email because I am working on a fantastic course right now. I would love your input. I want to make sure I cover everything. It is going to be the definitive course, and I am sure of it when it comes to protecting your computers. So keep an eye out for the email that's going to bet coming. If you're an office manager, if you're someone who has the responsibility of securing computers in a small company, this is for you. So keep an eye out. I'm more excited about this than anything I've done before. I've done these DIY or Do It Yourself cybersecurity courses before and several other courses. However, this is the course of courses when it comes to securing your computer but also administering your computers. I'm going to get some bonuses because I'm working on it thinking, you know, what else can I do that's going to help them understand the depth of maybe how far they need to go. There's a couple of times where I was doing this saying, and you know what they need to understand this too. So putting all of that in, this is going to be amazing. But I do want to make sure I'm covering everything you guys want to have included. So I don't hear I'm rambling on, but keep an eye on your email, because I'm going to be sending something out probably early next week about this as we're finishing up these modules, and then we'll use your input to polish it up. So thanks again, everybody, and we'll be back this weekend. Bye-bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning. And I don't know how much you know about the Amazon Alexa and the whole environment. There were some big announcements announced by Amazon in the last little while. We spent a little bit of time talking about them. And some of the things you can do with this new smart home assistant software, and some of the things you might want to do and maybe some of the things you don't want to do. So here we go with Jim. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Related articles: Alexa, Now A Truly Useful Smart Assistant ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Good morning, everybody. Craig Peters on here. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning. And I don't know how much you know about the Amazon Alexa and the whole environment depending on how you want to pronounce it. But there is some big announcements coming out of Amazon just a couple of weeks ago. So we spent a little bit of time talking about them. And some of the things you can do with this new smart home assistant software, and some of the things you might want to do and maybe some of the things you don't want to do. So here we go with Jim. Jim  If you have an Amazon electric you may want to just, you know, get ready for her to go crazy. Yeah, she's she's gonna go a little crazy because we're going to sing her name over and over again. But there's a lot of things she can do for you, not the bad stuff. There's a lot of things she can do for you. That a great that you don't even know about but you know who knows about it. The genius, Our Tech Talk Guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir. Craig  Hey, good morning, Jim. Jim  So I've been teasing this all morning. And I know every time I say Alexa know, everybody's which isn't good, because people who are listening through a smart speaker which you can listen to this show through someone's finger, every time I say that, it stops playing and she starts listening. So maybe we should come up with a different name for her while we talk about her behind her back. Craig  You could do that. Yeah, absolutely. Can I actually use my Alexa to listen to you in the morning? Yeah. Which is great. I do. I'm fascinated. Every day. I get people send me emails. They say Jim, I've got one in the bathroom. And one in the kitchen. Michael, what? Right? And you know why I don't even have one. Talk about being in the Yeah, I mean, a large portion of this audience listens to the show. Jim   Through Alexa or through another smart speaker and and the guy doing the show doesn't even own one. Craig  Well, first off, if you're if you have one of these Amazon echo's, these Alexa devices, the first thing to do if you're listening to Jim is change its name. So, here's the trick, Alexa will actually respond to either you can say Alexa and it will wake up, or you can go into your app that you have for your Alexa and you can change its name now it will respond to one of three names. You can either call it Alexa, you can call it Echo, or you can be like john Luc Picard and call it computer and it will respond. Jim  Yeah, that was the Star Star Trek. Little reference there. For those of us who are geeks Craig  Yeah, exactly. It's although there's a couple of things that I have it do, by the way, it has these, these little apps, if you will, that you can run on the echo devices on these Amazon devices. And you can actually program them quite simply my wife who is anything but a programmer has done this as well. And one of them is red alert. So if I, if I tell it that there's a red alert, I'm not going to say the name in front of it, because I don't want them all going on, right. But it can, it can learn to do things. So it starts playing the whole Red Alert thing from Star Trek and lights flashing. So that ties that ties into one of the things you had been talking about a little bit earlier. And that is that they had a big announcement, a whole set of them. Amazon has their big yearly announcements about a week or two after Apple has theirs. And so they were up on the stage one of their big announcements is that they're going to be able to allow you to have some some names, kind a ounds like, we're going to have a committee to study whether or not we are going to have a committee that's going to investigate sensuality of impeaching President Trump. Yeah. So Samuel Jackson's voice is going to be available on the Alexa. But they're going to do something interesting with this. Jim, we've talked so many times about this new deep fake stuff. They're going to deep fake Samuel Jackson's voice. Jim  Oh, so that we talked about this, how dangerous this can be that they could take my image and have me saying something or doing something illegal or whatever, and that that technology is going to be available to the average person, but it's already available to the high tech people. So so they're going to take the tone of Samuel L. Jackson's voice and they're going to say things even though he's not saying it to say those things exactly. So you can boys that's gotta be I'll tell you what I'll bet that's a big payday for Samuel L Jackson. Craig  It is because they brought him in studio when he recorded a bunch of stuff but historically what happened with Sherry and and many of these others over the years is a record someone singing almost everything that anyone has ever said. So they've given us a minimum of 5000 word vocabulary typically, oh Samuel L. Jackson is going to be way too expensive to have them have them say every word in the English language that is likely to want to do so Jim  Yeah Craig  Deep fakes to go into abound on your Alexa. So that's number two. He's number one, he's going to be the first one. Another thing that I am using that I get I just found out about myself because Amazon upgraded it is something called Alexa guard. Now we all know that the Alexa sits there listening. Okay all of the time. Jim   That's why she's not in the house right now, cuz she'd be listening all the time. But go ahead. Craig  Yeah. And that's a little bit unnerving, frankly. So Amazon has some technology in it to make it so that if even if it's hacked, you'll notice the light will come on if it's starting to record. So there's a difference between listening and recording. But with Alexa guard, what's going to happen or what happens right now is it listens for Windows breaking or alarms, like carbon dioxide, alarms, fire alarms, any kind of alarm that you have, and it also ties into some of the Home Alarm Systems. So if you have the ring, if you have a couple of others, it'll tie into that so here's what happened. It hears someone walking around. Yeah, that's that's fine, right? Craig   Probably going to learn about footsteps is probably going to be able to learn that there's a dog barking or something else is going on. But right now it's just alarms and window breaks. And what it'll do is it will basically call you up. Jim Oh. Craig It calls you. You have the app on your smartphone, and it says, Hey, I heard something and then it'll play the recording of what it heard to you. That's pretty good. That's really cool. Jim Yeah, so broke broken glass. It hears that it records it and then it calls me up. Now that's, that's a didn't know that's without having to pay for an additional alarm system for your home. Craig  It comes with it. And right now you can get some of the older models of the Alexa for as little as 20 bucks. Jim Wow. Craig So there you go. Now you've got a basic alarm system. It's also by the way, got an auto delete now. Cuz I know that you've been concerned you don't have one of a does record they do go to the cloud. Everybody does this, Microsoft does it with Cortana. And Apple does it, but it goes and then they're reviewed to see how accurate was their understanding of what you said. They now have an auto delete feature in the Amazon Echo universe. And it allows you to have your voice automatically your recordings automatically deleted every three months or every 18 months. You can also tell Alexa to delete what I just said or delete everything I've said today. So it's got a lot of nice little features in it. It also has Food Network features and if you have the echo show which is the one that has the screen on it, you probably notice this because it keeps adjusting recipes for you but this is going to tie in to book a cooking classes from Bobby Flay, which is really kind of cool, you can ask a question it'll tie into your shopping list that I Amazon will take for you that you can use in the grocery store other places, you can ask it So, okay, so let's show me that chicken recipe. And then later on you can go back to it and say how many chicken sighs or what I supposed to use or buy, right? You can tell to save the recipe. It's got new stuff for kids as well and read them stories and have some simple games and other activities. Alex her back is available on your Alexa Wow, you can have your own little game yeah, you're a little game and answer the question within question answer. I don't know how he does it. In the form of a question answer in the form of Yeah, there you go. Yeah, so you answer the question with a question. Wi Fi controller. It has hunches. And that feature is going to be a nap or not announced, but I'm going to come in very, very soon. So the can perform different actions together. So, for instance, we talked a minute ago about the Alexa guard, so you can have it so as Alexa detects something that thinks might be a smashed window and alarm going off. You can have it automatically turn on lights and under your house, you can say hey, Alexa, I'm leaving now. And with hunches, it'll mimic you the way you normally use your lights and and your radio and listening to Jim Polito in the morning. It will mimic all of that as though you are at home. So a lot of really cool features. We have three or four of them in the house these Alexa everything from the dot through the show. Yeah, the kids have them. And I've kind of fallen in love. These things are very, very handy. Jim Well, look, we can find out more. I mean, Craig just scratched the surface. Plus he's got a lot of other information. And all you have to do to get it is text my name, Jim to this number Craig   855-385-5553. So just text a Jim to 855-385-5553 Jim  Standard data and tax rates apply. But you'll get all this great information and you'll get much more Craig will not bother you. He will not pester you. He will not hack you, Craig. Thanks so much, buddy. We'll talk with you next week. Craig  All right. Take care, Jim. Bye-bye. Jim  All right, a very important final word. When we return you're listening to the Transcribed by https://otter.ai   ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson  

Craig is in the WGAN Morning News with Ken and Matt. This morning,  we got into a whole bunch here about some lawsuits that are in the works on your behalf against Intel. A little bit more about Huawei, but we went into some details on this whole idea of China owning and providing some 97% of precious metals. And those are now getting pulled into this entire trade battle. And some serious time talking about the wake-up call that new grads are going to get when they report for their first job after Graduation. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Intel Has A Problem and So Do You  Colleges Graduates Are Up For Rude Awakening When They Show Up For That New Job The U.S. Has Had Enough of Huawei and China!   --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 05/29/2019 Intel Vulnerability and Inevitable Lawsuits, Huawei, China and Precious Metals and College Graduates Get A Surprise. --- Craig This morning I was on with, of course, Ken and Matt and we spent some time talking about some of the issues of the day. We got into a whole bunch here about some lawsuits that are in the works on your behalf against Intel. A little bit more about Huawei, but we went into some details on this whole idea of China owning and providing some 97% of precious metals. And those are now getting pulled into this entire trade battle. And some serious time talking about a wake-up call for grads. So a lot this morning, and here we go.   Matt 738 on a Wednesday means Craig Peterson joins us as he does now Craig How are you this morning?   Craig   Hey, good morning doing well, I hear you getting chickens.   Matt No, I'm not getting chickens. But my wife says she wants chickens. I think that this is a fad. But, hey, it's possible, you never know.   Craig Well, we have chickens. I've had them for years. They're easy to take care of, and they do keep the bugs down. If you want to get rid of the ticks, which are nasty this year, then chickens can help, but Guinea hens are supposed to be the best, but they are loud and obnoxious.   Matt Yeah, no, I'm not going be doing that.   Ken Neighbors would love that, of course, a better than the rock concert and whisper.   Ken So, Mr. Peterson, who you, by the way, you can go to Craigpeterson.com any time and get his newsletter and find out all about tech stuff. Doesn't every computer have Intel in it? Everything has Intel Inside. So, are we all screwed here?   Craig Yeah, this is a really, big deal here. And I just don't get it. They seem to be getting a pass. You know, Ken if you if someone came to you, I know you deal primarily with marital laws,   Ken I do.   Craig But if someone came to you says, Hey, I bought this device to do this job. It's advertised to do it. And it's only doing it about half as well as advertised. Would they have a case? Would there be a class action to suit?   Ken Yeah   Craig It doesn't seem to be happening here. Here's what's happened. Pretty much every Intel chip made back to 2011 has a significant security flaw. The industry is putting it in 9.5 out of 10 as far as vulnerabilities go. As far as how bad this is, some Intel chips going back afar as 2007 have these flaws well.  Intel has come out and said okay, well, here's what we're going to do, and we're going to release a patch that you can apply for our chips. If you want to be safe, you have to apply this patch. And you have to turn off hyperthreading. Well, Apple, who uses Intel chips in its desktops and their laptops, has said that doing what Intel tells you to do will force you to lose about 40% of the performance on your computer. That is amazing. It's appalling. And Intel is even said Listen, you know if what we'll do, we'll do some patches for the chips going back to 2011. But 2007 forget about it, you guys must buy a new generation of chips if you have a computer with chips made during those five years, that are vulnerable to what's called ZombieLoad, which is the latest nasty piece of hardware problems from Intel. If you have chips made in those five years, Intel isn't going to do anything for you. It is amazing. Now it depends on your circumstance, you know, you may not be fully exposed to this. But this is the second time that there's been a significant flaw discovered in Intel chip security flaw in the last six months. And this one's even worse than the last one. So Intel saying, "Well, is only classifying it as a medium threat." And frankly, if you have a stack of software protecting your computer, and you have a firewall and next generation one that's inspecting everything coming in, including the JavaScript, etc., etc., then, then you might not be very vulnerable.   Craig But the people that are going to be really, really, really ticked off about this are people who run cloud companies. If you are running your stuff in the cloud, think of it like a salesforce.com, Amazon or Microsoft Azure, which have massive clouds of computers, they have to turn on all of the patches and fixes which means turn off hyperthreading, applying the microcode fixes, etc. They are instantly losing up to 40% of the capability of their server speeds. It is going to result in a huge and more likely a massive lawsuit, I'm sure. We're also going to see I would put money on this gentleman. By the end of this year, Apple will say Adios to Intel, and for their lower end laptops and maybe even some lower end desktops, they will no longer use Intel. But will switch over to a proprietary chip design that they've been using for their iPhones and iPads for a while. More and more companies will be doing that. It was just this week, Intel's most significant competitor AMD released stats on how they don't have these vulnerabilities, right.  There's always something. AMD has some new chips using processes that Intel has not even been able to get close to perfecting yet. So AMD is going to be rising dramatically, Intel's going to be falling sharply. I am not giving any investment advice. Okay. I'm not an investment advisor at all. But I'm talking about their presence in the industry. It is an industry game changer. I think in this case, that whole Intel Inside advertisement they used for so many years is going to bite them. Many people in the IT biz are angry with Intel right now.   Ken Talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us now, as he usually does on Wednesdays. And this is a Wednesday ladies, gentlemen, not a Tuesday, it's the second day of the week for us, but it is the third day of the week. Today Craig, when you graduate from college these days, let's say the class of 2019, for instance,  and you head off into the job market. And you know, for years you've had kind of certain types of prospects and certain expectations about what you have to do after you leave college and go into the quote "real world" end quote. Things are changing in that respect. Do you think that kids are going to be having to deal with a little bit more of a higher expectation as they are entering the workforce?   Craig   Yeah, this is an excellent article from the Wall Street Journal, and I put it up as well for some more information. There Wall Street Journal's call this a wake up call for grads. Entry-level jobs that are out there and of course, there are many of them are, is anything but any more. In business, and we could talk about this for a long time, but these jobs have been at the low-end jobs are saying well forget it, we're not going to pay these minimum wages, it's not worth it to us. We'll automate, right. Case in point, being a McDonald's. Many people had their first job at McDonald's. However, now what we're finding that automation and outsourcing, have taken away so many of the lower end jobs. Even when you look at a business like journalism, you used to have people combing other people's newspapers doing clipping, clipping services to get some ideas, beating the streets reading the letters to the editor. Now, that's entirely automated. So graduates now are expected to operate at a much higher level than they ever have had to perform before. And when you're looking at skills, these technical skills required in jobs, the turnover is just so fast and new skills, that your future employers are going to be expecting you to be productive almost on day one. Gone are the days where an employer will say in reality, we don't expect anything out of an employee for the first three months. And then it'll be six months before we get anything truly productive. We have employers out there right now who are looking for people to start making sales calls. For instance, on day one great example, so much. The Wall Street Journal article had quotes in here from IBM, who has 330,000 people who are saying we need people who can adapt. So, if you are graduating from college, and it's anytime soon, you are going to have to adjust and fast. Gone are the days like with my father, who at how old is he? I think he said he was 18 years old, and he started working for the Royal Bank of Canada retiring at 65, from the Royal Bank of Canada. And then he took a contract doing some third-party work for about five years at the Royal Bank of Canada. Now we're going to be switching jobs quickly. We have some industry leaders who are saying the best advice they can give to the younger kids is switch jobs and change careers be very flexible. And that is an entire shift from the generation before mine. We baby boomers even had, on average three to five careers. So things are changing guys in a massive way.   Matt We have on Craig Peterson. He joins us every Wednesday at 738 even though we have Memorial Day Monday and so this is Tuesday for us. Great, I can't pronounce the company. I keep messing it up who-who the one in China. How do you pronounce that? It comes up with bad we're not buying things from anymore.   Craig   Huawei, Huawei,   Matt Huawei, sort of a salad age.   Ken So, explain to us what that's all about. I mean, are they evil?   Ken  10:52   Is it that bad?   Craig The question is, are they evil? Some companies claim that they are and others that claim that they're not. You might remember this scare a few months back where servers and Amazon and elsewhere were found to have some hardware on the motherboard that was not part of the schematics designed by major manufacturers like Supermicro.  They said to Huawei. We want you to manufacture this product, China, and we want this done this way. Here's a schematics make it and ship it back to us. There have been a lot of scares, some of them turned out to be, pretty much, correct. There was a bit firmware put on the boards, maybe a little hardware that shouldn't have been there. And then we announced a trade ban with Huawei and of course, we're in a big fight with them. The Canadians arrested their CFO just a lot about three or four months ago for the United States, who has a warrant out on their CFO.   Craig The problem is that we getting going here is the installation of 5g hardware, made by Huawei. So there was a ban put in place where we could not make a trade with Huawei anymore. Google said, "okay, we're going to honor that, and we will not sell them Android OS anymore." Other hardware manufacturers that were licensing their technology to them, also pulled it back. And the government realized that Huawei is the number two smartphone maker in the world, now that they have passed Apple.  So, they are going to be hurting people here in the US. Now, military bases have stopped selling Huawei, all of what, almost two years ago, because of some of the questions around them. Here's where we stand right now, if you have a Huawei handset, the US Commerce Department has given them a 90-day reprieve on all of their hardware patches, and software and licenses. So, for 90 days, they can send updates, patch phones that people have purchased and can get everything they need, but when that window closes, Huawei won't be able to get any more updates from Google Android for security and other things.  Huawei is scrambling, maybe to have their little version of Android because it's open source, but it gets very complicated. Intel, Qualcomm Broadcom, they all make chips, they have all pulled out of Huawei. If you have a Huawei phone, you have 90 days to get all your stuff together get patches and maybe to a new operating system. I would recommend if you have Huawei, it might be time to consider moving to a different hardware platform, seriously. As ride with Huawei is not going to be a fun ride.   Matt We're talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru. He joins us at this time every Wednesday. Craig, ordinarily I'd let you go. But I do have one question for you that I would like to get your perspective on if possible. On Drudge right now, the headline is about rare earth materials. This one isn't on your list of stuff. However, I know that you know that rare-earth materials make up most of our circuits and cell phones.  There's a lot of elements that are necessary for the production of smartphones, electronics in general, right. And virtually all of them come from China. It is not essential because there are places in America where we could do it. There's a, you know, a couple of great places in California, which would be fantastic if they allowed us to use them and we could and dig into the earth. But we don't do that, and we get them mostly from China. And now China due to the trade of dispute between the United States and China,  China is now threatening to slap either tariff or restrict our use rare-earth materials as leverage in the trade war against the United States. Since we're so dependent on it. So, thoughts on that? I mean, you have an entire country, addicted to technology and their smartphones and all these things. And you have a single country, which is a current trade adversary that controlling all of the elements necessary for the production of those things. It seems like a recipe for disaster. Don't you think?   Craig It sounds like it. The last numbers, I saw, show that China has been providing something like 97 percent.   Matt Yep   Craig Yeah of some of these rare earth materials that are used in the manufacturing these electronics. Here's how I've been looking at this because I have been following it. We've got, obviously a bit of a trade war going on. There been a lot of people for years who've been concerned about China, buying up some of these rare-earth plants around the world. We're not that worried in the electronics industry about it, because as you pointed out, we have our own,   Matt Really?   Craig Well, in the short term, there is going to be a hit, no question. But we have our own. Also, on top of that remember much of it, look at the uranium one deal, that uranium is coming from the United States. And ultimately, if we need to gain access to some of the rare-earth materials that are here in the US or, or are in the ground and mined by some of our partners worldwide, all we have to do is call China and say get lost. We don't care if you own it on paper, we are grabbing control of it. And that's what the talk in the industry is right now. That we will use eminent domain to grab back resources in our country and friendly countries to gain access to it because it is critical for both military and civilian use, like our cell phones and computers and the manufacturing of them. Also, there are alternative ways to do some of this manufacturing. And the big one. Number one is it it's so cheap to buy these rare-earth materials from China, we don't even bother recycling most of our gear. And much of the rarer stuff that we need can be recovered from existing electronics. So, that's another angle that we can use to protect ourselves.   Ken Craig Peterson, our tech guru joins us every Wednesday 730. Craig will talk to you next Wednesday. Craig Hey, take care, gentlemen.   Matt   Bye-bye. All right. Thanks a lot,   Craig So, with that, hey, I am going to be making some changes to this podcast. And I hope they're going to be what you guys want to hear. It's going to be a little bit more security focused and a little less of the interviews because I've found that, you know, often I end up talking about the same essential topics on all three different radio stations. So, I'm at the very least,  think I'll do cut it up so that we have the best of the three on the individual topics. I haven't decided yet, and we might have me going through each of the issues individually and not even include a whole bunch from these different radio stations. Anyways, as always let me know what you think text me@craigpeterson.com. I've got to throw this out. My heart goes out to everybody in the Midwest and elsewhere. Tornadoes or other natural disasters have hit them. It's been quite a week, two weeks. I blame it on the Canadians. Okay, Canadians listening. Sorry about that. But anyhow, it is the cold air that's a problem. We have so much cold air that's hitting this warm, moist air that's come up from the Gulf from the south. And that is responsible for causing these storms this year, according to the meteorologists and that makes sense, right? That's what you need for a storm, a cold front hitting a warm front. And the fact that we have such cooling going none from some of this cold air coming from the north and hitting this hot and moist Southern air. It's creating a lot of tornadoes this year. So my heart and prayer go out to everybody impacted. Take care of everybody, and we will be back on Saturday. Bye-bye. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553  

