Podcast appearances and mentions of david all

On this episode of the pod, my guest is David Cayley, a Toronto-based Canadian writer and broadcaster. For more than thirty years (1981-2012) he made radio documentaries for CBC Radio One's program Ideas, which premiered in 1965 under the title The Best Ideas You'll Hear Tonight. In 1966, at the age of twenty, Cayley joined the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), one of the many volunteer organizations that sprang up in the 1960's to promote international development. Two years later, back in Canada, he began to associate with a group of returned volunteers whose experiences had made them, like himself, increasingly quizzical about the idea of development. In 1968 in Chicago, he heard a lecture given by Ivan Illich and in 1970 he and others brought Illich to Toronto for a teach-in called “Crisis in Development.” This was the beginning of their long relationship: eighteen years later Cayley invited Illich to do a series of interviews for CBC Radio's Ideas. Cayley is the author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey (2022), Ideas on the Nature of Science (2009), The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (2004), Puppet Uprising (2003),The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives (1998), George Grant in Conversation (1995), Northrop Frye in Conversation (1992), Ivan Illich in Conversation (1992), and The Age of Ecology (1990).Show Notes:The Early Years with Ivan IllichThe Good Samaritan StoryFalling out of a HomeworldThe Corruption of the Best is the Worst (Corruptio Optimi Pessima)How Hospitality Becomes HostilityHow to Live in ContradictionRediscovering the FutureThe Pilgrimage of SurpriseFriendship with the OtherHomework:Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey (Penn State Press) - Paperback Now Available!David Cayley's WebsiteThe Rivers North of the Future (House of Anansi Press)Ivan Illich | The Corruption of Christianity: Corruptio Optimi Pessima (2000)Charles Taylor: A Secular AgeTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, David, to the End of Tourism Podcast. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. David: Likewise. Thank you. Chris: I'm very grateful to have you joining me today. And I'm curious if you could offer our listeners a little glimpse into where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you through the lenses of David Cayley.David: Gray and wet. In Toronto, we've had a mild winter so far, although we did just have some real winter for a couple of weeks. So, I'm at my desk in my house in downtown Toronto. Hmm. Chris: Hmm. Thank you so much for joining us, David. You know, I came to your work quite long ago.First through the book, The Rivers North of the Future, The Testament of Ivan Illich. And then through your long standing tenure as the host of CBC Ideas in Canada. I've also just finished reading your newest book, Ivan Illich, An Intellectual Journey. For me, which has been a clear and comprehensive homage [00:01:00] to that man's work.And so, from what I understand from the reading, you were a friend of Illich's as well as the late Gustavo Esteva, a mutual friend of ours, who I interviewed for the podcast shortly before his death in 2021. Now, since friendship is one of the themes I'd like to approach with you today, I'm wondering if you could tell us about how you met these men and what led you to writing a biography of the former, of Ivan.David: Well, let me answer about Ivan first. I met him as a very young man. I had spent two years living in northern Borneo, eastern Malaysia, the Malaysian state of Sarawak. As part of an organization called the Canadian University Service Overseas, which many people recognize only when it's identified with the Peace Corps. It was a similar initiative or the VSO, very much of the time.And When I returned to [00:02:00] Toronto in 1968, one of the first things I saw was an essay of Ivan's. It usually circulates under the name he never gave it, which is, "To Hell With Good Intentions." A talk he had given in Chicago to some young volunteers in a Catholic organization bound for Mexico.And it made sense to me in a radical and surprising way. So, I would say it began there. I went to CDOC the following year. The year after that we brought Ivan to Toronto for a teach in, in the fashion of the time, and he was then an immense celebrity, so we turned people away from a 600 seat theater that night when he lectured in Toronto.I kept in touch subsequently through reading mainly and we didn't meet again until the later 1980s when he came to Toronto.[00:03:00] He was then working on, in the history of literacy, had just published a book called ABC: the Alphabetization of the Western Mind. And that's where we became more closely connected. I went later that year to State College, Pennsylvania, where he was teaching at Penn State, and recorded a long interview, radically long.And made a five-hour Ideas series, but by a happy chance, I had not thought of this, his friend Lee Hoinacki asked for the raw tapes, transcribed them, and eventually that became a published book. And marked an epoch in Ivan's reception, as well as in my life because a lot of people responded to the spoken or transcribed Illich in a way that they didn't seem to be able to respond to his writing, which was scholastically condensed, let's [00:04:00] say.I always found it extremely congenial and I would even say witty in the deep sense of wit. But I think a lot of people, you know, found it hard and so the spoken Illich... people came to him, even old friends and said, you know, "we understand you better now." So, the following year he came to Toronto and stayed with us and, you know, a friendship blossomed and also a funny relationship where I kept trying to get him to express himself more on the theme of the book you mentioned, The Rivers North of the Future, which is his feeling that modernity, in the big sense of modernity can be best understood as perversionism. A word that he used, because he liked strong words, but it can be a frightening word."Corruption" also has its difficulties, [00:05:00] but sometimes he said "a turning inside out," which I like very much, or "a turning upside down" of the gospel. So, when the world has its way with the life, death and resurrection and teaching of Jesus Christ which inevitably becomes an institution when the world has its way with that.The way leads to where we are. That was his radical thought. And a novel thought, according to the philosopher Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, who was kind enough to write a preface to that book when it was published, and I think very much aided its reception, because people knew who Charles Taylor was, and by then, they had kind of forgotten who Ivan Illich was.To give an example of that, when he died, the New York [00:06:00] Times obituary was headlined "Priest turned philosopher appealed to baby boomers in the 60s." This is yesterday's man, in other words, right? This is somebody who used to be important. So, I just kept at him about it, and eventually it became clear he was never going to write that book for a whole variety of reasons, which I won't go into now.But he did allow me to come to Cuernavaca, where he was living, and to do another very long set of interviews, which produced that book, The Rivers North of the Future. So that's the history in brief. The very last part of that story is that The Rivers North of the Future and the radio series that it was based on identifies themes that I find to be quite explosive. And so, in a certain way, the book you mentioned, Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey, [00:07:00] was destined from the moment that I recorded those conversations. Chris: Hmm, yeah, thank you, David. So much of what you said right there ends up being the basis for most of my questions today, especially around the corruption or the perversion what perhaps iatrogenesis also termed as iatrogenesis But much of what I've also come to ask today, stems and revolves around Illich's reading of the Good Samaritan story, so I'd like to start there, if that's alright.And you know, for our listeners who aren't familiar either with the story or Illich's take on it, I've gathered some small excerpts from An Intellectual Journey so that they might be on the same page, so to speak. So, from Ivan Illich, An Intellectual Journey:"jesus tells the story after he has been asked how to, quote, 'inherit eternal life,' end quote, and has replied that one must love God and one's neighbor, [00:08:00] quote, 'as oneself,' but, quote, who is my neighbor? His interlocutor wants to know. Jesus answers with his tale of a man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, who is beset by robbers, beaten, and left, quote, 'half dead' by the side of the road.Two men happen along, but, quote, 'pass by on the other side.' One is a priest and the other a Levite, a group that assisted the priests at the Great Temple, which, at that time, dominated the landscape of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount. Then, a Samaritan comes along. The Samaritans belonged to the estranged northern kingdom of Israel, and did not worship at the Temple.Tension between the Samaritans and the Judeans in the Second Temple period gives the name a significance somewhere between 'foreigner' and 'enemy.' [00:09:00] In contemporary terms, he was, as Illich liked to say, 'a Palestinian.' The Samaritan has, quote, 'compassion' on the wounded one. He stops, binds his wounds, takes him to an inn where he can convalesce and promises the innkeeper that he will return to pay the bill.'And so Jesus concludes by asking, 'Which of the three passers by was the neighbor?'Illich claimed that this parable had been persistently misunderstood as a story about how one ought to act. He had surveyed sermons from the 3rd through 19th centuries, he said, 'and found a broad consensus that what was being proposed was a, quote, rule of conduct.' But this interpretation was, in fact, quote, 'the opposite of what Jesus wanted to point out.'He had not been asked how to act toward a neighbor, but rather, 'who is my neighbor?' And he had replied, [00:10:00] scandalously, that it could be anyone at all. The choice of the Samaritan as the hero of the tale said, 'in effect, it is impossible to categorize who your neighbor might be.' The sense of being called to help the other is experienced intermittently and not as an unvarying obligation.A quote, 'new kind of ought has been established,' Illich says, which is not related to a norm. It has a telos, it aims at somebody, some body, but not according to a rule. And finally, The Master told them that who your neighbor is is not determined by your birth, by your condition, by the language which you speak, but by you.You can recognize the other man who is out of bounds culturally, who is foreign linguistically, who, you can [00:11:00] say by providence or pure chance, is the one who lies somewhere along your road in the grass and create the supreme form of relatedness, which is not given by creation, but created by you. Any attempt to explain this 'ought,' as correspond, as, as corresponding to a norm, takes out the mysterious greatness from this free act.And so, I think there are at least, at the very least, a few major points to take away from this little summary I've extracted. One, that the ability to choose one's neighbor, breaks the boundaries of ethnicity at the time, which were the bases for understanding one's identity and people and place in the world.And two, that it creates a new foundation for hospitality and interculturality. And so I'm [00:12:00] curious, David, if you'd be willing to elaborate on these points as you understand them.David: Well if you went a little farther on in that part of the book, you'd find an exposition of a German teacher and writer and professor, Claus Held, that I found very helpful in understanding what Ivan was saying. Held is a phenomenologist and a follower of Husserl, but he uses Husserl's term of the home world, right, that each of us has a home world. Mm-Hmm. Which is our ethnos within which our ethics apply.It's a world in which we can be at home and in which we can somehow manage, right? There are a manageable number of people to whom we are obliged. We're not universally obliged. So, what was interesting about Held's analysis is then the condition in which the wounded [00:13:00] man lies is, he's fallen outside of any reference or any home world, right?Nobody has to care for him. The priest and the Levite evidently don't care for him. They have more important things to do. The story doesn't tell you why. Is he ritually impure as one apparently dead is? What? You don't know. But they're on their way. They have other things to do. So the Samaritan is radically out of line, right?He dares to enter this no man's land, this exceptional state in which the wounded man lies, and he does it on the strength of a feeling, right? A stirring inside him. A call. It's definitely a bodily experience. In Ivan's language of norms, it's not a norm. It's not a duty.It's [00:14:00] not an obligation. It's not a thought. He's stirred. He is moved to do what he does and he cares for him and takes him to the inn and so on. So, the important thing in it for me is to understand the complementarity that's involved. Held says that if you try and develop a set of norms and ethics, however you want to say it, out of the Samaritan's Act, it ends up being radically corrosive, it ends up being radically corrosive damaging, destructive, disintegrating of the home world, right? If everybody's caring for everybody all the time universally, you're pretty soon in the maddening world, not pretty soon, but in a couple of millennia, in the maddening world we live in, right? Where people Can tell you with a straight face that their actions are intended to [00:15:00] save the planet and not experience a sense of grandiosity in saying that, right?Not experiencing seemingly a madness, a sense of things on a scale that is not proper to any human being, and is bound, I think, to be destructive of their capacity to be related to what is at hand. So, I think what Ivan is saying in saying this is a new kind of ought, right, it's the whole thing of the corruption of the best is the worst in a nutshell because as soon as you think you can operationalize that, you can turn everyone into a Samaritan and You, you begin to destroy the home world, right?You begin to destroy ethics. You begin to, or you transform ethics into something which is a contradiction of ethics. [00:16:00] So, there isn't an answer in it, in what he says. There's a complementarity, right? Hmm. There's the freedom to go outside, but if the freedom to go outside destroys any inside, then, what have you done?Right? Hmm. You've created an unlivable world. A world of such unending, such unimaginable obligation, as one now lives in Toronto, you know, where I pass homeless people all the time. I can't care for all of them. So, I think it's also a way of understanding for those who contemplate it that you really have to pay attention.What are you called to, right? What can you do? What is within your amplitude? What is urgent for you? Do that thing, right? Do not make yourself mad with [00:17:00] impossible charity. A charity you don't feel, you can't feel, you couldn't feel. Right? Take care of what's at hand, what you can take care of. What calls you.Chris: I think this comes up quite a bit these days. Especially, in light of international conflicts, conflicts that arise far from people's homes and yet the demand of that 'ought' perhaps of having to be aware and having to have or having to feel some kind of responsibility for these things that are happening in other places that maybe, It's not that they don't have anything to do with us but that our ability to have any kind of recourse for what happens in those places is perhaps flippant, fleeting, and even that we're stretched to the point that we can't even tend and attend to what's happening in front of us in our neighborhoods.And so, I'm curious as to how this came to be. You mentioned "the corruption" [00:18:00] and maybe we could just define that, if possible for our listeners this notion of "the corruption of the best is the worst." Would you be willing to do that? Do you think that that's an easy thing to do? David: I've been trying for 30 years.I can keep on trying. I really, I mean, that was the seed of everything. At the end of the interview we did in 1988, Ivan dropped that little bomb on me. And I was a diligent man, and I had prepared very carefully. I'd read everything he'd written and then at the very end of the interview, he says the whole history of the West can be summed up in the phrase, Corruptio Optimi Pessima.He was quite fluent in Latin. The corruption of the best is the worst. And I thought, wait a minute, the whole history of the West? This is staggering. So, yes, I've been reflecting on it for a long time, but I think there are many ways to speak [00:19:00] about the incarnation, the idea that God is present and visible in the form of a human being, that God indeed is a human being in the person of Jesus Christ.One way is to think of it as a kind of nuclear explosion of religion. Religion had always been the placation of a god. Right? A sacrifice of some kind made to placate a god. Now the god is present. It could be you. Jesus is explicit about it, and I think that is the most important thing for Iman in reading the gospel, is that God appears to us as one another.Hmm. If you can put it, one another in the most general sense of that formula. So, that's explosive, right? I mean, religion, in a certain way, up to that moment, is society. It's the [00:20:00] integument of every society. It's the nature of the beast to be religious in the sense of having an understanding of how you're situated and in what order and with what foundation that order exists. It's not an intellectual thing. It's just what people do. Karl Barth says religion is a yoke. So, it has in a certain way exploded or been exploded at that moment but it will of course be re instituted as a religion. What else could happen? And so Ivan says, and this probably slim New Testament warrant for this, but this was his story, that in the very earliest apostolic church. They were aware of this danger, right? That Christ must be shadowed by "Antichrist," a term that Ivan was brave enough to use. The word just has a [00:21:00] terrible, terrible history. I mean, the Protestants abused the Catholics with the name of Antichrist. Luther rages against the Pope as antichrist.Hmm. And the word persists now as a kind of either as a sign of evangelical dogmatism, or maybe as a joke, right. When I was researching it, I came across a book called "How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is The Antichrist." Mm-Hmm. It's kind of a jokey thing in a way, in so far as people know, but he dared to use it as to say the antichrist is simply the instituted Christ.Right. It's not anything exotic. It's not anything theological. It's the inevitable worldly shadow of there being a Christ at all. And so that's, that's the beginning of the story. He, he claims that the church loses sight of this understanding, loses sight of the basic [00:22:00] complementarity or contradiction that's involved in the incarnation in the first place.That this is something that can never be owned, something that can never be instituted, something that can only happen again and again and again within each one. So, but heaven can never finally come to earth except perhaps in a story about the end, right? The new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven.Fine. That's at the end, not now. So that's the gist of what he, what he said. He has a detailed analysis of the stages of that journey, right? So, within your theme of hospitality the beginnings of the church becoming a social worker in the decaying Roman Empire. And beginning to develop institutions of hospitality, [00:23:00] places for all the flotsam and jetsam of the decaying empire.And then in a major way from the 11th through the 13th century, when the church institutes itself as a mini or proto state, right? With a new conception of law. Every element of our modernity prefigured in the medieval church and what it undertook, according to Ivan. This was all news to me when he first said it to me.So yeah, the story goes on into our own time when I think one of the primary paradoxes or confusions that we face is that most of the people one meets and deals with believe themselves to be living after Christianity and indeed to great opponents of Christianity. I mean, nothing is more important in Canada now than to denounce residential schools, let's say, right? Which were [00:24:00] the schools for indigenous children, boarding schools, which were mainly staffed by the church, right?So, the gothic figure of the nun, the sort of vulpine, sinister. That's the image of the church, right? So you have so many reasons to believe that you're after that. You've woken up, you're woke. And, and you see that now, right? So you don't In any way, see yourself as involved in this inversion of the gospel which has actually created your world and which is still, in so many ways, you.So, leftists today, if I'm using the term leftists very, very broadly, "progressives," people sometimes say, "woke," people say. These are all in a certain way super Christians or hyper Christians, but absolutely unaware of themselves as Christians and any day you can read an analysis [00:25:00] which traces everything back to the Enlightenment.Right? We need to re institute the Enlightenment. We've forgotten the Enlightenment. We have to get back to the, right? There's nothing before the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is the over, that's an earlier overcoming of Christianity, right? So modernity is constantly overcoming Christianity. And constantly forgetting that it's Christian.That these are the ways in which the Incarnation is working itself out. And one daren't say that it's bound to work itself out that way. Ivan will go as far as to say it's seemingly the will of God that it should work itself out that way. Right? Wow. So, that the Gospel will be preached to all nations as predicted at the end of the Gospels." Go therefore and preach to all nations," but it will not be preached in its explicit form. It will enter, as it were, through the [00:26:00] back door. So that's a very big thought. But it's a saving thought in certain ways, because it does suggest a way of unwinding, or winding up, this string of finding out how this happened.What is the nature of the misunderstanding that is being played out here? So. Chris: Wow. Yeah, I mean, I, I feel like what you just said was a kind of nuclear bomb unto its own. I remember reading, for example, James Hillman in The Terrible Love of War, and at the very end he essentially listed all, not all, but many of the major characteristics of modern people and said if you act this way, you are Christian.If you act this way, you are Christian. Essentially revealing that so much of modernity has these Christian roots. And, you know, you said in terms of this message and [00:27:00] corruption of the message going in through the back door. And I think that's what happens in terms of at least when we see institutions in the modern time, schools, hospitals, roads essentially modern institutions and lifestyles making their way into non modern places.And I'm very fascinated in this in terms of hospitality. You said that the church, and I think you're quoting Illich there, but " the church is a social worker." But also how this hospitality shows up in the early church and maybe even how they feared about what could happen as a result to this question of the incarnation.In your book it was just fascinating to read this that you said, or that you wrote, that "in the early years of Christianity it was customary in a Christian household to have an extra mattress, a bit of candle, and some dry bread in case the Lord Jesus should knock at the door in the form of a stranger without a roof, a form of behavior that was utterly [00:28:00] foreign to the cultures of the Roman Empire."In which many Christians lived. And you write, "you took in your own, but not someone lost on the street." And then later "When the emperor Constantine recognized the church, Christian bishops gained the power to establish social corporations." And this is, I think, the idea of the social worker. The church is a social worker.And you write that the first corporations they started were Samaritan corporations, which designated certain categories of people as preferred neighbors. For example, the bishops created special houses financed by the community that were charged with taking care of people without a home. Such care was no longer the free choice of the householder, it was the task of an institution.The appearance of these xenodocheia? Literally, quote, 'houses for foreigners' signified the beginning of a change in the nature of the church." And then of course you write and you mentioned this but "a gratuitous and truly [00:29:00] free choice of assisting the stranger has become an ideology and an idealism." Right. And so, this seems to be how the corruption of the Samaritan story, the corruption of breaking that threshold, or at least being able to cross it, comes to produce this incredible 'ought,' as you just kind of elaborated for us.And then this notion of, that we can't see it anymore. That it becomes this thing in the past, as you said. In other words, history. Right? And so my next question is a question that comes to some degree from our late mutual friend Gustavo, Gustavo Esteva. And I'd just like to preface it by a small sentence from An Intellectual Journey where he wrote that, "I think that limit, in Illich, is always linked to nemesis, or to what Jung calls [00:30:00] enantiodromia, his Greek word for the way in which any tendency, when pushed too far, can turn into its opposite. And so, a long time ago, Illich once asked Gustavo if he could identify a word that could describe the era after development, or perhaps after development's death.And Gustavo said, "hospitality." And so, much later, in a private conversation with Gustavo, in the context of tourism and gentrification, the kind that was beginning to sweep across Oaxaca at the time, some years ago, he told me that he considered "the sale of one's people's radical or local hospitality as a kind of invitation to hostility in the place and within the ethnos that one lives in."Another way of saying it might be that the subversion and absence of hospitality in a place breeds or can breed hostility.[00:31:00] I'm curious what you make of his comment in the light of limits, enantiodromia and the corruption that Illich talks about.David: Well I'd like to say one thing which is the thought I was having while you, while you were speaking because at the very beginning I mentioned a reservation a discomfort with words like perversion and corruption. And the thought is that it's easy to understand Illich as doing critique, right? And it's easy then to moralize that critique, right? And I think it's important that he's showing something that happens, right? And that I daren't say bound to happen, but is likely to happen because of who and what we are, that we will institutionalize, that we will make rules, that we will, right?So, I think it's important to rescue Ivan from being read [00:32:00] moralistically, or that you're reading a scold here, right? Hmm. Right. I mean, and many social critics are or are read as scolds, right? And contemporary people are so used to being scolded that they, and scold themselves very regularly. So, I just wanted to say that to rescue Ivan from a certain kind of reading. You're quoting Gustavo on the way in which the opening up of a culture touristically can lead to hostility, right? Right. And I think also commenting on the roots of the words are the same, right? "hostile," "hospice." They're drawing on the same, right?That's right. It's how one treats the enemy, I think. Hmm. It's the hinge. Hmm. In all those words. What's the difference between hospitality and hostility?[00:33:00] So, I think that thought is profound and profoundly fruitful. So, I think Gustavo had many resources in expressing it.I couldn't possibly express it any better. And I never answered you at the beginning how I met Gustavo, but on that occasion in 1988 when I was interviewing Illich, they were all gathered, a bunch of friends to write what was called The Development Dictionary, a series of essays trying to write an epilogue to the era of development.So, Gustavo, as you know, was a charming man who spoke a peculiarly beautiful English in which he was fluent, but somehow, you could hear the cadence of Spanish through it without it even being strongly accented. So I rejoiced always in interviewing Gustavo, which I did several times because he was such a pleasure to listen to.But anyway, I've digressed. Maybe I'm ducking your question. Do you want to re ask it or? Chris: Sure. [00:34:00] Yeah, I suppose. You know although there were a number of essays that Gustavo wrote about hospitality that I don't believe have been published they focused quite a bit on this notion of individual people, but especially communities putting limits on their hospitality.And of course, much of this hospitality today comes in the form of, or at least in the context of tourism, of international visitors. And that's kind of the infrastructure that's placed around it. And yet he was arguing essentially for limits on hospitality. And I think what he was seeing, although it hadn't quite come to fruition yet in Oaxaca, was that the commodification, the commercialization of one's local indigenous hospitality, once it's sold, or once it's only existing for the value or money of the foreigner, in a kind of customer service worldview, that it invites this deep [00:35:00] hostility. And so do these limits show up as well in Illich's work in terms of the stranger?Right? Because so much of the Christian tradition is based in a universal fraternity, universal brotherhood. David: I said that Ivan made sense to me in my youth, as a 22 year old man. So I've lived under his influence. I took him as a master, let's say and as a young person. And I would say that probably it's true that I've never gone anywhere that I haven't been invited to go.So I, I could experience that, that I was called to be there. And he was quite the jet setter, so I was often called by him to come to Mexico or to go to Germany or whatever it was. But we live in a world that is so far away from the world that might have been, let's say, the world that [00:36:00] might be.So John Milbank, a British theologian who's Inspiring to me and a friend and somebody who I found surprisingly parallel to Illich in a lot of ways after Ivan died and died I think feeling that he was pretty much alone in some of his understandings. But John Milbank speaks of the, of recovering the future that we've lost, which is obviously have to be based on some sort of historical reconstruction. You have to find the place to go back to, where the wrong turning was, in a certain way. But meanwhile, we live in this world, right? Where even where you are, many people are dependent on tourism. Right? And to that extent they live from it and couldn't instantly do without. To do without it would be, would be catastrophic. Right? So [00:37:00] it's it's not easy to live in both worlds. Right? To live with the understanding that this is, as Gustavo says, it's bound to be a source of hostility, right?Because we can't sell what is ours as an experience for others without changing its character, right, without commodifying it. It's impossible to do. So it must be true and yet, at a certain moment, people feel that it has to be done, right? And so you have to live in in both realities.And in a certain way, the skill of living in both realities is what's there at the beginning, right? That, if you take the formula of the incarnation as a nuclear explosion, well you're still going to have religion, right? So, that's inevitable. The [00:38:00] world has changed and it hasn't changed at the same time.And that's true at every moment. And so you learn to walk, right? You learn to distinguish the gospel from its surroundings. And a story about Ivan that made a big impression on me was that when he was sent to Puerto Rico when he was still active as a priest in 1956 and became vice rector of the Catholic University at Ponce and a member of the school board.A position that he regarded as entirely political. So he said, "I will not in any way operate as a priest while I'm performing a political function because I don't want these two things to get mixed up." And he made a little exception and he bought a little shack in a remote fishing village.Just for the happiness of it, he would go there and say mass for the fishermen who didn't know anything about this other world. So, but that was[00:39:00] a radical conviction and put him at odds with many of the tendencies of his time, as for example, what came to be called liberation theology, right?That there could be a politicized theology. His view was different. His view was that the church as "She," as he said, rather than "it," had to be always distinguished, right? So it was the capacity to distinguish that was so crucial for him. And I would think even in situations where tourism exists and has the effect Gustavo supposed, the beginning of resistance to that and the beginning of a way out of it, is always to distinguish, right?To know the difference, which is a slim read, but, but faith is always a slim read and Ivan's first book, his first collection of published essays was [00:40:00] called Celebration of Awareness which is a way of saying that, what I call know the difference. Chris: So I'm going to, if I can offer you this, this next question, which comes from James, a friend in Guelph, Canada. And James is curious about the missionary mandate of Christianity emphasizing a fellowship in Christ over ethnicity and whether or not this can be reconciled with Illich's perhaps emphatic defense of local or vernacular culture.David: Well, yeah. He illustrates it. I mean, he was a worldwide guy. He was very far from his roots, which were arguably caught. He didn't deracinate himself. Hmm. He was with his mother and brothers exiled from Split in Dalmatia as a boy in the crazy atmosphere of the Thirties.But he was a tumbleweed after [00:41:00] that. Mm-Hmm. . And so, so I think we all live in that world now and this is confuses people about him. So, a historian called Todd Hart wrote a book still really the only book published in English on the history of CIDOC and Cuernavaca, in which he says Illich is anti-missionary. And he rebukes him for that and I would say that Ivan, on his assumptions cannot possibly be anti missionary. He says clearly in his early work that a Christian is a missionary or is not a Christian at all, in the sense that if one has heard the good news, one is going to share it, or one hasn't heard it. Now, what kind of sharing is that? It isn't necessarily, "you have to join my religion," "you have to subscribe to the following ten..." it isn't necessarily a catechism, it may be [00:42:00] an action. It may be a it may be an act of friendship. It may be an act of renunciation. It can be any number of things, but it has to be an outgoing expression of what one has been given, and I think he was, in that sense, always a missionary, and in many places, seeded communities that are seeds of the new church.Right? He spent well, from the time he arrived in the United States in 51, 52, till the time that he withdrew from church service in 68, he was constantly preaching and talking about a new church. And a new church, for him, involved a new relation between innovation and tradition. New, but not new.Since, when he looked back, he saw the gospel was constantly undergoing translation into new milieu, into new places, into new languages, into new forms.[00:43:00] But he encountered it in the United States as pretty much in one of its more hardened or congealed phases, right? And it was the export of that particular brand of cultural and imperialistic, because American, and America happened to be the hegemon of the moment. That's what he opposed.The translation of that into Latin America and people like to write each other into consistent positions, right? So, he must then be anti missionary across the board, right? But so I think you can be local and universal. I mean, one doesn't even want to recall that slogan of, you know, "act locally, think globally," because it got pretty hackneyed, right?And it was abused. But, it's true in a certain way that that's the only way one can be a Christian. The neighbor, you said it, I wrote it, Ivan said it, " the neighbor [00:44:00] can be anyone." Right?But here I am here now, right? So both have to apply. Both have to be true. It's again a complementary relation. And it's a banal thought in a certain way, but it seems to be the thought that I think most often, right, is that what creates a great deal of the trouble in the world is inability to think in a complementary fashion.To think within, to take contradiction as constituting the world. The world is constituted of contradiction and couldn't be constituted in any other way as far as we know. Right? You can't walk without two legs. You can't manipulate without two arms, two hands. We know the structure of our brains. Are also bilateral and everything about our language is constructed on opposition.Everything is oppositional and yet [00:45:00] when we enter the world of politics, it seems we're going to have it all one way. The church is going to be really Christian, and it's going to make everybody really Christian, or communist, what have you, right? The contradiction is set aside. Philosophy defines truth as the absence of contradiction.Hmm. Basically. Hmm. So, be in both worlds. Know the difference. Walk on two feet. That's Ivan. Chris: I love that. And I'm, I'm curious about you know, one of the themes of the podcast is exile. And of course that can mean a lot of things. In the introduction to An Intellectual Journey, you wrote that that Illich, "once he had left Split in the 30s, that he began an experience of exile that would characterize his entire life."You wrote that he had lost "not just the home, but the very possibility [00:46:00] of home." And so it's a theme that characterizes as well the podcast and a lot of these conversations around travel, migration, tourism, what does it mean to be at home and so, this, This notion of exile also shows up quite a bit in the Christian faith.And maybe this is me trying to escape the complementarity of the reality of things. But I tend to see exile as inherently I'll say damaging or consequential in a kind of negative light. And so I've been wondering about this, this exilic condition, right? It's like in the Abrahamic faith, as you write "Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all begin in exile.And eventually this pattern culminates. Jesus is executed outside the gates of the city, nailed to a cross that excludes him even from his native earth." And you write that "exile is in many ways the [00:47:00] Christian condition." And so, you know, I've read that in the past, Christian monks often consider themselves to be homeless, removed from the sort of daily life of the local community in the monasteries and abbeys and yet still of a universal brotherhood. And so I'd like to ask you if you feel this exilic condition, which seems to be also a hallmark of modernity, this kind of constant uprooting this kind of as I would call it, cultural and spiritual homelessness of our time, if you think that is part of the corruption that Illich based his work around?David: Well, one can barely imagine the world in which Abram, who became Abraham said to God, no, I'm staying in Ur. Not going, I'm not going. Right? I mean, if you go back to Genesis and you re read that passage, when God shows [00:48:00] Abraham the land that he will inherit, it says already there, "there were people at that time living in the land," right?Inconvenient people, as it turns out. Palestinians. So, there's a profound contradiction here, I think. And the only way I think you can escape it is to understand the Gospel the way Ivan understood it, which is as something super added to existing local cultures, right? A leaven, right?Hmm. Not everything about a local culture or a local tradition is necessarily good. Mm hmm. And so it can be changed, right? And I would say that Illich insists that Christians are and must be missionaries. They've received something that they it's inherent in what they've [00:49:00] received that they pass it on.So the world will change, right? But Ivan says, this is in Rivers North of the Future, that it's his conviction that the Gospel could have been preached without destroying local proportions, the sense of proportion, and he put a great weight on the idea of proportionality as not just, a pleasing building or a pleasing face, but the very essence of, of how a culture holds together, right, that things are proportioned within it to one another that the gospel could have been preached without the destruction of proportions, but evidently it wasn't, because the Christians felt they had the truth and they were going to share it. They were going to indeed impose it for the good of the other.So, I think a sense of exile and a sense of home are as [00:50:00] necessary to one another as in Ivan's vision of a new church, innovation, and tradition, or almost any other constitutive couplet you can think of, right? You can't expunge exile from the tradition. But you also can't allow it to overcome the possibility of home.I mean, Ivan spoke of his own fate as a peculiar fate, right? He really anticipated the destruction of the Western culture or civilization. I mean, in the sense that now this is a lament on the political right, mainly, right? The destruction of Western civilization is something one constantly hears about.But, he, in a way, in the chaos and catastrophe of the 30s, already felt the death of old Europe. And even as a boy, I think, semi consciously at least, took the roots inside himself, took them with him [00:51:00] and for many people like me, he opened that tradition. He opened it to me. He allowed me to re inhabit it in a certain way, right?So to find intimations of home because he wasn't the only one who lost his home. Even as a man of 78, the world in which I grew up here is gone, forgotten, and to some extent scorned by younger people who are just not interested in it. And so it's through Ivan that I, in a way, recovered the tradition, right?And if the tradition is related to the sense of home, of belonging to something for good or ill, then that has to be carried into the future as best we can, right? I think Ivan was searching for a new church. He didn't think. He had found it. He didn't think he knew what it was.I don't think he [00:52:00] described certain attributes of it. Right. But above all, he wanted to show that the church had taken many forms in the past. Right. And it's worldly existence did not have to be conceived on the model of a monarchy or a parish, right, another form that he described in some early essays, right.We have to find the new form, right? It may be radically non theological if I can put it like that. It may not necessarily involve the buildings that we call churches but he believed deeply in the celebrating community. As the center, the root the essence of social existence, right? The creation of home in the absence of home, or the constant recreation of home, right? Since I mean, we will likely never again live in pure [00:53:00] communities, right? Yeah. I don't know if pure is a dangerous word, but you know what I mean?Consistent, right? Closed. We're all of one kind, right? Right. I mean, this is now a reactionary position, right? Hmm. You're a German and you think, well, Germany should be for the Germans. I mean, it can't be for the Germans, seemingly. We can't put the world back together again, right?We can't go back and that's a huge misreading of Illich, right? That he's a man who wants to go back, right? No. He was radically a man who wanted to rediscover the future. And rescue it. Also a man who once said to hell with the future because he wanted to denounce the future that's a computer model, right? All futures that are projections from the present, he wanted to denounce in order to rediscover the future. But it has to be ahead of us. It's not. And it has to recover the deposit that is behind us. So [00:54:00] both, the whole relation between past and future and indeed the whole understanding of time is out of whack.I think modern consciousness is so entirely spatialized that the dimension of time is nearly absent from it, right? The dimension of time as duration as the integument by which past, present and future are connected. I don't mean that people can't look at their watch and say, you know, "I gotta go now, I've got a twelve o'clock." you know.So, I don't know if that's an answer to James.Chris: I don't know, but it's food for thought and certainly a feast, if I may say so. David, I have two final questions for you, if that's all right, if you have time. Okay, wonderful. So, speaking of this notion of home and and exile and the complementarity of the two and you know you wrote and [00:55:00] spoke to this notion of Illich wanting to rediscover the future and he says that "we've opened a horizon on which new paradigms for thought can appear," which I think speaks to what you were saying and At some point Illich compares the opening of horizons to leaving home on a pilgrimage, as you write in your book."And not the pilgrimage of the West, which leads over a traveled road to a famed sanctuary, but rather the pilgrimage of the Christian East, which does not know where the road might lead and the journey end." And so my question is, What do you make of that distinction between these types of pilgrimages and what kind of pilgrimage do you imagine might be needed in our time?David: Well, I, I mean, I think Ivan honored the old style of pilgrimage whether it was to [00:56:00] Canterbury or Santiago or wherever it was to. But I think ivan's way of expressing the messianic was in the word surprise, right? One of the things that I think he did and which was imposed on him by his situation and by his times was to learn to speak to people in a way that did not draw on any theological resource, so he spoke of his love of surprises, right? Well, a surprise by definition is what you don't suspect, what you don't expect. Or it couldn't be a surprise.So, the The cathedral in Santiago de Compostela is very beautiful, I think. I've only ever seen pictures of it, but you must expect to see it at the end of your road. You must hope to see it at the end of your road. Well the surprise is going to be something else. Something that isn't known.[00:57:00] And it was one of his Great gifts to me that within the structure of habit and local existence, since I'm pretty rooted where I am. And my great grandfather was born within walking distance of where I am right now. He helped me to look for surprises and to accept them also, right?That you're going to show up or someone else is going to show up, right? But there's going to be someone coming and you want to look out for the one who's coming and not, but not be at all sure that you know who or what it is or which direction it's coming from. So, that was a way of life in a certain way that I think he helped others within their limitations, within their abilities, within their local situations, to see the world that way, right. That was part of what he did. Chris: Yeah, it's really beautiful and I can [00:58:00] see how in our time, in a time of increasing division and despondency and neglect, fear even, resentment of the other, that how that kind of surprise and the lack of expectation, the undermining, the subversion of expectation can find a place into perhaps the mission of our times.And so my final question comes back to friendship. and interculturality. And I have one final quote here from An Intellectual Journey, which I highly recommend everyone pick up, because it's just fascinating and blows open so many doors. David: We need to sell a few more books, because I want that book in paperback. Because I want it to be able to live on in a cheaper edition. So, yes. Chris: Of course. Thank you. Yeah. Please, please pick it up. It's worth every penny. So in An Intellectual Journey, it is written[00:59:00] by Illich that "when I submit my heart, my mind, my body, I come to be below the other. When I listen unconditionally, respectfully, courageously, with the readiness to take in the other as a radical surprise, I do something else. I bow, bend over toward the total otherness of someone. But I renounce searching for bridges between the other and me, recognizing that a gulf separates us.Leaning into this chasm makes me aware of the depth of my loneliness, and able to bear it in the light of the substantial likeness between the Other and myself. All that reaches me is the Other in His Word, which I accept on faith."And so, David at another point in the biography you quote Illich describing faith as foolish. Now assuming that faith elicits a degree of danger or [01:00:00] betrayal or that it could elicit that through a kind of total trust, is that nonetheless necessary to accept the stranger or other as they are? Or at least meet the stranger or other as they are? David: I would think so, yeah. I mean the passage you've quoted, I think to understand it, it's one of the most profound of his sayings to me and one I constantly revert to, but to accept the other in his word, or on his word, or her word, is, I think you need to know that he takes the image of the word as the name of the Lord, very, very seriously, and its primary way of referring to the Christ, is "as the Word."Sometimes explicitly, sometimes not explicitly, you have to interpret. So, when he says that he renounces looking for bridges, I think he's mainly referring [01:01:00] to ideological intermediations, right, ways in which I, in understanding you exceed my capacity. I try to change my name for you, or my category for you, changes you, right?It doesn't allow your word. And, I mean, he wasn't a man who suffered fools gladly. He had a high regard for himself and used his time in a fairly disciplined way, right? He wasn't waiting around for others in their world. So by word, what does he mean?What is the other's word? Right? It's something more fundamental than the chatter of a person. So, I think what that means is that we can be linked to one another by Christ. So that's [01:02:00] the third, right? That yes, we're alone. Right? We haven't the capacity to reach each other, except via Christ.And that's made explicit for him in the opening of Aylred of Riveau's Treatise on Friendship, which was peculiarly important to him. Aylred was an abbot at a Cistercian monastery in present day Yorkshire, which is a ruin now. But he wrote a treatise on friendship in the 12th century and he begins by addressing his brother monk, Ivo, and says, you know, " here we are, you and I, and I hope a third Christ."So, Christ is always the third, right? So, in that image of the gulf, the distance, experiencing myself and my loneliness and yet renouncing any bridge, there is still a word, the word, [01:03:00] capital W, in which a word, your word, my word, participates, or might participate. So, we are building, according to him, the body of Christ but we have to renounce our designs on one another, let's say, in order to do that. So I mean, that's a very radical saying, the, the other in his word and in another place in The Rivers North of the Future, he says how hard that is after a century of Marxism or Freudianism, he mentions. But, either way he's speaking about my pretension to know you better than you know yourself, which almost any agency in our world that identifies needs, implicitly does. I know what's best for you. So Yeah, his waiting, his ability to wait for the other one is, is absolutely [01:04:00] foundational and it's how a new world comes into existence. And it comes into existence at every moment, not at some unimaginable future when we all wait at the same time, right? My friend used to say that peace would come when everybody got a good night's sleep on the same night. It's not very likely, is it? Right, right, right. So, anyway, there we are. Chris: Wow. Well, I'm definitely looking forward to listening to this interview again, because I feel like just like An Intellectual Journey, just like your most recent book my mind has been, perhaps exploded, another nuclear bomb dropped.David: Chris, nice to meet you. Chris: Yeah, I'll make sure that that book and, of course, links to yours are available on the end of the website. David: Alright, thank you. Chris: Yeah, deep bow, David. Thank you for your time today. David: All the best. And thank you for those questions. Yeah. That was that was very interesting. You know, I spent my life as an interviewer. A good part of my [01:05:00] life. And interviewing is very hard work. It's much harder than talking. Listening is harder than talking. And rarer. So, it's quite a pleasure for me, late in life, to be able to just let her rip, and let somebody else worry about is this going in the right direction? So, thank you. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Maintenance is often the most challenging area in a property management business. What if you could automate your maintenance workflow with an in-house, expert AI maintenance coordinator? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with David from Vendoroo (formally Tulu) to talk about AI maintenance coordination and how it could revolutionize the property management industry. You'll Learn [05:25] The AI Revolution [10:51] What can AI Maintenance Coordination Do? [20:58] How Vendoroo Handles Work Orders [27:56] Why You Should Have in-House Maintenance [37:30] Where do Humans Step in? [41:37] Handling Worst-Case Scenarios Tweetables “Property management is a very human business. It's a very relationship-driven business.” “Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives.” “Residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager.” “The first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] David: Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control.  [00:00:24] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Property Managers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high, trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:01:05] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:25] And now let's get into the show. All right. So today I'm hanging out with David Normand and Reza Keshavarzi. Did I say your last name right?  [00:01:36] David: We always say it sounds like the great sauce that you would put on a steak. Keshavari. So delicious. [00:01:41] Jason: All right.  [00:01:41] David: Yes. Cool.  [00:01:43] Jason: So David and Reza are from a company called Tulu, which we'll be getting into, which I think are probably revolutionizing maintenance related to AI and our topic today, we're going to be talking about AI and maintenance coordination, maybe getting into some of the current maintenance challenges, what AI could help with, what should be automated, what shouldn't be automated because I think that's a very important thing to cover and how to turn maintenance into a profit center. Before we get into that, why don't we get into some background? So David, why don't you give us the journey? How did you two get into this? How did you event like, how did you start your journey in the property management space? [00:02:24] David: Yeah, great. It's crazy to think about it. It just all started probably about 15 years ago. Like many of you, started a property management company with a buddy of mine. I remember we started off with 80 doors. Got our 1st client, was excited. He left his job at Verizon. I was actually in the banking industry, bidding on subprime auto loans and the 2008 crash happened. And so we all knew what happened after that. And so anyway we actually had some tremendous success and in just over four years we added over 600 doors. Which was a phenomenal growth in our market. And we had a lot of people going, "Hey, what's your secret sauce? what are you guys doing?" Right. And the reality was, is that we just cared, right? We cared harder. We had fiduciary duty. And all of these owners were leaving their other property managers and saying, "Hey, Maybe these guys have it figured out," and we were getting conversions and our close rate was like 80%. [00:03:13] It was really crazy, but something happened and just like many of us, owners started getting frustrated feeling like, the magic was wearing off because at the end of the day, no matter how hard we worked. Those owner statements and those maintenance invoices at the end of the month, I realized were the main source of friction between those long lasting relationships and the same reason why somebody left that previous property manager to come over for the hope of more transparency and maintenance was the same issue that we ran into. [00:03:41] Right. So that led me on this journey of trying to figure out, how do we standardize our fiduciary duty to owners when it comes to maintenance and help them bring transparency and education and understanding to what I feel is really the cornerstone foundation of what a great relationship is? Because no, the building can be full, the mortgage can be paid, but those maintenance bills still come in and there's still the questions.  [00:04:06] "Why does this cost this much? So I had some great opportunities to work went on with Fannie Mae helped them manage their rental portfolio, but still in the back of my head, wanted to try to solve this issue. And all these years later, I get a phone call from somebody that said, "Hey, you need to meet this guy, Reza. He's in the HOA industry. And he's seen a similar issue with lack of transparency. And I think that you guys are trying to solve the same issue. Hey, why don't you meet up?" And I'll, and I'll preface this. This was the fourth introduction to a guy in a fourth type of tech or a company that we try to part with. [00:04:40] And it just shows you the journey of an entrepreneur. Like you never know when that right connection that's going to align with your passions, resources, and understanding happens. And I actually had three other techs that didn't work out before. And I didn't want to bring them to market. [00:04:52] Right. So that's our story. We got introduced to each other and the synergies have been fantastic. And I'm really excited to talk about what we're doing here in the space. So it's been a crazy journey. It's been exciting. Maybe one day I'll write a book down the road about all the things not to do. [00:05:04] Jason: I think every entrepreneur that has a little bit of success could write that book. I'm sure. So cool. David, where do you think we should start? Like there's a revolution right now, this AI revolution, like it's AI everywhere. And and it's moving fast.  [00:05:21] David: Yes.  [00:05:21] Jason: Like really fast. [00:05:22] And it's a bit crazy. And. Everything's changing. There's a million software tools and companies coming out. Maybe AI is making all of them. I have no idea, but like...  [00:05:31] David: 85 percent of all content written online is written by AI these days. So yeah, definitely.  [00:05:35] Jason: Right. There's the fake internet theory that like the majority of the traffic and communication and comments on the internet isn't even real. So it's like we're walking around this fake ghost town online. And we're consuming content and we're like none the wiser in a lot of instances. So my quick take, for those listening, as we're going through this AI revolution, it's exciting. There's a lot of change happening. [00:05:57] We don't want to be left behind. We want to make sure we're paying attention to what's new, what we can use. Everybody's probably used chat GPT once or twice or keeps hearing about it from other people. "They've got a GPT, that thing that you use." Yeah. I used it this morning, right? Like I was trying to figure out something in my Chevy Tahoe. [00:06:15] And I was like, "how do I do this thing in my Tahoe? Like, can you just tell me?" And it can collapse time, but sometimes it's not useful. I think my take on this is that human interaction is going to be a premium. It's going to be at a premium. It's going to be something that really sets people apart because we're moving away from humanity to some degree by leveraging all this tech and AI and all these tools and property management is a very human business. [00:06:43] It's a very relationship driven business. And and I think we'll get into this today. We want to be careful of using technology where we shouldn't or trying to trick people. "Well, look, I'm pretending like it's me, but it's AI. Haha. I tricked you." And what's funny is there's little indicators, like, and we know that this stuff's being used in a lot of different ways, like governments are using this now, like, we don't even know what's real on the news or what's like deep fakes or AI, like they're showing people's like doing interviews and people are zooming in and noticing their rings are disappearing and like weird stuff, right? [00:07:20] David: Yeah.  [00:07:20] Jason: And stuff's going viral on like the internet. And so we're living in this world where we're super skeptical and we wonder if anything's real.  [00:07:28] David: Yeah.  [00:07:29] Jason: Sometimes people are even asking, like, is this AI on a phone call?  [00:07:33] David: Yeah, well, you can't tell the difference now. I'll tell you, our tech team and AI guys they actually played around with me a little bit and they actually use my voice and had me doing work orders and no one could tell it was them. [00:07:44] Not me speaking and giving triage and doing that type of stuff. And I actually I tested it with my wife and I sent her a message over it and she didn't even blink an eye. Didn't even blink an eye. It was crazy. It was that first like aha moment that really when we talk about our fiduciary duty to our clients and ourselves about the power of this and where it's going, right. [00:08:01] And to that point. So when it comes to AI, I think people need to understand that really, the way that we look at chat GBT to me is just the new Google, right? It's Google on steroids. Okay. And so, yeah, for sure. Do we use some chat GBT to understand like, how to write the perfect sentence structure? For sure. [00:08:18] But the cool part about this, Jason, is that what we're doing is: how do we use these models in this education that teach it about fiduciary duty to your owners? That's what gets me excited, right? That's what gets me excited to understand and to think intelligently and to think with thoughtfulness to the owner's pocketbooks when it's considering a decision of how to dispatch for maintenance, right? [00:08:42] Like, isn't that what we're all looking for? That we need a system that every work order that comes in that it goes to a expert maintenance coordinator that we know what that costs. I'm talking expert maintenance coordinator, a person's been in this job for 15 to 20 years that you can send a work order to and they don't make an error. [00:09:00] They're intelligent. They're able to educate, they're able to be client facing. Like there's a real skill set there if you put that on a CV for somebody, right? But that's not what this industry is filled with. Actually, this industry is filled with individuals who are under pressure to find the most affordable maintenance solutions and the most affordable ways to try to find people to run those maintenance solutions. We're allocating the least amount of resources to handle what I consider the highest probability of owner dissatisfaction in the property management relationship with the owner, right? So I have a VA who's 2000 miles away that's responsible for spending a thousand dollars in my owner's money. [00:09:38] And there's all types of potential errors and things that are happening as a result of that. So the way that we look at AI and actually in our business, we just use the word smart a lot. And we try to use that word, that intelligent instead of artificial. Because you know what? There is a lot of human input that has gone into this to teach it how to be smart and to teach it how to consider the fiduciary duty. [00:09:59] So at the end of the day, I would encourage all the listeners here that are going on this journey with us today to understand, not to be skeptical, how to maximize its value, right? And that's really what we're going to be focusing on today and to show you how we're maximizing its value to help us achieve what we call our dream outcome when handling maintenance. [00:10:18] Our dream outcome is as a property manager, I'm starting a company or I'm looking to grow, or I'm hitting those next growth objectives, or I'm looking for ways to be more profitable. What is my dream outcome? And that all circles around having an expert maintenance coordination in my office that is reducing trips costs and considering the fiduciary duty to my clients. [00:10:40] Right? So that's what we'll talk about here today and how we're using AI to achieve that.  [00:10:43] Jason: Got it. Well, let's get into it. So what can AI do and what can't AI do? Like, well, specifically what can Tulu do and what can't Tulu do?  [00:10:54] Where's the line drawn?  [00:10:55] David: Yeah, that's a great question. [00:10:56] So first of all, I always tell everybody this out of the beginning: we are not an outsourced maintenance coordination solution. We're not an outsourced company. Yeah. We are not a vendor. Okay. We're not bringing vendors to your marketplace. Okay. Tulu is your expert in house maintenance coordinator. [00:11:13] So if you're thinking of "I'm hiring a maintenance coordinator" or "I'm building a property management and I need a maintenance coordinator," you now have that. That's that ability to add this onto your software, your system. It's a simple plug and play. You get to remain inside of your portal, you don't have to leave it. [00:11:30] There's not another new portal, all updates, all things are pushing to Buildium and we're pushing to Appfolio. That was a big part of it. There's no new app for the vendors. There's no new app for the clients because we know what's important for them to live inside of there. So what can it do? Well, first of all, it's a leader. [00:11:43] Okay. And being a leader means that it is going to use the information that we capture about your company to lead your VAs, to make expert triage decisions that always consider your fiduciary duty to the owner. So let's give an example right here to break that down. Right. Say a hot water tank comes in. [00:12:03] Okay. Hot water tank's leaking. Okay. First thing it's going to want to understand is what time of the day is it and where is the hot water tank leaking from?  [00:12:09] Jason: Okay.  [00:12:10] David: And then it's going to determine based upon the location of the hot water tank, the type of the hot water tank, which type of vendor at which time is the right one to send out. That is the most cost effective that has the greatest probability of resolving that issue for the best price and meets the satisfaction of the resident. Right. Now that was a mouthful right there. Okay. And if you think about all of the potential errors and data points and things that are involved, the smart maintenance coordinator considers all those and it brings out a triage and it tells the VA "here's the pieces that you're missing. Here's the information that I need. And here's what my suggestion is for you to move forward." So it's amazing at being a leader. And then it's amazing at being an expert about creating communications for the resident and to the vendor to direct them. And then it's also an educator and at the bottom of every work order. [00:12:58] And I hope to be able to show some people it's really cool. We don't believe in just telling people what to do. We should educate them and tell them why they're doing what they're doing. Right. So imagine if you had the best expert maintenance coordinator leaning over the shoulder of every VA that you have standing there and telling them every work order, every time, here's what to do, here's how to do it, and here's why you're doing it. Right. And as a result, we're finding that VAs that come over that are dedicated to the account in two weeks, they're educated. And in six weeks, the majority of them are executing as a high level maintenance expert within six weeks. Of after sitting down and learning the training system, because just as much as it's leading, it's also training and educating. [00:13:38] That is a wow moment for somebody who's been in the space, who's been here for 15 years, managing hundreds and hundreds of people for government entities and stuff and understanding the amount of time and effort and training that goes into somebody. And then all of a sudden they come and they tell you, "Hey, by the way, I got a new job. Thank you for all the training. I'm going to go make $30,000 somewhere else," right? How many times has this happened to me? Hundreds of times, right? And so that's a big part of what we're solving here.  [00:14:02] Jason: So in order to be effective and operate as an expert maintenance coordinator so that your VAs that don't have this knowledge can function as if they have this knowledge, then this has to be programmed, right? Maybe it'd be helpful for, the viewers or listeners of this podcast to find out what are all the inputs that go into this? What did they have to provide and what do you guys provide, so this AI, they can trust it? [00:14:29] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question, Jason. So first of all, I want to put it on point two to make an emphasis that in this journey that we're all learning about these smart technologies and AI, there's still a big part of human component, right? [00:14:38] And it's like when you chat, when you write something in chat GBT, like you just don't send it without looking at it. Right. You're reviewing it and making sure it's still saying that you want it to say. Right. So everybody rest assured this thing is not, living on its own and there's checks and balances. [00:14:51] But the onboarding on average takes 30 to 45 minutes. Okay. And one of the things that we did is number one is, when it comes to triaging and best practices, there's literally probably about 500,000 work orders of data points that it's considering. And it's an expert in that thing that's saying, "Hey, listen, this is how you should handle every work order that comes in because I've seen this, 20,000 times, and this is the best outcome." [00:15:18] Right. But then what it does is it allows the property manager to talk in natural language. Like you want to talk like a robot. We don't have to write weird code. Just say things. "Hey the owner of one, two, three main street really loves Tom." Tom works on his properties. Comes in 123 main street comes up. It understands what Tom's capabilities are. And it says, "please use Tom to use this." The owner prefers that Tom works on his properties. They have a great relationship. Cool. And so those little tidbits for example, if the heat goes out in unit number one, understand that access has to be in unit number two basement to the HVAC unit, right? [00:15:52] So that's good to know, but why is that important to know? Because most VAs would make a mistake. They say there's no heat. They don't check property notes. They send out the plumber. Plumber is knocking on the door at unit number one. Person says, I don't know where the HVAC unit is. Tenant next door is not home. [00:16:06] Now you just charge your owner for 250 emergency call to go out. The resident still doesn't have heat. They think that you're unorganized. It shows you're unorganized on your owner statement because there's two invoices. "Oh, no, wait, you want to cover that? You're unorganized." So you just ate 250 that you're already not marking up on maintenance and you do that 10 times a month. [00:16:25] Okay. And that's what's going on.  [00:16:27] Jason: And this is where then the owner's like, "I might as well just do it myself because I know everything and it's in my head." So how did they get all of that out of their head? All the little things they know about each property, each multi unit property, what's in the basements, what's..? [00:16:40] David: We have a cool onboarding process. And again, most times about 30-45 minutes, they sit in, it's called building your AI co pilot. Actually, a lot of people dig it. It's cool. It's a cool process. And we will be first, we go into your system and we're able to pull out all your work order data and it organizes all your vendors, and we can tell who all your vendors are and what you're doing based upon the work order types. [00:16:59] We can tell if you're a preferred guy is here. Number one guy is, "Hey. This guy always seems to be working on these properties." So there's a lot of information that we gather. And then you just come in and you're like, "yeah, he's my primary. He's my secondary. Oh, here's this little information about this property." [00:17:13] So you really don't have to get like, like crazy. Like, like, the mailbox is located, like. You can add that stuff later, but in the beginning, it's just like, what are those important rules? I remember this one that really jumped out at me as impactful, a classic mistake, this owner had a lady living in the apartment for 35 years. [00:17:31] Okay, and she's getting old and one of the rules is that no matter what maintenance ticket comes in, "don't ask her to triage. Don't ask her. It's the tenant's responsibility. I love this person. Please send her out and just take care of her. Right?" What a great rule to put into your system that shows the owner that when that work order comes in, He's not getting a call from, and I forget what her name is. [00:17:51] And like, they're asking me to change my light bulbs again. And then he's like, I told you twice not to do this. And next thing he's looking for another property manager. And I always love that example of that rule. So that's what you're looking as far as the information you're giving us takes about 30 to 45 minutes. [00:18:03] For people who have anywhere between, 150 to 350 properties. If you start having, 500, 600, a thousand, I would definitely allocate up to two hours and onboarding for sure.  [00:18:13] Jason: Okay. That's really fast when it comes to rolling out a new technology. Yeah. It's ridiculously fast.  [00:18:19] David: Yeah. [00:18:19] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Extremely quick. So basically you have all this learning and understanding that's going into who your preferred vendors are. We know how to handle the maintenance work orders. There's no like integration that has to happen. And so as this triage is coming through, you're getting this expert level triage and you can add things down the road. [00:18:38] You can add it, but how to handle the work orders as we say, there's really nothing new in maintenance. What's new is: "what's the NT for the property? Are there any special conditions that we need to know? Right? What are your residents' responsibilities and what are you responsible for?" Once you have those four questions answered, how to handle the hot water tank, at what time to hit on the hot water tank, how to, how to repair this door, how to do that. [00:19:02] Those true principles of maintenance are true for everybody, if that makes sense, right? So, so that's a big part of the value that you get that You're hiring an expert maintenance coordinator. If you were to hire him, you wouldn't necessarily be telling him. "Hey, this is how you replace a doorknob." [00:19:18] He should already know that when you hired him. Right. So think of like it that way when you're considering us as a technology.  [00:19:24] Jason: So, a human maintenance coordinator, the challenge would be, there's no way they can remember every detail about every property, right?  [00:19:32] David: Yeah,  [00:19:32] Jason: it's not. Which means they would have to keep notes. [00:19:35] Let's say they've already got a decent amount of notes somewhere. Might be in the property management software, maybe they've got their own, I don't know, database of something. Is there the ability to pull in all that information?  [00:19:46] David: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. To grab those notes out. A lot of people have the ability to export it. [00:19:51] They have a good note file or something like that. We get those, we take that information and it can just be pushed up into the system for sure. So yeah, the onboarding it, it can be, again, some people come in and say, "all I have is single family houses." Everything's pretty straightforward. [00:20:03] Other people send over an Excel list. "Here's my property notes at the property levels" and upload them. So that's the cool part where. You ingest into the system. There's not a lot of data, manual input. It's reading it and assigning it. And that's where we're using technology to help even improve the onboarding process that you talked about, right? [00:20:19] You think about people wear t shirts, like, I survived the Yardi onboarding process, right? Like, technology has come a long way to help improve that process, and that was a big part that we focused on.  [00:20:28] Jason: Yeah, that's wild. So once you've got them onboarded and they're in your system, the AI knows pretty much everything about the property, but maybe it doesn't, maybe there's some things it doesn't know. [00:20:41] And so work order comes up. You're working on something and it's still just in the property manager's head or it's still in the business owner's head or maybe they don't even know yet, but it runs there. It runs into an issue. It's like it has a question maybe, or it doesn't. It needs to know some more stuff. [00:20:57] I don't know. What happens in those scenarios? [00:21:00] David: Yeah, this is a great one. So, all right, so let's talk about the life cycle of a work order. Right. And let's everybody just understand that there still is a human component involved in this, right? Every property manager has a dedicated, we call them a remote team member, who's now this expert maintenance coordinator at the cost of a remote team member. [00:21:16] Now they're able to execute at a very high level. But there are going to be things that they're faced that they don't understand. So they have the ability to communicate with you one on one, or we also have this process internally that they have this ability to go, "I need a request from the expert in the loop" and the expert in the loop is you know, invoice review, complication that they're saying that the AI is not clear on them and it's asking for additional support. And so they can bump that up to individuals, myself, and there's other members of the team members that are big part of this and they can get expert level triage inside of there, to say, "Hey, listen, I'm facing with this vendor issue. They need 25 percent upfront. The job is only 500. I'm not understanding what to do here. The building is located and they're saying access is weird. They need to bring something in." There are complications that still involve human understanding. And so that expert in the loop solves that piece in there. [00:22:07] And also speaking of humans, we believe that residents and vendors still need to speak to a human. Okay. Super important. Okay. So the value that we have is that we're able to create expert level triage, According to their specifications and the training model and all the great things and the automation and the text messages that are written for them and the codes that are written for them the emails, all those things. [00:22:31] So, if we can automate at a very high level and free up our people to be able to provide support on the phone to the vendor on the field, or to actually talk to a resident, everybody knows this and I talk to everybody, guys, residents don't want to talk to a computer. They want to feel that they have a connection to their property manager and that when they call in, a lot of people have not even adapted technology for anybody who has, residents have been with them with a while and they're used to talking to Janet, they're used to talking to tell him inside and next thing you can say to them, "Oh, we have a new maintenance system. And by the way, you have to talk to the system." They're like, "okay. This is lame," right? Like, so that personal connection and we have a saying inside of the office that we keep your residents and your vendors within arm's length of you, right? It's communicating. They're using your property management name. [00:23:20] They're speaking on your behalf. This is an extension of your office. This is your maintenance coordinator. Don't think of this as a vendor. Don't think this is an outsourced maintenance solution that you're setting all your maintenance to some company that's sourcing vendors or bringing them in and doing every, this is your in house maintenance team. [00:23:38] So always consider that when you're thinking about Tulu, real people. In house maintenance coordinator just powered by AI enabled execute at a crazy high level.  [00:23:46] Jason: So, yeah. So how do tickets get into the maintenance system? Like how are they initiated? Do they still have to be answering their own phone calls? [00:23:56] Are they just putting it into their property manager software? And then Tulu is going to like start taking some action. What communication does Tulu facilitate or take over if we're going to be having still needing some humans to be in Tulu allows us to increase the amount of communication and care that we show. [00:24:13] Where do we draw the line? Like, where is Tulu stepping in and doing some communication and where do we need team members to be doing communication?  [00:24:21] David: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So let's just go through the life cycle of a work order for everybody. I think that's what everyone really understands when they're all thinking about this. [00:24:28] Okay, let's give me a work order from start to finish. Right? So no change to your residents. No change to anybody. They log into their portal, Buildium, Appfolio, RentVine, whatever they're using. They submit a maintenance work order, that maintenance work order through their system is dispatched to the Tulu maintenance coordinator, expert maintenance coordinator. [00:24:46] All the magic is happening, all the triage, everything is taking place, and inside of the property management software, they're going to see. Work order.  [00:24:53] Jason: And is that dispatched through via email? API? Yep.  [00:24:56] David: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just through email? Yep. Set up as simple. You can set it up as a maintenance coordinator and as the maintenance coordinator is set up and the email comes in and it pings out and that creates the work order and starts to process through the, yeah. [00:25:08] Yep. Cool. And then the property manager will see that the work order has been it's in triage on the status of their system. Then it's assigned, then the vendor will be assigned there. And then from there, the updates, when it's scheduled that we call it the who, what, and the why, right? [00:25:25] What's going on, who's doing it and what's being done to progress this for. That's a note. You're constantly getting those notes. Now, the cool part about this, Jason. is behind the scenes. All of those text messages and phone calls and emails that we call the noise that are between the residents and the vendors and everybody are all being captured in a system behind the scenes. [00:25:45] Right. Super value there, right? If a resident is a little bit upset about something or you have some questions, "Hey guys, can you hand me the phone call this one to show me the text messages," right? Communications are big part. So we capture all those communications inside there at any time that the owner of the property manager wants to pull them. [00:26:00] That's great. Then the work order is completed. The completion, quick question. So  [00:26:05] Jason: all this communication between tenants and vendors, unless they're using some sort of magical system That the vendors have to be in and that the tenants are logged into. And it's like seeing all this, how does Tulu capture that? [00:26:18] How does it know that the vendor is communicating with the tenant or the tenant? Okay. So it would be any point.  [00:26:24] David: Yeah. Good point. Any point that the the tenant. Is communicating or the vendor or just communicate with two of those. So if the vendor happened to communicate directly with the tenant, it would not capture that part, right? [00:26:34] That's their phone to phone with that part, right? So it's when the resident or the tenant is communicating with the maintenance coordinator. And as we all know, tenants and vendors love to communicate by text message, right? That's their number one thing to do. So, it's really cool for vendors too, because as we know, a bunch of vendors, they hate. "I don't want to work in another app." Vendors can take pictures from their phone. They can upload estimates from their phone. The estimate comes in and it's actually turned into this really pretty estimate because we know vendors estimates are notorious for being on the back of a paper and hand scratched, right? [00:27:06] So it actually creates into a brand new Tulu estimate. And so your owners get transparency into pricing and labor. And it's standardized and everything looks clean. And so yeah, vendors love it because they're not lazy, but they're busy guys. And instead of going home and trying to do a whole bunch of paperwork, they can now just generate an estimate, take a picture and shoot it right through. [00:27:22] So, yeah.  [00:27:23] Jason: Because the challenge that there's a lot of communication involved. And so usually to decrease the amount of communication, they're trying to figure out how do we get the vendors to just talk to the tenants directly to collapse time? But if you have AI, then my guess is that Tulu will still just act like that middle person because the vendor can communicate with them, they can immediately text you, then Tulu texts the tenant, then it's just doing it real time. [00:27:45] You don't have to wait on a human being in your office to like make this communication happen. So you're like, "well, we're so slow. Let's just get them to talk to each other." The AI is making this happen. Is that accurate?  [00:27:56] David: Huge point right here is, and man you really hit off the nail on the head on this one point here. [00:28:01] The amount of people that we are seeing that they're using vendors to perform triage in this space is actually alarming. Okay. Alarming. All right. Vendors should not be performing our triage. They should not be the ones trying to figure out what is going on. They're not our client facing people. Maybe some guys are good. [00:28:20] your in-house guys, goods or whatever. The majority of people are using this, right? The beauty of the system is: Do we have enough information that is captured? From the resident, the property manager that considers the needs of the owner to formulate the correct direction to the vendor so that they can show up with the resources that they need to fix the job the right time or show up educated about what they're there to fix. [00:28:41] Jason: So let's talk about this real quick. Like vendors should not be doing triage and why not? Like, like what are the obvious ramifications here? Well, vendors, that's like asking a surgeon if you need surgery, right? That's how he makes his money.  [00:28:55] "That's the solution is surgery. We should chop that out, like, let's cut that thing out and I get paid thousands and thousands of dollars."  [00:29:02] David: Or how about this one, Jason, on an owner's report. I see a cost for so many times you see a cost for a maintenance guy, "unable to resolve expert needed." well, why? Because the maintenance vendor was sent out to do the triage. [00:29:15] That's not fiduciary duty to the owner. If we had the right information, we could have avoided that one trip. So we have some really cool case studies. I'd love to show people that out of like 260 work orders, we have one right here, a client that signed up with us. And so out of that thing here let's see. [00:29:31] They completed 194 work orders. 17 unnecessary trips were canceled. Wow. Okay. 17 unnecessary trips and 15 of those work orders had an immediate reduction in price because they said that the wrong resource was assigned to that. So think about that. 17 different numbers.  [00:29:48] Jason: So if that, if they have an in-house maintenance team, you're decreasing your your cost deploying these texts, going out and doing stupid work, like significantly. If you are using third party vendors, then there's always an expense. If you're sending anybody out, unless you're like, go do a bid, or something like this, but that's costing the vendor, which they're going to be more frustrated with you. [00:30:09] So you're freeing that up or they're charging you for it. "Oh, well, if I go out, I charge, right?" Yeah.  [00:30:15] David: I'll give you an example. We just saved owner of a pad split property who wanted to replace the refrigerator. The request came in and they asked for three estimates, okay, to replace the refrigerator. [00:30:28] Okay, the suggestion came back that basically said in a nutshell, summarize this, "why are you sending three different appliance vendors who are all going to charge a trip fee to go look at a refrigerator when a Home Depot program should be used and the cost of refrigerator should be 860? To factor all those costs in, it would have been about 1, 400. I don't understand why you're doing this. Please explain, right?" Talk about fiduciary duty to the owner.  [00:30:51] Jason: This is why owners get frustrated and they're like, "I might as well just do it myself." [00:30:55] David: " Because I knew better. I would go to Home Depot. Everyone knows to order a refrigerator from Home Depot, right? Unless there's special circumstances." And now imagine this, and this is where we're going with this, Jason. At the end of each month, these owner reports go out to all these owners, and owners sit down and they call up the property manager, and we always hear people talking about this at every conference. [00:31:14] "Oh, I don't want to answer that phone call. I know what this is about, right?" And the property manager is scrambling at the end of the month to call the maintenance coordinator, dig into work order notes and justify why did this cost this much? "Explain this to me," right? So we have this really cool report that's coming out that basically, including in the property owner, It would let you know that, Hey, you had six jobs that were able to send a handyman this month. [00:31:38] Here's what's going on. You had two emergencies, two replacements, little asterisks that said, "Hey, this trip fee was 120. Why? Well, it required two people because there was a toilet that was being replaced on the third floor so they requested an extra hour of labor to be able to bring that toilet up because it was too like..." intimate details so that your owners are feeling like they're getting this like this whole transparency, unbelievable transparency, this report, the property manager doesn't have to waste at the end of the month, which I used to send away two to three days at the beginning of each month, just to answer phone calls and questions.  [00:32:12] Jason: Right. Yeah. It's like "why did it cost us much? Why?" [00:32:14] Like they can just see it.  [00:32:16] David: Yeah. "Why didn't you send Tom?" "Well, I did send Tom to snake the drain because it was clogged in the master bathroom. We set his limit at an hour. He used a 17, 25 foot power snake. And we said, if you can't get this done within an hour, then we need to send Roto Rooter." "Oh, I get that. You really did try to save me money in the beginning. Yeah. And Roto Rooter found that 35 feet down the thing was a clogged diaper or something like that." That's what owners need to understand. And to break that down in every work order is a tremendous strain on property managers and our system in V2 that's coming very quickly. [00:32:52] I was actually working on this morning. Those owner reports will be generated then if every month that explain intimate details about the thought process. and the costs and any decisions behind breaking it down into category for every maintenance work order type for their owners. Huge value. Imagine going to a client, a new client, and you're presenting against somebody else and they say, "Hey, how do you handle maintenance?" [00:33:14] And you pull that report out and you put it down on the table.  [00:33:16] Jason: You're like, "like this is the level of detail. Nobody else is doing this." The maintenance coordinator get on the phone every time and saying, "let me walk you through all these charges and why they happened and what did." And like, how many people listen to this right now? [00:33:31] I'm like, I know you're listening to this going, "if I never had to do that again, that would be the best thing ever. Ever. Like I've never had to have that uncomfortable conversation with the owner." Like it's all in there. It's all there. Like it makes sense.  [00:33:43] David: "Here's why we are your property manager. And here's the value that I'm giving to you in the transparency to maintenance." [00:33:50] That's a huge burden. It's a significant pain point. And we know this Jason, the first offense creates a little crack between the relationship. The second one, you're losing trust with your owner and they're beginning Googling "other property managers around me." The third one. You're just waiting for them to look and to go somewhere else. [00:34:07] So the relationship is falling apart. Right. And we are trying to know that  [00:34:11] Jason: You got a 600 door business in four years.  [00:34:14] David: Yes.  [00:34:15] Jason: Like, and so, and you have probably heard countless stories of people if they're switching companies, it's really rare that people switch companies. Usually things have to be pretty bad and maintenance that's in communication. [00:34:27] Those that's number one factors, communication and why people leave. And so this allows you to free up a massive amount of time so you can actually be on the phone with the people when you need to be on the phone and stop wasting time with all of these repeat calls, repeat requests, what's going on with this, and yeah, this would just save so much time. [00:34:44] David: Well, think about growth, Jason, right? So the three things that we're solving for, number one is we're protecting fiduciary duty to the owners, justifying maintenance costs and reducing the cost of expert in house maintenance coordination and making it scalable. Yeah. Okay. [00:34:58] So now if I can have an expert maintenance coordinator that I add to my office, there's a fixed cost to it. I can scale infinity and not have to worry about hiring and training and staffing and issues and all these problems in global, right? My fiduciary duty to my owners, I got reporting and transparency. [00:35:17] Maybe my property manager now, instead of being able to manage 250 doors, maybe they can manage 350 doors. Isn't that cool? Like that's where we're going with this stuff for sure.  [00:35:25] Jason: Yeah, it definitely would make a business as maintenance coordination, maybe infinitely scalable. So, okay. I know somebody that's listening, that's very detail oriented and their brain doesn't think like a spider web, like mine is going, "Hey, you guys never finished the example scenario because Jason derailed it." [00:35:43] And so we've got the maintenance request. It's come in.  [00:35:46] David: Yeah.  [00:35:47] Jason: So take, let's go back to that.  [00:35:49] David: Okay. Yeah. Maintenance request comes in the triage takes place. The information is gathered once the information is gathered, and it fills the requirements of what they believe is the right decision. [00:36:00] At that point, the scheduling takes place. Okay.  [00:36:03] Jason: Okay. So which pieces of Tulu doing?  [00:36:05] David: All of this.  [00:36:05] Jason: Okay. Okay.  [00:36:07] David: Okay. Okay. So then we're scheduling and then the work is completed. Quality pictures are received. If the resident is satisfaction, you have happiness received, vendors invoices received, and that's all uploaded into the system. [00:36:20] And then at that point, the property manager can pay the vendor directly if they have a great relationship and maybe they want to pay them in whatever way they do. A lot of people like paying their vendors, that's fine. Or they can reimburse the Tulu system. If they just want to pay one vendor for the rest of their life, and then Tulu will pay the vendor for them directly. [00:36:38] So it is from intake to vendor payment, all updates, all communications, all triaging, everything.  [00:36:46] Jason: Tulu does all of it. Does it all.  [00:36:48] David: It is your perfect maintenance coordinator. What we call the dream scenario. It has the ability to triage, troubleshoot, knowledgeable about vendor pricing, it's client facing and experience and client facing means that you can even set the parameter that said, "Hey, if anything is over my NTE, I would actually like you to generate your justification as to why think about this and send it out to my owner." Now imagine your owner getting this super email that's like, "Hey, listen, we have this problem. So the five to fancy, here's the steps that it took place to do."  [00:37:15] Jason: So like the amount that's in the agreement that says like anything under 500 in a single month, like we have a right to just take care of it. Right. Or something like this property managers having their agreements. Okay. So, so where do they need humans then? Where do humans come in all of this? [00:37:31] David: Humans need to be there to provide expert level, the same expert level triage that the system is providing, we need humans in there to make sure, first of all, it's accurate. There is a component of that, right? We're reviewing this and training it, learning it, but as we talked about before, humans need to be there. [00:37:47] We love that they have a great relationship because they're an extension of the office with their RTM, right? With their property manager and that RTM, they get to know each other. Humans are needed to talk to the residents and humans are needed for vendor support. Okay. Vendors don't want to call into a robot when their hand is in a sewer line from the field asking about, "Hey, I need help and direction. What's going on?" [00:38:07] They don't want to hear "press two if you're unhappy with this service," like they don't want to hear that. That's where humans come in.  [00:38:13] Jason: Got it. Okay. So what are some of the results that you're seeing when you're installing in this into businesses? Like what's shifting? Because I'm hearing some things like it's going to decrease the time you're spending on the phone with your owner. [00:38:25] So it's going to decrease the amount of time doing communication. You won't have to spend time doing triages. It sounds like a large piece of maintenance coordination is going to be taken care of. It sounds like staffing costs can be reduced. You tell me what are clients noticing once they get this installed over their previous systems of using a stack of tech tools to try and get their team to be able to handle this stuff? [00:38:47] David: I think in the beginning and I think that it's cool in our relationship is just to hear people come back after the first month and go, "I can't believe it. Like I went an entire month and like, I was not involved in maintenance the way that I feel that I needed to be to make sure that all these things were taken care of. And I'm finding myself with like 20 hours extra a month." And we're like "yes, go grow. Go add more doors. Go show greater value to your clients. Maybe call your client that you haven't been calling in a month because you've been so busy." Right. So, so those are really cool. I think from a cost perspective, they are appreciating. [00:39:24] And I'm believing that. Even people who had in house maintenance coordinators or VAs, good ones, always still feel that they needed to second check all the work. So even though you're giving to somebody, they never were able to detach themselves from me. [00:39:37] And now when they're seeing the justification and they're seeing the education behind it, they get this sense of like, I can let go. You know why? Because this system is doing maintenance exactly the way that I'm asking it to do maintenance. And they feel that now they're actually back in control. If that makes sense. Or they're giving it away, but they're actually feeling they're in more control, if I'm making sense there. That's one of the coolest things is that they feel now they have their pulse on every work order where versus before they have to dive into search. Now they know that their requirements are just laid over every work order. So those are some big ones that I'm seeing, especially for those people who really show their value to their owners in the fact that they say, "I'm involved in every work order, every job." That's a great value prop. It really is. Is it scalable? Is it burning you out? Is it pulling you away from other duties that you need to be? Are you spreading yourself too thin? [00:40:29] Great questions to ask if you have growth objectives, right? Scalable solution. And basically what we're doing is we're allowing the best in the business who are property managers who have created great relationships to duplicate themselves. And that's exciting for them to see. I think that they're like, "wow it's thinking like me."  [00:40:45] Jason: This really sounds like a serious competitive advantage for a property manager that adopts this over any other competitors that don't  [00:40:54] David: Jason, I'm going to a new client pitch and now I'm knowing that the guy next to me is sitting down showing him, "this is how I handle maintenance. This is how I'm keeping your cost down. This is the process. And that new report's coming in our V2. I was actually working some funnels that this morning. And if you're laying that down and then you're walking in behind them and the person says, "well, how do you handle maintenance?" [00:41:15] "Well, I personally call you on every maintenance ticket." We're witnessing the greatest generational movement of wealth and real estate properties from retiring baby boomers to the next generation to their kids who are all grown up in a technology world that are demanding transparency and reporting and it's just going to be the new standard, Jason, a hundred percent. [00:41:34] It's going to be the new standard for sure.  [00:41:36] Jason: Okay. We probably got somebody listening. They're super skeptical. They're like, there's no way. And they're going to throw us some crazy scenario that came up recently. And I'm sure you've heard some of these. So how would you address that? Like some sort of like, "well, what if it's like this and this," and it sounds like worst case scenario. [00:41:54] The AI just says, expert in the loop. Like it's, it raises his hand in some way and says, "Hey, I could use a human over here."  [00:42:00] David: Here's one that actually, as a guy who in my history, we had portfolios, like 30,000 properties. [00:42:06] So I've done probably over 500,000 work orders. In my career. Okay?  [00:42:10] Jason: More than most of the people that are probably listening to this. Yes.  [00:42:13] David: Yes. And as a result, just because of the size of the inventories that we used to manage the other day, a resident submitted a maintenance work order in and said, "my microwave is not working. And I assume it's because my gas stove is not turned on. And does my gas stove need to be turned on in order for the gas to flow up to my microwave?" Okay. True. True. Okay. All right. True maintenance work order. The the smart system picked that up and now imagine a VA facing that without any knowledge or an experience that's going to be an email to the property manager, a phone call to somebody, or maybe they make a mistake because they're 2000 miles away and they don't have any contacts and they sent out a plumber to go investigate. And the owner says, "why are you sending out a plumber for this?" Right? Right. Okay. The system picked up and it literally educated and trained. And it said that gas has no relevance whatsoever to a microwave solution. This is an incorrect thing, right? And that, when I saw that one, it makes mistakes. [00:43:04] Don't get me wrong. It's not perfect, but when I saw it pick up on that one, I said, man, I said, this is getting exciting that it picked up on that. So I would ask that person to come and just experience it and look at a little bit and understand guys, right? This is exciting. This is new. It's learning. [00:43:19] We're developing and it's improving daily. There's still a lot of human oversight. There's still a VAs that involved. We're getting expert maintenance coordination down to a price point that is affordable for everybody, scalable for everybody. And the biggest point at the end of the day, your owners are going to feel that every maintenance work order comes in, it's being handled by the best maintenance process in the industry. [00:43:39] And that's what you're going to be able to offer them as a property manager to compete against other competition you have in your market. And I think that's a good value prop. So.  [00:43:46] Jason: Yeah, definitely. So is there anything else related to turning maintenance into a profit center that we should cover? [00:43:52] David: Yeah the first step going into a profit center is realizing that the average person is paying between 16 to 28 dollars per door to manage their maintenance, right? If we get that down to the correct number, and I'd love to have anybody come through and we'll run the analytics for them and we'll give them a pricing model for that just off the bat, the first profit center that we're creating is what if I'm able to reduce that by 50 percent your cost, that's an immediate profit center, right? [00:44:16] That's profit center number one. And then we can look at profit centers number two, that like, all right, now I can add on if I want to add on to my markup or we have some other ways that we can show them how to. But the first profit center needs to be is what do you know how much you are paying per door to manage maintenance? [00:44:34] Take all of your staff, all of your VAs, all of your systems, all your after hour services, take all those pieces, add them all up and divide them by the number of doors that you have. So every door that you bring on, it's costing me $27 to handle maintenance emergency services. Okay. Know that number, and let's have a talk. [00:44:54] Jason: You got to build that calculator on your website.  [00:44:56] David: It's coming.  [00:44:57] Jason: A lot of calculators like that to help people calculate their cold lead marketing costs or whatever. And as soon as they fill that out, they're like, "okay, I'll sign up. Like this is ridiculous. What I've been doing?"  [00:45:06] David: We have that in product right now. [00:45:07] We have a couple of pieces. We did the finish on it, but that's coming out where people can just understand what they're paying per door. But give us a call up. We'll walk you through the exercise. We'll show you what you're costing. Think about that as your first profit center, Jason. And then we can talk about other ones and we help give some people some advice still. [00:45:22] Jason: So David, you have a lot of knowledge and experience. How much of your knowledge and experience has gone into bringing this AI up to understanding what you know?  [00:45:32] David: I've been working on this for 12 years. Of putting the data and the learnings. And again, I've been fortunate guys where it was just my path. [00:45:39] It was my journey through this, where I've got to work for some huge outfits. I had my own consulting company for seven years. I was working with some of the biggest SFR groups in the nation, guys with 10,000-20,000 doors. And I'm just fortunate to understand the amount of data. So, I've put my blood, sweat and tears into this, but at the core of that Jason, my blood, sweat, and tears. [00:46:00] Is that, 15 years ago when I was brand new in this property management space, I had a broker tell me one time that after the sale of the property is done, the success of the owner is no longer your business or mine. And it's up to them. The sale is done. And they told me that when they walked away and that bothered me to this day, it bothered me that the fiduciary duty that individuals are giving to us to manage in some cases, millions of dollars of their money and assets and portfolios, right? And what type of products or services are we demanding of this industry? That we would demand of, let's say if I gave 50,000 to my broker to invest in the stock market for me, what type of services and technology and platforms am I demanding of that person, education, schooling, name brands, right? [00:46:45] But yet, are we demanding that same of us in our fiduciary duty to somebody that's giving over maybe their retirement to us their kids', future, college... you hear all these people, "why'd you get into real estate?" "I want to create a college fund for my kids." And after two years, the guy's like, "this is not what I signed up for. This is the worst mistake I ever made. And I'm backing out of, buying more properties because of challenges," right? That's what I'm driven by. And I've always been driven by that. It's my curse. And so I'd have to say there's a hundred percent of me in this Jason, for sure.  [00:47:13] Jason: Awesome. And it, this will outlive you like AI doesn't die. [00:47:17] And this is this not to be grim, but this is the concern. Like anybody has when they're signing up for a business, they're like, all right, "how much is reliant on just this one person? How much is reliant on that key person I'm interacting with?" Right. And the AI is not a person. Right? [00:47:34] And so, yeah, so that's really fascinating to think about. Like you've built all that into it and it has immediate, instant expertise. It's not like, "Hey, well, let me go call Tom and let me go check with Fred or let me..." like all the data it has, it's there and it's instant. [00:47:54] David: What's the difference between an emergency of a hot water tank that's leaking in a basement with a permeable stone floor versus emergency hot water tank that's located in the utility closet on the first floor? [00:48:04] One doesn't have to necessarily require a person to go out because there's no damage to prevent with water leaking down there. But the other one is leaking onto the floor and damaging your drywall. So these conditions have to be taking place. Locations of hot water tanks, like there's, I can nerd out in this and I'd love to sit down with anybody and drink beers and talk about all the millions of different maintenance things that I ran through. [00:48:24] But at the end of the day, when you're able to show your owner, "we acted as an expert." That's the guy that's going to say to his buddy when they're just having a drink, "call these guys up to manage your property because they're an expert in the thing." And that's what we're trying to bring to the industry for sure. [00:48:37] Jason: So this brings a level of expertise that the business owner, the property manager, the maintenance coordinator, and certainly the VA's just would not possess.  [00:48:48] David: You're talking 15 years, over 500,000 work orders worth of data points, learning and understanding from commercial, multifamily, single family across the board, best practices. [00:49:01] And it's for somebody who wants to imagine now a person can start a property management company tomorrow onboard Tulu. And they're immediately a veteran in the maintenance industry. Immediately.  [00:49:12] Yeah. No learning curve. You're operating and executing as the best maintenance coordinator in the industry starting tomorrow. [00:49:19] That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. Really cool.  [00:49:22] Jason: This is really, it's really wild. So now my brain's like, how can I get experts, how can I clone Tulu, but make an operator version of Tulu for running a property managed business. Or I can make it.  [00:49:32] David: Yeah there's, there, there are offshoots on this. [00:49:34] I would have to say, and I do want to tell anybody that in this space that we always say that property managers are safe because you know what the property managers do a great job of doing. You guys do a really good job at building relationships and creating value in your local markets. [00:49:46] Right. Focus on that. Don't get pulled into maintenance, right? Maintenance and that stuff can be automated. There are best practices. Don't struggle to have to be an expert there. Show your value and the resources and tools that you have. Lower your overhead. Produce better results. Be at networking events. [00:50:03] Shake more hands. Talk to more people. Sell more homes. Add more doors. Shine where you shine. Brokers shine when they're out in front of people shaking hands and having expensive salads over a nice glass of chardonnay and closing deals, right? Let us flip the toilets and do it well for you. [00:50:18] That's what I say.  [00:50:19] Jason: Awesome. Okay, cool. David, if they're interested in Getting started. How do they find out about Tulu? You can go right to our website  [00:50:26] David: at trytulu. com. And if anybody wants to email me personally, david.norman.trytulu.Com. I'll connect you with our sales team and set you up on a personal demo. I'll walk you through it. I promise I won't bring so much energy. I'm an energy guy. It's just my calling this space to be in the maintenance and I love to doing what we're doing and seeing owners go "yes!" Seeing property managers go "yes!" And we're not trying to replace anybody. We're just trying to help people honor their fiduciary duty to their owners. And that's my mission. That's what I'm driven by.  [00:50:56] Jason: Yeah. Fantastic. So try Tulu, T U L U. Dot com.  [00:51:02] David: Yeah.  [00:51:02] Jason: All right. Try it out.  [00:51:04] David: All right.  [00:51:04] Jason: David, thanks for coming on the DoorGrowShow podcast. Appreciate you.  [00:51:08] David: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Always great. Looking forward to the show. Until next time.  [00:51:11] Jason: All right. So if you are a property management entrepreneur and you are wanting to add doors, you get maintenance off loaded, off your plate, and you want to focus on growth and figuring out how to get more doors, you want to join the DoorGrow mastermind, our growth accelerator is all about that. [00:51:29] We are really good at optimizing businesses for growth using our rapid revamp class, where we clean up quickly, all of the front end stuff that is causing you to like kill trust and leaking trust and preventing deals. And then we give you the right strategies. We've got at least seven different growth engines that we can help build into your business that you can stack that will feed you unlimited leads without having to spend any money on advertising or marketing expense. [00:51:55] You just need people and it actually decreases the amount of time those people will spend If they're following working on the warm leads and the stuff that we would get you to do instead of cold leads, which take a lot more time. So we also have our super system level of our mastermind. This is where we're focused on ops, operations, helping your operator. That key person that's going to run the entire business for you, Mr. or Mrs. Visionary Entrepreneur, and they will help take your business to the next level. We can coach and support your operators, your BDMs, your salespeople, or you, the business owner to make this business infinitely scalable so that you can go to the next level and add a lot of doors. So reach out to us, let us assess your situation and see if we can help. [00:52

