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Saint Isaac for Syrian proves himself once more to be one of the most beautiful and poetic of teachers. He describes for us the nature of the human person and the fragmentation that has taken place because of sin. On the level of the flesh, the body has certain needs and will seek to satisfy them. Yet, sin often brings a disorder to this desire as well as a weakness of will.  In other words, we can begin to seek to satisfy the flesh in a sinful fashion and in a way contrary not only to Divine revelation but also to reason. The soul also is invested with its own particular nature that allows us to perceive the realities of the world around us and to understand them. This understanding, however, is not necessarily going to act in concert with the desires of the flesh. It is for this reason that we so often experience conflict within ourselves. We may see what is good and true and beautiful and yet by the weakness of our will embrace the opposite. Likewise, we may have the strength of will to embrace what is good and yet because of the darkness of our thoughts and our understanding we embrace that which does not conform to the truth or our real needs.  Due to our being in a constant state of receptivity through our senses, our thoughts can be shaped by the will of the flesh, the imagination from what we have seen or heard, our predisposition to think in a certain way where our minds are filled with inconsistencies and, finally, by the demons who wage war on us and seek to enliven the passions.  Purity of mind is to be rapt in things Divine and this comes about, Saint Isaac tells us, after a man has long practiced the virtues.  He warns us, however, that we cannot be so bold to think that we have achieved this without the experience of evil thoughts or that we are outside the reach of them while we are still in the body.  Again, Isaac is seeking to lay a foundation for us that allows us to see the inner workings of the mind and the heart. We must seek this purity of mind and struggle against the multitude of passions and the thoughts associated with them.  Isaac teaches us this not simply that we might understand it on an intellectual level, but that within it we might also find hope. The more clearly we see this the more freely we can pursue purity of mind. We can grow in our capacity to direct our thoughts to those things that are virtuous and create within the human heart a greater desire for God. It is from this vantage point that we can begin to see and enter the path that leads to purity of heart. --- 00:08:34 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 131, paragraph 15, first on page 00:14:49 Catherine Opie: Apologies what page are we on today? 00:14:59 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 131, paragraph 15, first on page 00:15:14 Catherine Opie: Reacted to "P. 131, paragraph 15..." with

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis (right belief and right practice) are intimately tied together. All of the fathers and, in particular, Saint Isaac the Syrian want us to understand that our perception of revelation, who God is to us and what we have become in his Son through the Paschal mystery, and how we live our life are inseparable. God has revealed himself to us in a unique and distinctive fashion, and has made known to us our dignity and destiny in Christ. Therefore, having a clear understanding of our human nature, the sickness of sin and the passions that follow and the healing that takes place through Grace is imperative. Isaac pushes us to understand that virtue is the natural health of the soul and the passions are an illness of the soul that follow and invade our nature and despoil its proper health. One can see how essential this is when looking at our life in this world and the struggles of the spiritual life. We can attribute sin and the hold that passions have upon us simply to human nature. However, when we do this, we lose sight of the fact that we have been created in the image and likeness of God and that sin is antecedent to that reality. We have been created for love and to manifest this love through virtue. A faulty or incomplete understanding of human anthropology and psychology, has often been the pretext that the Evil One uses to distort our vision to the point that we willingly embrace that which enslaves us.  To understand that we have been created good, conversely, establishes a firm desire within the human heart for that which is of God. It also establishes confidence and hope in the grace of God who tells us precisely that he has come not to judge the world but to save it!  One of the beautiful things that the desert fathers would have us understand is that Christ is the divine physician who has come to heal us. He is the Good Samaritan from the gospel who takes our burden upon himself in order that we might be nursed to the fullness of health.  Again, if Isaac makes us work to understand this, we must see it as a labor of love. To grasp these truths allows us to give free expression to our desire for God and to run towards Him with the freedom of those aided by His Grace. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:01:52 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 128 paragraph 6 00:10:40 Anthony: I just read that there is a "Holy Transfiguration East" in Burnsville, NC. 00:11:43 Anthony: Gotcha thanks 00:26:20 Joshua Sander: I've missed the last couple of weeks, and so you may have already explained this, but when Isaac uses the term "passions," what exactly does he mean? I've heard the term used roughly in the sense of "emotions" (i.e. anger, sadness, etc.), but does Isaac mean it more in the sense of "temptations"? I think you may have just explained this now, but in that case, could you briefly restate this? 00:30:04 Suzanne Romano: Does Isaac distinguish between original nature and fallen nature? 00:33:15 David: I found this helpful from Fr. Maximos- So, we have five stages in the evolution of a logismos,” he concluded, spreading out the five fingers of his right hand. “Assault, interaction, consent, captivity/defeat, and passion/obsession. These are more or less all the stages. While they use the same word in translation it helped me to realize the different stages in context. 00:37:23 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "I found this helpful..." with

Upon reading the beginning of this homily, one clearly gets the sense that Saint Isaac the Syrian wants our understanding of the spiritual life, who we are as human beings, and a relationship with God (who has created us in His image and likeness), to be set on a foundation that is unshakable. One must love Isaac for the effort! He is giving us eyes to see.  He began by presenting us with an image of a soul who truly abides in her nature, and so comes to penetrate into and understand the wisdom of God. Knowing nothing of the impediment of the passions, the soul is lifted up toward God and is astonished and struck with wonder. This is Isaac's starting point for a reason. He wants us to regain what over the course of time has been lost; that is, our perception the beauty and wonder of how God has created us and our natural capacity for love and virtue. Furthermore, it is not just about perception but the experience of being God bearers and temples of the Holy Spirit. It is about our deification.  What has distorted or understanding is the emergence of the passions and how we have come to view them. Isaac tells us categorically that the soul by nature is passionless. We are created in God‘s image and likeness and it is only the emergence of sin that has darken that which was created to be filled with light. Thus, when a soul is moved in a passionate way, she is outside her nature. The passions have the ability to move the soul after the fall. There's a radical communion between body and soul and with sin our experience of the world through the senses and in our desires and appetites become distorted. The break of communion with God leads to an internal break within us as human beings; a fragmentation on the deepest level of our existence. What is the nature of a soul created for communion when it pursues autonomy from the one who created her in love? Is it not only the loss of unity with God but within ourselves and our capacity to experience and reflect our true dignity?  Saint Isaac makes us work in these paragraphs and grapple to understand what he's saying. Yet, it is a labor of love; for it is upon the foundation of this understanding of our nature that we will once again be able to see the wonder and beauty of how God has created us and experience the healing necessary to reflect this wondrous reality to the world. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:17:20 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 127, paragraph 1 00:31:07 Lindsey Funair: When I hear the memories of the soul grow old, it reminds me that the soul knows not ego or attachment, it remembers only what is worthy of taking to Paradise, only that that is in Love. That is all there is once the world and self-love and other things that are not Love, is filtered from our memory. 00:31:13 Anthony: It's important to say that Isaac was born into a time and geography of turmoil and he wasn't living in comfort locked away from the outside. 00:31:43 Maureen Cunningham: Washington Carfer 00:31:52 Maureen Cunningham: Carver 00:33:02 Troyce Garrett Quimpo: This sections reminds me of St John of the Cross's Purgative Way. 00:36:11 Anthony: George Washington Carver 00:36:20 Vanessa: famous Black inventer 00:40:08 Maureen Cunningham: Yes George Washington Carver thank you , a little book I read . A Man who talked to flowers. 00:40:34 Anthony: I think when Isaac refers to philosophers he might have in mind the humors that dominate a man or the astrologers who Forcast about a person. 00:42:08 Lindsey Funair: it helps me to think of passions in this sense of Maslow's entire hierarchy, those things which are necessary to life and living and connecting with others and doing good, but when focused on directly become a distraction from the humility and obedience which place us "in" our soul and in relative connection to God 00:42:08 Manuel: How this idea that the soul is passionless by nature fit in with the opening of the Philokalia “There is among the passions an anger of the intellect, and this anger is in accordance with nature. Without anger a man cannot attain purity”? 00:44:25 Vanessa: When I went to university, I always thought the academics disciplines were centered around "explaining the world without God." 00:44:51 Anthony: I wrote it 00:44:56 Kathy Locher: What in our nature would have made us susceptible to temptation. Especially, given that we were living in Eden in God's company? 00:45:31 Ryan N: Father what would your response be to those who emphasize the importance of the body because it is equally made in the image and likeness of God ( not just the soul) 00:46:35 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "What in our nature w..." with

What is it that forms and shapes us the most as human beings? What affects the way that we perceive reality and gives form to the thoughts that we have  throughout the course of a day? Do we have any awareness of an interior life or are we simply drawn along by the flow of external realities; demands, responsibilities or forms of entertainment?  According to the Fathers and Saint Isaac the Syrian, we are in a constant state of receptivity through our senses. Part of being a human being is that we see and perceive everything that is around us; all of which give rise to a multitude of thoughts, images and feelings. Our lack of awareness of reality and of the internal life and the effect that our thoughts have upon us means that we often allow or identity to be shaped by the changing tides of the times or the constant shifting of our emotions.  In so many ways, the Fathers were the first depth psychologists. Their movement to great solitude and the stillness of the desert allowed a greater awareness to emerge of what was going on internally. This of course didn't lead immediately to understanding or transformation. However, the awareness did allow them to begin to discern the source of their thoughts, what thoughts predominate, and where their thoughts were leading them.  Thoughts can be so strong and so deeply rooted that they become habitual - as well as the actions that follow from them. These habitual thoughts and actions the Fathers call “passions” and the passions as a whole are referred to as the “world”.  Our growing capacity to acknowledge the dominant passions and to struggle with them allows two things to begin to emerge: a good transformation of our way of life and a greater capacity to understand the nature of our thoughts. Simply put, one begins to be able to measure one's way of life by what arises from within.   In this Homily, Saint Isaac is setting the stage for guiding us along a path to spiritual healing and transformation in Christ. The fruit of the struggle promises wholeness, freedom, and the joy that our sin often prevents. When we are guided simply by our private judgment or by what satisfies our most basic needs, then our understanding of things becomes very insular and myopic and we lose sight of the dignity and destiny that is ours' in Christ.  The more that we desire the life and freedom that Isaac describes above the more discover that we need to have no fear of anything. One who has tasted the love and mercy of Christ also finds emerging within himself the courage of a lion. The fear of soul that once overshadowed him succumbs before this ever-present love like wax from the heat of a flame. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:08:36 Bob Čihák, AZ: Is this the book? Amazon has: The Secret Seminary: Prayer and the Study of Theology by Fr. Brendan Pelphrey  | Apr 28, 2012 00:16:08 Mary Clare Wax: It has all the bells and whistles! Love it 00:18:29 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 124, paragraph 14 00:19:08 Myles Davidson: Replying to "P. 124, paragraph 14" “Think to yourself…” 00:20:04 Suzanne Romano: Hey Studge! 00:20:29 Stephen Romano: Hey sis  :) 00:20:47 Suzanne Romano: Reacted to Hey sis  :) with "

Life in Christ is not an abstraction and the gospel is not simply a set of teachings or an ideology. It is clarion call to “Follow Me” from He who is the Lord of life and love. We are invited to participate in the mystery of Divine Life. Just as the fathers  tell us that we are to “become prayer” and not simply engage in a discipline, likewise, we must become Christ. We must put on Him mind and our hearts must be animated by His Spirit of love.  It is for this reason that Saint Isaac the Syrian places desire at the heart of the spiritual life. There is one path that lies ahead for us – we are to long for Christ and for the life of the kingdom. Anything else is reductive; shrinking the faith down to what is manageable and acceptable to our sensibilities and understanding. It is no longer faith but a simulation or as Christ would say “hypocrisy“.  The reality that Saint Isaac places before us is the need for the healing of the soul; afflicted by sin, we are dominated by the passion. Yet because we are made in the image and likeness of God we often unknowingly reach out to grasp what is greater than ourselves while neglecting purity of heart and the need for God‘s grace and mercy. Such a path only leads to greater darkness. Sin unaddressed, like illness undiagnosed only grows worse. We must seek the healing that comes through participation in the Paschal Mystery; that is, a dying and rising to new life in Christ. We must die to sin and self in order to have the purity of heart and the depth of faith that allows us to comprehend what is beyond the senses and reason.  Central to Saint Isaac's thought is the purification of the Nous, the eye of the soul. If neglected one simply becomes blind to the presence of God and his love. The words of Christ come to mind in this regard: “the eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is  bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” To neglect such a reality is like the man who shamelessly entered into the wedding feast with unclean garments. We seek to enter into the fullness of life and love while yet immersed in the mire of our sin and clinging to the things of the world. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:13:13 susan: wish I could be there  I am a piano teacher  lol 00:13:20 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 123, paragraph 11 00:27:04 Myles Davidson: Father, a week or so ago you mentioned private revelation, many of which seem to also fit into this category (ie. fantasies of the mind). There are a plethora of so-called seers around today, many of which have been shown to be fakes. How do the Orthodox deal with this phenomena? I've heard they have a policy of keeping private revelations as just that… private. What are your thoughts on this? 00:28:12 Anthony: If Christ on the criss is the Bridegroom,  then I can see a person who has desired impure thoughts is running to be like the Bridegroom but is not "ready" to be married. Although, the Gospel does tell us to take up the cross and follow Christ,  without reference to one's state of mind or holiness. 00:37:36 Ren Witter: In my notes from the last time we did Isaac, you said that this teaching is not harsh, but practical. Sin being understood as a sickness, a person who has not yet been purified through praxis simply would not have the strength to take up the cross in such a way as to ascend to theoria. Sounds a lot like the teaching on taking up fasting beyond your strength - you'll just end up worse off than you were before. 00:44:14 Joshua Sander: My apologies if you've already covered this or if Isaac is about to get to this and I'm getting ahead of him, but how does one discern that one's own "senses have found rest from their infirmity" and that he or she is ready for theoria, especially given that temptations and struggles against sin will always be with us while we are in the flesh? 00:47:00 Nypaver Clan: What page are we on? 00:47:07 Ren Witter: 124 00:53:46 Anthony: I suspect a lot of us seekers are like St Teresa d'Avila who suffer much from bad advice until we run into clearer presentations of faith, hope and love. 00:54:15 Catherine Opie: Replying to "I suspect a lot of u..." Definitely my path

The experience of reading Saint Isaac the Syrian is something like being caught up in a vortex; not a linear explanation of the spiritual life or spiritual practices, but rather being drawn by the Holy Spirit that blows wherever It wills. It is not as though Isaac's thought lacks cohesiveness, but rather he presents the life of faith and life in Christ to us as an artist painting with broad strokes. This is especially true in the first six homilies that speak of the discipline of virtue. Isaac seems to be more concerned about our breathing the same air as the Saints. He wants us to be swept up by our desire for God and in our gratitude for His love and mercy. Our life is not simply following a series of teachings or a moral code, but rather embodying very life of Christ. We are to love and console others as we have been loved and consoled by the Lord. If our spiritual disciplines do not remove the impediments to our capacity to be loved and to love others, then they are sorely lacking.  In every way, our lives should be a reflection of Christ and the manner that we walk along the path of our lives should be reflective of His mindset and desire. In other words, we should desire to do the will of God and to love Him above all things, including our own lives. We are to die to self and sin and have a willingness to trust in the Providence of God that leads our hearts to desire to take up the cross daily and follow him. We begin to see affliction as something that not only shapes are virtue and deepens our faith, but that is a participation in the reality of redemption. We are drawn into something that is Divine and Saint Isaac would not have us make it something common. The Cross will always be a stumbling block when gazed upon or experienced on a purely natural level. But for those who have faith, we begin to see and experience the sweetness of God's love and intimacy with him precisely through affliction. Isaac would have us know that joy in all of its fullness. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:10:51 Catherine Opie: Hi there, where are we in the text? 00:12:03 Lori Hatala: pg 122 Cover a sinner... 00:13:10 Catherine Opie: Reacted to "pg 122 Cover a sinne..." with

Saint Isaac the Syrian begins his teaching with a gentle reminder that liberation from material things, that is, our attachment to the things of this world and placing them above God, is a slow process that involves great toil. Yet, this is the common order of things. In our journey, we often have to break loose of the mooring of those things that prevent us from loving. And so Isaac teaches us that righteous activity involves comprehending what God has revealed to us and then embodying it through action - praxis. Even as we make gains our memory of past sins and failures often brings grief to the soul. We shouldn't be discouraged by this, St. Isaac tells us, but we must simply allow these recollections to lead us to greater repentance and gratitude for God‘s mercy. Yet all of this is but a prelude to Isaac asking us an important question: Do you desire to commune with God by perceiving the love and the mercy that He reveals not just with the mind or the senses but through faith and experience?  Do you desire God? Do you desire Love? If our answer to this question is “yes” then Isaac tells us we must pursue mercy: “For when something that is like unto God is found in you, then that holy beauty is depicted by Him.“ We begin to see and comprehend the mercy and love of God by loving as he loves; by going beyond the limitations and the confines of our own understanding.  Such spiritual unity once unsealed incessantly blazes in the heart with ardent longing. The soul‘s divine vision, Isaac tells us, unites one to God and the heart becomes awestruck; filled with wonder at what no eye has seen or mind could imagine outside of the grace of God. The path to divine love first begins by showing compassion in some proportion to the Father's perfection. As Christ tells us, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful“ The dignity and destiny that is ours, the life and love into which God draws us should be what we pursue the most in life. To desire God, to give free reign to an urgent longing for Him brings about our transformation. Desire is our path to the Kingdom within. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:15:08 Callie Eisenbrandt: I'll take your books Father!!

As one reads the thoughts of Saint Isaac the Syrian the experience is almost like that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Did our hearts not burn within us?” Isaac speaks to something so deep within the human heart that it ignites the very thing that he sets out to inflame: desire, wonder, awe at the love of God and the mystery of the Divine Life into which God invites us.  One of the great struggles that we have as Christians is that we approach the faith and the spiritual life in a common fashion.  In our reading of the Scriptures, we approach them in a reductive manner, dissecting the gospels; pulling out for ourselves bits of wisdom to help us get through life. Yet, Isaac understands that we cannot over-scrutinize the words that are written or spoken to us, but rather must immerse ourselves humbly in Divine Wisdom. Isaac tells us that those who are filled with grace are led by the light that is running between the lines. It is this humble and prayerful approach not only to the scriptures but to the faith as a whole that prevents the heart from being common and devoid of that holy power that “gives the heart a most sweet taste through perceptions that awe the soul.”  A soul that is filled with the spirit is going to run toward God, driven by an urgent longing for the fullness of life and love that He alone can satisfy. Not every soul is awakened to that sense of wonder yet it is the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, and the one thing necessary. May God fill our hearts with a holy desire. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:09:28 The Recovery Community Hub of PBC, Inc.: Hey everyone, in Christ, my name is Ian, I am only using my former workers Zoom platform 00:11:17 Myles Davidson: Pg. 116 “Just as the heaviness of weights…” 00:11:50 Vanessa: I'm in Ontario too. Blizzard is bad here. 00:12:18 Edward Kleinguetl: I lived in Toronto for a year! 00:12:46 Ben: Replying to "I lived in Toronto f..." I'm east of Ottawa. 00:14:16 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: When you desire to do something for the love of God, put death as the limit of your desire. In this way you will rise in actual deed to the level of martyrdom in struggling with every passion, suffering no harm from whatever you may meet within this limit, if you endure to the end and do not weaken.  ~ St Isaac the Syrian 00:20:34 Anthony: It appears Isaac uses "Liberty" of mind different than the Greek Fathers? 00:34:08 Ben: I remember reading "The Imitation of Christ" for the first time in my youth, and thinking, "Oh, boy, this totally demolishes everything we were ever taught about self-esteem!" 00:36:20 David: I am wondering if the Diatessaron which was the most common with Aramaic communities might have influenced idea of living the gospel instead of the legal way of the west? 00:38:06 David: St Emphrain wrote a discourse on that and I assume Issac was likely exposed where the separate gospels tend to compare and contrast and get far to analytical. 00:40:22 David: The other thing I find fascinating the Syrian fathers taught through poetry which moves emotions not just debates or arguments. 00:42:17 Anthony: Seeing the Word of God as the Divine Logos keeps us from the "fundamentalism" that makes categories of touchable and untouchable. 00:42:27 Jamie Hickman: Great podcast episode on the show Square Notes looking at Thomas Aquinas's poetry...too often he's only known by his Summas as though that's his only writing style 00:42:46 Jamie Hickman: hat tip to Fr. Innocent Smith, OP, for his contribution 00:43:11 Paisios: Next book/class should be Hymns on Paradise 00:44:14 Anthony: Reacted to Great podcast episod... with "❤️" 00:44:52 Paisios: yes 00:45:04 Zack Morgan: I feel like the over-scrupulous approach we are discussing works more towards an apologetic end than anything else.  We find it almost too easy to read the Gosepls and accept them in contrast to a world that wants to reject them, so we easily fall into the temptation to over-explain that which we have come to blieve by a gift of faith that is in contrast very simple. 00:50:04 Kate : Perhaps it is a lack of faith and trust in the grace of God and the workings of the Holy Spirit in the depths of the soul. 00:52:37 Jamie Hickman: In one of St Louis de Montfort's books on the Holy Rosary, he recounts that Our Lady apppeared to Saint Dominic and told him to preach a simple homily rather than the one he had prepared, which was super eloquent, because in his humility he would convert the souls in the church even though the academics wouldn't be impressed...apparently Our Lady told him to preach the same simple version repeatedly, which led many academics present to think less of him...I might have confused which Dominican, but I think it was Dominic and definitely it was a saint 00:52:40 Sr. Charista Maria: My experience in reading the desert Fathers has been that the purpose and heart of it all is an encouragement to strive to "become fire!" 00:56:53 lauren: Reacted to "My experience in rea…" with ❤️ 01:00:12 Elizabeth Richards: Reacted to "My experience in rea..." with ❤️ 01:06:37 David: "Virtue seen and lived inspires and virtue explained often makes others weary " was a saying of my grandfather. People were attracted to Christianity by seeing love among the followers not convincing arguments. My own path from being young and not sure of religion was seeing Christ along side me in my grandparents and parents living their faith in love and sacrifice. 01:11:20 Ben: I've thought of that... 01:12:18 Catherine Opie: ❤️

Again, already in these first paragraphs of Homily One what comes forward most powerfully in Saint Isaac‘s writing is that the ascetic life is driven by love and desire for God. More accurately, one might say that it is the soul's response to God‘s revelation of His love, mercy and compassion to us in His only begotten Son.  Therefore, Isaac can speak of things such as shame not in the sense of diminishing an individual's self-identity but rather as a veil protecting the mind and the heart for Christ alone. As one purifies the heart one begins to see with a greater clarity those things that can diminish one's capacity to love and to see that which is good in God and others. Thus, while shame mortifies us it also protects us from being led indiscriminately by our thoughts and desires.  One of the blessings that God has given to us in order to purify the heart is the scriptures. We are exhorted to have a fervent love of instruction; to fill the mind and the heart with the words and deeds of Christ. In doing so we create a new habit of mind that directs the soul toward God in such a way that we put behind us and even forget everything that is a distraction from this greater reality. We are surrounded by the noise of the world and in kind of thoughtless fashion we allow ourselves to be led away from what endures unto eternity or what is uplifting. However, when the mind is captivated by the divine word, it can be filled with such wonder that it becomes unaware of even thoughts that are associated with our basic human needs - when our last meal was or how the night has passed away so quickly. The ascetic life, therefore, is not about self perfection or endurance. Rather, it is a recognition of our identity in Christ. We are made in the image and likeness of God and by his grace and his redemptive love we are being drawn into the very life of the Holy Trinity. Isaac's homilies are an invitation to enter into the wondrous depths of God's love. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:14:37 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 115 paragraph 15 from start of homily 00:28:16 Jamie Hickman: Sorry, I had trouble with the keyboard...regarding the last paragraph that begins "Not he is chaste who...": just wanted to say that the saint we are reading would be guarding his own thoguhts, but I wonder: can we say confidently that he doesn't judge another? Instead, can we assume he regrets that another has fallen prey to evil one by not preserving his purity in thought, word, or action? My purpose: guarding our purity seems to include guarding us from judging others...something I struggle with for sure, shamefully! 00:30:53 Jamie Hickman: Thank you, Father

Holy inebriation! We are to become drunk with faith.  For those inebriated with alcohol there is often a loss of the capacity to think about things or see things clearly. For those inebriated with faith, there is a loss of sight of the things of this world and attraction to them because one's gaze is fixed upon the Beloved. Love alone draws the soul forward. Indeed, it is by the grace of God that we make that initial turn towards Him and so begin to see with a greater clarity the inconstancy that sin brings into our life and the healing, the hope, and the joy that faith alone provides.   Our senses and our natural faculties that we use constantly to perceive the world around us often become a source of distortion because of the weakening of our will and the darkening of our intellect. And even if these faculties should function perfectly, they still are incapable of comprehending God as he is in himself.   When faith begins to grow, we begin to see the presence of God in all things and his Providence acting on our behalf. Love, seeks union and communion and perfect Love is present in our lives in a transformative fashion. We need not fear affliction, poverty, or the hatred of others knowing that we are loved with a perfect love. We are never in isolation when we are in Christ through faith and the grace that he provides us. The inconstancy of sin is replaced with the stability and fearlessness of faith. The world can take everything from us, including our honor, and yet we find no loss in it. With St Paul we count all things as refuse in comparison to knowing Jesus Christ and him crucified. Isaac wants a to understand the need to be fully immersed in this love, to be inebriated by it and permeated by it so that it shapes our entire existence. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:02:32 Paisios: Baptismal. One moment I'll get headphones. 00:09:33 Una: I see we have a dog and cat in attendance tonight 00:09:45 Una: Very Franciscan 00:09:59 Una: Are they keen on Isaac? 00:14:26 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 114, # 7 00:16:53 Paisios: Reacted to "Are they keen on I..." with ❤️ 00:22:00 Eric Jobe: There is an emphasis here on “perception” (rgeshta), which he repeats, a perception of the power of faith versus the perception of visible matter. I think this keys into the notion of being drunk. When we are drunk, we lose perception. If we are drunk with faith, we lose perception of worldly things and become perceptive to spiritual things. 00:22:07 Una: How does this paragraph fit with the essence/energy ? 00:23:10 Una: Thank you 00:23:40 Jamie: Reacted to "There is an emphas..." with

It bears saying that we find ourselves upon a privileged path as we begin this new journey with Saint Isaac the Syrian. To have access to his writings and access to such a translation in the West is a recent phenomenon and one not to be taken lightly. Further it is often said that Isaac is the greatest of the Desert Fathers in that through his writings one can move from being a novice in the spiritual life to the heights of contemplation. Immediately, one discovers that Isaac is unique and distinctive in his manner of approaching the spiritual life. He appeals to our capacity in faith to comprehend divine love and what has been revealed to us through Christ. It is what we comprehend in faith that fills the heart with wonder; that we are embraced by a love that never ends and that only seeks to raise us up out of the darkness of sin to the fullness of light. Isaac understands that, made in the image and likeness of God, we are going to be driven by desire; that is, a sense of lack and incompleteness. God has made us for himself and we only find our identity and the fullness for which we long in him. Our struggle is our attachment to the things of this world, including our own ego – the self. There are so many things that vie for our attention that the “one thing necessary” is often pushed out to the margins of our life or out of mind altogether. The love out of which we have been created and the lavish love through which we have been redeemed is often supplanted by that which eventually turns to dust. Our awareness of this should produce within us a fear that creates a movement toward God. Repentance is simply or acting on that awareness; turning away from our sin and our attachment to the things of this world and opening ourselves up to the healing grace and mercy of God. It is for this reason that Isaac does not focus on the development of virtue and the overcoming of vice as others do. For ultimately, we are not seeking the perfection of natural virtue or even to exceed what we understand as the heights of virtue. Rather, we are to understand the ascetic life is radically tied to being “in Christ”. In other words, the radical transformation that takes place through the grace that we receive through baptism, the Eucharist, and through the gift of the Holy Spirit leads to our participation in the life of the Trinity. Deification is what has been promised to those of faith. It is divine humility, divine love, divine compassion, and divine vulnerability that we are to embody. This takes place not through raw grit but rather through abandonment to Christ in a spirit of humility. As we let go of the illusion of self identity, independent of Christ, the true self begins to emerge.  Thus if we take anything away from this evening's discussion and reflection it should be the sense of wonder and desire that Isaac seeks to cultivate within the human heart. Love alone endures and the desire it produces inflames the heart to pursue the Beloved and the Life of the Kingdom. --- Text of chat during the group:  00:15:34 Bob Cihak: Father's Substack comments are another blessing for me. The come by email to me, several times daily and are beautifully succinct, most of the time. 00:17:15 Sr. Mary Clare: Thank you, Father! 00:36:18 Ren Witter: Sr. Barbara - would you mind sending your question to the whole group in the chat so that the people reading/listening to the podcast know what you asked? (I think your question must have been sent directly to Fr. Charbel). 00:36:30 mflory: The whole first paragraph is a chain of practices/virtues: reflection on the “restitution” (providence/the second coming) leads to withdrawal from the world which leads to control of thoughts which leads to faith which leads to fear of God which leads to virtue. 00:36:33 Jamie: Reacted to "Sr. Barbara - woul..." with

We come to the end of this journey with St John Climacus knowing that it is also only the beginning. What joy has come through sitting at the feet of St. John for these few years and to be led along the path that brings us to Christ and the freedom to give ourselves in love and receive love.  In these final paragraphs about the qualities and the responsibilities of a spiritual elder, what shines forth most brightly is the absolute and complete love that the elder must have for those in his care. The love of Christ that burns within his heart must embrace and give warmth to all those he guides and be a true source of light for them. There are times where he may have to be strict and forceful yet the love dwells within his heart, like divine love, is curative not punitive. Divine love offers itself completely, lavishly, allowing itself to be broken and poured out for others. Thus, the elder must have ever before him those in his charge; so much so that purity of heart allows him to see their needs and suffering and compels him to come to their aid.  There will be many times when he must carry those in his charge to the Lord through his own example, his hidden sufferings and constant prayer. Like a parent, there will be moments when he must take them by the hand and guide them one step at a time along the narrow path that leads to the kingdom. Despite the fact that the kingdom of heaven dwells within us, the journey is often toilsome.  Left to ourselves, we may never find the narrow gate or enter.  The elder must be long suffering; that when the lack of dispassion in others pierces his heart like a sword his response is like the Divine Judge - restraining himself and looking at others only with compassion. He must be willing to receive and take up upon his shoulders of the burden of his office as Christ took upon himself the burden of the cross and he must not despise the wounds that may come through rejection and betrayal. The elder's love must run so deep that intuitively he knows the sufferings of those in his care even before they speak of them to him. Without hesitation and quickly, he seeks to apply the healing balm.  And perhaps most powerful and beautiful of all - - in the end, the elder must acknowledge that he must decrease in order that Christ might increase within his children's hearts. There will come a time when they no longer need human instruction because they have given their hearts to the Lord and are guided by His Spirit. Blessed are those who bring others to Christ and whose guidance passes on from generation to generation. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:12:41 Bob Cihak: P. 260, # 89 00:17:46 Anna Lalonde: It was a complete blessing the four months I was in religious life! Transformed my prayer life. 00:19:12 Joanne Martínez : Joanne Martínez here, just signed on 00:19:55 Bob Cihak: P. 260, # 89 00:20:13 Joanne Martínez : Reacted to "P. 260, # 89" with

I was struck this evening not only with the wisdom of St. John's counsel in regard to the care of souls, but also the beauty of the heart of the Shepherd that emerges as we read through the text. Only a heart that has been conformed to Christ and a life that in every way has become prophetic in the sense of bearing witness to the love, humility, and obedience of the kingdom can give itself over to the care of other souls. The role of an elder is not simply to instruct, reprove and guide but above all to love. His affection for those in his care as well as for all people must lead him to console others as he himself has been consoled. He approaches this reality not with a spirit of condescension but rather as one who has been humbled by life and his own poverty and lifted up by the mercy of Christ. It is a spirit of gratitude that leads him to enter into the struggle of others with a spirit of generosity. He feels no revulsion at the sight of sin or weakness. Rather, it draws his attention and draws forth from his heart, compassion and mercy.  One of the most striking things we considered this evening was the nature of obedience. St. John tells us that it is the very definition of obedience to be fearless and to have no anxiety about anything at all. The truly obedient heart of an elder can calmly guide, direct, and comfort others without saying a single word. It is this reality that we are to embody in our lives; whether priest, religious, married or single. The best and the beautiful are meant for all and that which comes to us from the hand of our Lord must be freely extended to others. Thus, to have the care of souls is part of the very nature of Christian life. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:08:38 Bob Cihak: P. 257, # 64 00:15:03 Wayne: The idea of repentance is the major focus of the Eastern practise. 00:21:51 Myles Davidson: "Flee from discussions of dogma as from an unruly lion" St. Isaac the Syrian 00:23:43 Bob Cihak: Reacted to ""Flee from discussio..." with

The counsel and the guidance that St. John offers in this letter is unparalleled. His understanding of the role of the spiritual elder and the nature and manner of engaging those in his responsibility is deep and astute, both psychologically and spiritually. Yet what stands out the most in this letter is the dynamic that must exist between the spiritual elder and those in his care. The Abbot or the elder could never be described as an administrator or a master platoon leader in the military. Simply put, he is to be an embodiment of Christ to those in his care, being willing to lay down his life on their behalf. It is crucified love that saves and redeems us, and it is the same love that must guide the words and actions of one who has been given the responsibility for the care of others. What drives the heart of such an elder is the understanding of the care that he himself has been given, the consolation that God has offered to him. These realities move him to share what he himself has received an abundance. In fact to fail to do so is a reflection of a lack of charity as well as gratitude. By nature, a spiritual elder longs to help those in his care to avoid the pitfalls that the Evil One places before them in the spiritual life. He must be sensitive to the most subtle movements among the members of his community and the spirit that is manifesting itself among them.  Likewise, driven by love he must foster a sense of generosity between the members of the community and those in his care. He cannot allow himself the luxury of treating everyone the same - any more than a parent addresses the needs of their children in a mechanical fashion. St. John tells us “the overseers must heed to the sowing of the seed: to the season, person, quality, and quantity.” The elder must nurture and nourish as need demands. And finally, the one who does this in the fullest measure acts in a hidden fashion so that all glory and gratitude is directed toward God.  May God give us such faithful shepherds! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:10:09 Suzanne Romano: I just this minute received word that Bishop Richard Williamson passed away this evening. Please pray for his immortal soul. 00:10:54 Anna Lalonde: Are you moving there? 00:11:06 Anna Lalonde: In California 00:11:23 Anna Lalonde: Awesome 00:16:20 David: One thing I like about my Dad who keeps a saying from my Grandfather is when someone says thank you. He always says No thank God I am able. A small detail but I have come to appreciate it more with age and now do the same 00:23:04 Zachary Morgan: alhamdulilah! 00:39:34 Anthony: This relationship of shepherd to sheep reminds me of the "royal priesthood" described by St Ephrem in The Cave of Treasures.  Adam and his successor priest-kings on the mount of paradise took the care of all the faithful in their hands....until the numbers of faithful dwelling on the mountain dwindled, going into the plain and mingling with Cain's people.....and then God sent the Flood. 00:40:09 David: When I taught at a catholic school in Spain one of my mentors used to say there two types of teachers: One that seeks control and power and the other is one who learns more than the students about himself and faith. 00:51:50 Joseph Muir: For those who don't have the book, the two quotes at the end of the last paragraph come from the prophets Jeremiah and Obadiah, respectively 00:54:57 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "For those who don't ..." with

The deeper that we go into this letter, the more we begin to see the necessary qualities of an elder. In our society, we often value what seems to be productive. Yet what St. John emphasizes is the heart of the elder. One cannot offer care to another soul unless they have struggled long and hard with their own passions and are able to look at those who come to them through the lens of compassion, humility, and the love of Christ.  Repeatedly, we are shown the care that the elder must exhibit in his approach to those who come to him. He cannot be easily agitated when anger or hostility are directed toward him. Nor can he show disgust at the past or present behavior of another. He does not condescend, but rather makes himself the servant of one like himself – one who knows the deep wounds of sin; often wounds that are self inflicted.  Therefore, John tells us it is not right for a lion to pasture sheep, and it is not safe for a man who is still subject to the passions to rule over passionate men. One who does not seek to tend to the wounded, but rather to rule - one who does not seek to lead by example, but rather instruct with force - is going to be a gross distortion of the image of Christ. The elder must have the greatest sensitivity to the needs and the struggles of those who come to him, realizing that there is great variety and difference between individuals. Thus, an elder must be the most obedient and humble of souls; that is, he must have a refined ability to hear the truth, to hear the word of God spoken in his heart, and he must possess discernment that is born of humility. An elder can only see in others what he has contemplated in himself.  His awareness of the wounds that others bear only help him to understand that they are his responsibility. He approaches others not in a detached fashion, but as one who shares deeply in their sorrow and desires their healing as he desires his own. In this, St. John tells us Christ is the standard. The elder must receive all that is thrust upon him with the same selfless love that we witness on the cross. It is here that we begin to understand that John is not simply speaking about monks. He speaks to all of us and the necessity of taking Christ at his word; to love others as he has loved us, to be willing to lay down our lives for others, including those who treat us like enemies. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:09:11 Anna Lalonde: Pray because I was just anointed. Been not well since late Sept. 00:10:02 Janine: Yes Anna…I will pray for you! 00:10:09 Bob Cihak, AZ: Replying to "Pray because I was j..." Will do. God bless you. 00:10:50 Rebecca Thérèse: Reacted to "Pray because I was j..." with

One of the reasons that I've decided to prolong our study by reading this letter of St. John Climacus is that it speaks to our hearts about not only our interior life, the struggle with the passions and the growth of the virtues, but it also exhorts us - warning us that the care of others in love, our concern for their spiritual well-being trumps all things. In other words, our spiritual life cannot lead us to become self focused. Rather, it is meant to create hearts that are selfless and attentive to others and their needs.  What St John says about the care of souls and the responsibilities of spiritual elders he says to all of us. The consolation that we have received from Christ and the wisdom that he has bestowed upon us in our spiritual life and through experience is not our own possession. We seek to console as we have been consoled. We seek to protect as we have been protected by the grace of God and the guidance that we have received at the hands of others. The Church is not a business nor is it to function like one. We come to Church and receive the Sacrament not to “take something” for ourselves. We are drawn into the very life of the Holy Trinity and our “Amen” when receiving this gift means that we are saying “so be it” - let this be the reality in my life!  Like the good Shepherd, I will lay down my life for the good of others. We can never set aside our identity to fit in with society, any more than a spiritual elder can set aside his responsibility and his role of guiding and forming others. Therefore, this letter we are reading is not simply a pious exhortation but rather a call to revolution; that is, a call to radical repentance. We must turn to God in every way in order that by His grace we might love others as He has loved us. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:04:54 susan: asking prayers for my son peter and 16 week pregnant wife in la brea la below fires. 00:11:19 Rebecca Thérèse: Reacted to "asking prayers for m..." with

As one moves along through this text, one begins to understand that St. John Climacus is not only addressing elders but all those who have the care of souls. Fundamentally this is every Christian!There is no radical individualism in our faith, nor do we see ourselves disconnected from the sins of others and the burdens they bear. Love, compels us to be attentive to the other; not in a condescending fashion, but attending to them with the tenderness and compassion that we have received from Christ. Our Lord is the archetype for us and the consolation that we receive from his hand we are to offer to others freely. The fundamental virtues of an elder are humility and obedience; that is, truthful living and the capacity to listen. How can one serve others when there is any focus on the self or when they are still in the grip of the passions? There is  nothing so unseemly as an angry elder - one who looks at others with a harsh eye or is always quick to investigate trifling sins. The elder must be driven by love that makes him ever vigilant and watchful of those things that can be obstacles to the spiritual development of those in his care. He cannot be lax in fulfilling this responsibility or timid and cowardly in offering correction. He must be willing to offer counsel even when there is no thirst for understanding.  One begins to understand that such a responsibility is carried out with fear and trembling. The care of souls carries within it the Cross; it is crucified love that guides the elder and gives light to his path.  He is never a passive observer, but one who like Christ looks out and acknowledges the crowds as being sheep without a shepherd; in fact, as sheep already mauled by the wolves and in desperate need of healing. Thus, the capacity to care for others in this fashion is not something that can be set aside; nor can the abilities that God has given to an elder be buried in the ground with drawing down His wrath. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:09:34 Una: Does Father send out handouts in email? 00:10:08 Una: Could I get one at Una.McManus@gmail.com? 00:10:25 Adam Paige: https://mcusercontent.com/c38acab568d650f7ef65f39df/files/22eb6d8c-a2f9-1ed8-1270-b5bcd86c22f6/To_the_Shepherd.01.pdf 00:10:31 Una: Thank you 00:10:43 Adam Paige: Reacted to "Thank you" with

Sometimes during a group it is as if a light comes on that illuminates some aspect of life in a magnificent fashion and that speaks to each person in the group whatever their background or station in life. This was true in particular this evening as we continued to discuss St. John's writing “To the Shepherd” on the responsibilities of a spiritual elder. As we made our way through the text, it became clear that St. John's teaching about the care of souls applies to all of those who are responsible for the formation of others; not only priests or religious, but also parents, teachers, friends, etc.  Not one of us is free from the charge of the salvation of others; aiding them through our prayers, taking opportune moments to clarify their understanding of the faith, being living witnesses of the gospel and the love of the cross. All of us have the responsibility of seeking purity of heart and freedom from the passions in order that we might be able to discern with clarity and humility the needs of those around us. Lacking this, St. John tells us, we undermine our capacity to be well disposed and compassionate to each individual for whom we are responsible or who enters our life. How is it that we can serve others if we cannot discern good from evil and everything in between? In fact, St. John tells us it is a great disgrace for a superior to pray for or hold forward spiritual gifts to others that he himself is not acquired. How is it that he can faithfully guide others to God and to become partakers of the glory of God if he has no understanding of this within his own heart. Experience is the truest teacher and if the superior lacks that experience, he may only bring harm to others. Those who are spiritual elders, fathers, or mothers, must not be tempted to set aside this role in order to enjoy worldly friendship with those in their charge. It can be a natural thing to want companionship and to some extent this can exist. However, if a familiarity develops between the superior and others, he may lose the capacity to guide and feel constrained to do the bidding of others; never to contradict them, refuse them, or correct them. The elder must be pure of heart and able to understand the interior life and also the realities that sanctify us within the life of the church. The elder must be able to create a culture that forms a mind and heart directed toward God, the love of neighbor and the love of virtue. He must be able to discern the emotional capacity and maturity of others, so as not to push too hard and risk breaking their spirit or neglect giving counsel or correction of those who are quick witted and naturally gifted. Such purity of heart alone allows the elder to perceive supernatural realities and to understand the struggles that individuals have with multiple demons. The elder must be able to cure passions thought by others to be incurable. In this sense, he must have truly put on the mind of Christ and be the most humble and obedient member of the community. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:14:02 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 251, # 14   00:19:16 carol_000: Is much known about the repentance of Joseph's brothers or God chastising them for their treatment of Joseph   00:26:27 David: I think this is a big problem also in families. My oldest son felt I was often to hard on him. Now that he is 27 he has mentioned several times that I was the only one that loved him and was always there. It is really hard but being a father is different than being a friend only there to enjoy the good times and not try to guide someone to what has value.   00:28:48 Art: Reacted to "I think this is a bi..." with

We continued our reading and discussion of the treatment and cures that the spiritual father must understand for every malady that afflicts a person in the spiritual life. He must understand not only how to apply them but also the manner they are applied to each individual person with their unique needs. No person is the same and in the spiritual battle the elder must understand the subtle manifestations of spiritual illness and the manner in which various cures might be applied. One of the most striking aspects of tonight's discussion was on the capacity of the elder to be free from and endure nausea and to be able to untiringly strive to dispel the stench of vomit. Of course, St. John is speaking about sin itself and the willingness of the elder to enter into the darkness in which the other person finds himself; to descend into their hell and to endure the stench of sin itself. The capacity to do this comes through engaging in the spiritual battle throughout the course of one's life and attending in obedience to the counsel of one's own spiritual father. The lack of nausea and the ability to endure the stench of the vomit of sin comes from having long been immersed in it through one's own struggles. Compassion is born in a powerful way through the experience of common trials.  Beyond this, St. John tells that the shepherd must experience blessed dispassion. In other words, he must be free of the passions that would blind him and his ability to discern the particular needs of those in his care. This discernment allows the elder to illuminate the path that leads to repentance and so gives him the capacity to “resurrect every dead soul”. This is the identity that every Christian soul should seek to embrace. While it's true that not everyone is called to be a spiritual elder, every Christian by virtue of their baptism is called to the holiness described here and given the responsibility for the care of souls in their midst. We are responsible for the salvation and goodwill of those around us as much as we are responsible for our own. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:04:47 Anna Lalonde: Well my kids learned to walk up our hallway wall today so you up for that Father?

As we come to the end of the Ladder of Divine Ascent St. John unfolds for us the heights to which we are drawn – the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. Hope, often the most neglected of virtues, is the annulment of despair. It allows us to hold on to the promise of Christ to be with us always. Even when faith seems to fail us and all grows dark because of the cross that we carry, our hope in the Lord allows us to be consoled by his mercy and to be drawn forward. It protects us from despondency and doubt. Love when unimpeded allows us to see as God sees; to see the signs of the times and how things will unfold even when all seems chaotic. This divine love yields miracles; the supernatural healing and perfecting the natural. Through it we come to see the things of the kingdom with clarity. This clarity creates a fire within the heart; an urgent longing and thirst for the Lord that only he can quench. It is our movement into eternity. It reveals to us that the kingdom is now, heaven is now, eternity is now! We come to see that this love is not distant but that the kingdom dwells within.  St. John closes the step by calling out to Love Himself to satisfy his desire, to show him the path of the ascent that is most direct. For even though he had received this wisdom from others, St. John understands that it is only Love himself who can guide us. It is the experience of this love alone that moves us from words to reality. Finally, St. John exhorts us along with all those who read his book to ascend eagerly and to be resolved in their hearts to strive for the Lord above all things. He is our life, our salvation, our love! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:01:21 Bob Cihak, AZ: My microphone isn't working again but this is probably for the better, because I have a strong head cold with the virus also giving my voice into a gravelly inflection.   Doreen Stacy, our artist friend's funeral was yesterday. Preparations conflicted with our Monday meeting; I know I'm already excused but wanted to ask for prayers. Doreen only had 3 children but one of her daughters had 11. Who would have guessed that an English Professor could splendidly support a family that size?   00:08:21 Lori Hatala: https://gmail.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c38acab568d650f7ef65f39df&id=3f6ad96818&e=b6af48f1a0   00:12:25 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: What is the title of the St. Isaac book?   00:12:44 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 179, # I   00:14:52 Bob Cihak, AZ: Oops. Wrong book. Actually p.246, # 30 P. 179, # I   00:15:15 David: Sr. Barbara it is ISBN 978-0-943405-16-2 Holy Transfiguration Monastery my copy is 2011   00:26:39 Rebecca Thérèse: In what specifically are we supposed to hope? And what does lack of hope look like?   00:27:16 Lilly (Toronto, CA): “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” ...It's hard to surrender our weakness or sufferings, but it's in those darkest times that a simple Psalm will be enough to help us persevere   00:30:58 Myles Davidson: Replying to "What is the title of..."   The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian   00:32:31 Myles Davidson: Replying to "What is the title of..."   https://htmp.org/St-Isaac-Ascetical-Homilies/overview.html   00:58:14 Maureen Cunningham: Hound oh heaven   00:58:41 Joseph: “Love is the progress of eternity” echoes St. Gregory of Nyssa's notion of epektasis, the eternal ‘stretching and straining' of the soul toward God. Each step toward God is both a fulfillment and a new beginning. Our mystical ascent never truly comes to an end, the cup is never entirely full, our love reaches out to God for eternity.   00:59:54 Lilly (Toronto, CA): Who's the author of Flying over the abyss?   01:00:28 Dave Warner | AL: Flying over the Abyss: https://essexmonastery.com/bookshop/flying-over-the-abyss   01:01:26 Lilly (Toronto, CA): Thank you   01:01:41 Dave Warner | AL: Replying to "Who's the author of ..."   Archmandrite Zacharias Zacharou   01:02:18 Dave Warner | AL: Reacted to "Thank you" with

What do we live for? Or rather, better stated, Who do we live for? As we come to the end of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John speaks to us about the nature of Divine Love that is our destiny and dignity in Christ. We pursue the spiritual life for no abstract reason - not for moral perfection - not to satisfy a sense of religious duty. Nor are we driven by fear or anxiety as has sadly so often been the case.  It has always been Love that beckons us forward, that gradually heals the wounds of our sin or the traumas that we have borne. Anything that obstructs our vision of love and the mercy, God desires to overcome. God has created us for himself, made us in his own image and likeness precisely that we might share in the fullness of his life. The nature of love is curative not punitive.  St. John begins by speaking of those who keep in their imagination the face of the beloved and embrace it tenderly. This love often is so strong that it strips them even of the need for sleep or for food. The one who yearns for God says: “My soul thirsts for God, the mighty, the living God. The grace of this reality transforms nature to the point that even their countenance changes and is filled with the joy and the peace of the kingdom. Furthermore, the pure of heart, the one who loves without impediment, is the truth theologian and so grasp the very nature of the most holy trinity. Their heart transformed by love shows itself in their love of neighbor, their intolerance for slander or anything that might diminish the other. St. John also tells us that the power of love is in hope because by it we await the reward of love. Even when we cannot see, when we find ourselves wrapped in the darkness of the cross that we carry, it is in hope that we find rest and the reassurance of God‘s love for us . --- Text of chat during the group: 00:14:33 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 245, # 16   00:27:24 Jeff O.: Seems like Psalm 1, Jeremiah 17, the river of life flowing in and through us producing within us fruit no matter what   00:30:04 Anna Lalonde: Is that the fear of reverence and awe of God?   00:31:17 Cindy Moran: I remember in a worldly being a love sick teenager and could care less about eating   00:32:30 David: Are there different levels of fear? I remember when I was a child my sister and I used to say the worst punishment was seeing disappointment from our mother and father not any correction. I sometimes feel more like this than trying to reconcile a loving God who has done so much and fire and brimstrone.   00:34:48 Myles Davidson: I love St. Isaacs view of hell as the love of God that is painful to those who have rejected Him   00:43:17 David: I love the mass no matter what but I often find homilies downloaded from sites which feel detached, not from the heart. I find the priest who speak of personal experience or their struggles capture the parish more. It seems there are administrators and holy men but they are often not in balance.   00:47:57 Jeff O.: St. Maximos's “Questions 17-19” are great examples of examining the inner meaning of Scripture's ‘enigmas' with the fear of God (as he says). A higher reading, deeper reading - a mystical engagement with the Spirit that brings out the beautiful truths. He works out Exodus 4 with Moses and the angel threatening death into a beautiful way of describing the spiritual journey   00:48:54 Rebecca Therese: I heard someone say once that hell is a mercy for those who feel tortured by the vision of God.   00:50:19 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "I heard someone say ..." with

What does it mean to be drawn into the mystery of Divine Love? Even as beautifully as John writes, it is difficult to wrap our minds around the experience of the living God; the experience of a love that is free of every impediment and passion, a love that makes us sons and daughters of God and so shapes are identity in such a way that it is unshakable.  What is it that can overcome such a love? Our identity is often shaped by anxieties and fears, the unexpected and unknown, and our insecurities. Yet, as we are immersed in the love of God, all fear dissipates and is overtaken by an urgent longing for God and the thirst for his love.  We often resist opening ourselves up and becoming vulnerable to this love. One famous author wrote, “humankind can only bear so much reality.“ Yet the love of God, the more that it is experienced, allows us to run toward that reality rather than avoid it . It  reveals to us that even our weaknesses, the things that we perhaps hate about ourselves or the wounds that we bear, draw us toward him. Love reveals to us that we experience nothing in isolation. Christ is always present to us and within us. This being so allows us to offer Him all that we are without shame. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:06:36 Una: Byzantine Carmelite nuns https://www.byzantinediscalcedcarmelites.com/index.html   00:06:55 Una: In Sugarloaf, Pennsylvania   00:08:46 Bob Cihak, AZ: The author was one of the lecturers at Acton University when I attended over 10 years ago. "The Glory that is Pittsburgh" at  https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/the-glory-that-is-pittsburgh-5753572   00:12:33 Una: A line from that article that has me ROFL   00:12:35 Una: Pittsburgh is a town that makes me want to rhapsodize like a follower of Ayn Rand.   00:14:05 carol_000: Does this Zoom start a bit before 5:30 E Time ?   00:14:28 Una: Just chat before 5:30   00:15:10 carol_000: Una ..Thanks   00:16:00 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: Is it the same material as Father posts on FB?   00:16:01 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 244, #9   00:19:08 Daniel Allen: What page are we on again? Sorry I missed it.   00:19:16 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 244, #9   00:19:21 Daniel Allen: Thank you   00:46:02 Anthony: Part of the issue is how we receive the Gospel and Apocalypse....these are written with fearful language.   00:48:36 susan: some of the teaching seems so hard to do or embrace and seems like climbing Mt Everest lol so I have decided to become a micro ascetic  offer the smallest, micro offerings tiny tiny acts   00:50:21 Anthony: Should peter have been confident of forgiveness , even before the Lord forgave him?   00:51:12 David: Isn't there a process of letting go of things that leads us from obedience and caring to devotion. It seems love itself has stages and perhaps devotion is a joy in itself. But without letting go we lack faith and trust in the beloved.   01:04:11 David: My grandfather one time had me write down everything I was worried about for weeks. He kept it and showed it to me a year later and I realized how much time I wasted on that. While it took me years to understand it did help me move from belief to faith.   01:04:29 Daniel Allen: How do you give God “those things” in a concrete way? For instance how do you give God your anxiety in a concrete way, because sometimes offering it in prayer seems somewhat abstract.   01:05:19 Wayne: Reacted to "My grandfather one t..." with

We are brought to the denouement of the Ladder in these final steps on Dispassion and the “Trinity of Virtues” - Faith, Hope and Love. The words of St. John ring forth as if from the mouth of a poet. It is only one who has experience of and has seen the beauty of Divine love who can then speak of the urgent longing that begins to take over the soul when it no longer is held back by the weight of sin or one's ego. The dispassionate man, St. John tells us, no longer lives himself, but Christ lives in him. He has eyes only for the beloved and living in constant union with him.  All becomes Grace; Christ's virtue becomes our virtue, Christ's strength becomes our strength, Christ's love becomes our love.  Understanding this we must not allow anything to hold us back. Above all we should desire to enter into the bridal chamber; for this is exactly what Christ has made possible for us. Our relationship with God is often described with nuptial imagery; we are destined to become one with the most holy Trinity. What excuse could we possibly put forward for not at least seeking to break through the wall of our sin by embracing the forgiveness that is so freely offered? St. John's discussion of dispassion leads us to the final step of the Ladder. The theological virtues, named so because they have God as their end, become St. John's subject matter. These three are preeminent because they endure unto eternity. The greatest of them, love, allows no respite for the soul but drives her on with a kind of blessed madness. Overcome with an urgent longing for the Beloved it takes on a greater resemblance to God in so far as this is possible. The soul becomes inebriated - so often does it seek to satisfy its thirst for divine love. Having satisfied this desire the heart expands, taking on  distinctive properties where it becomes a fountain of faith, an abyss of patience and a sea of humility. What takes place then is extraordinary: love banishes every thought of evil or judgment. Only mercy, forgiveness and compassion remain. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:13:44 Myles Davidson: According to Wikipedia Scorcese is doing one on Moses the Black   00:14:08 Myles Davidson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Scorsese_Presents:_The_Saints   00:18:40 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 243, #13   00:37:15 Anthony: Renzo Allegri write a book: "Padre Pio Man of Hope." Good book.   00:39:32 Anthony: And this is why legalism and scrupulousity is such a problem. They strangle wonder and longing.   00:41:29 Anthony: Franciscans are  like the east   00:56:20 Anthony: Eastern Star   00:56:26 Leilani Nemeroff: Eastern Star   00:57:29 David: A book that really lead me to the fathers and from mere belief to faith was "What Difference Does Jesus Make"- Frank Sheed. Really hard to find not sure why this is not more popular.   00:59:25 carol_000: What time zone did this meeting start at 7:30   00:59:34 Nypaver Clan: EST   00:59:34 David: EST   00:59:48 carol_000: Thanks   01:00:09 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "Thanks" with

St. John understands that we are out of our depths whenever we try to capture with words what comes through experience. This is true in particular of the heights of prayer, contemplation, and with dispassion. John's language is poetic and thus a reflection of his straining to present us with the end of the spiritual life and what the heart longs for the most. In concluding his teachings on prayer, he warns us of certain pitfalls to avoid in order that our focus might remain upon Christ. Above all he does not want us to become discouraged by the attack of the evil one. Such a thing is to be expected. Prayer is so beautiful and transformative that the demons are going to do everything they can to disrupt it. Yet, John would have us understand that the demons are scourged by prayer and when we show fortitude they flee. Finally, he would have be confident in the practice of prayer. There is nothing that one can write in a book that is necessary when we have God himself as the Teacher of prayer. It is the Holy Spirit that searches the depths of God the guides us forward. Dispassion is even more difficult to capture with mere words for it describes one who has made his flesh incorruptible and has subdued all the senses; keeping his soul before the face of the Lord and always straining towards him. One is not only detached from the things of this world but has a gathered an exhaustible store of virtue as a source of strength. They are driven no longer by fear, but now only love; love that cannot be understood by mere reason. The soul is drawn forward by an urgent longing that belongs only to those who are created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, St. John sees dispassion as purity of heart; where a person has reached a level of existence where sin has no hold upon them and there is no longer even any awareness of the presence of demons. Such an individual is wholly united with God and always will be. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:24 Gregory Chura: Which step?   00:06:05 Bob Cihak, AZ: p. 240, #58   00:07:29 Myles Davidson: Can I ask what edition of The Ladder we are reading from?   00:08:08 Adam Paige: Paulist Press edition page 281

As St. John draws us more deeply into his understanding of prayer and the experience of intimacy with God, he begins to emphasize the importance of maintaining purity of heart and humility. Either through negligence or through demonic provocation, we can find ourselves being driven not by the Holy Spirit toward God but rather driven by the desires of the flesh. The vulnerability of prayer, opening our minds and our hearts to God, also carries with it the need to have established watchfulness of heart. If we have not we can indiscriminately open ourselves up to certain dangers. For example, we may allow our mind to wander during prayer in such a way that we turn away from God. It can even happen that in this turning away we are move towards the enemies of God. Like Judas we can share most intimately with the Lord at the table of the holy Eucharist and then immediately be driven out by an unholy spirit into the darkness. It is those who are closest to Christ who often betray him the most.  We all take certain things for granted. This is true in our relationship with God. We can treat that relationship cheaply; enter into it with a kind of familiarity to the point that we lose sight of the preciousness of what God has made possible for us. Our attachment to the things of this world or to individuals can fill our minds and our hearts even during the time of prayer. Therefore, John wants us to have no illusions about what it is that we ask for and seek in prayer. Our greatest desire should be what leads us to God and what endures unto eternity. As Saint James tell us: “we ask, but we do not receive because we ask wrongly.” We seek only the satisfy our natural wants and desires.  As it has been said, “The fool's portion is small in his eyes.” Often we do not see the beauty of what God offers us. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:12:58 Bob Cihak, AZ: P.239, #50   00:13:44 Tracey Fredman: Reacted to "P.239, #50" with

Joy! Suddenly, as we read through the Ladder of Dive Ascent every cross, every struggle in the spiritual life, while still present, begins to fade into the background. The costs involved in this struggle pales in comparison to the blessings and the fruits that God bestows upon us, especially prayer . St. John places before us the essentials of prayer - as well as what can undermine it. We continue to struggle to confine our thoughts and then to completely still the mind and the heart. When this takes place, prayer becomes perfection and rapture in the Lord.  This joy, however, especially among the anchorites is marked by humility. One does not expose the deepest elements of the most intimate relationship indiscriminately with others. In any case, it would be impossible to do so. As we are drawn along in faith, as we begin to encounter and experience God as he is in himself, words fail us. What we must do is hold on to what is precious. Imperfections and anxieties can pull us away from God and our trust in his love. Furthermore the evil one is ever set on disrupting that relationship. Plotting and conniving as he is, he will stir an emotion within our heart; or influence another to engage us in such a way so as to agitate or distract. But we must keep our eyes upon the Beloved.  St. John asks, “For what have I in heaven? Nothing. And what have I desired on earth beside Thee? Nothing, but to cling continually to Thee in prayer without distraction.”  Hearing these words, one can never look upon prayer simply as an activity or discipline. It is life. It is love. We are to become prayer. --- Text of chat during the group:  00:06:52 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 235, # 19   00:11:46 Myles Davidson: Greetings from New Zealand! (my apologies for turning up at the end of the last session… got the time zone conversion wrong). Anyway, delighted to be here. These discussions have been an immeasurable blessing to this baby Catholic. Thanking you profusely Father, and God bless you and your ministry!!   00:20:15 Myles Davidson: Do you have any tips for developing watchfulness of thoughts. Is this just a constant practice of mindfulness of thought?   00:29:37 Kate : What about the publication of saints' diaries or journals?  What would the Fathers say about this?   00:30:01 Anthony: Replying to "What about the publi..."     I love this question   00:30:36 iPhone: Can you explain vigils? Is it vespers and compline?   00:31:17 Rod Castillo: My Life in Christ by John of Kronstadt ????   00:32:42 Anthony: So the idea popular in "evangelicalism" (and now with Catholics and Orthodox) of a tell-all conversion story is not appropriate.   00:33:02 Jeff O.: Reacted to "So the idea popular ..." with

Reed Smith and its lawyers have used machine-assisted case preparation tools for many years (and it launched the Gravity Stack subsidiary) to apply legal technology that cuts costs, saves labor and extracts serious questions faster for senior lawyers to review. Partners David Cohen, Anthony Diana and Therese Craparo discuss how generative AI is creating powerful new options for legal teams using machine-assisted legal processes in case preparation and e-discovery. They discuss how the field of e-discovery, with the help of emerging AI systems, is becoming more widely accepted as a cost and quality improvement. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, and welcome to Tech Law Talks, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies Group. In each episode of this podcast, we will discuss cutting-edge issues on technology, data, and the law. We will provide practical observations on a wide variety of technology and data topics to give you quick and actionable tips to address the issues you are dealing with every day.  David: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Tech Law Talks and our new series on AI. Over the the coming months, we'll explore the key challenges and opportunities within the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Today, we're going to focus on AI in eDiscovery. My name is David Cohen, and I'm pleased to be joined today by my colleagues, Anthony, Diana, and Therese Craparo. I head up Reed Smith's Records & eDiscovery practice group, big practice group, 70 plus lawyers strong, and we're very excited to be moving into AI territory. And we've been using some AI tools and we're testing new ones. Therese, I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce yourself.  Therese: Sure. Thanks, Dave. Hi, my name is Therese Craparo. I am a partner in our Emerging Technologies Group here at Reed Smith. My practice focuses on eDiscovery, digital innovation, and data risk management. And And like all of us, seeing a significant uptick in the interest in using AI across industries and particularly in the legal industry. Anthony?  Anthony: Hello, this is Anthony Diana. I am a partner in the New York office, also part of the Emerging Technologies Group. And similarly, my practice focuses on digital transformation projects for large clients, particularly financial institutions. and also been dealing with e-discovery issues for more than 20 years, basically, as long as e-discovery has existed. I think all of us have on this call. So looking forward to talking about AI.  David: Thanks, Anthony. And my first question is, the field of e-discovery was one of the first to make practical use of AI in the form of predictive coding and document analytics. Predictive coding has now been around for more than two decades. So, Teresa and Anthony, how's that been working out?  Therese: You know, I think it's a dual answer, right? It's been working out incredibly well, and yet it's not used as much as it should be. I think that at this stage, the use of predictive coding and analytics in e-discovery is pretty standard, right? Right. As Dave, as you said, two decades ago, it was very controversial and there was a lot of debate and dispute about the appropriate use and the right controls and the like going on in the industry and a lot of discovery fights around that. But I think at this stage, we've really gotten to a point where this technology is, you know, well understood, used incredibly effectively to appropriately manage and streamline e-discovery and to improve on discovery processes and the like. I think it's far less controversial in terms of its use. And frankly, the e-discovery industry has done a really great job at promoting it and finding ways to use this advanced technology in litigation. I think that one of the challenges is that still is that while the lawyers who are using it are using it incredibly effectively, it's still not enough people that have adopted it. And I think there are still lawyers out there that haven't been using predictive coding or document analytics in ways that they could be using it to improve their own processes. I don't know, Anthony, what are your thoughts on that?  Anthony: Yeah, I mean, I think to reiterate this, I mean, the predictive coding that everyone's used to is it's machine learning, right? So it's AI, but it's machine learning. And I think it was particularly helpful just in terms of workflow and what we're trying to accomplish in eDiscovery when we're trying to produce relevant information. Information, machine learning made a lot of sense. And I think I was a big proponent of it. I think a lot of people are because it gave a lot of control. The big issue was it allowed, I would call, senior attorneys to have more control over what is relevant. So the whole idea is you would train the model with looking at relevant documents, and then you would have senior attorneys basically get involved and say, okay, what are the edge cases? It was the basic stuff was easy. You had the edge cases, you could have senior attorneys look at it, make that call, and then basically you would use the technology to use what I would say, whatever you're thinking in your brain, the senior attorney, that is now going to be used to help determine relevance. And you're not relying as much on the contract attorneys and the workflow. So it made a whole host of sense, frankly, from a risk perspective. I think one of the issues that we saw early on is everyone was saying it was going to save lots of money. Didn't really save a lot of money, right? Partly because the volumes went up too much, partly because, you know, the process, but from a risk perspective, I thought it was really good because I think you were getting better quality, which I think was one of the things that's most important, right? And I think this is going to be important as we start talking about AI generally is, and in terms of processes, it was a quality play, right? It was, this is better. It's a better process. It's better managing the risks than just having manual review. So that was the key to it, I think. As we talked about, there was lots of controversy about it. The controversy often stemmed from, I'll call it the validation. We had lots of attorneys saying, I want to see the validation set. They wanted to see how the model was trained. You have to give us all the documents and train. And I think generally that fell by the wayside. That really didn't really happen. One of the keys though, and I think this is also true for all AI, is the validation testing, which Teresa touched upon, that became critical. I think people realized that one of the things you had to do as you're training the model and you started seeing things, you would always do some sampling and do validation testing to see if the model was working correctly. And that validation testing was the defensibility that courts, I think, latched on on. And I think when we start talking about Gen AI, that's going to be one of the issues. People are comfortable with machine learning, understand the risks, understand, you know, one of the other big risks that we all saw as part of it was the data set would change, right? You have 10 custodians, you train the model, then you got another 10 custodians. Sometimes it didn't matter. Sometimes it really made a big difference and you had to retrain the model. So I think we're all comfortable with that. I think as Therese said, it's still not as prevalent as you would have imagined, given how effective it is, but it's partly because it's a lot of work, right? And often it's a lot of work by, I'll say, senior attorneys instead of developing it, when it's still a lot easier to say, let's just use search terms, negotiate it, and then throw a bunch of contract attorneys on it, and then do what you see. It works, but I think that's still one of the impediments of it actually being used as much as we thought.  Therese: And I think to pick up on what Anthony is saying, what I think is really important is we do have 20 years of experience using AI technology in the e-discovery industry. So much has been learned about how you use those models, the appropriate controls, how you get quality validation and the like. And I think that there's so much to use from that in the increasing use of AI in e-discovery, in the legal field in general, even across organizations. There's a lot of value to be had there of leveraging the lessons learned and applying them to the use of the emerging types of AI that we're seeing that I think we need to keep in mind and the legal field needs to keep in mind that we know how to use this and we know how to understand it. We know how to make it defensible. And I think as we move forward, those lessons are going to serve us really well in facilitating, you know, more advanced use of AI. So in thinking about how the changes may happen going forward, right, as we're looking forward, how do we think that generative AI based on large language models are going to change e-discovery in the future?  Anthony: I think there, in terms of how generative AI is going to work, I have my doubts, frankly, about how effective it's going to be. We all know that these large language models are basically based on billions, if not trillions of data points or whatever, but it's generic. It's all public information. That's how the model is based. One of the things that I want to see as people start using generative AI and seeing how it would work, is how is that going to play when we're talking about very, it's confidential information, like almost all of our clients that are dealing with e-discovery, all this stuff's confidential. It's not stuff that's public. So I understand the concept if you have a large language model that is billions and billions of data points or whatever is going to be exact, but it's a probability calculation, right? It's basically guessing what the next answer is going going to be, the next word is going to be based on this general population, not necessarily on some very esoteric area that you may be focused on for a particular case, right? So I think it remains to be seen of whether it's going to work. I think the other area where I have concerns, which I want to see, is the validation point. Like, how do we show it's defensible? If you're going in and telling a court, oh, I use Gen AI and ran the tool, here's the relevant stuff based on prompts, what does that mean? How are we going to validate that? I think that's going to be one of the keys is how do we come up with a validation methodology that will be defensible that people will be comfortable with? Again, I think intuitively machine learning was I'm training the model on what a person, a human being deemed is responsive. So that. Frankly, it's easier to argue to a court. It's easier to explain to a regulator. When you say, I came up with prompts based on the allegations of the complaint or whatever, it's a little bit more esoteric, and I think it's a little bit harder for someone to get their heads around. How do you know you're getting relevant information? So, I think there's some challenges there. I don't know how that's going to play out. I don't know, Dave, because I know you're testing a lot of these tools, what you're seeing in terms of how we think this is actually going to work in terms of using generative AI in these large language models and moving away from the machine learning.  David: Yeah, I agree with you on the to be determined part, but I think I come in a little bit more optimistic and part of it might be, you know, actually starting to use some of these tools. I think that predictive coding has really paved the way for these AI tools because what held up predictive coding to some extent was people weren't sure that courts were going to accept it. Until the first opinions came out, Judge Peck's decision and the Silvermore and subsequent case decisions, there was concern about that. But once that precedent came out, and it's important to emphasize that the precedent wasn't just approving predictive coding, it was approving technology-assisted review. And this generative AI is really just another form of technology-assisted review. And what it basically said is you have to show that it's valid. You have to do this validation testing. But the same validation testing that we've been doing to support predictive coding will work on the large language model generative AI-assisted coding. It's essentially you do the review and then you take a sample and you say, well, was this review done well? Did we hit a high accuracy level? The early testing we're doing is showing that we are hitting even better accuracy levels than with predictive coding alone. And I should say that it's even improved in the six months or so that we've been testing. The companies that are building the software are continuing to improve it. So I am optimistic in that sense. But many of these products are still in development. The pricing is still either high or to be announced in some cases. And it's not clear yet that it will be cost effective beyond current models of using human review and predictive coding and search terms. And they're not all mutually exclusive. I mean, I can see ultimately getting to a hybrid model where we still may start with search terms to cut down on volume and then may use some predictive coding and some human review and some generative AI. Ultimately, I think we'll get to the point where the price point comes down and it will make review better and cheaper. Right. But I also didn't want to mention, I see a couple other areas of application in eDiscovery as well. The generative AI is really good at summarizing single large documents or even groups of documents. It's also extremely helpful in more quickly identifying key documents. You can ask questions about a whole big document population and get answers. So I'm really excited to see this evolution. And I don't know when we're going to get there and what the price effectiveness point is going to be. But I would say that in the next year or two, we're going to start seeing it creep in and use more and more effectively, more and more cost effectively as we go forward.  Anthony: Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, I can see that even in terms of document review. If a human was looking at it, if AI is summarizing the document, you can make your relevance determination based on the summary. Again, we can all talk about whether it's appropriate or not, but that would probably help quite a bit. And I do think that's fascinating. I know another thing I hear is the privilege log stuff. And again, I think using AI, generative AI to draft privilege logs in concept sounds great because obviously it's a big costs factor and the like. But I think we've talked about this, Dave and Therese, like we already have, like there's already tools available, meaning you can negotiate metadata logs and some of these other things that cut the cost down. So I think it remains to be seen. Again, I think this is going to be like another arrow in your quiver, a tool to use, and you just have to figure out when you want to use it.  Therese: Yeah. And I think one of the things I think in not limiting ourselves to only thinking about, right, document review, where there's a lot of possibility with generative AI, right, witness kits, putting together witness outlines for depositions and the like, right? Not that we would ever just rely on that, but there's a huge opportunity there, I think, as a starting point, right? Just like if you're using it appropriately. And of course, today's point, the price point is reasonable, you can do initial research. There's a lot of things that I think that it can do in the discovery realm, even outside of just document review, that I think we should keep our minds open to because it's a way of giving us a quicker, getting to the base more quickly and more efficiently and frankly, more cost-effectively. And then you can take a look at that and the person and can augment that or build upon it to make sure it's accurate and it's appropriate for that particular litigation or that particular witness and the like. But I do think that Dave really hit the nail on the head. I don't think this is going to be, we're only going to be moving to generative AI and we're going to abandon other types of AI. There's reasons why there's different types of AI is because they do different things. And I think what we are most likely to see is a hybrid. Right. Right. Some tools being used for something, some tools being used for others. And I think eventually, as Dave already highlighted, the combination of the use of different types of AI in the e-discovery process and within the same tool to get to a better place. I think that's where we're most likely heading. And as Dave said, that's where a lot of the vendors are actually focusing is on adding into their workflow this additional AI to improve the process.  David: Yeah. And it's interesting that some of the early versions are not really replacing the human review. They are predicting where the human review is going to come out. So when the reviewer looks at the document, it already tells you what the software says. Is it relevant or not relevant? And it does go one step beyond. It's hard because it not only tells you the prediction of whether it's relevant or not, but it also gives you a reason. So it can accelerate the review and that can create great cost savings. But it's not just document review. Already, there's e-discovery tools out there that allow you to ask questions, query databases, but also build chronologies. And again, with that benefit, then referencing you to certain documents and in some cases having hyperlinks. So it'll tell you facts or it'll tell you answers to a question and it'll link back to the documents that support those answers. So I think there's great potential as this continues to grow and improve.  Anthony: Yeah. And I would say also, again, let's think about the whole EDRM model, right? Preservation. I mean, we'll see what enterprises do, but on the enterprise side, using AI bots and stuff like that for whether it's preservation, collection and stuff, it'll be very interesting to see if these tools can be used there to sort of automate some of the standard workflows before we get to the review and the like, but even on the enterprise side. The other thing that I think it will be interesting, and I think this is one of the areas where we still have not seen broad adoption, is on the privilege side. We know and we've done some analysis for clients where privilege or looking for highly sensitive documents and the like is still something that most lawyers aren't comfortable using. Using AI, don't know why I've done it and it worked effectively, but that is still an area where lawyers have been hesitant. And it'll be interesting to see if gender of AI and the tools there can help with privilege, right? Whether it's the privilege logs, whether it's identifying privilege documents. I think to your point, Dave, having the ability to say it's privileged and here's the reasons would be really helpful in doing privilege review. So it'll be interesting to see how AI works in that sphere as well, because it is an area where we haven't seen wide adoption of using predictive coding or TAR in terms of identifying privilege. And that's still a major cost for a lot of clients. All right, so then I guess where this all leads to is, and this is more future-oriented. Do we think we're at this stage now that we have generative AI that there's a paradigm shift, right? Do we think there's going to be a point where even, you know, we didn't see that paradigm shift bluntly with predictive coding, right? Predictive coding came out, everyone said, oh my God, discovery is going to change forever. We don't need contract attorneys anymore. You know, associates aren't going to have anything to do because you're just going to train the model, it goes out. And that's clearly hasn't happened. Now people are making similar predictions with the use of generative AI. We're now not going to need to do docker view, whatever. And I think there is concern, and this is concern just generally in the industry, is this an area, since we're already using AI, where AI can take over basically the discovery function, where we're not necessarily using lots of lawyers and we're relying almost exclusively on AI, whether it's a combination of machine learning or if it's just generative AI. And they're doing lots of work without any input or very little input from lawyers. So I'll start with Dave there. What are your thoughts in terms of where do we see in the next three to five years? Are we going to see some tipping point?  David: Yeah, it's interesting. Historically, there's no question that predictive coding did allow lawyers to get through big document populations faster and for predictions that it was going to replace all human review. And it really hasn't. But part of that has been the proliferation of electronic data. There's just more data than ever before, more sources of data. It's not just email now. It's Teams and texts and Slack and all these different collaboration tools. So that increase in volume is partially made up for the increase in efficiency, and we haven't seen any loss of attorneys. I do think that over the longer run that there is more potential for the Gen AI to replace replace attorneys who do e-discovery work and, frankly, to replace lawyers and other professionals and all other kinds of workers eventually. I mean, it's just going to get better and better. A lot of money is being invested in. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I think that we may be looking at a whole paradigm shift in how disputes are resolved in the future. Right now, there's so much duplication of effort. If you're in litigation against an opposing party, You have your documents set that your people are analyzing at some expense. The other side has their documents set that their people are analyzing at some expense. You're all looking for those key documents, the needles in the haystack. There's a lot of duplicative efforts going on. Picture a world where you could just take all of the potentially relevant documents. Throw them into the pot of generative AI, and then have the generative AI predetermine what's possibly privileged and lawyers can confirm those decisions. But then let everyone, both sides of court, query that pot of documents to ask, what are the key questions? What are the key factual issues in the case? Please tell us the answers and the documents that go to those answers and cut through a lot of the document review and document production that's going on now that frankly uses up most of the cost of litigation. I think we're going to be able to resolve disputes more efficiently, less expensively, and a lot faster. And I don't know whether that's five years into the future or 10 years into the future, but I'll be very surprised if our dispute resolution procedure isn't greatly affected by these new capabilities. Pretty soon, I think, when I say pretty soon, I don't know if it's five years or 10 years, but I think judges are going to have their AI assistance helping them resolve cases and maybe even drafting first drafts of court opinions as well. And I don't think it's all that far off into the future that we're going to start to see them.  Therese: I think I'm a little bit more skeptical than Dave on some of this, which is probably not surprising to either Dave or to to Anthony on this one. Look, I think, I don't see AI as a general rule replacing lawyers. I think it will change what lawyers do. And it may replace some lawyers who don't keep pace with technology. Look, it's very simple. It's going to make us better, faster, more efficient, right? So that's a good thing. It's a good thing for our clients. It's a good thing for us. But the idea, I think, to me, that AI will replace the judgment and the decision-making or the results of AI is going to replace lawyers and I think is maybe way out there in the future when the robots take over the world. But I do think it may mean less lawyers or lawyers do different things. Lawyers that are well-versed in technology and can use that are going to be more effective and are going to be faster. I think that. You're going to see situations where it's expected to be used, right? If AI can draft an opinion or a brief in the first instance and save hours and hours of time, that's a great thing. And that's going to be expected. I don't see that being ever being the thing that gets sent out the door because you're going to still need lawyers who are looking at it and making sure that it is right and updating it and making sure that it's unique to the case and all the judgments that go into those things are appropriate. I do find it difficult to imagine a world having, you know, been a litigator for so many years where everyone's like, sure, throw all the documents in the same pod and we'll all query it together. Maybe we'll get to that point someday. I find it really difficult to imagine that'll happen. There's too much concern about the data and control over the data and sensitivity and privilege and all of those things. You know, we've seen pockets of making data available through secure channels so that you're not transferring them and the like, where it's the same pool of data that would otherwise be produced, so that maybe you're saving costs there. But I don't, again, I think it'll be a paradigm shift eventually in that, paradigm shift that's been a long time coming, though, I think, right? We started using technology to improve this process years ago. It's getting better. I think we will get to a point where everyone routinely more heavily relies on AI for discovery and that that is not the predictive coding or the tar for the people who know how to use it, but it is the standard that everybody uses. I do think, like I said, it will make us better and more efficient. I don't see it really replacing, like I said, entirely lawyers or that will be in a world where all the data just goes in and gets spit out and you need one lawyer to look at it and it's fine. But again, I do think it will change the way we practice law. And in that sense, I do think it'll be a paradigm shift.  Anthony: The final thought is, I think I tend to be, I'm sort of in the middle, but I would say generally we know lawyers have big egos, and they will never allow, they will never think that a computer, AI tool or whatever, is smarter than they are in terms of determining privilege or relevance, right? I mean, I think that's part of it is, there's, you know, you have two lawyers in a room, they're going to argue about whether something is relevant. You have two lawyers in a room, they're going to argue about something privileged. So it's not objective, right? There's subjectivity. And I think that's going to be one of the chances. And I think also, we've seen it already. Everyone thought. Every lawyer who's a litigator would have to be really well-versed in e-discovery and all the issues that we deal with. That has not happened. And I don't see that changing. So unless I'm less concerned about being a paradigm shift than all of us going out for those reasons.  David: Well, I think everyone needs to tune back in on July 11th, 2029 when we come back to get stuff to begin and see who we're going.  Anthony: Yes, absolutely. All right. Thanks, everybody.  David: Thank you.  Outro: Tech Law Talks is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's emerging technologies practice, please email techlawtalks@reedsmith.com. You can find our podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com and our social media accounts.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.  All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.