Hosts can talk faster than they can type. Followers can listen while doing any number of other tasks. A business that comes with a podcast following of 15,000 is more valuable than one that comes with a 35,000-person email list. Podcasts are pretty hard to get wrong. They can diminish the laborious reading and writing aspects of emails and blogs by automatically offering content within the conversations with guests. Today we are talking with podcasting expert Craig Hewitt about ways that adding a podcast to your business can be beneficial both for a recent acquisition and a potential sale. Craig is the owner of Podcast Motor, a company that handles the end to end podcast production process for businesses. He's an entrepreneur in the podcast space, running two service companies and producing 35 podcasts. He believes, and we here at Quiet Light agree, that a good podcast is a great tool for building your business. Episode Highlights: How podcasts differ from blogs. Where podcasters should get started. Whether they need all the “stuff” to get up and running. Why podcasters use external services to create their episodes. Craig's solution for launching a podcast quickly and easily. Challenges hosts face in getting started and putting themselves out there. Why it's important to find the right guests and create relevant conversations for your business. How podcasting can be a fit for different types of businesses. Ways starting a podcast with a newly acquired business can help promote ownership. Why businesses need fewer followers for a podcast than for a blog. How a podcast can create repurposable content. Ways a podcast can benefit a business you are getting ready to sell. Whether podcasts are transferable. The basic technical tools you need to get started. How long you should test for success. Transcription: Joe: So Mark today's episode we're going to talk about why someone should start a podcast. Stutter, stutter, stutter, Chris edit that. Mark: Chris don't edit that just keep that in there. Joe: Yes let's keep it in because folks this is about podcasting and I was going to ask Mark a question … oh, man, did somebody put something in my coffee this morning [inaudible 00:01:34.2] in my coffee … it's a Northern thing. Do you have to be well spoken, intelligent, and an expert on the subject matter to start a podcast? Of course, the key is to have a successful podcast to build an audience and a brand and a reputation but what do you think? Do you have to have all of that to really begin? Mark: No absolutely not. And look at the risk of narrowcasting and just talking about what we're doing here which is running a podcast, I thought it would be interesting to have Craig Hewitt on the podcast here. Craig owns PodcastMotor. They do the editing for all of the Quiet Light Podcast episodes. He also has a podcast hosting service Castos.com which he's recently started. He's an entrepreneur cut of the same cloth that all of us are made of. He likes to start, he likes to buy, he likes to grow businesses and living in France actually. He's an expat living in France so a pretty cool backstory there which unfortunately we didn't have time to get into. But I wanted to talk to him about why anyone who's out there looking to buy or even grow your business and create something really unique and special might want to consider adding podcasting to the mix. And look I get it we're looking a little bit at our own experience here and how beneficial a podcast … the Quiet Light podcast has been at Quiet Light brokerage, but I asked Craig this question. Joe, I'm going to ask you and put you on the spot here again like I do on a third of these intros I try and ask you a question that we didn't prep for. If you're looking at a business for sale and it's got 30,000 e-mail subscribers, okay and that's one option and then there's another business in exact same niche but they have 15,000 podcast downloads per month, where do you put more value in your opinion? Joe: Oh without a doubt on the 15,000 because those people are listening. They're hearing your voice and they feel like they know you already. We've gone to events where people have come up and said hello and they joke and they say I feel like I know yo. I've heard Mike Jackness talk about that as well. But I think the number one thing that this podcast has done for us … and John Corcoran was a guest on the podcast as well where we talked about networking and how important it is to a business. And I think if you're a business owner, if you're launching your own products, if you're a SaaS product owner, you just look to prior examples of huge podcast success like Michael Jackness or Scott Voelker for instance. Scott has got a quarter of a million people that listen to him every month. You network and learn things from the people that you network with to grow your business and grow your brand and I think it's invaluable and it blows away the e-mail. Although the e-mail is something specific and different because you're probably trying to sell a product right then and there, I think on a podcast you're talking about the bigger picture and your brand. If you're a SaaS business owner I think it's a great idea because you can talk about what updates you've got to your product and the market in general. But I love the podcasting and obviously, I'm not very well spoken or eloquent so if we can do it anybody can. Mark: That's right. So this is a bit of an advertisement for starting a podcast and I feel confident in doing this because I know a lot of people out there probably will listen to this and won't start a podcast. You'll think about the technical challenges, you'll think about the fact that your voice has to be out there and Craig and I go over this. There is an element of fear because you're a little bit more intimate with your audience when you have a podcast. There's a third dimension that gets added, right? When you are just writing a blog post it's very two dimensional, you're words are out there, you can go back and edit it whenever you want, people don't hear your tone … your voice, they don't hear you screw up because you get to go and edit it. And of course you can edit a podcast but there's still … it's still you, a little bit more real and raw. So I know a lot of people are going to listen to this and not start podcast but I'm going to make a pitch to just say look if you're trying to build something unique, if you're trying to build something valuable, if you're trying to grow your existing business with the [inaudible 00:05:24.7] towards selling it down the road, there is some value to starting up a podcast which is going to make it different if you are able to grow a good sizable audience. And I think in the 11 years we've done Quiet Light Brokerage I can't think of a single business that we have sold that actually came with a podcast attached to it. Joe: I don't think I've ever had one. And as far as return on investment I would think that the podcast and the cost associated with it, the ROI would be huge and probably not measurable; an invaluable. But one other thing look this is we've got Craig from the podcast company that manages ours but we've talked to lots of people like Taz from the Amazon Entrepreneur. He launched his podcast, does two a week and he does it all himself. So it's possible to do it for very little or nothing at all if that's … if it's a budgetary problem and you still want to get started. Mark: All right let's hear it directly from somebody who's been in the podcasting niche for a long time. He knows all … a ton of what he's talking about, Craig Hewitt. Let's get to it and cover this topic and I'll hopefully inspire maybe one or two of you guys out there to go ahead and start a podcast with your business. Mark: Hello Craig welcome to the Quiet Light podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on. Craig: Hey Mark thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Mark: All right you and I know each other from a ways back at Rhodium; do you remember the … I don't remember when we met each other at Rhodium, do you? Craig: Gosh yeah. Like I'm optimistic with my time projections these days I want to say it's three years but it might be four years ago. It will be four years in April probably yeah. Mark: All right my wife does this thing I call it Megan math where she'll … something would be 2 months away and she'll somehow compress that down to like just two weeks away. Craig: Yeah [inaudible 00:07:06.4] great exactly. Mark: Again full disclosure and I'm sure I probably said this in the intro. We always do the intros after … we record the intros after we record the interviews themselves but I'm sure I will say this just out of full disclosure I do pay you professionally. You have been doing the editing … probably it's your group that has been doing the editing for the Quiet Light podcast so thank you for that. Craig: No it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure, yup. Mark: Awesome, all right so we're going to talk about podcasting today and whether or not somebody should consider adding it to a business. And I obviously with Quiet Light I want to focus a little bit on does it make sense to add on to an acquisition like if you buy a business, does it make sense to add that on? What's involved in starting up a podcast? What are the impacts that you might see? And I also want to … if there's time allowing probably talk about the personalized aspect of podcasts and how that's going to affect the buying and selling of businesses as well. We can all just talk a little bit about SaaS. I know you have some SaaS work as well which could be an interesting thing to get into as well. But let's start off real quick with your background and your history and kind of how you came into doing what you're doing. Craig: Yeah so we know each other through kind of why my first successful online business and really the way I escaped the rat race of the professional kind of corporate world which is called PodcastMotor. So PodcastMotor is a product tied service that does podcast editing and production, really kind of like end to end everything from Mark records an episode, sticks it in Dropbox and an episode shows up in iTunes a week later. We really try to take care of every aspect of that whole process for our customers. And that business has been going since … it just turned four this year so a couple of months ago. So we've been doing it a long time in the podcasting world. And we have about 35 customers that we service on a regular basis. So weekly or every other week that they have a podcast come out. About two years ago I acquired a WordPress plugin also in the podcasting space called seriously simple podcasting. And on top of that, we built a podcast hosting platform that we now call Castos. So I run two different businesses in the podcasting space and it all happened just by chance. To be honest I started a podcast … jeez, four and a half years ago I guess and saw it really quickly like a lot of people that podcasting is really difficult. There's a lot of nuts and bolts and technical stuff and gear and all this junk that you need to start a podcast as opposed to like a blog where you just get a WordPress site and a keyboard or your iPhone and you could start blogging as good as anybody else. Podcasting there's a technique and gear and equipment and all this stuff that you have to have to be decent. And then to be really good is a whole other level. So we started offering the PodcastMotor service based on me seeing that pain I guess. Mark: Yeah and I don't want to scare people right at the gate but let's get into that kind of a scary different world of podcasting because it is a little bit different. Let's start with just the hosting side and you talk about Castos your podcast hosting service. Isn't it enough to just have a regular website? I mean I think one of the things that was confusing to me with podcasting when we got into it before we started the Quiet Light podcast was well why do I need all this stuff? Why do I need Libsyn? Why do I need all these other things? Why are we … why do podcasters use these extra services? And what are some of things that if somebody is thinking about podcasting what do they need to consider from a technological standpoint outside of the equipment just from the webhosting setup, the technical setup? Craig: Yeah so the logic around having a dedicated media hosting platform with you know hear, Libsyn, and SoundCloud, and Castos or whatever, the idea there is so you have a hopefully a very popular podcast and you have thousands of people downloading your podcast every Tuesday morning when it comes out right? Mark: Just like the Quiet Light podcast, thousands and— Craig: Yeah okay so thousands of people listening to your podcast and downloading this 60, 80 megabyte file every Tuesday morning. If you're a business like all of your customers are and a lot of ours the last thing you want is this enormous strain on your web server on Tuesday morning when customers are coming to your site and trying to buy your stuff or schedule a meeting or something like that because both the streaming and download of the podcast will be bad. And your website will at least be very slow if not crash. So you separate the resource strain from podcasting and serving up your website and have a dedicated hosting platform just for those audio files and let your website run on you know WP engine or flywheel or wherever it's running so that the two aren't using the same resource. That's kind of the logic around why you needed a dedicated media hosting platform. It's just like you don't put your video files under use Wistia or something like that. It's the same kind of idea. Mark: All right exactly. Okay so there's this whole other technological world with podcasting and then there's also the equipment side of it. And then there's the editing side of podcasting as well. Craig: Yeah. Mark: And then there's the distribution to the different podcast networks. And we're kind of jumping on the deep end or I guess we'll swim to the shallow end because I'm going to talk about listing the praises of podcasting here in a little bit. And specifically as kind of a leading tease here for anyone listening why I think it's a really, really good idea for any acquisition that you do, any business that you're looking at to potentially acquire to consider adding a podcast and potentially even on the sell side as well. But let's talk about the setup here a little bit as well and the equipment. Now I've got as you can probably see from the video that you can see and we do these podcast over video is just a little more personal. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I got the road podcaster and I got like three other mics back there as well. [inaudible 00:12:52.1] and everything else. And you, you got I see a pop screen of yours, there's pop screens, there's mics, there's the Vulcan power stuff, it's a whole different world, isn't it? Craig: Yeah I mean so it is totally a different world and this is the bad scary thing about podcasting is that there's more opinions and resources out there than are necessary honestly. And there's so much information that so many people get scared and they go and read five or six different articles just about the best podcasting mic and what web … what podcast hosting platform to use and there's everyone has an opinion about that and you know how long should you're episodes be and blah, blah, blah. Do you need a pop filter? Do you need a boom mount? Do you need all this stuff and so actually we created a resource to kind of counteract this and we call it launch in a week. And the idea is we're going to give you like one or two options not like all these million things out there that all these other resources give you is like they create the analysis or paralysis by analysis. So we … so castos.com/launch takes you to launch in a week and we give you like in a week seven day, seven e-mails and videos exactly what you need to launch a podcast to dispel a lot of that over information and misinformation that's out there a little bit. Like microphones I only recommend two microphones you know it's like this one that I'm using Audio Technica ATR2100 and another one is called the Shure SM7B. That's a really really really good mic. This one is $65 that one is about $500. And so it's like kind of whatever you feel like you want or need. We try to do a lot of that like you can do this or this and don't overthink any of it because you can get in way over your head. And the unfortunate thing is a lot of people never get started because they just think so much about all this stuff. Mark: All right let's talk about that point because I think this is the biggest obstacle to podcasting right? With writing a blog you can put it out there and you can get it up and going. Everybody knows how to write something even if it's not very good but there doesn't seem to be as much of a barrier to getting started. Maybe it's because of the technical challenge but I think there's also a mental challenge of getting out there. And I know for a podcast standpoint we toss around the idea forever. I actually had a false start at starting the Quiet Light podcast and I think I recorded three episodes, launched two, and then stopped because I didn't record enough episodes. I think one of the challenges people have is the idea of being out there and trying to get this audio presentation perfect from the get go. But like you said just get out there and start. You have to actually start doing it. Craig: Yeah I mean I think part of it is with writing you can write a blog post and save it come back two days later and edit it and tweak it and you haven't even be published by someone else on your team if you want maybe it's your name it's not associated with it. But like right now you and I are seeing and talking to each other and like covering a lot of the senses all at one time. And when you're podcasting your literally in someone's ear for 45 minutes every week or whatever it is. So I think it's just the senses that you're covering and the emotional connection you crave with somebody which is why it's so great if you can do it and get it right. But it's also why it's so scary to just get started and overcome some of this fear of putting yourself out there. You know I think about … I've done a little bit of video work and it's a lot harder because then you have to get the voice and the physical kind of presentation right the first time and there's no editing. You can't just edit out a flub in a video it looks horrible. And so I think in a way if you're already doing video podcasting is so easy because you can just cut it up a million ways from Sunday and it's no big deal. But it is so much harder than writing. Mark: Yeah and I think one of the other obstacles that we run into is written content can be repurposed in so many ways right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: And there's different focuses that we can really measure written content from an SEO standpoint. So you can definitely say hey I'm going to optimize for this keyword. And I know I'm going to get this keyword density out there and then I can actually turn this into a downloadable white paper. And I can go out and I can maybe use the same sort of topic and write you know 10 different guest posts and get involvings. So there's that other benefit as well but you actually lead into one of the benefits and maybe this way you could [inaudible 00:17:18.0] to segue into that. And probably the number one reason that we started the Quiet Light podcast and the number one benefit that we've received from it is that personal touch that having a podcast creates. I'll tell you a funny story. You'll actually like this because you listen to our podcast by default from doing some editing. Craig: Of course. Mark: And I know you're not doing all the editing yourself but- Craig: No I do listen to the show though, yeah. Mark: Okay well here we go … thank you for that. That makes me feel better. So obviously Joe and I host the podcast and we were at Brand Builder's Summit. And somebody came up to our table at Brand Builder's Summit and said “hey it's Joe here” I'm like “ah no Joe is [inaudible 00:17:54.7] right now” and they go “oh man I really wanted to meet Joe, I absolutely love his podcast” I'm thinking “wow that's great you love Joe's podcast, I'm so glad that you love Joe's podcast” and he goes “yeah I know I was really hoping to meet Joe”. And Walker was staying right next to me and goes “no this is Mark over here he also does the podcast” he goes “ah is Joe going to be back soon?” I'm like “yeah Joe will be back soon”. Craig: That's wonderful, that's wonderful. Mark: But you know one of the things that this podcast has been able to do is it gets us in people's cars. It gets us in people's ears for a certain amount of time and it really breaks down some of that barrier that I think can happen when you're writing. Like you said it's very two dimensional. Craig: Oh yeah. Mark: It's the words on a page, you don't have the voice of the person in your head. This is … it's not as full-on as video but it's a little more personal. And I'm sure you've seen that a ton with what you're doing because I know you work mainly with businesses right? Craig: Oh yeah I mean for PodcastMotor all of our customers are businesses like yourselves. You know like small, medium size business and entrepreneurs, startups. And I think that the medium of podcasting is unique in two ways. One like we're having right now it's a conversation. It's not you on a video and your YouTube channel talking and everyone else is listening. That's not so helpful. And it's not so helpful in a very particular way when it comes to businesses and that is rapport building and networking. And this is like the secret sauce I think when it comes to like B2B podcasting is you have this podcast to reach a broader audience of buyers and sellers … of buyers maybe but really probably to get sellers in the door right? And so like for PodcastMotor we have a podcast. If we're going to go kind of strategically and think about who we're having on the podcast it's thought leaders in the podcasting like B2B podcasting space. So they can say wow you know I had this podcast with Craig last week, we talked for like an hour and he really knows his stuff. Dean my friend over here who runs a coaching business who wants to start a podcast should really talk to Craig because he really knows what he's doing. He can help him be successful. Like that really like micro networking opportunity that you have in interviewing a thought leader in your space on a podcast is not something you can measure by like download statistics or something like that. But for a lot of people should be the reason they do a podcast. It's not your listeners that you do the show for it selfishly a little bit is yourself and the networking ability that the podcasting medium allows for. Mark: Yeah I would agree 100%. And this is one of the main ancillary benefits that we received from the Quiet Light podcast. One of the biggest benefits is that it just keeps us in touch with people in a very personal way. And in some ways it's a little bit weird when people do come up to you and [inaudible 00:20:44.9]. Craig: Yeah. Mark: But I shouldn't listen to my voice that's weird but kind of cool at the same time. But that secondary benefit of that micro networking that you talk about I know we've had this happen actually recently we had Ezra Firestone on the podcast. And sure enough I had opened up my e-mail the other day and there's an e-mail from Ezra promoting his podcast episode with Joe, Joe's podcast. And I mean just think about that, I mean he's just one of the biggest Internet marketers out there right now promoting this one episode. And how many extra people are going to be exposed to the business, to us in general just because of that one episode. So this is definitely a benefit and might not be my number one goal but it's definitely one of those goals of the podcast is to be out there spreading our network for referrals. I think any referral based business that's out there this is a fantastic medium and probably a must that you should do is having some sort of a podcast if for nothing else to be able to bring in that network and grow that small network. Craig: So just to pile on there a little bit for folks who might be a little bit outside of the agency or consulting world so like starting from really high dollar and down to more transactional type businesses the other thing I think that podcasting does is it allows you to showcase publicly your knowledge and expertise. So if somebody sees you on another person's podcast they're going to say “wow Mark really knows what he's talking about when it comes to buying and selling businesses”. It automatically boosts your credibility with that person if they're looking to do this thing down the road. Yeah, I think that's massive. It's kind of like your little online CV that you build along with your social media and YouTube and all this kind of stuff but podcasting should be a part of that for a lot of people. Mark: Well and that actually leads to my next question really well and that is what do you think about podcasting on the more just B2C side as somebody selling baby shoes online. Craig: Yeah. Mark: I mean how can podcasting fit into that fold … with that type of business? Craig: Yeah I mean there's really two … in my mind there's two ways to go and admittedly this is a bit outside of the wheel house of what we do at PodcastMotor but there's really two kind of schools of thought or areas that you would run into there. One is just hobbyists, right? And so like you're a hobbyist you like the Pittsburgh Penguins, you want to have a podcast about that. That's just a hobby and that's great but it also does the thing about like building your social proof in the world. And so you want to go do something with that later on. You have this bank of 200 episodes that you want to do something with. If you're thinking about like a B2C area I think that you can either provide useful content to … you have a show about being