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT There is a lot of glass in public and commercial spaces, and the pro AV and digital signage industries have been applying all kinds of technologies to turn things like windows and dividers into part-time or full-time displays. In most cases, those jobs have come with compromises. There are films that might start curling at the corners, or discolouring. Mesh systems that look pretty good from the front, but terrible from the rear. And most recently, super-thin foils that need to be adhered to one side of glass panes. So what if the LED display was actually part of architectural-grade glass? That's the premise of a company called Clear Motion Glass - a Pennsylvania-based technology start-up that comes at the business from the angle of commercial glass. Clear Motion is a spin-out from William Penn Performance Glass, which has for many years been making and supplying laminated and tempered glass for commercial buildings. Unlike other products on the market, Clear Motion's LED displays are sandwiched inside sheets of laminated safety glass - so when a building goes up or is being retrofitted, the glass panels that go in are also active, highly-transparent displays. I had a good chat with Todd Stahl, a glass industry veteran who runs both the established and start-up businesses. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT David: Todd, thank you for joining me.  Todd Stahl: Hey Dave. Yeah, I appreciate you having us on. It's going to be a pleasure to talk about some LED glass with you.  David: Yeah, tell me about the company. I saw you guys at DSE back in December. You were busy almost the whole time. So I didn't really have the time or the chance to have any kind of a detailed LED conversation, but I know that the company has not been around that long, but it's grown out of a pretty well-established “performance glass company.” Todd Stahl: Yeah. A little bit about the history there. So, at Clear Motion Glass, we're making the LEDs inside of the glass. I came across the LED glass around June of 2022, so I've had it for just about two years. The parent company is William Penn Performance Glass, and that's another company I started in 2011. We deal with high-end architectural Glass.  So, a cliffnote version: We go to the top architects in the country, and they're like, “Hey, who are you designing for?” And they'll say to us, “Hey, we want some really cool glass to go in the elevators for the Empire State Building.” So we got into the architectural space with glass, and actually, we'll William Penn, who was just voted one of the top 50 glass producers in North of North America. So something that we're definitely pretty proud of around here.  Then I came across LED glass around 2022, I thought it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen put inside a glass, and I wanted to be a part of it. David: So when you say you came across it, what do you mean by that?  Todd Stahl: So, there's another product in glass, another glass product that's been around, I'm going to say right around since 2000. It's a glass that goes frosted to clear from the turn of a switch, Switchable glass. So there's a company called Smart Film Blinds, and they were an applied film company that would actually take that, what we would call switch glass, but they just took the film and applied it to existing glass, and it was owned by Alan and Tracy Ackerman, and then they had this connection with LED Glass they weren't quite sure what to do with it. They knew it was really cool. And it had a chance to be really something big, but they were more of a film company, and then he and I got introduced, through a need that we had for some smart film, the switchable film, and then eventually we had a partnership for a while. Then we decided basically that I'll stick with the glass part, what I'm best at, and he'll stick with the film part, which was what they were best with. But that's how I got introduced to it, right around two years ago.  David: What you're marketing now is Clear Motion Glass. Is that your own product or are you reselling somebody else's manufactured product?  Todd Stahl: We have partners overseas, such as a company called Filmbase. That's where we get the actual LED grid or LED mesh. We bring that to my facility in York, Pennsylvania, which is in the south-central Pennsylvania area, we're 20 minutes south of Hershey, close to Harrisburg, and then we actually fabricate everything as a finished panel here. So we'll make the glass, we'll get the interlayer components. We have a laminating machine that actually works by pulling a vacuum and heating it up to certain temperatures. After that, it comes out, and we have a clear LED glass display.  David: So laminated glass is something that's been around forever. So this is just basically sandwiching the mesh in between sheets of laminated glass?  Todd Stahl: Yeah, absolutely. We're definitely making a sandwich component. We start with a piece of glass, say that's your component number one. Then, we start with the inner layer materials.  In a case like this, we use a couple of different techniques, but we use EVA, which is ethyl vinyl acetate. Then we'll actually put the LED mesh grid on top of that, then we put another piece of EVA, then we go with the finished component of the sandwich, another piece of glass, and we stick them in an oven, we run a certain cycle, and about four hours later, we have a laminated piece of glass, exactly how you described. It's a sandwich makeup for sure.  David: Was there a lot of R&D work involved in it? Because I would imagine if you're putting an LED mesh inside of an oven, then going to a very high temperature and all that, I'm thinking if I didn't know much about this stuff, I'd be wondering, what's all that heat going to do to this thing? Todd Stahl: Yeah. You know, we have to make sure that it can withstand certain temperatures, obviously, and if you don't heat, and just in general, if you don't get laminated glass hot enough, it doesn't bond, it does not bond correctly. What you have to achieve is cross-linking and cross-linking is basically the interlayer material to the glass itself, and that happens at a temperature of around 110 degrees Celsius, so it's not getting hot enough to cook a Turkey in there, so we're not really dealing with extremes. I think a lot of people might think when you're actually making glass out of what we call a batch, you know that's where the glass is heated up to 2000 degrees and you're really dealing with some extreme temperatures. It's not quite the same extremes at all when you're dealing with laminated glass.  David: So tell me what performance glass is, and what high-end performance glass is because I don't know the glass world terribly well.  Todd Stahl: Yeah, sure. So, so what William Penn performance glass is the performance name kind of all started because our glass looks great and it, but it's an all safety rated glass. So that's kind of the performance part of the glass. So, if you're looking at our glass, say that's used for glass handrails, that's a very specific glass that's chosen to withstand the certain load requirements of a structural application, and typically most of our handrails are tempered, and laminated glass. So there are two ways on this planet to make a piece of glass safety-rated. You either temper it or you laminate it. We happen to do both of those things in a lot of our projects, and it's kind of funny like obviously safety-rated glass is strong, but the only thing that's really taken into consideration when you're referring to safety glass are you automatically assume it's going to break and what happens when it breaks, right? So with tempered glass, you put a lot of stress on the glass itself through a heating and cooling process, and whenever that glass breaks, it breaks into small panels that would not be able to potentially cause a life-threatening wound, and then you have the exact opposite with laminated where if a rock hits your car, if that's ever happened to you the rock doesn't come through and the pieces of the glass, the shards don't come through, they stay together. So you got those two things to the requirements when you're thinking about what is safety rated glass.  David: With the Clear Motion product, is it an indoor product only, an outdoor facing product, or what are the use cases?  Todd Stahl: So what's really cool about our LED glass is that almost wherever you're using architectural glass right now, you can now use our LED displays. So it can be used in exterior applications, a building facade, glass canopies, and railings that may be exterior. All of the components are kind of encapsulated inside that glass, and that glass is making a nice, really safe, cozy home for the LED display inside of it. David: And it's bright enough that it can be on a glass curtain wall like an auto dealer?  Todd Stahl: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the really cool applications for it. In fact, you had mentioned at the trade show and boy, were we busy? I think I was just talking about this yesterday. We scanned around 450 people in that short show. Our voices were a little strained by the end of the evening. So, the brightness of our display at the show, Dave, was only running around 4%, and I thought that was one of the more amazing things about the product because it was still kind of bright at 4%. Later we started bringing that up because a few potential clients wanted to see it at 50-60% brightness. So yeah, you can totally use this as an exterior sign and get whatever brightness you need. I think some of the products are well over 10,000 nits depending on the needs, and I think one actually lasted up to 15,000 nits, so plenty bright for the outside.  David: Yeah, once you get to 3,500, you're good.  Todd Stahl: Yeah, exactly. David: On transparency. I see on your website that it says there is up to 90 percent transparency.  Todd Stahl: Yeah, so when you get to some of the pixel pitches that are viewed from say, a distance of around a hundred feet, I think the pixel pitch at a 20, I believe that one may allow up to 90 percent of light to come through. It's really cool. I mean, you have this really great display, and then you're just getting all this, and you're not cutting off any spaces so if you have a traditional LED display, you can only view that from one side and I think that's kind of what's really amazing about this product and a lot of times when you're looking at the product, you don't even realize that it's transparent until the image would say it's rotating from one image to the next. And you're like, Oh, wow, that's clear, there are people behind there. So I think, yeah, it's really cool in that application.  David: From what I saw, because it's this mesh material, with super thin wiring in between each of the LED lights.  The challenge I've had with a lot of trans or “transparent products” is that they look good from the front side, particularly at a distance, but when you look at the back end of the things, there's a mesh, like a metallic mesh or something like that, a grid system that kind of makes it look like crap. Todd Stahl: Yeah. With a lot of the applied films that have been out there before, and there's not a whole lot of them, but there are a few, certainly from that backside, it doesn't look at all like the front, and the same thing, with the LED actual metal meshes, again, they look phenomenal from the front, and you get behind, and you're like, man, what am I looking at here? So with our product, what's really cool about that is you get a little bit of the halo effect, from the image that's playing on it, that you can see from, say, the view side of the glass, and then you get a slight reflection off of that front piece of glass that kind of bounces back through. So you see a little bit of a glow or a halo in the background, but it is not an eyesore, and it looks pretty good. You can see out, and you have a very clear picture of the people that you're looking through or whatever object you would be doing from the back of the product. It looks really good. It's a good look from the backside.  David: Yeah, there are numerous products out there that now do this kind of foil mesh effect, and you have to adhere it to the inside of a sheet of glass, which is all fine and everything else, but it doesn't look that good from the inside, does it? Todd Stahl: No, it really doesn't. The concept here, we touched on hockey a little bit, earlier, but you know, we have, you have all these hockey nets in the arena to protect the fans that a puck doesn't hit them, and most of those meshes are black. It's harder for our eyes to kind of pick up the black mesh than it is for white. There are some that have whites, but not many, and the black is blended in a lot easier. I'm a big hockey fan, so I've been to a few arenas, and the white ones are a little harder to, I think it takes away from the image more, and that's why we're using a black LED mesh.  When we first started, it was white, and it just didn't have as good of a; again, I thought it took away from the product from the backside.  David: So presumably there are limits in terms of the size of a glass panel that you can do because you've got a laminate in an oven of some kind and that they're only so big. So if you have, to use the example I mentioned earlier of, an auto dealer's glass curtain wall where the sheet of glass might be pretty darn big. How do you put multiple units together? And what does that look like in terms of cabling and everything?  Todd Stahl: Yeah. So we're always kind of limited in size by a couple of different things. Sometimes it might be the actual raw product glass that we're using. Some sheets are available to us, bigger and smaller, the width of the laminating materials, and then our oven as well. So basically, in our oven here in Pennsylvania, we can laminate an LED panel roughly about 6x10 feet. You know, that's a pretty sizable piece of glass, and then what we can do, if you're doing a glass facade it kind of gets into a little bit more of how the glass is installed, but you're basically stacking the panels. there's a control unit. That attaches to each panel of glass, and then those control units are all tied together and then that gives you one cohesive image plane from one panel to the next.  David: Do you have much of a seam in between them?  Todd Stahl: So, if you remember, at the trade show, I think we had two panels out there and we had a seam in the middle. So I'll see the seam, you'll see the seam, but when the image is playing, you really don't even notice it's there. A lot of times, depending on the application, a glass facade is a little different, because you're going to have all most likely all four edges of the glass covered, but, we have a lot of applications where the panels are being butt jointed together and it's a nice polished edge there. So, yeah, with the image running and stuff, you really don't even see it unless you get within a couple of feet of it.  David: So we're talking millimeters, not inches, in terms of a gap.  Todd Stahl: Yeah, absolutely. You know, a gap's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of three, three-sixteenths of an inch, plus or minus. David: So not much at all.  Todd Stahl: Yeah, not much at all. Like I said, it's pretty cool. When that image is going, you're like, it just looks like one big piece of glass.  David: And there are technical limits, like if, let's say, an airport curtain wall that might be like 80 feet high for the side of a terminal or something like that. Can you do that?  Todd Stahl: Absolutely. That can all be tied in. You'd have several zones there, and depending on how you're handling the programming from a laptop, and something like that, you just say zone one's the entire thing, and then you might break it down into individual zones if you want different things playing at different times, but yeah, we this is definitely designed to do entire glass facades or, curtain walls. David: All those little lights generate some heat. How does the heat get out?  Todd Stahl: Yeah, so we've been working with these products for about two years now, and I always expect when I put my hand on the glass to touch it, that it's going to be nice and warm, but it really isn't. The heat definitely dissipates quickly. There is some energy consumption, and we have charts for that. So once we get into a building design, we can get in there and say, “Hey, this is what you're going to need for your power requirements.” But it has very similar power requirements to current LED displays that have been around for a while. But yeah, it doesn't really create much heat. You would think it creates more, and I'm telling you, whenever anybody sees it, one of the first things that they almost always do is, “Oh, I expected that to be warm” and they touch it, and it really isn't.  David: Well, one of the criticisms or let's say what a naysayer might say about this, is, “All right, if I buy this, glass panel with the LED mesh embedded inside of it, what happens if there's a dead pixel? I'm stuck with that forever. It can't be repaired because it's sandwiched in between two sheets of glass.”  Todd Stahl: You know, it was my biggest concern. We spent a good bit of time.  I think the lifespan of the LED bulbs we're using is right under 11 years. So we found the biggest problem that we've encountered, and this took us a while before we were going to bring it to market because that's by far the biggest concern; anyone looks at that and goes, it's not the first time I've ever seen a bulb, you know? So there's a couple of things. There's been a lot of research and development to make sure when it comes out of lamination that we've already caused any bulbs to fail before those processes, and we actually have a little bit of a protocol we've developed. So, one of the biggest reasons a light bulb is going to fail is the heat and pressure in that vacuum. It's not so much the heat, but the pressure because there's a little bit of movement in there. So if all those connection points aren't just right, you're going to get a bulb that may come out after you've done all of the work, and then you fire it up, and you know, there's a lot of bulbs, and a diode and only one is bad, it's not good. So we actually have a pre-laminating process we run to actually replicate what is going to go through the stressors of the lamination process. And if we find a bulb or a diode that might not be working, we can replace it after that pre-cycle of lamination.  Now, on the flip side, let's say it's out there, it's in the field. If we use annealed glass on the front surface, so, annealed is not tempered, but the backlight would be tempered, so you're still dealing with a, fully safety rated tempered and laminated makeup. We actually have a drilling process where we can drill a core out of the glass, and we can actually replace that LED diode. What our experience is that once they come through lamination so far, with all the panels we've been working on we have not had one go out and we've put them in some areas of our glass production facility near our tempering oven, which is a really cool piece of equipment. It has a 600 horsepower blower that when the tempered glass comes through, it cools it to dissipate the heat, but it draws some dust, there's some heat back there. We've had a panel running there for two years in that condition without any issues. But yes, you can actually replace the bulbs if you need to, if one goes out.  David: So I'm curious when an architect and a general contractor puts a building up, they're thinking in terms of being there for decades, with maybe the exception of football stadiums, which seem to need to be replaced every five years or so. Is 11 years an acceptable operating lifespan for a sheet of glass for a builder or for a building owner?  Todd Stahl: Yeah. I mean, our interlayers, they last 20-30 years. The interlayers and the glass products, yeah, they're going to last a very long time. When we've been bringing this product to market I think, the event back to the switch light is one of the first times you're us glass guys are introducing electricity into the mix. And at first that back in 2000, I mean, it was really cool. It had the wow factor, but it didn't quite last as long for me. I didn't really get into the product until recently. But you know, that product will last around 10 years as well, and we don't get a whole lot of callbacks very often with any of our glass products.  But it seems like most clients are happy with a 10-year usage. That's been pretty good for the Switch Lite product. We talk about a decade out there to the architects and designers now that, that's a number that they all seem to be very happy  David: Let's say a car dealer goes in, they're fine, they're thinking in terms of the glass that they put in is there for 10 years, and they may switch it out anyways?  Todd Stahl: Yeah, I think you know that everybody wants to be fresh and new. So we found a lot of these high-end retail stores that we've designed with, for instance, a high-end jewelry line, and let's say they have started in California with a new design. They take that design and they move it east to New York City. By the time they get to New York City, whether that's been five to eight years, and they redesign the whole thing over again. So there's a cycle and I think, especially with retail, and a lot of these buildings, they always want to have a new, fresh look, and I think a lot of times they're redesigning in under ten years for a lot of applications.  David: I'm guessing I could be wrong here, but I'm guessing that there's hyper-competition from China for, what I would say is conventional LED displays and so on; you're probably going to have less competition for what you're doing because of the sheer weight of, even if they can make glass cheaper over in China, shipping glass panels over here would be just ghastly expensive, right? Todd Stahl: Yeah, definitely. It's pretty heavy to air freight glass, so it's always nice that there's this thing called the ocean between us and China, especially us being we've been a manufacturer forever, and thankfully, it is a little expensive to ship a finished product like that and take some time. So, yeah, and you know, right now, we're kind of pretty far ahead of the curve in how to actually laminate this properly. Our feeling was when we got involved with this, all right, we got the LED technology. Now we'll just throw it in some glass, and we got a home run and it wasn't quite as easy to just throw it in glass and end up with a finished product, you know? There are still some areas. We are not the only ones in the world laminating this product, but there are, from what I know, under five; we're the only ones who can do it with thin and large panels. We're the only ones that I know of that are actually doing some of the very specific things to make sure it's going to perform properly in these laminated glass applications. In our process, we are patent protected in our process where I think we're just like in the first phase, I don't know all the legal terminology, but we're going through the patent process for the way we laminate it.  David: Which will help you over here, won't help you with Chinese products, but again, there's that ocean thing in between. Todd Stahl: Yeah, absolutely. We have a few intellectual properties here and I'm not one to get into too many legal battles, but we would have some type of recourse if someone does come and is trying to laminate in a similar technique the way we do it. David: I suspect you're kind of looking around the corner as to where this is going and the types of technologies that are emerging. Do you kind of see this as, what you have right now is Gen 1, and over time the light emitters will get smaller, the wiring will be even thinner and so on? Todd Stahl: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's exactly the way I see it going. I mentioned earlier: I really am a glass guy, and this is a glass company by people who absolutely love glass. Now, that's a Will Penn. Clear Motion, we have that same feeling as well, but this is more of a technology company. And what we're talking about today, like you said, generation one. We're going to revisit this in under five years, and it's going to look, I think, a whole lot different.  David: Who's buying it right now? And are you in the field with this?  Todd Stahl: So we're working on probably over 50 to 60 current projects right now in the design phase. Almost everyone we're working with has signed NDAs. So we can't necessarily say the clients that we're designing with right now. But one's a high-end fast food restaurant. They want one of these in each restaurant and that's actually for an exterior application.  David: Are these proposals or purchase orders?  Todd Stahl: They are proposals right now, so a lot of verbal commitments. We have a project we're working on in the Middle East in the design phase right now, that's 18 months out, the funding has been approved. They're designing it in the UK and then we're working with the audio visual company, I think in Texas. So this is really brand new.  David: You're in startup mode!  Todd Stahl: We really are, and this is the third company I've started literally from scratch, and I think it'll be the last one because boy, it is challenging. It takes a lot of energy. There's this great energy when you're starting it, and this is a little extra challenging because this is brand new. No one has ever seen clear LED glass displays like they just did not exist four years ago.  People might've thought they saw something similar. Like you said, it was a film or a grid that was put behind the glass. But when people are seeing this now, we're creating a new market, we're educating people to that market, and we're educating ourselves.  David: I'm guessing when people come to a stand at a trade show, you're at, the architects and the people who design physical spaces are the ones who are going, this is more like it. They haven't really liked the idea of films or foils and all that because of how they look at the back end or they're worried about a film sort of, particularly if it's exposed to UV light and all that, it's going to yellow and on and on…  Todd Stahl: So what the feedback from the A&D community has been? We did an AIA show in San Francisco last June, and we had one or two clients, say, “Hey Todd, we have the budget for this. We have clients who want this product, and we've been looking for it for years.” Then we start designing the project with them, and that's the thing: once I shake hands with an architect, we might not actually have that project begin production for 24 months to a year. So, depending if the building's coming out of the ground or if it's just a remodel of an existing one, it's a very long cycle until we actually get orders placed, and you know, something I've been dealing with for 30 years. It's kind of the way the industry is.  David: Infrastructure projects are never quick, are they?  Todd Stahl: No, they really aren't, but the A&D world is kind of our background. It's where we've been for a very long time in that space, and we've definitely noticed that companies, individuals in the audio-visual world respond to this entirely differently. This doesn't have as many questions in their minds. They're more educated because we've been used to dealing with LEDs for a very long period of time. So it's kind of interesting how the two markets work together, like the DSE show where we introduced the product, I would say more to the audio-visual world if I'm using the right terminology there, it was received just as with that much energy, a lot of more understanding right away, not as many technical questions. David: It's a variation on stuff they've been seen before, but maybe a better variation. Todd Stahl: Yeah, absolutely, and the architects, like you were saying, and even in general, I think even though LG makes an applied film. The North American President of, I forgot the gentleman's name, he was in my shop a little over a year ago, and we were working with his film, and then we showed him our LED glass, and he was blown away by it. David: “There goes my business”  Todd Stahl: Well, I think he was like, I'm going to make that too. I don't think he was worried about his business, but that applied film that they had been using, again, from a very long viewing distance, the product looks great. It's not yet ready to be viewed in shorter viewing distances, but the fact that it's applied, I do think that there is something like when you're buying a high-end product, you don't want people to be able to come up and pick it off, and I mean that definitely happens with every piece of film, I think I've ever worked with in my life. The first thing people do is take their fingernails, and they try to scrape the edge of it. It's just something that is instinctual about humans. But I think if you take that film now, I always say, if you put a piece of film on glass, it's just film. Once you laminate that film inside of the glass, you now have a glass product that protects it.  It does what you were saying. It prevents it from being yellowed over time because the inner layer blocks out almost 100 percent of the UV rays. So I think it's a great home for the LED mesh.  David: So does William Penn and Clear Motion Glass, do they operate separately, or are you kind of in the same office, the same building, and everything else, it's just different business cards? Todd Stahl: No, actually, we are in the same overall building complex, but we're not connected physically. So Clear Motion, basically has the equivalent of its own social security number, which down here in the business and for business, the IRS wants us to have EIN numbers for our businesses. So Clear Motion has an EIN number. Will Penn has an EIN number, obviously, but they definitely operate as two companies but obviously very close connections.  David: And you are running both?  Todd Stahl: I am running both right now, and spoiler alert: two's a lot harder to run than one.  David: Yes, I bet. If people want to find you online, they just go to ClearMotionGlass.com?  Todd Stahl: Yeah, that's it. They can find us there. There are some emails there. They can shoot an email to us and we'd love to talk to anybody if this product's right for them we're really excited about it and definitely creating a lot of energy with it. David: Are you at a trade show anytime soon?  Todd Stahl: Yeah, so we're doing Infocomm, I believe. It's the middle of June out in Vegas. Are you going to be there?  David: Yes.  Todd Stahl: Awesome, man. We get to meet in person, then. We'll carve out some time for that, Dave.  David: Absolutely, yeah, and that's a good show for you. There are tons of pro-AV people there. Todd Stahl: Yeah, I love that. That's a new space for us. So we're a little extra excited cause that's definitely not like a glass trade show is.  David: All right. Todd, thank you so much for your time.  Todd Stahl: All right. Yeah. I appreciate it, Dave. It was a pleasure.  

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT The people behind college and pro sports have increasingly focused on making events multimedia experiences that start well before fans put their bums in seats, and we're now starting to see hints of that in the way public spaces are programmed. Screens are sync'd, and content is carefully timed and triggered based on data and all kinds of variables. While most integrators and solutions providers are focused on executing on ideas and needs, the New York company ANC has for years being delivering services and software for what it calls branded entertainment. The work started with collegiate and professional sports, but more recently the company has branched into areas like retail and mass transportation - including the multi-venue, many screens experience that stretches between the Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan and underground to the World Trade Center complex. I had a great chat with Joe Occhipinti, ANC's Chief Operating Officer. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT David: Hey Joe, thank you for joining me. I've chatted with ANC in the past with Mark Stross but that's going back like six years or something like that. I'm curious, first of all, what your company does and maybe we could get into a little bit about the background of basically buying the company back from prior owners that started as a family company and now it's going back as a family-driven company, right? Joe Occhipinti: Yes. So, Mark Stross, yeah, he's obviously still our CTO. So I'm sure you two had a fun-filled conversation. But yeah, a lot has changed in those five or six years that was probably just after, just before, Learfield had purchased ANC from our initial founder, Jerry Cifarelli Sr. who was kind of a pioneer in the signage and TV visible advertisement world. When he started ANC in the late nineties, it evolved the business into a large format, technology integrator for sports and other venues. So when Learfield took over, they obviously wanted to start integrating some of our technologies into all of their properties and universities which was great.  Joe Occhipinti: Yes. So, Mark Stross, yeah, he's obviously still our CTO. So I'm sure you two had a fun-filled conversation. But yeah, a lot has changed in those five or six years that was probably just after, just before, Learfield had purchased ANC from our initial founder, Jerry Cifarelli Sr. who was kind of a pioneer in the signage and TV visible advertisement world. When he started ANC in the late nineties, it evolved the business into a large format, technology integrator for sports and other venues. So when Learfield took over, they obviously wanted to start integrating some of our technologies into all of their properties and universities which was great.  It was a good five or six year run we had with them. And I was with the ANC for a lot of those years. I started back in 2012. So I saw the end of Jerry's initial ownership and then into the Learfield, and then I kind of parted ways with ANC in early 2022 and found my way into a company called C10 with Jerry's son, Jerry Cifarelli Jr. and shortly into 2022, Learfield reached out to us and was interested about looking into a potential acquisition and I think Learfield's business has changed a lot, right? Joe Occhipinti: Yes. So, Mark Stross, yeah, he's obviously still our CTO. So I'm sure you two had a fun-filled conversation. But yeah, a lot has changed in those five or six years that was probably just after, just before, Learfield had purchased ANC from our initial founder, Jerry Cifarelli Sr. who was kind of a pioneer in the signage and TV visible advertisement world. When he started ANC in the late nineties, it evolved the business into a large format, technology integrator for sports and other venues. So when Learfield took over, they obviously wanted to start integrating some of our technologies into all of their properties and universities which was great.  They were in multimedia rights and they've kind of shifted into a data-driven company with all their fans and engagement and I don't think it was core to them any longer and obviously with Jerry's father, having started the business, it was very near and dear to our hearts. We felt that ANC had all the right foundation but due to its success over 25 years, we can kind of take it back and change a few things, get the parts back together, streamline things, and get after it once again to bring the band back together. And that all happened in early 2023. We couldn't be happier to kind of be driving the boat again.  David: So, anybody if you meet at a cocktail party or a neighborhood party or whatever, says, what do you do? And more to the point, what does your company do? What do you tell them? Because it's quite involved. Joe Occhipinti: The loaded question. Hopefully they have like two drinks like one in each hand or something. But basically, the ANC consists of four business lines, we like to call it. So, the kind of the moneymaker, the thing that gets the most press is LED Technology installations and that could be the things that catch everyone's attention is obviously the large format LED displays but we're really a technology integrator, throughout the entire venue. So we have installed IPTV, we've installed TVs, we've installed full control rooms, things of that nature. And those are the apps which have a large format. I keep going back to that but the main video center hungs and arenas, center field boards and baseball. We have a 280 foot display at Westfield world trade center. Some of those marquee kinds of displays that you guys have heard and seen. Then we also have a services department or venue solutions we like to call it. After which all the pretty lights go up, we have to then maintain it and make sure it works for the life of that display or until the next renovation happens. So we actually have a fleet of operators out in the field who are going on pregame off days and making sure that modules are fixed and things are corrected. The proper content's loaded into the software and they're ready for the game presentation or for the next event or for the next change in scheduled content that's going to happen in an out of home venue. So we do a ton of that as well and then we also have our ad agency business. So that goes back to when Jerry started the whole business of TV visible signage, where we are acquiring inventory from teams that we work with or we go out and purchase it and then we also represent brands. So we'll place a discount tire behind home plate at a specific market that they would like to see or a number of different advertisers that we've been working with for years that really want to have that TV visible signage in sports our ad agency is mostly on the sports side we do some and out of home but obviously those are kind of owned by the properties and things like that so it's a little bit different and then what ties it all together is our software business. So It's called LiveSync now. It started as FasciaSoft, VisionSoft, VSoft and now it's LiveSync and it's all in the name. We specialize in syncing all your displays throughout the venue. So, somewhere like Westfield World Trade and Fulton Center, they're kind of one venue to put together. I think they have upwards of 75 or 80 displays between LCDs and LEDs and we have a constant stream of scheduled content. That's looping every 10 or 20 seconds 24*7 and you can sit there and watch in one area 5 to 10 displays all changing at the same exact time, frame to frame, everything running pixel to pixel. But the beautiful thing about live sync is what it does is we're wide open, open API, open source. If you want to play ball with everybody else that might be in the control room and we want to be able to trigger whatever else you might want to trigger with that piece of content. So if you wanted to run a home run graphic at Fenway park and you want to get your LED lights for a night game to flicker, you know when the guys around the bases. ANC Live Sync can trigger that software and it can all run synced and simultaneously. So, we really like to say that we can be the quarterback of the venue like somewhere like Wells Fargo Center. We trigger an IPTV program to have a goal animation run in the suites over whatever TV broadcast is being shown.  So, we've really come a long way in that regard. The software has come. Leaps and bounds, probably even from six years ago when you talk to Mark and we're really proud of the software that he's developed with his team. David: And this is your own software. It's not something you sell, right? It's software that you use when you're working with various customer venues.  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah. A lot of times our software is installed when we are doing the full install. Right. We don't really sell it out of cart. We have started to look into that, right? Like we think the software is at a point where it can do that and can be that. We did a deployment this year at I think it's PPG paints arena at Pittsburgh Penguins where another LED manufacturer got the LED job but they came to us for the software. So that was just a software standalone installation where we went in there into the control room and installed the servers and had it integrate with everything else they had there and it runs their live game presentation now. David: Right and when you're talking about being known for LED or being known for LED display control and so on but you're not a manufacturer or reseller of somebody else's product, right?  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah, we're not a manufacturer at all. So we do have competitors in this space, right? You know, big name, LED installers but they're all manufacturers. So, even though we were competitors, we're kind of not, you know what I mean? Like you can see a world where we can come together with some of these and enhance their business. Right. We feel that we can do a good job on the installation side and on the service side. But we really talk to the clients and figure out what they need from the LED signage perspective and we go out and find the best possible product to deliver that.  And then we'd like to use our four business lines to create a cohesive partnership with that client. So, once we're in a venue and they want to add a display here and there. It's very easy to add it into our existing licensing software or to add it to our services. Right? So, we like to use or give the partner back ad dollars by finding somebody to buy advertisements on their home plate or elsewhere in the venue. So, we really can use our different lines to be a full service partner for all of our clients.  David: It's interesting. Years ago, I remember talking to somebody about shopping malls and how shopping malls, particularly in Asia, were no longer just seen as warehouses or Harmonized venues for retail. They were experiential places that were programmed and that had like programming calendars and special events and everything else related to it and it kind of sounds like what you're doing and what you can deliver is you're really programming a venue or in the case of down by the World Trade Center, multiple venues so that content cascades across them things happen and so on, but it's all kind of cohesive as opposed to maybe more traditional digital signage and just display work where there's something driving this, there's something else driving that maybe they once in a while sync up but they're not really working together.  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah, I agree. I think these are all becoming everyone's fighting to get the people to their venue, right? I mean they want to drive sales or drive concessions or whatever it might be. And the malls are becoming more of let's go spend a few hours at the mall. I mean let's not just go pick up something I need, right? It's like, let's do this with the kids or see this special event or whatever it might be. And being able to create an atmosphere that's inviting and appealing to people's eyes kind of goes hand in hand with that. And then obviously you can promote the upcoming events and whatnot too. Right. So there's just more and more digital installations happening and the interesting thing that we're seeing in the business and it's happening in sports as well.  I mentioned Jerry Cifarelli Sr started with rotational signs like static banners behind home plate and on ribbons and that grew into LED behind home plate and then LEDs on Ravenstein, these massive center hongs. But now these at home venues and these sport venues are now expanding, right? You have these big conglomerates businesses that are doing stuff outside beyond just the stadium, right? Trying to get people there before the games and to the restaurants and to the bars and you're seeing digital marquee that you would typically see on the highway, kind of up on the back of a stadium or down the street at the bar that they just built, that's owned by the same kind of marketing company that owns the business or has similar interests. So, if they are kind of meshing a lot and they're all trying to fight for those eyeballs and fight for those people to bring the dollars and revenue in their way.  David: Yeah, it kind of seems like the worlds are converging, when I was reviewing your company website and seeing how deep a background you have in sports, both college and pro. And expanding into retail and in public spaces like mass transport and so on and thinking at first that well these are very different worlds but when you really think about it they're very similar worlds in a lot of ways these days because like airports are shopping malls and sports venues are no longer just the arena,  It's the multi purpose sort of event area with retail and residential and hotel and everything else and it's all being driven by the same developer or developer group. So they are harmonizing all this stuff.  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah, that's exactly right. And we're here to help. Whatever those entities are to create a cohesive appeal to the entire look. And then what's happening too is a lot of our venues are old, right? Our malls are a little older, our stadiums are getting older. So you're going to see more of these stadiums, new builds will happen but you're going to see a lot of renovations where there's going to be seating upgrades and there's going to be changes to potential sight lines and things of that nature and make egress and easier and more exits whatever it might be. But the technology is really what's going to put the renovations over the edge and it used to be that once you walked through that little tunnel and saw the baseball diamond, the first LED you saw that day was then. Now it's like when you're a couple of miles away on the highway, you see a billboard that's on the stadium. So right away, you're triggering people's eyeballs before they even get to the park. Then you're tailgating and you're seeing advertisements run in your face and then you scan your ticket and you see an LED when you go through the lobby and the concessions and things like that, those can be obviously monetizable and you can have advertisements there. And the same things happening in malls and in transit hubs and in other places where they're trying to grab your attention before you even think about heading into that wherever you're at, wherever you're going.  David: Do you have to sell this whole notion into these kinds of venues or do they just inherently get it now because they've seen it in action elsewhere and it's no longer just this sort of exotic concept? Joe Occhipinti: They definitely have seen it and they want to do it. I think where we come in is kind of helping them bring that to life. So we actually have like an architectural designer that will go and meet with teams and say, Hey, we have this area of our club or of our mall or transit hub that we'd really love to be able to monetize and put some LED signage here but we don't really know how to do it. So that's where we come in, I would say we consult them but we're really just trying to provide another service to an existing partner or potential partner to say, Hey, we'll take some pictures, we'll create a virtual world and we'll throw some LEDs on there and you guys can kind of see and understand what it might look like. And how do we angle it right to catch the attention of people coming up the stairs so that whatever it might be. So you can maximize the eyeballs and the dollars that you would get from that, right? Or the feel or the presentation that you want there. So we're doing that constantly. We have done that at a lot of our marquee venues where we start with one install and the next thing you know is there's three or four or five installs over the next five or six years where they're adding a screen here or there because they realize it's a high traffic area or during walkthroughs or tours. It's a good place to promote their upcoming events or whatever it might be, you know what I mean? So we kind of do that a lot for our places just to allow them to continue to add to the technology and to provide a better presentation to their constituents that are at the venue.  David: Is it just the highly visible stuff? In the case of, let's say, a sports and events center, are you also driving the menu boards, menu displays in concession and the ticket windows and things like that? Joe Occhipinti: Yeah, we've done some of that. As I mentioned, Wells Fargo is like our, I don't want to say crown jewel but it's been a really great partner for us for I believe over a decade. And we literally do everything there from, they have a sports book lounge on their top level to where they were ingesting staff feeds and scores and betting lines, their main video screen is kind of kinetic. It comes down at one size and opens another and we just have to hit one button in our software which allows it to do that and then their IPTV system. I think it's upwards of 700 LCD or TV displays that they have across the venue and we don't have our own IPTV software but we built a bridge between us and their IPTV providers so that when they do score a goal or there is a win, we can send graphics out there. Or if something they want to promote to their suites or to certain areas of the business of the venue, I should say, we can do that. Or even emergent emergency messaging or something like that. We have the ability to go full blast on every display that we touch that's in there. And then even still, they're even adding more, we have billboards out on 95 there in Philly. They added some more displays on their outside, where if you go to a flyers game tomorrow, you'll see us up there kind of installing it. So, like I said, they're trying to get you from when you're a few miles away to get you thinking, you know, I'm excited for this game and I'm excited to participate in this event but also what goes out on there, you alluded to that. I kind of said the betting lines and things like that. But one of our venues we have in the city, we have two JP Morgan Chase banks and you think that's kind of like a sleepy thing like who's going there to see the LED. But what Chase does for their customers is while you're sitting there, you might see If there are any subway delays, we work with the MTA to ensure that you'll see any traffic it might be if you're heading to Queens and say, it'll say take the tunnel not the bridge or whatever it is. Right. And whether we'll pop up. So yeah, we're not creating this data but we're ingesting it from different feeds and from different sources and we're making it pretty, we're creating the graphical ways that it might show up and kind of add to the person's experience being at whatever venue they're at.  David: Right. Now if I talk to virtually any CMS software company out there these days  and I asked them about data integration, they'll say, of course, yeah we do all kinds of  data handling. We've got APIs and this and that where we're all over that stuff but I get the impression that there are very much different kind of tiers of this that you can have kind of basic data integration that yes, you could query, let's say some transit data if it's publicly available as an XML feed or something. From what you're telling me, this is quite a bit more exotic than that. Joe Occhipinti: Yeah, I believe it is. I mean, I think what we can do is if the weather variable says it's going to be cloudy, we create a graphical thing that shows what you would think would be cloudy and that shows up there, right? Or if when it's time for the weather to come through and it's sunny, the background will say 65 and it'll be sunny but if it's 65 and rainy, the background will have rain on it. So we're even going to that level where what the trigger is we're not just spitting out what the variable is but we're trying to create a cohesive content experience too, that kind of shows what's happening and then it allows us to trigger different items in our software too that if we can automatically change when the variable goes from top one to bottom one, it automatically changes the advertisements that would run in that happening. So it even comes with efficiencies on our end of what we're able to and how we're able to gain presentation and things of that nature. But yeah, I mean these are little subtle things that the customer or the fan really appreciates and it's just great for us that we have an in-house design team. We recreate these things, we're then our statistical engineers and our developers are then creating ways for it all to work together. So yeah, you do have your base level where we just want to see the scores on a ticker which we're happy to do but if they want to get more involved and do some more graphical things to enhance the experience, we're obviously able to do that as well. David: When it comes to things like game day experiences for big sports venues and multi purpose venues like that, do these organizations have their own teams that handle all that and they just kind of work with you or are you actually doing the game day experience for these companies? Joe Occhipinti: It's different at every venue. We're happy to be part of the team. However they would like us to be. It goes anywhere from a place like the game bridge field house, right? They just hosted the all star game and we live sync touches every LED display that's permanently installed there. And our operators heavily involved in production meetings need to understand what the run of the show is to load the content prior to the game. He's been there so long. I'm sure maybe he will make some say, Hey, maybe try this or that. I don't know but he's been there for a while. He's great at what he does and they fully trust us to carry out the run of shows that they have created but what might be in that run of show or graphics that the in-house design team also creates. So that's kind of part of the services department that I mentioned before, we also have graphic designers in house that if they want a special intro or some graphical element for a camera like a kiss cam or something. These keys and things that you see that help with game press, we kind of create those things for them. And our guys are downloading it, testing it, making sure that it works for the game when it inevitably runs in the game. So it is varying levels somewhere passive, right? We're like, Hey, we're here, let us know what you need us to do. Let us know what content needs to be run. And then in others where we're heavily involved where we're talking to them twice a week on content and churning out thousands of hours of graphical design and in their production meetings and we're upgrading their stat layers every season and creating a new look that might go with their season tickets or whatever it might be. Right. So they would kind of like to have that whole cohesive kind of brand. Brand look that they go for. So it does vary per client just based on your level with them and what they want to get out of the relationship.  David: Your company background is much more in sports but as we mentioned earlier, you kind of branched into retail and mass transport and other kinds of things like that. How does the business break down now? Is it still predominantly sports or are you seeing quite a bit of traction in these newer areas?  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah. I mean, obviously the legacy business, it used to be ANC sports and we dropped the sports when we started to foray into other things, the at home kind of markets. I would say we do more volume and on the support side but there's obviously a lot of growth and a lot of greenfield on the place we call it places are out of the home side. And we've been lucky enough to do some impressive installations where the clients have trusted us to perform those, even though we had a lack of experience in it. I've mentioned Fulton and Westfield, that was our first foray into it and was a hit and it looks great and still looks great, seven eight nine years later. We did a really good install down in South street seaport which we believe is really impressive. We did some stuff at Moynihan train hall. So we've been lucky to have some big marquee type installations. We are trying to build our relationships with a lot of the out of home players without naming any names. Like we were trying to build those relationships and just kind of see what the partnerships look like there and be an installer and integrator for them as well, just like we've been able to do in the sports.  So, I think the numbers will probably say that we're still more of a sports type business. But I don't think it's that far off from being even one day and I think we are going to put some resources behind it and we're going to do some stuff with the software that will help us change. We are in the process  of changing our user interface to be a little bit easier to use. We're doing some cloud type and quick play type stuff at NBC Universal right now, where they can walk around with their phones when they're doing tours and they can just change what's being displayed on the screens from their phone. So we are putting some resources behind it because we believe in it that we could help a lot of different partners achieve their goals there. David: I would imagine the typical media companies, even very large ones, would be pretty happy if somebody handled these more involved installations like Times Square or an entertainment district where there's a lot of screens because they're primarily in the business of selling media time and display faces and so on. I don't know that they really want to get all that dirty in terms of running these kinds of networks, particularly when they start to get quite complicated.  Joe Occhipinti: Literally and figuratively dirty like we're also installing the displays. It's a heavy construction type thing too. Right. So we're installing the display, we're doing the steel work and then we're plugging everything in and running the show as well. So yeah, I think we have a lot to offer. And obviously, we need to make some enhancements and it's almost like the out of home stuff isn't easier. It's different from in-game live presentations. And like you said, the legacy business was built that way. So when we got into the out of home market, it worked for out of home but we had some of these features like scheduling and overtakes and some of these things but they weren't maybe as robust as they are today cause we started doing more in it.  So, we've really focused in and debugged them and made them stronger and better so that we can run an out of home type market but it's almost too robust for the simple kind of one display on the side of a building like I'm talking about where we specialize is game presentation where you see five or six or seven different screens. They all have to be synced to kind of make the game presentation feel cohesive or in certain venues like Westfield, where you see many screens at once, you don't want it to be choppy and look off but we're maybe a little bit too robust when it comes to a single display, right? And because we're too robust, our features, maybe a little bit heavy in terms of costs. So we're going to try to address some of those things and really create something that would get all the features that we have but can also be used in an easier type setting as well and not be so cost effective and then like I said, we want to start getting our cloud infrastructure stronger and things like that, so that people can go by and change it with a phone. Right now we have people on staff that are scheduling these places for us in our lives. They're voting in and scheduling all these things. It would be easy if you work for Westfield World Trade and you're trying to court a client. You don't have to coordinate with ANC and the scheduler to, Hey, between 11 and 12, I want to show Sixteen Nine podcasts on all displays.  You could just walk around and you could press a button on your phone and right when you're showing up and you can just launch it. Right. So we're trying to do things like that.  David: The Fulton Center thing is interesting in how it crosses into a world trade in the Oculus retail area and so on. What did you learn out of that in terms of putting together a visual network that was going to run across multiple venues that aren't necessarily visible to one another. They're connected by tunnels or concourses but they're different things in certain respects and also, instead of a game where people are sitting for 40 minutes, almost all of them are constantly on the move.  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah. So obviously they placed the screens in places where they felt there was going to be higher traffic, right? Like an entrance to a subway tunnel or you come out of the path from Jersey and you're trying to get up into street level Manhattan and you walk that past, what amounts to almost four or five hundred feet of screens and it was definitely a little difficult to envision what they were trying to do but as it started to come together, it made a lot of sense to us and they kind of made it a little easier on us than had they treated the different areas of the facility to want to run different things, right? They want the whole facility to run everything all at the same time. So we're able to create the software, create batches that have all the displays and throw all the content in there and then schedule them appropriately rather than this side underneath by the path station needs to run this at this time and then over by tower two, we want to run that. And then in Fulton, we want to run this other thing.  They are two separate venues so we have two different schedules going at each one because they're different trains that run at each station, right? So in Fulton, you have four or five. And in Westfield, you have the AC and the two-three or whatever it is. So you have to decipher what goes where but the way they wanted to run it allowed things to be a little bit easier on the back end but we had to deal with network infrastructure and everything else like that which was new to us in this type of a venue. But they're really there to obviously be advertisements. Also, they need to make the place feel beautiful. Have you ever been down there? It's like all marble, it's a really beautiful facility. So they had to fit and they wanted to be in your face cause they were driving advertisements. They want to be appealing but they still need it to be beautiful and look good as well. So there was a lot of pressure on us too. The 24/7 nature of it is a little different than sports where you have a game and if something goes wrong, you generally have till the next day or two days later to fix it. That doesn't happen outside of home. Things gotta be working 23 and a half hours a day with not a lot of downtime and not a lot of issues happening because advertisers are walking through it and potential advertisers and the customers. So it was a lot of pressure on us. We literally have people walking the facilities downtown, New York, for 18 hours a day reporting issues and fixing issues. We don't want to have any downtime on these displays because the stakes are that high.  David: Yeah, really. How many people do you have working in the company? Roughly?  Joe Occhipinti: We have about just under a hundred full timers and depending on the seasonality of it, we have around 200 part timers that work for us all across the country.  David: And of the full timers are most of them kind of in the greater New York area. Joe Occhipinti: There's probably like 30 percent in this area, just cause like I said, we have a lot downtown and kind of work at our headquarters in Westchester but we're pretty spread out. We have upwards of almost a hundred venues across the country where we have something.  So, in those markets, like in LA or Washington DC or Baltimore, where we have a lot of different things going on. We have full timers that are in those markets actually running a stable of part timers as well.  David: Yeah, because they need to be there. They can't just say, well I can get there next Thursday or something. Joe Occhipinti: Yeah, they gotta be there at a moment's notice most of the time. .  David: Alright. This is great. If people wanna know more about ANC, they just go to ANC.com.  Joe Occhipinti: Yeah. ANC.com.  David: Nice and simple.  Joe Occhipinti: We do some stuff on social media but LinkedIn is really probably the one that makes the most sense if you want to check out some of our posts and what we've been up to lately. But we just did a full rebrand. We changed our logo. We kind of changed our colors after we bought the company back. I think the website looks great. So yeah, ANC.com will take you straight there and you guys can learn everything there is to know about us.  David: Powered by C10, I see. Joe Occhipinti: Powered by C10. C10's still around. Obviously, Jerry Cifrelli Jr. founded that company and that was the vehicle from which we acquired ANC but obviously with the legacy he had with his father and the name brand that ANC had, we decided we wanted to keep it. And just give it a refresh and push it forward. David: All right. Joe, Thank you very much for your time.  Joe Occhipinti: Thank you, Dave. This has been great. I appreciate it.

Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will continue our discussion about the AI Approach to Multiply Your Sales. This is part four in our series, and today we'll be talking about learning, segmenting, and the Three Ds. Welcome back, Jay. Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I really, really enjoyed this. I know I've said that in previous podcasts, but it's true. After each one, I've gone into my own business and I'm like, okay, I got to apply this and apply that because these conversations are of such value. So I appreciate your time. I love this. And hopefully it's been helpful to everybody else. David: I'm glad, I feel the same way, and I'm really looking at this almost like a mini-course. If people were to put together these four episodes and say, "How much of this stuff am I doing in my business?" You can probably implement some things very quickly that can probably help you get some great results. Jay: 100%. David: All right, so let's do the quick review. And again, what we're talking about here is we asked AI what will help you to multiply your business because that's been a focus of our conversations recently. AI came back with some different responses, and then we're talking about what AI says and how we're able to help implement those things in business with our clients. And so let's just recap. Number one was refine your target audience. Number two, develop a compelling value proposition. Number three, optimize your marketing channels. That was our first episode on that topic. In episode two, we covered points four, five, and six. Number four was enhance your customer experience. Number five, implement a referral program. And number six, leverage the power of content marketing. In episode three of this series, we hit utilize upselling and cross selling strategies, which was number seven. Analyze and optimize your sales funnel, which was number eight, and invest in customer relation management software, CRM, which was number nine. Now we're going to be doing 10, 11, and 12. Eleven and 12 are really bonus because originally I asked it for 10 and then I realized that doesn't break out well if you're doing three in a podcast. So I went back to the AI and I said, give me two more. And it did. So we'll be talking about numbers 11 and 12 in this podcast as well. So number 10 in the list of things that AI says will help you to multiply your sales is: 10: Continuous learning and adaptation. Stay updated with industry trends, attend relevant workshops or conferences, and be open to adapting your sales strategies to meet changing market demands. Well spoken AI! Continuous education. It's a good call! Jay: It is, and some professions actually require it. But again, that continuous education is often on a service or a specialty or things like that. It's not really on customer service or the technology or things like that. I feel like in that regard, so many of us are a hamster on a wheel. You know, we're just trying to keep up with what today is giving us. We're putting grease on the squeaky wheel and we don't have time to really think about staying up on, you know, all the latest trends and those kind of things. David: Yeah. And a lot of people just don't like continuing education, because they feel like so much of it is platitudes. It's like, I already know this stuff. I already know it, right? But knowing what to do is very different than knowing how to do it. And that's really what I've been trying to differentiate in this series of podcasts is that, yes, these are great statements. Continuous learning. That sounds great. But what are you learning? Are you learning things that you can implement immediately? Are you putting in place processes that will allow you to start getting results right away so you can gauge those results and then adapt, change, or tweak the process as you go to make sure that it's working for you?

Mary Barra, GM CEO, discusses the company's announcement of its biggest-ever buyback plan, and says she expects 'strong adoption' of more affordable EVs. Thierry Wizman, Macquarie Global Interest Rates & Currencies Strategist, says the biggest risk right now is another sudden shock in the oil market. Scott Nuttall, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Co-CEO, discusses his firm's acquisition of insurer Global Atlantic. Lara Rhame, FS Investments Chief US Economist, says the state of services in the economy could threaten the Fed's 2% inflation goal. Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Co-Chairman & Co-Founder, reflects on the legendary life and career of Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger. David Rubenstein, Carlyle Group Co-Founder, previews brand-new episodes of Bloomberg's "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations" featuring AIG CEO Peter Zaffino and Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman. Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. 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Transcript: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene, along with Jonathan Ferrell and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best an economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business app. John Ferrell with Mary Burrow, I want to go through some of the numbers for our audience. Divid end up thirty three percent, biggest ever buyback plan ten billion dollars, forty billion dollar name yesterday. Just some context perspective there that is massive inquiring minds. Mary will want to know why have you decided to deliver a ten billion dollar buy back shortly after you've signed a labor contract that adds nine point three billion to expenses over its term. Well, as we looked at what was happening from a labor perspective, we had built and really the labor environment going into our negotiations, we had put conservative estimates into our plan. So although it was a little higher than what we expected, we believe that we have and our guidance for next year, we've already said that we'll be able to offset that completely with the plan that we already had of a two billion dollar cost out perspective. So we did the right thing to recognize our manufacturing team members who have done a great job and continue to build vehicles safely with high quality. And we also thought that we've got to look and make sure that we're balanced across all of our stakeholders, and our owners are very important. So we think this was a very balanced response when we look at what was done from a labor perspective and what we're doing as part of our capital allocation framework for our owners. Well, let's get into that. So shareholders are super happy. The name is up by almost eleven percent so far this morning. I wonder if you aw Wiz Mary, they didn't get the forty percent they wanted. They got twenty five plus cost of living adjustments and other things as well. Is the old things of this morning not something that concerns you. When I look at it, I think it's balanced. Again, we have very well compensated and you know, when you look at the suite of benefits that our represented team members have it's a very very appropriate package and frankly leading from an industry perspective broader than just the auto industry. So I think we did the right thing to recognize and reward the hard work of our manufacturing team members across the board. But also one of the things our manufacturing team members very much value is job security. And to have job security, you have to have a strong company and you have to look at all of your stakeholders. So what we did from a share buyback perspective for our owners is I think a very balanced response. As you know, this move this morning not just about the capital return program, also about cost cuts. We know you're looking to fully offset that labor contract the additional costs from it. Have you identified where you will cut where you need to cut? Yes, a lot of this was already underway. At the beginning of this year calendar year twenty twenty three, we announced it too, billion dollar cost reduction structural cost reduction between twenty three and the end of twenty four. That's well underway. As I said, we also comprehended that we would have increases in our labor cost as we looked at what the environment was and also wanting to reward our manufacturing employees. So you know there's work going across many aspects of the business and including making our products more efficient while still having the features, the functionality and beautiful designs that our customers want. So there's been a concentrated effort at the company to lower our fixed costs while enabling wonderful products and rewarding the team that is helping us deliver them. Clearly, these are additional costs. Are they forcing a change in execution or a change in strategy? Definitely not a change in strategy. Our strategy is clear. It's really based on four pillars of executing our strong internal combustion engine program vehicles, and we see we're performing very well in the market and we see that we're below the average incentives. I think that speaks to the strength of our internal combustion engine products. From an EVY perspective, we have confidence in the portfolio we have. We're a bit disappointed this year that we were constrained by the automation to build modules. So this is not something that is fundamentally an issue with Altium. It was more manufacturing automation issue that we're working and we'll be out of it by middle of next year and making improvement every quarter from that perspective. Also software and this year. Earlier this year, Mike Abbott joined our team who brings tremendous software expertise and he's built a very strong team that we'll share more about when we get to our investor day in March of next year. And then autonomy and when you look at autonomous vehicles and the importance of this technology and the talent that we have at Cruise. We are doing an independent review from an incident perspective but also overall from a safety perspective, and that will guide our path forward there. But we have a very capable team there. So the four pillars of our strategy have not changed at all. What has changed is our tactics, and our tactics are changing because of the world is changing. We never thought that the EV adoption would necessarily be a straight line. We've seen this in other markets, we're seeing it now in the US. But I think the thing that everybody has to remember, if the growth is slowing, it is still growing. And we think as we get more of the EV products we have this year into next, we think we're going to see is strong adoption for our products, and as the charging infrastructure continues to be more robust, we think that's going to drive adoption as well as having affordable evs. And that's where when you look at the Chevrolet Equinox as well as the Blazer and the Bolt that's coming, we're going to be having products in that range of affordable vehicles. That is going to be very important from EV adoption. Two things to unpack there. One is robot taxis. The other is EV. So let's deal with robot taxis. First, your counting expenses on crews substantially, just how committed are you there? I remember only a number of years ago we were talking about bringing in fifty billion in revenue by twenty thirty, and I get it. Married We'll understand that new tech is tough to develop, its to deploy. I think we're seeing that across a range of issues. But when do you know if it's the right time just to walk away from this well, I think the first of all, when you look at the progress that the Cruise team has made over the eight last eight years when General Motors acquired crews, I think it's substantial and we've already demonstrated that the cruise vehicle can perform at a level that's safer than a human driver. Let's not forget over forty thousand people on average lose their lives in traffic accidents in the US alone, and ninety percent of them are caused by human error. What we have learned with this incident is it's got to be significantly better than a human driver to drive adoption, and we have to do a much better job of working with the regulators. That's something that GM has a long reputation of working and being transparent with regulators at the local, state, and federal level. So I think as we do that and get the results of the independent review we're doing, that will guide us on our path forward. From an AV perspective, I'm always interested in how we know when we're wrong an exit size I think everyone has to go through, including myself married. But on this topic of EV's the slow down, what's behind it and why aren't we just learning that American consumers just don't want these cars? Well, I don't think it's that American consumers just don't want these cars. I think there still is limited availability when you look at the choice that customers had today, from an internal combustion vehicle perspective, I think a lot of the evs that are out right now are more expensive. You've got to look at where the sweet spot of the market is, and when you really want to win an EV's you've got to make sure that you are meeting the customer who only owns one vehicle. That's the bulk of people who buy vehicles today, new vehicles. They only own one vehicle or if they have two in their family. They're needed every day to earning their livelihoods. So we've got to get affordable. There's got to be a robust charging infrastructure. So again, the growth hasn't gone in reverse. It's slowing. I think we never expected. We thought it would be have some bumps along the way. I think that's what we're seeing right now. But I think when we have evs that are affordable, when people realize how much fun they are to drive and the performance and they're not giving anything up, and then that all important charging infrastructure, I think you know we're going to see them start to grow at a more rapid break again. And that's something that we'll continue to watch. And that's why we've changed some of our tactics to be responsive to where the customer is. You've been super generous with your time. Marriage. Just want to fit in one further question. Right now, you're a forty three billion dollar name. It's a big move this morning by ten percent. The forward multiple we're talking about four times expected earnings a little more than that after today's move. The stock has been dead money for the best part of a decade. You've been doing this a long time. I know you're super close with investors. What is it that you think is in this plan, this strategy that you have and a strategy that you've suggested this morning hasn't changed that's going to turn this around. Well, I think demonstrating our commitment to all of our stakeholders and the I think when you look at a ten billion dollar accelerated buyback program, it should signal because it means we have confidence in the cash generation ability of this company. We have confidence in our strategy across the four pillars that I covered. Yes, we had some challenges that this year with our ultim based evs that I think gabe investors some concern, But we're demonstrating the confidence that we and the board have that we're executing the strategy, and we're going to see growth, strong cash flow and strong margins. That's what we're going to deliver. That's captured in today's move nine percent. Mary, appreciate your time ready tell you thanks for catching up with us, Mary Parda of GM too. Wiseman joins us right now. Global Efects interest rate strategist much more than that at Macquarie, with lots and lots of experience on this. I love the first sentence of your note. Don't believe the hype You've been skeptical. Are you combining and dovetailing in with your low rate call a true slowdown in the economy? Yes? Absolutely. I think the narrative these days from Wall Street that I've seen in the last few weeks is that the reason the ten year field has been coming down is because we're in a disinflationary phase here in the economy, and there's going to be more disinflation to come in the US. I agree with that we are going to see disinflation in the US. It's going to come in rants, it's going to come in those eras of the CPI that are linked to consumer discretionary spending. But let's Also keep in mind one of the reasons we're going to see this disinflation is because the consumer is slowing. And there you have the don't believe the hype story, right, I don't believe the story is about record breaking Black Thursdays, by Friday sales and Cyber Monday sales. I think what I think these sales were on the back of heavy discounting. If you look at what some of these corporate execs had said prior to the start of the holiday spending season, they talked about having to cut prices. We'll all Marty even talked about deflation. So this is this is about disinflation. But let's keep in mind where this this inflation is going to come from. It's going to come from a weakening and pricing power at the consumer product and services level. It's going to be driven by slow down in agurate demand in the US. Also about how they're pank for this stuff Binapailita. You look at some of the numbers just booming. What do you take away from that? So my takeaway is from a macroeconomic perspective, what it does is it shifts spending to the early part of the season because normally you would have to save up a few more shekels as you approach your deadline on December twenty fifth to get those purchases done with by now, pay later. You don't need to do that, so it allows you to spend earlier, especially if you don't have access to revolving credit or credit cards. So I think that's another reason why we might have seen the so called record breaking days on last Friday and Monday. But again, if that's if it's the case that spending was only pulled forward, it doesn't mean that in aggregate for the whole of the season we're going to get that much that much hype. So far, people have viewed weaker US data as a positive. It's both been for a bond rally and a stock rally, And you're saying that we could see that bond rally continue quite significantly going forward. Will there be a diversion so in terms of risk asseesis or have to be to fuel a bond rally that goes much deeper than where we are now. Absolutely, to let the bond rally extend to say where the ten yure yield gets the three percent, I do think it has to be associated with a sell off at risk assets. I don't think you know, to get that kind of forceful move early in the bond market, you need to have some sort of dislocation in risk ASTs, some sort of drop in stocks, but over time, not necessarily. I think we can see a situation where, if this inflation continues slowly, you get the bond deal going down to where it was, let's say in the spring. Three and a half percent is not inconceivable without a stock market drop as long as it happens slowly and steadily. But well, corporations adapt. If I go back to bear Stearns, where you're held court, you had an entire security analysis team looking at these slowdowns, I don't buy the gloom. And the corporations, like General Motors, will adapt. I'm not sure what they're going to adapt to. Technological progress and changes. They can adapt to. Government policies that spur more investment in electric vehicles and clean energy technologies they can adapt to. But what do you do when you have excess inventory as the auto dealers do? Now? What do you do when the banks and the finance companies are cutting off credit to auto buyers? What do you do? Then you're not in control of that situation. You're in control of what's happening on your factory floor, You're in control of promotions, and maybe the way you adapt is by cutting prices. Let's face it, that's a way of adapting to to hold on to market share in the face of excess inventories, in the face of consumers slowing their demand. So yeah, they can adapt, but it's not necessarily in a way that is going to make their stock prices shoot up. You've identified a series of places in this economy where we could see lower prices retail, Walmart, talked about the auto makers, We're talking about GM, maybe lower prices, going to see that come through the pipeline soon. What's the biggest threat that still lingers for you? The biggest threat to that view that this disinflation continue through next year, it's supply shocks. I think the lesson of twenty twenty twenty two and early twenty twenty three was that we cannot control what happens in the rest of the world, especially as it pertains to the supply of oil, the supply of natural gas. So from my perspective, if we get another shock in that market, and by the way, it doesn't have to be because of a war, although in the past two years that has been the case. It could be simply that OPEC plus decides to curtail supply and we get a brand going back up to the low nineties as a result of that. Again, it's a question of how much they curtail supply by, but that's the biggest risk right now. The good news is that gasoline prices in the US have been falling for six weeks straight, I think, and steadily. I think that's going to show up in the CPI by the time we rolled around to seeing the November numbers and the December numbers. But the real reason that the CPI is going to still see disinflation is because rents rents in the new tenant market and the new lease market are coming down. That's going to put a lot of pressu ultimately on the yellows as measures of rents of primary residences. We're going to get that disinflation over the next few months. This is exactly what nil Data of Renaisance Macro is talking about tom the disinflation that's in the pipeline for rents for used cars, which is why based on what Walla said yesterday, it's not that much of an if for the likes of Terry, for the likes of Nil Duta, which is why they think you're going to get this conversation early next year about which you said interest rates. Yeah, there's no question there's a school of thought out there that this is not if. It's just simply when in the path to it. But I would dovetail it back to the labor economy, which we've barely touched on today, and we've got claims coming up here Thursday. And then you mentioned the late jobs report for November. I believe it's December eighth. But the basic idea here, John is when does a labor economy finally go? If you get a labor economy to go, you get there instantly. Claims two O nine, keep going back to two nine claims to eighty one economy in so many different ways over the last eighteen months or so. Terry, it's going to see it, Terry wi there at Macquarie longer going far away. There was KKR nineteen seventy six with history made in a style and a method. At KKR it was original. Shanale Basset gets an update from their co CEO Shanale, Good morning, Thank you, Tom. I'm standing by with the co CEO of KKR, Scott not All, and it is a really big day for KKR because they are doing this. They're buying the rest of Global Atlantic, a big insurance company that they don't already own. That is an all cash, two point seven billion dollar deal. But you're also creating a new unit at KKR that houses a core private equity business. If you had to give the market one way to understand what you're trying to do over there, what is it? First of all, Shanali, great to be with you, Thanks for having me. Really, what we're trying to do today is lay out the big three growth engines we have as a firm. So you're right, we are buying the minority stake in Global Atlantic we don't already own. We already owned sixty three percent of the companies, so we're buying the other thirty seven percent. Global Atlantic has been a great partnership for us. This is a transaction we did in twenty twenty one. The company is more than doubled since we announced the original deal in July of twenty twenty and it's been highly recurring a lot of growth earnings for KKR, so that's part one. We are also modifying our compensation ratios so our asset management business continues to scale. Our run rate management fees have doubled over the last three years. So the second thing we're doing is reducing the compensation ratioon fees, making an offsetting increase on kerry, and that will allow us to create more fee related earnings for our shareholder. You're changing the way you pay people, in effect, not the aggregate amount of compensation, but we're providing more of the fee related earnings to our shareholders, a little bit more carry to our people. The net of that is about neutral, but it will mean more of few related earnings overall. And then the third thing we're doing to your point, and this is relatively new for us, is we're creating a new segment for the firm. So we've historically reported as asset management and insurance. We are adding a new segment called Strategic Holdings. And what we will include in there are the dividends that we're receiving and will begin to receive in greater magnitude from our core private equity portfolio, which is a portfolio of great diversified recession resistant companies that we've been building up over the last several years. KKR, Apollo, Brookfield, they're all buying insurance companies. All of you are diversifying in pretty meaningful ways if you think about it. It's made private equity, by the dollars, by the assets under management, a smaller part of all of your businesses. What does this mean for the future of private equity? Private equity is still a growth business for us. We expect to continue to grow that part of KKR for a long time, both with respect to the flagship strategies, but also we've created a number of different growth strategies. The core private equity business is part of private equity that's now a thirty billion dollar franchise for us. So this isn't about an ore. This is about an and we see an ability to grow PE and all the other parts of KKR, and we've diversified meaningfully over the course of the last ten to fifteen years. We're just continuing our way down that path. Now, what does Global Atlantic exactly do. It seems like what it's really doing is giving you a whole balance sheet to be using to compete on you've mentioned capital markets is one place there's been a lot of competition from your industry to the banks. How does this help you now compete in a bigger way? Sure, Global Atlantic, as you know, it's largely issued annuities to individuals, and so if you think about what we do at KKRE, we work for pensioners, retirement retirees all around the world now family offices and individual investors as well. Global Atlantic distributes its products to that same kind of an audience. So historically we've worked for tens of millions of retirees. We still do, but now they're just in the form of policyholders. And that's our mission at KKR is to actually do a great job for all those people that we work for. We're not confused about who our bosses are. And so to the second part of your question on capital markets, what Global Atlantic allows us to do is create more synergy. We didn't necessarily see all this three years ago when we started our way down this path, but we think there's even more we can do to unlock value between the two companies, and capital markets is just one of those examples. Capital markets means you might be appearing on more and more deals lending a balance sheet to provide capital for big buyouts and other leverage loan deals. That's right, and we're already in that business. So the way that we built our capital markets business is by partnering with a Street, So we'll be alongside of the traditional banks and investment banks as we built that business. But what Global Atlantic brings us is an ability to expand the vision for that franchise. So there's more to do across asset based finance. As an example, more, when Global Atlantic does their large institutional block transactions, we can put some of the Global Atlantic balance sheet. GA has its own sidecard third party capital funds called IVY, so some can go into those third party funds, and then we can syndicate the excess through our capital markets forranchise as well. Just like we do private equity and infrastructure transactions, it applies to insurance deals as well. Something interesting about these deals is that you already have told investors this morning that this will add twenty percent to total operating earnings. You're boosting your targets into twenty twenty six for few related earnings. What are the real financial impacts? What can stockholders feel for KKR over the next two three years, well, I think what they'll be able to see is we are going to grow all three of our recurring forms of earnings in a much more meaningful way going forward, So a few related earnings will be higher. We continue to see a lot of organic growth in our businesses. Just by changing our compensation ratios, you get accretion on few related earnings, and we think by virtue of what we're renouncing today, we can do even more. With the Global Atlantic where we invest that portfolio, it's already gone from seventy two billion of AUM when we announced the transaction to one hundred and fifty eight billion over the last few years. We think we can do even more together. But they'll also see more insurance operating earnings, which we believe are highly recurring and fast growing. And then we'll have this third element, which will be the core private equity dividends showing up in the strategic holding segment. If you put those three things together, we think that'll be seventy percent or more of our overall pre tax income is those three forms of recurring earnings, and we're going to introduce them a new metric around that called operating earnings and we'll talk about that later today with our shareholders. Scott, we do have to leave it there. Thank you for joining us on a big day over at KKR. Tom shout on the basic Thank you so much with a gentleman from KKR in the future of what they do, joining us now, Lawyer. I'm chief US economist at FS Investments. On an eight point nine percent nominal GDP America, Laurie, what's so great about your economics is you've got it from the litmus paper of the FX market. How alone is the United States with an eight point nine percent nominal GDP. When Rishie Sonak is telling Francy Qua he's worried about austerity, I think we are still the growth continued to just surprise to the upside, and to me, it's remarkable the inconsistency between talking about rake cuts to you know, this idea that we're going to need rake cuts in the near term to support the economy, or the short term idea that we've seen the labor market slow. And really we do feel like we're an economy and the data would show that we're an economy firing on all cylinders. Government, business bending, consumption the only keys that's not really adding to it as residential construction. I would say that we are the standalone leader on growth. And what's so important here, Lisa, A nominal GDP topline, that's real GDP posts inflation is there's an assumption here by the Bill Ackmans of the world economists and not that it's going to plunge down to what six percent, five percent? Even that's a boom economy. And when you say it, they're talking the inflation component. And Laura, that's what I want you to weigh in on. How much does it matter if we see a slow down do we need to slow down if we continue to see the pace of disinflation that we've seen so far this year. I think there's two pieces to that argument. To me, the real and one place from probably off consensus is I am really reticent to think that we are going to get this magical slow down in inflation back to that two percent lane that we have had. On the good side, we have a lot of indications that just from some slower demand and from some of these resolutions and inventory that we're going to see lower goods prices. But I think we are really ignoring the big elephant in the room, which is services. We still have a hot labor market by my measure, we still have wage pressure that is way higher than prior to the pandemic, and the resting heart rate of inflation is still well above two percent. And on the services side really is the problem here. So I think we need to be careful about being very complacent about inflation coming down, and that really feeds into this non recessionary rate decline Goldilocks complacency that has taken hold of equity markets at this moment. In some ways, the Fed's wall are really kind of fed into that yesterday, which is a reason why maybe he gave Steams some of these market movements. He said, there is just no reason to say you would keep rates really high and inflation is back at target, how high is the threshold then to cut rates. If we do see the disinflation in the pipeline significant, it might not be long lasting because of some of these other issues, but we do see year over year comps come in with autoprice disinflation or outright deflation with rents coming in, with the fact that goods, as Walmart said, just prices are actually going down outright. I think the FED is good at looking around the corner on especially this rent issue. There's no doubt that rent is a very lagging indicator, but it's sticky for a reason. And all of the short term indicators that you know, six months ago were really pointing to rents coming down fast have now reversed. And I think something that's very important to me is the fact that rents are far below the cost that it is to buy a home per square foot. You are costing you a lot less to rent, and landlords are rational. They're going to see this, and they are going to over the next several quarters, you know, push rents higher again. So it's something that you just can't ignore in the core, even if you get the headline hitting two percent. I get nervous when the FED tries to micro manage the inflation process, Laura, and this with your overarching philosophy of summing all this together, are we beyond the pandemic? It sure doesn't feel like it to me. It feels like the stimulus is still pop and popping, popping. But from where you sit, are we beyond COVID Not? In the data, Tom, I think we're seeing this trampoline effect and the Q three GDP numbers are great example of that, and we had a big inventory, you know, push higher. We could very well get that. Still detracting from the fourth quarter, you're still getting some of these big swings in factors that are disguising what's going on underneath with demand which is still really red hot. So this is a big to me, you know, piece that we're looking at. For twenty twenty four, we start to see some move away from reliance on savings towards income. I think the irony is it could be a period of lower growth next year, but actually better sentiment about household economics as you see income finally catch up to the prior year and a half of inflation. Okay, I'm gonna pinion down it. Give me some twenty twenty four lower outlook numbers, real GDP. What do you think? Real GDP one point four and I think the tenure stays pretty high. I'm putting it at four percent for twenty twenty four. I mean, these are Lisa, these are huge slow down numbers. And then the question comes over immediately, what does non farm payrolls do? David Kelly, a JP Morgan would say goes negative well and This is really the ultimate question, Laura, do we get that kind of slow growth but high yield along with a full, fully employed America, along with job creation that continue to chugle all. I think that we look at the recessions that we've had in the two thousands, twy tens, even the nineteen nineties, we saw very little. If you look at nineteen ninety two thousand recessions, we saw very little drop and output, but a massive decline in labor in this I think upcoming year we're going to see a slower economy, but I think that companies continue to view labor as a scarce resource. I think the true Goldilocks is not going to be defined by output. It's going to be defined by the labor market, and we are going to see the I think the unemployment rates stay quite low. Lar. Thank you. We FS investment slower rhyme this morning there were a one point four percent called slower economy year. Howard Marks, chairman of oak Tree Capital Management, and I must point out author of not one, two, but three important books on investing of What to Do and just as importantly Howard What Not to Do. Howard on Charlie Munger getting the odds on your side. How did Charlie Munger get the odds on his side? He started off with a brilliant mind and a brilliant partner. He intensively studied the financials, thinking about the long term. He never tried to guess what a company or a stock would do in the short term. And he held for many years. You know, he was a great practitioner. Sit on your hands, and he did it flawlessly in the modern day, in the modern media, I remember reading those annual reports. How are years ago there was no financial media, there was no blogging internet. The short termism we're living it now. What is the lesson of Charlie Munger's long termism? Well, if you want to hit the long ball, you have to be very patient, and you know, when the stock moves up the first twenty percent, you can't start taking profits. Charlie and Warren have held things for decades. And the other thing is they were and Charlie always talked about this, you have very few moonshots. Charlie said within the last year that most of his wealth came from four decisions. And so you know what would have happened if he would have started trimming those four decisions early he certainly would not have accomplished what he did, and I think Warren would the same thing. Maybe the number four would be a little different with Warren, but you know, you know, Warren's famous for having said, put all your eggs in one basket. And I watched the basket really closely, and I think that it wasn't one basket. But the idea of concentration and patience coupled with good decisions makes for a great success. You know, a concentration and patience don't accomplish anything if you can't make above average investment decisions. But putting it all together is the formula for success. Howard, you wrote in some of your thoughts about Charlie Mungerth that he had very definite opinions, in particular regarding the investment management industry. He viewed the industry with considerable skepticism, and while a member of it, I found myself in agreement with him more often than not. What exactly are you talking about in particular? You know, I think both Charlie and Warren felt that our industry, relatively few members of it made substantial contributions to their clients wealth. Many more members that were well paid. He was always one who questions incentives. He says, you give me incentive, an incentive, I'll tell you the behavior. And and I think that, you know, I think that Warren and Charlie, if you're their operation, they, in fact Warren's ed and quotes, not a partnership, not a corporation of partnership. And they considered there there the people they manage money for their shareholders to be their partners. And they considered themselves to be working for their partners and not themselves, and their own wealth and success was a byproduct of working of doing great work for the partners. So you know, I like to put my sameself in the same boat. Those sentiments appeal to me greatly, and I've tried to follow that. How difficult has it been to sort of to adapt the strategy to different eras When you had conversations with Charlie Munger, there are questions around tech and how that changed the investment thesis. How did they think about the changing concept of what a wonderful company looked like and what fair value was. You know, you, on the one hand, you have to evolve with the times. On the other hand, you know they never went a full bore into the tech sector. You know, their famous are having made a lot of money with Apple, but you know, most tech the way they said it, they put it on the too hard pile. And if you have if you understand that your success will come from a small number of holdings, that means you don't need twenty thirty thirtyfty sixty. You don't need to exploit all the sceptors. You just have to find a few great ones. Of course, on the other hand, you know Tom said that we're you know, we're in a new era with all the communications we have. Part of what that means is that the world is a more interconnected, intelligent place. You know, back fifty years ago we used to be able to exploit things nobody else knew. Today there's very little information that doesn't make its waste speedily around the world. Howard to help us with one final question here to the management the future management of Berkshire Hathaway. They have a from COVID buildup of cash a four hundred and twelve billion out to half a trillion dollars five hundred and twenty five trillion. You and everybody else out there is living with explosive money market fund growth. You know the story in that forward here for Berkshire, Hathaway, what's the best use of there in our mounds of cash? You know, the people who run Berkshire today and will run it tomorrow understand the limitations of size. All things being equal, size makes it harder to outperform. They have the best probability of outperforming of any company their size, but their size will matter. And you know one of my professors at University of Chicago. I asked him afterwards, how would you manage a big fund? He'd say, I would index the cord and manage the hell out of the periphery. And I would imagine that at their size, they'll have to move in the direction of something like that, although they will not give up on outperformance. Howard Marx, thank you with oak Tree Capital Management. In remembrance of Charlie. I'm so pleased that we get to speak with Tipenstein, co founder and co chair of Carlisle Group, host of Peer to Peer Conversations on Bloomberg Television, because David is somebody who talks with all the executives across Wall Street, Main Street and beyond to understand how they're dealing with some of these transformative technologies of the moment, and David, I want to start there kind of where the similarities are in how some of these executives are thinking about the developments and artificial intelligence in a generative AI. Well, everybody wants to be an expert on AI and figure out how it's going to affect their company positively or negatively, but honestly, nobody really knows for sure yet how it will work. We're really inning one of artificial intelligence in terms of how major companies are going to use it or have it used against them. So everybody's trying to hire artificial experts or get people into their firm who can help them assess whether artificial intelligence is going to be useful to them or helpful to them, And nobody really knows yet, So I can't say anybody is certain how it's going to impact their business yet. David, mister Zevino stealed Marsh mcclennan and others, and then Nannie goes to AIG where different than other executives, he has to deal with disaster. What did you learn about how he handles the unexpected? Well, insurance is about dealing with the unexpected, really, and so AIG became the largest insurance company in the world for many, many years, and as a result of that, it had enormous tentacles throughout the entire financial complex. It clearly extended itself too much, didn't anticipate problems that arose, particularly in the mortgage area, and as a result had to be bailed out by the US government to tune of about one hundred and eighty billion dollars. Now that money's been paid back with interest. But AIG is no longer the biggest insurance company in the world, and it doesn't have quite the tentacles around the world that it once did, but still a very profitable company. David and Newsmaker yesterday. This is what Rubinstein does. He's steering the thunder from journalist David Rubinstein with Bill Ackman yesterday and the track that this nation will take. What did you learn from mister Rackman, David Rwinstein. Well, Bill is a very impressive person who obviously is outspoken, has been outspoken on many issues over many years. Recently has become quite visible in what he's been saying about Harvard. But he said in the interview which will air not too long from now that he's made a new bet. He's made a number of macro bets that have turned out to be extremely positive. One of them, he made it over one hundred times his money on a bet that he made a number of years ago in the time of COVID. Now he's made a bet that interest rates will be cut sooner by the Fed than is otherwise expected. And if that bet is successful, I guess he'll make a fair amount of money. But that's the big issue that many people are grappling with. Will the Fed decide and it needs to lower interest rates before the political season starts, let's say, in the summer or the fall of next year. Dave, excuse me, go ahead, Lisa, please my fault. David, is it surprising to you that a big hedge fund is focused on making big bets on treasuries right now? Well, many hedge funds people are doing that. Honestly, he has not done the so called treasury trade that others have done, where he's buying treasuries and shorting treasury futures. He hasn't done that. This is basically a bet that the Fed will succumb to some pressure to lower interest rates before too long. Now, the conventional wisdom in Wall Street is that the Fed will lower interest rates at some point during their first or second quarter, more likely the second quarter. I think his bet is it'll probably do it sooner than the conventional wisdom. And I have said publicly before, and I still think it's the case that the Fed will get in trouble if it lowers interest rates around the political season, because the Republicans will say, well, you're helping Joe Biden by lowering interest rates if you do so over the summer or in the early fall. So the Fed is going to lower interest rates, probably to avoid political criticism. It don't have to do it sooner than later. David, you mentioned mister Ackman in Harvard in the Horror of the Eastern Mediterrane. I want to go to your Duke University where they have a bridge. Folks. There's an old bridge called the Free Expression Bridge. And to make a long story short, they had to paint over a pro Palestinian tone as well. David, I want you to talk to the great and good right now about how those of means and success should deal with their shock at our American universities. Well, the American university system is still the envy of the world, and our private universities are really the places that people from all over the world want to attend. There's been a shock that many people didn't realize how strong the anti Israel feeling has been in some campuses, and the result of that has been outraged by some alums. Some universities have handled this better than other universities. I am the chairman of the board of the University of Chicago, and we have a tradition of not issuing statements on political matters or outside matters, and we have an issue one in this case. But in many cases other universities have not had that policy, and they've got in trouble for issuing statements that don't please one side or the other. It's a difficult way to walk his fine line, and I don't know that anybody has figured it out properly or correctly. David All glorious day for Bloomberg Surveillance with Doug cass and Howard Marks with us and membrance of Charlie Munger. Give us your thoughts on the hugely successful experiment that was Berkshire Hathaway. For those who don't know. Charlie Munger was from Warren Buffett's hometown of Omaha. He moved to Los Angeles and later reconnected with Warren Buffett, who hadn't really known before, but he had worked for Warren Buffet's grandfather at one point in a store. Charlie Munger was had outspoken, very very smart, a lawyer who transitioned from being a lawyer to being an investor, and his track record early on was actually better than Warren Buffett's in some respects. They teamed up became an incredible team of people who were mostly known to the public through their annual meetings where Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger would answer questions for six hours on end. And Charlie Munger was quite well known for his I would say, dismissive ideas of some other people's thoughts about investing. He was a very fundamentalist kind of investor and he transformed Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett was taught to buy things very cheap, and buy things cheap you can always make money. It was Charlie Munger's view that you should buy good companies. Maybe you pay a reasonable price for it, but buying good companies is better than buying cheap companies which may not be that good. And Warren Buffett gives a lot of credit credit to Charlie Munger for having transformed his views on the investment world. David, thank you for joining us today with us remember, and so Charlie Munger and of course with your excellence. Look for a conversation with Peter Zefino. Peer to peer conversations hugely anticipated in the next ten days. A conversation with Bill Eckman that move I would suggest move Markets. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Easter. I'm Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always I'm the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Keen, and this is BloombergSee 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David was the chief software architect and director of engineering at Stitch Fix. He's also the author of a number of books including Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails and most recently Ruby on Rails Background Jobs with Sidekiq. He talks about how he made decisions while working with a medium sized team (~200 developers) at Stitch Fix. The audio quality for the first 19 minutes is not great but the correct microphones turn on right after that. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. A few topics covered: Ruby's origins at Stitch Fix Thoughts on Go Choosing technology and cloud services Moving off heroku Building a platform team Where Ruby and Rails fit in today The role of books and how different people learn Large Language Model's effects on technical content Related Links David's Blog Mastodon Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Intro [00:00:00] Jeremy: Today. I want to share another conversation from RubyConf San Diego. This time it's with David Copeland. He was a chief software architect and director of engineering at stitch fix. And at the start of the conversation, you're going to hear about why he decided to write the book, sustainable web development with Ruby on rails. Unfortunately, you're also going to notice the sound quality isn't too good. We had some technical difficulties. But once you hit the 20 minute mark of the recording, the mics are going to kick in. It's going to sound way better. So I hope you stick with it. Enjoy. Ruby at Stitch Fix [00:00:35] David: Stitch Fix was a Rails shop. I had done a lot of Rails and learned a lot of things that worked and didn't work, at least in that situation. And so I started writing them down and I was like, I should probably make this more than just a document that I keep, you know, privately on my computer. Uh, so that's, you know, kind of, kind of where the genesis of that came from and just tried to, write everything down that I thought what worked, what didn't work. Uh, if you're in a situation like me. Working on a product, with a medium sized, uh, team, then I think the lessons in there will be useful, at least some of them. Um, and I've been trying to keep it up over, over the years. I think the first version came out a couple years ago, so I've been trying to make sure it's always up to date with the latest stuff and, and Rails and based on my experience and all that. [00:01:20] Jeremy: So it's interesting that you mention, medium sized team because, during the, the keynote, just a few moments ago, Matz the creator of Ruby was talking about how like, Oh, Rails is really suitable for this, this one person team, right? Small, small team. And, uh, he was like, you're not Google. So like, don't worry about, right. Can you scale to that level? Yeah. Um, and, and I wonder like when you talk about medium size or medium scale, like what are, what are we talking? [00:01:49] David: I think probably under 200 developers, I would say. because when I left Stitch Fix, it was closing in on that number of developers. And so it becomes, you know, hard to... You can kind of know who everybody is, or at least the names sound familiar of everybody. But beyond that, it's just, it's just really hard. But a lot of it was like, I don't have experience at like a thousand developer company. I have no idea what that's like, but I definitely know that Rails can work for like... 200 ish people how you can make it work basically. yeah. [00:02:21] Jeremy: The decision to use Rails, I'm assuming that was made before you joined? [00:02:26] David: Yeah, the, um, the CTO of Stitch Fix, he had come in to clean up a mess made by contractors, as often happens. They had used Django, which is like the Python version of Rails. And he, the CTO, he was more familiar with Rails. So the first two developers he hired, also familiar with Rails. There wasn't a lot to maintain with the Django app, so they were like, let's just start fresh, fresh with Rails. yeah, but it's funny because a lot of the code in that Rails app was, like, transliterated from Python. So you could, it would, it looked like the strangest Ruby code in the world because it was basically, there was no test. So they were like, let's just write the Ruby version of this Python just so we know it works. but obviously that didn't, didn't last forever, so. [00:03:07] Jeremy: So, so what's an example of a, of a tell? Where you're looking at the code and you're like, oh, this is clearly, it came from Python. [00:03:15] David: You'd see like, very, very explicit, right? Like Python, there's a lot of like single line things. very like, this sounds like a dig, but it's very simple looking code. Like, like I don't know Python, but I was able to change this Django app. And I had to, I could look at it and you can figure out immediately how it works. Cause there's. Not much to it. There's nothing fancy. So, like, this, this Ruby code, there was nothing fancy. You'd be like, well, maybe they should have memoized that, or maybe they should have taken that into another class, or you could have done this with a hash or something like that. So there was, like, none of that. It was just, like, really basic, plain code like you would see in any beginning programming language kind of thing. Which is at least nice. You can understand it. but you probably wouldn't have written it that way at first in Ruby. Thoughts on Go [00:04:05] Jeremy: Yeah, that's, that's interesting because, uh, people sometimes talk about the Go programming language and how it looks, I don't know if simple is the right word, but it's something where you look at the code and even if you don't necessarily understand Go, it's relatively straightforward. Yeah. I wonder what your thoughts are on that being a strength versus that being, like, [00:04:25] David: Yeah, so at Stitch Fix at one point we had a pro, we were moving off of Heroku and we were going to, basically build a deployment platform using ECS on AWS. And so the deployment platform was a Rails app and we built a command line tool using Ruby. And it was fine, but it was a very complicated command line tool and it was very slow. And so one of the developers was like, I'm going to rewrite it in Go. I was like, ugh, you know, because I just was not a big fan. So he rewrote it in Go. It was a bazillion times faster. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to add, I'll add a feature to it. It was extremely easy. Like, it's just like what you said. I looked at it, like, I don't know anything about Go. I know what is happening here. I can copy and paste this and change things and make it work for what I want to do. And it did work. And it was, it was pretty easy. so there's that, I mean, aesthetically it's pretty ugly and it's, I, I. I can't really defend that as a real reason to not use it, but it is kind of gross. I did do Go, I did a small project in Go after Stitch Fix, and there's this vibe in Go about like, don't create abstractions. I don't know where I got that from, but every Go I look at, I'm like we should make an abstraction for this, but it's just not the vibe. They just don't like doing that. They like it all written out. And I see the value because you can look at the code and know what it does and you don't have to chase abstractions anywhere. But. I felt like I was copying and pasting a lot of, a lot of things. Um, so I don't know. I mean, the, the team at Stitch Fix that did this like command line app in go, they're the platform team. And so their job isn't to write like web apps all day, every day. There's kind of in and out of all kinds of things. They have to try to figure out something that they don't understand quickly to debug a problem. And so I can see the value of something like go if that's your job, right? You want to go in and see what the issue is. Figure it out and be done and you're not going to necessarily develop deep expertise and whatever that thing is that you're kind of jumping into. Day to day though, I don't know. I think it would make me kind of sad. (laughs) [00:06:18] Jeremy: So, so when you say it would make you kind of sad, I mean, what, what about it? Is it, I mean, you mentioned that there's a lot of copy and pasting, so maybe there's code duplication, but are there specific things where you're like, oh, I just don't? [00:06:31] David: Yeah, so I had done a lot of Java in my past life and it felt very much like that. Where like, like the Go library for making an HTTP call for like, I want to call some web service. It's got every feature you could ever want. Everything is tweakable. You can really, you can see why it's designed that way. To dial in some performance issue or solve some really esoteric thing. It's there. But the problem is if you just want to get an JSON, it's just like huge production. And I felt like that's all I really want to do and it's just not making it very easy. And it just felt very, very cumbersome. I think that having to declare types also is a little bit of a weird mindset because, I mean, I like to make types in Ruby, I like to make classes, but I also like to just use hashes and stuff to figure it out. And then maybe I'll make a class if I figure it out, but Go, you can't. You have to have a class, you have to have a type, you have to think all that ahead of time, and it just, I'm not used to working that way, so it felt, I mean, I guess I could get used to it, but I just didn't warm up to that sort of style of working, so it just felt like I was just kind of fighting with the vibe of the language, kind of. Yeah, [00:07:40] Jeremy: so it's more of the vibe or the feel where you're writing it and you're like this seems a little too... Explicit. I feel like I have to be too verbose. It just doesn't feel natural for me to write this. [00:07:53] David: Right, it's not optimized for what in my mind is the obvious case. And maybe that's not the obvious case for the people that write Go programs. But for me, like, I just want to like get this endpoint and get the JSON back as a map. Not any easier than any other case, right? Whereas like in Ruby, right? And you can, I think if you include net HTTP, you can just type get. And it will just return whatever that is. Like, that's amazing. It's optimized for what I think is a very common use case. So it makes me feel really productive. It makes me feel pretty good. And if that doesn't work out long term, I can always use something more complicated. But I'm not required to dig into the NetHttp library just to do what in my mind is something very simple. [00:08:37] Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's something I've noticed myself in working with Ruby. I mean, you have the standard library that's very... Comprehensive and the API surface is such that, like you said there, when you're trying to do common tasks, a lot of times they have a call you make and it kind of does the thing you expected or hoped for. [00:08:56] David: Yeah, yeah. It's kind of, I mean, it's that whole optimized for programmer happiness thing. Like it does. That is the vibe of Ruby and it seems like that is still the way things are. And, you know, I, I suppose if I had a different mindset, I mean, because I work with developers who did not like using Ruby or Rails. They loved using Go or Java. And I, I guess there's probably some psychological analysis we could do about their background and history and mindset that makes that make sense. But, to me, I don't know. It's, it's nice when it's pleasant. And Ruby seems pleasant. (laughs) Choosing Technology [00:09:27] Jeremy: as a... Software Architect, or as a CTO, when, when you're choosing technology, what are some of the things you look at in terms of, you know? [00:09:38] David: Yeah, I mean, I think, like, it's a weird criteria, but I think what is something that the team is capable of executing with? Because, like, most, right, most programming languages all kind of do the same thing. Like, you can kind of get most stuff done in most common popular programming languages. So, it's probably not... It's not true that if you pick the wrong language, you can't build the app. Like, that's probably not really the case. At least for like a web app or something. so it's more like, what is the team that's here to do it? What are they comfortable and capable of doing? I worked on a project with... It was a mix of like junior engineers who knew JavaScript, and then some senior engineers from Google. And for whatever reason someone had chosen a Rails app and none of them were comfortable or really yet competent with doing Ruby on Rails and they just all hated it and like it didn't work very well. Um, and so even though, yes, Rails is a good choice for doing stuff for that team at that moment. Not a good choice. Right. So I think you have to go in and like, what, what are we going to be able to execute on so that when the business wants us to do something, we just do it. And we don't complain and we don't say, Oh, well we can't because this technology that we chose, blah, blah, blah. Like you don't ever want to say that if possible. So I think that's. That's kind of the, the top thing. I think second would be how widely supported is it? Like you don't want to be the cutting edge user that's finding all the bugs in something really. Like you want to use something that's stable. Postgres, MySQL, like those work, those are fine. The bugs have been sorted out for most common use cases. Some super fancy edge database, I don't know if I'd want to be doing, doing that you know? Choosing cloud services [00:11:15] Jeremy: How do you feel about the cloud specific services and databases? Like are you comfortable saying like, oh, I'm going to use... Google Cloud, BigQuery. Yeah. [00:11:27] David: That sort of thing. I think it would kind of fall under the same criteria that I was just, just saying like, so with AWS it's interesting 'cause when we moved from Heroku to AWS by EC2 RDS, their database thing, uh, S3, those have been around for years, probably those are gonna work, but they always introduce new things. Like we, we use RabbitMQ and AWS came out with. Some, I forget what it was, it was a queuing service similar to Rabbit. We were like, Oh, maybe we should switch to that. But it was clear that they weren't really ready to support it. So. Yeah, so we didn't, we didn't switch to that. So I, you gotta try to read the tea leaves of the provider to see are they committed to, to supporting this thing or is this there to get some enterprise client to move into the cloud. And then the idea is to move off of that transitional thing into what they do support. And it's hard to get a clear answer from them too. So it takes a little bit of research to figure out, Are they going to support this or not? Because that's what you don't want. To move everything into some very proprietary cloud system and have them sunset it and say, Oh yeah, now you've got to switch again. Uh, that kind of sucks. So, it's a little trickier. [00:12:41] Jeremy: And what kind of questions or research do you do? Is it purely a function of this thing has existed for X number of years so I feel okay? [00:12:52] David: I mean, it's kind of similar to looking at like some gem you're going to add to your project, right? So you'll, you'll look at how often does it change? Is it being updated? Uh, what is the documentation? Does it look like someone really cared about the documentation? Does the documentation look updated? Are there issues with it that are being addressed or, or not? Um, so those are good signals. I think, talking to other practitioners too can be good. Like if you've got someone who's experienced. You can say, hey, do you know anybody back channeling through, like, everybody knows somebody that works at AWS, you can probably try to get something there. at Stitch Fix, we had an enterprise support contract, and so your account manager will sometimes give you good information if you ask. Again, it's a, they're not going to come out and say, don't use this product that we have, but they might communicate that in a subtle way. So you have to triangulate from all these sources to try to. to try to figure out what, what you want to do. [00:13:50] Jeremy: Yeah, it kind of makes me wish that there was a, a site like, maybe not quite like, can I use, right? Can I use, you can see like, oh, can I use this in my browser? Is there, uh, like an AWS or a Google Cloud? Can I trust this? Can I trust this? Yeah. Is this, is this solid or not? [00:14:04] David: Right, totally. It's like, there's that, that site where you, it has all the Apple products and it says whether or not you should buy it because one may or may not be coming out or they may be getting rid of it. Like, yeah, that would... For cloud services, that would be, that would be nice. [00:14:16] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. That's like the Mac Buyer's Guide. And then we, we need the, uh, the technology. Yeah. Maybe not buyers. Cloud Provider Buyer's Guide, yeah. I guess we are buyers. [00:14:25] David: Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. [00:14:27] Jeremy: it's interesting that you, you mentioned how you want to see that, okay, this thing is mature. I think it's going to stick around because, I, interviewed, someone who worked on, I believe it was the CloudWatch team. Okay. Daniel Vassalo, yeah. so he left AWS, uh, after I think about 10 years, and then he wrote a book called, uh, The Good Parts of AWS. Oh! And, if you read his book, most of the services he says to use are the ones that are, like, old. Yeah. He's, he's basically saying, like, S3, you know you're good. Yeah. Right? but then all these, if you look at the AWS webpage, they have who knows, I don't know how many hundreds of services. Yeah. He's, he's kind of like I worked there and I would not use, you know, all these new services. 'cause I myself, I don't trust [00:15:14] David: it yet. Right. And so, and they're working there? Yeah, they're working there. Yeah. No. One of the VPs at Stitch Fix had worked on Google Cloud and so when we were doing this transition from Heroku, he was like, we are not using Google Cloud. I was like, really? He's like AWS is far ahead of the game. Do not use Google Cloud. I was like, all right, I don't need any more info. You work there. You said don't. I'm gonna believe you. So [00:15:36] Jeremy: what, what was his did he have like a core point? [00:15:39] David: Um, so he never really had anything bad to say about Google per se. Like I think he enjoyed his time there and I think he thought highly of who he worked with and what he worked on and that sort of thing. But his, where he was coming from was like AWS was so far ahead. of Google on anything that we would use, he was like, there's, there's really no advantage to, to doing it. AWS is a known quantity, right? it's probably still the case. It's like, you know, you've heard the nobody ever got fired for using IBM or using Microsoft or whatever the thing is. Like, I think that's, that was kind of the vibe. And he was like, moving all of our infrastructure right before we're going to go public. This is a serious business. We should just use something that we know will work. And he was like, I know this will work. I'm not confident about. Google, uh, for our use case. So we shouldn't, we shouldn't risk it. So I was like, okay, I trust you because I didn't know anything about any of that stuff at the time. I knew Heroku and that was it. So, yeah. [00:16:34] Jeremy: I don't know if it's good or bad, but like you said, AWS seems to be the default choice. Yeah. And I mean, there's people who use Azure. I assume it's mostly primarily Microsoft. Yeah. And then there's Google Cloud. It's not really clear why you would pick it, unless there was a specific service or something that only they had. [00:16:55] David: Yeah, yeah. Or you're invested in Google, you know, you want to keep everything there. I mean, I don't know. I haven't really been at that level to make that kind of decision, and I would probably choose AWS for the reasons discussed, but, yeah. Moving off Heroku [00:17:10] Jeremy: And then, so at Stitch Fix, you said you moved off of Heroku [00:17:16] David: yeah. Yeah, so we were heavy into Heroku. I think that we were told that at one point we had the biggest Heroku Postgres database on their platform. Not a good place to be, right? You never want to be the biggest customer person, usually. but the problem we were facing was essentially we were going to go public. And to do that, you're under all the scrutiny. about many things, including the IT systems and the security around there. So, like, by default, a Postgres, a Heroku Postgres database is, like, on the internet. It's only secured by the password. all their services are on the internet. So, not, not ideal. they were developing their private cloud service at that time. And so that would have given us, in theory, on paper, it would have solved all of our problems. And we liked Heroku and we liked the developer experience. It was great. but... Heroku private spaces, it was still early. There's a lot of limitations that when they explained why those limitations, they were reasonable. And if we had. started from scratch on Heroku Private Spaces. It probably would have worked great, but we hadn't. So we just couldn't make it work. So we were like, okay, we're going to have to move to AWS so that everything can be basically off the internet. Like our public website needs to be on the internet and that's kind of it. So we need to, so that's basically was the, was the impetus for that. but it's too bad because I love Heroku. It was great. I mean, they were, they were a great partner. They were great. I think if Stitch Fix had started life a year later, Private Spaces. Now it's, it's, it's way different than it was then. Cause it's been, it's a mature product now, so we could have easily done that, but you know, the timing didn't work out, unfortunately. [00:18:50] Jeremy: And that was a compliance thing to, [00:18:53] David: Yeah. And compliance is weird cause they don't tell you what to do, but they give you some parameters that you need to meet. And so one of them is like how you control access. So, so going public, the compliance is around the financial data and. Ensuring that the financial data is accurate. So a lot of the systems at Stichfix were storing the financial data. We, you know, the warehouse management system was custom made. Uh, all the credit card processing was all done, like it was all in some databases that we had running in Heroku. And so those needed to be subject to stricter security than we could achieve with just a single password that we just had to remember to rotate when someone like left the team. So that was, you know, the kind of, the kind of impetus for, for all of that. [00:19:35] Jeremy: when you were using Heroku, Salesforce would have already owned it then. Did you, did you get any sense that you weren't really sure about the future of the platform while you're on it or, [00:19:45] David: At that time, no, it seemed like they were still innovating. So like, Heroku has a Redis product now. They didn't at the time we wish that they did. They told us they're working on it, but it wasn't ready. We didn't like using the third parties. Kafka was not a thing. We very much were interested in that. We would have totally used it if it was there. So they were still. Like doing bigger innovations then, then it seems like they are now. I don't know. It's weird. Like they're still there. They still make money, I assume for Salesforce. So it doesn't feel like they're going away, but they're not innovating at the pace that they were kind of back in the day. [00:20:20] Jeremy: it used to feel like when somebody's asking, I want to host a Rails app. Then you would say like, well, use Heroku because it's basically the easiest to get started. It's a known quantity and it's, it's expensive, but, it seemed for, for most people, it was worth it. and then now if I talk to people, it's like. Not what people suggest anymore. [00:20:40] David: Yeah, because there's, there's actual competitors. It's crazy to me that there was no competitors for years, and now there's like, Render and Fly. io seem to be the two popular alternatives. Um, I doubt they're any cheaper, honestly, but... You get a sense, right, that they're still innovating, still building those platforms, and they can build with, you know, all of the knowledge of what has come before them, and do things differently that might, that might help. So, I still use Heroku for personal things just because I know it, and I, you know, sometimes you don't feel like learning a new thing when you just want to get something done, but, yeah, I, I don't know if we were starting again, I don't know, maybe I'd look into those things. They, they seem like they're getting pretty mature and. Heroku's resting on its laurels, still. [00:21:26] Jeremy: I guess I never quite the mindset, right? Where you You have a platform that's doing really well and people really like it and you acquire it and then it just It seems like you would want to keep it rolling, right? (laughs) [00:21:38] David: Yeah, it's, it is wild, I mean, I guess... Why did you, what was Salesforce thinking they were going to get? Uh, who knows maybe the person at Salesforce that really wanted to purchase it isn't there. And so no one at Salesforce cares about it. I mean, there's all these weird company politics that like, who knows what's going on and you could speculate. all day. What's interesting is like, there's definitely some people in the Ruby community who work there and still are working there. And that's like a little bit of a canary for me. I'm like, all right, well, if that person's still working there, that person seems like they're on the level and, and, and, and seems pretty good. They're still working there. It, it's gotta be still a cool place to be or still doing something, something good. But, yeah, I don't know. I would, I would love to know what was going on in all the Salesforce meetings about acquiring that, how to manage it. What are their plans for it? I would love to know that stuff. [00:22:29] Jeremy: maybe you had some experience with this at Stitch Fix But I've heard with Heroku some of their support staff at least in the past they would, to some extent, actually help you troubleshoot, like, what's going on with your app. Like, if your app is, like, using a whole bunch of memory, and you're out of memory, um, they would actually kind of look into that, for you, which is interesting, because it's like, that's almost like a services thing than it is just a platform. [00:22:50] David: Yeah. I mean, they, their support, you would get, you would get escalated to like an engineer sometimes, like who worked on that stuff and they would help figure out what the problem was. Like you got the sense that everybody there really wanted the platform to be good and that they were all sort of motivated to make sure that everybody. You know, did well and used the platform. And they also were good at, like a thing that trips everybody up about Heroku is that your app restarts every day. And if you don't know anything about anything, you might think that is stupid. Why, why would I want that? That's annoying. And I definitely went through that and I complained to them a lot. And I'm like, if you only could not restart. And they very patiently and politely explained to me why that it needed to do that, they weren't going to remove that, and how to think about my app given that reality, right? Which is great because like, what company does that, right? From the engineers that are working on it, like No, nobody does that. So, yeah, no, I haven't escalated anything to support at Heroku in quite some time, so I don't know if it's still like that. I hope it is, but I'm not really, not really sure. Building a platform team [00:23:55] Jeremy: Yeah, that, uh, that reminds me a little bit of, I think it's Rackspace? There's, there's, like, another hosting provider that was pretty popular before, and they... Used to be famous for that type of support, where like your, your app's having issues and somebody's actually, uh, SSHing into your box and trying to figure out like, okay, what's going on? which if, if that's happening, then I, I can totally see where the, the price is justified. But if the support is kind of like dropping off to where it's just, they don't do that kind of thing, then yeah, I can see why it's not so much of a, yeah, [00:24:27] David: We used to think of Heroku as like they were the platform team before we had our own platform team and they, they acted like it, which was great. [00:24:35] Jeremy: Yeah, I don't have, um, experience with, render, but I, I, I did, talk to someone from there, and it does seem like they're, they're trying to fill that role, um, so, yeah, hopefully, they and, and other companies, I guess like Vercel and things like that, um, they're, they're all trying to fill that space, [00:24:55] David: Yeah, cause, cause building our own internal platform, I mean it was the right thing to do, but it's, it's a, you can't just, you have to have a team on it, it's complicated, getting all the stuff in AWS to work the way you want it to work, to have it be kind of like Heroku, like it's not trivial. if I'm a one person company, I don't want to be messing around with that particularly. I want to just have it, you know, push it up and have it go and I'm willing to pay for that. So it seems logical that there would be competitors in that space. I'm glad there are. Hopefully that'll light a fire under, under everybody. [00:25:26] Jeremy: so in your case, it sounds like you moved to having your own platform team and stuff like that, uh, partly because of the compliance thing where you're like, we need our, we need to be isolated from the internet. We're going to go to AWS. If you didn't have that requirement, do you still think like that would have been the time to, to have your own platform team and manage that all yourself? [00:25:46] David: I don't know. We, we were thinking an issue that we were running into when we got bigger, um, was that, I mean, Heroku, it, It's obviously not as flexible as AWS, but it is still very flexible. And so we had a lot of internal documentation about this is how you use Heroku to do X, Y, and Z. This is how you set up a Stitch Fix app for Heroku. Like there was just the way that we wanted it to be used to sort of. Just make it all manageable. And so we were considering having a team spun up to sort of add some tooling around that to sort of make that a little bit easier for everybody. So I think there may have been something around there. I don't know if it would have been called a platform team. Maybe we call, we thought about calling it like developer happiness or because you got developer experience or something. We, we probably would have had something there, but. I do wonder how easy it would have been to fund that team with developers if we hadn't had these sort of business constraints around there. yeah, um, I don't know. You get to a certain size, you need some kind of manageability and consistency no matter what you're using underneath. So you've got to have, somebody has to own it to make sure that it's, that it's happening. [00:26:50] Jeremy: So even at your, your architect level, you still think it would have been a challenge to, to. Come to the executive team and go like, I need funding to build this team. [00:27:00] David: You know, certainly it's a challenge because everybody, you know, right? Nobody wants to put developers in anything, right? There are, there are a commodity and I mean, that is kind of the job of like, you know, the staff engineer or the architect at a company is you don't have, you don't have the power to put anybody on anything you, you have the power to Schedule a meeting with a VP or the CTO and they will listen to you. And that's basically, you've got to use that power to convince them of what you want done. And they're all reasonable people, but they're balancing 20 other priorities. So it would, I would have had to, it would have been a harder case to make that, Hey, I want to take three engineers. And have them write tooling to make Heroku easier to use. What? Heroku is not easy to use. Why aren't, you know, so you really, I would, it would be a little bit more of a stretch to walk them through it. I think a case could be made, but, definitely would take some more, more convincing than, than what was needed in our case. [00:27:53] Jeremy: Yeah. And I guess if you're able to contrast that with, you were saying, Oh, I need three people to help me make Heroku easier. Your actual platform team on AWS, I imagine was much larger, right? [00:28:03] David: Initially it was, there was, it was three people did the initial move over. And so by the time we went public, we'd been on this new system for, I don't know, six to nine months. I can't remember exactly. And so at that time the platform team was four or five people, and I, I mean, so percentage wise, right, the engineering team was maybe almost 200, 150, 200. So percentage wise, maybe a little small, I don't know. but it kind of gets back to the power of like the rails and the one person framework. Like everything we did was very much the same And so the Rails app that managed the deployment was very simple. The, the command line app, even the Go one with all of its verbosity was very, very simple. so it was pretty easy for that small team to manage. but, Yeah, so it was sort of like for redundancy, we probably needed more than three or four people because you know, somebody goes out sick or takes a vacation. That's a significant part of the team. But in terms of like just managing the complexity and building it and maintaining it, like it worked pretty well with, you know, four or five people. Where Rails fits in vs other technology [00:29:09] Jeremy: So during the Keynote today, they were talking about how companies like GitHub and Shopify and so on, they're, they're using Rails and they're, they're successful and they're fairly large. but I think the thing that was sort of unsaid was the fact that. These companies, while they use Rails, they use a lot of other, technology as well. And, and, and kind of increasing amounts as well. So, I wonder from your perspective, either from your experience at StitchFix or maybe going forward, what is the role that, that Ruby and Rails plays? Like, where does it make sense for that to be used versus like, Okay, we need to go and build something in Java or, you know, or Go, that sort of thing? [00:29:51] David: right. I mean, I think for like your standard database backed web app, it's obviously great. especially if your sort of mindset bought into server side rendering, it's going to be great at that. so like internal tools, like the customer service dashboard or... You know, something for like somebody who works at a company to use. Like, it's really great because you can go super fast. You're not going to be under a lot of performance constraints. So you kind of don't even have to think about it. Don't even have to solve it. You can, but you don't have to, where it wouldn't work, I guess, you know, if you have really strict performance. Requirements, you know, like a, a Go version of some API server is going to use like percentages of what, of what Rails would use. If that's meaningful, if what you're spending on memory or compute is, is meaningful, then, then yeah. That, that becomes worthy of consideration. I guess if you're, you know, if you're making a mobile app, you probably need to make a mobile app and use those platforms. I mean, I guess you can wrap a Rails app sort of, but you're still making, you still need to make a mobile app, that does something. yeah. And then, you know, interestingly, the data science part of Stitch Fix was not part of the engineering team. They were kind of a separate org. I think Ruby and Rails was probably the only thing they didn't use over there. Like all the ML stuff, everything is either Java or Scala or Python. They use all that stuff. And so, yeah, if you want to do AI and ML with Ruby, you, it's, it's hard cause there's just not a lot there. You really probably should use Python. It'll make your life easier. so yeah, those would be some of the considerations, I guess. [00:31:31] Jeremy: Yeah, so I guess in the case of, ML, Python, certainly, just because of the, the ecosystem, for maybe making a command line application, maybe Go, um, Go or Rust, perhaps, [00:31:44] David: Right. Cause you just get a single binary. Like the problem, I mean, I wrote this book on Ruby command line apps and the biggest problem is like, how do I get the Ruby VM to be anywhere so that it can then run my like awesome scripts? Like that's kind of a huge pain. (laughs) So [00:31:59] Jeremy: and then you said, like, if it's Very performance sensitive, which I am kind of curious in, in your experience with the companies you've worked at, when you're taking on a project like that, do you know up front where you're like, Oh, the CPU and memory usage is going to be a problem, or is it's like you build it and you're like, Oh, this isn't working. So now I know. [00:32:18] David: yeah, I mean, I, I don't have a ton of great experience there at Stitch Fix. The biggest expense the company had was the inventory. So like the, the cost of AWS was just de minimis compared to all that. So nobody ever came and said, Hey, you've got to like really save costs on, on that stuff. Cause it just didn't really matter. at the, the mental health startup I was at, it was too early. But again, the labor costs were just far, far exceeded the amount of money I was spending on, on, um, you know, compute and infrastructure and stuff like that. So, Not knowing anything, I would probably just sort of wait and see if it's a problem. But I suppose you always take into account, like, what am I actually building? And like, what does this business have to scale to, to make it worthwhile? And therefore you can kind of do a little bit of planning ahead there. But, I dunno, I think it would kind of have to depend. [00:33:07] Jeremy: There's a sort of, I guess you could call it a meme, where people say like, Oh, it's, it's not, it's not Rails that's slow, it's the, the database that's slow. And, uh, I wonder, is that, is that accurate in your experience, or, [00:33:20] David: I mean, most of the stuff that we had that was slow was the database, because like, it's really easy to write a crappy query in Rails if you're not, if you're not careful, and then it's really easy to design a database that doesn't have any indexes if you're not careful. Like, you, you kind of need to know that, But of course, those are easy to fix too, because you just add the index, especially if it's before the database gets too big where we're adding indexes is problematic. But, I think those are just easy performance mistakes to make. Uh, especially with Rails because you're not, I mean, a lot of the Rails developers at Citrix did not know SQL at all. I mean, they had to learn it eventually, but they didn't know it at all. So they're not even knowing that what they're writing could possibly be problematic. It's just, you're writing it the Rails way and it just kind of works. And at a small scale, it does. And it doesn't matter until, until one day it does. [00:34:06] Jeremy: And then in, in the context of, let's say, using ActiveRecord and instantiating the objects, or, uh, the time it takes to render templates, that kinds of things, to, at least in your experience, that wasn't such of an issue. [00:34:20] David: No, and it was always, I mean, whenever we looked at why something was slow, it was always the database and like, you know, you're iterating over some active records and then, and then, you know, you're going into there and you're just following this object graph. I've got a lot of the, a lot of the software at Stitch Fix was like internal stuff and it was visualizing complicated data out of the database. And so if you didn't think about it, you would just start dereferencing and following those relationships and you have this just massive view and like the HTML is fine. It's just that to render this div, you're. Digging into some active record super deep. and so, you know, that was usually the, the, the problems that we would see and they're usually easy enough to fix by making an index or. Sometimes you do some caching or something like that. and that solved most of the, most of the issues [00:35:09] Jeremy: The different ways people learn [00:35:09] Jeremy: so you're also the author of the book, Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails. And when you talk to people about like how they learn things, a lot of them are going on YouTube, they're going on, uh, you know, looking for blogs and things like that. And so as an author, what do you think the role is of, of books now? Yeah, [00:35:29] David: I have thought about this a lot, because I, when I first got started, I'm pretty old, so books were all you had, really. Um, so they seem very normal and natural to me, but... does someone want to sit down and read a 400 page technical book? I don't know. so Dave Thomas who runs Pragmatic Bookshelf, he was on a podcast and was asked the same question and basically his answer, which is my answer, is like a long form book is where you can really lay out your thinking, really clarify what you mean, really take the time to develop sometimes nuanced, examples or nuanced takes on something that are Pretty hard to do in a short form video or in a blog post. Because the expectation is, you know, someone sends you an hour long YouTube video, you're probably not going to watch that. Two minute YouTube video is sure, but you can't, you can't get into so much, kind of nuanced detail. And so I thought that was, was right. And that was kind of my motivation for writing. I've got some thoughts. They're too detailed. It's, it's too much set up for a blog post. There's too much of a nuanced element to like, really get across. So I need to like, write more. And that means that someone's going to have to read more to kind of get to it. But hopefully it'll be, it'll be valuable. one of the sessions that we're doing later today is Ruby content creators, where it's going to be me and Noel Rappin and Dave Thomas representing the old school dudes that write books and probably a bunch of other people that do, you know, podcasts videos. It'd be interesting to see, I really want to know how do people learn stuff? Because if no one reads books to learn things, then there's not a lot of point in doing it. But if there is value, then, you know. It should be good and should be accessible to people. So, that's why I do it. But I definitely recognize maybe I'm too old and, uh, I'm not hip with the kids or, or whatever, whatever the case is. I don't know. [00:37:20] Jeremy: it's tricky because, I think it depends on where you are in the process of learning that thing. Because, let's say, you know a fair amount about the technology already. And you look at a book, in a lot of cases it's, it's sort of like taking you from nothing to something. And so you're like, well, maybe half of this isn't relevant to me, but then if I don't read it, then I'm probably missing a lot still. And so you're in this weird in be in between zone. Another thing is that a lot of times when people are trying to learn something, they have a specific problem. And, um, I guess with, with books, it's, you kind of don't know for sure if the thing you're looking for is going to be in the book. [00:38:13] David: I mean, so my, so my book, I would not say as a beginner, it's not a book to learn how to do Rails. It's like you already kind of know Rails and you want to like learn some comprehensive practices. That's what my book is for. And so sometimes people will ask me, I don't know Rails, should I get your book? And I'm like, no, you should not. but then you have the opposite thing where like the agile web development with Rails is like the beginner version. And some people are like, Oh, it's being updated for Rails 7. Should I get it? I'm like, probably not because How to go from zero to rails hasn't changed a lot in years. There's not that much that's going to be new. but, how do you know that, right? Hopefully the Table of Contents tells you. I mean, the first book I wrote with Pragmatic, they basically were like, The Table of Contents is the only thing the reader, potential reader is going to have to have any idea what's in the book. So, You need to write the table of contents with that in mind, which may not be how you'd write the subsections of a book, but since you know that it's going to serve these dual purposes of organizing the book, but also being promotional material that people can read, you've got to keep that in mind, because otherwise, how does anybody, like you said, how does anybody know what's, what's going to be in there? And they're not cheap, I mean, these books are 50 bucks sometimes, and That's a lot of money for people in the U. S. People outside the U. S. That's a ton of money. So you want to make sure that they know what they're getting and don't feel ripped off. [00:39:33] Jeremy: Yeah, I think the other challenge is, at least what I've heard, is that... When people see a video course, for whatever reason, they, they set, like, a higher value to it. They go, like, oh, this video course is, 200 dollars and it's, like, seems like a lot of money, but for some people it's, like, okay, I can do that. But then if you say, like, oh, this, this book I've been researching for five years, uh, I want to sell it for a hundred bucks, people are going to be, like no. No way., [00:40:00] David: Yeah. Right. A hundred bucks for a book. There's no way. That's a, that's a lot. Yeah. I mean, producing video, I've thought about doing video content, but it seems so labor intensive. Um, and it's kind of like, It's sort of like a performance. Like I was mentioning before we started that I used to play in bands and like, there's a lot to go into making an even mediocre performance. And so I feel like, you know, video content is the same way. So I get that it like, it does cost more to produce, but, are you getting more information out of it? I, that, I don't know, like maybe not, but who knows? I mean, people learn things in different ways. So, [00:40:35] Jeremy: It's just like this perception thing, I think. And, uh, I'm not sure why that is. Um, [00:40:40] David: Yeah, maybe it's newer, right? Maybe books feel older so they're easier to make and video seems newer. I mean, I don't know. I would love to talk to engineers who are like... young out of college, a few years into their career to see what their perception of this stuff is. Cause I mean, there was no, I mean, like I said, I read books cause that's all there was. There was no, no videos. You, you go to a conference and you read a book and that was, that was all you had. so I get it. It seems a whole video. It's fancier. It's newer. yeah, I don't know. I would love to hear a wide variety of takes on it to see what's actually the, the future, you know? [00:41:15] Jeremy: sure, yeah. I mean, I think it probably can't just be one or the other, right? Like, I think there are... Benefits of each way. Like, if you have the book, you can read it at your own pace without having to, like, scroll through the video, and you can easily copy and paste the, the code segments, [00:41:35] David: Search it. Go back and forth. [00:41:36] Jeremy: yeah, search it. So, I think there's a place for it, but yeah, I think it would be very interesting, like you said, to, to see, like, how are people learning, [00:41:45] David: Right. Right. Yeah. Well, it's the same with blogs and podcasts. Like I, a lot of podcasters I think used to be bloggers and they realized that like they can get out what they need by doing a podcast. And it's way easier because it's more conversational. You don't have to do a bunch of research. You don't have to do a bunch of editing. As long as you're semi coherent, you can just have a conversation with somebody and sort of get at some sort of thing that you want to talk about or have an opinion about. And. So you, you, you see a lot more podcasts and a lot less blogs out there because of that. So it's, that's kind of like the creators I think are kind of driving that a little bit. yeah. So I don't know. [00:42:22] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I can, I can say for myself, the thing about podcasts is that it's something that I can listen to while I'm doing something else. And so you sort of passively can hopefully pick something up out of that conversation, but... Like, I think it's maybe not so good at the details, right? Like, if you're talking code, you can talk about it over voice, but can you really visualize it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if you sit down and you try to implement something somebody talked about, you're gonna be like, I don't know what's happening. [00:42:51] David: Yeah. [00:42:52] Jeremy: So, uh, so, so I think there's like these, these different roles I think almost for so like maybe you know the podcast is for you to Maybe get some ideas or get some familiarity with a thing and then when you're ready to go deeper You can go look at a blog post or read a book I think video kind of straddles those two where sometimes video is good if you want to just see, the general concept of a thing, and have somebody explain it to you, maybe do some visuals. that's really good. but then it can also be kind of detailed, where, especially like the people who stream their process, right, you can see them, Oh, let's, let's build this thing together. You can ask me questions, you can see how I think. I think that can be really powerful. at the same time, like you said, it can be hard to say, like, you know, I look at some of the streams and it's like, oh, this is a three hour stream and like, well, I mean, I'm interested. I'm interested, but yeah, it's hard enough for me to sit through a, uh, a three hour movie, [00:43:52] David: Well, then that, and that gets into like, I mean, we're, you know, we're at a conference and they, they're doing something a little, like, there are conference talks at this conference, but there's also like. sort of less defined activities that aren't a conference talk. And I think that could be a reaction to some of this too. It's like I could watch a conference talk on, on video. How different is that going to be than being there in person? maybe it's not that different. Maybe, maybe I don't need to like travel across the country to go. Do something that I could see on video. So there's gotta be something here that, that, that meets that need that I can't meet any other way. So it's all these different, like, I would like to think that's how it is, right? All this media all is a part to play and it's all going to kind of continue and thrive and it's not going to be like, Oh, remember books? Like maybe, but hopefully not. Hopefully it's like, like what you're saying. Like it's all kind of serving different purposes that all kind of work together. Yeah. [00:44:43] Jeremy: I hope that's the case, because, um, I don't want to have to scroll through too many videos. [00:44:48] David: Yeah. The video's not for me. Large Language Models [00:44:50] Jeremy: I, I like, I actually do find it helpful, like, like I said, for the high level thing, or just to see someone's thought process, but it's like, if you want to know a thing, and you have a short amount of time, maybe not the best, um, of course, now you have all the large language model stuff where you like, you feed the video in like, Hey, tell, tell, tell me, uh, what this video is about and give me the code snippets and all that stuff. I don't know how well it works, but it seems [00:45:14] David: It's gotta get better. Cause you go to a support site and they're like, here's how to fix your problem, and it's a video. And I'm like, can you just tell me? But I'd never thought about asking the AI to just look at the video and tell me. So yeah, it's not bad. [00:45:25] Jeremy: I think, that's probably where we're going. So it's, uh, it's a little weird to think about, but, [00:45:29] David: yeah, yeah. I was just updating, uh, you know, like I said, I try to keep the book updated when new versions of Rails come out, so I'm getting ready to update it for Rails 7. 1 and in Amazon's, Kindle Direct Publishing as their sort of backend for where you, you know, publish like a Kindle book and stuff, and so they added a new question, was AI used in the production of this thing or not? And if you answer yes, they want you to say how much, And I don't know what they're gonna do with that exactly, but I thought it was pretty interesting, cause I would be very disappointed to pay 50 for a book that the AI wrote, right? So it's good that they're asking that? Yeah. [00:46:02] Jeremy: I think the problem Amazon is facing is where people wholesale have the AI write the book, and the person either doesn't review it at all, or maybe looks at a little, a little bit. And, I mean, the, the large language model stuff is very impressive, but If you have it generate a technical book for you, it's not going to be good. [00:46:22] David: yeah. And I guess, cause cause like Amazon, I mean, think about like Amazon scale, like they're not looking at the book at all. Like I, I can go click a button and have my book available and no person's going to look at it. they might scan it or something maybe with looking for bad words. I don't know, but there's no curation process there. So I could, yeah. I could see where they could have that, that kind of problem. And like you as the, as the buyer, you don't necessarily, if you want to book on something really esoteric, there are a lot of topics I wish there was a book on that there isn't. And as someone generally want to put it on Amazon, I could see a lot of people buying it, not realizing what they're getting and feeling ripped off when it was not good. [00:47:00] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know, if it's an issue with the, the technical stuff. It probably is. But I, I know they've definitely had problems where, fiction, they have people just generating hundreds, thousands of books, submitting them all, just flooding it. [00:47:13] David: Seeing what happens. [00:47:14] Jeremy: And, um, I think that's probably... That's probably the main reason why they ask you, cause they want you to say like, uh, yeah, you said it wasn't. And so now we can remove your book. [00:47:24] David: right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. [00:47:26] Jeremy: I mean, it's, it's not quite the same, but it's similar to, I don't know what Stack Overflow's policy is now, but, when the large language model stuff started getting big, they had a lot of people answering the questions that were just. Pasting the question into the model [00:47:41] David: Which because they got it from [00:47:42] Jeremy: and then [00:47:43] David: The Got model got it from Stack Overflow. [00:47:45] Jeremy: and then pasting the answer into Stack Overflow and the person is not checking it. Right. So it's like, could be right, could not be right. Um, cause, cause to me, it's like, if, if you generate it, if you generate the answer and the answer is right, and you checked it, I'm okay with that. [00:48:00] David: Yeah. Yeah. [00:48:01] Jeremy: but if you're just like, I, I need some karma, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer these questions with, with this bot, I mean, then maybe [00:48:08] David: I could have done that. You're not adding anything. Yeah, yeah. [00:48:11] Jeremy: it's gonna be a weird, weird world, I think. [00:48:12] David: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. [00:48:15] Jeremy: that's a, a good place to end it on, but is there anything else you want to mention, [00:48:19] David: No, I think we covered it all just yeah, you could find me online. I'm Davetron5000 on Ruby. social Mastodon, I occasionally post on Twitter, but not that much anymore. So Mastodon's a place to go. [00:48:31] Jeremy: David, thank you so much [00:48:32] David: All right. Well, thanks for having me.

