Podcast appearances and mentions of david last

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT The health care sector has long struck me as having environments and dynamics that would benefit a lot from using digital signage technology. Accurate information is critically important, and things change quickly and often - in ways that make paper and dry erase marker board solutions seem antiquated and silly. But it is a tough sector to work in and crack - because of the layers of bureaucracy, tight regulations and the simple reality that medical facilities go up over several years, not months. People often talk about the digital signage solution sales cycle being something like 18 months on average. With healthcare, it can be double or triple that. The other challenge is that it is highly specialized and there are well-established companies referred to as patient engagement providers. So any digital signage software or solutions company thinking about going after health care business will be competing with companies that already know the industry and its technologies, like medical records, and have very established ties. LG has been active in the healthcare sector for decades, and sells specific displays and a platform used by patient engagement providers that the electronics giant has as business partners. I had a really insightful chat with Tom Mottlau, LG's director of healthcare sales. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT David: Tom, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown of what your role is at LG?  Tom Mottlau: I am the Director of Healthcare Sales for LG. I've been in this role for some time now; I joined the company in 1999 and have been selling quite a bit into the patient room for some time.  David: Has most of your focus through those years all been on healthcare? Tom Mottlau: Well, actually, when I started, I was a trainer when we were going through the digital rollout when we were bringing high-definition television into living rooms. My house was actually the beta site for WXIA for a time there until we got our language codes right. But soon after, I moved over to the commercial side and healthcare, around 2001-2002.  David: Oh, wow. So yeah, you've been at it a long time then. Much has changed!  Tom Mottlau: Yes, sir.  David: And I guess in some cases, nothing has changed.  Tom Mottlau: Yep. David: Healthcare is an interesting vertical market for me because it seems so opportune, but I tend to think it's both terrifying and very grinding in that they're quite often very large institutions, sometimes government-associated or university-associated, and very few things happen quickly. Is that a fair assessment?  Tom Mottlau: Absolutely. There's a lot of oversight in the patient room. It's a very litigation-rich environment, and so there's a bit of bureaucracy to cut through to make sure that you're bringing in something that's both safe for patients and protects their privacy but also performs a useful function.  David: I guess the other big challenge is the build-time. You can get word of an opportunity for a medical center that's going up in a particular city, and realistically, it's probably 5-7 years out before it actually opens its doors, right? Tom Mottlau: That's true. Not only that but very often, capital projects go through a gestation period that can be a year or two from the time you actually start talking about the opportunity.  David: And when it comes to patient engagement displays and related displays around the patient care areas, is that something that engineers and architects scheme in early on, or is it something that we start talking about 3-4 years into the design and build process?  Tom Mottlau: Well, the part that's schemed in is often what size displays we're going to need. So, for example, if somebody is looking to deploy maybe a two-screen approach or a large-format approach, that's the type of thing that is discussed early on, but then when they come up on trying to decide between the patient engagement providers in the market, they do their full assessment at that time because things evolve and also needs change in that whole period that may take a couple of years you may go as we did from an environment that absolutely wanted no cameras to an environment that kind of wanted cameras after COVID. You know, so things change. So they're constantly having those discussions.  David: Why switch to wanting cameras because of COVID?  Tom Mottlau: Really, because the hospitals were locked down. You couldn't go in and see your loved one. There was a thought that if we could limit the in-person contact, maybe we could save lives, and so there was a lot of thought around using technology to overcome the challenges of contagion, and so there was even funding dedicated towards it and a number of companies focused on it  David: That's interesting because I wondered whether, in the healthcare sector, business opportunities just flat dried up because the organizations were so focused on dealing with COVID or whether it actually opened up new opportunities or diverted budgets to things that maybe weren't thought about before, like video? Tom Mottlau: True, I mean, the video focus was definitely because of COVID, but then again, you had facilities where all of their outpatient procedures had dried up. So they were strained from a budget standpoint, and so they had to be very picky about where they spent their dollars.  Now the equipment is in the patient room, but at the end of the day, we're still going to get the same flow of patients. People don't choose when to be sick. If it's gonna be either the same or higher because of those with COVID, so they still need to supply those rooms with displays, even though they were going through a crisis, they still had to budget and still had to go through their day-to-day buying of that product.  David: Is this a specialty application and solution as opposed to something that a more generic digital signage, proAV company could offer? My gut tells me that in order to be successful, you really need to know the healthcare environment. You can't just say, we've got these screens, we've got the software, what do you need?  Tom Mottlau: Yeah, that's a very good question. Everything we do on our end is driven by VOC (voice of customer). We partner with the top patient engagement providers in the country. There are a handful that are what we call tier one. We actually provide them with products that they vet out before we go into production.  We go to them to ask them, what do you need? What products do you need for that patient? I mean, and that's where the patient engagement boards, the idea of patient engagement boards came from was we had to provide them a display that met, at the time, 60065 UL, which is now 62368-1, so that they can meet NFPA 99 fire code.  David: I love it when you talk dirty. Tom Mottlau: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there that.  David: What the hell is he talking about?  Tom Mottlau: Yeah, I know enough to be dangerous. Basically, what it boils down to is we want to make sure that our products are vetted by a third party. UL is considered a respectable testing agency, and that's why you find most electronics are vetted by them and so they test them in the patient room. It's a high-oxygen environment with folks who are debilitated and life-sustaining equipment so the product has to be tested.  We knew that we had to provide a product for our SIs that would meet those specs as well as other specs that they had like they wanted something that could be POE-powered because it takes an act of Congress to add a 110-amp outlet to a patient room. It's just a lot of bureaucracy for that. So we decided to roll out two units: one of 32, which is POE, and one that's 43. Taking all those things I just mentioned into consideration, as well as things like lighting.  Folks didn't want a big night light so we had to spend a little extra attention on the ambient light sensor and that type of thing. This is our first offering. David: So for doofuses like me who don't spend a lot of time thinking about underwriter lab, certifications, and so on, just about any monitor, well, I assume any monitor that is marketed by credible companies in North America is UL-certified, but these are different grades of UL, I'm guessing?  Tom Mottlau: They are. Going back in the day of CRTs, if you take it all the way back then when you put a product into a room that has a high-powered cathode ray tube and there's oxygen floating around, safety is always of concern. So, going way back, probably driven by product liability and that type of thing. We all wanted to produce a safe product, and that's why we turned to those companies. The way that works is we design a product, we throw it over to them, and they come back and say, okay, this is great, but you got to change this, and this could be anything. And then we go back and forth until we arrive at a product that's safe for that environment, with that low level of oxygen, with everything else into consideration in that room.  David: Is it different when you get out into the hallways and the nursing stations and so on? Do you still need that level, like within a certain proximity of oxygen or other gases, do you need to have that?  Tom Mottlau: It depends on the facility's tolerance because there is no federal law per se, and it could vary based on how they feel about it. I know that Florida tends to be very strict, but as a company, we had to find a place to draw that line, like where can we be safe and provide general products and where can we provide something that specialized?  And that's usually oxygenated patient room is usually the guideline. If there's oxygen in the walls and that type of thing, that's usually the guideline and the use of a pillow speaker. Outside into the hallways, not so much, but it depends on the facility. We just lay out the facts and let them decide. We sell both.  David: Is it a big additional cost to have that additional protection or whatever you want to call it, the engineering aspects?  Tom Mottlau: Yes.  David: So it's not like 10 percent more; it can be quite a bit more? Tom Mottlau: I'm not sure of the percentage, but there's a noticeable amount. Keep in mind it's typically not just achieving those ratings; it's some of the other design aspects that go into it. I mean, the fact that you have pillow speaker circuitry to begin with, there's a cost basis for that. There's a cost basis for maintaining an installer menu of 117+ items. There's a cost basis for maintaining a Pro:Centric webOS platform. You do tend to find it because of those things, not just any one of them, but because of all of them collectively, yeah, the cost is higher. I would also say that the warranties tend to be more encompassing. It's not like you have to drive it down to Ted's TV. Somebody comes and actually remedies on-site. So yeah, all of that carries a cost basis. That's why you're paying for that value.  David: You mentioned that you sell or partner with patient engagement providers. Could you describe what those companies do and offer? Tom Mottlau: Yeah, and there's a number of them. Really, just to be objective, I'll give you some of the tier ones, the ones that have taken our product over the years and tested and provided back, and the ones that have participated in our development summit. I'll touch on that in a moment after this. So companies like Aceso, you have Uniguest who were part of TVR who offers the pCare solutions. You have Get Well, Sonify, those types of companies; they've been at this for years, and as I mentioned, we have a development summit where we, for years, have piled these guys on a plane. The CTOs went off to Korea and the way I describe it is we all come into a room, and I say, we're about to enter Festivus. We want you to tell us all the ways we've disappointed you with our platform, and we sit in that room, we get tomatoes thrown at us, and then we make changes to the platform to accommodate what they need. And then that way, they're confident that they're deploying a product that we've done all we can to improve the functionality of their patient engagement systems. After all, we're a platform provider, which is what we are.  David: When you define patient engagement, what would be the technology mix that you would typically find in a modernized or newly opened patient care area? Tom Mottlau: So that would be going back years ago. I guess it started more with patient education. If Mrs. Jones is having a procedure on her kidney, they want her to be educated on what she can eat or not eat, so they found a way to bring that patient education to the patient room over the TVs. But then they also wanted to confirm she watched it, and then it went on from there.  It's not only the entertainment, but it's also things that help improve workflows, maybe even the filling out of surveys and whatnot on the platform, Being able to order your culinary, just knowing who your doctor is, questions, educational videos, all of those things and then link up with EMR. David: What's that?  Tom Mottlau: Electronic medical records. Over the years, healthcare has wanted to move away from paper, to put it very simply. They didn't want somebody's vitals in different aspects of their health stored on a hand-scribbled note in several different doctor's offices. So there's been an effort to create electronic medical records, and now that has kind of been something that our patient engagement providers have tied into those solutions into the group.  