One of the most wonderful things that someone said in the group tonight was: “I am amazed at how simple it all is!”  And they are absolutely right in their observation. All that the fathers tell us - about the struggle for purity of heart and overcoming the passions, seeking stillness and constancy in prayer - comes down to one simple reality.  God is love and that all run but “one receives the prize without effort!” He who humbles himself will be exalted. The moment we turn the mind and the heart to God and - even prior to that - the mere existence of humility in our hearts leads God to lift us up to gaze upon him face-to-face. It is like a child who has no illusions about his self-worth or identity, but simply reaches out for the parent and is lifted up immediately in love! It is this love that the hesychast seeks above all things; the eye of the heart is constantly turned toward and seeking the Belived. What is the one thing necessary that our Lord speaks about in the gospel? Mary sat at his feet being nourished upon his words of love and his presence. This is the better part. We so often complicate our lives and spend years and decades pursuing what the false self tells us that we need or where we will find dignity and the fullness of life. In the end, there is no ladder! There is only love and the urgent longing that makes us strive for it. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:22:52 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 230, #68   00:30:26 Anthony: There is a tension though, between a situation that is wrong which should be made right, and waiting in patience   00:33:32 Anthony: Ok, so like Abraham had a promise that took a long timevtivrealize   00:33:41 Anthony: Long time to realize   00:34:58 Anthony: Thank you   00:37:15 Fr Marty AZ 480-292-3381: be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 1Peter 4:7   00:39:41 Julie's iPad: It's hard when you're accused of something you didn't do or say not to defend yourself.   00:51:14 Anthony: Ego is the false self. Is Despondency a false remorse?   00:53:58 Nypaver Clan: Without effort?   00:55:09 Kate : I am really blown away by the simplicity of this.  How many times I have complicated the spiritual life!   00:58:02 David: I wasted years reading books and talking to people on discernment which always was a labyrinth of paths. On a retreat a old Jesuit Priest made it easy in 1 minute: Does this lead me closer to God or away from God. Our intellect often gets us lost and like a rocking chair giving us something to do but going nowhere.   00:59:41 Jeff O.: Reacted to "I wasted years readi..." with

There is a beautiful movement created in the heart by St. John's writing; it is almost a dance. We move back-and-forth with St. John by simultaneously reflecting upon the beauty of silence and stillness and the intimacy that we experience with God through it - while also being shown what the loss of the silence does to us. The silence of which St. John speaks is not just the absence of noise, but rather the presence of a love and life that transcends our understanding. It can only be experienced. Therefore, St. John holds out before us the intimacy for which our our hearts long and that can be found in the silence while also warning us of the dangers and the pitfalls that allow this great gift to slip through our fingers. The more we become attentive to the interior life, the more we realize how easily we can be distracted; how our thoughts and feelings can be manipulated either by our own appetites or by demonic provocation. It has been said that “Hurry destroys both poets and Saints“. The frenetic activity that surrounds us agitates and fragments the mind and the heart. To live in such a state for a long period of time dulls one's sensibilities not only to the finer things of life but to God himself.  Thus, the preliminary task John tell us is disengagement from all affairs, whether reasonable or senseless. Both can be equally distracting to us. In fact, it's often easier for us to recognize the inane things to which we direct our attention then it is to see how the responsibilities and demands that we have set for ourselves places us on a never-ending treadmill of activity of mind and body.  And so let us simplify our lives. It does not take long for us to realize the gains of doing so. We begin to taste, perhaps for the first time, the sweetness of those things that endure. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:04:54 Bob Cihak, AZ: P. 227, #41   00:37:54 David: OBS software?   00:40:41 Leilani Nemeroff: True, I stopped watching tv. It's amazing how annoying it is when you're exposed.   00:41:22 Cindy Moran: Most major movie trailers will have a cut every second.   00:43:15 Callie Eisenbrandt: Father- sometimes I feel guilty turning to the Jesus prayer when I'm feeling distracted or off track, like my mind isn't where it needs to be to be saying the prayer   00:44:16 Leilani Nemeroff: Yes, pronounced correctly!   00:44:26 Cindy Moran: The term for what you describe is called "jump cut"   00:44:41 Dave Warner (AL): Reacted to "The term for what yo..." with

In pursuing life in Christ, the experience of reality is often turned on its head. Our perception of the world around us and the interior world is shaped and formed by so many forces and influences. In a counterintuitive fashion, we have to move in opposing directions to the things that satisfy our ego or the desires of the flesh.  Needless to say this can be disconcerting. We may see ourselves as understanding the faith or as having grown in certain virtues only to have it dispersed in an instant by the light of God's truth. Whether it is something small or great, we can see how far we are from the stillness of mind and body of which Saint John speaks. Indeed, St. John tells us that many of these things the common run of men will find quite alien to themselves. We are often cast about on the sea of our emotions or blown like a reed in the wind. We struggle with a certain aberration of mind; that is, we are ever so inconstant and changeable in the way that we live our lives. If one does not acknowledge this and struggle throughout the years to purify the heart, then to enter into the life of solitude and stillness can only lead to derangement.  If what guides us is not the humble love and desire to give ourselves over completely to Christ then we are going to be fragmented internally by the most fierce passions. Anger will increase and even the memories of past wounds within the mind can fuel our resentment and drive us to the brink of madness. The person who enters into stillness well is completely unruffled by the chaos that exist in our world and becomes abstracted from the things that take hold of other peoples imagination as having great value. For the hesychast, however, there is only Christ! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:06:08 Greg C: Father, is that still Step 27?  I missed last week.   00:06:16 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: page 226 paragraph 32   00:06:24 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: yes.  Step 27   00:06:33 Greg C: Thank you!   00:09:50 Bob Cihak, AZ: Will our next book be Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, by Holy Transfiguration Monastery?   00:10:14 Adam Paige: Reacted to "                    …" with ☦️   00:25:08 Art: Where can a lay person obtain a basic rule to follow, to grow with, and progress in?   00:27:19 Adam Paige: https://store.melkite.org/product/publicans-prayer-book/   00:27:49 Art: Reacted to "https://store.melkit..." with

St. John Climacus brings us now to discuss the fruits of the ascetic life. We picked up this evening with Step 27 on “stillness of mind and body”. John is very hesitant to approach such a subject. He does not want to distract the warrior from the task at hand; that is, those who are engaged in the spiritual warfare against the passions and the provocations of the evil one.  He only relents because he understands how important it is to see the goal of the spiritual life so that it might increase our desire for God and our detachment from the things of the world.  Holy stillness emerges when the Nous, the eye of the heart, has become impenetrable and undistracted by the noise of the world. The disordered passions have now become a purified and single passion or desire for God. The love of and immersion in silence deepens because it is there that God speaks a Word that is equal to Himself. The language of Love, beyond words, begins to well up from within - united to the Spirit that cries out with groans that are beyond our understanding.  St. John acknowledges that many will not perceive or grasp the holy violence of the Hesychast; that is, the radical turning away from the things of the world in order to turn completely toward God. This turning toward God, however, does not limit our vision or comprehension as those who are worldly often believe. Rather, it opens us up to an experience of infinite mystery of God himself; everlasting Life and Love. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:06:16 FrDavid Abernethy: page 221   00:06:30 FrDavid Abernethy: Sept 27 On Holy Stillness   00:36:18 Anthony: How do we relate, then to people like I have met, pagan Hindus and a Muslim, who also appeared to me to have this spirit of peace?   00:41:16 Rachel: Yes!!   00:41:32 Rachel: Saint Charles de Foucald   00:41:55 Rachel: Algeria   00:42:05 Rachel: same as St. Charles De Foucald   00:43:55 David: O Gods and Men is the movie   00:44:25 David: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588337/   00:45:06 David: The original is French Des Hommes et des dieux   00:47:14 Jeff O.: When I was Nepal, the Christians would, instead of greeting with “namaste” greet with the phrase “J'amasee” - “I honor Christ (and his work) in you.” I thought that was a beautiful way to greet people with the honor and love of seeing Christ in the other…   00:49:17 Rachel: This happens in iconography as well/   00:49:31 Anthony: Reacted to This happens in icon... with "

As St. John draws us forward with these simple sayings about discernment and its fruit, we begin to see the immeasurable beauty of the ascetic life and the action of God's grace. The life that God calls us to is not one of frenetic activity but rather the cultivation of purity of heart and humility in order that He might act within us. We do not seek simply freedom from sin but rather the life of the kingdom. It is the love, the virtue, the goodness of Christ that transforms the world. It is our entrance into the Paschal Mystery, the dying and rising of the spiritual life (with and in Christ), that makes the love of the kingdom present to the world.  The life of the hesychasts, the ascetics who set all aside for Christ, is at the very heart of the church. When we lose sight of their love and desire for God, the church grows cold.  It is in the spirituality of the desert that the church will find renewal; when the minds and the hearts of men and women are open to the beauty of the life that God has called us to by His Grace. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:37:24 Anthony: In a way, some of the response to church scandal has been like an ill- guided peasants crusade.   00:39:35 Anthony: The peasants crusade led to harm for thr peasants   00:54:23 sprou: does solitude equal spiritual warfare?   00:55:33 David: I liked what Bishop Barron said about love being willing the good of the other. (St. John Paul) but first one needs to know what the good is and what is truth.   00:56:03 Vanessa: Reacted to "I liked what Bishop ..." with

We continued with St. John's summary of discernment and its particular fruit in the spiritual life. However, it does not read like a summary. Each saying opens us up to a divine reality and a participation in the life of Christ that comes to us by grace and the ascetic life. One cannot help but be captivated by the beauty of what St. John describes. It becomes evident that what we are being drawn into is the very beauty of Christ and that of the kingdom. Grace has the capacity to transform even the darkest of things within us and to illuminate the mind and the heart to see clearly what has eternal value. With the reading of each saying one begins to experience a holy desire growing within the heart. Thanks be to God! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:06:34 FrDavid Abernethy: page 217 page 14   00:25:57 Anthony: He says this while I'm making dinner....   00:31:19 David: Despair is suffering without meaning- Victor Frankl   00:49:34 Eric Ewanco: Reacted to "Κλίμαξ αγίου Ιωάννου.LadderClimatuspdf" with ❤️   00:49:43 Eric Ewanco: Reacted to "TheLadderofDivineAscent.pdf" with

Jeffy Donuts, host of fellow PTE Network show, Draught Daze, takes the hosting duties while Tim keeps score.  Check out this fun episode featuring: David - Thank you to all trivia podcasts Keith - Agrajag on Letterboxd Doug - Zero One Brewing Pat - Be Kind Enjoying the Show? Support us at www.patreon.com/ptebb Connect with us on Discord, Facebook, Twitter, IG, etc….at:  PTE Network | Links (ptepodcasts.com) Or contact us at frenemytrivia@gmail.com Wanna be on one of our shows? PTE Network | Appearance Request (ptepodcasts.com) Don't forget - Leave us a 5 Star Rating and write us a review and we'll see you next week for more Frenemy Trivia!

Discernment, St. John tells us, arises out of humility. It also allows us to see the value of humility in the spiritual life. It is the virtue above all virtues, that we must cling to in the spiritual battle. The enemy will seek to confuse us in one way or another; by flattery or by seemingly knowing our thoughts and placing ideas before us which then make us fear their control over us. However, discernment and humility, both protect our capacity to live in He who is the truth.  It also allows us to see the truth about ourselves as human beings and our dignity. We are not created with the passions. They rise out of our sin and the distortion of the desire that God has placed in us naturally. It is desire that makes us long for him and the life of virtue and it is anger that allows us to fight the good fight of faith and strike down the evil one and the temptations that are placed before us.   We also find, over the course of time, that discernment allows us to let go of our judgment and what gives us security in the spiritual life and to trust wholly in God. Therefore, when life seems to crumble around us and all seems to be wrapped in darkness, discernment allows us to step forward with trust in God and his love. While it keeps us from acting in rash way it also protects us from false prudence that hides cowardice and lack of courage.  What we begin to see is that any struggle in the spiritual life to overcome the passions, any sacrifice that we make to follow the Lord, promises what is beyond imagination. Even to lose all in this world is to lose nothing if we have Christ. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:06:22 Rachel: Hello everyone   00:11:11 Rachel: lol   00:12:42 Rachel: No one will take me

Discernment is so much more than our analyzing the realities and circumstances around us by the use of intellect and reason. These faculties, as wonderful as they are, have inherent limitations. They are not infinite, nor can they speak of God as he is in himself.  What God begins to show us in the spiritual life is that the more that we enter his love and truth, the more we are drawn into a mystery that is beyond us. Faith is described by many of the Saints as a “dark obscure knowing”. It is God‘s light, his divine light, that pierces through the darkness, and reveals to us the beauty of his love. It reveals (draws back the veil) and shows us that this love is worth everything to pursue and attain. “Love never ends”, the scriptures tell us. Discernment opens the door to that reality and allows us to step towards the beloved who desires to give us all. Our destiny is to move from glory to glory in the never-ending love of God. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:07:32 FrDavid Abernethy: page 209 para 139   00:40:44 Daniel Allen: Is the inverse then true?   00:42:28 Amale: What can the demons see or not see within us?   00:46:21 Rachel: The Elder would also know that in turn.. they could merit by true charity towards each other   00:47:33 Rachel: Where despite the feelings of animosity that arose, the monks would then more purely offer charity in the only way they can due to their limited capacity to love purely without unholy attachments   00:47:55 Maureen Cunningham: Father can demons reproduce? i was just wonderfing   00:48:00 Maureen Cunningham: Wondering   00:48:49 Kate : Can the demons hear our confessions to a priest within the context of the sacrament?   00:49:19 Maureen Cunningham: Best News   00:49:25 Jeff O.: Cassian seems to say in his conferences that they cannot reproduce   00:50:23 Amale: Do any souls who go to hell end up becoming demons? 00:51:10 Vanessa: Replying to "Do any souls who go ..."   I thought demons were the 1/3 of heavenly beings who went with Lucifer.   00:51:17 Jeff O.: He talks about it in the eighth conference on the principalities   00:51:24 David: In organization studies clicks can start which can create toxic results for teams.   00:51:53 Rachel: It is like the story of the Desert Father who, as soon as he instructed his Spiritual son would quickly leave him   00:52:39 David: We becomes us and them   00:52:51 Rachel: I suppose that was not for the community but purity of heart   01:00:58 David: I have heard a critism of the western church that we try to explain everything while the east embraces mysteries to be contemplated more. When I was younger I wanted the answers the older I get the more I love contemplating mysteries more.   01:01:15 Vanessa: Reacted to "I have heard a criti..." with ❤️   01:01:28 Jeff O.: Reacted to "I have heard a criti..." with

This evening we continued our discussion of discernment; in particular, developing an awareness of the action of the demons and their attempts to lead us astray. However, John also seeks to make us aware of the fact that it is not only the demons that we have to be aware of but our human nature in its fallen state. We are often weak of will and changeable in our mind. We are filled with contradictions and will often choose that which offers nothing over the love and the mercy of God. We have within certain destructive tendencies that are beyond reason. St. John would not have us over analyze these things but be aware of them so to avoid them and turn more radically toward God when we see them arise within our hearts. What is most striking in this section of the Ladder is that divine light shines through John‘s own words. The open up reality for us and we see on the horizon our dignity and destiny in Christ so brilliantly that one can only gasp. It creates within the heart an urgent longing to run to the Beloved. It reveals in a fraction of the moment the entire meaning of the ascetical life. It is not about self-perfection or endurance, but rather about Love. It is about acknowledging that what has been fashioned from clay has now been placed and seated upon the very throne of God. Joy! --- Text of chat during the group: 00:03:27 Carolus: Good evening Father.   00:03:34 FrDavid Abernethy: good evening   00:13:08 Genesius B: Father Michael of the Eparchy of Parma can only grow a goatee   00:13:36 Genesius B: we still love him though   00:19:18 David: Is this related to as one gets closer to God sometimes the attacks of the demons become stronger and often in different ways?   00:23:46 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: this translations says "greedy and grubby flesh" not corpulence   00:28:18 Genesius B: How can such inquisitiveness lead us to pride? Surely trying to understand Divine Providence can only reveal our own wretchedness? Is it that merely trying to understand is itself beyond us and thus an act of hubris?   00:28:25 Genesius B: and self assetion?   00:34:30 Genesius B: then when gifts are given should we seek to hide them, lest we become prideful in them. I see this in many saints but how does this not violate the Divine command to not hide our light?   00:35:58 Carolus B: Replying to "then when gifts are ..."   Or to not burry our talents.   00:55:58 Kate : St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, a French Carmelite saint, wrote, “Let yourself be loved by God.”  I often ponder this quote.  Why do I run from this love?  We do I not allow myself to be loved by God?   00:59:50 Ren Witter: I don't think, though, that we run from the love of God when it feels like love. I can't even imagine doing that, honestly.  I think we run from what we are taught is the mysterious love of God, because more often than not it feels like something terrifying, or threatening, or even wounding.   01:00:05 Ren Witter: We are told to trust that these things are manifestations of the love of God.   01:02:02 Daniel Allen: Christ says, “everyone when he is fully taught will be like his teacher.” Imitating Christ, and the saints in deed teaches us little by little until we our not like our fallen selves but like Christ.   01:03:41 David: When I used to teach catechism I heard many comments when discussing the saints saying they are not like that or it is not reachable from teens and even my sons. It seems helpful to discuss the whole lives of the saints like the difficulties and sinful past of St. Ignatius. Most writings seem to focus on them being perfect and so special rather than the journey.   01:06:55 Rebecca Thérèse: I find that reading what the saints wrote themselves is very helpful because they're very honest about their struggles and that makes them more relatable to me.   01:08:28 Rachel: Yes, this is true.We are all starving. For Christ.   01:12:55 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: One's image of God is so important - a distorted one gets in the way of living faith truly. This needs to be examined and renovated many times in one's life. Important to see self in God not outside of Trinity/grace.   01:14:30 Andrew Adams: Reacted to " One's image of God ..." with ❤️   01:16:11 Andrew Adams: Thank you Father!   01:16:11 Cindy Moran: Excellent session...thank you Father!   01:16:12 Jeff O.: Thank you Father!! Good to be with you all.   01:16:13 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you

As we read St. John Climacus, we begin to see discernment as rooted in our relationship with God; a relationship that is founded upon the revelation of God‘s love and the desire that it stirs within the human heart to respond in kind. If we love God, then it is not going to seem to be a burden to us to take every thought captive and bring it before God for his blessing or judgment. Nor is waiting upon the Lord going to be a point of frustration.  Rather, when we love God, we understand that he is going to desire what is best for us. This desire leads him to test our intentions so as to purify them. What God looks for is humility and a spirit of repentance. Faced with our own weakness, and the darkness that sin brings into our life and into the world, we must cling to God and allow him to guide us with his light.  Often only one step ahead is illuminated for us. We must be at peace with this if we have faith in him and trust in his love.  Part of what this requires from us is an honest heart; one that avoids distractions and holds fast to innocence. Often our sensibilities can become hardened through our experience of the world, and we lose the capacity not only to be vulnerable to others but to God himself. It has been said that “haste destroys the poet and the saint”.  In the face of the frenetic pace of the world, let us hold on to simplicity and silence in order that we might hear the Beloved when he speaks to us. ---   Text of chat during the group:   00:08:06 FrDavid Abernethy: page 206 number 114   00:16:33 Susanna Joy: It can be years and years...   00:16:56 Susanna Joy: ...one must have the patience of Job.   00:27:28 Susanna Joy: I have a friend who says, "Set all your thoughts, words, and actions as flowers at the feet of the Lord."  Then whatever the result, the intention is right.   00:28:10 Paul G.: Reacted to "I have a friend who …" with ❤️   00:30:37 Rebecca Thérèse: Therese thought of herself as a plaything of the infant Jesus so sometimes he would discard her in order to play with something else.   00:32:09 Genesius B.: Would it be imprudent to treat everything as beyond us, or perhaps prudent so we might never overreach?   00:33:35 Susanna Joy: Replying to "Would it be impruden..."     There is the riddle ...   00:34:50 Susanna Joy: Replying to "Would it be impruden..."     ...we must do our be...   00:42:31 sharonfisher: But how do we deal with the ‘warped souls' in life as we encounter them and recognize them as too familiar to our circumstances? It seems scary.   00:43:00 Kate : Father, Could you offer any guidance on finding the balance between overreaching in the spiritual life versus not pushing oneself enough?  I find it very hard to get the right balance.  It is a long, hard struggle.   00:46:23 Anthony: 1. Thanks for explaining the unforgivable sin.  2. No need to fall I to scrupulousity over this sin because concern about it indicates one has not confused good and evil. 3. I like a sentiment by St Paisios you shared on Facebook about keeping a calm soul so the devils can't cast their lines in our soul.   00:51:18 Susanna Joy: Replying to "1. Thanks for explai..."     That is such a great...   00:52:20 Susanna Joy: Replying to "1. Thanks for explai..."     Fish are tempted to ...   00:52:30 Susanna Joy: Reacted to 1. Thanks for explai... with "❤️"   00:53:10 Carolus B: Replying to "1. Thanks for explai..."   Should we avoid holding personal goals, instead endeavoring to only hold the single goal which is the desire of God, regardless of how we feel about the outcome?   00:53:52 Anthony: Hahaha. Yes he might   00:54:07 Paul G.: Reacted to "Hahaha. Yes he might" with

Discernment, as we have said, is the fruit of humility. Having removed the impediment of pride and having purified the heart of the passions, one comes to comprehend the things of the kingdom and the will of God. St. John gives us one example after another of how discernment helps us to perceive the things that lead us to God and that teach us to embrace that which endures.   As one progresses in the spiritual life, however, discernment is not simply the ability to know God‘s will, but rather also the ability to fulfill it in the way that God desires. In this, a soul can begin to trust in the action of the Spirit within the mind and heart. Therefore, although spiritual guides may be lacking one is not abandoned by God. Rather, God makes all things work for the good of those who love him.   In fact, the more one lays side ones will and turns to God in prayer and fasting, the more one lets go of the need to be driven by creativity, productivity, and one's own intentions as a whole. The deeper the communion becomes with God, the more one finds joy in being drawn along whatever path He desires. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:08:12 FrDavid Abernethy: page 204 number 105   00:46:02 Rebecca Thérèse: I think Teresa preferred the priest to be learned rather than just intelligent because she thought that even holy priests could be misled. A learned priest wuld be better able to communicate the infallible teaching of the Church, in her view.   00:50:33 Michael Hinckley: Re: lack of elders… we miss not having enough monks & nuns available in communities.   01:00:37 Susanna Joy: This is so similar to a practice I learned from muslim friends, where one fasts and prays 3 days begore taking decision, that God may clarify what action one should take...The fast is called istakharra...means the right path. :)   01:03:21 Susanna Joy: It is so good to rest in God's wisdom before taking action.   01:06:32 Michael Hinckley: Modernity and technology have much to blame since many things can be created ex nihilo. Tempts thinking “ye shall be like Gods"   01:10:48 Anthony: Yes   01:10:50 Rachel: Id love to see that   01:11:38 David: I volunteered for catechism but was surprised there was no assignment with a spiritual director and it seemed to become more of a quasi entraining push by those who were the directors by the parish. The focus was keeping the kids coming back and making faith "fun". It seemed so different from my experience here an in Spain.   01:13:42 Susanna Joy: https://youtu.be/LOcCXt1n-fI?si=EGIJbH3UquEgdU0C   01:13:43 Michael Hinckley: Replying to "I volunteered for ca..."   Precisely the problem.   01:14:40 Susanna Joy: Here is a beautiful song for you all. "Who puts his trust in God most Just"   01:14:41 Anthony: Pierogi making brings my parish together   01:14:58 Michael Hinckley: TLM communities also see the young coming b/c of lack of “fun” things   01:15:08 Ambrose Little: I'm not “young” and feel more or less that way.   01:15:25 Adam Paige: You're young at heart, Ambrose !   01:15:31 Ambrose Little: Reacted to "You're young at hear..." with

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, join us for a fascinating discussion with our guest David Fletcher, General Manager of Lone Star Sports and Entertainment. David gives us exclusive insights into the sports business industry, highlighting the economic impact of major sporting events on Houston. We learn about LSSE's role in the city's sports landscape and the excitement for the upcoming Tax Act Texas Bowl. David also enlightens us on why Houston is a major sports hub, touching on upcoming events like the college football championship and the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Tune in for a thrilling exploration of the fast-paced world of sports business. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Chris talks with David Fletcher, the General Manager of Longstar Sports and Entertainment, about the intricacies and realities of the sports business world. David describes the significant economic impact of major sporting events on the business community, highlighting their ability to draw in substantial revenue and tourism. We discuss the role of LSSE in the Houston sports scene and its involvement in exciting upcoming events like the Tax Act Texas Bowl. David addresses some common misconceptions about the sports industry, revealing the hard work, long hours, and sacrifices behind the scenes. We delve into what it means to be a good teammate in the sports industry, focusing on traits such as being coachable, ready, and positive. David shares insights on why Houston has become a hotspot for sports business, citing its prime location, diverse population, and robust infrastructure. We discuss the upcoming national college football playoff championship and the anticipation it's generating in Houston. David gives a preview of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, expressing his enthusiasm for the global event to be hosted in Houston. I explore personal topics with David, such as his first job experience, his preference for Tex-Mex over barbecue, and his dream 30-day sabbatical destination. David shares his passion for skiing in Park City, Utah, expressing gratitude for the support and involvement of the Houston community in their work. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller GUESTS David Fletcher About David TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet David Fletcher, general manager of Longstar Sports and Entertainment. David shares his insights into the business of sports, as well as the economic impact major sporting events can have on the business community. David, I wanna welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for coming today. David: It's great to be here, Chris. Appreciate the opportunity. Chris: So let everybody know, you're the general manager of what's called Longstar Sports and Entertainment here at Houston. Tell the audience a little bit about what that company is and kind of how it fits into the sports landscape here in Houston. David: Yeah, longstar Sports and Entertainment, or LSSE, as we try to call it with such a long name, is really the events production and management company at Houston, texans. So we are a primary outlet for event production, promotion and really a focus to our efforts to date around filling event dates at NRG Stadium. Most of what we do, chris, is in the sports space, although we have certainly done fair share of shows in the entertainment side, but college football, international soccer, rugby are all really big parts of what we do and inside of that we can do anything and everything that we need to do to make an event successful. We've promoted and negotiated and done our own events. We work with partners like ESPN or the Major League Soccer to host events at our building for them. We work with global brands like Manchester United, real Madrid or even Taylor Swift to bring events to our place in a variety of different ways. So really our focus is on bringing people together in Houston and we've done some other things over the years some investments and some events outside of NRG Stadium. But at our core we are a major part of making NRG Stadium one of the world class destinations for events and we're very proud of what we've been able to do over the last 21 years. Chris: That's what I love about kind of the focus at LSSC and the Texans for that matter is really a focus on doing things for the benefit and betterment of Houstonians. It seems to be kind of maybe a core focus. David: No question. I mean, look, at the end of the day, our organization is only focus on three things it's creating experiences, it's delivering incredible vowed partners and it's about doing great things for Houston. So, in that core capacity, major events, whether it be bringing Leon O Messi to play at NRG Stadium in an event like Copa America a few years ago I mentioned Taylor Swift we had a chance to host her in 2018, or Keddie Chesney or George Straits or Tim McGraw done shows with all of them over the years to the big time college football, like the Tax Act Texas Bowl that we host each and every year. Our focus is on really those three initiatives and I think they play into exactly what you said, which our organization has been all about, and the family the McNair family has been all about since day one. Chris: So, speaking of the Tax Act Texas Bowl, where we've got a match up right around the corner with Oklahoma State and Texas A&M excited about that and I would think that there is some excitement from those fan bases about being here at Houston. David: No question, our 18th year of hosting that college football postseason spectacular that happens each and every year at NRG Stadium. Last 10 years we've had the Big 12 in SEC and you mentioned it Texas A&M, who's obviously one of, if not, the biggest collegiate brand in this part of the world, going and taking on Oklahoma State, an old rival there from the Big 12 days and 20th ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys, I might add, who made it all the way to the Big 12 championship game this year and have the nation's best running back in Oli Gordon. A lot of things to be excited about on both fan bases. Texas A&M obviously a great brand, but had their struggles on the field relative to their expectations this year. A lot of transition, including bringing in a really exciting new coach and Mike Elko, and this is an opportunity for both of these teams, but particularly Texas A&M, to start their 2024 March to the championship this December 27th. Chris: Very good. So let's talk a little bit just about you and kind of how you got into the sports industry and you've been general manager now at LSE like 10 years. That's crazy because I can remember when you first took over the role. So 10 years goes by fast. David: It goes by real fast, chris. Look, for me sports has been an incredible part of my life, like many, since my early days of youth, I know as a kid. For me there wasn't a day that didn't go by literally a day that I didn't have to go to some practice or didn't get to go to some practice of some kind, played a lot of sports really important to my family growing up and ultimately developed a very strong passion for sport itself. As I got a little older I was in school at the University of Texas I realized that you could make a business out of it. You could create a life around the, not just playing on the field, and for me my playing days they definitely ended in high school, which is okay. I still get to this day, get to go out there and try and hack it with the best of them every once in a while, but I do it vicariously most of the time in working with my kids and coaching them and watching them grow. So for me, like I said, I knew sport was a big part of what I had a passion for when I graduated from UT. I had an opportunity to be to work for an NFL team in my hometown right here in Houston Texas. They didn't even have a name until a few weeks into my job, but that was the Houston Texans, and so coming out of UT and having the opportunity to be a part of building a professional team no less an NFL team from the ground up was something that I thought was really cool and I thought would be something that would help fuel that passion further, and it has. There's no question, of course, as a graduate coming out of college, many of us, myself included had bills to pay, and working as an intern at any sports team is not a great way to pay off those bills very quickly. But you know, I knew I had. I knew I had a goal in mind. I knew that I could make a business out of this if I really focused on making the most of the opportunities I had about keeping a positive attitude and really just taking every opportunity I could to grow, and I did that. I worked at the Texans during that first season, had an opportunity after that to get into a sales side where I did start making money working in media sales after leaving the team, spent a few years doing that for the University of Texas Athletics and then with the Houston Rockets, but I had a chance to return back to the team in 2010 and have been with the Texans in some way or shape or form ever since and that's been a lot of fun to really get to be in my hometown to work for the NFL team ups and downs included along the way, right, as we've had some great years and some not so great years. But going back to what I talked about earlier about being able to make an impact, particularly in my hometown, it's been an amazing opportunity for me and I still wake up every day and I know this is gonna sound really silly and I've grown a lot in my career, but we office at NRG Stadium and there are a lot of days where I walk in I'll hear the voice guy, david Brady, in my head going welcome to NRG Stadium. Chris: And it's just for me as I walk in the office. David: You know, it's a subtle reminder in my head that you know what. This is something pretty cool and this is something really special and been fortunate enough to be a part of a lot of things that have helped grow this community as a sports destination and then hopefully a lot more going forward. Chris: That's great. I mean it's a very unique position, unique opportunity. It relates to working for an NFL franchise. Right, there's only 32 franchises that you can work for, so let's talk again. So you work your way up and then you get this opportunity to move into leadership and I like to talk to guests, entrepreneurs, about leadership. So let's talk about that with you, kind of give us a little idea of your journey. Who were some of your mentors that you kind of molded your leadership style after? David: Well, I think mentors are so important, chris. They're so important to provide you you know reality, to provide you guidance, to provide you you know somebody who can ultimately be a resource, good and bad, in any situation. You know, for me it started with a good friend of ours and I still think about him all the time as Jamie Roots, you know, arguably one of the best in the business, president of the Texans for 20 plus years and spent spent really so much time, energy and effort in creating and ultimately growing the Texans brand, and so getting a chance to watch him and be a part of his team for almost a decade myself was something that you know, I've taken so much from. You know, the things that we focused on were about relationships, and that's really where it starts in any of these businesses is, you know, whether you're working with clients, teammates or employees and just trying to find ways to connect. You've got to be able to connect at all levels and build relationships with people, no matter what role they're playing in your business. So it's starting with relationships first. You know, I think, looking at how Lone Star has been approached I talked to Jamie about this a lot over the years Texans, so important and ingrained in the business of, or the fabric of, the Houston community. But what Lone Star has really helped do is expand the reach beyond just football and reach into what is already arguably the most diverse community in the country and bring them in to a place that they could celebrate, that the passions they have can create memories that last a lifetime and ultimately, yes, do business. You know, and so you know, lone Star helps us reach in. We've done, you know, 21 Mexican national team soccer events at our stadium. We've hosted Beyonce. We've had, you know, lsu take on Wisconsin or, you know, coming up, the national championship game for college football. Yes, there's some core elements that are consistent across every sport, every entertainment property, every football event that I just mentioned, but each of those tie people back to our business, they tie people into, or they bring people into, our community and they ultimately, you know, give us an opportunity to create even more momentum for the team and for Houston going forward. So, when I look at how we've approached that from a leadership perspective, you know it's really been thinking about how our business, my business, can impact people outside of what we do in the Texans. And with that, you know, like I said from the beginning, it starts with relationships. Chris: Hey, you hit the nail on the head because I think that's true. No matter what business you're in, if you're a one man shop or you're growing it to be bigger, it's all about relationships, like you said, with your external partners but more importantly with your internal teammates. So, talking on that subject a little bit, let's talk a little bit. I know you know you've built a team around you at LSSC to help put on and promote these events. What are some of the things you look for when you're going through that process? One maybe identify whether it's through the recruiting process or onboarding or, as they're there, in kind of the training to make sure you're making the best decision you can in building that team. And then maybe we'll talk about the other side is when you know maybe this wasn't the right fit, the harder decisions to make. David: Well, I think it starts. You know I mentioned it earlier, but to me there's really three core elements of being a good teammate, and I think these matter whether you're the intern or you're the leader of the organization. One be coachable right. Nobody that I have ever met, even the best in the business, know everything right, so be able to take advice, take criticism, learn from your mistakes, and that's something I think's really important. Two be ready, right. Be when opportunities exist, don't be afraid to raise your hand, don't be afraid to speak up, don't be afraid to go all in. You never know when an opportunity could be the best opportunity for you if you don't ask. So be coachable, be ready and then, from my perspective, just be positive, right. The attitude is the only thing that any of us can control, and my experience and my life has taught me that if you focus on the good, you have a lot better chance of getting there than if you focus on the bad. And that speaks to communication internally. That speaks to the way you approach how you position your business. It speaks to how you approach your competition right. Ultimately, at the end of the day, if you focus on the good, there's a better chance you're gonna get good. Chris: Like I couldn't agree more on that positive mindset, kind of staying positive, focus on the positive, learn from the bad and the negative maybe, but your primary focus has got to be on improvement in a positive way. Yeah, again, there's books written about it all over, but mindset makes a big difference. David: No question, no question. Ultimately, if you're a teammate for us and you've got those qualities, we feel like that's a great start to being a positive contributor to our group. Chris: Well, no just from being around the organization as much as I have. Y'all are known the Texans and LSSE. You're known within the sports industry of training people to be great and I guess that's a blessing and a curse. You get really good people but then people come and take them. David: Well, I've always had the mentality, chris. I know it's one that may fly in the face of common thought, but look, if anybody's being approached or anybody's being seen as having an opportunity coming from where we have brought them to, then we've done our jobs the other day and so we wanna keep as many of those on our team as we can, no question, but many times, for a variety of reasons, you have to accept that maybe reality, and so do the best of what you've got, be ready for the next opportunity, keep moving forward. Chris: So, working in the world of sports, what's one of the things you think is maybe the biggest misperception that most have about what you do? Cause it sounds pretty glamorous. David: Well, that's probably the biggest misperception. I think that, and that I have access to every ticket for every event all the time. My wife still sometimes even has that misperception, but I love her for it. No, look, I think the reality is that. I think that people do think that. Well, let me back up. I think there can be a perception that it is all glamorous all the time. Right, there's a lot of very visible and very talented people that are in the media all the time, that are compensated well, that are creating brands of their own. There certainly is an element to that, but I think that more often than not, it's a job that, if you don't have a passion for what you're doing, what you're doing, it's gonna be hard, because the hours are long, holidays are not really holidays. The players have negotiated a very significant salary, and that's not always the case for everybody else. And on the business side, and there are so many facets of what working in sports can be, and I think that's also, at the same time, an opportunity A lot of people look at. Well, you work for a team so that you're working in sports. Working in sports can be working for an agency that's working with a brand that is creating a partnership with a team. It could be working on the media side, bringing the events to life through social, digital and television content. It could be being a lawyer that negotiates contracts. It could be taking tickets and welcoming people to NRG Stadium, and so there's just so many different ways. There are over 7,000 people that work on a major event day at NRG Stadium. Just on the day, just on the day itself, right Between part-time staff, texans, employees, police fire, you name it. That's crazy. So it's such a big it becomes its own little city. So ultimately, there's a lot of different ways that sports can touch somebody. Most often, people just think of the players and what happens on the field. Chris: Well, it's nothing. You said when you started that, and I think it's true and it transcends all industries Passion To be really good at what you do, you have to have a passion for it, because it's long hours and putting in real hard time to learn and advance and grow your expertise at whatever it is, and so it has to start and stop a passion. David: No question, and if I look towards my life personally, it's been the fuel that's put me on the path to the successes that I've had. I mentioned it from the beginning. I mean, I started out as an intern with the Texans. I'm very proud of the fact that I'm the only intern or the only member of the executive team at Texans that actually started out as an intern with the team itself and that wasn't by accident. I mean, certainly there's a lot of good fortune along the way and I was able to produce results when needed. But I look at that as a testament to. Without the passion that I had, I wouldn't have been able to go through the 120 hour weeks as an intern, making minimum wage, I might add. You know working on, you know lifting heavy equipment or organizing, you know volunteer groups or you know putting together hours of copy that may not even be used, right. I mean, it's just those things that are just little steps along the way that, personally, I had to do, but I think they apply to anybody who has felt success in their business is that it starts with that passion. Chris: Yeah. So let's turn the conversation a little bit and talk about something that I don't think gets talked about enough, certainly at least here in Houston. We, when you step back and look at it, we, being Houston, which means you and others have done an amazing job of making Houston a true, like sports event destination. So we can talk about that a little bit, but what I want to do is connect that to how that the impact that has on the business community in Houston, because it's significant. David: It's massive, you know. So I'll start with a couple of things. One, you know, I think Houston's success as a destination for sport really points to. You can point to a lot of things that have been contributing factors, and they all have been geography center of the country, center of the continent, certainly a very, a very easy to get to market with all the infrastructure here from the great airports, obviously our traffic and our freeways. But the port you know, the infrastructure itself is fantastic, have served us well over the last 20 plus years with this latest renaissance, and we'll going forward. You've got a Some may need some tweaking, right? Chris: No question about it. David: I mean NRG is certainly, you know, a fantastic, world-class facility throughout its history. But that definition certainly has changed over the years and there's opportunities to continue to be the biggest and the best that we're working towards getting in the future. But the market seven plus million people in the DMA it's the most diverse market in the United States. All of that creates a lot of reasons why Houston has been a major destination. But I think the most important element is the leadership and the people and when I say people I mean the people at all levels that help contribute to the experience that's created when major events. Stakeholders are looking for a place to go and they come into Houston and they get to see it. We've got a number of groups that have worked together very successfully over the years the Texans and Lone Star, nrg Park, houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, all the major professional teams, harris County, houston Sports Authority, houston First Mayor's Office, city and Fire, the Texas Medical Center. All of those groups and many others have created a winning formula with how we approach the event experience, whether it's a festival, a conference or the Super Bowl. You throw in the hospitality community, which Houston First is certainly a driver of, but the thousands of unbelievable hotels, restaurants and entertainment options that are here in this community and how they collaborate and work together around these major events. And you see, no other market in the country can offer what we have as a collective package, and that's why you've seen Houston be awarded more major sporting events than any other market in the country over the last 15 years. That's impressive. Chris: I mean, people don't know that. They don't, it doesn't get talked about. David: They don't, they don't. There's certainly a lot of energy around. You get the first one right and then it just kind of dominos and we've been very aggressive as a community in pursuing those options. We've been very successful and when we get those options here to put our best foot forward, there are great resources at state level that certainly help with that and a spirit of collaboration with the governor's office to try and generate as many major events in the state of Texas as possible. So those are all winning points in the formula for success. But it really starts with the people and as we look at the future of the sporting event business, the major event business in Houston, there's a reason why we keep going after this and a big part of it is what you talked about the economic impact. Pick any number of these. These events Final four, college football, playoff, national championship game, fifa World Cup, super Bowl, taksac, texas Bowl, copa America I'm missing thousands of events that happen and are the Major League Baseball All-Star game, nba All-Star game, mls Cup. All these events that you see have really generated billions of dollars collectively for our community and economic impact. That's people coming to Houston and staying in our hotels. They're going and having a great time down in Galveston. They are eating at some of the world's best restaurants and that fuels our economy. We don't have the typical transient business that a vacation destination like a Miami or New Orleans may have, where entertainment in the community can spark a lot of travel. We are very much focused on conference events and entertainment opportunities and we do it better than just about anybody else out there. Chris: So let's kind of try to, you know, put some context around that. You mentioned, and obviously I'm well aware of the Texas Bowl, Taksac, Texas Bowl economic impact of that event to the greater Houston area. David: Annual basis over the last 10 years has been over $30 million on average. Every single year, we'll have anywhere between 25 and 30,000 people traveling in, staying in our hotels, restaurants, for three or four days ahead of the event. You've got people they're even driving in, too right, people that are coming in from the outer areas getting to celebrate that event. So that's meaningful, especially when that event specifically happens every year. It's right, it's a re-accuracy. End of the year, end of the year, when a lot of people are traveling for the holidays or maybe not doing as much, we've got an event that brings people into our community. That brings people here that may not be from a drivable distance. They may be coming from, you know, south Carolina, or Louisiana, or Florida, or Colorado Now that the Big 12 has expanded or Arizona, so you know, it really is something that fuels those businesses and gives our community as a whole an opportunity to celebrate around a major event, and we're proud of what that particular event has done, as well as, obviously, many others. Chris: Then we've got a couple of big events on the horizon. I want to talk about some of that. So let's talk about the first one, and that's the national title football college football playoff championship on January 8. It's a huge deal. It's the last one, I guess, of the 14 format, but you know what can we look forward to as Houstonians, with that game right around the corner? David: Well, it's a true celebration of college football, a week-long celebration. So you know, from a community perspective, you know the impact has already started. The Houston Love Teachers campaign that the Harris County, houston Sports Authority and the College Football Playoff local organizing committee has put together is has already generated millions of dollars in support for and recognition of teachers in our community, excuse me and that's an impact that will obviously pay dividends well beyond the game itself on January 8. When you look to event week itself, got four teams and four big brands that are hoping to descend upon Houston right after the New Year's. Chris: Yeah, yeah, so we've got what I mean. I think, any way you slice it, there's four or two teams that show up here are going to have big followings. David: Well, they are, and so you know what that means. It's not just about the 70,000 people that will fill up NRG Stadium. You know, again, the week long of activities, with free concerts every night during the weekend leading up fan fest down at Georgia Brown, which will have all kinds of interactive opportunities for fans to celebrate and enjoy the game of college football. You've got a number of initiatives around the industry itself that you know just further fuel Houston as a destination for business around the sport conferences and events and media opportunities, literally billions, if not trillions, of impressions showcasing our city. Chris: So you're gonna have the eyes of the world really on Houston for that kind of that weekend leading up and, I think, encourage the Houstonians right to get out and enjoy it yeah, no question, I mean it is. David: Houston is one of the best college football markets in the country the, the tax act, texas Bowl and many other events that we hosted. Our place and throughout the city. You've age rice, you know hcu tsu, prairie view. There's so much around college football that really Houston should be part of this destination, going forward on a consistent basis, and I think we'll show that as we bring everybody together here next month very good, yeah, david. Chris: So I think there's a lot to be excited about having the national title game be in our backyard, and I hope Houstonians will show up and take advantage of all the the events that are being planned yeah, it's gonna be an incredible week. David: We've earned the opportunity and I know, just like we did with Super Bowl a few years ago, with Final Four earlier this year, sonians love their sport. They will be out and enjoying another great celebration, and that's something that we should be excited about, and it's not the only one. You look down the road. We've got the world's biggest event coming just two years from now. Chris: As well, and that's the World Cup that's right. David: Yeah, fifa World Cup returns to Houston in 2020, or returns to Houston, comes to Houston in 2026. Houston, one of the venues in North America that was selected and you know just when you think about the opportunity to host five, six, seven, eight events in NRG Stadium with an average audience of a billion people and names like Messi and Neymar and Mbappe, who probably mean a lot to many people in this community but are treated as icons around the globe, and for Houston to have its name among the great markets of the world, at a truly global market which we know from a business perspective and from a from a population perspective. It is but to have that that verification on that type of stage is something that you know. As a community we also be very proud of and Chris Canetti in the World Cup office and Janice Burke and everybody over at NRG Park that ourselves included that helped to be part of making that a reality. We know we got a lot of work ahead to live up those expectations that's great. Chris: Well, david, I appreciate you, you know coming on and sharing some of these specifics. I want to ask you just a few more questions about you personally. What was your first job before days? You know the years before you were the intern of Houston Texas so I my first job I'm gonna go with. David: I've got a 1, 1a, all right. So my first job really was I worked at a Kroger in Kingwood as a checker or, sorry, as a bagger. But my my first quote real job I didn't have that one very long was I. I ended up being a server at Kingwood Country Club and the reason I say that was my first real job is that I worked in the service industry throughout my career. I mean, I still do today, obviously, but I worked in the service industry for 10 years, all the way through my time in Austin, going to school at UT, and I will tell you that nothing will teach you more about the world good and bad, than working in the service industry and I am so appreciative of the opportunities that I got to again. Start with something simple as that. But as a funny story, chris, I will say my crowning achievement as a server is I did serve as Don Johnson, the actor, don Johnson's waiter for the 10 cup rap party, because Tim Cup was hosting. That's right and so I do have that up by resume. Chris: So there you go see one of the benefits of living in Kingwood that's right. Yeah, one of the many I'll add okay, so since you work so much in, I guess, service hospitality, this will be easy for you. All right, you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Tex-mex all day long all right, and this one's gonna be hard for you to answer okay maybe not. If you could do a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go? What? David: would you do? That is a great question. I don't think it's very. I don't think it's very hard for me at all. I am an avid skier and my family and I have been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in Park City, utah, and I try and get the 30 days even now it's not possible to do in our work, but I love Park City probably more than any place else in this planet, and so I'd love to be able to go up my family for three days and just ski our behinds off got you. Chris: Well, that's great. That's a good one. David, thanks again for taking the time. Congratulations to you and the rest of the team back at Energy Park, the Texans LSSE, for all you do for Houston well. David: Thank you, chris, and we appreciate your support and involvement as well. Special Guest: David Fletcher.