We're back after a brief hiatus (all Rizzle's fault with him heading down to Austin, TX doing important things with Found3r). To kick things off we dive into the reason why we took a week off - said important irl meetup in Austin, TX led by David All and the Found3r team who are focused on the real, human stories of web3. The conversation branches off from there to cover the differences between putting on irl meetups versus url gatherinds and the amazing energy that is re-emerging around The WIP Meetup (big shoutout to Hyperfy and all the amazing updates their INCREDIBLY lean team is pushing out seemingly all the time). Matt waxes poetic on the need to lean into into pure play in the metaverse (aka digital spaces where folks can live, work and play) highlighted by The WIP of course, as well as amazing projects and and initiatives like ZeroOne, the race track and scoreboard that Misfit Pixels + Carl put together, and all the amazing virtual spaces that artists like Bananakin are putting together. The bottomline is that there is an ever expanding and far more accessible toolkit available to anyone with an internet connection that people can leverage to help craft and build playful digital and virtual experiences. The time to have fun is now. Shout-outs & Shots-fired: @FOUND3RUSA @trislit @DavidAll @bryanbrinkman @kelseykdriscoll @UpbringOrg @Permissionless @RayBuckton @GeoCoolingTx @hyperfy_io @AshConnell @AndrewSteinwold @Coldie @ThisArtMovement @Fractilians7 @money_alotta @_deafbeef @MattKaneArtist @MisfitPixels @cartar_l @bananakin @Pointshark1 @cryptovoxels @MetageistVR @Paradoxx_Media @CyberBrokers_ @zero________one @aaronhuey @MLOdotArt @upstreetai

David All is a connector, storyteller and above all else a Founder. On the 87th episode of More Than Blockchain, Jarrett chats with David about his new, non-partisan DC-based non-profit, FOUND3R, whose mission is to educate, advocate and create space for constructive conversations around the responsible adoption of web3 technology. To learn more about FOUND3R, please click here - https://linktr.ee/FOUND3R To read FOUND3R's 1 page TLDR - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mB9q02bJ6PBBL3XWCF1NR1r2dPkMxQHD/edit To read more about FOUND3R'S NYC Meet-Up, click here - https://www.decential.io/articles/found3r-town-hall-in-new-york-has-a-simple-message-web3-is-only-getting-started FOUND3R's LinkedIn Page - ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/found3r/⁠ FOUND3R's Twitter - ⁠https://twitter.com/FOUND3RUSA⁠ David's Twitter - https://twitter.com/DavidAll David's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidall/ Please follow us on social media and check out our website: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/morethanblockchain/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/morethanblckchn YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC45qe8qj0rIcXdYqI_aiIXg LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/more-than-blockchain Website - https://www.morethanblockchain.xyz/ Learn more about More Than Blockchain's Host - https://www.jarrettcarpenter.com/

Legendary sportswriter Sally Jenkins joins us to discuss her new book "The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Life And Work" and share some of the best personalities she spoke with and stories she learned. Then, David tried to speak with Mike Ryan during the break, but Mike snubbed him to buy tickets to Messi's first game. Why did he have to buy them right away? Why don't his season tickets cover this match? Does the U.S. have the worst ticket policies? And after Mike explains how he wants to sell the extra tickets he just bought, Amin, Stu, and David ALL create their own hypothetical ticket sale scenarios. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT There have been a few companies that have come along in recent years offering a platform that used templates, image library and stored data to largely automate the production of videos - but few if any of them had their heads wrapped around how that might work with and for digital signage networks. A Louisville, KY start-up is taking a run at the concept, and the big difference with Adificial is that its CEO and co-founder started and ran a digital signage software company for many years ... so he has his head around the desire for content automation when it comes to videos that find their way to screens. Some listeners will know Brian Nutt as the founder of Codigo, which had built up a strong and interesting business focused mainly on regional banking. That business was acquired in 2018 by Spectrio, which now also owns and publishes Sixteen:Nine, and Brian spent a few years away from the business, before thinking about and pulling together Adificial. It's a platform that uses web services and the scalability of cloud computing to enable HTML5-driven motion media files to be generated quickly and easily, by the hundreds or thousands. At scale, a motion file unique to a person or place can cost only pennies. Nutt is a digital signage guy, but he's launching Adificial with a focus on media embedded in staff and customer emails. That makes sense, as the idea is that this platform can generate many thousands of custom videos for emails, versus the dozens or maybe hundreds that might be needed by a digital signage network that wants different messaging for, let's say, each store in a chain. But the capabilities are there to make this relevant for digital signage. Have a listen. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT David: Hey, Brian. Thank you for joining me. For people who don't know you or maybe recall you from your past, can you give me your background and what you were doing with Codigo?  Brian Nutt: Sure and great to talk to you again, Dave. Codigo was a digital signage company that I founded back in around 2004, so set up kinda early on in the trajectory of digital signage. That morphed into us introducing a number of different retail media products, interactive kiosks, overhead music, on-hold messaging, all that type of, and we had a focus on financial institutions, really, like regional, local banks and credit unions. Although towards the end there, when I sold Codigo in 2018, we had installations around the world and all sorts of different industries from restaurants, universities, office complexes, and all the places that you would see a digital sign installed today, or retail media, as I said.  Did that and sold that in 2018, took a few years off and launched this new project which is pretty exciting.  David: So what is Adificial?  Brian Nutt: Yeah, so Adificial really began I guess in terms of me thinking about this back before I sold Codigo, so Codigo and I think like a lot of digital signage products, at least today, maybe not back then, but we had the pretty robust online content engine for creating content that could be either sent down to a kiosk or digital signage or any of the devices, whether it was on-hold messaging or any of those things, you could create the content on the web, and so I had this idea that might be an exciting product as a standalone product. We never launched it, and it's probably a good idea because folks like Canva came along, and Promo and these other products came along, and they did a pretty good job so I'm glad I didn't do it, but after little time off, I was still thinking about the product and just how video is forcing businesses to do things differently, and this requirement today to personalize content for folks that are your customers or are interested in the product. So the idea of an Adificial is to solve the problem that's traditionally been around video, which is, it's expensive, it's time-consuming and yet the requirement of it by consumers continues to race forward daily, and then the age today where data, people are willing to share their data with brands freely and why is video passive still? Why is it that it's audience-based where I press play and I watch it and Dave gets the same video as I do, even though we have totally different lives and we live in different spots and have different ages and all those things.  It's this idea that you can make videos personalized with data. What I know about you, I should be able to map brand assets, audio, video, and language even, and insert interactive elements, calendar invites, pdf, downloads, buttons, and anything like that into the video. So it's fully interactive and engaging in ways that just really haven't been largely available and at reasonable rates. David: So this is a content automation platform?  Brian Nutt: Yes. I would wrap it up by saying we're not in the marketing automation space. We're not trying to compete with Mailchimp or anything like that, what we're trying to do is automate the production of the video with data and available assets and return that piece of content back to the market automation platform that would then send it out, primarily via email, although I can see this transition to social and SMS in any other way that you communicate to consumers.  David: So if I'm running a digital signage network, and I have a hundred different stores and I want a video for each of those stores, but I want it localized to each of those stores, instead of getting an agency or in-house designer to generate a hundred different videos, you would run it through this and it would use data to generate those hundred videos? Brian Nutt: That's a decent comparison, but this product's really not built for digital signage. So imagine a little bit bigger than that. You know the value of data on your consumer today is tremendously high. So if you have a CRM that has 10,000 people that are either current customers or leads or somewhere along the customer journey. What we do is we could produce videos for all of them and you insert video into your marketing stack, into the customer journey and send it out via email.  David: Oh, okay. Are the files not big enough to run on a large format screen?  Brian Nutt: They could, and in fact, when I initially started this, the idea was to send content to any device, but we've narrowed that down and focused on market automation platforms. But there's no reason it couldn't morph into a digital signage play. It's just not today.  David: Right, because there's more scale in those and it's just a bigger business.  Brian Nutt: Yes.  David: So it's one of those things like Poppulo, App Space, and some of these other companies that are starting to blend platforms, where it's one stock that can send to a digital screen, that can also send to a smartphone, to a tablet, to a website, whatever. It would kind of plug into that kind of thing.  Brian Nutt: Yes, and here's the other reason that I've gotten into this, and I'm a huge believer in power digital signage, obviously. But at Codigo, our growth was really built around this incredible drive to build more stores, more locations, more branches in the banking space, and so we leveraged that and grew off that and really benefited from it. But today what's happening is, in fact, I was looking just recently, they're suggesting that in the next five years, 50,000 retail stores will close. Since 2009, when we were going into the great recession, banks and credit unions numbered about 15,000 total, that's not branches. Today, there are about 7,000. So it's this consolidation and push not including the number of locations that close during the pandemic, what 20,000 retail stores, something like that.  So what's happening, in my opinion, is the store or branch does a couple of things. One, it's meant to educate a person in person on the product, build trust, and sell products. But if stores are closing, people aren't going to the store, how do you communicate to them personally and to me, the conversation today is done in data. If I'm willing to give a brand my data, trust them with that, even if it's unreasonable. I'm not going to the store. I never wanna meet a person that's going to tell me about a shoe or a bank loan or whatever, but that doesn't mean I don't expect you to communicate back to me with things that are specific to me, to help me learn about products, build trust, and ultimately sell me something. So that's taking it from the digital science in-store installation, that's the next progression of what we're trying to solve.  David: It's another output.  Brian Nutt: Yeah, exactly.  David: So how does this work? Brian Nutt: I guess, where do you want me to start? It did take quite a while to figure it out honestly. You start with this gigantic idea and then try to distill it down into something actionable. So that's where we are now.  But at the finest level, it's really not that dissimilar from digital signage. It's just one level deeper in how you're delivering the content, so you know the right time, right place, right person, all those things. And a large well of content that's either procured the third party ShutterStock, et cetera, or first party to the brand and then using technology to map these pieces of content to data, and data could be something like just knowing your name and having it be, “Hello Dave”, and so if the first name equals Dave, then show the text Dave on the first screen and if language equals Spanish, say, “Hola Dave”, and that's really what it is.  It's mapping data smartly to assets, no matter whether it's something as simple as text or a background image or a video, things like that, and then you stitch those together based on where you are in the process towards, or whatever it's you're involved in. It could be something like onboarding an employee. It could be obviously selling someone, onboarding them on a product, or following up with a customer service issue, and you do it at scale. Because you can automate it.  David: So if you have the data tables, you have the image assets, and you have maybe some core templates, you could conceivably generate 10,000 videos that are all tailored to each individual? Brian Nutt: That's exactly right.  David: Are you dependent on templates? Brian Nutt: Again, it's very similar to digital science in many ways. So what we're doing, just like we did at Codigo, is leveraging a high degree of design skill and allowing folks to manipulate that as they choose. Now we've done a couple of things a little smarter this way, which is we're building in functions where we call it a branded function, which I guess is kinda out there in the market in software where you just click a button and it'll map your brand assets the best it can to template that we're building, but the same thing with Codigo is that we have a pretty high-end content editor that allows you to build whatever you want.  David: Do you need to have graphic design skills? Brian Nutt: Not a high degree of them. As I said, it's very similar to what we did at Codigo from a user experience perspective. David: So you wanna have somebody using this who has some core design chops and knows not to use Comic Sans for a font, or use pink and everything?  Brian Nutt: Exactly. I can barely sign my name much less, create a piece of content that's gonna be sent out to thousands of consumers and I'll never do that. But the thing about this is not the design skills. It's meant to be, the whole set it and forget it attitude, which is once we have content mapped and I have the data that's associated with different pieces of content, and I have the story, we call it a story setup, and maybe I'll give you an example: If they use a CRM and I have David Haynes who showed interest in Red Wine and you wanna join the wine club, the Friday Wine Club at the local wine establishment. So you show interest in that, and in their CRM you meet a condition that says, “Hey, Dave just joined the wine club” and what traditionally happens is when you meet that condition, you're sending an email and the email says, “Hey Dave, thanks so much for your interest in the wine club”, and it's got a picture or something of it, there, and maybe it shows people what the wine club. Well frankly, that's boring. So what we wanna do is take that same approach and it's all that is: a form, it's all merge fields. “Hello, first name” - it just that it happens to be Dave. “Thank you for your interest in Product ID” - wine club, or whatever that it might be. Brian might be a white wine drinker, but it all comes from the same engine, so it's effectively a similar approach. We're taking data from those systems, current systems, we're not trying to be a CRM and mapping that to assets that we have, whether they're the first party to this, in this case, the wine club or something that we've provided you from a third party library, and then turning that into video, right? Stitching each of these assets together with dynamic fields that represent, “Hey, Dave, thanks for your interest in the wine club. All the red wine drinkers are meeting down the road on Friday afternoon. Come by. Would you like to attend?” You could click yes.  David: Gotcha. So this is rules-based, it's not AI?  Brian Nutt: Today, no.  David: So there's a plan? Brian Nutt: There's a grand plan.  David: So what are the outputs like? What's the output file?  Brian Nutt: The output file as well as a URL, and so what we're generating is a PURL, a personalized URL.  David: So it's not an mp4, it's not a video file of any kind, it's an HTML5 file? Brian Nutt: Yes.  David: Do you work in parallel with a CRM system or how do the two platforms play together?  Brian Nutt: Yeah, now we're going to beta in February. Today, there are a number of different ways to do it. You can either upload it yourself or you can, there are a number of systems that can automate the transfer of data, like Zapier, et cetera. And you map these just like anything else. If you have a list of people that meet conditions, like the Red Wine Club, you take that data and get it to our system. As long as we understand what the fields are, then we can choose the correct content to weave together and return it back to you as a PURL, which can then be sent out as an email. David: How seamless will it be?  Brian Nutt: It should be very seamless. Take any system, let's take Mailchimp for example. There are custom fields and automation that allow you to insert links into an email template or a landing page. So we're routing on top of those existing systems and the features that they have and so once you have that, you can have a custom record for each person, like Dave O'Brien or whomever that updates itself, and when those conditions are met, it knows to send the email.  David: So would you use APIs or would you use middleware like you were mentioning like Zapier?  Brian Nutt: That's the first way to do it. Oddly in the financial space, it's more of a security requirement. Rather than doing that, oftentimes I'll just use SMTP, which seems old school, but there are reasons to do so, like man-in-the-middle attacks, and things like that. But there are ways to do this. Now, do we wanna integrate with as many systems as we possibly can? We'll let the market dictate that.  David: Because it's HTML5, is it responsive?  Brian Nutt: Responsive to the size of the device? Is that what you mean, like web responsive?  David: The screen resolution, and if it's going out on Facebook, it's a 4:3 square and if it's going out on a larger screen, it's a 16:9 rectangle?  Brian Nutt: Yeah, again, it's very similar to the product we had with Codigo, which is, you can do custom resolutions, you can do whatever you want, but then again, it's gotta be responsive to the area of the device, or in this case, the browser, whether that's mobile or your laptop or tablet or whatever.  David: So when you look at this from financial aspects, what's the benefits argument of doing this versus producing individual videos? It's pretty obvious, but tell me nonetheless.  Brian Nutt: As I said, producing videos is incredibly expensive, and I've termed it the content gap, which is what I call, it's the distance between what consumers require in video - and they want everything in the video - and what businesses can reasonably produce. So it's not just the cost, a lot of times people outsource this stuff, and then it's got a shelf life.  But with what we're doing we think we can reasonably produce hundreds of thousands of videos, for pennies on the dollar, and I say video because that's what people understand, but it's actually HTML that you render, that's the other component that is good. It's favorable. Now, will that be something that every brand wants? Do they want rendered videos? Sure, there might be folks that require rendered video, and maybe we'll do that at one point we actually did, at Codigo, we ended up using a very similar approach. Then we built a rendering engine that rendered as HTML5 to true video. But today it's HTML5 and it's just from hosting to production to the delivery of it, it drives the cost down to prices that were impossible. David: So when you go to market in a couple of months, two or three months, what am I paying? Am I subscribing to something? Am I buying an enterprise license? Brian Nutt: It's a SaaS model, and it's usage-based too. So it's a tiered-based model similar to the digital signage space, there definitely be some content creation elements to it where we assist clients if they need the content made, and you probably remember at Codigo we did that as well. It's the same approach here, and it really depends. It's hard to give you a specific pricing point. But I think most customers will probably land somewhere between $500 and $1500 a month. That's where I think it would be. It could be far higher, depending on usage.  I was at a trade show recently and there's a customer of mine, who said that they sent out emails last month. Well, If you make 140,000 videos, it might be a little higher, but that's what we're trying to do, we're trying to do the same thing as the last business, which may get a very attractive price that they can leverage.  David: So that's the scale argument why it makes more sense for a cable company or a phone company or power company, something like that, that has tens of thousands of subscribers and customers versus something like a digital signage network, which as I said, might have a hundred iterations of a similar ad, and you don't get the same economies of scale from. Brian Nutt: That's right, and in a lot of ways I feel like this is very similar to when I started Codigo. I remember telling people, I'm going to replace printed posters on the wall with flat screens, and they're like, what? And I'd say it's called digital signage. They'll say, oh, you mean like those LED, those red blinky lights that go across like that? I'm like no. That's not what I mean, and I would go around with a 42-inch screen, and those things were heavy, and so it's almost the same thing where I have to show this to everyone so they can understand this, and go oh I can use this. There are all these different permutations of a relationship with a client or an onboarding of one or whatever it is and then they kinda get it so that's where we are. David: Yeah, that's very familiar to me. Years ago, back in the mid-2010s, I had a little spin-out product that I did with a Korean partner called Spotamate, and it was automating videos based on templates and by far my biggest challenge was education. Because people just couldn't wrap their heads around it. So how are you gonna deal with that?  Brian Nutt: I think that today, the state of the consumer today around video is totally different, and the other thing is that I think Spotimate was sort of Adobe-reliant, right? David: Yeah, it was an Adobe plugin.  Brian Nutt: Yeah, so we're skipping all that. So from a user perspective, it makes it a little easier to get started, since it's a lot fewer steps to take, but from an education standpoint, I think people are starting to expect this. It's like if you log in to Netflix and you see all these interesting shows that you know, that makes you think, oh, wow, boy, that's something I would watch, you understand that there's a data-driven decision behind that, and whether it's content while you're scrolling through on Instagram or across the web, all these technologies exist and I feel like most folks understand that when they see something like this, they get it, where before it might have and it still can be creepy. I'm not saying it can't be, but depending on the use, before it was perceived entirely like that.  With the pandemic and, if you go back before the pandemic, or let's go five years back, a lot of people didn't wanna take videos. They didn't wanna do a zoom call or whatever. They wanted to do it on the phone or they shut off their camera. But today, if I have a Zoom call with you and you don't turn your camera on, I think something's wrong. What's going on? So it's this drive to video and the requirement of a personalized experience that when people get this, I think they'll be like, oh yeah they'll understand.  David: So I realized, as you've said that your core market is email marketing, maybe social media, some of those things. If you have digital signage, software platforms, or solution providers who are interested because maybe they do this whole omnichannel thing and they see this as an opportunity, how would they work with you? Would it run in parallel?  Brian Nutt: That's a sort of broad question to ask. I'm not sure I don't have that nailed down yet. But I'd take all inquiries, so to speak. Because again the idea is to insert this into the marketing stack. So whether it's digital signage or traditional email marketing, or any omnichannel approach, as you said, contacting a customer, why aren't you using video? And so it does seem as I said from my perspective, the growth of digital signage, which isn't anywhere, relies on footprint and as it declines or appears to decline at least from different ways. This is one of those ways to pick that up.  David: Yeah, and I think you're gonna start seeing a lot more screens, but in places other than what people thought about, which was, in stores and so on, but there are all kinds of operational messaging that could stand to be personalized based on location, not personalized to individuals, but to the dynamics of that, area of a building or whatever. Brian Nutt: Sure, and the same thing holds true. The level of personalization is all really based on the quality of the data that you have and if you try to make it too deep and too complicated, folks I think will shy away because, yeah, it might not be possible, remember, it's the same thing with digital signage. You can make things super, super complex, and try to do all these really neat things, but the reality is a lot of people don't have that capability. So you can only deal with what is reasonably available to you from a data perspective, but there's no reason you have to be specific to a person. Obviously, digital signage doesn't do that but automates it specific to an area, of the work floor, or whatever that's doable. David: You've been out of digital signage for roughly four years now. I'm curious now having kinda left the industry, what's your perspective on it now?  Brian Nutt: I think there has been a tremendous amount of consolidation, including me, right? So a lot of the players that existed before have been rolled up in some ways. So it's like the wild west that existed when I really was looking back in the wild west, but it's gotten a little more sterile, at least that's my opinion. I think that the interesting pieces of it are in the hive stack arena with retargeting and programmatic ad buying, which I was never a really big proponent of the ad model. I think we talked about it before, but there are interesting ways to serve content and that's really more, kinda what, where you're going with what your comments were before, how do you serve that content to folks in a unique and timely way, and I think there will be, and there already has been this approach to multi-device from a screen, just one big screen, but honestly, since I got out, I haven't paid a tremendous amount of attention to it.  David: What you're doing is very current in terms of the shift more and more to using data integration and automated content so that it's always relevant, so you're doing what the industry's doing. Brian Nutt:  All right, there you go. David: So if people wanna find out more, where are they gonna find you online?  Brian Nutt: Yeah, it's www.adificial.io - we're signing up beta users, although it'll be a closed group and already have a pretty good number that we've signed up from some past relationships. But anybody who's interested, just go on there and there's a beta sign-up little form there, and you can learn about it. David: And you're bootstrapped?  Brian Nutt: Yeah, bootstrapped in entirety. I've got one co-founder who was actually with me at Codigo as well, and we've got a team of six developers working on this thing full-time and are pretty excited about it. David: All right. It was great to catch up with you.  Brian Nutt: Yeah, you too, Dave. 

People become more connected as a result of communication. Communication is a crucial management function intertwined with all other management responsibilities. It closes the gap between individuals and groups by facilitating the exchange of information and understanding. Is it, nevertheless, possible to exploit it to one's advantage? In this episode, Dr. David Snyder will show you how to utilize language as a tool to effectively communicate your objectives and desires to others with guaranteed success. Standout Quotes: “When you have sincerity when you have a connection. When people are in rapport with you, when they have affinity with you, they lose, they lose the ability to analyze, and judge what you're saying in proportion to the amount of rapport that they have.” [David] “The more rapport that you have with somebody, the less they want to analyze, criticize, or judge they just want to go along to get along.” [David] “All beliefs are stated in cause and effect terms. Anything spoken in this term as the structure of belief, the brain pays attention to the structure first, and then everything second. And all the brain really cares about is that what you're saying is plausible.” [David] Key Takeaways: When you start employing hypnotic language, especially the patterns, the number seven plus or minus two reduces to around three, indicating that you can track roughly three units of information before being overwhelmed. And they stop trying to figure out what is being said. It creates a pleasurable feeling of cognitive overload or absorption while diminishing a person's ability to dispute or assess what is stated. The cause-and-effect pattern is incredibly captivating. It is likely the second most potent hypnotic language pattern since it establishes causal links between seemingly unrelated topics. As you better understand the power of cause and effect and how it reflects the structure of internal belief, you'll find yourself using it more strategically. To create effective causal relationships that direct your subject's mind to do what you want them to do in a way that appears completely natural and organic yet is hypnotically powerful and nearly impossible to resist. Episode Timeline: [02:36] The Presuppositional language [04:17] The Echo Technique [11:18] Complex Equivalence [13:26] The Four Language Pattern [21:41] The Nonconforming Gender [37:11] The Criterion Values [48:45] Charisma Learn more about Dr. David Snyder and NPL Power at: Website: http://www.nlppower.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsnydernlp/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidSnyderNLP Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidsnyderhypnosis YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/davidsnydernlp

“What I want for leaders and what I invite leaders to do is absolutely to consider what they want for the other person in that conversation before walking into that conversation,” shares David Taylor-Klaus, master certified coach and bestselling author. David works with executives and entrepreneurs to help them live more authentically and better connect with their clients and employees. He joins Mike Horne in conversation to discuss tips for unleashing personal mastery through authenticity.    According to David, the largest issue busy executives face is the inability to slow themselves down and listen to their intuition. They are so busy that they lose track of whether or not they are still in alignment with their core beliefs and desires. High performance leaders often get so caught up in work that they put it first above their personal lives and sabotage their happiness by doing so. David recommends starting by celebrating in the moment rather than only focusing on the long term end goal and going into every conversation thinking about what you want for the other person. When you go into a conversation thinking about your desired outcome for the other person, they will feel respected and listened to; whereas if you go in thinking of what you want for yourself, they may feel dehumanized.    Unearth personal mastery by chipping away at everything in your life that isn't authentic, isn't real, and doesn't reflect who you are at your core. Tune into this week's episode of the Authentic Change Podcast to learn more about how to get back into alignment with your authentic self and how to be a better leader.    Quotes: “The core element was, I became willing to see what I was doing that was out of alignment, that was inauthentic, that was wrong, and do the work in partnering with the universe to get it right.” (5:50-6:12 | David) “What's true is that we don't pay enough attention to what we feel, the somatic knowing. The little gray matter inside of your skull is 3% of your body mass, and yet, we spend 90% of our time paying attention to what we think and very little time paying attention to our heart intelligence, or our gut wisdom, our instincts, our intuition, all that somatic knowing. When we pay more attention to that, when we're aligned in that arena, wow. That's when it gets incredibly powerful and very juicy.” (7:03-7:37 | David)  “Sustained happiness is when we are enjoying and celebrating the moment, and not just the end. We get in trouble with the, “I'll be happy when.” When I graduate, when I get this job, when I get this promotion, when I get this raise. Well, dude, you're missing all the happiness of the moment in between.” (10:02-10:23 | David) “The phrase work life balance is a horrific lie. And I don't know whose twisted idea it was to put the word work first. That's what screwed us up. We too often, and for those high performers, uber driven type A or type AAA, we can get too over calibrated towards work. And that mindset is messing us up and preventing us from actually finding the happiness and the fulfillment that we crave.” (12:27-12:56 | David) “All of our jobs as adults to get back to our pure authentic self is to chip away everything that isn't real, isn't authentic, isn't true, isn't you.” (14:12-14:23 | David) “It's important that I get it real, it's not important that I get it right. Real is right for me. Not right in terms of the world.” (16:54-17:01 | David) “Being listened to feels so much like being loved that people can scarcely tell the difference.” (23:02-23:08 | David)  “When you're clear what you want for the people in your organization, and on your team, and those that you lead, it changes the way you lead. So yes, love them and love them deeply. Because if you don't, you're just treating them as objects, and othering does not serve us well as humans.” (23:25-23:40 | David) “I think the word manager is getting in the way. We should never be managing people. We should always be leading people. We can manage assets, we can manage elements. We can manage inanimate things, we can manage processes, but we should never be managing people. Because that's inherently treating them as cogs, or assets, or inanimate.” (29:16-29:35 | David) “What I want for leaders and what I invite leaders to do is absolutely to consider what they want for the other person in that conversation before walking into that conversation.” (36:15-36:25 | David) Links:   Mentioned in this episode: Learn more about Mike Horne on Linkedin Email Mike at mike@mike-horne.com Find more about Leading People and Culture with Authenticity   Learn more about David Taylor-Klaus: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtaylorklaus/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtk Instagram: https://instagram.com/dtkcoaching Web: dtkcoaching.com Join the Community: better human ❯❯❯ better life → betterhumanbetterlife.com

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When news broke back in March that the live events and publishing firm Questex had bought the assets of Digital Signage Expo, there was, understandably, a lot of interest and speculation about whether that might mean the defunct trade show and conference would be revived. It will be, likely around the same timeframe as the past, and back in Las Vegas. It is also likely it will have the same name - though it might just be called DSE.  What's also clear is that it will not be a simple re-boot of the old show - which makes perfect sense, since the Digital Signage Expo that ran for 15+ years would politely be described as spinning its wheels - with attendance flatlined and exhibitor counts shrinking. I contacted Questex when news first broke of the DSE assets being acquired at auction, and have had a few conversations since then with the company, including its CEO Paul Miller. I wasn't sure how much he could tell me, but we had a terrific, very open chat about what went down, and his company's thinking around a new and different DSE in 2022.  Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT David: Paul. Thank you for joining me. Who is Questex?  Paul Miller: Hi, Dave, thanks for having me first and foremost. Questex is a media and information services business that produces events alongside its media sites. We have been in existence as a company for about 15 years, just over. We are a company that focuses on really five or six markets, that is the life sciences and healthcare markets, the technology markets, and then we also focus on the areas of travel hospitality & wellness, and all of that is wrapped up around a focus on the experience economy. That's who we are and we do events, we do media websites, we do all kinds of connecting of buyers and sellers in those areas.  David: So of those properties that you have in the context of the Pro AV world, what would people who are listening to this most likely know, LDI or the Nightclub & Bar Show?  Paul Miller: Yeah. They would probably know our Nightclub & Bar Show in Las Vegas, mainly because that would have been in history. Some cases would collaborate with DSE and in some cases would just sit alongside so they would know that.  They probably would know the Lighting Dimension Show, the LDI show that you mentioned. Yeah, that's also one that is quite well known in this space. I would say outside of that, there are events that I think are relevant in the hotel area, in the spa area, in the gym area where we're connecting owners of hotels & operators of hotels and gyms and spas with various people that want to sell into those spaces. So of course digital signage is a huge area for all of those end users. So they may not know those, but certainly, I think they're areas that we think are very relevant.  David: We'll get into acquiring assets of DSE, but I was curious when that happened, so I looked up Questex to see who they are and how they work and I get a sense that your typical approach is you have publishing wing as a foundational thing that kind of sets the content for that particular vertical market, and then you grow and market the live event off of that. Is that a fair assessment?  Paul Miller: Yeah, I think that's a good assessment, Dave. We believe that we should be engaged with communities 365 days through the year because people don't always wait for an event before they make their decision. So we want to help them through that buying process through content that attracts them to our websites. As they interact with that content, we like to use that data to produce what we would consider a very relevant show. So when you come to the show, it's content that's been popular throughout the year, probably speakers that have been writing content that you can come and meet live. So we see a full connection between how people in the B2B world look for content, and how they go through that buying process, and the event is part of that.  In many cases, it's an exciting part of it, because people come to actually buy. In some cases, they come to network. In some cases, they come to get educated, and in some cases, all three. So, that idea that we would just do an event, and then see you next year is not really in our DNA. We're more, “Hey, we want to serve you throughout the year, and we'd love to see you live at the event if relevant.”  David: And I also get a sense that that the events look different depending on the vertical. So you don't necessarily do a full trade show with exhibits for a certain vertical because it really doesn't fit, whereas, for other verticals, it may.  Paul Miller: That actually is a really astute comment. I think sometimes in our world, not the digital signage world. This is our world at Questex. We sometimes talk about events a little bit like somebody saying, “I'm going on vacation to Africa,” and your first question is what country you're going to because you're going to have a different experience depending on where you're going.  In the events world too, there are various flavors. In some events, it truly is sort of a cash and carry. You bring in your goods, you set up your store and people come in and they buy your goods, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. By the way, I do not think that applies to digital signage, certainly on the whole, but that there is a flavor of event that we do that sort of emulates that, that is very much you come in to buy stuff and the exhibitors are there to sell stuff and success is how much did I sell, frankly? And then there are the educational type events which sort of surround large conferences. I think you'd be familiar with these: great speakers, good education, and some really good networking off-piece at the hotel bar afterward, et cetera, and then you can get into some really specific events which are matchmaking buyers with sellers. This particular buyer is looking for this solution and we're going to put you in a room with this seller. They tend to be more intimate, very VIP, in some cases, we will host those buyers. So we tend to be, and I think your comment is right on. We tend to look for what fits what element of the market at the right time. I think where it gets exciting, Dave, and this probably leads us into sort of our thoughts around the Digital Signage Expo is that in many cases you can do all three. You can have a great conference, you can have a great show, trade show floor, and you can do great matchmaking, and it doesn't work all the time. We have a feeling that it is relevant to DSE from what we've been hearing from the market, but you're absolutely right on the money. We don't really have a one size fits all approach as a company, and I think given the communities we serve, that would be very difficult for us to shoehorn in certain templates if you will.  David: Right. So back in, I think you said it was April, but you acquired the assets of Exponation. What did you actually acquire?  Paul Miller: We acquired the assets of Digital Signage Expo which would have included the trademarks, the websites, the database, the customer database. I think that was about it. A few other URLs, websites that sort of surrounded the industry a little bit. But everything that Exponation had that was DSE-related is what we acquired.  David: And how did that happen? Was there like a Broker who came to you and said, “Hey, we have this”, or do you have people who just pay attention to this sort of thing?  Paul Miller: No, it was strange, to be honest. The last year has been strange in many ways. Firstly, we're very aware at Questex of DSC. We had, as mentioned at the start, we had seen the show, we had visited the show. I wandered over to the show while at our Nightclub & Bar event. David: Just to sober up? (Laughter) Paul Miller: Yeah, actually, just to see what it's like at a B2B show that isn't serving alcohol, which is a different field, and actually we had been impressed for many years with the show. We certainly didn't really know the understories and what was really going on, but from a very shallow view, I would say, the show looked very professional. There were great companies, and there was good buzz, and we always said to each other that, that looks like a great event, and that was about it, just for the record.  Then I forget the actual timing, but sometime in the fall of last year, we obviously saw the story that Exponation had filed for Chapter 7, and that sort of alerted us about that a lot of us that are in the events business, the pandemic has been devastating. It wasn't that it was a surprise, but to be honest as having that sort of very narrow and shallow knowledge of the show, we were like, wow that's a shame that, that was a good looking event and we're probably going to see more of this was our initial reaction. Then what happened, Dave is that we got a notice from, I think it was the bankruptcy court. I can't remember who it was, but anyway, we got a notice that the assets were going to be auctioned to help raise funds, for those people that the debt was owed to if you will. So we said, okay we like these assets and we've got some things that we could bring to the event, or this was before we knew, by the way, that might be relevant. So we entered into an auction process and it was the first time in my career that I've ever been through such a process and it truly was a person on the phone, basically banging the gavel and saying, “Yep,  sold to the people at the back,” and that ended up being us. We obviously then did a lot of homework before we went into the auction. We got our hands around a little bit. What was the size of the show? What was the target audience for the show? What do we think we could bring to the show? And it checked a lot of boxes for us. Yeah, we went into the auction seriously and we won that auction, and then, of course, you find what actually have we acquired? And that was a fascinating sort of few weeks of research.  David: I've spoken with you in the past, I've spoken with someone else from your company and a consultant, Brent Gleason, who you've engaged to help out with this.  I'm curious, as you've done your kind of due diligence and exploration of the industry, what have you been hearing about the industry, your impressions on that, but also, we can go from there to what are you going to do?  Paul Miller: Sure. So firstly I have to say, and I think you know this that there wasn't a lot of ho-hum type of commentary in the research when we went to the industry. People were very passionate about space, very passionate about this product. Not all of it positive. I think there've been some negative experiences for certain people, but what we did find, Dave, was that this is an industry that is going through terrific growth and that growth looks to be sustainable, certainly, through the next half a decade if not beyond in our opinion, so great sort of 7.5% CAGR growth rates, touches a lot of verticals, and I know that people listening and yourself would know this, but this was our learning, touching verticals as diverse as healthcare, through to retail, through to hotels, houses of worship, hotels. So that was really interesting for us. We also found and heard that the industry actually wanted a place to gather. They do see this as an industry that has its unique personality. It's not all about one thing or another thing, and there are definitely some trends that are coming in, the digital out of home space for instance, that in my opinion, is akin to what happened between print and the internet, back in the late nineties, a lot of data starts to be kicked off and a lot of backend technology starts to get into play. With digital signage becoming the forefront of that, it's where people first interact. So we got very excited very quickly. Some of the comments frankly, were hard to swallow or people saying, “Hey, the event was not what it used to be.” “It was starting to lose a little bit of its luster.”  Obviously when the show was canceled last year. Some people were really quite upset about the lack of refunds and what went on there, and I fully understand that. We had to cancel a lot of events last year as well. It was a very tough scenario for everybody, but the industry we felt as we got into it had an opinion, and it was a strong opinion and people wanted to talk. We had incoming people calling us saying, “I want to talk to you about what you've bought here and let you know what you've got.” And actually Brad was one of those, by the way, Brad said, look, I have a lot of history with the show, and I'd love to help reinvent it along the lines that I feel, and I think what the industry feels it should have been going in any way. So look, we have the ability to “start again” in many ways. I don't think the Exponation had that ability. They had a product, they had to try to grow that product. We've acquired a set of assets, but we have a real strong ability to listen to the community and try to create a new experience for the community that they're telling us they want. And that's unique. So, we purposely were have been extremely patient. We just said, let's listen, and the more we listen, the more we're finding that the industry wants an event, it wants a place to gather, but it doesn't really want your grandmother's DSC.  I think the event has reached its limit, if you will, in terms of value and people wanted to do something else going forward, without losing some of the great things about the event, seems like it was a fantastic place for the industry to network and meet once a year. We don't want to lose that. That's a super reason for having an event. So, it's been a real experience. I mean, this is a very good acquisition from my experience, acquired through auction had gone into Chapter 7 through the pandemic and it has a set of stakeholders that really want to have a say. I mean, nobody said, sorry, I don't want to talk about it, or, I don't really have a comment. Everybody had something to say and I think that's great. That shows some passion. It shows some engagement. It's just that not all of the comments were positive, I have to be honest. David: Oh, for sure. When we chatted in the past, I said, I don't think there's enough to do at a trade show with a whole bunch of exhibit stands and everything, the way it was done in the past. There's a diminishing number of companies that want to spend those kinds of dollars, and I just didn't see it. Is that what you're hearing more broadly?  Paul Miller: Not really, no. I get your point, and we actually gave people the ability to tell us what they really want. Now, I will say that the number one thing that's coming back is that we want to meet people that are going to buy our product. So we want to meet, we don't really want to just get together and talk to each other. But it's a very expensive meeting to just talk to other people in the industry. So there's been a lot of questions to us like, do you reach people in the hotel industry? Do you reach people in the restaurant space? Do you reach people in other areas where digital signage is needed and can be engaged with?  And when we've explained, as I did up top, that these are the markets we're in, people have gone, if you can get those folks to attend an event, we absolutely will bring a booth and we absolutely will exhibit, but you gotta bring buyers. You're not going to get away with putting up an exhibit and meeting without competitors across the aisle, that's not enough.  David: Right. I know with Exponation, they worked their butts off trying to get brands to show up, to a level that they were putting them on advisory boards and things like that, just to make them feel like they should be there.  Paul Miller: Yeah. Look, I've been in the events space for sort of 25 years. It is not easy, particularly when, and this is where it comes back to the strategy of Questex, I think compared with Exponation, we're a huge believer in content. I think I've said this to you before content is still king or queen, but the kingdom is data. Once you have people and you've attracted them, around content, it's really about understanding what their needs are, what they're looking for, engaging with them, and I think if you're a pure-play event company, what you do is you put on an event once a year, you're sort of reliant on a lot of partners to produce that content for you, and not in your environment. So you don't get the data as much, and I think that makes it very difficult in complete deference to what Exponation was trying to do.  I think they were trying to do the right thing, but when you don't have that daily engagement with the community, it's quite hard to hit it out of the park on every single thing. You're going to find your content probably gets a bit tired, sometimes the loudest voice gets to be the speaker, as opposed to the one that everybody wants to hear. There are certain things that data takes out of the room. It takes that emotion out of the room and it says like this audience is engaging with this type of content, that's what they want to see live. That I think gives you a little bit more data-driven decision-making around what the industry wants, as opposed to my gut feel or what somebody just told me at the bar last week at the show.  David: So, based on everything you've been hearing, everything your team has been doing, do you have the bones of an idea of what we're going to see? Paul Miller: Yeah we do. I think that's a good description. I'm not sure we're fully fleshed out, but I can certainly tell you a few things that we're going to do.  Number one, we are going to relaunch the show. Just to be clear from the top, we are going to relaunch the show. We do think that the show has to be repositioned somewhat to be a broader show to bring in those customers, as I mentioned, We're looking at experiences around a broad-based agenda of life and business and mid the re-emergence of society and the global economy. So this is more about where does digital signage fit in the “roaring 20S”? So we are looking to bring back the event. We're looking at next Spring and we are looking at Las Vegas. I can't go much further than that at this point in time, because we are obviously trying to secure venues and we're trying to secure dates, and that by the way, is easier said than done in a post-pandemic environment and everybody wants dates. But we do have our Nightclub & Bar rebranded as our Bar & Restaurant event in Las Vegas next spring. There's the possibility of bringing that together again if you will. We will have an exhibit floor but also adding things like show floor experiences, very inclusive. You know, “let's demonstrate some applications, do some showcases, have some themed presentation stages.” So a lot of buzz on the show floor, but at the same time, a really engaging conference program, lots of curated presentations, tracks based on innovative applications, why do this, what are the outcomes, what you should be looking for? And last but not least we are hoping to have multiple layers of networking at the event. That's one thing that this community told us is, “Please don't lose the networking!”  As I think, you know more than I know, great parties, great places for the industry to come together and celebrate, learn to buy, to sell. So yeah, we were even looking at guides around Las Vegas itself, tours of installations so people can learn, form real-life applications, not just what somebody might tell you what could happen. Let's curate some tours, and we do that by the way, for our Bar & Restaurant event, we take people behind the scenes at a Nightclub behind the scenes of a Vegas restaurant, so they can see everything from point of sale applications through to what's going on in the kitchen, and how does the food come out? We think that the audience, the community is telling us it wants more, hands-on more, show me what works, more education, more demos and bring it all together as an event that is an experience beyond just, ”I walk the show floor and I meet a couple of friends at the bar.” David: Yeah. I've certainly heard many times and when I did a little survey asking about, where should a trade show go? The comment that's stuck in my head was, I know when I go to something like DSE, I'm landing, and that's what I'm doing that week, or for the next two, three days, that's my subject matter versus an ISE or an InfoComm, which are great shows, but they're Omni shows covering a whole bunch of different vertical industries and technologies and everything else and you don't have this aggregate of people who are just there for digital signage. Now you could go to a party and talk to 20 people, and they're all doing things that have nothing to do with digital signage, but they're in AV.  Paul Miller: Yeah, by the way, I think both are relevant. A lot of respect for ISE and InfoComm and the AVIXA Association in general, I think they do great stuff by the way. And I think there is relevance in attending a show that is broader than just the sort of industry that you're in. I think that's where you do see adjacencies and ideas that might be applicable. But what was loud and clear from this community was we wanted our own place. There's enough going on in the digital signage space for us to need to focus on our industry, our solutions, our ecosystem for us to want our own place, and that, by the way, was one of the key learnings over the last 8 to 10 weeks of listening to people.  There wasn't one person who said, I don't think the industry needs its own place. There are a few people who said can I afford the time to go to all of these events? And I think that's a relevant comment and that's all about saying, well, we have to win your respect to get your time, and we have to have a program that you walk away after two or three days or a week, and you go, “Wow, I'm going to recommend this to my friends because these guys really put something on that it creates a fear of missing out if I'm not there, and I think more importantly than all of that actually creates business interactions. People actually do write orders and they do write RFPs at the event.” That's what we're here for at the end of the day.  So yeah, I think the need for an event that's focused on this particular community is clear: that's actually a box that was checked very clearly. it wasn't a 50-50 decision. David: There will be people who listen to this and think that's great that you're doing a show, but spring in Las Vegas or just spring in general in the trade show industry is very crowded. There's a lot going on and you're putting this in between ISC and InfoComm, which are AV shows, there's NAB, all these other ones that happening around then there, I've heard many people say it would be lovely if an event like this was in the fall instead. Paul Miller: Yeah. Unfortunately, the fall is also busy. It's got its own interesting issues and particularly around the pandemic where shows have been moved around, and they're off cycles. The feedback that we got, Dave, was again, you're right, “It's crowded. Please don't put it over the top of another show because we don't want to be forced into a decision. Do we go to this or this?”  The feedback we got was, “We liked where it was before,” which was, around that April timeframe, spring timeframe. So we've taken that into account and we didn't have any huge set of people saying, “Hey, move it to November or get it out of the way.” The other option we had by the way was to think about, do we put it alongside our lighting show, which is in the fall, October, November.  The more we get into it, the more it becomes clear to us that actually, the lighting show is not as relevant as an audience, they tend to be lighting designers, people that are doing the rigging of lighting, et cetera. A better audience would be people that are buying stuff for their restaurant for us. So yeah, we're never going to get a date that's going to satisfy everybody, unfortunately. Our feeling is we have the best chance to bring the right set of buyers to this event in the spring of next year.  David: And if you do it somewhat in tandem with an existing show like your Bar & Restaurant show, I imagine there's some efficiency around Ops people, like, you don't have to bring double the staff. You may bring more than you would for one show, but not of double compliment.  Paul Miller: Yeah, the efficiencies come with, obviously the show place itself. So if we do go to the Las Vegas convention center, obviously you get efficiency. If you do two in one, if you will.  From our team perspective, maybe Dave, in terms of we could send seven people rather than two sets of five, for instance, which is where I think you're going. But I'm not sure, I think what we're looking at for this event is and also by the way, for the Bar & Restaurant event, as you can imagine, the experiences there are pretty high end. You've got people launching new dreams. You've got people launching new bar and restaurant concepts. So I think that it would be the same as at a reinvigorated DSE. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not looking for cost efficiencies, let me put it that way. That wouldn't be the reason for doing it.  David: When do you think you'll have a launch or an announcement saying we're going to do this?  Paul Miller: We're in the midst of recruiting an advisory board. We're getting some great traction there, by the way. I can give you a few names if that helps. I would say we are a matter of weeks away from a full announcement and maybe not many weeks.  David: Yeah, and I guess you really have to be because planning cycles are long, right? People are already budgeting for 2022.  Paul Miller: We gotta get moving, yeah. It's not just the budgeting aspect of this. It's the sales team that has to be implemented. You've got to have your content team in place. Your advisory board needs to meet so we can start to get around the sort of flavor of the show. So no, we gotta get our skates on, no doubt about it. David: So who are some of your advisors that you can say?  Paul Miller: Some that I can say, and by the way, there are a number of others that we think are going to be really exciting for the community to hear about, but we've got Rich Ventura, B2B Business line manager at Sony, I think previously the chairman of the DSF. We've got Rick Robinson, Chief Strategy Officer for Billups, leading voice in the out-of-home industry, and by the way, a play on the advisory board, just for the record is these four quadrants, there's the industry veterans, those people that really know this space, the new voices, and the new faces. We said we're going to reinvigorate, let's get some new voices. So Jackie Walker, digital signage subject matter expert at Publicis Sapient is one of those.  We've got a number of others. Laura Davis Taylor retail & reality, we've got some people here that I think are going to bring some really great new voices and faces alongside the veterans, also strategic partners that we're looking at, and of course, people like yourself in the media. We'd like to have a balance of all of the above and if we're going to deliver on our promise of a reinvigorated show, I think the definition of insanity is doing something the same way and then expecting a different outcome, so we've got to make some changes here and reinvigorate the advisory board, get new names and voices and faces involved, but don't throw away the baby with the bathwater either, make sure you've still got the people that know what they're talking about.  David: The last question I suppose is will it be called Digital Signage Expo or it'd be something else, or is that TBD? Paul Miller: Yeah, that's a great question. We have, interestingly, sometimes for how things happen without doing more sort of fundamental research, but internally we're using the DSE acronym quite a lot. I don't know is it Digital Signage Expo? Is it Digital Signage Experience? Is it DSE? At the moment where we're sticking with brand equity. Words and all that come with digital signage expo, but it's interesting internally, and we do refer a lot to it as DSE, and sometimes that just turned into the experience as opposed to the expo. So a little bit more about the industry, a little bit less about the product itself. I would say a personal front, from what I've heard from customers, Digital Signage Expo is fine. People are calling it DSE anyway, and I don't know if I want to go through a massive rebranding exercise at the same time we're doing a relaunch of the event.  David: Yeah. It's more of the communications and the people you bring on board and everything else.  Paul Miller: I think so, yeah. At the end of the day, I think it is: have we delivered a product that people go to and say you know what, these guys are on the path to creating a must-go-to event, we did some business, it was great to meet the community again, and I learned a lot. If we can check those boxes, I think we can then start to think about, okay, what now? And at the moment, we're just fully focused on producing something that people walk away from Vegas going, “These guys nailed it, they listened and we've got an event that's a must go for our industry, and they want to listen to some more on how we can make improvements from stage one.” So I think at the end of the day, that's what really matters. Yes, people have a lot of opinions. Yes, there's a lot of baggage. Yes, there's a lot of words that we're using right now that I hope resonate with the industry. But at the end of the day, it's did we deliver?  David: All right, Paul, thank you. I appreciate your time.  Paul Miller: Dave, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.  