David: So, is the hub, so to speak, the visual hub in a patient care room just a TV, or is there other display technology in there, almost like a status board that tells them who their primary provider is and all the other stuff?  Tom Mottlau: So it started as the smart TV, the Pro:Centric webOS smart TV. But then, as time went on, we kept getting those requests for, say, a vertically mounted solution, where somebody can actually walk in the room, see who their doctor is, see who their nurse is, maybe the physician can come in and understand certain vitals of the patient, and so that's why we developed those patient engagement boards that separately. They started out as non-touch upon request, we went with the consensus, and the consensus was we really need controlled information. We don't want to; we've had enough issues with dry-erase boards. We want something where there's more control in entering that information, and interesting enough, we're now getting the opposite demand. We're getting demand now to incorporate touch on the future models, and that's how things start. As you know, to your point earlier, folks are initially hesitant to breach any type of rules with all the bureaucracy. Now, once they cut through all that and feel comfortable with a start, they're willing to explore more technologies within those rooms. That's why we always start out with one, and then over the years, it evolves.  David: I assume that there's a bit of a battle, but it takes some work to get at least some of the medical care facilities to budget and approve these patient engagement displays or status displays just because there's an additional cost. It's different from the way they've always done things, and it involves integration with, as you said, the EMR records and all that stuff. So, is there a lot of work to talk them into it?  Tom Mottlau: Well, you have to look at us like consultants, where we avoid just talking folks into things. Really, what it has to do with is going back to VOC, voice of the customer, the way we were doing this years ago or just re-upping until these boards were launched was to provide a larger format, and ESIs were dividing up the screen. That was the way we always recommended. But then, once we started getting that VOC, they were coming to us saying, well, we need to get these other displays in the room. You know, certain facilities were saying, Hey, we absolutely need this, and we were saying, well, we don't want to put something that's not rated for that room. Then we realized we had to really start developing a product that suits that app, that environment, and so our job is to make folks aware of what we have and let them decide which path they're going to take because, to be honest, there are two different ways of approaching it. You can use one screen of 75”, divide it, or have two screens like Moffitt did. Moffitt added the patient engagement boards, which is what they wanted.  David: I have the benefit, at least so far, of being kind of at retirement age and spending very little time, thank God, in any kind of patient care facility. Maybe that'll change. Hopefully not.  But when I have, I've still seen dry-erase marker boards at the nursing stations, in rooms, in hallways, and everywhere else. Why is it still like that? Why haven't they cut over? Is it still the prevalent way of doing things, or are you seeing quite a bit of adoption of these technologies? Tom Mottlau: Well, it is, I would say, just because we're very early in all this. That is the prevalent way, no doubt.  It's really those tech-forward, future-forward facilities that are wanting to kind of go beyond that and not only that, there's a lot of facilities that want to bring all that in and, maybe just the nature of that facility is a lot more conservative, and we have to respect that. Because ultimately they're having to maintain it. We wouldn't want to give somebody something that they can't maintain or not have the budget for. I mean, at the end of the day, they're going to come back to us, and whether or not they trust us is going to be based upon whether we advise them correctly or incorrectly. If we advise them incorrectly, they're not going to trust us. They're not going to buy from us ten years from now.  David: For your business partners, the companies that are developing patient engagement solutions, how difficult is it to work with their patient record systems, building ops systems, and so on to make these dynamic displays truly dynamic? Is it a big chore, or is there enough commonality that they can make that happen relatively quickly? Tom Mottlau: That's a very good question, and that's exactly why we're very careful about who's tier one and who we may advise folks to approach. Those companies I mentioned earlier are very skilled at what they do, and so they're taking our product as one piece of an entire system that involves many other components, and I have full faith in their ability to do that because we sit in on those meetings.  Once a year, we hear feedback, we hear positive feedback from facilities. We see it but it really couldn't happen without those partners, I would say. We made that choice years ago to be that platform provider that supports those partners and doesn't compete with them. In hindsight, I think that was a great choice because it provides more options to the market utilizing our platform.  David: Well, and being sector experts in everything that LG tries to touch would be nightmarish. If you're far better off, I suspect I will be with partners who wake up in the morning thinking about that stuff. Tom Mottlau: Yeah. I mean, we know our core competencies. We're never going to bite off more than we can chew. Now granted, we understand more and more these days, there's a lot of development supporting things like telehealth, patient engagement, EMR and whatnot. But we're also going to make sure that at the end of the day, we're tying in the right folks to provide the best solution we can to patients. David: How much discussion has to happen around network security and operating system security?  I mean, if you're running these on smart TVs, they're then running web OS, which is probably to the medical facility's I.T. team or not terribly familiar to them.  Tom Mottlau: Yeah, that's a very good question. Facilities, hospitals, and anything that involves network security bring them an acute case of indigestion, more so than other areas in the business world. So these folks, a lot of times, there's exhaustive paperwork whenever you have something that links up to the internet or something that's going to open up those vulnerabilities. So, Pro:Centric webOS is actually a walled garden. It is not something that is easily hacked when you have a walled garden approach and something that's controlled with a local server. That's why we took that approach. Now, we can offer them a VPN if there is something that they want to do externally, but these systems were decided upon years ago and built with security in mind because we knew we were going to deploy in very sensitive commercial environments. And so not so much a concern. You don't need to pull our TV out and link up with some foreign server as you might with a laptop that you buy that demands updates. It's not anything like that because, of course, that would open us up to vulnerability. So we don't take that approach. It's typically a local server and there is the ability to do some control of the server if you want a VPN, but other than that, there is no access.  David: Do you touch on other areas of what we would know as digital signage within a medical facility?  Like I'm thinking of wayfinding, directories, donor recognition, video walls, and those sorts of things. Tom Mottlau: Absolutely. I mean, we see everything. Wayfinding needs have been for years and years now, and those are only expanding. and we start to see some that require outdoor displays for wave finding. So we do have solutions for that.  Beyond displays, we actually have robots now that we're testing in medical facilities and have had a couple of certifications on some of those. David: What would they do?  Tom Mottlau: Well, the robots would be used primarily to deliver some type of nonsensitive product. I know there's some work down the road, or let's just say there's some demand for medication delivery.  But obviously, LG's approach to any demand like that is to vet it out and make sure we're designing it properly. Then, we can make announcements later on about that type of stuff. For now, we're taking those same robots that we're currently using, say, in the hotel industry, and we're getting demand for that type of technology to be used in a medical facility.  David: So surgical masks or some sort of cleaning solutions or whatever that need to be brought up to a certain area, you could send in orderly, but staffing may be tight and so you get a robot to do it. Tom Mottlau: Absolutely. And that is a very liquid situation. There's a lot of focus and a lot of development. I'm sure there'll be a lot to announce on that front, but it's all very fluid, and it's all finding its way into that environment with our company.  All these future-forward needs, not only with the robots but EV chargers for the vast amount of electric vehicles, we find ourselves involved in discussions on all these fronts with our medical facilities these days.  David: It's interesting. Obviously, AI is going to have a role in all kinds of aspects of medical research and diagnosis and all those super important things.  But I suspect there's probably a role as well, right down at the lobby level of a hospital, where somebody comes in where English isn't their first language, and they need to find the oncology clinic or whatever, and there's no translator available. If you can use AI to guide them, that would be very helpful and powerful.  Tom Mottlau: Let me write that down as a product idea. Actually, AI is something that is discussed in the company, I would say, on a weekly basis, and again, I'm sure there'll be plenty to showcase in the future. But yes, I'd say we have a good head start in that area that we're exploring different use cases in the medical environment.  David: It's interesting. I write about digital signage every day and look at emerging markets, and I've been saying that healthcare seems like a greenfield opportunity for a lot of companies, but based on this conversation, I would say it is, and it isn't because if you are a more generalized digital signage software platform, yes, you could theoretically do a lot of what's required, but there's so much insight and experience and business ties that you really need to compete with these patient engagement providers, and I think it would be awfully tough for just a more generalized company to crack, wouldn't it?  Tom Mottlau: I believe so. I mean, we've seen many come and go. You know, we have certain terms internally, like the medicine show, Wizard of Oz. there's a lot out there; you really just have to vet them out to see who's legit and who isn't, and I'm sure there are some perfectly legitimate companies that we haven't worked with yet, probably in areas outside of patient education we, we have these discussions every week, and it's, it can be difficult because there are companies that you might not have heard of and you're always trying to assess, how valid is this? And, yeah, that's a tough one.  David: Last question. Is there a next big thing that you expect to emerge with patient engagement over the next couple of years, two-three years that you can talk about?  Tom Mottlau: You hit the nail on the head, AI. But you know, keep in mind that's something in relative terms. It has been relatively just the last few years, and it has been something that's come up a lot. It seems there's a five-year span where something is a focus going way back, it was going from analog to digital.  When I first came here, it was going from wood-clad CRT televisions to flat panels, and now we have OLED right in front of us. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of progression in this market. And I would say AI is one of them, and Telehealth is another; I guess we'll find out for sure which one sticks that always happens that way, but we don't ignore them.  David: Yeah, certainly, I think AI is one of those foundational things. It's kind of like networking. It's going to be fundamental. It's not a passing fancy or something that'll be used for five years and then move on to something else. Tom Mottlau: Yeah, true. But then again, also, it's kind of like when everybody was talking about, okay, we're not going to pull RF cable that went on for years and years because they were all going to pull CAT5, and then next thing, you know, they're saying, well, we have to go back and add CAT5 because they got ahead of themselves, right? So I think the challenge for any company is nobody wants to develop the next Betamax. Everybody wants to develop something that's going to be longstanding and useful, and so it's incumbent upon us to vet out those different solutions and actually see real practical ways of using it in the patient room and trusting our partners and watching them grow. A lot of times, they're the test beds, and so that's the benefit of our approach.  By providing that platform and supporting those partners, we get to see which tree is really going to take off.  David: Betamax, you just showed your age.  Tom Mottlau: Yes, sir. That made eight tracks, right?  David: For the kiddies listening, that's VCRs. All right. Thanks, Tom. That was terrific.  Tom Mottlau: Thank you very much, sir.  David: Nice to speak with you. 