In the studio today is David Leon, Director of Workforce Programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS), and Kate Kaegi, Project Manager for the DIF. In recognition of Disability Awareness Month, the second podcast of our DIF series includes David and Kate explaining how Virginia's DIF grant was initiated, implemented, and adjusted to best reach their initiatives of placing 750 individuals with disabilities in STEM and healthcare careers, registered apprenticeships, and State, County, and City jobs. Learn about the challenges they navigated and what they recommend when applying for a DIF grant.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} David: Don't be afraid to apply for a diff grant. It is an amazing opportunity to infuse energy and enthusiasm into your workforce. It is a chance to stretch, learn new skills, try new programs. You get to see staff flourish and more importantly, get some really cool outcomes for the clients we serve.   Kate: I was a little intimidated with the idea of RSA, but what I have found is this RSA is there to help us. They want us to succeed.   David: You can accomplish some great things.   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is David Leon, director for workforce programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, or DARS, and Kate Kaegi, project manager for the DEP. So David, how are things going at DARS?   David: They are great. We are plugging along, working on our grant. A colleague has a SWITZI grant, so it's been neat to really try a bunch of new things here in Virginia.   Carol: Very cool. So how are you Kate?   Kate: I am doing spectacular. Thank you for having me here today.   Carol: You bet. So, David, you and I had a chance to visit in a podcast on work incentives counseling in April of 22. And just so you know, you were one of my top five downloads. And when I think of Virginia, I always think of you and all the amazing things that have been cooking all the time. You guys always have something in the hopper and this is no different. So I started a series of podcasts focused on the diff grants and career advancement, and you are the second in my series and happened to fall in October with a nod to Disability Employment Awareness Month. So I want to just give our listeners a little snippet again about the diff grant. And so this particular round, the grant activities are geared to support innovative activities aimed at improving the outcomes of individuals with disabilities. And the Career Advancement Initiative model. Demonstrations were funded in federal fiscal year 2021. They were intended to identify and demonstrate practices supported by evidence to assist eligible individuals with disabilities, including previous served participants in employment who reenter the program to do the following. They were looking at advancing in high demand, high quality careers like science, technology, engineering and math, or those Stem careers to enter career pathways in industry driven sectors through pre apprenticeships, registered apprenticeships and industry recognized apprenticeship programs to improve and maximize competitive integrated employment outcomes, economic self-sufficiency, independence and inclusion in society, and to reduce reliance on public benefits like SSI, SSDI, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and State or local benefits. Now, I remember reading in the announcement some of that sort of I thought it was disturbing data that provided the base for why RSA picked this particular area and chose to fund it. And they based it on the program year 2019, RSA 911 data. And some of the things that they said were participants that were exiting the program in competitive integrated employment reported a median wage of 12 bucks an hour and working like 30 hours a week. And the top ten most common occupations were reported. They were like stock clerks and they were order fillers, customer service reps, janitors, cleaners. I call it the whole Food, Filth and Flowers. So I know through this initiative they were trying to do more. So let's dig into what you guys have cooking in Virginia. David, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you get to VR?   David: Thanks, Carol. Started as a job coach years ago. We won't say when. It'll make me feel old, and I worked for a private nonprofit. I then assisted in Virginia, working with individuals, exiting a training center and moving towards community living. From there, I came back to the Richmond area to work for a community service board and again was a job coach and then worked within a sheltered work and day services program before coming to DARS, where I started with the Ticket to Work program and now have that the work incentives and a few grants and the workforce programs.   Carol: You and I have very similar backgrounds. I too was a job coach. I did work in a sheltered workshop for a while as well and all of that. It's always interesting how people find their way to VR. Kate, how about you? Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got to VR?   Kate: I kind of fell into this. A lot of times, similar to other people. Unexpectedly, I found out about East Carolina's rehab program and that they had a scholarship for people who wanted to get their master's. And I'm like, Oh, free money. So I jumped into that. Absolutely loved it. I did my internship at the Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitative Center. It was called something or a different title when I started back in the day. As I tell my kids, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I was there, started off there as an evaluator and then kind of moved across the state, became a rehab counselor in the field, have done transition counseling, substance abuse counseling, went back to Boca Vale for a little bit, even dipped my toes into the world of job coaching and worked with David for a period of time at the CSV, came back to DARS, worked with the Department for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and also, as an aside, also had joined the military during that timeframe on the reserve side. So I'm out of that at this point. So I have quite an eclectic background. As a supervisor once said that I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do, but it was all overall 24 years of work working with individuals with disabilities in a variety of areas. So it really kind of dovetailed well for me to work in the first dif grant that we received prior to this grant where I was a VMA or Virginia Manufacturing Association liaison for our grant. And when we were working on this Phase two grant, it was just pulling from what we've learned previously and growing from there. And so here I am.   Carol: I love it, it positions you really well for the work under this new grant. Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. So, David, why don't you paint us a picture of Virginia DARS How many staff do you have? About how many people are you all serving?   David: Okay, DARS comprises the Division of Rehabilitative Services, the Disability Determination Services, Aging Services. We have roughly 28 to 30 offices around the state and are currently serving just around 18,000 clients. If you include Pre-ETS in those totals.   Carol: that's a bunch., holy cow. I didn't realize you guys were that big.   David: Yeah, and that doesn't include however many cases DDS is handling or our aging or the other units. But that's a little bit about DARS, and I like to say we stretch from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to almost as far west as Detroit. If you go down to Bristol, Virginia, which is technically a little further than Detroit. So lots of types of environments and communities and very unique challenges in different areas.   Carol: Yeah, so you're definitely facing different geographical issues and I'm sure probably even economic differences. You know, if you're talking the coast versus maybe more of a rural area. So I'm sure there's probably some challenges there with even getting providers or how you're providing services.   David: It's interesting. One of the things we've been able to see in, for instance, Southwest Virginia, there is an economic center that's only 16 miles away from an office. But to get there, you go over three mountains and it could take two hours. So are those jobs really accessible to someone without a vehicle? On paper from Richmond, it might look like, why aren't we placing folks in this community out of that office? Well, it's a two hour drive each way, and that's the only way to do it. You mentioned at the beginning those top ten job areas. And one of the things we're really trying to challenge ourselves with now is giving people the information to make an informed decision about a career choice. But if they choose a career that might not look as great, what is the best potential version of that job? What is the job within that sector that actually could become a career? So at the beginning when we were starting to work on this, our agency had been in order of selection for years with categories closed and with the pandemic. That all changed. But the clients we were seeing didn't change and their goals didn't change. I think that's going to be a longer term conversation. But if we can do things to promote the best version of a position. And so I'll just give you one example. And our commissioner, other folks would probably say, why do we have so many folks who want jobs in food service or in this? Because typically they're low paying. Typically there's a lot of turnover. It's hard to become stable. One of the first projects we worked on in this grant was a partnership with a school nutrition program, and we've been able to help a few individuals enter into work in a kitchen at a school where they have the same hours. Monday through Friday. They have the opportunity for benefits. In one case, we couldn't find transportation. That school system was allowing the individual to take the school bus for that person. That's a really stable job and it's somewhere they can grow and thrive for years. So I do want to just say we have to think a little bit differently about what Kate or I or others might think of as a career. How do we find that best option for someone where there is room for growth, but equally important room for that time for stability to get to mastery, to then look at other skills and hopefully down the road they'd come back, not because they lost that job and need it again, but because they've learned so much that they want to go on to the next thing of their own accord.   Carol: Yeah, I like that you said that because I remember that when we visited before talking about that best version of that job. So not to mean that no one can work in kind of food, filth and flowers. I know I say that and it sounds sort of condescending and it's not meant to be. But we typically relied on kind of those occupations, really entry level. But I like that you're taking a spin on that and really looking deeper because we need folks to work in those occupations too. And there's people that love doing that work. But how like you say, can you do the best version of that? So you have benefits and you're looking at those long term like working in a school district, you can get retirement and all these different really awesome things that go with that. So, Kate, I'm going to switch to you. So big picture, break it down for us on your grant proposal and what you're hoping to accomplish with I know you had said you have three core components. Talk a little bit about that.   Kate: Sure. I do want to make a caveat that I love about this grant is it is a demonstration grant, meaning we have the opportunity to try out innovative products and projects across the state. I just want to put a caveat on that to keep that in your mind as I'm going forward here. So our main goal is to place 750 individuals with disabilities in federal, state, county, city jobs and or registered apprenticeships or also Stem and health careers. So we have those three main components on that. And when we looked at this grant and David worked on the development and the proposal for this, we really wanted to touch individuals that had been kind of missed in the first grant. And this I think, is something as we're doing a grant, you're learning all the time. And we wanted to make sure that we were hitting those unserved and underserved across the state. So individuals that aren't as plentiful in different areas. So say like Winchester has a large Hispanic population, does that reflect the number served in the actual DARS office? How do we get Spanish speaking individuals more involved in DARS? How do we get women who may only recognize those areas that you talked about that flower filth? And because that's what they're aware of, that's the work they've done in the past. So I just need another job in that area. How can we open up some possibilities? Have you thought about the IT field? Have you thought about advanced manufacturing and can you see yourself doing that? So providing those opportunities, it's a way for us to look at those unserved and underserved across the state. And we're defining that as we're going and we're looking at the census data, we're looking at who we're serving within each state. And then we're also looking at our plans, the plans that the rehab counselors are creating. What are those plans? What is the main goal? Overall we see a lot of customer service because it's kind of a catch all. What does that mean? Is that customer service as a helpdesk technician as opposed to just somebody as a receptionist? So we're really helping both the VRC, the counselor, and the candidate explore possibilities like that.   Carol: I like that. I just love what you guys are doing and really fundamentally getting down, digging in and really focusing on those folks that have been underserved or unserved and just taking that twist on the occupation because there's a wide range like within customer service, you have the job from here to here.   Kate: Exactly.   Carol: Yeah, that is very cool. Now, I know you all had some really weird hiccups in the beginning when you were starting out with this particular grant. So what were some of those kind of hiccups and how did you overcome that? And Kate, I'll probably shoot to you first on this.   Kate: So part of the thing that I didn't mention was is that the roles that our team players have. So we have a liaison with Department of Labor and Industry, specifically the registered apprenticeship side. So they have their foot in the DOLI world and the foot in the DARS world. We also have a team member who has their foot in the Department of Human Resource Management Liaison, and then also her toes are also dipping in the DARS. So we've had some different team members on that. We also have a quick response, counselor, somebody who can go in and respond to immediate needs of employers, of an individual that might be working with them, that has a disability, that might need some help, whether that's in a registered apprenticeship or on that particular job. During the first year we hired and we had everybody up and running and we had two team members, one had a medical emergency and had to move away from the position because there was some driving involved. And then unfortunately, we had Lisa Hanky, who passed away unexpectedly on us. So, you know, you get all getting that hiring going and then all of a sudden we lost two individuals, so we had to restart that process.   David: But Kate, if I can add to that, and I believe this is true for everyone in our round of this DIF funding, I believe we were told two days before the beginning of the project, it was about a day after that that, you know, many agencies coming out of the pandemic have had challenges with staffing and we had those challenges in our procurement division. So getting contracts signed, getting those staff replaced. But the other thing that has been a challenge and we're finally coming out of. We created three positions that this agency has never had, and it had meant that we had to learn how to provide quality support to two other state agencies in the context of working with DARS and similarly with our quick response counselors. So we created these positions that we had an idea of how they could work. But once someone got into those roles and was learning the other agency, we've had to be flexible in understanding how they can actually benefit our clients and our agency. And that has been a learning process.   Carol: You guys bring up a really good point because I think sometimes when folks are applying for the DIF grant, you're not recognizing off the get-go That first year can be a struggle because like you said, you found out two days before and then you get the money. And then as we know with any state government, it takes time to hire and like to get through all those processes. And so RSA may be on one hand going like spend the money and you're like, we're trying, but we've got to get through all our HR processes and all this crazy stuff. So it takes a little bit to get rolling in that first year. And I know we often on the TA world are talking with people as they're applying for grants going just know as you're going into it that first year, you're probably not going to spend the amount of funds you projected originally because there's just is a time factor and getting through all of that.   Kate: Absolutely. That was the one thought that David and I, if you know, we apply for another one down the road, maybe making that first year a little bit less intensive and spreading it out from year 2 to 5 because that's where the major work will be done.   Carol: Yeah, that's smart. Very smart. So I know you guys were talking about some challenges. What are some other particular challenges that you're experiencing right now?   Kate: Well, I'll get started on that piece. One of the things we have found similar to the staffing, the challenge that we had when we first started of hiring individuals, we're finding a turnover in staff in DARS. And so we are having a lot of younger counselors that have, in some cases don't have a rehab background. They might have a social work background. So we have a lot of training that we're doing and then redoing on that. We're having a training coming up in October for the VOC rehab counselors and we're getting kind of back to basics. What makes a good referral for our Pathways Grant, looking at those possibilities of not just that receptionist job, let's look at helpdesk. What are the opportunities that are out there? And so that has been kind of a challenge, is just retraining. And I think this is kind of normal across the board. But these rehab counselors are busy. They have a lot more documentation they have to put in Aware. There's a lot more individuals coming through their door because we have the rapid engagements, so they are overwhelmed. And how can we dovetail our services to best support them, how to make the referral process as easy as possible for them, what supports make the most sense for them? So that's been one of the interesting challenges.   Carol: So, Kate, have you guys done anything around just the way in which your staff or the support of those counselors, do you have like other staff that are kind of wrapped around them, whether you call them maybe a rehab tech or some sort of a case aide or whatever it might be that can help the counselors with sort of all the documentation requirements and that kind of thing. Have you done some work in that?   Kate: Actually, here in Virginia, we do have support. We have vocational evaluators, placement counselors and what they call employment service specialists that run the job club and things like that. And they can help support with some of the paperwork. But similar to other states that actually have like a rehab tech that would do some of the counseling or the that kind of thing, not as much. And each office is run a little bit different. That's part of the appeal. And what I mean by that is, is some of the offices might not have a vocational evaluator, some might have a placement counselor that might be covering more than one office so that there is enough differences on that piece. But yeah, that has been a struggle for keeping all of that work and getting it done for them.   Carol: Yeah, You're definitely joined by your colleagues across the country on that. I keep hearing that over and over. David did you have anything else you wanted to add to that about any of the particular challenges?   David: Yeah, I think we wrote this knowing we needed to do some things better and serve certain populations differently to get to where people had the same outcome regardless of gender, race, ethnicity. And that is still a challenge. We are learning that we have a long way to go to effectively serve those folks who have English as a second language. And when we started the project, we started with like a counselor advisory board to help not only create buy in, but inform us what the counselors needed. We have now shifted to an advisory board geared towards helping us do better with the Hispanic Latino population, and that English is a second language. So we're hoping over this next year, working with members of our state who are representative of those groups will actually help us figure out what services are going to be most likely to bring people in for help. What supports we will need to think about providing for those individuals to be successful. And again, it goes back to how do we help people see for themselves greater opportunities and careers than they might have.   Carol: So are you linked in then with your like your WIOA partners on your adult basic ed side? Like under that, you know, the English as a second language, Like they're more expert than us in working with that group?   Kate: Absolutely. One of our key partners is the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center, who teach the adult ed, they help support them across the state when we get further along I'll talk about some of the projects that we're working with with them.   Carol: Yeah, that's excellent. I love that. So I know you guys are seeing some exciting results. What kind of exciting results are percolating up?   Kate: So one of the things that we found as we're moving forward is we actually had working with adult Ed, we had a program that we were doing Intro to IT, where we're starting a basic starting platform for accounting fundamentals, and we were ready to go. We had seven individuals in this first cohort, and one of the things we found was the individuals that we met, even though we just came through Covid with all of the tech training, we had individuals they knew enough to get on to Zoom and to do some items, but we really needed to step back and do some basic tech training. So, they had enough gaps in their knowledge that they couldn't move forward without some major help. So what happened on this is, is we stepped back and started to do some digital literacy training and they moved forward with that. And each of those individuals are now moving forward with the accounting fundamentals this summer. So stepping back, we're actually looking at what we're calling digital work skills training, which is really exciting opportunity for individuals to get started with North Star digital literacy. We're working on goal setting some soft skill development just to get them started on that end. So we have individuals that would typically not be able to go to a virtual training actually get started there. And what we're finding with that end is, is that we have some individuals, you know, those customer service people who just want to do clerical, they're getting introduced to IT. And so we've had a few individuals that have moved on to our next training, which we call the Max Career Lab. And Max Potential is an employer here in Virginia. And I think they go into other states as well, several other states. And what they are, they're a temp agency for IT employment. So they hire individuals to work with Dominion, to work with, you know, with all these employers doing various IT. But they have a unique hiring model. They actually have an opportunity where individuals come in and they go through a career lab five day, three hours a day, 15 hours of a career lab. Then they do an interview. During those five days, they do an overview of data analytics, networking, all these different career areas. So they'll do an hour and a half of overview of the career, and then they do an actual interactive activity that they break out in groups for. So it's a great way to explore the IT field. So we've hired them to actually run career labs for us. They do the 15 hours, then they get homework and then they have an interview assessment. So the interview is just like a typical interview that they run, but they follow up with what activities that they're interested in. So this has been a wonderful way for us to explore different IT areas and to help individuals determine what area of IT they want to do. Here in Virginia, we're blessed. We've got Nova, we've got a lot of IT careers, but counselors and vocal evaluators don't always know how to direct somebody into the right avenue because technology is always changing. You know, cybersecurity, cybersecurity, that's always a great one, right? Because we're right here in Nova. However, not everybody wants to do cyber. Have you thought of data analytics? Have you thought of the different networking positions? Have you thought of machine learning? You know what, all is out there? And so it's an opportunity for us to do a hands on career exploration and next steps with an actual employer running the sessions for us.   Carol: That's cool. Yeah, I hadn't heard about a career lab before like that. That is very intriguing because so many people learn much better, you know, by actually experiencing seeing what that's about because it can sound cool. You read about something like the cybersecurity was the big deal, but then you get into it and you're like, Oh, I don't really want to do that, you know? So giving them that opportunity, I think that's fabulous.   Kate: Yes, and we have had our first cohort. We had 25 people sign up. We had 22 complete the whole piece. That includes the interview.  Of that group we had six individuals. So they compare the group together, but they also compare them to the other public groups that they have across the board. So of those individuals, six are encouraged to look at direct work experience. The rest have been encouraged to do a few other activities, like maybe develop more professional skills or develop more tech training, possibly, you know, accounting fundamentals. We had one that decided they did not want to do IT training. And I'm thinking, what a great opportunity you now know what you don't want to do. And for us, that can be great, right? So we're looking at some other options for that young man. It has been a wonderful opportunity. We're now in our second cohort and our hope is, is to keep continuing this as we're going through this grant and to see how we can set this up once the grant is over.   Carol: Very cool. Have you had any surprises kind of as you've started this. I know you're in year two. Are there any surprises?   David: I think there are always surprises. This is right. Staff and surprises some of the opportunities that have come up. I don't think we anticipated. So we've shifted to take advantage. One of the big pieces of this grant is our focus on state hiring and the individual we hired for that aspect worked diligently during the first six months with them on an alternative hiring process through the legislation, had a go live date, whether we were ready or not. And what we didn't understand is during the first year, this process, it wasn't available to current state employees who may be disabled. That created a lot of issues for folks who were upset that they couldn't access this to move up within state government. We weren't able to change that ourselves, but it was changed in legislation. And starting in July of this year, we were allowed to offer a certificate of disability to someone who was currently employed and that has seen an increase. We've had roughly 1500 people request certificates of disabilities. I think part of what was surprising is what a great opportunity that has become as a referral source for DAR's. Roughly 300 individuals have chosen to get more information and receive VR services, and we are seeing that as a really nice piece of the process. Additionally, I think we finally had our first individual who went from what we call part time wage employment to full time classified, which was one of the intents of the process we developed. So it's nice to begin to see that work. But for Kate and I, we have to remind ourselves some of this might take two, three, four years before we really actually see these things that could be possible in action. And I think the other big surprise there is just how great of a partner our Department of Human Resource Management has been. They recently allowed us to present to 120 hiring managers and we will be a regular part of their monthly recruitment network action meetings. They've bought into our use of windmills training. They advertise it every month and we are co-sponsoring a job accommodation network training in October for them that they will heavily market to state hiring managers. So I think that's been really great. And then the other surprise, it turns out that our division of registered apprenticeship within the Department of Labor and Industry is moving to a new state agency. So we will see what that does. You know, you think things are pretty stable and static in certain ways, but they can change. That's been a surprise. But it's not a good or bad. It just, you know, might be a chance to actually work with more of our partners more directly.   Kate: And David, another surprise that we had was the use of data. We have been doing some trainings with the field and they you know, when you bring numbers involved, people get a little, oh, I don't know if I want to touch this, but what we found was the counselors, the evaluators, the placement, they enjoyed looking at this data. They ate it up. So the use of data as a tool to look at who we're serving, how are we serving them, has been an eye opener. At least it was a surprise for me. Now I'm a vocational evaluator, so I love data and I thought I was, you know, unique. But I'm not you know, everybody is, you know, surprisingly likes that data.   Carol: Yeah.. Well, and definitely how you present it to the field, you know, if you're just like blah, blah, blah, whatever, they really are interested because it's the culmination of their work, you know, so they see what's happening. It really helps to paint that picture and then they can react and respond and do things in a different way in response to that data. So I think that's smart that you guys are doing that. Now. I know you both had talked about shifting the conversation around employment and shifting that whole narrative on barriers to advancement and employment. Talk a little bit about that.   Kate: So one of the things that the counselors are really good at is, is when somebody comes in the door and they say, hey, you know, I need help finding work. But when we look at the definition of what we do, it's getting and but it's also keeping or advancing in your career. So what is that advancement look like? So if you have somebody coming in who I need a job right away, maybe this is where somebody is going to go for a stock clerk. But what about the idea of doing a quick training so that they can get a credential in the Certified logistics associate and then moving from there, maybe when they do that interview, now that they have that credential, maybe they can ask for a little bit of a raise. And what is the next step on that piece? So we've definitely looked at that. How do we make, as David said, the most of the career that you're looking at or the other areas that we've already talked about? Let's look at other areas.   David: One of the things that actually came from one of our offices that they wanted was we've heard more and more about attrition and attrition from application to plan, but also attrition from plan before employment or before successful closure. And we have created a group called Work Wise, which is designed for individuals who have just become employed to meet once a week in the evening, talk about their jobs, have an opportunity with a staff person to talk through issues, challenges. It's been really a powerful group, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how the individuals who choose to participate in a couple of cases did not want to stop going when their case was closed because of how valuable it was to in close to real time talk through things that were happening at work with someone with a VR counseling background. And that has been a really powerful group because it's also given folks to learn from each other and get to that stability and confidence to maybe also look for future opportunities. I know we're getting ready to also hold a salary negotiation training for folks. So again, let's help people think through and have those skills now that they may use now or they may use later when an opportunity to move up comes around. And similarly, we've started a group that we're calling money wise where we've partnered with a local credit union with that hope of how can we help make sure folks maximize their the benefits they choose to take advantage of from an employer. How do we help someone make sure that if there's a 401 match and it's X amount, that they do that much at the very least, Right. Those things that everyone is told, Well, if there's free money from an employer, you take it or if there's tuition assistance or some other thing, maybe there are things to plant some seeds. So someone would continue to move forward.   Carol: I can see how so much of this work that you are doing is so foundational and will be of benefit to, you know, your other colleagues across the country with the things you've uncovered and the things that you are working on, these different classes and groups and all of that. I'm sure other people are going, Gosh, I want to do that too. I think this will be amazing to help plant the seeds across the country. Now, David, I know you were concerned about implementing something that could withstand the test of time. And I know DIF grants are meant it's a demonstration grant. You're trying something out, but you want to also be able to carry forward these ideas into the future. So how are you guys structuring this to make that happen?   David: We really are thinking about sustainability and to Commissioner Hayfield's credit, that's been one of the things that she and Dale Batten have really stressed to us. It's great to do great work in a period of time, but how can we make sure that the things that have the potential to be value add or transformative continue and don't just end the day the funding stops? And we've really thought through many of the activities that we are creating, we are working on from at the beginning. What would this look like when there's no funding? How will we continue these? It's part of our partnership with Valray. We're working to get some of these pieces put into Canvas and set up through that learning management system. But within some of the positions, you know, one of our hopes is that the DHRM VR liaison could become its own full time non restricted position at the end. Similarly, we would hope that for the others, or at least those activities become a part of multiple staff strategically throughout the state. And that's one way we're looking at it.   Kate: And yeah, we're looking at the train, the trainers, also the tools that we're using. One of the pieces for vocational evaluators would be English language acquisition and knowledge. So there are assessments that are out there that can test somebody's English language, which is important for us to know if we're working with individuals and we're trying to place them on the job. So how do we get the tools necessary into the hands of the individuals and trained up for that so that that can be moving forward? So we're being proactive for these individuals that we hope to come into our doors a little bit more often.   Carol: That's excellent. So what do you guys see as your next steps? Where are you going from here? The point you're at right now, what are the next steps?   Kate: So a lot of our programming that we're doing right now is in partnership with adult ed. We see a great marriage between DARS and Adult Ed because Adult Ed works with a lot of individuals with disabilities already. They're adult educators. They can provide a little bit more support for our learners for credential training. They've got different things that are across the state. I'm working with our rehab center, Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation to really figure out how can we marry these? Right now I'm coordinating all these trainings. Is there a way that the center can provide this? And this gives the center an opportunity to look at a virtual environment? What does this look like? We're not sure what it looks like, but we're giving a try to see for that next piece so that max potential with the employer, can that be run through Wilson so that it is open and able to run after the grant is over.   Carol: So for our listeners that would want to apply for a grant, but they've been afraid to do so. What advice would you give to other people?   David: Don't be afraid to apply for a grant. It is an amazing opportunity to infuse energy and enthusiasm into your workforce. It is a chance to stretch, learn new skills, try new programs and get some great outcomes. If there are things you've wanted to try and you don't necessarily have the budget to do or don't seem to fit a demonstration grant is a phenomenal opportunity, and when I came into this agency under grants and special programs, usually we had to worry about things like a match component. And if you have the chance to apply for a grant where there isn't a match and you are willing to be patient with that work, you can accomplish some great things. You get to know your partners better. You get to see staff flourish and stretch and more importantly, get some really cool outcomes for the clients we serve.   Carol: Love that infuse that energy and enthusiasm. I wrote that down. That was a great. You're like giving a commercial for the RSA DIF Grants, that's awesome.   Kate: One thing I would add on this too is when I first came in eight years ago on the other grant, I was pretty much kind of a newbie in the grant world, and I was a little intimidated with the idea of RSA. But what I have found is, is RSA is there to help us. They want us to succeed. And if you have a solid grant application and know what you want to do, they will help you give you some ideas. They invited other states to meet with you to kind of talk about different things. So they have been very good about sharing knowledge and they want to see us succeed.   Carol: That sounds so great. Well, I am going to definitely tell our listeners like they should reach out to you too, if they've got some questions to reach out to David and Kate, because you all have a lot of very cool stuff cooking, and I'm sure you're willing to talk to others about what you've been doing as they're thinking about maybe applying some of this, even though they may not have a DIF grant, but applying some of the things that you're learning into their own work in their states?   Kate: Absolutely. We're here.   Carol: Excellent. Well, I appreciate you both. Thanks for spending time with us. And I look forward to circling back with you a little bit in a couple more years as time flies on this grant and see where you're coming in at and those good results. So have a great day.   David: Thank you very much.   Kate: Thank you.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!  

David Colebatch, CEO of Tidal, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Tidal's recent shift to a product-led approach and why empathizing with customers is always their most important job. David describes what it was like to grow the company from scratch on a boot-strapped basis, and how customer feedback and challenges inform the company strategy. Corey and David discuss the cost-savings measures cloud customers are now embarking on, and David discusses how constant migrations are the new normal. Corey and David also discuss the impact that generative AI is having not just on tech, but also on creative content and interactions in our everyday lives. About David David is the CEO & Founder of Tidal.  Tidal is empowering businesses to transform from traditional on-premises IT-run organizations to lean-agile-cloud powered machines.Links Referenced: Company website: https://tidal.cloud LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-colebatch/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Returning guest today, David Colebatch is still the CEO at Tidal. David, how have you been? It's been a hot second.David: Thanks, Corey. Yeah, it's been a fantastic summer for me up here in Toronto.Corey: Yeah, last time I saw you, was it New York or was it DC? They all start to run together to me.David: I think it was DC. Yeah.Corey: That's right. Public Sector Summit where everything was just a little bit stranger than most of my conversations. It's, “Wait, you're telling me there's a whole bunch of people who use the cloud but don't really care about money? What—how does that work?” And I say that not from the position of harsh capitalism, but from the position of we're a government; saving costs is nowhere in our mandate. Or it is, but it's way above my pay grade and I run the cloud and call it good. It seems like that attitude is evolving, but slowly, which is kind of what you want to see. Titanic shifts in governing are usually not something you want to see done on a whim, overnight.David: No, absolutely. A lot of the excitement at the DC summit was around new capabilities. And I was actually really intrigued. It was my first time in the DC summit, and it was packed, from the very early stages of the morning, great attendance throughout the day. And I was just really impressed by some of the new capabilities that customers are leveraging now and the new use cases that they're bringing to market. So, that was a good time for me.Corey: Yeah. So originally, you folks were focused primarily on migrations and it seems like that's evolving a little bit. You have a product now for starters, and the company's name is simply Tidal, without a second word. So, brevity is very much the soul of wit, it would seem. What are you doing these days?David: Absolutely. Yeah, you can find us at tidal.cloud. Yeah, we're focused on migrations as a primary means to help a customer achieve new capabilities. We're about accelerating their journey to cloud and optimizing once they're in cloud as well. Yeah, we're focused on identifying the different personas in an enterprise that are trying to take that cloud journey on with people like project, program managers, developers, as well as network people, now.Corey: It seems, on some level, like you are falling victim to the classic trap that basically all of us do, where you have a services company—which is how I thought of you folks originally—now, on some level, trying to become a product or a platform company. And then you have on the other side of it—places that we're—“Oh, we're a SaaS company. This is hard. We're going to do services instead.” And it seems like no one's happy. We're all cats, perpetually on the wrong side of a given door. Is that an accurate assessment for where you are? Or am I misreading the tea leaves on this one?David: A little misread, but close—Corey: Excellent.David: You're right. We bootstrapped our product company with services. And from day one, we supported our customers, as well as channel partners, many of the [larger size 00:03:20] that you know, we supported them in helping their customers be successful. And that was necessary for us as we bootstrapped the company from zero. But lately, and certainly in the last 12 months, it's very much a product-led company. So, leading with what customers are using our software for first, and then supporting that with our customer success team.Corey: So, it's been an interesting year. We've seen simultaneously a market correction, which I think has been sorely needed for a while, but that's almost been overshadowed in a lot of conversations I've had by the meteoric rise and hype around generative AI. Have you folks started rebranding everything with a fresh coat of paint labeled generative AI yet as it seems like so many folks have? What's your take on it?David: We haven't. You won't see a tidal.ai from us. Look, our thoughts are leveraging the technology as we always had to provide better recommendations and suggestions to our users, so we'll continue to embrace generative AI as it applies to specific use cases within our product. We're not going to launch a brand new product just around the AI theme.Corey: Yeah, but even that seems preferable to what a lot of folks are doing, which is suddenly pivoting their entire market positioning and then act, “Oh, we've been working in generative AI for 5, 10, 15 years,” in some cases. Google and Amazon most notably have talked about how they've been doing this for decades. It's, “Cool. Then why did OpenAI beat you all to the punch on this?” And in many cases, also, “You've been working on this for decades? Huh. Then why is Alexa so terrible?” And they don't really have a good talking point for that yet, but it's the truth.David: Absolutely. Yeah. I will say that the world changed with the OpenAI launch, of course, and we had a new way to interact with this technology now that just sparked so much interest from everyday people, not just developers. And so, that got our juices flowing and creativity mode as well. And so, we started thinking about, well, how can we recommend more to other users of our system as opposed to just cloud architects?You know, how can we support project managers that are, you know, trying to summarize where they're at, by leveraging some of this technology? And I'm not going to say we have all the answers for this baked yet, but it's certainly very exciting to start thinking outside the box with a whole new bunch of capabilities that are available to us.Corey: I tried doing some architecture work with Chat-Gippity—yes, that is how I pronounce it—and it has led me down the primrose path a little bit because what it says is often right. Mostly. But there are some edge-case exceptions of, “Ohh, it doesn't quite work that way.” It reminds me at some level of a junior engineer who doesn't know the answer, so they bluff. And that's great, but it's also a disaster.Because if I can't trust the things you tell me and you to call it out when you aren't sure on something, then I've got to second guess everything you tell me. And it feels like when it comes to architecture and migrations in particular, the devil really is in the details. It doesn't take much to design a greenfield architecture on a whiteboard, whereas being able to migrate something from one place to another and not have to go down in the process? That's a lot of work.David: Absolutely. I have used AI successfully to do a lot of research very quickly across broad market terms and things like that, but I do also agree with you that we have to be careful using it as the carte blanche force multiplier for teams, especially in migration scenarios. Like, if you were to throw Chat-Gippity—as you say—a bunch of COBOL code and say, “Hey, translate this,” it can do a pretty good job, but the devil is in that detail and you need to have an experienced person actually vet that code to make sure it's suitable. Otherwise, you'll find yourself creating buggy things downstream. I've run into this myself, you know, “Produce some Terraform for me.” And when I generated some Terraform for an architecture I was working on, I thought, “This is pretty good.” But then I realized, it's actually two years old and that's about how old my skills were as well. So, I needed to engage someone else on my team to help me get that job done.Corey: So, migrations have been one of those things that people have been talking about for well, as long as we've had more than one data center on the planet. “How do we get our stuff from over here to over there?” And so, on and so forth. But the context and tenor of those conversations has changed dramatically. What have you seen this past year or so as far as emerging trends? What is the industry doing that might not be obvious from the outside?David: Well, cost optimization has been number one on people's minds, and migrating with financial responsibility in mind has been refreshing. So, working backwards from what their customer outcomes are is still number one in our book, and when we see increasingly customers say, “Hey, I want to migrate to cloud to close a data center or avoid some capital outlay,” that's the first thing we hear, but then we work backwards from what was their three-year plan. And then what we've seen so far is that customers have changed from a very IT-centric view of cloud and what they're trying to deliver to much more business-centric. Now, they'll say things like, “I want to be able to bring new capabilities to market more quickly. I want to be able to operate and leverage some of these new generative AI technologies.” So, they actually have that as a driving force for migrations, as opposed to an afterthought.Corey: What I have found is that, for whatever reason, not giving a shit about the AWS bill in my business was a zero-interest-rate phenomenon. Suddenly people care an awful lot. But they're caring is bounded. If there's a bunch of easy stuff to do that saves a giant pile of money, great, yeah, most folks are going to do that. But then it gets into the idea of opportunity cost and trade-offs. And there's been a shift there that I've seen where people are willing to invest more in that cost-cutting work than they were in previous years.It makes sense, but it's also nice to finally have a moment to validate what I've assumed for seven years now that, yeah, in a recession or a retraction of the broader industry, suddenly, this is going to be top-of-mind for a lot of folks. And it's nice to see that that approach was vindicated because the earlier approach that I saw when we saw something like this was at the start of Covid. And at that point, no one knew what was happening week-to-week and consulting leads basically stopped for six months. And that was oh, maybe we don't have a counter-cyclical business. But no, it turns out that when money means something again as interest rates rise, people care about it more.David: Yeah. It is nice to see that. And people are trying to do more with less and become more efficient in an advanced pace these days. I don't know about you, but I've seen the trends towards the low-hanging fruit being done at this point so people have already started using savings plans and capabilities like that, and now they're embarking in more re-architecture of applications. But I think one stumbling block that we've noticed is that customers are still struggling to know where to apply those transformations across their portfolio. They'll have one or two target apps that everybody knows because they're the big ones on the bill, but beneath that, the other 900 applications in their portfolio, which ones do I do next? And that's still a question that we're seeing come up, time and again.Corey: One thing that I'm starting to see people talking about from my perspective, has been suddenly they really care about networking in a way that they did not previously. And I mean, this in the TCP/IP sense, not the talking to interesting people and doing interesting things. That's been basically steady-state for a while. But from my perspective, the conversations I'm having are being driven by, “Wait a minute. AWS is going to start charging $3.50 a month per assigned IPV4 address. Oh, dear. We have been careless in our approach to this.” Is that something that you're seeing shaping the conversations you're having with folks?David: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean right off the bat, our team went through very quickly and inventoried our IPV4, and certainly, customers are doing that as well. I found that, you know, in the last seven years, the migration conversations were having become broader across an enterprise customer. So, we've mapped out different personas now, and the networking teams playing a bigger role for migrations, but also optimizations in the cloud. And I'll give you an example.So, one large enterprise, their networking team approached us at the same time as their cloud architects who were trying to work on a migration approached us. And the networking team had a different use case. They wanted to inventory all the IP addresses on-premises, and some that they already had in the cloud. So, they actually leveraged—shameless plug here—but they leveraged out a LightMesh IPAM solution to do that. And what that brought to light for us was that the integration of these different teams working together now, as opposed to working around each other. And I do think that's a bit of a trend change for us.Corey: IPAM has always been one of those interesting things to me because originally, the gold standard in this space was—let's not kid ourselves—a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. And then there are a bunch of other offerings that entered into the space. And for a while I thought most of these were ridiculous because the upgrade was, you know, Google Sheets so you can collaborate. But having this done in a way with particular permissions and mapping in a way that's intuitive and doesn't require everyone to not mess up when they're looking at it, especially as you get into areas of shared responsibility between different divisions or different team members who are in different time zones and whatnot, this becomes a more and more intractable problem. It's one of those areas where small, scrappy startups don't understand what the fuss is about, and big enterprises absolutely despair of finding something that works for them.AWS launched their VPC IPAM offering a while back and if you look at it from the perspective of competing with Google Sheets, its pricing is Looney Tunes. But I've met an awful lot of people who have sworn by it in the process, as they look at these things. Now, of course, the caveat is that like most AWS offerings, it's great in a pure AWS native environment, but as soon as you start getting into other providers and whatnot, it gets very tricky very quickly.David: No, absolutely. And usability of an IP address management solution is something to consider. So, you know, if you're trying to get on board with IPAM, do you want to do three easy steps or do you want to follow 150? And I think that's a really big barrier to entry for a lot of networking teams, especially those that are not too familiar with cloud already. But yeah, where we've seen the networking folks get more involved is around, like, identifying endpoints and devices that must be migrated to cloud, but also managing those subnets and planning their VPC designs upfront.You've probably seen this before yourself where customers have allocated a whole bunch of address space over time—an overlapping address space, I should say—only to then later want to [peer 00:13:47] those networks. And that's something that if you think you're going to be doing downstream, you should really plan for that ahead of time and make sure your address space is allocated correctly. Problems vary. Like, everyone's architecture is different, of course, but we've certainly noticed that being one of the top-button items. And then that leads into a migration itself. You're not migrating to cloud now; you're migrating within the cloud and trying to reorganize address spaces, which is a whole other planning activity to consider.Corey: When you take a look at, I guess the next step in these things, what's coming next in the world of migrations? I recently got to talk to someone who was helping their state migrate from, effectively, mainframes in many cases into a cloud environment. And it seems, on some level, like everyone on a mainframe, one, is very dependent on that workload; those things are important, so that's why they're worth the extortionate piles of money, but it also feels like they've been trying to leave the mainframe for decades in many cases. Now, there's a sense that for a lot of these folks, the end is nigh for their mainframe's lifespan, so they're definitely finally taking the steps to migrate. What's the next big frontier once the, I guess, either the last holdouts from that side of the world wind up getting into a cloud or decide they never will? It always felt to me like migrations are one of those things that's going to taper off and it's not going to be something that is going to be a growth industry because the number of legacy workloads is, at least theoretically, declining. Not so sure that's accurate, though.David: I don't think it is either. If we look back at past migrations, you know, 90, 95% of them are often lift-and-shift to EC2 or x86 on VMware in the cloud. And a lot of the work that we're seeing now is being described as optimization. Like, “Look at my EC2 workloads and come up with cloud-native or transformative processes for me.” But those are migrations as well because we run the same set of software, the same processes over those workloads to determine how we can re-platform and refactor them into more native services.So, I think, you know, the big shift for us is just recognizing that the term ‘migrations' needs to be well-defined and communicated with folks. Migrations are actually constant now and I would argue we're doing more migrations within customers now than we have in the past because the rate of change is just so much faster. And I should add, on the topic of mainframe and legacy systems, we have seen this pivot away from teams looking for emulation layers for those technologies, you know, where they want to forklift the functionality, but they don't want to really roll up their sleeves and do any coding work. So, they're previously looking to automatically translate code or emulate that compute layer in the cloud, and the big pivot we've seen in the last 12 months, I'd say, is that customers are more willing to actually understand how to rebuild their applications in the cloud. And that's a fantastic story because it means they're not kicking that technology debt can down the road any further. They're really trying to embrace cloud and leverage some of these new capabilities that have come to market.Corey: What do you see as, I guess, the reason that a number of holdouts have not yet done a migration? Like, historically, I've seen some that are pretty obvious: the technology wasn't there. Well, cloud has gotten to a point now where it is hard to identify a capability that isn't there in some form. And there's always been the sunk cost fallacy where, “Well, we've already bought all this stuff, and it's running here, so if we're not replacing it anytime soon, there's no cost benefit for us to replace it.” And that's actually correct. That's not a fallacy there. But there's also the, “Well, it would be too much work to move.” Sometimes true, sometimes not. Are you seeing a shift in the reasons that people are giving to not migrate?David: No, I haven't. It's been those points mostly. And I'd say one of the biggest inhibitors to people actually getting it done is this misconception that it costs a lot of money to transform and to adopt cloud tools. You've seen this through the technology keeps getting easier and easier to adopt and cheaper to use. When you can provision services for $0 a month and then scale with usage patterns, there's really no reason not to try today because the opportunity cost is so low.So, I think that one of the big inhibitors that comes up, though, is this cultural barrier within organizations where teams haven't been empowered to try new things. And that's the one thing that I think is improving nowadays, as more of this how-to-build-in-the-cloud capability becomes permeated throughout the organization. People are saying, “Well, why can't we do that?” As opposed to, “We can't do that.” You know what I mean? It's a subtle difference, but once leadership starts to say, “Why can't we do this modern thing in the cloud? Why can't we leverage AI?” Teams are given more rope to try and experiment, and fail, of course. And I think ultimately, that culture shift is starting to take root across enterprise and across public sector as well.Corey: One of the things that I find surprising is the enthusiasm with which different market segments jump onto different aspects of cloud. Lambda is a classic example, in that it might be one of the services that is more quickly adopted by enterprises than by startups and a lot of cases. But there's also the idea of, “Oh, we built this thing last night, and it's awesome.” And enterprises, like you know, including banks and insurance companies don't want to play those games, for obvious reasons.Generative AI seems to be a mixed bag around a lot of these things. Have you had conversations with a number of your clients around the generative AI stuff? Because I've seen Amazon, for example, talking about it, “Oh, all our customers are asking us about it.” And, mmm, I don't know. Because I definitely have questions about and I'm exploring it, but I don't know that I'm turning to Amazon, of all companies, to answer those questions, either.David: Yeah. We've certainly had customer conversations about it. And it depends, again, on those personas. On the IT side, the conversations are mostly around how can they do their jobs better. They're not thinking forwards about the business capabilities. So, IT comes to us and they want to know how can we use generative AI to create Lambda functions and create stateless applications more quickly as a part of a migration effort. And that's great. That's a really cool use case. We've used that generative AI approach to create code ourselves.But on the business side, they're looking forwards, they want to use generative AI in the, again, the sample size of my customer conversations, but they see that the barrier to entry is getting their data in a place that they can leverage it. And to them, to the business, that's what's driving the migration conversations they're having with us, is, “How do I exfil my data and get it into the cloud where I can start to leverage these great AI tools?”Corey: Yeah, I'm still looking at use cases that I think are a little less terrifying. Like, I want to wind up working on a story or something. Or I'll use it to write blog posts; I have a great approach. It's, “Write a blog post about this topic and here are some salient points and do it in the style of Corey Quinn.” I'll ask Chat-Gippity to do that and it spits out something that is, frankly, garbage.And I get angry at it and I basically copy it into a text editor and spent 20 minutes mansplain-correcting the robot. And by the time it's done, I have, like, a structure of an article that talks about the things I want to talk about correctly. And there may be three words in a sequence that were originally there. And frankly, I'm okay with plagiarizing from the thing that is plagiarizing from me. It's a beautiful circle of ripping things off that that's glorious for me.But that's also not something that I could see being useful at any kind of scale, where I see companies getting excited about a lot of this stuff, it all seems to be a thin veneer over, “And then we can fire our customer service people,” which from a labor perspective is not great, but ignoring that entirely, as a customer, I don't want that. Because by the time I have to reach out to a company's customer service apparatus, something has gone wrong and it isn't going to be solved by the standard list of frequently asked questions that I clicked on. It's something that is off the beaten path and anomalous and requires human judgment. Making it harder for me to get to people who can fix those things does not thrill and delight me.David: I agree. I'm with you there. Where I get excited about it, though, is how much of a force multiplier it can be on that human interaction. So, for example, in that customer's service case you mentioned, you know, if that customer service rep is empowered by an AI dashboard that's listening to my conversation and taking notes and automatically looking up in my knowledge base how to support that customer, then that customer success person can be more successful more quickly, I think they can be more responsive to customer needs and maybe improve the quality, not just the volume of work they do but improve the quality, too.Corey: That's part of the challenge, too. There have been a number of companies that have gotten basically rapped across the snout for just putting out articles as content, written by AI without any human oversight. And these don't just include, you know, small, scrappy content mills; they include Microsoft, and I believe CNN, if I'm not mistaken, had something similar with that going on. I'm not certain on that last one. I don't want to defame them, but I know for a fact Microsoft did.David: Yeah, and I think some of the email generators are plugging into AI now, too, because my spam count has gone through the roof lately.Corey: Oh, my God. I got one recently saying, “Hey, I noticed at The Duckbill Group that you fix AWS bills. Great. That's awesome and super valuable for your clients.” And then try to sell me bill optimization and process improvement stuff. And it was signed by the CEO of the company that was reaching out.And then there was like—I expand the signature view, and it's all just very light gray text make it harder to read, saying, “This is AI generated, yadda, yadda, yadda.” Called the company out on Twitter, and they're like, “Oh, we only have a 0.15% error rate.” That sounds suspiciously close to email marketing response rates. “Welp, that means 99% of it was perfect.” No, it means that you didn't get in front of most of those people. They just ignored it without reading it the way we do most email outreach. So, that bugs me a fair bit. Because my perspective on it is if you don't care enough to actually craft a message to send me, why should I care enough to read it?David: Completely agree. I think a lot of people are out there looking for that asymmetric, you know, leverage that you can get over the market, and generating content, to them, has been a blocker for so long and now they're just opening up the fire hose and drowning us all with it. So I'm, like, with you. I think that I personally don't expect to get value back from someone unless I put value into that relationship. That's my starting point coming into it, so I would maybe use AI to help assist forming a message to someone, but I'm not going to blast the internet with content. I just think that's a cheeky low-value way to go about it.Corey: I don't track the numbers anymore, but I know that at this point, through the size of my audience and the content that I put out, I have taken, collectively, millennia of human time focusing on—that has been spent consuming the content that I put out. And as a result of that, I have a guiding principle here, which is first and foremost, you've got to respect your audience. And I'm just going to have a robot phone it in is not respecting your audience. I have no problem with AI assistants, but it requires human oversight before it goes out. I would never in a million years send anything out to the audience that I hadn't at least read or validated first.But yeah, some of the signups that go out, the automatic things that you click a button and sign up for my newsletter at lastweekinaws.com, you get an auto message that comes out. Yeah, it comes out under my name and I either wrote it or reviewed it, depending on what generation of system we're on these days, because it has my name attached to it. That's the way that this works. Your credibility is important and having a robot spout off complete nonsense and you get the credit or blame for it? No thanks. I want to be doomed from my own sins, not the ones that a computer makes on my behalf.David: [laugh]. Yeah, I'm with you. It's unfortunate that so many people expect the emails from you are generated now. We have the same thing when people sign up for Tidal Accelerator or Tidal LightMesh, they get a personal email from me. They'll get the automated one as well, but I generally get in there through our CRM, and I send them a message, too. And sometimes they'll respond and say, “This isn't really David, is it?” No, no, it's me. You don't have to respond. I wanted to let you know that I'm thankful for you trialing our software.Corey: Oh, yeah. You can hit reply to any email I send out. It comes from corey@lastweekinaws.com and it goes to my inbox. The reason that works, frankly, at this scale is because no one does it. People don't believe that that'll actually work. So, on a busy week, I'll get maybe a dozen email replies to it or one or two misconfigured bounces from systems that aren't set up properly to do those things. And I weed those out because they drive me nuts.But it's a yeah, the only emails that I get to that address, honestly, are the test copies of those messages that go out, too, because I'm on my own newsletter list. Who knew? I have two at the moment. I have—yes, I have two specific addresses on that, so I guess technically, I'm inflating the count of subscribers by two, if advertisers ask. But you know, at 32,000 and change, I will take the statistical fudging.David: Absolutely. We all expect that.Corey: No, the depressing part, when I think about that is, there's a number of readers I have on the list that I know for a fact that I've been acquainted with who have passed away. They're never going to unsubscribe from these things until the email starts bouncing at some and undefinable point in the future. But it's also—it feels morbid, but on some level, if I continue doing this for the rest of my life, I'm going to have a decent proportion of the subscriber base who's died. At least when people leave their jobs, like, their email address gets turned off, things start bouncing and cool that gets turned off automatically because even when people leave voluntarily, no one bothers to go through an unsubscribe from all this stuff. So, automated systems have to do it. That's great. I'm not saying computers shouldn't make life better. I am saying that they can't replace a fundamental aspect of human caring.David: So, Corey Quinn, who has influence over the living and the dead. It's impressive.Corey: Oh, absolutely. Honestly, if I were to talk to whoever came up with IBM's marketing strategy, I feel like I'd need to conduct a seance because they're probably 300 years old if they're still alive.David: [laugh]. Absolutely.Corey: No, I get passionate about this stuff because so much of a lot of the hype now has been shifting away from letting people expand their reach further and doing things in intentional ways and instead toward absolute garbage, such as, “Cool, we want to get a whole bunch of clicks so we can show ads to them, so we're going to just generate all bunch of crap to your content and throw it out there.” Everything I write, even stuff that admittedly, from time to time, is aimed for SEO purposes for specific things that we're doing, but that's always done from a perspective of okay, my primary SEO strategy is write compelling, original content and then people presumably link to it. And it works. It's about respecting the audience and so many things get that wrong.David: Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of scary now because I always thought that podcasts and video were the last refuge of authentic content. And now people are generating that as well. You know, you're watching a video and you realize hey, that voice sounds exactly consistent, you know, all the way through. And then it turns out, it's generated. And there's a YouTube channel I follow because I'm an avid sailor, called World On Water. And recently, I've noticed that voice changed, and I'm pretty sure they're using AI to generate it now.Corey: Here's a story I don't think you probably know about yourself. So, for those who are unaware, David, I hang out from time to time in various places. There's a international boundary between us, but occasionally one of us will broach it, and good for us. And we have social conversations where somehow one of us doesn't have a microphone in front of our face. Imagine that. I don't know what that's like most weeks.And like, at some level, the public face comes off and people start acting like human beings. And something I've always noticed about you, David, is that you don't commit the cardinal sin, for an awful lot of people I meet, which is displaying contempt for your customers. When I have found people who do that, I think less of them in almost every case and I lose so much interest in whatever it is that they're doing. If you don't like the problem space that you're in and don't have respect for the people paying you to make these problems go away, you shouldn't be doing it. Like, I'll laugh at silly AWS misconfigurations, but my customers are there because they have a problem and they're bringing me in to fix it. And would I be making fun of? “Ha ha ha, you didn't spend eight months of your life learning the ins and outs of how exactly reserved instances apply in this particular context? What a fool is you.” That's not how it ever works. I wish I could say it wasn't quite as rare as it is but I'm tired of talking to people who have just nothing but contempt for their market. Good work on that.David: Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I had a penny-drop moment when I was doing a lot of consulting work as an independent contractor, working with different customers at different stages of their own journey and different levels of technology capabilities. You know, you work with management, with project people, with software engineers, and you start to realize everybody's coming from a different place. So, you have to empathize with where they're at.They're coming to you usually because you have a level of expertise, that you've got some specialization and they want to tap into that capability that you've created. And that's great. I love having people come to me and ask me questions. Sometimes they don't come to me nicely asking questions, they make some assumptions about me and might challenge me right off the bat, but you have to realize that that's just where they're coming from at that point in time. And once you connect with them, they'll open up a little bit more, too; they'll empathize with yourself. So yeah, I've always found that it's really important for myself personally, but also for our team to empathize with customers, meet them where they're at, understand that they're coming from a different level of experience, and then help them solve their problems. That's job number one.Corey: And I'm a firm believer that if you don't respect your customer's business, they shouldn't be your customer. It's happened remarkably few times in the however many years I've been doing this, but there have been a couple of folks that have reached out I always very politely decline to work with them when this happens. Because you don't want to make people feel obnoxious for reaching out and, like, “Can you help me with my problem?” “How dare you? Who do you think you are?”No, no, no, no, no, none of that. But if there's a value misalignment or I don't think that your product is going to benefit people who use it as directed, I will not let you sponsor what I do as an easy example. Because I can always find another sponsor and make more money, but once I start losing the audience's trust, I'll never get that back, and I know that. It's the entire reason I do things the way that I do them. And maybe, on some level, from purely capitalist perspective, I'm being an absolute fool, but you know, if you have to pick a way to fail and assume you're going to get it wrong, how do you want to be wrong? I'll take this way.David: Yeah, I agree. Keep your ethics high, keep your morals high, and the rest will fall into place.Corey: I love how we started having ethical and morality discussions that started as, “So, cloud migrations. How are they going for you?”David: Yeah [laugh]. Certainly wandered into some uncharted territories on that one.Corey: Exactly. We started off in one place; wound up someplace completely removed from anything we could have reasonably expected at the start. Why? Because this entire episode has been a beautiful metaphor for cloud migrations. I really want to thank you for taking the time to chat with me on this stuff. If people want to learn more, where should they go to find you?David: tidal.cloud or LinkedIn, I'm very active on LinkedIn these days.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to both of those in the show notes. Thank you so much for going down this path with me. I didn't expect it to lead where it did, but I'm glad we went there.David: Like the tides ebbing and flowing. I'll be back soon, Corey.Corey: [laugh]. I will take you up on that and hold you to it.David: [laugh]. Sounds great.Corey: David Colebatch, CEO at Tidal. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, upset comment that doesn't actually make cohesive sense because you outsourced it to a robot.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

How does one begin to speak about purity and chastity in an age that hyper-sensualizes the human experience?  When we define ourselves so tightly and, in particular, so tightly to disordered desire, how is it that we bear witness to and embrace the call of Saint John and the other fathers to purity? Part of the answer to these questions is to immerse ourselves in the vision of the fathers; their anthropology and psychology and the spirituality that shapes these things. However, this only begins to lead us to an understanding of who and what we have become in Christ.  If it remains purely notional we will inevitably be drawn back in to what the culture puts before us. What Christianity calls us to is to see ourselves only in light of Christ and to find meaning and identity in Him. Likewise, we must see the radical solidarity that exists between every one of us as human beings made in the image and likeness of God. We are called to a life of radical conversion and repentance.  When we look out into the world and see great evil or sin, our response must be to turn to God with even greater zeal and desire. We must embody the love, joy, peace, and purity of the kingdom. Anything less is going to ring hollow to the world. To speak of purity or chastity in simple moralistic or legalistic terms is to fail to understand what we have become in Christ. It is the Spirit of God that dwells within us and we are not called to embody natural virtue much less what private judgment puts forward as good. It is the beauty of Divine life that must shine forth in our every thought and action. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:08:51 FrDavid Abernethy: page 142, para 19   00:30:23 Anthony: I kind of think I (we?) try too hard to be Christians, and that is a self-centered and very difficult focus.  It's not the way of easy relief of Christ's cross.  It's my cross.   00:31:39 Anthony: My pastor once mentioned how we make our own heavy, too heavy crosses.   00:33:50 Eric Ewanco: I try to project the seraph serpent mounted on a pole to the Eucharist lifted up during the liturgy, sending out healing to me from the crucifixion of Christ   00:50:56 Michael: Oh wow, I thought it was just a metaphor. I didn't realize he was literally talking about bestiality.   00:51:29 angelo: Reacted to "Oh wow, I thought it..." with

The depth of the fathers' understanding of the workings of the mind and the heart, the appetites and desires, is staggering. One of the great fruits of the ascetic life of the Desert fathers is what it reveals about the desert of the human heart. Jeremiah the prophet wrote: “The human heart is a treacherous thing.  Who can endure it“. How true this is! St. John Climacus gradually begins us to draw us in to the subtle workings of our bodily appetites, in particular those tied to sensuality. Our vision of ourselves, and others can become so easily distorted by our sin. We become unable to see the beauty not only of the world around us, but of the human person and every aspect of their being. We all use ourselves and others and the things of this world in a desperate attempt to fill a void within our hearts. We long for the love of God. Even the atheist, one who denies God with all their heart, experiences this longing. They may be completely unaware of its source but nonetheless desperately seek something to fill it. And in those times when we are not wrapped up in the attempt or the delusion of fullness, we experience depression. There is no human being that does not experience isolation and the pain of loneliness even when surrounded by others and an abundance of worldly goods. St. John painstakingly reveals to us the nature of the struggle for purity of heart in order that we might be freed from seeking for the love and fullness anywhere else than in the bosom of God.  --- Text of chat during the group: 00:01:25 Kevin Burke: I am just getting started on this forum and really enjoying it, I plan to catch up with the previous lessons as well.   Can you tell me what version of the book that we are using in this forum? I have the Paulist version but it's very different and I would like to get the precise same version.   00:03:14 Adam Paige: Replying to "I am just getting st..."   The Holy Transfiguration Monastery version we use is a revision of this earlier 1959 translation: http://www.prudencetrue.com/images/TheLadderofDivineAscent.pdf   00:31:20 Anthony: St. Gregory of Narek on the Song of Songs does a very good job of drawing holy innocence from a love story.   00:34:04 Anthony: Replying to "St. Gregory of Nar..."   "The Blessing of Blessings: Gregory of Narek on the Song of Songs" Translated from the AArmenian by Roberta Ervine, Cistercian Publications, (c) 2007   00:34:48 Louise Gaston: Would you say that purity of heart coupled with an observing ego allows for a sensitive detachment and discernment? With God's grace too?   00:34:51 angelo: Reacted to ""The Blessing of Ble..." with ❤️   00:38:55 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: "greater still is the man unhurt by all he has looked upon." says this translation...   00:39:24 Rodrigo Castillo: The Blessing of Blessings: Grigor of Narek's Commentary on the Song of Songs (Cistercian Studies books) (Volume 215) https://a.co/d/7ZqSBAW   00:40:44 angelo: Reacted to "The Blessing of Bles..." with

Tonight we made the transition from St. John's Step on Gluttony and its offspring to our discussion of Purity and Chastity in Step number 15. Again, as we read slowly through the text and begin to unpack it, we begin to see the larger picture; the image of humanity redeemed. We see what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, and the experience of embracing our full dignity and identity.  What is held out to us is an incorruptible freedom and joy as our love becomes ordered toward God. We begin to see the true beauty of the things of the world, of others, and of God himself. As I've often mentioned, the desert fathers were the first depth psychologists; they present to us the path that brings healing of soul. They see the human person in his fullness and we see in their writings such our true dignity and destiny.  Our struggle often is found in the fact that we've never come to taste that freedom, the joy, the capacity to love unimpeded by our sin. The ascetic life is not about endurance, or personal health or the ordering of our life so much as it is about the desire for God, his love, and to share in the life that he makes possible for us. It has been said that “Beauty will save the world”. In the writings of the fathers, we are called to see this beauty first in the person of Christ; and in and through him the beauty of the life that is held out to us. May we desire it with all of our hearts. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:12:16 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: Who? Author?   00:12:44 Anthony: Pope Shenouda   00:13:09 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: THanks   00:13:35 FrDavid Abernethy: page 138   00:13:38 FrDavid Abernethy: no 32   00:14:03 Anthony: If y'all have Coptic Orthodox parishes nearby with food festivals .... GO!   00:23:15 Cindy Moran: This reminds me of: the kingdom suffers violence and the violent seize it by force--Mt 11:12   00:25:17 Debra: What Step and paragraph   00:26:44 Lori Hatala: step 14 para 36   00:26:55 Debra: Replying to "step 14 para 36"   Thank you!   00:32:35 Anthony: I get it, but cooking is an art.  Food is beautiful.  Nothing God made - matter or form - is evil.  What we consider to be food needs reform.  Our habits need reform to appreciate the art.  But I'm a bit concerned that some of these fathers are a presenting the stick too much and the carrot to little.   00:39:23 Ambrose Little, OP: Replying to "I get it, but cookin..."   The carrot is food, which is bad. ;)   00:39:39 angelo: Reacted to "The carrot is food, ..." with

How striking it is to hear the nature of the struggle with gluttony and the need for fasting spoken of with such zeal and clarity! Such practices have for the most part fallen by the wayside or have been minimized to such an extent as to be equally nonexistent. The unfortunate fruit of this is that we often have never tasted the freedom and the strength comes through ordering our appetite for food. Thus, the humbling of the mind and the body and the deepening of the experience of prayer through the stilling of the thoughts is also rarely experienced.  We need to take hold of the wisdom of the fathers and their zeal that will allow us to put it into practice.  St. John tells us that when God sees the movement of the mind abs the heart towards Him through these practices that He will aid us with His grace.  We also see that the fathers have a very clear sense of the workings of the human mind and how we experience our bodily appetites. Their observations of what takes place on a physiological level are astute and reveal the depth of their experience. All of it is meant to fashion within our hearts a renewed desire for the ascetic life.  We must see that which is uniquely an distinctively Christian about these practices. For while St. John and the other fathers speak of them so frequently, they also understand that their beginning and end is found in one's relationship with God. The desire for God's love must compel us.  --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:51 FrDavid Abernethy: page 136. paragraph 17   00:11:08 FrDavid Abernethy: page 136 paragraph 17   00:17:21 Bridget McGinley: Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things- Philippians 3:19   00:23:45 Emma C: I have a question!   00:24:02 Emma C: I was wondering can fasting help with other attachments to the world like shopping?   00:24:10 Brett Pavia, BCMA: I have a question …   00:24:15 Emma C: Excessive shopping*   00:36:18 Rachel : That's a fantastic idea.   00:36:40 Anthony: The back of the Publican's Prayer Book has a guide to ease into fasting, written by Patriarch Gregorios III. Also, Italian food is a LOT of peasant food (cucina povera).   00:41:40 Rachel : You have good friends. In Cali, you can find something at a steakhouse though.   00:42:12 Rachel : "Crab feed"   00:42:19 Anthony: This one does.  Fish is usually penance.  So is soup. ;)   00:42:21 Ambrose Little, OP: I dunno. Ours is plain, and I don't like fish.

How do we talk about and understand despondency? I never heard about the word or the nature of the vice until I was in my 20s and after having read the fathers. And yet we hear from the fathers that it is the greatest and gravest of the eight capital vices. It afflicts the soul in such a way that it draws it into darkness. The soul loses its capacity to see the presence of God or to love the things of God. It becomes most dangerous when we are engaged in the spiritual life in isolation; either as those who live the life of a hermit, or as those who see the spiritual life as a private affair.  We live in a radical solidarity with each other, and with God. Our understanding of this, and our embrace of that reality may be the one thing that keeps us from falling into a general death.  This demon uses the most subtle forms of temptation to make us lax in our spiritual practice or come to despise it all together. There are very few remedies for it for this reason. One must remember death and the brevity of our life. We must understand that we are in the end times and see the urgency of the moment. We must also cling to obedience; placing our thoughts before another and allow them to guide us when we cannot see the path before us.  Prayer filled with hope, St. John tells us, is the only thing that brings this vice to utter death. Only when we cling to He who is life and love and hope and let go of the illusion that we can simply endure the spiritual trials of this world on our own will this vice be conquered. But once it is conquered, a person has come to experience all that is good; they are prepared for every spiritual battle that lies ahead. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:19:17 David: Question on translation: Acedia wouldn't this be closer to insouciant or melancholy rather than despondency?   00:35:37 Daniel Allen: Despondency is a child of talkativeness but community life is opposed to it? That seems sort of contradictory.   00:37:21 Anthony: The spirit of despondency also perverts a concept of what it means to be "elect": I am the only true one, everyone is against me."  That's not a good place to be.   00:37:51 Daniel Allen: As a follow up it seems that despondency is always a lurking threat.   00:38:32 Daniel Allen: Ok that clears it up thank you   00:41:21 Cindy Moran: Noonday Devil from Ps 90:6 [DRV]   00:43:22 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: Also, many monks would not eat before 3 pm so beginning around midday hunger and hungers may start.   00:46:55 Anthony: The dinner bell represents hope that suffering will end.   00:59:02 Kathy: What do you mean by deification?   01:00:26 Eric Ewanco: Deification is become by grace what Christ was by nature -- becoming God-like, sharing in the divinity of Christ as he shared in our humanity, being partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:3-4)   01:01:26 Anthony: A great Roman Catholic imagery / interpretation of deification is in Dante's "Paradiso," especially the later cantos.   01:02:14 Kathy: Thanks   01:06:45 Daniel Allen: St Therese - “May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.”   01:06:59 Kristen Brotemarkle: beautiful quote, thanks for sharing that. ^   01:09:55 Liz: Sorry, what´s the name of the author Father is talking about?   01:10:26 Anthony: Paul Evdekimov   01:10:32 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: Paul Evdokimov   01:10:35 Liz: Thank you!!!   01:18:25 Ambrose Little, OP: Gender equality. Very modern.   01:20:56 Jeff O.: It seems like despondency (and gluttony as well) have a tendency or propensity to draw us towards numbing…which, paired with the nature of our culture which attempts to provide numbing or comforting in all things seems like an almost double whammy of sorts…   01:21:34 Anthony: Reacted to "It seems like desp..." with

I have one word for tonight‘s group: Beautiful! Repentance “brings to us the power of the living God, revealing once again, the true Christ Jesus who dwells in us.” As with so many aspects of the faith, we have a tendency to compartmentalize not only the practice of virtue or of prayer but of our relationship with God as a whole. Yet our faith and our relationship with God should touch the very fabric of our beings and shape the essence of every relationship and every work that we engage in throughout the course of our lives. It should shape also our experience of death and our realization of our own mortality. Repentance is not an episodic reality but a continual effort, the continual straining of the heart - reaching out to God to experience his love and mercy. In this sense it is the most important of things. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:06:18 sue and mark: microphone is not working   00:08:33 Ren Witter: PDF Handout: https://mcusercontent.com/c38acab568d650f7ef65f39df/files/34558acb-864f-f9f8-1546-e7decdc9605b/Repentance.pdf   00:34:44 charlesevers: What gets us (causes) trapped into thinking of past sins?   00:34:55 Irene Bridget Hutchinson: Fr, how would a scrupulous person go about being constantly repentant with peace of soul?   00:44:00 David: The past few years I have also focused on taking time in prayer and adoration to express gratitude and thanksgiving. Isn't it equality important to give thanks as to deepen repentance. No amount of regret changes the past, no amount of worry will change the future but any gratitude will change the present.   00:50:52 charlesevers: Very good. Thank you Father.  Excellent explanation.   00:55:37 charlesevers: St. Bonaventure wrote a colloquay   01:12:54 Rachel : Yes. Only true Beauty. Most,. I include myself, can tend to misuse t|   01:21:53 Missi White: That's a tough pill to swallow, especially in what has become such a narcissistic culture.  How I needed this conference, thank you!   01:24:26 Art: Helpful reminder for me at times: But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (Jn 1:12-13)   01:25:21 Bonnie Lewis: I have found that when I pray for someone who is causing me to harbor a resentment toward them, I am the one who changes internally.  The other person may remain exactly how they were, yet I have received a peace of mind and thought toward them.  This doesn't happen overnight.  sometimes it takes some time.   01:36:29 Rachel : Who wrote the book? A continual effort. With no temptation or battle a soldier is not made stronger through resisting. St. Faustina, and  St Therese had clear experiences of people who tried their patience. They felt the irritation. Its not like the new lens that Father is speaking of will mean that somone will not need to actively practice patience but that the life of repentence, living constantly in the presence of God, in Truth, the person "drunk with compunction" just simply cannot not forgive when they see who they really are in Christ and the dignity of others as well. All mankind seen through the lens of love   01:37:12 Rachel : This book should be gone through very slowly.   01:41:33 Rachel : I think Ren mentioned that this past year in a group! I need to get that book.   01:44:13 Bonnie Lewis: Thank you Father David.  This was beautiful.   01:44:15 David: Thank you Father!   01:44:27 charlesevers: Thank you Father.  This was wonderful   01:44:30 Lori Hatala: so very helpful.   01:44:31 Rachel : lol   01:44:31 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you

This is a unique episode. Short and sweet. Since David and Paul really don't have a chance to introduce themselves in regular episodes, they thought it might be good to take an opportunity to do so in this episode.After introductions, they share announcements regarding the future of this podcast.Episode Links:Mastering The MarketplaceHosts:Paul Maher is General Manager of the Commercial Marketplace Service Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.David Starr is a Principal Software Development Engineer in the Commercial Marketplace Services Team at Microsoft. Follow him on LinkedIn and Mastodon.Transcript:DAVID: Rebooting the podcast with your hosts, Paul Maher, and David Starr.Welcome to the Azure for Executives Podcast, the show for technology leaders. This podcast covers trends and technologies in industries and how Microsoft Azure is enabling them. Here, you'll hear from thought leaders in various industries and technologies on topics important to you. So I'm sure you've noticed that the Azure for Executives Podcast has been on a bit of a hiatus for a few months. Well, we're back. And we're back with some really great news, which I'll leave for a few minutes as we kind of settle into this episode. Now, this is a unique episode, as it'll be pretty short and sweet. We don't have any guests today. But instead, you get my co-host, Paul Maher, and me talking a little bit about the show and our futures. Since we don't really have a chance to introduce ourselves in regular episodes, we thought it might be good to take an opportunity to do so in this episode. So after introductions, we'll have some announcements regarding the future of the podcast. Paul, why don't you talk a little bit about what you do at Microsoft and maybe some of your passions?PAUL: Thanks, David. And it's great to be back. And it's nice to have the opportunity, as you said, to actually introduce ourselves. We spend a lot of time talking to our guests, so it's a fun opportunity to say hi to our listeners. And so, just a little bit about myself, I mean, I've worked in various business and technology-related leadership roles throughout my career with some of the largest companies worldwide across multiple industries. But for the past few years, I've really been focused on cloud across many different roles and initiatives. So you could call me kind of really the cloud evangelist if you will. But currently, at Microsoft, I lead the commercial marketplace services organization. And my focus is really on helping businesses transform by moving to the Microsoft Azure Cloud and growing sales through the Microsoft commercial marketplace. So great to be here, great to have the opportunity to introduce myself to the listeners. And, David, maybe you want to take the opportunity to do the same.DAVID: Sure. Thanks, Paul. I'm a Principal Software Development Engineer here at Microsoft, and I live in the same organization as Paul, and that is the commercial marketplace services team. And, Paul, if you think back, you hired me directly. And I was about number seven in the org at that time, if you'll recall. And --PAUL: That's right. Lucky number 7, David. Lucky number 7.DAVID: [laughs] Indeed. And we have a pretty good-sized organization now, so we've grown quite a bit over the last four years, which is how long I've been with the team, four years and counting. So I'll tell you that this is my second stint at Microsoft. And my first go-round was working on Visual Studio. For those who might use Visual Studio on the show, may not be you but people who work for you; I put a feature, or I was part of a team, I should say, a good-sized team that put a feature called CodeLens into Visual Studio. So that was a good piece of work. And today, instead, I focus on working with partners for the commercial marketplace, as you've heard, a pretty good focus on the commercial marketplace in our past episodes. Well, what that means is that I take consults. These are sort of one-time answer questions for partners who might be struggling a little bit with their onboarding or work with partners in a longer-term engagement to get them from start to finish and get their products onboarded to the commercial marketplace. So that's the essence of what I do. I work with partners in that context. And my little side project baby I have to mention, is Mastering the Marketplace. That is a resource where you or your technologists on your team can go to learn more about how to do that implementation. And we have videos and code and hands-on labs to grow skills, so all that good stuff to help you get going. And the URL for that will be posted in the show notes. I'll say here it's aka.ms/masteringthemarketplace. With that, Paul, what's the big news that we were talking about?PAUL: So the big news, even though we are part of the Microsoft commercial marketplace organization and that's our day job and our priority, we've taken a step back. And we feel like broadening the focus of the podcast here to include all topics Azure will be really relevant and interesting to our listeners, and executives, and leaders who are looking to move to Azure. So with a goal of making sure that folks who tune in and listen can get the best experience and the best knowledge exchange from tuning into the podcast, we'll be broadening the reach of the podcast to cover all things Azure which I'm super excited about. Historically, we made the decision to have a singular focus on the show. But I think the new format will really benefit everyone and really be applicable to a diverse audience. So I'm excited that we're expanding our remit, expanding our scope, and excited about the topics that will be upcoming in future shows. So with that, I mean, David, do you want to talk a little bit about the new format for our listeners?DAVID: Sure, Paul. And just to reiterate, I'm really excited too about where the show is going. I think we're going to have a really good dearth of topics and be a show that is more of a resource for technology decision-makers, so as we said, with regard to format, but as we said, our focus will be broadening. And while our audience demographic of leadership positions within technology organizations remains the same, our show topics will include specific technologies, patterns and practices, recommendations, and guidance on how to get the most from Azure, particularly as it relates to your business processes, your business goals, and how to achieve your technology goals. Our intent is to bring experts to the show and share real-world experiences to help you be successful in your technological adventures.PAUL: That's great, David. So with that, carrying on then, now we understand a little bit about that new format where we're broadening the scope. We have lots of good stuff in terms of thinking about all things Azure patterns and practices, recommendations. What I'm excited about is that it's really hopefully going to be a consumable digest for all listeners to learn about all things Azure. Specifically, David, is there anything you are excited about the future of the show?DAVID: You bet there is. I'm excited to talk with some of the great guests we've got lined up and learn from them about many aspects of using Azure, how they've implemented their solutions, how they've perhaps even changed their business to work with cloud technologies, and how they drive new business and enable technologists in their organizations. And I won't give away any spoilers here, Paul, but I will say that I'm glad to be back producing the show. So to the listeners, whether you're a long-time listener or someone who's just joining us for the first time, I'm positive that you'll enjoy the diversity of conversation. I have to tell you, Paul, I listen to a bunch of other podcasts. I don't listen to us really after [laughs] we've produced the show. But I love podcasts myself, technology ones in particular. And I especially like them for my morning walks to and from my gym. And for me, that means I like about a 25 to 35-minute episode, which is what we'll target for the show going forward. We'll try and keep it within those bounds. Now, speaking of excited about the show, how about you, Paul?PAUL: Yeah, I'm super excited, David. I mean, I'm looking forward to rebooting the show. It's been a little while. I've enjoyed the summer time off, but now it's time to get back to business. Just to reiterate what you've said, David, I think a 25 to 35-minute sweet spot is great. I think it's long enough for the content to be meaningful but not too long, where it becomes a little bit of a challenge to get through the contents. So we're excited about that.  We've carried forward the learnings from our podcasts, and we've listened to the listeners. And so excited about the format, excited about the timings. And I hear you about...I hate hearing my own voice also [chuckles], but I encourage the listeners to tune in and listen. But what am I looking forward to as we reboot the show? Well, number one, of course, it's all about the listeners, so I'm super excited to reconnect with our listeners. Thank you for following us so far, and excited about what we'll bring in the future. Of course, in the fast-paced technology world that we all live in, I'm excited to learn about the latest advancements from our guests, of which it's a changing world, of course, but most importantly, really sharing practical hands-on guidance with our listeners. So hopefully, we're helping our listeners achieve their goals and accelerate their path to success. My hope with the podcast ultimately is that we're providing in that 25 to 35 minutes bite-sized consumable content that is really clear in terms of the delivery but also actionable. My goal is that the conversation doesn't stop with the podcast. That's the beginning of the conversation. So that's what I'm excited about, David. And then so with that, I mean, David, as we look to close things out, is there anything you'd like to share on logistics?DAVID: You bet. Let's talk about how we're going to move forward producing the show. We'll be working to hit a cadence of an episode about every two weeks or so, and to be honest, that's about all either of our schedules can tolerate for getting episodes on air. And beyond that, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and all those other podcast aggregators and hosts. Also, you can get to us on our homepage easily by going to this URL: aka.ms/azureforexecs. And we post every show there, and you can listen to it through a web page if you choose. And that's our landing page for the show. So I encourage you to head over there, where you'll be able to see show notes and be able to subscribe to the show in various ways. Just click the Listen & Subscribe button. So speaking of show notes, I want to add for this episode, we're going to obviously include links to some of the things we've talked about and also to Paul's social accounts and to my socials as well. And I'll tell you, you know, even though I'll probably post a Twitter account, I stepped away from that lately [laughs]. I don't know why. I really like it when people hit me up though on LinkedIn and talk about the show, give me some feedback, tell us what you'd like to hear in future episodes. So hit me up on LinkedIn, and my LinkedIn profile will be in the show notes. So really looking forward to moving forward and to hearing from you as we reboot the show and have a different path forward.PAUL: That's awesome. So not only are we rebooting the show, David, I hear we need to get more social. So be on the lookout for us dialing back up and being more social on LinkedIn and our Twitter accounts. So with that, let's stop the introductions and get on with the first show in the new format. Thank you so much to our listeners who have stuck with us over the years, and welcome hopefully to new listeners. It's great to have you here. We're delighted you're all joining us, too, for the Azure for Executives Podcast. And with that, on with the show.DAVID: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Azure for Executives Podcast. We love hearing from you. And if you have suggestions for topics, questions about issues discussed on the show, or other feedback, contact the show host, David Starr or Paul Maher, through the social media links included in the show notes for each episode. We look forward to hearing from you.