Today’s episode features an interview between your host Matt Trifiro, and David Xie and Dalerie Wu of Zenlayer.David is the Chief Product Officer at Zenlayer. Before joining Zenlayer, he spent eight years at Gartner, most recently as Group Vice President of Digital Products. Dalerie is the Head of Corporate Strategy at Zenlayer. She has been with Zenlayer since 2015 and previously led its global marketing team. In this interview, David and Dalerie discuss the unique challenges of bringing edge solutions to emerging markets, and how the edge represents a huge opportunity to introduce a quality digital experience to countries with underdeveloped telecoms infrastructure. Key Quotes: “I'm sure a lot of technologists think about the edge from the technology angle. We tend to think about edge purely from our customer's perspective. Because we are serving global companies, they are usually doing well in their home country, which is usually in the developed world. For example, if the United States is the core market, then the emerging markets will become the edge for them.” -David“All of those emerging markets are growing at a much faster speed and they have tons of people, so if you add those two things together and then couple that with the poor infrastructure, that means there's a huge opportunity for infrastructure providers to bring a good or decent digital experience to those users.”  -David“In emerging markets, it's really people using mobile internet more than wired connections because of the infrastructure issue. It's hard for them to build fiber, so you have wireless internet being so much more dominant. Over 90% of people who are on the internet use a mobile device to access it.” -Dalerie“I think once [5G] does roll out to emerging markets, it will have a much bigger impact than it would probably have here in the US…[but] really building and ramping that up is going to be a challenge.” -Dalerie“Cloud and edge [are] complementary. Cloud is always going to be here as the core, but as more and more applications are being consumed by users all over the world at the edge, you need the edge computing component to complement that.” -DalerieSponsorsOver the Edge is brought to you by the generous sponsorship of Catchpoint, NetFoundry, Ori Industries, Packet, Seagate, Vapor IO, and Zenlayer.The featured sponsor of this episode of Over the Edge is Zenlayer. Improving user experience doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Zenlayer helps you lower latency with on-demand edge services in over 180 PoPs around the world. Find out how you can improve your users' experience today at zenlayer.com/edgeLinksFollow Matt on TwitterFind David on LinkedInFind Dalerie on LinkedIn

  Update: Provision for David’s House (Audio) Eve Brast - 4/4/21 Eve said: The Lord instructed us to update the David’s House page. Recently, the owner of David’s House has given a deadline of May 2nd for the purchase of David’s house before the house would be put on the market. The Lord had me come across the information that had been sent out to everyone in larger UBM of where to send donations for David’s house and I was reminded of the original dream revelation shared below.  After the first and only time we mentioned the revelation below of an offering for David’s house the donations of the saints had fallen off mostly because it was "out of sight, out of mind".  We came to believe that maybe the Lord would provide for the rest of what was needed for the purchase of the house through the GCR. But Father showed me in another dream this morning that this other way was not the method that He chose to use for this but His original command below. Because of this, the Lord had been impressing me that we needed to bring this up before the saints again as a reminder that this is how He has ordained for the provision for the purchase of the house. But I was uncertain that I was hearing clearly from the Lord and didn’t want to get into works to bring to pass what we were having faith for. I believe that one of the reasons for this is because He desires to bless our listeners for their sacrificial gifts to bless David. David has sacrificed his life and the majority of all his resources, continually, over the lifetime of this UBM ministry that the Lord gave him in order to meet the needs of all the brethren. 1 Ch 29:1-9   And David the king said unto all the assembly, Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great; for the palace is not for man, but for Jehovah God. 2 Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God the gold for the things of gold, and the silver for the things of silver, and the brass for the things of brass, the iron for the things of iron, and wood for the things of wood; onyx stones, and stones to be set, stones for inlaid work, and of divers colors, and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance. 3 Moreover also, because I have set my affection on the house of my God, seeing that I have a treasure of mine own of gold and silver, I give it unto the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house, 4 even three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, wherewith to overlay the walls of the houses; 5 of gold for the things of gold, and of silver for the things of silver, and for all manner of work to be made by the hands of artificers. Who then offereth willingly to consecrate himself this day unto Jehovah? 6 Then the princes of the fathers houses , and the princes of the tribes of Israel, and the captains of thousands and of hundreds, with the rulers over the king's work, offered willingly; 7 and they gave for the service of the house of God of gold five thousand talents and ten thousand darics, and of silver ten thousand talents, and of brass eighteen thousand talents, and of iron a hundred thousand talents. 8 And they with whom precious stones were found gave them to the treasure of the house of Jehovah, under the hand of Jehiel the Gershonite. 9 Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because with a perfect heart they offered willingly to Jehovah: and David the king also rejoiced with great joy.  This original method is what God desires to use for the sake of His people.   I Have Prepared With All My Might for the House of My God Eve Brast - 4/2/21 (David’s notes in red) I dreamed that David was merged with President Trump and was sitting in front of me and slightly to the right. (His head was larger than normal and it was Trump’s face that predominated his appearance even though they were merged together.) (We have been expecting that the David Man-child reformers will come to power parallel to Cyrus Trump conquering Babylon. Daniel was promoted over Babylon on the night that Cyrus conquered Babylon.  They became parallel!) David was telling me all about the GCR and how it was going to solve so many financial issues for people and for the financial situation for his house as well. Then the voice of the Lord spoke from above and behind me saying something like, “It shall not be so with David’s house.” I can’t remember everything He said but I understood, in the dream, that the GCR was not going to happen in time for the deadline of the purchase of his house.  (The first deadline was 4-1-21 when the GCR was touted to come but that day came and went and it didn't happen and now we know why but we cant tell anyone yet.)  Then I woke up. I was pondering the dream this morning when Missy received a confirmation of this correction. The trust in the GCR for the provision was the ‘Ishmael'. The original plan and promise, 'the Isaac' was that the saints of God in UBM would provide for the purchase of David’s house according to the dream revelation in the original broadcast here: Provision for David’s House Eve Brast - 12/8/19 (David’s notes in red) (I am a little apprehensive because I have never asked anyone for money but I will share Eve’s revelations in obedience to the Lord’s Word.)  Eve said, I had asked Father to give me a dream or a Word concerning how David would be able to purchase His house that he is currently in after our meeting on Thanksgiving. David shared a Word I had received from the Lord on 11/26/19 concerning Father’s provision for the purchase of his house which He had promised to him. The owner was going to sell the house but was offering David the first chance to buy it and has checked back with him several times. Then the dream and Word below is what The Lord gave me.  Here is a portion of that Word on 11/26/19. I asked Father concerning some of David's questions… then I asked “What about David's house?” And Father said, (Speaking to David) “Do not be anxious or troubled concerning the house. I have desired it for My dwelling place. I will not allow it to be sold to another, though they may try. It will not succeed. I will provide for the purchase.” I asked for a confirmation of this word with a couple of quarters that I keep on my nightstand that rarely come up all heads and I got 2 heads for confirmation. Then I asked for a random word by faith and my finger was on Psalm 33:13,(9-22 for context): 9 For he spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. 10 Jehovah bringeth the counsel of the nations to nought; He maketh the thoughts of the peoples to be of no effect. 11 The counsel of Jehovah standeth fast for ever, (Notice the confirmation three times that what Father promised He would do.) The thoughts of his heart to all generations. 12 Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah, The people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. 13 Jehovah looketh from heaven; He beholdeth all the sons of men; 14 From the place of his habitation he looketh forth Upon all the inhabitants of the earth, 15 He that fashioneth the hearts of them all, That considereth all their works. 16 There is no king saved by the multitude of a host: A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. 17 A horse is a vain thing for safety; Neither doth he deliver any by his great power. 18 Behold, the eye of Jehovah is upon them that fear him, Upon them that hope in his lovingkindness; 19 To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine. 20 Our soul hath waited for Jehovah: He is our help and our shield. 21 For our heart shall rejoice in him, Because we have trusted in his holy name. 22 Let thy lovingkindness, O Jehovah, be upon us, According as we have hoped in thee. 11/30/19 I dreamed that I and my oldest (first-born) son Noah, who was 9 years old in the dream, were going on a mission field trip with local and larger UBM. (I believe that I and Noah represent the corporate body of the first-fruits. We are representing the whole of the corporate UBM body also.)(The first-born of the Bride has the 9 fruits of the Spirit.  David as a type of the Man-child is God’s first-born Son in this text. Psa 89:27  I also will make him my first-born, The highest of the kings of the earth.)  (I literally got this same word when I asked for a random word in real life for Noah 3 years ago.) We were all going to this huge multi-story white marble mansion that was not more than 3 stories. (Our Father's house). It was very bright outside as the sun shone down on us and upon the mansion as we were approaching it. (The three stories represent three levels of maturity) Isa. 60:1-5, 1 (Addressing the Bride, Father says,) Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee. 2 For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples; but Jehovah will arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. 3 And nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. (First God manifests the glory to the Bride and then He brings His people out of Babylonish captivity to come under the Bride as it was originally in the time of David.) 4 Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: they all gather themselves together, they come to thee; thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be carried in the arms. 5 Then thou shalt see and be radiant, and thy heart shall thrill and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be turned unto thee, the wealth of the nations shall come unto thee. (Jer 3:14-17  Return, O backsliding children, saith Jehovah; for I am a husband unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.  15  And I will give you shepherds (the Man-child reformer body) according to my heart, who shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.  16  And it shall come to pass, when ye are multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith Jehovah, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Jehovah; neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember it; neither shall they miss it; neither shall it be made any more.  17  At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah (Notice Jerusalem is the Bride and now she is the throne of the Lord along with their King David, representing the Man-child, who was caught up to the throne in Rev.12. Rev 3:21  He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. And then we see the nations of God’s people come to the Bride and Man-child to be under their rule as it was in David’s time.); and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil heart.) (Notice the “Name" of the Lord is synonymous with the Bride and Hebrew word name means, "nature, character and authority”. This speaks of the Brides maturity.) When we got inside and my eyes were adjusted, I saw beautiful, polished marble floors throughout and a large grand staircase with cherrywood banisters curving up to the 2nd floor. There were elegant crystal chandeliers and many, many rooms. (John 14: 2-4, 2  In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4 And whither I go, ye know the way.)  The rooms that I saw were furnished with antique cherrywood furniture and antique maroon Persian rugs of different designs.  (This is a type of the house of God at the beginning which we should have never departed from to go into captivity in Babylon.) Isa. 46:9-13, 9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me; 10 declaring the end from the beginning (Notice that this glorious house of God which represents His people in the beginning will also be in the end.), and from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure; 11 calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel (Cyrus, a type of Trump to conquer Babylon) from a far country; yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed, I will also do it. 12 Hearken unto me, ye stout-hearted, that are far from righteousness: 13 I bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry; and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory.  Jer. 6:16,Thus saith Jehovah, Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls: ... There were also many beautiful rooms with large libraries with shelves and shelves of books from floor to ceiling and large antique fireplaces with vigorous fires burning. (In God’s original house there is much knowledge available to His children but they have followed after Babylonian religion.). (Studying the Word of God will burn up the flesh.) There were many study desks made of cherrywood and beautiful antique upholstered tapestry couches and chairs for sitting and reading or studying. 2Ti. 2:15 KJV, Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Jos.1:8, This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Ezr. 7:10, For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. 1Th 4:11, and that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your hands, even as we charged you; To the right of us past the foyer was a large kitchen that looked similar to a kitchen in a high end restaurant it was all stainless steel and there were many round tables beyond that for people to eat at. (In Fathers house all hunger and thirst for truth is met. Jesus, who is the Word is also our bread as He said in John 6:35-51, 35 Jesus said unto them.  I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. 36 But I said unto you, that ye have seen me, and yet believe not. 37 All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.) David led us all up the grand staircase to the second floor. When we got to the top I realized that it was a children’s cancer hospital. (God’s children are living under the curse of death, which is like a cancer in our souls.)  There were many patient rooms. But I didn’t see any nurses or doctors. We were the ones who were there to minister the Word and healing to the children and their families. (His house has the cure because His disciples have the “Bread of Life."). We all paired off into twos. Noah and I paired up and then we all went around ministering to the sick children and their families. (Noah and I are representing the whole of the corporate UBM body also.) Mar. 6:7-15, 7 And he calleth unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits; 8 and he charged them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no bread, no wallet, no money in their purse; 9 but to go shod with sandals: and said he , put not on two coats. 10 And he said unto them, Wheresoever ye enter into a house, there abide till ye depart thence. 11 And whatsoever place shall not receive you, and they hear you not, as ye go forth thence, shake off the dust that is under your feet for a testimony unto them. 12 And they went out, and preached that men should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. When we had visited and ministered to everyone, we followed David back down the stairs and gathered over near the large kitchen.  There was a commotion in the kitchen amongst the kitchen staff and the chefs that prepared the food and served it to the sick children and their families, but I couldn’t make sense of it.  I saw the CEO of the hospital, who was dressed in a suit and white dress shirt, come into the kitchen to hear the complaints of the chefs and staff. He was an older man with grey hair. (The Chief Executive Officer represents the Father who is over all His house.)  David was quietly talking with the men in our group when I heard the CEO say,  “Okay. No problem. I’ll take care of it.“  Then He called David over to the kitchen with a large beckoning motion of his right arm.  David humbly and quietly slipped over to the CEO's right side, kind of looking down with his hands in his pockets as if uncomfortable with the attention being called to him. (Humility is a requirement in order to serve the Father and His kingdom and people. Pro. 29:23 A man's pride shall bring him low; But he that is of a lowly spirit shall obtain honor. Pro. 15:33, The fear of Jehovah is the instruction of wisdom; And before honor goeth humility.) I then noticed that David was wearing the same suit as the CEO. (Representing Heavenly works of the Father) The CEO put his right arm around David’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze and smile of approval and told the distraught chefs that, “David will take care of it.“ (John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father.) I went over closer so that I could hear what all the fuss was about. I heard the chefs telling David that they were out of loaves of bread to feed to the sick children. (The chefs represent ministers in Father’s house who prepare spiritual food for His children.  In much of Father’s house they have no bread to make his children healthy and mature.) There was a large, deep, metal serving pan on one of the counters and I watched David place his hands on both sides of the pan. He bowed his head and closed his eyes and prayed and blessed it. Then suddenly it was filled to the top with many loaves of bread. (Jesus multiplied the fishes and the loaves and so does the Man-child body of our day) (2 Co. 9:10 And he that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for food, shall supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and increase the fruits of your righteousness:  Ecc. 11:1-2, 1 Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days. 2 Give a portion to seven, yea, even unto eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. ) As David multiplied the loaves representing the Word, everyone let out a gasp of astonishment and there was a brief silence before the entire kitchen staff erupted into exclamations of wonderment and praises to God. (The chefs in much of God’s house do not have the bread or Word to feed God’s children to bring them into the image of Christ, but David is meeting their needs by multiplying the bread. Jesus also multiplied the wine. The bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ and we need both. Jesus said it was essential that eat this bread for eternal life. John 6:47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth hath eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. 51 I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: yea and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.  52  The Jews therefore strove one with another, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? (Jesus was the Word made flesh) 53  Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves.)  They were so happy that they had enough bread now to feed the children in the hospital. (We have fought Satan and his helpers to get the bread multiplied just as they have fought to take it down. The fullness of the bread or Word will cause the children to feel their hunger is being satisfied. This fullness is who Jesus is. It is the seed that manifests Him.) David tried to slip away quietly while everyone marveled at the miracle that had just taken place, but the CEO called David back over to his side and announced to everyone that he was presenting a reward to David for his faithful mission work at the children’s cancer hospital. (Isa. 33:15-17, 15 He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from taking a bribe, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil: 16 He shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks; his bread shall be given him; his waters shall be sure. 17 Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold a land that reacheth afar.) All of UBM and the kitchen staff of the hospital gathered around to watch David be presented with his reward. (Its a reward of time restored. It is also a retirement party for David’s old man.) The CEO brought out a small, polished, blonde wooden box that was lighted inside. It had a clear glass display on the front of it. Inside was an open faced golden pocket watch with a golden chain and a golden crucifixion spike attached to the other end of the chain. (In many companies its customary on retirement to give the retiree a gold watch. This one has a crucifixion to go with it.  Jesus retired his old man WITH the crucifixion spike. The spike represents staying on the cross. The time of the old man's works is over at crucifixion.  Rewarded for a time of crucifixion is, "I will restore unto you the years that... my great army which I sent among you.”)  Joel 2: 23-27, 23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in Jehovah your God; for he giveth you the former rain in just measure, and he causeth to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain, in the first month . 24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil. 25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker-worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer-worm, my great army which I sent among you. (These enemies are given to crucify us but all that the crucifiers stole God will multiply back.) 26 And ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and shall praise the name of Jehovah your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you; and my people shall never be put to shame. 27 And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am Jehovah your God, and there is none else; and my people shall never be put to shame.  We received this text twice recently. Isa. 22: 20-25, 20 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim (meaning: "whom God will raise up” pointing to a resurrection. He is a type of the crucified Man-child who takes the place of the apostate leaders) the son of Hilkiah: 21 and I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. 22 And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; and he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. 23 And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a throne of glory to his father's house. 24 And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, every small vessel, from the cups even to all the flagons. 25 In that day, saith Jehovah of hosts, shall the nail that was fastened in a sure place give way; and it shall be hewn down, and fall; and the burden that was upon it shall be cut off; for Jehovah hath spoken it. (When Jesus was "cut off" He was taken from the cross and the nail had to "give way". Then resurrection catching up to the throne came as a type for Jesus in the Man-child David’s of our day.) The time piece hung at the back of the display box to the right as the chain dipped around over to the left where the spike hung attached.  (The left is who used the spike on Jesus and the Man-child of our day but Judas, a factious leftist, also died at this time by his own hand.) David was smiling and looking down a lot because he felt uncomfortable being openly recognized for his ministry work and slipped the reward into his pocket. Mat. 6:1-4, 1 Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. 2 When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. 3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: 4 that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.  (I do feel uncomfortable about this but the Lord ordered that Eve present this to you and I am obeying.) We all proceeded out of the beautiful marble building, down the white steps, and onto the large stone paved area where there were outdoor tables and chairs. (Preparing for the coming marriage feast of the seven day tribulation.) David was then called to go with the CEO to discuss his next plans for David and UBM. (Concerning the crucifixion of David here, Angelica just had a dream that I died and was placed in a room and she received in the dream this represented a tomb but then she knew I was not there, meaning a resurrection happened.) I noticed that David left his journal and pen on one of the tables. So I went over and picked it up and began reading some of the prayers David had written to the Lord. It was like reading the Psalms. I read about sufferings and griefs and trials and the many prayers for his family and the sheep he cared for and then I read his prayer concerning his house. (This represents a spiritual memorial for David) In the dream I was praying for the Lord to please provide for David when a voice above and behind me said, ”Tell everyone in all of UBM to take up a collection for the purchase of David's house.” (Father told Eve to tell you this so I am just letting her say it in obedience.  I have never taken up a collection for myself or had anyone else take up a collection for me so this feels quite awkward. However I am not doing it, the Lord through Eve is.) (I know that David would never do something like this in real life out of greed or personal ambition. He has preached against the filthy lucre of the apostate church leaders for years. And has never let his own personal needs be known or taken an offering or received UBM money. He has given to everyone. He will only share this out of obedience to the Father.  A couple of months ago I learned that the owners of the house that the Lord promised to David, and which he is renting, wanted to sell it, but were giving him first choice to purchase it.  (When the owner told me this I knew it was time to buy it so by faith I told them I would buy it. Here is a little background on this house. The man and wife who rented this house before me asked me if I would come look at it with them.  So I did walk with them through the house as the realtor was showing it to them.  I said privately to the Lord as I walked, “Lord I like this place.  Could you get me something like this?”  I didn't tell them that I did this but after they got the house they were informed by the Lord that I was to own the house and they told quite a few people this but I didn’t know it. I was renting a house a few miles away. When I first saw that previous house, the Lord said, "call them".  I said Lord that house is for sale, not rent. (The Lord had told us to only rent until our own houses were provided.)  He said again, "call them". So I called the realtor who said they only wanted to sell it.  I said, "I dont care if you keep it for sale, it wont sell until I am supposed to leave.”  I said this because I had already asked the Lord to let me only rent this house until I was to leave for the house He has chosen for me to own, which is the one I am in now.  So they agreed to rent it to me. The owner thought he had the house sold seven times in a row.  Each time I told him the Lord told me the house would not sell and each time he thought it was a sure thing. My wife wanted to go find another place but I told her that we didn't need to worry, the house would not sell. After about the third time the owner said to me, "Wow, you have a pretty good record of being right.”  I said, “Its not me, its the Lord". He was a Methodist and really didn't know the Lord would talk to us. After that he would ask me every time and I would tell him the same thing until the 8th time when I felt differently in my spirit so I asked the Lord if it was my time to go to my house and reached in my pocket and pulled out 3 coins and they were all heads for YES. So I called across town to one of our studies and asked them to get a confirmation so 5 of them threw coins on the floor and they all came up heads. 8 heads in all for the 8th time.  The house sold and the couple who were renting my future house had already invited me to come stay with them. When they decided to leave I took over the rent and am still here. Like they told everyone, "God said David was to have the house". :o)  Its not a fancy house but its the only one on this mountain and its quiet woodsey with lots of wildlife, just like I like it. We have a prayer and Bible meeting here with a few of us 6 days a week and win a lot of battles for our country and the Church by Father’s grace.  Since the owners were wanting to sell now, I was wondering if David might have to move again so I asked the Father to give me a word by faith at random concerning the house situation and my finger was on Psa. 68:16, Why look ye askance, ye high mountains, At the mountain which God hath desired for his abode? Yea, Jehovah will dwell in it for ever.) (In this case the house of David is on a mountain even as king David’s was.)   Then I was reminded of another Psalm. Psa. 132:1-18, 1 Jehovah, remember for David All his affliction; 2 How he sware unto Jehovah, And vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob: 3 Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, Nor go up into my bed; 4 I will not give sleep to mine eyes, Or slumber to mine eyelids; 5 Until I find out a place for Jehovah, A tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob.  6 Lo, we heard of it in Ephrathah: We found it in the field of the wood. 7 We will go into his tabernacles; We will worship at his footstool. 8 Arise, O Jehovah, into thy resting-place; Thou, and the ark of thy strength. 9 Let thy priest be clothed with righteousness; And let thy saints shout for joy. 10 For thy servant David's sake Turn not away the face of thine anointed. 11 Jehovah hath sworn unto David in truth; He will not turn from it: Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. 12 If thy children will keep my covenant And my testimony that I shall teach them, Their children also shall sit upon thy throne for evermore. 13 For Jehovah hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for his habitation. 14 This is my resting-place for ever: Here will I dwell; for I have desired it. 15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread. 16 Her priests also will I clothe with salvation; And her saints shall shout aloud for joy. 17 There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed. 18 His enemies will I clothe with shame; But upon himself shall his crown flourish.  (I received by faith at random, "Jehovah will build thee a house” in, 1Ch 17:9-10  And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place, and be moved no more; neither shall the children of wickedness waste them any more, as at the first,  10  and as from the day that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel; and I will subdue all thine enemies. Moreover I tell thee that Jehovah will build thee a house.) (The few of us who knew about this situation were praying for the financial provision needed.)  So in the dream I called All of UBM together and announced the collection that the Lord had spoken concerning David’s house. (It is in obedience to this portion of the dream, that we are sharing this with larger UBM. Father is wanting to use us all in His purpose for this situation, that His will be fulfilled. It is purely out of obedience that we share this and not for any other reason.) And we all gave sacrificially as much as we could both small amounts of money and large. I woke up as I was looking at the large woven basket of donations that we had all taken up and we were all excited to present it to David when he returned from his meeting with the CEO. (I believe the woven basket represents our combined and interwoven efforts to bless David with the funds needed for the purchase of his house.) (This could represent spiritual resurrection and being caught up to the throne?) I asked for a text by faith at random for this dream and my finger was on “my steps “ in Psalms 17:5, a prayer of David, (1-15), 1 Hear the right, O Jehovah, attend unto my cry; Give ear unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips. 2 Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; Let thine eyes look upon equity. 3 Thou hast proved my heart; thou hast visited me in the night; Thou hast tried me, and findest nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress. 4 As for the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the ways of the violent. 5 My steps have held fast to thy paths, My feet have not slipped. 6 I have called upon thee, for thou wilt answer me, O God: Incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech. 7 Show thy marvellous lovingkindness, O thou that savest by thy right hand them that take refuge in thee From those that rise up against them. 8 Keep me as the apple of the eye; Hide me under the shadow of thy wings, 9 From the wicked that oppress me, My deadly enemies, that compass me about. 10 They are inclosed in their own fat: With their mouth they speak proudly. 11 They have now compassed us in our steps; They set their eyes to cast us down to the earth. 12 He is like a lion that is greedy of his prey, And as it were a young lion lurking in secret places. 13 Arise, O Jehovah, Confront him, cast him down: Deliver my soul from the wicked by thy sword; 14 From men by thy hand, O Jehovah, From men of the world, whose portion is in this life, And whose belly thou fillest with thy treasure: They are satisfied with children, And leave the rest of their substance to their babes. 15 As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding thy form. I asked for a word by faith at random for the part of the dream where Father spoke to me and said, “Tell all of UBM to take up a collection for the purchase of David’s house.” And my finger was on, “hast commanded” in Psa. 119:4, Thou hast commanded us thy precepts, That we should observe them diligently. I asked for a couple of words by faith at random for the gold watch with the spike and received, Eze. 44:18 (in context 15-18), 15 But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me; and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord Jehovah: 16 they shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table, to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge. 17 And it shall be that, when they enter in at the gates of the inner court, they shall be clothed with linen garments; and no wool shall come upon them, while they minister in the gates of the inner court, and within. 18 They shall have linen tires upon their heads, and shall have linen breeches upon their loins; they shall not gird themselves with anything that causeth’sweat. (Their works will not be those of the flesh) The other was Rev. 2:24-28, my finger was on the phrase, “I cast upon you none other burden”,(This could well mean that this burden of sacrifice will be enough for the righteous.)24 But to you I say, to the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as have not this teaching, who know not the deep things of Satan, as they are wont to say; I cast upon you none other burden. 25 Nevertheless that which ye have, hold fast till I come. 26 And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: 27 and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of my Father: 28 and I will give him the morning star.  I asked for a word concerning the chefs running out of bread to feed the children and then David having to multiply the bread for the children (We have been preparing to multiply the bread around the world and it is starting with two revivals that we know of. And the old order Babylonish leaders are falling.) and received by faith at random, Dan. 5:26, finger on “Mene," 24-29, 24 Then was the part of the hand sent from before him, and this writing was inscribed. 25 And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. 26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; 27 TEKEL; thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. 28 PERES; thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. 29 Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with purple, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. (That night Cyrus (Trump) conquered Babylon.) I asked Father for a couple of random words concerning David’s “meeting" with the CEO to discuss future plans and received, Acts 9:11, with my finger on the phrase, “The street called Straight” 11 And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go to the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one named Saul, a man of Tarsus: for behold, he prayeth; ... he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: 16 for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. The other was Acts 5:25, finger on “standing”, And there came one and told them, Behold, the men whom ye put in the prison are in the temple standing and teaching the people. (Like Joseph and Jesus, a type of the end time David Man-child’s, they came out of prison to minister in God’s anointing.) I pray everyone will be obedient to give what the Father puts upon your heart to contribute to this effort and His purposes that He has revealed in these revelations. Note From David   Hi Saints,  So you see that the Lord showed us prophetically and then confirmed it to us that we were to take up a collection for David’s House. This of course will be a temporary offering and will discontinued as soon as possible.   Thank you so much for your gift for this house which is used for a prayer and Bible study meeting 6 days a week. We also host visitors and minister to locals here as often as we can. This is our ministry office. It is not a fancy house but very simple.  None of the rent, utilities, internet, vehicles or legal insurance, or other costs have been born by the ministry but by me personally who receive no money from the ministry.  Other ministries claim all of this cost belongs to the ministry, yet I have born this cost along with a few who support me. Now I will continue to bear the costs except there will be no rent. This has suited me well all these years and I would not have changed a thing if the Lord had not intervened with dreams and words and direction from Him concerning His support for this house. Thank you so much for your help.  :o).  Love from your servant in Christ, David            You can send a check or money order written to David Eells, marked “For David’s House” here:  UBM  P.O. Box 231616 Montgomery, AL 36123, USA Please send your email address too so we can thank you. Here's how easy it is: Log into your account at PayPal.com. select "Pay or send money" and choose whether you're paying for goods or services or sending money to friends and family. Enter the recipient's email address, mobile number or name and click "Next" Enter the amount and click "continue".   10 : $10.00 USD - monthly 20 : $20.00 USD - monthly 30 : $30.00 USD - monthly 40 : $40.00 USD - monthly 50 : $50.00 USD - monthly 75 : $75.00 USD - monthly 100 : $100.00 USD - monthly 150 : $150.00 USD - monthly 200 : $200.00 USD - monthly 250 : $250.00 USD - monthly       Please read the note above for simple instructions on how to give without any service fee for you or us. Monthly Gift Amount       POTUS David Receives Two Houses Eve Brast - 1st week of Jan. 2020 (David’s notes in red) I dreamed that David (Representing the David Man-child body) and I (representing the Bride) were touring a house in a city. (David’s house) It was a three story house (Spiritually not physically) located on one of the main city streets. The local UBM brethren were also there touring with us. (This is the current UBM house Representing the larger UBM Bride body who are touring or passing through as sojourners, where the Bride is being matured.) The realtor lady was showing us the house. It was so clean and fully furnished in an elegant modern style. I remember that the couches were all white. (The resting place of the Bride is holy) I remember thinking and whispering to David, "This is the house I've always wanted.”  (The Bride desires the holy house ruled by the David Man-child body as King David ruled over Jerusalem that John was told was the Bride in Revelation.)  David took a white piece of paper and wrote, "$175,000" on it and handed it to the realtor. He asked her if the owners would take $175,000 for it and she was happy and said, "I'll ask them. I don't think it will be a problem." She acted like the sale was a done deal. (Amazingly, This is the price the Lord told us to offer the realtor lady for my house. This could be a physical aspect to this spiritual dream as a sign to us.  This is very unusual.) David said, "Okay, Great." And then we all walked out of that house onto the sidewalk. We walked about a block up the city street to a large mansion. (Representing our ministry to the world)  The sun shone on everything in the city and all the houses and buildings were made of white white brick or stone. Even the sidewalks were white.  As we were walking the sun was shining on all of us. I looked to my right a little ahead of me and saw Merle walking with us. (Another relative coming in) He looked over at David and said something with a big smile on his face. He looked so free and David said something back to him. His wife, Missy, was walking behind me and also joined in their conversation. We were all happy and excited. When we entered the mansion there was a fairly large entry way and beyond that was a very large living room that opened to the left of the entry way. The sun shone on everything in the city and all the houses and buildings were made of white white brick or stone. Even the sidewalks were white. (Knowing the rest of the dream, this is our "white house" but represents our expanded ministry and administration and not just one building.)  It was so large that it had high open ceilings . You could see the 2 support pillars and all the beams and rafters. All the lighting was like track lighting along the rafters and beams. (The temple of Solomon also had 2 pillars. Jachin and Boaz) (Jachin means "Yah establishes" and Boaz means “strength”.  It is the Lord in us that has the strength to establish us.) To the right of the entry way was a large kitchen with a dining area at the far back corner. On the side of the kitchen closest to the entry way was a children's kitchen. Everything was small and their size. There were 2 little blonde (Meaning submitted to the Son/Sun) girls and a blonde boy (sisters and brother) practicing making meals in the children's kitchen. (Teaching the "little sister" how to prepare the spiritual food for others.) (This is what We have been told by the Lord we will do; Get the gospel out to the world in a huge way.) The carpet in this area was evergreen in color and there was a staircase from the children's kitchen area that led up to the second and third floors. (Evergreen is the color of eternal life) (The third floor is the highest level of maturity, representing spirit, soul, and body) We went up to the second floor where all the bedrooms were. There was a children's play area and I had brought a box of old vintage toys for the children to play with. So I unpacked the box and placed the toys in the play area. The children were so excited because they had never seen these toys before. (Representing revealing the ancient paths to the younger Christians and them desiring them.) Then we went up to the third floor where there was a huge bath area. (For cleansing of the body) It was like an upscale spa with walk-in showers and massage tables and chairs. And over to my right was a large tiled patio with sliding glass doors. Outside on this patio was a large, tall, yellow water slide. There was a woman out there supervising all the children riding on the slide. There were these clear, plastic dolphins that each child would sit on to ride down the slide. The lady would also hand the children white towels to dry themselves with. (We will be able to minister the water of the Word and the importance of sanctification to the elect children of God.) I looked up at the high raftered ceilings above the bath area and saw the most beautiful floral hangings draping down. They smelled heavenly and were the most beautiful flowers I'd ever seen. (A sacrifice of a sweet smell is our sanctification and cleansing ourselves to the Lord.) Then we all went back down to the living room area and stood next to one of the support pillars. David looked to be in his thirties. (Thirty is the age at which one can enter public ministry. David, Joseph, and Jesus were thirty and the Man-child will be anointed at thirty spiritually.) There were secret service details (Angels) and men in hard hats installing surveillance cameras and monitors throughout the house. (Psa 91:10-12 There shall no evil befall thee, Neither shall any plague come nigh thy tent. 11 For he will give his angels charge over thee, To keep thee in all thy ways. 12  They shall bear thee up in their hands, Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.)   David was now the President. (The david’s will rule in the spiritual realm like P. Trump will in the natural but the spiritual makes it possible for the natural.  Rev 5:10  and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth. Rev 2:26  And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations. Heb 2:6-8  But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him?  7  Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him (Man) with glory and honor, And didst set him over the works of thy hands:  8  Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he subjected all things unto him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. (Both Joseph and Daniel, types of the Man-child, were second only to the King on his throne representing God. The David Man-child body will rule in the earth, confirmed in other dreams - See: Our Limitless Authority in Christ and Death and Resurrection of the David’s) David said, something like, "That's not really necessary." But the secret service guys insisted. (The angels watch over our safety.). I said to David, "Well, You ARE the President of the United States."  He said something about the price of the mansion costing, "$850,000,000”.  (Possibly representing the overall ministry worth)  And I said, "Well that's a drop in the bucket since you have billions of dollars.” (Billions will come in for the Kingdom work and ministry, providing for refugees, and getting the gospel to the world. In my mind in the dream I knew it was about 8 Billion.) (In 2007 Father gave me in a vision a billion dollars to take care of His children in refuge. More recently we asked for more and He said He would give 1.6 billion. So we asked for more to provide for His people and reach the world with the gospel since we are supporting hundreds of missionaries in dangerous lands with money and literature.  I asked for “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” and we get this dream. Eph 3:20  Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.) David said, "Yeah. Well, I guess you're right.”   Then I woke up. I asked Father for a word for this dream by faith at random and my finger was on, "the Jews gathered" in Est. 9:2, (in context 1-5) 1 Now in the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king's commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, on the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have rule over them, (whereas it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them,)(As a direct result of Mordecai, the Man-child, and Esther, the Brides, intercession.) 2 the Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them was fallen upon all the peoples. 3 And all the princes of the provinces, and the satraps, and the governors, and they that did the king's business, helped the Jews; because the fear of Mordecai was fallen upon them. 4 For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame went forth throughout all the provinces; for the man Mordecai waxed greater and greater. 5 And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto them that hated them.      Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Frisian Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer Kinyarwanda Korean Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kyrgyz Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Maori Marathi Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Norwegian Odia (Oriya) Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Samoan Scots Gaelic Serbian Sesotho Shona Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu Powered by Translate Printer-friendly version

What if your greatest fears were boxed and given to you as a present? That’s exactly how storyteller and strategic communicator David All sees fear—as a gift. In this episode, Ria discusses fear and how to fiddle with it in the best way possible.

In this special New Year's Beyond story, David All looks deeper into the meaning of that sweet, familiar song, Auld Lang Syne, a poem attributed to Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. Before you turn the page and burn the book on 2020, turn around and remember the 'Good old days' and all those days in between. Wisdom for our Soul, Courage for your Journey. In Belly, we share our extraordinary life stories of personal transformation to illustrate the nature of personal transformation. Beyond helps us go beyond personal stories to comprehend the overall pattern of transformation. ENABLE OUR MISSION Your podcast is a sacred space and judgment free zone. It's free of advertising and outside influence -- 100% listener supported. A podcast where you can feel safe to listen and know that you're not alone. Transformation is scary, but not a single butterfly has ever attempted to climb back into the cocoon. To keep us advertising free and support our mission to heal, inspire and shape lives with extraordinary personal life stories, chip-in $5 a month at https://www.bellystory.com/support/ (BellyStory.com/support). Thank you for listening. Warmly, David All Creator, Storyteller, Producer CO-CREATE OUR PODCAST To submit your story, sign-up for new episode emails, contact us or support our mission with a donation, visit: https://www.bellystory.com/ (BellyStory.com) Support this podcast

From the baseball field, to the Nascar track, to the tennis court, in sports, ads can be found everywhere. Brands and sports have been linked together through sponsorship for decades. And now, with the rise of social media and influencers, athletes can create even more profitable relationships with brands than ever before. But a sponsorship should be more than just a way for a brand and an athlete to make money. Today, more than ever, that message matters. The story you tell makes a difference. And the purpose behind a brand is what is drawing people in and converting them to loyal customers. At POC, that belief is what has been driving the company since its founding, and it is influencing its unique content strategy, which is successfully driving people to its website and into its ecommerce channels. POC is a Swedish company that makes top of the line protective gear for athletes around the world. David DeMartini is POC’s Global Chief Marketing and Digital Officer and on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he explains why the purpose- and data-driven content strategy the company has  devised is working, and what other brands can learn from what they have built. Whether it’s more of a focus on original, serialized video, or a different approach to working with influencers, POC’s marketing strategies have far outperformed traditional methods. Learn how and why on today’s episode! Main Takeaways:Propose a Purpose: More than ever, consumers are driven to brands that have a clearly-stated purpose or mission. But simply having a purpose written out on your website is not enough. Brands that develop an ambitious purpose, stress test it, and look beyond the problems of now to understand how their purpose can drive them in the future are the ones that will succeed.Don’t Be Old School: Athlete sponsorships are not new in the marketing world, however, brands like POC are finding creative ways to expand those partnerships. By investing in different marketing channels like video series, movies, and other long-form, engaging content, brands can set themselves apart and tell stories in ways customers will connect with. More Than The Data: Every organization should be using data to guide organizational decisions, but data should never be the only factor. Data should be used in conjunction with what you know about your customers on an intangible level to create a balance that is analytics-based but still feels human.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hello, and welcome back to up next in ecommerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Our guest today is David DeMartini, the Chief Marketing Officer at POC. David, welcome to the show.David:Hi, Stephanie. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm really excited to have you too. I just went into a Wormhole watching some of your guys' videos with the skiers, flying down the mountain at lightning speed and I was like, "Could I do this? No, probably not." But they were great to watch.David:Yes. Oh, well, thank you. And I sure you could do it. We have an amazing roster of athletes that do a great job of telling our brand story through their actions and our goal is to do everything we can to keep them safe. So, it's fun to create content or let them create content and it helps us tell our story.Stephanie:Yeah. I love that. We'll definitely be diving into all of that in a little bit, but first tell me or anyone who's listening, what is POC?David:Yeah. So POC is a Swedish company that was founded in 2006, 2007 timeframe. We are a protection brand. We're the world's leading protection brand, currently servicing athletes and participants across bicycle sports and snow sports. And so, we have a really strong mission and purpose to save lives and protect those pursuing their passion, and enable people to really find more joy in life through using our products to keep them as safe as possible when they're doing the things that they love.Stephanie:Yeah. And you have very nice looking products as well. I haven't been snowboarding in a while, but I'm like, "If I was, I would want this helmet here and they even have mouth guards nowadays, which is mind blowing to me." I mean, very helpful, but I have not seen any other companies. You have a helmet with a... Is it called a mouth guard? What is the word for that now?David:Yeah. Well, on the snow side, we have a couple of different disciplines that we service. And I think the product you're referencing is one of the helmets we have on the race side of our business. When slalom skiers or even some GS skiers are running gates. There's a chin bar that attaches to the helmets to make sure none of [crosstalk] end up smacking them in the face as they're making their way down the course. So, always looking for ways to better protect our athletes in our customers. And that's a pretty handy service with that chin bar because taking a slalom gate to the face is not much fun.Stephanie:Yeah. It does not sound like it. I also looked at them like this would be perfect for my two and a half year old, and he is always falling and hitting his face somehow, or his chin I'm like, "You guys need some kids versions of this."David:Yeah. That's a good point. We have an amazing children's line that we call poquito-Stephanie:Oh, cute.David:Kids helmets and there's some really cool safety pieces built into that. We found that the most accidents that happened with kids on a ski slope or on a bicycle are scenarios where someone larger than them, whether it's a larger kid or an adult just simply doesn't see them. And there's a collision that happens. So we have a really great visibility story built into our kids' products, but we hadn't thought about the chin or face protection for the children, but maybe we [crosstalk 00:03:28]. Yeah?Stephanie:Yeah. So when I was looking through your LinkedIn [inaudible 00:03:33], I also saw that you have a background in media and sports, and I was wondering what drew you over to POC?David:Yeah, so I of cut my teeth at an agency in Colorado working across an amazing book of brands that the agency Backbone Media service at the time. And it was really an amazing opportunity for me because I got to really dig in and understand some of the challenges that brands have really all maturity level, where we're trying to overcome. Everything from a larger, more established brand, like Eddie Bauer or YETI Coolers, all the way up to startups looking at how do they just continue to raise some money to propel their businessDavid:And so, as I was working through and learning and absorbing and working with all these amazing people at Backbone Media, I was really fine-tuning the things that were interesting to me and knew I always wanted to be in marketing and direct-to-consumer but really found an understanding of what specifically in those areas were interesting.David:And then after about five years with Backbone, POC was one of the clients of Backbone for a long time. And one of the accounts I worked on and an opportunity came up to join POC internal as the marketing director for North America and I took that and I've been lucky to find myself in some opportunistic positions within POC. And my skillset has allowed me to rise to the ranks here as well which has been really fun and really rewarding.Stephanie:Yeah. That's great. I also love how POC has the same messaging across all the platforms. It was very clear about what you guys stood for. So tell me a little bit about... Did that draw you in when you saw, "Here's our purpose. Here's why we're here." How did that impact your decision to jump over to work with them?David:Yeah. I think that one of the key attributes that you see as particularly important and something that a lot of brands in the outdoor space focus on is purpose. And the term purpose can be applied to business or the way that a company operates in a lot of different ways. But I realized early on that a trend that I was seeing with the brands that I worked with at Backbone Media, the ones with a solid foundation, a clear purpose and a really clear and ambitious but not to the point where the brand platform and the mission of the vision didn't really mean anything. Those are the companies and the brands that were doing the best.David:And so, I quickly realized how important that was. And so, as I thought about what was next, I knew that, that was core to any organization that I could see myself at, for an extended period of time. And so I made that one of my priorities and starting to look around for whatever was next for me was that purpose has to be there. And I have to really be able to connect to that purpose in a meaningful way because if I can't, in a lot of ways you're trying to fake it to make it, and that just gets really taxing and is tiresome and hard to do. And it comes back to, if you can act to the purpose it's very easy to find the motivation to really give everything you have to the business and these days you have to do that.David:So, POC has had it. It's a really amazing a brand platform and admission and vision. That's been with us since day one and credit to the founder, Stefan Ytterborn who created the brand in 2006, to address a problem that he saw in the form of... His kids were becoming ski racers. And he looked around at the head protection at the time and said, "This doesn't seem all that great and I think I can do this better." And had the foresight to realize that spending the time and really ironing out what he was there to do and what their mission and vision looked like, was crucial to make sure he built something that could continue to live on and be successful.Stephanie:That's great. Your kids always seem to be a driving force sometimes with businesses or new products. And I love that story, having an actual reason to develop something and being like, "Oh, everyone actually needs us in this industry. And it's not good enough. I'm going to fix it right now."David:Yeah. He saw a problem that was specific to him and where he was in his life and realized that, he's probably not the only one feeling this way and really created something special and it's been a fun ride since then and continues to do well. So, again, it goes back to the core purpose of the business is real and meaningful. And that's really valuable and making sure that we make the right decisions on a day-to-day basis.Stephanie:So, since you've been able to see many brands, especially why you were working at the agency, what are tips or best practices around maybe a new brand coming up with their purpose, but then actually following through, because I think that's a tricky thing with a lot of these new companies popping up it seems like a lot of them say they have a purpose or here's what we're doing, but it doesn't actually come through. It's just like the messaging. You don't see actions behind it. Is there any advice or things that you saw when you were at the agency of like this work and this did not work, everyone should not do it this way?David:Yeah. It's a good question. And I think the answer to that can take many different forms but really what you're looking for is something that's balanced in something that is, it can stand the test of time. And so what I saw at Backbone was it used to be that you could identify a problem, find a solution for it, and then take that and run with it. And I think that that worked for a long time and that was the traditional approach to starting a business. But I think the consumer today has evolved so much to where they look for more than just helping them solve a problem. You really have to be invested in the solution and in the problem itself to a point where it's authentic and real.David:And so I think for anybody who's thinking about starting a business and can't stress enough, the importance of making sure you spend the time and put the work in on building a brand platform and then pressure testing that through all different mock scenarios thinking about where you're going to be in five years, 10 years, 15 years, and beyond. And making sure the verbiage you use in the core of that brand platform can remain constant. I see if a new company is... It's almost like you can't be too focused on the problem you're trying to solve, you have to think beyond that problem, that future problems, and make sure that your approach and what you're creating can solve future problems as much as it can solve the problem here and now.David:And it's a really hard thing to do, and it takes a very specific approach and creative mind. And it's not easy to achieve. And so I feel lucky to be part of an organization where, we were able to achieve that. And the founders that started POC went through that exercise and it's cumbersome and difficult. But I think it's super important.Stephanie:Yeah. I completely agree. It reminds me of... I don't know if you've heard of the, Clock of the Long Now, it's a 10,000-year clock, and it's all about encouraging long-term thinking. And every time I start thinking about longer-term thinking, and where is this headed? I always think about that clock, it's my motivation.David:Yeah. I think that's a great connection point. And it's really hard to visualize and come up with mock scenarios as to what could happen in 10 years because who knows what's going to happen in 10 years. But I think just going through the exercises and putting the time and the effort and we'll help you find the right balance between to immediate here and now, and then on the other end of the spectrum is... I don't know if you know a guy named Scott Galloway, but he uses the term, yogababble where you use so many buzz words and it's so conceptual that it actually completely loses all of its meaning. You got to find someplace in between there that is balanced and can stand the test of time to a certain degree.Stephanie:Yeah. That's a good mentality. I saw you have another title, which you didn't mention in the intro, and I'm not sure why, of executive producer. I was looking at the one video, American Downhiller, which is really good. I only got to watch 10 minutes of it, but I think it's a good segue Into some of your marketing and content strategies because the video was so well done. I mean, is it on Netflix? If not, it should be. Tell me a little bit about how you guys go about thinking about developing videos.David:Yeah. I'm really glad you brought that up because that's a really, really fun and amazing project that we just launched to the world earlier in... I think it was in October actually. I was going to say November but, launched in October with a world premier here in Park City, Utah, and then a distribution program with U.S. Ski Team and skiracing.com. And like I mentioned, we got our start in ski racing and it's incredibly important in Colorado business. Compared to other snow sports categories, or the bike category. It's relatively small, but it's so important because in the athletes... Really on any level that are competing or skiing gates on a consistent basis.David:I mean, that's where the stakes are at the highest. That the speeds are incredibly high. The snow conditions are ice essentially these days. You have skis with incredibly sharp edges and the possibility of things going wrong is quite high. And so, we work really hard to continue to innovate on behalf of the ski race community and find different ways to apply the different technologies and safety features that we develop to their world. And so, through the years we've become really close to this ski race community. Like I said, it's not a huge community, but it's very tight-knit one. And one that we're very happy and proud to be part of.David:And over the years, looking for opportunities and being very close with the U.S. Ski Team, we saw this story that was really amazing and hadn't really been told on a mass level around the men's speed team, and how brotherhood really formed through, I guess you could say it through unique adversity in the sense that no ski racing in the U.S. is not what it is in Europe. When you go to Austria, you go to Norway, you go to Switzerland, ski racing is... I mean, the Hanukkah in Austria is it's like the Super Bowl, it's a huge deal there. They have amazing massive fan bases and so being an American and on the American team, when you're competing, most of the races are in Europe. And so the challenge is that the U.S. team had to overcome were unique.David:And I'm not really qualified nor want to say that their challenges were harder or worse to overcome than some of the Europeans, but they were just different. You're not able to travel home on the weekends. You're spending so much time with your other teammates and it really cultivated this brotherhood that organically evolved into this story that became... They took the name American Downhillers, and that term became a tool to represent this brotherhood and the function of some of the veteran guys on the team working to help develop and help some of the younger guys that were coming up to the speed program navigate some of these difficult scenarios that they were in, where you're in foreign country, you're not able to see your family. You're not able to go home on a consistent basis.David:And really that story was just so amazing that we were working with skiracing.com, and we finally said, "Hey, let's try and tell the story." And so, it came to life and I believe it was 2017 where we started to do some short episodes in conjunction with skiracing.com. And we did that for two or three years, five minute, eight minute, 12 minute episodes, focusing in on different elements of this American Downhiller story.David:And towards the middle of 2019, we said to ourselves, "Well, these episodes are great but we haven't really done anything like telling the story from start to finish. Is something we haven't done and it would be an amazing piece for the ski race community." And so, we partnered with skiracing.com and a woman named Claire Brown, who's an amazing producer and has an amazing team of filmmakers. And she's been a part of the ski race community since she was a little kid and she raised competitively through college and I believe she was an All American. And as a staple in that industry and community. And so, we worked with her to tell the story. And so we were able to tell the story from start to finish and pull pieces from the different episodes that we had. And it turned into this really amazing piece that, gives some insight and some behind the scenes look into what it truly means to be an American Downhiller and then some of the challenges that they had to overcome.David:So a really, really fun project that Claire and Elizabeth Reeder, who's one of our Sports Marketing Managers, did an amazing job facilitating and putting together, and we're super proud of it. And we're excited we're going to continue on with this theme and this first one was focused on the men's team, and there's equally as interesting and amazing stories on the women's side. And we're excited to continue to tell these amazing stories that happen in American ski racing, and the next one up we'll be focused on the women's team.Stephanie:That's great. So, where does this content live? I definitely want to finish it. I mean, like I said, it seems like it should be on Netflix or something. It's very, very well done, very professional. It gets you right from the beginning with all the skiers hopping in and saying what it means to them. Where do you guys put this content after it's all made?David:So the distribution for it... We launched a lot of amazing new ski race product this season. And so, we had an objective to reach and engage and build our connection with the ski race community. So the initial rollout plan with this was to work with the U.S. Ski Team work with skiracing.com. and obviously we would support it as well, but we have it living on YouTube and we've seen really great results from an organic grassroots distribution plan. We are looking at some film festivals throughout the country over the next few months and have submitted it in a few of those and we are looking at some larger distribution. There's possibility that some of it might run on NBC, this winter, which would be amazing.David:And we're looking at the subscription viewers or platforms like Netflix and Apple TV and Amazon as well. And trying to figure out how we can get it up there. The goal with the larger distribution platforms is... Again, the story is what's most important and the story can help inspire the next generation of ski racers or particularly American Downhillers. There's a utility function to that and we want to make sure that, that's available to any and everybody that wants to see it on an ongoing basis. So there's a long tail distribution plan to this as well, to make sure that anybody who wants to learn and understand this story has the ability to do that through some of these larger platforms.Stephanie:That's cool. It seems like there's definitely a lot of angles. You've got the partnership thing going on. You've got... Yeah, being able to tell the story holistically, like you wanted to and then the long tail of possibly be able to sell products as well when people see them, yeah. At the perfect place, perfect time while they're watching it.David:Yeah. And we were very intentional about... We didn't want this to be something that felt like we were artificially trying to place product throughout it, the commitment was to the story. And like I said, we've been a partner with U.S. Ski Team for so long that now our product is visible, but you'll also see product from our competitors. And that's okay. We feel like if the story's great and we can help facilitate telling it we don't need a ton of branding. We don't need POC products sitting next to every interview or we don't need the traditional product placement in these stories, feel like we're doing a service to the community by facilitating telling it, and for us, that's what we're here for. So, we take a bit of a different approach to content than say some brands do or some brands previously have.Stephanie:Yeah. Well, how do you guys approach product placement? Because that seems like a very... I mean, it's always been around, but I see a lot of brands doing it way better now. I was just talking about it, the Netflix series of one about organizing and how well the container store did after that. And I don't remember really being slapped over the head with the branding, but it was more me wanting to check into it afterwards if like, "Well, what were they using to organize their entire closets?" And it was very organic. So I see brands doing a much better job now when it comes to product placement and partnerships around that. How do you guys explore that avenue?David:Yeah. So our sports marketing organization does an incredible job and partnering with athletes and getting our product on athletes has been core to our marketing strategy since day one. And so, again, do think it comes back to the purpose conversation we had and we are not delivering on our purpose if we are not supplying the best in the world with our products, because we truly do believe that they're the safest products out there. And so, as you mentioned it, when you take an approach of... We want personalities, we want athletes on our roster that have similar beliefs but of course their own brand and their own way of executing on those beliefs. But we want people who stand for innovation, progression, and we want to make sure that the partnerships we develop with athletes, we truly are helping them pursue their passion and helping them progress the sport that they've dedicated their lives to.David:And so, we have an amazing list of a roster of athletes that we're always looking at and adding to. We have some amazing development programs as part of our sports marketing strategy. We have a three layer level approach. We just launched a revised regional or grassroots athlete program that we call the Aspired Collective and that is solely intended to give up incoming athletes across both snow sports and the bike world. Give them opportunities and help them continue to progress in their careers to one day be the next superstar. And so, doing what we can to support the communities and support the activities in sports that we service through supporting talent within those categories you naturally find yourself with your product on the right people more often than not.David:And so, again, it's a little bit... We try and take a maybe a less manufactured approach and we don't go out and say next year we think so-and-so is going to be the best ski racer. So we've got to get our stuff on this person, this guy or girl, and then the next year it's someone else. And so we go after, we look for longer-term partnership opportunities people who truly believe in what they're doing and partnering with us helps them do what they're doing better. That's the stuff we look for.Stephanie:Yeah. It seems like athletes sponsorships, that's like the original [OG] influencers. Influencers are big now, but the sponsorships of athletes, it seems like it was already going on for a really long time. But what seems really hard to do is figure out how it's driving sales or how it's influencing your marketing campaign. How do you guys think about that when you're setting up these partnerships, you're picking out what athletes you want to work with? How do you think about what the end results should be outside of just wanting to work with a great person of course and making it long-term? What are some metrics you hope to achieve with these parties?David:Yeah. I think it's a really good question because I think the rise of influencer marketing has put such an emphasis on follower number and engagement metrics and all these things. And I think what we've seen is that those things are all important and I'll get into how we look at those, but you can't focus so much on just the numbers to where you lose sight of the individual, the personality, really the non-tangible that an influencer or an athlete or any partnership brings to the brand. And we've been very careful to... We have an objective to be results driven and measure what we can and take a data-driven approach of course but we also want to make sure we don't over index on that to the point where we lose some of the intangible stuff.David:So, when we look at an athlete, a lot of times their Instagram follower account or their YouTube page is an important metric and in the equation but they're also three or four other metrics that are equally as important. So we look at personality, we look at opportunity to have a longer-term relationship with this person. We look at how they compete, where they compete, these sorts of things and make a very balanced call on whether or not they should be somebody we should pursue or not pursue. But to answer your question about measuring influence that athletes or influencers have, it is difficult. And there are some data tools that we have, whether it's being smart about how you distribute content for them to work into their communication outreach with specific links and stuff that we can track through our website.David:But a lot of that stuff is specific to a single campaign or a single program and there's really not a great way going back to the equation that we look at, there's not a great way to measure the intangible stuff, but we know it's important and we know it's working and it's a core element of our positioning in the marketplace. And so, we measure what we can, but we also try and be real and be okay with... There's simply some things that are just hard and difficult to measure and we trust ourselves to say, "This is this things that aren't measurable, we can..." I trust our people and we trust ourselves to say, "This is worth the investment and it's providing a lift to our brand in a way that we just simply can't measure."Stephanie:Yes. What are some of your favorite marketing campaigns that you've done that you really remember, or that were most successful?David:Oh, that's a good question. Favorite marketing. The American Downhiller is definitely up there just because it was so different and new, and we'd never produced a feature like them but we've already talked about that one. Earlier this fall, we launched a signature series, excuse me, around Fabio Wibmer who's an incredibly talented mountain biker, whether it's trials or downhill riding or, dirt jump riding. He is arguably the most popular mountain biker in the world right now and we created a signature series with him that we launched earlier this fall. That's really, really cool and we took the approach of, "We're going to create the product for you, but we really want you to create the marketing and the messaging and launch this product in your voice."David:And that was a really fun approach to take to this because one, it took a little bit of the stress off us internally, and two, it allowed for our audience to hear a message that they're used to hearing from us, from somebody different, which I think in a lot of ways was quite refreshing and something different. And Fabio's team is incredible at creating highly engaging video content and his YouTube following is massive. And so, we basically said, "We'll help you make the product. We'll support some of the distribution of the content, but we want you to create that content." And so it was a different approach for us and a pretty fun one because it brought a different tone of voice to a launch than we're used to having.Stephanie:That's really fun. I mean, and a really good point because I can think of so many brands who work with people in their industry and they end up squishing their creativity by saying like, "This is our brand messaging. This is how it needs to be done." And you can tell you're like, "This is not Oprah Winfrey talking. This is not that Oprah does that." I don't know, but they squish the creativity of the artist or the influencer by all their rules. And it ends up not being very organic and then no one's following actually ended up connecting with it.David:Exactly. And the value that these athletes and influencers and anybody that we partner with bring to our brand is they have their own community and we want to help them build their own community. But if we come in and say, "You need to talk to the community that you've built in our voice and in the way that we speak and over-engineer that, one, their community is going to say, "This is stupid. I can tell this isn't new, or I can tell that this isn't the person that I committed to either through a click on follow or some other way." And if we give that freedom to the person to communicate the points that we're trying to get our audience to understand, and in the way that feels natural to them it's going to come off better, it's going to be a better end product in terms of the creative and again, it's going to resonate with the audience more effectively.David:And we lean on our athletes in our roster of partners very heavily because they're good at what they do. And for us to come in and say, "We know how to do what you do better," it doesn't feel right and I don't think it's right.Stephanie:Yes. So you had a good quote that I saw, but I'm probably going to botch it. So you can just tell me if it's wrong. It's all around data and you were saying that the data that you gather around your customers is your true North. And I wanted to hear a little bit about, what data do you look at and is that influencing your products, or how are you using it day-to-day?David:Yeah. I think that you got the quote exactly right so, thank you for that. And I guess maybe a little counterintuitive to my last point of the balance between tangibles and intangibles, but when we do have data available, we need to make sure we're using that. And we are still a growing organization and we are far from totally dialed in terms of our data management and pulling and curating as much data as we possibly can. But we have gotten a lot better at doing that, really the past three or four years. And part of being able to actually use your data effectively you have to start with your systems and your tech stack and we've been really lucky to be able to partner and use Salesforce suite of services with Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud.David:And the decision to run with those platforms was specifically so that we could start to organize our data and get our systems to speak better together and learn more about our customers. We have all kinds of different touch points with these customers. And the fact that Salesforce Commerce Cloud can speak with Marketing Cloud, and even with Service Cloud when we get a customer service inquiry that scenario really at least gives us an opportunity to maximize what we know about our customers. And so, like I said, we have a long way to go to be where I would say we're A+ rating in terms of data management,` but every day our team gets smarter and we make right the right decisions and we learn more.David:And I think in terms of using the data as your true north and bringing it full circle back to the idea of balance, you got to be able to analyze the data, understand what the data is telling you, but then put that information or that insight into the context of the other things you know about your customer base. I think one of the things I feel very lucky in that, we are a relatively small team, a marketing team of 25 or 28 people across both the marketing team and the digital team. One of the benefits of that is that, we don't have a lot of redundancy and every individual in the organization you naturally have to gain an understanding and you got to know our customer relatively well for almost everything that we do.David:And so, that contextual understanding and knowledge of our customer, coupled with some better data management and insight going actually does give us a pretty good understanding of our customer. What's important to them and how we can deliver on that. Whereas I think a lot of times in bigger organizations I've seen, if you have a lot of not necessarily redundancy, but a lot of very specified positions that do one thing and do one thing very, very well, it's a lot harder to understand the big picture and gain of an accurate profile of the contextual things that go along with your customers. And so, I guess what I'm saying is in a larger organization, it's very easy to look at the data and only the data and it's sometimes hard to bring your head up and look around and say, "Okay. Well, this is what this is telling me about this specific point or insight. How does that connect with what might be happening over here?" And so there's of course the challenges with being a smaller group but I there's also a lot of benefits and that's definitely one of them.Stephanie:Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, thinking about how do you get to that holistic approach where... I mean, I've been at larger companies before and things get siloed and you have your customer service team over here, and they're probably hearing so many good nuggets from customers about new product features they want, or something that might help the experience better or the unboxing experience. And a lot of times that they just get stuck there and you don't know how to incorporate into your new product launches and stuff. And so, I hear a lot of companies, especially smaller ones that are very quickly growing, experiencing issues like that, where things are all siloed and they don't know how to look at the data, but then also take a step back and use your gut and be like, "That's actually sending us in the wrong direction, or that's not really our customer who's saying that."David:Exactly. Yeah. Being a small group allows us to... Our customer service manager can easily stand up and walk across the room or these days, tap our Digital Director on the shoulder and say, "Hey, three of my team members said this and they're hearing this. What does that mean for what you do?" Those conversations are really, really important. And since we're lucky. It's a little easier for us to facilitate those just because we're a smaller team.Stephanie:Yes. So what digital trends are you excited about? Where are you guys headed over the next three years in the world of ecommerce?David:It's a good question but there's lots of them. I think one of the things that I'm seeing in and we're actually acting on is that, consumers are... Their expectations have evolved to a certain point to where the traditional tactics in terms of driving a sale, there's more options there. I think, you're seeing a lot of brands think about the needs of their customers and really looking at it and saying, we need to be able to add more value than we're looking to extract from our customer base. And to do that, you have to really think about what are the challenges or the struggles, or the other complimentary problems you can solve for your customers on behalf of them to help strengthen that connection they have with your brand.David:And I think what we're going to see is that, we're going to see a lot less mass trends, I guess, in a sense or mass tactics in the sense that brands that are going to be successful are the ones that are going to focus on building a community that is tight-knit has a very meaningful value prop for the members of that community. And ultimately places a little bit more emphasis on lifetime value and holding onto the customers that they have and building a better relationship with them versus turn and burn customer acquisition bring them in, make a sale, move on to the next.David:And so, we're really excited about that because we have a lot of the ingredients necessary to build a meaningful community and we have to do some ideation on this idea of providing more value than we're looking to extract, but it's a new set of challenges and one that I think is a little bit more fun because you're becoming a better partner to your community and keeping hold of that and looking for ways to solve other problems for them and make your brand more appealing and one that they want to connect with on a deeper level. And that's really fun, and so we're excited about that.Stephanie:Yeah. That gets back to the whole idea of long-term thinking. And yeah, I think the companies that'll rise above the rest, especially with so many coming out right now, we're going to be the ones who think longer-term like that. Think how to build that community and really engage your customers. That's not just driven on that quick conversion.David:Exactly. Yeah. And if you look at the mega brands out there right now that are being successful, they're looking at that exact equation, obviously in a different way than we are, but you see brands like Peloton and Lululemon's acquisition of Mirror, they're looking to check a series of boxes, whether it's vertically integrating owning the hardware, developing a reoccurring revenue model. All these things that compliment and go hand in hand with a tight-knit community of consumers that are truly committed to you as a brand.David:Yeah. I think literally Lululemon's one of the most amazing examples because they do such a good job of developing a community, creating these ambassador programs towards, there's one up here on main street, you walk into a store and you look around and the imagery they use our local ambassadors. You look up on the wall and you see your friends up there and it's like, "Wow, one, I didn't know they were in a massive, that's cool." But also to be that smart to actually integrate local ambassadors into their communication and retail is just such a cool thing and makes the brand feel truly invested in this area [inaudible] do that-Stephanie:Yeah. I didn't know they did that. That's really cool.David:Yeah. And so they're all in on the community thing, and I think this acquisition they made of this mirror product is a great way to continue to facilitate that at scale. And it'll be really cool, not really case study, but brand to follow over the next couple of years and see how they continue to evolve because they truly are the best in the biz.Stephanie:Yes. I agree. All right. Well, let's shift over to the lightning round, brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready to go, David. All right.David:All right. [inaudible] this might be tough.Stephanie:I've done a done, I'll have to cut you off.David:Yeah. Cut me off. Don't be shy.Stephanie:All right. What's up next on your Netflix queue?David:Oh, Netflix queue. I don't know the name of it, but there's a film series about the Formula One circuit that has been recommended to me and I wish I could remember the name, but it follows some of the drivers Formula One and it's supposed to be really, really good. So-Stephanie:Drive to Survive.David:That might be it. I think you're right. It saved in our account, which is very helpful. Thank you Netflix. That's the one where we're super psyched to see next.Stephanie:Right. That sounds cool. Yeah. I think someone on our team actually recommended that as well. And I think they told me to watch it from a business perspective. I'm not really sure why. I need to check it out.David:Wow. Well, you have to let me know what you think.Stephanie:Yes. What's up next on your travel destinations when we can get out into the world and travel again?David:Man, that sounds so nice. Doesn't it?Stephanie:I know. That's why I asked it.David:Yeah. My wife and I have been talking about... And we originally were going to do it for a honeymoon, but things didn't work out the way we want it to at that trip, but we still have not skied in Japan. And that is on our list for when things settle down, is to go and Japan such an amazing place and it's such a great culture that we're super excited to experience that a little more in depth than my business trips have allowed. And you would also get an incredible amount of snow. So this seems quite good as well.Stephanie:Yeah. Well, that sounds really nice. And then you can go and hang out in the hot bath with this monkeys. Have you seen that?David:I have seen that. I think my wife might be more excited for that than she is the actual skiing.Stephanie:Oh, I'll go with her then.David:Yeah.Stephanie:I went to Japan and I missed that because we weren't in the right area and that's very sad. I'm like, "How fun would it be to take a bath monkeys?" I don't know. Maybe it's a tourist trap, but either way I want to try it.David:Yeah. It sounds pretty entertaining.Stephanie:Yeah. What one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?David:Oh, man. I mean, so much. It's a good question. Well, here now, I'm getting ready to take the next level of avalanche certification and understanding how avalanches work so that we can ski and travel through the back country safely. I have some training on that, but there's a lot more that I don't understand. And so that is fresh on my mind as the snow is starting to fall and I'm excited to continue my education on understanding snow pops and risk assessment and making sure that we can [inaudible] snow, but do it safely.Stephanie:I mean, that's a good one. And that is a unique answer. No one else has said that so far. So David-David:Thank you.Stephanie:All right. And then the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?David:I mean, the thing that comes to mind feels a little bit like a cop out just because it's been so talked about, but I think 5G is really hard to ignore and when that fully rolls out the mobile trends that we're seeing are going to become even more important and pointed. So, it's going to put so much more emphasis on the computer you carry in your pocket rather than the one that you sit in front of it at the desk. We and a lot of other brands are still working on how do you crack that device in a way as meaningful as it could be in maximizing the value to the business that comes from a mobile device. So, I think that's going to continue to become more and more important and it's a tough one to solve.Stephanie:That's a good answer. Or it's not a cop out because no one else has said that so far. I thought you were going to say COVID-David:Oh, right.Stephanie:And then I was going to be like, "No. [inaudible 00:51:09]." So-David:No. I didn't think of that. It's the new normal, I guess.Stephanie:I'm glad. Yeah. Exactly. All right, David. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you and POC?David:Yeah. So, come find out more about us at pocsports.com. Can learn more about our product offering, our amazing roster of athletes and the things that are important to us and want to moment just to thank the amazing team of people, not just with marketing but everybody here involved with POC. Like I mentioned, they are as committed as anyone can be to why we exist and that permeates through our business and so many different ways on a consistent basis. And the people here and the talent that they bring and the drive and passion that they bring truly is what makes us an amazing organization. So, would rather say, thank you to them I guess than promote myself, if that option is okay.Stephanie:That option is okay. That sounds great. Thanks so much, David. Yeah. It's been great.David:Yeah. I appreciate it, Stephanie. And great to speak with you.