This week on Bribe, Swindle, or Steal, we listen in on the lively presentation at the 2024 TRACE Forum featuring former enforcement officials, Charles Duross, Partner, Morrison Foerster, David Last, Partner, Cleary Gottlieb, and Mark Mendelsohn, Partner, Paul Weiss. Speaking with TRACE President, Alexandra Wrage, Chuck, David, and Mark discuss their time as Chiefs of the FCPA Unit and their experiences navigating heightened scrutiny and shifting resources, and then they offer their perspectives on what lies ahead.

Read on for today's agenda below prepared by David (thank you very much). - Retired US Diplomat to 5 different nations  David Hunter shares his knowledge, passion, interest, and experience.1)Israel Military Alleged to Have Branded Muslim With Star of David: Last week, Israeli troops captured a Muslim Palestinian named Arwa Sheikh Ali and beat him up. He was held several days in a police station and just released to 'house arrest' but has not been seen by physician yet. But he has a scar on his face that resembles the Jewish star of David. Was he branded?2)Can You Trust the 'Trust Companies' In Communist China? One very large Chinese 'Trust Company', Zhongrong International Trust Co, has since end of July missed making payments on twenty-two investment products it sold to investors. The company has $230 billion in real-estate backed funds, and finances Chinese real estate projects to make money to repay it's investors. Can Zhongrong repay it's debts?3)Khalid Sheikh Mohammed---The Man Who Time Forgot?: Khalid--- known as KSM ---was the chief planner of the notorious 9/11 Attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. He was captured hiding in Pakistan in 2006 and sent to Guantanamo Cuba where he has been held ever since. Seventeen years later, the US Government appears to be negotiating a 'plea deal' which would eliminate any death sentence for him if convicted. The 9/11 victim's families are outraged. What do you think?4)Pakistani Muslims Burned Churches in Lahore: In Lahore, one of Pakistan's oldest and largest cities, a group of Muslims have attacked Christian churches and Christian worshipers for alleged blasphemy. They claim pages of a Koran, the Muslim holy book, was torn up and tossed in the street. Police have now arrested two Christians for that crime. What is going on?

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Companies that specialize in deploying digital signage networks don't always get the kind of respect they deserve in this industry.  They can get called "hang and bang" guys, when in reality the job is complicated as hell. Getting digital signage networks properly installed and running across hundreds or even thousands of locations involves a LOT of project management and coordination, and a lot of vetting and training to ensure the techs who show up know the work, what to do and how to behave. Travis Peterson started Snap Install about 10 years ago, having learned his installation chops working in home AV systems. Those can be fun jobs - putting slick audio and video systems in the homes of stinkin' rich people - but to scale an installation business, you need high volume commercial work. Based in Minneapolis, Snap Install now has a big core staff and hundreds of trusted contractors around the US and Canada, who take on high volume digital signage deployments in venues like restaurants, retail and health care. We had a great chat about the challenges he always faces, and the bigger ones presented in the past year. We also get into where Snap starts and stops, and why his team does the stuff they're good at, and leaves things they probably could do to their partners. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT David: Travis, thanks for joining me. Can you tell me, because maybe not everybody knows what Snap Install is all about?  Travis Peterson: Yeah, thanks for having me, Dave. Snap Install. we're a nationwide service provider. We're located out of Maple Grove, Minnesota. For those of you not familiar with Minnesota, it started in the twin cities area, and we are a nationwide service provider of skilled labor. So in other words, we're brokers of services.  We have 54 employees at our corporate office and then 700+ contractors across the country that worked for us directly. Businesses and manufacturers hire Snap to provide installation service solutions really from coast to coast, so our job is: we represent our clients in a professional manner and follow up on the design scope of work to get the job done. Now that job could be a thousand plus site rollout across the country or one service call in a rural area.  David: Are you focused just on digital signage or is it one of many things that you do? Travis Peterson: Digital signage is the primary focus and represents the majority of our business. But we also have two other verticals that are defined. One is the healthcare industry and then another one is the relocation of executives across the country, their residential homes actually. David: Oh, really? Interesting. So what do you do with that?  Travis Peterson:  It's actually one of the main reasons the company got started. I was fresh out of college. In my second job, I was working for a company back just over 10 years ago and that company had a similar business model, but it was B2C compared to our business model B2B, and back then you go to Amazon, you could throw a TV in your cart and you could have added installation to it. The company I was working for, we would send the technician out to the home.  And I started a B2B platform there and worked with some relocation companies, and executives moving across, they got expensive equipment. We would dismount their equipment, movers pack it up, ship to the new house and then we'd reinstall it. As that company as much as I loved working there and really got my first taste of a small business, it's where I became addicted to the small business platform. I realized that as it became unethical, I had two choices. One: go to sell insurance like my dad and possibly golf, probably a lot more and have a lot more freedom and residual income coming in or start a business. And I decided to start a business and I went to one of our biggest clients at the time, as that business was falling apart and said, “Hey, if I started a company, would you follow me and be my first customer?” And he said, absolutely. We had a good working relationship. He knew that the company wasn't doing well and he asked me two questions. I'm 26 years old at this time. And he said, “Do you have any money, Travis?” And I think I might've had about $5,000 to my name and I said no, and he said, “do you have a business plan?” In my head, I was saying, what the hell is a business plan? I said, no. He said hop on a plane and fly out to Philly, let's talk. Did that and we put together Snap Install and the focus was primarily three things? We call them our three pillars. Our people, what I'm most proud of is our culture. Our partners, which are all of our customers, and then our technicians across the country. And with that focus on those three pillars, we've really over the last, it'll be 10 years here in September. We've seen success. And as I was stating the primary focus, the reason we started was the relocation and that's what his business, his other business does is they help relocate executives and we do that AV work for them. So as we succeeded with that, we branched off over the last 10 years into the healthcare facilities, into the digital signage world.  David: Yeah, I would imagine when you looked at digital signage and thought, “okay, the  one and two gig things with the executives is interesting, but if we want to scale, we've got to find something that offers scale and signage does that.” Travis Peterson: You nailed it. The onesie twosies are great, but when you get the thousand site rollouts, that's really our bread and butter and it's really where the company grew.  David: When companies describe themselves as service providers, I always push back on them and say, where do you start and where do you stop? What's the range of services and what's the stuff you don't do?  Travis Peterson: I think that's a great question and I think that question is just as important as what you do. One thing we are not is we don't provide system consulting or design. We don't provide any hardware or software and we also don't run a knocking system for system monitoring. Plenty of other companies do all that stuff and we don't, and we're also the type of service provider that some others aren't out there. We know when to say no. We know when to say that either when our partner isn't going to set us up for success or when it's just not in our specialty. Think high-level integrations. We have boots on the ground across the country. We have high-level technicians and we also just have warm bodies that sometimes just need to show up and swap out an HDMI or turn off a PC player to get a backup and running and all those skill sets. We aren't the type of company that's going to say, “Yes, we can do that.” We make sure that we can define it and follow through on the scope of work and then get the deliverables back to our customer and represent them in a professional manner as well.  David: There are some of your competitors who seem to be focused on specific areas. I don't rattle them off cause you don't need to know that or listeners don't need to know that, but maybe they are heavy on C-stores or maybe they're heavy on QSR. Do you have a vertical that you tend to focus on or is it more just what do you need to do and let's talk?  Travis Peterson: So our goal is to provide solutions to our partners and we're a vendor-neutral company. We have partners ranging from that focus on healthcare, that focus on QSR, that focus on kiosks, and what we try to do is really embed ourselves with our partners and make sure that we understand what their goals are and that we can deliver on the scope of work. So when we say “our focus”, we're in all of those. But our focus isn't on a specific vertical within digital signage. Our focus is on our partners and making sure that we can deliver on their needs and they range in so many different ways. If you asked me where the majority of our work comes in the digital signage, I'd say it'd be through healthcare and QSRs  David: Healthcare would be interesting right now. I'm guessing you haven't done a lot in the last 10 months?  Travis Peterson: For some, yes. And for some, no. It's changed, COVID has changed the way we've had to do business and as many people listening can probably attest to. For one, on the healthcare side is the clinics. What we've seen a big increase in is them utilizing digital signage more to educate their customers: A, for social distancing, maybe. B, for not having to while they're sitting in the waiting room, it's limited usage in the waiting room or whatnot. They're utilizing a lot of those things then all the way back to the doctor's office. Putting signs up in the office. So while they're waiting for the doctor, it's there too. So for some customers, you're absolutely right. We've seen a huge decline and then other businesses actually boomed since Q2.  David: Okay. So yeah, you wouldn't be going into primary care facilities like a hospital or something like that, but tons of clinics are still seeing patients and they need to communicate with?  Travis Peterson: Yeah, and now we have some of our customers, they're even working on medical carts that offer the vaccine that we're helping integrate and deploy at hospitals too. David: How would that work?  Travis Peterson: So the card is designed in different ways to ensure that it holds the vaccine and then it monitors, without getting into too many details, it's providing care for the customers as they come through with minimal contact, for the actual nurses or practitioners to the clients. David: Now you said that you don't have a knock, you don't do recurring managed services and things like that. Is that a headcount choice or complication choice, or is it that you don't want to compete with your partner?  