Mike Isaacson: If your free speech requires an audience, might I suggest a therapist? [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome once again to The Nazi Lies Podcast. I am joined by two historians today. With us is Evan Smith, lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, and David Renton, who taught at a number of universities in the UK and South Africa before leaving the academy to practice law, though he still finds time to research and write. Each of them has a book about today's topic: the free speech crisis. Dr. Smith's book, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech, chronicles the No Platform policy of the National Union of Students in the UK from its foundation in 1974 to the present day. Dr. Renton's book, No Free Speech for Fascists: Exploring ‘No Platform' in History, Law and Politics, tells a much longer story of the interplay of radical leftist groups, organized fascists, and the state in shaping the UK's speech landscape and their significance in politics and law. Both are out from Routledge. I have absolutely no idea how we've managed to make the time zones work between the three of us, but welcome both of you to the podcast. Evan Smith: Thank you. David Renton: Thanks, Mike. Mike: So David, I want to start with you because your book goes all the way back to the 1640s to tell its history. So what made you start your story in the 1640s, and what did contention over speech look like before Fascism? David: Well, I wanted to start all that time back more than 300 years ago, because this is the moment when you first start to see something like the modern left and right emerge. You have in Britain, a party of order that supports the state and the king, but you also have a party which stands for more democracy and a more equal distribution of wealth. And essentially, from this point onwards in British, European, American politics, you see those same sites recreating themselves. And what happens again, and again, and again from that point onwards for hundreds of years until certainly say 50 years ago, you have essentially the people who are calling for free speech, whether that's the levellers in 1640s, Tom Paine 100 years later, J.S. Mill in the 19th Century. The left is always the people in favor of free speech. In terms of the right, if you want a kind of the first philosopher of conservatism, someone like Edmund Burke, he's not involved in the 1640s. He's a bit later, about a century and a half later. But you know, he supports conservatism. So what's his attitude towards free speech? It's really simple. He says, people who disagree with him should be jailed. There should be laws made to make it harder for them to have defenses. And more and more of them should be put in jail without even having a trial. That's the conservative position on free speech for centuries. And then what we get starting to happen in the late 20th century, something completely different which is a kind of overturning of what's been this huge, long history where it's always the left that's in favor of free speech, and it's always the right that's against it. Mike: Okay. Now, your contention is that before the appearance of Fascism, socialist radicals were solidly in favor of free speech for all. Fascism changed that, and Evan, maybe you can jump in here since this is where your book starts. What was new about Fascism that made socialists rethink their position on speech? Evan: So fascism was essentially anti-democratic and it was believed that nothing could be reasoned with because it was beyond the realms of reasonable, democratic politics. It was a violence, and the subjugation of its opponents was at the very core of fascism. And that the socialist left thought that fascism was a deeply violent movement that moved beyond the traditional realm of political discourse. So, there was no reasoning with fascists, you could only defeat them. Mike: So, let's start with David first, but I want to get both of you on this. What was the response to Fascism like before the end of World War II? David: Well, what you do is you get the left speaking out against fascism, hold demonstrations against fascism, and having to articulate a rationale of why they're against fascism. One of the things I quote in my book is a kind of famous exchange that takes place in 1937 when a poet named Nancy Cunard collected together the writers, intellectuals, and philosophers who she saw as the great inspiration to– the most important writers and so on that day. And she asked them what side they were taking on fascism. What's really interesting if you read their accounts, whether it's people like the poet W.H. Auden, novelist Gerald Bullitt, the philosopher C.E.M Joad, they all say they're against fascism, but they all put their arguments against fascism in terms of increased speech. So C.E.M Joad writes, "Fascism suppresses truth. That's why we're against fascism." Or the novelist Owen Jameson talks about fascism as a doctrine which exalts violence and uses incendiary bombs to fight ideas. So you get this thing within the left where people grasp that in order to fight off this violence and vicious enemy, they have to be opposed to it. And that means, for example, even to some extent making an exception to what's been for centuries this uniform left-wing notion: you have to protect everyone's free speech. Well people start grasping, we can't protect the fascist free speech, they're gonna use it to suppress us. So the Left makes an exception to what's been its absolute defense of free speech, but it makes this exception for the sake of protecting speech for everybody. Mike: Okay. Evan, do you want to add anything to the history of socialists and fascists before the end of World War Two? Evan: Yeah. So just kind of setting up a few things which will become important later on, and particularly because David and I are both historians of antifascism in Britain, is that there's several different ways in which antifascism emerges in the interwar period and several different tactics. One tactic is preventing fascists from marching from having a presence in public. So things like the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 is a very famous incident where the socialists and other protesters stopped the fascists from marching. There's also heckling and disrupting of fascist meetings. So this was big meetings like Olympia in June 1934, but then also smaller ones like individual fascist meetings around the country were disrupted by antifascists. There was also some that are on the left who also called for greater state intervention, usually in the form of labor councils not allowing fascists to congregate in public halls and stuff like that. So these kinds of arguments that fascism needs to be confronted, disrupted, obfuscated, starts to be developed in the 1930s. And it's where those kinds of free speech arguments emerge in the later period. Mike: Now immediately after the Second World War, fascist movements were shells of their former selves. They had almost no street presence and their organizations usually couldn't pull very many members. Still, the response to fascism when it did pop up was equally as vehement as when they organized into paramilitary formations with membership in the thousands. Something had qualitatively changed in the mind of the public regarding fascism. What did the immediate postwar response to public fascist speech look like, and what was the justification? Evan, let's start with you and then David you can add anything he misses. Evan: David probably could tell the story in a lot more detail. In the immediate post-war period in Britain, Oswald Mosley tries to revive the fascist movement under the title The Union Movement, but before that there's several kind of pro-fascist reading groups that emerge. And in response to this is kind of a disgust that fascists who had recently been imprisoned in Britain and their fellow travellers in the Nazis and the Italian Fascists and the continental fascists had been, you know, it ended in the Holocaust. There was this disgust that fascists could be organizing again in public in Britain, and that's where it mobilizes a new kind of generation of antifascists who are inspired by the 1930s to say "Never again, this won't happen on our streets." And the most important group and this is The 43 Group, which was a mixture of Jewish and communist radicals, which probably David can tell you a little bit about. David: I'd be happy to but I think before we get to 43 Group, it's kind of worth just pausing because the point Mike's left is kind of around the end of the Second World War. One thing which happens during the Second World War is of course Britain's at war with Germany. So what you start to get is Evan talked about how in the 1930s, you already have this argument like, “Should stopping fascism be something that's done by mass movements, or should it be done by the state?” In the Second World War the state has to confront that question, too, because it's got in fascism a homegrown enemy, and the British state looks at how all over Europe these states were toppled really quickly following fascist advance, and very often a pro-fascist powerful section of the ruling class had been the means by which an invading fascism then found some local ally that's enabled it to take over the state and hold the state. So the British state in 1940 actually takes a decision to intern Oswald Mosley and 800 or so of Britain's leading fascists who get jailed initially in prisons in London, then ultimately on the Isle of Man. Now, the reason why I'm going into this is because the first test of what the ordinary people in Britain think about the potential re-emergence of fascism comes even before the Second World War's ended. When Oswald Mosley is released from internment, he says he has conditioned phlebitis, he's very incapacitated, and is never going to be politically active again. And the British state buys this. And this creates–and an actual fact–the biggest single protest movement in Britain in the entire Second World War, where you get hundreds of people in certain factories going on strike against Oswald Mosley's release, and high hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions demanding that he's reinterned, and you start to get people having demonstrations saying Mosley ought to go back to jail. That kind of sets the whole context of what's going to happen after the end of the Second World War. Mosley comes out and he's terrified of public opinion; he's terrified about being seen in public. He's convinced that if you hold meetings you're going to see that cycle going on again. So for several years, the fascists barely dare hold public meetings, and they certainly don't dare hold meetings with Mosley speaking. They test the water a bit, and they have some things work for them. Evan's mentioned the 43 Group so I'll just say a couple sentences about them. The 43 Group are important in terms of what becomes later. They're not a vast number of people, but they have an absolute focus on closing down any fascist meeting. We're gonna hear later in this discussion about the phrase "No Platform" and where it comes from, but you know, in the 1940s when fascist wanted to hold meetings, the platform means literally getting together a paste table and standing on it, or standing on a tiny little ladder just to take you a couple of foot above the rest of your audience. The 43 Group specialize in a tactic which is literally knocking over those platforms. And because British fascism remained so isolated and unpopular in the aftermath of the Second World War, you know, there are 43 Group activists and organizers who look at London and say, "All right, if there going to be 12 or 13 public meetings in London this weekend, we know where they're going to be. If we can knock over every single one of those other platforms, then literally there'll be no fascists to have any chance to find an audience or put a public message in Britain." That's kind of before you get the term 'No Platform' but it's almost in essence the purest form of No Platforming. It's people being able to say, "If we get organized as a movement outside the state relying on ordinary people's opposition to fascism, we can close down every single example of fascist expression in the city and in this country." Mike: Okay. So through the 50's and 60's, there were two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, there was the largely left wing student-led free speech movement. And on the other hand, there was a new generation of fascists who were rebuilding the fascist movement in a variety of ways. So let's start with the free speech movement. David, you deal with this more in your book. What spurred the free speech movement to happen? David: Yeah. Look in the 50s and 60s, the free speech movement is coming from the left. That's going to change, we know it's going to change like 20 or 30 years later, but up to this point we're still essentially in the same dance of forces that I outlined right at the start. That the left's in favor of free speech, the right is against it. And the right's closing down unwanted ideas and opinion. In the 50s and 60s, and I'm just going to focus on Britain and America, very often this took the form of either radicals doing some sort of peace organising–and obviously that cut against the whole basic structure of the Cold War–or it took the form of people who maybe not even necessarily radicals at all, just trying to raise understanding and consciousness about people's bodies and about sex. So for the Right, their counterattack was to label movements like for example in the early 60s on the campus of Berkeley, and then there's originally a kind of anti-war movement that very quickly just in order to have the right to organize, becomes free speech movements. And the Right then counter attacks against it saying, "Essentially, this is just a bunch of beats or kind of proto-hippies. And what they want to do is I want to get everyone interested in drugs, and they want to get everyone interested in sexuality, and they want everyone interested in all these sorts of things." So their counterattack, Reagan terms this, The Filthy Speech Movement. In the late 60s obviously in states, we have the trial of the Chicago 7, and here you have the Oz trial, which is when a group of radicals here, again that their point of view is very similar, kind of hippie-ish, anti-war milieu. But one thing is about their magazines, which again it seems very hard to imagine today but this is true, that part of the way that their their magazine sells is through essentially soft pornographic images. And there's this weird combination of soft porn together with far left politics. They'll get put on trial in the Oz trial and that's very plainly an attempt– our equivalent of the Chicago 7 to kind of close down radical speech and to get into the public mind this idea that the radicals are in favor of free speech, they're in favor of extreme left-wing politics, and they're in favor of obscenity, and all these things are somehow kind of the same thing. Now, the point I just wanted to end on is that all these big set piece trials–another one to use beforehand is the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial, the Oz trial, the Chicago 7 trial, all of these essentially end with the right losing the battle of ideas, not so much the far right but center right. And people just saying, "We pitched ourselves on the side of being against free speech, and this isn't working. If we're going to reinvent right-wing thought, make some center right-wing ideas desirable and acceptable in this new generation of people, whatever they are, then we can't keep on being the ones who are taking away people's funds, closing down ideas. We've got to let these radicals talk themselves out, and we've got to reposition ourselves as being, maybe reluctantly, but the right takes the decision off of this. The right has to be in favor of free speech too. Mike: All right. And also at this time, the far right was rebuilding. In the UK, they shifted their focus from overt antisemitism and fascism to nebulously populist anti-Black racism. The problem for them, of course, was that practically no one was fooled by this shift because it was all the same people. So, what was going on with the far right leading into the 70s? Evan, do you want to start? Evan: Yeah. So after Mosley is defeated in Britain by the 43 Group and the kind of antifascism after the war, he moves shortly to Ireland and then comes back to the UK. Interestingly, he uses universities and particularly debates with the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union, and other kind of university societies, to find a new audience because they can't organize on the streets. So he uses–throughout the '50s and the '60s–these kind of university platforms to try and build a fascist movement. At the same time, there are people who were kind of also around in the '30s and the '40s who are moving to build a new fascist movement. It doesn't really get going into '67 when the National Front is formed from several different groups that come together, and they're really pushed into the popular consciousness because of Enoch Powell and his Rivers of Blood Speech. Enoch Powell was a Tory politician. He had been the Minister for Health in the Conservative government, and then in '68 he launches this Rivers of Blood Speech which is very much anti-immigration. This legitimizes a lot of anti-immigrationist attitudes, and part of that is that the National Front rides his coattails appealing to people who are conservatives but disaffected with the mainstream conservatism and what they saw as not being hard enough in immigration, and that they try to build off the support of the disaffected right; so, people who were supporting Enoch Powell, supporting the Monday Club which is another hard right faction in the conservatives. And in that period up until about the mid 1970s, that's the National Front's raison d'etre; it's about attracting anti-immigrationists, conservatives to build up the movement as an electoral force rather than a street force which comes later in the '70s. Mike: There was also the Apartheid movement, or the pro-Apartheid movement, that they were building on at this time as well, right? Evan: Yeah. So at this time there's apartheid in South Africa. In 1965, the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia has a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain to maintain White minority rule. And a lot of these people who are around Powell, the Monday Club, the National Front, against decolonization more broadly, and also then support White minority rule in southern Africa. So a lot of these people end up vocalizing support for South Africa, vocalizing support for Rhodesia, and that kind of thing. And it's a mixture of anti-communism and opposition to multiracial democracy. That's another thing which they try to take on to campus in later years. Mike: So finally we get to No Platform. Now, Evan, you contend that No Platform was less than a new direction in antifascist politics than a formalization of tactics that had developed organically on the left. Can you talk a bit about that? Evan: Yeah, I'll give a quick, very brief, lead up to No Platform and to what's been happening in the late '60s. So Enoch Powell who we mentioned, he comes to try and speak on campus several times throughout the late 60s and early 70s. These are often disrupted by students that there's an argument that, "Why should Enoch Powell be allowed to come onto campus? We don't need people like that to be speaking." This happens in the late 60s. Then in '73, Hans Eysenck, who was a psychologist who was very vocal about the connection between race and IQ, he attempts to speak at the London School of Economics and his speech is disrupted by a small group of Maoists. And then also– Mike: And they physically disrupted that speech, right? That wasn't just– Evan: Yeah, they punched him and pushed him off stage and stuff like that. And a month later, Samuel Huntington who is well known now for being the Clash of Civilizations guy, he went to speak at Sussex University, and students occupied a lecture theater so he couldn't talk because they opposed his previous work with the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. This led to a moral panic beginning about the end of free speech on campus, that it's either kind of through sit-ins or through direct violence, but in the end students are intolerant. And that's happening in that five years before we get to No Platform. Mike: One thing I didn't get a good sense of from your books was what these socialist groups that were No Platforming fascists prior to the NUS policy stood for otherwise. Can we talk about the factionalization of the left in the UK in the 60s and 70s? David, maybe you can help us out on this one. David: Yeah, sure. The point to grasp, which is that the whole center of British discourse in the ‘70s was way to the left of where it is in Britain today, let alone anywhere else in the world. That from, say, ‘64 to ‘70, we had a Labour government, and around the Labour Party. We had really, really strong social movements. You know, we had something like roughly 50% of British workers were members of trade unions. We'll get on later to the Students Union, that again was a movement in which hundreds of thousands of people participated. Two particular groups that are going to be important for our discussion are the International Socialists and International Marxist Group, but maybe if I kind of go through the British left sort of by size starting from largest till we get down to them. So the largest wing we've got on the British left is Labour Party. This is a party with maybe about half a million members, but kind of 20 million affiliated members through trade unions, and it's gonna be in and out of government. Then you've got the Communist Party which is getting quite old as an organization and is obviously tied through Cold War politics to the Soviet Union. And then you get these smaller groups like the IS, the IMG. And they're Trotskyist groups so they're in the far left of labor politics as revolutionaries, but they have quite a significant social heft, much more so than the far left in Britain today because, for example, their members are involved in editing magazines like Oz. There is a moment where there's a relatively easy means for ideas to merge in the far left and then get transmitted to the Labour Party and potentially even to Labour ministers and into government. Mike: Okay, do you want to talk about the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists? Evan: Do you want me to do that or David? Mike: Yes, that'd be great. Evan: Okay. So as David mentioned, there's the Communist Party and then there's the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group. The International Marxist Group are kind of heavily based in the student movement. They're like the traditional student radicals. Tariq Ali is probably the most famous member at this stage. And they have this counter cultural attitude in a way. International Socialists are a different form of Trotskyism, and they're much more about, not so much interested in the student movement, but kind of like a rank and file trade unionism that kind of stuff, opposition to both capitalism and Soviet communism. And the IS, the IMG, and sections of the Communist Party all coalesce in the student movement, which forms the basis for pushing through a No Platform policy in the Nationalist Union of Students in 1974. Mike: Okay. So in 1974, the National Union of Students passes their No Platform policy. Now before we get into that, what is the National Union of Students? Because we don't have an analogue to that in the US. Evan, you want to tackle this one? Evan: Yeah. Basically, every university has a student union or a form of student union–some kind of student body–and the National Union of Students is the national organization, the peak body which organizes the student unions on all the various campuses around the country. Most of the student unions are affiliated to the NUS but some aren't. The NUS is a kind of democratic body and oversees student policy, but individual student unions can opt in or opt out of whether they follow NUS guidelines. And I think what needs to be understood is that the NUS was a massive organization back in those days. You know, hundreds of thousands of people via the student unions become members of the NUS. And as David was saying, the political discourse is much bigger in the '60s and '70s through bodies like this as well as things like the trade union movement. The student movement has engaged hundreds of thousands of students across Britain about these policies much more than we see anything post the 1970s. David: If I could just add a sentence or two there, that's all right. I mean, really to get a good sense of scale of this, if you look at, obviously you have the big set piece annual conventions or conferences of the National Union of Students. Actually, it doesn't even just have one a year, it has two a year. Of these two conferences, if you just think about when the delegates are being elected to them how much discussion is taking place in local universities. If you go back to some local university meetings, it's sometimes very common that you see votes of 300 students going one way, 400 another, 700 going one way in some of the larger universities. So there's an absolute ferment of discussion around these ideas. Which means that when there are set piece motions to pass, they have a democratic credibility. And they've had thousands of people debating and discussing them. It's not just like someone going on to one conference or getting something through narrowly on a show of hands. There's a feeling that these debates are the culmination of what's been a series of debates in each local university. And we've got over 100 of them in Britain. Mike: Okay, how much is the student union's presence felt on campus by the average student? Evan: That'd be massive. David: Should I do this? Because I'm a bit older than Evan and I went to university in the UK. And it's a system which is slowly being dismantled but when I was student, which is like 30 years ago, this was still largely in place. In almost every university, the exceptions are Oxford and Cambridge, but in every other university in Britain, almost all social activity takes place on a single site on campus. And that single site invariably is owned by the student's union. So your students union has a bar, has halls, it's where– They're the plumb venues on campus if you want to have speakers or if you want to have– Again, say when punk happened a couple of years later, loads and loads of the famous punk performances were taking place in the student union hall in different universities. One of the things we're going to get onto quite soon is the whole question of No Platform and what it meant to students. What I want to convey is that for loads of students having this discussion, when they're saying who should be allowed on campus or who shouldn't be allowed on campus, what's the limits? They feel they've got a say because there are a relatively small number of places where people will speak. Those places are controlled by the students' union. They're owned and run by the students' union. It's literally their buildings, their halls, they feel they've got a right to set who is allowed, who's actually chosen, and who also shouldn't be invited. Mike: Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's a lot more than I knew about student unions. Okay. Evan, this is the bread and butter of your book. How did No Platform come about in the NUS? Evan: So, what part of the fascist movement is doing, the far-right movement, is that it is starting to stray on campus. I talked about the major focus of the National Front is about appealing to disaffected Tories in this stage, but they are interfering in student affairs; they're disrupting student protests; they're trying to intimidate student politics. And in 1973, the National Front tried to set up students' association on several campuses in Britain And there's a concern about the fascist presence on campus. So those three left-wing groups– the IMG, the IS and the Communist Party–agree at the student union level that student unions should not allow fascists and racists to use student buildings, student services, clubs that are affiliated to the student union. They shouldn't be allowed to access these. And that's where they say about No Platform is that the student union should deny a platform to fascists and racists. And in 1974 when they put this policy to a vote and it's successful, they add, "We're going to fight them by any means necessary," because they've taken that inspiration from the antifascism of the '30s and '40s. Mike: Okay. Now opinion was clearly divided within the NUS. No Platform did not pass unanimously. So Evan, what was opinion like within the NUS regarding No Platform? Evan: Well, it passed, but there was opposition. There was opposition from the Federation of Conservative Students, but there was also opposition from other student unions who felt that No Platform was anti-free speech, so much so that in April 1974 it becomes policy, but in June 1974, they have to have another debate about whether this policy should go ahead. It wins again, but this is the same time as it happens on the same day that the police crackdown on anti-fascist demonstration in Red Lion Square in London. There's an argument that fascism is being propped up by the police and is a very real threat, so that we can't give any quarter to fascism. We need to build this No Platform policy because it is what's standing in between society and the violence of fascism. Mike: Okay. I do want to get into this issue of free speech because the US has a First Amendment which guarantees free speech, but that doesn't exist in Britain. So what basis is there for free speech in the law? I think, David, you could probably answer this best because you're a lawyer. David: [laughs] Thank you. In short, none. The basic difference between the UK and the US– Legally, we're both common law countries. But the thing that really changes in the US is this is then overlaid with the Constitution, which takes priority. So once something has been in the Constitution, that's it. It's part of your fundamental law, and the limits to it are going to be narrow. Obviously, there's a process. It's one of the things I do try and talk about in my book that the Supreme Court has to discover, has to find free speech in the American Constitution. Because again, up until the Second World War, essentially America has this in the Constitution, but it's not particularly seen as something that's important or significant or a key part of the Constitution. The whole awe and  mysticism of the First Amendment as a First Amendment is definitely something that's happened really in the last 40-50 years. Again, I don't want to go into this because it's not quite what you're getting at. But certainly, in the '20s for example, you get many of the big American decisions on free speech which shaped American law today. What everyone forgets is in every single one of them, the Supreme Court goes on to find some reason why free speech doesn't apply. So then it becomes this doctrine which is tremendously important to be ushered out and for lip service be given to, just vast chunks of people, communists, people who are in favor of encouraging abortion, contraception, whatever, they're obviously outside free speech, and you have to come up with some sophisticated justifications for that. In Britain, we don't have a constitution. We don't have laws with that primary significance. We do kind of have a weak free speech tradition, and that's kind of important for some things like there's a European Convention on Human Rights that's largely drafted by British lawyers and that tries to create in Articles 10 and 11 a general support on free speech. So they think there are things in English legal tradition, in our common law tradition, which encourage free speech.  But if we've got it as a core principle of the UK law today, we've got it because of things like that like the European Convention on Human Rights. We haven't got it because at any point in the last 30, or 50, or 70 or 100 years, British judges or politicians thought this was a really essential principle of law. We're getting it these days but largely by importing it from the United States, and that means we're importing the worst ideological version of free speech rather than what free speech ought to be, which is actually protecting the rights of most people to speak. And if you've got some exceptions, some really worked out well thought exceptions for coherent and rational reasons. That's not what we've got now in Britain, and it's not what we've really ever had. Mike: Evan, you do a good job of documenting how No Platform was applied. The experience appears to be far from uniform. Let's talk about that a little bit. Evan: Yeah, so there's like a debate happening about who No Platform should be applied to because it states– The official policy is that No Platform for racists and fascists, and there's a debate of who is a racist enough to be denied a platform. There's agreement so a group like the National Front is definitely to be No Platform. Then there's a gray area about the Monday Club. The Monday Club is a hard right faction within the conservatives. But there's a transmission of people and ideas between National Front and the Monday Club. Then there's government ministers because the British immigration system is a racist system. The Home Office is seen as a racist institution. So there's a debate of whether government politicians should be allowed to have a platform because they uphold institutional racism. We see this at different stages is that a person from the Monday Club tries to speak at Oxford and is chased out of the building. Keith Joseph, who's one of the proto-Thatcherites in the Conservative Party, comes to speak at LSE in the 1977-78 and that there is a push to say that he can't be allowed to speak because of the Conservative Party's immigration policies and so forth like that. So throughout the '70s, there is a debate of the minimalist approach with a group like the International Socialists saying that no, outright fascists are the only ones to be No Platformed. Then IMG and other groups are saying, "Actually, what about the Monday Club? What about the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children? What about Conservative Ministers? Are these people, aren't they also sharing that kind of discriminatory agenda that shouldn't be allowed a platform?" Mike: Okay, and there were some objections within the National Union of Students to some applications of No Platform, right? Evan: Yeah, well, not so much in the '70s. But once you get into the '80s, there's a big push for it. But probably the biggest issue in the '70s is that the application of No Platform to pro-Israel groups and Jewish student groups. In 1975, there's a UN resolution that Zionism is a form of racism, and that several student groups say, "Well, pro-Israel groups are Zionists. If Zionism is a form of racism and No Platform should be applied to racists or fascists, shouldn't they the pro-Israel groups then be denied a platform? Should pro-Israel groups be disaffiliated from student unions, etc.?" Several student unions do this at the local level, but there's a backlash from the NUS at the national level so much so the NUS actually suspends No Platform for about six months. It is reintroduced with an explicit piece of it saying that if No Platform is reinstituted, it can't be applied to Zionists groups, to pro-Israel groups, to Jewish societies. But a reason that they can't, the NUS can't withhold No Platform as a policy in the late 1970s is because they've been playing catch up because by this time, the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism are major mass movements of people because the National Front is seen as a major problem, and the NUS has to have some kind of anti-Fascist, anti-racist response. They can't sit on their hands because they're going dragged along by the Anti-Nazi League. Mike: One thing that you talked about in your book, David, is that simultaneous to No Platform was this movement for hate speech prohibitions. Talk about how these movements differed. David: Well, I think the best way to convey it is if we go back to the motion that was actually passed at the National Union of Students spring conference in May '74. If you don't mind, I'll just begin by reading it out. Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance, financial or otherwise, to openly racist or fascist organizations or societies (e.g., Monday Club, National Front, Action Party, Union Movement, National Democratic Party) and to deny them a platform. What I want to try and convey is that when you think about how you got this coalition within the National Union of Students in support of that motion, there were like two or three different ideas being signaled in that one motion. And if you then apply them, particularly what's happening as we're talking 50 years later now, if you apply them through the subsequent 50 years of activism, they do point in quite different directions. To just start up, “conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance” dadadada. What's really been good at here, I'm sure some of the people who passed No Platform promotion just had this idea, right? What we are, we're a movement of students' unions. We're a movement of buildings which are run by students and are for students. People have said to themselves, all this motion is really committing us to do is to say that we won't give any assistance to racist or fascist organizations. So what that means in practice is in our buildings, in our halls, we won't invite them in. Now, it may be that, say, the university will invite a conservative minister or the university will allow some far-right person to have a platform in election time. But the key idea, one key idea that's going on with this, just those things won't happen in our students' unions. They're our buildings; they're our halls. To use a term that hasn't really been coined yet, but this is in people's heads, is the idea of a safe space. It's just, student unions are our safe space. We don't need to worry about who exactly these terrible people are. Whoever and whatever they are, we don't want them on our patch. That's idea number one. Idea number two is that this is really about stopping fascists. It's not about any other form of discrimination. I'll come on to idea three in a moment. With idea three, this is about fascist organizations. You can see in a sense the motion is talking to people, people coming on and saying like I might not even be particularly left wing, but I don't like fascists. Evan talked about say for example, Zionist organizations. Could a Zionist organization, which is militantly antifascist, could they vote this motion? Yes. And how they'd sell it to themselves is this is only about fascism. So you can see this in the phrase, this is about refusing systems to “openly racist or fascist organizations,” and then look at the organizations which are listed: the National Front, well yeah, they're fascists; the Union Movement, yeah, they're fascists; the National Democratic Party, they're another little fascist splinter group.And then the only one there that isn't necessarily exactly fascist is the Monday Club who are a bunch of Tories who've been in the press constantly in the last two years when this motion is written for their alliance with National Front holding demonstrations and meetings together. So some people, this is just about protecting their space. Some people, this is about excluding fascists and no one else. But then look again at the motion, you'll see another word in there. “Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance to openly racist or fascist organizations.” So right from the start, there's a debate, what does this word racist mean in the motion? Now, one way you could read the motion is like this. From today, we can all see that groups like the National Front are fascists. Their leaders can spend most of the rest of the decade appearing constantly in literature produced by anti-fascist groups, identifying them as fascist, naming them as fascist, then we have to have a mass movement against fascism and nazism. But the point is in 1974, that hadn't happened yet. In most people's heads, groups like the National Front was still, the best way to describe them that no one could disagree to at least say they were openly racist. That was how they described themselves. So you could ban the National Front without needing to have a theological discussion about whether they fitted exactly within your definition of fascism. But the point I really want to convey is that the motion succeeds because it blurs the difference between saying anything can be banned because it's fascist specifically or anything can be banned because it's racist or fascist. This isn't immediately apparent in 1974, but what becomes pretty apparent over time is for example as Evan's documented already, even before 1974, there have been non-fascists, there have been conservatives going around student unions speaking in pretty racist terms. All right, so can they be banned? If the answer is this goes to racists or fascists, then definitely they can be banned. But now wait a second. Is there anyone else in British politics who's racist? Well, at this point, both main political parties are standing for election on platforms of excluding people from Britain effectively on the basis of the color of their skin. All right, so you can ban all the main political parties in Britain. All right, well, how about the newspapers? Well, every single newspaper in Britain, even the pro-Labour ones, is running front page articles supporting the British government. All right, so you could ban all newspapers in Britain. Well, how about the television channel? Well, we've only got three, but the best-selling comedies on all of them are comedies which make fun of people because they're foreigners and because they're Black. You can list them all. There's dozens of these horrible programs, which for most people in Britain now are unwatchable. But they're all of national culture in Britain in the early '70s. Alright, so you say, all right, so students we could ban every television channel in Britain, every newspaper in Britain, and every political party in Britain, except maybe one or two on the far left. It's like, wait a second people, I've only been doing racism. Well, let's take seriously the notion, if we're against all forms of racism, how can we be against racism without also being against sexism? Without being against homophobia? So the thing about No Platform is there's really only two ways you can read it in the end, and certainly once you apply it outside the 1970s today. Number one, you can say this is a relatively tightly drawn motion, which is trying to pin the blame on fascists as something which is growing tremendously fast in early 1970s and trying to keep them out. Maybe it'd be good to keep other people out too, but it's not trying to keep everyone out. Or you've got, what we're confronting today which is essentially this is an attempt to prevent students from suffering the misery, the hatred, the fury of hate speech. This is an attempt to keep all hate speech off campus, but with no definition or limit on hate speech. Acceptance of hate speech 50 years later might be much more widely understood than it is in early '70s. So you've got warring in this one motion two completely different notions of who it's right politically to refuse platforms to. That's going to get tested out in real life, but it's not been resolved by the 1974 motion, which in a sense looks both ways. Either the people want to keep the ban narrow or the people want to keep it broad, either of them can look at that motion and say yeah, this is the motion which gives the basis to what we're trying to do. Mike: Okay. I do want to get back to the notion of the maximalist versus the precisionist view of No Platform. But first before that, I want to talk about the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism to just get more of a broader context than just the students in Britain in terms of antifascism. David, do you want to talk about that? David: Okay. Well, I guess because another of my books is about Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, so I'll try and do this really short. I'll make two points. First is that these movements which currently ended in the 1970s are really very large. They're probably one of the two largest street movements in post-war British history. The only other one that's candidate for that is the anti-war movement, whether that's in the '80s or the early 2000s. But they're on that same scale as amongst the largest mass movements in British history. In terms of Rock Against Racism, the Anti-Nazi League, the total number of people involved in them is massive; it's around half a million to a million people. They're single most famous events, two huge three carnivals in London in 1977, which each have hundreds of thousands of people attending them and bring together the most exciting bands. They are the likes of The Clash, etc, etc. It's a movement which involves people graffitiing against Nazis, painting out far-right graffiti. It's a movement which is expressed in streets in terms of set piece confrontations, clashes with far-right, Lewisham in ‘76, Southall in ‘79. These are just huge movements which involve a whole generation of people very much associated with the emergence of punk music and when for a period in time in Britain are against that kind of visceral street racism, which National Front represents. I should say that they have slightly different attitudes, each of them towards the issue of free speech, but there's a massive interchange of personnel. They're very large. The same organizations involved in each, and they include an older version of the same activist who you've seen in student union politics in '74 as were they you could say they graduate into involvement in the mass movements like Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. Now, I want to say specifically about the Anti-Nazi League and free speech. The Anti-Nazi League takes from student politics this idea of No Platform and tries to base a whole mass movement around it. The idea is very simply, the National Front should not be allowed a platform to speak, to organize, to win converts anywhere. Probably with the Anti-Nazi League, the most important expressions of this is two things. Firstly, when the National Front tries to hold election meetings, which they do particularly in the run up to '79 election, and those are picketed, people demonstrated outside of them  A lot of them are the weekend in schools. One at Southall is in a town hall. These just lead to repeated clashes between the Anti-Nazi League and the National Front. The other thing which the Anti-Nazi League takes seriously is trying to organize workers into closing off opportunities for the National Front spread their propaganda. For example, their attempts to get postal workers to refuse to deliver election materials to the National Front. Or again, there's something which it's only possible to imagine in the '70s; you couldn't imagine it today. The National Front is entitled to election broadcasts because it's standing parliament. Then the technical workers at the main TV stations go on strike and refuse to let these broadcasts go out. So in all these ways, there's this idea around the Anti-Nazi League of No Platform. But No Platform is No Platform for fascists. It's the National Front should not get a chance to spread its election message. It's not yet that kind of broader notion of, in essence, anything which is hate speech is unacceptable. In a sense, it can't be. Because when you're talking about students' unions and their original No Platform motion and so forth, at the core of it is they're trying to control their own campuses. There's a notion of students' power. The Anti-Nazi League, it may be huge mass movement and may have hundreds of thousands people involved in it, but no one in Anti-Nazi League thinks that this organization represents such a large majority that they could literally control the content of every single TV station, the content of every single newspaper. You can try and drive the National Front out, but if people in that movement had said right, we actually want to literally carve out every expression of racism and every expression of sexism from society, that would have been a yet bigger task by another enormous degrees of scale. Mike: Okay, I do want to talk a little bit more about Rock Against Racism just particularly how it was founded, what led to its founding. I think it gives a good sense of where Britain was at, politically. David: Right. Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976. The two main events which are going on in the heads of the organizers when they launched it, number one, David Bowie's weird fascist turn, his interview with Playboy magazine in which he talks about Hitler being the first rock and roll superstar, the moment where he was photographed returning from tours in America and comes to Victoria Station and appears to give a Nazi salute. The reason why with Bowie it matters is because he's a hero. Bowie seems to represent the emergence of a new kind of masculinity, new kind of attitude with sexuality. If someone like that is so damaged that he's going around saying Hitler is the greatest, that's really terrifying to Bowie fans and for a wider set of people. The other person who leads directly to the launch of Rock Against Racism is Eric Clapton. He interrupts a gig in Birmingham in summer '76 to just start giving this big drunken rant about how some foreigner pinched his missus' bum and how Enoch Powell is the greatest ever. The reason why people find Eric Clapton so contemptible and why this leads to such a mass movement is weirdly it's the opposite of Bowie that no one amongst the young cool kids regards Clapton as a hero. But being this number one star and he's clearly spent his career stealing off Black music and now he's going to support that horror of Enoch Powell as well, it just all seems so absolutely ridiculous and outrageous that people launch an open letter to the press and that gets thousands of people involved. But since you've asked me about Rock Against Racism, I do want to say Rock Against Racism does have a weirdly and certainly different attitude towards free speech to the Anti-Nazi League. And this isn't necessarily something that was apparent at the time. It's only kind of apparent now when you look back at it. But one of the really interesting things about Rock Against Racism is that because it was a movement of young people who were trying to reclaim music and make cultural form that could overturn British politics and change the world, is that they didn't turn around and say, "We just want to cut off all the racists and treat them as bad and shoot them out into space," kind of as what the Anti-Nazi League's trying to do to fascists. Rock Against Racism grasped that if you're going to try and change this cultural milieu which is music, you actually had to have a bit of a discussion and debate and an argument with the racists, but they tried to have it on their own terms. So concretely, what people would do is Rock Against Racism courted one particular band called Sham 69, who were one of the most popular young skinhead bands, but also had a bunch of neo-nazis amongst their roadies and things like that. They actually put on gigs Sham 69, put them on student union halls, surrounded them with Black acts. Knew that these people were going to bring skinheads into the things, had them performing under Rock Against Racism banner, and almost forced the band to get into the state of practical warfare with their own fans to try and say to them, "We don't want you to be nazis anymore. We want you to stop this." That dynamic, it was incredibly brave, was incredibly bold. It was really destructive for some of the individuals involved like Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69. Effectively saying to them, "Right, we want you to put on a gig every week where you're going to get bottled by your own fans, and you're going to end up like punching them, just to get them to stop being racist." But we can't see any other way of shifting this milieu of young people who we see as our potential allies. There were lots of sort of local things like that with Rock Against Racism. It wasn't about creating a safe space in which bad ideas couldn't come in; it was about going onto the enemy's ideological trend and going, "Right, on this trend, we can have an argument. We can win this argument." So it is really quite an interesting cultural attempt to change the politics of the street. Mike: Okay, now you two have very different ideas of what No Platform is in its essence. Evan, you believe that No Platform was shifting in scope from its inception and it is properly directed at any institutional platform afforded to vociferous bigots. While David you believe that No Platform is only properly applied against fascists, and going beyond that is a dangerous form of mission creep. Now, I absolutely hate debates. [laughter] I think the format does more to close off discussion than to draw out information on the topic at hand. So, what I don't want to happen is have you two arguing with each other about your positions on No Platform (and maybe me, because I have yet a third position). David: Okay Mike, honestly, we've known each other for years. We've always been– Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. David: –your listeners will pick up, there's loads we agree on, too. So I'm sure we can deal without that rubbish debate. [Evan laughs] Mike: All right. So what I'd like to do is ground this discussion as much as possible in history rather than abstract moral principles. So in that interest, can each of you talk a bit about the individuals and groups that have taken the position on No Platform that you have, and how they've defended their positions? David let's start with you. What groups were there insisting that No Platform was necessary but its necessity was limited to overt fascists? David: Well, I think in practice, that was the approach of Rock Against Racism. They took a very different attitude towards people who were tough ideological fascists, to the people who were around them who were definitely racist, but who were capable of being argued out of that. I mean, I've given the example of the policy of trying to have a debate with Sham 69 or use them as a mechanism to change their audience. What I want to convey is in every Rock Against Racism group around the country, they were often attempts to something very similar. People talk about Birmingham and Leeds, whether it be sort of local Rock Against Racism groups, they might put on– might get a big band from some other city once a month, but three weeks out of four, all they're doing is they're putting on a local some kind of music night, and they might get a hundred people there. But they'd go out of the way to invite people who they saw as wavering supporters of The National Front. But the point is this wasn't like– We all know how bad faith debates work. It's something like it's two big ego speakers who disagree with each other, giving them half an hour each to debate and know their audience is already persuaded that one of them's an asshole, one of them's great. This isn't what they were trying to do. They were trying to win over one by one wavering racists by putting them in an environment where they were surrounded by anti-racists. So it was about trying to create a climate where you could shift some people who had hateful ideas in their head, but were also capable of being pulled away from them. They didn't do set piece debates with fascists because they knew that the set piece debates with fascists, the fascists weren't going to listen to what they were going to say anyway. But what they did do is they did try to shift people in their local area to try and create a different atmosphere in their local area. And they had that attitude towards individual wavering racists, but they never had that attitude towards the fascist leaders. The fascist leaders as far as they're concerned, very, very simple, we got to close up the platform to them. We got to deprive them of a chance. Another example, Rock Against Racism, how it kind of made those sorts of distinctions. I always think with Rock Against Racism you know, they had a go at Clapton. They weren't at all surprised when he refused to apologize. But with Bowie, there was always a sense, "We want to create space for Bowie. We want to get Bowie back because Bowie's winnable." That's one of the things about that movement, is that the absolute uncrossable line was fascism. But if people could be pulled back away from that and away from the ideas associated with that, then they wanted to create the space to make that happen. Mike: Okay, and Evan, what groups took the Maximalist approach to No Platform and what was their reasoning? Evan: Yeah. So I think the discussion happens once the National Front goes away as the kind of the major threat. So the 1979 election, the National Front does dismally, and we can partially attribute that to the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, kind of this popular antifascist movement. But there's also that Margaret Thatcher comes to power, and there's an argument that's made by historians is that she has pulled away the racist vote away from the National Front back to the conservatives. It's really kind of a realignment of leftwing politics under Thatcher because it's a much more confrontational conservative government, but there's also kind of these other issues which are kind of the new social movements and what we would now term as identity politics, they're forming in the sixties and seventies and are really big issues in the 1980s. So kind of like feminism, gay rights, andthat,  there's an argument among some of the students that if we have a No Platform for racism and fascism, why don't we have a No Platform for sexism? Why don't we have a No Platform for homophobia? And there are certain student unions who try to do this. So LSE in 1981, they endorse a No Platform for sexist as part of a wider fight against sexism, sexual harassment, sexual violence on campus is that misogynist speakers shouldn't be allowed to have a presence on campus. Several student unions kind of have this also for against homophobia, and as a part of this really divisive issue in the mid 1980s, the conservative government is quite homophobic. Section 28 clause 28 is coming in in the late eighties. It's a whole kind of homophobia of AIDS. There's instances where students object to local Tory politicians who were kind of outwardly, explicitly homophobic, that they should be not allowed to speak on stage. Then also bubbling along in the background is kind of the supporters of apartheid, so South African diplomats or kind of other people who support the South African regime including Conservative politicians, is that several times throughout the 1980s, they are invited to speak on campus, and there's kind of a massive backlash against this. Sometimes the No Platform policy is invoked. Sometimes it's just simple disruption or kind of pickets or vigils against them. But once fascism is kind of not the main issue, and all these different kind of politics is going on in the eighties, is that there's argument that No Platform for fascism and racism was important, but fascism and racism is only one form of hate speech; it's only one form of discrimination; it's only one form of kind of bodily violence; and we should take them all into consideration. Mike: Okay. Now there's been a fair bit of backlash against No Platform in kind of any of its forms from various sectors, so let's talk a bit about that. Let's start with the fascist themselves. So their response kind of changed somewhat over time in response to No Platform. David, you talk about this. David: Yeah. In the early ‘70s in Britain or I suppose in the late ‘70s too, what's extraordinary is how little use fascist make out of saying, "We are being attacked, free speech applies. We've got to have the right to be heard." I made the point earlier that Britain doesn't have a strong legal culture of free speech. We do have some culture of free speech. And again, it's not that the fascists never use these terms at all, they use them, but they use them very half-heartedly. Their dominant approach is to say, "We are being attacked by the left. The left don't understand we have better fighters than them. If they attack us on the streets, we'll fight back. In the end, we'll be the ones who win in a kind of battle of machismo, street fighting power." Now A, that doesn't happen because actually they lose some set piece confrontations, mostly at Lewisham in 1977. But it's interesting that they don't do the kind of thing which you'd expect the far right to do today, which is to say, like the British far right does today, they constantly say, "We're under attack. Free speech demands that we be heard. We're the only people who take free speech seriously." There's a continuous process in the British far right these days of endlessly going on social media every time anyone even disagrees with them a little bit, they immediately have their faces taped up and present themselves as the victim of this terrible conspiracy when in the mid-'70s when there really were people trying to put the far right out of business, that isn't what the far right did. I think, in essence, a whole bunch of things have to change. You have to get kind of a hardening of the free speech discourse in the United States; you have to have things like the attack on political correctness; the move by the American center-right from being kind of equivocal on free speech to being extremely pro-free speech; and you need to get the importation into Britain of essentially the same kind of free speech discourse as you have in States. Once we get all of that, the British far right eventually twigs that it's a far more effective way of presenting themselves and winning supporters by posing as the world's biggest defenders of free speech.  But in the ‘70s, they haven't learned that lesson yet, and their response is much more leaden and ineffective. In essence, they say, "No Platform's terrible because it's bullying us." But what they never have the gumption to say is, "Actually, we are the far right. We are a bunch of people putting bold and dangerous and exciting ideas, and if we are silenced, then all bold and dangerous and difficult ideas will be silenced too." That's something which a different generation of writers will get to and will give them all sorts of successes. But in the ‘70s, they haven't found it yet. Mike: Okay. Now fascists also had some uneasy allies as far as No Platform is concerned among Tories and libertarians. So let's talk about the Tories first, what was their opposition to No Platform about? Evan, you talk about this quite a bit in your book. Evan: Yeah. So the conservative opposition to No Platform is essentially saying that it's a stock standard thing that the left call everyone fascist. So they apply it to broadly and is that in the ‘80s, there's a bunch of conservative politicians to try to go onto campus, try to speak, and there's massive protests. They say that, "Look, this is part of an intolerant left, that they can't see the distinction between fascism and a Conservative MP. They don't want to allow anyone to have free speech beyond that kind of small narrow left wing bubble." In 1986, there is an attempt, after a kind of a wave of protest in '85, '86, there is an attempt by the government to implement some kind of protection for free speech on campus. This becomes part of the Education Act of 1986, that the university has certain obligations to ensure, where practical, free speech applies and no speech is denied. But then it's got all kind of it can't violate the Racial Discrimination Act, the Public Order Act, all those kind of things. Also, quite crucially for today, that 1986 act didn't explicitly apply to student unions. So student unions argued for the last 30 years that they are exempt from any legislation and that they were legally allowed to pursue their No Platform policy.

Roe v Wade Has Been Overturned! Melanie - Just rejoicing in the fact that Roe V Wade is overturned and the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart, this is a Godincidence Elizabeth - This is the Memorare moment! We have been praying so hard for this. Sheila - I am so thankful to God and Father Rocky for all that has happened Mandi - Shout out to Relevant Radio and to everybody for all the prayers Sam - Our state has a heartbeat bill and I just sent a letter to see how this affects the heart beat bill. AND I am So happy! Therese - In some parts of the world it is already the feast of the immaculate heart of Mary, so I think that that is a fitting thing for today. Amy - I want to comment on any post abortive parents. I am a post abortive parent and want to give them hope for today. Our unborn babies are rejoicing in heaven because of day. Making Abortion Illegal and Unthinkable Sandra - Please pray that California has a conversion. Richard - I am so happy and wanted to share my joy with Patrick! Philip - I am celebrating by inviting our parents to dinner and saying the rosary tonight in thanksgiving as a family. Ron - I listen to you a lot and I am very happy for today's news! David - Thank you to Relevant Radio and Our Lady and St. Joseph. Victor - So happy for the news we received! I have a young daughter and I am more hopeful of her future.

In the Manager Minute Studio today is David Leon, Director of Workforce Programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) along with host of the Manager Minute podcast, Carol Pankow. Find out how the projects David has led are shaping the approach that Virginia is taking in relation to work incentives counseling (benefits planning). What is the overall structure? Why did DARS see it as imperative to develop the capacity for work incentives counseling in Virginia beyond what is provided by the WIPA(Work Incentives Planning and Assistance)? Find out what resources and tools David is recommending and what advice he has for you.   Listen Here   Full Transcript   Important Links Cities for Financial Empowerment https://cfefund.org/projects/   Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "Your Money Your Goals" and Focus on Disability - materials are free and may be        co branded https://www.consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/educator-tools/your-money-your-goals/   National Disability Institute https://www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org/downloads/   FDIC Money Smart  https://www.fdic.gov/resources/consumers/money-smart/index.html   ·       Next Gen Personal Finance https://www.ngpf.org/   You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at: https://www.vrtac-qm.org/   Full Transcript   Work Incentives Counseling---Finding the incentive to engage in work incentives counseling with Virginia DARS!   {Music} Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host, Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute. I am so fortunate to have David Leon with me in the studio today. David's the director of workforce programs at the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, or, as you all endearingly refer to it as DarS. So, David, how are things going at DarS?   David: Excellent. Thank you for having me and thank you for asking.   Carol: Well, I was doing a little LinkedIn research about you, and I see you have been with the agency for over 11 years, and you're really known as a powerhouse in the VR community with some super creative work, especially as it relates to the agency's goal of helping those populations that experience both disability and poverty. And I learned that Virginia Diaries was awarded one of the announced Disability Innovation Fund grants, and I would definitely like to hear more about that at a later date. So, I'm gathering that the projects you've led and continue to lead on behalf of DARS with support from your commissioner, Cathy Hayfield, have really helped shape the approach that Virginia is taking in relation to benefits planning. And on a side note, I saw you're also a recent graduate from George Washington University with your master's in VR counseling. I always have to give a plug. My employer, I really admire you for going back to school and accomplishing that.   David: Thank you.   Carol: So today we're going to tackle the topic of benefits planning and learn more about the success of Virginia DARS has experienced. Now, when I asked around about VR best practices, your name kept coming up over and over again. And I know many agencies do kind of a one and done with benefits planning. They get something on the plan, they kind of move on. And my understanding is that your agency has gone far beyond that. So, let's dig in. What is the overall benefits planning structure in your agency?   David: Thank you, Carol. And let me start by saying anything we have been successful at here in Virginia is really based on our commissioner commitment to this work. The agencies buy into the value of this work in a systemic way, along with what we find as best practices from other agencies. I'm very proud of the work we do here in Virginia, and there are many other states with different approaches who we have borrowed pieces of over the years. Basic approach to benefits counseling is around what that looks like as a culture within the agency. To that end, we've done several things that I want to touch on first, and those include an expectation that all counselors go through VCU's intro to benefits course. That is something that all of our placement staff and our VR counselors are expected to go through. Every client who is potentially on benefits is expected to have within their IEP work incentive services. So, from an agency cultural perspective, there are a couple of things that are important there. We want our counselors to know at least a little bit about the subject and hence the reason that they go through the introduction to disability benefits. That's the course offered every month or two through the WIPPA program. That is the very basic six-part session on Intro to SSI, Intro to SSDI benefits. We also want all of our clients to get these services. The other piece that's important in Virginia is we don't refer to this as benefits counseling. We refer to it as work incentive counseling and work incentive services. The reason being we don't want to focus on benefits. We want to focus on work. You get what you focus on, and we want to focus on maximum employment and maximum earned income for our clients. So, another piece that's a little bit unique to Virginia, I think, is that every individual who goes through work incentives, counseling will be shown one example of what their life might look like if they are completely off cash benefits. Whether it's possible or not, we want every one of our clients to think it could be possible one day, and we want to create a document that kind of has a shelf life so that maybe you're not ready today, but maybe next year you get that opportunity after your case closed and you're going to have a report in front of you that might show you, Oh, now that I'm earning this much, it says I should look for these work incentives. So that's a little bit about the structure for within the agency. From a counselor perspective. Within our structure, we also have work incentives, specialist advocates. Those are people trained either through Cornell University or VCU, to provide work incentive services or benefits counseling as the rest of the country knows of it. And those individuals often work for employment networks and have partnership plus relationships. They don't always. But that is a best practice for our agency. And that's so that if somebody does choose to work their way off cash benefits, there's a natural link to an employment network and to continue to receive those services after post closure from the same people who provided them during the case. We also within our structure have a work incentive specialist whose sole job is to provide training for our counselors and those work incentive specialists each month we do state. Specific trainings on our state Medicaid system. Other things related to Virginia, how to use reports for counseling and guidance, and those hours count usually for their continuing education. So that's a really nice thing. It's a way to help make sure the people we have trained to provide services stay current. The other thing our work incentive specialists does is provides quality control. When a newly credentialed practitioner wants to provide services in Virginia, they have to share their first several reports with our work incentive specialists who double checks them, make sure they're correct and they are not allowed to provide the services independently without sending them until the person who works for me says You are good to go and that does something else. Know you think of rapid engagement. It creates a relationship between newly trained benefits practitioners and our staff in charge of quality control, so that when something wonky comes up, they know who to ask and they feel comfortable asking. That's a really key part of our system. The last thing that's unique to Virginia, we have state specific software that all of our work incentive specialists use when they're working, a case where you put in the scenarios earning X amount of dollars and it will do the math for you, along with provide an output of what potential work incentives might apply. And what we require are a couple of things. For a report to be completed and shared with the client and counselor, there has to be a copy of that individual's benefit planning query known as the BPI. The rationale for making sure that's a piece of it is sometimes we learn things that will really be important to the counseling and guidance process. For instance, if someone has a rep payee or an authorized rep, that's an additional conversation with the VR counselor about who might need to be at the table when it comes to talking about work goals. If someone has an overpayment on their benefit planning query, that might be an indication that we need to really hit home on the importance of wage reporting or budgeting, or other aspects related to what that overpayment has done to a case. So those are some reasons for that document. Another thing that's a little bit different about how we do our work world summary and analysis, which is the Virginia version of a benefit summary and analysis. We require the actual use of that individual's IP goal. And again, it's another opportunity to utilize Virginia specific labor market information around what the wages look like at 20 hours a week or full time for the types of jobs they're looking at. Again, everywhere through this process, we are reinforcing that value and goal of employment. The other nice thing about that is by the time someone gets to that work incentive specialist to go through the Work World Report, the individual might suddenly say, well, they want to do something different than is the goal in their plan. It's another point where we can ensure consistency with the client and their counselor. So, all of those are parts of what this first product looks like. The work world summary and analysis. We have a bunch of different services available. All of them are a la carte after that Work World Report and they are designed to be based as needed and outcome based. So, whereas you can go to the WIPA project, and you might be given advice, you might not necessarily be given things in writing, or if you're in the hierarchy at a place where you're going to get a benefit summary and analysis. If you say, I want to know what happens if I go to work 20 hours a week, you're going to get a report that shows that our clients come into a work world report and say, I want to know what happens if I'm going to work 20 hours a week. We say we're going to show you that, but we're going to also show you what it's like to work 25 hours a week using these two work incentives. And we're going to show you what it might look like working 40 hours a week, totally off benefits, because if someone hasn't imagined it, we don't want to artificially limit their potential for work. Some of the other services we offer through our work incentive services assistance with for achieving self support that's paid in two parts, one for submitting it and a second payment. If approved, we can help with impairment related work expenses. Blind work expenses. Student Earned Income Exclusions Subsidies. Medicaid Works. Our state's Medicaid buy in Virginia is a 209 B state, so we pay to help people get 1619 B protection. We will pay to help someone with an overpayment. We will pay to help someone set up an individual development account and able now account. We will pay to help someone get section 301 protection. And then under financial empowerment, we will pay for financial health assessments. We created a pre service called Maximizing Employment Potential through career pathways, we call it Max. And that's really kind of a choose your own adventure about career and money. We're really excited about that. It's still got some kinks to work out, but some of our providers have really created some cool tools there. And then we have a. Couple of services around budgeting skills, using financial empowerment tools. So that's all the different services we have currently. And again, each one, the individual only gets paid when they have proof, they've provided the service or in many of those work incentives, when that work incentive has been applied to the individual's case within Social Security or sometimes within our state social services system.   Carol: Well, I like what you said about you get what you focus on. So obviously starting out by focusing as an agency, you've made it important for your counselor. So that came through really loud and clear by everyone having that exposure to at least that introductory level training through VCU. So that I thought was really cool. And then also ensuring you're incorporating that into the plan that they must do that. I do have a question, though. I wondered about that state specific software, kind of that technology piece, like what did it take to get that all cooking?   David: That was something that existed before I got here. It was developed by folks at VCU and was developed as a policy tool for Social Security Administration. Things moved on. We had the opportunity to move it to be specific to Virginia and move it to the Web. So, we've taken ownership of that and continue to update it each year. And now it is just a Virginia specific tool with our kind of rules and thresholds built in. But it started well before I got here as a policy tool that then was converted to be used in Virginia. There is something similar that is called DB 101. I shouldn't say similar. It's very different because if another state wanted the tool we had, we would just give it to them and say, Hey, maybe help cover part of the development costs for any changes and another state would have to pay to get their specifics put in. But what I really appreciated about it is two or three different work incentive specialists could put the exact same information in in different parts of the state, and the math would be the same. That's cool, and that's really important because that stuff is not always right. And the other thing that's nice about it, I haven't looked at DB 101 in a long time, but last I checked, that tool was more designed as a self-service tool, and a lot of our clients don't know if they get SSI or SSDI. They don't always have a full picture, and I would never want to trust such a complex system to someone who hasn't really been trained to look for potential discrepancies and errors, especially. I guess the other thing oh, I heard from a friend of a friend who said, don't ever work more than this many hours because this thing happened. Right? We all hear the stories, and every situation is different, and you can never know that other situation to really compare it to your own. The other thing I just wanted to add about our approach with our counselors, because we've had some staff also trained to do more than just that basic level. One of the things we are fortunate to have here in Virginia is Wilson Workforce Rehabilitation Center. I believe eight states have comprehensive centers, much like WWRC, we have a staff at WWRC who is trained to provide all of the work incentive services. And that individual is one of the few internal staff who regularly provides these services in a comprehensive way. So, if someone goes to the center for other things, they might get some of these other services there. But we've also at times trained some other staff in these at a higher level, not with the expectation that they actively practice. We wanted people around the state to be able to triage or to know if somebody needed a referral. So strategically, we had trained our autism subject matter expert. We had trained the person who was in charge of PreETSs We had trained the person who was in charge of small business, set up self-employment. So, we had trained some other folks and a few counselors here and there. Again, not with the expectation that they provide services, but those folks who might be in a room with a broad audience and get asked a question and be able to say, Oh, you need this person and understand that based on that question, they needed some extra help. And so, some of those staff and the positions I mentioned have come and gone. But we continue to when the opportunities come up, try to add other internal staff just again to have more people at that next level understanding. And I think right now we have maybe three different VR office managers who are credentialed through Cornell and maybe one who's credentialed through VCU. And we have a district director who has their benefits practitioner credentials.   Carol: That's super strategic. Like you've been super strategic about that. When I think about the PreETS or the small business, all those different areas that has been smart to spread that out commonly. I just think back to my own agency. You have like one person, you know, there's that one person that knows it. They're the keeper, you know, the keeper of the knowledge and the other people. Have a little smuedge. I like what I'm hearing. You know, when you talked about that another state could take the what you've got developed, you know, that software basically they'd have to pay to get it developed with their data and such for their state. So, you guys are open to that?   David: Absolutely. Yeah. We worked on a grant and then get what happened. We were going to do a grant with another state where the grant would have covered it for them. I don't remember what happened, to be honest with that potential project. Maybe in the end we found out we got something else at that time in our ability to do both was and I'm learning with the RSA diff one new grant at a time is plenty.   Carol: Yeah, right. Good advice. So, I'm going to take you back a little minute because obviously you didn't just dive into the middle of this. This came from somewhere. So why did DARS see it as imperative to develop this capacity? And so, I'm not going to use my benefits planning for this work incentive counseling in Virginia, you know, beyond what's provided by the work incentive planning and assistance, those weapons, what's kind of that bigger picture?   David: You know, first, the WIPA projects fantastic. It's a great resource. It's important to remember they've gone from 113 to 107 to 93 to 87. The number of projects continues to go down, meaning the number of individuals that need to be served or could be served by each has gone up at the same level. Funding from when with a began funding has not changed. It's important to know. So, in a state like Virginia, where we have over 300,000 people potentially eligible for services, what we were finding is the clients of our agency were not always getting the services they needed just in time based on where they were at. And sometimes you have clients who are doing self-directed job searches, you have all sorts of folks. Some people could wait, but sometimes people couldn't, and that was creating issues. The other issue in Virginia, we are one of a lucky few states that's called a 209b state, which means Medicaid protection is not automatic. We were helping people get great jobs and some of them were losing their Medicaid prior to the Medicaid expansion and prior to the buy in through no fault of their own. But because they didn't know they had to apply and had a very tiny window to apply to keep their Medicaid. So, when our state had the Medicaid infrastructure grant in the early 2000, developing this program was a piece of it. And originally the folks who went through it were called Work Incentive Specialist Advocates, and they were called Work Incentive Specialist Advocates because of the advocacy piece around making sure those protections would be in place from Department of Social Services and DMS and Medicaid. That's really where this program began. Truth be told, my start was in this field through a local community service board. I started as a job coach and then I went to manage a sheltered work program, and when I was there early 2000, I was really surprised that some of the folks who were in my program that in my mind could be working and, in each case, something had happened related to their benefits that I didn't understand. But when this program was started, I was a provider, and I was in the first cohort to be trained as a work incentive specialist advocate. That was in 2005. The program didn't really do much in terms of what DARS had hoped in those early years. I was using it and I was thrilled that I had access to the person at the time who was the work incentive specialist, and we were able to work through those cases within the sheltered work program I was in where they were. At the very least, I was able to help folks move to enclaves and hourly pay from sub minimum. So that was a really nice thing to watch. So, you're talking to someone who believes in this from every level of how work incentives can help.   Carol: Which is why your name keeps coming up. You're kind of the pioneer. You've been doing it for a while.   David: I just got lucky. I got very lucky to understand how it could help people I cared about that were underemployed. I came to the state. We had this program. It wasn't really going anywhere. And the way we had done the training the first time, the training I had was fantastic. It was through a specific organization that wasn't providing it anymore. We had to restart and my former boss, Dr. Joe Ashley, who's a brilliant guy, was like, David, what should we do? How can we restart this? And I was working on the Ticket to Work program, and my thought was, what if we invite people who have been through this or who are willing to go through this that are willing to become employment networks because having those services at the employment network would be a reason for someone to choose to keep their ticket after case closure. And it might provide reasons for them to get other cases that might not come to DARS, he agreed. We used innovation and expansion dollars and partnered with Cornell University at the time to offer several rounds of training. When I got here, we had roughly 40 people who had maintained their credentials and said they were interested. Now we have 110 people today that are active and are currently fully credentialed. That doesn't include the internal staff. And by pairing this with the rest of the Ticket to Work program, I think it helped some of those agencies see the potential, and it definitely slowly helped those that chose to become employment networks create another stream of revenue because we as a VR can think something is important all day long. But if we don't provide tangible benefits for our partners in the community, well, they might support someone going through the training, but are they going to support giving them the time to do the work? Right. So, when I got here, we didn't really spend any money on those services. And now each year we spend between 400 and 500,000 a year in case service dollars on different work incentives. And what I'd say is our cost reimbursement has gone up. Now, I'm not a researcher. I can't say that it's a direct causation that spending this amount has led to this increase in our program income through cost reimbursement. But we have seen a nice increase in that area that looks like it trends along the same lines of our growth in the work incentives. And I will say that when you look at our numbers in terms of our rehab rate, which isn't as important these days with other changes, but it was significantly higher for those individuals that had work incentives services earlier in the process when we were able to hear the people who didn't get it, here are the people that did. It was about a 25-percentage point higher rehab rate for those that had work incentives and that remained constant as we continued to grow it. We don't track that anymore because again, it's not how we're measured these days, but it was a pretty cogent argument for the continued increase and development of these services.   Carol: So, I want to circle back on the money for a minute. So, you talked about using innovation expansion funds to start and then you made investments with your program income to help fund. Have you used any other kind of funds? Is that all been sort of VR money or has there been any other kind of funding that's helped you to kind of scale this up?   David: Interesting you ask again; we are always looking to improve. Right. And there were those promise grants a few years ago. One of the things that came out of that, and I think California did this work, California worked with Cornell University on a course related to youth benefits counseling. We are using pre dollars right now and we are offering the Cornell youth training to all of our current wishes for free. So, something they're not spending $650 on. Right. We're offering them the chance to get this second credential. And we're also offering it to our staff who have completed the introduction to Social Security disability class through VCU. They can't get the certification because they aren't fully credentialed. But again, we are trying to infuse this next level how to talk to families about money for their sons and daughters. So, we are doing that right now. I think people are a little zoomed out. I thought for sure each of these sessions would be 100% full. We're averaging 25 to 30 instead of the 40 I'd hoped. But again, we keep trying things and we keep trying things that incorporate our work incentive specialists around the state, our field staff. What things can we do that will help further align these goals? And then another thing we've tried, but again, on a very small scale, we have a Nadler grant around financial empowerment and able accounts, and it involves some financial coaching. And through that project, I've been able to pay for about five staff to become certified in financial social work again. And we pick people who are with us. Why? Because we're trying to really figure out how the financial empowerment piece fits, because the more I've seen, the more I'm convinced that they go hand in hand.   Carol: I agree. So, what do you hear from your staff? Like you guys have made this an incredible investment in staff. There's all these different levels and I'm sure some folks really like that. More specialization in this area. What does staff think of all this? And be honest.   David: I wonder if they tell me the truth. I mean, Drew, here comes Dave. He's going to talk about Social Security benefits or financial empowerment again. No, I think when people get it, they start to get it more and more. And what excites me is when you hear more nuanced questions like I've heard everything from why isn't this a requirement in your master's in rehab counseling? Like, I've heard all sorts of things about it. And I think what's nice is we now provide at least a one hour training every month. That's specifically for counselors. It's not mandatory, but we get 40 to 50 every month that sign up. We also are willing to go to different offices so regularly we will go to an office and do an hour to an hour and a half presentation and then my staff will stay to do one on one staffing. So, in terms of strategy of building the capacity, I think the way you provide information to the field, even now when we do it virtually, we're about to have a training later this month for a specific office. We're going to set the training from 10 to 1130, and then one of three people from my team will be available for the next two and a half hours. Half hour increments for any of the staff to staff some cases. Right. You just heard it. How do we engage you right now with your caseload to make sure we're answering your questions that might not have been as appropriate for that group discussion?   Carol: You're high energy. So, I'm sure as you bring it across, it's not like, oh, well, we're going to do this work incentives stuff. And here's another thing to do, because then they can see the value to them and in the end to the customer. I mean, that's the ultimate goal. It's getting people where they want to be and having the information so they can make an informed decision about what they're doing.   David: Absolutely. I love it. The other thing we do a lot and I have to do this less and less, which is great. But when we were building it, any time there was a good success story that included benefits counseling, I would write it up and I would turn it in so that our commissioner saw. So, I was trying to support and encourage almost like that growth mindset, form of communication. How can I write about someone's behaviors as a counselor that were doing what I needed them around benefits, counseling as a big positive? We did a lot of that early on. Like if a counselor got to see their name in a weekly report that they didn't write up, it added to their social capital. Right. It was a positive reinforcement.   Carol: And you guys are good at social media, like your commissioner is fabulous. So, I follow Cathy on social media too in Virginia.   David: DARS Cathy is amazing at that. In fact, she has taught me more about that than I believe it. I now I think about that stuff, and I never would have ten years ago.   Carol: So, what resources would you recommend for agencies who would like to expand their capacity to discuss a client's financial situation? I know there's probably some really great tools or something out there that you could help out with.   David: Now we're on to more of the financial empowerment, right? I think there are a few things. And first is, how do you get counselors to feel comfortable talking about finances? Right. We've gone to grad school for this master's and rehab counseling, but maybe we have credit card debt, maybe we've had a bankruptcy, maybe we've had a bill we couldn't pay on time. How do you get counselors to feel okay about that? That's the first thing. And we offer some trainings we've developed here in Virginia around like working with people in poverty as a form of cultural competency that I'm really proud of that work. And again, some of it we took from some great work from Kentucky. We added and grew it through our targeted communities' projects and some other projects and really try to help with a kind of behavioral economics framework for why clients may make some of the decisions they do. But the tools I love the most and that we support the most are twofold. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Your Money, Your Goals Toolkit is phenomenal. All of their materials are free to use. They allow for co-branding. So, for our partners, if they want to use their materials, they can put their own logo on them. So, it adds again, it adds to the perceived value you can go through and pick specifically the tools you need for any given situation. FDIC is money smart. They have money smart for youth, for adults, for various ages. And the money smart curriculum is in line with the standards of learning, at least for the state of Virginia and most states that have a financial education, financial literacy requirement in school. One of the things that makes this work easier, frankly, in Virginia is that a are commissioner gets it or commissioner full on believes in the importance of financial literacy and financial empowerment. In fact, when we talk about the folks who are working their way off cash benefits, we don't necessarily talk about the money. We talk about how many people we helped work their way out of poverty. Right. And that's how she likes to frame it. So, you take your cues from your leader. Commissioner Hayfield firmly supports this work. But the other tools that we really like here in Virginia and have been fortunate to be able to use, we use some tools from next gen personal finance. That is one of the most incredible nonprofits I've ever had the pleasure of getting to work with or meet any of their folks. All of their tools are really geared towards that K through 12 teacher who might be working within the financial literacy or financial education space, maybe those economics teachers in high school, personal finance, but they have developed some amazing tools and we use some of them regularly. And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the National Disability Institute. We use a lot of their tools, and our financial health assessment actually was developed during our career Pathways for Individuals with Disabilities Grant with the help of the National Disability Institute. So, I think they're still there. But when we were developing this tool, I had lots of experts to run ideas off of, and when we had staff go through the financial social work program, we took that opportunity to revisit our financial health assessment and see if what we learned would change. And sure enough, we rewarded almost all of the questions to be more matter of fact so no one would feel bad about themselves. The way the question was worded, we made them all much more neutral, really. And I think all of those tools have been fantastic. To me, it's what is someone going to feel comfortable using and how is someone going to speak to this work in an authentic voice where they feel comfortable and proficient and there's 20 other tools out there. Most major banks have financial literacy programs you can get from their websites. We are just starting to partner with the State of Virginia Credit Union and we're going to try some other things with them. And then at our center, see, we are about to try a program called Cares for Youth that was established and created by a federal bankruptcy judge. Again, I guess he ran into people declaring bankruptcy more than once and thought that there should be some other help for folks. But we didn't have training in that when I went to high school. Now in Virginia, you don't graduate without a class in personal finance. It would have been very helpful because I can tell you firsthand, I have probably five shirts that have Visa, American Express logos on them with my college mascot. And I definitely had some debt because I thought the shirts were cool and they seemed free at the time.   Carol: I think the free is the is the key word there seemed. Yes. So, yeah. So, you have brought up like a ton of tools. And for our listeners out there, what advice would you give them if they're sitting in an agency where maybe they haven't spent a lot of thought about this? And we know that has happened across the country. People have just had different focuses. There's been different things going on. But for somebody that wants to get started because you guys are well down the road, like, what advice would you get for even kind of getting focused in this area?   David: Someone who works for a VR agency, there are several areas I am particularly interested in effecting change related to this work, so I can talk about those very easily. How many individuals that we successfully place have their jobs potentially put at risk when something that should be a known recurring expense comes back up? But it's more than 20 or $30. Example, someone needs hearing aids. They're hearing aids are not working as well. Their job performance comes down while they go on our waitlist to get new hearing aids. Why isn't the discussion at closure around this is going to be an ongoing medical expense that you might need down the road? How are you going to budget for this now? That's a loaded thing for me to say because everybody's situation is different. But if we don't at least have the conversation, that assumes everybody must always come back for this service over and over and over. And I'm not saying that nobody should ever come back, but we owe it to all of our clients to have the conversations. Another example, there was a study in 2013. It may have changed, but 47% of job applicants included a credit check. How do we help people understand how their financial behaviors affect job propositions and employability? It's a key part in this ever-changing world. We have clients who may need to move for a job. The amount they might pay for a vehicle or rent could change based on that credit report. These are real world things. It's not something I'm just saying these things actually happen. The rate you get for various loans is dependent on those credit scores. You might be taken out of an interview pool because of your credit report, especially for certain industries. So, from being in a place where our job is to get people jobs, financial empowerment can reduce the barriers to employment. I believe that 100%. And if we're not looking at how to make sure we're doing that, we're missing part of the picture. So that's the other example I would make is it's not just durable medical equipment. We have done a lot in the last ten years using technology. We have helped people program into an iPad, videos of their job or scenarios of what to do when certain things come up in a job. That's not a huge expense. But why wouldn't we make sure that that person is in a position to purchase a new one when it can no longer be updated? Because those things do happen and it's a shame to see somebody have to even worry about will they be able to keep their job while going through that paperwork? Not to mention, time is a commodity, and we keep people tethered to the system unnecessarily, which to me robs people of their agency. I think that's really the areas that that's why that's so important to me personally. That doesn't mean we don't help when we can and we shouldn't jump in when we can, but we help more if we prepare someone and avoid those ebbs and flows. There have also been lots of studies related to lost productivity at work when people are worried about their finances.   Carol: Well, you're very profound, David. I have to say, I like that. Keeping people tethered to the system, making that. Comment that really resonates with me very much. So, if folks are listening and they want to get more information about what Virginia is doing, I mean, is there a good way I don't know if there's any information on your website or what's the best way if somebody is going, oh, my gosh, he just blew my mind and he said a million things. What's their best way to maybe get a little more information about what you are doing?   David: I'd be happy to talk to anyone who is interested in this stuff or send them to the people on my team doing the different pieces. One other thing with financial empowerment and what agencies can do. We as an agency are a member of our state's Jumpstart Coalition. It's Jumpstart, but that SE is like a dollar sign. It's a national organization around K through 12 financial education. Be a great way to get some partnerships going for that print space. But another thing that we're really fortunate to have at least one fully functional version. There's a group called the Cities for Financial Empowerment in Roanoke, Virginia, where they provide free financial coaching and help with credit, establishing bank accounts and savings. And we don't have to be the experts. We just have to ask enough questions to know that someone could benefit and help get them connected. So the other thing that's important with all this is much like with the work incentive services, I would never expect all of our staff to become experts in this work, but I would expect them to understand that if you're working with someone who receives supplemental security income or Social Security disability insurance, that you know enough to make sure you're getting them to the person if they're not asking the questions. And those same things exist in many parts of our states and other states where there are free services, quality services for more detailed, in-depth financial coaching and assistance. And the city's program is a wonderful one. I want to say there's 30 or 40 sites around the country. We've also helped a community start a program through getting ahead and the getting by world. And it's through the bridges out of poverty system. And again, really, we just continue to look for programs that might exist. Is there a way to partner and get some of our clients involved?   Carol: Well, David, I appreciate every single thing you said today. I think it was very exciting. I think it will be fun for our listeners to get their minds around this as well and see what we can do to make a dent in really advancing our work in this area across the country. And I appreciate what you're doing there in Virginia, so thanks so much for joining me today. I appreciate it. I hope you have a great day.   David: Thank you very much. I love this stuff. I really appreciate being a part of it.   {Music} Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.  

David Gilmore, known as the LDS Prepper on YouTube. Posted his first video 10 years ago. He was inspired by other YouTube prepper channels and wanted to share what he was doing and learning on his journey and preparedness. Today his channel has over 210,000 subscribers and over 44 million video views. Please checkout his quality videos and products at his website and YouTube channel, linked below! Website - https://ldsprepperstore.com/ Youtube Channel – LDSPrepper Show Notes How LDS Prepper Got Started A Passion for Helping People Be Prepared Value of Building Rapport With Your Customers “Once You Educate Customers, Your Going To Get Sales” Knowing Where Your Customers Congregate – Online / Offline Top Seller – LDS Prepper Premium Micro-Nutrient Mix Mittleider Gardening Course Book What I Like About Having an Online Business in the Prepping Industry Continued Education and Growth for Sustainability is Needed Around The World Personal & Business Goals For The Next Year Other People's Traffic: Tips for Growing Your Online Youtube Channel / Business Transcription David: I found that really I can ship anywhere in the world. And I do so I need to make myself available to the world. So I started on YouTube. And then when I make a YouTube video I also put a link on my Facebook profile because I've got 5,000 friends, okay, I've never met. But however, they feel like they know me because they've watched the videos right? They say this all the time, I feel like I know you, I've watched 300 of your videos. Podcast Intro: If you're someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family. If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing. You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman. We are here to celebrate you whether you're looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel. From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid. Brian: David Gilmore, known as the LDS Prepper on YouTube. Posted his first video 10 years ago. He was inspired by other YouTube prepper channels and wanted to share what he was doing and learning on his journey and preparedness. Today his channel has over 192,000 subscribers and over 42 million video views. He has become a true YouTube influencer. His passion has turned from a hobby to a seven figure a year business as an affiliate for preparedness products and producer of his own product. Today he shares his insights with us on how to start an online business with zero capital zero risk and a mobile phone. David Gilmore, welcome to the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast. David: Thank you Brian. Glad to be here. Brian: Yeah, I really appreciate it. How did you end up at this point? How did the whole journey start with you, David? David: Great question. I'm really a visual learner. My wife reads lots of books, her nightstand is piled with books and she just goes through the books. And I get to watch a video I get it. I gotta see physically. Instead of me googling things for answers, I go to YouTube. I call it YouTube University. And it really helped me out and I am preparedness-minded. I feel it's my responsibility as a father and as a husband to provide and protect. I was always looking for solutions and YouTube just seemed like a great place to do that, and I appreciate what others put up. So I thought, well, maybe I should share some of the things that I'm doing. First of all, had to come up with a YouTube name.