Season 3, Episode 3: Fatherlessness: The Consequences of Forging Checks Led to a Personal Life Transformation. Corey Cepeda's transformation to become a better man didn't happen overnight, but that journey did begin one night in a jail cell long ago. That night, on his knees on the coldest concrete floor in an intimate jail cell, he committed to ending his rough lifestyle, a typical example in the pattern of fatherlessness led him there. In the darkness of that oubliette, his soul noticed the light - his decision to forge checks meant that he would miss his first daughter's baptism. A kenshō moment where he glimpsed his true nature and like a seed that can't be unplanted, would change him forever. He grabbed the Bible, dropped to his knees, and started his process of transformation by surrendering. And asking for forgiveness from a higher power. Corey's determination and commitment to changing his life is an inspiring story of personal realization, clear awareness, and what it really takes to climb up a better man.   CONNECT DEEPER WITH OUR STORY For episode notes, a transcript, quotables, and to connect and learn more about our guest, visit: BellyStory.com/s3e3   OUR STORY Hey there, welcome to Season 3 of Belly of the Beast Life Stories with David All.  This third season of life is a rare collection of stories of men that grew up without a biological father around. It's helping me comprehend my own life story of fatherlessness, and showing folks that it's a pattern worth breaking to be a better man. At some point during this season, I'll share my own belly story, but until then, good men like Corey are standing for all of us to share their story, to inspire us and give us courage to reveal our own true nature. That's the purpose of this podcast as I comprehend it today: Wisdom for our Soul -- Courage for your Journey. This is your podcast for extraordinary personal life stories. Each story illustrates the nature of personal transformation. A change that forced us down into the dark, gooey stage of life where we found our purpose and climbed up a new person.   ENABLE OUR MISSION Your podcast is a sacred space and judgment free zone. It's free of advertising and outside influence -- 100% listener supported. A podcast where you can feel safe to listen and know that you're not alone. Transformation is scary, but not a single butterfly has ever attempted to climb back into the cocoon. To keep us advertising free and support our mission to heal, inspire and shape lives with extraordinary personal life stories, chip-in $5 a month at BellyStory.com/support. Thank you for listening. Warmly, David All Creator, Storyteller, Producer   CO-CREATE OUR PODCAST To submit your story, sign-up for new episode emails, contact us or support our mission with a donation, visit: BellyStory.com

At first glance, you might wonder why Christian Long, a man with multiple fathers, would be featured in a series on fatherlessness. Good question. It’s true that Christian has a biological father, but he was out of the picture before Christian was three years old and only emerged again when Christian was 25. Christian also had three stepfathers (and three different last names.) Thanks to his wife, he has a father-in-law… So there is no shortage of fathers in his life. What’s missing, though, was a dad – a safe, constant male figure in his life. The story of Christian’s father-void is still not over. At age 50, he’s still processing how his experience of fatherlessness has affected his temperament, his fears, and his relationships – especially his relationship with his own children. As he reflects, a deep, raw honesty emerges. It’s real. It’s is a place of acceptance. And it’s hopeful. OUR STORY Hey there, welcome to Season 3 of Belly of the Beast Life Stories. I’m David All. It’s another season of life here at the podcast. This third season is a very rare collection of stories by men who share the golden thread of growing up with an absent biological father and broke the pattern to be a good man. I’ll be sharing my own Belly story later this season. And let me tell you that a year ago, when we launched this show, I didn’t realize this was my Belly story. Wisdom for our Soul -- Courage for your Journey. Extraordinary life stories illustrate the nature of personal transformation. A change that forced us down into the dark, gooey stage of life where we found our purpose and climbed up a new person. Our podcast has a purpose — a mission to heal, inspire and shape lives with extraordinary life stories. Stand with us — Visit BellyStory.com to share your story, listen and subscribe, sign-up for episode updates and chip-in, and enable our mission.   EPISODE SUMMARY Part I - Christian reflects on having multiple fathers -- stepfathers and a biological father –- yet he had a dad-void. - Christian’s childhood memories of his biological father are so few, whatever in-person memories exist happened at or before the age of two. - Christian’s first stepfather insisted on adopting him. Years later, Christian realized the adoption was not based on love for him as a child; it was nothing more than a negotiation, a poker move of sorts. - Once a year, Christian visited his paternal grandparents, and once while he was there, he spoke with his father on the phone, though at the time, he didn’t know who he was. - Anger, often suppressed or masquerading as sarcasm, has been a constant companion of Christian’s. - The threat of violence from his stepfather left Christian on edge, scared, and looking for outlets away from home. - Christian describes a difficult time in his marriage when he moved out for a couple of months and how the responsibility he felt as a father helped pull him back home. Part II - Christian shares why he believes his children are what held his marriage together through a rocky time. - Christian reflects on the lines of a poem he wrote for his daughter, Berkeley. - Christian articulates why feeling love is so difficult. - Christian describes the work of healing from being fatherless. - Christian describes his online community of men who choose to be honest and vulnerable with one another. Part III - In some ways, Christina feels like he’s just beginning -- just beginning to discover himself, to feel. It’s never too late to start. QUOTABLES “The first thing that Christian said to me about his story was that it might not be a good fit for this season, because he still feels the deep wound of fatherlessness.” “The idea of thinking of who was my dad in an intimate, emotional, close way is a moving target for me.” “I was in a constant state of discomfort and also trying to protect my mother but doing it through sarcasm or one-liners.” “While I didn't take that violence out on people I cared about, that violence becomes passive but just as detrimental in other ways.” “My kids were my salvation. When I wasn't sure about me and I wasn't sure about my career, my skills, I wasn't sure about my marriage, whether I was lovable or could love in return, my kids, even at a young age, were my salvation.” “if there hadn't been kids, I don't think there would have been a way back. I don't think, for my wife, I would have been enough to bring back, and I don't think I would have felt there was a place to go back to.” “What I felt deep, deep, deep is that those kids were the way back, that my wife and I, our relationship was possible because those kids would bring us back together as a family.” “It was like I didn't know how to exist until they arrived.” “I have spent a lot of my life assuming and feeling that the people that I was meant to love or I was meant to feel their love were going to disappear.” “I look at the kids and I'm still in awe that my daughter really deeply loves me. And I'm still super intimidated and feel a pain, like a breaking, when my son doesn't need his dad.” “That just to be in a space where good human beings will talk deeply about what guides them and what they're challenged by... It's also just a helluva lot less lonely. You're not stuck in your lane. So I keep showing up. I keep welcoming them back.” “This is the moment. The past story doesn't have to be the next story.” “Identity, I think it's out in front of me. It's time to go lay claim. It's time to feel good. It's time to say this is the life that was meant to happen.”   LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST - Founder / Host of the "Oh, Sh*t" Sessions: a virtual gathering of 'good men' from around the world who come together each month to explore the "Oh, Sh*t" moments in their life -- now and in the past -- as well as to define the ways they are seeking to make a purposeful impact in their future. Interested to learn more / participate? Reach out directly via: longchristian@gmail.com - TEDx Indianapolis talk -- "Wonder, By Design": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R68Yhd--RY - We Are Unusual talk -- "Creating the Conditions for Wonder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsA6LZpoJ3w - The WONDER Project (work) website: https://www.wonderproject.org/ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianadamslong/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianlong/ BE A PART OF OUR STORY - Enable Our Mission: BellyStory.com - Submit a Story: BellyStory.com - Listen for Free: BellyStory.com - Post a Review: BellyStory.com - @inourbelly on Instagram - @davidall on Instagram Email us: Belly@mountethos.com   This podcast is produced by MOUNT ETHOS: An All Purpose Storytelling Studio for the World's Finest Come on up and take a look: MountEthos.com

As with so many children in the world today, Leonardo Lightbourne (L.T. Bourne) grew up with an absent father. Watching from the window as his father drove away left L.T. feeling confused and heartbroken. As he grew, he became a people-pleaser, trying to win the favor of others so that they wouldn’t abandon him. This led to a lack of boundaries and some bad decisions.  Thankfully, L.T.’s best friend’s father served as a mentor and a positive influence in his life. Without his encouragement and guidance, L.T. is doubtful that he would be where he is today.  Upon completing university, he struggled to find employment...for months. He felt like a failure. During this low point of his life, L.T. began journaling, realized that he was suffering from parental abandonment issues, and he determined to work through them. From there, his book, It’s Not a Man’s World: How I conquered the Sins of My Father, was born. L.T.’s journey is full of lessons about boundaries, surrender, forgiveness, and empowerment. His story is a message of hope, of embracing your life right where you are, and of taking responsibility for your own narrative, no matter how rocky your start may have been.  → OUR STORY Hey there, welcome to Season 3 of Belly of the Beast Life Stories. I’m David All.  It’s another season of life here at the podcast. This third season is a very rare collection of stories by men who share the golden thread of growing up with an absent biological father and broke the pattern to be a good man. I’ll be sharing my own Belly story later this season. And let me tell you that a year ago, when we launched this show, I didn’t realize this was my Belly story.   Wisdom for our Soul -- Courage for your Journey. Extraordinary life stories illustrate the nature of personal transformation. A change that forced us down into the dark, gooey stage of life where we found our purpose and climbed up a new person.  Our podcast has a purpose — a mission to heal, inspire and shape lives with extraordinary life stories. Stand with us — Visit BellyStory.com to share your story, listen and subscribe, sign-up for episode updates and chip-in, and enable our mission.   → EPISODE SUMMARY Part I - L.T. remembers the day his father left. He was just a child. There was an argument with his grandmother; his mother was crying; and then his father drove away as L.T. watched from the window. - He knew his father was only 10 minutes away, yet he never came to visit.  - L.T. felt like he must have done something wrong. This led to him developing a people-pleasing personality. - Watching family sitcoms on TV showed L.T. that he was missing something in his life, that something was lacking in his family structure. - Father’s Day was especially difficult. Having to go to church and witness the celebration of happy father-child relationships was like pouring salt in a wound. - His own birthday was difficult to celebrate too. He felt like his birth must have been a mistake. Why should he celebrate his parents’ mistake? - Thankfully, L.T.’s best friend had an intact family, and his friend’s father became a mentor and father-figure to L.T.. He nurtured and encouraged L.T.. He even let him sit in on some lectures he gave his own son. - After university, it would be months before L.T. would land a job. He felt like a failure.    Part II - During that time of unemployment, L.T. started journaling. Through his writings, he recognized he had parental rejection issues he needed to work through. The book idea was born. - Writing his story helped L.T. drop the people-pleasing. Telling his story “gave me back my power as a man.” - Wisdom comes through pain. And telling our stories liberates us from the pain.  - When L.T. was able to surrender to the present moment, he was able to let go of the past. - L.T. realized that holding onto resentment was an act of insanity. - Forgiving his father allowed him to live a free, happier life.  - We don’t get a manual on how to do life, and we’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to hurt people as we’re trying to figure things out. We need to forgive one another so that we can all keep moving forward in our development.   Part III -When others hurt you, it’s not because of something you’ve done but because of something they’re going through. - No matter what your background, whether you had an involved father or not, you can control the narrative of your life. - L.T. now embraces his journey and recognizes that his rough start just makes victory that much sweeter.   → QUOTABLES “I had the fear of if I love somebody, then they're going to up and leave the minute I make a mistake or the minute I do something.” “Mentorship is a phenomenal thing. It has reaped so many benefits in my life...If that figure wasn't there, I don't think I would be in this position I am today...I definitely would have fallen victim to the environment that I was in.”   “Because I didn't feel worthy of love, I always felt like I needed to win people's love in my life. So I would always be the person you call, and I'm always there. I'm always available. I always want to go above and beyond for you because I didn't feel worthy… People would interpret this as being someone who is dedicated, who is committed, who is hardworking, but deep down, that wasn't who I was. I was suppressing my insecurities of feeling not worthy.”   “The darkest period brought about my greatest blessing in that I was able to journal, and from my journal, I was able to develop the idea of writing a book about growing up without a father. So that period brought about one of my greatest blessings and gave me a story that is relatable to a lot of people globally. So even though it's one of my darkest periods, it brought about my greatest blessing.”   “Writing a book gave me a voice of speaking and not worrying about what other people thought of me. I was able to be vulnerable. I was able to express myself in a way that I've never expressed myself before. And that destroyed the whole people-pleasing mindset and attitude… I'm not doing things to be accepted anymore. I'm telling my story because I want to be liberated. I want to live a life of not holding on to pain and regret. That moment of telling my story gave me back my power as a man.”   “There is no greater power than being completely at one with who you are. There is no greater power than that. And I have that now.”   “It just seemed like an act of insanity to be angry at my father's decision. That has already been made. But what am I going to do now about it?”   “Forgiving my father and learning how to develop a strong perception of why he left allowed me to live a free, happier life. It allowed me to love him for him and not his actions because I was able to see his actions as a product of the way he was raised and his environment as opposed to the person that he was.”   “People never hurt you because of what you do. They hurt you because of what they are going through.”   “An individual who has fully accepted himself, who has fully loved himself will never hurt you. They will always love you because they have come to peace with who they are.”    “When they show you hurt, show them love. Show them what they're missing in their lives so that one day that would gain some insight or they will have a revelation, or they will gain some introspection.”   “Respond to hurt and hate with love, and you will always win in the end.”   “Are you going to rise up and be victorious? Or are you going to fall down and play the victim? It's your choice — victor or victim. It's entirely in your hand.”   “I know now that to whom much is given, much is required, and that the strongest soldiers usually get the hardest battles and the hardest fight. And so I embrace that knowing that God has given me a strength that is far beyond the average human being, to carry emotional trauma and overcome emotional trauma and now be a beacon of wisdom to others.”   → LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST - It’s Not a Man’s World: How I Conquered the Sins of My Father by L.T. Bourne (get it on Amazon) - Website and blog: https://www.ltbourne.com/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamltbourne - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamltbourne - Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/iamltbourne - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamltbourne   → BE A PART OF OUR STORY - Enable Our Mission: BellyStory.com - Submit a Story: BellyStory.com - Listen for Free: BellyStory.com - Post a Review: BellyStory.com - @inourbelly on Instagram - @davidall on Instagram Email us: Belly@mountethos.com Produced by MOUNT ETHOS: One of the World’s First ALL PURPOSE Storytelling Studios

In this fourth episode of Beyond, David All tells us Joe Biden’s personal story of choosing the role and responsibility of fatherhood over all else, including his own ambitions in his career of public service.   Various examples from Joe's personal life story show a pattern of responsible fathering passed down from one generation to the next.   This is a portrait of fatherfullness, a glimpse into the rare pattern that we need more of in the world today to reverse the trend of fatherlessness.   ABOUT THIS PODCAST Wisdom for our Soul -- Courage for your Journey. In Belly, we share our extraordinary life stories of personal transformation to illustrate the nature of personal transformation. Beyond helps us go beyond personal stories to comprehend the overall pattern of transformation.   Stay tuned for Season 3 of Belly where we’re sharing real stories of men growing up with an absent biological father and the impact this has on their life.   Fatherlessness, the antithesis of fatherfullness, is the golden thread marking a childhood of grief, anger, and missteps, it’s a difficult pattern to break out of. But for David and these other men, we see a transformation from the adult boy to the man. A climb up from being born in the hole is the overall pattern of each of these stories. These are extraordinary stories you need to hear.   Visit BellyStory.com to listen, sign-up for new episode notifications and enable our mission.

Like rivers and streams filled with fragments of gold, there are nuggets of wisdom in the stories we hear.    Beyond the Belly is wisdom distilled from our stories to pure gold; simply listen and glimpse in to your own life journey.   This episode with our advisor and master healer, Artie Wu, reveals the overall pattern of transformation — the secret recipe of each personal Belly story. Once you hear the pattern - you’ll see it coming up in our podcast and with those around you.   Want to get exclusive episode updates and content?   Using your phone, listeners in the U.S. can text us at (360) 968-6867 with your name and email address to get new episode updates and receive exclusive access to episode content on our website.   Here’s an example of how to text us your information: David All david@inourbelly.com     EPISODE SUMMARY – The first stage of transformation is ‘forced change’ which is the event which triggers the process of transformation – We use Dr. Julian Gold’s diagnosis of cancer (Season 1) where he was diagnosed and days later was in the hospital for treatment – Artie notes that a health event is one category of forced change that “truly cannot be stuffed down anymore” – In the actual forced event itself — and in your own forced change in your life — understand the overall meaning in the event itself – Artie discusses allegory versus symbol; rise above why it’s happening and understand that it is happening and how will you respond to it – From forced change, the caterpillar goes into the cocoon stage, and we use an excerpt from Chip Conley’s story(Season 1) to illustrate the “dark, gooey stage” of life – Jobi Manson’s story(Season 1) is used to illustrate the role of surrender in the process – necessary as the final stage before climbing up into being a butterfly – Holocaust survivor Martha Sternbach’s story(Season 1) of erupting as a butterfly 50 years after the Holocaust ended is our example of emergence – Artie answers David's question “Will everyone become a butterfly?”   QUOTABLES “The question that’s more interesting and relevant to me and ultimately helpful in my experience is what is the overall meaning of this event [forced change that leads to transformation]?”   “The true transformative surrender is always forced. It always feels forced. If you willingly do it and try to maintain control, it’s not quite the real thing.”   “So when that transformation happens… Your narrative about your self changes. And then you, in your essence, also change.”   “I think the answer is the natural pattern is that yes, yes. You know, everyone is a caterpillar does go down to cocoon phase and does come up the butterfly. The process can be aborted, can be forced back backward even or like completely stalemated and halted. Because there are other forces within you that will say this entire shape is invalid. I reject this entire shape. I demand that I be a caterpillar and a damn good looking one driving a nice car for the rest of my life with no change whatsoever. All I want is no change. And those forces in a person can be very powerful as well to the point where they abort any cocooning that happens.“     GUEST RESOURCES Artie Wu’s healing center: http://bit.ly/presidelife Facebook community: http://bit.ly/PresideFB On Instagram: http://bit.ly/artieIG   LISTENER COMMUNITY RESOURCES Text your name and email address to (360) 968-6867 for episode updates and exclusive content  Write a fair review about this show: https://bit.ly/bellyapple Our website: https://inourbelly.com David’s personal email: david@inourbelly.com Social Media (we’re open to help in these areas if you’d like to volunteer): Instagram.com/inourbelly  Twitter.com/inourbelly Linkedin.com/company/belly-of-the-beast-life-stories Facebook.com/inourbelly   GROWTH STORYTELLING StoryGPS by David All to connect to your personal narrative: https://davidall.com ALLSTAY Group: Growth storytelling for business and organizations: https://allstaygroup.com

Like rivers and streams filled with fragments of gold, there are nuggets of wisdom in the stories we tell. Beyond is wisdom distilled to pure gold; simply listen and glimpse in to your own journey.   This inaugural episode unearths the origin story of Belly with our advisor, Artie Wu of Preside Life (http://bit.ly/presidelife).   Want more stories?   Using your phone, listeners in the U.S. can text us at (360) 968-6867 with your name and email address to get new episode updates and receive exclusive access to episode content on our website. Here’s an example of how to text us your information: David All david@inourbelly.com   EPISODE SUMMARY Artie Wu describes the origin of Belly of the Beast Life Stories from his perspective as a longtime friend and advisor to David All The meaning behind the term, “Belly of the Beast” Discussing the overall pattern of transformation using the metaphor of a caterpillar, down into her cocoon, and climbing up a butterfly Biblical story of Jonah and the Whale Modern examples of the Belly story pattern include Star Wars and The Matrix (films) The difference between grief and depression and why accepting the meaning of your pain matters   QUOTABLES “Belly of the Beast really is an allusion to some call it ‘hero’s journey.’ Some call it sort of transformations people go through over the course of their life cycles. And there are many ways to describe that.”   “There’s a natural shape of the transformation process in a person’s life in a phase they go through in nature. And, you know, one metaphor that comes up a lot is that of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.”   “And I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a video of a butterfly coming out of cocoon, it doesn’t look like fun. It comes out. It’s slimy, it’s struggling. Sometimes a wing breaks. And it needs to sit there totally vulnerable for some period of time for its wings to dry out before it can even fly away. It’s very precarious, dangerous, terrifying process.”   “And we always put our attention on the rainbows and unicorns aspect of being this butterfly.”   “It wasn’t a metaphor that the caterpillar died, the caterpillar did die because it is gone.”   “In the Bible story, [Belly of the Beast is] an allusion to Jonah and the whale.”   “And one day, Jonah is standing on the shore. And this whale, this leviathan, comes up from the depths and swallows him. And so he’s in the Belly of the Beast. But then the whale dives down underwater. Right. And the idea here is that when Jonah is down literally in the Belly of the Beast, he undergoes transformation. He’s like, well, I’m gonna die anyway here. I don’t know what happened. Everything I was afraid of losing — I’ve basically already lost.”   “And metaphorically speaking, at some point along your journey, a whale comes up and just literally takes you down. And the idea here from classical times is that You know, you get the call, and if you refuse the call, something will come up, grab you and drag you down anyway.”   “And what’s beautiful about hearing people’s individual stories from Martha Sternbach (Season 1, Ep.1)  to like everyone else is that even though we all have a fingerprint, each fingerprint is unique. And to hear that, you know, the incredible stories that you’ve brought out in this first season, it helps us see the shape of our own fingerprint.”   “In classic Star Wars, the belly of the beast is the trash compactor in the belly of the Death Star. In The Matrix, for instance, the belly of the beast is when Neo actually physically dies and then comes back completely transformed, knowing he has his powers.”   “Like for instance, when we talk about the difference between grief and depression. Grief is when you’ve had a loss and you actively, willingly sit with it and just sit with the pain of a loss and you don’t run away from the pain. You actively go down into the belly of the beast. You go down into grief, you go down into your cocoon phase. Depression is where you say, no, no, run away. Get away. Get away. Numb it with alcohol, numb it with drugs, with sex or whatever. And you keep running from this pain you know is coming. And eventually a hand comes up, grabs you and drags you down anyway. That’s the difference.” GUEST RESOURCES Artie Wu’s healing center: http://bit.ly/presidelife Facebook community: http://bit.ly/PresideFB On Instagram: http://bit.ly/artieIG   LISTENER COMMUNITY RESOURCES Text your name and email address to (360) 968-6867 for episode updates and exclusive content Write a fair review about this show: https://bit.ly/bellyapple Our website: https://inourbelly.com David’s personal email: david@inourbelly.com Social Media (we’re open to help in these areas if you’d like to volunteer): Instagram.com/inourbelly  Twitter.com/inourbelly Linkedin.com/company/belly-of-the-beast-life-stories Facebook.com/inourbelly   GROWTH STORYTELLING ALLSTAY Group: Growth storytelling for business and organizations: https://allstaygroup.com

This informational bonus episode covers a few key adjustments we're making: 1. Originally our theme for Season 3 focused on exploring the transformations in personal stories of folks that have faced the criminal justice system. With COVID, it's not safe to take this issue on the way we envision, so we're shifting. 2. The new theme for Season 3 will be a collection of personal stories by men. We'll explore the grieving and transformation in manhood by men that grew up fatherless. 3. If you have a "Fatherless" story you're willing to share with our community, reach out. (david@inourbelly.com) 4. We are merging 'Beyond the Belly' into this podcast, offering one stronger podcast with two distinct, but related streams of content. We'll re-release Beyond Episodes 1-3 in case you missed them. Thanks for listening. Warmly, David All p.s. And thank you all for rating and writing a fair review of this podcast on Apple iTunes. It helps other folks discover the stories. (bitly.com/bellyapple)

In our season 2 finale episode, Ashley Wayne shares her story of facing down her fear of being blind and becoming a mother. And now, she has two blind children and a newborn.   Full transcript available: https://inourbelly.com/season-2/ashley-wayne   Belly of the Beast Life Stories is a firsthand retelling of real life transformations, an oral history podcast by David All.   Season 2: For Love of My Child are true stories of a parent’s transformation when faced with acute challenges, chronic ills, and early endings of their child or children.   Give us soul juice: Subscribe, rate and write a fair review about this podcast so other heroes can find it, too. And please consider sharing this story with one person that it will inspire or better understand their life experience.   STORYTELLING FROM DAVID ALL + Life Stories Workshops: “What’s your story?” Can be an uncomfortable question. Life Stories Workshops by David All help folks thread the dots of their life story to gain clarity and mastery of their story. Watch a video and learn more at DavidAll.com   + Beyond the Belly: A new podcast connecting the dots and threading the patterns in Belly of the Beast Life Stories   EPISODE SUMMARY   Part I The gift of sight was always seen as a luxury to Ashley up until this moment She’s days from going to get her daughter in Bulgaria, the international adoption nearly realized In these early moment, a blind woman confronts being a blind mama to her blind daughter Ashley was blind at birth, two detached retinas, not even a perception of light The darkness hadn’t slowed her down, but the simple everyday tasks of changing diapers or taking her to a friend’s house to play seemed insurmountable “It was scary; when you’re suddenly put in charge of another human being it’s very sobering" Parenting brought her to her knees, Ashley had to realize it was OK to ask for help   Part II Ashley had spent a lifetime being independent, and thriving, as a blind person But the realities of being a mother changed her perception She shifted her mindset Day by day, Ashley was successful at doing the little things and life started to return to normal Normal enough to begin (and finish) the process of adopting their blind son, who had Cerebral Palsy Faith is everything to Ashley, and she elaborates on this fundamental aspect of her life A Grand Canyon experience through a blind families eyes Blind people don’t have superpowers like exceptional hearing Ashley has to be extremely present to experience special moments with her family 4-weeks ago, Ashley birthed her first biological son, that appears to be fully sighted Ashley still yearns to see, especially the little things like seeing what her infant is looking at and being fascinated by   Part III Ashley shares advice to her younger self just as she’s about to take on motherhood She writes a lot about the distancing she and her family experience being blind (see articles in the guest resources section) and urges folks just to treat them normal   QUOTABLES "It was a very emotional time. I remember as it got closer, feeling this immense weight and wondering, am I really going to be able to take care of her? I had done a lot of things as a blind person that I think many people would imagine would be pretty difficult.  But parenting felt like it was going to be this much more insane and immense task. And I really didn't know if I could do it, but we had obviously committed and were going to adopt her."   "And I didn't need sight, and I could get along just fine without it, and almost to the detrimental extreme of that end, you know, believing that sight wasn't necessary, and I was an amazing blind person who could do anything [Laughter]. I didn't need anyone's help, especially help from those the sighted people.  I think parenting really did bring me to my knees, figuratively and literally sometimes, just the realization that sight is a gift, and it would be not just nice to have, but would be preferred in a lot of cases when it comes to parenting, and that it was OK to admit that."   "You know, every little task, like I kind of dreaded every diaper change, like, am I going to get her clean enough?"   "You realize that things weren't quite as intense or frightening as I had originally thought. It doesn't mean that I still didn't need help or things weren't frustrating at points. But it began to feel less and less alien and yeah, just a bit more normal."   Regarding faith… “It’s everything. It's what I hope to... We hope and strive for, to teach our children that there is a God. And it's, we can know him through Christ."   "I've always had to rely more on my hearing. And just to dispel a myth, because I always have to take any opportunity to mention this, you know, blind people don't have super hearing."   Advice to a younger Ashley… "You will figure it out. Yeah, you'll make some mistakes, but nothing so horrible that neither you or her will be scarred for life. You will figure it out together and all the things will get done."   GUEST RESOURCES + Ashley’s Facebook: A Blind View   Here are a few of Ashley’s articles: + A blind mother’s courageous journey of parenting two blind children (profile piece) + Learning what it means to be a blind mother + I’m a blind mom raising blind kids, here’s what I’d like you to know   SHOW RESOURCES + Submit your story - Now curating Season 3: The Forgiven, stories bringing to life the transformational trial of the criminal justice system  + Belly of the Beast Life Stories website + @inourbelly on Instagram + @inourbelly on Twitter + /inourbelly Facebook Community + Beyond the Belly is David's new podcast connecting the dots and threading the patterns in Belly of the Beast Life Stories   + LIFE STORIES WORKSHOPS “What’s your story?” It’s my favorite question to ask, but is it your favorite question to answer? It will be. Life Stories Workshops by David All help folks thread the dots of their life story to gain clarity and mastery of their story. Watch a video and learn more at DavidAll.com.   DAVID’S WEEKLY  INSIGHTS, INSPIRATION & HEALING RESOURCES + “There has to be an openness which allows the unseen to become visible, the eternal to become immediate, and the transformation to become possible.” Michael Meade, Living Myth Podcast   + Belly Advisor and Master Healer, Artie Wu, is offering Live Sacred Space Sessions as a support resource of safe sacred space and emotional comfort during the pandemic crisis. They are 100% online and free and open to all. In case you missed David’s conversations with Artie, check out Beyond the Belly episodes 1-3.

Mathew Passy’s 4-month old daughter was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, a rare but treatable disease, bringing immediacy to the role and responsibility of fatherhood.   Full transcript available: https://inourbelly.com/season-2/mathew-passy   Belly of the Beast Life Stories is a firsthand retelling of real life transformations, an oral history podcast by David All.   Season 2: For Love of My Child are true stories of a parent’s transformation when faced with acute challenges, chronic ills, and early endings of their child or children.   Give us some soul juice: Subscribe, rate and write a fair review about this podcast so other heroes can find it, too. And please consider sharing this story with one person that it might help inspire or better understand their life experience.   STORYTELLING FROM DAVID ALL + Life Stories Workshops: “What’s your story?” Can be an uncomfortable question. Life Stories Workshops by David All help folks thread the dots of their life story to gain clarity and mastery of their story. Watch a video and learn more at DavidAll.com. + Beyond the Belly: A new podcast connecting the dots and threading the patterns in Belly of the Beast Life Stories   EPISODE SUMMARY Part I •The story opens with Mathew and his wife taking their 4-month old daughter, Hailey, into the hospital with a fever that was later diagnosed as bacterial meningitis •Meningitis is a rare disease caused by viral or bacterial infection that moves into the cerebral spinal fluid and swells the thin membranes that cover the brain and the spinal cord •This meant that Hailey would be in the hospital for two weeks for treatment •Mathew had just started a new business •Mathew and his wife took turns being at the hospital •On his first night, his daughter has a seizure in his arms for an hour •This event “knocked” Mathew "for a loop" •He describes this moment as bringing the preciousness of life into immediacy; a scary experience where his mind was racing •A self-described “control person,” not having control of the situation was hard •Although not a “religious person,” Mathew wondered if he was being “punished"  •Mathew had a lot of fear about the health of his daughter, but also whether or not his business would survive  •This experience matured Mathew; from being an “older kid with kids” to a father responsible for a family   Part II •We learn more about how the experience changed Mathew •Hailey was released from the hospital but every time she cried or had a slight fever, Mathew and his wife were on the phones with the doctors •Mathew’s clients didn’t abandon him, in fact, they validated his “family first” decision and are still with him to this day •Being an entrepreneur has given Mathew more time to spend with his family and he has barriers, like stopping work at the end of the day to make dinner and spend the evening with the kids •Setting the health scare aside, Mathew wouldn’t take this experience back because he’s a better dad now   Part III •Mathew shares his advice to his younger self •Mathew now has a sense of calm in any situation knowing that he has what it takes to get through it because he’s doing it for them   QUOTABLES "And then to be in the situation in the hospital where something has to be done and you either can't get answers, or have no control over it, is so hard."   "And because I had just started my own business, I didn't really have a ton of money coming in, every dollar counted. And we had just bought the house earlier that year, so it felt like it could all just crumble very, very quickly, and the life that we were projecting to lead, just felt like it could have been snatched from us at any second."   "I think I was hyper-focused on Hailey and her care."   "I think this whole experience matured me. These are really fully matured, responsible adults and I'm sure to a lot of people that sounds like a bunch of nonsense, but it just changed me, and just made me realize that I can't go back to pretending I'm a kid anymore, that my life is now all about them, and providing, and setting an example and ensuring that they are prepared for the world."   "But my wife and I took control of the situation. And we...  you know, we dictated the terms. We had the plan. We were the ones who got through it and figured it out and and made sure that all the decisions were going through us, and it it no longer felt like we still needed our parents in the room to help us."   "Every time she had a fever, every time she cried that felt a little bit off kilter, we were on the phone with doctors."   "I wouldn't take it back. I think I'm probably a better Dad. I think I'm probably a more present Dad. More appreciative."   "But I also have this overwhelming sense of calm that just says, "You got this. Whatever this means, whatever they're throwing at you, you'll figure it out. You'll find the solution because it's what you have to do, and not for you, but for them."   GUEST RESOURCES + The Podcast Consultant + Podcast Me Anything + Causepods Check out this Causepods episode with Mathew and David All discussing Belly of the Beast Life Stories and Beyond the Belly; this was David’s first interview on someone else’s podcast.    SHOW RESOURCES + Submit your story David follows-up personally + Belly of the Beast Life Stories website + @inourbelly on Instagram + @inourbelly on Twitter + /inourbelly Facebook Community + Beyond the Belly is David's new podcast connecting the dots and threading the patterns in Belly of the Beast Life Stories   LIFE STORIES WORKSHOPS “What’s your story?” Can be an uncomfortable question. Life Stories Workshops by David All help folks thread the dots of their life story to gain clarity and mastery of their story. Watch a video and learn more at DavidAll.com.   DAVID’S WEEKLY  INSIGHTS, INSPIRATION & HEALING RESOURCES + “What heals us makes us whole.” Michael Meade, Living Myth Podcast + Belly Advisor and Master Healer, Artie Wu, is offering Live Sacred Space Sessions as a support resource of safe sacred space and emotional comfort during the pandemic crisis. They are 100% online and free and open to all. In case you missed David’s conversations with Artie, check out Beyond the Belly episodes 1-3.

David All is the creator of Belly of the Beast Life Stories, a podcast that tells the stories of a person’s personal transformation story. David explains to us why he started his podcast and why he finds the personal stories of transformation on his podcast so fascinating.  He goes on to tell us the story of his own personal transformation in his career and how he came up with the name, Belly of the Beast and Beyond the Belly. We also find out why he decided to format his show in Seasons and what advice he as for those looking to start their own podcasts. The conversation shifts to why he supports Peace4kids.org, what they do and how they help children in foster care, even during this global pandemic. We wrap up the show with David announcing a new workshop where he’s helping people who have already found their calling, tell the story of how they got there. Key Topics: ·      David explains why he decided to start his podcast (1:30) ·      David opens up about his career before starting his podcast (4:00) ·      Where the name Belly of the Beast came from (6:47) ·      The story of David’s personal transformation (9:11) ·      Why David decided to format his show with Seasons (11:48) ·      David offers advice to anyone who may want to start a podcast (14:50) ·      What David’s other podcast, Beyond the Belly is about (18:00) ·      David explains the best way to get acclimated with his work (20:30) ·      David tells us about his cause, Peace4Kids.org (22:49) ·      We find out about a workshop David is hosting, helping people tell their own stories (25:00) Website: https://inourbelly.com/ (https://inourbelly.com/) Link to Podcast: Apple – Belly of the Beast Life Stories - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/belly-of-the-beast-life-stories/id1476989899 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/belly-of-the-beast-life-stories/) Beyond the Belly - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-the-belly/id1502783451 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-the-belly/)   Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/inourbelly (https://www.facebook.com/inourbelly) Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/inourbelly/ (https://www.instagram.com/inourbelly/) https://www.instagram.com/davidall/ (https://www.instagram.com/davidall/) Twitter - https://twitter.com/inourbelly (https://twitter.com/inourbelly) https://twitter.com/DavidAll (https://twitter.com/DavidAll) Donation Link: https://www.peace4kids.org/donate (https://www.peace4kids.org/donate) Underbelly workshops - https://inourbelly.com/underbelly/ (https://inourbelly.com/underbelly/) Thanks for Listening! Be sure to subscribe on  Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3hmQQrfFDPznEqEAEeRVm8) , or wherever you get your podcasts. And feel free to drop us a line at mathew@causepods.org. Follow Mathew on Social Media to stay up to date on Causepods -  LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewpassy/) For help, resources, and community support, please join the  Causepods Facebook Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2073354376260768)  if you are already producing podcasts for a cause or are thinking about launching one. And if you would like to be a guest on Causepods, please fill out this form and schedule  your chat here (https://bookme.name/thepodcastconsultant/lite/causecast-podcast-booking) .

For this, the 21st and final episode of the first season of the living with Meraki podcast, I’m turning the tables and featuring an episode of a podcast called Belly of the Beast Life Stories in which I was interviewed by the host, David All. We sat down under the redwoods in Mill Valley and talked about my relationship with my daughter and how that has evolved since she was adopted in Japan 16 years ago.We later laughed that my theme song happened to include the lyrics, Belly of the Beast. Guess this was meant to be!You can find David’s podcast, Belly of the Beast Life Stories, on his website, inourbelly.com or on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcasting portal.This is it for Season 1 of the Living with Meraki podcast. I’ll be back soon. Thanks for joining me!

Twenty years ago David Wood was ahead of the curve in the coaching space thanks to a workshop that led him to delve into the emotional aspects of business leadership. He is here today to discuss ways owners can use emotional intelligence to overcome the hurdles and valleys of growing a business. David is a high performance life and business coach, working solely with established entrepreneurs. He got his start on Park Avenue at the age of 23 and thought he had it made as a consulting actuary. A mandatory personal growth workshop made him realize that he was clueless about anything emotional in business. Today he uses his knowledge in his own business, Play for Real, to help entrepreneurs and business leaders push through tough scenarios with themselves and others and help them to do great things. David also is a coach trainer, mentor, author, and host of the Tough Conversations podcast. Episode Highlights: Reasons why David is speaking with us today. How he takes surface level goals and delves deeper into them. What questions entrepreneurs should ask themselves in order to get through any growth challenges in their business. David's focus on goal setting. The difference between a coach and a therapist. Why people seem so eager to move to the next thing when a sale is over. Quick coaching tips for business owners. The 4-step approach David suggests for sellers and buyers. How David's techniques can help your business and improve your life. Transcription: Mark: So a few years ago Joe I wrote a blog post on the Quiet Light blog and you can actually look this up and it's called I made a bad website acquisition. It was about a business that I bought and made some mistakes with and subsequently sold later on. At the end of that little ownership period that I had with that; it was a really small acquisition, we're talking a very small five figure level here but at the end of that period I hated that business. I hated it so much because it wasn't making any money. It was taking a bunch of my time. The logistics were a bit of a pain. And I got to the point where frankly I was willing to get rid of it for just about anything. And when we talk about the soft side of a transaction a lot of times people want to talk about the financial side and the metrics and the numbers and the financials; how do you actually juice that multiple, how do you get the value as high as you can? But so much of what we do is on that other side and that is the soft side of the transaction and understanding the arc of an entrepreneur's ownership of the business and how are you going to feel when you sold that business as well. And look before you turn it off and think this is all soft gooey stuff; this has a real impact on valuations. And I know you talked to David Wood about this, he was a business coach, because he really kind of keyed in on that as well. Joe: Yeah I know it has a tremendous impact. I like to say don't let the business outgrow you. That's generally why people sell because they've got a certain capacity and the business outgrows them; they get sick of it, they get frustrated, trends change, and they sell which is exactly what not to do. So working with a business coach like David who spends a lot of time with people in the e-commerce world helps you understand what your own personal goals are in business and in life. They're combined when you're an entrepreneur. And helps you get through those valleys and over those hurdles as you need to. David is a good friend of Ezra Firestone. I met him at Blue Ribbon Mastermind. Brad and I and Chris were there so I heard him do a fantastic presentation and I just had to connect with him afterwards and have him on the podcast. I think he can and will and has through the podcast I listened to he imparted some great wisdom when it comes to operating a business within your own capacity. Mark: Let's hear it. Let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got David Wood from Play for Real with us. David is actually a high performance life and business coach. I met him at Ezra Firestone's Blue Ribbon Mastermind event in; where were we David? St. Petersburg, Florida. David: Yeah. Joe: In January of 2019. I'm sorry 2020. David is a good friend of Ezra's and he did such an amazing presentation I wanted to have him on the podcast. Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast David. David: Hey thank you. I'm happy to be here. Joe: Well, I'm glad you're here. We don't do fancy introductions so why don't you go ahead and give the people listening a little bit of background on yourself and what you do. David: Sure. Well I thought I was successful and I was at the age of say 23 because I was working on Park Avenue. I grew up in our country town in Australia. And here I am on Park Avenue consulting with Sony Music for the next song and I thought I pretty much got it made. I was a consulting actuary and for people who don't know what that is, we deal with financial projections going say 50 to 100 years into the future. Joe: Wow. David: And so my job was risk assessment but then I lucked into doing a personal growth program and I nearly didn't do it because they were all smiling way too much and they all wore nametags. I'm like this is very cult-y. I don't know about this but I didn't let that stop me and they cracked me open. They had me realize that I'd gotten great at systems and logic and results but I didn't know anything about vulnerability. I knew nothing about deep connection with other people and how to really influence people. Emotional Intelligence was something I hadn't even heard of. So the first half of my life was about business and results and success in that line of work and then the last half of my life has been about researching the more I still call it hippie woo-woo stuff like the touchy feely stuff. How do I make eye contact with someone? How do I be vulnerable? How do I deeply connect? So the people who come to me don't just want their business to be better. You can get a lot of business coaches for that. And they don't just want a part of their life to be better. They want everything to be to be better than it was before. So that's the short version of; oh I didn't say to in that course I got to coach somebody. Someone was really stuck about something that was destroying her marriage and I was able to hold space for her and her life changed and I got hooked. I was like this is amazing. I just spot the patterns and see what's missing and make a suggestion and she ran with it, totally revamped her marriage and her life, and I was like I can do this more than as a hobby? And this is back in ‘97 and it turned out yes you can. People were just starting to consider coaching as a career. So now I've been doing it for 20 years and I don't see any sign of stopping. Joe: You were ahead of the curve then and you're doing pretty amazing stuff now. You didn't mention that you wrote a book, that you're on stage quite often, you're on 70 podcasts last year, then Loosening Jack Canfield or John Gray did the inside cover of your book or things of that nature. You're pretty well connected with high level people but you deal with a lot of entrepreneurs as well in your coaching business, is that right? David: Yeah I'd coach entrepreneurs mainly for the last 20 years. Now I'm doing more corporate stuff, some vice presidents and also some prison work and working with prison inmates so I'm expanding but I'm an entrepreneur at heart. So I love working with entrepreneurs who are already doing great things. I don't work with just startup. You have to have a track record of success and then let's; how do you go further? Joe: The people listening are probably saying well why are we on the podcast together; why are you here? David: Yes. Joe: And when we list a business for sale oftentimes someone will say; a buyer, well if it's so great why are they selling? Or we always ask the question why they're selling. And more and more often what happens, people, is that a business outgrows the individual. And what we want people to do is understand first and foremost who they are, what they're capable, what their likes are, what their dislikes are, what drives them, what fills the cup and makes them happy. And that's a lot of what you do in your day to day work, David, is that correct? David: Yeah. Joe: Okay. David: Yeah I get people who have got surface level goals. They come to me like they want to be a better leader. They want to learn how to manage their team or something like that. And that's fine. Let's start there. But then I want to know what's really going to have you be happy. And some people know and they just don't think it's possible or they haven't put time and attention on making it happen. Some people haven't really asked themselves the question; how could my life be better? And that's the sum total of my initial sessions with a client; how can your life be better? Sometimes it's a business goal. If my business increased by 30%, that would do a lot for me financially and my family and then my life would be better. Okay maybe I'll buy that. But normally there are other things like what if my relationship with my partner was deeper? What if my kids opened up to me and talked to me about their life? What if I had the health that I wanted? So yeah I like digging into those questions like how could it be better? Joe: How can the people listening today sort of figure out what questions to ask themselves? Imagine we've got an audience that it's got a healthy mix of entrepreneurs that someday may sell their business. They're learning about buying and selling and preparing the business for sale. And then the other half of the audience might be those that are thinking you know what I'm going to buy one of these someday because they're unhappy in the corporate world or they've sold one and they don't want to take the risk of building another so they're choosing to buy. But let's focus first on those people that are struggling with the business that they have; they've grown it, they bootstrapped it, it's growing like crazy, and they're just trying to keep up. How does one identify what their own comfort level is with the size of the business or the staff or the growth? Because a lot of what we deal with are people that wait too long that things get pretty miserable because it's grown to the point where it's beyond their comfort level. They don't want to manage people. Mark and I had this conversation this morning and he's like we're doing an organizational chart here at Quiet Light Brokerage and I'm in a particular place mark and we're all in different places. The key center of our organization is the advisors; our team of advisers. And I'm straddling a couple of areas, Mark is straddling a couple of areas and we said to each other we have the right as entrepreneurs to do what makes us happy. We want to choose that path. How does one identify what it is that makes them happy? Is there a is there a process that that they would go through in terms of goal setting or asking questions of themselves and I will just stop rambling now answer that question help me out. David: So the question is how can people identify how they can be happy; what are the right questions they can ask themselves? And I love this, on 75 interviews last year no one's really asked me this question. So what I did is I went straight to my website and I'll read out some of the questions. I have a life assessment that anyone can take. And if you like we can give it to people at the end of the show. They can go and fill it in but I'll read out some of the questions. I have people in this assessment rate your life areas out of 10; business career fulfillment, wealth and money, your key relationship, health and peace. I even include relationship with yourself; like how much do you like yourself. So these are a few of the areas, there are a few more which I don't want to steal all the thunder. I'll leave some for people to find when they go and fill it in. And I have people rate them out of ten and that helps them look at oh wow this area is really a three; like my health and peace is a three, what's going on there? Or my relationship with my partner is like a six. Is that really okay with me? Like am I really going to leave the rest of my life at a six? So that's the first point and then I have people rate coaching areas; how about how are you doing with real goals? I'd like to talk about; and you heard this in my presentation at Ezra's Blue Ribbon, GPA, goals planning and action. So out of ten how are you doing with setting real goals, having a real plan, and taking real action? A lot of people would like to be more focused. We're kind of like a monkey on crack when it comes to getting work done. How about your daring, your caring, your decisiveness? So you rate these out of 10 and by the way this form doubles as prep if anyone wants to do a session with me. I use this as an intake because I want to go straight to wow you're doing great here, here, here, here, and here are three areas that look like they could be doing better. Which of these do you want to focus on? Joe: I think the real goals thing is amazing and critical and so obvious that everybody should be doing it but I don't think they do. I read decades ago; right David, we both got some gray on the chin that Harvard; I took a little class at Harvard, half the kids wrote down their goals and half didn't. Those that wrote down their goals were something like ten times as wealthy or successful and happy as those that didn't. One of the things that we're trying to do here and having you on is part of that mind shift. I want people to stop asking the question how much is my business worth, how much can I sell my business for, I'm ready to some business how much can I, how much can I? Instead set goals and say in three years I want to sell my business for X and then reverse engineer the pathway to that and understanding, gaining the knowledge on valuations and setting goals to that pathway exit. Are you working with people in terms of that goal section of their life whether it's personal, with their partner, with their business, with whatever it is that is weak on that scale and helping them with goals or do you just sort of act in a way almost, and what's the difference between a therapist and a life coach and a business coach in this situation? David: All right we've got three areas I want to address here. We'll see if I can track and remember all of them. The first one… Joe: I won't remember them all so don't worry about it. David: The first one is for me I like your process in this many years I want to sell my business for X. I think that's missing a key step. I would say firstly how do you want to feel in three years? It's incredible; and you can do this when you're doing a New Year's visioning session if you ever do that kind of thing. Like don't set goals first, set feeling goals. I want to feel this. And then you can set some goals that will help you feel that. I want to feel at peace. I want to feel deeply in love with my partner. I want to feel joy as I walk down the street and look at strangers. Those aren't some bad goals; actually this came off the top of my head. And then all right to feel like that what would I need to be doing? And I looked at well I love coaching. I've wrote this down; it was three or four years ago, I need to be more coaching and training because I'm inspired when that happens and I want to feel inspired. It's like oh wow I didn't know that. So it is a goal. So first step, how do I want to feel, secondly what do you need in your life to feel that and there might be a financial component to that. All right I need at minimum this amount of money to support these goals that are going to have me feel good. And you probably found this when you coach your clients, it might be less money than you thought the minimum. They have done some studies that show that first; I don't know how much it is 50 or 60 grand can really do a lot to provide happiness in the year and after that it drops way off because you need your own food and you want shelter and you want some basic peace. But after that that poor show that extra trip or vacation isn't going to do that much at all. So that's the first thing. And then there was a second component. I know I remember the therapy component but what was the other component to your question? Joe: I told you I wouldn't remember David. Come on, I'm serious. I meant it. David: Oh that's right. I wanted to say some people come to me ready with goals. They're like I know what I want I'm just not getting there fast enough. So we might do brainstorming or we might have to strategize a plan and they might just need some accountability to put attention on it. All right every week I'm going to do it. Other people it might take three to six sessions to peel the onion and to just uncover. They may not know yet. Like people would come to me with I want this this and this, six months later we've uncovered that; I'm working with an executive right now who finally has seen that he's really arrogant and he thinks he's smarter than everybody else which may be true but it's not serving him. He didn't come to me with that but it's a merge and it's impacting all of his relationships not just at work. Joe: Did he come to that realization and share it with you or did you go you know you think you're; how do you come about that realization? David: Well, sometimes I might gently point it out and I have that privilege because they're paying me. So I can say you know I think I have some feedback that might not be easy to hear but it might be very valuable, would you like to hear it? You're never going to get a no from someone who's paying you to hear your idea. But he came to me. He said you know what I think I can be a bit of a jerk and we; actually this was really fun. Sometimes you get to have fun in coaching. I said to him there's a chance. I know this is hippie woo-woo but I think you could really make a big difference for you if you're willing. It comes from the Himalayas and you're willing to trust me on this. He said all right. So I took him through this Himalayan chant. It starts with; maybe you've heard it, it starts with Owa Tajer Kiam and we did this and we kept on going and he got faster and faster saying it with me until he realized he was saying oh what a jerk I am, oh what a jerk I am, oh what a jerk I am. And when he finally got it he laughed so hard and that's part of my style is let's bring some humor to it. Yeah, you can be a jerk, so can I. When I'm frustrated I'll use my intelligence to belittle the waiter and they may not even know. And then I'll feel bad about it. But we're getting off track. So some people have a sense of what they want, other people it's going to take some time to uncover and I find that really fun and fascinating. And then you said how is coaching different from therapy. It's very contentious. A therapist will argue about this but once I heard this metaphor a therapist will help a man with a broken leg to walk again and a coach will help that man to run the four minute mile. Joe: Okay. That's not mental therapy though that's physical therapy. How do you differ from somebody sitting down and saying I'm unhappy with my life? David: Well the metaphor is more about someone who's really, really struggling to go from bad to okay versus helping someone to go from okay to good or from good to great. Joe: Okay. And you're the okay to good or good to great. David: Yeah, that's my target market. Now there are coaches who might be willing to work with someone who's really struggling financially. For example if someone's got a lot of historical stuff trauma and baggage from that; and I'm one of them, I have no judgment about that. That's not me. I would say a therapist could spend time with you to help you unpack and bring up all those feelings from the past and like that. I'm more interested in what do you want and what are you going to do about it and there is some overlap because sometimes people have limiting beliefs. And I've got one vice president who said I think I've got some limiting beliefs that are holding me back, can you help me with those? I'm like yeah we can bust those open. But I'm not going to do a lot of how was it when your father treated you this way and whatever; that's not my style. I'll refer someone to a therapist if it looks like there's some old stuff that's really holding them back. And a disclaimer and a plug for therapists there are some therapists who will work with people who are doing just fine and help them go to great. So it's a broad brush painting with right now. Joe: But I got to tell you in the future audience you may hear me say how do you want to feel in three years when you sell your business instead of what's your financial goal. What do you want to exit for? Inaudible[00:21:40.0] a combination of both. Because I've got to tell you people are this is their baby they've built it up and sometimes they're sad to sell it. But I'm interviewing people right now for the purposes of writing a book. Yes this is the second time I've mentioned this on the podcast and I will not be obnoxious and plug it all the time but it's fascinating. The idea is when that wire hits your account and you can do it with your phone now and you see all of those zeros in your bank account for the first time, what was that feeling like is the question that I asked. And the feeling was okay, that's good. Now I've got to get to work and helping with the transition of the business and keep going. It wasn't champagne popping and jubilation and things of that nature. And do you think that's because; and I heard this literally at three out of the five interviews that I've done so far. Do you think that is just because they're caught up in time focused on the work at hand versus setting a financial and feeling goal when someone exits their business? David: I think the question is why are people so quick to move on to the next thing and they're not celebrating and enjoying? Joe: Yeah I guess so. Thank you. You do a better job of reframing my questions than I do. Thank you. David: My pleasure. Firstly tell me do you have a working title for your book? Joe: I do. We talked about it. That's right. David: I think there was one line you said and like oh you got to hold on to that line. I can't remember what it was. Joe: We did. I've settled on; and this is the part where I'm either an idiot or brilliant. I sent out two title options; I already said it to everybody here, one was Incredible Exits which is a series we use here on the podcast for people who have sold their businesses. And the other was Exitpreneur. David: That's the one I remember, yeah. Joe: That's the one that stuck. Right. So I think probably 24 out of 25 people said Incredible Exits, go with it, it's just that. David: Do you remember the book title that I suggested? Joe: Yes Making Exit Sexy Again or something along that lines. David: No, that might be the subtitle but you said to me something like the real money is in the something. Joe: It's when you exit the business. Yeah the real money is when you exit. And then yes… David: It was nothing like where the real money is. I forgot what it was but I was very excited about it at the time. I really am. Joe: We're Making Financial Sexy Again that was the subtitle that you suggested. David: Your financials; because you said the real money is in the financials and people might get that and so you can make it sexy. Joe: Or eyes bleed. Well I ended up settling on The Exitpreneurs Playbook with the whole goal of setting a goal and reverse engineering your pathway to that. But we might add some feelings in that goal. David: Yeah. So speaking about reverse engineering I'll comment on why I think we're so quick to skip over the celebration but firstly I want to tweak or reframe something you said. I agree with you it would be good to ask them how do you want to feel when you sell the business. So that's great. I think that would be a good move. And what I'm talking about that I want to clarify it is much broader than that. I'm saying how do you want to feel in your life generally. Joe: Yeah. David: And so just for listeners to make sure that that's clear; how do you want to feel generally when you wake up, as you go about the day, when you go to bed. How do you want to feel and what kind of activities and things actually have you feel that and then reverse engineer the life of that. And you may find that money would be a component and that's where Joe can come in and help you maximize what you get for your business to support what you've already created in terms of your life goals. Now why I think we're so quick to skip and I'm one of them once a while this is I say why we are quick to skip the celebration and I got this from Dan Sullivan I think; a Strategic Coach. So we're looking forward, that's how we're oriented. We're looking forward and we constantly see the gap between where we are and where we want to be. And that's great that's the ego's job because it wants to put food on the table. But when we do that all we're going to see constantly are gaps. We're constantly going to see what there is to do and it can be overwhelming and we miss the celebration. If we want to feel good and acknowledge ourselves for how far we've come we have to turn around. Metaphorically look backwards and see how far we've come and that's the gain. So he talks about Gain and Gap and I'm always like all right that was good. Now what's next? And I have to slow down and even say to people we're celebrating or I'm going to pop some champagne or we're going to dinner or dinner's on me because I want to really acknowledge this win in my life that for example my health has been pretty rough for quite a while and I went out three times last week to go and be with people and get limbic connection and that's a win. So we can slow down and celebrate that and say wow look how great that is instead of looking forward to go there's still so much to do health wise to heal. So does that answer your question? Joe: It does. Thank you. Have you got any quick tips for those that are too afraid to hire a personal and business and life coach; have you got any quick tips in terms of somebody that's caught up in that grind every single day just trying to keep the wheels on the bus and not run out of inventory and deal with the coronavirus now and tariffs and so on and so forth? How do they kind of slow down and focus and appreciate what it is that they've got so that they can look forward with a clear vision? David: Yeah well I would recommend filling in the life assessment at PlayforReal.life. It'd take you five or 10 minutes and it's great information to have about your life. And then you can see oh maybe I want to work on the real goals, I'm going to sit down and do an hour session with myself and set some specific measurable targets that will have me feel great. So that's one thing. I like to talk about truth and daring in particular. Joe: I played that as a kid. David: Yeah well that's Truth or Dare. Joe: I know, I know. David: I like truth and dare. I don't know if those are quick tips but I think the more we speak out truth the better life gets the more attractive we get. We might rock the boat a few times and have some teething pains but I think… Joe: So speaking the truth to those around you, to yourself, is a daring thing to do? David: Most of us have grown up learning to hide things. We learn it covertly and subconsciously. We're like I'm just going to keep all this stuff in here and I'll show the world what's safe. And I get that and sometimes that's appropriate. But nine out of 10 times I think it separates us and a great leadership move and personal growth move is to share the things that are a little edgy. Hey when you said that I felt disappointed or I notice I want us to feel better working together and it feels strange and I don't know what it is to talk about it. Joe: It's hard to initiate that. David: Yeah. Joe: How do you initiate that? I remember I was a kid; I was in my 20s and I was volunteering at this theater in Portland, Maine and doing a massive renovation. It was going to end up being a concert venue and I volunteered to work my tail off so that I could become an employee of the company when it finally opened. And I got that opportunity and it really pissed off somebody else and we weren't done yet. We still had another three or four weeks and that person he could have been bumping into me with his shoulder because he was so upset he would have. It was that kind of you know mental stare and whatnot and finally I just said hey what have I done to upset and offend you? And it was hard for me to figure out what to say but it worked and we became friends afterwards oddly enough. And so I did; I was truthful and confronted him I dared to and it worked out very well but it's very hard to do. David: Yeah. Joe: How do you bridge that gap and say it? David: Well the biggest obstacle is most people aren't even aware of those troops that are swimming around in their subconscious. They're just like that guy's a dick. Or that I don't like her or I'm just not going to work with him again. He's unreliable, right? We don't even see that I could speak up and possibly change this. So that's the first thing is become aware of it. And I'm working on an app called it; that will help you do a true thought to try and work out oh what are the truths that I could say if I felt courageous? Secondly once you work it out say it's like that guy and you're feeling like things are strained and you want to bring up the conversation, the thing that gets in the way is lack of clarity. You're not aware yet what your hope or intention is like what's the good that could come out of it? You haven't generated that yet. So it's a bit murky. You're not totally clear what you're afraid of. It's probably something like he might get defensive or it might be really awkward and might make things worse. But that's not clear in the mind. So I have a free download on the on the website. It's called A Four Step Tough Conversations Blueprint and the worksheet will help you get clear, it'll even ask you is there a request you could make; something they could do that would improve the situation? so you get clarity then you're going to be much more likely to have the conversation because like oh now I know what's going on. Before I was just this jumble of I just didn't like what was happening. Then once you got the clarity you can follow the four steps which give you to them in a nutshell. You asked permission, don't just dump the conversation; can I talk to you about something for a few minutes? You share one hope and one fear. My hope is that we'll feel more connected after it because I'm feeling like things are a little strange now my hesitation is I might make it worse. But are you willing; can I share the issue? And then three you share the issue and make your request. My request would be just that you let me know what's going on or if there's any way I can improve the situation. Joe: You make it sound very easy. David: Well I've had a lot of practice doing them and talking about it and the worksheet really does make it a lot easier. I'm not saying you're not going to feel uncomfortable and I'm not saying there isn't risk. That's what makes it a little bit exciting but your chances of it going better are much clearer because you'll have the steps. You can even take a printout with you and say I wrote down some talking points because I wanted to do a good job at this. And then the step four; super important, is get curious and listen. How is this from your side? What are you experiencing? Do you have a better idea than what I do? And then you shut up and you listen and then you'll work it out together. Joe: I love it. Can you summarize for us as we're wrapping up and running out of time how is it David that this is helpful for people in business; the entrepreneurs that are here in the audience? David: Oh my God. It's helpful for everyone but specifically in business you want your staff to be motivated and empowered. I had my assistant quit out of nowhere. She did only three things that weren't working for her and she didn't have the training as most people don't know how to speak up. She didn't even consider a conversation was possible. So by you learning these techniques and practicing it you can model it for others so that you can have more communication among your team. You become more attractive as a leader. You're going to build more loyalty that people want to work with you. They will have a sense that they can trust you. You'll have more customers because your energy is going to shift. And they'll be like oh wow; like Ezra, right? I say one of the reasons that people go and pay and be part of Blue Ribbon Mastermind is because of who Ezra is and how he shows up. And he's learned how to have these conversations and speak truth. So if we had more time I could probably go into 10 more benefits but here's one final benefit. You will feel better and you will like yourself more if you're speaking truth. Joe: Yeah that's a pretty huge benefit, that's called being happy. So I'm going to go ahead and download it myself. I know you and I are going to chat personally next week and I'm very confident that I will actually become one of your clients and maybe we'll have you back on and talk about my personal experience and how we went through that process and what it's made; a difference for me, in my life here at Quiet Light Brokerage. All right. Any last minute thoughts and then of course again the URL at how people reach you if they want to touch base and possibly have a coaching session or just learn more from what you do on the website. David: Yeah. Thank you. So my last thoughts are you're doing great; wherever you are, whatever you're doing, life is incredibly complex. I'm going to do a rant sometime on this. Things are designed to break down. That's how it's going to work. And you made it this far. You're doing great. You don't need anything else. That's the number one thing. Secondly there's always room for more; for things to be better. That's the game I'm playing. How I do better and get the most out of this this life. And so if you want to practice speaking a truth more maybe having a few tough conversations I think that'll help. Setting goals and really we didn't talk about laser focused action but those are some things that can help. My invitation, if people want to find out more or get in touch with me PlayforReal.life is my website and there are three cool things you can do at that site all at the same link. One you can download this blueprint if you want to have a blueprint; a roadmap for your tough conversations. Secondly I have my own podcast if you want to listen to me as well as Joe. I've got Tough Conversations with David Wood, you can subscribe at the website. And the third thing if something resonated for you on this call and you'll like I want life to be better. I want business to be better and if you think you might be coachable like you're open to input see if you qualify for a discovery session. If you qualify I don't charge for that one because it's fun and too because it's how I find the right people to work with long term. We'll actually dive into your life and business and create a plan. And if you want to implement it on your own, keep me posted. Let me know how it goes and if we both believe that coaching can have a big impact we'll talk about setting up coaching and that's all at PlayforReal.life. Joe: All right. Well I'm looking forward to it myself David. Thanks for coming on the show I appreciate it. And I hope you can help a lot of people in the audience just be happier in life and happier and more successful in business. Thank you very much. David: My pleasure Joe. Thank you. Links and Resources: Play For Real David's Podcast  