Travis Peterson: More the latter. As being vendor-neutral, it's also very important that we aren't competing with our customers as well. We are about 98% labor and that 2% falls into on-site materials that we sometimes are forced to provide. But some of the recurring services that we have started dabbling into that have worked well for both our partners and ourselves is preventative maintenance type work, we call them health checks. You go out and you do a thousand site rollouts. That equipment needs to continue to function and function properly. And us providing maintenance on that regularly, where we show up just to check it and provide the right deliverables back to our customers. So they have that peace of mind as they charge their customers to ensure it's actually working is good too and a lot of companies are being audited on that type of stuff too lately. So we can help them be proactive on that and make sure we get ahead of the game instead of them having to pay maybe for a 90 minute response time when they call us and it's a fire truck having a roar out there as quick as possible to get a PC back up and running. We've seen some value in that. And also with COVID, a lot of systems are collecting dust over the last nine months and those systems are going to need to be powered back on and up and running here soon. And we've seen a majority of our partners already proactively planning to get us out there and get those up and running. So it really depends on the retail store or the location, allowing us to come in and do that. But we've seen a big uptick in that as of late.  David: When you describe partners, would they most typically be like CMS software companies or are they manufacturers as well?  Travis Peterson: A wide variety of all of them, some resellers as well.  David: And so for a reseller or a kind of a local solutions provider, if they get a big gig, they just know that they couldn't possibly do a four-state rollout or a nationwide rollout? Travis Peterson: Exactly. Or sometimes they might just want boots on the ground. It might be an integrator, and they're trying to do a very large project in a state that they aren't located in, and they're going to fly out one specialist, but then they want eight of our techs to show up and run wires, mount screens, check and actions and they're the guide on-site, where they direct other people around.  David: Digital signage is one of those things that goes from very simple stuff, like you could get a gig in a workplace where you're putting in meeting room displays or video conferencing displays, that kind of thing, but it can go all the way to the other end where you have a 300 foot LED video canopy. Do you cover the whole waterfront or is there a sweet spot for what you do?  Travis Peterson: That's a great question. And it ties back to my point of us being willing and able to say no when we need to. If we can generate a scope of work that can be consistent from coast to coast, that's where we succeed. And that scope of work needs to be done from any tech across the country. And as you can imagine, when you're dealing with 700 plus technicians, their skill sets have a wide variety of range. So some of those high-end projects, we absolutely do those. Sometimes it's only in specific Metro areas. We work with our partners, but getting back to figuring out what the partner needs and the systems they're trying to put together and have assembled, that's where we come back working with them and say, we can do this, or unfortunately we aren't the right partner for this, but if you can send your people out to do this portion, we're happy to do the mounting and other things along those lines to make sure that we're meeting each other's needs. But it does tie back to that say no when you need to say no, because, in our industry, it's funny, you think you'd be in a good spot as a business when your competitors don't do a good job. But unfortunately for us, it's completely the opposite. There have been some companies, service providers throughout the years in this industry that have really put a bad name on the nationwide service provider. And that doesn't help us. That actually hurts us when our partners, as we're trying to sell to them, they already lost that trust as a small business. For me, every client we get, we have to work so hard to get it. So it's so important to keep those. And from their perspective, when you hire a nationwide service provider and they worked so hard to sell that deal, and then their nationwide service provider screws it up, it's going to be a pretty hard sell for us to get that trust back from them and tell them that we're different than what they've already experienced. David: How important is aftercare because, in the olden times when I used to travel, I would go through airports and mass transit, terminals, and all that sort of thing. And I would see video walls and they were badly in native calibration and had been left way too long. But I get a sense that in a lot of cases you have customers who, or somebody has the customers who put these things in, and then they forget about them or they're there, but they don't worry about the colors drifting and all that sort of stuff.  Travis Peterson: It happens all the time. I've even been in airports where we've performed installations, say at a quick-service restaurant, I've actually gone back there and fixed some cable management ‘cause I walked by and was like, “God, we've done that.” But when you're at a retail store or anything, you have so many employees going around and things get touched, cable management falls because someone was messing with stuff and the calibrations off, cause it's been two years. So you nailed it on the head. It's a service we provide and we feel the ROI is there, but some people don't budget for it. And when they don't budget for it, it's hard to justify adding that cost because it isn't always cheap either. But the value is there and there's nothing worse from my perspective when you walk into a restaurant and three screens are working, one's off, or the cable management hanging, and I know I'm going to be biased and nitpicky when I see something small or maybe the average consumer might not be. But that value is there from our end. David: Even my local bank, outside of Halifax, I go in there, there's almost always one of the screens out and I've got to a point where I know the manager and I'll walk in and go, “that one's out again”, and we've actually gone behind the counter and monkeyed around to try to get things going again, even though he doesn't know who the service provider is, I know who it is, but I'm not going to call them or anything else. But like you say, you get nitpicky and you want to see it working properly.  Travis Peterson: Yeah. If you ever know it's Snap, you better call me Dave. Cause we'll get on and fix it.  David: You're probably not allowed in Canada right now.  Travis Peterson: It's true. We do have technicians in major Metro areas though. David: Oh, there you go. Aren't there tougher environments than other ones to do, like what are the hardest venues to do installs in?  Travis Peterson: Pre COVID or post-COVID? (Laughter) David: Let's talk both. Travis Peterson: Pre COVID, I think airports always take the cake. It's just, you gotta go through more security. You got a lot of people walking around there for it all the time. Also overnight work, after hours. So we are structured in-house at our corporate office, we have full-time nighttime employees that are doing the project management because we have enough work where we do a lot of overnight work, but that's where it's tough. So we have different tiers of our technicians. We have primaries, tier one, tier two, tier three. And our primaries, they're our bread and butter guys. They're from across the country. They live in a brief Snap Install. When we have nighttime work and we need to utilize them for that, then during the daytime, which is still a high priority of work, we gotta bring in the other crews and make sure that they're up to speed with handling that higher workload that was there for the primaries that are covering the nighttime or vice versa. So it's a challenge for us logistically in making sure no matter when the work comes across or where it is, we're providing that high level of service that we promised to our customers. But as far as physical locations, I would always, I think put airports at the top, but we do a lot of work in airports because when you walk through airports, there's a lot of screens everywhere. There's a lot of business to be had.  David: So I've written about this, that it's a bit of a blessing in disguise. If there's anything good that comes out of COVID and there's not very much at all is that a lot of projects that would normally have to be done overnight and normally done if they're done through the day with a whole bunch of hoarding and a whole bunch of disruption, those venues are mothballed right now and you can go in and start and stop a project, just work in the daytime for a week and you're done without ever having to be there at midnight.  Travis Peterson: It has been the one blessing that COVID has provided us is fewer consumers walking around and more daytime work. But the other problem that comes with that is a lot of people just cut their budgets immediately and said no more technology, digital signage spending. I always see not a lot of our partners take some hits there too. So as great as it is, we would take pre-COVID any day over post-COVID in regards to the number of projects that were being awarded. But a challenge for COVID too is with us is I had to take my network team and I actually add two people to it. And our network team is really the team that drives the compliance and relationships with our contractor’s and it became a full-time job for two employees just to manage the different state regulations, county regulations for our techs because we felt the need for communication needed to be at an all-time high for our network. But also we felt the need to educate them and make sure they were aware really from Q2 all the way to now, is we were trying to stay ahead of the game and let the technicians know that safety is number one and what their state was regulated on, what they could and couldn't do and make sure in some cases we were considered, I'm missing the word right now, but a needed service, where if a cop pulled some of our techs over, which was happening, we had a sheet that could provide them that they were essential workers, and it was needed. And we were providing that documentation because we were essential workers, we were in healthcare. We were doing the type of work that the States checked off and said, “You're good to go.”  So that became a full-time job and that became a challenge. And we were seeing us spending resources and money on things we never had to in the past and it was good. And as much as COVID has hurt many across the country and many businesses, I look at it as a blessing in disguise. In one way, if you look back a year from now, the Q1 of 2020, Snap was firing on all cylinders. We were chasing our tail in many ways and then COVID hit and it really slowed our business down, about 70% for a little bit. But it allowed me to take a step back and work with my leadership team and take one step back to take two steps forward. And we didn't let anyone go due to COVID. But now, since then we've brought on 14 new hires and our complete company is restructured in a way that we're built for growth. And I strongly believe that if that never happened, I wouldn't be in the spot where I'm at as growing through some of those challenges. And then also our company. I think we'd still be chasing our tails in a lot of ways, instead of being prepared for what's ahead now which we feel 2021 in digital signage is going to come back and it's going to come back roaring and we're excited about it.  