a parent, provide useful content to other parents about how to be a good parent, organic parenting and all this kind of stuff. Or you have what's called like sponsored content and this is where a company would pay a creative agency like I believe it's Pacific Media is the real big one in this to create a show like Serial. So Serial is the Gimlet Media podcast from a few years ago. They would create a podcast like that and it would just be you know this podcast is brought to you by Huggies Diapers or something like that. And it's this totally awesome show about parenting and motherhood or whatever but it's just sponsored by this B2C company. And you see more and more sponsored content out there these days where a business is saying look this is a massive branding opportunity for us. We're going to create this piece of content that we know our audience will love. It probably doesn't have a lot of like direct business impact, people are not going to go buy our diapers because of this podcast but they're going to know our name really well because every week the show they love the most has our name all over it. Mark: Yeah that makes complete sense. I also think of the episode we did with Mike Jackness from colorit.com and the show is on email marketing. So it had nothing to do with podcasting but we were talking about how often he was sending emails. They were sending emails to their subscribers every single day but the vast majority of what they're sending is ridiculously useful content that is not selling their clients in any way, their customers in any way. And the result of this is that people end up looking forward to communications from them. So I can imagine that impact as well if you have a B2C company and you're in this hobby, this niche, or you really have a very unified sort of product that you're selling. Or it can even be a type of service as well. You're growing an audience that is kind of a group of raving fans for what you're doing. And you're offering so much value that when you do offer that sale when you do go out there and promote something you have this group out there that's just super excited to hear from you. And that's a nice problem to have, right? Craig: Yup. Mark: Yeah all right let's talk a little bit about this from an acquisition standpoint. Obviously, we should bring this back into this and I want to talk about from an acquisition standpoint and also selling and we'll end with the selling question because I think there is a pretty significant question there. But on the acquisition side the one struggle I can see … I did an acquisition recently my guess and that's almost two years ago now and – Craig: It's not funny, math coming back in there. Mark: Yeah [inaudible 00:25:57.8] absolutely, time flies too. And you and I have actually talked about the starting up a podcast on this acquisition. It's a little bit weird though you know like Quiet Light Brokerage has started … I own, I've kind of grown with it so I feel like I own it. It is a little bit weird to start a podcast with something that you don't own. But I wonder if there is almost a sense of growing ownership if you start building something on top of that like a podcast with an acquisition. Craig: Hmm. Mark: Kind of an open ended thought but I don't know if you've had any experience with that or any thoughts on that. Craig: Yeah I mean I think that … so I had not run into this personally like with some of our customers having acquired businesses that they didn't want to start a podcast around. But having acquired several businesses the one thing that I think is really important and often times really difficult is for an acquirer to really know the business model and the types of people that kind of live and breathe this product or space that you're in. And there is nothing better than to say I want to go interview the 50 best people in Instagram for kids whatever … whatever niche it is you know than a podcast. Mark: Instagram for kids sounds like it should have some predatory laws about it I'm just saying. Craig: Yeah sure whatever it is right … it's underwater basket weaving. I mean you interview the 50 best people on underwater basket weaving. You're going to know basically everything there is to know about the influencers and the things that really matter to people in that business. So for me it's like someone who is always looking to acquire businesses and kind of dabbling as like a serial entrepreneur if I was going to get into a business I didn't know a lot about lot about starting a blog or really continuing a blog would be really daunting because I … there's a lot of opportunity to waste a bunch of time and money there. You can write a bunch of articles about things people don't care about but it's really hard to have a podcast that's bad if you will in a space you don't know a lot about because you just go interview people and ask them interesting questions. And what they have to say is the content it's not what you have to say, it's what the people you have coming on the show. So I'd say for people looking to … who have acquired a business that might be a little out of their wheel house just start a podcast, interview the thought leaders in that space and you have like the nexus of all the really interesting content for your audience. And you as the new owner know exactly what's so important to everybody in that space. Mark: Yeah and I'm going to compare this actually to the blogging world because I went from the blogging world pretty heavily into the podcasting world almost exclusively now. Libby has been writing blog posts on every one of our podcast episodes so we can keep up with some blog content. But in the blogging world, you would have to sit down. You would have to come up with your own idea for a blog topic. You would have to research that topic. And then you would have to write on that topic. And the way blogs are going you have to write more and more and more. I was writing 1,500 to 2,500 word blog posts. I was doing four of those per month plus four outside of Quiet Light blog posts per month. So I was doing eight blog posts on average 2,000 words a piece. And then best practices after you publish that blog post you should go out and you should do outreach. So you should reach out to the influencers and say hey take a look at this and how easy is it for an influencer to ignore your e-mail or give it a cursory look. I'd flip this around for this I'm doing my research right now on this interview with you I'm reaching out to you and you're an influencer on the podcasting world so I already got my influencer locked in as well. We're getting great content at the same time. It kind of brings all of this into one hopefully easily digestible format. So that's a huge benefit I think as well. And when you're looking at getting into a space like you said trying to network and get to know the influencers in a space that you don't know is one of the biggest challenges. And having a podcast I'll tell you what when I ask people to be on the podcast I'd get one of two reactions. One is no I'm super shy I don't want to do it. And two is yeah that sounds great because who doesn't want to be in front of a big audience and get heard. People like to be on podcasts. They'd like to think that they're important enough to be interviewed. Craig: They want to take their Joe Rogan. Mark: Exactly even though … you know I'm not going to tell them that there's like three people that listen to the Quiet Light podcast but they're still excited. Craig: So you brought up two things I really want to touch on quickly. One is three people listening to the Quiet Light podcast, one is not true right? But in a B2B sense and even a B2C sense in your niche, the number of people listening to your show doesn't matter at all. So if you have a hundred people listening to your podcast that is great. Those are a hundred really passionate people about what you have to say. As opposed to a hundred people reading a blog post that has almost no impact whatever. You need tens of thousands of people reading a blog post for it to really be impactful in the in the greater sense. But 100 people in your niche listening about your podcast is fantastic. So they're really high intent people for whatever your business purpose is. The other thing is talking about repurposing content. I think podcasting has the ability to repurpose content really easily right? We're doing audio, we're doing video, it will be created in to show notes for a blog post, you have it transcribed, you can syndicate the video to YouTube. Like you can do all of these things with one … what we're going to talk for 45 minutes today piece of investment and your time and you have a team or someone do all of the extra work to produce all that for you and you have two or three or four pieces of content you can syndicate to everywhere that people consume this media. As opposed to writing a blog post it can ever only ever be in your blog. You can't go create a podcast out of a blog [inaudible 00:31:29.4] could but that's just kind of silly. Mark: Right and you're absolutely right as far as the repurposing content. Again if people haven't checked out in a quick plug in the Quiet Light brokerage blog, I think it was last fall we brought on [inaudible 00:31:41.3] and she listens to every one of these podcasts. Hi, Libby thanks for all the work you're doing. And she's putting together awesome blog posts like I've been reading these myself and she's taking the information that we're picking up in the podcasts and then she's going out and supplementing it with outside research as well by putting together a full on blog post with quotes from the blog post as well but bringing out a slightly different narrative than what we cover in this this conversation. It's a great way to be able to repurpose this content and give it just a little extra layer and a little extra dimension. And so that is one way to repurpose the content. And again I can't emphasize this enough the amount of time it takes to do a podcast significantly less time than it takes to do the blogging side. Let's address the question of a podcast in a business that you hope to sell someday. And I think this is a question that is a little bit more difficult to answer here because we talk a lot … let me ask you this have you seen the Princess Bride? Craig: Yeah of course. I have an eight year old daughter, yup. Mark: Well I always like to say that getting a business prepared to sell is you have to follow the Dread Pirate Roberts rule right? You don't want to be actual Dread Pirate Roberts. It's the name that counts right? That's the quote from the movie; it's the name that counts. The actual Dread Pirate Roberts has been retired and living like a king in Patagonia. That's what we want to be able to do. We want to pass on the name of our business. We don't want to actually have to be tied to the business. Well, we just talked about podcasting, it's being in somebodies ear and being that personality in somebodies ear. And so from a standpoint of selling maybe, it's a little bit of a disadvantage on that when you go to sell. But I don't think it has to be a disadvantage but I'm going to put you in the uncomfortable spot here and see first have you thought about this much and what are your thoughts on it? Craig: Yeah so I guess two things; one, I know that podcast themselves have definitely been bought and sold more and more right? We're recording this in beginning of 2019, you hear more and more about people selling and buying podcast especially in a space. It's like buying and selling a blog in a space. If you're a business and you acquired this blog redirect it and then pour your content into your domain and you already have this audience that's seeing your brand. The same can be said for podcasting so people want to come in and buy a podcast in a space because it has a built in audience. I think it's a really good kind of audience and customer acquisition strategy for a business that already kind of exists and has their own podcast to look at selling the business and transferring the podcast to the new owner. I think that a lot of the standard knowledge and business process transfer things apply there. Like if you have a process around Mark how you identify the guests that you want to have and how you invite them and you send them a [inaudible 00:34:23.3] like an as a zoom thing in it and you have an outline you send them three days before and all this kind of stuff and you have a team behind it to edit and produce the podcast. Then someone buying your business that has a podcast in it is not nearly as daunting as just saying like I wing it every week. And the new owner is saying holy crap I can't imagine doing that. So I think that … I mean the truth is a podcast is not really hard. Like once you do a couple of them it's not really that hard. So giving the buyer of the business that would acquire this asset but kind of responsibility of a podcast, give them the tools to be successful and I think it's definitely a net win. The worst thing I can see though is you have a podcast and you have an audience and people that really enjoy and want to connect with you through the podcast and the acquirer comes in and drops the ball, obviously, a big negative. So if people have podcasts and they're going to be selling their business or business with podcasts I would definitely make sure like the rest of the business like you said with the Dread Pirate Roberts thing it's like make sure that it's totally transferable and that the person's going to be successful. That intimate nature of the podcast I think can transfer from one person to another pretty easily. You know the new person is going to have some level of domain expertise and you'll love a different spin on the podcast and that's cool. Yeah, I think it's definitely a net win as long as the person is set up to be successful. Mark: Yeah and I would agree. And the other thing I would point to is that when talking about an exit strategy when looking at what you need to do to prepare a business for sale there's going to be this push and this pull on various factors of the business. And when you're looking at this, when you're looking at the business holistically it's always going to be better for you to build a strong, loyal, happy, faithful audience right? Craig: Yeah. Mark: That's way, way more valuable than anything else. And is there maybe a little bit of a demerit when it comes to having something like a podcast which may be tied to your voice. Yeah, okay there's … I think just being honest yeah I think there's going to be a little bit of concern about the transferability. But that can be addressed right? That can be addressed pretty easily. You can agree to do the podcast and co-host with the new owner for six months and have a very warm hand off that way. That would be a very natural way to do it. I think the benefits that a podcast adds in building an audience, let's think about this real quick here what is the value of an online business when we actually look at it and when we do all the tax returns and everything else on it we allocate most of the purchase price towards goodwill. The sort of nebulous who knows what it is that makes this business successful. Successful and having a podcast is really a big part of building that good will. So if you take the time and build a lot of good will through a podcast and that's a good source and driving avenue for customer acquisition within your business that's going to be a net plus in the grand scheme of the things. So I think people that are out there thinking about podcasting thinking well I don't want to start that because it's going to hurt the transferability of the business. I wouldn't necessarily say that. I wouldn't necessarily say don't do in fact I'll probably say the opposite especially if you have enough time. If you're looking at a year, two or three years before selling and you're able to build that audience I think it actually makes more sense because it's really hard to replicate that. Craig: Yeah the value you can get in those two years is so much more than the potential drawback of the new owner flubbing it and your audience being upset which is basically the worst thing that could happen right? Mark: You're totally biased in this but I'm going to ask you this question right now. If I could give you a business with 30,000 e-mail subscribers or a business with 15,000 podcast listeners what would you take? Craig: Yeah I mean the podcast listeners are going to engage with your message a lot more. You probably also would get all of them on an email list so you're already halfway there to having both. I mean you're literally … and we say it all the time, you're literally in someone's ear creating like some kind of like different neural connection with those people. I get your e-mail; I read your e-mails fine. I hear you on the podcast; I hear you talking about your kids and the Dread Pirate Roberts and all these kind of stuff that like has a different level of meaning. And it is that personal stuff that in a situation where you're going to be transferring it to a new owner is a little different. But for the time that you have the business or you're looking in acquiring a business that has a podcast it is a huge benefit. Because a lot of people are scared, right? You didn't start the podcast for some period of time probably because you're like … I don't know this is an onerous task I don't know if I'm up for it right? I mean maybe I did sure like I didn't start a podcast because I was like I'm not going to talk into a microphone and then put it out on the Internet for anyone who wants to hear it to hear because I sound like an idiot right? Like a lot of people don't like the sound of their voice and you just have to get over that stuff because the net is such a huge win. Mark: Yeah. Craig: Think about like you're at a conference now and like you know Mark I heard you on the podcast right? Mark: Right well it was that conference question that actually led us to do the podcast because we've been going to so many conferences and conferences are expensive. You have to fly out there for sponsoring and now that the sponsorship fees are ridiculously high and … but the benefit of being there in front of somebody and having those little jokes here and there or just playing… we'll play it a game. Well, we've done golf, we've done jenga, we've done darts … or something like darts it was actually sharp objects that we're throwing out our booth but that'd be dangerous they wouldn't let us do that. But that actual physical presence being there it really relaxed people so much more and allowed us to connect on more of a one on one basis. And that's why we started the podcast and sure enough, I think that happened. Given that choice between e-mail list and podcast, I would take the podcast audience as well. I think you can mobilize a podcast audience much faster. I think they're more engaged. I think they're more likely to quite literally listen to you but be more attentive to what you're saying. I think there's … that's just different [inaudible 00:40:07.3]. Craig: Yeah I would say like that one look at guys like you know Gary Vaynerchuk right or Pat Flynn or whoever that you look up to in the business and marketing world they all have podcasts right? So like that says something I think. The other thing is the volume of information that we are relaying in this episode is massive. Like … you know we transcribe episodes for customers a podcast and a typical you know 45 minute conversation is about 15 pages in a Google doc. Mark: Wow. Craig: So you're like how are you going to relay 15 pages of content to anybody ever? That's impossible, right? No one is ever going to read that blog post or email but they'll listen to that podcast every week. Mark: Yeah absolutely, in fact, I have our director of content marketing now Chris Moore who also listens to the podcast, hey Chris how are you doing? He's been going back through every one of our podcasts and pulling up quotes. And he was telling me just earlier this week about how much volume is there that we put together in what feels like a very short amount of time of doing this podcast. It is a ton of information. Craig: Something … a bit of a carrot I think for both the buy and sell side you know of your audience is you can bet your bottom that Google will be indexing audio very soon. Mark: That's a really nice tease. Craig: Oh you know the SEO impact of podcasting ya-da-da-da-da, you're going to create like show notes that are like 700 words or whatever for an hour long conversation. 100% guarantee that there will be an audio tab in Google whatever soon in the next couple of years. Mark: Yeah all right so let's go to this. We're almost up with our time I want to end up with what does somebody need at a bare minimum if they want to test a podcast for their business? How long … we don't have to get in the details of the equipment like we don't … I mean you want to give a couple of recommendations there and what are the basic things they should think about if they want to get and test it out for say two or three months and how long should they test it? Craig: Yeah so I think that the basics you need a microphone. I mentioned the two microphones before. If you really just want to test use the Apple ear buds they're actually quite good. Mark: They are actually. Yes, I'll second that actually, yeah. Craig: Get in a quiet place; don't have your kids running around or the train going by with the window open or something like that. Do some kind of environmental safety measures for the sound quality. You need something to record and edit the audio with. A tool that does both of those is called Audacity. It's open sourced and free in cross-platform so Windows or Mac. So you can record and edit with Audacity. Something to record with select a microphone or the Apple ear buds perfectly good and then you probably want something to store the files on so like a podcast hosting platform like a Castos or Libsyn, or SoundCloud and then you need to create what's called an RSS feed. And that is the thing that places like iTunes and Stitcher and Spotify read. And then share information about your podcast like as a whole like the title and description and image and all likely stuff and about each episode. That's kind of how podcasting works is you submit this RSS feed to these directories and the directories read the meta information about your show as well as information about each episode as it's published. So that's kind of a 20,000 foot view of podcasting. How many episodes? I think if you can't come up with 20 good guest interview or topics to cover or something like that then you have a couple of problems. But you probably shouldn't get into content generally but you really, really, really need to think about at least having a couple of episodes to launch with. Two, three, four something like that and but you really should have a general idea of what the first 20 episodes is going to look like. Mark: Yeah and I recommend actually recording probably about two months' worth just to start. If you're running a business as well I know like the recent first … my first go with Quiet Light podcast didn't really happen as I recorded three episodes and then I got busy and three weeks goes by really, really fast. And we do this here at Quiet Light we will get like a nice buffer of about two months but next you know we're staring down an empty set again of episodes. So get a nice buffer set up for that first trial and see what happens. It's a great medium and I'm going to do a plug for you just like you don't have to come across self-promotion. Honestly, your service makes this whole thing dead simple. Like I don't think about it at all, I don't think about what I'm doing. The only thing I thought about was what sort of graphic are we going to use for the podcast. Outside of that everything was set up, everything was done, the introduction was done. It makes it really, really simple. And so if you are looking to go this direction don't add a bunch more to your plate. Go out talk to PodcastMotor I recommend your guys service highly enough. Craig: Cool. Thanks so much that's great to hear. Mark: Hey thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. If you guys have questions feel free to reach out to Craig@podcastmotor. We'll put contact information in the show notes and yeah if you have any other questions or suggestions for podcast episodes send me an email mark@quietlightbrokerage.com. Thanks, Craig. Craig: Thanks, Mark. Links and Resources: Podcast Motor Castos Contact Podcast Motor