About DavidDavid is an AWS expert who likes to design and build scalable solutions that are fully automated and take care of themselves. Now he is focusing on selling his own products on the AWS Marketplace.Links: 0x4447: https://0x4447.com/ Products page: https://products.0x4447.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at MinIO the high-performance Kubernetes native object store that's built for the multi-cloud, creating a consistent data storage layer for your public cloud instances, your private cloud instances, and even your edge instances, depending upon what the heck you're defining those as, which depends probably on where you work. It's getting that unified is one of the greatest challenges facing developers and architects today. It requires S3 compatibility, enterprise-grade security and resiliency, the speed to run any workload, and the footprint to run anywhere, and that's exactly what MinIO offers. With superb read speeds in excess of 360 gigs and 100 megabyte binary that doesn't eat all the data you've gotten on the system, it's exactly what you've been looking for. Check it out today at min.io/download, and see for yourself. That's min.io/download, and be sure to tell them that I sent you.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Sysdig. Sysdig is the solution for securing DevOps. They have a blog post that went up recently about how an insecure AWS Lambda function could be used as a pivot point to get access into your environment. They've also gone deep in-depth with a bunch of other approaches to how DevOps and security are inextricably linked. To learn more, visit sysdig.com and tell them I sent you. That's S-Y-S-D-I-G dot com. My thanks to them for their continued support of this ridiculous nonsense.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Today's promoted episode is brought to us by 0x4447. And my guest today is David Gatti, their CEO. David, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.David: Thank you for getting me on the show.Corey: One of the things that I find fascinating about what you do and where you come from is that for the last five years, you've been running an independent company that I would classify based upon our conversations as pretty close to a consultancy. However, you've gone down the path that I didn't when I set up my own consultancy, and started actually selling software—not just software: Solutions—as a packaged thing that you can wind up doling out to various customers, whereas I just went with the very high touch approach of, “Oh, let me come in and have a whole series of conversations with people.” Your scale is a heck of a lot more. So, do you view yourself these days as a software company, as a consultancy, or something else entirely?David: So, right now, I did put aside the consultancy because yeah, one thing that I realized, it's possible but it's very hard to scale, it's also hard to find people at the same level. So yeah, the scalability of the business is quite hard, whereas with software sold on the AWS Marketplace, that is much easier to scale than what I was doing before, and that's why I decided to take a break from consulting and focusing one hundred percent on the products that I sell on the AWS Marketplace to see how this goes and how it actually works, and can a business be built around it.Corey: The common wisdom that I've encountered is that consulting, especially when you're doing it yourself, is one of those things that is terrific when you find yourself in the position that I originally did of your employer showing up and, “Knock, knock,” “Who's there?” “Not you anymore. Get out.” And there's a somewhat, in my case, limited runway as far as how long I've got before I have to go find another job. With consulting, you can effectively go out and start talking to people, and provided that you can land a project, it starts throwing off revenue, basically immediately, whereas building software, building packages, things that you end up selling to people, it's almost like a real estate business on some level, where you have to take a lot of investment up front to wind up building the thing, where—because no one is, generally speaking, going to pay you spec work to go ahead and build something for 18 months and come back and hope that it works.David: Right.Corey: I also bias towards the services because I'm bad at writing code. You, on the other hand, write things that seem to actually work, which is another refreshing difference.David: Yes. So, I did that, but now I have a guy that is just a Linux expert. So, you were saying that there is a high investment in the beginning, but what actually—in my case what happened, I've been selling these products for the past three years basically as a hobby. So, when I was doing AWS consulting, I was seeing, like, a company has a problem, a repeating problem, so I was just creating a product, putting it on the Marketplace, and then sending it to them. So basically, they had a situation where I can manage those projects to update when there's a need to do an update, and there was always a standardization behind that, right?So, if they had, you know, five SFTP servers, and there was a need to make an update, I was making the update on my image, putting it on the Marketplace, and then updating all those servers in one go in a much quicker fashion then managing them one by one, right? And so I had this thing for three years. So now, when I started doing this full-time, I have a little bit of a leap on what's going on. So, I already had a bunch of clients that are using their products, so that actually helped me not to have to wait three years before I saw any revenue coming in.Corey: I always thought that the challenge behind building something like this was that well, you needed to actually be conversant in a programming language; that was the thing that you needed to package and build these things. But I take a look at what you have on the AWS Marketplace—and I will throw a link to this in the [show notes 00:04:39]—but you offer right now four different offerings: A Rsyslog server, a Samba server, VPN server, and an SFTP server, and every one of those four things, back in my DevOps days, I built and implemented on AWS, generally either from scratch or from something in the Marketplace—and I'll get to that in a bit—that didn't really meet a variety of needs. And every single time I built these things, it drove me up a wall because I had to do this without, like, solving a global problem locally, myself, to meet some pile of needs, then I had to worry about the maintenance of the thing, making sure that the care and feeding continued to work. And it just wasn't—it didn't work for me in the way that I wanted it to. It never occurred to me that I really could have just solved this whole thing once, [unintelligible 00:05:28] it on the Marketplace, and then just gone and grabbed the thing.David: Exactly. So, that was my exact thinking here. Especially when your work with the client, this [unintelligible 00:05:38] was also great [idea 00:05:39] because when you work with clients, they want to do things as fast as possible, right? So, can they say, “I need an SFTP server?” Of course, it takes, you know, half a day to set up something, but then they scream at you and say, like, “Hey, do the next thing. Do the next thing. Do the next thing.” And you never end up configuring the server that you're making a reliable way, sometimes you misconfigure it because, oh I forgot this option, and now everybody on the internet can access the server itself.Corey: Wait, screw up a server config? That doesn't sound like something I would do.David: Well, of course not.Corey: Yeah, no one [unintelligible 00:06:08] they're going to until oops.David: Yes. You're amazing and you're perfect, of course, but I'm not. And I was seeing, like, oh, you know, in the middle of the night, oh, I forgot this option. I forgot this. I forgot that.And so there was never a, basically, one place when the configuration just correct, right? And that was something that sparked my idea when I realized the Marketplace exists. It's like, oh, wait a moment, I can spend few weeks to do it, right, put it there and never worry about it again. And so if when a client says like, “Hey, I need this,” I can deploy it literally, in less than one minute. You have any of those products that actually I'm selling up and running, right?And of course, the VPN is going to be a little bit slower because it needs to generate all the certificates at the beginning, but for example, the SFTP one is just poof, you're deployment with our CloudFormation file, provide username and password, and you're up and running. And I see, for example, this thing with clients, which sometimes it's funny, when there's two clients that they use the SFTP server only once a day for one hour. So, every day is like one new instance created, then one instance removed, and one instance created and one instance removed. And so it keeps on going like that.Corey: The thing that always drove me nuts about building these things out was first I had to go and find something on those rare occasions where I used the Marketplace. Again, I wasn't really working in the same modern Marketplace that we think of today when we talk about the AWS Marketplace. It was very early on, the only way that it would deliver software was via, “Here's an AMI, grab the thing, and go ahead and deploy it, and it's going to have an additional hourly cost on. It the end.” And more or less the whole Henry Ford approach of, “Oh, you can get it in any color you want, as long as it's black.”So, back in those days, I would spin up an OpenVPN server—and I did this at several companies—I would go and find the thing on the Marketplace from I think it was the OpenVPN company behind the project. Great, I grabbed the thing, it had no additional cost through the Marketplace. I then had to go and get a custom license file from the vendor themselves, load the thing in, then start provisioning users. And this had no integration that I could discern with anything else we had going on, so all of this stuff was built through the web config on this thing, there was no facility for backing the thing up—certificate, material, et cetera, et cetera—so if something happened to that instance or that image, or we had to go through a DR exercise, well, time to reprovision everyone by hand again. And it was annoying because the money didn't matter. At a company scale, it really doesn't for something like this unless you're into the usurious ranges. It does not matter.It's the, I want to manage this simply and effectively in a way that makes sense, and in many cases in a way that is congruent with our on-prem environment. So, “Oh, there's a custom AWS service that offers something kind of like this. Use that instead.” It's, yeah, I don't like the idea, personally, of having to use a higher-level managed service that I'm very often going to need the most, right when things are getting wonky during an outage scenario. I want something that I understand and can work with.And I've always liked, even if I have all the latest whiz-bang accesses into an environment, in production environments, I spin up something like this anyway, just to give myself a backdoor in the event that everything else breaks. And I really like how you've structured your VPN server as far as backing up its config, sharing its configs, you can scale it to more than one instance—what a ridiculous concept that is—and so on and so forth.David: So, it's not more than one—I mean, yes, you can deploy to more than one time, but the thing that—because again, when you were saying, like, companies don't care about the cost, right? It's more about how annoying it is to use and set up, right? And so I'm one of those people that when I, for example, see things like I've been playing with servers since the '90s, right, and I was keeping rebuilding and recreating everything every single time from scratch.And, yeah, it was always painful. It took always a lot of time. For example, our server took six months to set up the right way. And also the pricing [unintelligible 00:10:11] the competition has is quite aggravating, I will say. Like, it's very hard to scale above a certain point, especially for the midsize companies.And the goal with the Marketplace is also, like, make it as simple as possible. Because AWS itself doesn't make it easy to be on the Marketplace, and it's almost, like, crazy how hard it is. So, for anybody who will like to—who might think, like, “Oh, I would like to try this AWS Marketplace thing,” I would say should do it, but be super patient. You cannot rush it because it's going to take you on average six months to understand how even the process of uploading anything and updating it and managing it is going to take it because their website that they've built has nothing to do with the console and it's a completely custom solution that is very clunky and still very old-fashioned, how you have to manage it.Corey: Tell me more about that. I've never gone through the process of putting something up on the Marketplace. To my understanding, you need to be an AWS partner in order to use the Marketplace, correct?David: No you don't have to.Corey: Okay.David: No. Thankfully not. I hope it's not going to do this thing is not going to change. [crosstalk 00:11:20]—Corey: Yeah. I wound up manifesting it into existence by saying that. Yeah. If you're on the Marketplace team listening to this, don't do that, please. I really don't want to get yelled at and have made things worse for people.David: Don't give them ideas. [laugh]. Okay?Corey: Exactly.David: No, it's anybody can do it. But yeah, how to add a new product. So, the process is you have to build an AMI first. And then you have to submit the AMI to AWS by first creating a special AMI role—sorry, I always get confused AMI, [IAM 00:11:51], I never—IAM is users. Okay.Corey: I think we have a few more acronyms that use most of the same letters. I think that's the right answer here.David: [laugh]. So, either IAM or AMI, whichever is responsible for roles, you have to create a special role to give AWS access to your AMI. Then you submit the image to AWS providing the role that they have to use. They scan it and they do simple checks to make sure that you don't for example, have SSH enabled with regular users, do some regular scanning to make sure that you're not using an image from ten years ago, right, of Linux. And once you pass that, you are able to actually create your first product.Then you have to write your title, description provide, for example, the ports that needs to be open, the URLs to separate resources, the pricing page, which takes on average one hour to fill up because let's say that you have 20 instances that you support, and for every instance, you have to write the price for that instance per one hour. Then if you want to have a discount of let's say 20%—because you can set it by the hour, or someone can pay you for the full year. And so for the full year, you might have a discount. So, you have to have also the price per hour discounted by the amount of percentage that you want, and then you have to repeat it 40 times. Because there is no way to upload that.Corey: That feels like the internal AWS billing system in some respects. “Well, if it's good enough for us it good enough for our customers.” And—David: [laugh]. Exactly.Corey: —now, I have empathy for the folks in the billing system internally; their job is very hard, but that doesn't mean that it's okay to wind up exposing those sharp edges to folks who are, you know, paying customers of these things.David: Right. And it'd be a simple thing like being able to import the CSV file with just two columns and that would be perfect. But no, you have to do it by hand. There is no other way. So hopefully—Corey: Or someone has to. Welcome to the crappiest internship of your life.David: Exactly.Corey: It feels like bringing people into data entry for stuff like that is cheating.David: Exactly. So, you do that and then I don't remember exactly what the other steps are to a new creating a completely new product because I did that three years ago, and so now, I'm been just updating those products, but yeah, then they have to review your submission, and once everything is okay, then your product is on the Marketplace, and you can—are already accept everything. If you, for example, want to have the image also available in some specific regions that are not the default ones, you have to enable this by hand. I don't remember anymore how, but it's not obvious.Corey: And you have to keep redoing this every time they launch a new region as well, I would imagine.David: So, they say that you can have enabled the option to automatically add it, but it still won't work. Well, it will work, but… let's say, so in my case, I'm using CloudFormation. I gave a complimentary CloudFormation file where if you want to deploy my product, you go to the documentation page, you click the orange button, and you basically provide the parameters, and you click next, next, next and the product is deployed within a few minutes.And in that CloudFormation file, I have a map of every AMI in every region. Okay? So, if they add a new region and they automatically add the AMI there, then if you don't get notified that there is a new region, you don't know that you have to update the CloudFormation file, and then someone might say, like, “Hey, David, why this product is not deployed in this region.” It's like, “Oops. I didn't know that they have to update the CloudFormation file with a new region.” Right?Corey: Yeah, I'm a big believer in ClickOps, the idea of doing things in the console, but everything you're talking about sounds like a fraught enough process that I'm guessing you have some form of automation that helps you with a lot of this.David: Yeah. So, I hate repeating anything more than once, so everything in my book is automated as much as possible. The documentation, for example, how I structure it, there is a section that tells you how to deploy it by just using CloudFormation file and clicking next, next, next, next until you have it. And then there's also the option if you want to deploy manually because you don't trust what the CloudFormation file is doing, right? Of course, you can see the source file if you wanted to, but sometimes people are a little bit wary about big CloudFormation files.In any case, I have this option, but they have this option as a separate thing. So, AWS has an option where you could add a CloudFormation file that goes with your product. The problem is to be able to submit a CloudFormation file natively so they will take care of it requires you to get Microsoft Office 365. Because they give you an Excel file that has, I think, a few thousand columns. And for example, numbers under [unintelligible 00:16:40], when you export, you save the final—or sorry, you export it, it will cut around 500 columns. So, you miss, like, two-thirds of what AWS will likely to send you. And why they do that, I have no idea. I don't know if they still do it after three years, but when I was doing it, they told me like, “Hey, this is the file. Fill it by hand.”Corey: About that time period, that was exactly how they did large-scale corporate discounts on custom contracts is that they would edit the AWS bill in Excel, or if not, the next closest thing to it because there were periodically errors that looked an awful lot like someone typo-ing something by hand.David: What—Corey: Computers are generally bad doing that, and it took an extra couple of weeks to get those bills, which is right around the speed of human.David: Wow.Corey: I see none of those problems anymore, which tells me, that's right, someone finally upgraded off of Microsoft Excel to the new level. Probably Airtable.David: [laugh]. Maybe. So, I don't know if that process is still there, but what they did, like, then I realized, oh, wait a moment, I can just have a CloudFormation file in S3 bucket publicly available and just use that instead of going through that process. Because I didn't want to pay on a yearly basis for a product that I'm going to use literally once a year. That didn't make any sense to me and so I decided I'm going to do it this way. That's why, yeah, if they add on a new region, I have to go out and update my own CloudFormation file because I maintain that myself, whereas they would maintain it for me, I guess.Corey: The way that I see all of the nuts and bolts of the engineering parts of getting all these things up and running on the Marketplace, it feels like it is finicky; it is sharp edges that AWS is basically known for in many respects, but without the impetus of making that meaningfully better, just because there's such an overriding business reason, that—it's not like there's a good competitor for something like this. So, if you want to sell things to AWS people in most frictionless way possible, it reflects on the AWS bill, causes discounting, counts for their spend commitments, and the rest, it's really the AWS Marketplace is the only game in town for a lot of that.David: Right. So, I don't know if they don't do it because they don't have enough competition or pressure because to me when I first started doing this AWS Marketplace, it felt to me like more Amazon than AWS, right? It feels more like an Amazon team was behind it and not people from AWS itself. It felt like completely something different. Not to mention, yeah, the console that they provide is something completely custom that has nothing to do with the typical AWS console.Corey: I've heard stories about the underpants store division's seller tools as well; very similar to the experience you're describing.David: Mmm. And also the support is different. So, it's not connected to the AWS console one. The good thing about it, it's free, but it's also only by email. And so yeah, it's a very weird, clunky situation where I mean, I'm someone that, I guess, loves the pain of AWS. [laugh].I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But when I started, I decided, you know what, I'm going to figure it out, and once I do, I'm going to feel happy that I was able to. Maybe that's their goal: It's to give us purpose in life. So, maybe that's the goal of AWS. I don't know.Corey: There are times I really wonder about that where it feels like it could be so much more than it is, but it's not. And, again, my experience with it is very similar to what you've described, where it's buying an AMI, the end. But now they're talking about selling SaaS subscriptions on it, they're talking about selling professional services—in some cases—on it. And effectively, it almost feels like it's trying to become the Marketplace through which all IT transacting starts to happen. And the tailwind that sort of is giving energy to a lot of those efforts is, if you have a multimillion-dollar spend commitment with AWS in return for discounting, you have to make sure you spend enough within the timeframe, 50% of all spend on the AWS Marketplace counts toward that.Now, other cloud providers, it's 100% of spend, but you know, AWS is nothing if not very tight with the dollar. So okay, fine, whatever. There's a reason for companies to go down that path. Talk to me a little bit about the business aspect of it because for me, it seems like the clear win, in the absence of anything else is—especially at larger companies—they already have a business relationship with AWS. The value to someone selling software on the Marketplace feels like it would be, first and foremost, an end-run around companies procurement departments.It's just oh, someone has to click a button and they're up and running, as opposed to going through the entire onboarding and contracting and all the rest, manual way. Other than the technical challenges of getting things up and running on it, how have you found that it works as far as getting in front of additional customers, as far as driving adoption? You could theoretically have—I imagine—have not gone down the Marketplace route at all and just sold this directly on your website, click here to buy a license file the way that a lot of stuff I used to as well, and would have cut out a lot of the painful building an AMI and putting it into the Marketplace story. What's the value to being in the Marketplace?David: Yeah, so in the beginning, the value was basically that it's on the Marketplace, as I was saying, I was using it with pre-existing clients, so it was easy for me because I knew AWS images were there. So, it was easy to just click my own CloudFormation file and tell the client after one minute, “Hey, it's up and running. You have a bunch of profiles for your VPN. Enjoy and have fun.” Right?That experience, once you have it on the Marketplace, it's nice because it just works. And you don't have to do much work. Then I realized that AWS, in the search bar in the console, when you were typing, for example, you know, you type EC2, S3, CloudFormation, to find the service, what they were doing originally is when you were typing in the search bar, you were getting the services of AWS, and then when there was nothing left, they were showing the results of the Marketplace, which was basically amazing because you have primetime in the console with your product, you had to do zero marketing, and you get every week, took new clients that are using our product. And the trend was growing pretty, pretty well.And that was a proposition that is just amazing. Like, nobody has that because you can have Fortune 500 companies using our product without doing anything. It just—is it simple to deploy? Yes. Does it provide value? Is the price great? And people were just using them. Fast forward now; what happened is AWS changed the console. And instead of showing, after the services, the Marketplace, like, now they show the sub-section of the services, they show the results from the blog, the articles, videos, whatever, I don't even know what they've put there—Corey: Originally, you could search my name in that search bar, and it would pop up a profile of me they did for re:Inforce in the security blog.David: [laugh]. There you go.Corey: “Meet Corey Quinn. A ‘cloud economist'—scare quotes and all—who does not work here. And it was glorious. Now, they've changed the algorithm so it pops up. “Oh, you want Corey Quinn, you must mean IoT Core.” So, that blog post is still there, but it's below the fold because of course they give precedence to a service that they have that nobody uses or understands. Because, Amazon.David: Yeah, of course. And so that was awful because suddenly I realized that, oh, I'm getting less and less new clients because you know, after six months, one year, people are shutting off their things because they're finished using them, and I will not getting new ones. But at that time, I was doing [AWS 00:24:06] consulting, so it's like, oh, maybe it was a glitch in the Matrix, whatever. I got lucky.But then after a few months, I realized, wait a moment. When I was working in AWS, I realized that the console results changed, and I went like, oh, that's what happened and that's why I'm getting less clients, right? So, in the beginning, that was a great thing and that's why I'm actually paying you to promote my business and my products because now there is no way to put the products in front of customers because AWS took it away. And so that's why I decided to actually go full-force on this to make sure that I promote as much as possible because that one cool feature that AWS was providing, they took it away for whatever reason because blog posts are more important than their partners, [laugh] I guess.Corey: Well, it depends on the partner and the tier of partner, and it feels like it's a matter—to be clear, full disclosure: I am not an AWS partner; I'm not partnered with any vendor in this space, for either real or perceived conflict of interest issues, so I don't have a particular horse in the race. But back when there were a small number of partners, the network really worked. Now, there are tens of thousands of partners, and well, what winds up being surfaced? Customers, as a result seem to be caring less about various partner statuses, unless they're trying to check a box on some contractual requirement. Instead, they just want the problem solved, and it's becoming increasingly challenging to differentiate just by the nature of how this works.I don't believe, in 2022, that you could build almost anything, and put it on the AWS Marketplace in isolation and expect that to suddenly drive adoption by the fact that you're there. It feels, to me, at least on the other side of the fence, that the Marketplace experience is all about, you go there and you look for the name of the thing that you already know that you want because you've heard about it from other means, and then you just click it and you go, and that's the end of it. It's a procurement story; it's not a discoverability story.David: Right. And yeah, so that's sort of a bit disappointing, and I even made a post on Reddit about it to just bring this up to AWS itself to say, like, “Hey, UI change is pretty severe.” Because I mean, they get a percentage of every hour, the products are running, so basically they shoot themselves in the foot by making less money because now they're getting less products are being shown to potential customers. So, yeah, that's a disappointing thing.When it comes to also you ask what other way there is to show their products to potential customers, so there is an option where AWS can help you out. And when I talked to them, I think last year, they said that if you reach $2 million in sales a year, then they will basically show you around other potential customers, right? Which is a little bit disappointing because especially if you're a small company like mine, it's pretty hard to get to that $2 million in a meaningful time. And if once you reach that point, you might go like, “Hmm, how is this going to help me if you now show me in front of other people?” So yeah.And of course, I understand them in a sense that if they show a product from the Marketplace to a big company and the product turns out to be of poor quality, then of course the client is going to tell AWS like, “Why you're showing us something that just doesn't do its job?” Right? But it'd be nice to have a [unintelligible 00:27:24] when you say, “Okay, you're starting out. After a few years, so we can show you to this midsize clients.” You don't have to go to, immediately, Fortune 500 companies. That doesn't make any sense, right?Corey: And I still—even the companies that are at that level, I've talked to them about how they've grown their business, and not a single one has ever credited anything AWS did to help them grow. Other than, “Well, they threw re:Invent, so we spent extortionate piles of money and set up a booth there, and the fact that we were allowed in the building to talk to people was helpful, I guess.” But it's all through their own works on this, I'm not convinced, to be very direct with you, that AWS knows how to effectively drive sales and adoption of things on their own Marketplace. That is an increasing source of concern.David: Right. And then there's no plan of what to do with a company that is starting on the Marketplace, once it's a few—or it's already a few years and established in the Marketplace and a big one. Yeah, they don't have any way to go about it, which is a bit disappointing. But again, I like a challenge. I like the misery of AWS, so I'm just doing it. [laugh].Corey: No, I hear you. Would you recommend other people in your position explore selling on the Marketplace, given the challenges and advantages both that you've experienced?David: So, if you were to start from scratch, it will take you, like, three years—maybe not three years, but it's not something that should be the primary revenue source of the business if you want to go into the AWS Marketplace situation because you have to have enough capital to do enough marketing to see if you can get in front of people. If you already do some consulting like me, where I did some stuff on the side, and then realized, oh, people are using it, people like it, they get some feedback, the want new features, like, “Oh, maybe I can start growing this bigger and bigger, right?” It's not something that's going to happen immediately. And especially the updating process that happens, it can get quite stressful because when you make an update—so you have a version of a product that's working and running, right? Now, you make an update and you have to spend at least a week or even sometimes two weeks to test that out to make sure that you didn't miss anything because you don't want people to update something and it stops working right?Corey: You can't break customer experiences on these things.David: Yeah. No.Corey: It becomes a nightmare.David: Because especially you don't know if, literally, a Fortune 500 company is using your product or, like, a tiny company that has only ten employees, right?Corey: Your update broke the file server with a VPN means it's unlikely that they're going to come back anytime soon, too.David: Right.Corey: You're also depending on AWS, in some respects, to steward the relationship because you're you don't have direct contact with your buyers.David: No. So, that's important thing. They don't give you access to the contacts; they give you access to the company information. So, I actually do have Fortune 500 companies using my products, but yeah, there's no way to get in touch with them. The only thing that you get is the company name, the address, the domain that they used to create an email. So, at least you can get a sense of, like, who this company is.But yeah, there is no way to get in touch if there is a problem. So, the only way that you can notify the customer that there's a new update is when you make an update, there is a text area that you can say what's new, what did you change, right? And that's the only communication that you get with the client. So if, for example, you do a big mistake, [laugh], you basically have that just little text box, and hopefully, someone reads it. But you know, AWS is known for sending 20 emails a week for every account that you open. Good luck getting through that noise.Corey: Hope that you don't miss the important ones as you go through. No—David: Exactly.Corey: —I hear you. These are problems that I think are on AWS's plate to solve. Hopefully, someone over there is listening to this and will at least reach out with a bit of a better story. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. We'll include links, of course, to this in the [show notes 00:31:09]. Where else can people find you?David: They can find us basically on the product page of what we sell. So, we have products.0x4447.com/. That's where, basically, we keep all our products. We keep updating the page to provide more information about those products, how to get in touch with us, we provide training, demos, anything that you want. It's very easy to get in touch with us instead of—sometimes when it comes to AWS. So yeah, we are out there, pretty easy to find us. The domain—the company name is so unique that you either get our website or—Corey: Easy to find on Google.David: Yeah, so we're basically—the hex editor. And that's basically it. [laugh].Corey: Excellent. Well, we'll definitely put links to that in the show [notes 00:31:50]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.David: Thank you very much.Corey: David Gatti, CEO of 0x4447. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment that makes sure to mention exactly how long you've been working on the AWS Marketplace team.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Whether he's producing a tour, assembling an All-Starr band with Ringo Starr, or writing a best-selling book, there's one thing David Fishof is always doing: dreaming. Hailed as one of the most creative and innovative entertainment producers in the world, David has been responsible for some of the most original, successful, and exciting live shows ever brought to the stage. But of all the shows he's put on over his 40-plus year career, there's one production that stands out from all the rest: Rock ‘n' Roll Fantasy Camp.  A!er years of good fortune working with veteran rockers like Roger Daltrey, Ringo Starr, The Monkees, Levon Helm, Joe Walsh, Jack Bruce and Peter Frampton, David decided it was time to share his experiences with rock fans around the world. And so, in 1997, he debuted the rock camp—a place where people from all walks of life can reconnect with their passion for music alongside the most famous names in the business.  Click Here to View the Rock Camp: The Movie Trailer  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5TO_UJoq8w&ab_channel=RockCampTheMovie)  Click Here to Check Out My Top Selling Book - "Rock Your Business: What You and Your Company Can Learn from the Business of Rock and Roll" (https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Your-Business-Company-Learn/dp/1936661454)  http://rockcampmasterclasses.com (http://rockcampmasterclasses.com)  Website http://rockcamp.com (http://rockcamp.com)  Website #2 http://rockcampthemovie.com (http://rockcampthemovie.com)  Website #3 http://rockcampmasterclasses.com (http://rockcampmasterclasses.com)  LinkedIn URL https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfishof (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfishof) Facebook URL https://www.facebook.com/RockFantasyCamp  (https://www.facebook.com/RockFantasyCamp)  Twitter URL https://twitter.com/dfishof?lang=en (https://twitter.com/dfishof?lang=en)  YouTube URL https://www.youtube.com/c/rockfantasycamp/videos  (https://www.youtube.com/c/rockfantasycamp/videos)  Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/rockfantasycamp (https://www.instagram.com/rockfantasycamp)  www.marlanasemenza.com Audio : Ariza Music Productions Transcription : Vision In Word Marlana: Whether he's producing a tour, assembling an all-star band with Ringo Starr, or writing a bestselling book, there's one thing David Fishof is always doing dreaming. Hailed as one of the most creative and innovative entertainment producers in the world, David has been responsible for some of the most original successful and exciting live shows ever brought to the stage. But of all the shows he's produced over his 40 years plus career, there's one production that stands out from all the rest, Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. Welcome, David! David: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.   You know, I think we were talking in the beginning about bucket list.   That's all I do all day is I get people their bucket lists. Go to Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. It's the ultimate bucket list. You can jam with, Slash, Roger Daltrey, you name it…so I'm giving everyone their bucket list. And I'm trying to think in the last two seconds, what would be my bucket list?   The irony is that people think they know what's on my bucket list. So, guy invited me to, he was so thankful to go to Rock Roll fantasy camp. He's been a friend for many years, I want to take you to Michael Jordan fantasy camp. Wouldn't that be cool David and give me your fantasy? They know I love basketball. And I said, I'm not going on Michael Jordan fantasy basketball camp, and they said why? I'm not going to look like an idiot. Try to beat him one on one or with these two other guys. And I realized that as much as people have their bucket list, people are scared for the bucket list. Because yeah, I have that a rock and roll events, again, people, initially, the wife buys it for the husband. And then the...

Full Transcript In episode 6 of Manager Minute, employment and VR take center stage during October's National Disability Awareness Month. David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind (MCB), and Natasha Jerde, Director of State Services for the Blind of Minnesota (SSB), join Carol Pankow to talk about the state of employment, today's challenges, and the initiatives and practices they implemented to improve employment for individuals with disabilities.   Learn how David and his team at MCB increased their customer base by 25% over the last year and how partnerships and creativity in Minnesota are helping to increase the number of people with disabilities being employed.   Find out more about VRTAC-QM at https://www.vrtac-qm.org/.                                                                       Stay up to date by following VRTAC-QM on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @VRTAC_QM.   About VRTAC-QM Partnering with State Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies (SVRAs) to enhance service delivery and maximize outcomes through quality program and resource management.  The purpose of the VRTAC-QM is to provide training and technical assistance that will enable State VR agency personnel to manage available resources, improve effective service delivery, and increase the number and quality of employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. The VRTAC-QM provides TA and training in VR program and performance quality management, fiscal and resource quality management of the VR program, and general quality management of organizations. You can request technical assistance from the VRTAC-QM by contacting your TA Liaison directly, contacting any member of the Center you wish, or by filling out the information on our main website and clicking on submit. While on the main website, join our mailing list to receive updates on training and new activities occurring within the center.    Full Transcript:   Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management conversations powered by VR, 1manager at a time, 1 minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: So welcome to the manager minute, I am so excited to have David D'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, and Natasha Jerde, Director of State Services for the Blind in Minnesota. Thank you both for joining me today. Natasha, you've been in your position for two years now. So how's it going in Minnesota?   Natasha: Well, first, thanks for having me, Carol. And for others, I'm actually filling in for detail magazine with Minnesota General, so I am representing both. So I will speak globally and with Minnesota. We are definitely going through a state of evolution because not only are we going through COVID, we are also one of the states that really are going through the racial reckoning that's been happening when George Floyd was murdered. So we are having a lot of diversity and inclusion efforts in addition to trying to figure out what VR is going to look like in this new era. So it's been a challenge, but it's also been an opportunity as well.   Carol: Yeah, it definitely has been a heavy load and thank you for pinch hitting for Dee, too. I knew you could represent both, so that's great. And David, I saw you just had your three year anniversary in August. So how are things in Massachusetts?   David: Thanks for having me on. Things in Massachusetts are going well. I'm excited to talk about all of the various programs that we have. We haven't let COVID stop us at all. We continue to move forward. We're doing realignment projects. We've done a bunch of those that we'll talk about. Hiring is up good things happening in Massachusetts. I know we're going to go into more detail.   Carol: Good to hear it. Well, October is designated as a National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and when I was thinking about an October topic, well, it just made perfect sense to talk about employment and VR. David, I remember last year when we were on a call with RSA and they were highlighting VR's 100th anniversary. You presented what was happening at the Mass Commission and you really had some exciting things happening for customers during the pandemic. And I love following all the work that you do on your social media and I saw y'all have a podcast as well. And Natasha, I know your team well, and they're always creating some wonderful ways to build partnerships with employers and create interesting and lasting relationships that have helped to improve employment opportunities. And you're also a really good partner with Minnesota General. I know two years ago we held the roundtable and recognition of employers in Minnesota during this very month to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I just wanted to talk for a second about some Bureau of Labor Statistics and as I was looking things up as of August 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that unemployment rates for persons with disabilities are 11.5 percent, compared to five point one percent for persons without disabilities. And the labor force participation rate for people with disabilities is 35.6 percent, compared to 75.8 percent for working age people without disabilities. Now, the labor force participation of people with disabilities is higher than it was prior to the pandemic, and John O'Neill, he's the director of the Center for Employment and Disability Research at the Kessler Foundation. He said that this actually has been a bright spot during the pandemic as people with disabilities, and he thought maybe out of economic necessity remained engaged in the labor market. He says the last time that we saw labor force participation at this level was July of 2009. But even given all of that, you know, that bright spot, much work needs to be done to increase the number of people with disabilities in the labor force, which really ties directly to the mission of VR. So I know these past 18 months have definitely been a challenge for you both pivoting to remote work for your staff, figuring out new ways to provide services to your customers and figuring out the reality of this new world of work. And in some ways, I'm really hopeful that the pandemic has proven there are new ways in which work can be done that's going to benefit our consumers in the end. So let's dig in. So, Natasha, can you paint us a picture of your agency? Like, how many people are you serving right now? Do you currently have a waiting list and how are your employment numbers looking?   Natasha: I have both Minnesota blind and general here at Minnesota Blind. We're at about 650 individuals we're currently surveying. And if you look at 2, 3, 4 years ago, we were usually in the 700's. So our applications are still down, but they are trending upwards. We haven't had a waiting list for a few years. All categories are open. Our employment numbers are slowly trending upwards. 2021 brought much higher well, not much higher, 3 higher than 2020. But we are looking to get back our 2019 numbers slowly but surely. And as for Minnesota General, they've had a downward trend. There are about 2000 fewer applications and serving 11 percent fewer applicants than they did in the previous year. Our numbers are pretty on par with the national trends. Minnesota General has been offering services to all people on the waiting list. They reopened their final 2 priority for service categories, which had been closed since the fall of 2014. They have effectively eliminated the waiting list. They are seeing rates of employment at the time of exit decrease overall about 13 percent decrease, which is very identical to the national trends.   Carol: That's big news, though on the waiting list, that's good stuff. That is really good stuff for both of you. So, David, paint us a little picture of your agency.   David: Basically, everything I'm going to talk about is on our website. So let me just start with that. If people hear something that resonates with them, please use us as a resource. We want to collaborate with you. Go to Mass.Gov/MCB Mass.Gov/MCB and find out all that's going on with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. We've seen a 25 percent increase over our previous year in terms of VR despite the pandemic, so that's really a testament to our team, our counselors, and most especially though, the consumers we work with who have persevered and there's just a lot of opportunity in Massachusetts. Some of that might be related to the pandemic, actually. You know, COVID has put real strain on the health care system. We've seen hiring there. But even other service industry things, we've seen hiring there to go back to John O'Neill's data point, which I believe in John very much and Andrew out Anvil that does the entire program first Friday of the month at noon, I faithfully listen to the number come out and they do a great job since the data has been collected in 2008. Yeah, I mean, we made a great amount of progress that COVID happened. We slid all the way back and now we've slowly regained. So at least we're back to where we were, which I think is a good thing for people with disabilities. Specifically to Massachusetts, though, we've seen that, we've seen our VR program increase and consumers typically we have, you know, somewhere between 850 and 950. Now we're at about 1050, 1038 consumers. Exactly, actually that we served as of June 30 at the end of the fiscal year. And of that, we had 155successful closures, and many of those were six figure closures. We had a significant amount of people that got a high level job, so that's very encouraging to us and we've had some good results. I know we're going to talk about some of the specific programs we're looking at pre X, we're looking at the mid-career professional and even older adults who want to reenter the workforce or continue to work beyond retirement age.   Carol: That is super exciting news. It really is. I love it. That's what I remember you talking about with RSA when we were doing that. Other call it like a year ago, like these six figure positions, that's that's incredible. So now that we've gotten this kind of picture of what's going on in general with your agencies, let's just look a little bit at the overall employment picture in each of your states. So what's your employment rate kind of look like and what are your hot employment markets and sectors? And David, I'll go to you first. I know you started a little bit on this. I'll let you expand.   David: Yeah, as I indicated, health care remains strong. In Massachusetts, we're hovering right around five percent for the general unemployment number. Our labor participation rate among the general population remains strong. Unfortunately, among people with disabilities, we're still looking at around two thirds of all working age people with disabilities who are not in the labor force. To me, that's job one, right? That's job one for our agency, for our counselors, is engaging our consumers and trying to get them resolved to want to work. That, I think, is because before you can get the job, we know how to get them the job once they're resolved, but they've got to be resolved to want to work. So that's job one. Then the second part is getting them a job, which is it's not easy, but it's easier, right? I think we're doing well. We've put together public awareness campaigns to really try to get out there. We use actually real allotment dollars from RSA to launch our What's Your Vision campaign, which we're out on TV with 30 second ads. We've been in print or on social media again, go to mass dot gov food slash MQB to check out the full campaign. I know there was a plethora of real dollars coming from RSA, so if you're looking for something to do with those dollars, we've proved the proof of concept that you can do it and it can be effective because we're having more people come to MQB.   Carol: Very cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to looking at that link. So Natasha, how about you? What's going on with the employment overall? The picture in Minnesota?   Natasha: Minnesota is looking great. Our unemployment rate is at 3.8percent, which is well below the national average. Our labor force participation rate is 67.8 percent for all individuals and about 48 percent of Minnesotans with a disability are employed, and that's compared to about 38.8 percent nationally. So the numbers are looking great. And when you're asking about hot jobs across the board, everything is hot right now. Job vacancies are at a record number. Employers across the state are reporting difficulty finding workers. The demand is especially high in health care and social assistance. But those other areas that really were hit hard during the recession, including food service, hospitality, those are soaring right back.   Carol: Wow, thank you for that. So it's no secret that the pandemic had a huge impact on employment and the economy as a whole. But can you tell us how the pandemic has affected employment for the customers you serve in particular? And are there any lessons you learned during these past 18 months you're putting into place for the long term and attached? I'm going to punt that one to you first.   Natasha: We actually had a lot more opportunity than challenge when COVID hit, so we did have a number of individuals with disabilities who were laid off primarily because they were in the service and hospitality industry, and that was hit especially hard. But with COVID, it really showed that teleworking is completely and utterly doable, and all of these job postings we're seeing now are for remote workers. And when you're working with people who have transportation barriers who also live in very rural settings, this has been incredible and they're getting jobs and we're able to accommodate those jobs. The biggest struggle, though, is because we are so remote and virtual is accessibility issues, and we've been doing a lot of education of employers, of our own employer, the state of Minnesota, how to make sure everything is accessible so that if someone is working virtually, they can still do their job. And how we implement accommodations in a virtual world look very different. I think our biggest lesson learned is you just need to roll with it. You have to be flexible and you can't get locked into the way you used to do things. So we did things we didn't think was actually possible. We've done virtual adjustment to blindness training. We've even done virtual job site accommodations where they would walk us around on their phone or their laptop showing us the worksite, and we had been able to give suggestions and ideas how to accommodate without ever leaving our house. You just have to throw the book out the window is what we learned.   Carol: I bet your team has been super busy. I bet those guys are just like, Wow, but it's got to make the work super interesting.   Natasha: It's so much fun. I have never seen such creativity as I have these past 18 months. We have tried anything and everything, and it's been incredible. We're going to use a lot of those things from here on out.   Carol: Oh, very cool. So, David, I know you guys are always super innovative at the mask commission. So what about you? Tell us about how these last 18 months have impacted you and employment for your customers and kind of any lessons you've learned?   David: Yeah, really. Just a big credit goes out to our team and our consumers, one for being resilient. And we closed Friday, March 13 at five o'clock and we were open for business Monday morning, 9:00 a.m. Our counselors were already equipped with mobile laptops. Aware, which is our case management system, is all in the cloud, so we were positioned well to be able to work in this remote environment. So that's helped our counselors and our team. But additionally, I got to agree in Natasha's right, and I think you all listening to this podcast will agree the amelioration of transportation as a barrier or at least the significant amount of that as a barrier has been a game changer. It's really a paradigm shift and is unlocked. So many potentials for not only blind people, but all people with disabilities. I think that the permanence of that opportunity is a huge takeaway, a silver lining. Covid is a very serious situation. A lot of people have suffered, so I don't want to say it's a great thing because we wouldn't want to trade that right. But this is really help people with disabilities. And I think in the long term, it's going to continue to help them. I think that's the top of the full thing. And how can we leverage that even further? Is there are things we can collectively go to RSA for or I think, you know, Carol, I also sit on the National Council on Disability. Although I'm here as commissioner today, I'm trying to influence people on the federal level to think outside the box. And let's consider if there are other ways that we can leverage, whether it's being online or any technology that we can use to bring to bear for the benefit of people with disabilities to work.   David: I think more and more of that is coming, and that's a good thing. We're getting some of the other things we've been doing, though we just want an award. I'm pleased to say for our graphic novel that we put together our Patriots Best Practices guide. That's a good thing. We're trying to engage those students and their families who traditionally you know how some of these RSA guidelines go. They're very dry. They're on an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper typed print. This is engaging. We find once you put it in the kids hands, they can't put it down and they're learning about all the steps of VR and the families are learning about that. That's a good thing because we really believe it takes a village and back to the other thing we were talking about where you've got to get the person with the disability resolved to want to work. And yes, they come about that ultimately on their own. But if their families are in on it, their friends are in on it, the community is on it and telling them, Hey, this is a good thing. Work brings independence, self-determination and it really, you're going to be contributing to something. I mean, I would assert somebody's self-identity really work is intertwined with that. So we think that things, whether it's the what? Your Vision ad campaign, this Preets practices guide, all of the other work that we're doing, trying to get out into the broader community. We think that rising tide will lift all ships.   Carol: So is that price guide also on your website, David?   David: It sure is Mass.Gov/MCB. Additionally, we have a companion website that goes with it that shows you the graphic novel and is audio described at the same time. And I think that's quest for independence. It's the UWW, AMC B Dash quest for independence. Again, go toMass.Gov/MCB. You'll get the link to it.   Carol: Awesome. No, I'm sure there's some people going to be interested in that as well. That's a bonus tip all listeners for the price guide. That's great. So it might be a little early on seeing this yet, but have you either have you seen any kind of the signs of the long COVID starting to impact customers? David, I'll ask you that first, have you started to see that?   David: Yeah. So in Massachusetts, we haven't seen too much of that, but we have seen hesitancy getting back out into the community a little bit. And on the consumer side, you know, so we're only going to do that when people are comfortable because it's really it's safety first, it's safety first for our team, for our counselors and then additionally for the consumers. We haven't seen too many breakthroughs, fortunately or too much spread in our community in Massachusetts, which we're grateful for. We have a high vaccination rate. I think Massachusetts leads the nation in the percentage of our people who are vaccinated. I think that's contributed and helped really open things up in Massachusetts here. I wouldn't say it's back to what it was pre-COVID, but I think we're trending in the right direction and hopefully sometimes we'll be able to put this behind us.   Carol: Good. Good, Natasha, what about in Minnesota? Are you seeing any signs of like the long COVID in customers?   Natasha: We have not. Between both general and blind. We haven't seen a single applicant or customer who is dealing with long COVID. Part of me is, yes, it might be too soon, and the other part of me is thinking, I don't know if individuals really are realizing that those long term effects are going to have a disabling impact on them, and they may not even realize what VR is or what disability is. They were living and working just as anyone does. And then this happened. So I think there might need to be some awareness out there in the future.   Carol: I can see a campaign coming. I can see David like launching a campaign around this, how we going to serve the long COVID folks. So back in the day, I used to have this personal philosophy. I like to tag to start with, you know, about employment, and I always felt that I wanted our customers to achieve and obtain or maintain family sustaining wages. And I don't focus used to be like, what? Like, what is that? But I didn't want people to just get a job. I wanted them to give more than a job. I was hoping it could lend itself to a career and moving up and having a ladder and buying a house and doing all of that. So what is your personal philosophy around employment and people with disabilities and Natasha, I'll ask you first.   Natasha: My first philosophy is I agree with you, Carol. Any old job does not mean a good job, and family sustaining wage is essential. My other philosophy is I don't believe there should have to be a philosophy around employment of people with disabilities. I mean, frankly, VR is a long term goal needs to be that we aren't needed, that the only factor in any employment situation should be that the individual can do the job and it should not matter if they have a disability or not. And employers need to recognize that every single person brings value and strength to the organization. And we are doing a family sustaining wage study in Minnesota, and 93 percent of individuals with disabilities who are part of the data did not receive a family sustaining wage. 93 percent, there should not be a gap and they should not be relegated to entry level employment, minimum wage employment if they want and need to do more. My philosophy is there shouldn't have to be one.   Carol: I love that here here, Mic-drop on that boom. So David, how about you? Even though we shouldn't have to have one? Do you have a personal philosophy?   David: I certainly do as a consumer myself, having been completely blind multiple times in my life and now being legally blind right on 20-200, there is a significant amount of suffering that occurs with people with blindness, people with disabilities in general. Coming to that acceptance, that disability is going to be part of the natural human condition, I think is the first thing. So once you can come to terms with that, then it becomes the greatest secret right, which is we become what we think about. So if you focus and your resolve that you want to work, you will achieve that and then move up. And so it starts with goal setting and a plan and all the things we talk about in VR, the tried and true methods of sitting down with your family, with your extended circle and drawing up that plan and sticking to it, the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. You got to hang in there for everyone hundred you ask you. I get 99 no's, and you can't give up until you get that one, yes, even if it's at the hundredth time, so you've got to hang in there, that is. The number one thing is that perseverance, because people with disabilities are naturally inclined to solve problems to hang in there. Whether it's the Accenture study that we know that people with disabilities outperformed in terms of being on time in terms of having less absenteeism, in terms of being productive in many ways. Those are all good traits, but it starts with overcoming the inherent challenges that come with disability. And then once you do that, then come into VR. We've got programs and services, and we've got great professionals who know how to provide opportunities for you.   Carol: I love that. Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said it. That Accenture study as well. It's back to the basics. I always think we used to talk about that. Going back to the basics. I know sometimes it's like, Oh, here's a flashy new program that's going on, but really, it is back to the basics. I am going to ask you, though, have you had any other types of initiatives or practices that you put into place around employment that you're hoping are going to help to move the needle forward? And David, I'm going to kick that to you.   David: So let's talk about some of the realignment projects that we do. I think year one realignment projects that we did. Twenty four separate realignment projects, we follow that up with another six this year. I think we're doing another 6. So we're talking everything from the graphic novel that we talked about to we launched an employer challenge during the pandemic. We get great response on that from the business community, where we challenge the business community to, hey, do one more thing. That's the name of the campaign. Do one more thing. Everybody can be a mentor. You can offer one more internship. How about interviewing and then hiring and then promoting and retaining all of those things? So that's what that campaign is centered around. We launched our Career View podcast. We've got twenty one episodes there on all types of VR topics. We have special guests and staff and counselors sharing their insight, by the way that's available on our website Mass.Gov/MCB. You can also find it on SoundCloud, Apple and Google. So we have our nationally recognized summer internship program. This year, we had nearly 70 individuals participate that joins more than a group of 700 that we've had over the years. In October, we had our job fair. We do that annually at Radcliffe and with partners like Perkins School for the Blind, Carroll Center for the Blind and other community stakeholders. This year we had 40 career ready candidates who pitch themselves. We did reverse pitches, which seem to be a very effective model in the 20 personnel executives that we have loved it and we're getting placements out of that job fair. We did the 60 second elevator pitch, so if you want more information, contact me, be pleased to share it. We did a reach for the stars, which was in that event where we gave out gifts to the people that had the best pitches. And then for Nadeem, we created blogs and worked with our sister agencies, MRC and Match Commission for the death of Hard of Hearing to get it out through their communities to make sure that people know that, yeah, it's about blindness, but it's also about people with deaf blindness and people with blindness and other disabilities as well. So whether it's the virtual town halls that we're doing, I came day celebrations. I mean, we've got a lot of events going on. My team has worked so hard and I think we have the advantage, though, of such institutional knowledge and just great human resources here in Massachusetts with our team at MCB and the consumers. I mean, you just got to have a willing consumer group that wants to take part.   Carol: Well, I think you need to have a session at NCSAB or CSr CSAvR and all the things that you're doing because I could just see, like my old director, wheels are turning. I am sure colleagues from across the country would be like, What are you doing? I want to know more about that.   David: Sign us up. I mean, there is a number of other studies that we did realignment projects. I think in total, Carla and I, who's our communications director, Carla Cathy, does a terrific job. I think we stopped at 52 different projects that we've done over the past 24 months or something like that. So we've got a lot going on. Check us out. Mass.Gov/MCB to find out more.   Carol: Holy smokes. Thanks for sharing that. So Natasha, I know you're representing you and Dee, so are there any other initiatives or practices that you all are doing around employment to move the needle forward?   Natasha: I got sent a whole list that Minnesota General has been doing, but I think the biggest thing I wanted to share first is that we are doing most of these things together. I think Minnesota General and Minnesota Blind had had a long history of being very isolated from one another and siloed. That is no more. We do almost everything together and as one voice, and so a lot of the things I'll be talking about, we are doing this as a team, but with employment, I think pre-employment is the first place we start is when you build that. Relationship between a student and work, so a couple of things that we're doing at SSB is bring your a game where students are meeting monthly and they get information about an Alexa game and then they play that game with their family and friends, and then they come back together with their peers to talk about the game and how it relates to jobs and job skills. And then we also did an open mic night so that we can encourage the artistic side of our students. And they came, Well, they're going to be coming on the 28th. They're singers and bands and poets and comedians and storytellers, so they'll be able to share their talent. We're also expanding our pre-employment transition services programs. We're adding another work opportunity navigator who's going to be focused on providing work experiences in the northern region since we have a ton of students up there and a lot of need. We're also entering into a contract with the third party to host liability insurance so that we can get more students out there for work experiences. That's been our biggest barrier, so we figured let's get over that so we can get students paid work experiences. We have a program in Minnesota called the Connect seven hundred program, which is great but could be better. But Connect seven hundred is like Schedule A, where a person with a disability can come in and have a noncompetitive interview. And the Connect 700 program has just soared this last year. And the stats are that someone who applies for Connect 700 with the state are nearly twice as likely to get hired than someone from the general public firsthand. SSB has had a number of vacancies in every single vacancy, has had to connect 700 applicant and almost every single vacancy has been hired from a Connect 700. So that's been a really great experience. Another huge project, and I'm going to say it's 2 projects. The first is the elimination of subminimum wage. Legislature created a task force to eliminate it by 2025 and going hand in hand with that is our collaboration with the Department of Human Services to help people who are on waivers and receiving vocational rehabilitation to get jobs. We're doing something called service provider alignment, so if someone's on a waiver and getting vocational rehabilitation services, they can have the same provider from start to finish. We have a new framework called Engage Plan, Find and Keep so that it helps people move through that process without any delays so that they can get into employment. And there's no back and forth of who's paying for what. So it's a seamless experience. And then I could go on and on with 50 more things, but for sake of time, I won't. But the final thing is we have increased our collaboration with our WIO partners tenfold because they have connections. We don't we know disability, but they have connections with the business community we often can't replicate. So we've been doing a lot with our title 1 and title 3 partners. And so with that, I'll turn it back to you, Carol.   Carol: Well, I know that's been on your heart for a long time. You've always talked about that partnership with the WIO partners, and that is so critical. You both have so much happening. And so I want to lead us into our National Disability Employment Awareness Month, little part of our discussion and how each of your agencies is drawing attention to this month. So, Natasha, I know that I was following on social media as well and saw that there was an employer event earlier in the month. So can you tell us a little bit about how that went?   Natasha: Yeah, we had over 400 attendees. We invited the creators of the windmill training. If you're familiar with windmills, Milt Wright is the company, and the two owners of that corporation actually came and presented. And the topic was music within disability inclusion in a business world, and that recording is available on YouTube. And if you go to our Career Force website, it's available on there. We also unveiled something called disability inclusion bite-size learning modules for employers, and they are 20 minute modules and there are five of them that employers can go in and learn about disability inclusion, and there's tip sheets and tip cards and how they can incorporate it into their business. We've also done a number of blog posts and of course, we celebrated White Cane Day and we posted three videos regarding White Cane Day and what it means for people with vision loss. And fortunately, our governor is very much in support and issue two proclamations one for NDI and one for White Cane Day.   Carol: Yeah, that was awesome and I loved it. I saw your video too, promoting White Cane Day. I thought that was really well done. Both of you are good at the old social media and David, I follow the mask commission all the time on social media and I saw you were part of a panel a couple of weeks ago for National Disability Employment Awareness Month.   David: Yeah.   Carol: and also I saw there was a podcast dropped and you had a couple of other tweets out and some really cool things with customers. I just wondered if there's any things you want to highlight about the special month.   David: Again, just a shout out to our team for doing such a great job with all of the social. Media, Caller Kath is doing a great job, but did a VR panel with the state exchange for employment for people with disabilities, a seed project which counts on state governments, has an affiliate. It's the National Association of State Personnel executives. So NASPE they had their conference in Boston, so they wanted to hear from me. So we were able to present there about hiring people with disabilities. So we're a model employer state. We talked a little bit about that and how they could do things in their state. So that was good. But we kicked off the month with our vlog and our ad campaign that I mentioned previously. What's your vision, which is on TV and it's in print and it's really getting a lot of traction. We had our job fair. We had our employer of the year and then our Reach for the Stars contest, which we talked about. We had our virtual town hall with our transportation authority, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, about barriers and making sure that people with disabilities have their free or reduced Charlie card in Massachusetts. If you're blind, you have a free travel pass to be able to travel throughout the public transit system. So we talked about that we had a white pain awareness day and celebration where we had some mobility awards within that program. That was fun, but we had a provider's council presentation with the disability commissioners all throughout Massachusetts about human services and things like that. We presented to higher education professionals at Lesley University. We did an event for parents of children with blindness and visual impairments for the Boston Public Schools and New England College of Optometry. Again, just more of the reallotment project. So it's very busy at MCB, but it's a good thing. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing the amount of consumers coming in for VR is up. The amount of closures is up. So it's a good thing. I think it's working.   Carol: I'd say so, David, I think you need to train your peers. I have never seen anyone quite like you and how you've promoted and really gotten traction in Massachusetts and have made some really cool things happen. I think it's amazing. And Natasha, I just wanted to say so that if people wanted to follow what you were talking about with the mini modules for the employers, I looked it up and it's CareerForceMN.com. So if anybody wants to listen to that, definitely. David's promoted his website to a number of times, but folks should definitely go to both because I think that you will get a lot of rich information that is applicable in any state. It doesn't have to be that it was developed for Massachusetts or Minnesota. What's being said are things that are pertinent anywhere. So I know we need to close up here shortly and I just want to ask you each. So if you had a shiny VR crystal ball and you could forecast what is happening with VR 5 years from now and how would employment for VR look? And what do you think needs to be done to just overall improve employment for individuals with disabilities? Natasha, I'm going to go to you first and then I'll go to David   Natasha: O if only I had that crystal ball. You know, I think we can't have VR look the same in 5 years from now as it does 5 years ago. I think we have hung our hats on the old way of doing VR for so long, and we really, really need to reimagine across the board how we work with our customers and everything that David says. This is what I hope that all VR agencies embrace. We need to connect people to not just any old job. We need to be focusing on advancement. We want people to never have to come back to VR. But yeah, that's the majority of our cases. Are people returning. That's why we need to invest people for the long haul and we need to make sure that they have everything that they need so that they do not come back. And the way that we approach businesses, I think, has been kind of archaic and has been from this. Well, we're going to convince you to hire people with disabilities, but we need to be driving home that the expectation is if employers want talented, loyal staff, a strong business model that embraces diversity and inclusion and a workforce that actually reflects their stakeholders and customers, then they cannot disregard the disability community. And VR needs to be the leader in that message. And it cannot be. Just please hire someone with a disability that's not going to work, and that's not our approach anymore.   Carol: Well said. Well said. So, David, how about you? Do you have a crystal ball?   David: Wish I did. But the great poet Santayana said those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, so I think we need to look back. Let's look back at starting with like Smith's best act and all of that and see how much progress we have made. And even it just contemporarily when we're talking about we did away with homemakers, that was a big VR thing. Right now, it's imminent that we're going to get rid of. 14C, that's another step. You know, I look at programs like the SBA8A program. Let's get included in that. I look at Randolph Sheppard as we've seen the pandemic just crushed so many of those vendors there. What can we do now to expand that program or to get that program into other sectors or industries to keep that alive and keep people entrepreneurial? So I. I think the future's bright for VR, I believe in incremental change. These are long standing challenges that are profound. And so to me, it's like, what can we do to look at the existing program, incorporate all of the good things that we've talked about, all of the things that we've been hyper accelerated to learn as a result of COVID. It's the transportation piece that we talked about, the technology piece that we talked about. Let's keep that going so we can provide our people with access to the opportunities. And I'm just very confident that we're trending in the right direction. I want to keep it going.   Carol: Well, thank you, David, for those positive words at the end. I really appreciate that. I think you two are both such a visionary and just talented leaders, and I'm really looking forward to the work you all do over these next five years. Very excited. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate your time. I know you're both busy.   David: Thank you, Carol.   Natasha: Thanks to you all.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR. 1 manager at a time, 1 minute at a time brought to you by the VRtAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