David: Your business is one that relies heavily on human factors. You've got your 60 or so full-time employees, but I think you said 700 contractors or something like that. That's a lot of personalities scattered across the country and you have to stay on top of them all. You have to rely on them showing up, and then you've got by extension, and I remember this from my own time being VP Ops of a company and running another company that you could have the install techs there, but you're still on the phone yelling at an electrician who was supposed to be there at 11 and it was 12:30 and so how do you get past all that and have you learned a way to do it? Travis Peterson: Lots of gray hairs and probably die at a young age. (Laughter) No, you know what, our whole business is built of relationships and we don't have a product that flies off the walls that we can box up and ship out to our customers. Our product is technicians, it's humans and humans make mistakes. I make mistakes every day. And that's okay. One thing with our customers, it's a sales pitch. We don't lie to our prospects. We tell them, “Hey, there's going to be days that you don't like us, cause we're going to mess up,” and that's okay because what we can promise you is every time we mess up, we're going to do the right thing. And we're going to figure out a solution to have you have a happy customer. But I'd be lying if I said there weren't days I wanted to pull my hair out. One of the most frustrating parts about this business model is our 50+ employees in-house, we could work our asses off, check every box, make sure everything's perfect, and that technician who we've maybe never physically met that we're sending out to a site failed us, and sometimes that's on us because we don't do our checks and balances, but sometimes it might just because he or she's having a bad day. So things we do to prevent that is: in the last five years, we've completely invested into our network team that builds the relationships, holds our tech compliant, insurance all the county, whatever it may be. And then also we have reviews with them and they know how they're graded. So our technology and other investment, we've made every tech out in the field has an app on their phone. It's the Snap app and that's where they do all their work. It's where they accept their jobs, where we can see when they're completed with the job, all the deliverables come through, but then they also know their rating on a job and some businesses out there have some prospects or even clients to this day, they ask us, “Hey, your competitors say they have W2 technicians across the country, you guys have subs, why are they better or why are you better than them?” And I dunno if it's about who's better or not, but I'm a strong believer that the contractor model if used appropriately and is accountable, is stronger than the W2 model in some ways. And I tie that all back to competition with the W2 employee. They might get complacent. They might not care as much. They might call in sick or do something elsewhere with subcontractors, you actually have that competition level and if you're transparent with them and show them that other people in their areas are knocking on the door, looking for that work, it doesn't mean that we make them compete with each other and hold it there to their throat every day. We actually are all about building relationships. Long-term, we don't just throw it out to a marketplace and cross our fingers. Our techs work directly with us and we build those loyal relationships. But that competition aspect is, you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours. But at the same time, I need you to keep up that accountability because I hold myself accountable and I expect you to hold yourself accountable. As we're paying you for this work.  David: There are some, I'm aware of at least two matchmaker services out there, that kind of dating services for AV techs. You put in a need and different techs in that region can respond to it and bid on the deal. Are they competition or is that really a onesy twosy thing that you don't tend to play in very often?  Travis Peterson: Onesy twosy thing that we don't play in at all. Our value add, some of our technicians, they work for our competitors as well. And we're okay with that. We're transparent and saying, that's fine as long as when you're doing our work, you're putting our work first and actually it's a two-way street. A lot of them come back and say, gosh, we wish you had this work because you treat us way better because you pay us quicker because you do this, and this. And with the onesy twosy company is that is our value add is really the project management feature we offer in house with those 50 plus employees. If you call Snap as a client of ours, you're calling the same person and they know exactly what job that you're talking about. They can connect you with the right person. They can provide the tier one or tier two support service they need to, and that pays dividends for our customers because there's nothing worse than getting a call from your customer saying, “Hey, the TV just fell,” or “Hey, this didn't happen” instead of a call from us being proactive and saying, “Hey, this happened. If you want to reach out to your customer, that's fine but here's what we're doing about it to make it right and here's how we're going to make sure your customer has a smile on their face at the end”  David: Are the jobs getting more complicated because you now have a lot of direct view LED and a whole range of new products. In many cases, the cabinets have different shapes. The mounting systems are different. There's very little in the way of universal standards or anything else. So you go into a job and the techs have to crack the manual and everything. All of a sudden, look at the back and go, okay, this is yet a new wrinkle that we haven't seen before. Travis Peterson: They're definitely getting more complicated and a real man read manuals is what we tell our kids. There are lots of techs out there that will say, “I got this, I don't need to look at a manual as anyone that's an expert in their field.” But it's become clear as the complications get thrown, our way is we have to make sure the documentation is there. We have to make sure the expectations are the same from what we think our customers expect to what they actually expect of us and lay that out and in our technology having checkpoints. So as a technician goes through the job, that person has to actually check off the things they're doing to ensure that we're following it step by step. Because if you do the wild west, so you just say, hang it up there and let's just hope it's right. That's not going to work. There are steps you have to follow and we work with our partners to make sure that it's laid out and very clear so that it can be followed with a scope of work. David: Last question: is there a piece of advice that you provide to your partners and if you're exposed directly to your end-user customers, you try to get across to them to smooth out the job? Travis Peterson: Yes. Some of them let us be more involved than others, but for us, it's communication and getting us involved as quickly as possible. Not to give advice and tell you what's right or wrong, but we've seen a lot of things. We've been in business for almost 10 years now. It's not our first rodeo. We do this all day, every day. And what some customers might not realize is checking those boxes and having the checks and balances prior to deployment is so important. And in the end, it saves them a lot of money and we don't do it to rattle their cage and cause more issues. We do it to make sure we're being proactive before that deployment starts so they can save money in the end and we can avoid fewer trips. David: Do you have to try to convince them of the value of a preliminary site survey?  Travis Peterson: I think it depends on the stage of the relationship we're out with our customers for those the ones that we've been working with for a long time, they see the value, maybe they didn't at first and then we had to sell it to them and show them why now they know it's there, but it is something that can be challenging at times where that customer doesn't want to pay that small fee for the survey upfront and we allow them not to, but in the end, they paid triple what it would've cost because if they avoided a couple of things that they could have covered.  David: Yeah. They think it's a cash grab until I find out actually, no, we should have done it. Travis Peterson: Exactly and it's definitely not a cash grab for us. It's more of a break-even to cover our asses on some other things going forward.  David: All right, Travis, I appreciate you taking some time with me.  Travis Peterson: I appreciate that.  David: Thank you.  

In Episode 57 of the Hoopsfix Podcast, we sit down with BBL Commercial Director Bob Hope, who was instrumental of the forming of the league in 1987.Hope has been involved with basketball club and league administration/commercial since the 70s, and was one of the main drivers for the clubs breaking away from the federation to form the BBL in the late 80s.Since then, he has served as the commercial director of the league twice, been the UK rights holder for basketball producer Molten Sports and founded Bob Hope TV Productions Ltd to provide live tv coverage of the sport (as well as other minority sports).Hear from Bob on: How he first got into basketball as a youngster, making the switch from gymnastics His early days of getting into basketball administration with the Exhall Eagles in the Warwickshire league Founding and coaching the club Granwood (later Team Fiat and then Birmingham Bullets) and entering the National League in 1974) The inter-county tournament that used to run at Loughborough which was predominantly made up of National League clubs representing as counties The early signs of tensions between clubs and the federation - England Basketball - in the late 70s What happened at the 1979 England Basketball AGM where the clubs - led by Bob Hope and David Last - voted out Chair Ken Charles to be replaced with Harry Keats The negotiations that ensued and what happened for the BBL to be formed 8 years later with the clubs effectively breaking away Raising money and sponsorship for the 1980 and 1984 Olympic qualifying GB teams The formation of Basketball Marketing Ltd set up by England Basketball which Bob Hope became the Director of Sales andMarketing for as he retired from coaching How they could move over the sponsorship and TV contracts from Basketball Marketing Ltd to the BBL when the clubs broke away, with Hope joining the league in charge of commercial All the secretive meetings clubs were having as breaking away to form the BBL became a reality The differences between raising sponsorship in the early days of the BBL to now Forming Bob Hope TV Productions Ltd in 1988 to produce live basketball TV coverage for the likes of Channel 4, the BBC, ITV2 and Sky How he became the UK-rights holder for Molten Sports Re-joining the BBL in 2016 as Commercial Director after having been retired for 1 month Discovering the monetary value of the betting rights of the BBL - with over €16million (accidentally stated as €60million in the interview - 16million is the correct figure!) being betted on the league each year  How Premier League football is the biggest barrier to getting the BBL back on TV The issues the league is having with Keemotion and it not being up to broadcast standard at the moment How close the league is to signing a major commercial deal The importance of social media and digital for the BBL's growth and future sponsorship deals How COVID-19 has impacted the league and what it could mean for the future The growth of the league and aim to get to 16 franchises And much, much more!  The show has been approved on iTunes – find it here and please subscribe to automatically receive new episodes straight to your phone/computer/tablet – if you could give us a review/rating it would be much appreciated to help the podcast spread far and wide, meanwhile it is also on Spotify here, Overcast, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.You can support Hoopsfix's work in helping to grow British basketball on Patreon.