Randall Jacobs, Co-Founder of THESIS Bike drops in to talk about the development process and vision for the OB1 bicycle. THESIS Bike Online THESIS OB1 Specifications CRAIG: All right. Hello everyone. Today we've got Randall Jacobs from THESIS Bike here, live in person. We're going to talk to him about the THESIS Bike Company and what his inspiration was. We actually just got back from a sample ride here in Marin county riding the new OB1 bike and I'm really excited to introduce everybody to Randall. So thanks for joining us.   RANDALL: Thanks for having me.   CRAIG: I always like to start by finding out a little bit about your background as a rider. Did you start more on the mountain bike side or on the road side?   RANDALL: So I started racing mountain bikes as an undergraduate. I was playing football and broke my foot. Cycling was the first thing I could do and I took to the bicycle on the mountain bike side and did the collegiate series, found that I was reasonably good at it and stuck with it. It's become a real lifestyle ever since.   CRAIG: And did that lead you into other elements of the sport?   RANDALL: I went on to move overseas for a period and rode on and off. When I was 25, I had a life event where my father became sick. I was looking at where he was. He had a brain tumor at the time, so pretty bad prognosis. I said, what are the things I'd like to have accomplished in his position? Being a pro athlete was one of those things. So I started training full time. I was lucky to win a couple of national championships as an amateur shortly after he passed and then spent the subsequent couple of years living out of my Honda Element traveling around the country with a fleet of bicycles that was worth probably 5X what the car was worth.   CRAIG: So you're racing on the national mountain bike scene at that point?   RANDALL: Yeah. I was, you could say, pack fodder on the US Cup circuit, and then I'd have a few good results in the local circuits.   CRAIG: What a great journey. Spending that much time doing it. I think it's something that a lot of people aspire to just following their dreams of bike racing and going out there and doing it and it's certainly not without its sacrifices.   RANDALL: It's certainly is.  I was fortunate in my case in that I had started a career in international trade and supply chain architecture where I could work remotely anywhere in the world. So in that regard it didn't cost too much, but you definitely put certain other things on hold being on the road all the time.   CRAIG: So when you hung up your racing cleats, what was next for you professionally?   RANDALL: From there I started a product development company where we were working with the same set of Chinese manufacturers that I had cultivated during my period running product and market development for the Chinese trading and manufacturing company. I then sold that company to one of our partners and went to work for Specialized in 2013. At Specialized, the Diverge project was in its early days. I actually ended up naming that bike and was the product developer for the project, so doing all the bike builds and negotiating all the deals with the vendors and so on, and coordinating the product and supply chain sides.   CRAIG: So you were helping sort of spec out the supply chain and the specifications for the original Diverge bike while you were there?   RANDALL: Correct. And doing a lot of the field testing and component compatibility testing to make sure everything was fully dialed, which is where you see my obsessive attention to detail come in.   CRAIG: The Diverge bike, it was really one of the first production, quote unquote gravel bikes to hit the market from a big manufacturers that right?   RANDALL: For sure. The first bike that was called a gravel bike. I mean, there had been people riding such bikes for quite some time. When that bike came out, it was the early days of drop bar disc brakes, which really opened up a lot not just for braking power and modulation, but also for tire clearance. That was a key enabling technology that allows you to have the sort of bikes we have today, the other one being tubeless tires. And in today's world, tubeless tires with really wide rims allows you to have a bicycle, a drop bar bike, that is fast like a road bike on the road and as capable or more so than what a mountain bike would have been not too long ago.   CRAIG: Gotcha. So the Diverge, was it the end all be all?  Was it everything you wanted to make in a gravel bike?   RANDALL: No. Of course, there are constraints on what we were able to do at that time for a variety of reasons. When you work for a big company, there's always going to be product decisions that are more due to a cost structure or needing to support a certain margin and marketing story. So with the OB1 it was really something I had been incubating for quite some time and it's my opportunity to take an unfettered approach to product from the ground up. I've had to compromise on nothing: not tire clearance, not stick-on or bolt-on magic elastomers attached to the frame, nothing. I just went ground up with pure evidenced-based curation of the components and the setup.   CRAIG: Interesting. So we're here to talk about your new company that you cofounded, THESIS Bike, and you just referenced your first model, the OB1. Some of the motivation has already come out in the conversation about why you wanted to start this company, but why now? What are the trends you're seeing? You're doing some unique stuff at THESIS that we'll get into as far as the bike itself and the business model, but why now and why are you guys the people to do it?   RANDALL: If you look at what we're doing, the primary innovation here is this business model. But the product itself is really cool and one I've been thinking about for awhile, so let's start with the product itself. So you saw bikes like the Open UP come online, which really brought an almost monster cross capability in a form factor that is more akin to an endurance road bike that's slacked out a little bit.   We wanted to go a step further. So if you look, we don't do a frame set. We do a complete bike for the cost of a frameset from the companies were competing with, and that's enabled by the business model innovation.   On the product side of things, [we have] a flat top handle bar with a shallow drop and a 10 degree flare so you’re narrow and relatively aero on the hoods, but in the drops you have that additional control which has benefits not just in gravel but also when you're just doing a road descent. You just had that much more leverage. Or even like in a sprint. You see this on ENVE’s road handle bars. They have a model that has a four degree flair, a little subtle thing. And I think you'll see flare bars start to catch on across disciplines, even with roadies or at least the more progressive roadies who aren't so traditional in their equipment choices.   On the wheels, we do 650B and 700C wheel pack package options. In our case both wheel packages use a high end carbon rim. With the 650B we go really wide, 27.3 internal width, so 33.3 external. And what that does is it takes your tire, like the WTB Byway we have as standard, and it brings it out from 47 to almost 50 millimeters and changes the profile such that the side knobs engage a bit sooner and you can drop the pressure down and not have the tire flopping around. So I'll ride out to the trail chasing down roadies at 45 psi and then I'll drop it down to 30 and the rear in 27 in the front and ride it like a full on cross country bike. And I'm passing people on dualies. So that's another kind of small detail along with the flare bar.   The other thing is the dropper post, which you experienced today, which really transforms the bike. Anyone who's coming from the mountain scene knows that you'd probably rather give up a couple inches of suspension rather than your dropper. On the gravel bike gets that much more game changing because you're starting with no suspension.   CRAIG: It was certainly an interesting moment for me. Randall generously let me take the dropper post on all the descents today. So I had a good time doing that and it was interesting because I've obviously I've ridden the dropper posts on my mountain bike quite regularly for the last half dozen years or so. And I was quite familiar with the benefits to that with the gravel bike. It was interesting creating that sort of pocket of space underneath me because I simply wasn't familiar with it ever doing that on a drop bar bike. And I definitely appreciated the tight integration with the lever so that on the SRAM shifter, Randall has hacked it so that it controls the dropper post for you. So instead of having a front chain ring, a shifter, I can shift the dropper posts down right from the handlebars.   RANDALL: Yeah. And that's a pretty simple hack that we will be documenting with a video real soon. But essentially with SRAM’s modern hydraulic front shifters, there's a one minute hack that's fully reversible to remove the ratchet mechanism and allow that shift lever to swing freely and thus actuate the dropper post, which is really slick. I use it more than I ever used the front derailleur.   CRAIG: So that was interesting. As most people who listened to his podcast know, I tend to ride my gravel bike on more mountain biking style terrain than the kind of flow and fire roads that are often known in other parts of the country for gravel. So for me, this is something I've been thinking about for awhile, checking out a dropper post. So it was a lot of fun. And I definitely will say that if you're on the type of steep terrain that sort of characterizes the terrain in Marin County, it's definitely a value add. And there's a small weight penalty but not a dramatic weight penalty given that sort of benefits of speed going down.   RANDALL: Yeah. There is this common misconception I'll describe where you pick up a bike and you say, “Oh, that's really light. It must be fast”. But really there's a lot of ways in which you can make a bike heavier and faster. So as an example, with a dropper post, you're able to descend that much faster, not just on the super steep terrain that we were riding today, but even on less steep but really fast terrain with loose sweepers where you don't drop it all the way down. You drop it down just enough so that you have a little bit more control and you can shift your weight back and so on, and you go through with more confidence. The other thing is you can brake that much harder. So you're braking vastly more with the rear brake versus the front brake. And you can break with both of them in a “holy crap” sort of situation and have more traction and not be ready to go over the handlebars like you would be if you were sitting on top of a fully extended post.   CRAIG: Yeah, I think it's one of those things that we will definitely start to see more and more of. I think there is a somewhat of a sentiment in gravel to be respectful of our road brethren and then the changes maybe are slower to be adopted for more aesthetic reasons than anything else, but I can definitely vouch for the, the sort of performance benefits of the dropper post from what I've evidenced today in today's short ride. I do want to talk about a little bit more about the frame set too. It's a carbon frame set, correct?   RANDALL” Yup. Full carbon frame set.   CRAIG: And you've got a lot of mounts spec’ed down there, which I think is interesting. So let's talk about the mounts and some of the other things that make this bike essentially a quiver killer. Something that you can replace your road bike. And many other bikes in your garage.   RANDALL: The frameset [features] a full carbon frame and fork. I'm using the same Toray carbon fiber that everybody else uses. In our case it's T700 to T800 other people give it some fancy acronym for the same thing. It's all mostly coming from the same place.   We've done a few things that are common and few things that are unique. So on the common side, we have a full suite of bosses: cage mounts inside the frame, third cage on the down tube, a bento up top. But we've [added] to the fork blades more bottle cage bosses that are also sturdy enough to handle a front rack. We have rear rack mounts as well. So you could set this up as a full touring setup and put 10 kilos or more on the front and 15 on the back, plus a frame bag, and be on your way for your next epic adventure.   Some other smaller details that I think are really important are on the fork. Steerer tube failure has always been a big concern of mine or you've seen a bunch of recalls in the industry, some of them associated with improper manufacturing but some of them associated with the clamping force of the stem actually crushing the carbon. And so if anyone in the audience has built a carbon frame of the carbon steer before they'll see that you have this expansion plug that goes in. And we looked at all of them and none that can be found on the open market did a good job of fully supporting the steerer. So we actually bonded an aluminum tube with a built in star nut into our forks, which you can then cut and shorten. And that's a safety feature. You really have no way to install it improperly because you don't install it. It's already there. And if you're traveling a lot and you're removing your stem and reinstalling it, you can over-torque it, but it's still not going to crush the carbon. Carbon is a brilliant material in tension, but it's terrible in compression. So that was another small detail where we really paid a lot of attention.   The other thing that you noticed is we decided to forego the drop stay which you see on a bike like the Open or the new Ibis Hakka. Those bikes accommodate a slightly larger tire. I think they can go up to like a 2.2. Our bicycle is optimized around a 700C x 40 or 650b x 47, which has the same radius as a 700C x 30. And that [the 700C x 30) is actually what we use on the road.   For our [650B] wheelset, we went with a wide rim that expands the tire to almost 50 millimeters. And what we found is that’s kind of the sweet spot for maintaining a road geometry, look and feel while still giving you all the capabilities of a borderline monster cross or light XC bike.   CRAIG: Gotcha. And you're offering both a single chain ring and a double chain ring. Correct?   RANDALL: Yeah. If you're considering going with the 1x, go for it. I’m all in on 1x myself. We’re offering the double because there's a lot of people who want to go that route. We can talk about pluses and minuses here. With the 1x you get the clutch so the chain’s not slapping around. It also frees up the left shift lever for the dropper, which I think, once you've experienced it, you won't want to ride without it. I think it's really a game changer as much as anything else you can do. But yeah, we'll do a 2x as well.   In both cases you have a few different gearing options so you can really dial it in. If you're not super fit and you live in a really hilly area, go with a 38 or 40 in the front. If you're super fit and live in a flatter area, go with a 46 with a 10-42 in the rear to give you plenty of high end. Same with the double. We're working on 46/30 or 48/32 options. We're just doing the compatibility testing right now before we offer it.   CRAIG: In addition to designing the frame, you've also designed the wheel set and some of the other components. Is that right?   RANDALL: Well, so this word designed. We started with a frame set that had all of the characteristics that we wanted. The same is true for the rims. And that's true in wheels in particular. Almost nobody is designing their own rems or if they do, they just spec a profile and they say to an engineer at the factory, please do the layup for me. So we started with a frame that met the vast majority of our criteria and then worked with the factory on over 100 different line item changes to bring it up to where we thought it needed to be. So simple things from additional chainring clearance, to adding 3K carbon reinforcement under every single boss and cut out in the frame to give it that much more strength and fray resistance, to adding fiberglass at all the interfaces with metal so you don't get galvanic corrosion. All these little granular things that you don't think about until it's a year down the road and you're trying to remove your seat post and it won't come out because it's bonded to the carbon. We did all of those things.   CRAIG: Presumably you were traveling overseas to work directly with the factory.   RANDALL: Oh yeah. Yeah. So I've spent a couple of weeks in the factories and then quite a bit of time late at night on calls. That gives us a big advantage.   I've been working in supply chain since I started working. This was back when I was 21. I'm approaching 36 now. I'm a fluent mandarin speaker, so that allows a degree of relationship and interaction that's just not possible if you're an English speaker. So I go into a factory and I don't just speak English with the boss, I am speaking Mandarin with a line worker to understand the process that they're going through as they're making that part, what are the common failure modes as they're doing that so we can then work the engineers to design around it. And this is something that's really important to me and that I enjoy doing tremendously.   CRAIG: For those of our listeners who aren't that familiar with the bike industry, how different is that process from what a major manufacturer goes through? Are you dealing with the same types of factories, the same types of materials that you would be at a Specialized or a Trek?   RANDALL: Everyone's using from the same subset of factories, using the same materials, the same manufacturing techniques. There's almost nothing new in our industry. It’s rare that you come across something new, which is why you see quite a bit of odd looking “innovation”. It's really just a way of trying to stand out in some way. So part of our thesis is that we innovate only where that innovation provides a genuine benefit to the customer. So as an example, on our wheelset, we didn't design a custom profile. We went and found one of the best manufacturers in China, who's manufacturing rims for all the big players. They had an off the shelf rim. We worked with them to modify the layup slightly to make it optimized for a gravel application. So in our case, that meant taking a mountain bike rim with a mountain bike width that gives you that tire stability on the 650B set, and lightening the layup because it doesn't need quite as much of a burly build as it would for, say, the enduro application for which it was designed.   CRAIG: Gotcha. So in addition to the sort of manufacturing processes of the bike, you're reinventing how you're going to sell to customers. Obviously selling direct is not something totally new, but for the bike industry and customers purchasing a bike, it is a relatively new experience to go direct to a smaller brand and buy online. Can you just talk a little bit about that decision and the type of relationship you want to foster with the customers and why you thought it was important to direct?   RANDALL: Sure. From a product standpoint, it allows us to offer a very granular degree of customization. When you buy a traditional bike, you're buying a complete bike. If the handlebar width isn't right, the crank length isn't right, the gearing isn't right, you're then spending money after the fact to swap that out or you're just dealing with it. And that's unfortunate given how many times that bike has been marked up and what you're paying for it.   The other thing is, our price point is $2999, and for what we offer, that is, I mean, there's nothing else that approaches that. You can buy competing frame sets that cost that much or even slightly more. The way that we're able to accomplish that is by being as close to factory direct as you can get.   And it's actually better than factory direct because when you go factory direct, first off, no factory is going to sell you one handlebar, right? So you need a certain amount of buying volume to get that pricing. Additionally, component compatibility.  You'd have to deal with “how do I high spec my bike with all these components that I've curated”. You don't have the same access to information and resources that say somebody on the inside like myself is fortunate to have.   We took a model where we work directly with the same factories who are supplying all the big brands. We work with the top of the line, open components. So we have a hollow forged crank from Samox that is lighter than Rival and comes with a spindly chain ring, and it's a really stiff and bomb proof package that can take a rock strike.   That’s one example. It’s the same with our frame set, same with our wheel packages and so on. We do assembly of the wheels and bundling of certain components in China and ship those out. And then we bundle all the components from Taiwan and we ship those out from there. So you receive two boxes of components that have been validated to work really well with each other and that you've been able to customize to your particular body, your use case, and even to your style if you want to. If you had a baby blue car with little metallic flecks in the paint when you were in high school or something like that, and you want to replicate it, send us a Pantone number and for a small up-charge we’ll get you exactly the color that you want.   CRAIG: Wow. So you mentioned two boxes are going to get shipped. The bike is not assembled correctly when it arrives. That's a little bit different than some of the other direct to consumer brands who are touting [that] all you need is an allen wrench and we'll be ready to go in five minutes. Let's talk a little bit about that.   RANDALL: So there are some brands that I've heard do a pretty good job there. Canyon is one that stands out, they do a pretty good quality build is what I've heard from mechanics, but that is not the general standard. So if you talk to many who work in shops, the really good ones tend to disassemble a factory built bike and then reassemble it to make sure it's done right. It's just hard to get that attention to detail on a mass assembly line and furthermore, they're not fit to the rider. And so you're still having to do a bunch of tweaking and so on.   So going back to why we named the company THESIS, we saw a way to both have the net cost to the rider be lower and get them a product that fits them and their riding style much better. A frame up assembly at Sports Basement [a Bay Area retailer] is 280 bucks. And now you have a local mechanic who did that build to your standard, helped you tweak it and fit it and so on. Obviously a full on custom fit is going to be a little bit more money, but that's the case with all of these bikes. Nobody's bundling in a fit, and furthermore, it would cost us more to ship everything to a single facility, have it assembled poorly or not as well as it could be done locally, and then put it in a big box with yet another bit of packaging, and put everything in a big box and then ship it with higher tariff codes to some location where you receive it and still have to finish putting it together. And it's probably not dialed in and tuned properly. Right? So we looked at the experience and quality of product and the net cost to consumer all having a big advantage with this type of model.   CRAIG: Interesting. So the bike, the OB1 really can be quite a versatile chassis, if you will. It can be almost a platform for every type of riding that you want to do. As we've talked over the day that we've talked about road riding. So talk about the OB1 as a road bike.   RANDALL: Gravel bikes in general are just the road bikes that the industry should have been selling regular people all along. So you look road bikes and generally they’re race replicas. The head tubes are short. The steering is more aggressive. The tires are really skinny. People are still riding 23mm tires at 130 PSI, which not only is not comfortable, it's actually slower than a higher volume tire. Not to mention the braking on carbon rims in the wet and all these other issues. The OB1 we designed to be...the one bike for every road.   So as a road bike it's got an endurance road type geometry and the road wheel package that’s a 44 depth, 22 internal, a 30 external rim that we pair with a supple 30 millimeter tubeless tire from WTB that rides super smooth and super fast. So I'll take that bike and go out and hammer with the local hammerheads on Scotty's ride or do some of the longer road rides that we see out here and keep up just fine. There's no deficit., and actually with the dropper, I'm descending faster than they are because I can do it more confidently and more aero because I can get into that crazy tuck.   You get a lot of questions on the gravel side. We spoke about the advantages of the flare bar and the dropper and swapping in the 650B wheelset. In my case, on my road we'll set I run an 10-42 [cassette] to give me a little bit taller gearing on the high end. And then on the gravel set I run an 11-46, which gives me a little bit more low end so I can climb up all the dirt walls here in Marin. For touring. the geometry is long and stable enough where you can do light touring, which with today's gear makes it entirely capable. It’'ll take 10 plus kilos in the front and the rear. It has all the bosses for that. If you’re bike packing, it has plenty of room in the front triangle and again, has all the mounting points for anything you'd want to take.   If you look at the actual differences between these types of bikes, it's mostly tire clearance, mounting points, and marketing. Those are the primary differences between a road bike and gravel bike and a cross bike and all these other bikes. Some might add geometry, but that's more at the extremes. With the OB1, we have a geometry that is at the overlapping point in the Venn diagram of all these different sub-niches. So you really can have one bike for everything. And with this bike, we wanted to demonstrate that the myth of N+1, which is used to sell more bike, is false… At most, you need one bike with two wheel sets.   CRAIG: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going to think that's a realization that many cyclists will come to in time. And it's, it's fascinating to me. And for those of my listeners who have listened for a long time, they know my journey to gravel riding came from this notion of bike packing that I never truly realized. But having a bike in the closet that enabled me to ride on the road, ride on gravel, which is my primary pursuit, and occasionally get out there and do some light touring or bike packing really was a revelation. And the realization that one bike really could do it all. And frankly when I'm in a group road ride, it's not my bike that's the limiting factor. It's generally my legs which goes to show [it’s not] the bike I'm riding. And I think your bike...can do it all. When you're really honest about the type of rider that you are and can be like, neither one of us are on the pro tour, so we're not looking for marginal gains that on the extremes.   RANDALL: And those marginal gains are very marginal. 80% of aerodynamic drag is your body. A good chunk of what remains is the wheels, and we have an aerodynamic wheelset that's paired with the wide tires so you really can get very close to the bleeding edge and still not have a machine that is compromised for every other application. If you're gonna go out and do the local crits, you might want to get a road bike. For all the rest of us, get one really good bike that you'll have a much better time on. You'll probably be faster with that one good bike versus spreading those same resources over several mediocre ones.   CRAIG: Yeah. Well it's a really interesting bike. It's a beautiful bike. I encourage everybody to go to the website. I'll put that in the podcast notes. So people can check it out and I think it's a bike that begs to be looked at. I think you show a lot of the different ways in which the bike can be used on the website, which is great. I think it gives our listeners a lot to think about. So what's next for THESIS bike? When can we order one? How can people find you? How can they learn more about the philosophy and just get to understand the brand and you as a designer?   RANDALL: By the time you broadcast this podcast, we will probably have sales live or be approaching it. We have a waitlist currently that is getting increasingly long. We've done a few sales with friends and family at this point just to run them through the buying process and work out all the kinks before we open it up to a general audience. But yeah, we're expecting within the next couple of weeks, so by the time this podcast goes out.   As far as what's next for THESIS, we mentioned that the bike comes 90 percent unassembled. We have some very interesting partnerships in the works for local assembly and are hoping to have that as a checkbox option at checkout when you buy your OB1.   A part of the vision here, in addition to wanting to make a great product and an innovative business model, is to really provide an opportunity for the unsung heroes of the bike industry, your mechanics and fitters as well as the factories that are actually producing and increasingly engineering things...for them to have new and better opportunities to be compensated for the work they do. Having a model where a mechanic can get paid for their expertise in helping you with your curation and fit, and then make money on the assembly experience as well. And have, instead of an oppositional relationship between mechanic and customer where the customer doesn't know if the mechanic is just trying to sell them something, to have a relationship. We work with those parties to provide the rider with the best experience possible, whether it be with equipment or maintaining that equipment.   The single best return on investment that you can get in cycling is not equipment. It may be diet, but after diet and training it is definitely a professional build and fit. You'll be more comfortable. Your equipment will last far longer. And we want to have a model that provides the right incentive structure where people take advantage.   CRAIG: Interesting. Well we definitely look forward to learning more about that. If people have questions for you are there social channels they can connect with you on, or an email address, website and the like?   RANDALL: You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can contact me at randall@thesis.bike. or if you just have general questions, hello@thesis.bike.   CRAIG: Okay, great. Well best of luck with the brand. I look forward to riding with you again and continuing to spend a little bit more time on the bike. As I said, my initial ride shows it's a lot of fun, so I'm looking forward to that and I wish you guys all the best. For my listeners, definitely check out the website. I'll put it in the notes, put that in the media podcast notes so people can find you easily. And yeah, I hope you have a great summer with this.   RANDALL: Yeah, thanks a lot. Looking forward to that next ride.   CRAIG: Awesome.