INTRODUCTION:My guest today is all the way from the UK and he is helping men build confidence, become their true selves, last longer in bed and masturbate like they mean it! His name is David Chambers and he is the host of The Authentic Man Podcast and an accomplished Dating & Intimacy coach. This man is a master of mindfulness and tantric practices and it was a real pleasure to talk about sex with him on my show.  INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):·      Expert Advice From A Dating Coach ·      Mindful Masturbation·      Secrets To Men Lasting Longer In Bed·      Self-Love & Self-Mastery Defined·      Why Some Men Sleep With LOTS Of Women·      Why Men STOP Sleeping With LOTS Of Women·      How The Subconscious Mind Rules The Conscious Mind·      Having Sex To Fill Emotional Voids·      Men And The Fear Of Rejection·      Avoiding Commitment·      Communication Barriers During Sex·      Toxic Masculinity CONNECT WITH DAVID:Website & Courses: https://www.theauthenticman.netPodcast: https://www.theauthenticman.net/podcastTwitter: https://twitter.com/iamauthenticmanFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/IAmTheAuthenticManInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theauthenticman_/ DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS:·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)       - https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370       - TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs SDJ MEMBERSHIP (FULL EPISODES):·      $2.99 per month.·      Donate any amount for 30 days of access.·      $25 per year.https://www.sexdrugsandjesus.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ TRANSCRIPT:You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to. And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right. At the end of the day, my name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world. As we dig into topics that are too risky for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your.There was nothing on the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.De'Vannon: My guest today is all the way from the UK. And he is helping them build confidence, become their true selves last longer in bed and masturbate. Like they mean it, baby yassss!!! His name is David Chambers and he is the host of the authentic man podcast. And he's also an accomplished dating and intimacy coach as well.This man is a master of mindfulness and tantric practices, and it was a [00:01:00] real pleasure to talk about sex with him on my show.Hello, David, the authentic man man's man. How are you doing today? David: I'm feeling, um, I'm feeling really, really kind of grounded and calm. I just, uh, just before we go on about an hour ago, I was laying on a massage table with my Reiki master doing a magic. So I'm now feeling stupid, like relaxed and said, so I'm really feeling, oh De'Vannon: shit, that's how you get ready for, uh, uh, for a fucking interview.You get the Reiki master over there. You get all of this in the house. David: Yeah. Then all the energy get relaxed, save big, De'Vannon: but see that's how your, your podcast intake, man, it starts off that way. Like your voice is so like low and calm. You've got like the massage music going and you're already getting people into the state of hypnosis before you [00:02:00] even much started talking about.What'd he really came there to talk about that day.David: Nevermind. De'Vannon: Okay. So David, tell us about how you got started on the path of being a dating coach. Talk to us about your history and your struggles and everything that led to that path.David: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. Um, I, uh, about, um, Let's say 15 years ago, uh, you know, you're young 20 something year old, man. And I was just not as happy with my day in life as I want it to be, you know, like many of us, you know, I'm sure I was 20 odd years old. I was kind of up and coming in my career and my tech career.And I was looking to expand my life and expand my horizons and do new things. And I was finding myself, going to the bars and clubs and meet women who they weren't really interested in. The sort of things I was interested in. They wanted to, you know, go to bars and clubs and maybe buy some handbags and [00:03:00] shoes and holiday and, you know, get drunk, that sort of thing.And I was feeling a little bit tired of that. I felt like I was growing out of that a little bit and I wanted to travel. I wanted to, you know, um, dive into new cultures, try new experiences, do things that push my comfort zone. So I was a bit frustrated with that. I started Googling one night as you do. Um, and I came across a book that promise to teach a man, you know, how to, to, to talk to women, how to talk to a higher quality women.I guess the phrase would have been in those days and a book was the game. Um, so like many amount at that time I picked up, I'd read it, cover to cover in a few weeks. Um, and I, I use some of the techniques. I definitely did. It went out and you know, some of the lines, you know, some of the first pickup, the kind of introductory lines as I probably call them is like, got me.Help me with confidence a lot of the time. So then I, I ended up at a bootcamp and at the end of that boot camp, I turned to the teacher, the head teacher, they had the guy who was running it and said, Hey, I think I could teach this [00:04:00] stuff, you know, on the bootcamp. He said, yeah, I agree. And that kind of started a path of, for about year and a half, doing that on the side, as well as working in my tech job.And during that year and a half, I started to develop to move away from a lot of the stuff that was in the game. I wasn't really that keen on a lot of what was in there to start with, but I started to really develop this idea of like having fun, you know, that, that mystery thing that a lot of men struggle with, especially when they get into a club, like having a good time, having fun with people like smiling, joking, laughing, uh, being in the moment being, you know, open and honest and, and so forth.So I really got into that. And then I got kind of fed up with that whole scene, that whole kind of men trying to pick up women. It become, I started to see there was a really dark side coming across students who didn't love. They didn't love meeting women. They just wanted to take advantage of them. And I didn't sit well with me, cause my, my point of view has been like a deep love and reverence for women.You know, I grew up, I've got four, four sisters sometimes I forget. Um, I've got four sisters, um, and I grew [00:05:00] up with them. So I really have a love for women. So I spent many years after that, just learning about myself, you know, self-dependent work, going to workshops, going to courses, you know, week-long things, things like that even went to a Buddhist monastery to stay for a week, uh, one year just to, you know, learn more about me and I, I had a partner.I was with fast forward a few years from there. Uh, we were together for about four years or we broke up when I was in Bolivia. We were traveling around the world. We traveled all fruit, India Southeast Asia flew over to south America to see the Olympics and broke up in a, in a hotel room in Bolivia, in a little town called.And it all really, for me, stemmed from the idea. And the thing that I struggled with was just speaking about my feelings and emotions and listening to her about taking it personally and making it all about me and what I've done wrong. So what that kind of created was a cycle where I didn't say how I felt, because I didn't want to upset her because I didn't want her to be acting for me.You have to deal with her [00:06:00] emotional reaction. So I was balling up all these feelings, all these desires, things that I wanted, and it just caused the breakdown of a relationship slowly over a year. And I really vowed to myself. Then I said, I'm not going to let it happen again. I don't want that to happen again.So I went on a bit of a journey after that. I kept traveling for about six months, discipline medicine did a lot of meeting new people, a lot of just open Hyde conversation. Um, and then after that I came back to London, uh, a friend of mine, uh, the guy who used to run the podcast with AMAT, he was like, let's do something.Well, this thing, let me, she's like, you know, there's so much data on, is this. Do this, say this where this then say this, then do this and then trick her into doing this. He was like, but we know that doesn't work. Long-term we know that that's very superficial and it doesn't build beautiful relationships.So the podcast was born, uh, originally it was called your thing, dating series, um, spending about day. And you know, in the last few months I've expanded it into and change the name to the authentic man has decided to step away [00:07:00] around Christmas time. So this has all led to a journey of like self-learning self-development growth.Um, Coming into myself, maturing more than anything. And a couple, there's a nother side that runs alongside, this is my love of sex, sexuality, tantra, and things like that. That I've also brought into my work. So now I'm, you know, doing everything from running workshops about masturbation, for play, a tantra for couples, tantric, massage,and the like. So it's really a combination and helped me grow and move forward. So out of my own pain, you know, I've turned this as I often say, your pain can become your gold. And for me, that's really been, been true for me. De'Vannon: Excellent breakdown of you. And I love how you have the small beginnings, as they say, as the Lord says in the Hebrew Bible to despise not the day of small beginnings and, you know, and you came from and where the, where there anybody out there believes in God or not is, you know, a thing, but it's just, it's [00:08:00] just good fucking sense, you know, to despise small beginnings, you know, he didn't get visited.David didn't get discouraged. And you know, he started, you know, he had his heart broken, he went through some shit, uh, you know, he started off helping somebody else and now he's become the guru himself. Now your website is absolutely fantastic. The authentic man.net. And because it's really like a resource and a hub, I love when websites are like that.So it's almost like, you know, Creative website. And you just happen to have some podcast episodes on there because you got everything else too. You got your blog going, you got courses, you design, you got workshop videos coming up and stuff like that. And so we're going to talk all about that in my show notes that I'm going to design for you, but I love it.It's a resource and men can go to you and find out how to become a better man. Um, I wanted to, so I was listening to one of your [00:09:00] podcasts episodes. And you said, uh, an interesting thing about self love. And I wanted to talk about self love, um, up front, because I think a lot of the work you do has that infused.I think all the work you do has used in it. You say something like self love is not always among ourselves. Uh, yeah. And, um, sometimes it requires discipline and self-mastery, which is something else that I came across a lot when I was researching you. So tell us what is self love and self mastery what's in not getting confused with.David: Hmm. I think. Hmm. Hmm. Good question. So, so self love to me is in a real nutshell, and I think for this is it's sometimes I just work with, see what comes up for me in the moment is like, you know, all the love we give to other people, right? For a lot of us, like, or the love that we want from other people, like maybe you want a boyfriend or a girlfriend who's gonna, you know, [00:10:00] take you out for dinner.Who's going to give you foot mass artist. Who's going to cook for you, who is going to, you know, tell you how beautiful you look and you know, all those things give that to you. That is, to me the real basics of self-love all the things you want from outside of you that you crave externally, right? You crave the validation, you crave the love, the feeding, the warmth, give that to yourself on a daily basis every day in some way, you know, like it, as I said before I came here today, I took myself and I went and got some Reiki for my Reiki master.And it's like, that's an act of self love, you know, because I'm giving myself the relaxation and the joy that I love to give to other people. Right. And I give that to myself. It's an act of self-love and where self-discipline kind of comes in, is that when you've go things like, say going to the gym, Now going to the gym can be an act of self-love, right?Because maybe you've decided that, you know, you want [00:11:00] your body to look a certain way or you live in something. You want your body to look a certain way. Maybe you want your body to feel a certain way. You know, you want to feel a certain way in your body. So there's going to take that. You go to the gym or you go to yoga or you do some running or lattes or whatever exercise you choose to do, but you're also going to need some discipline infused into that, right.To keep going, because these sorts of things take discipline and where the self-mastery comes in for me is also looking at yourself and asking questions about who you are and how you feel and what's going on for you. So inside of the example of going to the gym, maybe there's days where you're like, I don't fancy it today.I don't want to go today. And actually I want to go to the cake shop and eat a whole massive cake. That's normally for four people. It could be an act of self love for you to go and eat that cake. And this is where, you know, it's not always easy to tell because if you've been going through. You know, three times a week for four years, and you've never missed a session.But inside of [00:12:00] that, that self-love is giving you what you really desire and need in that moment is to have some cake to sell yourself. You'll sell some love and just have something in you that feels good. Right. But if you are on the flip side of someone, who's been trying to go to the gym for three years and you've gone about four times, right?And it's a normal story for you to want this cake inside that moment, your axis of bluff is to crack your ass to the gym right now, the self-mastery comes in is when you have that for that is like, Hmm, I don't really want to go to the gym and you go, Hmm. What is underneath that for what's going on there?Well, what's my, is there a fear there? Is there a concern? Is there a worry, right. You know, for some of us, if it's like going to the gym, it's like with almost fearful sometimes. If we do this thing, we will change as a person. And how will the world react to me or my family? Not likely my friends, not like me.Will I be less accepted because I changed. Right. And that kind of often sits in quite an unconscious place. So self-mastery, to me, it's like to look at why you do things, why certain things keep happening to you and [00:13:00] why things have happened to in the past. De'Vannon: I think that's a beautiful breakdown. And when you were explaining about the cake and the gym, my mind went to, so, so I have a clothing store called down under apparel and I've, I've worked with models before, and these guys are like zero body fat, eight packs, you know, all of that sort of stuff.And the first photo shoot that I ever did, you know, they showed up with a bag of like jelly. And, um, and they were, and I was like, I couldn't understand, like, I don't get it. You look like that. What's your eating bad. This isn't fair, plain explain, you know, like, bro, we don't do this all the time, but you know, it was like, you know, they had been preparing for, for the photo shoot.So they had been going without, until now they were rewarding themselves with those coveted, just the wheat and everything like that. And you know, you will see the Olympic athletes that they got the Olympics going. Now, as soon as they're done with the Olympics, they're at, McDonald's [00:14:00] getting fast food and everything and all of that and you know exactly what, and that felt that'd probably be so great going into them.You know, they're listening to this and going. Yep. Yep. Yep. Amen. Amen. And amen. And, um, Okay. So I w I would like for you to tell me about like a client success story, of course we won't, we'll call him Joe or whatever the hell you feel like calling him. Now, look, I want something juicy. I want, I want a train wreck case.Somebody was a hot day, um, feisty mess. And then when you looked at him and thought, maybe I can't do nothing with this when I don't know, somebody mess up from the float up is what I want to hear about. And then how, how you help them turn that thing around. David: Mm. A lot of guys that come to me, they're not like in, in real messages, there's not just small tweaks that they need.Right. There's really small tweaks. [00:15:00] So as a client, I had to, not too long ago, he, he hadn't been on a date in a few years. He hadn't had any sort of physical activity to me De'Vannon: that sounded like a train wreck to me. You've put in a nicely, that's what I call messed up from the flow up. Now you say no physical activity.So we hadn't had no sex in like four years. And what you're saying, oh, that's a train wreck. I'm gonna be quiet. Go head on. I just want people to be clear, that's a train wreck. David: So, so yeah, after working for a few weeks together, um, you know, you've got to, to going to like some speed dang events. Right. But he was interested in, so he went to some speeding events and beforehand, you know, we've been talking about conversation, how to show up, how to be playful, how to, you know, be, be the character that he is.And, you know, he goes to the speeding event. I think he leaves there. I mean, he's got like four or [00:16:00] five matches. I think there was like maybe 10 women there, four or five matches. And for him, he was blown away, you know? Cause this was like he's before he's been on date for ages. Right. So now he's like, wait, that's four or five matches.This is a problem I've never had. I don't. We do, I do. I come up with and I was like, well, you can go out with all of them. Right. You know, you don't have to choose in this moment. You know, if you want to go out with them, go out all of them. Right. So there's one, one guy goes to see a few times. And um, I think he goes on a few dates with her and the one day we were talking and he's like, oh, you know, I feel like on the beach was pushing to come back to my place.And I was like, So, so what, what did he do? He was like, no, no, you know, I didn't think it was right, blah, blah, blah. And then we kind of unpack that, right. Because sometimes we have these ideas of what's not right and wrong. It's like, well, what did you want? What did she want? Right. And what was authentically, there was no manipulation about that.So a few days later, um, [00:17:00] he was messaging me in the morning was like, oh, you know, the girl's saying these sorts of things to me. And I was like, what's true for you? What would you really love? You know? And he's like, I'd love to give her a massage. And I was like, okay, cool. Well, you know, talk to her about that.So that evening she goes around to his place. And, uh, I remember being a bit panicked beforehand again, he called and was like, you know, what's going on? He was like, I'm worried, you know, maybe, you know, she doesn't really want that. Maybe this, maybe that. And I said, okay, what's true for you. And what do you sense on her?Right. There's the two things you just feed into those things. Right. Don't get too much into like how things have to be, because things don't have to be any way. And, um, so they get the girl came round and they spent the night together, you know, and they had a good time. So, you know, I was very happy about that.And obviously, you know, it's not always as about getting laid and having sex, but he, they had a really beautiful eating together, massage and stuff like that. And they, they both share some, some kinks as well. So they're able to explore that [00:18:00] swapping together. So that was really beautiful to, to hear. Um, I didn't turn it to relationship for him, but he started to enjoy dating.I think that was the most important thing actually with, for him was after that he started to date. He started to enjoy it. It's like to have fun when he dated. Right. And this is a big thing for all of us to go from just dating, being this chore. Like it's like a job, like it's work. So to go to Ashley, realize that things about connecting with new human beings, we should always be a beautiful expanse.De'Vannon: Man. You're like the best big brother ever. Like that is like, gosh, if I'd had somebody in my life had given me a relationship like that, like that relationship, advice like that when I was younger, maybe I wouldn't have turned into a ho. And, David: um, De'Vannon: but that is absolutely. Incredible because he went from no physical interaction.He was abstaining forward for all kinds of reasons. And then when he did finally do it, you walked him through the anxiety. You were there, you were truly [00:19:00] his coach. I've, I've played sports before. There's nothing like having like a good coach in your corner. So they make you feel like you can do things you ordered or you, you don't think you can.And then that was a pivotal moment from her, for him, because that imprinted upon him, his understanding a different way of being, and that's what it's all about. So you can go from being a train wreck to a super fast training and, uh, and you know, living your best life. I want you to go back to how you were saying, like, in your twenties, you were having, you know, a lot of meaningless sex and everything.A lot of guys are like fucking their way through town, you know, clocking talking girls left and right. And so you said you were seeking for a lot of validation from him, but you really didn't get any validation from it. So. What inclined you to think that as a man, you should be sleeping with a whole bunch of women.And then at what point did you realize that look, this isn't working. David: Yeah, yeah, no, it's a [00:20:00] beautiful question. So really poignant question, because I think it has to start with the fact that I didn't really have a father who was in my life. My dad was, he doesn't actually live that far from even now, but he's not much of a, a present person in my life.Right. He's he's not emotionally able to be with a child. He's not able to really nurture in any way. And I know it's not his fault. You know, I've really spoken to him about this to a certain degree about his upbringing and realize that it really was his, that was like completely absent as a human being.But they're physically, which I think sometimes it's almost worse because you see the person there and you kind of think this is how it should be or this how it shouldn't be, but they don't give you a decent example. So I grew up with a lack of like masculinity, uh, example in my life and all the men have like friends of my mom's friends.I could always look at these men and go, you're not the sort of man that I look up and I should look up to. I always knew I was always like, Nope, you're not sort of managed to look up to. So I didn't have anyone in my life to say, [00:21:00] this is how you be a man. Right. So I remember going to university. Women start to pay attention to me.So I was like, oh, you know, I'll sleep one. And then I was sleeping with two and then I would be really honest and be like, look, I don't want a girlfriend. I wanna, you know, I want to enjoy myself. And I would tell them like, you know, so no one was expecting, I wasn't lying about it. Right. It's especially at the start, it wasn't really crying about it.So then I was like, oh, this is fun. And then other guys are like, oh Dave, you're the man. But they don't usually say those words, but they, you know, you get a lot of man points from, from men. And then on the, another perverse turn of this is that when you are being with a lot of women, other women also become more attracted to you, right?Because they see you with other women and they, they kind of gravitate towards you. So you're in this kind of cycle. And this was for years where, you know, I would go in and out of relationships, but I'd just be like sleeping with a lot of women at any given time, maybe four or five women I'm meeting up with for a number of months.And in many ways it was very flattering and very [00:22:00] validating way of being a man and being a virile, you know, accomplished man, especially in the bedroom. There was a day. And I never forget this day. She was, it was about, probably about 10 years ago, 10, yeah, 10 and 10 and a half years ago. And I slept with this girl and I left them my bedroom.So in the place I'm in now, and I sat on my sofa, which is different in front of you. I'm seeing, and I had some biscuits in the hand and I was eating the biscuits. And at one point I finished the biscuits and I just sat there, staring at the wall and I kind of had my head in my hands and then I laid down and fell asleep on the sofa.Right. But what I was feeling there was this emptiness. I didn't really want to go back into the bedroom with the girl because there was no real connection with me and her. And I was just like, this is empty. You know, this is empty.I was like this isn't, this is empty and it's not making me feel good, but it's externally validating [00:23:00] me. And it's very easy to get very addicted to that external validation. Right. And even get quite addicted to the evacuation of being with a woman and ejaculating and touching them and holding them.Right. It could be quiet and addictive thing. If you've never look at the underlying feeling that's happening, that you're running away from. Because often as a man, if you're just constantly chasing sex, you're chasing the next woman or the next man. Right. You're chasing something, but what's behind you.What are you running away from? Right? This is, we often forget. This is like often we just running away from ourselves and our own feeling of loneliness or worthlessness or, or a desire for connection. And in that moment, I was like, I thought. And I've got like four women I could call up tomorrow and they'd all come to my house, you know, and I felt lonely in those moments.So I started to make changes. Then I started definitely to make changes then in it, you know, sometimes I would say, let's say necessary. I felt I was, there was a point where I worried I was a sex addict, you know, I've, I've been accused by a woman. I was seeing, she was just like, you have an addiction, you know, you don't need to be sleeping with four women.And I really fought [00:24:00] about that for a long time and it worried me. Um, but after that I was like, you know, I don't need to live like this. I don't need to just kind of for want of a better phrase, churn through women in that way. You know? So I kind of left those day behind and you know, there's a couple of times I flirted with that life a little bit, but I was still a lot more conscious of.Am I doing this because this is a really beautiful experience with someone who I'm really enjoying my time with, or am I doing this just because I'm running away from like, you know, looking at my own thoughts and feelings about my own loneliness or my own inadequacy. So, you know, that's that self-mastery pieces again, you know, it's looking at why you're doing something and understanding that instead of just denying it, De'Vannon: that's like how I learned in my, um, kept the therapy training when I got my certification and hypnosis, you know, so much of it revolved around understanding the why behind the why, how we can do things like on autopilot or for all of these great reasons.And the real reason behind it is embedded deep within our [00:25:00] subconscious and then have noses all about breaking through the conscious mind and getting to the root of problem that a lot of times as it is that our upbringing, everything. So a person may be having baby out there being. Or, um, maybe having problems in their relationship at work, all kinds of things.And it's because of something negative anchored in their self and their subconscious in which the subconscious, I think was like 78% of the brain or something like that. And I think the content was only like 12% of our members. I mean, shit, 88%. 12% for the conscious mind of our member directly. So most of what we are doing is being manipulated by experiences that we've had before, until we became up to that.And what you're doing is in that vein of work and your experiences speak to that. So you were able to basically coach yourself, you know, you know, you know, to go to a better state of thinking and [00:26:00] being now. You also said that you avoided commitment and it was due to a deep seated fear of rejection or of choosing the wrong woman.I really want you to talk about the rejection aspect because from my dealings with men and, and y'all have dealt with a lot of them in Monday, mama, no mama. No. Uh, I did. I did with you there too, but I was, I was fucking a whole lot of men when I was like in the military and you know, and all of that as a little bit different, you know, but still I was, you know, trying to fill a void for me.You know, my dad, my dad would refer me to administrate and you know, that wasn't gonna happen. And so, you know, where do you go from there? And now I'm in the military. I'm 17. Don't ask. Don't tell. So I can't really say. Good relationship. I'll get kicked out, but you know, Nick is readily available. So what you gonna do?And so, David: and so,[00:27:00] De'Vannon: and then I was in a college town. I had,I was like 19 and everything, the fire, the fire. And so, um, but a lot of men have this like rejection. I don't know if you would call it a complex or whatever. You know, these big, strong, handsome men are, you know, who a lot of us, a lot of us girls would say, you just, it's always Leah concern, you know, can do no wrong.But when they approach us, they can turn and we can sit and say, Such fear, you know, coming off of men who we didn't would not have put, looked at that way, unless he started acting that way. So where is this fear of rejection coming from? What is it? What did he do with it? [00:28:00] David: Yeah. Yeah. And as you put it, so whoa, like sometimes the men, they think of it, you know, for want of a better word, you can, they come over and you can feel that there's this fear of being rejected.And there's a perverse thing that happens, especially if we're talking about, you know, the, the initial approach where you go over to someone and you're afraid of being rejected. So you speak almost quite timidly. You're not committed to the, you don't feel committed to whatever you're saying. So the person can feel the lack of commitment, but feels.There's something off here. There's a lack of safety in some way. So they then respond in crime. Right? And then the person who's feeling the rejection feels the response that is a bit cagey isn't full-blooded and then experiences rejection, often ejects. That's a very common cycle that happens in a bar or club.For me, it was a bit deeper than that. It wasn't this about the original rejectionist around inside of relationship. Right? Like not being accepted as I was, the rejection of me is like [00:29:00] not being accepted. The fear for me was the BMI relationship and they get to know me and then they would reject me.Right. Which would cause me to want in many ways, it's like to hide certain things, not say certain things about who I was, because if they, if I show them all the bits and pieces that they like. Most of that, they're going to like, and then they can accept me as I am. But the problem inside of that is, is there's a self-rejection that's happening constantly, right?Which wears away at us because we are basically telling ourselves that there's parts of who we are that are bad and wrong and needs to be hidden from other people. And that people will not accept about us and that we don't accept those parts. So there's that city, a cycle of continuous self-rejection of ourselves.It actually makes us feel worse. And also we project that, that rejection on to other people assume that they're doing the same thing to us because ultimately we always see the world for a lens of how we see ourselves. So a lot of the, the, the fear of rejection, isn't it. [00:30:00] That we think of the people who are rejecting us really it's about, we are continually rejecting ourselves, right?So for me, that was just like constant. Like, okay, if I say this, then she'll get upset. And if I say this, you went like that, you know, trying to hide. And it just becomes a very high energy game just to maintain things in a, in a way, instead of what I much prefer to operate in now, which is like, this is who I am.I've accepted who I am, but for the most part, because there's always bits, we're trying to take out the backpack right. And acceptable. This is who I am. I'm accepting. This is, this is how it is. Right. There's things here that could be better. There's things that could be improved. That's okay. But I look at them and I say, yeah, that's a part of who I am.De'Vannon: Okay. So it's about self-acceptance of what, but, okay. So, so when you say a fear of choosing the wrong woman, so is this something that happens once you made some. Improvement in yourself as a man. At what point did he [00:31:00] begin where you, um, avoiding commitment? Cause you were afraid you might pick the wrong girl.David: Um, this was continuous, continuous, like a continuous thing that I would be with the woman for maybe six months a year. And, but I'd also kind of have my half my eye on like, okay, if this doesn't work out, you know, I can still be fine kind of thing. Right. So the fear is that she's not the right woman for me.So if that's that fear is true, that I need to also be like looking out for what's wrong with her constantly, you know, nitpicking finding forth, but also have one eye on the exit. It's like, you know, it's basically like living with one foot out the door, meaning you'll never fully commit to someone. You never give them your all which, which for the other person is horrendous.Right. Cause it, it creates a lot of anxiety for them. But for me doing it, it also creates anxiety for me, for me. But it's also had me on this kind of high alert of always nitpicking back. Something that I [00:32:00] have to really be conscious of now. Right. Is that I give unsolicited advice to my partner now, or I'm like, oh, like even the other day she was cooking.Some planting, um, resonates. I've taught a Swedish woman to cook Jamaican food. So there is some time to see us. She loves it. Right. She's cooking. You're welcome. You're welcome. Bye.And she's, she's cooking the plant in and I'm like, oh, you need to cook that a bit longer. Oh, you should. You should tell him that. And it's like, I have to, then I w I sat down and I say, Hey, I'm leaving. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, because this is part of this like, oh, you could be better. This is wrong.Something's wrong. And it's something that I still have to manage. Right. So I have to be really aware, it's shine my light of awareness. But in the past it was worst because I wouldn't even, I would be nitpicking at the women I was with verbally, but also be like, well, you know, with all these things, you're definitely not the right one for me to be [00:33:00] with, you know?De'Vannon: Okay. Okay. So that, that kind of echoes whether it echoes what we were talking about with like the hypnotherapy, because what you're saying is you were dealing with her on the surface off of a, an, an inner belief that you had or interferes that you had and stuff like that. I've had to do that to, you know, and, and, and dial it back.Which, which is something hard for somebody who's as extra as Maya this to do, but, but it can be done. It can be done. So hopefully y'all, David: and it helps the relationships as well. Right? De'Vannon: Yeah. And when you do a little less, you know, I used to be, you know, like super critical and stuff like that. And I, I believe that was me speaking forward, the voice of those who were, who have been critical of me in the past, my dad and in the military, the church, you know, and, you know, then I brought that into the relationships and now I'm like, okay, why, why am I doing this?And [00:34:00] so it's always beautiful when we have that moment, you know, like you and I have had where we begin to question why we're doing what we're doing while we're thinking the way we're thinking, where did this come from? And then taking ownership of ownership of it and changing it to.Let's let's have some fun. We're going to talk about some sexual things. Now I want to know what are the secrets for men lasting longer in bed? And you said in my, in my readings of you, that it's not about, um, where you sit on your podcast. I believe it's not about being a porn star and lasting for hours.It's about lasting as long as you want to. David: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think we we've watched all this porn, right. Ultimately porn has become. I'll say it's education, you know, rightly or wrongly porn has become our sex education, but that's our generation, right? Because our parents were too scared to talk about sex because they were [00:35:00] clueless to be honest.Right. And you know, the younger generation I'm seeing now, I've got the younger sisters about 10 years or so younger. And at least they have, um, there's a bit more in, in terms of like healthy, uh, sexual kind of education now. So for us there was porn. So we watched porn and most of the porn we watched was, you know, a few minutes long.They were like going as hard as they could for, you know, five minutes, three minutes. And if you're watching, you know, Petra, heteronormative, poor, like me, it's all about the penis in the vagina. The woman is like weathering and screaming all over the place, even though no one's touching the crit risks. No one's done any foreplay.That's right. And that, and that becomes a man's education for sex. You know, a lot of guys, they go into sex and it's like, okay, cool. I need to give this one the best two minutes of their life, you know? And it's not even two minutes of like, oh, not including the floor place. Like no, that's includes the four pay because that's all they've seen.Right. That's the only reality of what sex is. [00:36:00] So I work with guys and it's like, okay, cool. You want to have you, you want to last longer because every man, almost every man you meet is like, yeah, I wouldn't mind last a bit longer. So I usually start with, with the pace. The first thing we do is slow down, slow things down, because as much as we think we're really enjoying a few minutes of hard action, there's actually so much more enjoyment to being hard on.We can slow down. We have a whole body. The, as I say now, I learned from my tantric lenses. Our whole body is an instrument of pleasure. We have all these senses that we can use for erotic pleasure. If we choose to, you know, the taste, the smell, the sound, if we just spend the time to, to drop in, to relax, to breathe and to, to be present.Right? So the first thing is to slow down, like when we in, in the, in the accident as well, and also to build up slowly, it's really important to build up slowly, because if you build up slowly as, as men, our arousal can rise very quickly, right. We can go from [00:37:00] fucking zero to erection, to penetrating in, in a 30 seconds.So it really is. We talking, you know, one minute to 30 seconds, but for us, like for me, it was sleeping with women. Women can take anything from 20 minutes to an hour, really to be ready for sex. Right. So there's a huge mismatch there. Right? You've got one minute and ready. You've got like 20 minutes, half an hour, I'm ready.And it's like, how do we marry this up? Right. So. The thing I teach men is to slow down, slow down, be present, be really focused on the sensations of touch with the person you're with. Even if you're with someone and they're trying to speed things up, slow things down a little bit. There's no rush. We're all conditioned to going really quickly.It's like the rest of our lives. We just run around like mad people all the time. Why? Because we're conditioned to do that. We don't stop and think, wait a minute. Can I do all this shit slowly? Yeah, I could. And I was, I might enjoy it more, you know? So, so that's the kind of in, in play [00:38:00] insects way of, you know, uh, slowing things down as well as I'd add in breathing, deep breathing is a good one, breathing very deeply, you know?Cause it moves. It also moves the sexual energy, the S the sensations around the body. You feel more, not just in your cock, not just in your, in your groin. You start to feel the sensations in your feet and your toes and your hands up the back of your spine and so forth. But I also teach men that before they're even having sex, they can start to do.At home on their own, right? In terms of, you know, like mindful masturbation practice, like a self pleasure practice that includes meditation, maybe a few minutes of meditation, then it includes some, some Breathworks and deep breathing, you know, to relax the body. And then when you do get to put your hands on your cock, right, don't just put your hands there.You have a whole body, you can touch, you can start to learn about the different parts of your body that you enjoy being touched on. You know, for many men, my belief is 90% of men have no idea that they can enjoy any other sort of [00:39:00] touch other than on their Cox. They don't realize that maybe they really sensitive in loads and it feels amazing for them to be, to be stroked or even just slightly licked, you know, because you just have to find that, right.But lot body parts, you just have to find that just right. Type of touch. Right. And you have to, you have to spend some time to experiment, you know, because it might not be firm. It might be soft. It might be like, Featherlight, it might even just be some blowing, right. That feels amazing. And you have this whole body to, to kind of find that out about, and there's like, there's all these different parts.And so you'd have to spend time, but if we'd done this at this free cock centered sex, you'll never know you've missed out on this whole life of all these beautiful sensations. So I teach mentor to, you know, be with themselves, be more connected to their own body and what they enjoy, you know, relax, but also to use different strokes when they're alone, you know, not just the standard up and down with one hand, you know, you use two hands, use a, get a flashlight and use that as well.You know, like really experiment, really being [00:40:00] playful. Being the playfulness of yourself to learn, because this allows you to understand your arousal a bit more. And it also means that when you start getting very aroused, when you're alone, you can slow down and you start to understand your arousal rate as it rises so that when you do go into the bedroom with someone else, you can slow down.When you find yourself getting very aroused, because you want it to last longer. And it means then you just riding the waves, man, just riding these waves as they get a bit higher and then you can choose exactly when you want to. When you want to comment when you want actually, De'Vannon: oh, I think what you just invented, I would call, um, masturbation meditation.David: That's exactly how I describe De'Vannon: it. You should call it patent. Trademark gets that, that our circle thing on there, new masturbation meditation, founds, Fabiola.I mean, for the man out there. [00:41:00] All y'all got sensitive. Nicole's ears pretty much for the most part, if I haven't slept with a thousand men and I have at least y'all yeah. The deck for sure. But your ears and your know-hows trust me. Just let, let somebody touch them and see what happened. David: Yeah. So De'Vannon: does this get into the area of sexual performance anxiety or is that kind of like the same thing?David: No, no, there's a lot of, uh, you know, sexual performance. Anxiety is something that is, is huge for men around lasting long enough, right? There's a, this concern is fear about lasting long. I've been big enough having a nice enough body pleasing the partner, you know, all these things play on the mind of, of, of, you know, sex performance, anxiety, even for men in relationship.I know that some of my clients are like their anxieties around that they have a much lower sex drive than their partner. So their anxiety almost [00:42:00] is like, I'm going to come home. You're going to want sex. And if I don't want to, how am I going to deal with, how am I going to manage that? Right. So all these sorts of anxieties I've already.I do a lot of work for men about, you know, what's the anxiety, what is it? How can you work for it? How can you discuss it with your partner? Right. Where does it really come from? Is it a real anxiety, even, you know, is it a real fear and worry when it comes to sex? Like the one around often that comes from men is like, oh, I want to please, my partner, I've heard, she's been with other men, you know, we want to please her.And it's like, okay, how do you think you go about that? How do you think you'd go about pleasing your partner? And this is a beautiful question, right? Because the way men come at sex a lot, right. Especially heterosexual man is I am doing sex to someone I'm doing sex to a woman. I am doing it to her. It's like, um, it's a it's, it's not a co-creation right.It's not a, uh, something you're both doing [00:43:00] together De'Vannon: from, from the woman's perspective. Sorry to get you off. But, um, so when, whenever, whenever. What I'm going to illustrate what you're saying. So like when I've received the deck from men before, it's like, man, look, they would look at me like I'm going to be like a workbench or like some sort of project.Okay. So while he's up there thrusting, everything's like, he's studying my reaction, everything like that and see what he is doing to me and the effect that he's having on me. It's a project to be done. This is what he's talking about, about people of the audience. And that's what I wanted to say. Go ahead and continue that.David: Oh, that's beautiful customer. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's a it's it's do you know what it is? It's very much nail on hammer. The hammer. The nail is the passive object in it. I mean, actually it's not that way. Right? Because, so when I do say so how are you going to please this partner you're going to be with [00:44:00] this woman.They're like, oh, then I need to know. I need to know, you know, how to make her calm. Okay, cool. How are you going to know how to do that? But you don't need to watch a video. Okay. What would you going watch? Uh, you know, there's some stuff on YouTube or, you know, porn or whatever, or other porn sites, right.Tutorials. Okay, cool. And then when you've watched that, what are you gonna do? Okay. So when I'm with her, and then I want to start remembering the stuff I learned and then do that stuff to her. Cool. How'd, you know, she liked it. Um, uh, she'll come how'd, you know, when she comes and, and you know, a lot of us, we, all men are not really sure.Right. That I dunno. Cool. And we get to down this line of, you know, sometimes they add in some more techniques to learn and I go, what else could you do? Sometimes they're done founded and I'm like, so could you ask her what she likes? And then there's usually a silence. Which I [00:45:00] can't do that. How am I going to do that?Then? She'll know, I don't know what to do. Why would, you know what to do? This is a completely new human being, and this here is just a coaching conversation. I've had like 20, 30 times. Right. And they're like, I can do that. I can ask them like what they like. Yeah. And then what will they tell me if they know?Yeah. And then you can do those things, right? Yeah. And then you know that they enjoy that because they told you because they told you beforehand. Yeah. And isn't that a much better thing. And it opens up a lot more, but this is so radical. Right. Because there's this idea that we should all know exactly how to have sex really well with any different person that comes along.Right. Which is really, when you think about is ludicrous. And what it also does on the flip side is with this masculine doing too, it also means that a woman becomes, she doesn't have any responsibility. Right. Which isn't good, right. For her own pleasure because it's [00:46:00] like, oh, he does this to me. So if I have a shit time out, fuck is his fault.Cause he shouldn't bet. So it means that all the responsibility sits with the man about, you know, being right, being good. And the woman's left generally unhappy. Right? Let's be honest about it. Right? If you canvas women around the world about their sexual enjoyment with, with the men that we've. So what my thing is rebalancing is like saying to women, and I think there's a lot of female empowerment.There's a lot of beautiful female empowerment happening. And I love to see, you know, I try to even be part of it, right. Where I can is like speak up as a woman and say, this is what I want. This is what I need is what I desire as a man. Hear that and hear that as like a person that you're with a woman you love, who's loving you.Who wants you to feel pleasure and wants you to know what she enjoys to bake. You can enjoy it together. And it becomes a co-creation instead of the project being done to.De'Vannon: A co a co-creation a project working on [00:47:00] together. Sounds a lot better. It really, really does. And, um, but, but you in pun intended, hit the nail on the head when you were talking about when you were talking about men, not men, not feeling like they could just ask the simple question, communicating and stuff like that is the, if the episode or of any sort of connectiveness that anyone that any two or more people are going to have together.And it's really just that simple or. And, you know, you could just ask, you know, there's the, there's no need to make it a pop quiz or an exam. There's just, it's just simple girl. What do you like? And look, women are freaky as hell and not like she's some shy little school girl, just because she don't come out at him.Perverted, you know, society has taught her, you know, she's got to act like a lady and that's a whole other thing, but trust me, she know what to do with a Dick. Women love sucking them. [00:48:00] She can move them and love the male anatomy and, uh, but a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of us, the girls are waiting on you to initiate a lot of stuff.But once you do that baby, well, then it's all good. You know,David: it's a question. Is it similar in the, in the Creek community? Is it there's there's men who are like, I do the De'Vannon: Dewey. And then what community, how did you refer to it? David: In the queer community? De'Vannon: Okay. Yeah, I thought she said, it's the term that I had been recognized. I was like, okay, this is a new thing from across the pond.Okay. So something in a gay world, if you are the penetrative one, the one who's sticking the Dick into the asshole or whatever hole you are choosing that particular day. Then we call you a top. If you are the one receiving the Dick and we call you a bottom, if you Afrique and you like at all, we call you versatile.And, um, [00:49:00] but yeah, it's very much, the dynamics are not the same. I'm glad you brought that up because that was going to be my next point, how these, these struggles are the same for gay men, straight men by men, men who prefer not to be labeled any kind of way, but at the end of the day, even in the gay world, I mean, I mean, I've had straight men by men, gay men and everything.It's the same across the board in terms of if they get stage fright, if they are feeling insecure and stuff like that, if they feel, you know, the whole, you know, men can get into their fields and it doesn't matter. And so everything that David has said, this applies to gay men, straight men. Then you have a lot of gay men who were super, super, super, super, super machismo that it doesn't matter.You know, he, he w he'll tell you that he's gay, but that doesn't, he doesn't view himself as a feminine or girly or anything at all. You know, it's all about, you know, and then they'll get into fights and everything [00:50:00] like that. Like, it doesn't matter. I'm not saying men are fighting us what they do, but that brings me to toxic masculinity.I want you to talk, talk to us about. What it is, you know, why it's a problem? Where does this toxic masculinity come from? My Naval guy who, who knows he's toxic has toxic masculinity. You know, like he knows it. He'll be like, yeah, I'll have toxic masculinity. Like, and you know, and then the conversation would go from there.And it, and it was because when I was a massage therapist, I was like, yeah, you should come get a massage. And Tommy was like, yeah, no only girls only girls get attached to me. And I was like, okay. You know, and that, you know, people don't want to have sex with you just so they give you a massage. Like it just, I'm sorry, it's not that serious.And he's like, you know, he was like, yeah, I know, I know. But I just have to talk to them as salinity. And you know, this is just how it is, you know, whateverfree from these expectations in this [00:51:00] toxic, I don't know. You talk, I don't know what to say by, David: so I think your friend there is a really good example actually, of where we talk about the self-mastery it's like he's identified, there's a problem right there. And he's identified that he actually, I don't know if it is a problem for him, that's, there's another, but he's not willing to look at the underlying thing.Like why is it that he's toxic and why does he hold these beliefs? And I guess also the question is is why is he not willing to give them up or try something different? Right. But that's a, that's a whole different conversation. So for me, the, the, the thing about toxic masculinity is that, and also the first thing that was spaced the word toxic masculinity and not synonymous of each other.Right. I think we've moved into a world where some people think that all masculinity is toxic and I really deeply disagree. And I could find so much evidence to only one who doesn't agree with that. So what we've, we've really got in this day and age, you've got the, the patriarchy, and I don't need to explain that to anybody.Right. Which you know, is [00:52:00] hurting black people is hurting white men as well is hurting everybody really. Right. But what it's saying is that it gives us these very small boxes that we have to live in. Like it's saying that. To be a masculine man. You can only be a certain way, right? Which is you need to be big.You need to be buff. You need to be straight. Uh, you need to want to have sex with women all the time. You need to probably, you know, earn good money, have a nice house, drive a fast car and all these things, right. And this box over here of what being masculine is, you know, think of, think of James Bond in the seventies.You know, that was for me is like not the pinnacle of masculinity, but he's very, he's very masculine manually. It doesn't show any emotion. That's something you can't do. If you're a masculine man, you can't show emotion. You can't care very much about anything. That's sweet. If you're a masculine man, you don't really care about anything.You know, you have to be quiet. Um, there's even an aggressive nature to being a real kind of masculine man. So all these things, if you put them all together, Right. There [00:53:00] are definitely part of masculinity. The problem that's really lacking when it used someone who is toxic exhibiting these toxic masculine traits is they lack, compassion and love right.For themselves. But it also have a people because if you have these masculine traits and you start to bring in compassion, right. And love the man who is saying, I can't have a massage from, from a guy when he brings love into that, he's like, oh, well, this actually would be really beautiful for me. Right.I'm going to, it's going to be nice and maybe. There's a bit of uncomfortability, but I can have compassion for my own uncomfortability and still do this thing. Right. And I think that's where we're really lacking is this love, this compassion, compassionate for each other. And we just talked through our world.You know, our capitalist world is just like, everything's about results. Everything's about money, you know, and we don't care about nurturing. We don't care about even creativity. You know, even something as simple as artistry is being decimated [00:54:00] really in our countries because Hey, if it doesn't make money, then it's worthless, you know, kind of thing.So, you know, all those things we would traditionally say are more feminine traits. And when I say masculine and feminine, I'm not saying these things are gendered. It's just the, you know, when we look at these things, you know, first of all, you look at some of the Eastern traditions, uh, like tantra for instance, is very much seen.You know, the feminine is the, what they often call Shakti's the energy of life. It is like full blooded flow and force. And the masculine is, is she, various consciousness is direction is, is boundaries is, is a container, right? And those two things together are, have amazing creative force, but on their own, they don't give you anything valuable.And I think this is a problem for a lot of men is they're just inhibiting all this masculine energy and they're not bringing in any of these, these more feminine traits that actually will help them grow as men, right. And grow and help us grow as a community, as a world to be more loving and kind and more [00:55:00] supportive to everybody and not just be so maybe self-centered and focused on results De'Vannon: and right in the thing is.You know, women, well, we're all lightened, our good and evil, masculine, and feminine everything everybody is. So that's a part of balance. And when we don't embrace it, then we get thrown out of balance. But see, even women like, like you were telling me before, expect certain preprogram masculine traits from men too, you know, I was one that way, you know, you know, especially coming from the south, you know, I was thinking men are supposed to act this way, you know?So if a guy did not act a certain way, I remember one time, this was really fucking, you know, tough to do, but like tattoos everywhere when I was like, you know, you know, on the streets. And they were like heavily involved in drugs and everything, you know, who was known, you know, having a big Dick and all of that, you know, you know, that type of guy [00:56:00] wanted like a grape soda or something one day.And I was thinking, you know, You know, you know, grape soda, you know, I was like, okay, that's kind of like girly compared to the sort of man that I'm looking at here standing before me, you know, but it wasn't right for me to put that, put that restriction on him. If he wants to pound some pussy and then go get a grape soda, then he could fucking pounds of pudding to get a very solid, it doesn't have to be or scotch or a bear or nothing like that.He don't have to go get high. And again, you know, he wants some, a Fresca, wherever the fuck makes Greg sodas, I don't drink soda, but you know that, you know what, that was his right. I shouldn't have done that to him. So what do I get that bullshit from in my mind? So that was me having some toxic bullshit going on about what he should be doing and rather than accepting him for what he was.And, um, so talk to us about how women can expect this too, from people and how this hurts women as well. David: Yeah, because we're all conditioned with the same [00:57:00] patriarchy, they're all conditioned with the same, uh, toss, toxic masculinity. So we've seen so much of this toxic mess and anything we've gone. Okay.This is how men should be. So then women are looking for a man, right. And they're like, they meet a man, maybe like me, for instance, who is, who would be like, you know, and I had this a lot when I was, um, in my twenties and even in my early thirties, it's like, women would be like, oh, you're quiet. You're quite girly.Really? Aren't, you're quite capped. I'd be like, yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I wear a color and I dance. I love to dance. I dance at my home on my own and I'll do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. And they'd be like, oh, that's quite girly. And I'd be like, yeah. And you see there, you're hearing in there, they have associated something like dancing in a man of something that's girly or wearing color.Like, you know, the shirt you have on right now. I'm like, that's a fucking awesome shirt. I'll be wearing that shirt if I was out, you know? So it's like, women would be like, oh, [00:58:00] that's a bit, you know? Okay. Are you, I used to get asked a lot. Are you gay? And I'm like, no, no, I'm not gay. And they'd be like, oh, I'm really sorry if I offended you.I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's fine. I understand why you said that to me. It's not offensive to me. That's what you're thinking. It's not about me. And this is the thing is that when we learn these, we conditioned into this toxic masculine way. And then we project it onto everybody and expect them to be this way.And then the worst thing is, is that. If we have this idea that men see difference, the woman has it. Oh, all men, you know, they sleep around, right. That's how they are because they are men, which is a toxic trait to say a woman sleep around. So then they meet a man and they're dating, or they get married to have babies.And they're like, oh, you know, all man, they sleep. My husband, you know, he's sleeping off a women. That's just how men are. And that's where she has taken on this toxicity that she's learned. She has kind of, um, embedded that into her belief system. And then she allows that to happen a life when really being a man and sleeping around they're, they're two different things.They don't have to go together. Or [00:59:00] even we get to worst things around things like physical abuse. You know, this idea that old men are aggressive, that good men are aggressive. So if you meet a man who's not aggressive, you're like, well, ah, he's not a real man. But you see another man over there who's like fucking frame glass or when at the, at the floor, because he's, you know, he spilled a little bit of his drink or something.You're like, oh, well that's a real man. That's where we, we kind of embed this toxic ideas into us. And then it hurts us as well, because this is the way the perverse way of the toxic masculinity is it also helps the men who are toxic because it's it strangles them into who they're allowed to be. You know, I have a friend of mine.Um, he is, I'd say it's pretty masculine guys tool. His bald is pretty bulky guy. And he did a lot of, uh, was it like street dancing? They do, it's a street dancing classes. Right. And he didn't tell anyone. He went to the street dancing classes because he was afraid that men would, would judge him would make fun of him.Right. And that fee could, there [01:00:00] is what toxic masculinity does. It stops. It stops us from expressing ourselves in the way that we'd really like to, because we fear the judgment of others. So we've in the adjustment of us. De'Vannon: Right. And when you're running around, like that expecting things from people that you shouldn't or expect things from yourself that you shouldn't, then you were out of balance and you won't be able to, to give love because you're not loving yourself.Right. And we can't give away what we don't have. David: Yeah. Yeah. De'Vannon: So then, um, I'm going to let you go ahead and have the last word and, uh, tell the listeners out there, your great wisdom and everything. I've so enjoyed our time today. So go ahead on and preach your gospel. David: What's there for me now.I think the thing that comes up for me is around how we deal with our emotions. I think. [01:01:00] This is a big part of the work I do, especially with men is that there's this idea that emotions are useless, and this is also a part of the kind of toxic masculinity, right? So we should, we should always do everything with the brain, but brain is superior to emotions and we should ignore them and we should, you know, get on with other things we're doing.And the truth is, is like our emotions are very valuable because they give us an understanding of, of our past as well, even because those emotions, some conflicts come from dysfunction. Beliefs and dysfunctional ideas we have, but

The stores of the future are being built today, and according to David Wilkinson, President & General Manager of NCR Retail, they will not be the types of stores that currently come to mind. We are living in a time that blurs the lines between digital and physical, and retailers are working with NCR to make every experience as seamless as possible. David explains how on this episode of Up Next in Commerce. He tells us how personalized shopping will be brought to the forefront through first-party branded apps that customize the shopping experience for you. And he details how retailers in all industries can start breaking free of the traditional shackles of standard point of sale technology and store designs. Plus, David and I nerd out about how cryptocurrency will be entering the mainstream sooner rather than later, and how retailers can prepare for what that will mean for their payments systems. Enjoy this episode!Main Takeaways:Tech First, Differentiation Later: Retailers in every industry are trying to find ways to differentiate themselves and create memorable experiences for customers. But in order to ensure quality customer experiences, the basics of how your store functions need to be flawless. Focus first on optimizing all point-of-sale technology and other digital or tech offerings so that however the customer wants to transact, they can without friction. Then, when that is running smoothly, you can begin to focus on the peripheral experiences that separate your store or brand from the rest.Freeform Future: Anyone looking to create a store or business today has more freedom than ever before. They are no longer locked into the old ways of doing things. Traditional points of sale can be rethought. The design of a grocery store can be revamped to cater to more personalized experiences. Fast food restaurants can completely forgo inside dining. So many new options are on the table because in 2020, consumers proved to be willing to adapt to all kinds of new experiences.    Going Beyond The Loyalty Program: The days of trading your phone number for a discount code are long gone. These days, if a consumer is giving over personal information, they want something substantial in return. Brands have a chance to create loyalty experiences that are personalized and incentivize activities outside of the store, such as on social media, to give their consumers a unique reason to sign up. Crypto Checkout: Cryptocurrency is more than just a buzzword — it's likely to begin infiltrating daily life, particularly how people buy and sell goods. Majority of cryptocurrency holders would be willing to pay for their goods with their crypto, and retailers have to start figuring out now how to create systems that would make those transactions possible and secure.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hello, and welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. I'm your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have David Wilkinson, the president of NCR Retail. David, welcome to the show.David:Thank you, Stephanie. Glad to be here.Stephanie:I'm very excited to have you on. So before we start, I would love it if you could highlight what NCR Retail is for anyone who doesn't know, because you guys do a lot and I want the words to come from your mouth instead of ours.David:Yeah, I appreciate that. There's a lot of, depending on who you ask, a lot of misconceptions about what we are as a company and what we do. We think about it in pretty simple terms, we want to create technology that runs the store. And so when I think about that, that's really the software and services that would be creating the capabilities to do transactions and interact with customers in and around the store environment. People might traditionally think of us as an ATM or a cash register company, it's really quite different, it's a payment software and services company across the three primary businesses that we serve, banking, retail, and hospitality.David:We're experts in how consumers interact with technology for things like self-service or automated transactions, which is critical in what's happening around the world today with labor and reallocation of labor, and really just focused on creating great customer experiences and technology to enhance that.Stephanie:Okay, cool. So what are some of the newest projects that you've been embarking on over the past year or two that maybe you had to quickly roll out where you're like, "Okay, everyone wants touchless payments now, or everyone wants this capability"? What have you had to scramble to keep up with?David:Yeah. When you think about our business, we're in the retail side where 70% of our business is grocery, or in big box, I'll put big box in that, another 15% that would be convenience and fuel retail. And then the rest of the balance of that would be, think about a department and specialty. So there are a handful of different trends, as you know, that occur within each of those industries. I'll start with convenience and fuel for a second, as you described. There was a big race when the pandemic was early, everybody wanted to social distance, nobody wanted touch things that other people were touching, so it created the ability or the need to do things like touchless payments at the pump.David:So we've worked with several convenience and fuel retail companies, Kum & Go was one of them, where we created the ability to do stage transactions on your mobile device and reduce the number of touches that you would have to make to the pumps. So it's got store payment, it would allow you this to queue up the pump, initiate the pump activation through our point of sale application, and then you could get to the pump and you always got to touch the pumps to put the nozzle in the car for those of you that have to pump gas in the 48 states that require that. And then the other, you'd have to touch the pump, but it reduces the touch of the thin pads.David:So we're finding those kinds of applications in convenience and fuel. Convenience and fuel also, we're seeing a big rollout of self-checkout, which is one of our flagship... We are the market leader globally in self-checkout, and when I think about what's happening, we really understand how consumers interact with the technology. The hardware is interesting, the software is really interesting, but the understanding of the workflows, the process flow, how do you avoid unnecessary shrink? How do you avoid unnecessary interventions? We're seeing a lot of now, increased demand in the convenience and fuel space that hasn't traditionally had self-checkout, but makes a perfect fit, small basket size convenience shoppers don't want to stand in the line and want different interactions or maybe a less interaction with a person in that environment.David:So COVID is heightened that. So that's what's happening. Convenience and grocery, it's a similar thing. We saw some weird things happening early days with spatial awareness and everyone was focused on, "We've put plexiglass in the stores, we can't have any kind of human interaction, we've got to queue outside the grocery store before we come in and set appointments in different times." So we did a lot of things. We have a very large professional services team that can do custom applications, and we did a lot of that kind of stuff where we're building queuing apps and other things that probably aren't here to stay, but we'll have some longer-term applicability.David:But what we're seeing really is touchless payments with self-checkout, so paying on the mobile or mobile scan in the isles, and then a broader roll out of self-checkout and then getting deeper debt or more density within the store for self-checkout, meaning more lanes enabled for self-checkout so that customers have that capability. I'll take a breath after this, but then the other piece was ecommerce. Obviously ecommerce is growing. If you look at grocery, you can look at different numbers, but it's multi-hundreds of percent growth off of fairly small numbers. But in ecomm, that's being a large part up to anywhere between 15 and probably 25% of grocery quickly moved to ecommerce.David:So we invested, bought a company that has an ecomm engine to turn that experience back over to the retailer so they can have an app, a retailer branded application, allow you to do the list management, recipe management, order online pickup in the store, and then has a picking optimization app on the back end for the retailer. So those are some things that we're working on and deploying that would include payments, but it's a lot going on. Innovation has been compressed into a short amount of time with COVID. I think we're seeing that in a lot of different industries and probably none more impactful than retail.Stephanie:So kind of what things do you think won't stick now that we're a year plus past, and a lot of times when change is happening quick, people are like, "Let's just try everything and do everything new." Some things like ordering groceries online, it feels like it's here to stay, people are debating like, will the percentage fall back again? I think maybe it has this 2020, but then maybe the pie grew. So the numbers, I'm not really sure, but what things are here to stay and which ones were just like a fad and we tried it out and now it's like, no, we actually don't need that.David:Yeah, it's a good question. That's a question we get a lot. I'll start with the easy ones that are fun to joke about in light of the seriousness of the pandemic, but like plexiglass and a sticker on the store that you have to queue six feet or 12 feet or however many feet apart. Those are the things that I think will start to fall down a little bit. We learned that hoarding and stockpiling toilet paper was not a cure for anything. So I think some of those kind of applications or behaviors will go away. What we did find though in the joke in the toilet paper is really about the supply chain. And what we found is that brand loyalty across the consumer base shifted pretty significantly, that you no longer were loyal to a single brand, you were loyal to a brand that had what you wanted and we saw a supply chain shortage.David:And that may have introduced shoppers to where they were traditionally brand loyal for whatever reason, the ability to shop around. One of the trends that will see continue is retailers want more and more data about their consumers so that they can offer personalized experiences, and we all crave that. The social shopping phenomenon is here. And we see it in Asia is more prolific than in the US, but some form of that will start to take hold in the US. And so understanding the customers more deeply is a trend that's here to stay. I think you said online grocery shopping, even while we saw hypergrowth, 85% of the shopping was done in the store, so we think some blend of that will stick around.David:I've seen the same stats that say, "Hey, we've reached the peak of growth, it's going to plateau, maybe decline and then bump back up." So I think online shopping, if you think about it as a consumer, so personally if you think about it, the ability for me to create a list based on past purchases or find a recipe and click on a recipe and add those ingredients to my list or to my basket, have somebody pick those items but I still want to pick out fresh vegetables, fresh flowers, meats, whatever it may be, the things I want to look at, touch and feel, how do we create this hybrid shopping environment where I can do the, we'll call it the center of the store shop, dry other things, and allow me to do the edge of the store, the fresh foods and other things, I think there's there's a hybrid model that makes a lot of sense.David:Now, that's a big change because none of the retailers... We didn't design stores that way, we designed stores to, like I just said, center stores, all this stuff, the outsides are all fresh foods, all the checkout stands are right at the front, congregated. I think this notion of pervasive and flexible checkout will start to take hold. I think those are the trends, convenience, less touch, more choice, and knowing your consumers better are the things that we'll start to see that will stick and we'll see those trends either flatten and start to grow again, or just flatten, but become a bigger percentage of the overall.Stephanie:Yeah. It's funny you mentioned about like what things I want to pick out versus what things other people can. I mentioned this a couple episodes back like, I don't care about picking out the flowers, the cereal, that's all fine get what's there, but no one will ever pick out the avocados the way that I want them or the type of fruit that I want. So why isn't half the store just in inventory, just grab it out of inventory for me, and the other half, it actually want to be and see and touch and smell, that's the part that you can actually interact with. So we're thinking alike, which I like.David:Yeah. You're spot on. Are you a cantaloupe thumper?Stephanie:I am, yep. And the watermelon, I want the perfect little dark yellow spot on it. And my avocados, I hope it didn't get plucked from there and mold growing around the STEM. I'm very particular. And I always think when I order from Whole Foods, I'm like, "Should I write these in notes?" No, because they're going to think I'm crazy if like, "Pick out the avocado just like this, and look for this with your watermelon or cantaloupe."David:Yeah. But think about the opportunity there with what you described. So the application that we have allows us to do a lot of customer specific notes. And then if you have control, if you're the grocer and you have control of your experience, so forget about third-party intermediary picking apps. I'll use Instacart as an example Instacart, sends an Instacart shopper into the store, you may or may not have the same shopper. And the Instacart person doesn't may or may not care, I'll say on a relative scale, cares less about the brand itself where you're shopping. But if the retailer had control of that and knew that you, Stephanie, were a high value customer, you love to buy avocados and that was a real differentiator for you.David:If I knew that about when you shop, you could create an experience that you would actually enjoy buying all the products online, perhaps, or maybe they have an avocado cam specifically for you, but those are the connected experiences that we think getting more and more technology in the stores to deliver those experiences is going to be key.Stephanie:Yep. I think that also summarizes the next couple years, because this past year, year and a half or so, people were willing to try, try online ordering, try going through self-checkout, try all the new things. But then now I think we're in a phase where brands need to actually deliver. We were okay with hiccups as consumers for a while there, but now you go in and if self-checkout is not working, I know some stores I know I'm like, "I'm not even going to try it because every time that little light goes off, if I don't put my thing in the right area and I have to wait and whatever it may be." I remember the brands that it doesn't work with and I don't do it anymore, versus certain stores, I know every time I go in and out and it works perfectly.Stephanie:So I think now is the time when brands have to deliver and figure out, "How do we actually deliver that experience to them because they've been willing to be in beta for a little while now, and now we're popping out of that and we're ready for just like a good experience."David:Agree, agree. And to deliver that, if you think about where retail technology had been, anybody that's been in and around retail technology understands that the way we deploy technology in a retail store is antiquated, fairly antiquated. And the experiences that you described are ones that would say, "I have to have modern capabilities. I can't afford to rip and replace everything." And we're taking this run the store approach where we want to deliver outcomes to you. So as a retailer, we want to deliver all those outcomes that you just described. And the more technology you deploy into the store, as you said, the more it has to be available and working. And that sounds basic, but it it's not as basic as you would think. It's not as common sense as you think across the piece.David:Because I can't put a paper sign or a bag over a kiosk and say, "Hey, this isn't available," it has to be available because that's the way that we're interacting and transacting. And so when I look at that, I think we're investing to deliver at scale all the technology in the store. So think about like the dial tone where it just works. The ability for a consumer to come into your store, identify themselves, stand an item, get a total basket, or start a transaction online and finish it in the store, tender it, take payment. That's what we want to deliver to the store as an outcome, as a service. And then the store then, or the retailer brand can focus on, "How do I differentiate my brand? What experiences can I create? Can I create a store within a store or venues within my store? Or what am I trying to do?"David:Because that's really where the store will start to compete. The base technology is not where the store is going to compete, the technology has to be a foundation for creation of new experiences that will be enabled by technology, and a lot of it, we don't what will it be? I don't know. Most of them are likely to be consumer led technologies as they're bringing their own tech into the store, and we have to learn how to deal with it. That's what we're focused on, is getting down to a foundational level, providing that modern architecture without a rip and replace building the bridge, and allowing them to be cloud ready, cloud enabled to take advantage of all the cool things that are happening and all the investment that's going into all these interesting applications that are all consumer facing or social shopping or whatever you want to call it.Stephanie:Yep. That's, to me, the life cycle of technology, when it starts to work is when it's seamless behind the scenes, that's when you know you've made it to then start building on top of it. You don't even notice it's there. What do you see retail experiences looking like going forward to actually have an experience there? what are you seeing brands doing right now that's really cool? What should that look like?David:Yeah. Think about the experience, think about an online shopping experience overall and why you like it. I will say online shopping is horrible, online buying is a good experience. Shopping online, I have to know what I'm looking for, I don't get to see the selection. Maybe I know a little too much about how the content gets served up to me, but I'm not seeing the full selection or assortment I made. There may be something I like that they don't think I like. So there's all these things that happen. But why you think online buying is such a good experience is because you know who I am. I walk in, "walk in" to your store, and I say, "I'm David Wilkinson. I am here."David:Also, I'll give you permission to see everything I bought, and then you have the ability to say, "Oh, based on everything you bought, these are other things you might like," and serve all that, a package it in a way that makes it a good experience, put it in a cart, and then I also have given you a form of payment that I've told you that you can keep and use for anything that I shop in your store for digitally. And then I transact and then you deliver it to my home frictionlessly. Now, take that and say, "How do you create a great shopping experience?" Take a lot of those attributes of online buying and then physical as you described.David:Let me grab the avocado and make sure it's just soft enough but not too soft, let me thump my watermelon, let me look at the meat, let me look at the flowers. Let me take in the full cereal aisle to see what's going on. I love chocolate, but I don't know if I want milk or dark, but I want to experience that in the store, but allow me to see... If I put a box of Rice Krispies in my shopping cart you might ask me, "Do you want marshmallows?" Because maybe you want rice crispy treats, as a cross sell up. So, deliver that to me dynamically in the aisle on a mobile app.David:You've got my store payment form. I've got all these scanning items in my cart, real-time building that basket real time, and then allowing me to pick up some things that I had you pre-picked for me, that I ordered online, or I may just do pervasive checkout where I'm using computer vision RFID or some other form of sensory fusion to create a basket that always knows what I bought. So the notion of creating that online experience, but with all the goodness of what you could create as a brick and mortar retailer in the store and removing that friction is what the experience of the future looks like. We're not that far from that. That's not a, "Oh my gosh, that's a 10-year vision." We could deliver that tomorrow. It's a matter of breaking down some of the traditional thinking and some of the traditional barriers that occur within retail technology today and then getting the consumer engagement that would drive that.David:So that's the way I see the experience of the future, is a nice blend of all the convenience of online with the greatness of an experience in a store.Stephanie:Yeah. I love that. I think that's also why it's important to take a step back from your industry and look around at like what other tech companies are possibly doing and seeing how other things are being created and being experienced, because I think when you're thinking, this is what the store is, and here's my capabilities, it's hard to think outside the box. Whereas just when you were talking, I'm like, "Wow, how cool would it be to... " People go there to experience things, they go shopping to experience things, and maybe people still want to see shelves, but do you actually need a shelf? Can it be a virtual shelf? Can it be a mix of AR or VR where you just look and you can see all the new brands popping up, you can still feel like you're experiencing it.Stephanie:And then you just tap a bunch and you can have a little bit of both while also the productivity of like your car getting filled on the back end behind the scenes and you're ready to go, because you might not need to see the different types of bone broth on the shelf, but you won't actually see them, but you don't need to be collecting them yourself. And I think yeah, always thinking outside your industry is a way to start feeling that out and seeing new innovations and then rethinking the entire way that retail operates right now.David:Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think it's a lot fun. And you think about those experiences that you have to create and the state of the labor market, it requires more labor in the stores to deliver a lot of those experiences. And we're in a labor crisis where labor rates are going up, unemployment was at a low, but now it's hard to read the unemployment stats because it's more of a willingness or want to work at this point and more labor hours required in the store. I think technology will be the key in getting some of that back. I love the AR, VR. Allow me to build a list outside of the store, whether I'm going to buy clothing, go to a convenience store or to a grocery store.David:You could have a list and shop through your mobile device in the store and it points out where you go and it could point out other like items. There are so many fun things that we're going to be able to unlock with technology and data and the consumer willingness to opt into that if you're creating value for them.Stephanie:Yeah. I sometimes also like to look at the startups who don't have barriers to enter the markets, the ones that can just start a little guide shop type of maybe grocery store or whatever it may be and they're like, "I'm going to implement this store in like a tech-first approach. And it's going to be small, but it's going to be like this." Do you see anything like that right now where you're like, "Whoa, these companies are doing things in a very different way and it could either fail or be really cool"? And you don't have to name names if you don't want to.David:Yeah, we're seeing it on both. We do obviously a lot of research around what's happening on the tech side of retail, and I'll collage together a couple of sources and I'll tell you that there's $100 billion of investment going into retail tech startup is proclaimed to be retail tech startup. Forget about anything that might be on the periphery of that around could be any AI or ML or inventory. It could be some other things. So there's a lot of money and there's a lot of really interesting things happening. Yes, we're seeing that anywhere from retrofitting in-store lighting to create a platform for AI where you can do camera and tracking and you can do facial recognition or gait recognition, store tracking and close the loop with a point of sale system.David:Really interesting things happening there. On the other side, there are a lot of startup retailers. If you and I just sat in a room and brainstorm and said, what do we want to build as a store? We wouldn't be forced to this paradigm of what a convenience store or especially specialty retail store or a grocery store look like today. Why do I need a fixed point of sale? Why do I need these other things? And so we're working with a small startup out of South Carolina that's creating this concept of drive up grocery. They're looking around watching the pandemic, fast food and quick service restaurants do a great job, buy online, pickup in store. No inside shopping. And so we're helping them with the tech. We're going to run all the tech for these stores where they effectively have a dark store that they either order on an app or they drive up and you order on a tablet and they have to pick it quickly, so they have to know inventory.David:So I look at these things and it's fun to watch. They have no barriers, they have no paradigm that they're trying to break. They're just charging forward with a need in the market and how they're going to approach it. So, yeah, we see a lot of that. We see a lot of that around computer vision, we see it on the tech side, we see a lot of that around what's happening with a AI and ML. We're starting to see a little bit more of that around payments and alternative payments with things like crypto. So there's just a lot of interesting things that we see happening.Stephanie:I would think the one misconception a lot of people have too is that retail is dying or dead. And a lot of influential people have said that, and maybe they're retracting that statement now, but what I think is cool to watch is the type of retailers that are opening up. You see a lot of discounters opening up right now way more than maybe in the past, which is an interesting trend. And then you see these very luxury, maybe not too luxury, but B2C brands also only focusing on what experience do you get by coming here? So what do you think around those two types of industries opening up more retail locations this year than before?David:We serve those discounters all around the world and that's not just the US trend, we see that happening in all parts of the world. And I think convenience growth is also... I just this moved to convenience, smaller footprint is a big trend, and I really think it's about that last mile and accessibility. And so, all the discounters will tell you their growth numbers are off the charts. The way I think about that is they have a critical need for data because they have to understand, they're not obviously carrying a full assortment in that store, so they have to understand their demographics. They have to understand that past purchase history of that municipality or wherever they're located. And they have to have probably technology solutions to deploy potentially the order in the store.David:So I think there's a good blend there as the retailers are going to find the discounters that they're really all about location and proximity to their customer base and serving a need that people want either in between a big grocery shop or going to the big box retailer, the ability to just do quick top-up trips for certain items, I think is where they're going to make their names. And I think that they're seeing a tremendous success as evidenced by their growth and the industry. The luxury brands are interesting, or even maybe not the luxury brands, but you see other in a lot of sporting and fat sporting fashion, and other things where you have the home fitness craze or the virtual fitness craze is taking hold, but so many of those things are experiential again.David:So instead of a story, you think about just creating an experience center that allows you... We saw that, Apple started that with their Apple stores, they were very experiential, Tesla had done something very similar, no big surprise, the same person helped design and develop those two stores. But when do we think about that, if you look at what Kate Hudson did with her brand and partnering. So there a lot of interesting things that are happening around creating experiences around retail at those higher end, or call it more luxury brand goods, it's a blend of, "Hey, I have this subscription content and a complimentary set of retail items that you have to somehow bring together."David:And that's a hard thing to do online. I think that's what we're seeing. I think you'll see more of those pop up. And I think we're seeing more of the traditional retail, the older school, especially retail, either collapse or consolidate, and you're seeing a lot of those newer experiential brands pop up. So I think it's a trend that will at least be here for the next three to five years.Stephanie:Yeah. I agree. I'd love to start seeing case studies around these people, they came into the store, their experience is golf store, whatever it may be, they played on in this camping set with their kids, and then it attributed to this many sales. That's what I'm hoping to see over these next couple of years. I think the experience is where it's at, but I also know a lot of people do, maybe even myself who would just go in and have a good time and be all right, see you next week. And so it'll be interesting to dig into that data eventually and see, is the ROI there of having a full-on experiential store or is it more from a branding perspective or how do you even view that from a financial person?David:I think you said it, well, you have to be purposeful in how you do that. You can't just say, "I'm going to pop-up a traditional retail model, and it's going to be experiential." To your point, I think you have to set out to say, "I'm going to create this experiential store. It's got a different footprint, a different look and feel, a different set of technology capabilities." Because you may or may not be catering to the client that's going to buy online. If you look at a clothing store like Bonobos, who has a showroom store or showroom store, you don't buy anything. There you go in and you try things on for fit, feel, you can touch and feel everything. They have one of everything and they have a bunch of different sizes.David:And then when you go to order, all they're doing is ordering online and then they've got your account and you can order online. So I think that's a good example of somebody that has done a great job of creating an experience. And then that also solves the returns problem on the flip side of the econ equation.Stephanie:The other thing that I wanted to talk about with loyalty programs, because I think you've talked about this in the past and I know a lot of companies always try it, and I can think about the ones that actually, I remember that worked well for me, Nordstrom Rack is one of them, I think TJX one's sometimes hard to find where my dollars are, but at least I know that they're there. And then other ones that just don't work well, certain grocery stores where I'm like, "Why do I keep putting my number in here? What am I getting from this?" So how do you think about loyalty programs? How should they be created and how will they work over the next couple of years?David:This is going to get back to data and the ability to do personalized shopping. Some of the research that we look at, and I'll look at things that are 50, 60, 70% of consumers are willing to provide data or willing to give data if they get value in return. I know that seems like a loose equation because value is different to your point from the eyes of the beholder, but I think it has to be a more personalized program like you said, if I'm just going to enter a phone number in and that's going to drive a discount off a price, that's just not going to be good enough anymore.Stephanie:What if it's not clear, if you're like, "I put my phone number in, did I get anything?" You're looking at the little register and you're like, "I don't see any discounts, what am I even building up to? I don't get it."David:Or offering you something after the fact like, "Hey, you made these three purchases, here's something off your next visit." I think there's going to be such a competitive marketplace for people creating personalized experiences. Now, think about social, if you're on the clothing side, like you're talking to those high end brands, the ability to plug into social networking and create a loyalty program that either would reward somebody for expanding their network or influencing your products or the ability to buy through social channels when you see I want input from people that I would view as either my peers or people like me, how do they like reading reviews, other things, information's at their fingertips.David:So I think that kind of information with your personal data, with social interaction is going to be key. But again, I think loyalty programs are going to come down to more of what we talked about earlier around the online experience, creating more of that online experience, where I give you permission to create an experience because I don't want the friction. I want you to know who I am, I want you to know what I like, I want you to be able to recommend things that, and I want the best deal at the time of purchase. And I want you to respect my loyalty to your brand in the long term, and then I want to reduce all the friction.David:So to me, that's bigger than a points program or enter your phone number, and I'm going to track your purchases and may or may not give you a discount. That's creating that 360 full view of your consumer and really truly understanding them.Stephanie:Yeah. And I think it's also, it's okay to interact with them more than you think if it's done in a way that's purposeful. I think that's the interesting thing is you see the brands that you don't ever hear from and you're like, "What am I even doing here?" And then you hear from the brands that just give you random offers that maybe never incentivize you to do something. And so I think there's a sweet spot where a lot of brands now are leaning into that the more, becoming a media company, having their own content, creating this all-encompassing experience and figuring out how to do that in a way that actually drives the results, will be the way of the future.Stephanie:But I think still brands are having a little bit of a struggle around trying to figure out like what that looks and what incentivizes people to want to act and interact with your content or your texts or whatever they need.David:Right. And like we said, in Asia, it's probably a little more ahead with some of that social commerce and the gamification of both social and product recommendations and loyalty. So some form of that will take hold here. I was trying to think of an example of who is doing it really well, nothing just pops into my head. So we'll skip that.Stephanie:We can skip that then. Yeah, no worries. For anyone who listens to the show, they know that I love to always try and talk about crypto when I can, for whoever is willing to do that with me. And so I wanted to hear from you since I know you guys are obviously the payments space and you're probably watching what's happening in that realm all the time, I want to hear your thoughts on how crypto is going to impact retail and specifically around payments.David:Yeah. I love to talk about crypto too, so I appreciate you bringing it up. I think that it's obviously a very hot trend, there's a lot of trending news happening around crypto. Some of them good, some of them bad, whether it's the hype that Elon Musk creates around things those Dogecoin or Bitcoin on Saturday Night Live, you can follow the trials and tribulations of that. When you get to the underpinnings of the applicability of that and the desire of people to participate in alternative payment form that has less, we'll call it less fees or less cost or more direct access, or feel they have more control, I think that's where we're seeing a lot of uptake in cryptocurrency.David:I just read some studies this morning that talked about cryptocurrency holders, 51% of crypto holders are very likely to use cryptocurrency at retail if they would accept it. So you think about, okay, how do we accept cryptocurrency in a retail environment? We did a demo pre-COVID, whatever, I think that would have been 2020 January at the National Retail Federation, their big show that they have in New York at the Javits Center every year, we actually had a cryptocurrency demo where we said, "We're going to help serve unbanked or underbanked cash economy. How do they participate in the digital economy?" But we had our cash acceptance, think about a self-checkout that has the ability to accept cash.David:We could take that cash. We partnered with some companies to convert that cash to crypto that would be then stored on a cloud wallet or a mobile wallet, generate a QR code, and then we shared it. It was a short demo line, and then we effectively go to the point of sale and purchase something with cash that we had just turned to crypto, scan a QR code at the point of sale, a very simple execution of a lot of elegant and complex things behind the scenes and new thinking. So I think we will see more and more crypto applications come up in retail. And for us as NCR, whether it's moving from cash, to still some checks, to credit cards, debit cards, tap to pay, Apple Pay, mobile wallets, crypto, we want and need to, based on what our mission is, to be able to serve your payment needs from cash to crypto.David:So we are absolutely investing in both partnerships and organic technology that is around crypto, we think again, whether it's payment or some other disintermediation using the underpinnings of what distributed ledger would bring to just ease of payment and security of payment, and again, value stream of payment. There is a there there, either work to do to define exactly what that means, and then consumer adoption is a bit of a wild card, which of those will take off.Stephanie:Yeah. But I think once again, it highlights when tech goes behind the scenes, there will be a place when we are transacting and we don't even know really what's behind the scenes and operating that. Even for now, thinking about Venmo, what actually goes behind the scenes to make all of that work, I think there will be a place when people go in and transact, and maybe it is utilizing crypto, but you don't really know how it's really working, you just know that it's fast and you don't pay fees on it, and it just happens, and it just works. And same thing around financing, these companies that you need to finance things, there'll be a much easier way to do it, whereas you can enter into it quickly and you can see your contract quickly and get out of it when you need to.Stephanie:And right now it feels like a lot of friction around that still, and especially for developing countries, like you said, who don't have banks to rely on or can't rely on them because it is a little bit volatile or whatever it may be. A ton of opportunity that I see disrupting and getting to a place where you don't even know what's behind the scenes powering essentially everything.David:I think you're right, there's a broader education that has to be done because crypto is not about nefarious criminal activities and I'm a money launder or in some illegal trade that I don't want my cash to be seen by the government. That's not what it is. There a lot of regulations, a lot of usage around KYC and other ways that are protecting those assets there, a lot of backing that's being done, you see things stablecoin. The volatility of the value is obviously a big myth, we joked about at the beginning, it's up and down, up and down. But getting asset back, tokens and stablecoins will start to create the ability to leverage distributed ledger in the way that it was meant to be, where the chain of custody is always known, the assets itself hold their own chain of custody.David:You remove all the intermediaries and all the middle people, clearing houses and other... It's going to free up the world of payment in some way that we'll see that more, call it a democratization of the payments infrastructure that I think will be interesting, that would be part of it.Stephanie:Yeah. I like watching it. And the only time I get a little hesitant is when I see entities creating their own coins or governments being like, "We're going to be issuing crypto however," it's backed against, I'll just make it up the US dollar or gold or whatever, our currency in this country. And that's where I'm like, "Oh, I feel like you're taking idea of decentralized and you're completely doing the wrong thing with it and it's turning back into a centralized function." And that's the only point that makes me hesitant, but also I know that maybe consumers would hear that it's backed by the US dollar and be like, "Oh, that one is a better bet." Whereas if you actually understand where this tech, even maybe people don't know who created it, but where it even started and the ideology behind it, is not to tie it to a centralized in it, but we will see.David:Like do that then you just recreate the payment system. Probably not worth it.Stephanie:No. All right. Well, let's shift over to the Lightning Round. The Lightning Round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, David?David:I am ready.Stephanie:All right. Hard one first, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?David:I think I'll call it ubiquity of buying online and picking up or delivery anywhere. And so solving, how do I get it to the home at a cost-effective way? How do I manage returns? Or how do I combine that experience of in-person and online? However we define that or whatever that looks is going to change the face of ecomm or commerce.Stephanie:Yup. If you had a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be?David:Wow, It's going to be totally odd. If I had a podcast, it would be about fitness. And I love to do CrossFit, and so it'd be fitness podcast, and I'd have a CrossFit athlete like Travis Mayer or Mat Frazier or somebody on there.Stephanie:I like it. What are you secretly curious about?David:It's funny, it's not overly secret. I think about what the conversation we just had about cryptocurrency. I'm fascinated by cryptocurrency and the underlying applications of distributed ledger across everything from supply chain to the world of, call it finance or micro lending, or just the stock market. A physical stock certificate is no longer... In distributed ledger worlds, you no longer need a physical stock certificates. So I'm fascinated by that. So maybe more fascinated than secretly intrigued.Stephanie:Yeah. I love that. I always keep thinking about smart contracts and especially going through and buying a home and being like, "Why am I still trying to verify that no one from the 1920s or whatever owns this home, that's ridiculous. Why don't we just put this baby on Ethereum or Cardano and call the Dai." There's so many of this.David:The home knows it hasn't been owned.Stephanie:Yeah. It should know that we don't have, we don't need to ask and pay $3,300 in title insurance to make sure that no one else owns this title. That's crazy.David:It is. I agree with you. I agree with you. So I'm interested in how we unlock all that goodnessStephanie:Yeah. When you want to feel more joy, what do you do?David:I spend time with my wife and my daughter and our dog. So I just hang out with the fam.Stephanie:I like that. And then what one thing do you not understand today that you wish you did?David:Wow. That may be the same answer to what I'm intrigued with the cryptocurrency, but I'll go a different route. I don't understand why I can't hit a golf ball more straight, and I would love to understand that. I would love to understand that.Stephanie:I wish I could help you with that, but I just attempted mini-golf with my three-year-old the other day and it did not go well. And I was like, "I shouldn't be teaching you. I think you're doing better than me." So I hope you figure that out on your own.David:Yeah. I do too. I do too.Stephanie:The last one, what's up next on your reading list or on your podcast queue?David:It's funny I don't have it with me, but it is a book about, it's not a crypto book, but it is a distributed ledger of financial book. I don't remember the name of it, it's probably not overly interesting.Stephanie:Is it new?David:It is new. It's a 2020, 2021 book. Stephanie:Digital Finance: Security Tokens and Unlocking the Real Potential of Blockchain.David:That is it. That's sitting there waiting to read. And then it's funny, the other book that is next next on my list, and I'm old school so I have real books-David:a book called From Cotton Picker to Store Keeper. It's the story of the Brookshire's grocery company. So a Texas company at Tyler, Texas, but it's just a store. It's a family-run store that has a grocery chain that has survived and continues to thrive and grow. And so it's just an interesting read Stephanie:All right, David. Well, it's been really fun having you on the show. Thanks for sharing all your insights and hanging out with me for a bit. Where can people find out more about NCR retail and yourself?David:Yeah. I would just go to our website, ncr.com and you'll find about us. And then for me, I'm on the old school social media of LinkedIn. We do still a lot of posting through LinkedIn, it just works for us. So you'll see more thereStephanie:I'm on LinkedIn, it's not that old school. Cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on and joining us.David:Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Accountability, integrity, commitment. These values provide the lens through which ALPS realizes its vision. To live these values requires a culture of authenticity, a place where people can be true to themselves. In this episode of ALPS In Brief, ALPS President and CEO David Bell meets with ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte to reflect on how the company navigated the pandemic, the success of which David credits to the company's healthy culture and its ability to remain transparent. Join them as they discuss the implications of 2020 and their effect on ALPS in 2021. Transcript: MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello and welcome. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, and you're about to listen to the next episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Over the years, David Bell, the CEO of our company and I have got together and chat periodically about what's happening internally, looking at vision and just trying to share some things. And the point of it has been... I think it allows you as the listener and our insureds to learn a little bit more about us each time. And I also hope to have the discussion of vision and what ALPS does, in this regard educate lawyers as to the value of, and a little bit about the process of creating a corporate or a firm vision. So before we jump into it, I'd like to spend a little bit of time here and introduce David a little more formally than I have in the past. David Bell is the president and CEO of ALPS Corporation and ALPS Property & Casualty Insurance Company. David joined us here at ALPS in 2012. Prior to that, he was previously with Allied World Assurance Company, and that's a publicly traded global reinsurance company. David was a founding executive and served as the chief operating officer. After graduating from the University of Montana in 1996 with a degree in finance, he began his career with the Chubb Corporation. David also co-founded and serves on the board of Grateful Nation Montana, a first of its kind in the nation organization that provides tutoring, mentoring, and college education for the children of Montana soldiers killed while on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also appeared on NBC Nightly News, Fox & Friends, and numerous other television and radio outlets talking about the need to make funding education for the children to fallen soldiers, a national priority. And that's just an outstanding and excellent organization David has been involved with you. I'd also like to share that that David has recently been appointed chair of the board of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center. This is a center that promotes better understanding of Asia and of U.S. relations with Asia. And we'll talk about that a little bit here shortly. So David, always a pleasure. Welcome to the podcast. DAVID BELL: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate you taking the time. I always enjoy our conversations about life and business. MARK: It has been fun and I've been surprised, pleasantly surprised and I'm sure it's... these visioned podcasts have had a lot of attention over the years, so it's always a pleasure to get back into it. I thought I would start out. In a prior podcast we set up 2020 and going into 2020, we had a vision and a strategic plan and things were rocking and rolling. And then, the rest of the world, we got hit upside the head with an unexpected global pandemic. I would... Let's start out. How did ALPS survive? How did we do in terms of how did this impact the vision? Let's just explore the impact of all of this. DAVID: Sure. Well, certainly 2020 was not what any of us envisioned. As we began the year, this time, last year, the year threw us a lot of curve balls and the nation and families and everyone, curve balls. And it's been an interesting, at times tragic example of what can happen unexpectedly. But in terms of the company, 2020 was and is closing to be a very good year both in our strategic objectives, largely having been accomplished, not withstanding COVID and our financial objectives as well. And so I think it gave us an opportunity to put some of our core values into practice. They look great on paper and they were fun to talk about when they're not being tested. But a lot of what COVID included necessitated really leaning on those core values as our employees had unexpected needs, as our insureds had unexpected needs and how we had to kind of plan for those and around those and line up in partnership with our different stakeholders. So it was definitely an interesting year. Now, I certainly feel grateful and for us as an organization, that we are not in the type of business that would have been directly in the cross hairs of some of COVID more problematic after effects. And that's frankly... it has as much to do with luck as it hasn't to do with anything else. So, 2020 almost saying with the tone of guilt was a really good year for the company. MARK: Did it impact where we go in 2021? Did it make some changes in terms of how you approach the corporate vision, the strategic plan? DAVID: In terms of the strategic and financial milestones and our vision of where we're taking the company, I really don't think that it played a meaningful role in any detours. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: I think it did forever change the landscape of a lot of aspects. Internally, I think the way that we had to rearrange our business, where we did it from- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... to how we handled the various different circumstances that our employees had and have had to co-exist with. Some of those changes will be permanent and so I think that it certainly wasn't a business as usual year by any stretch of the imagination. But I do think we will emerge better in a lot of ways as a company. And I can't really think of any ways that we would come out of 20 and into 21 weaker. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: And that was... Again, I attribute a lot of that to the fact that we just aren't in the many types of businesses that have had such a profoundly problematic impact. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: And I think our employee base... I'd like to believe that our employee base is stronger in 21 than in 20, because we experienced some pretty profound things together. And I think for evidencing that core values comment, when people have an opportunity to see some of those values put in action, I'd like to believe that they emerged from the other side of that with a stronger bond with one another and more confidence in the organization that they work for. MARK: Well, let me comment about that because speaking as one of these employees that has gone through all of this, I absolutely agree with you. My own personal experience was such that, this transition to the remote work setting for all of us for quite a while, we had to accelerate new tools, using Microsoft Teams as an example, and the communication ability and in terms of just being able to see each other talk. I felt closer now to everybody in the company than I have in... I'm coming up on 23 years here. So it really is... I do want to underscore that it's been a good thing. Initially my response was, everybody's coming. Wow, this is... We've got to get used to it. I used to walk into our world as some of us there have been remote all along, but now it's, I truly do, I feel much closer as part. Okay. Maybe a quick moment, since we're on the topic, do you want to share a summary of your own observations about what we saw in terms of the population we ensure that we are in service to? Any thoughts about that? DAVID: Sure. I mean, we've seen the results of COVID impact our insured firms at both ends of the extremes. For some firms they have seen overall, the COVID dynamic result in more business and more growth. MARK: Right. DAVID: On the other end of the extreme, particularly when the courts are closed and the economy is frozen up, there is not the commerce occurring that creates billable hours. And it has created significant challenges in... and has created a great deal of fear financial and otherwise by particularly some of the smallest firms. And so we've had to... We've reacted based on what our insured partners are coming to us with. We came out for example, for those that that found a reduction or virtual for time, virtual elimination of billable hours revenue, right? We came out and had opportunities to postpone premium payments. And well before the state regulatory bodies entered the scene and started to require insurance companies to do that, we did it. I'd like to think because it was the right thing to do. MARK: Right. DAVID: Right away when we saw that it was going to be necessary, it was clear in the very early stages of COVID, that this was going to create a problem for blocks for lawyers and a problem paying premiums, both because of financial constraints and because of just the tactics of being in a whole office and not being worried, your mail comes and all of that type of stuff, so that part of it was interesting. And I think the survey results that we've gotten back as we survey our insureds based on their experience that they've had with us each year, would suggest that our folks here who bring a great deal of compassion and empathy, many people, and I hope so lawyers themselves, had been in the shoes of our insurance. And so, I'm pleased that by all accounts, it seems we've done that well. On the landscape of what our insureds are seeing from a claims perspective, we definitely saw what I call a significant reduction in the volume of claims. MARK: Yes. DAVID: And we've actually seen a reduction in the severity of the claims that we did get. And so, that will clearly be a temporary phenomenon, right? MARK: Yeah. DAVID: When commerce has stopped and the courts are closed, then it's... You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you're going to have at least a temporary lull in claims activity. Now the big question is, as this thing ramps up, will it hockey stick up? And as businesses fail coming out the other end of COVID, and tragically as marriages and other institutions fail, we effectively "make up" for lost ground on the claims picture. I think that there are pretty reasonable predictions on both sides of that ledger but it's an interesting dynamic to be looking at- MARK: It is. DAVID: ... and talking about. MARK: Yeah. Well, time will tell on that one. When I think about how ALPS has survived or navigated through the pandemic thus far, and seeing wins and losses in terms of some of our insureds from struggling in some ways, and profiting very much in other situations, I really start to believe that the... One of the ways that we navigated this so well, was because we had a solid strategic plan. We had established core values that people understand and live by. Our culture is important. And so to the degree that sharing some of the insights about what we've done, I guess I'd say... How do I say, I'd like to talk about some of this stuff as a tool, as a way to give firms that may be struggling a little bit, one path to try to move forward and come out of this. So if we could take a little bit of time, just briefly, let's start with this whole concept of core values. Can I just... What does that mean to you and where do they come from? And perhaps let me share,folks, the core values that drive us, that David has talked about already here today, as are driving some of this conversation. We ask, is this the truth? Is it fair? Does it benefit our people and the company? And does it help us make a profit? So, those are our core values. So again, David, how do we get to them? Why are they important to you? DAVID: Sure. Well, I think the core values are kind of the went through, which we all hope everything else that we're doing is filtered. And we didn't hire consultants to- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... I'm sure these could be worded differently. I'm sure there are core values that could be added and there are ways that we could word the ones that we have better. I've been in the learning sessions that many people listening to this, have been with great companies that have come up with very different ways to approach this and I'm convinced that there's no right or wrong way to do it. I felt like there was a lot of the golden rule kind of baked into this. MARK: Yes. DAVID: And our stakeholders include the people inside this company who labor every day on our common mission. It includes the people who we insure, right? We make a promise to transfer the risk of something bad having happened, the financial risk of something bad having having happened from their balance sheet to our balance sheet, right? MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: And so we need to make that promise clear in the contract. We need to represent it accurately. We need to fulfill it justly when our claims attorneys are working on the claims. And we need to have the financial stability to be able to fulfill the promises as well. And then of course we do have shareholders too, and so we have kind of different stakeholders. But I think these four points which we've repeated so many times, I think most people probably know by memory. But is it the truth? It's kind of self-explanatory- MARK: Yeah. DAVID: ... a bit self-evident. I do believe that relationships are the headquarters to everything, including financial and business transactions. Without a healthy relationship, it's very difficult to get anything else constructive done. And without truth, it's almost impossible to have a healthy relationship. If you have reason to believe, but the person on the other end of your negotiation or discussion is being dishonest. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). DAVID: I mean, I can't imagine how you can have anything constructive come out of that. And so we have to ask ourselves, is it the truth? Is what I'm telling my employees the truth? Is what our people are telling our insurers the truth? Right? MARK: Right. DAVID: And so that is in some ways, so obvious that it could be glossed over, but boy, is it essential in just everything that we do. The second one is, is it fair? Is it fair? Is it equitable? That's trickier because it's obviously a subjective question, right? Fairness to one is not seeing the same as fairness to other, and so when I look at that is, it's kind of thinking about it from my own perspective, as a leader, as a flawed human being who brings the bias of my experiences that I've had in my own life, into my decision-making. Many of those biases being unconscious, right? And so, the question that I ask for me and the decisions that I'm making, and then I would ask others is, are you in pursuit of fairness and of equality? And it doesn't mean that you'll be perfect all the time. It doesn't mean that everybody... When you feel that you've done something fair, it doesn't mean that everybody else will feel that way. In fact, I think a truism of leadership and arguably one of the ways that you can know whether you'll be successful in leaders, if you're comfortable with the fact that something that you believe is the right thing to do, will not be shared by other people who are important to you. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: We're just going to have people who believe differently about this. But I think if we say, Hey, look, I'm trying my best, I'm going to be truthful and transparent. I'm happy to explain the reasoning for what I'm doing. And I'm using my best efforts to seek fairness and equality. I think if there's a genuine, recognized effort to do that, there's room for shades of gray, as people have their own interpretations. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: That's number two. Number three, as you pointed out, is, does it benefit our people and the company. By the company, obviously it means our insureds- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... and the various people, right? But we don't want to do something to serve people outside this company that hurts our own people. And we don't want to do something that helps or enriches our own people at the expense of folks externally, who we serve as well. And that's also a prioritization question, right? I mean, there's a lot of things to distract us. There's a lot of places that we can spend time and money. And I think sometimes we just need to ask ourselves, is what we're about to do going to benefit our people and the company? Because if the answer isn't an unqualified yes, maybe that's not the best allocation of time or financial resources. And then fourth, which I include unapologetically but also intentionally include last, is, does it help us make a profit? MARK: Right. DAVID: We're a for-profit business. Our ability to fulfill the promises that we make now and in the future, is entirely dependent upon us being a profitable company that is financially strong. But that being said, it's not profit above all else. There are clearly numerous ways that this organization could have, and could today make a lot more money than it is making. And if this were number one, there might be an organizational temptation to do that. Profit is important. It is not the most important. MARK: Right. Yeah. DAVID: And I think if you do everything else well, profit will come. It might not come as much or as fast as some people would like but it is a function of where it sits in your order of priorities. MARK: What I like about this, and it's something I've learned as a result of my experience as an ALPS member. I think a lot of companies, when you sit down and they talk about core values, and they list, these are the things we value and it becomes this thing you put on the wall and you want to advertise, and sort of pound your chest a little bit. These are not things that are symbols. What I like about these values, I've transitioned from a list of things that we value, to a list of things that enable us. They become the lens if you will, of how we view the vision, how we view who we are, how we view what we're trying to do. And I think that distinction, at least for me was very, very important. And I just share that with all of you listening, to approach core values from this perspective of, how do we want to set the view of where we are going? Of who we are? That's what core value is. It's defining us, not defining what we value in the sense of making a profit or... and that's important but we value diversity. And again, I'm not trying to dismiss any of that as relevant, but in my mind, there's a distinction there, I've set up the food for thought. Culture, let us just take one or two minutes. How is culture important in this process from a CEO perspective? DAVID: I've actually evolved as I've gotten older in years and had more experiences, made more good decisions and made more poor decisions, and lived with the consequences of both. I've always been a very metric driven person and would probably define my default management style as in a kind of a KPI terms, right? Key Performance Indicators. I've recognized over the years that if you had to pick, culture is frankly not only more important than the financial metrics, but the financial metrics are more dependent upon a healthy culture to produce them over the long-term, then the people realized that, then I probably appreciated it in the early chapters of my profession. And I'm really... We've hired quite a few people in the last year or two as the company continues to grow and expand in different parts of the country and write more business and in States all around the country. Culture, I think is sometimes the most misunderstood word that's commonly used. And people say, well tell me about your culture. And I say, I can give you kind of my culture speech, but if you want to know what the culture... If people have the opportunity to come to the company, we're not all but most of the employees are based and you walk around, the question that I've asked people to observe for themselves without any ability by me to influence it, is walk around, look at the way that people engage with one another, do their mannerisms show that they are genuinely interested in the discussions that they're having? Are they smiling? Are they able to have a little fun? Are they self-deprecating? Is their energy... Is it a library or look at where it feels like a professional salt mine? Or is it a place where there's vibrancy and laughter but it's also professional and it's very intentional. And so I think that if you have an organization where people feel safe, which has a lot to do with these core values, right- MARK: Right, right. DAVID: ... They feel safe because it's not politicized, there is an expectation that what you hear is honest. Then I think it gives people the ability to be their unguarded cells and be comfortable. And to me, that's culture, that's the culture you want. Because that's where you start to get true performance out of folks- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... because they feel that they can spread their wings, take some risks. And sometimes the risk for somebody who's just putting themselves out there to suggest something, where that might be not in their default picture. MARK: The way I describe this as again, a member of the ALPS family, culture in my mind... A healthy culture encourages, enables, allows, et cetera, mutual investment so that all of us regardless of position, are able to increase to invest in what we're doing as a group. But the organization also invests in us. It's a two-way street. And perhaps it's another way of saying, I think, culture when it's really working, is the... So I've talked about the lens. Core values is the lens that we look at vision, all this. The culture is living the vision. It is walking the talk of what our values say at our... and it is moving towards something, a common goal. Now, I'd love to hear your comment on vision planning in general. ALPS is a corporation. We don't all sit down, all of us and get together. And what's the vision. How do we get to our vision? Can you just give a brief overview of the process? What does that look like? DAVID: Sure. I mean, I think in order to have a vision that you can communicate in order to get the people who you depend upon to make the vision a reality on board, you first have to have a very clear and honest reckoning with where you are right now, right? You can't portray yourself as something other than what you are, or other than the state in which you are in. And so when you say this is who we are, this is where we are. And then this is where we're going. And this is why, right? Because I think, in private enterprise too often, the objective is more. MARK: Yes. DAVID: More is a lot of things, but sustainably inspiring to an employee population. It is not, right? People need to understand what's in it for me? Why, should I be as excited about the vision casting and where we're going? You've told me where we are, you've shown me where we're going. You've outlined some way station milestones in between here and there. Tell me why I should be fully bought in to this pursuit, because it is easier to just do what we're doing right now. Well, and not really venture out with all of the risks and work that are involved with going out onto the vision timeline. And so, I think one of the key approaches is to bring clarity to what those points look like and bring transparent explanation for the reasons, because you are asking people to do more and, or do different than what they are doing right now. MARK: Right. DAVID: And people need to know why they should do that. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I can also share, it includes, sort of measurable metrics. It's one thing to say, well, my vision is to be the most profitable family law firm in greater Montana or something. But if you don't have a pass, we need to sit down and I can assure you folks, we do. That's part of this strategic planning process. David, I want to give you a little bit time, if we still have some time to talk about the Mansfield Center. But before we get to that, can you just... Share what you feel comfortable sharing. What does the future look like for ALPS? DAVID: Sure. We are- MARK: In terms of your long-term vision? DAVID: Yeah, well, so ALPS, it's got such a great three decades of history. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: It started in the wake of the S&L crisis, when there was a genuine crisis of a complete lack of availability for legal malpractice insurance, particularly for the smallest firms. MARK: Right. DAVID: Right? ALPS was one of a handful of kind of white Knights that were created by State Bars in order to solve this problem. Obviously the market has evolved in different cycles over the last three decades. The crisis went away. We've had times when it's been very, very competitive and at times where has been very problematic from a loss perspective. And so, what ALPS has always been is, a direct carrier, a direct insurer of legal malpractice, the GEICO or Progressive, of lawyers malpractice. And it's far more common to have these commercial lines of insurance traded through brokers or agents. And I do believe that brokers and agents provide an important value proposition- MARK: Oh, yes. DAVID: ... for midsize and larger commercial risks in general. But they add a very significant cost as a percentage of the full transaction. And so I think one of the reasons why we've been as successful as we have been particularly in the last five to 10 years, is because we've been able to take the economics that traditionally go to brokers and agents, and share those economics between insureds and the company, really more to the benefit of the insurance. We didn't make this up. It's how Progressive and GEICO- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... permanently disrupted the Personal Lines Industry several decades ago. So, we are not pioneers, I think we've done things differently- MARK: Yeah. DAVID: ... and in many ways done things better as it relates to Commercial lines. But that's been our journey. So, in brief, Mark, to answer your question, the States that we are not in, we need to be in, now there are only a very small number of States that we have no appetite to be in, right? But for the 47 States where we do have an appetite, the States that we're not in, we need to be in. The States that we are in, we need to have critical mass in. MARK: Yes. DAVID: There are States where we're in, but we're not a substantial player. I mean, there are States where we are the undisputed largest- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... LPL carrier by policy count in the state. And there are multiple States where we are that. But there are also a lot of States where we have a very small market share. We need to have critical mass. And then eventually, as we gain more critical mass in places where we don't yet have it, we can start to look laterally and offer products other than legal malpractice. Right now we do legal malpractice, Cyber and EPL, Employment Practices Liability. But our attorneys who buy from us, arguably, the most important risk transfer product that they buy, they trust us directly with. And so we can bring to them offerings of other insurance products whether or not our balance sheet specifically is protecting or not, that's a step. And then eventually, we have ambitions to get into other lines of commercial business beyond legal malpractice. It could be accountants, it could be miscellaneous errors and emissions. I mean, we are now... What I'm describing now, I would put in the intermediate to long-term time horizon- MARK: Yes, right. DAVID: ... not in the short to early intermediate. But those are... When we have vision, I have a timeline illustration that I'm sure both of you and I are picturing in our minds right now, because we've both seen it, that shows for the purpose of employees. These are the steps along our path, going to this place, here is why we're doing this. This is why we think it's important. And I think just as important as that, and I guess, I think the next observation that maybe the final one that I'll offer will kind of wind in almost all of your questions. For me, I think it's important to acknowledge what we are and what we aren't. I think some companies love... And I'm not criticizing this, it works for them. They create almost a cult like atmosphere right there, where you just bleed the color of the company. And I think that that's great and cool, and for some companies. I don't believe that for what we do, right? We are a lawyer's malpractice insurance company, right? So we are not ending homelessness, we are not feeding- MARK: Right. DAVID: ... hungry kids, right? To be sure, the money that we're making enables us to be generous to others- MARK: Absolutely. DAVID: ... and that is a significant priority for us. I think we've had the ability to do a lot of really wonderful things- MARK: Yeah, yeah. DAVID: ... with that, but our core business isn't digging wells in impoverished nations. And so, I think it's not only okay to me, it's important to say, this is a job, a career, it's a place to labor alongside of people who you trust and hopefully who you enjoy. And I think the reason why people at ALPS, why we have so little turnover and why by all of our measuring techniques, people seem to have a very positive perspective of being here, because they can get up and look in the mirror and whether or not legal malpractice was necessarily the job they dreamt up when they were a wee lad, they can nonetheless look in the mirror and say, "We're doing great work." Right? MARK: Yeah. Yeah. DAVID: We create our product honestly and ethically, we sell it transparently. And the instructions that we get from the top on down is, if we owe it we pay it, if we don't know we fight it. We don't really have to get much more complicated than that, right? MARK: Right, right. DAVID: If we've made this promise, keep it. If we haven't made this promise, then we have a responsibility to the other stakeholders to dig in. And so we do dig in and do battle, on occasion. So, that I think is an important aspect of who we are, because it lets people feel... It lets people contextualize the purpose of their role here. I tell people often that I view, I love my job, I love the people who I work with. I look forward to it every day. It is not my life. I take vacation. I largely view the time that I spend here as giving me the means and the ability to do other things, and with other people who I care deeply about. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: So, if you are here 24-7, and on the weekends, you should not be- MARK: Yeah, I agree. DAVID: ...right guys? This should not be your life. MARK: Right. Yeah. DAVID: It should be an important part of your life because of the hours we spend together. But it should not define who you are and it definitely should not be your identity. So, those are kind of, some of the aspects of life under the ALPS umbrella. MARK: Yeah. We're kindred spirits in this regard. If we have a little bit of time and if you need to go, David, you need to go, but I would love if you have a few minutes, you were sharing prior to starting lists, the Mansfield Center. And I suspect a lot of people really have no clue what the Mansfield Center is, and what incredible stuff is happening here in Montana. So, I would love if you could just give a few minutes and share what you'd like to share and fill us in a little bit about what's going on with the Mansfield Center. DAVID: Sure, sure. I mean, I've been on the Mansfield Center Board for probably 15 years. Mansfield Center was created... Mansfield Center and the Mansfield Foundation was created by an Act of Congress, actually. MARK: Oh, wow. DAVID: Senator Mike Mansfield was, I think still to this day, the longest serving Senate president in U.S. history. He and I actually probably don't share ideologically many of the same priorities, but that's the beauty of this whole thing. I mean, Mike Mansfield was... He had kind of epitomized the good old days of bipartisan friendships, deep lasting friendships with people who felt very strongly in opposition politically to aspects of Mike. I recently became the chair of the Mansfield Center Board. Mainly I had a ton of time for the Executive Director. She's wonderful. And I believe that we're in a very... We all know that we're in a precarious time in our country. We all know the dangers that are around us. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: But I also think that there is a national yearning for bipartisanship, for civility, for cooperation. And the Mansfield Center is an ideal national and regional too in the Rocky Mountain West, but national vehicle to channel those types of things. So for example, we have, Dr. Fauci coming up in event that we've planned. We've got the chair of the Problem Solver Caucus, chairs. And if you're not familiar with the PSC which goes under "new labels" sometimes, it's worth a Google. PSC, Problem Solver Caucus, 50 Republicans, 50 Democrats in the house. They are a force now, four key legislation really needs to involve the Problem Solvers Caucus. And you have... It's just such an under-reported wonderful example of what is actually going on, which is, the two chairs, a Republican and a Democrat, who probably don't agree on anything politically, but when you listen to these two people talk, it's very clear that they definitely trust one another, that they, I think soundboard and value the opinions of one another as much, or in some cases more than the members of their own party. And so, they are opportunities, I think to harness this yearning. I just did a call with the U.S. Chamber. I'm also on the board there, and the Mansfield Center. And so, my hope over the next 24 months, is to try to play some small role in tethering together organizations like the Mansfield Center and the Chamber and the Bipartisan Policy Center. And these organizations who have this, we have to work together mission, because I think there is an opportunity right now even where people, even who aren't interested in politics, recognize that we have to start to treat one another better. We have to start respecting the opinions of people who we don't agree with more. We have to talk about things. And so, that's why I'm currently kind of somewhat jumped in the deep end of Mansfield Center activities. I think that there's a good opportunity, and I'm privileged to be a part of it. MARK: Well, I'm really pleased that you shared all of this. I absolutely agree with you in terms of the political situation we're in and the amount of discord is going on just crazy. But just hearing this, it brightens my day. I mean, it so does, it's just... I can just speak as a citizen at this point and say, it's hard, it really is hard, to find the bright spots of hope. And this is one, so I really appreciate. DAVID: Yeah, hopefully we'll see more example. I believe that media, social and mainstream, is the greatest threat to our nation's mental health that exists today. And so I just, I hope that there will be more and more opportunities to witness the current examples of healthy bipartisan dialogue that's going on and more, perhaps just as important, lots of opportunities to create, make, and be a part of new ways for people who have been camped for a long time to extend a hand, to be friends. It doesn't mean you have to agree. MARK: Right. Yeah. DAVID: Right? It just means that you have to just listen for a bit and maybe a little give and take, negotiations. Everybody listening to this podcast, they're likely in a profession where negotiation is a central part of what they do. And give and take is an absolute essential ingredient. We need more of that- MARK: Right, right. DAVID: ... political discourse as well. MARK: Yeah. DAVID: It should not be whoever's in control when the pendulum swings that way, as an absolute. So thank you, Mark for that. MARK: Well, you're welcome. And thank you. This is where we're going to need to leave it folks. I know David has got quite a busy day. David, it truly, it's always a pleasure to get together and spend a little time chatting. I thank you for fitting us in today. Folks, I hope you found something of interest and value in this podcast. And as always, if any of you have any additional thoughts about podcast topics or something you'd like to hear about, someone you'd like us to try to visit with, please don't hesitate to reach out. You may reach me at MBaaS, M-B-A-A-S @alpsinsurance.com. So that's it folks. Bye-Bye. Thanks again, David. DAVID: Thank you.  