Enjoying the show? Please support BFF.FM with a donation. Playlist 1′00″ Algenüberzug by minae minae 7′15″ Sad Alron by Mark pritchard 9′30″ Broken Clouds by Gaussian curve 13′20″ southern by don't dj 16′25″ Terrazzo  (feat. Motion Graphics) by Visible Cloaks 21′00″ Fukiya   吹矢 by Meitei   冥丁 23′00″ Workaround One by beatrice dillon 24′00″ (Kinda On Some Funk Edit) by Brazilintime 24′50″ Slow Down by - 27′30″ Brown Bag by Luchbox 29′30″ 10101 by James Holden 33′20″ Gaswerksiedlung by Thomash,Ground 42′00″ barreras (powder remix) by iury lech 49′00″ where it falls by David Last 50′00″ suburban tribal by pavel milyakov 53′29″ Crime Jazz by - 56′00″ Empty Skies by Build Buildings 57′30″ tekuno by foodman 59′00″ yami nabe by foodman 60′20″ Beihelfer by Denzel + Huhn 64′00″ First Nations Drums Feat. Ahmed Sosso (Original Mix) by Fluida,Ahmed Sosso 68′00″ Dreamtime Lullaby by blue tech 74′00″ comos los cerdos by Drujm 78′30″ Monday Mellow by Juju & Jordash 81′00″ Waltz (A Lonely Crowd) by masayoshi fujita 82′30″ Cut Up Piano and Xylophone by Fridge 84′20″ anfuhrt by minaeminae 89′00″ Blue Deal by Minor Science 94′00″ live at google data center by sam kidel 98′00″ Gossip by Lyra Pramuk 101′00″ katharsis impossible by siriusmo 102′40″ pressurizor by badawi 107′20″ Jacob's House by Jab 111′40″ Leonids by fila brazilia

A skeptical journalist fights freezing temperatures alongside a fitness guru to test the limits of his own mortality. Read more about Scott’s adventures with Wim Hof and his ascent up Mt. Kilimanjaro in his book, “What Doesn't Kill Us." See what else Scott is up to on his website. Produced by Adizah Eghan, original score by David Last  Snap Classic: Season 8 - Episode 17  

For our eighth edition of the Equilibrisme Podcast Series, we proudly present Dr.Nojoke, with a rare vinyl set. Frank Bogdanowitz alias Dr. Nojoke is a producer and performer – his live sets continually bring new and unique sounds to the table, a combination of field-recordings, self-made sounds, and highly conceptual production that redefine the way we understand electronic music. A Berlin native and leader in directional minimal techno (or “clikno” as he describes it), Dr. Nojoke is a master of rethinking ordinary musicality and procuring new uses for the everyday. “Emma Robertson” CLIKNO Since 2005 Dr.Nojoke has been working on technoid sound-sculptures based on self-made field-recordings. He defines a deep, minimal, complex and groovy music, he calls Clikno. Always with an experimental approach in production Dr.Nojoke transforms acoustic sounds into highly technological music – reflecting the real world in an electronic sound. Dr.Nojoke has been releasing on a multitude of labels such as Pheek's imprint Archipel, Klangscheiben, Sleep is Commerical, Pluie/Noir, Destroy All Monsters, Goldmin Music, Minim.all, Autist, Resopal… In 2016 he founded his own music label CLIKNO, which started to put out vinyl editions in 2018. He did remixes for acts like Rosenstolz, Dinamoe (Rico Püstel), Pheek, David Last and D.Diggler as well as for the English Electro-poetress Caro Snatch, M_Ferri (alias Superlover), Sven Laux, Andrew Duke, Sebastian Albrecht, Andrés Marcos and got remixed by Cleymoore, Berk Offset, Marlene Magnoli, Alicia Hush, the Marx Trukker … In 2018 Dr.Nojoke launched CLIKNO as a vinyl-label for his own music productions. This beautiful mix was specially created for our record release party at Transit last December and re-imagined at home. We hope you enjoy! Thanks Dr.Nojoke , we love it! links: www.drnojoke.de http://www.clikno.com/

Iran has launched rocket attacks on two Iraqi bases housing US troops. The missile strikes came in retaliation to the US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Iran's supreme leader has said the missile attack was “not enough”. As tensions continue to rise between the two nations, The Leader podcast speaks to the Evening Standard's Defence editor Robert Fox. £1 million grant to cut school exclusions: To coincide with an in-depth investigation into secondary school exclusions, looking into the best way to improve grades and help curve sustained bad behaviour, the Evening Standard are launching a £1 million campaign to radically cut exclusions. Eliza Reberio founded the Lives not Knives campaign aimed at tackling youth crime and gang culture. Eliza was sent to a Pupil Refferal Unit when she was younger and tells The Leader podcast why teens are most likely behaving badly in school and why they need better support.Subscribe to find us from 4pm every week day.TRANSCRIPT:David Marsland Welcome to The Leader of the Evening Standard's daily news commentary and analysis podcast. We're here at 4pm, make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing. now, from the Evening Standard in London. This is The Leader.Hi, I'm David Marsland. Iran battered two US military bases in Iraq with at least 15 ballistic missiles, is war next?Robert Fox What the Iranians are fervently hoping for is a pause because the real unknown for them is Trump and Trumps total unpredictabilityDavid Marsland Our deffence editor Robert Fox as the Middle East and the world is waiting for the US to respond. Also,Eliza Reberio if this happened when they were eight, nine and 10, why are we then waiting for when they're 14/15 to be excluded from school for us to support them?David Marsland We talked to a young woman whose life was nearly ruined after being kicked out of school. As the Evening Standard launches a million pound campaign to cut exclusions.Taken from the Evening Standard editorial column This is The Leader, for the whole thing pick up the newspaper or head to standard.co.uk/comment. In a moment defence editor Robert Fox on the crisis in Iran...For half an hour from around 1030 at night Iran pounded two US bases in Iraq with ballistic missiles. Revenge said the country state TV for the White House ordered killing of General Qassem Soleimani. In Tehan crowds chanting God is great and death to America. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested Iran was just getting started. [Clip], David: Last night we slapped them, he said, and added these military actions are not enough for revenge.Boris Johnson Our most reasonable people would accept that the United States has a right to protect its bases and its personnel. In the House of Commons Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave her support to the US, but called for de escalation in the Middle East. And for all the Ayatollah's tough words, there are some who believe a targeted strike that appears to have killed new... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Blair asks David to make some predictions about the new year, and then they discuss some ways that businesses can prepare for and react to (God forbid) an economic downturn.   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, predict the future. Coming year, the year ahead ... It doesn't matter when people are listening to this or when we've recorded it, but in the year ahead is it going to be a year of abundance or is it batten the hatches, we've got trouble? DAVID C. BAKER: I think it'll probably be right in the middle. I think it'll be- BLAIR: Oh, come on. Make a guess. DAVID: Oh, no but that is a real prediction. BLAIR: Don't you love driving through these small towns and rural parts of whatever country and you see these fortune tellers that read the cards or whatever? And they're all in these shitty little offices. I'm just wondering, how does that work? DAVID: How come they're not in palaces? BLAIR: Yeah. Right. Or the 49th floor of some high rise condominium. DAVID: You talk with your clients, a lot of them every week, and I do as well, it'd be interesting to see what you're feeling right now. What they're feeling right now. My sense is that there's quite a bit of uncertainty, like the stock market wasn't great through last year, and unemployment is still low, and there's some political uncertainty. The world feels a little bit fragile. But really that's kind of in our heads. DAVID: The actual business results have been pretty good for almost everybody in the marketing field. There are a few isolated examples of firms that have struggled a lot. Often because they lost one big client or something like that. But it's generally, firms have been doing really well, and there's thinking okay, is this next year, is this year, 2019, going to be as good as last year? DAVID: I don't think it will be better. I don't think it will be a whole lot worse. I think we'll be lucky to have a similar year. But what do you think? BLAIR: For context, we're recording this on December 21st, 2018. So Happy Solstice by the way. So we're going into 2019 wondering how things are going to shake out. And the stock market, see I don't pay much attention to the stock market but I just noticed that all the gains for the year have been wiped out in the last few weeks. So the market is down. There is discussion within the broader financial markets about whether, or not we're headed for another 2008-ish crisis. There is the global political unrest and uncertainty. BLAIR: But in the face of all that, if you ask me to make a prediction of the year ahead ... this has nothing to do with reality, I realize as I was thinking about it. And only to do with whatever is going on inside of me. But I always believe my future is bigger than my past, to steal a phrase from Dan Sullivan, from Strategic Coach. So I'm an eternal optimist. BLAIR: Now it doesn't mean I think that the market conditions are going to improve next year. I actually don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about this. That's why I'm going to interview you on it. Because you've spent some time thinking about it. And this can't be right, but it's a great way to go through life. I actually think it really doesn't matter what the markets do. BLAIR: If I'm running a well run business, I will be able to survive anything. So, that's the way I think about. And then how I think about a bad year, looking back on it, might be entirely different. But I go into it with this, you might call it naiveté, around what's going to happen. But you should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Is that the saying? DAVID: Yeah. That's a really interesting perspective. And by the way, you are so messed up in the head. BLAIR: I know. I acknowledge that. DAVID: You think I wouldn't be surprised anymore by the stuff you say. BLAIR: What surprised you? DAVID: Well, you said something really powerful, that I don't want to pass up. I want to make sure that people don't miss it. And that's that from a personal performance, or a firm performance standpoint, next year will be better than last year. And that's separate than what the marketplace might bring us. I think that's really, really smart thinking. DAVID: I want to clarify having, in that broader context, that yeah, I absolutely believe that too. Every one of my clients is going to be running their business better in 2019 than they were in 2018. But what will the marketplace bring them? And I think that's just brilliant the way you just separated those two things. BLAIR: So I've spent a lot of time contemplating the question of, is there such thing as free will? Do we human beings have free will? Then one day I realized, you know what, it's kind of a stupid question. Because the answer is it doesn't matter. You should live your life like you have free will and you have total control. And I feel the same way about business. BLAIR: You should operate your business like you have complete control over what happens. Because I think in those moments when we feel helpless and out of control; and if we have a tendency to blame the market, really most of us we're running businesses that can survive a downturn in the market. If we're making correct and courageous decisions and preparing ourselves appropriately, it really doesn't matter what happens in the market. BLAIR: Now there are some exceptions to that. Maybe we'll get into that. Because some vertically specialized firms in particular are more susceptible to an economic downturn. Is that right? DAVID: Right. For sure. I think of this as ... so you, the people listening to this, are the captain of the ship. You're standing on the deck, and you can't control the winds that are going to come your way, but how far out should you look so that you can take corrective action if you see an iceberg coming. That's kind of your job as the captain. You can't just rail at the winds, assuming that you're going to change them. But you can get your crew ready. You can think about the decisions you need to make, as far in advance as possible. Think about the culture of the crew and all of those things. DAVID: So it's a unique balance that nobody else at the firm has to think like you do with a finger firmly on the immediate pulse, but also looking far ahead, and making those smart decisions that way. BLAIR: Okay. Let's begin by talking about those things that our listeners can do to prepare before a downturn even hits. So if you suspect, or if you're worried about the economic conditions in front of you, wherever you are in time, what are some of the things that you should do to prepare yourself? DAVID: Well, one of the things that you might do is think about, rather than building a much more expansive, slash expensive, amount of money going to people, you could give somebody a one time bonus, instead of building that amount into their usual salary. Because it's very difficult to take money away from somebody, so that would be one thing that you could do. I don't mean a Christmas bonus. I just mean, instead of an annual bonus, maybe you'd give them just a one time bonus, rather than raising their compensation. That'd be one thing to think about. DAVID: Obviously if you've been