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In this episode, Craig speaks with Andrew More, Owner and Managing Director of More CA, a chartered accountancy firm.  Andrew has set out to add value to his services by not just helping his clients with compliance but also offering them real world advice, assistance, and guidance.    When asked about the kinds of problems Andrew helps his clients with, he explains that his practice puts an emphasis on the ethos of collaboration.  This involves brainstorming with his clients to solve issues and problems they are faced with.  They work with technology to facilitate processes and ensure accuracy in the figures, along with other specialists to help improve their clients’ businesses.   Unlike the run-of-the-mill accounting firms most business people see once or twice a year, Andrew is more hands on.  He engages with his clients on a more regular basis and encourages them to ask questions no matter how simple they may seem.   Andrew has had to differentiate More CA from the rest of the traditional accounting firms by adding more value to his clients.  One way More CA has done that was by educating the practice’s clients on what they must expect from their accountants.  As he starts to work with his clients, he asks four basic questions such as What is your structure? What are your issues? How do we contact you? What are your goals?”   More CA’s purpose in asking the clients what their goals are is to determine whether their personal goals and business goals are in alignment.  Once they understand what their client’s goals are, they can advise them on the manner of which will be relevant to helping them achieve their goals.   When asked about what he enjoys about being in business, Andrew mentioned that he enjoyed working with his clients.  In his previous job, he knew he could offer them more than what the same old accountancy model offered.   Andrew feels that he has succeeded in what he has achieved.  However, he says his goals are constantly changing.  These goals push you to be better and not content with who you are.  He reviews his goals about once a year.   His assistant, Claire, holds him accountable for his goals.   Sometimes, his friends and family do the same.  Most of the time, he engages in introspection and what he calls “self-review.”  Bouncing ideas around with a trusted friend or colleague. From these discussions, he is able to get clarity and allows him to identify what to prioritize and what not to prioritize.  It comes back to the Paretos Principle, also known by other monikers such as the Law of the Vital Few, the 80-20 Rule, and the Principle of Factor Sparsity.  Basically, it states that approximately 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the causes.   The one thing Andrew has been able to uphold in his professional demeanour and personality has been developing his empathy.  It’s about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to understand where they are coming from in terms of their matters, issues, accidents, and failures.  This hit home for Andrew because it made him realize that nobody comes into work to do a bad job.  In the same manner, none of the clients are out there to harm you as well.  You cannot be judgmental.  Things need to be taken from their intentions that were made.   Turning his clients into aspirational go getters takes a lot of work as well.  The clients need to understand what their preferences, their approach to risk, whether conservative or moderate, and what they want to achieve.   Andrew’s advice for small business owners in New Zealand is that if your accountant hasn’t asked you what they’re trying to achieve or what your goals are, then you’re not getting your money’s worth and you probably have to look around.  He advises small business owners to work closely with their accountants and allow them to help the business owners achieve their goals.   When asked what the difference was between bookkeepers and accountants, Andrew says it really comes down to the price.  Accountants are now sharing a lot of their business with bookkeepers.  Chartered accountants, however, have more to offer in terms of knowledge, educational background, and experience.  Offering value added services to the clients sets More CA apart from the rest.  When the client needs advice, wants to do anything important, wants to grow, has plans to grow and succeed the business, and the like, he or she would need a chartered accountant.   Mistakes that are regularly made by business owners include budgeting for tax.  Many people don’t do that.  Some businesses have gone under because of their failure to budget for taxes.  Second, business owners need to have goals or connect to something.  These goals need to be written and shared.  This starts that collaborative movement in your business and in life.  It also allows you to achieve or realize something that was totally unreachable.   One way to do this is to collaborate.  Andrew considers that as the key.  With the help of specialists, business owners will be able to focus on what matters to them .     THE PROJECT GUYS PODCAST ANDREW MORE INTERVIEW   WHAT WE NEED TO BE ASKING OUR ACCOUNTANTS   Craig Oliver: Welcome everybody!  Craig here from the Project Guys once again. Today, I’m talking to Andrew More, who’s the owner and managing director of More CA. More CA is an accountancy firm. Andrew set out the business and the frustration with the traditional accountancy firm model. He really wanted to be able to partner with his clients and offer a bit of value for their money. So, rather than just doing compliance for his clients, he wanted to be able to offer real world advices, assistance and guidance their financial health to help achieve their goals. So, I’m really excited to have Andrew here as a philosophy on what we should be asking for our accountants and what have them move forward with us with things. So, welcome, Andrew! Andrew More: Thanks, Craig. Thanks for having me along. Craig: So, let’s start off. Tell us a little bit of your background, how you got to where you are now… obviously, you’ve got a funny accent, how did that all come from? (laughter) I mean, why did you decide to go into business? Elaborate on that a little bit more. Andrew: So, I’m not from around here. I’m from Edinburgh, Scotland but I grew up in the family business and my best friend, they were in a family business as well. So, yes..I was influenced by that in an early stage. My education, I attended towards  math and physics and ultimately accountancy.  I tended to have a natural flair for those sorts of things and hey, I love autonomy. I love doing this my own way. So, I think a natural progression to business was where  I was gonna go and when we’re expecting our first child, I decided it was time to risk everything and go out  on my own.  Maybe not best for the partner but it gave me enough time with the family and it let me do things the way I wanted to. So, it was a pretty good move. Craig: Cool. So, tell us more about your business. What is it you do? What problems are you solving for your clients? Andrew: Okay, so my firm, More CA,  is substantially a chartered accountancy practice and a small one at that but we have an emphasis on an ethos of collaboration. Now, by collaboration, I simply mean people getting their heads together and solving the issues and problems which are facing the business people. So, we do this and we collaborate with technology to make things easier, make things more accurate, re-collaborate with specialists such as accountants, lawyers, business advisors and all of these sorts of things and we involve ourselves, as specialists in our own wee way and also obviously the business owners because they do a lot of the work and they make their business the best. We do all the basic compliances.  You’ve mentioned earlier, the kind of financial reporting, the tax returns but our main emphasis, as I said is, collaboration.  So, the problems that we tend to find are quite varied. So for instance, yesterday, I was dealing with a restaurateur, guy owns a quite successful wee restaurant and what he’s come to know is that he’s made such a success of himself. He doesn’t have any time. Craig: Roger. Andrew: So, he’s asked us to take all his admin work off him. So, we freed up a lot of his time to progress other projects by helping him out by putting out flexi-time payroll.  He’s doing all this rostering and we’re helping him do that. We’re putting in a lot of add-on apps for zero in order to take care of the necessary paperwork and then we’re doing the book keeping and we packaged it all up into a nice monthly bill that he’s happy with. So, he’s now focusing on what he wants to do. Other areas, other problems, we routinely get around growth.  We help people kind of, work out their plans towards growth, set targets, those sorts of things and work towards them. Some people have succession issues and we try to help them out. Succession is always best dealt with early on. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:  You set out what the goals are and work towards that plan. Craig: So, you’re really getting involved with these businesses. So like, collaboration, partnership…you’re not just an accountant you might see once or twice a year.  It takes time. It’s sort of, understanding your business and working with them to help them achieve what they’re trying to achieve and their little personal goals.  Isn’t it? Like you said. Andrew: That’s correct. Craig: It’s a real hand on type philosophy. Andrew: It’s very much hands on. It’s very much based around engaging with our clients regularly, giving them the confidence to be able to ask those question which they might feel that are silly. So, we’re making them comfortable within themselves and yeah, we appeal to people who have that sort of idea. Craig: Cool. So obviously, that a different way of thinking about accountancy services, no doubt when you were started off, you  came out of wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and gung-ho about it all. Tell us a bit about of some of the challenges and learnings you’ve had on from the early years right through now, the different challenges, different things that you have learned. Andrew: Okay, so I think that the major challenge or the major hurdle which I had to overcome as being an outsider in provincial New Zealand and this might sound a bit strange but professional service operators such as  accountants, lawyers tend to be passed on down the family chain like heirlooms. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: So, really just getting my foothold in this province and actually appealing to people that I’ve actually got the skills and services that they require has been a challenge. Nowadays, it’s getting people to understand that as a charted accountant, I offer more than the traditional accountants you store from. Craig: Yes. Andrew: So when I say traditional accountants, I mean, maybe the big, big firms when they’re dealing with small business have tended to just give their clients a set of accounts, a tax return, a letter and a bill once a year. Craig: Yup, yup and we’ve been guilty of that. Andrew: Yeah and that’s not very enjoyable for anyone and there’s very little added value and so we’re trying to step away from that and teach our clients that, that’s not all we do.  That’s very much the first stepping stone of the first foundation stone in regards to actually being involved in helping them get ahead, achieve goals. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: We’ve never had that conversation because charted accountants are never offered. They’ve dictated terms and nobody came to step ahead and show that we would have a lot to offer. Craig: So, I dare say some of the challenges would have been around perhaps,  educating the market place, educating the clients to almost expect  more  and teaching them “This is what you can expect and these are the sort of things you should be asking for or demanding” type of thing, rather than going to an accountant or your lawyer towards a scary time, going down to the dentist at a scary time. It’s actually someone who can help you progress your business Andrew:   Yeah, so we’ll probably ask her routinely and we have our contact chief that we fill in with our clients and it goes through a whole various kind of,  “What’s your structure?”, “What’s your issues?”, “How do we contact you?” All of these things. Craig: Cool. Andrew:  And the major point of it is our goals section. We ask our clients what they’re goals are. If we don’t know their goals, we can’t advise them appropriately. So, if we understand our goals or if they don’t have goals, we’ll help find their goals. Craig: Yup. Andrew:   They might not be goals based on business, they might be personal. Craig: Yup. I’ve always had to look out for that. You got your business and your personal, yeah. Andrew:   Yeah, at some point they’ve gotta converge. You can’t have personal goals which are tangential from your business goals because then you’re gonna be at a constant state of hating yourself for being in business. Craig: So, often the business funds the personals Andrew:   Correct. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   So, everyone’s got goals.  It’s just the case of documenting them and if we can understand their goals then we can advise them on the manner of which will be relevant towards to actually achieving these goals. Craig: Yeah, cool.  Awesome. So, what do you actually enjoy about being in business? What is it like to expand your wills? What do you enjoy about your business or your industry? What do you base your success at? Andrew:   Okay, so, what do I enjoy about my business? Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   I like doing business my own way. (laughter) Andrew:   One of the main things with getting at and going out to business by myself is that I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing for our clients and the firm that I was working for.  We were just giving that same old accountancy model of no added value and I knew we could do so much more. So that’s why I went to business by myself and that’s why I like to plow my own lawn thoroughly as they have warned me against and I’m not trying to be a disruptor. I think I’m naturally disruptive and the fact that I am offering a bit more .Key to my success, I could say that my success is moderate so far. Craig: C’mon! Andrew:   And I guess if you, if I still look at where I am now compared to when I’ve first started out, I’d say yes, I’ve succeeded in what I have achieved.  But the thing about goals are, we are constantly changing them. Craig:  Yup. Andrew:   So, you look back in it now and you look at yourself now and you probably think, “Oh, I’m only a moderate success because I’ve reassessed my goals.” And I think that’s probably one of the keys, you’ve gotta have goals. If you don’t have goals, you’re probably just gonna plod along, doing things that you may just be content with who you are. Nothing wrong with that. Craig: No. Andrew:   But I’m fairly aspirational. So, I set goals and I review them. Craig: So, how far would you review your goals?   Andrew:   I would review them at least once a year and well, I’d reassess myself on it once a year. I think it really comes down to what your goals are and how quickly you need to respond to maybe adverse events. That’s how quickly and how often you review them.  If you got projects and you’ve got a short time scale. You’ve obviously need to review your actual milestones regularly but my goals have been pretty much annually based on two-year, three-year, or  five-year goals. I’ve got milestones placed along the way to six months annually. Craig: Do you review them yourself or do you bring advisor parties to help you play devil’s advocate or a third party influence or external…do you know what I’m saying? Like, with your clients, do you bring in your professional… Andrew:   It’s always nice to be held accountable. (laughter) Sometime though, I don’t personally do that. I have done with my assistant, Claire, she knows what my goals are and certainly used some people to bounced ideas off. So, I do use that devil’s advocacy and that could be friends, family and those sorts of things. Craig: Yup. Yup. Andrew:   But a lot of the time, I’ve done self-review. I’m searching for doing this for others like I can do it for myself. I write loads of business plans. Craig: Okay. Andrew:   I write loads of them with these great ideas I conjure up over Christmas time. (laughter) Craig: Over Hanukkah Andrew:   And I review them on the second day and I go “Oh, that’s rubbish.” Craig: [incomprehensible] One day, there’s going to be a great idea in there and you could be the next great Mark Zuckerberg. (laughter) Andrew:   Yeah, you understand it right? You need tough collaborators and for small business people, it’s pretty hard to find collaborators. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   So even if it’s your partner, your colleagues, your friends, share your ideas. And hey, if one of them is happy to be a devil’s advocate and maybe just to help you ask those questions that justify your own ideas, hypotheses, your philosophies, just have them justify it. Craig: And sometimes, it’s just like and all in fairness as well, you have so many ideas in your head, so many businesses plans the clarity as to which you should follow and which ones you should bin. Andrew:   Yeah, just like your goals. Craig: Yeah. Yeah.  And I just went through the process myself, last week, I had lots of little projects on the go, not quite sure if  they were gonna amount to anything. So, I had a meeting with someone I trust on Friday,  bounce my ideas around. This was a big mess of brains from this section down, got massive clarity out of it, know which ones to prioritize and which ones are not.  Yeah. Andrew:   It comes back to that whole paretos principle of that 80-20. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   So, what are you trying to achieve? Figure out your goals? If this project doesn’t actually fit in with your goals, what you’re actually trying to achieve? There’s probably no point of taking it on. Craig: No. Andrew:   If you’re wanting to have a lifestyle balance and you take on a project which is gonna consume a hundred hours a week and you’re not gonna do it. Craig: No. Andrew:   You’re not gonna achieve it. So, you need someone to go, “Hey, Craig. That’s a massive project, you’re not gonna do this as well as you actually want to.” Craig: So, work out your genius. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So later you might not think yourself as a leader but as a leader in at sort of industry or community, what have you learned personally and professionally, perhaps of yourself in the last few years, being in business for yourself rather than working in the cooperate? Andrew:   Okay, well.  I guess even working in the corporate world or doing any sort of thing, you know in a business leader, you gotta  have certain things. You gotta have a sort of, systematic process driven. You gotta have some sort of discipline, those sort of things that are pretty much standard. Probably the main thing, I’ve learned, which I’ve tried to uphold in my professional demeanor and personality is empathy. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   And really by that I mean, putting yourself in that predicament of the other person and trying to look at matters and issues, accidents and failures from their perspective.  This kind of hit home to me was dealing with the staff in my previous and realizing that nobody comes into work to do a  bad job. Craig: Yup. Andrew:   Likewise, none of your clients are out to harm you, none Craig: None. (laughter) Andrew:   Would you say that your clients are the few you deal with that set out] to harm you? Craig: Yes. Andrew:   And so, when things do go awry and things do fail and accidents happen, just step into their shoes and understand what their intentions were and more often than not, you’ll find that they’re well-intended and they’re good people. It just wasn’t the right call.  So, I hold hese beliefs and I hold myself to them in a professional manner. Personally, unfortunately, as I take to the football field, my fight club fever comes around and I become a horrible, mouthy center forward. But I… (laughter) Craig:  There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s where you take your aggression out. So long as you don’t do it with a client. Andrew:   Yeah, so empathy would be the main thing there. Craig: Yeah, now that’s a good thing to have there, empathy. Like you said, it’s  often…people having a bad day but it’s been a build-up of all sorts of things. It’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back in the morning.  It’s totally irrelevant with what you’re doing with them.  But you just, felt it rough for the day. Andrew:   Yeah. So, when have people have issues as well. Craig: Yeah. Andrew:   A lot of people have far greater issues  or hang ups than you will ever have. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   So, you’ve gotta  just take time. Don’t be judgmental. Craig: Yeah. Cool. Andrew:   Take everything from their intentions that was made. Craig: Cool. Cool.  So, the majority of the  listeners, listening to this will be small to medium business owners in New Zealand and Australia. In your opinion, what sort of things us, as business owners been asking in and or demand you from our accountant? Andrew:   Well, I’m guessing that all accountants will be offering the same thing. So… Craig: Yes, let’s assume that. Andrew:   …pretty much the traditional model that I was talking about.  Craig: But that’s the bare minimum though, there’s the expense and the expectation. Andrew:   That would be the bare minimum but really , it comes down to what you’re trying to achieve. So, if you’re happy and content with what you’re doing and that’s probably all you’ll ever need. And so, maybe you’ll differentiate between providers and price. If you’re looking for something or if you’re aspirational or goal-driven or you have ideas of who you want to be then what you’re really wanting is somebody to be interested ,to show interest, to maybe document with what your interests are, to know what your goals are and ask these questions. If they haven’t asked you that, then how can they possibly try and give you professional advice which is gonna ba appropriate for you if you don’t know what you want to achieve. So, I’d say if for a small business owner in New Zealand , if your accountant hasn’t asked you what you’re trying to achieve or what your goals are then you’re probably lacking and you probably need to look around. Craig: Good. Good. That’s good. I haven’t thought of it that way. I thought it was the other way around with the push-demand stuff but like you say, often you don’t know what you don’t know.  At least, they’re asking you their questions and you’re willing to share them as well and then you know you’re on the right track, don’t ya? Yeah. Andrew: Well, the thing with accountants is that if one character came and had this great amount of knowledge and experience and education. But we’ve tended to use our dispense the advice purely for the bigger corporates, the really big clients who pay huge fees. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   And it’s never actually filtered down to small businesses. So, the small business person comes in and they dictated what they’re getting. Craig: Yes. Andrew:   The thing that I can’t say is that tax returns, they don’t really get the opportunity to sit down and say, “Hey, Mr. Jack the accountant. You got all this knowledge. Can you get me the benefit of it?” and when the client is sitting right across the table from this old school chartered accountants, dictating terms. They don’t feel comfortable enough to ask those questions. They don’t feel comfortable enough to ask what the previsions is, “What’s provisional tax?”,  “Why are you sending me these bills?” Craig: It’s an intimidation factor, isn’t it? Andrew:   It’s an intimidation factor. So, if they could have broken that down over the years and actually given some real value to their clients, we wouldn’t be having this issue that we’re currently having. Craig: Yeah. Cool. Awesome. So, how often should we be reviewing our accountant’s offerings? Let’s face it, men today, we just walk around, new financial year, is it too late to ask my accountant these question or do I have to wait next year? What should I be doing? Does it matter?  Andrew: It really doesn’t matter. I would say that with anything, you should review the value in it.  The problem being that a lot the cases we take on or a lot of the clients we take on do have goals or issues. They’re not issues and goals that can be fixed in a silver bullet.  There are some things that might take a year or two to gain the understanding, embed the knowledge, empower the individual to make decisions, understand their goals and to progress.  Let’s say if you’re reviewing once every one or two years then that would be fine.  However, it comes back to the fact that, “Has your accountant ever asked you these questions?” , “What are your goals?”, “What are you trying to  achieve?”, “How can we help you?” Craig: “Why are they in that business?” Andrew: If they haven’t asked you that then they aren’t putting the right amount of  effort in. They’re not interested and why would you have a business adviser that wasn’t specifically interested in  what you’re trying to achieve? Crag: I guess also, it’s very well that they could ask where in your goals you’re at because it’s sort of a new way of thinking. But this is actually following through with taking interest in those goals. It’s easier to say, “Oh, what are your goals in your business?” and then they go “ Oh! I’ve never been asked by that. I don’t really know what I wanna share with you today, Mr. Accountant.” But they need to follow through that. They need to say, “Oh, well. Tell me more about that. How can I help you achieve those?” or “What do you need from me?”   Andrew: You ask what their goals are, you ask them how they could be most of help so you can follow up and ask people right there who are stuck in that mindset of traditional accounting.   Crag: Yup. Andrew: They still come to us, on price or efficiency or convenience and we  get from that basic compliance but are happy with that  and we wouldn’t change that if that’s what… we’d want to make them some aspirational goal-getter when they don’t want to be so understanding that, understanding what their preferences are, understanding their approach to risk, whether they are really private  or whether they are gambling-oriented, whether they want to take risks or whether they really came to shine retiring. If you know all this, then you can  better meet  their demands, meet their requests and fulfill or satisfy the clients Crag: Yeah. Cool. Lovin’ that, lovin’ that.  So, maybe we can identify say, maybe  our current accountant is not doing as much as they could be possibly doing but like changing banks, changing lawyers, changing dentists, it’s a pain in the bum. How to change your accountant? I don’t know. That’s perception would be, wouldn’t it? It’s almost as if breaking up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, ain’t that though? Andrew: Yeah, man. Crag: It’s a big move. Andrew: Unfortunately, text messaging doesn’t work. (laughter) Crag: No. No Andrew: Or not calling her back Crag: Facebook messenger Andrew: And you still get the bill for their blah Crag: Yeah. Yeah. Andrew: So, it’s always been an issue that we’ve come against as well. We had previously told our clients, “Hey, just give your accountant a call and tell them that you’re moving on” and that courtesy that was shown was never, very rarely, reciprocated by the accountants. Crag: Yes. Andrew: Our position nowadays is to leave it to us and provisions within our ethical guide which require new engagements to ratified or disputed and for information to pass within seven days. Crag: Okay. Andrew: Most accountants will adhere to that and that’s all that’s required. We do find people, especially in provincial New Zealand have deep seated relationships with their accountant and has  been passed on to them. They’ve had a long standing agreement and they may find that changing and having that conversation’s really kind of awkward, really uncomfortable. Crag: Yes. Andrew: So, if they don’t want to do it then that’s where we step in, doing it in a professional manner. If they do still want to do it then they’re perfectly allowed to do so. But they are under not required to justify their decision and it really comes down to “But the accountant was such a good friend.” Then friendships are reciprocal. So, you’re paying them a fee to do a certain service for you and you’ve asked for extra help and they’ve taken their fee on their in their arm, giving you that extra help. What kind of friendship’s that? Crag: Yes. Andrew: It’s not your issue, it’s the accountant’s issue and they probably deserved to lose you. Crag: Yes. Andrew: We see the same way with our services. We don’t tie people up because we want them to be comfortable enough to say, “Andrew, you’re not doing a good enough job. Stand up and give us our service or we’re gonna cut of our monthly installment of our fee.”  Crag: Yes. Andrew: And that will give me moving. Unfortunately, we don’t have that. Craig: And the consumerist of the client saying, “Oh, I don’t see… I’m struggling to understand the value of what I’m receiving from you.”  And then as the supplier, they  need to justify that or lift the game or or whatever Andrew: Absolutely, just life their game. As we talked about earlier, transitioning to an accountant, dictating terms…the power is now moving to the consumer. Crag: Yeah. Andrew: The subscription-based packaging, the ability to shift between different packaging, different accountants. That’s how it should be. Crag: Yeah. Andrew: That should be the flexibility that a small-business owner should demand. So, we are offering it, there’s other people in the market that are offering it and moving between accountants should not be difficult and it doesn’t need to be. Crag: Yes. Andrew: We can do that all for you. Crag: Awesome. So, on the more personal note, now that you’re a big advocate of good work and life balance which is why I guess is one of the reasons why you went into business for yourself. Andrew: Uh-humm. Crag: Since you’ve been in the business, you’ve become a father to two. Andrew: Yes. Crag: You’re also a husband and now a business man, obviously. Andrew: Yeah. Crag: So, how do you manage? How’s your work-life balance going? What’s the tip? What’s the golden nugget about that? Andrew: Well, I had so many diminished. (laughter) Having no business in the first year was great Crag: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew: I couldn’t pay the bills then.       Craig: But great for the golf swing. Andrew: Got two holes in one. Craig: There you go.! (laughter) Andrew: Yeah. Sometimes you gotta fill up some holes in. It is becoming more difficult, my business is growing. I’m very happy with it. Craig: Yep. Andrew: What’s demanded is our systematic and process-driven approach and if you invest upfront in these sorts of things then you can actually still achieve it. Technology, we’ve put out on stuff like receipt bank. We’ve got zero-running. We’re doing all these sorts of stuff. We’ve got different portals in our website where our clients can engage with us routinely. They can set up their own meetings and they do everything. We use Skype so our clients don’t have to suffer traffic or parking things. We’re able to get across the country. So, we are working on work-life balance for both us and our clients. Although our own work-life balance may have diminished since the early days, I still play sports and I still drop my kids of at daycare, I pack them up most days. I’m normally home to make dinner. So, I’ve still achieved it. It’s really just about having a plan, understanding what you’re requirements are ,understanding what your resources are required and working towards your goal.  You can achieve it. Craig: And I guess, it comes back to reminding yourself as to why you did it in the first place, isn’t it? Andrew: That’s true. Craig: I’ve seen too many people start off with having this idea of a good work-life balance but then the work is 60-70 hours a week, forget why you’ve ever done it. Then once again, work in a job. Back to the first job. Andrew: Correct. Craig: Obviously, you’ve embraced technology. How has technology changed the industry since you walked out of the University so many years ago. Andrew: I walked out of University at ’99. Craig: Oh, there you go. Andrew: So, it’s been a while… Craig: 18 years ago. Andrew: I was looking at this recently, it took me back to my first job. I was working as an auditor at Edinburgh, Scotland and in 2001 and 2002, I was senior auditor on a job in Edinburgh, it was one of our bigger clients. They were manufacturing in home sale, you know one of those paper products, lever arch files, different kinds. Craig: Yup. Yup. Andrew: It’s a huge turn over though, but they’re full accounting system was purely manual and I mean hand written. Like, volumes upon volumes, libraries of books, day records and ledgers, trial balances, the works. So, they employed our financial director who’s a chartered accountant on a ridiculous salary and he was doing what we regarded these days as, menial tasks…  Craig: Right. Andrew: And taking days over them because that was what was required. Craig: Yes. Andrew: So, what you were spending days over can now be done automatically through inventions such as zero… Craig: Yes. Andrew: Fantastic new invention and to produce a trail balance report is a click of a button. To balance, to reconcile your bank is probably 20 minutes work in a week. Craig: Yep. Andrew: So, we’ve moved from days of work done by a skilled individual to minutes of work done by a layman or somebody in business who has probably never done accountancy papers. Craig: And has got no interest in it whatsoever. Andrew: So, we’ve seen a massive shift in technological movement of huge disruption and that has men that are  time-involved has reduced massively and the accuracy of the work that has been prepared or the reported that have been prepared are far more accurate than what was done previously. So that has given, I think this has probably been the basis whereby governments kind of deregulated those. Craig: Right. Andrew: Allowing people to do it a lot more  themselves, allowing more bookkeepers in the market at the expense of chartered accountants. So, that’s a real problem for our industry and as chartered accountants but we’re our own worst enemies. We never gave out enough information away, we never engaged enough with small business when they needed it. The traditional accountants just profit those for years. Craig: So, obviously, technology we know has taken over the world, so to speak. It’s not going away. So what do you think the industry is going the next five to ten years? Andrew: I personally think it’s probably a bleak future. It will probably take a backwards step for a point, for a certain time. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: But in the short term, it would be very beneficial for the consumer because there’s currently  a price war. When you look at the services of a traditional accountant gave compared to what bookkeepers today giving, they are substitutable. Craig: Yes. Andrew: So, for their easily substitutable services, because financial statements by one is roughly the same as financial statements of another. You’re just pressing button to create them and it comes down to price. So, people are going towards the cheaper one and the bookkeepers are charging a third or a fifth of the price of a chartered accountant. Craig: Yes. Andrew: And they’re just small business people. After all, you have to be very savy when it comes to cost. So that’s what’s happening in the big firms, sharing a lot of business with the bookkeepers. Craig: Right. Andrew: The problem with that is, the chartered accountants do have enormous educational backgrounds, huge experience. They have wealth of knowledge which bookkeepers just do not have. Craig: No. Andrew: Bookkeepers are very good bookkeepers which I think is a very good business advisers. The problem when it comes to  small businesses is that they’ve never given advice and are probably blah with small business. So, now they’re losing out because they’re substitutable products and book keepers are getting in. So, come to tipping point where people are realizing, “Hey, I could do a lot more for my clients.” like we are. Craig: Yes. Andrew: And we’re telling people, “Hey, we’ll give you this advice and we’ll patch it up with the same sort of price as a bookkeeper.” Craig: Yeah, Andrew: “And we’ll give it routinely for you.” We’ll engage or we’re going to avenge the end up by the dumbing down of our profession and I think, more likely, we’ll get the dumbing down of the profession first of all be fore anyone can take a stand to exchange things. Craig: Yes. Andrew: It tends to be a compromise of convenience, price and quality. Probably, the most evident one of recent time is journalism. Craig: Right. Andrew: When was the last time you bought a newspaper? For me, probably a couple of years, maybe more and that’s because I can log into my iPad and I can read the news in the morning and get a gist of what’s going on in the world and never have to go to news and I’m quite happy with what it is.? The photographs are awful, they’re better from an iPhone. There’s no artistic merit. The grammatical and spelling errors are deplorable. These people struggled to get through school and they’ve chosen a profession where they’re writing English. So, we’re seeing them dumbing down as people go for convenience, quality and price.  Craig: Yup. Andrew: Over here, we got technology that’s running these reports and could be creating what the accountants used to do and they are accurate and they are, 90% is good, maybe? Maybe just as good in some cases then are easily substitutable. So, it’s easy to see why the consumers are going down that way. Craig: I guess it comes back down to educating the market place. There’s a bookkeeper who can do your work, your account in just a push of a button. But now we’re gonna educate, you actually need more than that and here are some service providers who offered the value and this is sort of something the account has shifted from being a compliance to adding value to your business. As a key partner to your business, isn’t it? Andrew: Okay. Craig: Like you said, transition and re-educating to market place. Andrew: Bookkeepers are great bookkeepers. If you’re wanting advice, you’re wanting to do anything important, you’re wanting to grow. You want to have plans on how you want to grow and succeed your business and how you sell it and how you value it whether the business you’re buying is actually making sense. You’re going to need a chartered accountant. Craig: Yes. Andrew: If you can get that information and you can get that sort of engagement, and that interest from someone then you should take every time because otherwise you’ll be with a bookkeeper and hey, if you’re content just kind of pottering along and doing the things that you want to do, you’ve got a lifestyle that you’re very happy with then a bookkeeper is the way to go. Craig: Yup.   [33:40] Andrew:  . If you want something more important or you want someone to advise you and collaborate with you and you really need someone who is going to give you that. But not off track the Craig: There’s gonna be no Andrew: There’s gonna be a few of those. Try not to get some bad ones. We see ourselves as more of collaborative. Craig: I guess also, in a way, it’s good that a small business like yourselves and there are other people with the same size as you that can change in a whim. But the corporates can’t have that flexibility. They can’t change overnight, they can’t adapt overnight, can they? Andrew: We’ve invested the last 6-7 months getting our review of our business up and running. Getting it done, understanding what we’re trying to achieve and reconfiguring our mindset around, “What does our client base want?” and we’ve invested our time and quite significant resource in getting our website up. So, we engaged a portal where people can ask questions, drop information, set up appointments. Engage over us with media and over Skype and all of these sorts of things. So, it’s not so much of a web…but I do agree that bigger firms have, if they wanted to undertake this, they would have a huge made up of systems and process to set up, maybe some staff to lose, maybe staff to be brought on, huge up scaling coming a lot longer. Craig: Yeah, you got the flexibility to make change and we can see what you’ve just been through yourself in the last 6-7 months. It’s that sort of thing that could potentially help your clients to do the same thing. Nothing happens overnight but you can help walk through that procedure, that exercise because you’ve done it yourself. Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Craig: And if I had a big pocket full of money there to implement these sort of things,  you’d realize that it takes time to implement things, it takes time to redesign our website because that costs money. It doesn’t happen overnight. Andrew: We’re very happy sharing our thoughts and these things because really, that’s what we do. We give advice and when people are saying , “What portal should we use?” We’ll say, “Well have a look at   blah. It’s been great for us. ” Craig: “Better stay away from this one because this was a nightmare for us.” Andrew: Yeah. You’re going to have to pass on this knowledge because that was what we really suppose, we are collaborators. Similarly too, I started my business myself, I started it worth nothing, like 3 climbs(?). I’ve had to build my own business myself. So, if you’re starting a business, why would you go to someone who is fourth generation inheriting a chartered accountancy firm, who’s never started a business?  Craig: Never been but yeah Andrew: How can they advise you? {36:00} Craig: How could they know the pain of not being able to or pay the groceries that week?   Andrew: How could they not know what the hurdles are? Craig: Yes. Andrew: They might know from a theoretical standpoint but are never gonna know from a practical standpoint because they’ve never done it. Craig: No. Exactly. Exactly. So, from your experience, what are some of the mistakes that you see business owners are making? And what advice would you give both established and start up small businesses? Andrew: I guess when we look at the mistakes which are regularly made which was really made to put into effort to emphasize when taking on clients. First one is, budgeting for tax. You’d be surprise how many people don’t. We had businesses go under simply because they don’t budget for tax. But it’s very easy to actually get your mindset the right way that you could actually put money aside and never have that problem.  The other one is you’ve gotta write down goals or connect to something.  Write it down, it’s far more powerful than just keeping it in your head.     Craig: Do you think that you could share those goals? Andrew: Absolutely. Sharing your goals, sharing your knowledge, sharing your dreams. Craig: So, writing them down and sharing them. Andrew: It’s very important because as I said earlier, it starts that collaborative movement. You feel that you are being held to account by even if you tell your partner. She’ll go, “Oh, how are your goals going?” Craig: Yes. Andrew: “How are you actually achieve these?” “When are  you going to achieve this?” Or your friends, share them.  We see it with startup businesses and startup land with who is next door. Craig: Yup. Andrew: And they had a lot of people putting up different ideas and sharing all their knowledge and by doing so, they’re actually moved their businesses forward to their business ideas. If you keep your dreams to yourself then you’ll probably never realize it. If you share them then you might find that  there’s a movement. You might find somebody and they go, “Hey, that was a great idea. Let’s push this forward. I can help you here. I can get someone else to fill the void here and then we’ll move forward. ” Andrew: So, very true there. Craig: What’s a good advice would give them about these sorts of things? Andrew: I would say, write them down. Have a plan. Be mindful that your plan might change. Be mindful that if you set a goal now, in three years’ time you might have achieved it or you might have realized that it was totally unreachable. So that would change your path too. Craig: ..to a moving target sometimes. Yeah. Andrew: And let’s say, “Yeah, we’re very essential to this and we emphasize this.” Collaboration is key. Craig: Cool. Andrew: Use specialists. We do. There’s no point in trying to reinvent the wheel and trying to create your own resource where are resources out there which are free.  Even look at the tools of business on the IRD website. Very useful, it’s like, given in layman’s terms and answers all of the question that you have about your accountant. IRD gives you free GST classics. So, sign up for them. Craig: Yeah. Andrew: Otherwise, you’ll pay for your accountant, $600-700 to teach you the same thing that you’ll get for free. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use the people who are meant to give you these stuff. Craig: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, that’s been awesome, Andrew. Thanks very much for your time. I got some really cool tips from that and especially around the need to collaborate either friends, family, other business advisers, other business people, networking…just find some people. That’s great stuff. Seek advice. Expect more from our accountants. Ask what value are they providing you apart from just compliance. Big one, obviously is set your goals. Write them down and show them to some key people that you can keep in touch. Like what Andrew said, “ You share your goals with them and they’ll share your goals with you”  and you can review them for each other with a beer or something and keep in touch with your accountant. So, if someone wants to talk about the products and services that you provide, how do we get a hold of you, where could we find you? Andrew: So, we’re at www.moreca.co.nz  so that will give you direction as to how to engage with us. Craig: So, that’s more with one o or with two? Andrew: One. m-o-r-e-c-a.com That’s our platform. That’s our new website. There’s a lot of free resource on there. Craig: Awesome. Andrew: It’s pretty basic. It’s meant to start a conversation or to help you understand where you’re at. If you need more specific or particular advice…contact us through the portals. There’s plenty of them there. We offer a free consultation. Go by skype meeting if you’re outside the province or you can pop into the office but you can book that online as well. Craig: Awesome. Andrew: So, really, really became a helpful tool there to start the process and we’ll try to expand our blog in time. If you have any particular questions that are coming up, send them in. We might add them to the blog and add some feedback. Craig: Throw in an email if you need help. Andrew: Absolutely. Craig: Awesome. Now, we really appreciate it, Andrew. Thanks very much for your time. Andrew: Thank you, Craig.    