Keepsakes, momentos, treasures, heirlooms — whatever you call them, everyone has certain things that they hold dear. For many people, hand-written notes fall into that category. In a world filled with 240-character tweets, rapid-fire text messages, and a stuffed email inbox, getting a hand-written note means more than ever. Even if it comes from a brand.   Personalization is one of the buzziest words in ecommerce, and every business is trying to find a way to give its customers the best, most personal experience possible. David Wachs is helping them with that.David is the CEO of Handwrytten, which uses robots to send personal, hand-written notes, which have a 300% higher open rate than other types of communication. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, David explains why personalization is the way of the future. Plus, he dives into the thinking behind subscription-based services and what it takes for your subscription to stand out to investors. David also shares the advice that he received from Conan O’Brien that has stayed with him his entire life. Main Takeaways:This is Getting Personal: Over the last few years, consumers have started seeking more personalized experiences. There are many ways to create those experiences in-store and online, but ecomm businesses have a personalization advantage due to the data they have access to. Brands that can tap into that data and then follow through are the ones that stand out.   Subscribe Here: Subscription services are popping up everywhere. When done correctly, subscription services provide a recurring revenue model, which is something most investors look for. However, creating the right model takes time, effort, and experimentation, and it’s important to be willing to put in that work to find the model that is best for you and your customers. Here’s Some Advice: When one piece of advice sticks with you 20 years later, that’s something worth paying attention to. Tune in to hear what words of wisdom from Conan O’Brien have inspired David every step of his journey.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today on the show, we have David Wachs, the CEO of Handwrytten, spelled with a Y. David, welcome.David:Thank you so much for having me.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on the show. I just went down a great wormhole of watching your robots write letters. I think that's a great starting point to hear how you came to be at Handwrytten. What brought you to found it?David:Yeah, so this is actually my second venture. My first one was in the text messaging space. So, I started that one before the iPhone came out. We rode the wave of mobile technology with the iPhone and all that. By the end, we were sending millions of messages a day on behalf of major brands, like Toys R Us, a lot of brands that are now bankrupt, but no fault of ours, but Toys R Us, Sam's Club, OfficeMax, Abercrombie & Fitch, etc.David:What we did was we helped them connect with their customers through text messages. And then we also did iPhone apps and Android apps and all that, but our core was really text messages. What we found was, it really, really worked. I mean, these were not spam messages. These were people opted in, so they actually wanted to receive Abercrombie & Fitch offers, etc, straight to their cell phone. When we sent out those offers, they'd have literally lines out the door.David:We worked with Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which is a big smoothie shop chain. Every time they sent out an offer, I'd walk into a Tropical Smoothie. I'd say, "How's this mobile thing working?" They didn't know who I was, and they'd say, "Oh, my gosh. Every time we do it, we have to staff up, because we sell so many smoothies." So, I knew we had something good. But at the same time, I helped create a monster, because everybody nowadays is getting inundated with probably 50 text messages a day from family and commercial texts and right now, political texts, several hundred emails a day.David:I think the average office workers receives about 150 emails a day and spends 28% of their time sorting through all that email. And then you add stuff like Twitter and Facebook and Slack and all the Instagram, all these other electronic forms of communication. Maybe I'm just old, but for me, it all just becomes noise.Stephanie:It's very noisy right now, especially with the political texts that I'm getting.David:Oh, my God.Stephanie:I'm getting like five a day. Stop it. I don't want that anywhere.David:I know, I know. It all just becomes noise. The average 35 to 44-year-old receives nearly 1,600 texts a month. The average 18 to 24-year-old receives 4,000 a month. So, what I know and what you know is no matter how personalized that email or that text looks... Hey, David, thank you so much for your purchase of this coffee grinder or whatever. ... that text was automated or that email was automated. We immediately discount the value of it, right?David:Half of them or way more than half, I never even read, because you just know it's automated junk. And then junk mail, the slick stuff that comes in your mailbox goes directly to your trash can. But what I realized right before leaving, my last company, is handwritten notes not only do they get opened, but they get treasured. I have a bookshelf behind me at my last job that had the handwritten notes I received. My salespeople had all the handwritten notes they received. What I wanted to do was when I sold my last company is I wanted to send handwritten thank you notes to my employees and send handwritten thank you notes to my best clients, thanking them for helping me build up this company and sell it and all the rest.David:I started doing that. I sat down with the best intentions. Very quickly, my hand got sore or I ran out of stamps or I screwed up a card and I had to get another one. I just realized there had to be a better way. So, that's a long explanation on how I ended up with Handwrytten, which is what we have today. What Handwrytten is a combination of software on the front end and then robots on the back end. So, you visit handwrytten.com or use our iPhone app, Android app, Zapier, Salesforce.com Integration, which is a big integration for us, and I know a sponsor of the show, HubSpot integration, all these ways to get your handwritten notes into the system.David:And then we use robots, real robots that we have a patent pending on and I can get into how we develop those, but they're custom robots we built, robots holding real ballpoint pens that actually then write out the notes and mail them on your behalf. The end result is completely indistinguishable from a human.David:We're doing this for large brands and small brands and individuals. Consumers can go on and send their mother a birthday card, for example, all the way up to major brands.Stephanie:Though your mom might know. She'd be like, "That's not your handwriting, Stephanie." Do you guys have any tech that maybe could mimic handwriting, where I could go in there and write up a couple words, and then your robots come in and write it similar to my handwriting?David:So, not exactly. What we do is if you really want your handwriting recreated, we have worksheets for you. It's like you're back in middle school. You have to fill in all the letters and all the numbers multiple times, because we need multiple variations, and we need ligature combinations. So, like two Os together, two Ls together. Do you cross your two Ts with one crossbar or two? We take all that into account. We create a very robust handwriting just for you, but it's an expensive onetime thing. So, pay for it once, it's yours. It's in the system. You can use it as much as you want, no additional charge. So, yeah, but most of our clients or businesses not you sending to your mother. So, for them, it doesn't really matter as much.David:Honestly, I dissuade people from creating their handwriting style, because it is so expensive.Stephanie:Very cool. So, tell me a little bit about maybe some case studies or the ROI that some of your clients are seeing when they send out a note that looks personalized versus just a typical letter, something that's written up by a computer and is very obvious?David:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have a bunch of stats here, but I don't want to constantly give you footnotes on the stats. So, if I say any stats that are of interest to any of your listeners, just visit Handwrytten.com. That's Handwrytten with a Y. You can pull up all the resources and double check, be a fact checker, etc. But handwritten on envelopes, just the envelopes, have a 300% or a three-time greater open rate than printed envelopes. You just Google that stat and that pops up everywhere. And then also response rates are anywhere from 20 to 50% higher.David:We work with a bespoke suit company based in Canada. They send out coupons every year around the holidays. Those coupons come with a handwritten note from their CEO and his handwriting style with his signature. Those coupons have an 18% redemption rate when usually the company's coupon redemption rate is closer to the 3 to 5% rate. So, it's been very effective for them.David:We have other clients... Let me see here. We have some retention improvements. So, we have a client that does meal box or actually snack boxes for offices. Basically, they'll send you a huge box of snacks every two weeks with like beef jerky or crackers and cookies and all that. What they do is if they accidentally send your office the wrong snack box, they'll follow up with a handwritten note and the right snacks. Now, obviously, the additional snacks help increase retention, but the handwritten note doesn't hurt.David:What they find is if they screw up a client and they send them this snack box, that customer ends up having a greater lifetime value than if they never screwed up in the first place.Stephanie:That's smart. I mean, not only are you getting more times to get in front of that customer, but then you can show them how great the customer experience is even when things go wrong. Yeah, it seems like you'd be a lot more memorable by actually messing up. That's pretty smart.David:Yeah, and then we have some side effects of these, because most people just get one or two handwritten notes a month now, not like the good old days when they receive a bunch. People literally Instagram and tweet these things. So, we work with a company called VNYL.David:What they are is they are a vinyl record subscription service. So, if you're really into old school vinyl, they will look at your Spotify account and your other... I don't know about Pandora, but your other music services. They'll see what you listen to. And then they'll send you vinyl records that they recommend based on your habits. With those vinyl records, they'll include a handwritten note written by us. So, every day we'll write up a whole bunch of their handwritten notes, send them back to VNYL. They'll get inserted with these orders. Not only people love those notes, they then post them on Instagram and on Twitter. That creates a viral aspect that then helps drive more business back to VNYL.David:We've seen the same thing with a morning YouTube show. It's one of the largest morning YouTube shows on the planet. They're a client of ours. They were launching a fan club, where you'd pay 5 or 25 bucks a month or whatever to be a part of their fan club. The first thing they'd send you was this handwritten note from the two hosts of the morning show.David:What's funny is they didn't change up the language on that note at all. Everybody got the same note with the exception of dear Stephanie or whatever, but the rest of the note was identical. All these people are posting these photos of this note to Twitter over and over again. I mean, it's the same note just different names over and over. People were so upset if their note did not arrive within a few days. You know what I mean? They were so looking forward to receiving a note from these two YouTube guys.Stephanie:Are there any backlash on that? Because I could see some people feeling like maybe they were tricked, or especially earlier, when you're talking about retention. If someone is sending out a set of vinyl records every month and see similar handwriting or the exact same one every single time, it seems like there could be a risk of someone saying, "Hey, this isn't actually authentic. You tricked me." Have you seen that backlash, or how do you guys approach that when it comes to a subscription model with someone who's maybe sending out a same snack box every month with a note in it that people will eventually be like, "Oh, yeah, this is obviously not a person writing it. It's the same every single time"?David:Yeah, that's a great question. So, with VNYL, they've got a number of personalities that are the box curators. So, there's like 10 some odd people that are responsible for making these recommendations. Each one of those people was assigned one of our handwriting styles. So, if you get a note from Cody, it'll be in Tenacious Nick. Our handwriting style is called Tenacious Nick this month. And then next month, you get a message from Suzy, it might be in Chill Charity. The following month if you get one from Cody again, it'll be back in Tenacious Nick. So, you'll associate Tenacious Nick with Cody. And then that's how that works.David:We have not seen a backlash. With the morning YouTube show, I was shocked that they didn't see it because they weren't... We vary stuff on the notes. So, in fact, we worked with a home fitness gym thing. They wanted a note from their founder included with every one of their products. They were annoyed with us that there was variation in the writing. We said, "Well, this is-Stephanie:A good thing.David:"... this isn't a print product. Every line's not supposed to identically look like the other card." They were just not a great client for us, because of that. They wanted everything to be exactly... That's not how people write.Stephanie:Yeah, that's actually the exact question I was going to ask. Do you incorporate errors or smudges? How do you think about building the technology behind the scenes to make it more real?David:Yeah, for sure. So, we actually built our own font engine for one, leveraging some best of class technologies underneath it all. But we do stuff like the left margin of the card is not straight. So, it's not like every letter of every line starts on the same exposition as the line above it. There's what we call jitter. It moves in or moves out very subtly, but a couple of points. A point is a 72nd of an inch for those that don't know, but yeah. So, we move those letters in and out, so that there's some variation there. We also do the same thing with interline or intraline, I always screw that up, but the spacing between lines.David:So, one line might be slightly closer to the line above it and slightly farther from the line below it than the next one and vice versa. So, there is some line spacing stuff going on there. Then, like I said, the letters themselves alter quite a bit. We've got at least four or five copies of every letter plus ligature combos. So, you might have three copies of an L, but then we also have three copies of two L's together. So, there's a lot of variation in going into our handwriting. We get this a lot. We don't curve the text. So, there is a little bit of maybe over precision on the text is fairly straight.David:Now, the page might be slightly rotated, so that the text runs up the page ever so slightly or down the page ever so slightly, but it's not like the text is going to be on a roller coaster and go up and then down and back again. It's relatively consistent. We are working on that, but it has not been a problem. It's still very much passes most people's internal Turing tests of what looks human versus what looks robotic. So, yeah, we don't want to overdo it. The line jittering and the left margin jittering is all very, very subtle. So, that it's not like creating some uncanny valley that looks totally bogus. You know what I mean? So, those are some of the things we do there. We work with a mattress company. In every mattress box, there's, "Thank you so much for buying our mattress."David:And then there was what I call a doodle. So, they made I think like eight of these little pieces of art. So, the words, "Thank you for your mattress," were not in one of our handwriting styles. It's a direct replica of somebody writing that. And then below that, the doodle is a direct replica of somebody drawing a doodle. So, it could be moon in the stars or there's one of somebody sleeping in a bed with a little thought cloud showing what they're dreaming of, a little cat.David:What was cool about that is with eight variations, if you buy two mattresses from them, one might have one little note from one guy in it and then the next mattress might have a note from somebody else in it. So, it looks really, really real. And then you post those to Twitter. It really shows up well there. So, that's what I recommend doing. If you're doing the same note over and over in volume, let's just mix it up a little bit. It doesn't cost you really anything more after you get going. You have some great variation.Stephanie:I saw you guys moved to having a subscription model, which a lot of guests who come on the show, they talk about thinking about doing that or some of them have recently. How did you guys know it was the right time to move into a subscription model?David:That's a great question. You're the first person to ask me that.Stephanie:Good.David:Yeah, so there's a number of reasons we did that. I will be bluntly honest, because I think it's of most value to everybody. Number one, I've self-funded Handwrytten to date for the last six years. I intend to continue doing that. However, we were just written up in the Inc 500. We had a good placement in the Inc 500. That created a lot of interest by investors. One thing investors are looking for is a recurring revenue model. While most of our clients recur every month, we have like solar panel installers that send thousands of messages a month. It's not structured as a recurring revenue model. It's just whatever you do, you pay for the next month, you don't do anything, you don't pay anything for it. So, we wanted to come up with a structure for a subscription model that would work.David:This is more the PR-friendly answer, but they're both totally true. On the flip side, we have customers that wanted to send a lot of notes a month but didn't want to do them all at once and didn't want to do a huge pre-pay buy. So, before this, there were two ways to get discounts. One was to do a huge pre-pay, where you say, "Okay, I'm going to send 10,000 notes for the next couple months, and I'll pay for that at a discount;" or go on our website and bulk upload a spreadsheet of 10,000 notes. For a lot of people, those two models don't work. What if I'm sending 10 cards a month, but they're spread out over the course of a month? I mean, I'm still sending 10 cards, can't they get a little bit of a discount on that?David:So, we tried to come up with a model that serves them. It's tough, because unlike an email provider or a CRM provider or anybody else, we have hard costs. Forget about the cardstock and the labor that goes into every card and all that, we have a 55¢ stamp on every card. That's expensive. You know what I mean? So, it took us years to think of a way that would make this work. What we decided was you prepay for credit. That credit, it goes on your account. So, you pre-pay 35 bucks, you get 35 bucks of credit on your account. But that credit also gets you a 15% discount on all orders for the month, so not just on the orders you spend the $35 on. After you exhaust that 35 bucks, you still get that discount moving forward for the rest of the month.David:So, that was the model that we came up with, because we wanted to provide value, we don't want to rip anybody off, but we needed a recurring revenue option. It is strictly an option. You can use our service for the rest of your life without ever using one of these subscription models.Stephanie:I think the one thing that came to mind was I've been listening to a lot of different interviews of SaaS founders, talking about how the subscription model, the future is not as much about getting into a long-term contract. It's more actually pulling back to where you only pay for what you use. It's not actually locking you into a contract anymore, because a lot of people are nervous about that or maybe prepaying. So, were there any surprises that maybe you guys have seen within the last week and a half as you implement this or pushback from customers or anything where you're like, "Oh, we weren't expecting that"? The consumer maybe thought this one thing, but actually, our plan was different. We adjusted it. Anything that you had to change after launching?David:Yeah, there's a few things. Nothing that was a got you and nothing we're really changing. It was more interesting. Okay, so we had somebody cancel their plan today. They signed up and then immediately canceled. So, if you sign up and you get the 15% off, that's 15% off the cards. That's not 15% off gift cards, which should go without saying, but maybe we have to add some language to the FAQ and all that, because I mean, that would be an arbitrage opportunity for somebody. You go on our website. You buy a Visa card for 15% off. You then take that Visa card and buy more Visa cards for... You know what I mean? So, that's just crazy town.Stephanie:It's good you didn't figure that out the hard way.David:No, no, this pre-pay for a while has always locked you out. I mean, when you pre-pay for something, you're pre-paying for the service, not for gift cards. It clearly does not work. I mean, it could be a huge issue. So, that was one. We had a woman that was very upset that she didn't get a discount on her gift cards, and we refunded her. We have a money back guarantee. So, if anybody uses our service and they don't like the service, they don't like the handwriting, they don't like the card quality. They don't like the subscription, whatever, we'll just give you your money back.David:I think more companies need to broadcast their money back guarantee, because even if they don't think they have one, they have one. On our website, we have our money back guarantee. Before that, if anybody called and complained, we still gave them their money back. We just didn't advertise that we had a money back guarantee. So, we gave the service without getting the benefit, if you know what I mean. Side point. So, point number one was people were shocked that you don't get a discount on gift cards creating an arbitrage.Stephanie:One person, but yes.David:Yeah. Point number two, I'm surprised that... So, we have a 10% plan, a 15% off Plan and a 20% off Plan. We might go 25%. But I'm actually surprised so many people subscribed for 10% off. I didn't realize 10% off would move the needle where people would be willing to subscribe. But if you're in that area where you send that many cards, why not subscribe? So, that's great. I'm glad people are using it. In fact, it's our most popular plan right now.David:So, that was two, and then three, which I expected. But my expectation was realized was people we have a cancel at any time type offer. So, we have a lot of people signing up for the 10% off plan, sending five cards, and then canceling the plan. That's fine. If they want to do that, I'm not going to stop people from doing it. It's more important to us to be transparent and create a plan that has no lock in and deal with the people that are just trying to take advantage of it. If they want to do that, fine.Stephanie:Yeah, I mean, it also seems like that you're still getting that sale and you'll probably be remembered in the future. They're like, "Oh, that was a good experience. Okay, I'm going to go back again.” So, maybe it's not as harmful as... Even though initially, you might be like, "Oh, that's annoying," but maybe the future customer that you wouldn't have otherwise had.David:Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's totally fine. I've still sold them five cards or whatever it is. So, it's no big deal. It's funny how people will go out of their way to save 10%, 10% for me doesn't really move the needle but whatever.Stephanie:I know. Yeah, that's very interesting that, 10% moves people to act like that. I think the biggest thing that you are also saying is like the clarity in the subscription model, which I think is really important and that a lot of companies don't get right from the start, because they can make really confusing ones.Stephanie:So right now, it also seems like there could be... Well, twofold, either a big opportunity in direct mail or it's noisier than ever, because brands know that people are home and they're starting to do direct mail where maybe they weren't doing that a year ago. So, how are you thinking about direct mail right now and making sure that your notes are getting opened? Is there still an opportunity, or is that dried up with where we're at right now?David:So, I will say we are the largest handwriting provider in the world. Based on our volume, I will tell you there is room for improvement. We have very large brands using us, but it's still just a drop in the bucket of everybody that could use us. I think a lot of brands just don't even know it's an option.David:There's the BCG matrix, which is like the hardest thing to sell is a new product to a new customer. If you're an office supplier and you start selling your existing customer a different type of pen, well, they're an existing customer and they've already bought a pen from you. So, that's an easy sell. If you're selling a new customer a pen, people know about pens do an easy sell. But if you're selling Joe on the street that you've never met a handwriting service, it's very hard. So, there is a bunch of that. We're doing our best to raise awareness. That's been targeting quite frankly, a lot of Facebook advertising. We used to just go after Google and SEO, SEO, that type of stuff. But now, we're trying to drive awareness through Facebook and LinkedIn and all the rest.David:But yeah, I think there's a huge opportunity for brands to do this, because nobody is doing it or very few are doing it in a consistent, structured manner where some of our clients come to us and do a one-off campaign or one-off promotion, and then they'll say, "Oh, that was the greatest promotion we've ever done. We'll reconsider it again next year." You're thinking, "Why is it a promotion in the first place?" That should be an ongoing part of your CRM outreach strategy." Right now, we're developing a whole program just for automotive dealers to do just that, where you buy a car, you immediately receive a handwritten thank you. A couple weeks later, you receive a service offer, birthday card, happy holidays card, etc. It just repeats without the dealer even having to think about it. I think that model of moving it away from being a promotion to being a part of your CRM strategy is really what needs to happen.David:But a lot of other online brands actually have the advantage over traditional retail, because they have the home addresses of the clients where the retailers may or may not depending on if they're in the loyalty program. So, online brands have this huge benefit of creating a one-to-one personalization opportunity through handwritten notes that brick and mortars might not. So, there's that. And then also right now, it's at the disservice of large B2B brands, because they might have your work address, but then they don't have your home address. So, they're left out of the shuffle too. But even before this COVID crisis, we were seeing online brands take much better advantage of this than in-store.David:I can give you a perfect example here. We work with a very high-end perfumery that makes a very expensive cologne and very expensive perfume. Everybody that's buys this cologne and perfume from their website, they received a very beautiful handwritten note, thanking them for their purchase, etc. But if you walk into a department store, I walked in there with my wife and kids. We're walking through the mall, and we walked into this department store prior to COVID. I found the product and I was showing it to my wife. A store rep came over and said, "This is the product." I said, "Oh, yes, thank you. I'm just showing to my wife because we send out your handwritten notes." She said, "No, you don't, I have to send my own handwritten notes." I explained what I meant.David:She said, "As a store rep, we're supposed to send handwritten notes, but we're too busy talking to customers like you, finishing up a sale, cleaning up the merchandising of the department, doing whatever else is required. We never get around to it. So, even though we have the best intentions in place, because it's not automated for us, we don't get to it." We've been pushing this perfumery to offer the same service to their in-store experience, which would create a much better personal one-to-one experience than the online only.David:Where we've done a really good job of this or really the client that we have... It's all about the client. It's a high-end luxury leather goods company. They make handbags, purses, shoes, that type of thing. Every time you make any purchase whatsoever in one of their retail outlets, a handwritten note goes out from our service. But it's signed by the store clerk that you worked with or it has their name and their phone number at the bottom of the note. So, we automated what this perfumery didn't, basically. We tied it to the end. But short answer your question is I still think there's a huge opportunity here. Quite frankly, people are very lonely right now. Any handwritten mail I think will get savored and opened and really showing that-Stephanie:They need a good handwritten note.David:They really do.Stephanie:Now's the timeDavid:Yeah, people have the time for it. I think at an abstract level, so two things. One, maybe they might not believe it's actually handwritten if they start getting thousands of these a day or something, which will never happen. But they might say, "Oh, gee, this is not actually handwritten." But that doesn't stop people when they get their Christmas card from the president, depending on what election year it is. But if they get their Christmas card from the president, they probably realize the president didn't sit down and sign a Christmas card to them. But it almost doesn't matter. It's the thought that counts and there is that they went above and beyond just laser printing a note. They figured out a way to send me something that seems really personal.Stephanie:So, I wanted to circle back to what we were talking about earlier about investors and how you were self-funded for the last six years. I want to hear a little bit about why you're thinking about bringing on investors now and what that thought process is like.David:So, this really has more to do with David Wachs than Handwrytten. So, this is my second venture. My first company, that text messaging company, also was self-funded. I built that up and I was able to sell that off and do pretty well. That was a true startup. There were a lot of nights where it was just me in an empty room with a two-liter diet Mountain Dew sitting by my side as I program.Stephanie:Nice, healthy.David:Classic, stereotypical startup image, I lived that. But that company actually took off a lot faster than Handwrytten. This time, I decided, "Okay, well, I'm just going to invest my own money, I'm going to build it up." I never really considered venture until this year when we got on the Inc 500. The problem is or the problem I see is we're in a bit of a doughnut hole. Had we gone for venture early on, we would have been great, because then we would have had an idea and no track record. We would have built up this company.David:We would have taken up an S ton of cash, garbage truck cash. We would have invested all of this advertising and built it up really fast. But instead of doing that, I grew profitably and organically, I reinvested profits back into the company, so our growth trajectory is much slower. Because of that, now venture capitalists don't even really want to talk to us. Oh, you've only grown at this rate, not 50 times. I'm like, "Well, yeah, because I've grown smartly and profitably."Stephanie:That seems to be a focus, the tides are turning a bit. I mean, there was, for a long time, just grow as quick as you can, we'll give you a bunch of money. You don't even have to figure out the business model. Do you even have a business? If you want to pivot halfway through spending all the money, it's fine, but I am starting to see a shift now, where, yeah, they're looking for companies actually grow sustainably, at least some VC firms around here. So, I don't know if you experienced that yet.David:Honestly, I've been so busy. So, we entertained a few VC phone calls. They were very, very nice people and very, very big firms. They basically said, "Oh, well, you haven't grown enough this year." I said, "Well, COVID has been going on. So, there's that." Because not a lot of our clients were retailers, so we lost that business, etc. So, to answer your question, part of it was I've actually worked in VC. I've worked for two different VC firms, but I've never taken VC.David:I thought it would be good for me personally to go through that experience of receiving VC, having somebody else to report to from a funding perspective. And then potentially down the road, really working for a VC firm as a partner or something like that. I thought that would be my next transition, because this is company number two. I don't see myself going through this process again. So, that was the thought process of, "Well, if I take VC now, we could really blow this up, because I've got a well-oiled machine here that just needs money to scale, that needs to scale advertising."David:The technology is pretty much done, although we're doing some really innovative stuff in machine vision, machine learning, which I can talk about. The idea was, "I haven't done it before. Let me give this a go, if anybody's interested." I had a handful of conversations, they all went the same way. I'm short on time these days. So, I was just like, "Well, let me get back to the grindstone and maybe worry about that later."Stephanie:Got it. Cool. Yeah, thanks for answering that. I was wondering where you left off with that. All right. So, we only have 10 minutes left. So, I was going to shift over to the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, David?David:I will do my best.Stephanie:All right. That's all I ask for. What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?David:Personalization. Whether it's a handwritten note or an experience that's personalized when you visit a website or anything else, I think standing out through personalization, there's been study after study by companies like Segment that say that's a huge opportunity.Stephanie:Do you name your robots?David:No, we name our handwriting. The robots are numbered. So, it's 1 through whatever, 95 right now. We used to have an animated robot, and he still is on our website. If you buy a card, you'll see this little animated robot at the end. His name is Pinbot 2000, because when I was growing up, things that ended in 2000 sounded very futuristic even though [crosstalk 00:44:47].Stephanie:Yeah.David:His name is Pinbot 2000.Stephanie:I like it. What's your favorite handwriting?David:I like Tenacious Nick. If you visit our website, it's a very sweeping block print.Stephanie:[inaudible] check it out. What's up next on your reading list?David:It's funny. I've got a bunch of books here. This one is by the head of sales for HubSpot, Mark Roberge? I hope I'm pronouncing that right. It's called the Sales Acceleration Formula. It was recommended to me. So, I figured I'd read it tomorrow when I have to fly to Chicago.Stephanie:Very cool. What's up next on your Netflix queue?David:My brother actually is a bigwig at Netflix, but what I'm watching right now is on Amazon. It's The Boys. I'm trying to finish season two.Stephanie:Oh, is it good?David:Yeah. It's a dark superhero tale. The one I liked on Netflix... It was 40 minutes and was great. I think it's called Cubers. It's great. If you don't care about Rubik's Cubes at all, which I really don't, it was still wonderful. It's the story of two Rubik's Cube masters. One of them is autistic, and the other Rubik's Cube master, who is just a really nice guy in Australia. The friendship that evolves through these two Rubik's Cube masters. That's really good.Stephanie:That's interesting. If you were to have a podcast, what would the podcast be about and who would your first guest be?David:That is a great-Stephanie:It can't be about handwritten notes.David:No, no, I think it would be about one-to-one marketing though, which is very much in the same vein and probably a sucker answer that I'm giving you. But it would be how do you market to people on a personal level that doesn't come across as junk, because everything's looking like junk?Stephanie:Yup, I like that.David:That would be what it is, and I apologize in advance for that answer.Stephanie:No, I like that one. I mean, I think it's much needed now. Who would you bring on as a guest?David:Joe Polish, who's a marketing expert. He's quite good. Dean Jackson who he works with would be a good guest for that. There's probably somebody from Segment as they have a lot of data that backs it up. So, I'd want to talk with them.Stephanie:Cool. All right. And then the last one, since you've started a company before and you've sold it and started another one, what piece of advice would you give to a new entrepreneur who's starting up a new commerce company?David:Commerce or not, the one piece of advice that I give to everybody was told to me in person over dinner. So, this is a little bit of a humble brag by Conan O'Brien. So, when I was in college, I used to be in this group that would bring speakers to campus and we brought Conan O'Brien. So, the guys that organized got to sit down and do dinner with him. This is a long time ago. So, he was relatively starting out on having his own talk show back then.David:But the advice he gave us was, "Always get in over your head." That has stuck with me for 20 some odd years now, always get in over your head. I mean, people give you advice every day, but how much of it sticks for 20 years. The way I interpret that is if you don't get in over your head, you're never going to grow. You're just never going to pull yourself out of your comfort zone and really do something bigger than you thought you could do. So, I think about it all the time.Stephanie:I like it. Okay, Conan, coming in with some good wise words, pretty good. All right, David. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. Where can people find out more about you and Handwrytten with a Y?David:Handwrytten with Y, so you can visit Handwrytten with a Y, H-A-N-D-W-R-Y-T-T-E-N.com. We have @handwrytten on Twitter, Handwrytten on Facebook. Personally, I'm @DavidB, as in boy, Wachs, W-A-C-H-S on Twitter. You can find me there, although I don't tweet very much. If anybody wants to try the service, there's two things I'd say. If you go to the business page, you can actually request a samples kit for free. That samples kit will have all sorts of different handwriting styles for you, including Tenacious Nick, my favorite, but they're all good.David:The other thing is if you sign up and you sign up with an email and password, you can enter a discount code. Enter discount code 'podcast', and you'll get $5 in credit that you can then use to send yourself a card or somebody else's card or send your first card, whatever. So, that's available for you too.Stephanie:Awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much, David. It's been fun. We will have to have you back in the future once you can see more about your subscription service and all that. So, thanks for coming on.David:Awesome. Thanks, Stephanie.

David Sonn is the Founder and President of Arc Intermedia, a HubSpot certified, digital only agency that focuses on “customer acquisition using digital strategies and digital tactics.” David ran a web development company for 13 years but found that he and his partner had become “production monkeys,” delivering a commodity and competing with offshore developers. “You never want to sell or have to build a model based on price,” he says. Ten years ago, when people started requesting Search Engine Optimization, David found his niche. Intrigued by the ability to precisely measure results, he founded Arc Intermedia -- and got out of the website building business and into the business of building businesses.  David may have started his agency “really slow and really small,” but he didn't start “really cheap.” He hired the most experienced SEO and paid search experts he could find, people who could lead practice area development. He says, “When you're a somewhat small agency that we are, every person counts.” Hiring and investing in the right people is critically important. In this interview, David provides a wide range of tips on building a strong digital business. Marketing initiatives need to start with strategy. When clients try to tell Arc Intermedia what they want the agency to do, David says it is critically important to understand “the good, the bad, and the ugly” about that business, to get to know the client well enough to discover things of which even the client may be unaware, and to know the client's goals – what the client is trying to accomplish – before building the strategy and implementing the strategically determined tactics. As many people in marketing say, content is king. Marketers need to know how to leverage that content through SEO, distribution, credibility, and across social platforms. While a variety of tactics can be used get leads, to drive people to a website, to fill out a form, to give them “stuff,” people often resist filling out forms because they don't want the sales calls that immediately follow. David recommends giving people something of value in exchange for their personal information.  The key to building customer relationships is nurturing potential clients through broad exposure on a variety of platforms and providing a variety of (non-sale) interactions. Use marketing automation to nurture clients to help close the deal. Clients often come to Arc Intermedia and request adding a particular tool, such as SEO, to their marketing mix. David reminds us that today's digital marketing requires an integrated process to succeed. SEO, social presence, publication on an industry website or blog . . . these things “loosen the soil” and build the familiarity and credibility that makes a paid search or display ad work.  Customer acquisition is what “moves the needle for the bottom line of a company.” Paid search has evolved to a high level of sophistication. Precise targeting produces a wealth of data. Advertising on social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – should be backed by “great strategy.” Knowing when to pivot, why you need to pivot, and having the ability to pivot is critical.  David describes paid search as a “sprint,” and SEO as a “marathon.” He feels that it is important for both parties to set their expectations realistically about what's going to be accomplished when. He requires SEO contracts to be for at least 12 months – SEO takes that long to show a return. After a year, when he shows clients where they were in month zero and what has been accomplished in the year that followed, “the contracts basically renew themselves.” SEO on paid media optimized for terms and topics in high demand? He says, “It's infinite traffic if you do it correctly.” David can most easily be found on his agency's website at arcintermedia.com.   Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by David Sonn, President and Founder of Arc Intermedia based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the podcast, David. DAVID: Thank you. Hi, Rob. How are you? I appreciate you including me today. ROB: Great to have you here and have a little pre-call with you before this. Tell us about Arc Intermedia. What is this agency, and how did it get started? DAVID: Arc Intermedia is what I call a digital only agency. Why I need to make that designation is I've been around the block for a while, so I have experience in traditional advertising and that kind of thing, but with this agency, when I built this agency 10 years ago, I wanted to hyper-focus only on digital strategies and digital tactics. We basically will come to a customer that needs more customers. I don't care if you're Apple Computers or you're a two-man band working out of a garage; everybody needs more customers. So we built this agency on customer acquisition using digital tactics. ROB: Got it. How long has the business been around? DAVID: I founded this 10 years ago. Oh, by the way, we're 10 years old this year. ROB: Happy birthday. Anniversary, whatever you want to call it. DAVID: Thank you. [laughs] Yes. ROB: The digital tactics even over that time have changed a lot. What were the tactics on Day Zero when it's you and – were you by yourself? Did you have partners in the earliest stages of the firm? DAVID: I'm going to back up and tell you a little different story. I promise, promise, promise to get there. Before I had Arc Intermedia, back in 1996 I founded one of the first interactive firms in Philadelphia. When we went into business, and I had a partner at the time, we built websites. At the time, 1996, a lot of companies didn't even have websites yet. There was no roadmap whatsoever. We thought this was a fantastic idea. We thought, hmm, this internet thing has a chance to stick around. So we built a company around it without a real plan. We raised some money from friends and family and just got after it. We made a lot of mistakes, but it was all good. 13 years of success proved that out. But I did find that when I had that web development company, we basically became production monkeys. Clients began to tell us what they wanted, what colors, this, this, and this, and we just became builders, not thinkers or advisors. When you're in that space and you begin to try to build a commodity like that, you're now competing against the whole world. And oh by the way, it's really hard if you think you're going to compete against offshore solutions on price. You never want to sell or have to build a model based on price. I began to look at the business and say, hmm, is this really what I want to continue to do? Near the tail end of it, we began to get more and more requests for SEO, search engine optimization. We were building these websites, but no traffic was coming to them. Clients wanted us to do SEO. I began to get my hands involved in SEO, and then jointly, paid search – way, way, way back, the origin of that was – I don't know if you remember the GoTo Network? It was the beginnings of all of it. ROB: Oh yeah. DAVID: I got my hands involved in the GoTo Network, and I got real excited. I'm like, look, we can build out some strategies. We have some money, and we instantly can begin to drive traffic to these websites. Then I had clients calling me up and telling me that they were getting all these sales leads and things were changing, and what was going on at the website? That was a light bulb moment for me. I really didn't want to be involved in the web building business anymore. I wanted to be in the business building business. I got real excited. Being an entrepreneur, I started to get that itch again. I'm like, I built this company and it's now been 12-13 years. I think it's time for me to bust a move into something else that I want to do. This customer acquisition piece – the part that actually moves the needle for the bottom line of a company – became very exciting to me. Then I did, and now back to your original question, I began to explore some of these original tactics much further. I didn't see any companies out there specializing in it. The agencies of the land, the traditional ad agencies, still wanted to spend your money on radio and TV and that kind of stuff and things that couldn't be measured. As scary as digital is in that you can measure right down to the penny, to the click, to this, to that, that actually was really, in some weird way, extremely enticing to me. That we could see it, we could measure it, and I could stand up and find the client and say, “I succeeded” or, hopefully not, “I failed.” But for some reason that was an incredible, incredible attraction to me. I decided that it was time to dissolve the web development company, and I launched Arc Intermedia, but this time I decided to start really slow, really small on purpose. It was myself and Mike Maier, who came over with me. It was just the two of us, and we started the company. We hyper-focused on some of the basic tactics of the day. There was SEO; it was much different than it is today, but it was SEO, and there was the paid search and that piece. Then as I began to see what was working for customers, the different technologies and tactics that were evolving, I began to build the experts around it. I went out and got one of the best SEOs, Ron Sansone, in the Philadelphia area, and he began to build out our search practice. From him, I added more people with SEO experience, paid search experience. Rasheed Hendricks heads up our paid advertising department, and he's just absolutely fantastic. That piece is ever-evolving. And then, as you probably have heard from doing many of these interviews, content is king. You need to know how to leverage content. Content can be leveraged from an SEO standpoint, from a distribution standpoint, from a credibility standpoint, from a social standpoint, all of it. You and I were talking a little bit about how we're HubSpot certified. Katie Schieder on my team is in charge of content and content marketing, and she does a fantastic job with her team. There's a lot of different pieces, and I know I'm maybe sounding like I'm rambling right now, but hopefully I answered your question. ROB: One thing I hear in there is a strong recognition and appreciation for a team of experts in the different subject areas. One thread I want to pull on a little bit that's unique about your story is you mentioned in your previous business, the web development shop, that you had investors. We talk a good bit about investors, but what we most often talk about on this podcast is people who are proud and grateful to not have investors, and maybe sometimes a chip on their shoulder because they know other people who have raised money and have gone out of business. What did you learn from having investors, and what would you say to other people who think they wish they had investors? You mentioned it was friends and family, so we didn't go out and raise $100 million, but still there are entailments to that. DAVID: There is nothing – nothing – sexy about having investors. Zero. Now, I was super fortunate that we ended up raising money through friends and family. And oh by the way, that was because no bank would touch us. When we had a plan to build a web development company back in 1996, every bank says, “Oh, that's fantastic, but I need a 150% collateral that we are going to freeze for every dollar that we give you.” If I had a 150% collateral that I could do, I wouldn't be sitting at that bank looking for money. That was just silly. So obviously that never went through. But we were fortunate that we were able to do it through friends and family and a lot of people who supported us. I will tell you, there's an incredible extra weight on your shoulders because you don't want to fail them. In my mind there was no chance, ever, in any way, shape, or form, that I wasn't going to return every dollar back to the people that invested in us – and then some, of course. My success was definitely going to be their success, and I was going to make sure that happened regardless, even if it meant that I was going to pay that money back personally. I was going to get it done. When you're taking VC money, that's a different approach and you can't always do all of that. But having investors is not sexy or anything that you should really go for unless you absolutely have to. Now, when I had Arc Intermedia, the one thing that was to my benefit was that I was going to start small, and I'm also now a little bit older, a little bit wiser. I self-funded my whole thing. The beauty there is, I never had anybody standing on my shoulders. I never had anybody that I had to answer to in that regard. So my advice would be try, try, try to do it on your own or figure out a way to do it on your own or try to figure out where you can get investment from people that trust and believe and love you, and then the VC thing is separate. Last. ROB: Right on. I think I would perceive in the web world, when you talk about the '90s, you'll hear a lot about some of the sticker prices people paid for pretty simple websites by our standards. You'll hear half a million, a million, 10 million. You mention competing with offshore now and this race to the bottom. Certainly it has been cheaper and cheaper to get a pretty good website. You can pay a kid from a high school and get something pretty decent. You can pay a pro less than you would pay one person in a year for sure. You don't see that same race to the bottom in the marketing world. You can't get 10 times as much marketing for the same price as you could 5 years ago. What do you think it is that keeps it from becoming a race to the bottom where some high school kid can hop out and just crush your B2B marketing? DAVID: Because there's so much more that goes into it. The tools now are very sophisticated with paid search and all the data you can get back and the targeting you can do, if you're going to do advertising on social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that. But at the end of the day, there has to be some really great strategy in there, and there has to be the ability to pivot and the eye to know when to pivot or why you need to pivot. Then the other part of it is the customer. Can the customer tell you what their cost of acquisition needs to be? Or can you then prove it out? For example, Rob, if I said to you, “Hey, you give me $1,000 bucks, and for every $1,000 bucks you give me, I'm going to give you $10,000 back in business,” you would do that all day long. You would figure out how many thousands you could give me so I could give you tenfold back. To answer your question, I think that only happens if you really have the people that have the expertise and the daily eye on this stuff to really know what works. The customer acquisition piece and the journey and all the points in between, it doesn't happen by chance. It's not by luck, and it's also not subjective. You used websites as the example. We can sit here and argue that the homepage needs to be a shade of blue or maroon or what have you, and maybe we're both right. Who knows? But at the end of the day with digital marketing, either I'm driving results and giving you a positive return or I'm not. I think that's the difference. ROB: That makes sense. There's infinite rounds of competition, and there's a level of spending that's always going to meet the value. The value of what people buy online keeps on going. People are buying more stuff online, and you need smarter people to drive those tools as you go. You mentioned some key folks that you have on your team, and you had clearly built a team before with your web dev shop. How did you think about assembling your team differently as you were building your second business? DAVID: This is probably an old adage that you've heard before, but it's always hire slow, fire fast. Thank God, I've not had to fire anybody at Arc Intermedia. I've got that great of a team. That's actually one of the things that I really do hang my hat on. In 10 years, we've never had anybody leave but one person, and it was more or less just a career change in that case. We still remain friends with that young woman to this day. But hiring the right people on the front end and making an investment in the right people is critically important. What my process was – and I'm going to use the SEO one as an example because it's clean and easy – I began to see in the marketplace that SEO was critically important, but I also could see that I could build a business around it. When I wanted to go and build the SEO, I didn't want to just hire a mid-tier person or an entry-level person or something where we were going to, together, learn it on the fly. Rather, I thought the most important or better move was to make the investment in a senior level person who had been doing it and we could build off of that person and let that person build out the practice, if you will. That's my approach. When you're a somewhat small agency that we are, every person counts. We're mean and lean and there's no place to hide, and everybody has to be able to show for what they bring to the table. My entire team, basically, is built with fairly senior level people that I would say are experts in their field. It's just been a much better approach than what I've seen others do. ROB: How do you think about positioning? When you have a senior person, that SEO offering also has to be a little bit of a premium offering. SEO certainly can have one of the highest long-term ROIs, but it can also be one of the slowest marketing tactics to start to bear fruit. How do you walk a customer along expectations around the sticker price you need to show them to bring the team that you have to bear on SEO? DAVID: You actually used my word, expectations. You've got to set the expectation correctly up front. As a joke, we say SEO is the marathon, paid search is the sprint. If you begin to lay out and set those expectations, both parties can get their head around what's going to be accomplished when. Part of that is, with SEO, we will not take on a contract that's less than 12 months, and the reason being is it is completely unfair to judge us on anything less than 12 months. 3 months in, if you were to look at what we were doing, you'd say, “You guys don't know what you're doing” or “This is a complete waste of money.” And they'd be right, because there wouldn't really be the return in 3 months. Wouldn't really be the return there in 6 months. But what you've got to do is look at a plan that's been executed correctly over a 12-month period, step back and say, “This is where we were month zero. Now look where we are.” Honestly, the contracts basically renew themselves because once you can show what can be delivered with SEO – and the beauty of SEO on paid media – it's infinite traffic if you do it correctly. If you're optimizing for terms and for topics that are in high demand, you can drive a great deal of traffic. And then if you have set up your customer journey correctly on the website and begin to show those conversions and whatever it may be, whether it be ecommerce or registrations or sales leads or what have you, it kind of sells itself if you do it correctly. Now, as far as a high ticket, SEO is a very difficult industry. It's getting a bit better, but we're constantly up against the – I don't know what to really call them outside of where they begin to make promises for SEO for $200 a month. We're always fighting against that. But our price point – and you've got to remember it's all labor-based, so people need to get paid. Especially when you have senior level people that you alluded to, they've got to get paid and you've got to offset those costs. So yeah, good SEO is not cheap, but I will tell you this: look at an SEO contract for 12 months, the cost of it, and compare that to some kind of media play. Compare that to a TV or radio campaign. Or even sometimes the money we really need to move the needle in paid search just because the search terms may be very costly, and if you don't have X amount of dollars, you're spitting in the wind. You'd be foolish to think you're going to get any kind of return because you can't drive the volume to get the return. In the grand scheme of things, SEO is actually not expensive if you're comparing it correctly. ROB: Right, it just doesn't track as quickly. “I did X dollars of SEO this month and it generated this amount of results.” You have to be more patient than that. We have talked a good bit about SEO. I know that is where you started, but I know you've also been thoughtful about layering in other service offerings to the business. What have you added in, and how did you reach those decisions of starting to embrace something where a lot of times agencies will partner on offerings they're not ready to do or ready to do yet? DAVID: I often find clients will come to us, and sometimes they will have a need. The need may be that they need more sales leads or they need to sell X amount more widgets. But often they come to us with a tactic in mind. For example, “We need to do SEO.” “Why do you need to do SEO?” It's just because that's what they've been told, that's what they've heard, that's what they may not be doing. They may not be coming up in the search results, so they think that's what they need. But really what we're seeing today now in digital marketing is it's more of what we call an integrated approach. It's the SEO, it's the presence on social, it's the being published on an industry website or a blog that begins to loosen up the soil so that when we do finally hit them with a paid search ad or a display ad, they've seen us before. There's some kind of credibility that's been built up just because they've seen us in multiple places, and we've nurtured them along and we can close the deal. Many of these things now work so hand-in-hand, and again, we always want to start strategy first. Don't tell us what to do; tell us what you're trying to accomplish. Then once we understand the goals and we're all on the same page with the goals, we'll build out the strategy. Then the strategy will dictate the tactics. That then leads into, what did we think made sense to bring in-house? With SEO, the counterbalance was the paid search. We had started doing some paid search from the very beginning, but not to the level of what we're doing today and what we needed to. That was a no-brainer, to make sure we headed up that department with paid search. Paid search is nice because people are looking for your exact service. In fact, paid search is one of my favorite forms of advertising because it's people actively looking for what you have. You just need to get in front of them. Conversely, people who are a bit more passive or are not actually searching, we need to prospect. And the best way to prospect is through display advertising or social advertising and those kinds of things. Again, having that piece of the pie just made a ton of sense of another piece that we need to layer on. Now, we can talk all day long about different tactics of driving people to a website, to filling out a form, to be giving them stuff, but the place that I see people now fall short of is you've got the sales lead; now what? The customer fills out a form. One of the reasons they don't want to fill out a form is because they know immediately they're going to get a phone call from a salesperson, and that's the last thing they want. So you've got to look at it a bit differently. “Hey, fill out this form and I'm going to give you something of value.” I always say you've got to give something to get something. Maybe they fill out the form to get some kind of a free tool or a download or a piece of advice or a consultation or something like that. But if you're really, really going to do this and you think you're going to get a return on that initial investment, you'd better be able to nurture. The nurture piece comes in with this marketing automation. For example, I know I've already said it before, but we're HubSpot certified, and that platform allows us to do a lot of different things. We can do email marketing and we can manage the workflow all the way through. If they open this email and they click on this, we know that they're demonstrating X interest in something, and we can then take them down the next path of providing them the next piece of content. We can nurture and we can build that relationship without the phone call, without the salesperson getting after them. So having the marketing automation piece was something we absolutely needed to bring in because we were doing such a fantastic job with driving leads on the front end that we needed to have the nurturing piece on the back end. ROB: It seems like you not only are comprehensive in the different services you provide, but you have to be comprehensive in your understanding of the business to be able to nurture leads along. You can get a first conversation, but to be able to nurture and build trust and credibility with somebody else's customer is not something you can get from just an onboarding form for a new client. How do you get to that depth of knowledge where you're actually building trust on behalf of a business that's not yours? That's a challenge. DAVID: You're right, it really is. I'll tell you, we get down into the weeds to the nth degree of some stuff that I never thought I needed to know about, from tuberculosis testing to hospice care to minor league baseball to all kinds of stuff. If you're willing to make a commitment to a new client – and to be honest with you, we do say no. There's times that we're like, “This isn't going to be a fit for us for XYZ reasons.” But when you finally say, “I am going to commit to you,” commit means I've got to learn your business, and I've got to find the skeletons in the closet. I've got to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly. Honestly, it's a constant learning process. We often will do onboarding with a client and we'll try to learn and glean as much information as we can, and as we launch programs, we begin to understand that what they were telling us is completely wrong. And they didn't even know it. So there's that piece of it too. Also, there's times where we'll do pilot programs of things just to begin to gather data. I'd like to believe that our team is very smart, and we have a lot of experience to begin to make some great guesses. But at the end of the day, we're not always right. You've got to look at the data. You've got to really look at what's happening in a given space and then be ready to pivot and think about things completely differently than when you went into it. But it's ongoing. There's no end to it. I'm still learning about tuberculosis and all those kinds of things. [laughs] ROB: It's more and more valuable for more and more people to be marketing online. David, when you are looking at what is next for you and what's next for Arc Intermedia and marketing in general, what are you excited about? DAVID: One of the things I'm excited about – we're in a horrible global pandemic, and one little tiny, tiny good thing that's come out of this from a digital marketing standpoint is I'm now having clients who we've been talking to about this for a long time understand that the lion's share of the budget really does need to start going to digital. Digital can deliver. It can be measured, and it's the one actually bringing in the leads. Just in this past 6 months, we've had a number of clients tell me that they're going to do major shifts in their budget for 2021 more towards the digital space. Why that makes me excited is if you give me more budget, I can do more things. I can expand out that integrated approach. I can go deeper in different tactics and strategies that we maybe have been pushing for that we couldn't just straight up because of budget. We can get after more of the content marketing piece, the content distribution piece. We can begin to see how we can tie different paid tactics to some other things that we're doing on the site. We can also look at different offer types and incentives to help ring the bell. ROB: That makes sense. The margin for execution on a small budget – there's just not a lot of room for mistakes or a lot of room for experimentation. I can absolutely see where having real digital budgets is a meaningful thing. David, when people want to track you down, when they want to connect with you and with Arc Intermedia, where should they go to find you? DAVID: Of course, we have that wonderful website that we've just done some updates to. We've even got our anniversary video out on the homepage, so I would direct everybody to arcintermedia.com. A lot of people find me on LinkedIn because that's a super easy way. Occasionally some people may find me over on Twitter. But I would say website. ROB: [laughs] Sometimes we find a different version of ourselves over on Twitter. DAVID: Yeah, I think I'm pretty good on that front. [laughs] For the most part. You won't me on Facebook, I will tell you that. ROB: Got it. Just have to have a shadow account to manage some of the client relationships? [laughs] DAVID: We have a love/hate relationship. I love the data that Facebook gives us to market on behalf of our clients. I'm not super fond of participating on Facebook myself. ROB: I understand completely. Even after they ban QAnon, who knows what's next? Or if they'll actually accomplish that. Who knows? Anyhow, David, good to connect with you. Good to have you on the podcast. Congratulations on 10 years of Arc Intermedia, and really of making a living going out and killing your own food for much longer than that with the web dev shop before that. DAVID: Yes indeed. Working without a net. ROB: [laughs] Indeed. Thank you so much, David, and be well. DAVID: Rob, I really appreciate your time. Thank you. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Ask David What do you do when someone won’t stop asking questions? Hello David, It’s been a while since I’ve emailed you, but that’s because I’ve been doing really well thanks to you! I started a new job 3-1/2 months ago, & this woman seemed to take to me right from the start. It was nice at first having someone to talk to etc, but it has quickly turned bad. She sits in the cubicle right next to me. All day long she talks to me asking me questions. What did I do after work? Who was I with? How long was I gone? What did my husband do? And on & on. It feels like she’s interrogating me because the questions never stop. I’m trying to get more vague with my answers hoping if will deter the conversation, but no luck. It really becomes distracting at times & then other times it just feels like she’s being nosy & freaks me out. I just want her to leave me alone! I think this would be a good opportunity to use the 5 secrets of effective communication, but I’m struggling. Could you help? Thank you, Brittany Hi Brittany, Will send to Rhonda for an Ask David. But a simple approach would be to tell her that you admire her and appreciate her interest, but that you sometimes find the questions distracting from doing your work. Perhaps you could sit down with her for lunch or something, and then use your five secrets skills. Using the relationship journal, you could write down one thing she said to you, and exactly what you said next. Then we can see exactly what you are doing that is fueling the problem! I've attached one, and you could send it to us after you have completed Steps 1 and 2. David Thank you for the reply! It really made my day. I attached the relationship journal. It was actually more helpful than I thought it would be for this situation. Once I was able to think of a good example, I realized that maybe my lack of inquiry or showing interest in her is causing her to ask me all these questions. Although if I ask her more about herself, I don't know if it would result in her talking even more? Hard to say. Thanks for your help, and I appreciate your thoughts on my relationship journal. -Brittany Hello, Wanted to give you an update on how it went using the five secrets. First thing Monday morning my coworker started right up with the questions. I used the five secrets & said something similar to what I wrote to you. She apologized for bothering me, & things have been great all week! She actually brought in headphones & has been listening to music now. And there’s no tension or animosity between us which was my fear initially. We still chat here & there & are friendly. Thanks again! -Brittany How can a pastoral counselor get training in TEAM-CBT? Dear Doctor David, I am a pastor from South Africa, married to an Australian, living in Dubai :) I was struggling with mild depression & came across your book "feeling good" and read it & applied all your techniques & it has been life-changing - THANK YOU! What surprised me most was the simplicity and effectiveness of the exercises. I believe that much of what you teach is life skills everyone should have! I wish I was taught these things when I was younger! Over the years I have helped people, from all walks of life - inmates, students, business people, etc., but primarily from a spiritual perspective. I believe I can be more effective and help so many more out there if I learn how to apply your exercises to others. I would love to train in TEAM and learn how to apply these techniques with the people I minister to, but I am not a psychologist or certified as per your requirements. I realize practice and critical feedback is paramount in order to get really good in TEAM. Please advise me on an alternative route. Any help with this regard would be highly appreciated! Thanking you in advance. Yours sincerely, Gareth Noble Hi Pastor Noble, Sure there is a certification program at the Feeling Good Institute. I believe pastoral counselors would be very welcome. They offer many online introductory classes in TEAM-CBT. Check our my free weekly Feeling Good Podcasts, too. I will include your question, with your permission, on an Ask David Podcast. I also offer a free depression class on my website, and about to post an anxiety class too, also free. There are tons of resources, almost all free, on my website, www.feelinggood.com. You can check out my website page from time to time for online workshops. Dr. Angela Krumm angela@feelinggoodinstitute.com is head of the certification program at FGI, which is www.feelinggoodinstitute.com. Angela and I are both PKs (Pastor’s kids)! All the best, David Is love an adult human need? Rhonda said that people in the TEAM certification listserve thought they heard David say that love is not an adult human need. Is this true? David comments on hearing Dr. Beck say that decades ago, in one of Dr. Beck’s weekly training groups at U. Penn, and what he (David) discovered. What’s the best training program to learn TEAM-CBT? David and Rhonda, I hope this note finds you well. I'm writing for a few reasons. The first is to thank you for your podcast and related resources. I found your podcast and started listening at the beginning of COVID-19 (mid-March) because I was feeling acute anxiety. The T.E.A.M. approach and your teaching are such an amazing gifts. The positive reframing in particular is truly life changing and revolutionary for me. Considering what my negative thoughts show about me that's positive and awesome and then finding the cognitive distortions has provided me such relief. I have been so excited about T.E.A.M. therapy that I often discuss it with my husband, friends, and family. I really loved David's comment in the most recent podcast that good therapy isn't evangelizing; rather it's letting the patient define problems and goals within his/her own values. I also liked your comment that doing therapy well is like an artform or a dance- that's such a beautiful sentiment, and I've been able to see the conversational "dances" you perform in the amazing, transformative, empathic live therapy sessions with Michael, Rhonda, Sarah, and others. These sessions have often brought tears to my eyes. This brings me to my second reason for writing. Listening to the podcast has been transformative for me in another way- it's made me seriously consider becoming a therapist myself. I have considered this possibility over the years, but now that I'm familiar with the T.E.A.M therapy approach and can see how helpful it is, I'm excited to explore this path more. I have a B.A. in psychology so I would need additional education- do you have suggestions for masters programs that you think would provide good alignment with the T.E.A.M. approach? I live in Charlottesville, Virginia and have two young children, so a local or online program may be the best bet for me. Thanks in advance for any ideas you may have. All the best to you, Molly Hurt Thanks, Molly. We can read your wonderful email on an Ask David if that is okay with you, but here is the quick answer. In graduate school, you don’t typically learn much that is useful. It is more getting a license to practice, then you learn from mentors, workshops, etc. The FeelingGoodInstitute.com has training and certification programs, including 12 week beginner classes in TEAM that are excellent. The whole area of coaching is emerging now too, and the certification is rather informal. If you get a degree like a masters degree in social work online, and then get licensed to do therapy, that is one approach, but there are many ways to get certified—counselor, psy d degree, marriage and family therapy, and so forth. So in short, I would, personally, find some way—the easiest way—to get certified so you can legally do therapy. But concentrate on learning TEAM as the tool to use. In California, as an aside, anyone can call themselves a “psychotherapist,” but you need the degree and license to call yourself a “psychologist.” Good luck, and thanks again! david Why are should statements considered distortions? Thanks for your quick and helpful reply. It's useful to have a better sense for how to prioritize my time and training. I'm excited to continue to explore T.E.A.M. therapy! And you are welcome to read my email on the podcast, thanks for asking. If I may, one other question for you: how do you recommend someone defeat "should" statements when his/her behaviors aren't healthy or beneficial? For example, "I should not overeat when anxious" or "I should not procrastinate" or "I should not be impatient with my daughter." I understand that saying "should" in these cases adds pressure and can lead to shame, but I don't see the distortion in these statements. In other words, these statements may not be helpful to a patient, but how are they not 100% true? I would appreciate any additional guidance you can offer on what I find to be the most difficult cognitive distortion! Thanks again to both of you for generously sharing your loving and kind approach to helping people deal with their problems and feel better. The impact you're having is profound. I love listening to you empathize with patients- it makes me strive for building an even more loving connection with my husband and daughters, as well as others in my life. Best, Molly Hi Molly, You may want to listen to podcast #205 pm Should Statements. You can also find a lot in my books, like Feeling Good, which you may have already read. There is also a chapter on how to crush should statements in my new book, Feeling Great, which will be released on September 15, 2020. Shoulds are distortions because they are not valid. It is not true that you “should not overeat when anxious.” You SHOULD overeat when anxious because it is very appealing, tasty, and makes you feel better. A correct statement would be, “It would be preferable if I did not overeat when anxious.” This statement removes the shame and pressure, while honoring your goal. There are three correct uses of should: the moral should (thou shalt not kill), the legal should (you should not drive 90 miles an hour because you’ll get a ticket) and the laws of the universe should: this pen should fall to the floor if I drop it because of the force of gravity. But overeating when anxious is not immoral or illegal, and it does not violate the laws of the universe. So it is not a valid use of the word. There is a podcast on this, I think, and you can search for it on my website use the search function. Rhonda and David  