doing the opposite for a long time that's going to raise a few eyebrows, but it also might just be prudent thinking, and say, "Hey listen. You've kind of maxed out within the salary range that we set for your role. But you've been a fantastic employee. I don't want to build a whole lot of fixed, higher money going to salaries, but I do think you deserve something. So here it is." I think that might be the first thing you probably think about. BLAIR: I think that's a great way to phrase it. Because as you were describing it I was thinking, well how do you communicate this? So you communicate it by saying, "I want to acknowledge your good work." I guess this is my question. Would you acknowledge nervousness about the market? Because of the market et cetera, I don't want to build in higher, fixed salaries. Or would you always come back to, you've kind of maxed out in the salary band. Is it appropriate to communicate to your people, I'm doing this move because I'm concerned about the larger economic conditions? DAVID: Not unless not mentioning it would strike them as odd. So if they are feeling the same thing, because of what they're seeing in the news, and what you're talking about. And if you don't acknowledge that potential for something right around the corner then I think you're going to look kind of stupid. But if saying that feels more like an excuse to them, then I wouldn't say it. So just sort of acknowledge what is widely viewed in the marketplace. I think that's how I would view it. BLAIR: So preparation point number one is to consider bonusing people rather than building salary raises into fixed compensation. What else should people do to prepare? DAVID: I'm really just working down the income statement thinking about where most of the money goes. Right? And most of the money goes to people. Where does it go next? Well it used, and this is kind of changing a little bit, because of how expensive benefits are for people. But where it goes next is facilities. DAVID: So this is not the time to sign a 15 year lease. Right? It might be as long as you have some outs. And those outs are the ability to sublease to somebody else, or the ability to give them six or twelve months notice at any point in the lease, and walk away from it at that point. Or maybe if you're providing a personal guarantee for the entire term of the lease, that personal guarantee is capped at some certain amount. DAVID: So when you think about how you might need to adjust the size of your firm, other than people, facility is the next thing to think about. So just really careful about some of those long term decisions that you're making. BLAIR: Okay. That makes total sense. What else? DAVID: This is one I want to talk about together. And it's just this notion that lead generation, if done well, is this massive fly wheel. Where I grew up we had to supply our own electricity, and there's this diesel generator. I remember how slow that thing would start. You'd have to crank it over by hand and it would go ... little faster, faster. And then once you turned it off it would take forever to slow up. You could lose a hand if you put your hand in there too quickly. That to me is what lead generation is like. It takes so long to spin up. DAVID: So if you don't have your own lead generation plan well in place, before some sort of downturn hits, then you are screwed, my friend. Because it just takes so long. People are always asking me, after we fix positioning and lead generation at a firm, and you're doing the same kind of work as I am, well what results should I expect? How long should this take? And the answer isn't the same for everybody. But frequently it sounds something like this. "Well, if you do everything right, you should expect to land the first right fit client in about six months. And then about every three months you're going to land another one." And they look back at you thinking, that is not what I expected to here. DAVID: So you've got this downturn that hits and then you decide to get your act together. Sorry friends, it's too late. You know. What do you think about how long this kind of stuff takes to spin up? BLAIR: Well, and both of these issues, positioning, and lead gen in particular, they also affect how you see the new business position. So if you don't have the flywheel, the lead generation flywheel moving already, by creating content, building a reputation, et cetera, putting stuff out there that positions you and drives inbound inquiries. If that's not happening and then you hit an economic downturn ... and let's say you've got the new business seat is empty, and you decide oh we need new business, we have to fill it. You're going to look at the new business seat as you want to feel it with somebody who does lead generation the old fashioned way. The outreach, the cold outreach way. BLAIR: And when times are good and your lead generation flywheel, to continue the metaphor, is turning with little effort, then most small to midsize independent firms, probably don't need a business development person who is its salesperson. They need somebody who is actually good at navigating a sale to a close. BLAIR: Just very quickly, if you need your new business person to generate leads for you, rather than navigate the leads that marketing is generating for you, than you want somebody who has got a very high competitive drive. Who's rejection proof. Who goes, goes, goes. Who talks people into things. When leads are coming from marketing then you tend to think of a salesperson as somebody who is a little bit more patient and consultative, who's good at navigating. Is a little bit more discerning, so they have a lower competitive drive. And they're good at navigating opportunities through to a close. And in a lot of firms that can be the principal or another senior person. BLAIR: If your lead generation flywheel is turning you don't need that kind of old school typical new business person, who's out there smiling and dialing. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: But as soon as the downturn hurts and you realize that you haven't done the hard work on the lead generation flywheel issue, then you're going to panic, and you're going to go looking for a salesperson, lead generator, who's going to smile and dial and try to talk people into things. DAVID: I always picture those people driving a Taurus for some reason. BLAIR: Why? DAVID: I don't know. They drive 300 mile max trip and it's usually a dark colored Taurus, and they're wearing a polyester suit. Maybe I'm a little prejudiced about those sales people. BLAIR: Yeah. Maybe you are. DAVID: Yeah. Maybe. BLAIR: Okay. So we're talking about preparing for a downturn. You've talked about trying to keep your fixed comp lower by maybe bonusing people, rather than raises. You've talked about being careful about signing long term leases. You've talked about do your positioning and lead generation planning and work in advance, so that the flywheel is still spinning even in a down economic period. What else? Anything else on the preparation list? DAVID: Last thing maybe would be just to pay down as much as possible, the debt that you've already incurred from either ignoring operational issues that you should have solved in other ways, or maybe from the last downturn, or whatever. Get that off the books. Because when you are looking at reducing your monthly outlay there are some things that you simply can't touch. One of those is the debt. So if you have debt, still on the books, in a downturn, you have to cut the people side even deeper than you would have wanted to. You can't cut the facility. You can't cut the debt. So you have to cut the people side deeper. DAVID: So you really want to focus there, and in particular you want to focus on any debt that's personally guaranteed. Which for any smaller firm listening, almost all of it is. Even the credit cards. That would be like a term loan from a bank or a line of credit. Sometimes in the bigger firms, it's not. If there's a distinction there and some of the debt is personally guaranteed, and some isn't, then focus on the part that's personally guaranteed. So that if there's a really big disaster and we have to walk away from the firm you won't be as harmed personally outside of the corporation, that is the business. BLAIR: Yeah. This in a previous episode we talked about the idea of steady pressure and a pulse of something hitting. So the steady pressure in this case might be debt. You're carrying an unnecessarily high debt load, and then the pulse is rapid economic downturn. You've talked before about how ... I don't know if you abhor debt, but you can correct me if that's wrong. I think you've got a great line about how debt covers up some other issues. Right? It hides things. Is that right? DAVID: Right. Right. Debt is okay in some cases. I personally hate it for anything except for appreciating assets. But where I particularly hate it is where it's just covering up sins that need to be solved in other ways. Whatever the reason for the debt that's on the books, get rid of it as much as you can before a downturn. Then of course if the downturn does hit you could borrow again. I don't think you should. You could borrow again. But mainly it's about giving yourself the flexibility of not cutting more people than you would have otherwise done. BLAIR: Yeah. If you're carrying a lot of debt in good economic downturns, the likelihood of you surviving an economic downturn is not good.   BLAIR: So let's move from how to prepare to how to react. So let's say, God forbid, the market keeps dropping. Other things happen. And we get something close to what happened in 2008, and a big part of the economy kind of takes a big hit. Or freezes outright for a little while. I think you're a big proponent of having a plan. Right? Essentially having a plan, in writing, that you enact at the appropriate time. Is that fair? DAVID: Yeah. Because it's very emotional when it hits. So whether it affected the world around you, and you weren't being singled out, or whether it was just you losing a big client. Whenever that happens it tends to freeze you. It's emotional. You don't know exactly what to do and the best way to prepare for that, I found, is for you as a management team to get together before it happens, and put two plans together. One is the adjustment plan. One is the survival plan. And you put it in a folder. I mean, maybe it's not really a physical folder, where somebody could find it. Maybe it's just in a folder on your computer, or whatever. You just pull that plan out. It will still need to be modified a little bit. But it's a fantastic starting place. DAVID: The adjustment plan would say, "Okay. We probably need to get rid of this one administrative person. We're going to need to slim down and have two fewer account people. Whatever." Then the survival plan is much deeper than that. "We are going to sublease half of our facility. We are going to stop our cooperation with this other firm that we've been doing. We are going to put off this particular purchase. We are going to draw down our line of credit, up to this amount but not a penny beyond that. I am going to cut my salary." Whatever all of those things are. You just pull out the appropriate plan. The adjustment plan or the survival plan, and then you put it into place. DAVID: If you haven't done that then you're typically going to lose two or three weeks worth of very valuable time in reacting the way you probably should. BLAIR: Okay. So I'm imagining, it's a little bit of war planning or just scenario planning. You have these two folders. Here's what's going to happen when things go bad. But I also imagine that that subjective measure of when things go bad, changes as things are going bad. So you probably should have some objective measure that says, when this happens or when revenue or AGI per FTE, or when this client leaves. Or a client of a certain size leaves, or whatever. Is that what you're saying? And if so what would those objective measures be? DAVID: That isn't what I was saying but I really like adding that. Because otherwise, you just don't know when ... so if we were part of the military planning in the U.S., we might say, "Okay if North Korea launches this missile, this is what we're going to do." That would be very easy to measure. But if we say, "Okay how do we measure our relations with that country getting worse, and so on." DAVID: So one of the things that I've seen some firms do is that when they add generous benefits ... so they say, "Okay we're going to pay for everybody's parking now." That makes sense. A lot of firms say that. But what they don't do is they say, "We're going to pay for everybody's parking now, because now our fee billings per full time equivalent employee are above X. And by the way, if they drop below X again, then we will no longer be able to do that." So they layer the generosity, and they tie those individual layers to specific performance metrics. DAVID: The ones that they would particularly pay attention to would typically be the fee billings per full time equivalent employee. Or it could be net profit. That net profit frequently would need to be indexed so that if the principal pays themselves less money to help get through a downturn, we recognize that. And say, "The net profit lower would be a whole lot lower if I hadn't lowered my compensation." So, that's what I mean by indexing that. DAVID: But I like that. So we're going to go to this folder if we lose this client. Any client that represents more than 25% of our billings. Or we're just going to go to this folder if we have two quarters in a row with less than five percent net profit. Or something like that. That's how I would think about it. BLAIR: So I think our listeners need to go out and buy one orange folder and one red folder. DAVID: One red folder. Right. BLAIR: Okay. What else should we be thinking about in terms of our reaction plan? DAVID: You know when you work with a firm, and I work with a firm, and we're sitting there looking at their situation for the first time, it's really obvious to both of us that the roots of what they're struggling with came about many years ago, or many months ago. Then you stop and say, "How did that happen? What led to that?" And frequently it's when they began to chase cash instead of chasing profit. DAVID: So they had these people that were working for them. They didn't want to lay them off. So they said, "Okay I know this is not an ideal client but at least it's something for them to do. We're not going to make a lot of money, but we'll make more money than if we didn't take work for them." And that's fine if you want to do it. But what you don't want to do is lie to yourself here and say, "And then when things get better we'll convert them into the good client that we had hoped they would be at the first." That is simply not going to happen. It's very unlikely that that's going to happen. DAVID: What you want to do is not necessarily, you wouldn't be able to drop this edict on yourself and say we're just never going to chase cash. We're really going to chase profit only. That's probably unrealistic. But at least be honest with yourself and say, "We are going to take this client. We're not going to make much money. But at least it's going to cover our overhead. We know that as soon as we are able to we are going to replace them with a client that will deliver profit to us." So just being honest at the very beginning and recognizing when the switch in your head flips, and you chase cash instead of chasing profit. BLAIR: That's a really important point. And you wrote something years ago, and I quoted you again within the last two weeks on the subject. I think the article was titled, it wasn't the title it was the point of it. Most cashflow problems are profitability problems. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: And somebody said to me the other day, "Oh yeah, we're going to do X. It's just an issue of cashflow." And I probed deeper into that to try to determine whether it was a cashflow problem or a profitability problem. But the interesting idea there is some people know it's a profitability problem. We're just not getting validation from the market that what we do is actually worth something. And others are somewhat delusional about it. So they might know it and they might be spinning a story to you. Others might be spinning a story to themselves. BLAIR: So you're saying, be honest with yourself. First of all. About whether or not we're talking about cashflow or profitability. But in this specific situation, I really like how you said it, it's unrealistic to say never take something for the cash. Because there are times when you've got good people sitting there with nothing to do, and along comes a project that isn't profitable, and you think, 'yeah, what's the harm. It will keep them busy. Maybe they'll enjoy it. There's no profit in it for us but allows me to keep those resources around.' So you're saying that perfectly valid. Just be honest with yourself, and maybe your teammates or your leadership team about what you're doing. DAVID: Yeah. Exactly. And when you mask a problem and say it's cashflow, what you're really saying is this is a problem with my clients. If you said profit, that's really a problem with the way you're running the business. So it's easy to deflect some of the decisions you're making around that. DAVID: You know the other thing I would do too, working down this list, is just about, do you really want to continue this business? In the past it never seemed to be an option to just close the business because there was so much stigma attached to that. But I don't see that stigma in the marketplace anymore. I don't see the stigma of failure like I used to. In fact, I see more stigma associated with people who stick it out, and they really shouldn't. Instead the courageous decision is not to stick it out. The courageous decision is to just stop it. Right? DAVID: But you want to make that choice for yourself. Like every professional athlete, they want to chose when they stop. They don't want their contract to not get renewed, or get shuffled down to a minor league team or something. Just deciding, making a good decision, early on, and not just bleeding all of the money that you do have out to fix this thing that in the end never gets fixed. BLAIR: Now you work with about 50 firms a year. How many times a year are you advising your clients to shut their businesses down? DAVID: About, probably two a year. So four percent or so, of those firms. BLAIR: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What else is on the list of how to react to a downturn? DAVID: Maybe you need to get rid of that partner. Maybe this is the right time to do it. The firm will never be cheaper if you need to pay them out. This is going to be the cheapest you'll ever get it. That would be one way to look at it. BLAIR: So I'm imagining a firm of two partners, and both partners are listening individually, and they're both thinking, 'Yeah.' DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: I'm going to get rid of that other partner. DAVID: And they're trying not to flinch as they listen to betray what they just thought of. Yeah. BLAIR: Okay you're both in the car together. You're not making eye contact. This is getting really awkward. You better stop for coffee. Or switch to country music. DAVID: Surely it's not that bad. We don't have to go to country music. BLAIR: We can stop right now. We're done. This podcast will not get any better. DAVID: It probably won't. Why do you not get through a tough time, if you do have a partner? You would think that having a partner would make it easier to get through a good time. When in fact sometimes it's just that you're not on the same page. You're not pulling the oars in the same direction. I often think that, oh there's a great opportunity to adjust your partnership. Especially if this highlights how one of you is just not carrying your share of the weight. BLAIR: Insert awkward silence here. We just stirred up a whole hornets nest, didn't we? Anything else on your reaction list before we get to things that we don't dread about a downturn? DAVID: No, that's about it. Those are the big things. But if you get those you've covered almost all of it. BLAIR: Okay. So I'll just recap. So it happens, you've got to have two folders. One is like things are going bad and when things are really bad. You want to have objective measures where possible. You want to know who you're going to layoff because as you've pointed out, that's probably the easiest part of your overhead to deal with, is the personnel. Don't chase cash instead of profit. Unless you're honest with yourself about what it is that you're doing. Think about shutting it down if it's appropriate. If you're thinking of getting rid of your partner, now is a really good time to do it. Probably financially as well. Okay. BLAIR: So you and I have talked about this before, in private conversations. We have each talked about this from a stage, or written about it. But a downturn isn't all bad, is it? Why? Why isn't it bad? DAVID: No, and I'd want to hear what you have to say about this because you have a very strong evolutionary way of thinking about this. Right? BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: You see animals killed where you live and you realize it's a part of life. Maybe firms dying now and then is a part of life. It just sounds so cruel when we say it, right, but thinning the herd is okay. If maybe you don't survive, maybe you didn't deserve ... did I just say that? Maybe you don't deserve to survive right? BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: And if you do survive than tomorrow you're going to have fewer competitors. And it's kind of sad for them, but it's kind of a good time, too, right? Oh that just sounds so awful saying it. BLAIR: Well first let's put it in a larger context. Because I think for most of listeners here, let's just acknowledge, we're all very fortunate to be born when we're born and where we're born. And to be running businesses. And if our business fails what's the worst that's going to happen? If we've been successful entrepreneurs to a point, and our businesses fail, then we will regroup and we'll be fine. We will start another business, or we will go work for somebody else, and we will put those skills to bear. BLAIR: A small number of people, for whatever reason, whatever else they're dealing with in their lives, it's not going to be so easy. So let's just acknowledge that there's always some human suffering. But as we talked about in one of the podcasts a couple of episodes ago, the worst case scenario really, for most of us, isn't all that bad compared to most of the population on the planet. BLAIR: So with that greater context, the idea is that a downturn is like a disease running through an animal herd. It kind of kills the sick and the weak. And in some ways it's a horrible ... well it's a ruthless metaphor. It's not horrible. But in the end it makes the herd stronger. There have been times when I've heard you say, you know if you've opened a design firm in the last ten years, and you haven't made money, then you're an idiot. Because the economic times have been so good that all you had to do was- DAVID: Did I really say it like that? BLAIR: Yeah. Maybe on paraphrasing. But you've essentially said, times are so good that it's really hard not to make money. We have to make exceptions for the exceptional situations. Like when you're young, you're just starting out. You're highly leveraged debt wise. Taking all this risk when you're just starting out. I'm a big fan of those people. And other things, you care for a sick loved one, et cetera. There are all kinds of extenuating circumstances. But generally speaking there are some firms that continuing with the ruthlessness streak, that the world's just not going to miss. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: If they go out of business. Because the honest to God truth is they weren't creating value in ways that other firms, that may have been somewhat similar to theirs, were creating real value. So if you're not creating real value in the world, and an economic downturn hits and your firm gets wiped out, you can feel sorry. You can say, "Oh the odds were stacked against me." But statistically the odds are probably that your business isn't going to be missed. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: So what does that do to the profession? It makes it stronger. At least in theory it does, doesn't it? DAVID: It does. And even though it does sound callous I concur exactly with what you're saying. So if you are running a firm right now, and you know how well you're positioned, you've got this lead generation flywheel spinning. And you've got good people, and you don't have a lot of debt. What if next year is bad? In the world around you. What if the environment does take a turn for the worse? In some ways you ought to be rubbing your hands together, and saying, "Oh man. This is going to clear my head. I can't wait to make sharper decisions and to think more clearly about this. And to not tolerate some of the poorer performers that I have. And to use my time more wisely. It's okay." DAVID: So as we face some of the uncertainty that's coming up, I hope the people that get nervous are the ones who should get nervous. And they get off their asses and start fixing their lead generation problem, mainly. That's the big one. I know you've got some events coming up. I've got some events coming up. People need to take that sort of stuff seriously. Or if they just know what the answer is, then they just need to get off the couch and start doing things. Those are the people I want to hear this and just really implant this sense of excited, not urgency, but excited about the future. Excited about taking their firm a little bit more seriously. I think is a message we want for people. BLAIR: You wrote to me an economic downturn is like a breath of cold, fresh air, on a cold winter day, in the mountains. What the hell did you mean by that? DAVID: You just can't ignore it. You just climb out of the tent and ... oh my goodness. It opens up your lungs in a way that it doesn't. And you feel alive, like you're never going to feel alive in an apartment in a city somewhere. Right? BLAIR: Yeah. When I read that I thought some of us our wartime CEOs. When there isn't something wrong, when we're not under attack, by say a competitor or a larger economy, then we are not at our best. When you see threat on the horizon that's when, you know it's like that bracing cold air. It's like, all right. I recognize that in myself. I don't know if you see it in yourself. I recognize it in some of my clients. BLAIR: There's nothing like a little bit of threat to reinvigorate you about your business. And that's what I was when I read your line that an economic downturn is a breath of cold, fresh air, on a clod winter day, in the mountains. DAVID: Yeah. And I didn't mean that as a Hallmark card either. I meant it as a terrifying, sort of invigorating statement. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: This has been fun. BLAIR: It has been fun. So let's just leave our listeners with this. We hope an economic downturn is not in your immediate future, but if it is we'd like you to think about it, like a breath of cold, fresh air, on a cold winter day, in the mountains. Okay. Thank you David. DAVID: Thank you Blair.

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