Green Meadows Beef is an unique family business providing grass feed beef direct to the consumer. This is the story how the Carey family have built their business of providing raw materials to the end user and the way they have used social media to take it to market     Today’s guest is Nick Carey, Director and General Manager of Green Meadows Beef based in Taranaki.  Green Meadows Beef is a unique family business who have built their business primarily using online and social media platforms.  The business has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years.  Craig and Nick talk about what started as an offbeat idea that has become big business for his family.   In 2012, his family decided they wanted to add value to their products.  This propelled them to launch a paddock to plate system.  This involved shipping products from their farm through their own processing and distribution channels.  Their direct-to-market through online sales has formed a big growth part of their business.   Nick’s father, suggested for them to try and market their beef product directly to the consumer.  They sat together as a family and formed a new way to get their products to the market, and soon, they recognized the opportunity of selling online. This propelled them to launch a paddock to plate system.  This involved shipping products from their farm through their own processing and distribution channels.  Their direct-to-market through online sales has formed a big growth part of their business.   Nick started his career as a commercial lawyer in Wellington and New Plymouth His role in this new family business was in the development, branding, and logistics.  Soon enough this was taking most of his time and he eventually decided he needed to quit his job as a lawyer.    That was a leap of faith for Nick, who has had to adjust to being an entrepreneur.  There were four key problems Green Meadows Beef was solving for the consumer.  These were (1) Time saving (2) Ease of purchase (3) Quality assurance, (4) Provenance.   Nick and Craig also talk about how wildly successful My Food Bag has become.  It is a website that allows it’s customers to order a food bag for a varied number of people.  It is also customized for them in terms of the number of people and their diet.  My Food Bag has revolutionized the industry.  Countdown eventually came up with a similar concept of online selling.  There was a big shift in the market of people being more open to purchasing food products online.  That assured Green Meadows Beef of its market.    In terms of marketing research, they were lucky that Green Meadows Beef was nimble enough to adapt their offering as well.  This included having to tweak their operations on the way.  They started out selling bulk-frozen packs and delivering them through chilled or frozen trucks.  However, it has now evolved to a point where they can customize their own products and deliver them the next day, chilled, through a courier.   Nick’s journey has not been without challenges.  One day, his company’s freight company informed him that they were no longer going to deliver Nick’s frozen meat packs.  As a result, he was forced to change his business model, which led to better results because they are now selling fresh produce instead of frozen produce.   Another challenge Nick has had to face was the price of raw materials.  Over the last three to four years, the price of raw materials has almost doubled.  At the same time. One of the things that has raised the price of the raw product is the price that it can otherwise be sold elsewhere.  Export of demand has been high.   They now run their farm as a separate business from their meat processing.  Each company has different governance, advisers, and processes.  Ensuring that the two businesses were independent of each other will help with succession planning and will force each one to be profitable on its own.  .  However, with the easing off of demand in the United States, the farm gate prices have been affected.    Nick learned to focus on the role of governance and the value of the right independent advice.  Another crucial area that Nick has focused on is being able to get accurate and timely business information, dealing with changes in technology and how scalable that is, and finally, achieving a profitable core business before evolving into other paths.   Another thing that Nick has focused on is learning how to work with his people.  Getting the right staff onboard has been a good learning experience for him.  He makes sure his employees have clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines so that he could focus on working on the business and growing it.  Nick has been able to retain his staff for 4 years now.  He hardly needed to do cold hires because he utilized the benefits of his networks.   As for online selling, Nick uses mostly social media such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with people and to build an audience.  They do mostly paid advertising now.  He initially did everything in-house but has started outsourcing it already using a marketing consultant who works remotely for them.   In terms of content, Nick suggests that you keep it personal, relevant, and fun to keep his customers engaged.  With competition sprouting up more, there is a need to ensure that you get heard.  Nick’s friend once said that content is king but engagement is queen and she rules the house.  You need to be able to engage your followers.    Currently, they are on Pinterest and Instagram but it has been a challenge to maintain everything.  They use third party tools to help with the marketing side.  They also use cloud based systems that help cut costs and get things done.   What Nick enjoys about being in business is building something from the ground up, seeing the evolution of that business, and having a chance to enjoy its success.    As a lawyer, Nick had a structured and disciplined career.  At the moment, he says he has very little structure in his life now.  Working with creative types, for example, causes him to work longer hours and deadlines extended.  He deals with it by communicating well with his people.  He says that if you spend a good portion of your day through communicating, it makes the day go so much better. This goes back to having structures in place so the rest of the team can function harmoniously while you’re communication with them.    Nick’s challenge working with his family is ensuring that there is regular communication in terms of what’s happening in the business as well as asking for feedback.  He suggests that there has to be a clear distinction of business and family time.  It is important that everyone gets their chance to have a say but at the end of it, they are able to sit down and have dinner together.   In terms of having external professionals and mentors for his business, Nick says that one of the critical things is finding the right independent advice.  His solution has been to persevere until you find exactly what you need at a particular time.  As your business continues to change, so does the levels of advise.  Nick has found that having an independent director has helped him fill the skills gap.  Engaging the services of experts can be beneficial to his business as well.    Nick does not dwell on the past.  His company has a year end review where they identify what worked and what didn’t so that in the future, they can learn from these experiences. Nick says that in hindsight, he would have focused on margin analysis in his business and having a better handle on his cash flow and budget.  This has become one of their strengths and has allowed them to diversify the business for a more consistent cash inflow.   Being content in terms of business and the industry that you’re in is a mistake that business owners make.  As an example, the evolution of online selling has had an effect on traditional purchasing.  Nick suggests that you need to stay on top of things and not rest on your laurels because you don’t know what’s around the corner.   Strengthen your core business and ensure that it is profitable and sustainable before you venture out into other business opportunities.  At the moment, there is a need to develop relationships with consumers because people want to know where there food comes from, how it’s produced, and what’s going on.    Visit www.GreenMeadowsBeef.co.nz for more information.   TRANSCRIPT NICK CAREY    Craig: Hi guys!  Craig here from The Project Guys. Today in our podcast, really happy to introduce Nick Carey.  Nick is a Director and General Manager of Green Meadows Beef based here in Taranaki.  Green Meadows Beef is a unique family business who built the business primarily using online and social media platforms.  They specialise in suppling New Zealand consumers’ grass fed premium beef, where you online, and delivered to your door in twenty four hours.  And their business has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years.  What started as an offbeat idea and working from home office is now having their own dedicated butchery and retail premises and offices.  So, welcome Nick.   Nick: Thanks Craig.  Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell a little bit about our story.    Craig: No drama at all! . Tell us a little bit about your background and why you decided to go into business.   Nick: Well, my background was as a commercial lawyer for a few years both in Wellington and New Plymouth.  We as a family, I guess, back in 2012, decided that we wanted to add value to the products we were producing which was mainly meat or beef and as a way to, I guess, cement the family farm and those plans through a formal succession plan, we decided to launch an integrated pallet to plate business which is shipping products from our farm through our own channels and processing channels, as Craig mentioned, direct consumers New Zealand wide through the different channels we utilise it at supermarkets, restaurants, and caterers and of course, direct-to-market through online sales, which is our biggest growth part of the business.   Craig: So, you’ve mentioned that you were a lawyer and then from a lawyer to an entrepreneur, it’s not a traditional path, was it your idea to do businesses with family?  How did it all sort of evolve?   Nick: Yeah.  Evolve is probably the right thing to say.  It was my father’s idea to try and market the products.  Obviously, we soon recognised online was a much easier path than let’s say the traditional paths of standing at farmer’s markets or carport sales or whatever it may be where other people are maybe trying to sell similar products.  So it’s at that time, all of us, I’ve got two siblings.   We all became involved to help form a plan to get the products to market and I helped here on the side with development and branding and things and arranging all of that and then once we launched the business, it became pretty evident that I wouldn’t be able to continue in my day job and helping out with the business.  So it was about, I guess, 3 months in that I gave up…   Craig: Oh, that quick! Yeah.  Yeah.   Nick: Yeah.  Yeah.…full-time paid employment to jump into the business.   Craig: To be poor for a couple of years.    Nick: Yes!  Yes!    Craig: [laughs]   Nick: Forever.    Craig: Forever.  [laughs] Yes!  Yes!  So, when you started, obviously, it was just quite a bit different and there’s a new concept.  Get away from the farmer’s markets or selling to a wholesaler, direct….did you guys do any market research and that actually work out where you had a legitimate market and business…   Nick: Uhm…   Craig: And what are the problems you’re solving which are and I suppose were time saving and ease for the purchaser, wasn’t it?   Nick: That and also quality and provenance.  So those are I guess the 4 key messages or key problems we’re solving for the consumer.   Craig: Yeah.  Yeah.   Nick: In New Zealand, at that time, there was a limited range of producers doing what we were doing.  Certainly that landscape has changed now and more and more are coming on board to be…whether it’s in meat or other ___ farm products or whatever.  The launch of things like MyFoodBag and you know and the whole…   Craig: Which is wildly successful.   Nick: Exactly.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: And a great example of success in this market.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: So I guess in…when the business was in its infancy, there was only a couple of competitors in New Zealand.  I don’t even think Countdown had really launched their…   Craig: Right.   Nick: Online sales at that time so obviously, we’ve noticed a big shift in the market and people being far more open to purchasing food products online.  So, with our research, it was really based on looking at producers in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, seeing what they were doing, what offerings they had.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: And obviously, because we…we were selling online, just online only at the start, it did allow us some chance to scale as time went on so there was no pressure of having products ready to go with no markets.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: So I guess, we…we are currently on to building website number three.   Craig: Right.   Nick: So there has been multiple chances to refine the offering based on our own learnings…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: Rather than…than doing too much…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: market research at the beginning, I guess, which  potentially a pitfall…   Craig: Yeah.  But…   Nick: that were fallen into but we’ve been lucky that we’ve been nimble enough to be able to adapt that offering to…   Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…   Nick: to see that…what does that mean?   Craig: Yeah.  Oh, it’s a case sometimes of getting that ___ to market and then work out having to… and having to tweak everything on the way, isn’t it…   Nick: Exactly.  We’ve started out in our industry selling bulk frozen packs and delivering it via the chilled or frozen trucks…   Craig: Yes.   Nick: all over the country where it could take anything from a week to two weeks.   Craig: Right.   Nick: To be delivered to the model that we have now and it’s evolving as you can customise and pick and choose your own products…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: …and it’s delivered the next day, chilled via courier, so…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: You know, there’s different challenges that come at you and one of that for example was the freight company telling us, “No, we’re no longer gonna deliver your frozen meat packs.”  So…   Craig: Oh, is that right?   Nick: So your business if often forced to change…   Craig: Yes.   Nick: …which can obviously lead to better results…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: …because the consumer appreciates…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: fresh produce versus…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: frozen produce.    Craig: So there.  So tell us a bit more about the challenges and the learnings you had in those early years and maybe also the challenges you’re facing now and how that evolved?   Nick: Definitely.  I guess the critical challenge for us been the price of our raw materials.   Craig: Alright.   Nick: Just to put them in a little bit of context and background, we run the farm as a totally separate business from the meat processing…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: Different governance, different advisers, everything and we thought that was a critical distinction from a…   Craig: Uhm…   Nick: …a governance point of view particularly in the family situation so that we had two separate business which were hopefully, hopefully independent of each other, both supporting…   Craig: Uhm…   Nick: …themselves.  So…   Craig: Also that.  I guess it also helps with succession planning too.  Exit strategy is one [incomprehensible]…   Nick: Exactly.  And obviously that’s what we’re focusing…   Craig: Uhm…   Nick: The meat processing business now is taking on a life of its own with contract manufacturing…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: …and things like that so…obviously anytime, I mentioned it at the start that the farm is very much part of the succession plan but if there were something that caused the farm to go, well, we’ve got another business…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: And vice versa, we could always onsell the meat processing side of things.   Craig: Uhm…uhm…uhm…   Nick: …and keep the farm…   Craig: That’s right.   Nick: But so…part of it is that the farm must obviously make a profit…   Craig: Yes…   Nick: So we have to purchase the animals that we’re using through the Green Meadows Business from the farm at the prevailing market rate…   Craig: Yes…   Nick: Over the last three to four years, that price of raw materials has almost doubled…   Craig: Oh sh….   Nick: Without a corresponding rise in meat prices at the consumer end…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: There’s still a certain barrier at the consumer end as to what a sausage or whatever may cost so I guess that’s been the critical challenge that we’ve face and we’ve had to really adapt and change our product offering.  So…   Craig: So what’s driven the price of the raw product up?  Is it the price on the farm to produce that product?   Nick: No, it’s the price that it can otherwise be sold elsewhere...   Craig: Oh, okay.   Nick: So, export demand, primarily out of the U_S where ground beef, easier ground beef is exported…   Craig: Okay…   Nick: …to the U_S and it’s been in quite high demand in particularly out of China as well…   Craig: Right.   Nick: So, depending on what’s happening in those markets, I’m assuming we’re seeing an easing off in the United States at the moment on demand which, of course, is then having a…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: …a correlation back to farm gate prices here.   Craig: Cool…   Nick: So I guess with that challenge, we learned quite a lot and kind of like it’s focused a lot on what’s happened in the business so there are a couple of points off the top of my head…   Craig: Yes…Yeah…   Nick: I guess the role of governance and the value of the right independent advice has been a critical things that we’ve taken from it, I guess the information we’re pulling out of the business in terms or accurate and timely…   Craig: Yup…   Nick: …business information, technology and how scalable that is, what machines can really make our day better…   Craig: Right.   Nick: Versus culling out some of those manual processes, cause obviously, bearing in mind making food can sometimes be a relatively manual process…   Craig: Yup!  Yeah…   Nick: And then it all comes back to achieving a profitable core business before evolving into other paths.  So, we’ve really focused over the last year or two on what is our core business, how to make it profitable before launching into some other opportunities as well.    Craig: So how do you take yourself out of the business to work on the business around those things you just…   Nick: Yeah, well, as the businesses continue to grow, we’ve been able to put staff into roles that I was otherwise doing, so for example, we’ve just taken on an operations manager who is handling most of the day-to-day production and supply side of the business whereas I’m just handling the demand side and obviously everything else.  So the finances and working on the business so, I guess that’s been a good learning is getting the right staff on board, making sure that they have clearly defined roles and responsibilities and reporting lines so that that then frees you up to do as you say, “working on the business,” and growing it.  So we have that clearly…clear definition of okay, operations manager was gonna focus on the supply side and production, I was gonna handle the demand, so that’s where my focus is now…is on the demand side and when you’ve got the right people and the right positions, everything is fine and it works well.    Craig: So, you’ve gotta run on a fierce podcast business and about staffing.  How’d you go and find the right staffing?  How’d you know?  Do you know?  [laughs]   Nick: I guess, that’s a good question, “Do you know?”   Craig: Cause that’s critical, isn’t it?   Nick: It is and we are fortunate that in nearly 4 years, we’ve retained all our staff which I guess, obviously speaks of our environment also.  The direction that we’re pushing the company.  It…it’s…I guess it comes down to clear jobs…just clear job descriptions when you’re going so you know exactly who you’re looking for so when you find them, you know, they tick all the boxes and utilising the benefit of networks because all of our staff have been knowing to….   Craig: Someone…someone…   Nick: Yeah.    Craig: Someone who knows somebody…Yeah…   Nick: Exactly, so now I’m doing that thing with cold hires but I can see that the next thing we’re already looking for our next staff member, which is scary…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: But I can see that that will be a cold…a cold hire so I guess that will come down to getting clear…clear pre-employment checks and questions and also making sure they’re the right fit for the…   Craig: thing…   Nick: Exactly.   Craig: Cool.  Awesome.  So, you have used a lot of online tools and platforms that you’ve touched on before to build the business to where it is.  Tell us about the strategy and has that changed over the years and if so, how or….yeah…   Nick: Yeah…It’s a different __part obviously with online selling.  You wanna connect with customers in real time and I guess social media in particular is great for that.  We’ve primarily used Facebook and Twitter for the connecting with people and building an audience at the beginning.  I guess how that’s changed is we’ve now moved from just connecting with customers and building that brand and that relationship through the more paid advertising now.  So we do a lot of online marketing in terms of ECO and pre marketing and also direct marketing through the likes of Facebook.  So, I guess it’s building a network and a platform, which would then turn into an opportunity to market, so…   Craig: Did you do all that in-house, or do you outsource it?   Nick: We did start all that in-house but now I’ve outsourced it.  We have a marketing consultant who works remotely for us, who handles all that ECO and ECM marketing.   Craig: And what about all your Facebook engagement?  Cause I know when you first start your business, you’re massive on engaging with your audience, you do a lot of that at the start.  Is that still done in-house?  Or…   Nick: It’s still done in-house and obviously that’s been one of the challenges I found is that I handle that role as the businesses grow, keep it…personal, and keep it relevant and keep it fun which is how we engage with our customers and perhaps that’s something I could be doing better.    Craig: [incomprehensible]   Nick: I think as we came and set the so high with using that as a focus, it’s kind of…you can easily fall by the way, so…   Craig: That’s so much of a big challenge, isn’t it because that’s how you built the brand and showing you some of the loyalty stats.   Nick: And I’m definitely seeing that with other influences that I follow that they came out with a good solid two years of social media engagement and then now it’s sort of dropped back…   Craig: Yes…   Nick: And I don’t know whether that’s just the maturing of the market and there are a lot of these platforms now and monetising, they’re successors, so it now makes it difficult to instigate…seen whereas in the beginning it was relatively easy but I think you raise a good point about engagement because a lot of the focus on social media a few years ago was all about content and posting the right sort of content but now, I know a person who writes and used to podcast a lot of Facebook.  She said that content is king but engagement is queen and she rules the house.   Craig: Yes…   Nick: And it’s sort of something that’s always always stuck with me because you can have great content but if you’re not getting anything back from the people you’re publishing it to, what’s the point?   Craig: Yeah, you could have 100,000 followers but if you’re not engaging them, what’s the point?   Nick: Yes.  