Along with Laurie Reney, Associate Broker and Empowerment TEAM Director, The Team tackles the conversation regarding being a real estate agent.   Podcast & Live Radio Show on WATD 95.9 McNamara Broker Team Boston Connect Real Estate Sharon McNamara | Mary Baker | Melissa Wallace | Dustin Hughes Facebook Live every Tuesday at 6:15 pm @ facebook.com/McNamaraBrokerTeam Follow our team on Instagram @McNamaraBrokerTeam       PREFER TO READ THIS EPISODE?   Announcer: Now, Talk Real Estate sponsored by Boston Connect, Real Estate Services. Sharon McNamara: Hi, I'm Sharon McNamara, and you are listening to Talk Real Estate. Let me share a little bit about my background before we get started. I am the broker/owner of Boston Connect Real Estate, located on the South Shore, and I have been working as a full time realtor in sales and marketing consultant for home buyers and home sellers for the past 15 years. I have helped hundreds of clients throughout the home buying and home selling process. My unique approach to assisting my clients to the next chapter of their lives is driven by being a team player and by offering them continuous training, education, advising, and mentoring. I like to say that I offer my clients exceptional service that moves you. Every week I will be providing you with real estate topics ranging from home buyer and home seller advice, legal matters, insurance binders, flood insurance concerns, home inspection questions, environmental worries like radon, lead paint and mold, mortgages and loan programs, staging tips and ideas, real estate contracts, market trends, home values and more. Sharon McNamara: It's a talk radio show, and sometimes we are even interactive so you can follow along online. If you have any questions during the show, please call 781-837-4900. We'd love to talk real estate. If you missed any of our shows, or if you want to listen to one again, you can listen on my podcast at talkrealestateradio.com. If you would like a one-on-one consultation with me regarding your home sale, or your home purchase, I'd love the opportunity to meet with you. You can connect with me anytime at bostonconnect.com or 781-826-8000. Now sit back, relax, take good notes, and let's talk real estate. Sharon McNamara: Hello to all my South Shore neighbors. This is Sharon McNamara, and you are, of course, listening to Talk Real Estate with Sharon McNamara, Mary Baker, and Melissa Wallace, and we have a very special guest with us tonight, Laurie Reney. Laurie Reney: Hello. Sharon McNamara: Hello. Special. Laurie Reney: Thank you for having me. Sharon McNamara: Yeah, and welcome to our Talk Real Estate round table, that's what we're going by here because our table is round, if you get it. Laurie Reney: I love it. Melissa Wallace: It's the symbolism of it that really- Sharon McNamara: Yeah. Melissa Wallace: -gets you. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. And we have Ben in studio. Hello there, Benjamin. Benjamin: Good evening, ladies. How are we tonight? Sharon McNamara: We are doing fantastic. So if people want to call, what number should they call, if they have any questions for us? Benjamin: They should call 781-837-4900. Sharon McNamara: I was just checking to see if you were on your toes and following along with me. Benjamin: Not only am I on my toes, but they are the tippiest part of my toes. Sharon McNamara: Perfect. Perfect. So tonight our topic, we decided that we were going to talk about this, we mentioned it briefly last week. So You Want To Be A Real Estate Agent? What? What? That's what I just wrote on Facebook. You want to be a what what? Laurie Reney: Yeah. Sharon McNamara: I'm really hyper today. All that ginger candy I was eating, Mel. Yeah, I know. I ate a whole thing of it. I have a bellyache. Melissa Wallace: It's kind of addictive. I'm not going to lie. I didn't like it at all at first and now it's growing on me. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. Well I've decided after I gave up gum, January 1st I gave up gum. Melissa Wallace: I found all of your gum today. Sharon McNamara: In the drawer? Melissa Wallace: It's in the draw by the refrigerator if anybody wants any. Sharon McNamara: So we have plenty of gum in the office. But yes, I just gave up gum and I'm doing really good. But then I took on another habit that's called the ginger, and I decided once they're gone I'm not buying anymore. Melissa Wallace: Yeah, because it's a replacement thing? Sharon McNamara: Yeah. I eat 10 of them. I'd rather one piece of gum and then I just have that for a while. Look at Laurie, she's just like, yep. I'm following along. Laurie Reney: I am. Melissa Wallace: Laurie, this is your first time joining us live, isn't it? Laurie Reney: It is. Melissa Wallace: Oh my goodness. Laurie Reney: I love it down here. It's so cozy. Melissa Wallace: Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it's awesome. Sharon McNamara: It's really great too. Cause during the day I have like little meetings down here and like little conferences with people. So. Melissa Wallace: It's your sound studio. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:03:56] No, I feel like Laurie, we have to adjust her mic a little bit so maybe we have to lift you up. How you feeling about that, Ben? Yep- Benjamin: I agree. I think we can bump a little volume and we should be good to go. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. Well, bump her a little volume there and it be good. All right, so we're going to talk about So You Want To Be A Real Estate Agent? What? What? Melissa Wallace: I was going to say, you crazy? Sharon McNamara: No, what are you, crazy? No, we're going to talk about the pros, the cons, the ups, the downs, the in-betweens, everything in between and the, maybe, misconceptions about our profession that it isn't actually a profession, the misconceptions that you can just go into this and make a boatload of money even if you're doing it part-time. There's also the group of people who are like, Oh, I'm going to get into it and I'm going to flip houses and that's going to be my, that's how I roll. Melissa Wallace: My niche. Sharon McNamara: Yeah, my niche. So we're going to talk about all those things and more tonight. What can I help you with there, girl? Laurie Reney: Oh, I thought we might have an agenda. Sharon McNamara: Yeah, we do. They're on the printer. I'll be right back. Sorry about that. So I know that we are going to- Melissa Wallace: Why don't we start by talking about why we have Laurie on talking about You Want To Be A Real Estate Agent? What? What? Benjamin: You mean right after the traffic, ladies? Melissa Wallace: Why don't we listen to the traffic first and I wonder if the... Who's the new guy? I don't even know who's the new guy. Benjamin: David Cedrone tonight. Melissa Wallace: From the WATD Traffic Studio. How's it looking out there, David? David: All right. This time we're sponsored by unbound.org. Expressways southbound, typical delays. Heavy out of the O'Neill, the South Bay. You'll come off the brakes, hit them again from Granted Ave. down through the split. Route 3 not looking too bad, just a bit sluggish through Braintree, down to before Union Street. Lower end of 93 southbound, you're bumping to bumper out of the split out through 24, 24 southbound slow from the top down to the Horse Bridge. 95 northbound gets heavy at the top connecting to 128. No issues on Route 44. David: A girl in Kenya dreams of becoming a doctor. An elder Guatemala dreams of being part of a community. Reach out and change their world, it will change your own. Unbound.org. Traffic on the nines every morning. I'm David Cedrone and the WATD Traffic Center. Announcer: We now return to Talk Real Estate sponsored by Boston Connect Real Estate Services on 95.9 WATV. Sharon McNamara: Back. Hello to all of our neighbors out there. I don't want to just say South Shore because we are South of Boston, so I know that we're hitting all kinds of different studios now, too. Melissa Wallace: I used to get us all the way up in Medford. Sharon McNamara: Yeah- Melissa Wallace: that's definitely not South... Boston. Sharon McNamara: All right, well I lost my glasses, but that's normal. Melissa Wallace: They're on your face. Sharon McNamara: Oh my God. If we could take a picture of what just happened. Melissa Wallace: Well, we have it on video, so, okay. Well while Sharon collects herself, you can go to Facebook. We are live on Sharon Costa McNamara. So if you want to send her a friend request, I'll accept you and you can watch it. Although, we are shared on all of our Connect pages, Pembro Connect, Duxbury, Situate, Hanover, Marshfield, all this on pages. I'm like, "What is she looking for?" And you're, "I'm just looking at my glasses." They were dangling underneath her chin. So that's a thing. That happened, and I'm glad we have it on video. Recorded for the rest of history. Melissa Wallace: All right, so she's still collecting herself. So, Laurie, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners who might not have heard your introduction before. I know this is the first time live with us, but we have certainly talked about you many times because we love you so much and love what you do with our agents and for our company and all that fun stuff. Melissa Wallace: So why don't you introduce yourself? How long have you been in the business? What you do here at Boston Connect, where you service, and then we'll dive right in. Laurie Reney: All right, cool. I'm Laurie Reney. I've been in the business for about 22 years now. I've been a broker for, I believe, 10 years which is awesome. Here at Boston Connect I sell real estate, but I also mentor agents, as well as coach up the experienced agents, as well, to hold them accountable, to hopefully push them a little bit to do more in sales and to have a good life as well. Melissa Wallace: Balance. So you're teaching a lot of balance and how to do it all. Have it all, do it all. Laurie Reney: I would say... I call it a both-and. Melissa Wallace: Oh, both-and? Laurie Reney: Yes, a both-and. You can have a great business and a great-filled [crosstalk 00:08:35] life. Yes. Melissa Wallace: You can both have a great business. Laurie Reney: Yes. That's my goal. I service the... I raised my family and I grew up in Duxbury so I know that community very well, as well as, I would say, the coast. I live in Marshfield now in the Humarock area, which I love. Melissa Wallace: How long have you been in Marshfield? Laurie Reney: Six years. Melissa Wallace: Okay. Laurie Reney: Yep. And we love it. So I do serve, I would say, Quincy all the way down to the upper Cape. Yep. Melissa Wallace: Excellent. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. So I put in here that Laurie is also, you're an associate broker, right? Laurie Reney: Yes. Sharon McNamara: So you have your broker's license, and we'll talk a little bit about that tonight, too, is what do you have to do to earn your broker's license? So she's an associate broker here at Boston Connect Real Estate and she is also the director of our empowerment T.E.A.M. Sharon McNamara: At Boston Connect Real Estate, we have T.E.A.M. For us is training, education, advising and mentoring. So that's how we came up with T.E.A.M. And it really is about empowering our agents and our team, really, in more ways than one, just helping everybody. So tonight we are talking more than we normally do about Boston Connect Real Estate because that's where we are, so that's what we know. But we are just going to help people, because people ask us all the time, "So what, what does it entail to get your real estate license? What do you have to do? What..." And all these great things. So I figured we'd just go around the table a little bit around our real estate talk round table here. Mary, why don't you tell everybody about you? Mary Baker: Okay. Well, what do you guys not know about me? I have been with Boston Connect for nine years. I got licensed when I was 21 and immediately, yeah, I was 21, and immediately came and hung my license with Boston Connect Real Estate. Before that I was an assistant to an agent up in Arlington, Massachusetts, so that's how I knew I wanted to get into the career. I started at Boston Connect as always licensed, but as Sharon's assistant, trying to hands-on get my feel for the business and what it was going to be, because I was a little trepidatious of how much responsibility would be on me. Then I slowly integrated into being a showing agent then a buyer's agent. Now I am the full time buyer's agent for our team and an assistant listing agent. So yeah, it just grew. It naturally and organically grew and that's where I am today. Sharon McNamara: Yes, absolutely. I remember when you came on, it was when we were first in the office and it was about a year. I still sell real estate because that's truly where my love is, with real estate. I mean, I love the office, but I really want to be more hands on with our agents and helping our agents grow their businesses, and me still being hands on with my clients and helping them in their next chapters. We're very, very lucky and fortunate to have Melissa Wallace with us who takes care of everything in between all of those nooks and crannies. And, Melissa, why don't you tell everybody how long you've been doing this and how much you love it here. And AKA Melissa's name tag on her door says, Our Everything. So we have some pretty big titles for her, director of, really, everything. Melissa Wallace: Every title that I have. Well, my name is Melissa Wallace. I grew up all over the South Shore, primarily in Weymouth, but about almost six years ago now, I graduated and my first job out of college was an assistant to a real estate agent like Mary, but also working part time in a bar like many real estate agents do, and it just sort of progressed from there. I went to another company and sort of worked as a semi-office manager. I actually worked with Laurie there and that's where I met Laurie, and then we made the decision to come to Boston Connect about four years ago for me, at least almost four years ago. And I didn't have my real estate license beforehand, but after about a year here I decided to go ahead and do that and so I could help out the company more and help out the team more. Melissa Wallace: And my role at the company progressed. I was primarily just an assistant to Mary and Sharon and that was my role in the team. And then it sort of progressed and now I'm... Sharon McNamara: I was so surprised you said yes to us. Melissa Wallace: One day was just like, "Hey, do you want to be the office manager?" And I was like, "Sure." Mary Baker: I still remember what I wore during your interview and I remember looking at you and being like, "What do you want me to do?" And me and Sharon looked each other when we like, "We want you to tell us what to do." Sharon McNamara: It's sort of your job, you tell us what to do and where to go and- Mary Baker: You do it very well. Sharon McNamara: And it's been a natural progression for you here at the office. So not only do you help us in our team sell real estate, but you're also immune, or you're out there doing open houses and everything with that new construction and subdivisions that we have. But you're also hands on with the agents individually in the office, helping them with their emails and helping them with Canva and helping them with all the things that go along with being a real estate agent. Melissa Wallace: Yeah. I like to view it as my job is to help the agents here, help them be successful in their business because that's what makes me happy and I hope it makes them happy. And I want to see everybody succeed, not just start a team and not just you, Laurie, not just the core peeps here, but I want everybody to succeed. So if there's something that I can do to help you succeed in your business, then my door's always open. Sharon McNamara: So long as you get your paperwork in on time. [crosstalk 00:14:26]. Melissa Wallace: Yeah, as long as you get your paperwork in on time. Sharon McNamara: Someone's got to set the rules. Melissa Wallace: Yeah. Mary Baker: Absolutely. Sharon McNamara: So tonight I thought that- Melissa Wallace: Well, what about you, Sharon? Benjamin: We have Donna on the line, too. Mary Baker: Oh, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners? Sharon McNamara: So I will introduce myself. My name is Sharon McNamara. I am the broker/owner of Boston Connect Real Estate. It's funny because I don't often say that I am the broker/owner, it's only in certain situations that I do because I do feel that I work with everybody here at Boston Connect. I don't feel as if I'm above, not that that title means anything. But that was one of the harder aspects of us moving to this building was when our offices for all of our staff was on a level above where the agents sit and all I could think about was my first experiences, in the Peru and the higher up you were in the corner offices. And then when I went to Reebok, my background advertising and marketing when I was at Reebok, the higher up, it just was sort of like a hierarchy, and I never wanted that feeling for here. Sharon McNamara: And that's why at the top of the stairs, right outside my office, it says we rise by lifting others. And I want that to be a constant reminder to us as staff. We're staff to them, like really, to our agents. And our job is to lift them above us. So it is a constant reminder to me every single day when I'm going in and out of my office. That that's really what's important to me here at Boston Connect Real Estate. But I do feel like I very much treat myself like an agent who works at Boston Connect, so that's why I think sometimes it gets... It's weird when I have to make some decisions for the company because I'm like, "Well, now what do you think?" Melissa Wallace: "Now it's my job to make decisions. I want to go." Sharon McNamara: I'm like, Mel said, "No." [inaudible 00:16:08] Like that means no. I had to ask her one day, I remember it was Christmas time, and I took a picture of the mailbox actually that's over in the corner there for Christmas and I was like, "Can we please get this? It's so cute." She's like, "How much is it?" I'm like, "All right..." But I have been, I got in the business. I was very fortunate. Like I said, I was at Reebok advertising and marketing, which is probably why I'm a very heavy listing agent. I love that part of the whole process with buying, helping people sell their homes. I was home with the two girls, and when it was time for them, for me to really go back full time, that's what we decided that we would do when they got to a certain age, I'd said I didn't think I wanted to do that. So I decided to get into real estate and I got into real estate in 2001 is when I got my real estate license. So I've been doing this just about 19 years, I guess, 19-20 years, almost 20 years. Sharon McNamara: And it's been something that I really loved, and I think it's because the mindset that I put on this was not that I was helping people sell houses or buy houses. It was more that I was helping families. So that's what moves me. No pun intended. That is what moves me. And that's what gets me through every year and every day as a real estate agent. And I am not motivated by money. I am not motivated by... When we do the vision boards, it's really difficult for me to do a vision board because I'm not motivated by materialistic things, but I'm more motivated by words and inspiration and helping, and it just works out that the more people you help then the things that you would want to have from a vision board perspective like a garage or something like that. That's how that stuff comes to fruition for me. Sharon McNamara: I think that one of the things I love, I went out on my own, by the way. I've been at three companies, all wonderful, awesome companies. I have nothing bad to say about any one of them. I learned a little bit of everything from every single one I was in. I learned a lot from every single agent, from every single office that I was in. I can't say that I've had any bad experience in any of the offices, so I would never say, "Oh, I left this company because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." As I grew and when I wanted different things for my clients is when I moved. So I've been in a few different companies and, like I said, I took a little bit of everything from each one and that's how we decided to come up and grow Boston Connect Real Estate. Sharon McNamara: So 2010 is when we opened Boston Connect Real Estate. I said to Mark, "Why don't we sell our boat and open a real estate office?" At the time there were a couple of people that were trying to recruit me to be managers for their office. And I just thought, "Well, if people have confidence in me, then I will have confidence in them as well." So I in myself as well and that's when I opened Boston Connect Real Estate. I'm just trying to help these two out that just haven't had [inaudible 00:19:10] [crosstalk 00:19:10] . Melissa Wallace: No, we're just saying, I believe we have a caller. Sharon McNamara: Oh, do we have a collar, Ben? Benjamin: Yes, we do. We have Donna on the line. Sharon McNamara: Oh, hello, Donna. Donna: Hey ladies. Sharon McNamara: Hi. How are you? Mary Baker: You said that very nicely. Are you watching it on Facebook? Donna: Yes, I have been listening and as a seasoned agent, just one year shy of you, Sharon, I am extremely excited about the success that all of you have made. Sharon McNamara: Oh wow. You, too, Donna Bagni. Donna: Sharon, you have grown an incredible company that is a boutique atmosphere that allows any agent under them to be able to put the client or the customer's needs before Corporate America. And I worked very heavily in Corporate America before I left my job to have my children. Mary Baker, I don't know. I just thought Mary Baker coming in to interview and in came this girl in stilettos and her name is Mary and... Oh my God. Mary Baker: Donna, you're the reason that I'm at the company. You got me here. [crosstalk 00:20:37] Laurie Reney: Because Donna was Mary's sister's buyer's agent, right, when she bought her home on Center Street in Pembroke. Donna: And, looking at real estate from today's viewpoint, it's not yesterday's real estate. It becomes harder and more difficult. And you need a seasoned agent to be able to navigate through the situations that pop up. And you need to look at them as your final... Your final step is to close the deal for the benefit of both the buyer and the seller. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. One of the things Donna that you're saying is about having a seasoned agent and I think that that's really important, and we just gave away our awards this year and for last year. And one of the things I mentioned for our Was She a Shining Star for us was Maryann Trask. She's been in the business a very long time. And one of the things I love about our office is that we're always learning from each other. I've learned from Maryann and I love that. And I love the fact that we have a new agent, Susan Solace just joined us, and I don't know if she's listening or not, but welcome aboard. But I love that everybody is very hands-on with helping that other agent succeed. And that's where I think our seasoned agents come into play so much because they... We know the road traveled can be wobbly at best and it's like walking on cobblestone. Sharon McNamara: But I feel that all of our seasoned agents, whoever's sitting in the room at the time, "Hey, I need some help with..." That's one of the things I really, truly love about Boston Connect Real Estate and just the way that we are able to... We call it our Boston Connect Family and that ain't no lie. Melissa Wallace: Donna, I agree with you with what you said with a seasoned agent, but I also, I feel very confident in our, we call them newbies, and our agents who joined the company who haven't been with another agency and are going through a mentoring program, I'm very confident in them being able to succeed as well in a transaction because of the training that we have here. And because we do have the seasoned agent where you can just walk into the office and you hang out with Donna and Nadine or hang out with Trish and Nick. It's so true, when you're here you learn so much. And even if you're just sitting here, your business is going to succeed because you're constantly learning, you're constantly listening, you're asking questions. I even said it in our office meeting last week, "I'd rather you ask me 10,000 questions because that's what I'm here for. Then for you to assume something and have it be wrong. You are here to ask questions." Donna: I could not agree with you more because the platform that Sharon set up- [crosstalk 00:23:57] Sharon McNamara: And I did not set that up alone, so I cannot take credit for that. So, Donna, when I went out on my own I called Donna Bagni. [crosstalk 00:24:04] Donna: I know, but let me just tell you something. Sharon McNamara: No, let me finish. I called Donna Bagni and I said, "Hey Donna, can I let you in on something?" It's 2010 it was the market was changing, and I could see it and I could feel it and I didn't like the way that things were going, that you couldn't make choices for your clients. And I said, "I really do want to go out on my own." And I jumped out in a declined market and no place to go but up. But I called Donna and, at the time Joan Eulich, who was her partner and recently deceased, so God bless her. Yeah, we loved Joan. And I asked, "Will you meet with me?" Sharon McNamara: She met with me in my cabana and that's where we put together our commission scale and things like that for the agents, like what makes more sense? And that's some of the stuff maybe we'll get a chance to talk about later when people are considering what company to go to. So yes, I had to get that in there, Donna B. Donna: All right, well, thank you very much. So what I want to follow up with was the fact that, yes, the platform was created and I had to take care of my grandbabies. So the torch passed to Laurie, and she has done an absolute incredible job with these new people and I couldn't be prouder. And you know what? Boston Connect has my heart and soul. Mary Baker: No, that makes me feel great. Yeah, don't make us cry on Facebook Live. I mean I won't cry, but Laurie certainly will. [crosstalk 00:25:42] Sharon McNamara: Mary doesn't cry. Well, Donna, honestly I really do think that, I feel like we're gloating a little bit here about Boston Connect Real Estate, but I feel that we are getting out the energy of what Boston Connect Real Estate is and how we feel about our agents who are here with each other. Laurie Reney: We're consumed with support and love for each other which is something that you don't really find in every company. Sharon McNamara: And when one person is having a bad day, it's like the other person will lift them up. If Donna is over in the corner choking, I'll go grab her water. Even though when I was choking, no one got me water. Sharon McNamara: Well, Donna B, thank you so much again. That's Donna Bagni who is a full-time real estate agent at Boston Connect Real Estate. She has been with us since 2010. Donna is a good friend, I have known her since when I first started in this industry. I did start at Jack Conway Company and Jack was wonderful. It was to have Christmas parties and him come in and just sort of hang out. That family feeling that I had back then is one of the very most important parts that I brought to Boston Connect Real Estate with me. Their office is no longer there, but we still have a little bit of just Jack and us, I guess. I say I'm an ex-Con. And again like I said, all great companies. Sharon McNamara: I have worked for nothing but great companies, and we're very fortunate on the South Shore, South Coast, everywhere. We are surrounded by great companies and great agents. With that said, we do know that this time of year, all of our agents are being called to be recruited because that's what people do. I call it fishing season, right? It's hunting season. They're looking for the agents who maybe didn't have a great year or they're just trying to persuade them to come over with, "We have the greatest technology, we have the greatest this, we have the greatest that." I always tell people, "You need to do what you feel in your heart is best for you and your family because that's what's going to make you be the best agent that you can possibly be. So staying in a company that you're not thrilled with, or you don't feel like they getting the support from, whether that's us or another company, then you shouldn't. You need to do what's best for you and your family." So we're going to have a little bit of an open house. I don't know that we've picked a date. Did we decide? Melissa Wallace: No, we haven't. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. By the end of the show, because we definitely want to give that data out, we're going to have a little bit of an open house here. So if you are currently a real estate agent and you're thinking about making a change, I don't make calls to agents, I don't want to take an agent from any broker. We attract, we don't recruit. And I think that that's why we've built a company with 34 agents that are very much like-minded and really want that warm fuzzy feeling and just some really damn good numbers, because we know how to do that, too. I think we're number 13 in Plymouth County for 2019 of all Massachusetts companies. So volume sold, we're doing really good, but I feel like we're stealth-like. We just sort of like fly under the radar. We're just doing our own thing and not getting in anybody else's way. Fair to say. Yes. So we're going to have that open house, and what we'll do is have a calendar where people could have private one-on-one meetings. So just come and talk to us. Say, "Hey, I want to be a real estate agent. What's entailed in that?" Melissa Wallace: Right. Sharon McNamara: So I think we were thinking maybe Saturday, February 8th or the following Saturday after that. Probably the Saturday after that. Melissa Wallace: Hold on one second, one moment please. Sharon McNamara: So Laurie's role here at Boston Connect Real Estate is when new agents come in and they're newbie agents, her role is to get them going as being a mentor. Do you want to talk a little bit about that mentoring process? Laurie Reney: Sure. A new agent, especially if they're brand spanking new, that's typically what I do. I take them under my wing, we meet, I have them do a database. That's the most important thing first, create a database with everybody that they know, and then send out a letter introducing themselves. And then from there, hopefully, they get a lead, whether it be a listing or a buyer, and then we walk through the whole process side-by-side throughout the entire deal. I take calls all day, all night from my mentees because it's a big deal. And I love everybody that I'm mentoring because they truly do care, and nobody just assumes that they know the right thing to do. Laurie Reney: And what I really appreciate about this office is that it's not just me. If I'm not available, they can call Sharon, they can call Mary, they can call Melissa, they can call Donna, they can call anybody in the office and people just jump to help. Because a lot of people here were mentored. Trish and her husband, and they are killing it because they have such a great foundation. Sharon McNamara: And they really did listen to the advice that we gave, which is really great, and how to grow their business right from the beginning when we were doing all the Buffini programs. So we are certified instructors for the Buffini program and we can get into that another day. Sharon McNamara: But one of the things that you just rang in my head about everybody being there is I remember it was a Saturday, I think that you were up in New Hampshire and Michelle Fay, who's in a mentoring program right now, love her to pieces. She actually gave me a book today on essential oils. So thank you, Michelle. She's such a giver, I love her. She's always thinking about me and that's probably why she's now my favorite, she gives me presents. But she was in here one day and she's like, "I don't know what to do. One of my clients is going to be writing up an offer, and I don't want to bother Laurie while she's away and I don't want to try to do it on my own," even though she probably could have. But she was following protocol, we'll walk you through the step of everything. And I was like, "I know how to write an offer. Remember me?" So she's like, "No, I wouldn't want to bother you." And I was like, "That is not a bother. I actually enjoy it." Sharon McNamara: I know her clients anyways because Michelle was me and Mary's client, we helped her find a house. So that was a lot of fun to be able to sit and do that type of stuff. Laurie Reney: Sure. And you're, and you, you love doing that. You just love the training aspect of it as do I. I say to myself, "Do I really want to sell another house, or would I rather just mentor and help people 24/7 because it is very gratifying. When they have their first closing, they get their first check and they just have this biggest smile on their face. It makes what I do worth it. Sharon McNamara: So why don't we talk about some of the... What else are we going to talk about? [crosstalk 00:32:32] Melissa Wallace: Well, we asked our agents. Sharon McNamara: Oh yeah. Melissa Wallace: We have a private group on Facebook, and we just posted some questions and let them know what we were going to be talking about tonight. Some of the questions were: Why did you get into real estate? Is it everything that you expected? Is it not what you expected? Do you find it easier or harder? And what surprised you most about the business both good and bad? We had a couple of people comment on it recently, Trish Flynn, we just talked about her in her husband. Sharon McNamara: Her husband's name is Nick. Nick Flynn, otherwise known as the Flynn Team. Melissa Wallace: Yeah. And Trish said, "It's so hard, you have to constantly work at it to be successful." And we were just talking about this upstairs. What is it that I said? "You essentially get what you put into it." So your salary... Not salary because your commission. At the end of the year, what you make is going to reflect the amount of effort and time and work that you put into your year, into your business. So if you're taking six months off to relax and hanging out at the beach and go on this vacation, this vacation, at the end of the year that bank account is probably going to reflect that. That's right. Sharon McNamara: Yeah. Well, that's my favorite thing, too, is unfortunately in this business, what ends up happening is, at the end of the year, agents tend to blame their brokerage for their lack of profitability rather than looking at themselves. One of the things and exercises I always had to do with myself when I was an agent was I have to be here every day. You know what I mean? So, but when I was an agent, nobody is punching you in, punching you out. You don't have to be anywhere. You're an independent contractor. I can't even say that the meeting is mandatory. Right? Sharon McNamara: But if you don't do these things on your own, you're not going to be successful. So if I was my own boss, would I fire myself? Are you given this 40 hours a week minimum? Because that's what a full time job is. So if you want a full time salary making over six figures a year, then you should be working that many hours, figure it out and that- Laurie, you have all the data. Yeah, the statute did that for me the other day and I want to make that something in the office where how many calls and stuff. Laurie Reney: If you want to net a certain dollar amount, say $50,000 a year net, that's before you pay taxes and everything. No, no, that's gross. You would have to make three phone calls a day. You would have to write two notes a day. You'd have to do pop bys and things like that. I'm Buffini coached, so I'm talking Buffini-isms here. The bottom line is, is if you don't do what you need to do, you're not going to make, you're not going to sell. You really have to treat it, as you say, as a full time job. I know myself, if I get up and take a shower and put clothes on, I'm more apt to make my calls, do my notes, do my pop buys. It's key. Sharon McNamara: I could never work from home. My problem with working at home is I have OCD and a little bit of ADD mixed in there, so that's a good mixture when you're working at home. "Oh, I think they'll do a load of laundry. Oh, I think I'll clean out the attic. Oh, I think I'll work on the basement now. Oh, I think I'll make a call. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow." It's just too easy to get into that. I've always worked in the office. I'm usually the first one in the office and the last one out of the office. Not now, because now I have Melissa to do that, and I just feel that this time of year, when agents are reflecting back on what they did, I think that having the support to say, "Hey, this is how you grow. We want to help you grow. We want to help you help your clients." Sharon McNamara: But my favorite one is when somebody came to me one year and was like, "Oh, I just don't think that I'm doing well because Boston Connect Real Estate isn't a national brand." You have the best tan of anybody in this office right now, and I own a boat and you're tan is better than mine. So while you were sitting on the beach, everybody else was working. Laurie Reney: But I do think like so to Melissa's questions on the interoffice page, the biggest misconception that a lot of people have is that this business is going to allow you the freedom and flexibility to do kind of what you want when you want. So right now, because I've always been employed by you, Sharon, my system for when I work is I'm working in the office, but had I not been under your wing when all of that was happening or when I was being trained, I wouldn't know that those are the systems that you have to put in place. So we're always encouraging our agents to be coming into the office and really working on their business and making that time. Laurie Reney: I just think a lot of people get the misconception that they can balance everything that work is simultaneous with off time. And you're doing both at the same time. You have your designated work hours and that's how you just have to develop systems and be super, super hyper organized about prospecting and meeting people and talking to people. And when Laurie's talking about making calls, it's not just "Hey" to your mom saying, "Did you pick up any milk today? Do you need anything?" It's you're trying to make new connections with people and get your name out there. Sharon McNamara: When I first got into this business I got into it because I thought it would be flexible. Laurie Reney: That's a common thing, right? Sharon McNamara: I did not realize it was flexible for everybody else's schedule. Right? Because I was home with the kids. They would get on the school bus, and they would do their thing. But when do people want to see houses? After five and on weekends. So it's really flexible for everybody else's schedule. Sharon McNamara: And we're not trying to be Debbie Downers here. It can be extremely fruitful. It can be extremely fruitful if you want to do the work. But people who come to us, it comes time after time after time, "Oh, I'm just going to do this part-time in between everything I'm doing." Mary Baker: It's not going to happen. Laurie Reney: I don't believe the land of the part-time agent is going to be much longer. Sharon McNamara: I don't think they can keep up anymore. Laurie Reney: I don't mean that for any part-time agent that's out there and you're killing it. Great. You have way more skills than I do, but at the end of the day I just feel as if this business is going to become an incredibly professionalized skill. Sharon McNamara: I think that there's a difference between part-time and part-time because part-time I only do real estate part-time. I don't need the other additional income, or is it, "I have a full time job Monday through Friday, nine to five and then I work this part-time." That's when I think it gets difficult because people want to see houses Monday through Friday after work, Saturdays and Sundays all day long, holidays. Monday holidays where we were open yesterday on Monday because people want to see houses. I generally sell a house on Memorial Day Monday, that Monday every single year because people are off. But then what happens? Then comes the transaction and when did the appraisers work? When did the attorneys work? When does everybody, the loan officers? They're all working Monday through Friday, nine to five which means hello- [crosstalk 00:39:47] Laurie Reney: You've got to be available. Sharon McNamara: Yeah, that's us. Everything in between. Sharon McNamara: What are some of the other agents saying? Any questions too by the way. (781) 837-4900. A topic tonight is So You Want To Be A Real Estate Agent? If you have any questions about being a real estate agent, or if you have any questions in general about real estate, feel free to call us. (781) 837-4900. Melissa Wallace: Jessica Page: Much harder than I expected. I expected to work part time and make my own hours. Kristen Howlette said that she got into the business to help pay for college. Sharon McNamara: And I think having a goal- Laurie Reney: Motivation definitely helps. And consistency. To piggy back on what Mary said. I know that we went to the National Association for Realtors Conference out in San Francisco this year and it was really, I think the best conference that I've ever been to. And one of the things there was three common messages with almost every single class that we attended. And one of the biggest things is to be consistent and to also build upon your skills. And that's what they're saying. The market is changing. It's still a very strong market, but it is changing for the realtors that are active in the market. Yeah. Sharon McNamara: Laurie, you did some statistics. So what is the National Association of Realtors? What is the average that the average real estate agent makes? Laurie Reney: $31,900 gross, that is before your taxes and expenses? Melissa Wallace: Five minutes. Sharon McNamara: Yep, yep. I mean that's hard to believe. Laurie Reney: It's poverty. I mean, that's just... Mary Baker: Crazy. Melissa Wallace: I mean, I'm speechless over here. Laurie Reney: And that's a real stat. Laurie Reney: I remember when one of my first office meetings with you, this was even pre me coming onto the team in any capacity, was it was 23,000. The average age of a real estate agent was something like 55, am I right? So, and then the average gross commission, or gross net, or over a yearly whatever was 23,000 and I'm like, "I don't know if I want to do this any more.", It's like things remembered. Take me back. Laurie Reney: Well, but I could very well have gone the exact opposite route and given up super, super easily early on in this business had it not been for encouraging people in my career and Sharon putting me in the position to succeed essentially and giving me the tools that I needed to do that. I just think especially for a newer agent, it's very, very hard to develop those skills when you're younger and don't have all of the connections, family ties, or kids in the school system. But if you pound the pavement every day, it will happen. Sharon McNamara: So the process, your real estate license, just so we can get some of this out. We always refer everybody to Charlie Burke. He's a very good friend. Unfortunately, I only have Charlie Berg's cell phone number. I'm not going to give that out. But he is the Massachusetts Academy of Real Estate located in Braintree. Again, Charlie Burke, Massachusetts Academy of real estate and he is in Braintree. He does the classes, you need 40 hours. Sharon McNamara: I think that it should be a little stricter. It takes more time to be a yoga instructor than it does to be a real estate agent. And That I found extremely interesting because you're working in helping people with hundreds of thousands of dollars, their biggest investment. So it's a 40 hour class. So I know Charlie has different ways that you can take that class, like all one week, weekends, nights, whatever it is. I know he's teaching tonight. I was hoping that it would be able to call in at some point. After you do the 40 hours, then you go ahead and you take a test with the state of Massachusetts, so you can get licensed. So then you're a real estate agent, and they're a bunch of fees that go along with that process. Sharon McNamara: And then, if you join an office, we are a realtor office, so we belong and we are members of the National Association of Realtors. So you also have to pay those fees, and you have a one day class with code of ethics. And I think that it's good because with the code of ethics, you're sort of at a higher standard of what is acceptable and what isn't. And you have to go through that process. And then there are fees for the... That's the national, then there's the state, so Massachusetts Association of Realtors, and then there's a local board. So I happen to be part of all the local boards because I'm the broker. But I know Mary and Melissa... Laurie, are you part of Greater Boston. Laurie Reney: No. Sharon McNamara: So you're a part of South Shore, and Mary and Melissa are a part of the Greater Boston board. So altogether I think our fees are what, like $600 a year? Mary Baker: Yeah, just about. Sharon McNamara: So it's $600 a year. We always start everybody out with, "Start with the checkbook that goes to a business", but you probably need a couple of thousand dollars in it at least to get started in this business. You're an independent contractor. If you treat this like a business, then you will be very successful. You should have QuickBooks and all these other things and treat it like a business. Right. Laurie Reney: Anybody else have any thoughts? No, we're just about done. Sharon McNamara: How did that happen? Mary Baker: Do you still want to be a real estate agent? Sharon McNamara: Yeah, very well said, Mary Baker. Well again, we're going to try to have that open house on Saturday, February 8th. We may be changing the date. Actually, I just thought of something, but we'll let you know. So maybe if you want to set up some time with us to talk to any one of us, or all of us, you can get us at the office. (781) 826-8000, (781) 826-8000, or you can go to bostonconnect.com. If you want to listen to any of our past shows, you can go to Talk Real Estate Radio, or you can go to Talk Real Estate Round Table and you will find all of our past shows. Ben, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Benjamin: Always a pleasure, ladies. Have a great week. Sharon McNamara: All right, we'll see you next week, everybody. Bye. Bye.        

Our final episode of 2019! December has been an odd month. With Christmas behind us and 2020 just around the corner we are looking forward to many new and exciting adventures in the new year. Let’s take this time to refocus and refresh ourselves. From Shawn and David All the Best!! Run Wild!!! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/trailtalesARP/message

Lesson 24.6 认识全世界的朋友David：Hi, Could you tell me how to get to the Summer Palace?Sherry：Sorry, I'm not from here.David：Thanks anyway.Sherry：Not at all. I'm heading to the Summer Palace too. Do you want to go together?David：Sure, I like making friends. My name is David. Nice to meet you.Sherry：I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you, too.David：All right, Sherry. Let's go.David：你好，请问颐和园怎么走？Sherry：不好意思，我也是刚到这儿的。David：谢谢。Sherry：不客气，我也要去颐和园。一起走吧？David：好，我喜欢交朋友。我叫大卫，很高兴认识你。Sherry：我叫杰瑞，我也很高兴认识你。David：嘿，Sherry，走吧。跟Lily一起说英语去旅行的训练营即将开营啰！有144节线上课程，针对24个不同的旅游场景循环加深强度，课后你还可以缴交自己的录音还有老师亲自帮助你纠正不好的发音，让你立即开口说英语，在家学习也好像在世界各地游走！现在报名到公众微信帐号guilvte或是Line ID：flywithlily，回覆训练营，跟我们一起学英语环游世界去！

Lesson 24.6 认识全世界的朋友David：Hi, Could you tell me how to get to the Summer Palace?Sherry：Sorry, I'm not from here.David：Thanks anyway.Sherry：Not at all. I'm heading to the Summer Palace too. Do you want to go together?David：Sure, I like making friends. My name is David. Nice to meet you.Sherry：I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you, too.David：All right, Sherry. Let's go.David：你好，请问颐和园怎么走？Sherry：不好意思，我也是刚到这儿的。David：谢谢。Sherry：不客气，我也要去颐和园。一起走吧？David：好，我喜欢交朋友。我叫大卫，很高兴认识你。Sherry：我叫杰瑞，我也很高兴认识你。David：嘿，Sherry，走吧。跟Lily一起说英语去旅行的训练营即将开营啰！有144节线上课程，针对24个不同的旅游场景循环加深强度，课后你还可以缴交自己的录音还有老师亲自帮助你纠正不好的发音，让你立即开口说英语，在家学习也好像在世界各地游走！现在报名到公众微信帐号guilvte或是Line ID：flywithlily，回覆训练营，跟我们一起学英语环游世界去！

Lesson 24.6 认识全世界的朋友David：Hi, Could you tell me how to get to the Summer Palace?Sherry：Sorry, I'm not from here.David：Thanks anyway.Sherry：Not at all. I'm heading to the Summer Palace too. Do you want to go together?David：Sure, I like making friends. My name is David. Nice to meet you.Sherry：I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you, too.David：All right, Sherry. Let's go.David：你好，请问颐和园怎么走？Sherry：不好意思，我也是刚到这儿的。David：谢谢。Sherry：不客气，我也要去颐和园。一起走吧？David：好，我喜欢交朋友。我叫大卫，很高兴认识你。Sherry：我叫杰瑞，我也很高兴认识你。David：嘿，Sherry，走吧。跟Lily一起说英语去旅行的训练营即将开营啰！有144节线上课程，针对24个不同的旅游场景循环加深强度，课后你还可以缴交自己的录音还有老师亲自帮助你纠正不好的发音，让你立即开口说英语，在家学习也好像在世界各地游走！现在报名到公众微信帐号guilvte或是Line ID：flywithlily，回覆训练营，跟我们一起学英语环游世界去！

John describes the story of Jesus in the wilderness as a story of a test of identity that asks who is Jesus as “son of God”? What kind of son of God will he be? Like the Roman Emperor, Adam, David? All carry the title “son of God”.We too are beloved children of God. How do we understand that and how is that identify tested?John then offers some thoughts on how to approach lent in light of all this from a Franciscan perspective based on the Ash Wednesday homily.The notes for this sermon can be found here

David gets into Blair's head to get his 10 basic negotiating tips that he has worked with clients on over the years.   LINKS “10 Negotiating Tips” (with 5 bonus tips) “Selling in One Lesson,” 2Bobs episode 49 Buying Less for Less: How to avoid the Marketing Procurement dilemma, by Gerry Preece Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value, by Reed K. Holden   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, today we are going to talk about 10 really interesting ways you can get your spouse to go ... Wait, I haven't, quit laughing. I haven't - BLAIR ENNS: I'm out. DAVID: How to get your spouse to go to the place for dinner that you want to go to. BLAIR: Okay. DAVID: How's that? BLAIR: Sure. What kind of trouble could we possibly get into? DAVID: Yeah, that would be a really stupid pod ... No. What we're talking about are some negotiating tips that you've thought about over many years. You've polled, you've tested, you've researched. You've worked with clients on. You've consolidated them into this one place. We may get to some bonus tips. I don't know if we'll have the time, but we definitely want to talk about the 10 basic tips around negotiating. Can you get me inside your head for a minute before I start pulling these out from you one by one? BLAIR: Well it's pretty crowded in there. What is it that you wanted access to? I gave you my password to everything the other day. What else do you want? DAVID: Is this going to be this difficult today? Are we going to do that? Or are we going to be cooperative? BLAIR: I'm feeling a little punchy. DAVID: Yeah, I see. I see you are. BLAIR: I'm in another hotel room. This is day 31 of a 36 day road trip. I tweeted today, "Okay. I've answered the question, how much travel is too much?". DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: Getting into my head, I think these tips, I considered it kind of a beginner's guide to negotiating. I don't consider myself to be an expert on negotiating. But you can't advise people on the subject of selling and pricing without knowing something about negotiating, so a while ago I took a bunch of the best practices that I've encountered on the subject of negotiating, and kind of put it into one place. That's I think what we're going to talk about today. I'll call it a beginner's guide to negotiating, and we're referencing to these 10 tips that I've published previously. DAVID: Hopefully it will be more than a beginner's guide. But we'll just set people's expectations low. BLAIR: Yeah, right. DAVID: Then we'll exceed them. BLAIR: That's exactly what I was doing. DAVID: There are 10 in here. But there are two of them that we've actually had the chance to talk about in previous episodes. I will reference all 10 of them. But then with two of them I'm going to point people to a previous episode if they want to really bone up on all that stuff. DAVID: The first one is, avoid over-investing. This is one that we have talked about. It was in a recent episode. It was called Selling In One Lesson. The idea is that the more somebody wants it, the more at a disadvantage they are, right? Just summarize that for us and then we'll move on to the number two one. Over-investing is the first one. BLAIR: Yeah, so you can, a good metaphor for negotiating would be a poker game where there's times when you're bluffing, when you're playing certain hands. But in particular the idea of bluffing. Or calling somebody else's bluff. You can apply some of the tips that we'll talk about here. If it's very clear to the client that you want this so bad, and it's clear to the client not just from what you say, but from all of the free work that you have done, all of the costs that you've incurred. If you are clearly over-invested in the sale then you do not have much of a bargaining position. Because you are demonstrating through your behavior that you want it more than the client does. Therefor the client is the one with the power in the relationship. BLAIR: It's a big broad rule. Avoid over-investing in the sale. As you pointed out, we covered this in detail in the podcast, Selling In One Lesson. DAVID: Okay. Even if you do desperately need it, don't act like it. BLAIR: Right. DAVID: Second, and here we want to start diving in in more detail. The second principle for negotiating is, ask the question, "Have we already won?". As I read that, I wasn't sure exactly what you meant. That led me to dive a little bit deeper into this, and I found it really interesting. "Have we already won?". Are you really asking that specific question? Or is it more just framing the negotiating in your head? BLAIR: This is a negotiating point specific to the topic of negotiating with procurement. This comes up a lot, I wrote about this in my book, Pricing Creativity: A Guide To Profit Beyond the Billable Hour. In the last month in the various places I've been, and the talks that I've done, and the training I've done, procurement has come up a lot. Where I'll talk about a principle and somebody says, "Yeah, but you don't understand. That doesn't work with procurement". BLAIR: The role of procurement, and I learned the most from this listening to a talk by a guy named Tom Kinnaird. Tom was head of procurement at WPP. Gerry Preece is another great resource on negotiating with procurement people. Gerry is an ex P&G global design procurement person who has a consulting practice, and he's written a great book on dealing with procurement. It's called Buying Less For Less. I think the subtitle is The Marketing Procurement Problem. BLAIR: When I was listening to Tom Kinnaird, who was former head of procurement at WPP and is now a consultant, he was giving away at a conference in London I was also speaking at, he was giving away some insider procurement tips. One of the tips he gave away was, you need to know that procurement often lies. When procurement shows up at the end of a negotiation, when you feel like you are the ordained firm, you've either won the business or you're in the pole position, and then procurement shows up to negotiate the final deal. In that situation, almost greater than nine out of 10 times, you have won. You've already won, and the concessions that procurement is demanding that you make, it's not mandatory that you make them. BLAIR: Procurement's going to communicate to you that, in order for you to win the business, that it's still a competitive situation, they're still considering other firms. In order for you to win the business you have to cut price. The general rule of thumb is, if procurement shows up late and starts using that language on you, they're lying. I talk about this in my next article. I'm actually quite heated about it in the next article. So far I'm only at the unedited version of it. DAVID: Still very angry. BLAIR: Yeah. It will be published by the time this podcast goes to air. Hopefully it's a little bit more measured. But in it I make the point that procurement is the only profession in the world that I know of where they're taught that it's okay to lie. It's okay to outright lie in the course of everyday business. When they show up late and say, "You need to sharpen your pencil. We've got three bids. You're the highest bidder. You need to get your price to X or you're not getting the business", they're almost always lying. BLAIR: Now when procurement shows up at the beginning and they navigate the entire purchase process, you have another problem. They're not lying. It's an even bigger problem. They're seeing what it is that they're buying as a commodity, so you have to ask yourself, should you be even participating in a process where the client clearly does not value what you do, and it's seen as an expense to be minimized rather than an investment to be made? But the lesson is, so the tip is, ask the question, "Have you already won?". BLAIR: When you're in a situation where it feels like you've won, and then procurement comes in and says, "You haven't won yet. You've got to get past us. You have to give us all of these concessions", don't believe them. In fact I would go further and say, "We have this idea that we've got to throw procurement a bone in a situation like this. We'll give them this one win and then they'll go away". That's not how they work. They're trained to keep asking until you say no, so you want to start with no. BLAIR: We could go deeper into that. We could do a whole podcast on negotiating with procurement. But that's the tip. You ask yourself before you start giving concessions away, ask yourself, "Wait a minute. Have I already won here? Is it really necessary for me to make these concessions?". Because in a lot of situations you have already won, and it is not in your interest to make any concessions whatsoever. DAVID: The main clue is found in when procurement comes. At the beginning or the end. BLAIR: Yes. DAVID: That's the second one, okay. The third tip here takes this further, and it's around the idea that procurement lies regularly. Not just about this one thing that we're talking about that relates to how to decipher the timing and whether you've actually won. BLAIR: Yeah, so it is a recurring theme here. You might think, I always say, "Attack ideas. Don't attack people and organizations". But I always make an exception for procurement. Reid Holden, who's written a couple of great books on pricing and also on negotiating, and he infiltrated the world of procurement. He has this great line, and I repeat it often. "80 percent of procurement people give the other 20 percent a bad name". DAVID: As opposed to 20-80, yeah. You're flipping that around, right? BLAIR: Yeah. In the story I'm writing, I'm writing two different examples of two different agencies pitching two different pieces of business and then having to deal with procurement. One hold their ground and the other one doesn't hold their ground. The example where the agency holds their ground, they're told in the beginning, "The account is a $500,000 a year retainer", and so they do a little pilot project for free. They prove validation. Then they're handed off to procurement and procurement says, "The fees are not $500,000. They're $300,000. Take it or leave it". The firm walked away, and in the end the client came back and said, "Oh, no no. We want you to work with us. You can have the original $500,000". BLAIR: As I was talking to the agency president who was telling me this story, I said to him, "If I were you in that situation. If I'd heard that from the procurement person, I would want to get the client and the procurement person in the room together. I would want to look them both in the eyes and say, 'I want to know which one of you lied to me. You said it was $500,000 in fees. You said it's not $500,000, it's $300,000. One of you lied. Which one was it?'". BLAIR: We know who the liar is. The liar is always procurement, right? Because they're taught that it's okay to lie. But I just imagine, and I'm ranting in this article, and you can feel me getting emotional now. Because I can't believe that we continue to give this egregious behavior a free pass. We need to call out irresponsible practices and outright lies when we hear them from our clients and our clients' procurement department. I hope I've addressed the issue of three procurement lies. I feel like we should probably get off the subject of procurement. DAVID: Well I turned the recorder off a long time ago, and what people are going to hear instead of you ranting is me providing a very reasonable response to all of these things. BLAIR: Instead of my therapy while I lie on your couch. I'm going to a marketing procurement conference in London. I think it's in June. I'm really looking forward to being in the room with these people, and having an open conversation about what I think of their business practices. DAVID: The third point is, beware of procurement lies. Let me just read some of these and then we'll go to the next point. "It's down to you and one other". That's one lie. Another one is, "Yours is the highest bid". Another is, "You have to cut your price to remain in contention", or all these other things that you might hear. BLAIR: Or, "Take it or leave it. There's no negotiating. There's no middle ground. Here's my offer. Take it or leave it". That's another one. DAVID: Right, yeah. Then a concession, you say, is an invitation to ask for more. All right. Let's get you back down to happy land, and we'll move off of procurement. BLAIR: Well we're still going to talk about procurement a little bit here in the next one. Go ahead. DAVID: The fourth point is, outwait the waiter. Outwait the waiter is the fourth point. Talk about that. BLAIR: Yeah. I forget where I heard this idea from first, because I really would like to attribute to the various sources that I've pulled all of these things from. It might be Chris Voss who wrote, "Never split the difference. Negotiate like your life depends on it". Or it might be Jim Camp. Or it might be Tom Kinnaird. I don't remember who. But the idea is, when you're in the final negotiations with people, and again it's almost always procurement. Because it's procurement who's trained in negotiating. That's another point. We really need to be trained in negotiating to counteract those on the client side who are trained in negotiating. BLAIR: One of the tactics that they do is, after you've won, or you think you've won, they slow everything down. Procurement will say, "I'll get back to you in this time period", and then they'll take longer. You'll reach out to them and leave a message, and they'll just kind of stretch things out to make you sweat and to make you more nervous. That's the way they can extract more concessions from you. BLAIR: Again, if you think back to the formula that we talked about in Selling In One Lesson, P equals DB over D. Your power in the sale is a function of your desirability, is your desirability greater than your own desire? Because if it's not, if you're communicating that your desire for the client and the engagement is higher than the client's desire, then you have the least power in the relationship. The tactic when procurement is trying to slow things down to make you sweat is, you slow things down even more. If they take 24 hours to get back to you, you take 48 hours. You communicate to them that, "Yeah, that's fine. We're in no rush. I mean, if this is going to happen it's going to happen. If it isn't, that's fine too". BLAIR: It's almost a game of, and there are times when negotiating really is a game and it really should be fun. It's never fun if you're over-invested in the sale, right? DAVID: Yeah, right. BLAIR: But it should be fun, and you should play this game. Instead of being anxious you just play it out and outwait them. If they delay, you delay longer. If they say they can't speak for 48 hours, you say you can't speak for 96 hours, etc. DAVID: Just multiply by two. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: They're saying, "We need to slow this down in some way", and they're expecting you to indicate some investment in the sale. Like minor panic or whatever. Instead you're flipping this around and saying, "Ah, no problem at all. Do you need more time?". BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: "That's fine. We're not in any hurry, okay". BLAIR: You got it. DAVID: Got it, so that's the fourth point. The fifth point here is to beware the white knight. I don't think we need to talk too much about this one, because in a slightly different context we did talk about this in an episode called How To Drive Your Employees Batshit Crazy. Here we were talking more about management and so on. But the principle is the same. It's this idea that we are going to bring in the big white knight to save the day. Just give us a few sentences on this one. BLAIR: Yeah, the white knight is usually the senior person on your team. There's some negotiating going back and forth. Everything's proceeding, maybe well but slowly. Maybe it doesn't feel like it's proceeding well. But the principle or the senior person swoops in and says, "You know what? I'm going to fix, I'm going to get this deal done in one fell swoop". They show up and make a concession, thinking, "Okay. I'll just make the one concession and close on this". What they don't understand is, they've just undone a lot of work being done by other good people. BLAIR: Sometimes it makes sense, if you think of the previous tip about outwait the waiter. Sometimes it makes sense to just, it's part of the negotiation. To slow things down. When the principle shows up to speed things up and says, "I'm going to make this one concession and close the deal", then they realize, that one concession is really just the beginning. They have just created a whole new set of problems, and the likelihood that the agency is going to close this business at a profitable position has just diminished significantly. BLAIR: The idea is, be careful about allowing the senior person, usually the principle, to swoop in at the last minute and make a concession that they think is going to just close the deal. Because it usually doesn't work that way. DAVID: Yeah. On the other side of the table, they've discovered where the weakness is and how they can get even more concessions. Because you've tipped your hand. That's a good one. DAVID: All right, number six. Decide your give and gets in advance. Decide your give and gets in advance. Which is opposite of what you just talked about, where somebody else swoops in without much consultation. We might make a concession, but we're going to do it very intentionally. We're not going to be willy nilly here. Decide your give and gets in advance. Who's doing this? The team as whole? Anybody that's in a position of power? How does this work? BLAIR: That's a good question. It's not just the person who's on the front lines. It's the people ultimately who have to live with the decision. It's a senior member. It's probably a team decision or the decision in the principle. The idea here is similar to going into an auction, right? We go to an auction, we think, "I'm not going to do anything stupid", and we end up bidding these crazy high prices. Because in part, loss aversion bias kicks in. We make a bid, we mentally own it, and then somebody outbids us and now we've lost something that we just a second ago emotionally owned. BLAIR: What the science shows is, we value losing something about two times as much as we value gaining it. In an auction that causes us to do crazy things. The way you combat that going into an auction is, you have an honest conversation with yourself about what your absolute maximum price is, and you do not deviate from that maximum price whatsoever. You do not allow yourself to get swept up in the moment. You hold the line by making the decision in advance. BLAIR: The principle here of, "Decide your give gets in advance", is the same thing. You decide, what are you willing to give up in advance in the negotiation? What are you not willing to give up? What is it that you absolutely need to get from the client, and what are you willing to take a pass on? You make those decisions in advance so that you do not find yourself in the middle of a negotiation, while at the table or in the conversation, giving away something that you are going to regret later. You just draw the boundaries in advance of the negotiation.   DAVID: I want to take a slight detour here and ask you a question. Because we're assuming that this is occurring at the outset of a new relationship in many cases. If you do this right, do you have to play these same games in subsequent negotiations with the same client? Or do they get and sort of figure out your style and where the lines are, so that it's a little bit more efficient later? BLAIR: Yeah. There's two different camps here, and we may be opening a big can of worms. I mean, it's a legitimate question. There's the negotiating with procurement camp, where if you really are using these principles and you're getting into these protracted things and you have these standoffs, you win. You've won the first round. That does not mean that procurement's not coming back for you even harder. When you're going into a relationship with that type of organization, you're going to win some battles. Ultimately you will lose the war. Ultimately everybody loses the war. BLAIR: The idea is that you get to a point where, "All right. This relationship is no longer fruitful. They've kind of beaten all of the margin out of us over the long term". You know, hopefully it was a good run. BLAIR: Then on the other camp would be good clients where you're not dealing with procurement, or they're more of a value buyer where you just have to use one or two of these techniques, and you're not setting up a long term war where you're constantly battling each other. It really could be one or the other, where you're constantly in a negotiation. Always defending what you know is an onslaught that you're ultimately going to lose in the end, but it still might be worth it. It might be a three, four year good run and it's worth fighting the battle. Or other situations where you just find yourself using one or two of these techniques and that's it. Then you find yourself in a good relationship with a value buyer who really values what it is that you do. DAVID: Yeah. I find that when I talk with my clients, and we share some clients, it's dispiriting enough when they have to enter these negotiations with a new client. But when they've worked with a client for years and then this gets turned on them again, when they want to review the relationship. They almost are just intentionally forgetting everything that happened over the last four years, and you have to prove yourself again. There isn't much in business that can pull the rug out from under your confidence and slap you in the face than something like that. I don't even know why I'm saying this. It just hits me at the moment that it's very discouraging for people to have to do that over and over again. BLAIR: I agree. DAVID: All right. Number seven. Neuter the final negotiators. Neuter ... It's like we're watching a Game of Thrones episode here. What kind of a serial killer are you in disguise? Neuter the final negotiators. Okay. What kind of knife do we use here? BLAIR: Maybe there's a better word for neuter. What I'm talking about is, the moment that you have the greatest amount of power in the relationship is the moment when the client, not the procurement person, but the client says, "You're hired". DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative). BLAIR: When that happens, and often you go from the client saying you're hired to, then you get handed off to procurement or legal or finance or whomever. That other department will kind of, you've got to fight another war over there. But if you know the war is coming, if you know, if you're used to dealing with the same types of clients and you know there's a battle with procurement coming, use your power at its height. The moment you're hired. BLAIR: I had a client once who called me and said, "We're doing great. We're closing all of these really big deals. Seven figures. We've got all the senior decision makers in the room. But I have the same problem. It's like every time I get a call from procurement, 'You've got to knock 200 grand off of this', etc". BLAIR: I said, "Okay. Next time it happens, next time you close a deal, in the room you have the senior decision makers. You say to the client, 'Okay. We've got a problem here'. Everybody's in agreement. We're going to do this. Here's the price. Here's the scope. Everybody's in agreement. Everybody's excited about moving forward and really looking for the engagement. Then you stop and say, 'Okay. We've got a problem. We've just agreed on this. The price is the price. We've talked about the value that we're going to create. BLAIR: I'm going to get a call from your procurement person, and that procurement person is going to tell me that if I don't knock $200,000 or $300,000 off this price we're not going to do business together. The price is the price. We've just agreed on what we all agree is fair for the value that we're going to create. The price is the price. There's no economies of scale here for us to make the price cheaper. Can we agree, when procurement calls me', and then you look over at the client side and say, 'When procurement calls me, who can I get them to call?'". BLAIR: Now you're in this little, it's a little bit like a power play move but not as bad as it sounds. In that the senior client on the client side of the table generally will take responsibility and say, "No. Have that person call me". That's what I mean by neuter the final negotiators. Leverage the fact that you have the most power to combat procurement in the moment when the client says, "You're hired". BLAIR: Now the higher up you're dealing in a client organization, the more power you have. In this example my client, the agency, was dealing with senior people on the client side. Presidents of divisions. They weren't dealing with brand managers. Bu even some brand managers might be willing to lend some weight to helping you get around procurement. But again, you ask in that moment. The moment when the client says, "I want to do this", or, "We want to hire you". That's when you have the most power to neuter the final negotiators. DAVID: Well I think this would be fun to do. Because I can see saying it with kind of a twinkle in your eye, and they just smile and look at each other. Because they know that that is coming, and they kind of chuckle and say, "Yeah yeah. Here's who it'll be. This is what they'll say. We'll take care of it". I love this one. DAVID: All right. We're on the way to 10, and we're at number eight. This one is an A B thing. What you say here is that you should either be ruthless, or you should be collaborative. One place is going to take you somewhere. The other place is going to take you somewhere else. Which is which here? Be ruthless or be collaborative? BLAIR: Yeah, so it's both but you pick your spot. You be ruthless with other professional negotiators, and you be collaborative with clients. With good clients. Because you have to work with the clients. You don't want to get into ... If you're setting the tone of the relationship moving forward where you're in this somewhat ruthless battle, you have to be aware of creating the conditions, if we're just not a very fruitful relationship moving forward. But you really should be ruthless with professionals. Again, you could hear me getting a little bit emotional as I talk about procurement people. You don't want to do that. BLAIR: One of the advantages procurement people have is, they are not emotionally invested in the sale. They don't give a shit at all, right? DAVID: They aren't even people. They don't even have emotions. BLAIR: "They're bureaucrats, Morty. Shoot them". Or, "They're robots". It's a Rick and Morty line. We're going to get into trouble with the 20 percent of the procurement people who are out there. Again, I just say to my friends in procurement, I don't actually have any friends in procurement, but it's possible that one day I might have a friend in procurement. I would just say that, the problem isn't just in the procurement profession. It's actually in the organizations above procurement who give license to procurement to procure creative and marketing service as though they were widgets. They think that they can drive cost down without affecting the quality or the value to be created. You can't really do that. The responsibility isn't just with procurement. BLAIR: But back to, these people aren't emotionally invested. We, especially if you're the creative person coming up with the concept, we tend to be emotionally invested in the results. You be ruthless with them. You hold the line. As I've already said, they're going to ask until they hear no, so you start with no. There's no need to build rapport or kindness or to ever negotiate out of emotion. If you find yourself being emotional, see if you can't retreat, regroup, let go of whatever it is that you're emotionally attached to. Then re-engage again when you're emotionally detached. But it's like, be ruthless. Hold the line. Don't fall into the trap of this ridiculous idea that you're going to befriend a procurement or a professional negotiator and you're going to, somehow through the strength of your personality, you're going to get to a solution. BLAIR: As you've pointed out, they're robots, or they're bureaucrats. I use that term in this moment out of a little bit of a respect. What I mean by that is, they're not clouded by emotions. They've got a job to do. They've got an objective. They're marching steadily toward that objective and not letting their emotions cloud their judgment, so you should be able to operate at that same unemotional ruthless level. DAVID: All right. Number nine is, use a positive no. Use a positive no. Can you explain that? I presume you can. BLAIR: Let's hope I can. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: There are so many different ways that you can say no. I think so many of us have a hard time delivering the word no, because in so many of our businesses, what we do is we find a creative solution to every problem. We don't accept that the answer has to be no to something, so therefore we have a hard time saying no. BLAIR: There are all kinds of different techniques on how to deliver a positive no. I'll just give you a couple of them here. First you just kind of, if there's an objection, you just make sure that you restate the objection. "Okay, I'm hearing that affordability is an issue for you". Then you deliver your no. You start with kind of a yes. "Yes, I hear that affordability is an issue for you". Then you deliver your no. "Listen, I can't give you that price in this specific situation". Then you layer in another yes. "But what I can do is stretch out the payment terms a little bit", or something else. Or throw in some other forms of value. Throughout the entire time, your attitude is always positive. It's not, "Oh, you know, I don't think we can do this". It's not, "There's no way we can do this". BLAIR: There's a time for, "No way". But there's a time when you want to use a positive no. You're nodding your head saying, "Yeah, I'm absolutely hearing you that affordability is an issue for you on this. I can't give you that price in this situation that you're looking for. But here's what I can do for you". Then deliver what it is you can. "I can throw in some extra value. I can stretch out the payment terms a little bit for you". It's all about delivering no with a positive attitude. BLAIR: I'm not saying that's always the approach. I think there are times when it's just a hard line, "No. Take it or leave it", walk away. But in many situations it makes sense to deliver a positive no. DAVID: You're also demonstrating that you've listened. That you care. You may make a decision that's not one they would prefer, but you're not just simply closing up and not listening to them. That's part of restating this to them. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: All right. The final one is to use alternatives to no, and you've got a few examples here. Are these used with clients or with pros? I think I probably should have asked that question many times here, because it's been interesting to hear the distinction. Using alternatives to no. Who do you use these with, primarily? BLAIR: Yeah, I would put most of these, like use a positive no or use an alternative to no, I would put most of them under the collaborate column. That means with clients. Where I find myself tending to want to be more ruthless and just deliver hard nos to procurement. Now that's me a little bit worked up emotionally, violating what I said earlier. The truth is, a really good negotiator will use positive nos and alternatives to nos with procurement from time to time. It's not just all hard lines. Although I really believe that you begin with a super hard line with procurement. BLAIR: I think generally speaking, for sure you should use these approaches with clients. The people that you want to have a fruitful working relationship with that. A great alternative to no, and I think this one comes from Chris Voss. If it's not Chris it's somebody else. I'll also, I'm recalling that some of the other techniques I probably got from Reid Holden in his book, Negotiating With Backbone. It's a small book. It's a really good book. Both of those books are great books on negotiating. BLAIR: His line, and again I think it's Chris Voss. Instead of saying no just ask, "Well how would I do that?". If procurement is saying, "Listen, the fees in your proposal, we're not giving you that. We're giving you 60 percent of what you've asked for. You can take it or leave it". Then you essentially turn the problem back onto, instead of saying no you just turn the problem back onto the client. "Okay, 60 percent of the fee. How would I do that? How would I deliver the services that you're looking for at just 60 percent?". DAVID: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and a pause, right? At that point? BLAIR: Right. Always a pause, and we're not talking about that here, but I've talked about the power of pause before. When you pause after you deliver a no or an objection or an obstacle for the client to overcome, you want to pause because whatever you hear next gives you so much information about how much power you have in the buy sell relationship. BLAIR: You could also use a, "Yes, but", instead of asking, "How would I do that?". The client might say, "I don't know. That's your problem. How you do it is your problem". You might say, "Well do you think we have 40 percent profit margin built into this?". "I don't know, that's your problem". You could say, "Yes, but". You could say, "Well you know, I suppose I could deliver on 60 percent of that. I mean, if that's your bottom line. I guess we'll just put the interns on it and remove access to senior people. Access to principles. We'll take our creative director off of it, and yeah, we can meet your price that way". DAVID: They're starting to get a warm feeling. BLAIR: Yeah. I mean, this is where we're having fun now, right? I think when the client asks you to do something ridiculous, you could ask the client, "Well okay. How would I do that?". Or if the client's not going to participate in that question you can offer a solution. Again, this speaks to the title of Gerry Preece's book, Buying Less For Less. The idea that when procurement is buying marketing services, they drive the cost down. What they don't appreciate is, they're driving the quality down. Because in a people based business, the way you get your costs down is, you get less expensive people on the job. BLAIR: Just communicate that to the client. "Okay, we can give you that price. But here are all of the things that we have to strip out". What you're almost certainly going to hear is, "No, we want those deliverables or value drivers at the price you quoted". That's where you can laugh and say, "Yeah, well let me tell you about the things that I want in my life too, that I'm not going to get either". DAVID: One of the things that I've been thinking about my own situation over the years, and something that's hit me. It's given me this kind of warm feeling. I know that sounds weird. But it's when I find myself getting a little bit angry, and that's because I feel like I'm being taken advantage of, or not appreciated to the level I should be. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: I can relax and tell myself, "I don't need this that badly. Why don't I just smile and make this more of an interesting exercise?". Not so much a contest, but an exercise to see what I can learn. As long as I'm willing to walk away from it, I don't understand why I'm getting angry. I need to treat this more as a business conversation. It frees up my mind to think in these categories and not get all wrapped up in myself at some point. BLAIR: Yeah. I call that smile and defy. You smile to yourself for a minute. Remind yourself, "Let's not get carried away here. This is just a game". Then you defy what it is that's been asked of you. Then you just see what happens next. You have that ability to do that. I have that ability to do that. Because we're not over-invested in the sale. We're not allocating significant resources from our businesses to close any one particular deal. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: When you don't over-invest, and I know and work with lots of agencies who have learned to not over-invest in the sale, everything changes when you're not over-invested. It's easier for you to smile. It's easier for you to use some of these techniques. It's easier for you to walk away from poor fits, knowing that if it really is a good fit, it will come back on your terms. DAVID: Care a lot, but don't care too early. That should be the title of this. BLAIR: That's great advice, yeah. DAVID: All right. We will put some bonus ideas in the show notes. Marcus will help us with that. These are 10, and we'll throw some more in there. This was really fun to talk about, Blair. Let's hope that none of these procurement folks listen to this before you meet them in London, or we will have some real life neutering taking place. BLAIR: I would prefer they did listen, and we had some frank and fruitful discussions. DAVID: Okay. Thank-you, Blair. BLAIR: Thanks David.