David Azar is Founder and CEO of Outsmart Labs, a digital marketing agency focused on riding new trends and platforms to drive more traffic, more visibility, and more online conversions. His agency works with clients to build a 360 strategy to drive those conversions in sales, traffic, and newsletter signups. David says, “Digital marketing changes so fast that it's about whoever adapts faster and whoever finds the opportunities in the market.”  The agency provides traditional digital marketing services -- Google strategies, Facebook, traditional social media strategies – but likes the advantage of being an “early adopter” of the newest trends. Where to be now, according to David? TikTok – the place where kids dance. Or not. In this interview, David describes the phenomenal growth of TikTok. The number of U.S. users grew from 27 million in July 2019 to 40 million in January 2020, and then to 65 million at the beginning of April, with 85 million users by mid-June. About 1 in 4 people in this country use TikTok, many of whom are “very involved,” to wit, 34% of TikTok users actively produce content.  David explains that TikTok's paid ads platform can cost over $50,000 a month. On the self-serve side, the budget can start as low as $1. TikTok has specific rules about content, posting, and addressing the audience, along with a powerful editing app. Videos created for Instagram won't work on TikTok.  David says now is the time for smaller brands to gain TikTok followers and community. The cost on TikTok is one-tenth that of Instagram. Big brand demand for influencers is low, so the spend on these initiators will produce a better ROI than an equivalent spend on TikTok ads. This cost is only going to go up, David warns. Today's users will only pay a fraction of what they will have to pay in a year to “get the same audience and the same followers.” The current TikTok algorithm promotes good content and makes it extremely easy to go viral. That, David says, will probably change. TikTok usually starts with a challenge. Someone responds to that challenge. The greater the number of people who respond, the better the chance that challenge will reach the “For You page “where everyone's going to see it and participate in that challenge.” Outsmart Labs partners with initiators who have up to a million followers to create concepts for its client brands. It then develops a first activation, one that will attract a lot of followers and eventually take the brand to the For You Page and “very large exposure.” Outsmart Lab clients have seen great ROIs on TikTok activation campaigns over the past year. Other areas of opportunity David discusses in this interview are local SEO and programmatic advertising. In regards to local SEO, David has found that close to 96% of retail establishments don't do anything to develop local SEO. Yet, many customers will look for a company offering a specific product or service in their community. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has impacted this “local market opportunity” for many businesses. But the situation also presents an opportunity for companies to rethink their websites and their business models. Programmatic advertising tracks customers from their cell phone locations and pushes strategic advertisements to these phones based on their location. Covid-19 presents an opportunity for companies to rethink their websites and their business models.  David can be reached at his company's website at https://outsmartlabs.com/. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm excited to be joined today by David Azar, Founder and CEO at Outsmart Labs based in Miami, Florida. Welcome to the podcast, David. DAVID: Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you tell us about Outsmart Labs? Many firms have a superpower, so what is yours?  DAVID: That's a great question, great way to put it. I think our superpower is definitely our team. I think the team that we have together is what makes all of our campaigns very successful. At Outsmart Labs, we focus very highly on new trends and new platforms. First, to introduce what Outsmart Labs is, we help clients with having more traffic, more visibility, and more conversions online, and we really build a 360 strategy in order to drive those conversions, whether those are sales, whether that's traffic, newsletter signups. I think the team we have is a team that's very hungry. We are at the forefront of trends. We were actually one of Google's top agencies, rising agencies, which really allowed us to have access to a lot of data. We're not scared of trying new platforms. For example, right now, what we've been doing over the last year, which we've been seeing really great ROIs on, is TikTok. TikTok activation campaigns. I think what clients like is the mix of finding traditional marketing, whether it is Google strategies, Facebook, traditional social media strategies, and also inputting some newer platforms. At the end of the day, digital marketing changes so fast that it's about whoever adapts faster and whoever finds the opportunities in the market. I think our clients like that in us, understanding that some of the things might not work, some might work, but overall the strategy is going to be a very good strategy in order to scale. ROB: Excellent. It sounds like from your first introduction, you are very results-focused. How do you align a channel like TikTok – what do good results look like on that channel? Are you looking primarily at brand impressions, or is there a deeper level you can go to with a campaign there? DAVID: Great question. I think I mentioned what's really important now n digital marketing is not just doing one platform; it's really the 360 approach. Think of yourself whenever you're online and you're shopping for something. Most likely, if you see an ad for something you're interested in, you'll click it, but most likely you won't convert that first time. So over time, the more you're going to be seeing that ad, the more likely you'll say, “Okay, now I'll take the time to convert.” TikTok actually has a great opportunity at the moment. Even though it's been seeing humongous growth – and clients always tell me, whenever I offer them to go on TikTok and I go, “You guys should go on TikTok,” they tell me, “But I don't understand. TikTok is just kids that dance. I don't understand why that's my market.” This is when we tell them the growth of TikTok over the last year. They had 27 million users in July of last year, 40 million in January – and I'm talking in the U.S. – 65 million in the beginning of April, and on June 15th they had 85 million users. So, 85 million users means that now 1 person out of 4, almost, in the U.S. has a TikTok account, so pretty much anyone. It's all about finding the right way of – the way you're going to be marketing your product. It's not about just doing dance. It's about finding your core values and creating it in a creative way. At the moment, that we're at right now, it's a huge opportunity because the TikTok algorithm works a certain way where it's actually very “easy” to go viral on TikTok, and the algorithm really promotes good content. To answer your question of what a good ROI on TikTok looks like, it depends on what the client is. Depends on the number of activations they're going to be doing on TikTok. But I think that right now, what brands should really focus on is gaining followers and gaining a community on TikTok. As you know with Facebook, Instagram, and other different platforms, the organic reach goes lower and lower as time goes by and as more users are using the platform. We are at a time with TikTok where they haven't changed their algorithm yet, and so far, if you do a good video and you make it to the For You page, pretty much anyone with the right center of interest is going to see your video. The way we look at it is not only do we do organic content for clients, where we're going to be creating videos for the clients, but in order to have quicker results, it's about doing activations with influencers – what we call initiators for TikTok. I don't know how familiar you are with TikTok. I don't know if you wanted me to talk to you about how the trend works to get to the For You page. But usually you want to have a challenge, and then someone's going to do the challenge, and the more people do the challenge, the more likely your challenge will get to the For You page where everyone's going to see it and participate in that challenge. In order to ensure that the challenge is going to make it to the For You page where everyone is going to see your challenge and you're going to have a huge amount of exposure, we actually partner with large initiators and we come up with the concept of whatever the client wants. They tell me, for example, if it's a cosmetic company, “We want to promote our skincare line. We want to showcase it to as many people as possible.” So, we're going to come up with a creative concept. For example, there's a trend that works really well, which you've probably seen, which is people have all these cosmetic products and they act as if they're DJing, and the lights go on and off and you're pretending you're DJing with cosmetic products. Everyone was redoing it, and you can get a lot of followers and people exposed to your brand by doing that. So, we actually partner with initiators that have a million or up followers, and then we work with them in creating the concepts. We have a general idea, we work with them and say, “This is the hashtag challenge that we want to create.” They help us do it, and then they launch the activation with us. Because they have such a large following – and 34% of people on TikTok are active content creators, meaning people do actually want to create content on TikTok because it's kind of the whole goal of TikTok. So once those large initiators create this first activation, then as you see it, you want to participate, and little by little we ensure that brands go to the For You page and get a very large exposure. It's really a tenth of the price of Instagram. Budgets are significant for a small business, but for larger businesses, it's not that much – especially when you're looking at the reach you can have. A TikTok campaign right now, activation ranges between $10,000 and $20,000 for an activation, but you're going to be reaching around – depending on how well the campaign performs – 10 million to maybe 30 million views, people watching your content. This is incomparable to any other metrics. The reason I was saying – you were asking what the superpower of Outsmart Labs is; it's really seeing those opportunities in the moments they're there, because in 6 months from now, the algorithm is going to change. In 6 months, maybe 3 months, 4 months, we don't know when they're going to change it, but that opportunity, as great as TikTok is still going to be, it's probably not going to be as great as it is now. TikTok is going to have to change the algorithm, just like Facebook did before, just like Instagram did before, because they have to make sure the content they're showing is quality content. Because obviously, they make money by showcasing a large number of pages, and the more pages users watch, the more the platform makes money. So, they want to make sure people stay on the platform. That algorithm is for sure going to change. There hasn't been an announcement by TikTok; it's just knowing how digital works. But I think right now is really the time where brands need to go on TikTok. Also, a lot of large brands at the moment – we have a variety of clients, some very large international groups, and every time we pitch TikTok to them – it's changing now in the last month, but originally for the last year, it's always been, “We really like TikTok. We see what's going on on TikTok, but on a global level, we haven't decided how we feel about TikTok.” This is where I think a lot of smaller brands have such a big opportunity, because at the moment, TikTok isn't really crowded by the biggest brands. Except if you're the NBA or brands that are more talking to a Gen Z audience, which already got onto the trend. The other bigger ones haven't. So, if you're a smaller brand, it's really the time for you to take it upon yourself to go on the campaign. I actually have another example of showing how important it is to get on the platform early. We have this client – I can't name it, but it's a large high-end fashion brand. Family business. Not one of the largest ones you can think of, but fairly known in the world of fashion. I was talking to them, pitching them TikTok, and the person in charge of marketing is about 32 years old. I was telling him why he should get on TikTok now, before everyone gets on it, and he told me, “You're right, David. I definitely see that because as a brand, I was lucky that I was in the U.S. when Instagram launched, and I told our founder to create an Instagram account for our brand, and within one year we gained 500,000 followers.” In the last 10 years, they only gained 75,000 followers because the algorithm changed. At the beginning of Instagram, it was much easier to push your organic content. Same thing with TikTok. Whoever's going to be able to take advantage of TikTok now, they're going to pay a fraction of the cost they'll pay in a year to get the same audience and the same followers. I don't want to make the whole talk about TikTok and bore you with just TikTok, but it's definitely a fascinating platform. Digital is so fascinating anyway. Every month or two or three, there's something different where there are opportunities to be seen. It's just about finding a way to adapt your brand values and your message to that audience. ROB: Definitely. Even though it's been very focused on TikTok for a moment, I think it underpins even the name of the brand, Outsmart Labs. It seems like we're in this moment of this TikTok channel that you mentioned. Instagram's been through it, Facebook's been through it. Even Google, from a search engine optimization perspective, has been through it. I think two things were true. One is that the algorithm was at a point where there were true legitimate tips and tricks that work and help you rank that you can actually know and, to an extent, master or be very good at. The other one – I'm not entirely sure, but I think you may have implied – essentially, this is a really good organic marketing channel, whereas – I don't even know; are you doing paid on TikTok? Or is the opportunity on the organic side so immense that it's worth going deeper there? DAVID: It really depends what kind of brand you are. The TikTok paid ads platform is fairly expensive. Usually it's over $50,000 a month in spend, so it's not accessible to everyone. They opened the self-serve on TikTok, which you can start at $1 or whatever budget you want to put in, so we do use that as well. The thing is, usually clients want to have fast results. Because influencers right now are not as in demand by all the big brands and haven't had those large contracts, at the moment, spending $1,000 on TikTok ads versus $1,000 on getting more initiators, I think at the moment it's better to go with the initiators. But I think in 3 months it's going to be something different, and most likely you're going to see a big rise – and that's also why I'm sure the algorithm is going to change, because they can't let that happen because that's how they monetize and make a dollar on an initiator doing something on TikTok. So, it's a mix of both, but when you talk organic, you definitely should. Especially if you're a brand that's a little popular where you have a market that knows you. People are just looking for people on TikTok. I think the DJ Khaled example is a great example with what he did with Snapchat. I don't know if he was still very popular at the time – I don't know if you know what happened. He got lost on his jet ski in Miami and started saying, “I'm lost in Miami” on Snapchat when Snapchat just started. Everyone picked up on it and helped him to find his way. Then over the course of the year, he became the most popular person on Snapchat and now has the success and popularity that we know he has. So, it's about taking it at the moment and finding the right video. The organic does work really well, and people are looking for those brands. If you look at a lot of the brands that don't create any content at the moment, but they're a little famous, they have followers already on their account even though no one's really posting anything. So, I think doing some organic content is definitely great just because the algorithm works so well. If you do a good video – the thing is, you have to spend time in creating videos specifically for TikTok. Whatever you share on Instagram is just not going to make it to TikTok. TikTok has its rules, has its way of posting, its way of addressing the audience. The editing app is quite incredible in TikTok. So, you need to utilize all of that to make it work. It's a mix of everything. In order to have quick results, definitely activation with influencers is number one because you definitely see a switch right away. But obviously if you're going to be investing in the platform, you definitely want to think of also organic content and what you're going to be producing. A great tip I give clients that are scared and saying, “I don't know what I'm going to be posting if I do organic content” – first of all, that's what we do, so usually we take care of it. But other than that, the whole concept of TikTok is they suggest challenges and trends that they want people to do. Sometimes when you're a big brand or you're a little famous, if you just find a creative way to participate in a challenge, it gives you a chance of going viral. There's not that much creativity that goes into it because you know the trend and the kind of video that you need to create. ROB: Wow. It's very clear you are, as best I can tell, completely up-to-date on the now. Let's rewind a little bit, though, to the very beginning. What is the origin story of Outsmart Labs? What got you started in this business? DAVID: Actually, it started very early. I was 16 years old. Before even Outsmart Labs, just digital marketing and my love for digital marketing and the possibilities that it offers. When I was 16 years old, I was put on a project. We created the first professional sports team affiliate marketing website. It was for the team – I'm French; I'm from Paris, so it was the team of Paris. We had sponsors like Nike, a kayak company of France, large car companies. We went to the sponsors, they wanted more exposure, and we told them, “Why don't you give us discounts, and whenever a fan goes through our website and goes through to your page from our website, they'll get discounts from Nike, or on kayaks.” During that whole project, I was in love with how, as long as you think it, you can reproduce it. Then I fell in love with digital marketing, went to school at University of Miami, got very lucky that it was the beginning of Facebook and Twitter, so I got to see that grow. I started an event company when I was in school. All of our promotion was done through Facebook, and we had about 800 students come to our events every time, so I saw the power that Facebook had. Basically, a free tool was giving me the strength that a paid tool would give me. I always thought that was super interesting. If you think smartly, you technically don't necessarily need to spend a lot to get a lot. Doesn't mean you don't spend a lot of time, but in terms of actual dollars spent, it doesn't have to be that much. Then as time grew, I worked for a large firm called Amadeus, which is the reservation system of every plane ticket that you book. They didn't have a social media presence at the time or Facebook, so I did it for them. It was a fascinating project. I was like, “You know what? I'm doing this for all those different clients; why don't I just create my own agency and take it from there? I know there's a lot of people that don't know how even Facebook works or are new to the trends, so why don't I help them?” We started Outsmart Labs 9 years ago now, and it's been growing ever since. We have clients in a lot of different industries. What I really love – I personally love innovation. I personally love thinking big picture, thinking how to beat the system in ways like you were mentioning before, the secrets that are not really told, but that you guess from Google, but also applying the rules and putting it all together and making it work. So that's what we've been doing. We've been working with clients in hospitality, in travel, in luxury, even in mental health. I really love thinking about a lot of different industries. A lot of clients ask us, “But you've never worked in that industry. Is that a problem? I'd rather have an expert in whatever space,” and I tell them all the time, honestly, if someone is knowledgeable about digital marketing, there are so many tools out there that allow you to analyze all the competitors, analyze what they're buying, what they're doing, what kind of ads, what wording they're using, so it's almost not even that important. It's even almost better to use an agency that maybe doesn't have as much experience in the specific industry because in order to get to that level, they're going to have to do so much more research. Because it's changing so fast, that research is going to pay off into a smarter strategy than whoever did it a year from today. That's basically how Outsmart started and the logic and what I love personally about digital marketing, and I think everyone on the team is similar to that. ROB: That's really excellent. If you look out a little bit even beyond now – TikTok rose, it's working; there's probably some other platforms you've worked on – Instagram, there's probably some stuff you can do even on Facebook. But what are the next potential frontiers that you see coming? Are there maybe two or three new opportunities you see emerging that maybe it's just experimental budget for your clients now, or maybe it's already humming for a very select subset of them, but we might be thinking a little bit more about in 6-12 months? DAVID: One opportunity that I see that's a really big opportunity – unfortunately, because of the current situation of COVID and physical retail not being as open as it was prior, it might not be as big of an opportunity as it should be, but in a world where there's no COVID or in places where it's less affected by COVID and stores are open, local SEO is something that I see overperforming. It's something that not a lot of people put a lot of effort in. If you want a little definition of what local SEO is, it's how you get your retail business, your physical business, to show up on Google whenever someone makes a search query under which your business should show up. It's showing the closer local retails, whether retail or hospitals or mental health institutions or insurance companies or cosmetic stores or whatever that is. Local SEO is not necessarily very difficult to do in terms of what needs to be done; it's just very time-consuming. Because Google and all of those platforms create data, people tend to assume that because they're finding their business on Google or when they google their name, automatically they're registered within all the local directories within Google, within Facebook, within all of those platforms, which is actually not true. It's just a crawler doing it. So, actually spending a bit of time on local SEO – and about 96% of retail don't do anything on local SEO. I'm talking even the largest brands that we work with. Some of them tell me, “Everyone knows my brand. There's no point in me working on local SEO.” Sometimes if someone types in “cosmetic store near me,” you want that store to show up first versus a competitor. So, I think that's definitely a trend that I've been seeing. It's not necessarily a trend that's just now. It's been two years where no one's getting on that, and I really think it's working really well. Another thing that I would say – real-time bidding, programmatic advertising, definitely something we see also. Very efficient. Being able to target people based on their location, historical location or actual location, allows you to target and trigger a message very customized to each audience. Not necessarily something very new, and not necessarily something everyone's doing. It's also a little more expensive to do, so that's why maybe a lot of smaller businesses don't do it. But doing it smartly and using the tool for another purpose – which we do a lot for some of the clients that can't afford those budgets – you can really leverage programmatic advertising to your benefit to create a new audience, to track foot traffic in a location, to drive more foot traffic, to drive brand awareness. All of those are great things with programmatic. In terms of other opportunities, I think just being active in general. But that's not really an opportunity; that's just a truth. Those are the three that we're working on the most. Influencer marketing with TikTok mostly. We do YouTube, we do Instagram, but where we see the biggest growth is TikTok in that sense. ROB: For someone who's never dabbled in programmatic or real-time bidding or hasn't done so in a while, how has that ad inventory changed – the ad units, where they get displayed, how they're bought? I think it may not be what people used to think it was in terms of where the ads actually show up. Have they caught up to Facebook a good bit in terms of targeting? DAVID: What's interesting about programmatic is, first of all, not a lot of people know that this even exists. I think if more people knew how it worked, I don't think people would accept to share their location on their apps as often. Just to explain quickly how programmatic works, every time you download an app and you agree to share your location with the app, your device ID goes onto a stock market that anyone can buy. Along with that device ID, it gives your browser data saying you're using Chrome, Safari, your phone is in English, French, Spanish, and you were at this exact location. On average, someone shares their location between 25 to 40 times a day. With programmatic advertising, the great thing is we have a really great understanding of who every person is because it's not just what you search, it's not what you pretend to be on social media; it's actually who you are by where you live, what time you leave for work, what time you get to work, what time you leave from work, what type of restaurants you go to, do you run, do you not run, do you bike, do you not bike, and all those different things. Then how it works and where it's displayed – think of yourself whenever you play Candy Crush, whenever you read the New York Times or whenever you read CNN. There are ads on those platforms. Those ads are ad placements that can be bought by anyone and it can input your ad into that. This is how programmatic works. The beauty of programmatic from an advertiser standpoint is that as long as you can think it, you can do it. You can initially drive traffic – so you could have two competitors. Let's pick an example at random and say McDonald's and Burger King. That's actually a campaign we ran with one other restaurant. What we could do is geolocate every single Burger King, if you're McDonald's, for example, and say everyone that's waiting in line at a Burger King, I want to send an ad that says “Claim this $1 menu at McDonald's.” You see that ad on your phone, you can click “Add to your wallet.” It looks like the exact same thing as a plane ticket when you add it to your wallet, and then automatically it's claimed. Then you can trigger that alert once it's on the phone any way you want. You can say I want to look at the 10 closest McDonald's to this Burger King where the person redeemed this coupon, and any time the person comes within 100 feet of my McDonald's, I want a notification on his phone saying “Don't forget to claim your $1 menu at McDonald's.” Or you can say, people tend to go eat at 12:00; at 11:30, I want to send a notification to all those phones saying “Hey, don't forget to come eat your McDonald's.” And you can go back 90 days, so technically you can geofence every single one of your competitors' stores, go back 90 days, take all of the global data from all of those stores, and target those customers. The possibilities are endless with programmatic. ROB: There's absolutely a lot going on there. David, as we wrap up this conversation, what are some other things that we should know about either the journey of Outsmart Labs or what's next for you and the firm? DAVID: Two things we're excited about. The first thing is digital marketing has always been huge. Obviously, a lot of brands spend a lot of money on digital marketing. No one's really questioning the efficiency of digital marketing anymore. But still, for brands that are not ecommerce only, digital marketing came second to the retail business or their traditional marketing, and I think this whole situation of coronavirus has repurposed or made people reconsider the positioning of digital within their mix of marketing assets. A lot of companies have noticed that once they got all their stores closed, all they had left was their website. A lot of companies haven't even thought about where their in-store POS was not synced with the website POS, so all of a sudden they were left with nothing. So I think this whole coronavirus has gotten brands to rethink how to consider their digital strategies and understanding they should be relying a lot more on it because the chances of this going down is lower and people are shopping more online. To me, whenever I pitch a client, there's a lot of indication in terms of saying why it's necessary for them. I think the last 3-4 months in that way, we skipped through that. Now they know, “It's necessary, we need it; how do we do it?” I look very much forward to this because of the positioning of Outsmart. We tend to also pitch things that are not so traditional. As much as we do traditional, we always try to test things. You always need to pick your clients because not every client is willing to test things – and it makes sense; it's their money, and they want to maybe spend money just where they know the return on investment they're going to get. So that's what I'm really excited for. I think we're going to talk to a lot more clients. A lot more clients are going to be willing to be even more out of the box in terms of what they're going to try to do to differentiate themselves and basically have more real estate online. ROB: David Azar of Outsmart Labs, thank you so much for joining us today. I think you've given us a clinic on a bunch of very targeted and effective tactics in marketing. Congratulations to you and the firm on everything. DAVID: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to talk for the 30 minutes. ROB: All right, David. Be well. DAVID: Thank you. You too. Bye. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

How do handwritten notes help businesses improve outbound meeting books, increase customer retention and boost customer loyalty? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Handwrytten Founder David Wachs explains how combining handwritten notes with inbound marketing can yield incredible results, and how his company is helping customers automate and send handwritten notes at scale. Check out the episode to here exactly how Handwrytten works and how companies large and small are using it to increase sales and improve customer retention. Highlights from my conversation with David include: David is the Founder of Handwrytten, which enables companies to automate handwritten notes at scale. Handwrytten has a website and smartphone app interface, as well as integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot and Zapier. The notes that Handwrytten creates are generated using robots that hold real pilot G2 ballpoint pens, so they look incredibly authentic. Handwrytten is growing at about 300% a year. Companies use Handwrytten in three different ways: 1) sending thank you notes to customers; 2) ecommerce companies include notes in-box with new orders; and 3) outbound outreach. Handwrytten clients that use handwritten notes for outbound meeting booking requests get 3x to 4x more responses, which tracks with the fact that handwritten envelopes get opened three to four times more than typed ones do. One of the companies ecommerce clients has improved customer retention by 5 to 10% by including handwritten notes in their boxes. Several other clients have gotten valuable social proof when their customers post pictures of the handwritten notes they receive on their social media accounts, driving incredible brand loyalty. Handwrytten offers a number of options for customizing notes, from custom handwriting fonts, to inserting your business card or a gift card, etc Resources from this episode: Visit the Handwrytten website Follow David on Twitter Connect with David on LinkedIn Request samples from Handwrytten Follow Handwrytten on Instagram Follow Handwrytten on Pinterest Listen to the podcast to learn how companies are using automated handwritten notes to get better inbound marketing results at scale. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week my guest is David Wachs who is the founder of Handwrytten. Welcome David. David Wachs (Guest): Thank you very much Kathleen. I'm thrilled to be here. David and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I am really excited to have you here and I say that every week. I do really mean it, but I'm really excited for this one and I have to share this story with my listeners because how this happened I think is so serendipitous. Not that long ago, a few weeks ago, I was sitting around my dining room table with my husband on a Sunday morning and I subscribe to the Washington Post, which I get once a week, and I read this article in the Washington Post that mentioned this company called Handwrytten and talked about what it was doing and how it helps businesses send handwritten notes. I stopped him and I was like, "You have to read this. This is really interesting. We should check this out." Not more than one week later, David sends me a LinkedIn message saying, "Hey Kathleen, I've been listening to your podcast and I would love to come on." I was like, wait, what? This is the same person. How did that just happen? Anyway, that's my story of how David and I connected. David, can you tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, Handwrytten, and what led you to start this business because I think it's really cool? About David Wachs and Handwrytten David: Well thank you very much and it really is an honor to be here. I am a listener to the show and I've learned a lot and because of it I am now an Inc. contributor because I listened to one of your episodes where you talked about getting your own content out there in a number of ways as well as a lot of other stuff. Thank you for putting on this wonderful podcast. I've actually been doing Handwrytten - we are a six year old startup - I've been doing this for six years now and I have to apologize, there's some construction noise in the background that I have no control over, so hopefully ... Kathleen: I don't hear anything, but if we hear a beep, beep, beep, we'll hope that nobody's backing up into your office. David: I started this six years ago. Prior to Handwrytten, and this is important as to why I started Handwrytten, I had a company that did text messaging and in that business we'd send millions of text messages a day for large brands like Abercrombie and Fitch, ToysRUs, Chicago Tribune and others. What I realized from that, while all that marketing worked and people came out in droves to tropical smoothie cafe and Abercrombie and those types of things, when we sent the messages, they were quickly forgotten and deleted. I started looking around when it was time to exit Sell It - the name of the company was Sell It - when I was looking around for other opportunities and I walk into my sales people's offices and I'd see handwritten notes on display in their offices. Not only were they kept, but they were treasured. I think a lot of this is because the average office worker gets 147 or 150 emails a day. You typically get about 40 to 50 text messages a day, something crazy like that. In all that, and with new tools, and I know HubSpot's a great tool, but tools like HubSpot and all the rest, it's easier and easier to send all these emails and electronic forms of communication. After a while it all just becomes noise. When somebody takes the time to send you a handwritten note, it really stands out as something unique and thoughtful and cherish. I thought, gee, I'm too lazy to actually send handwritten notes. For my mom's birthday, I would go to the Walgreens, buy a greeting card, promised myself I'd mail it, stick it in my briefcase, and never get around to it because I wouldn't get a stamp, and I'd never sit down to write it. Kathleen: I may or may not have that problem in common with you. David: This happened over and over and in all my suitcases and briefcases, I find banged up birthday cards and stuff. I thought there has to be a way to automate this. That's what led us to start Handwrytten, was being able to take an offline form of communication and make it scale in the same way that emails and texts and tweets and all that does. We do that through technology in a few forms. On the front-end or what you use, we have a website where you can type in one handwritten note or upload a spreadsheet of 10,000. We've got iPhone apps and Android apps mostly for consumers, but they can be used for businesses as well. Then we have a salesforce.com integration. Directly from Salesforce, you can send notes and track them. HubSpot CRM integration, and then Zapier integration. All these methods are trying to turn our software really into a platform where you can send handwritten notes wherever you want and even better, hopefully automate that so you don't even have to think about it. Then on the other side, the way we fulfill your orders, is we have now about 85 robots that we build here in our facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Each robot holds a real pen. It's a pilot G2 ballpoint pen. You can buy them at Staples, and it writes your note out just like you would. In fact it's no faster, maybe a little bit slower than you are, but it doesn't take any breaks. We're constantly building robots to keep up with demand. We don't sell the robots or lease them out, we just keep building them and putting them on racks in our facility here. We've got about 85 of those. They're pretty cool. They're 3D printed and laser cut and there's all sorts of cool technologies that I've learned about throughout this process. When the notes come off the line, if I'm staring at some of the notes that might have the handwriting styles that I am not familiar with, perhaps it's a handwriting style of like a client and we've custom made it, I am flabbergasted because it looks so real. I see it coming off the machine and I can't tell the difference. Anyway, we're doing about a hundred thousand last month. December was a very busy month. We did about 115,000 of those notes. We've been growing at about 300% a year, so after six years we're finally hitting our stride. It was a long curve, but it's been a very interesting process because we have clients that range the gamut. They range from individual realtors and mortgage brokers all the way up to high-end Italian goods manufacturers that sends us with their quarterly catalog. I'm happy to talk about all those. In a nutshell, if I had to segment how clients use us, they really use us in three different ways. They use us for thank you notes or correspondence to existing clients. That is if you buy a home or if you buy a handbag or whatever, we will package up a handwritten note with a handwritten envelope and then mail it out to you. The second way is we do in-box. For large online mattress companies or meal box companies, when you open up that meal box or that mattress box, you might find a handwritten note sitting at the top of that package that says thank you so much for your purchase. We all really care about what you think. Review us on Amazon, Yelp, Trustpilot, or whatever that is, or refer us to your friends. We do a lot of that. Then the third is the outbound outreach, such as a jewelry store. They might be opening up in a new location. We'll do a database pull of all the homes in that area that meets certain revenue criteria and then send them all a handwritten note. Now that is very expensive because you're paying for a real forever stamp. Unlike a junk mail piece, which is just printed, we have to start at that level. We have to print something, print the stationary, and then we have to write on top of it. It's never going to be as cheap as a junk mail piece, but it also gets opened substantially more frequently and I can talk about that. Those are the three ways: inbox, send via the mail to existing clients and customers, and then outreach to new prospects, but the new prospects is rather small just because it is so expensive. Kathleen: I have so many questions I want to ask you. David: Go for it. How do handwritten notes fit in with digital marketing? Kathleen: I'm about to ask my question, but before I do, I want to let everyone who's listening know you're going to notice that it sounds a little different because David and I were talking and we heard a little echo on his end. We've switched gears and he's called in so that we can give you guys better audio. That's why, if things sound a little different, you're not going crazy. What I wanted to ask you, David, I think it's so fascinating what you're doing and I want to zoom out and start big picture, which is that, so much of, when we talk about inbound marketing these days, we're almost 99% of the time we're talking digital. You've almost, everyone else is going right you're going left. You've gone really back and you're investing in this very traditional form of, I don't even know if most people would call it marketing. Handwritten letters. It's a very old school approach. Talk a little bit about, if you would, how you see that fitting in with digital marketing or the future of marketing in general. David: Yeah, and I hope everybody can hear me. I think as everything's gone digital people are really craving human connection and they can't go to the store now and know that person that sold them the good in China on Amazon. They want to feel like there is a human on the other end of that Amazon shipping box. That's really where we step in. When I started this company six years ago, the tagline was and still is: quality cards, your words in pen and ink. Really we were quality cards first because we thought everybody wanted that tactile experience. That's certainly part of it, but how does this fit into digital marketing? Well we think marketing is marketing and sales is sales and you have to have a holistic cross channel approach. When you visit the Handwrytten website, and obviously this is a very specific example because it has to do with us, but when you visit the Handwrytten website and you request handwriting samples, that triggers a whole Zapier flow that obviously includes a handwritten note that gets sent out to you automatically. We do this a lot for insurance firms and other people as well. The same website form interaction flow. On top of that, you also get emails and you get phone calls from us. I don't see Handwrytten the company being any different than anybody else. If you're looking to reach out to your clients, whether they're inbound leads or outbound prospects, you want to have a multichannel approach. Not everybody quite frankly connects online. For example, we're working with some healthcare brands and they're trying to go after Medicare seniors and they're finding a lot of these patients aren't responding to emails. By sending them a handwritten note to get them to come into the doctor or sign up to their plan or whatever it is, it's able to appeal to a different demographic. David: Also, there is definitely a novelty factor. I think the average person receives between one and two actual handwritten notes, or we're an actual handwritten note too, handwritten notes a month. While you might get hundreds of junk mail pieces and tens of thousands of emails during that time, this is a very different piece of mail that you're going to receive. I think it can apply almost universally. People say, who are your clients? We say it's anybody that wants to use the mail. That's really what it is. I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I think whether it's an inbound campaign or an outbound communication process that you're trying to build, you have to think about voice and you have to think about obviously email and perhaps social, but you should also think about what's your mail strategy and does that mail strategy include handwritten notes. Kathleen: Yeah. It's interesting to me because I've been observing what's happening with marketing and with consumer behavior and there definitely is a little bit of a craving. I think I agree with you for things that harken back to a different time because we have gotten into this era of everything being so digital and so disconnected in terms of, you're not necessarily talking to a real person and everything's very automated. I think it's interesting that there's this resurrection of the handwritten letter at this time. I also think it's interesting as the parent of a 13-year-old that kids that age are not being taught cursive in school anymore and I can see where the prospect, especially for younger people coming into the workforce, the prospect of sitting down and having to spend time writing out notes, cards, letters, what have you, seems daunting because they're not really taught to write the way that perhaps somebody my age was when we went through school. Examples of companies using handwritten notes in their marketing David: Yeah, absolutely. This stuff does work. We know that handwritten envelopes, forget about the actual note itself, but the handwritten envelope gets opened three times as frequently as a printed envelope. We have clients that are doing outbound meeting booking requests, and they get about a three to four X response right there versus sending out email blasts. We've got Team Rubicon, which is one of the...Unfortunately most clients don't want us to mention who they are, but we have a few examples that do. Nobody wants to be known as sending notes through us, but Team Rubicon, it's a nonprofit organization and they've been able to improve their redonation rates substantially. A meal box subscription is able to increase its customer retention by 5% to 10%, which was moving the needle for them. Just the simple thing of including this little note in the box has had some really cool results. Another side effect is thanks to Instagram and pint-, I guess more Instagram and Twitter, people are tweeting and Instagram sharing the notes they receive. Another client that I'm allowed to mention is a VYNL, V. Y. N. L. They're a record subscription. They are perfect for us because they're old school records and we're old school handwritten notes and a lot of people will Instagram and tweet pictures of the handwritten notes they received from VYNL. What's so amazing about VYNL is each note is individually curated for the recipient. it's like, "Hey Kathleen, I saw on Spotify you listen to whomever, because you're listening to that band we sent you these two other records." Then that note gets written out by us and then every day we ship notes to VYNL and they insert them with records. It's pretty cool. There is that Instagramming, tweeting element, which gets back to your online marketing strategy. What's crazy is we work with one client that runs a huge, one of the most popular daily YouTube shows, and they were trying to create a fan club basically, and part of that $5 admission to the fan club, you get a handwritten note from the stars of the video. People were complaining if they didn't get their handwritten note fast enough, which was crazy. They'd see all these handwritten notes online and the YouTube group didn't change it up per person. Pretty much the same note everybody got, but they loved it so much that they would complain if they didn't get that note fast enough. Oftentimes, I mean the vast majority of the times it had nothing to do with us. It was just the post office or a bad address or whatever, but it was really interesting to see that. I think all of this just comes down to customer experience management and improving that process for the individual because they feel so genericized by everything else. We have one client that does snack boxes for offices. You could sign up and get a box of granola and chips and whatever else and they'll send it to you on a monthly basis. What they found was if they screwed up your order on your snack, and then they followed up with sending another free snack box with the handwritten note, now granted the free snacks play a huge part in this, they follow up with a free snack box and the handwritten note, your loyalty was much higher than if they never screwed up at all. Then they actually started screwing up on purpose. Kathleen: That's hysterical. David: Yeah, because they found that it added so much value to have that experience where you reprove yourself to the clients. That was super interesting to us as well. Kathleen:That's incredible. I don't know whether I feel like it's just sad or exciting that people are so thrilled to get a handwritten note that the tweet it. It's sad in the sense that it's become a lost art, truly. I still do force my kids to send handwritten thank you notes after Christmas. It's so funny because some of them resist and don't necessarily always do it. The younger ones I can stand over and force them and they're always like, why? Why do I have to do it? No one does this anymore. I'm like, you will do it. David: That's exactly why they should do it is because nobody does it anymore. Customizing the handwriting for your notes Kathleen: Exactly. Well, that's neat. Now I want to switch gears for a second and talk about, somebody listening and they're like, this sounds really interesting and I might want to do it. You said something earlier that really peaked my interest, which is that you can customize the handwriting. Talk to me about that because that I did not realize and that is a game changer. David: Yeah, so we have two options there. One, you can use any of our pre-canned fonts. I shouldn't call them fonts, handwriting styles. You can find them on Handwrytten.com and those, I think we're up to 18 currently, and they range from overly fancy Jenna, to compact Lulu, to very blocky, to everything in between. Most clients can get by with those. If you want to go and actually have your own handwriting style made, it is a process. It's really an art form. We have two people here. That's all they do is generate these handwriting styles. It's not cheap. Relatively, I guess it's cheap. It's about a thousand dollars one time fee, but it takes several days for us to perfect that style because it's not just writing out the alphabet and writing out capitals and lowercase, but it's writing six copies of each letter, and then writing a ligature combinations, which are like two O's together, two L's together, two T's, because the way you'd write two T's, would you cross them with one line. How do your double O's look? Do you loop those together? All that type of stuff gets taken to account and then the end result is something that looks pretty darn close to your own handwriting. For a much lower fee of a thousand, instead of that, for $250 we can just do your signature and then you could just insert that in any note. The thousand dollars does include the signature. You get it for "free" there. We do have about 60 to 65 clients that have done that. The vast majority of our clients just use one of our, I don't even have my own custom style, I just use one on the website. Kathleen: Right, the cobbler's child. Right? David: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We didn't even send out Christmas cards this year for the same reason. We were too busy sending everybody else's. That's how all that works. I will say, like I said earlier, they do look, overall the biggest question we got is, we get a few questions, but the number one question is, does it look real? I would say on some of those to me it fools me even, but if I were to hand you a handwritten note and I say, "Hey Kathleen, did you receive my handwritten note?" You'd say, "Absolutely. Looks great. Thank you so much for thinking about me." If I said to you, "Hey Kathleen, what did you think of that handwritten note? Could you tell it's written by a robot?" If I asked you that it's going to change your viewing of that handwritten note entirely. At that point maybe 50/50 you might determine, oh wow, at the bottom it looks like that. Oh, at the top or something like that. Kathleen: Right. The lines are very clean. That's the one thing I noticed. When I write, I'm all over the place, but that's the only tell to me is that it's very linear, I don't know if that's the word, but... David: Yeah. We're getting there. On that way we actually have two different types of what we call jitter. We have a left margin jitter so that the left margin moves in and out every line. It doesn't look like you started the characters at the same spot. Then we also have, and maybe some of these aren't showing up in the samples on the website, but we do jittering. Then the other type of jitter we do is interline jitter. One line to the next below it is going to have a different spacing than the line below that. We vary that on a line-by-line basis. We do not angle those lines because that would look overly done. That jitter amount is incredibly subtle because we find people aren't super close then super far then super close. It's within only a couple of points per line that we jitter both of those, but we do try to make it subtle enough where, it's not going to look too perfect with a hard edge on the left side of the screen. Kathleen: This is totally fascinating to me. It sounds like you guys have studied human behavior as regards how people write notes with an incredible level of detail. I will say that to me, $1,000 to have a custom font made for your handwriting seems incredibly reasonable if you're going to do any volume. That pays for itself very quickly. Having said that, it's really funny because I'm on your site right now looking at the handwriting samples and I've determined that I am somewhere in between messy Michael and darlin Darlene. David: Yeah. All the styles are actually, this is where we become a small company all of a sudden, all the styles are named after either me and my family. I am casual David, even though that's not my handwriting, or office workers. It's down to the point where even my dog, who's the office dog compact to Lulu because she's six pounds and compact, has her own handwriting style there. The real popular ones, or my favorites are, tenacious Nick, chill Charity, dapper Will. They all look really great and what's nice about if you choose one of these standard 18 handwriting styles, we're constantly refining those styles and just making sure they look better and better. For example, with the very formal cursive styles, they look wonderful, but then if somebody were to write something in all caps in that cursive, it looks weird. Now we're going back and refining all those ligature, they're not really ligature combinations, but combinations of all cap words written in a cursive style. You just go down a rabbit hole of things you want to improve on each of these things. Luckily we have ASU, Arizona State University, not too far away. We have the design students from there come in and they help us with all that because it's a lot. There's a lot to be done. Kathleen: That's so fascinating. I could talk for hours about these little details and I think it's really cool that you are paying attention to the details in that way because if you're going to do this, I think it would totally backfire if it wasn't done well. If it's an obvious robotic attempt at writing a card. David: Yeah. We actually have one client that their quality assurance person, who is in a quality assurance mindset, was rejecting our cards because each card looked different. We said to him, well, that's the whole point. Not each card is supposed to be identical because people are, I know for a fact, for their brand, people do Instagram and do Pinterest and all that stuff, pictures of their cards, and if two people see the exact same card with the exact same spacing and everything else, it's going to look terrible to them. I was able to get them over that hump. It was funny that that was...He came at it from sourcing or let's get this laser printed perspective, and we said, no, no, no, that's not how it's supposed to be. They are all supposed to have a little variation so it looks more realistic. What types of cards can you choose from? Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. To that point, my understanding from looking at your site is you can do folded cards or flat cards, correct? David: Yes. Yep. Really we can write on pretty much any piece of paper. On our website, we've got an inventory of about a hundred folded cards to choose from. Most of those now are designed in-house by us under the Red Wagon label. Nothing ever says Handwrytten when it comes in the mail, because we don't want to be the ones to spoil that. Those will come with that on the back. Instead of saying Hallmark, it says Red Wagon. In addition to that, we've got a variety of either blanks or blank on one side, 5X7 flat cards. With those, if they're totally blank on both sides, you can put a big image on the back, or I think confusingly which is called the front in our system, and then on the other side you can put your logo at the top and maybe a footer at the bottom and then we'll write between that and it looks like a nice luxurious piece of stationary. That is a very popular option. If you're a larger client and you've got your own stationary like some of our luxury brands do or whatever, they can always obviously just send that to us and we'll use that instead. What's nice about the online card customizer is it's so simple. You can literally spend like, I'm doing demos for prospects and I'll go online and in three minutes with them on a Zoom call, I'll create a piece of stationary that looks totally legitimate for them to use and then we can write it on it and send them a sample on their own stationery. It looks really good. The reason it's a flat card and not a folded card is basically we're resource constrained at Handwrytten currently and we can't afford a huge digital press that we'd then have to cut everything down and all that so it's easier if we just stick to a 5X7 flat card and it allows us to offer these at a price point in quantity one where it still makes sense. Kathleen: Yeah. David: It's $3.25. Kathleen: You guys also do handwritten envelopes too, correct? David: Everything is handwritten. The note is handwritten. The envelope is handwritten. There's a real forever stamp put on that piece if we're mailing domestically or an international first class stamp, if we're mailing outside of the United States. In addition to sending cards, clients can send us their business cards and we can insert those. There is a small fee for that for the storage and handling all those business cards. How companies are using Handwrytten David: Then additionally we've got probably 15 different denominations of gift cards for you to choose from. Amazon, Starbucks, Target, Home Depot, Visa gift cards, that type of thing. You could choose any of those and include that with your order at checkout too. We do a lot of $5 Starbucks cards typically for, "Thank you for meeting with me - here's a coffee on me" type things. We also do quite a few Home Depot for realtors and mortgage brokers. Kathleen: Oh yeah, that's a good idea. David: Yeah. Then also quite frankly for lazy people sending birthdays to their friends wherever, we do a lot of visa cards for that. I would say by and large, our biggest seller is the $5 Starbucks. Kathleen: Yeah, I could see it being really useful for companies that are trying to get more online reviews for their products. Somebody reviews you, you send them a thank you with a little gift card as a token of your thanks. That seems like a complete no brainer. David: Yeah, and we do a lot of that for Amazon sellers. Amazon's changed up the rules a little bit, so now it's not allowed to go out and contact them outside of the channel. You can't just send them a note in the mail. Now we're just inserting those notes with the packages themselves prior to getting shipped to Amazon for fulfillment, but we do a lot of those types of notes for them. Then a thank you for your referral and then a ton of insurance renewal type. When your insurance is up for renewal, it automatically triggers through Zapier a handwritten note to you thanking you for your renewal. On the inbound side, quite frankly, I think a lot of it is automatic triggering on forms. When people fill out a form online, that rep might take a few days to get in touch with them and in that time, we send all notes within typically the next business day. Then the post office takes their snail mail time to get to you. It's a nice follow up to whenever the rep contacts you. Kathleen: Yeah, that's what I was thinking of is I could see a lot of applications in sales. I could also see, in one of my previous roles I had, my team did an annual conference and I could see sending it to people who've registered for the conference or sponsors or even follow ups after the conference. There's so many different ways to use it with events. David: Absolutely. We were able to get our hands on the attendee list for our conference luckily a few weeks before the conference started, and we were able to track down all the mailing addresses. I didn't even attend that conference quite frankly. I just sat in the lobby and it was by far the most successful conference we ever had because we had meetings booked. I had so many meetings booked. I had to cut meetings short to get to the next meeting. It was great. It was a great example that our service worked for ourselves. It is absolutely great for pre-conference meeting scheduling and post-conference followup. It certainly does break through the din. How to automate handwritten notes Kathleen: Going back to something that you started with. I wanted to just revisit the...You talked about really this evolving into a platform because you have these integrations, so for people who are listening, it sounds like you have the option of doing this in a very transactional way. Either sending you a CSV file with a bunch of names and addresses or you could literally connect this to your CRM and trigger actions from there, correct? David: Yeah, absolutely. Our deepest integration right now is with Salesforce and in Salesforce you can send a handwritten note from the account screen, from the contact, from the lead, or from the opportunity. Then we could also automate through Salesforce. There's automation play, which was called process builder. Quite frankly, I'm a much bigger fan of Zapier, so even if they know how to do process builder, I know nothing about it. I say just spend the $29 a month and do Zapier and send it out. That way it's much easier. Either through Salesforce or through Zapier, you can do it. What's nice about doing it in Zapier or through HubSpot's CRM is any time you send a Handwrytten note, it's recorded in the CRM systems - within Salesforce or within HubSpot's CRM timeline. Therefore, when you go into that record and you see, "Oh, I called Kathleen on Monday, I sent her an email on Tuesday, I sent her a Handwrytten note with a $5 Starbucks on Wednesday", all that's recorded in your CRM platform. Then depending on the CRM platform, I know Salesforce is really robust in this way, your manager can oversee you and see all the notes you sent. Track your spend. Maybe not allow you to send gift cards or not allow you to send too many notes a month or whatever it is. We are looking to expand on that more into HubSpot and into Shopify. Trying to get these small stores to automatically follow up upon certain thresholds. On Shopify, if I send somebody a third order or they've spent over $500 in their lifetime with me or whatever that is, that would automatically trigger a note. Currently, we do all that through Zapier, but we just want to make it more transparent by putting it directly in the Shopify store. Quite frankly, for Handwrytten, I just want to be everywhere and every touch point is better SEO and it's more availability, more people will know about us and that type of stuff. Even if they in the end, commonly uses us through Zapier or uploading a CSV into our website. Kathleen: The real power of this to me is just that it has the potential to eliminate the human error factor. As somebody who works with companies as a head of marketing, I think there's so much potential to, I was mentioning before, integrate this in the sales process. I'm a marketer who loves working closely with sales teams because obviously you can judge yourself based on the number of qualified leads you pass to a sales team, but really with marketing, at the end of the day, it all comes down to how many of those leads turn into customers. I like to look at what happens after that lead gets passed over. I think being able to say, okay, we did a demo for this person. When that's marked off in Salesforce or in HubSpot CRM, if I can go in and automatically trigger it so that handwritten note goes out, I don't then have to rely on the sales team. It also makes their life easier, which improves my relationship with them. Anything marketing can do to make sales life easier, is always a good thing. I know for sure that it's going to happen. To me that makes it incredibly appealing as a marketer. David: Yeah, and that's where we're really trying to get with all of our clients. We want to be the plumbing of the organization on the handwritten notes side. You have your email plumbing and your CRM plumbing, but we want to be the handwritten note plumbing that you don't even think about. You just know it's going to work. For instance, we work with a solar panel installation company in Louisiana and they're sending about 400 notes a day. All of these notes are simply triggered off of people setting up meetings. They don't do anything. These notes are automatically triggered. They don't even have to think about it. We have a major car manufacturer if you call into their main customer support number in Detroit, and I'm not sure why you'd call them versus your dealership, but whenever people still do call the car manufacturer, depending on if you were resolved or unresolved in the call center, it automatically triggers one of three different handwritten notes to that car buyer. That purchaser saying "I'm so happy we were able to help you" or "I'm so sorry we weren't able to resolve this" whatever. To your point, exactly, it's taking the compliance or the follow through aspect out of it. The last thing you want to do is sit down and you're trying to answer the phone and you don't want to have to sit down and remember to send 40 handwritten notes and have your hand cramp up and everything else. We work with a super premium luxury perfume company and we do all their online purchases. We send handwritten notes following an order. I was just walking through a department store with my wife and they had that premium brand and I pointed it out, and the store clerk came up and she was asking me why I was pointing it out and I said, oh, it's because we do the handwritten notes for you guys. She goes, "No, you don't." I have to write all my own handwritten notes and it takes all day to do it and that's a pain in the neck. I said, "Well, we do it for the online orders." She said, "Well, geez, you should do it for me too", because she's very busy. I'm sure she can't get around to sending all her handwritten notes. If she does, maybe they start looking terrible by the end of the day because her hands cramped or whatever. We're doing a lot of that trying to make the online experience just as good as the offline. Kathleen: That's awesome. I think this is a no brainer. I know I'm going to be using it in some capacity, but I've been fascinated by solutions like this for a while because the same pain point that you expressed when you started the company, I felt that a few years ago and I went and started Googling to try to find a solution and there wasn't really one that existed. There were some very, very high priced ones that if you're a company that's going to do tremendous volume, it might be worth investing in it, but there weren't any good solutions that supported a lower volume and a smaller budget. I love that you have a solution that spans all of that. I think that's great. It makes it so much more accessible. David: Right now for better or worse, I actually wrote a medium post about this, our big competitor who you probably saw, they are no more because they spent all their money on marketing and very little money on technology. I come from a technology background and I spent all our money on technology so that we could support the business and maximize throughput of messages so that you didn't have to have somebody sitting there placing each note individually on a handwriting robot like they did. They are no more, and right now we are pretty much the only game in the United States. I know of one in Germany doing it and the big problem we're coming across right now are companies claiming to be handwritten, but we've received their product and it's laser printed. There's a little bit of market confusion out there currently, but in the actual handwritten notes space in North America, we are in an interesting position to be the only game in town right now. You'd think we'd be bigger given that. We're getting there. We're definitely getting there. Kathleen: Oh, I have a feeling that in a few years everyone is going to be talking about you. Well not even a few years. I don't think it's going to take long because it's a really great product and it sells itself to me at least. David: Thank you. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Well, I want to make sure I save enough time to ask you my questions that I always ask all my guests. The first one is, we talk a ton about inbound marketing on this podcast. When you think about companies or individuals out there who are practicing inbound marketing, who do you think is really doing it well right now? David: This is actually not a client of ours, but I have some friends that do digital marketing and we've been talking about it. I actually ran this question by them because I knew you're going to ask it. There's a company called GhostBed based in Florida. They do online mattresses. They've been doing them quite a long time and they rely heavily on people writing video reviews or doing video reviews and putting them on Instagram or on Twitter and then they pull them off those social channels and actually put them on their website and then they tag you with that ad roll and everything else once you're there. They really got ya. I know they use a marketing influencer network. I think they're using one called Intellifluence, but they do a very good job. As far as our clients, I think VYNL does a very good job within their niche of building this huge branding presence on, for certain, very specific niche demographics. Those hipsters that want to receive old fashioned vinyl. They've done a great job of getting out there and getting in front with a lot of Instagram and a lot of Facebook marketing and then driving that back to their website and then just having everybody, at least when we started, there was a lot of excitement about these handwritten notes with them and there was a lot of taking pictures of those and posting them online. That worked really well. Then I got to say we've done a pretty good job of it just because of the cobbled together HubSpot-like platform we've built, which is a nine or 10 step Zapier zap that when you come in and you request, I will warn all your listeners, that if they request samples, they're going to get emails from members of my team and then a phone call and they're going to be put in our CRM system and all that. That whole process is totally automated. I'm pretty happy about the inbound processing machine we've created here based on creating an item of value, which is a handwritten note sample that people want to receive. I think GhostBed has done a really pretty incredible job. Kathleen: Oh, I can't wait to check that out. It's amazing what you can do with Zapier. It's pretty limitless. David: It really is. I should work for them. Kathleen: Yeah. I had a guy named Connor Malloy as one of my guests many episodes ago. He's from a company called Chi City Legal. I think it's him and one partner that have a law practice in Chicago and he runs his entire practice on Zapier on basically zero budget. It's amazing what he has done. That was one of my favorite episodes because he was like, "I don't know if you want to talk to me because it's just me and my partner and we don't have a big budget and we don't have any fancy software." I'm like, "No, that is why I want to talk to you because you've done all this incredible stuff on a shoe string with just you." David: I remember the episode. He had Zapier pre-filling his contracts and all that stuff. Kathleen: Yeah. It's amazing. That's really cool that you guys have an integration with Zapier because I've used it at many companies and it's really a game changer. Second question is, the digital marketing changes really quickly and the biggest complaint I get from marketers is they can't keep up with it. How do you personally keep up with it? How do you stay educated? David: Well, recently I have to admit I have become a Reddit addict and I don't know if you've gone on the Reddit bandwagon yet, but it's a never ending rabbit hole to go down for good and bad. I can go on certain channels and just dive in to silly videos for hours on end or I can look at the growth marketers subreddit and get some really great ideas. I find Reddit to be really good. The latest idea, and I almost hesitate to mention this on your show, is a little black hat idea for LinkedIn marketing called LemPod, L. E. M. P. O. D. I don't know if it's worth getting into because somebody...It was posted on Hacker Noon as well in other websites they talked about LemPod, but basically it's a way of preseeding your LinkedIn posts with engagements. You join a group of other digital marketers or people in your same vertical or what have you, and it automatically fills your post with comments from them, and because of that, the more engagements your posts have, the more visibility they have. My recent posts have all received 5,000 to 10,000 views because of LemPod. It's a little bit black hat, but I learned about that through Reddit as well. Also, I'm a huge fan of Flipboard and I'm part of the hashtag inbound marketing content on Flipboard, so I read that. Then finally I listen to you and I've heard all these episodes you've mentioned. Those are the three ways. LemPod is certainly interesting if you're looking for an interesting approach to massively increasing your views, even if it's a little funny at the beginning. Kathleen: Yeah, I'll definitely have to check that out. I am so humbled that you mentioned me in that mix and that you listened to the podcast and get some value out of it. That means a lot to hear that feedback. Thank you. David: No, absolutely. Like I said, during the preinterview for this and then again I write for Inc. magazine and I tried to create items of value on the website because of that gentleman that worked at HubSpot, then G2 Crowd. I really take what you're doing to heart and I think I cannot be the only one. There has to be other listeners out there doing the same. Thank you for doing this and I hope it's paying off for you because it's paying off for us. How to connect with David Kathleen: Oh, well thank you. That is why I love doing it. It makes me happy to hear that it's working for you. Well, I'm sure there are people who are listening to this and they're thinking this Handwrytten things sounds really cool. I want to check it out. How should they do that? What's the best way for them to learn more about Handwrytten and or connect with you online? David: Yeah, you can always connect with me online. I'm David B Wachs on Twitter, I think David B. Wachs On LinkedIn, but just search for David and Handwrytten on LinkedIn. The company is Handwrytten.com. That's Handwrytten with a Y, H. A. N. D. W. R. Y. T. T. E. N. I do recommend the samples requests. You can always say "stop emailing me" after you get your samples, because with the samples you get a whole bunch of material. You get custom cards, you'll get standard cards, you'll get a whole page of different writing styles and a nice little folder to hold it all in. People really do like our samples. You could just get that at Handwrytten.com/business. We are rolling out a new website in the next two months, which I'm super excited about. If you check us out now, please check this out in two months. That's it. We have a small presence on Instagram. I think our tag is Handwryttennotes on there, and we are on Pinterest because we do a lot of consumery style notes, but for the most part, just feel free to connect with me on Twitter. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. Well, I will put links to all of that in the show notes, so head over there if you're interested in connecting with David or learning more about Handwrytten. There's so much good stuff on the website, so I definitely do recommend people check that out. Of course, if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode or you'll learn something new, I would really appreciate it if you could head to Apple podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review. That would help us get in front of more listeners like you. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, David. This was a ton of fun. David: Thank you very much. It was an honor to be on your show.