So I think, you know, that’s a key thing to keep it at the back of your mind because it’s not a question of numbers because it’s like you said, it’s how they’re engaging.    Craig: You said when you sell your products you use Facebook and Twitter, yet have you tried the other platforms at all?   Nick: We do have a little bit on Pinterest, obviously we’re in a food business and Instagram, but it’s again, it’s the challenge of maintaining everything.  We do use a lot of third party tools to push the marketing side of things which we find works well and we obviously into the day to day side of things prefer to use online tools for managing the business, whether it be accounting software, our website is all run on a third party CMS which is obviously cloud based and what else do we use in the cloud?  Design tools and everything like that that’s all accessible now which really help (a) cut costs and (b) get things done.   Craig: So what do you enjoy most about being in business?  What strokes your ties?   Nick: Tough question, but I guess it’s with building something from the ground up and seeing the evolution it’s having the chancing to leap at success.  There are days obviously that I don’t enjoy leading.    Craig: You wish you were a follower there mate? [laughs]   Nick: Yeah.  Exactly.  When you bring in HR and customer issues and things like that.  Obviously, you want to do a good job, whether it be your staff or your customers but I guess that’s the critical thing is having that chance and opportunity which I do feel fortunate for that you know, we’re in a position that I was able to leave my fulltime employment to follow something which I could see working and it…with just a few challenges and refinements.  We’re now well on a path to making a success.    Craig: Yeah.   Nick: So that’s pretty special and something that I hold dear and try not to abuse really but it is a bit of a privilege to do this so if I can keep looking at it like that, then it’ll keep me focused and also keep me grounded.   Craig: Grounded, which is what New Zealand ___ is all about.  Cool, you hear that?   Nick: Yeah, I guess we at the start to kinda pushed the business and I do believe in it is we did a lot of PR work which is obviously the opposite to the grounded because you’re having to put yourself out there and tell your story and that can be difficult at times especially when you get…things like TV involved, so yeah, I think that’s a good balance to have.    Craig: So, ____ what have you learned from you know, five or six years ago, when you left the safe little confines of a lawyer’s office…   Nick: To me, just by one and a half years…whatever it was…   Craig: You were very structured and disciplined to doing this.  What have you learned as a leader?  Here, professionally and personally?   Nick: Yeah, I guess a couple of things, you do mean structure, I have very little structure in my life now.    Craig: [laughs]   Nick: Just by trying to plan things, you know, obviously things never really go to plan.  So that’s been difficult in terms of deadlines and things like that as I’m understanding how things work in the real world versus a lawyer’s world where 5 o’clock Friday was your excellent deadline and you wouldn’t dare go past 5 o’clock Friday whereas when you start involving perhaps creative types into the mix and deadlines can often extend.    Craig: Yes.   Nick: So that’s been one challenge for me personally and also from a managing or leadership type of thing.  Communication and understanding the importance of communication internally and externally and you can never really over communicate particularly with staff and things of concerns.    Craig: Yeah.   Nick: I guess that’s another that I’ve really learned is you spend a good portion of your day through communicating and it makes the day go so much better.   Craig: Yes.   Nick: But then it comes back to what I mentioned earlier about having the structures in place so that the rest of the team can function harmoniously while you’re communicating with them…the team…   Craig: Yeah.  And what about the family dynamic, isn’t that communications is key?  Sometimes, the family businesses, they can either go really well which is good or goes real bad because one of the first rules of business is don’t ever do business with family members, isn’t it?   Nick: It is.    Craig: Yes, back to the question.  Sorry about the rain everybody!  So I asked Nick about the dynamic of working with some family members.  One of the first rules of business is don’t go into business with family.  So I guess it has worked here.  From a leadership point of view, the communications point of view, have you managed that?   Nick: Yeah, it has been both a benefit and a challenge to go into business with family.  On a daily basis, I work with both of my peer, so on a day to day to basis, I mean, both of my brothers work externally from the business so two problems obviously, or challenges working with family day in day out but also having family interested in the business but not having the experience or benefit of seeing what’s happening day to day so we have pretty regular communications between in terms of what’s happening in the business, asking for feedback that they’re both very helpful and useful, these are my brothers who don’t work in the business.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: But balancing that you also have a clear distinction of what’s business time and what’s family time because there’s always that tendency to make family time always business time and I think that’s critical particularly in terms of my own domestic situation as well, I’ve got a partner who doesn’t work and the person that’s end to end in terms of say my parents with their grandchildren and things like that.  It’s still got to operate in a normal situation and we are very open with each other so there’s never any issues in terms of overstepping lines or boundaries.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: And I think it’s really important that everyone gets their chance to have a say but at the end of it, we still sit down for dinner.   Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Cool.  Cool.  So you’ve always had external professionals and mentors for your business and I believe now you’ve got a Board of Directors and an independent director tell us about what made you decide that you needed this and the benefits of using these strategies and advise that is out there around using mentors or Board of Directors, etc.    Nick: I guess one of the critical thing is finding the right advice, independent advice and it can be a struggle at times, so I guess what I sort of found is keep persevering until you find exactly what you need at that particular time and your levels of advice and who can advise you changes as the business continues to change…and…   Craig: Evolves.  As the business evolves…   Nick: Exactly, so I think the best thing you can do is get out there and take advice as step one but then if you’re not getting the right sort of advice is going out and looking for some different advice.   Craig: Yeah.  Yeah.   Nick: So, we’ve had, as you mentioned, a range from formal strategic planning with our accountants through the business mentors through to now an independent director who I work with closely on a daily basis and they’ve all had their uses and purpose but having an independent voice daily looks like some of the skill gaps that we have or that I have as well is really important and I guess that’s what I see the benefit…the main benefit of the independent board is to plug the skill gaps and I mean we are looking now at maybe bringing another independent onto the board who has some different skill set that none of us have secure around dealing with marketing to the end consumer…   Craig: Right.   Nick: And events cg and things like that so it’s…   Craig: So it’s skill gaps or experience gaps?   Nick: I guess both are incredibly relevant because you get the skills from experience so I think yeah.  I think both are intertwined.   Craig: And you said before that when you first started out your sort of a range of advisers, I mean, it’s the right advice.  When you start out were you ever nervous and scared about what’s going on.  So how do you know if you get some right advice?  If you’re speaking to for example an accountant and they say you should be doing this strategy, how do you know, is that the gut instinct or it is…how do you know if it’s the right one or the wrong one?   Nick: Yeah, it’s a good question because I guess when you go into business you’re always confident and pigheaded and you don’t really wanna take advice.   Craig: No.   Nick: And then to sit over the table with someone and, no offence when you’re listening to maybe to sit over the table with someone, no offence to any listeners who may be in the accounting profession or something.   Craig: Someone’s profession…   Nick: Who’s telling you you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing that wrong.  You know, it can be difficult so I think it’s not a case of knowing or choosing what that right advice is at the start but getting a lot of advice and really going out there and getting as much in as you can and taking bits and pieces from different sources to kind of form that plan because you and only you, I guess will know exactly how the business is going internally or what your dreams and goals and things are but it does help to get as much advice from them.   Craig: So that could be what we’ve talked about accountant, but there could be other business owners that could be lawyers, other professionals, and that’s where networking comes in, isn’t it?  You realize that when you network, you understand that same…your peers to having the same issues you have even if they might be in a different industry.   Nick: Exactly and as many people you can speak to as possible.  You know, whether it’s just a friendly ear or someone that you admire, in your industry or a different industry.  It can be really beneficial to have that engagement.    Craig: Awesome, so the benefit of hindsight, we all do this.  What would you do differently?   Nick: Hindsight, oh yeah, it’s a great thing.   Craig: No, it’s not.  It’s a terrible thing!   Nick: I guess that’s one thing our plan is not to dwell too much on the past.  We do a year review the end of each year and pick out the points of what went good and bad and then put it together and then don’t really dwell on it too much because again, it’s what you’re looking into the future that really controls things.  So I guess with hindsight, what I would do it has been more of a focus on margin analysis in our business, so which products work well, where we can extract the most value and also a better handle on cash flow and budget so that financial side of the business from the get-go.  I spend a lot of focus now on cash flow and planning cash flow a couple of months in advance and…   Craig: So you turned into an accountant?   Nick: Yeah, well, I…   Craig: [laughs]   Nick: I think maybe I’m turning into an accountant but that was a chance to really tighten the skill gaps that I had.   Craig: Right.   Nick: In the financial management side of things and now that’s one of our strengths where a lot of similar sized businesses I see don’t have a handle on cash flow, which in my business, can actually be quite difficult with online selling because we don’t know when people are gonna bulk buy meat packs and what’s gonna happen which is why we’ve diversified the business from just straight online sales to other traditional sales so that we’ve got consistent cash flow coming in.   Craig: A little bit of advice to people.  Look after your cash flow and mind your  budget, sounds like you’re good at. A couple of hours a week takes to analyse what else has happened that week which is critical.    Nick: I guess that’s one thing that having an independent director allows me to do because we have a phone call every Friday afternoon, which…   Craig: Hi guys, so from your experiences, what are some of the mistakes that you see business owners are making.  So, we talked a little bit about cash flow.  Anything else that…   Nick: Yeah.  I guess, something a little different and that I can see out there I see is that they are content both in terms of their businesses and their industries and not pushing their boundaries and or doing the… trying alternative ways to do things and obviously in the retail side of things.  I guess something else I am saying is people being content in terms of their…inside their businesses and in terms of marketing their businesses as well so obviously, the example is that the evolution of online selling and the effect it has on traditional purchasing, and brick and mortar stores and it kinda seems like…to some of them that it’s come out of nowhere whereas the evolution of online selling has been happening in time over the last ten years or so.  So I think, I see that both as established businesses and the traditional business being content can often come back to hurt them later on.  So, i mean, that’s something else we noticed and why we’re doing things differently as well.   Craig: So, the moral of the story is don’t be scared of pushing the boundaries and thinking outside the square box, just give it a go.   Nick: And also staying on top of things and not just resting on your laurels because you don’t really know what’s around the corner.   Craig: Don’t be scared of what’s around the corner.    Nick: Yeah.  That’s just saying a little bit no matter how established you are.   Craig: So is that the sort of advice you’d give to…if you were to mentor for a better general word, either both established or a startup…what other things would you…   Nick: Yeah, it’s different keeping on top of thinss, looking overseas, seeing what’s happening whether you’re selling shoes or cats, or whatever.  It’s…there’s a lot to…we’re fortunate in this part of the world that we’re a little behind as well.   Craig: Yes, yes…I was gonna ask that.   Nick: So, it’s kind of a good thing I think for us because we can have a look and see what’s happening overseas.   Craig: You think sometimes, people fall into the trap of going overseas either to Europe or America, seeing something, trying to do it New Zealand but they’re too soon   Nick: And obviously given our market size as well as the other key issue here, and also how spread out the market is.  It’s a long way from the top of the North Island to Steward Island.  Yes, I know, I definitely think that’s true and that’s where the difficulty, I guess comes in with what I just see is…do you become an adopter or do you follow…   Craig: Become second tier.   Nick: Yeah and there’s lot of risk, in obviously going out and being an early adopter and it falling in your face which…   Craig: But then fortune favours the brave and…   Nick: But again coming back to what I mentioned earlier on in the podcast is that’s where you’ve got a profitable and sustainable core being you’ve got those opportunities to go out and expand and you’ve still got that core business to I say loosely, to fall back on but you know…   Craig: Yeah.  To pay the bills…   Nick: Yeah.  Yeah.   Craig: Yeah.  Cool.  Awesome.  And so where do you see your industry going in the next five to ten years?   Nick: Yeah, well in the markets, the direct food market, there’s differently more choice for quality and more relationships with…between consumers and producers so I definitely see that as an important step in what we’re trying to stay ahead of because people increasingly do want to know where their food comes from and how it’s produced and what’s going on so I think it’s only gonna get more and we’re gonna see return as one kind of crystal ball return to a lot traditional ways of doing things because the end user or consumer’s putting a price on all those so in our case, it’s manufactured products and more real products and people are prepared to pay more even though it costs more to produce but that’s where I see it headed.   Craig: Alright.  Cool.  Awesome!   Nick: And you’ll be more disrupters, I’ve already talked about MyFoodBank and seeing markets online so we find those disrupters coming into the market so I guess, listening to my own advice that’s where I need to stay ahead of and say exactly what’s happening in the market and what trends are coming up.   Craig: Awesome.  Awesome.  Hey Nick, we’ll wrap it up.  Thanks very much for your time.  .  How do we find you?   Nick: Yeah so we are an online business.  Our website, so you can check out our products at greenmeadowsbeef.co.nz and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with our page will get you there.   Craig: Awesome!  Right.  Thank Nick!  Good stuff!   Nick: Sure!    

Episode 100: Writing plays for youths with Lindsay Price   It's episode 100 of The Theatrefolk Podcast. Today we turn the tables and put Lindsay Price in the hot seat. What's it like writing exclusively for young performers? Show Notes Plays by Lindsay Price Lindsay Price's Website Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, theatre educators everywhere. I'm Craig Mason; I'm the publisher here at Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. I've always wanted to say that! This is Episode 100 of the Theatrefolk Podcast and you can catch the links for this episode in the show notes at theatrefolk.com/episode100. If you're a regular listener to the podcast, you're probably asking yourself, “What happened to Lindsay this week?” Well, maybe you're not because you probably heard her laughing and being disruptive over the intro but, at any rate, fear not, my friend. She's sitting right here beside me and she'll be back with her regular hosting duties next week. Today, as I said before, it's the 100th episode of the Theatrefolk Podcast. And so, we thought we'd turn the tables and we've put Lindsay Price in the hot seat for once. So, today, I'm going to be the host, Lindsay is the guest. So, let's just get this show on the road. Lindsay: You have got a very nice hosting voice, Craig Mason. Craig: Thank you very much. Lindsay: That's lovely. Craig: Well, hello. Welcome. Lindsay: Hi. How are you? Craig: Good. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do for a living? Lindsay: Well, I write plays. I have little skits that are out in the world and get produced all over Canada and the US and overseas as well which is the most awesome thing I think you could ever say. We were just in Lincoln, Nebraska, and we met students from Saipan who have done my scripts. Craig: Yes, and they told you that you were famous in Saipan. Lindsay: I'm famous in Saipan. I'll take it, I'll take it. Craig: Yes, they first came up to the table and said they were talking about what they were doing and one of the pieces was yours and I said that I was your husband and they were like, they almost wanted to kiss my ring. They were so amazed that anyone who was even remotely close to you was there. Lindsay: Awesome. Craig: So, how did you get into playwriting? Lindsay: Oh, okay. Oh, we're going to go way back. Craig: Actually, you know what? Let's go even further back. What was the first play that you saw? Do you remember? Lindsay: The first play that I ever saw must have been The Nutcracker. I'm almost certain it was The Nutcracker. I must have been in plays from kindergarten on because the school that I was at before I moved towns, they did that, and I know I have a very, very vivid memory of me being Mary in the Nativity play – must have been grade three though – but I wore a black dress because that's the dress that I had and I had a green towel – my mom gave me a green towel. Craig: So, it was a very traditional production, the Virgin Mary in the black dress and green towel. Lindsay: Yes! Oh, gosh, I'm trying to think because I can see myself; it must have been another Christmas show. We must have done Christmas shows every year. But I think that The Nutcracker at the O'Keefe Centre – which is no longer called the O'Keefe Centre – it's not the Hummingbird anymore either. Craig: I don't even think it's called the Hummingbird anymore. Lindsay: Oh, man. But then, I think that the biggest memory I have as opposed to the smallest memory I have is I went and saw Annie and I'm going to call that the very first play that I saw. Craig: Was it a professional production? Lindsay: I think it was probably a touring production. It was also at the O'Keefe Centre which is no longer called the O'Keefe Centre. So, I'm going to bet that it was – it had to have been about the exact same ...

Episode 47: Is it Worth it to See the Understudy?   This podcast continues a series of talks between Lindsay and Craig on the plays they saw during their trip to England. This week, they talk about their mistake buying tickets for Hamlet at the RSC, not realizing that it was for the understudy performance. At first it was a disappointment but then after seeing the show, a completely unique theatre experience. Show Notes Royal Shakespeare Company The International Thespian Festival Our Facebook Page Subscribe to The Theatrefolk Podcast On iTunes. On Stitcher. Episode Transcript Lindsay: Welcome to TFP, The Theatrefolk Podcast! I am Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you are well, thanks for listening. Today, Craig and I continue our jaunt through England, and we have finally made it to the RSC the Royal Shakespeare Company. Oh, that was the most horrible accent ever! First, lets do some Theatrefolk news! So, this podcast goes out on a Wednesday, and this particular Wednesday is June 26th, so we are in the thick of our week at the International Thespian Festival. If you're standing in Lincoln, listening to your iPod, listening to me talking to you on your iPod and you haven't made it over to the vendor area yet, get over here! We've got free electronic catalogs with free resources, we have free monologue CDs for students, 20 guys and 20 girl monologues, all free. We're giving away free scripts to those who come up to the table with the daily secret password, which is posted each day on the Theatrefolk Facebook page. If you're not in Lincoln, I'm done talking about it, so you can breathe a sigh of relief. Phew. Lastly, where oh where can you get this podcast? We post new episodes every Wednesday at theatrefolk.com and on our Facebook page and Twitter. You can find us on the Stitcher app, and you can subscribe to TFP on iTunes. All you have to do is search on the word, what is it, ah yes, Theatrefolk. Episode 47, is it worth it to see the understudy? So, when Craig and I talked about what theatre we wanted to see when we took our trip to England, going to Stratford on Avon, and seeing something at the Royal Shakespeare Company was certainly on the list, and then, we found out that Hamlet was playing, and we had to see it. It just sort of in our minds went, this is the quintessential sort of England theatre experience, right? Then, when we bought our tickets, they were so remarkably cheap, we couldn't believe it. Then, we found out why. It was the understudy performance, where all the understudies play leads, and leads play the minor roles. So, let's head off to Stratford to hear our thoughts on this most interesting question. Ta ta! Craig: So, we're seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet in Stratford, up on Avon, and what we didn't know when we booked the tickets, and we should have known I suppose, because the tickets were only five pounds a piece, was that what we were seeing was an understudy rehearsal. When we first discovered that, I was a little bit disappointed, but then I quickly realized that we didn't know anybody who was in the cast anyways. So, it wasn't very important, we wouldn't be missing anyone in particular. Lindsay: And, how cool is it, because what other theatre company does a public understudy show? Craig: So, there was a curtain speech before the show, and they explained that this was the one and only time that they do a rehearsal like this. The show is about two months into the run, and everyone in the cast that has a lower role understudies obviously, other roles in the shows, some understudies more than one role in the show. This is the one time that they put the whole show together with just the understudies. Lindsay: But that's not all. The people who play the larger parts, like Hamlet, Ophelia, and Polonius... Craig: They had to fill in the lower parts so those roles would be covered as people's rank...