Blair offers seven mindsets that any seller of expertise needs to master so that they can behave like the expert in the sales cycle.   Links "The Jedi Mindset" by Blair Enns McClelland's Human Motivation Theory, also known as Three Needs Theory, Acquired Needs Theory, Motivational Needs Theory, and Learned Needs Theory   Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Good morning, Blair. You are in London. I'm in Nashville. BLAIR ENNS: Yeah, it's my afternoon, and it's your seven AM. DAVID: And don't tell me you've gotten a lot more done today already, because that's just a time change thing. Has nothing to do with productivity. Today we're going to talk about the seven masteries of the rainmaker, choke, choke. BLAIR: You're choking on the word rainmaker, are you? DAVID: Well, a little bit. I'm also, it's like seven. How come it's not six or eight? Seven sounds quite biblically, almost like we need to take an offering at the end of this or something. BLAIR: Let's do that. DAVID: I'm more choking on the idea of the rainmaker. Do you hear that term much anymore? I don't really hear it. We know what it means, though. BLAIR: No, but there was a time when you heard it often. In fact, if an agency were running an ad looking for a new business person, probably a health percentage of those ads would have the title rainmaker wanted. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: I've never liked the term rainmaker. It's a little bit funny that an agency principal would be looking for an individual who essentially has magical powers, the ability to make it rain. DAVID: Right. It's dry. The crops are going to die. All we can do is just rely on magic. So let's call on the rainmaker. We have no idea how he ... it was always a he back in those days, but we don't know how he or she does it, but this is our last resort. BLAIR: We have no positioning. We have no leads. We have no prospects. We have no formalized new business process. You absolutely need somebody who can make it rain, yeah. So I've kind of used that term tongue in cheek, but the idea of seven masteries, it really stems from the notion of mindset. Because you can master behaviors. You can master all kinds of things. And when I originally wrote about this a few years ago, I had come home to the idea that I was teaching people sales process and people were learning, so they were onboarding and understanding what it is that they knew to do in specific situations, but yet, they still couldn't bring themselves to do it. BLAIR: So I kind of went deep into the subject and realized well, the things that I'm asking them to do, because my approach, the Win Without Pitching approach to selling to new businesses is a little bit contrary to the conventional way it's done in the creative profession. So the things that I was asking them to do were contrary to their overall general pattern of behavior. And then you ask yourself, well, what sets somebody's general pattern of behavior, and the answer is it's really the thoughts in their head, the mindset. BLAIR: So I kind of arrived at this model, this idea of the seven masteries of the rainmaker. These are the seven things that are concepts that an individual needs to master in order to put themselves in the mindset, the mindset of the expert. I sometimes refer to it as the Jedi mindset, so they master those concepts. So they're in the proper mindset. Then they can begin to behave, generally speaking, across the pattern of general behavior, they can begin to behave like the expert, and then they can start to take onboard these very specific things that we teach client does x, you do y. BLAIR: If you learn those specific points of sales process, what to do in the sale, in certain situations, but you're not already operating or behaving like the expert, then they're not going to work. So this whole idea was about getting to somebody's mindset. DAVID: Okay, so we're going to go through the seven, but before we do that, let's assume that I want to embrace this way of thinking. What specifically, almost mechanically, are you suggesting I'm going to do with these seven things? Do I just write them down, and I chant them to myself? No, you're not talking about that. It's more I analyze my behavior against this list. What am I going to do with this after we get through going through the seven? BLAIR: As I walk you through the seven, you'll think about where you are on that spectrum, and in the first mastery, just ask yourself, hey, are you mastering this now, or do you have some homework to do? And then I am going to get you to chant something funnily enough. DAVID: Good luck with that. BLAIR: After we get through four of the ... I think I said to you, this is either going to be really fun, or it's going to be a complete disaster. DAVID: Right, yeah. BLAIR: So we'll just see how it goes. As I explain the mastery, you just ask yourself, well, is this something I have mastered, or do I have some homework to do? And then once we get through four, the first four, which I consider to be the foundational masteries, then I'll actually talk about stringing them all together in a little saying or a mantra that you can say to yourself, and I don't mean to say that you're like Buddhist guru here or something. DAVID: As you laugh and talk about that, right. BLAIR: We're going to get you to say it out loud and then you'll see that when you do this properly, this becomes the conversation that you're having yourself with, and it sets you up to go into a situation where you're behaving properly. And even if you don't remember the specific things I tell you that you should be doing in the situation, it won't really matter, because you'll be thinking the right things. Therefore, your tendency will be to behave appropriately. You will behave like the expert. And then you can forget all of the nuance, and you'll still probably do pretty good. DAVID: Okay. All right. So let's dive in then. The first one is focus, right? So talk about that. BLAIR: Yeah, so mastering focus, it begins with the subject of focus. When you go in and do a total business review with a firm, I don't know this for certain, but I would expect that one of the very first things that you look at is the firm's positioning. Once you do an assessment of where the firm is and how they need to improve, I suspect that's kind of the foundation of where you start, or one of them. It certainly is in my business. DAVID: Yeah. In fact, I'm doing one today, yesterday and today. And as I was driving to where I'm talking with you now, I was just thinking, you know, I love this work. There's so much science and art around positioning, and it sets the stage for everything, right? How can you have all these other conversations without that? And that's what you mean focus, power in the sell comes from deep expertise, which comes out of that focus. DAVID: So when somebody's listening to this first one, and they're thinking, okay, do I still have homework to do, that question is is my firm focused enough to give me power or leverage in that relationship. BLAIR: Yeah, are you focused, or are you the individual benefiting from a focused firm. And the benefit of focus is when the firm narrows its focus in terms of the types of problems it solves or the types of clients it works for, usually a combination of those two, when it narrows its focus, it allows the firm to build a deeper expertise. So if you're an agency principal, and you have a dedicated new business development person, just ask yourself, are you arming this person with the benefit of focus. So we're going to build a four statement mantra. BLAIR: And the first statement is I am the expert. I am the prize. And that comes from this notion, this idea that I see myself as the expert practitioner in the relationship and not a vendor. I have some power in the relationship because of the depth of my expertise. Therefore I have a sense of being in control, but this idea that I am the prize, I am the prize to be won. I and the firm, we are the prize to be won in the relationship. And it's not the client is the prize that I am trying to win. BLAIR: So again, that's a mindset thing. Do you see yourself as this deep expert and representing a firm that has deep expertise that is desirable to the client, and do you see yourself and the firm as the prize to be won in the relationship? DAVID: That is so powerful, even though the words are so simple. It's the opposite of being a supplicant. It's not an arrogance, though. It's more of a quiet confidence that I've seen this before, and I'm eager to help, but we should talk about whether this is a right fit. I don't have to have this. I keep thinking of all these statements that emerge from what you were just talking about on the focus side. Even though we're kind of skipping, we could unpack this notion for weeks. We could talk for weeks, just about what focus means. But that's how it all starts. I love the fact that ... obviously, it has to be on this list, but I love the fact that it's also the first one. DAVID: So I am the expert. I am the prize. So that's focus. Second would be purpose. So talk about what that means, because we're still talking about very foundational things. How does purpose relate to this as a second one? BLAIR: Yeah. So after you master focus, you build deep expertise. The second, master a sense of purpose. And by purpose, I mean kind of a higher mission or calling. So most well-positioned firms can express their positioning in some fairly standard, almost formulaic language, and I don't mean to denigrate the language by calling it formulaic. I think first, you actually have to express your positioning in a formulaic language before you get creative with the language. BLAIR: So most specialized firms can say we're experts at helping this type of client solve this type of problem, or this discipline for this market. And that's just the beginning. Once you have that nailed, you want to go off in search of a higher purpose. Now, what purpose does for you in the sale is it gives you moral authority. It gives you the moral authority because you're driven, not to sell something to the person sitting across the table from you, and you're driven, not to help them sell things to their client. By tapping into purpose, you're tapping into something that's bigger than you, and even bigger than your client. And that gives you some moral authority in the sale. BLAIR: I'll give you an example in my own business. So Win Without Pitching, I can express our positioning as sales training for creative professionals. So the discipline is sales training. Creative professionals is the market. But my mission based positioning is we are on a mission to change the way creative services are bought and sold the world over. So there are different reasons. It starts to get into this Simon Sinek, tapping into your why thing. But there are certain moments when I will say that statement to myself, or if I'm being introduced to give a speech, I'll hand that language to the person who's introducing me, and that helps me get through maybe a slightly anxious moment and tap into something bigger than what I'm trying to accomplish in the moment. BLAIR: And when you're thinking bigger, when you're thinking past the transaction that's in front of you, and you're thinking past even what your client's objective is, to something even bigger than that, that steals you, gives you this moral authority, it contributes to your confidence, and it allows you to kind of ... gives you more ... I don't want to go back to the power word, but more confidence to navigate through the situation, through the sale, acting like the expert. DAVID: Yeah, and what I'm going to say next, I don't want it to take us too much off track, but I couldn't help but thinking of something as you were talking through this. Part of what we're doing at the beginning of a transaction like this or a possible transaction, or relationship, I guess would be a better way to say it, is to gather some control in that relationship, set ourselves up for that, not, though, so that we can misuse the power, but to use it for the benefit of the client, and sometimes it looks like a mistake. It looks like a power trip. It doesn't make sense sometimes from the outside. It's like if you saw somebody holding a child down, and it was through a glass window, and it looked cruel, and then the next thing you saw is that they were giving the child a shot, or they were dressing a wound or something like that. So we're doing something where we're exerting control to help the client, not to abuse the client. And we're reminding ourselves of that during this purpose discussion. DAVID: I love the example of getting up on stage, picture you've traveled a long time, you're tired, maybe something has happened that's shaking your confidence just a little bit. And you say this to yourself that I am on a mission to help. I guess that's the second phrase here that we're talking about. The first one, I am the expert, I am the prize. The second one, around purposes, I am on a mission to help. All of a sudden, it settles everything down. It reminds us why we're here and what we're trying to do. BLAIR: Yeah, well said. DAVID: So the third one is leadership. This is also a foundational statement. These first four are very foundational. So leadership is the third one. BLAIR: Yeah, let me just build where we are so far. So focus, I am the expert, I am the prize. Purpose, I am on a mission to help. And leadership, the line that goes with that is I can only do that if you let me lead. The idea of mastering leadership speaks to the notion that the sale is the sample of the engagement. So for you to do your best work in the engagement, you need to be able to lead. I use the word power, and I tend to overuse it, and as you point out, I don't mean power for the sake of power. I don't mean overusing it, but I mean, the client letting you assume the expert practitioner position and lead them through the engagement, rather than them relegating you to the vendor position and having them drag you through the engagement or dictate to you how the engagement is going to work. BLAIR: You're being hired to help solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity. And for you to do your best work, you need to be allowed to lead in the engagement. Now, if you're not leading in the sale, then you won't be allowed to lead in the engagement, because the roles in the relationship are established well before the engagement begins. They're established in the sale. That's why you need to behave like the expert. You need to behave appropriately. BLAIR: So this third mastery of leadership is simply recognizing that for you to do your best work in the engagement, you need to be allowed to lead the client. Therefore, it's your job or a requirement that you assume the leadership position in the sale before you're hired. Again, I refer to the battle for leadership or power or control as the polite battle for control. And it should never feel to the client like you're dominating them or lording anything over them. They should feel the way it feels to you when you're hiring an expert practitioner yourself. They're calm, they're collected. They're clearly in control of where things are going or what the appropriate next steps should be. BLAIR: But they're also quite consultative with you, and they make you feel like you have input and you're not being dragged along. So that's the third mastery is leadership. DAVID: I can't help but think about the notion of process as well, because many clients of the folks that are listening to this podcast, those clients are sometimes going to question the process you want to take them through, and it's pretty important to not only have a reason for the process, but to also stick to your process as the expert. Now, if it's not a good process, you don't need to stick to it. I guess that was obvious. BLAIR: It's funny. I was thinking that, too. I'm sure you've seen this, too. There are a lot of agencies out there that kind of manufacture this, I'll call it process, the Canadian version. They manufacture it, and they lead their clients through it, and I come along, or you as a consultant come along and look in and go oh, it feels a little bit hollow and empty, and it's needlessly long, and it's not as fruitful as the client might think. So I think we can laugh about it, but there's actually some fairly hollow processes out there. DAVID: Right. But assuming that it's a good process and it really is a core part of how you're going to lead the client, then this begins to be a part of how you conduct this conversation. It's like you've hired me as an expert. The way I've done this in the past many, many times is to follow this process. I don't mean the hollow process. I mean the good process. It's allowed me to find the truth more reliably and more quickly. And that's a part of leadership. Leadership is not just the advice I'm giving a client. Leadership is also the process that we go through together to arrive at that advice. That's more the point. So focus, purpose, leadership. And the fourth one is detachment.   DAVID: Let me go through and repeat these phrases again. So on focus, we have I am the expert, I am the prize. On purpose, I am on a mission to help. On leadership, I can only do that if you help me lead. And then third is detachment so walk us through that. BLAIR: Yeah. Fourth is detachment, and the line that goes with it is all will not follow, and that's okay. There's really two things you want to master about detachment. First of all, you want to detach from the outcome. So we're talking about the mindset you get into right before you go into the sales interaction. And you layer in all these masteries, focus, purpose, leadership, and this idea of leadership, I'm going into the exchange, and one of the things I'm looking for is I'm looking to take the lead, and I'm looking to see if you will let me take the lead. Do you recognize me as an expert, and are you willing to let me lead in the engagement? If you are, you'll let me lead at least a little bit in the sale. And the fourth mastery here, detachment is letting go of the fact of well, if they don't, that's okay. BLAIR: Your business is bigger than any single one interaction or any single one opportunity. You are this focused expert. The idea is if this person or this client or account doesn't come with you, if they don't let you lead, if they don't hire you, et cetera, that's okay. So you detach from the outcome. That's number one. You focus on the mindset and the behavior, and you detach from the outcome. So again, if you imagine when you hire or work with other professionals in your life, if you end up saying to a lawyer or accountant or solicitor or whoever the most vaunted expert is in your life, if you decide kind of not to go with them, they're not pleading for you to please, please, please give me your business. Because they're this recognized expert who have, you imagine that they have all kinds of opportunities available to them beyond you. BLAIR: And that's essentially what you should be thinking to yourself and then communicating to your client, and just let go of the outcome. So that's the first point on detachment is just generally focus on the mindset, focus on the pattern of behavior, and let go of the outcome. Don't be tied to the fact that this person absolutely must buy from you. BLAIR: There's a lot rolled up in this idea. The idea of not over investing in the sale is tied to it. It's easier to detach when you haven't over invested in the sale. But the second part of detachment is each of us personally tends to have something, and it's usually one recurring thing that we want from the other person in the sale. BLAIR: And I'll go back to this model of motivation known as McClelland's needs theory of motivation or the three needs theory that says people are motivated primarily by one of three different things. It's the need to win versus others, the need to orchestrate others, and the need to connect with others. So if you're a high competitive drive, and you have a high need to win, then you really need to detach from, before you walk through the door, just let go of the need to win this opportunity. If you have high power needs, you have the need for authority and respect, that's probably a good thing, because you and I and have been talking about that. You want to occupy the expert practitioner position, but some people can be in danger of having too high a need for authority and respect. BLAIR: And that's me. So I need to let go of the need to be the absolute authority on something, and other people have high affiliation needs. What they're concerned about in any social interaction, even in a commercial one like this is the need to be liked by others, the need to connect with and be liked by others. So in that situation, they would be telling themselves something like all right, this person doesn't need a friend. They need an expert practitioner. So I will detach from my need to have this deep, personal connection with somebody. There's some more nuance there. You don't want to detach from that completely. But you do want to recognize essentially what a big motivator is and recognize that you tend to go to this too often, and in the situation you want to let go of it. BLAIR: So the idea is that all will not follow speaks to this notion that you don't need to close every deal, and then there's this secondary detachment of what is it that you personally need. Identify it and let go of it. DAVID: Because we should not need constant affirmation that we are an expert in the relationship. We should enter that potential relationship. Every once in a while, it's on a rocky ground, but believing generally that we are the expert, and there's a lot of evidence for that and that many, many clients over many years have paid us a lot. And then after the engagement, we've heard that it made a difference for them, whatever business our listeners are in. DAVID: I love talking about this notion about how much we care or what we care about. I have this theory that has zero scientific underpinnings, just to make that clear. BLAIR: Those are the best theories. Go on. DAVID: All of a sudden, you're interested now. The idea is that we have 200. Now the number might go up or down, obviously, but we have about 200 instances in our souls where we can care a lot more than the client can. And every time we deeply care more than the client does about something, a little part of us dies. And then we have 199 left. So you want to use those very carefully. They're like little tokens that are not going to be replaced. Caring about the wrong things, it just kind of kills you slowly, right? BLAIR: Yeah, you've punched all the holes in your care card. You're out. DAVID: Exactly. Where's my free card? BLAIR: Clearly, you've punched yours years ago. DAVID: I don't even know what a care card looks like anymore. Okay. So what's this mantra that you're going to try and get me ... you say it, and I'll repeat it. And this rolls up the first four. BLAIR: I am the expert. I am the prize. I am on a mission to help. I can only do that if you let me lead. All will not follow, and that's okay. You try it. DAVID: Okay. If I say that is, will you let me lead the next six episodes of the podcast? BLAIR: Yes. DAVID: Okay. BLAIR: You can have whatever you want if you say this. DAVID: Okay. I don't believe that. But I am the expert. I am the prize. I am on a mission to help. I can only do that if you help me lead. BLAIR: If you let me lead. DAVID: If you let me lead. All will not follow, and that's okay. So obviously, I messed it up. I have to practice this some more. Okay. So those are the first four, and you've wrapped them up. The next three masteries are different, though. They're not foundational. They're more specific situation masteries. And we sometimes get these in as well, today. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: So what's the first one? Silence. BLAIR: You're looking at the list. You tell me. DAVID: Ah, you were pulling that on me. You just did that to me, and I fell right into it. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: Okay, I'm a sucker. BLAIR: The fifth mastery is silence, and I think we've talked about this a little bit before. I think mastering silence is the single biggest little thing that you can do, if that makes sense, and it does make sense, the single biggest little thing you that you can do to become a better sales person. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when a buyer and seller are talking, any time there's a pause in that conversation, there's an impetus on both parts to fill it, and if you're the seller, you tend to fill a pause in a sales conversation with some sort of concession. You don't even have to master silence. You just have to learn to be more comfortable in silence than the other party. Because if you can be more comfortable, then the client is likely to fill the void with a concession or they will give you really valuable information. BLAIR: So we always teach that any time you raise an objection or place kind of a hurdle in front of the client and ask the client to jump over that hurdle, or you ask for a behavioral concession, after the statement or the ask, you just be quiet. So if you put forward your proposal, and it's got a price on it, and you're putting it forward orally, and you say and the price is $200,000, then you just stop and say nothing. And it's hard to do this initially, but it's actually very easy to get good at this. And if you can just kind of not be the person to break the silence, and you let the client fill the void, then you'll get all kinds of information on where the client stands, on how much power you have in the relationship. And you might even get some concessions, whereas sales people like to fill a void in that moment. The price is $200,000, silence, and then the sales person can't stand it, and says, oh but we could do it for less. DAVID: Yeah, and the panic rises so quickly. It's like yeah, maybe they just need to pull out Fortnite and start playing it or check their email. You're not suggesting that. BLAIR: I would say count to 10 under your breath. DAVID: Yeah, okay. All right, so silence is the first of the three after the foundational ones, and the second one is directness, say what you're thinking. We've talked a lot about this one, but it fits in the system, right? So just remind people, if they haven't heard that episode. BLAIR: I was just working with a firm earlier this week, and we were just doing some role play scenarios where I was on the subject of saying what you're thinking. So I was just throwing out some scenarios. And I was saying okay, here's a scenario, you're talking to a prospective client. You're thinking oh, they're probably too small. They probably can't afford you. What do you say? And I was really surprised at how people ... and I've been doing this for years. I continue to be surprised at how people struggle with finding the language to actually politely say what you're thinking, because we are not conditioned to do that in this business. In the creative and marketing firm business, we're taught that we're in the service business. The customer's always right. We're taught to nod and smile yes, even when we think the answer is no. BLAIR: But an expert would never do that. If you've got an opinion that's contrary to one that's been stated by the client, including an opinion on what the next step should be in the path to determining whether or not you're going to work together, you should say it. So be direct. Put it on the table. So I say there's a slight pause. As soon as you get the thought, the contrary thought, you have an obligation to state the thought, and you pause long enough so that you can think of a way to say it with kindness. So we talked about before, the subject goes by the name kind ruthlessness. So you're kind in your language, but you're ruthless in your standards and your behavior. By that I mean, you're being direct, you're saying what you're thinking. If you think the client's assessment of their problem or their opportunity is wrong, then you should say so. BLAIR: If you think there are flaws in the way they're proposing to hire a firm like yours, then you should say so. If you think the client is making a mistake in the engagement, then you should say so. Any expert worth their weight would confront politely with kindness the client with the mistake they think the client is making. And we, almost universally ... it's not universal, but it's almost universal. We don't do that. We need to learn to get better at doing that. So you master this idea of directness of saying what you're thinking. DAVID: I'm picturing somebody taking the oath of office or being sworn in before they give testimony. There needs to be something like that for experts, a commissioning service for experts where they raise their hand and say, I pledge to do it politely but to be honest and to state the truth with the clients who deserve that from me. They deserve that leadership from me. This is very powerful. BLAIR: I love that idea, our equivalent of the Hippocratic oath. DAVID: Right. So silence, directness, and the last one is money. So master your own wonderful relationship with money. That's one of the things we got with another couple or some friends or whatever, and we can talk about sex. We can talk about all kinds of ... we can't talk about how they raise their kids, and we can't talk about money sometimes, and that carries over into how we conduct these early relationships and sales studies as well. We can't really talk about money for some reason. BLAIR: Yeah, and that's why it's the seven and the last mastery. I like the idea that if people were just to read it, you have to master money. Some people would be repulsed by it, the idea. And those are the people that I'm really speaking to here, because we're not mastering the accumulation of money or the spending of money. What I mean by mastering money is mastering our own relationship with money. I believe, and I think we've talked about this before, that most of us have a dysfunctional relationship with money. BLAIR: In my book, Pricing Creativity, the last chapter, I think it's titled the last obstacle is you, and I talk about the mental barriers ... we've done a podcast on this ... the mental barriers to profit. And that's what I'm talking about is not getting hung up on money, and all of the personal emotional things that we were taught or we learned around money, all of the baggage ... baggage isn't fair, because as you pointed out, in social situations, the rules around talking about money are actually quite different than they are in a business situation. You say you've got friends where you can talk about sex, you can talk about politics, you can talk about things. But you can't necessarily talk about money. There's only a small number of people in my kind of personal life, where I have an open relationship without the subject of money, where we've agreed that we're going to talk openly about money, and there's really nothing off limits. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: I'm really talking about mastering the subject of the hold that money has over you or the idea that the subject of money is somehow holding you back because you don't feel it's worth it. I got an email two days ago from a client, who said ... he forwarded an exchange that was happening in his firm. He said, oh you're going to love this. He said read down and start from the bottom. So this is a firm that's recently moved to value-based pricing. So they still scoped it based on hours. Somebody internally said, well, it should take this many hours. The client wasn't buying hours, but they sold it for way more hours than it took to deliver. And two people internally were saying this is unethical. We cannot do this. BLAIR: So the principal at the firm and I are kind of laughing back and forth about this, because if you think it's unethical to create extraordinary value quickly, then you have a dysfunctional relationship with money. DAVID: You also have some other issues that are coming around the corner, too. This is such a great topic. I'm not at the point where I'm going to start chanting this. But I do ... I really do like this. So the foundational four, focus, purpose, leadership, detachment, and then the three masteries that are more for specific situations which you might use in certain specific cases would be silence, directness, and money. Blair, this was fantastic. Loved our discussion today. BLAIR: Yeah, thanks. It wasn't nearly as weird as I thought it would be. DAVID: Thank you, Blair. BLAIR: Thanks, David.

We sit down with facilitator, instructional designer, meeting host and leadership consultant David Foster of Capgemini to talk about the importance of social and emotional intelligence.David's LinkedInTRANSCRIPTAde: “EQ is our ability to manage ourselves and our emotions. In the workplace, this means acting and reacting to events appropriately, such as maintaining your composer and ability to perform under pressure. However, as important as EQ is, it is also necessary but not sufficient for success. Confidence in navigating the workplace culture, high SQ, is the major obstacle for women and minorities. Culture is largely shaped by the dominant group, which for most workplaces is straight white men. This is not a conspiracy or a plot. We all tend to befriend people who are similar to us or with whom we have the most common. We take work breaks with our buddy. We grab a quick lunch with our friend. Women do this. Minorities do this. Straight white men do this. For the latter group however, this often results in power begetting power. Women and minorities in particular need to have high SQs. They need to be perceptive, vigilant, and deliberate in how they navigate the workplace culture. Not being automatically part of the workplace power club is a given for women and minorities. We can bemoan that fact, or we can take action. Taking offense or feeling hurt keeps us stuck. Successfully navigating the workplace culture--demonstrating high SQ--is the key to career growth and success.” The excerpt I just read from Smart Is Not Enough: Why Social Intelligence (SQ) may be the key to career success for women and minorities by Phyllis Levinson challenges what being good enough looks like in the working world, and social and emotional intelligences are the secret sauces to climbing the corporate ladder. How do people groups with lesser social capital and access thrive in these highly competitive spaces? This is Ade, and you're listening to Living Corporate. So today we're talking about social and emotional intelligence.Zach: Yeah. So I know you gave the definitions in your intro, but when I think of definitions for these terms, I think of it as emotional intelligence being your ability to understand and manage yourself where as social intelligence is your ability to understand and manage the relationships around you. Ade: That's about right. And I think it's interesting because I would argue that by the nature of black and brown folks being the minority, minorities in the workplace have some of the highest emotional intelligence, right? I mean, I know I'm always thinking about how I'm going to come across, how to speak, how to phrase my questions both in email and in person, and, you know, not live up or down to some stereotypes and come across as angry. And I'd say that's pretty common. I think that code-switching speaks to this phenomenon the most. The fact that we change our voices with the hopes of being accepted and making others feel more comfortable with us speaks to a certain level of emotional intelligence, no?Zach: No, I absolutely agree. And look, I don't think we're saying that minorities don't need help in better developing and honing their emotional intelligence, but it is me saying that you don't often see minorities in the corporate workplace with emotional, like, outbursts. In your experience, how many times have you seen someone that was not white just completely lose control at work, Ade?Ade: Never, and I definitely get your point. Your point is well-taken, but to me the social intelligence part is a huge hurdle. So the article you referenced earlier is interesting because I posit that if power resides with the majority group and people of color don't heavily engage with the majority--like you were saying, people tend to associate with people who are most like them--how do we learn how to navigate those spaces?Zach: It kind of--it actually kind of throws the whole idea or the term of social intelligence into question, right? Because it's not particularly an issue of mental capacity or capability as it is access. Like, I don't know how to manage this particular relationship in the workplace, not because I'm inept but because I don't have access to these relationships in the same ways as folks who don't look like me are. I mean, am I--am I tripping? Am I onto something?Ade: I do think you're onto something. It reminds me of our very first episode with Fenorris when he was talking about the white executive giving him the real talk in that plane, which by the way, side note, I know y'all have been rocking with us for a while, but if you haven't listened to our very first episode with Fenorris Pearson you definitely should go give it a listen. Back to reality. Fenorris was saying that it is essentially obvious when his black colleagues were trying to mimic behavior and mimic a culture that isn't necessarily theirs, and it built more distrust than not ironically. You might also remember this conversation about authenticity in our episode with Janet Pope essentially saying that people who find themselves in the minority, particularly folks of color, often put on personas that we believe mirrors that of the majority when in actuality the people around us who we're trying to mirror don't recognize themselves and they recognize that lack of authenticity.Zach: Right, and that's not really our fault. Like I said before, we don't have access because historically we haven't been allowed access. We're just now really engaging in these spaces [inaudible]. It's only been what, like, 50 years since the last civil rights bill was passed? So it's been, like, a pretty short line. The point is because of the way that Corporate America is set up, we have to have skills that extend beyond the X's and O's. It's not just critical for our growth, it's really needed for our corporate survival.Ade: Right. And you know, it would be great if we could at some point, I mean, over the course of this season, be able to speak to someone who is a bit of a subject matter expert on social and emotional intelligence. Maybe someone with outstanding communication, conflict resolution and interpersonal skills, and I would feel really comfortable, even more comfortable, maybe if they had maybe 20 years of experience as an instructional designer, a corporate facilitator and [inaudible]. And just to put some nice little icing on top, if they were actually responsible for the coaching and professional development of executives for an international consulting firm, I might just faint.Zach: Oh, you mean like our guest David Foster?Zach and Ade: Whaaaaaat?Zach: *imitating air horns* Sound Man, you know what it is. Put 'em right there. Let's go. Ade: That's never gonna fail to make me laugh. All right, so next up we're gonna get into our interview with our guest, Mr. David Foster. Hope y'all enjoy.Zach: And we're back. And as we said, we have David Foster on the show. David, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?David: Hey. I'm doing great, Zach. Thanks for inviting me. A real pleasure.Zach: Absolutely, man. So look, as you know, today we're talking about the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace. Can you talk to us about what emotional intelligence is and how it comes into play with how you do your job?David: Yeah. So a couple things, you know? I work as a facilitator in Capgemini's Accelerated Solutions Environment. You know, despite the fact that we're a technology company we're really in the people business, and, you know, what we specialize in in the ASE is helping people getting aligned really quickly, helping them making decisions, and helping them come up with really innovative solutions to really wicked, challenging problems, and that's not something that you can do without having a high degree of emotional intelligence. You know, as a facilitator I'm typically at the front of the room, and for me it's not really about presenting myself as an expert as much as it is shepherding people through our process. So emotional intelligence for me is something that I have to pay real close attention to. You know, when I think about it, there are a couple of pieces to emotional intelligence. You've got the idea of just perceiving emotions, and so for me, you know, when I'm in front of an audience or a client group, it's about trying to understand where they are emotionally. And a lot of times we're dealing with really charged topics, so understanding what position they are on that rollercoaster is really important, you know? And that's the other part of it is, like, understanding emotions. So you can perceive them and you can feel them, but you have to be able to interpret them a little bit, a lot of bit, you know? That helps you decide what questions you need to ask or helps you decide how you might shift the focus of a session or how you might even capitalize on the emotions that you're perceiving. You know, for me and my position, it's about managing that emotion sometimes, and I'm speaking not only about the client and about the audience, but I'm speaking about myself as a facilitator. Look, we're all human. You know that, Zach. Right? Like, we're all human beings, and when you're standing up in front of a group or even if it's one-on-one, the emotion that comes off of someone or someones, you feel that, right? And so sometimes it's about not only managing the emotion that's coming from folks--maybe it's questioning, you know, the origin of it or where it's coming from, but it's also understanding what it's doing to you, you know? Because it can certainly either trigger your emotions--it might put you in a position where you end up feeling some emotions, you know, based on empathy with a group, but managing those emotions is key. And then it's really about using emotions. So if I think about those four things, like perceiving, understanding, managing and then using--and when I say using, it's not--you're not trying to take advantage of folks in terms of using emotion, but you're looking at and perceiving those emotions, understanding them and trying to figure out, "Okay, how best can we tap into this to help us achieve our goals?" So if there's energy and intent to do something, you know, how do we make sure that we put people in the position so that they can do that? Emotional intelligence is essential, you know? And it's not just in my role. I think it's in every role in our corporate environment, you know? Because like I said, we're a people business, and people have emotions, you know? We are emotional, sentient beings, and so if you think that just your IQ is enough, I think you're sadly mistaken. So that's--in a nutshell, I think, you know, the synopsis of how I think about EQ and how I think about emotional intelligence and it impacts me when it comes to how I do my job as a facilitator. Now, I can extend that even further, you know? There are lots of touch points where I'm not only interacting with colleagues or I'm interacting with clients in different ways, you know? And emotional intelligence extends beyond just when you're in front of the room. It has to do with your interpersonal relationships in terms of how you work with others, you know, how you contribute to a team and how you ultimately can add value to an organization, so.Zach: See, that's so intriguing. So have you had any situations--rather, have you had any situations where you've seen business relationships completely be broken by a lack of emotional intelligence? And if so, would you mind sharing a story?David: Yeah. You know what? Broken is, like, the end, but I think there's a continuum. If you're not keen on or at least focused on emotional intelligence, you can fracture relationships, you can damage relationships. So there's a whole lot that you can do outside of just breaking them. I just did a session this weekend that's really interesting. The guy that was one of the main sponsors of our session, the CIO, you know, he's taken the DiSC profile, and I have my own opinions about assessments. I think they're all information, you know? I don't know if that truly defines who you are and how you are as much as it just gives you information to help you decide how you might proceed in terms of your relationships or in terms of your preferences. And this guy, you know, he had taken the DiSC profile, and so he characterizes himself as a driver, you know? "I'm just a high D. I'm a high D." And it's almost like he uses that as his lead into any sort of conversation, you know? Not to mention that he's also a lawyer by trade, you know? And he's got a penchant for, you know, winning arguments no matter the cost, and he has a penchant for arguing and driving people very, very hard no matter the cost. So here we are in this ASE session, and, you know, the way we work is we have large-group stuff and then we get into breakouts, and I always talk to my sponsors about, you know, when you get into these breakouts you want your people to do the work, and you want to almost sit back, and you want to ask more questions than give more answers, and you don't want to stand up and pontificate. Well, he took this opportunity--they were sharing some information about a particular work stream, and he took this opportunity in front of, you know, a small group of folks to run up one side of this person and down the other, basically asking a lot of pointed questions, creating an argument, trying to win an argument about why certain work hadn't been done, right? And what I saw happen was not only did that change the tone and the tenor of the breakout, but it also changed the tone and tenor of their relationship for the rest of the session, where this person who had been on the receiving end of these very pointed and very argumentative sort of interjections, you know, almost shut down, right? And you don't want to do that, and I think about that, specifically in the session seeing that, but I was wondering, "Man, what is it like every day to work with this person if that's what you have to deal with?" And I actually pulled her aside to check on her and said, you know, "Are you doing okay?" And she said, "That's my everyday." And so when you think about that--you know, here you have this leader who is, you know, putting out front the idea that because "I'm a D, because I'm a high driver, I almost don't have to pay attention to how or what I do and how or what I say impacts the folks that I'm saying it to," because he can hold that shield up in front. And like I said, those assessments and those types of things are really only information, and the fact that he took that opportunity to basically confront this person, you know, not really understanding--well, it's not even not that--he understood what we were doing, but not being sensitive enough or being aware enough to know, you know, what those actions could possibly do to that person within our session. You know, that indicated a pretty severe lack of emotional intelligence. Now, whether or not he's able to repair that relationship I think is up to him. You know, Zach, I've got--and we've talked before about leadership, and we've talked before about, you know, how to lead and different styles of leadership, and I think EQ is, like, a really important arrow in the quiver. It's just one thing, you know? And having a high degree of emotional intelligence allows you to not only be self-aware, but it also allows you to be flexible, right? If you're--if you're focused not only on the things that are triggers for you, your own emotions, you know, that's part of it. You have to pay attention to the other emotions, and you almost have to--you have to be flexible, and you have to be able to adapt your approach, and you have to be able to adapt how you communicate based on the emotions of the other folk in the room, you know? Not just yours, but others, and it was obviously--it was a pretty charged conversation. He had some things he wanted to get out, but there's a way of communicating that so that you don't, like you said, break or damage your relationship. And just to extend the story further, you know, I had a confrontation with him. He wanted to--we have this thing in the ASE called proposals where, you know, people put proposals in front of a group of judges to--you know, what does the way forward look like? Take your best shot, right? So we have--we have the judges, and, you know, he wanted to be a judge, and I told him--I said, "I don't know if that's a good idea." I said, "Based on your closeness to the problem, based on your position in the organization, and based on what I observed," you know, based on how his interactions could change the tone and tenor of conversations, I advised him against it. And he didn't push too hard on that, and he said, "Well, how do the judges work?" I said, "Well, they develop criteria," and he said, "I want to be part of that conversation." And I stopped him and I said, you know, "What's your interest?" Right? And he said, "I want to make sure that my opinions are represented," and I proceeded to lay it out for him. I said, "Look, you know, ASE sessions are a chance for you to let the people in the room own the work, and it's a great chance for leaders to watch their people work. You know, you've got some smart folks here, you know? And you almost have to trust that they're gonna come up with the right criteria," et cetera, et cetera, and Zach, we went back and forth.Zach: Really?David: And talk about emotional intelligence. You know, at that point I have to know what my triggers are, right? So I could've gotten into this back-and-forth argument, but I have to remember my role. My role is a facilitator, right? I can't really hold a position. And I told him that. I said, "I'm not gonna hold a position. As a matter of fact, I'm not gonna argue with you." I said, "I've laid out the risks. I've told you what could happen if you involve yourself in this conversation. Ultimately it's up to you to make the choice, and I'm not gonna stand in your way, but you can't come back to me and look at me and say, "That didn't go the way I thought it would," because I cautioned you and I warned you," and I said, "I'm basically done arguing with you because it's obvious that you want to win this argument. So, you know, if you want to be part of this criteria development, have at it." And so we walked away from each other. Relationship wasn't broken. You know, still respected me as a facilitator, and as we're getting back into the main space--'cause we were pulling people together to get them ready to do this assignment--he stops me and he says, "You know, I've changed my mind. I'm not gonna be part of it." I said, "Okay," and so I proceeded to set up the assignment, send people out, and then I found him and I said, "Would you mind telling me what changed your mind?" And he said it was ego. He said, "That conversation between you and I was all about ego," and he said, "I have to be better about managing my emotions, and I have to be better about managing my ego, and sometimes I need to exercise a bit more humility." And he actually went back to the other conversation. He said, "You know, I had a situation where I went at somebody on my team pretty hard, and that wasn't a good thing. And I did the same thing to you, and that wasn't a good thing." So in that small little microcosm you had somebody who was on the one end, you know, really not aware. Like, self--maybe self-aware, you know, using the DiSC assessment as his form of awareness, but not aware of how he was behaving would impact others, right? Really not understanding the emotions that he was generating based on how he was interacting, and he actually--the pendulum actually swung for him, you know? So I don't know when it happened, how it happened. I don't know if I had anything to do with it. You know, maybe it was just the switch flipped, and he was--you know, all of a sudden he had the ability to say, "You know what? I really need to take a step back and look at how my behavior and how I'm managing my emotions and how I'm using my emotions is actually impacting others," you know? And I think that's an important point, and I'm sorry to just prattle on, but, you know, emotional intelligence is a skill. It's something that you can develop. It's something that you can learn, and a lot of times one of the ways we learn is by reflecting, self-reflection, on the situations that we've been presented with, how we've responded, how we've behaved, and how we might change or how we might do things differently.Zach: As you know, our show focuses on people of color in the workplace, like their experiences and perspectives and really having authentic discussions around that idea and around that identity. So I would posit minorities have more pressure to be self-aware by the nature of them just being minorities, by the nature of them being--David: [inaudible].Zach: Right? The smallest group in the space. There's pressure, or there's an expectation that we just need to be more self-aware. So what advice would you give to a people group who's already aware that they are the minority when it comes to growing and developing emotional intelligence?David: Yeah. You know what? We could--how much time do we have? Man, [laughs] because--so I think about that a lot, and maybe some historic context here. This idea that we, because we have been so excluded as people of color from institutions of--I mean, call it whatever. Learning. Institutions of earning. You know, social institutions. We've always been in positions where we've had to extend the olive branch, or if I think about the middle ground, we're always crossing that middle ground, do you know what I mean? Like, we're always expected to reach further and reach farther because these institutions have been established before us, and they weren't designed with us in mind, right? And it's--you know, if we want entry into them, you know, we're the ones that have to make the choices and decisions about how to interact with people. It's almost like we have to present ourselves in ways that make it okay for people to accept us, right? Which is an emotionally charged conversation, and again, we could spend, you know, four, five, eight podcasts. It's an ongoing conversation, right? So I don't disagree with you. I think we have to be, as people of color and as a minority group within, you have to be extremely self-aware, number one about your emotions, because there's a lot that could trigger you, you know? And understanding what your triggers are and understanding intent behind what people say or how they interact with you, being able to manage your emotions. It's a skill you have to have, you know? I would almost say forget about excelling, right? Forget about the idea of being promoted or moving up in an organization. I mean, talk just surviving, right? So think about being on projects. Think about being part of teams. How do you, as someone coming to this already in a position where, you know, people have perceptions of you whether or not we're welcome, whether or not we're able to perform at the same level. How do you manage that and then still do your job? I think emotional intelligence is something that you absolutely have to have. Without that, you know, this business will chew you up and basically spit you out. And it's not just EQ, Zach. You know, it's not just emotional intelligence. It's almost like you have to have some social awareness, you know what I mean? Like, you have to--you have to have a bit of empathy, a lot of empathy. You've got to really understand, you know, the organization, you know what I mean? You really have to know where you're working and who you're working for, and in that self-management, you know, how to be--how to control yourself in what can be emotionally charged situations. It's critical, you know? The only way that you're gonna succeed, you know, is if you have a strong sense of, you know, social EQ or social IQ and emotional intelligence. I read something--you know, this guy Daniel Goleman, which--I mean, his model of emotional intelligence is one that's been around for a really long time, you know? He said, "IQ is only 20% of it." Right? EQ is 80%, and I would--I'd offer that social IQ is key. So I don't know if I answered the question completely. You know, I'll get back to the advice. The advice I would--I would give to folks is, you know, you want to position yourself with mentors who have been successful navigating this organization, you know? They haven't moved up into leadership positions by accident. There's something that they're doing right, and whether it's, you know, that they have a highly evolved sense of self or they have a really highly evolved ability to perceive social and emotional situations, you know, you want to find mentors who can actually coach you on how to navigate some of these situations 'cause they're gonna repeat themselves, you know? And if you get good at handling them, you know, I think that is what positions you to do well in this organization. Now, that doesn't change the fact that there's some messed up stuff that goes on out there, right? I mean, let's just be real. You know, we have to deal, as people as color, as the minority group in an organization, there are some folks who, you know, quite frankly may not care whether we succeed or not, right? And that's just the reality, and part of what we deal with I think is, you know, our ability to understand who's in the room. You know, maybe the position that they're holding in terms of, you know, does this person care about me as person or not? Does it matter, right? And then what do I do with that, right? So that's my emotional intelligence, right? My ability to be reflective, you know? My ability to notice my emotional self within a work situation, you know? My ability to evaluate those situations and really begin to notice patterns, right? And then if you notice the patterns, you might start to see some opportunities for you to do something different.Zach: So you've given advice around what people of color and underrepresented groups in Corporate America can do to really develop or continue to sharpen their emotional intelligence and their social IQ. I'm curious, what advice would you give to the C-Suite regarding emotional intelligence and those who seek to be more ethnically inclusive and more welcoming so that they can actually acquire or procure the talent that they're looking for from these ethnically diverse spaces?David: Yeah. That's a multifaceted conversation, right? I think, you know, leaders that are looking to be more inclusive, first of all you have to have a high degree of EQ, right? Your sense of self needs to be very, very strong. You also have to--and within that sense of self, I think it's understanding your intent. Like, what's my intention? You know, is it checking a box? Do I really believe that involving and having a diverse workforce is gonna be advantageous, not only to the things that I touch but to the broader organization? You know, that sense of self is critical, and I would offer something else. It's not just emotional intelligence, it's not just social intelligence, but there's this thing. I don't know if you've heard of this, but the empathy quotient too. Like, your ability to put yourself in the shoes of others, right? Your ability to really walk a mile in the shoes of somebody else, you know? That whole idea of active listening and understanding the intent with which someone is communicating to you, you know? What's the message behind the words? I think--you know, I'm not part of the C-Suite, you know? And I think anything that I'm offering is really just what I've observed in terms of what's really been successful for people looking to be more inclusive. You know, you've got to be awesome at problem solving, and I think the combination of those three things--you know, the social intelligence, the emotional intelligence, your empathy quotient--helps you solve problems, you know? You've got to provide and be a supportive communicator. I think you have to be able to be flexible and be able to communicate with different types of folk. That's just the bottom line. You've got to be confident, you know, truly in empowering people, you know? A to B is always gonna be A to B, but the road may look completely different than you thought, and when you're involving diverse populations in a workforce, you know, you have to believe that the road to get from A to B may be something different just based on the types of people that you get involved, you know? And, I mean, I think in terms of attracting folks to work in a situation, you know, where we work, in this corporate environment, you know, you have to do your best to provide an opportunity and to provide and create an environment where people can contribute and add value, and the only way that you can do that I think is if you have a high degree of not only how you lead, right, but the environment that you want to create, and you have to model that behavior, right? You've got to make sure that no matter what it is, whether it's problem solving, whether it's managing conflict, whether it's how you empower others, whether it's how you communicate, whether it's how you motivate people, you know, I think as a leader, modeling that kind of behavior, that inclusive behavior, and modeling the fact that you need to have a high degree of emotional intelligence, a high degree of social intelligence, a high empathy quotient, you know, that's what makes people want to work with you, right? You know this, Zach. People don't leave jobs. They leave people, right? So the work that you can do on yourself, you know, to become more self-aware, it's gonna be reflected in your leadership style, right? The work that you do to become and increase your emotional intelligence, your empathy quotient, your social IQ, it's gonna be reflected in your leadership style, and people are gonna want to work with you, you know? They're gonna want to be part of an organization, you know, especially if you're modeling that behavior.Zach: Man. David, this has been a great conversation, man. Before we wrap up, do you have any parting words and/or any shout outs?David: Wow, shout outs? You know what? Here's the thing. I want to give a big shout out to the A3 posse at Capgemini. Doing incredible work, and a shout out and an apology, right, that I am not more involved. It's one of my goals this year to make myself, as part of the senior leadership of the organization, a bit more present, but I notice and I pay attention, and it's a potent group. Anybody out there who's listening who's not part of A3, you definitely want to get involved because they are doing great things to not only represent within this broader organization but it's a great resource, and it's just nice to be able to have conversations at times with people who speak the same language, who are going through the same things, you know, as we are as people of color trying to navigate, you know, this corporate environment. And I also want to thank you, Zach. I think Living Corporate is a step in the right direction, you know? The more that we can start talking about these things, the more that we can start to talk about the stuff that matters to us as people of color, especially in this day and age, without getting too political. You know, we recognize the times that we live in, and so it's extremely important that we hunker down and that we empower ourselves, right? With the tools that we need, with the kind of support that we need. You know, surround ourselves with the mentors that we need so that we can succeed, you know? And so that we can thrive, and ultimately so that we can definitely survive. So thank you, Zach. I can't--you're doing great work, brother. I want you to keep it up.Zach: Man, I appreciate it, David. And absolutely, man. Shout out for those who are listening. A Cubed is an African-American employee resource group at Capgemini, a great resource for black folks to come together and really, to David's point, really a strong point of relation and community within the community. So definitely shout out to A3, shout out to A Cubed. Shout out to Janet Pope, who was on the show before. I know that she leads that group. And David, man, thank you again for the love, man. We want to make sure to have you back, and we appreciate it, dude. We'll talk to you soon.David: All right. Zach, thank you very much.Zach: All right, man. Peace.David: Peace.Ade: And we're back. Zach, that was a great interview. I really appreciated his candid tone and vulnerability. I also really appreciated his stories around facilitating and managing personalities as well. I'm just out here trying to manage myself [inaudible].Zach: Right. In my experience in working with David, it's amazing to even just see it in action. I appreciated his points around being reflective and being able to interpret emotions and move accordingly.Ade: Well, he talked about emotional and social intelligence being what helps you solve problems. That really resonated with me because in my own head I get really, really nervous about dealing with people or being at work and having the right answer, and I've been noticing that when I take a breath and think through how I feel as well as those around me, beyond the X's and O's, the zeroes and ones, I'm able to arrive at a solution that actually works. To me, that's the simplest hook for the why behind why emotional and social intelligence might be a focus. They help you solve problems, and who doesn't want to be good at solving problems? With that being said, unless you have any further thoughts, let's get into our Favorite Things. How do you feel?Zach: No, that's awesome. Let's do it. So my favorite thing right now has to be DeRay Mckesson's book The Other Side of Freedom. I was really excited when he announced the fact that he was--he was almost finished with it, and so I preordered it, and I've been waiting, and it dropped on my birthday, September 4th. So I'm, like--I'm just excited to read it. I haven't really gotten fully into it yet, but I finished the intro, and I'm loving what I'm reading so far, and I can tell already that it's a favorite.Ade: So I'm confused. You said September 4th. Do you mean Beyonce's birthday? [Sound Man throws in car slamming on its brakes effect]Ade: Beyonce? Her birthday?Zach: I mean my birthday, and listen, I've been on this earth long enough now to realize that, yes, it's B Day. I get it, but, you know, it's my birthday too, okay? Beyonce does not own the day.[car slams on its brakes again]Ade: She does, because as you said, it's B Day, not Z Day. Which, you know, cool. You can have, like, September 5th or something, but September 4th is B Day. So, like, I guess you can rent September 4th. It's fine. It's fine. We'll be nice.Zach: [laughs] Okay. We might have to subtitle this show (B?) Happy Z Day. That would be kind of funny. We might do that.[again]Ade: Why not B Day?Zach: [sighs] Why don't we go ahead and go to your favorite things? How about that?Ade: All right. All right, okay. I'm gonna stop frustrating you. All right, so my current favorite thing is this book called The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. Now, it is purely a work of fiction. It is comedy and it is drama and it is a tragedy, and if you're the sort of person who likes an emotional rollercoaster with your literary works I certainly recommend that book. My second favorite thing, because I can never choose just one, is this, like, nifty invention called a water bottle. I've been training for a marathon again, and I don't know how much you know about training for marathons, but they suck. The training sucks, the marathon sucks. I don't know why I'm doing this. Somebody help me. But water bottles have been saving my life so far, so there's that upside. Yay.Zach: [laughs] Okay. Well, yeah, definitely shout out to the book, and shout out to water bottles, you know? My wife, she just recently toured Route 66.Ade: Aye!Zach: Yeah, and one thing I remember I told her--I was like, "Listen, make sure you have water," and she said, "I will in my water bottle." So yes, shout out to water and shout out to Favorite Things, and as a reminder, to see all of our favorite things, go to our website, living-corporate.com, and click Faves. You'll see all of our favorite things for the season right there. Make sure you go check it out.Ade: Yep. And that's our show. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Please make sure to follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like us to answer and read on the show, please make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Also, don't forget to check out our Patreon at LivingCorporate as well. We're Living Corporate everywhere! That does it for us on this show. My name is Ade.Zach: And this has been Zach.Ade and Zach: Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Like Jamie's flying flob, Matt & Dan are up in your face with all things FPL.With a shortage of Fantasy Premier League fixtures is this the time for Free Hits? Who's best placed to replace Sergio and Kane? And just how do you pronounce David?All revealed here. It's Gameweek.Join us on Twitter and Facebook: @GameweekHQ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Episode 31 of the Retro Disney World Podcast: "Mission To Mars" - We appreciate your support and hope you have been enjoying each and every episode. Be sure to check out some of our previous shows. Corrections & Listener Mail First off, we discuss Meredith Wilson appearing in some of the movies we viewed last month and also make some additional connections.  Brian corrects his statements regarding Ray Bradbury in our last episode, which a number of listeners wrote in and let us know about. Our 20k episode, we discuss an alternate narration. Plastic Seaweed let us know the original narration just came to light; it is on YouTube now, and was surprisingly recording by a blind park guest. Mike Frank wrote us, loves the podcast, and wants Mr. Bowers to release "Tales of the Styrofoam Head". All of the various audio recordings How has done over the years is sitting in the archives, which could be released in the near future. For now, check out Kingdom of Memories for some already released audio. For questions, comments and concerns, please write us - podcast@retrowdw.com. Audio Rewind Our audio rewind this month turned out to be Magic Journeys! The winner is Mark Brent, winning the GAF Magic Kingdom guide full of great information.  If you think you know the answer to this months audio rewind puzzler, email us! podcast@retrowdw.com - This month the winner will get a stack of vintage Disney postcards from the 1970s and 1980s.  All entries due 7/24/2017 and a random winner will be selected. Even if you don't win, you will gain an entry into the Fall/Winter Prize Pot, being picked in December. Prize Pot This year, we are going to do a new and exciting prize giveaway. The RetroWDW Podcast will have two prize pots this year; one summer, one winter. We have moved onto Prize Pot #2! All prizes added to the pot will be given to one lucky winner this December.  Here is what we have so far: Life Magazine - 1971 (Courtesy of David) All entries for the audio rewind go to winning the next prize pot.  Email us to enter: podcast@retrowdw.com Main Topic Mission To Mars We have quite the episode lined up for you this month, and it posts in conjunction with an amazingly rare film we acquired as well. You are in for a real treat as we discuss Flight to the Moon & Mission to Mars. How takes us through the entire history and also lets us know he absolutely hated this ride... Looking back, we hear about the unique things that are actually happening throughout both rides. The origins of the show in Disneyland are discussed, which was titled Rocket to the Moon. TWA originally sponsored this, opening in 1955. The whole moon thing kind of lost excitement in Flight to the Moon, but before that, it did come to The Magic Kingdom. Mission to Mars came next, in 1975 and ran until 1981. We go into the various sponsorships of this attraction, all the way up to 1993. The first hand ride experiences given during this episode are absolutely amazing. The Film We will be releasing the Mission To Mars original film next week, so please check back for this amazing piece of history. RetroWDW Merchandise How is working hard to create an amazing Mission To Mars inspired piece of merchandise, so please check our store for this unique creation. How just keeps putting out these one of a kind designs that you cannot find anywhere else. Give How some feedback on your favorite design by tweeting at us, showing off your purchases.  Retrowdw.com/supportus Next Month Join us next month when we take you to Journey Into Imagination at EPCOT Center. This is a highly requested topic and we know you are going to really enjoy it! *Event Alert: Plan on joining us for Epcot35 in early October...More details to follow soon!

What if your greatest fears were boxed and given to you as a present? That’s exactly how storyteller and strategic communicator David All sees fear—as a gift. In this episode, Ria discusses fear and how to fiddle with it in the best way possible.